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+Project Gutenberg's Daughters of the Puritans, by Seth Curtis Beach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Daughters of the Puritans
+       A Group of Brief Biographies
+
+Author: Seth Curtis Beach
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2008 [EBook #25582]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAUGHTERS OF THE PURITANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Chris Logan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DAUGHTERS
+OF THE PURITANS
+
+A Group of Brief Biographies
+
+BY
+
+SETH CURTIS BEACH
+
+_Essay Index Reprint Series_
+
+BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC.
+FREEPORT, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+First published 1905
+Reprinted 1967
+
+[Illustration: THE HOME OF LYDIA MARIA CHILD AT WAYLAND,
+MASSACHUSETTS]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+    CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK, 1789-1867                              1
+
+    MARY LOVELL WARE, 1798-1849                                     43
+
+    LYDIA MARIA CHILD, 1802-1880                                    79
+
+    DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX, 1802-1887                                  123
+
+    SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI, 1810-1850                        165
+
+    HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 1811-1896                               209
+
+    LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, 1832-1888                                   251
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK
+
+
+[Illustration: CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK]
+
+During the first half of the nineteenth century, Miss Sedgwick would
+doubtless have been considered the queen of American letters, but, in
+the opinion of her friends, the beauty of her character surpassed the
+merit of her books. In 1871, Miss Mary E. Dewey, her life-long
+neighbor, edited a volume of Miss Sedgwick's letters, mostly to
+members of her family, in compliance with the desire of those who knew
+and loved her, "that some printed memorial should exist of a life so
+beautiful and delightful in itself, and so beneficent in its influence
+upon others." Truly a "life beautiful in itself and beneficent in its
+influence," the reader will say, as he lays down this tender volume.
+
+Catharine Maria Sedgwick was born at Stockbridge, Mass., in 1789, the
+first year of the presidency of George Washington. She was a
+descendant from Robert Sedgwick, major-general under Cromwell, and
+governor of Jamaica. Her father, Theodore Sedgwick, was a country boy,
+born in 1746, upon a barren farm in one of the hill-towns of
+Connecticut. Here the family opened a country store, then added a
+tavern, and with the combined industries of farm, store and tavern,
+Theodore, most fortunate of the sons if not the favorite, was sent to
+Yale college, where he remained, until, in the last year of his
+course, he managed to get himself expelled. He began the study of
+theology, his daughter suggests, in a moment of contrition over
+expulsion from college, but soon turned to the law for which he had
+singular aptitude. He could not have gone far in his legal career
+when, before the age of twenty-one, he married a beautiful girl whose
+memory he always tenderly cherished, as well he might considering his
+part in the tragedy of her early death. He had taken small pox, had
+been duly quarantined and discharged but his young wife combed out the
+tangles of his matted hair, caught the disease, and died, within a
+year after marriage.
+
+Marriage was necessary in those days, his daughter suggests, and the
+year of conventional widowhood having expired, Mr. Sedgwick, then at
+the age of twenty-three, married Miss Pamela Dwight, the mother of his
+four sons, all successful lawyers, and his three daughters, all
+exemplary women. The second Mrs. Sedgwick was presumably more
+beautiful than the first; certainly she was more celebrated. She is
+immortalized by her portrait in Griswold's "American Court," and by a
+few complimentary lines in Mrs. Ellet's "Queens of American Society."
+
+Theodore Sedgwick rose to distinction by his energies and talents but,
+as we have seen, he was of sufficiently humble origin, which could not
+have been greatly redeemed by expulsion from college; while at the age
+of twenty-three, that must have been his chief exploit. Social lines
+were very firmly drawn in that old colonial society, before the plough
+of the Revolution went through it, and there was no more aristocratic
+family than the Dwights, in Western Massachusetts.
+
+Madame Quincy gives an account of a visit, in her girlhood, paid to
+the mother of Miss Pamela, Madame Dwight, in her "mansion-house," and
+says that her husband, Brig.-Gen. Joseph Dwight, was "one of the
+leading men of Massachusetts in his day." Madame Dwight was presumably
+not inferior to her husband. She was daughter of Col. Williams, of
+Williamstown, who commanded a brigade in the old French War, and whose
+son founded Williams College. A daughter of Madame Dwight, older than
+Pamela, married Mark Hopkins, "a distinguished lawyer of his time,"
+says Madame Quincy, and grandfather of Rev. Mark Hopkins, D.D.,
+perhaps the most illustrious president of the college founded by
+Madame Dwight's family.
+
+The intermarriage of the Williamses, Dwights, and Hopkinses formed a
+fine, aristocratic circle, into which the Sedgwicks were not very
+cordially welcomed. "My mother's family (of this," says Mrs. Sedgwick,
+"I have rather an indefinite impression than any knowledge) objected
+to my father on the score of family, they priding themselves on their
+gentle blood; but as he afterwards rose far beyond their highest
+water-mark, the objection was cast into oblivion by those who made
+it."
+
+A few years after this marriage, the war of the Revolution began. Mr.
+Sedgwick entered the army, served as an officer under Washington,
+whose acquaintance and favor he enjoyed, and from that time, for forty
+years until his death, he was in public life, in positions of
+responsibility and honor. He was member of the Continental Congress,
+member of the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House, Senator
+from Massachusetts, and, at his death, judge of the Massachusetts
+Supreme Court.
+
+Judge Sedgwick was a staunch Federalist and, in spite of the fact that
+he himself was not born in the purple, he shared the common Federalist
+contempt for the masses. "I remember my father," says Miss Sedgwick,
+"one of the kindest-hearted men and most observant of the rights of
+all beneath him, habitually spoke of the people as 'Jacobins,'
+'sans-culottes,' and 'miscreants.' He--and this I speak as a type of
+the Federalist party--dreaded every upward step they made, regarding
+their elevation as a depression, in proportion to their ascension, of
+the intelligence and virtue of the country." "He was born too soon,"
+says his daughter apologetically, "to relish the freedoms of
+democracy, and I have seen his brow lower when a free and easy
+mechanic came to the front door, and upon one occasion, I remember his
+turning off the east steps (I am sure not kicking, but the
+demonstration was unequivocal) a grown up lad who kept his hat on
+after being told to remove it." In these days one would hardly tell
+him to remove it, let alone hustling him off the steps.
+
+The incident shows how far education, prosperity, wealth, and forty
+years of public life had transformed the father of Miss Sedgwick from
+the country boy of a hill-farm in Connecticut. More to our present
+purpose, the apologetic way in which Miss Sedgwick speaks of these
+high-bred prejudices of her father, shows that she does not share
+them. "The Federalists," she says, "stood upright, and their feet
+firmly planted on the rock of aristocracy but that rock was bedded in
+the sands, or rather was a boulder from the Old World, and the tide of
+democracy was surely and swiftly undermining it."
+
+When this was written, Miss Sedgwick had made the discovery that,
+while the Federalists had the better "education, intellectual and
+moral," the "democrats had among them much native sagacity" and an
+earnest "determination to work out the theories of the government."
+She is writing to her niece: "All this my dear Alice, as you may
+suppose, is an after-thought. Then I entered fully, and with the faith
+and ignorance of childhood, into the prejudices of the time." Those
+prejudices must have been far behind her when her first story was
+written, "A New England Tale," in which it happens, inadvertently we
+may believe, all the worst knaves are blue-blooded and at least most
+of the decent persons are poor and humble. Later we shall see her
+slumming in New York like a Sister of Charity, 'saving those that are
+lost,' a field of labor toward which her Federalist education scarcely
+led.
+
+She could have learned some condescension and humanity from her mother
+who, in spite of her fine birth, seems to have been modest and
+retiring to a degree. She was very reluctant to have her husband
+embark upon a public career; had, her daughter says, "No sympathy with
+what is called honor and distinction"; and wrote her husband a letter
+of protest which is worth quoting if only to show how a well-trained
+wife would write her doting husband something more than a century ago:
+"Pardon me, my dearest Mr. Sedgwick, if I beg you once more to think
+over the matter before you embark in public business. I grant that the
+'call of our country,' the 'voice of fame,' and the 'Honorable' and
+'Right-Honorable,' are high sounding words. 'They play around the
+head, but they come not near the heart.'" However, if he decides for a
+public career, she will submit: "Submission is my duty, and however
+hard, I will try to practice what reason teaches me I am under
+obligation to do." That address, "my dearest Mr. Sedgwick," from a
+wife a dozen years after marriage, shows a becoming degree of respect.
+
+We may be sure that this gentle mother would have encouraged no silly
+notions of social distinctions in the minds of her children. Even Mr.
+Sedgwick seems to have had a softer and more human side to his nature
+than we have yet seen. Miss Sedgwick enjoys repeating a story which
+she heard from a then "venerable missionary." The son of the village
+shoemaker, his first upward step was as boy-of-all-work of the clerk
+of courts. He had driven his master to the court session in dignified
+silence, broken on arrival by a curt order to take in the trunk. "As
+he set it down in the entry," says Miss Sedgwick, "my father, then
+judge of the Supreme Judicial Court, was coming down stairs, bringing
+his trunk himself. He set it down, accosted the boy most kindly, and
+gave him his cordial hand. The lad's feelings, chilled by his master's
+haughtiness, at once melted, and took an impression of my father's
+kindness that was never effaced."
+
+The individual is so much a creature of his environment, that I must
+carry these details a little farther. Forty years in public life,
+Judge Sedgwick had an extended acquaintance and, according to the
+custom of the time, kept open house. "When I remember," says Miss
+Sedgwick, "how often the great gate swung open for the entrance of
+traveling vehicles, the old mansion seems to me much more like an
+hostelrie of the olden time than the quiet house it now is. My
+father's hospitality was unbounded. It extended from the gentleman in
+his coach, chaise, or on horseback, according to his means or
+necessities, to the poor, lame beggar that would sit half the night
+roasting at the kitchen fire with the negro servants. My father was in
+some sort the chieftain of his family, and his home was their resort
+and resting-place. Uncles and aunts always found a welcome there;
+cousins wintered and summered with us. Thus hospitality was an element
+in our education. It elicited our faculties of doing and suffering. It
+smothered the love and habit of minor comforts and petty physical
+indulgences that belong to a higher state of civilization and generate
+selfishness, and it made regard for others, and small sacrifices for
+them, a habit."
+
+Just one word more about this home, the like of which it would be hard
+to find in our generation: "No bickering or dissention was ever
+permitted. Love was the habit, the life of the household rather than
+the law.--A querulous tone, a complaint, a slight word of dissention,
+was met by that awful frown of my father's. Jove's thunder was to a
+pagan believer but as a summer day's drifting cloud to it. It was not
+so dreadful because it portended punishment,--it was punishment; it
+was a token of suspension of the approbation and love that were our
+life."
+
+These passages have a twofold value. They tell us in what school Miss
+Sedgwick was educated, and they give us a specimen of her literary
+style. Language is to her a supple instrument, and she makes the
+reader see what she undertakes to relate.
+
+Judge Sedgwick died in Boston, in 1813, when Miss Sedgwick was
+twenty-three. The biographical Dictionaries say he was a member of Dr.
+Channing's church. As Miss Sedgwick relates the facts, he had long
+desired to "make a public profession of religion," but had been
+deterred because he could not conscientiously join the church of his
+family, in Stockbridge, with its Calvinistic confession, and was too
+tender of the feelings of his pastor to join another,--"unworthy
+motives," says Miss Sedgwick. Briefly stated, he now sent for Dr.
+Channing and received from him the communion. Later, Miss Sedgwick
+followed him into the Unitarian fellowship. She, and two distinguished
+brothers, were among the founders of the first Unitarian church in New
+York city.
+
+Miss Dewey calls her volume "The Life and Letters" of Miss Sedgwick,
+but the Life is very scantily written. She has given us a picture
+rather than a biography. Indeed, to write a biography of Miss Sedgwick
+is no easy task, there was so much of worth in her character and so
+little of dramatic incident in her career. Independent in her
+circumstances, exempt from struggle for existence or for social
+position, unambitious for literary fame and surprised at its coming,
+unmarried and yet domestic in tastes and habits, at home in any one of
+the five households of her married brothers and sisters, she lived for
+seventy-seven years as a favored guest at the table of fortune. She
+saw things happen to others, but they did not happen to her. It was
+with her as with Whittier's sweet Quakeress:
+
+    "For all her quiet life flowed on
+      As meadow streamlets flow,
+    Where fresher green reveals alone
+      The noiseless ways they go."
+
+Of her outward career, Miss Dewey truly says: "No striking incidents,
+no remarkable occurrences will be found in it, but the gradual
+unfolding and ripening amid congenial surroundings of a true and
+beautiful soul, a clear and refined intellect, and a singularly
+sympathetic social nature. She was born eighty years ago"--this was
+written in 1871,--"when the atmosphere was still electric with the
+storm in which we took our place among the nations, and, passing her
+childhood in the seclusion of a New England valley, while yet her
+family was linked to the great world without by ties both political
+and social, early and deep foundations were laid in her character of
+patriotism, religious feeling, love of nature, and strong attachment
+to home, and to those who made it what it was. And when in later life,
+she took her place among the acknowledged leaders of literature and
+society, these remained the central features of her character, and
+around them gathered all the graceful culture, the active
+philanthropy, the social accomplishment, which made her presence a joy
+wherever it came."
+
+It is not singular if she began her existence at a somewhat advanced
+stage. She was quite sure she remembered incidents that took place
+before she was two years old. She remembered a dinner party at which
+Miss Susan Morton, afterward Madame Quincy, was present, and to which
+her father and her brother, Theodore, came from Philadelphia. If you
+are anxious to know what incidents of such an event would fix
+themselves in the mind of a child of two, they were these: She made
+her first attempt to say "Theodore," and "Philadelphia," and she tried
+her baby trick of biting her glass, for which she had doubtless been
+reproved, and watched its effect upon her father. "I recall perfectly
+the feeling with which I turned my eye to him, expecting to see that
+brow cloud with displeasure, but it was smooth as love could make it.
+That consciousness, that glance, that assurance, remained stamped
+indelibly."
+
+"Education in the common sense," says Miss Sedgwick, "I had next to
+none." For schools, she fared like other children in Stockbridge, with
+the difference that her father was "absorbed in political life," her
+mother, in Catharine's youth an invalid, died early, and no one, she
+says, "dictated my studies or overlooked my progress. I remember
+feeling an intense ambition to be at the head of my class, and
+generally being there. Our minds were not weakened by too much study;
+reading, spelling, and Dwight's geography were the only paths of
+knowledge into which we were led;" to which accomplishments she adds
+as an after-thought, grammar and arithmetic.
+
+Nevertheless, when in 1838, six of the Sedgwick family travelled
+together through France and Italy, doing much of those sunny lands on
+foot, Miss Sedgwick was interpreter for the party in both countries,
+apparently easy mistress of their respective languages. It is
+remarkable what fine culture seems to have been attainable by a New
+England child born more than a hundred years ago, when Harvard and
+Yale were, as we are told, mere High Schools, and Radcliffe and
+Wellesley were not even dreamed of. Instead of Radcliffe or Wellesley,
+Miss Sedgwick attended a boarding school in Albany, at the age of
+thirteen and, at the age of fifteen, another in Boston, the latter for
+six months, and the former could not have been more than two years.
+Both, according to her, gave her great social advantages, and did
+little for her scholarship. Miss Bell, the head of the Albany school,
+"rose late, was half the time out of the school, and did very little
+when in it."
+
+Miss Paine's school in Boston, let us hope, was better; but "I was at
+the most susceptible age. My father's numerous friends in Boston
+opened their doors to me. I was attractive in my appearance"--she is
+writing this to a niece and it is probably all true--"and, from always
+associating on equal terms with those much older than myself, I had a
+mental maturity rather striking, and with an ignorance of the world, a
+romantic enthusiasm, an aptitude at admiring and loving that
+altogether made me an object of general interest. I was admired and
+flattered. Harry and Robert were then resident graduates at Cambridge.
+They were too inexperienced to perceive the mistake I was making; they
+were naturally pleased with the attentions I was receiving. The winter
+passed away in a series of bewildering gayeties. I had talent enough
+to be liked by my teachers, and good nature to secure their good will.
+I gave them very little trouble in any way. When I came home from
+Boston I felt the deepest mortification at my waste of time and money,
+though my father never said one word to me on the subject. For the
+only time in my life I rose early to read French, and in a few weeks
+learned more by myself than I had acquired all winter."
+
+It will be seen that she had the ability to study without a teacher,
+and that is an art which, with time at one's disposal and the stimulus
+at hand, assures education. Intellectual stimulus was precisely what
+her home furnished. "I was reared in an atmosphere of high
+intelligence. My father had uncommon mental vigor. So had my brothers.
+Their daily habits and pursuits and pleasures, were intellectual, and
+I naturally imbibed from them a kindred taste. Their talk was not of
+beeves, nor of making money; that now universal passion had not
+entered into men and possessed them as it does now, or if it had, it
+was not in the sanctuary of our home,--there the money-changers did
+not come."
+
+The more we know of her home life, the less wonder we have at her
+mental development. She says that "at the age of eight, my father,
+whenever he was at home, kept me up and at his side till nine o'clock
+in the evening, to listen to him while he read aloud to the family
+Hume, or Shakspere, or Don Quixote, or Hudibras. Certainly I did not
+understand them, but some glances of celestial light reached my soul,
+and I caught from his magnetic sympathy some elevation of feeling, and
+that love of reading which has been to me an education." A modern
+girl is liable to nervous prostration without being kept up till nine
+on such juvenile literature as Hume and Shakspere at the age of eight;
+but Miss Sedgwick was a country girl who, in youth, lived out of doors
+and romped like a boy and, at the age of fifty, led a party of young
+nieces through France, Switzerland, and Italy, much of the way on foot
+and always at their head. Always fortune's favorite, she enjoyed among
+other things remarkably good health.
+
+She thinks she was ten years old when she read Rollin's Ancient
+History, spending the noon intermission, when of course she ought to
+have been at play, out of sight under her desk, where she "read, and
+munched, and forgot myself in Cyrus's greatness."
+
+A winter in New York, where she afterward spent so much of her time,
+was her first absence from home. She had a married sister there whose
+husband was in government employ, and her oldest brother was there
+studying law. She was eleven years old; the date was 1801; and her
+business in New York seems to have been to attend a French Dancing
+School of which at that era there was but one in the city. She saw her
+first play, and used to dry the still damp newspaper, in her
+eagerness to read the theatre announcements. She also experienced a
+very severe humiliation. She, with her brother, Theodore, attended a
+large dinner party at the house of a friend of her father. "Our host
+asked me, the only stranger guest, which part of a huge turkey, in
+which he had put his carving fork, I would take. I knew only one point
+of manners for such occasions, dear Alice,--that I must specify some
+part, and as ill luck would have it, the side-bone came first into my
+head, and 'Side-bone, sir,' I said. Oh what a lecture I got when we
+got home, the wretched little chit that compelled a gentleman to cut
+up a whole turkey to serve her! I cried myself to sleep that night."
+It was too bad to spoil that dinner party for the little girl.
+
+Her mother died when Miss Sedgwick was seventeen; her father when she
+was twenty-three. All her brothers and sisters were married and
+living, three of them in New York city, one in Albany, and one, her
+youngest brother, in Lenox. With this brother in Lenox, Miss Sedgwick
+for many happy years, had her home, at least her summer home, having
+five rooms in an annex to his house built for her, into which she
+gathered her household gods and where she dispensed hospitality to
+her friends. For many years, New York city was generally her winter
+home.
+
+Theoretically, we have arrived with this maiden at the age of
+twenty-three, but we must go back and read from one or two early
+letters. She is ten years old when, under date of 1800, she writes her
+father: "My dear papa,--Last week I received a letter from you which
+gave me inexpressible pleasure." This is the child's prattle of a girl
+of ten summers. She writes very circumspectly for her years of a new
+brother-in-law: "I see--indeed I think I see in Mr. Watson everything
+that is amiable. I am very much pleased with him; indeed we all are."
+The following is dated 1801, when she is eleven: "You say in your last
+letters that the time will soon come when you will take leave of
+Congress forever. That day shall I, in my own mind, celebrate forever;
+yes, as long as I live I shall reflect upon the dear time when my dear
+papa left a public life to live in a retired one with his dear wife
+and children; then you will have the pleasure to think, when you quit
+the doors of the House, that you are going to join your family
+forever; but, my dear papa, I cannot feel as you will when looking
+back on your past life in Congress. You will remember how much you
+have exerted yourself in order to save your country."
+
+There was something in the relations of this Sedgwick family, not
+perhaps without parallel, but very beautiful. These brothers and
+sisters write to each other like lovers. To her brother Robert, Miss
+Sedgwick writes, "I have just finished, my dear brother, the second
+perusal of your kind letter received to-day.... I do love my brothers
+with perfect devotedness, and they are such brothers as may put
+gladness into a sister's spirit.... Never, my dear Robert, did brother
+and sister have a more ample experience of the purity of love, and the
+sweet exchange of offices of kindness that binds hearts indissolubly
+together."
+
+There are three letters from Robert Sedgwick to show how he
+reciprocated this affection. He says: "I can never be sufficiently
+grateful to my Maker for having given me such a sister. If I had no
+other sin to answer for than that of being so unworthy of her as I am,
+it would be more than I can bear, and yet when I read your letters I
+almost think that I am what I should be. I know I have a strong
+aspiration to be such, and I am sure they make me better as well as
+happier." Again, he says: "Thanks, thanks--how cold a word, my dearest
+Kate, in return for your heart-cheering letter! It came to me in the
+midst of my Nol Pros., special verdicts, depositions, protests,
+business correspondence, etc., like a visitant from the skies. Indeed,
+my dearest Kate, you may laugh at me if you will for saying so, but
+there is something about your influence over me which seems to have
+shuffled off this mortal coil of earthiness; to be unmixed with
+anything that remains to be perfected; to be perfectly spiritualized,
+and yet to retain its contact with every part of its subject.... Lest
+I should talk foolishly on this subject, I will dismiss it, only
+begging you not to forget how your letters cheer, rejoice, elevate,
+renovate me."
+
+Here is a love-letter from Theodore, her eldest brother: "Having this
+moment perused your letter the third time, I could not help giving you
+an answer to it, though there be nothing in it interrogative. Nor was
+it meant to be tender or sentimental, or learned, but like all your
+letters, it is so sweet, so excellent, so natural, so much without
+art, and yet so much beyond art, that, old, cold, selfish, unthankful
+as I am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a
+sister." Let us revenge ourselves upon these brother and sister lovers
+by saying that perhaps they did not feel any more than some other
+people, only they had a habit of expressing their feelings. If that
+was all, we cannot deny that the habit was very beautiful.
+
+Why did Miss Sedgwick never marry? We are not distinctly told; but she
+did not need to, with such lovers in her own family. Besides, how
+could she find any one, in her eyes, equal to those brothers, and how
+could she marry any one of lower merit? "I am satisfied," she writes,
+"by long and delightful experience, that I can never love any body
+better than my brothers. I have no expectation of ever finding their
+equal in worth and attraction, therefore--do not be alarmed; I am not
+on the verge of a vow of celibacy, nor have I the slightest intention
+of adding any rash resolutions to the ghosts of those that have been
+frightened to death by the terrors of maiden life; but therefore--I
+shall never change my condition until I change my mind." This is at
+the age of twenty-three.
+
+Later in life, after many changes had come, she seems to have wished
+she had not been so very hard to suit. Fifteen years roll away,
+during which we see one suitor after another, dismissed, when she
+writes in a journal not to be read in her life-time, "It is difficult
+for one who began life as I did, the primary object of affection to
+many, to come by degrees to be first to none, and still to have my
+love remain in its full strength, and craving such returns as have no
+substitute.... It is the necessity of a solitary condition, an
+unnatural state.... From my own experience I would not advise any one
+to remain unmarried, for my experience has been a singularly happy
+one. My feelings have never been embittered by those slights and
+taunts that the repulsive and neglected have to endure; there has been
+no period of my life to the present moment when I might not have
+allied myself respectably, and to those sincerely attached to me.... I
+have troops of friends, some devotedly attached to me, and yet the
+result of this very happy experience is that there is no substitute
+for those blessings which Providence has placed first, and ordained
+that they shall be purchased at the dearest sacrifice." Those who have
+paid the price and purchased the blessings may have the satisfaction
+of knowing that, according to Miss Sedgwick's mature opinion, they
+have chosen the better part.
+
+We might call this statement the Confessions of an Old Maid who might
+have done better. She closes her testimony with an acknowledgment that
+she "ought to be grateful and humble," and the "hope, through the
+grace of God, to rise more above the world, to attain a higher and
+happier state of feeling, to order my house for that better world
+where self may lose something of its engrossing power." This religious
+attitude was not unusual, nor merely conventional and unmeaning. All
+the Sedgwick family seem to have been constitutionally religious. The
+mother was almost painfully meek in her protest against her husband's
+embarking upon a public career; Mr. Sedgwick has been deterred from
+joining a church only by some impossible articles of puritan divinity,
+but cannot die happy until he has received the communion from Dr.
+Channing; "both my sisters were very religious," says Miss Sedgwick;
+while the letters I have quoted from two of her brothers, young
+lawyers and men of the world, have the devoutness of the psalms. "I
+can never be sufficiently grateful to my Maker for having given me
+such a sister," says Robert; and Theodore: "selfish, unthankful as I
+am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a
+sister." Of course one can use a religious dialect without meaning
+much by it, but these Sedgwicks were cultivated people, who thought
+for themselves, and did not speak cant to each other.
+
+Since it was a religious impulse that turned Miss Sedgwick's mind to
+literature, it is worth while to follow the thread of her spiritual
+history. This was written at the age of twenty when she was looking
+for a religious experience that never came, and would have considered
+herself one of the wicked: "On no subject would I voluntarily be
+guilty of hypocricy, and on that which involves all the importance of
+our existence I should shrink from the slightest insincerity. You
+misunderstood my last letter. I exposed to you a state of mind and
+feeling produced, not by religious impressions, but by the convictions
+of reason." Of course "reason" was no proper organ of religion; but
+besides this defect, her interest in serious things was liable to
+interruption "by the cares and pleasures of the world" and, perhaps
+worst of all, "I have not a fixed belief on some of the most material
+points of our religion." One does not see how a person in this state
+of mind should have anything to call "our religion." She seems to have
+advanced much further in a letter to her brother Robert, three years
+later: "I long to see you give your testimony of your acceptance of
+the forgiving love of your Master.
+
+... God grant, in his infinite mercy, that we may all touch the
+garment of our Savior's righteousness and be made whole."
+
+The editor of these letters tells us that Miss Sedgwick is now a
+member of Dr. Mason's church in New York city, having joined at the
+age of twenty, or soon after the letter in which she says she is not
+satisfied on certain points of doctrine. Dr. Mason is described as an
+undiluted Calvinist, "who then was the most conspicuous pulpit orator
+in the country--a man confident in his faith and bold to audacity."
+Miss Sedgwick stands the strong meat of Calvinism ten years, when we
+have this letter. "I presume you saw the letter I wrote Susan, in
+which I said that I did not think I should go to Dr. Mason's Church
+again.... You know, my dear Frances, that I never adopted some of the
+articles of the creed of that church and some of those upon which the
+doctor is fond of expatiating, and which appear to me both
+unscriptural and very unprofitable, and, I think, very demoralizing."
+
+What perhaps stimulated the zeal of Dr. Mason to insist upon doctrines
+always objectionable to Miss Sedgwick, was an attempt then being made
+to establish a Unitarian church in New York city. She has not joined
+in the movement, but does not know but it may come to that. It is a
+critical moment in Miss Sedgwick's history, and it happened at this
+time she went to hear Dr. Mason's farewell sermon. "As usual," she
+says, "he gave the rational Christians an anathema. He said they had
+fellowship with the devil: no, he would not slander the devil, they
+were worse, etc." Very possibly this preaching had its proper effect
+upon many hearers, and they gave the "rational Christians" a wide
+berth, but it precipitated Miss Sedgwick into their ranks. She was not
+then a thorough-going Unitarian, saying, "there are some of your
+articles of unbelief that I am not Protestant enough to subscribe to";
+a little more gentleness on the part of Dr. Mason could have kept her,
+but she could not stand "what seems to me," she says, "a gross
+violation of the religion of the Redeemer, and an insult to a large
+body of Christians entitled to respect and affection."
+
+She joined the tabooed circle in 1821, and wrote from Stockbridge,
+"Some of my friends here have, as I learn, been a little troubled, but
+after the crime of confessed Unitarianism, nothing can surprise them";
+she longs to look upon a Christian minister who does not regard her as
+"a heathen and a publican." An aunt, very fond of her, said to her,
+one day as they were parting, "Come and see me as often as you can,
+dear, for you know, after this world we shall never meet again."
+
+These religious tribulations incited her to write a short story, after
+the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, to contrast two kinds of
+religion, of one of which she had seen more than was good. The story
+was to appear as a tract, but it outgrew the dimensions of a tract,
+and was published as a book under the title of "A New England Tale."
+It is not a masterpiece of literature but, like all of Miss Sedgwick's
+works, it contains some fine delineations of character and vivid
+descriptions of local scenery. It can be read to-day with interest and
+pleasure. As a dramatic presentation of the self-righteous and the
+meek, in a New England country town a century ago, it is very
+effective. "Mrs. Wilson" is perhaps a more stony heart than was common
+among the 'chosen vessels of the Lord,' but so the Pharisee in the
+parable may have been a trifle exaggerated. The advantage of this kind
+of writing is that you do not miss the point of the story.
+
+Miss Dewey says The New England Tale gave Miss Sedgwick an "immediate
+position in the world of American literature." Her brother Theodore
+wrote, "It exceeds all my expectations, fond and flattering as they
+were"; her brother Harry, "I think, dear Kate, that your destiny is
+fixed. As you are such a Bibleist, I only say don't put your light
+under a bushel." That the book did not fall still-born is evident when
+he says further, "The orthodox do all they can to put it down." On the
+other hand, her publisher wanted to print a cheap edition of 3,000
+copies for missionary purposes. I should like to see that done to-day
+by some zealous liberal-minded publisher.
+
+The New England Tale appeared in 1822, when Cooper had only published
+"Precaution" and "The Spy." In 1824, Miss Sedgwick published
+"Redwood," of which a second edition was called for the same year,
+and which was republished in England and translated into French. It
+reached distinction in the character of Deborah Lenox, of which Miss
+Edgworth said, "It is to America what Scott's characters are to
+Scotland, valuable as original pictures." Redwood was reviewed by
+Bryant in the North American, in an article which, he says, was up to
+that time his "most ambitious attempt in prose." "Hope Leslie"
+appeared in 1827. It was so much better than its predecessors, said
+the _Westminster Review_, that one would not suppose it by the same
+hand. Sismondi, the Swiss historian, wrote the author a letter of
+thanks and commendation, which was followed by a life-long friendship
+between these two authors. Mrs. Child, then Miss Francis and the
+author of "Hobomok" and "The Rebels," wrote her that she had nearly
+completed a story on Capt. John Smith which now she will not dare to
+print, but she surrenders with less reluctance, she says, "for I love
+my conqueror." "Is not that beautiful?" says Miss Sedgwick. "Better to
+write and to feel such a sentiment than to indite volumes."
+
+"Clarence" was published in 1830, and I am glad to say, she sold the
+rights to the first edition for $1,200, before the critics got hold
+of it. The scene is laid in New York and in high life. The story, said
+the _North American Review_, is "improbable" but not "dull." Miss
+Dewey says, "It is the most romantic and at the same time the wittiest
+of her novels," but Bryant says it has been the least read. "The
+Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America," appeared in 1835, and
+Bryant called it "a charming tale of home life, thought by many to be
+the best of her novels properly so called."
+
+If Miss Sedgwick had written none of these more elaborate works, she
+would deserve a permanent place in our literature for a considerable
+library of short stories, among which I should name "A Berkshire
+Tradition," a pathetic tale of the Revolution; "The White Scarf," a
+romantic story of Mediæval France; "Fanny McDermot," a study of
+conventional morality; "Home," of which the _Westminster Review_ said,
+"We wish this book was in the hands of every mechanic in England";
+"The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man" of which Joseph Curtis, the
+philanthropist, said, "in all his experiences he had never known so
+much good fruit from the publication of any book"; and, not least,
+"Live and let Live: or domestic service illustrated," of which Dr.
+Channing wrote, "I cannot, without violence to my feelings, refrain
+from expressing to you the great gratification with which I have read
+your 'Live and let Live.' Thousands will be better and happier for
+it.... Your three last books, I trust, form an era in our literature."
+
+This was high praise, considering that there was then no higher
+literary authority in America than Dr. Channing. However, a message
+from Chief Justice Marshall, through Judge Story, belongs with it:
+"Tell her I have read with great pleasure everything she has written,
+and wish she would write more." She had gained an enviable position in
+literature and she had done a great deal of useful work during the
+fifteen years since the timid appearance of "A New England Tale," but
+she seems to have regarded her books as simply a "by-product": "My
+author existence has always seemed something accidental, extraneous,
+and independent of my inner self. My books have been a pleasant
+occupation and excitement in my life.... But they constitute no
+portion of my happiness--that is, of such as I derive from the dearest
+relations of life. When I feel that my writings have made any one
+happier or better, I feel an emotion of gratitude to Him who has made
+me the medium of any blessing to my fellow creatures."
+
+In 1839, Miss Sedgwick went to Europe in company with her brother
+Robert, and other relatives. The party was abroad two years and, on
+its return, Miss Sedgwick collected her European letters and published
+them in two volumes. They give one a view of Europe as seen by an
+intelligent observer still in the first half of the last century. She
+breakfasted with Rogers, the banker and poet, with whom she met
+Macaulay whose conversation was to her "rich and delightful. Some
+might think he talks too much; but none, except from their own
+impatient vanity, could wish it were less." She had tea at Carlyle's,
+found him "simple, natural and kindly, his conversation as picturesque
+as his writings." She "had an amusing evening at Mr. Hallam's"; he
+made her "quite forget he was the sage of the 'Middle Ages.'" At
+Hallam's she met Sydney Smith who was "in the vein, and we saw him, I
+believe, to advantage. His wit is not, as I expected, a succession of
+brilliant explosions but a sparkling stream of humor."
+
+In Geneva, she visited her friends, the Sismondis, and in Turin
+received a call from Silvio Pellico, martyr to Italian liberty. "He is
+of low stature and slightly made, a sort of etching of a man with
+delicate and symmetrical features, just enough body to gravitate and
+keep the spirit from its natural upward flight--a more shadowy Dr.
+Channing."
+
+Soon after Miss Sedgwick's return from Europe, she became connected
+with the Women's Prison Association of New York City, of which from
+1848 to 1863 she was president. An extract from one letter must
+suffice to suggest the nature of her activities in connection with
+this and kindred philanthropies: "It is now just ten, and I have come
+up from the City Hall, in whose dismal St. Giles precincts I have been
+to see a colored ragged school.... My Sundays are not days of rest....
+My whole soul is sickened; and to-day when I went to church filled
+with people in their fine summer clothes, and heard a magnificent
+sermon from Dr. Dewey, and thought of the streets and dens through
+which I had just walked, I could have cried out, Why are ye here?"
+
+A fellow-member of the Prison Association, who often accompanied her
+on her visits to hospitals and prisons, "especially the Tombs,
+Blackwell's, and Randall's Island," says, "In her visitations, she was
+called upon to kneel at the bedside of the sick and dying. The
+sweetness of her spirit, and the delicacy of her nature, felt by all
+who came within her atmosphere, seemed to move the unfortunate to ask
+this office of her, and it was never asked in vain."
+
+Always a philanthropist, Miss Sedgwick was not a "reformer" in the
+technical sense; that is, she did not enlist in the "movements" of her
+generation, for Temperance, or Anti-Slavery, or Woman's Rights. She
+shrunk from the excesses of the "crusaders," but she was never slow in
+striking a blow in a good cause. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published in
+1852, but its indictment of slavery is not more complete than Miss
+Sedgwick made in "Redwood," her second novel, twenty-five years
+before. A planter's boy sees a slave starved to famishing and then
+whipped to death. It hurt his boy heart, but he afterward became
+hardened to such necessary severity and he tells the story to a fellow
+planter with apologies for his youthful sentimentality. Does "Uncle
+Tom's Cabin" show more clearly the two curses of slavery: cruelty to
+the slave and demoralization to the master?
+
+She sympathized with the abolitionists in their purpose but not always
+with their methods: "The great event of the past week has been the
+visit of the little apostle of Abolitionism--Lucy Stone." This was in
+1849 when Mrs. Stone was thirty-one. "She has one of the very sweetest
+voices I ever heard, a readiness of speech and grace that furnish the
+external qualifications of an orator--a lovely countenance too--and
+the intensity, entire forgetfulness and the divine calmness that fit
+her to speak in the great cause she has undertaken." But in spite of
+this evident sympathy with the purpose of the Abolitionists, Miss
+Sedgwick declined to attend a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society,
+saying: "It seemed to me that so much had been intemperately said, so
+much rashly urged, on the death of that noble martyr, John Brown, by
+the Abolitionists, that it was not right to appear among them as one
+of them."
+
+Not even Lucy Stone, however, could have felt more horror at the
+institution of slavery. The Compromise Measures of 1850 made her
+shudder: "my hands are cold as ice; the blood has curdled in my
+heart; that word _compromise_ has a bad savor when truth and right are
+in question." When the Civil War came, in her seventieth year, she had
+"an intense desire to live to see the conclusion of the struggle," but
+could not conjecture "how peace and good neighborhood are ever to
+follow from this bitter hate." "It is delightful to see the gallantry
+of some of our men, who are repeating the heroic deeds that seemed
+fast receding to fabulous times." Some of these young heroes were very
+near to her. Maj. William Dwight Sedgwick, who fell on the bloody
+field of Antietam was her nephew, Gen. John Sedgwick, killed at the
+battle of Spottsylvania, was her cousin.
+
+As she was not in the Anti-Slavery crusade, so she was not in the
+Woman's Rights crusade. She wished women to have a larger sphere, and
+she did much to enlarge the sphere of her sex, but it was by taking it
+and making it, rather than by talking about it. "Your _might_ must be
+your _right_," she says in a chapter on The Rights of Women, in "Means
+and Ends." Voting did not seem to her a function suited to women: "I
+cannot believe it was ever intended that women should lead armies,
+harangue in halls of legislation, bustle up to ballot-boxes, or sit
+on judicial tribunals." The gentle Lucy Stone would not have
+considered this argument conclusive, but it satisfied Miss Sedgwick.
+
+In 1857, after a silence of twenty-two years, in which only short
+stories and one or two biographies came from her hand, she published
+another two-volume novel entitled, "Married or Single." It is perhaps
+her best work; at least it has been so considered by many readers. She
+was then sixty-seven and, though she had ten more years to live, they
+were years of declining power. These last years were spent at the home
+of her favorite niece, Mrs. William Minot, Jr., in West Roxbury,
+Mass., and there tenderly and reverently cared for, she died in 1867.
+
+Bryant, who was her life-long friend, and who, at her instance wrote
+some of his hymns, gives this estimate of her character: "Admirable as
+was her literary life, her home life was more so; and beautiful as
+were the examples set forth in her writings, her own example was, if
+possible, still more beautiful. Her unerring sense of rectitude, her
+love of truth, her ready sympathy, her active and cheerful
+beneficence, her winning and gracious manners, the perfection of high
+breeding, make up a character, the idea of which, as it rests in my
+mind, I would not exchange for anything in her own interesting works
+of fiction."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+MARY LOVELL WARE
+
+
+[Illustration: MARY LOVELL WARE]
+
+Of all the saints in the calendar of the Church there is no name more
+worthy of the honor than that of Mary Lovell Ware. The college of
+cardinals, which confers the degree of sainthood for the veneration of
+faithful Catholics, will never recognize her merits and encircle her
+head with a halo, but when the list of Protestant saints is made up,
+the name of Mary L. Ware will be in it, and among the first half dozen
+on the scroll.
+
+The writer was a student in the Divinity School at Cambridge when a
+classmate commended to him the Memoirs of Mrs. Ware as one of the few
+model biographies. It was a book not laid down in the course of study;
+its reading was postponed for that convenient season for which one
+waits so long; but he made a mental note of the "Memoirs of Mary L.
+Ware," which many years did not efface. There is a book one must read,
+he said to himself, if he would die happy.
+
+Mrs. Ware's maiden name was Pickard. To the end of her days, when she
+put herself in a pillory as she often did, she called herself by her
+maiden name. "That," she would say, "was Mary Pickard." I infer that
+she thought Mary Pickard had been a very bad girl.
+
+Her mother's name was Lovell,--Mary Lovell,--granddaughter of "Master
+Lovell," long known as a classical teacher in colonial Boston, and
+daughter of James Lovell, an active Revolutionist, a prominent member
+of the Continental Congress and, from the end of the war to his death,
+Naval officer in the Boston Custom House. Mr. Lovell had eight sons,
+one of whom was a successful London merchant, and one daughter, who
+remained with her parents until at twenty-five she married Mr. Pickard
+and who, when her little girl was five years old returned, as perhaps
+an only daughter should, to take care of her parents in their old age.
+So it happened that the childhood of Mrs. Ware was passed at her
+grandfather Lovell's, in Pearl St., Boston, then an eligible place of
+residence.
+
+Mr. Pickard was an Englishman by birth, and a merchant with business
+connections in London and Boston, between which cities, for a time,
+his residence alternated. Not much is said of him in the Memoirs,
+beyond the fact that he was an Episcopalian with strong attachment to
+the forms of his church, as an Englishman might be expected to be.
+
+Of Mrs. Pickard we learn more. She is said to have possessed a vigorous
+mind, to have been well educated and a fine conversationalist,
+with a commanding figure, benignant countenance, and dignified
+demeanor, so that one said of her, "She seems to have been born for an
+empress." Like her husband she was an Episcopalian though, according
+to the Memoirs, less strenuously Episcopalian than Mr. Pickard. She
+had been reared in a different school. Her father,--Mr. James
+Lovell--we are told, was a free-thinker, or as the Memoirs put it,
+"had adopted some infidel principles," and "treated religion with
+little respect in his family." The "infidels" of that day were
+generally good men, only they were not orthodox. Jefferson, Madison,
+Franklin and Washington were such infidels. After Channing's day, this
+kind of man here in New England was absorbed by the Unitarian
+movement, and, as a separate class, disappeared. Mrs. Pickard was bred
+in this school and she appears never to have forgotten her home
+training. "She was unostentatious and charitable," says an early
+friend, "and her whole life was an exhibition of the ascendency of
+_principle_ over mere taste and feeling."
+
+Her religious attitude becomes interesting, because in an exceptional
+degree, she formed her remarkable daughter,--who was an only child and
+until the age of thirteen had no teacher except this forceful and
+level-headed mother.
+
+With these antecedents, Mary Lovell Pickard was born in Boston,
+October 2, 1798, John Adams being then President. In 1802, Mary having
+passed her third summer, Mr. Pickard's business called him to London,
+where he resided with his family two years, so that the child's fifth
+birthday was duly celebrated in mid-ocean on the homeward voyage. In a
+letter of Mrs. Pickard, written during this London residence, she
+says, "Mr. Pickard is even more anxious than I to go home. Mary is the
+only contented one. She is happy all the time." There is so much that
+is sad in this record that, before we have done, the reader will be
+glad the little girl had at least a bright and sunny childhood to
+remember. It appears she did remember it. It may not be remarkable,
+but it is interesting, that the experiences of this early London
+life,--between her third and fifth year,--made an indelible
+impression upon her, so that twenty years later when she was again in
+England, much to her own delight, she "recognized her old London home
+and other objects with which she was then familiar."
+
+A lady who was a fellow passenger of the Pickards on their homeward
+voyage was struck by the gentle management of the mother and the easy
+docility of the child. To say, "It will make me unhappy if you do
+that," was an extreme exercise of maternal authority, to which the
+child yielded unresisting obedience. This, of course, is told to the
+credit of the child, but the merit, probably belongs to the mother.
+Doubtless we could all have such children if we were that kind of a
+parent. A little tact, unfailing gentleness, and an infinite self
+control: with these, it would seem one may smile and kiss a child into
+an angel.
+
+On arriving in Boston, Mrs. Pickard took her family to her father's,
+where she remained until her death, and where, we read, "with parents
+and grandparents, Mary found a home whose blessings filled her heart."
+Being an only child, with four elderly persons, Mary was likely to be
+too much petted or too much fretted. We are glad to know that she was
+not fretted or over-trained. In a letter of retrospect, she writes,
+"For many years a word of blame never reached my ears." An early
+friend of the family writes, "It has been said that Mary was much
+indulged; and I believe it may be said so with truth. But she was not
+indulged in idleness, selfishness, and rudeness; she was indulged in
+healthful sports, in pleasant excursions, and in companionship with
+other children."
+
+Everything went smoothly with her until the age of ten when, rather
+earlier than most children, she discovered her conscience: "At ten
+years of age I waked up to a sense of the danger of the state of
+indulgence in which I was living"; but let us hope the crisis was not
+acute. It does not seem to have been. According to the testimony of
+her first teacher, she was simply precocious morally, but not at all
+morbid. Her school was at Hingham, whither she was sent at the age of
+thirteen. The teacher says that with her "devotedness to the highest
+objects and purposes of our existence, she was one of the most lively
+and playful girls among her companions, and a great favorite with them
+all."
+
+There seems to have been really no cloud upon her existence up to this
+point,--the age of thirteen. I have had a reason for dwelling upon
+this charming period of her childhood, untroubled by a cloud, because
+from this date until her death, the hand of God seems to have been
+very heavy upon her, afflictions fell upon her like rain, and it
+required a brave spirit to carry the burdens appointed for her to
+bear. Happily, she had a brave spirit, did not know that her life was
+hard, "gloried in tribulation," like St. Paul, and was never more
+cheerful or thankful than when she was herself an invalid, with an
+invalid husband to be cared for like a baby, seven children to be
+clothed and fed, and not enough money at the year's end to square
+accounts. Ruskin tells of a servant who had served his mother
+faithfully fifty-seven years. "She had," he says, "a natural gift and
+specialty for doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of the
+sick-room; so that she was never quite in her glory unless some of us
+were ill." It will be seen further on that these were only a part of
+the accomplishments of Mrs. Ware. It is fortunate if a woman is so
+made that her spirits rise as her troubles thicken, but the reader of
+the story will be thankful that her life was not all a battle, that
+her childhood was more than ordinarily serene and sunny, and that not
+for a dozen years at least, did she have to be a heroine in order to
+be happy.
+
+Mary had been in Hingham about half a year, enjoying her school-girl
+life, when her mother was taken ill, fatally ill as it proved, and the
+child, then at the age of thirteen, was called home and installed in
+the sick-room as nurse. This was the beginning of sorrow. The mother
+lingered through the winter and died in the following May. There
+remained of the family, the grandparents, one son of fine talents, but
+of unfortunate habits, and her father, "broken in spirits and in
+fortune, clinging to his only child with doting and dependent
+affection." We can see that it could not have been a cheerful home for
+a young girl of thirteen. Some thirty years later, she wrote to one of
+her children, "I think I have felt the want all my life of a more
+cheerful home in my early childhood, a fuller participation in the
+pleasures and 'follies' of youth." I put this reflection here, because
+it does not apply to the years preceding the loss of her mother while
+it exactly fits the period that now follows.
+
+The year following her mother's death, Mary attended a girls' school
+in Boston. A passage from a letter written at this period will show
+something of her quality. It is dated February 27, 1813, when she was
+fourteen and a few months. Besides, she had been at school, six months
+at a time, a total of about one year. She had been mentioning two or
+three novels, and then discourses as follows: "Novels are generally
+supposed to be improper books for young people, as they take up the
+time which ought to be employed in more useful pursuits; which is
+certainly very true; but as a recreation to the mind, such books as
+these cannot possibly do any hurt, as they are good moral lessons.
+Indeed, I think there is scarcely any book from which some good may
+not be derived; though it cannot be expected that any young person has
+judgment enough to leave all the bad and take only the good, when
+there is a great proportion of the former." Perhaps I am wrong in
+thinking this an exhibition of remarkable reflection and expression in
+a girl well under fifteen, whether she had been at school or
+otherwise. Mrs. Ware was always a wonderful letter-writer, though, if
+we take her word for it, she had little of her mother's gift as a
+conversationalist. It seems to have been a life-long habit to see the
+old year out and the new year in, spending the quiet hours in writing
+letters to her friends. In one of these anniversary letters, written
+when she was fifteen, she says, "I defy anyone to tell from my
+appearance that I have not everything to make me happy. I have much
+and am happy. My little trials are essential to my happiness." In that
+last sentence we have the entire woman. Her trials were always, as she
+thought, essential to her happiness.
+
+On this principle, her next twelve years ought to have been very
+happy, since they were sufficiently full of tribulation. The two years
+following her mother's death, passed in the lonely home in Boston,
+were naturally depressing. Besides, she was born for religion, and the
+experience through which she had passed had created a great hunger in
+her soul. Trinity Church, into which she had been baptized, had not
+yet passed through the hands of Phillips Brooks, and its
+ministrations, admirable as they are for the ordinary child, were
+inadequate for the wants of a thoughtful girl like Mary Pickard. The
+final effect was, she says, to throw her more upon herself and to
+compel her to seek, "by reading, meditation and prayer, to find that
+knowledge and stimulus to virtue which I failed to find in the
+ministrations of the Sabbath."
+
+At this critical period, she returned to the school at Hingham, which
+she had left two years before, and there, in the Third Church, then
+presided over by Rev. Henry Colman, one of the fathers of the
+Unitarian heresy, she found peace and satisfaction to her spirit. Ten
+years later, she spent a week in Hingham, visiting friends and
+reviving, as she says, the memory of the "first awakening of my mind
+to high and holy thoughts and resolves." The crisis which, elsewhere,
+we read of at the age of ten, was a subordinate affair. This Hingham
+experience, at the age of sixteen, was really the moral event in her
+history.
+
+As hers was a type of religion,--she would have said "piety",--a blend
+of reason and sentiment, peculiar to the Unitarianism of that
+generation, hardly to be found in any household of faith to-day, we
+must let her disclose her inner consciousness. One Saturday morning,
+she writes a long letter to one of her teachers saying that she feels
+it a duty and a privilege "to be a member of the Church of Christ,"
+but she fears she does not understand what the relation implies, and
+says, "Tell me if you should consider it a violation of the sacredness
+of the institution, to think I might with impunity be a member of it.
+I am well aware of the condemnation denounced on those who _partake_
+unworthily." She refers to the Lord's Supper. It is to be hoped that
+her teacher knew enough to give the simple explanation of that dark
+saying of the apostle about eating unworthily. At all events, she
+connected herself with the church, received the communion, and was
+very happy. "From the moment I had decided what to do, not a feeling
+arose which I could wish to suppress; conscious of pure motives, all
+within was calm, and I wondered how I could for a moment hesitate.
+They were feelings I never before experienced, and for once I realized
+that it is only when we are at peace with ourselves that we can enjoy
+true happiness.... I could not sleep, and actually laid awake all
+night out of pure happiness."
+
+After a few months, sooner than she expected, she returns to Boston
+and sits under the ministrations of Dr. Channing, to her an object of
+veneration. She writes that her heart is too full for utterance: "It
+will not surprise you that Mr. Channing's sermons are the cause; but
+no account that I could give could convey any idea of them. You have
+heard some of the same class; they so entirely absorb the feelings as
+to render the mind incapable of action, and consequently leave on the
+memory at times no distinct impression." I should like to quote all
+she says of Channing, both as a revelation of him, and of herself. She
+heard him read the psalm, "What shall I render unto God for all his
+mercies?" and says, "The ascription of praise which followed was more
+truly sublime than anything I ever heard or read." It must have been
+an event,--it certainly was for her,--to listen to one of Dr.
+Channing's prayers: "It seems often to me, while in the hour of prayer
+I give myself up to the thought of heaven, as though I had in reality
+left the world, and was enjoying what is promised to the Christian. I
+fear, however, these feelings are too often delusive; we substitute
+the love of holiness for the actual possession."
+
+There her sanity comes in to check her emotionalism. She is reflecting
+upon another experience with Dr. Channing when she comes very near
+making a criticism upon him. She tells us that she does not mean him;
+he is excepted from these remarks, but she says, "There are few
+occasions which will authorize a minister to excite the feelings of an
+audience in a very great degree, and none which can make it allowable
+for him to rest in mere excitement." To complete the portraiture of
+her soul, I will take a passage from a letter written at the age of
+twenty-five, when death has at last stripped her of all her family, "I
+believe that all events that befall us are exactly such as are best
+adapted to improve us; and I find in a perfect confidence in the
+wisdom and love which I know directs them, a source of peace which no
+other thing can give; and in the difficulty which I find in acting
+upon this belief I see a weakness of nature, which those very trials
+are designed to assist us in overcoming, and which trial alone can
+conquer."
+
+Mary Pickards were not common even in that generation, but this creed
+was then common, and this blend of reason and religious feeling,
+fearlessly called "piety," was characteristic of Channing, her
+teacher, and of Henry Ware, afterward her husband. It was the real
+"Channing Unitarianism." Pity there is no more of it.
+
+Mary was sixteen years old,--to be exact, sixteen and a half; the
+serene and beautiful faith of Channing had done its perfect work upon
+her; and she was now ready for whatever fate, or as she would have
+said, Providence, might choose to send. It sent the business failure
+of Mr. Pickard, in which not only his own fortune was swept away but
+also the estate of Mr. Lovell was involved. Upon the knowledge of this
+disaster, Mary wrote a cheerful letter, in which she said: "I should
+be sorry to think you consider me so weak as to bend under a change of
+fortune to which all are liable." Certainly she will not bend, but she
+is obliged to quit school and return to the shattered home.
+
+Before the summer was over, her grandfather, Mr. Lovell, died; whether
+the end was hastened by the financial embarrassments in which Mr.
+Pickard had involved him, is not said. Mrs. Lovell, the grandmother,
+followed her husband in two years,--for Mary, two years of assiduous
+nursing and tender care. Perhaps one sentence from a letter at this
+time will assist us in picturing her in this exacting service. She
+says that she is leading a monotonous existence, that her animal
+spirits are not sufficient for both duty and solitude, "And when
+evening closes, and my beloved charge is laid peacefully to rest,
+excitement ceases, and I am thrown on myself for pleasure."
+
+With the death of the grandmother, the home was broken up, and Mary,
+trying to help her father do a little business without capital, went
+to New York city as his commercial agent. Her letters to her father
+are "almost exclusively business letters," and he on his part gives
+her "directions for the sale and purchase, not only of muslins and
+moreens, but also of skins, saltpetre, and the like."
+
+Details of this period of her career are not abundant in the Memoirs,
+and the death of her father, in 1823, put an end to her business
+apprenticeship.
+
+Apparently, she was not entirely destitute. At the time of his
+disaster, her father wrote, "As we calculated you would, after some
+time, have enough to support yourself, without mental or bodily
+exertion." That is, presumably, after the settlement of her
+grandfather's estate. As her biographer says, "Every member of her own
+family had gone, and she had smoothed the passage of everyone." But
+she had many friends, and one is tempted to say, Pity she could not
+have settled down in cozy quarters and made herself comfortable.
+
+Indeed she did make a fair start. She joined a couple of friends,
+going abroad in search of health, for a visit to England. She had
+relatives on the Lovell side, in comfortable circumstances near
+London, and an aunt on her father's side, in the north of England, in
+straightened circumstances. She resolved to make the acquaintance of
+all these relatives.
+
+The party arrived in Liverpool in April, 1824, and for a year and a
+half, during which their headquarters were in London, Paris was
+visited, Southern England and Wales were explored, and finally the
+Lovell relatives were visited and found to have good hearts and open
+arms. For these eighteen months, Mary Pickard's friends could have
+wished her no more delightful existence. She had tea with Mrs.
+Barbauld, heard Irving, then the famous London preacher, and saw other
+interesting persons and charming things in England. There is material
+for a very interesting chapter upon this delightful experience. It was
+followed by a drama of misery and horror, in which she was both
+spectator and actor, when young and old died around her as if smitten
+by pestilence, and her own vigorous constitution was irreparably
+broken.
+
+This episode was vastly more interesting to her than the pleasant
+commonplace of travel, and much more in keeping with what seems to
+have been her destiny. In the autumn of her second year abroad, she
+went to discover her aunt, sister of Mr. Pickard, in Yorkshire. The
+writer of the Memoirs says that this visit "forms the most remarkable
+and in some respects the most interesting and important chapter of her
+life." She found her aunt much better than she expected, nearly
+overpowered with joy to see her, living in a little two story cottage
+of four rooms, which far exceeded anything she ever saw for neatness.
+The village bore the peculiarly English name of Osmotherly, and was
+the most primitive place she had ever been in. The inhabitants were
+all of one class and that the poorer class of laborers, ignorant as
+possible, but simple and sociable. Terrible to relate, smallpox,
+typhus fever, and whooping cough were at that moment epidemic in that
+village.
+
+It will be impossible to put the situation before us more briefly than
+by quoting a passage from one of her letters: "My aunt's two daughters
+are married and live in this village; one of them, with three
+children, has a husband at the point of death with a fever; his
+brother died yesterday of smallpox, and two of her children have the
+whooping-cough; added to this, their whole dependence is upon their
+own exertions, which are of course entirely stopped now.... You may
+suppose, under such a state of things, I shall find enough to do."
+
+The death of the husband, whom of course Miss Pickard nursed through
+his illness, is reported in the next letter, which contains also this
+characteristic statement, "It seems to me that posts of difficulty are
+my appointed lot and my element, for I do feel lighter and happier
+when I have difficulties to overcome. Could you look in upon me you
+would think it impossible that I could be even tolerably comfortable,
+and yet I am cheerful, and get along as easily as possible, and am in
+truth happy."
+
+Evidently, all we can do with such a person is to congratulate her
+over the most terrible experiences. In a letter five days later, the
+baby dies of whooping-cough, and in her arms; a fortnight later, the
+mother dies of typhus fever; within another month, two boys, now
+orphans, are down with the same fever at once, and one of them dies.
+In the space of eight weeks, she saw five persons of one family
+buried, and four of them she had nursed. By this time, the aunt was
+ill, and Miss Pickard nursed her to convalescence.
+
+This campaign had lasted three months, and she left the scene of
+combat with a clear conscience. She was allowed a breathing spell of a
+month in which to visit some pleasant friends and recuperate her
+strength, when we find her back in Osmotherly again nursing her aunt.
+It was the end of December and she was the only servant in the house.
+Before this ordeal was over, she was taken ill herself, and had to be
+put to bed and nursed. In crossing a room, a cramp took her; she fell
+on the floor, lay all night in the cold, calling in vain for
+assistance. She did not finally escape from these terrible scenes
+until the end of January, five months from the time she entered them.
+
+Miss Pickard returned to Boston after an absence of about two years
+and a half, during which time, as one of her friends wrote her, "You
+have passed such trying scenes, have so narrowly escaped, and done
+more, much more, than almost any body ever did before." She went away
+a dear school-girl friend and a valued acquaintance; she was welcomed
+home as a martyr fit to be canonized, and was received as a
+conquering heroine.
+
+In a letter dated from Gretna Green, where so many run-away lovers
+have been made happy, she playfully reflects upon the possibilities of
+her visit, if only she had a lover, and concludes that she "must
+submit to single blessedness a little longer." Our sympathies would
+have been less taxed if she had submitted to single blessedness to the
+end. Why could she not now be quiet, let well enough alone, and make
+herself comfortable? Destiny had apparently ordered things for her
+quite differently. One cannot avoid his destiny, and it was her
+destiny to marry, and marriage was to bring her great happiness,
+tempered by great sorrows.
+
+The man who was to share her happiness and her sorrows was Rev. Henry
+Ware, Jr., then the almost idolized minister of the Second Church, in
+Boston. Mr. Ware was the son of another Henry Ware, professor of
+theology at Harvard, whose election to the chair of theology in 1806
+opened the great Unitarian controversy. Two sons of Professor Ware
+entered the ministry, Henry and William, the latter the first
+Unitarian minister settled in New York city. Rev. John F. Ware, well
+remembered as pastor of Arlington St. Church in Boston, was the son
+of Henry, so that for more than half a century, the name of Ware was a
+great factor in Unitarian history.
+
+After Dr. Channing, Henry Ware was perhaps the most popular preacher
+in any Boston pulpit. One sermon preached by him on a New Year's eve,
+upon the Duty of Improvement, became memorable. In spite of a violent
+snow storm, the church was filled to overflowing, a delegation coming
+from Cambridge. Of this sermon, a hearer said: "No words from mortal
+lips ever affected me like those." There was a difference between
+Unitarian preaching then and now. That famous sermon closed like this:
+"I charge you, as in the presence of God, who sees and will judge
+you,--in the name of Jesus Christ, who beseeches you to come to him
+and live,--by all your hopes of happiness and life,--I charge you let
+not this year die, and leave you impenitent. Do not dare to utter
+defiance in its decaying hours. But, in the stillness of its awful
+midnight, prostrate yourselves penitently before your Maker; and let
+the morning sun rise upon you, thoughtful and serious men." One does
+not see how the so-called 'Evangelicals' could have quarreled with
+that preaching.
+
+Mr. Ware had been in his parish nine years, his age was thirty-two, he
+was in the prime of life, and at the climax of his power and his
+popularity. Three years before, he had been left a widower with three
+young children, one of whom became Rev. John F. Ware. That these two
+intensely religious natures, that of Mary Pickard and that of Henry
+Ware, should have been drawn together is not singular. In writing to
+his sister, Mr. Ware speaks tenderly of his late wife and says, "I
+have sought for the best mother to her children, and the best I have
+found." Late in life, one of these children said, "Surely God never
+gave a boy such a mother or a man such a friend."
+
+Miss Pickard engaged to be a very docile wife. "Instead of the
+self-dependent self-governed being you have known me," she writes to a
+friend, "I have learned to look to another for guidance and
+happiness." She is "as happy as mortal can be." Indeed it was almost
+too much for earth. "It has made me," she says, "more willing to leave
+the world and enjoy the happiness of heaven than I ever thought I
+should be. Strange that a thing from which of all others, I should
+have expected the very opposite effect, should have done this."
+
+The year following the marriage of these saintly lovers,--one can call
+them nothing less,--was one of exceeding happiness and of immense
+activity to both. It is not said, but we can see that each must have
+been a tonic to the other. Considerate persons felt a scruple about
+taking any of the time of their pastor's wife. "Mrs. Ware," said one,
+"at home and abroad, is the busiest woman of my acquaintance," and
+others felt that way. Before the year ended, Mrs. Ware had a boy baby
+of her own to increase her occupations and her happiness. It lived a
+few bright years, long enough to become a very attractive child and to
+give a severe wrench to her heart when it left her. This experience
+seems to have a certain fitness in a life in which every joy was to
+bring sorrow and every sorrow, by sheer will, was to be turned to joy.
+
+Of Mr. Ware, it is said that this first year "was one of the most
+active and also, to all human appearance, one of the most successful
+of his ministry." He put more work into his sermons, gave increased
+attention to the details of his parish, delivered a course of
+lectures, and undertook other enterprises, some of which are
+specified; and, during a temporary absence of Mrs. Ware, wrote her
+that he had hoped he had turned over a new leaf, "but by foolish
+degrees, I have got back to all my accustomed carelessness and waste
+of powers, and am doing nothing in proportion to what I ought to do."
+
+But man is mortal, and there is a limit to human endurance. Mr. Ware
+could not lash himself into greater activity; but he was in good
+condition to be ill. In a journey from Northampton, he was prostrated
+by inflammation of the lungs, with hemorrhages, and after several
+weeks, Mrs. Ware, herself far from well, went to him and finally
+brought him home. This was the beginning of what became a very regular
+annual experience. I met a lady who was brought up on the Memoirs of
+Mary L. Ware, and who briefly put what had impressed her most, in this
+way: She said, "It seemed as though Mr. Ware was always going off on a
+journey for his health, and that Mrs. Ware was always going after him
+to bring him home"; if we remember this statement, and add the fact
+that these calls came more than once when Mrs. Ware was on the sick
+list herself, we shall be able greatly to shorten our history.
+
+This was the end of Mr. Ware's parish work. He was nursed through the
+winter and, in early spring, Mrs. Ware left her baby and took her
+invalid husband abroad, in pursuit of health, spending a year and a
+half in England, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy. It was, she
+afterward said, the most trying period of her life. Mr. Ware
+alternated between being fairly comfortable and very miserable, so
+that these Memoirs say "He enjoyed much, but suffered more." Still the
+travels would be interesting if we had time to follow them.
+
+Near the close of the first year abroad, Mrs. Ware's second child was
+born in Rome, and, although this was as she would have said,
+"providential," never was a child less needed in a family. Mrs. Ware
+had then two babies on her hands, and of these, her invalid husband
+was the greater care. In the following August, Mrs. Ware arrived in
+Boston with her double charge, and had the happiness to know that Mr.
+Ware was somewhat better in health than when he left home, a year and
+a half before.
+
+His parish, during his absence, had been in the care of a colleague,
+no other than the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you remember the New
+Year's Eve sermon of Mr. Ware, it will be evident that he must have
+left behind him a very conservative parish, and you will not be
+surprised that in about four years, Mr. Emerson found his chains
+intolerable.
+
+Mr. Ware had been invited to a professorship in the Harvard Divinity
+School, and it was to this and not to his parish that he returned. For
+the steady, one might say monotonous, duties of his professorship, Mr.
+Ware's health was generally sufficient. The lecture room did not exact
+the several hundred parish calls then demanded by a large city church,
+nor the exhausting effort which Mr. Ware and Dr. Channing put into the
+delivery of a sermon; and the lectures, once prepared, could be
+delivered and re-delivered from year to year. Real leisure was
+impossible to one of Mr. Ware's temperament, but here was a life of
+comparative leisure; and for Mrs. Ware, who shared all the joys and
+sorrows of her husband, the twelve years that follow brought a settled
+existence and very much happiness. Neither her own health nor that of
+her husband was ever very firm, and there was always a great emptiness
+in the family purse, but with Mrs. Ware, these were, as with Paul,
+"light afflictions" which were but for a moment, and she did not let
+them disturb her happiness.
+
+Impossible as it may seem, they contributed to her happiness. She made
+them contribute to it. She says in a letter of 1831, "Of my winter's
+sickness I cannot write; it contained a long life of enjoyment, and
+what I hoped would be profitable thought and reflection." She repeats
+this statement to another correspondent, and says, with apparent
+regret, that the illness did not bring her "to that cheerful
+willingness to resign my life, after which I strove." You cannot send
+this woman any trial which she will not welcome, because she wants to
+be made to want to go to heaven, and she is as yet not quite ready for
+it.
+
+Mr. Ware has been dangerously ill, and of course she could not spare
+herself for heaven until he recovered, but this trial did something
+quite as good for her: "My husband's danger renewed the so oft
+repeated testimony that strength is ever at hand for those who need
+it, gave me another exercise of trust in that mighty arm which can
+save to the uttermost, and in its result is a new cause for gratitude
+to Him who has so abundantly blessed me all the days of my life." It
+is good to see what the old-fashioned doctrine that God really is,
+and is good, did for one who actually believed.
+
+That first baby, whom she left behind when she went abroad with her
+invalid husband, died in 1831; the mother fainted when the last breath
+left the little body; but this is the way she writes of it: "I have
+always looked upon the death of children rather as a subject of joy
+than sorrow, and have been perplexed at seeing so many, who would bear
+what seemed to me much harder trials with firmness, so completely
+overwhelmed by this, as is frequently the case."
+
+After that, one is almost ashamed to mention the trifle that the
+income of this family was very small. Mr. Ware, after 1834 _Dr._ Ware,
+held a new professorship, the endowment of which was yet mostly
+imaginary. The social demands took no account of the family income;
+the unexpected guest always dropping in; at certain times, it is said,
+"shoals of visitors;" and the larder always a little scantily
+furnished. If one wants to know how one ought to live under such
+circumstances, here is your shining example. "There were no apologies
+at that table," we are told. "If unexpected guests were not always
+filled, they were never annoyed, nor suffered to think much about it."
+"I remember," says a guest, "the wonder I felt at her humility and
+dignity in welcoming to her table on some occasion a troop of
+accidental guests, when she had almost nothing to offer but her
+hospitality. The absence of all apologies and of all mortification,
+the ease and cheerfulness of the conversation, which became the only
+feast, gave me a lesson never forgotten, although never learned."
+
+The problem of dress was as simple to Mrs. Ware as was the
+entertainment of her guests. "As to her attire," says an intimate
+friend, "we should say no one thought of it at all, because of its
+simplicity, and because of her ease of manners and dignity of
+character. Yet the impression is qualified, though in one view
+confirmed, by hearing that, in a new place of residence, so plain was
+her appearance on all occasions, the villagers suspected her of
+reserving her fine clothes for some better class." There are those who
+might consider these circumstances, very sore privations. What Mrs.
+Ware says of them is, "I have not a word of complaint to make. We are
+far better provided for than is necessary to our happiness." I am
+persuaded that this is an immensely wholesome example and that more of
+this kind of woman is needed to mother the children of our generation.
+In a letter to one of her daughters, she says she has great sympathy
+with the struggles of young people, that she had struggles too and
+learned her lessons young, that she found very early in life that her
+own position was not in the least affected by these externals, "I soon
+began to look upon my oft-turned dress with something like pride,
+certainly with great complacency; and to see in that and all other
+marks of my mother's prudence and consistency, only so many proofs of
+her dignity and self-respect,--the dignity and self-respect which grew
+out of her just estimate of the true and the right in herself and in
+the world."
+
+We have seen enough of this woman to discover that she could not be
+made unhappy, and also to discover why. It was because her nature was
+so large and strong and fine. Sometimes she thinks Dr. Ware would be
+better and happier in a parish, "But I have no care about the future
+other than that which one must have,--a desire to fulfil the duties
+which it may bring." Surely that is being,
+
+    "Self-poised and independent still
+    On this world's varying good or ill."
+
+In 1842, Dr. Ware's health became so much impaired that Mrs. Ware
+entertains an unfulfilled desire. It is to get away from Cambridge,
+which had become so dear to them all. "I scruple not to say that a
+ten-foot house, and bread and water diet, with a sense of rest to
+_him_, would be a luxury." The family removed to Framingham, where Dr.
+Ware died, a year later. Whatever tribulations might be in store for
+Mrs. Ware, anxiety on his account was not to be one of them.
+
+Death came on Friday; on Sunday, Mrs. Ware attended church with all
+her family, and the occasion must have been more trying for the
+minister who preached to her than for herself. A short service was
+held that Sunday evening at six, and "Then," she says, "John and I
+brought dear father's body to Cambridge in our own carriage; we could
+not feel willing to let strangers do anything in connection with him
+which we could do ourselves." Think of that dark, silent lonely ride
+from Framingham to Cambridge! But here was a woman who did not spare
+herself, and did not ask what somebody would think of her doings.
+
+After this event, the Memoirs tell us that a gentleman in Milton gave
+her a very earnest invitation to go there and take the instruction of
+three little children in connection with her own. In this occupation
+she spent six years of great outward comfort and usefulness. There is
+much in these years, or in the letters of these years, of great
+interest and moral beauty. Even with young children to leave, she
+speaks of death as serenely as she would of going to Boston. "I do not
+feel that I am essential to my children. I do not feel that I am
+competent to train them."
+
+Of her last illness, one of her children wrote, "Never did a sick room
+have less of the odor of sickness than that. It was the brightest spot
+on earth." "Come with a _smile_," she said to a friend whom she had
+summoned for a last farewell, and so went this remarkable and
+exceptionally noble woman.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+LYDIA MARIA CHILD
+
+
+[Illustration: LYDIA MARIA CHILD]
+
+In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, few names in American
+literature were more conspicuous than that of Lydia Maria Child, and
+among those few, if we except that of Miss Sedgwick, there was
+certainly no woman's name. Speaking with that studied reserve which
+became its dignity, the _North American Review_ said of her: "We are
+not sure that any woman of our country could outrank Mrs. Child. This
+lady has been before the public as an author with much success. And
+she well deserves it, for in all her works, nothing can be found which
+does not commend itself by its tone of healthy morality and good
+sense. Few female writers if any have done more or better things for
+our literature in the lighter or graver departments."
+
+Mrs. Child began her literary career in 1824 with "Hobomok, a Tale of
+Early Times," and she closed it with a volume of biography, entitled
+"Good Wives," in 1871. Between these two dates, covering forty-seven
+years, her publications extended to more than thirty titles, and
+include stories, poems, biographies, studies in history, in household
+economics, in politics, and in religion. "Her books," says Col.
+Higginson, "never seemed to repeat each other and belonged to almost
+as many different departments as there are volumes"; and while writing
+so much, he adds, "she wrote better than most of her contemporaries."
+
+If she had not done many things so well, she would still have the
+distinction of having done several things the first time they were
+ever done at all. It has been claimed that she edited the first
+American magazine for children, wrote the first novel of puritan
+times, published the first American Anti-Slavery book, and compiled
+the first treatise upon what is now known as "Comparative Religions,"
+a science not then named, but now a department in every school of
+theology.
+
+Mrs. Child's maiden name was Francis, and under that name she won her
+first fame. She was born in Medford, Mass., Feb. 11, 1802. Her father,
+Convers Francis, is said to have been a worthy and substantial
+citizen, a baker by trade, and the author of the "Medford Crackers,"
+in their day second only in popularity to "Medford Rum." He was a man
+of strong character, great industry, uncommon love of reading,
+zealous anti-slavery convictions, generous and hospitable. All these
+traits were repeated in his famous daughter. It was the custom of Mr.
+Francis, on the evening before Thanksgiving to gather in his
+dependents and humble friends to the number of twenty or thirty, and
+feast them on chicken pie, doughnuts and other edibles, sending them
+home with provisions for a further festival, including "turnovers" for
+the children. Col. Higginson, who had the incident from Mrs. Child,
+intimates that in this experience she may have discovered how much
+more blessed it is to give than to receive. Certainly, in later life,
+she believed and practiced this doctrine like a devotee.
+
+Mrs. Child began to climb the hill of knowledge under the instruction
+of a maiden lady known as "Ma'am Betty," who kept school in her
+bedroom which was never in order, drank from the nose of her
+tea-kettle, chewed tobacco and much of it, and was shy to a degree
+said to have been "supernatural," but she knew the way to the hearts
+of children, who were very fond of her and regularly carried her a
+Sunday dinner. After "Ma'am Betty," Mrs. Child attended the public
+schools in Medford and had a year at a Medford private seminary.
+
+These opportunities for education were cut off at the age of twelve
+apparently by some change in the family fortunes which compelled the
+removal of Maria to Norridgewock, Maine, on the borders of the great
+northern wilderness, where a married sister was living. An influence
+to which she gave chief credit for her intellectual development and
+which was not wholly cut off by this removal was that of Convers
+Francis, her favorite brother, next older than herself, afterward
+minister in Watertown, and professor in the Divinity School of Harvard
+University. In later life, Dr. Francis was an encyclopedia of
+information and scholarship, very liberal in his views for the time.
+Theodore Parker used to head pages in his journal with, "Questions to
+ask Dr. Francis."
+
+Dr. Francis began to prepare for college when Mrs. Child was nine
+years old. Naturally the little girl wanted to read the books which
+her brother read, and sometimes he seems to have instructed her and
+sometimes he tantalized her, but always he stimulated her. Years
+afterward she wrote him gratefully, "To your early influence, by
+conversation, letters, and example I owe it that my busy energies
+took a literary direction at all."
+
+Norridgewock, her home from her twelfth to her eighteenth year, was
+and is a very pretty country village, at that era the residence of
+some very cultivated families, but hardly an educational center. As we
+hear nothing of schools either there or elsewhere we are led to
+suppose that this twelve year old girl had finished her education. If
+she lacked opportunities for culture, she carried with her a desire
+for it, which is half the battle, and she had the intellectual
+stimulus of letters from her brother then in college, who seems to
+have presided over her reading. What we know of her life at this
+period is told in her letters to this brother.
+
+The first of these letters which the editors let us see was written at
+the age of fifteen. "I have," she says, "been busily engaged reading
+Paradise Lost. Homer hurried me along with rapid impetuosity; every
+passion that he portrayed I felt; I loved, hated, and resented just as
+he inspired me. But when I read Milton I felt elevated 'above this
+visible, diurnal sphere.' I could not but admire such astonishing
+grandeur of description, such heavenly sublimity of style. Much as I
+admire Milton, I must confess that Homer is a much greater favorite."
+
+It is not strange that a studious brother in college would take
+interest in a sister who at the age of fifteen could write him with so
+much intelligence and enthusiasm of her reading. The next letter is
+two years later when she has been reading Scott. She likes Meg
+Merrilies, Diana Vernon, Annot Lyle, and Helen Mac Gregor. She hopes
+she may yet read Virgil in his own tongue, and adds, "I usually spend
+an hour after I retire for the night in reading Gibbon's Roman Empire.
+The pomp of his style at first displeased me, but I think him an able
+historian."
+
+This is from a girl of seventeen living on the edge of the northern
+wilderness, and she is also reading Shakspere. "What a vigorous grasp
+of intellect," she says, "what a glow of imagination he must have
+possessed, but when his fancy drops a little, how apt he is to make
+low attempts at wit, and introduce a forced play upon words." She is
+also reading the Spectator, and does not think Addison so good a
+writer as Johnson, though a more polished one.
+
+What she was doing with her ever busy hands during this period we are
+not told, but her intellectual life ran on in these channels until
+she reaches the age of eighteen, when she is engaged to teach a school
+in Gardiner, Maine, an event which makes her very happy. "I cannot
+talk about books," she writes, "nor anything else until I tell you the
+good news, that I leave Norridgewock as soon as the travelling is
+tolerable and take a school in Gardiner." It is the terrible month of
+March, for country roads in the far north, "the saddest of the year."
+She wishes her brother were as happy as she is, though, "All I expect
+is that, if I am industrious and prudent, I shall be independent."
+
+At the conclusion of her school, she took up her residence with her
+brother in Watertown, Mass., where one year before, he had been
+settled as minister of the first parish. Here a new career opened
+before her. Whittier says that in her Norridgewock period, when she
+first read Waverly at the house of her physician, she laid down the
+book in great excitement, exclaiming, "Why cannot I write a novel?"
+Apparently, she did not undertake the enterprise for two years or
+more. In 1824, one Sunday after morning service, in her brother's
+study, she read an article in the _North American Review_, in which it
+was pointed out that there were great possibilities of romance in
+early American history. Before the afternoon service, she had written
+the first chapter of a novel which was published anonymously the same
+year, under the title of "Hobomok: a Tale of Early Times."
+
+A search through half a dozen Antique Book stores in Boston for a copy
+of this timid literary venture I have found to be fruitless, except
+for the information that there is sometimes a stray copy in stock, and
+that its present value is about three dollars. It is sufficient
+distinction that it was the first attempt to extract a romantic
+element from early New England history. Its reception by the public
+was flattering to a young author. The Boston Athenæum sent her a
+ticket granting the privileges of its library. So great and perhaps
+unexpected had been its success that for several years, Mrs. Child's
+books bore the signature, "By the author of Hobomok." Even "The Frugal
+Housewife" was "By the author of Hobomok."
+
+In 1825, the author of Hobomok published her second novel, entitled,
+"The Rebels: a Tale of the Revolution." It is a volume of about 300
+pages, and is still very readable. It ran rapidly through several
+editions, and very much increased the reputation of the author of
+Hobomok. The work contains an imaginary speech of James Otis, in
+which it is said, "England might as well dam up the Nile with
+bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in
+this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of
+Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of
+Switzerland." This supposed speech of Otis soon found its way into the
+School Readers of the day, as a genuine utterance of the Revolutionary
+patriot, and as such Col. Higginson says he memorized and declaimed
+it, in his youth.
+
+This literary success was achieved at the age of twenty-three, and the
+same year Miss Francis opened a private school in Watertown, which she
+continued three years, until her marriage gave her other occupations.
+In 1826, she started _The Juvenile Miscellany_, as already mentioned,
+said to be the first magazine expressly for children, in this country.
+In it, first appeared many of her charming stories afterward gathered
+up in little volumes entitled, "Flowers for Children."
+
+In 1828, she was married to Mr. David Lee Child, then 34 years of age,
+eight years older than herself. Whittier describes him, as a young and
+able lawyer, a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and editor of
+the _Massachusetts Journal_. Mr. Child graduated at Harvard in 1817
+in the class with George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, George B. Emerson,
+and Samuel J. May. Between 1818 and 1824, he was in our diplomatic
+service abroad under Hon. Alexander Everett, at that time, Chargé
+d'Affaires in the Netherlands. On his return to America, Mr. Child
+studied law in Watertown where, at the house of a mutual friend, he
+met Miss Lydia Maria Francis. She herself reports this interesting
+event under date of Dec. 2, 1824. "Mr. Child dined with us in
+Watertown. He possesses the rich fund of an intelligent traveller,
+without the slightest tinge of a traveller's vanity. Spoke of the
+tardy improvement of the useful arts in Spain and Italy." Nearly two
+months pass, when we have this record: "Jan. 26, 1825. Saw Mr. Child
+at Mr. Curtis's. He is the most gallant man that has lived since the
+sixteenth century and needs nothing but helmet, shield, and
+chain-armor to make him a complete knight of chivalry." Not all the
+meetings are recorded, for, some weeks later, "March 3," we have this
+entry, "One among the many delightful evenings spent with Mr. Child. I
+do not know which to admire most, the vigor of his understanding or
+the ready sparkle of his wit."
+
+There can be no doubt that she thoroughly enjoyed these interviews,
+and we shall have to discount the statement of any observer who
+gathered a different impression. Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, at whose
+home some of these interviews took place, was a boy of twelve, and may
+have taken the play of wit between the parties too seriously. He says,
+"At first Miss Francis did not like Mr. Child. Their intercourse was
+mostly banter and mutual criticism. Observers said, 'Those two people
+will end in marrying.' Miss Francis was not a beautiful girl in the
+ordinary sense, but her complexion was good, her eyes were bright, her
+mouth expressive and her teeth fine. She had a great deal of wit,
+liked to use it, and did use it upon Mr. Child who was a frequent
+visitor; but her deportment was always maidenly and lady-like."
+
+The engagement happened in this wise. Mr. Child had been admitted to
+the bar and had opened an office in Boston. One evening about nine
+o'clock he rode out to Watertown on horseback and called at the
+Curtises' where Miss Francis then was. "My mother, who believed the
+denouement had come," says Mr. Curtis, "retired to her chamber. Mr.
+Child pressed his suit earnestly. Ten o'clock came, then eleven, then
+twelve. The horse grew impatient and Mr. Child went out once or twice
+to pacify him, and returned. At last, just as the clock was striking
+one, he went. Miss Francis rushed into my mother's room and told her
+she was engaged to Mr. Child."
+
+There are indications in this communication that Mr. Curtis did not
+himself greatly admire Mr. Child and would not have married him, but
+he concedes that, "Beyond all doubt, Mrs. Child was perfectly happy in
+her relations with him, through their long life." After their
+marriage, he says, they went to housekeeping in a "very small house in
+Boston," where Mr. Curtis, then a youth of sixteen, visited them and
+partook of a simple, frugal dinner which the lady cooked and served
+with her own hands, and to which Mr. Child returned from his office,
+"cheery and breezy," and we may hope the vivacity of the host may have
+made up for the frugality of the entertainment.
+
+In "Letters from New York," written to the Boston _Courier_, she
+speaks tenderly of her Boston home which she calls "Cottage Place" and
+declares it the dearest spot on earth. I assume it was this "very
+small house" where she began her married life, where she dined the
+fastidious Mr. Curtis, and where she seems to have spent eight or
+nine happy years. Her marriage brought her great happiness. A friend
+says, "The domestic happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Child seemed to me
+perfect. Their sympathies, their admiration of all things good, and
+their hearty hatred of all things mean and evil, were in entire
+unison. Mr. Child shared his wife's enthusiasms and was very proud of
+her. Their affection, never paraded, was always manifest." After Mr.
+Child's death, Mrs. Child said, "I believe a future life would be of
+small value to me, if I were not united to him."
+
+Mr. Child was a man of fine intellect, with studious tastes and
+habits, but there is too much reason to believe that his genius did
+not lie in the management of practical life. Details of business were
+apparently out of his sphere. "It was like cutting stones with a
+razor," says one who knew him. "He was a visionary," says another,
+"who always saw a pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow." This was a
+kind of defect which, though it cost her dear, Mrs. Child, of all
+persons, could most easily forgive. One great success he achieved:
+that was in winning and keeping the heart of Mrs. Child. Their married
+life seems to have been one long honeymoon. "I always depended," she
+says, "upon his richly stored mind, which was able and ready to
+furnish needed information on any subject. He was my walking
+dictionary of many languages, and my universal encyclopedia. In his
+old age, he was as affectionate and devoted as when the lover of my
+youth; nay, he manifested even more tenderness. He was often singing,
+
+    'There's nothing half so sweet in life
+      As love's _old_ dream.'
+
+Very often, when he passed me, he would lay his hand softly on my head
+and murmur 'Carum Caput.'... He never would see anything but the
+bright side of my character. He always insisted upon thinking that
+whatever I said was the wisest and whatever I did was the best."
+
+In the anti-slavery conflict, Mr. Child's name was among the earliest,
+and at the beginning of the controversy, few were more prominent. In
+1832, he published in Boston a series of articles upon slavery and the
+slave-trade; in 1836, another series upon the same subject, in
+Philadelphia; in 1837, an elaborate memoir upon the subject for an
+anti-slavery society in France, and an able article in a _London
+Review_. It is said that the speeches of John Quincy Adams in Congress
+were greatly indebted to the writings of Mr. Child, both for facts and
+arguments.
+
+Such, briefly, is the man with whom Mrs. Child is to spend forty-five
+years of her useful and happy life. In 1829, the year after her
+marriage, she put her twelve months of experience and reflection into
+a book entitled, "The Frugal Housewife." "No false pride," she says,
+"or foolish ambition to appear as well as others, should induce a
+person to live a cent beyond the income of which he is assured." "We
+shall never be free from embarrassment until we cease to be ashamed of
+industry and economy." "The earlier children are taught to turn their
+faculties to some account the better for them and for their parents."
+"A child of six years is old enough to be made useful and should be
+taught to consider every day lost in which some little thing has not
+been done to assist others." We are told that a child can be taught to
+braid straw for his hats or to make feather fans; the objection to
+which would be that a modern mother would not let a child wear that
+kind of hat nor carry the fan.
+
+The following will be interesting if not valuable: "Cheap as stockings
+are, it is good economy to knit them; knit hose wear twice as long as
+woven; and they can be done at odd moments of time which would not be
+otherwise employed." What an age that must have been when one had time
+enough and to spare! Other suggestions are quite as curious. The book
+is "dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy." "The writer,"
+she says, "has no apology to offer for this little book of economical
+hints, except her deep conviction that such a book is needed. In this
+case, renown is out of the question; and ridicule is a matter of
+indifference."
+
+Goethe made poems of his chagrins; Mrs. Child in this instance
+utilized her privations and forced economies to make a book; and a
+wonderfully successful book it was. She was not wrong in supposing it
+would meet a want. During the next seven years, it went through twenty
+editions, or three editions a year; in 1855, it had reached its
+thirty-third edition, averaging little short of one edition a year for
+thirty-six years. Surely this was a result which made a year of
+economical living in a "very small house" worth while.
+
+"The Frugal Housewife" was a true "mother's book," although another
+and later volume was so named. "The Mother's Book" was nearly as
+successful as "The Frugal Housewife," and went through eight American
+editions, twelve English, and one German. The success of these books
+gave Mrs. Child a good income, and she hardly needed to be the "frugal
+housewife" she had been before.
+
+A check soon came to her prosperity. In 1831, she met Garrison and,
+being inflammable, caught fire from his anti-slavery zeal, and became
+one of his earliest and staunchest disciples. The free use of the
+Athenæum library which had been graciously extended to her ten years
+before, now enabled her to study the subject of slavery in all its
+aspects, historical, legal, theoretical, and practical and, in 1833,
+she embodied the results of her investigations in a book entitled, "An
+Appeal in behalf of the class of Americans called Africans." The
+material is chiefly drawn from Southern sources, the statute books of
+Southern states, the columns of Southern newspapers, and the
+statements and opinions of Southern public men. It is an effective
+book to read even now when one is in a mood to rose-color the old-time
+plantation life and doubtful whether anything could be worse than the
+present condition of the negro in the South.
+
+The book had two kinds of effect. It brought upon Mrs. Child the
+incontinent wrath of all persons who, for any reason, thought that the
+only thing to do with slavery was to let it alone. "A lawyer,
+afterward attorney-general," a description that fits Caleb Cushing, is
+said to have used tongs to throw the obnoxious book out of the window;
+the Athenæum withdrew from Mrs. Child the privileges of its library;
+former friends dropped her acquaintance; Boston society shut its doors
+upon her; the sale of her books fell off; subscriptions to her
+_Juvenile Miscellany_ were discontinued; and the magazine died after a
+successful life of eight years; and Mrs. Child found that she had
+ventured upon a costly experiment. This consequence she had
+anticipated and it had for her no terrors. "I am fully aware," she
+says in her preface, "of the unpopularity of the task I have
+undertaken; but though I expect ridicule, I do not fear it.... Should
+it be the means of advancing even one single hour the inevitable
+progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness
+for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's fame."
+
+Of course a book of such evident significance and power would have
+had another effect; by his own acknowledgement, it brought Dr.
+Channing into the anti-slavery crusade, and he published a book upon
+slavery in 1835; it led Dr. John G. Palfry, who had inherited a
+plantation in Louisiana, to emancipate his slaves; and, as he has more
+than once said, it changed the course of Col. T. W. Higginson's life
+and made him an abolitionist. "As it was the first anti-slavery work
+ever printed in America in book form, so," says Col. Higginson, "I
+have always thought it the ablest." Whittier says, "It is no
+exaggeration to say that no man or woman at that period rendered more
+substantial service to the cause of freedom, or made such a 'great
+renunciation' in doing it."
+
+Turning from the real world, which was becoming too hard for her, Mrs.
+Child took refuge in dreamland and wrote "Philothea: a story of
+Ancient Greece," published in 1835. Critics have objected that this
+delightful romance is not an exact reproduction of Greek life, but is
+Hamlet a reproduction of anything that ever happened in Denmark, or
+Browning's Saul of anything that could have happened in Judea, a
+thousand years before Christ? To Lowell, Mrs. Child was and remained
+"Philothea." Higginson says that the lines in which Lowell describes
+her in the "Fable for Critics," are the one passage of pure poetry it
+contains, and at the same time the most charming sketch ever made of
+Mrs. Child.
+
+    "There comes Philothea, her face all aglow;
+    She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe,
+    And can't tell which pleases her most--to relieve
+    His want, or his story to hear and believe.
+    No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails,
+    For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales;
+    She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food,
+    And that talking draws off from the heart its bad blood."
+
+In 1836, Mr. Child went abroad to study the Beet Sugar industry in
+France, Holland, and Germany and, after an absence of a year and a
+half, returned to engage in Beet Sugar Farming at Northampton, Mass.
+He received a silver medal for raw and refined sugar at the Exhibition
+of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association in 1839, and a
+premium of $100 from the Massachusetts Agricultural society the same
+year. He published a well written and edifying book upon "Beet Sugar,"
+giving the results of his investigations and experiments. It was an
+enterprise of great promise, but has taken half a century, in this
+country, to become a profitable industry.
+
+Mrs. Child's letters from 1838 to 1841 are dated from Northampton,
+where she is assisting to work out the "Beet Sugar" experiment. It
+would have been a rather grinding experience to any one with less
+cheerfulness than Mrs. Child. She writes, June 9, 1838, "A month
+elapsed before I stepped into the woods which were all around me
+blooming with flowers. I did not go to Mr. Dwight's ordination, nor
+have I yet been to meeting. He has been to see me however, and though
+I left my work in the midst and sat down with a dirty gown and hands
+somewhat grimmed, we were high in the blue in fifteen minutes." Mr.
+Dwight was Rev. John S. Dwight, Brook Farmer, and editor of _Dwight's
+Journal of Music_.
+
+Half of her published letters are addressed to Mr. or Mrs. Francis G.
+Shaw, parents of Col. Robert G. Shaw. Here is one in 1840, to Mr.
+Shaw, after she had made a trip to Boston. It will be interesting as
+presenting a new aspect of Mrs. Child's nature: "The only thing,
+except meeting dear friends, that attracted me to Boston was the
+exhibition of statuary.... I am ashamed to say how deeply I am charmed
+with sculpture: ashamed because it seems like affectation in one who
+has had such limited opportunity to become acquainted with the arts. I
+have a little figure of a caryatid which acts upon my spirit like a
+magician's spell.... Many a time this hard summer, I have laid down my
+dish-cloth or broom and gone to refresh my spirit by gazing on it a
+few minutes. It speaks to me. It says glorious things. In summer I
+place flowers before it; and I have laid a garland of acorns and
+amaranths at its feet. I do love every little bit of real sculpture."
+
+Her other artistic passion was music, quite out of her reach at this
+period; but happily, she loved birds and flowers, both of which a Beet
+Sugar Farm in the Connecticut Valley made possible. A family of
+swallows made their nest in her woodshed, husband and wife dividing
+the labors of construction, nursing, and even of incubation, though
+the male bird did not have the same skill and grace as the lady, in
+placing his feet and wings. Mrs. Child gives a pretty account of this
+incident in a letter to one of her little friends, and says, "It seems
+as if I could watch them forever." Later, in one of her letters to
+the Boston _Courier_, she gives a more complete account of the
+episode. Her observations convinced her that birds have to be taught
+to fly, as a child is taught to walk.
+
+When birds and flowers went, she had the autumn foliage, and she
+managed to say a new thing about it: it is "color taking its fond and
+bright farewell of form--like the imagination giving a deeper, richer,
+and warmer glow to old familiar truths before the winter of
+rationalism comes and places trunk and branches in naked outline
+against the cold, clear sky."
+
+Whether she had been living hitherto in a "rent" we are not told, but
+in a letter of February 8, 1841, she informs us that she is about to
+move to a farm on which "is a sort of a shanty with two rooms and a
+garret. We expect to whitewash it, build a new woodshed, and live
+there next year. I shall keep no help, and there will be room for
+David and me. I intend to half bury it in flowers."
+
+There is nothing fascinating in sordid details, but Mrs. Child in the
+midst of sordid details, is glorious. A month before this last letter,
+her brother, Prof. Francis, had written her apparently wishing her
+more congenial circumstances; we have only her reply, from which it
+appears her father is under her care. She declines her brother's
+sympathy, and wonders that he can suppose "the deadening drudgery of
+the world" can imprison a soul in its caverns. "It is not merely an
+eloquent phrase," she says, "but a distinct truth that the outward has
+no power over us but that which we voluntarily give it. It is not I
+who drudge; it is merely the case that contains me. I defy all the
+powers of earth and hell to make me scour floors and feed pigs, if I
+choose meanwhile to be off conversing with angels.... If I can in
+quietude and cheerfulness forego my own pleasures and relinquish my
+tastes, to administer to my father's daily comfort, I seem to those
+who live in shadows to be cooking food and mixing medicines, but I am
+in fact making divine works of art which will reveal to me their fair
+proportions in the far eternity." Besides this consolation, she says,
+"Another means of keeping my soul fresh is my intense love of nature.
+Another help, perhaps stronger than either of the two, is domestic
+love."
+
+Her Northampton life was nearer an end than she supposed when she
+wrote these letters; she did not spend the next year in the little
+farm house with "two rooms and a garret"; on May 27th, she dates a
+letter from New York city, where she has gone reluctantly to edit the
+_Anti-Slavery Standard_. She had been translated from the sphere of
+"cooking food and mixing medicines" to congenial literary occupations;
+she had, let us hope, a salary sufficient for her urgent necessities;
+her home was in the family of the eminent Quaker philanthropist, Isaac
+T. Hopper, who received her as a daughter, and whose kindness she
+repaid by writing his biography. However the venture might come out,
+we would think her life could not well be harder or less attractive
+than it had been, drudging in a dilapidated farm house, and we are
+glad she is well out of it. Strange to say, she did not take our view
+of the situation. We have already seen how independent she was of
+external circumstances. In a letter referred to, dated May 27, she
+chides a friend for writing accounts of her outward life: "What do I
+care whether you live in one room or six? I want to know what your
+spirit is doing. What are you thinking, feeling, and reading?... My
+task here is irksome enough. Your father will tell you that it was not
+zeal for the cause, but love for my husband, which brought me hither.
+But since it was necessary for me to leave home to be earning
+somewhat, I am thankful that my work is for the anti-slavery cause. I
+have agreed to stay one year. I hope I shall then be able to return to
+my husband and rural home, which is humble enough, yet very
+satisfactory to me. Should the _Standard_ be continued, and my editing
+generally desired, perhaps I could make an arrangement to send
+articles from Northampton. At all events, I trust the weary separation
+from my husband is not to last more than a year. If I am to be away
+from him, I could not be more happily situated than in Friend Hopper's
+family. They treat me the same as a daughter and a sister."
+
+The _Anti-Slavery Standard_ was a new enterprise; its editorship was
+offered to Mr. and Mrs. Childs jointly; Col. Higginson says that Mr.
+Child declined because of ill health; another authority, that he was
+still infatuated with his Beet Sugar, of which Mrs. Child had had more
+than enough; it appears from her letter that neither of them dreamed
+of abandoning the Sugar industry; if the enterprise was folly, they
+were happily united in the folly.
+
+However, of the two, the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ was the more
+successful enterprise, and at the end of the two years, Mr. Child
+closed out his Beet Sugar business and joined Mrs. Child in editing
+the paper. Mrs. Child edited the _Standard_ eight years, six of which
+were in conjunction with Mr. Child. They were successful editors; they
+gave the _Standard_ a high literary character, and made it acceptable
+to people of taste and culture who, whatever their sympathy with
+anti-slavery, were often repelled by the unpolished manners of Mr.
+Garrison's paper, _The Liberator_.
+
+Something of her life outside the _Standard_ office, something of the
+things she saw and heard and enjoyed, during these eight years, can be
+gathered from her occasional letters to the Boston _Courier_. They are
+interesting still; they will always be of interest to one who cares to
+know old New York, as it was sixty years ago, or from 1840 onward.
+That they were appreciated then is evident from the fact that,
+collected and published in two volumes in 1844, eleven editions were
+called for during the next eight years. Col. Higginson considers these
+eight years in New York the most interesting and satisfactory of Mrs.
+Child's life.
+
+Though we have room for few incidents of this period, there is one
+too charming to be omitted. A friend went to a flower merchant on
+Broadway to buy a bunch of violets for Mrs. Child's birthday.
+Incidentally, the lady mentioned Mrs. Child; she may have ordered the
+flowers sent to her house. When the lady came to pay for them, the
+florist said, "I cannot take pay for flowers intended for her. She is
+a stranger to me, but she has given my wife and children so many
+flowers in her writings, that I will never take money of her." Another
+pretty incident is this: an unknown friend or admirer always sent Mrs.
+Child the earliest wild flowers of spring and the latest in autumn.
+
+I have said that one of her passions was music, which happily she now
+has opportunities to gratify. "As for amusements," she says, "music is
+the only thing that excites me.... I have a chronic insanity with
+regard to music. It is the only Pegasus which now carries me far up
+into the blue. Thank God for this blessing of mine." I should be glad
+if I had room for her account of an evening under the weird spell of
+Ole Bull. Her moral sense was keener than her æsthetic, but her
+æsthetic sense was for keener than that of the average mortal.
+Sometimes she felt, as Paul would have said, "in a strait betwixt
+two"; in 1847 she writes Mr. Francis G. Shaw: "I am now wholly in the
+dispensation of art, and therefore theologians and reformers jar upon
+me." Reformer as she was and will be remembered, she was easily drawn
+into the dispensation of art; and nature was always with her, so much
+so that Col. Higginson says, "She always seemed to be talking
+radicalism in a greenhouse."
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Child retired from the _Standard_ in 1849. Her next
+letters are dated from Newton, Mass. Her father was living upon a
+small place--a house and garden--in the neighboring town of Wayland,
+beautifully situated, facing Sudbury Hill, with the broad expanse of
+the river meadows between. Thither Mrs. Child went to take care of him
+from 1852 to 1856, when he died, leaving the charming little home to
+her. There are many traditions of her mode of life in Wayland, but her
+own account is the best: "In 1852, we made our humble home in Wayland,
+Mass., where we spent twenty-two pleasant years, entirely alone,
+without any domestic, mutually serving each other and depending upon
+each other for intellectual companionship." If the memory of Wayland
+people is correct, Mr. Child was not with her much during the four
+years that her father lived. Her father was old and feeble and Mr.
+Child had not the serene patience of his wife. Life ran more easily
+when Mr. Child was away. Whatever other period in the life of Mrs.
+Child may have been the most satisfactory, this must have been the
+most trying.
+
+Under date of March 23, 1856, happily the last year of this sort of
+widowhood, she writes: "This winter has been the loneliest of my life.
+If you knew my situation you would pronounce it unendurable. I should
+have thought so myself if I had had a foreshadowing of it a few years
+ago. But the human mind can get acclimated to anything. What with
+constant occupation and a happy consciousness of sustaining and
+cheering my poor old father in his descent to the grave, I am almost
+always in a state of serene contentment. In summer, my once
+extravagant love of beauty satisfies itself in watching the birds, the
+insects, and the flowers in my little patch of a garden." She has no
+room for her vases, engravings, and other pretty things; she keeps
+them in a chest, and she says, "when birds and flowers are gone, I
+sometimes take them out as a child does its playthings, and sit down
+in the sunshine with them, dreaming over them."
+
+We need not think of her spending much time dreaming over her little
+hoard of artistic treasures. Her real business in this world is
+writing the history of all religions, or "The Progress of Religious
+Ideas in Successive Ages." It was a work begun in New York, as early
+as 1848, finished in Wayland in 1855, published in three large octavo
+volumes and, whatever its merits or success, was the greatest literary
+labor of her life.
+
+Under date of July 14, 1848, she writes to Dr. Francis: "My book gets
+slowly on.... I am going to tell the plain, unvarnished truth, as
+clearly as I can understand it, and let Christians and Infidels,
+Orthodox and Unitarians, Catholics, Protestants, and Swedenborgians
+growl as they like. They will growl if they notice it at all: for each
+will want his own theory favored, and the only thing I have
+conscientiously aimed at is not to favor any theory at all." She may
+have failed in scientific method; but here is a scientific spirit. "In
+her religious speculations," says Whittier, "Mrs. Child moved in the
+very van." In Wayland, she considered herself a parishioner of Dr.
+Edmund H. Sears, whom she calls, "our minister," but she was
+somewhat in advance of Dr. Sears. Her opinions were much nearer akin
+to those of Theodore Parker. Only a Unitarian of that type could
+perhaps at this early period have conceived the history of religion as
+an evolution of one and the same spiritual element "through successive
+ages."
+
+She had not much time to dream over her chest of artistic treasures
+when the assault of Preston S. Brooks upon Senator Sumner called her
+to battle of such force and point that Dr. William H. Furness said, it
+was worth having Sumner's head broken.
+
+When death released her from the care of her father, she took
+"Bleeding Kansas" under her charge. She writes letters to the
+newspapers; she sits up till eleven o'clock, "stitching as fast as my
+fingers could go," making garments for the Kansas immigrants; she
+"stirs up the Wayland women to make garments for Kansas"; she sends
+off Mr. Child to make speeches for Kansas; and then she writes him in
+this manner: "How melancholy I felt when you went off in the morning
+darkness. It seemed as if everything about me was tumbling down; as if
+I were never to have a nest and a mate any more." Surely the rest of
+this letter was not written for us to read: "Good, kind, magnanimous
+soul, how I love you. How I long to say over the old prayer again
+every night. It almost made me cry to see how carefully you had
+arranged everything for my comfort before you went; so much kindling
+stuff split up and the bricks piled up to protect my flowers." Here is
+love in a cottage. This life is not all prosaic.
+
+Old anti-slavery friends came to see her and among them Charles
+Sumner, in 1857, spent a couple of hours with her, and left his
+photograph; she met Henry Wilson at the anti-slavery fair and talked
+with him an "hour or so." Whittier says, "Men like Charles Sumner,
+Henry Wilson, Salmon P. Chase, and Governor Andrew availed themselves
+of her foresight and sound judgment of men and measures."
+
+When John Brown was wounded and taken prisoner at Harper's Ferry,
+nothing was more in character for Mrs. Child than to offer her
+services as his nurse. She wrote him under cover of a letter to Gov.
+Wise, of Virginia. The arrival of Mrs. Brown, made Mrs. Child's
+attendance unnecessary, but the incident led to a lively
+correspondence between Mrs. Child and Gov. Wise, in which Mrs.
+Senator Mason, of Virginia, joined. Neither of her distinguished
+correspondents possessed the literary skill of Mrs. Child. The entire
+correspondence was collected in a pamphlet of which 300,000 copies
+were sold. On a visit to Whittier at Amesbury, a delegation from a
+Republican political meeting called upon her, saying they wanted to
+see the woman who "poured hot shot into Gov. Wise."
+
+In 1863, after saying that she is "childish enough to talk to the
+picture of a baby that is being washed," she writes her friend, Mrs.
+Shaw, "But you must not suppose that I live for amusement. On the
+contrary I work like a beaver the whole time. Just now I am making a
+hood for a poor neighbor; last week I was making flannels for the
+hospital; odd minutes are filled up ravelling lint; every string that
+I can get sight of I pull for poor Sambo. I write to the _Tribune_
+about him; I write to the _Transcript_ about him; I write to private
+individuals about him; and I write to the President and members of
+Congress about him; I write to Western Virginia and Missouri about
+him; and I get the articles published too. This shows what progress
+the cause of freedom is making." Not everything went to her mind
+however. If we think there has been a falling from grace in the public
+life of our generation, it may do us good to read what she says in
+1863: "This war has furnished many instances of individual nobility,
+but our national record is mean."
+
+In 1864, she published "Looking Toward Sunset," a book designed to
+"present old people with something wholly cheerful." The entire
+edition was exhausted during the holiday season; 4,000 copies were
+sold and more called for. All her profits on the book, she devoted to
+the freedmen, sending $400 as a first instalment. Not only that, but
+she prepared a volume called "The Freedman's Book," which she printed
+at an expense of $600, and distributed among the freedmen 1200 copies
+at her own cost. She once sent Wendell Phillips a check of $100 for
+the freedmen, and when he protested that it was more than she could
+afford, she consented to "think it over." The next day, she made her
+contribution $200. She contributed $20 a year to the American
+Missionary Association toward the support of a teacher for the
+freedmen, and $50 a year to the Anti-Slavery Society. A lady wished,
+through Mr. Phillips, to give Mrs. Child several thousand dollars for
+her comfort. Mrs. Child declined the favor, but was persuaded to
+accept it, and then scrupulously gave away the entire income in
+charity. It is evident she might have made herself very comfortable,
+if it had not given her so much more pleasure to make someone else
+comfortable.
+
+Her dress, as neat and clean as that of a Quakeress, was quite as
+plain and far from the latest style. A stranger meeting her in a stage
+coach mistook her for a servant until she began to talk. "Who is that
+woman who dresses like a peasant, and speaks like a scholar?" he asked
+on leaving the coach. Naturally, it was thought Mrs. Child did not
+know how to dress, or, more likely, did not care for pretty things.
+"You accuse me," she writes to Miss Lucy Osgood, "you accuse me of
+being indifferent to externals, whereas the common charge is that I
+think too much of beauty, and say too much about it. I myself think it
+one of my greatest weaknesses. A handsome man, woman or child can
+always make a pack-horse of me. My next neighbor's little boy has me
+completely under his thumb, merely by virtue of his beautiful eyes and
+sweet voice." There was one before her of whom it was said, "He
+denied himself, and took up his cross." It was also said of him,
+"Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor." He never had a
+truer disciple than Mrs. Child.
+
+Not that she ever talked of "crosses." "But why use the word
+sacrifice?" she asks. "I never was conscious of any sacrifice." What
+she gained in moral discipline or a new life, she says, was always
+worth more than the cost. She used an envelope twice, Wendell Phillips
+says; she never used a whole sheet of paper when half of one would do;
+she outdid poverty in her economies, and then gave money as if she had
+thousands. "I seldom have a passing wish for enlarging my income
+except for the sake of doing more for others. My wants are very few
+and simple."
+
+In 1867, Mrs. Child published "A Romance of the Republic," a pathetic
+story, but fascinating, and admirably written; in 1878, appeared a
+book of choice selections, entitled, "Aspirations of the World"; and
+in 1871, a volume of short biographies, entitled "Good Wives," and
+dedicated, to Mr. Child: "To my husband, this book is affectionately
+inscribed, by one who, through every vicissitude, has found in his
+kindness and worth, her purest happiness and most constant incentive
+to duty."
+
+Mr. Child died in 1874 at the age of eighty, and Mrs. Child followed
+him in 1880, at the age of seventy-eight. After her death, a small
+volume of her letters was published, of which the reader will wish
+there were more. Less than a month before her death, she wrote to a
+friend a list of benevolent enterprises she has in mind and says, "Oh,
+it is such a luxury to be able to give without being afraid. I try not
+to be Quixotic, but I want to rain down blessings on all the world, in
+token of thankfulness for the blessings that have been rained down
+upon me."
+
+It is too late to make amends for omissions in this paper, but it
+would be unjust to Mrs. Child to forget her life-long devotion to the
+interests of her own sex. In 1832, a year before her "Appeal in behalf
+of that class of Americans called Africans,"--eleven years before the
+appearance of Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century,"
+Mrs. Child published "A History of the Condition of Women in all ages
+and nations," showing her disposition to begin every inquiry with a
+survey of the facts, and also that the "woman question" was the first
+to awaken her interest. Her greatest contribution to the advancement
+of women was herself; that is, her own achievements. To the same
+purpose were her biographies of famous women: "Memoirs of Mme. de
+Stael and Mme. Roland" in 1847, and sketches of "Good Wives" in 1871.
+Whittier says, she always believed in woman's right to the ballot, as
+certainly he did, calling it "the greatest social reform of the age."
+In one letter to Senator Sumner, she directly argues the question: "I
+reduce the argument," she says, "to very simple elements. I pay taxes
+for property of my own earning, and I do not believe in 'taxation
+without representation.'" Again: "I am a human being and every human
+being has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax
+him, to imprison him, or to _hang_ him."
+
+A light humor illuminates this argument. Humor was one of her saving
+qualities which, as Whittier says, "kept her philanthropy free from
+any taint of fanaticism." It contributed greatly to her cheerfulness.
+Of her fame, she says playfully: "In a literary point of view I know I
+have only a local reputation, done in water colors."
+
+Could anything have been better said than this of the New England
+April or even May: "What a misnomer in our climate to call this
+season Spring, very much like calling Calvinism religion." Nothing
+could have been keener than certain points scored in her reply to Mrs.
+Senator Mason. Mrs. Mason, remembering with approving conscience her
+own ministries in the slave cabins caring for poor mothers with young
+babies, asks Mrs. Child, in triumph, if she goes among the poor to
+render such services. Mrs. Child replies that she has never known
+mothers under such circumstances to be neglected, "and here at the
+North," said she, "after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell
+the babies." After Gen. Grant's election to the Presidency, a
+procession with a band from Boston, marched to her house and gave her
+a serenade. She says that she joined in the hurrahs "like the
+strong-minded woman that I am. The fact is, I forgot half the time
+whether I belonged to the stronger or weaker sex." Whether she
+belonged to the stronger or weaker sex, is still something of a
+problem. Sensible men would be willing to receive her, should women
+ever refuse to acknowledge her.
+
+Wendell Phillips paid her an appreciative tribute, at her funeral.
+"There were," he said, "all the charms and graceful elements which we
+call feminine, united with a masculine grasp and vigor; sound
+judgment and great breadth; large common sense and capacity for
+everyday usefulness, endurance, foresight, strength, and skill." The
+address is given in full in the volume of "Letters." There is also a
+fine poem by Whittier for the same occasion:
+
+    "Than thine was never turned a fonder heart
+      To nature and to art;
+
+    Yet loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,
+      And for the poor deny
+    Thyself...."
+
+The volume contains a poetical tribute of an earlier date, by Eliza
+Scudder, of which Mrs. Child said, "I never was so touched and pleased
+by any tribute in my life. I cried over the verses and I smiled over
+them." I will close this paper with Miss Scudder's last stanza:
+
+    "So apt to know, so wise to guide,
+      So tender to redress,--
+    O, friend with whom such charms abide,
+      How can I love thee less?"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX
+
+
+[Illustration: DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX]
+
+The career of Dorothy Dix is a romance of philanthropy which the world
+can ill afford to forget. It has been said of her, and it is still
+said, that she was "the most useful and distinguished woman America
+has yet produced." It is the opinion of Mr. Tiffany, her biographer,
+that as the founder of institutions of mercy, she "has simply no peer
+in the annals of Protestantism." To find her parallel one must go to
+the calendar of the Catholic saints,--St. Theresa, of Spain, or Santa
+Chiara, of Assisi. "Why then," he asks, do the "majority of the
+present generation know little or nothing of so remarkable a story!"
+Till his biography appeared, it might have been answered that the
+story had never been told; now, we should have to say that, with a
+thousand demands upon our time, it has not been read.
+
+Dorothea Lynde Dix--born February 11, 1802--was the daughter of Joseph
+Dix and granddaughter of the more eminent Dr. Elijah Dix, of
+Worcester, later of Boston, Mass. Dr. Dix was born in Watertown,
+Mass., in 1747. At the age of seventeen, he became the office boy of
+Dr. John Green, an eminent physician in Worcester, Mass., and later, a
+student of medicine. After five years, in 1770, he began to practice
+as physician and surgeon in Worcester where he formed a partnership
+with Dr. Sylvester Gardner. It must have been a favorable time for
+young doctors since in 1771, a year after he began to practice, he
+married Dorothy Lynde, of Charlestown, Mass., for whom her little
+granddaughter was named. Mrs. Dix seems to have been a woman of great
+decision of character, and no less precision of thought and action,
+two traits which reappeared conspicuously in our great philanthropist.
+
+Certain qualities of Dr. Dix are also said to have reappeared in his
+granddaughter. He was self-reliant, aggressive, uncompromising,
+public-spirited, and sturdily honest. To his enterprise, Worcester
+owed its first shade trees, planted by him, when shade trees were
+considered great folly, and also the Boston and Worcester turnpike,
+when mud roads were thought to be divinely appointed thoroughfares.
+His integrity is shown by an incident which also throws light upon
+the conditions of a troubled period. His partner, Dr. Gardner, made
+the grave mistake of taking the royal side in the controversies that
+preceded the Revolution, and Worcester became as hot for him as
+Richmond or Charleston was for a Union man in 1861. Dr. Gardner
+disappeared, leaving his effects behind him. After the war, Dr. Dix
+made a voyage to England and honorably settled accounts with his
+former partner.
+
+It was like the enterprising Dr. Dix that he turned this creditable
+act to his financial advantage. On his return to America he brought
+with him a stock of medical books, surgical instruments, and chemical
+apparatus, and became a dealer in physician's supplies, while
+continuing the practice of his profession. His business prospering, in
+1795 he removed to Boston for a larger field, where he opened a drug
+store near Faneuil Hall and established chemical works in South
+Boston. Successful as physician, druggist and manufacturer, he soon
+had money to invest. Maine, with its timber lands, was the Eldorado of
+that era, and Dr. Dix bought thousands of acres in its wilderness,
+where Dixfield in the west, and Dixmont in the east, townships once
+owned by him, preserve his name and memory.
+
+The house of Dr. Dix in Boston, called the "Dix Mansion," was on
+Washington St., corner of Dix Place, then Orange Court. It had a large
+garden behind it, where originated the Dix pear, once a favorite. Dr.
+Dix died in 1809, when Dorothea was seven years old. Young as she was,
+he was among the most vivid of her childhood memories and by far the
+pleasantest. She seems to have been a favorite with him and it was his
+delight to take her in his chaise on his rounds, talking playfully
+with her and listening to her childish prattle.
+
+Joseph Dix, the father of Dorothea, is a vague and shadowy memory. He
+seems to have had little of his father's energy or good sense.
+Unstable in many of his ways, he lived a migratory life, "at various
+spots in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, as well as in Worcester
+and Boston, Mass." When Dorothea was born, he was living at Hampden,
+Maine, adjoining his father's Dixmont properties, presumably as his
+father's land agent. He probably tired of this occupation because it
+interfered with his business. His business seems to have been
+religion. He was a prolific author of religious literature. He was a
+philanthropist after his kind, giving his time without stint to the
+writing of religious tracts, and spending his money in publishing
+them, with little benefit to the world and much detriment to his
+family. In the stitching and pasting of these tracts, the whole
+household were required to assist and it was against this irksome
+taskwork that Dorothea, at the age of twelve, rebelled, running away
+from Worcester, where the family then lived, and finding a refuge with
+her grandmother in Boston. Dorothea afterwards educated her two
+brothers, one of whom became a sea captain and the other a Boston
+merchant.
+
+Dorothea Dix was created by her Maker, but she was given in a plastic
+state, first into the hands of inexorable Madam Dix, and next into
+those of the all-pitying Dr. Channing. Madam Dix is described as a
+fine specimen of the dignified, precise, conscientious New England
+gentlewoman of her generation. Industry, economy, and above all
+thoroughness were the chief articles of her religion, and she
+instilled these virtues into the mind of her granddaughter by the most
+vigorous discipline. A week of solitary confinement was among the
+penalties inflicted upon the hapless child who had failed to reach
+the standard of duty prescribed for her. The standard, with Madam Dix,
+did not differ from perfection discernibly. Mr. Tiffany quotes a lady
+who in her girlhood, as a special reward of merit, was allowed to make
+an entire shirt under the supervision of Madam Dix. It was an
+experience never forgotten. No stitch in the entire garment could be
+allowed to differ perceptibly from every other, but the lady spoke of
+the ordeal with enthusiastic gratitude, declaring that it had been a
+life-long benefit to her to have been compelled to do one piece of
+work thoroughly well.
+
+"I never knew childhood," Miss Dix said pitifully in after life.
+Certainly with this exacting grandmother, there can be no childhood as
+it is understood to-day; but if Dorothea submits to the rigorous
+discipline enforced upon her, she will make a woman of iron fibre who
+will flinch from no hardship and will leave no task undone. Happily
+she did submit to it. The alternative would have been to return to her
+half-vagabond father. Too much discipline or too little was her
+destiny. She preferred to take the medicine in excess, and in the end
+was grateful for it.
+
+Dorothea was so apt a pupil and so ambitious that, at the age of
+fourteen, she returned to Worcester and opened a school for small
+children, prudently lengthening the skirts and sleeves of her dress to
+give dignity and impressiveness to her appearance. Half a century
+later one of these pupils vividly recalled the child-teacher, tall of
+her age, easily blushing, at once beautiful and imposing in manner,
+but inexorably strict in discipline.
+
+Dorothea spent the next four years in Boston in preparation for a more
+ambitious undertaking and, in 1821 at the age of nineteen, she opened
+a day school in Boston in a small house belonging to Madam Dix. The
+school prospered and gradually expanded into a day and boarding
+school, for which the Dix mansion, whither the school was removed,
+furnished convenient space. Madam Dix, enfeebled by age and
+infirmities, laid down the scepter she had wielded, and the premises
+passed virtually into the hands of Dorothea. Thither came pupils from
+"the most prominent families in Boston" and other Massachusetts towns,
+and even from beyond the limits of the State. There also she brought
+her brothers to be educated under her care and started upon a business
+career.
+
+Hardly had she started her school for the rich and fortunate before,
+anticipating her vocation as a philanthropist, she opened another for
+the poor and destitute. A letter is preserved in which she pleadingly
+asks the conscientious but perhaps stony Madam Dix for the loft over
+the stable for this purpose. "My dear grandmother," she begins, "Had I
+the saint-like eloquence of our minister, I would employ it in
+explaining all the motives, and dwelling on the good, the good to the
+poor, the miserable, the idle, the ignorant, which would follow your
+giving me permission to use the barn chamber for a school-room for
+charitable and religious purposes."
+
+The minister with saint-like eloquence was Dr. Channing. The letter is
+valuable as showing the source of the flame that had fired her
+philanthropic soul. For the finer culture of the heart she had passed
+from the hands of Madam Dix to those of Dr. Channing. The request for
+the room was granted and Mr. Tiffany tells us that "The little
+barn-school proved the nucleus out of which years later was developed
+the beneficent work of the Warren Street Chapel, from which as a
+centre spread far and wide a new ideal of dealing with childhood.
+There first was interest excited in the mind of Rev. Charles Barnard,
+a man of positive spiritual genius in charming and uplifting the
+children of the poor and debased."
+
+Letters from Miss Dix at this period show that she had a sensitive
+nature, easily wrought upon, now inflamed to action and now melted to
+tears. "You say that I weep easily. I was early taught to sorrow, to
+shed tears, and now, when sudden joy lights up or unexpected sorrow
+strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling
+tide of feeling." She is reading a book of poems and weeping over
+it,--"paying my watery tribute to the genius" of the poet. She longs
+for similar talents that she "might revel in the luxury of those
+mental visions that must hourly entrance a spirit that partakes less
+of earth than heaven." It will be remembered that her father was
+religious even to folly. Here was his child, only by judicious
+training, the stream was turned into channels of wise beneficence.
+
+With the management of two schools, the supervision of the household,
+the care of two younger brothers, and ministries to her grandmother
+already advanced in years, Miss Dix was sufficiently occupied, but she
+found time to prepare a text-book upon "Common Things," gathering the
+material as she wrote. This, her first attempt at book-making, issued
+in 1824, was kept in print forty-five years, and went to its sixtieth
+edition in 1869. It was followed the next year by "Hymns for Children"
+selected and altered, and by a book of devotions entitled, "Evening
+Hours." Lengthening the day at both ends, "rising before the sun and
+going to bed after midnight," working while others slept, gave time
+for these extra tasks. Nature exacted her usual penalties. In the
+third year of this arduous labor, threatenings of lung troubles
+appeared which, however, she defied even when "in conducting her
+classes she had to stand with one hand on a desk for support, and the
+other pressed hard to her side as though to repress a hard pain."
+Meanwhile she wrote a bosom friend: "There is in our nature a
+disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which
+unless hourly combated will overcome the best faculties of our minds
+and paralyse our most useful powers.... I have often entertained a
+dread lest I should fall a victim to my besieger, and that fear has
+saved me thus far."
+
+Besides the terror of lapsing into self-indulgence, she was
+stimulated to activity by the care of her brothers, for one of whom
+she seems to have felt special anxiety: "Oh, Annie," she writes, "if
+that child is good, I care not how humble his pathway in life. It is
+for him my soul is filled with bitterness when sickness wastes me; it
+is because of him I dread to die." Was there no one to advise her that
+the best care of her brother would be to care for herself, and that if
+she would do more, she must first do less! Where was Dr. Channing who,
+more than any other, was responsible for her intemperate zeal! It
+appears that Dr. Channing, "not without solicitude," as he writes her,
+was watching over his eager disciple. "Your infirm health," he says,
+"seems to darken your prospect of usefulness. But I believe your
+constitution will yet be built up, if you will give it a fair chance.
+You must learn to give up your plans of usefulness as much as those of
+gratification, to the will of God."
+
+Miss Dix abandoned her school apparently in 1827, after six years of
+service and at the age of twenty-five. The following spring and summer
+she spent as a governess in the family of Dr. Channing at his summer
+home in Rhode Island. Her duties were light and she lived much in the
+open air, devoting her leisure to botany in which she was already "no
+mean proficient," and to "the marine life of the beautiful region."
+Very pretty letters were exchanged between her and Dr. Channing at the
+termination of the engagement. "We will hear no more of thanks," he
+wrote her, "but your affection for us and our little ones we will
+treasure among our most precious blessings." He invites her to renew
+the relations another year, and so she did.
+
+To avoid the rigors of a New England climate, Miss Dix, for some
+years, spent her winters, now in Philadelphia, now in Alexandria, Va.,
+keeping herself busy with reading "of a very multifarious
+kind,--poetry, science, biography, and travels,--besides eking out the
+scanty means she had laid by from her teaching by writing stories and
+compiling floral albums and books of devotion." In 1827, she published
+a volume of "Ten Short Stories for Children" which went to a second
+edition in 1832; in 1828, "Meditations for Private Hours," which went
+through several editions; in 1829, two little books, "The Garland of
+Flora," and "The Pearl, a Christmas Gift." Occasional brief
+engagements in teaching are also recorded in this period.
+
+The winter of 1830, she spent with the Channings on the Island of St.
+Croix, in the West Indies, in her old capacity as governess. A
+daughter of Dr. Channing gives an interesting account of the
+preceptress of whom, first and last, she had seen so much. She
+describes Miss Dix as tall and dignified, very shy in manner, strict
+and inflexible in discipline. "From her iron will, it was hopeless to
+appeal. I think she was a very accomplished teacher, active and
+diligent herself, very fond of natural history and botany. She enjoyed
+long rambles, always calling our attention to what was interesting in
+the world around us. I hear that some of her pupils speak of her as
+irascible. I have no such remembrance. Fixed as fate we considered
+her."
+
+Miss Dix returned from the West Indies in the spring, very much
+improved in health, and in the autumn, she reopened her school in the
+Dix Mansion, with the same high ideals as before and with such
+improved methods as experience had suggested. Pupils came to her again
+as of old and she soon had as many attendants as her space permitted.
+A feature of the school was a letter-box through which passed a daily
+mail between teacher and pupils and "large bundles of child-letters of
+this period" are still extant, preserved by Miss Dix with scrupulous
+care to the end of life. It was a bright child who wrote as follows:
+"I thought I was doing well until I read your letter, but when you
+said that you were rousing to greater energy, all my satisfaction
+vanished. For if you are not satisfied in some measure with yourself
+and are going to do more than you have done, I don't know what I shall
+do. You do not go to rest until midnight and then you rise very
+early." The physician had administered too strong a tonic for the
+little patient's health.
+
+A lady who, at the age of sixteen, attended this school in 1833,
+writes of her eminent teacher as follows: "She fascinated me from the
+first, as she had done many of my class before me. Next to my mother,
+I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was in the
+prime of her years, tall and of dignified carriage, head finely shaped
+and set, with an abundance of soft, wavy, brown hair." The school
+continued in the full tide of success for five years, during which
+time, by hard labor and close economies, Miss Dix had saved enough to
+secure her "the independence of a modest competence." This seems a
+great achievement, but if one spends nothing for superfluities and
+does most of his labor himself, he can lay by his income, much or
+little. The appointments of the school are said to have been very
+simple, a long table serving as a desk for study, when it was not in
+use for dinner. Only one assistant is mentioned, who gave instruction
+in French and, perhaps, elementary Latin. Surely Miss Dix could handle
+the rest herself. The merit of the school was not in its elaborate
+appointments, but in the personal supervision of its accomplished
+mistress. So the miracle was wrought and at the age of thirty-three,
+Miss Dix had achieved a modest competence.
+
+The undertaking had cost her her health once before, and now it cost
+her her health again. The old symptoms, a troublesome cough, pain in
+the side, and slight hemorrhages, returned and, having dragged her
+frail body through the winter of 1836, Miss Dix reluctantly closed her
+school in the spring and, in obedience to her physician, went to
+Europe for rest, with the intention of spending the summer in England,
+the autumn in France, and the winter in Italy. Prostrated by the
+voyage, she was carried to a hotel in Liverpool where she was put to
+bed with the forlorn prospect of being confined to her solitary room
+for an indefinite period of convalescence. But again Dr. Channing
+befriended her. From him she had received letters of introduction, one
+of which brought to her side Mr. William Rathbone, a wealthy merchant
+of Liverpool and a prominent English Unitarian. Mr. and Mrs. Rathbone
+insisted upon taking her to their home, a charming residence a few
+miles out of the city. Thither she consented to go for a visit of a
+few weeks, and there she remained, as an honored guest tenderly cared
+for, for eighteen months. "To the end of her days," says her
+biographer, "this period of eighteen months stood out in her memory as
+the jubilee of her life, the sunniest, the most restful, and the
+tenderest to her affections of her whole earthly experience." She
+wrote a Boston friend, "You must imagine me surrounded by every
+comfort, sustained by every tenderness that can cheer, blest in the
+continual kindness of the family in which Providence has placed me,--I
+with no claim but those of a common nature." And again, "So completely
+am I adopted into the circle of loving spirits that I sometimes
+forget I really am not to consider the bonds transient in their
+binding."
+
+She very much needed these friends and their tender care. Nine months
+after her arrival, we hear of occasional hemorrhages from which she
+has been exempt for ten days, the pain in her side less acute, and her
+physician has given her permission to walk about her room. One would
+think that her career was practically ended, but, strange to say, the
+career which was to make her famous had not yet begun. From this date,
+her convalescence proceeded steadily, and she was able to enjoy much
+in the delightful home and refined social circle in which she found
+herself. "Your remark," she writes a friend, "that I probably enjoy
+more now in social intercourse than I have ever before done is quite
+true. Certainly if I do not improve, it will be through wilful
+self-neglect." Apparently, she was having a glimpse of a less prosaic
+existence than the grinding routine of a boarding school. Madam Dix
+died at the age of ninety-one, leaving her granddaughter, still in
+Europe, a substantial legacy, which sensibly increased her limited
+resources and, when the time came for action, left her free to carry
+out her great schemes of benevolence without hampering personal
+anxieties. It ought to preserve the memory of Madam Dix that she
+endowed a great philanthropist.
+
+In the autumn of 1837, Miss Dix returned to America, and avoiding the
+New England climate, spent the winter in Washington, D. C., and its
+neighborhood. Apparently, it was not a wholly happy winter, chiefly
+because of her vain and tender longings for the paradise she had left
+across the sea. The Washington of 1837 seemed raw to her after the
+cultivated English home she had discovered. "I was not conscious," she
+writes a friend, "that so great a trial was to meet my return from
+England till the whole force of the contrast was laid before me.... I
+may be too craving of that rich gift, the power of sharing with other
+minds. I have drunk deeply, long, and Oh, how blissfully, at this
+fountain in a foreign clime. Hearts met hearts, minds joined with
+minds, and what were the secondary trials of pain to the enfeebled
+body when daily was administered the soul's medicine and food."
+Surely, that English experience was one upon which not every invalid
+from these shores could count, but when, a few years later, Miss Dix
+returned to England as a kind of angel of mercy, giving back much
+more than she had ever received, the Rathbone family must have been
+glad that they had befriended her in her obscurity and her need.
+
+It was in 1841 at the age of thirty-nine that the second chapter in
+the life of Miss Dix began. Note that she had as little thought that
+she was beginning a great career as any one of us that he will date
+all his future from something he has done or experienced to-day. It
+happened that Dr. J. T. G. Nichols, so long the beloved pastor of the
+Unitarian parish in Saco, Maine, was then a student of Divinity at
+Cambridge. He had engaged to assist in a Sunday School in the East
+Cambridge jail, and all the women, twenty in number, had been assigned
+to him. The experience of one session with his class was enough to
+convince him that a young man was very much out of place in that
+position and that a woman, sensible if possible, but a woman
+certainly, was necessary. His mother advised him to consult Miss Dix.
+Not that her health would permit her to take the class, but she could
+advise. On hearing Mr. Nichols' statement, Miss Dix deliberated a
+moment and then said, "I will take the class myself." Mr. Nichols
+protested that this was not to be thought of, in the condition of her
+health, but we have heard of her iron will: "Fixed as fate we
+considered her," said one of her pupils; and she answered Mr. Nichols,
+"I shall be there next Sunday."
+
+This was the beginning. "After the school was over," says Dr. Nichols,
+"Miss Dix went into the jail and found among the prisoners a few
+insane persons with whom she talked. She noticed that there was no
+stove in their rooms and no means of proper warmth." The date was the
+twenty-eighth of March and the climate was New England, from which
+Miss Dix had so often had to flee. "The jailer said that a fire for
+them was not needed, and would be unsafe. Her repeated solicitations
+were without success." The jailer must have thought he was dealing
+with a woman, not with destiny. "At that time the court was in session
+at East Cambridge, and she caused the case to be brought before it.
+Her request was granted. The cold rooms were warmed. Thus was her
+great work commenced."
+
+Such is Dr. Nichols' brief statement, but the course of events did not
+run so smoothly as we are led to suppose. The case had to be fought
+through the newspapers as well as the court, and here Miss Dix showed
+the generalship which she exhibited on many another hard fought
+field. She never went into battle single-handed. She always managed to
+have at her side the best gunners when the real battle began. In the
+East Cambridge skirmish, she had Rev. Robert C. Waterston, Dr. Samuel
+G. Howe, and Charles Sumner. Dr. Howe visited the jail and wrote an
+account for the Boston _Advertiser_. When this statement was disputed,
+as it was, Mr. Sumner, who had accompanied Dr. Howe, confirmed his
+account and added details of his own. He said that the inmates "were
+cramped together in rooms poorly ventilated and noisome with filth;"
+that "in two cages or pens constructed of plank, within the four stone
+walls of the same room" were confined, and had been for months, a
+raving maniac and an interesting young woman whose mind was so
+slightly obscured that it seemed any moment as if the cloud would pass
+away; that "the whole prison echoed with the blasphemies of the poor
+old woman, while her young and gentle fellow in suffering seemed to
+shrink from her words as from blows;" that the situation was hardly
+less horrid than that of "tying the living to the dead."
+
+Where was Miss Dix during this controversy? Why, she was preparing to
+investigate every jail and almshouse in the State of Massachusetts.
+If this was the way the insane were treated in the city of Cambridge,
+in a community distinguished for enlightenment and humanity, what
+might not be going on in more backward and less favored localities?
+Note-book in hand, going from city to city and from town to town, Miss
+Dix devoted the two following years to answering this question
+exhaustively.
+
+Having gathered her facts, she presented them to the Legislature in a
+Memorial of thirty-two octavo pages, the first of a series of
+seventeen statements and appeals presented to the legislatures of
+different states, as far west as Illinois and as far south as
+Louisiana. "I shall be obliged," she said, "to speak with great
+plainness and to reveal many things revolting to the taste, and from
+which my woman's nature shrinks with peculiar sensitiveness.... I
+proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present
+state of insane persons within this Commonwealth, in cages, closets,
+cellars, stalls, pens, chained, naked, beaten with rods and lashed
+into obedience.... I give a few illustrations but description fades
+before reality." If we could dismiss the subject by saying she reports
+instance after instance where men and women were confined in the
+almshouses in Massachusetts in such conditions of inhumanity and
+neglect as no intelligent farmer would tolerate for his swine, we
+could avoid some unpleasant details; but the statement would be
+ineffective because it would seem incredible. At the almshouse in
+Danvers, confined in a remote, low, outbuilding, she found a young
+woman, once respectable, industrious and worthy, whose mind had been
+deranged by disappointments and trials. "There she stood," says Miss
+Dix, "clinging to or beating upon the bars of her caged apartment, the
+contracted size of which afforded space only for increasing
+accumulations of filth,--a foul spectacle; there she stood, with naked
+arms, dishevelled hair, the unwashed frame invested with fragments of
+unclean garments, the air so extremely offensive, though ventilation
+was afforded on all sides but one, that it was not possible to remain
+beyond a few moments without retreating for recovery to the outward
+air. Irritation of body, produced by utter filth and exposure, incited
+her to the horrid process of tearing off her skin by inches; her neck
+and person were thus disfigured to hideousness.... And who protects
+her," Miss Dix suggestively asks, "who protects her,--that worse than
+Pariah outcast,--from other wrongs and blacker outrages!" This
+question had more meaning for Miss Dix than we might suppose, for at
+the almshouse in Worcester she had found an insane Madonna and her
+babe: father unknown.
+
+Fair and beautiful Newton finds a place in this chapter of dishonor,
+with a woman chained, nearly nude, and filthy beyond measure: "Sick,
+horror-struck, and almost incapable of retreating, I gained the
+outward air." A case in Groton attained infamous celebrity, not
+because the shame was without parallel but because the overseers of
+the poor tried to discredit the statements of Miss Dix. The fact was
+that she had understated the case. Dr. Bell of the McLean Asylum,
+confirmed her report and added details. In an outbuilding at the
+almshouse, a young man, slightly deranged but entirely inoffensive,
+was confined by a heavy iron collar to which was attached a chain six
+feet in length, the limit of his possible movements. His hands were
+fastened together by heavy clavises secured by iron bolts. There was
+no window in his dungeon, but for ventilation there was an opening,
+half the size of a sash, closed in cold weather by a board shutter.
+From this cell, he had been taken to the McLean Asylum, where his
+irons had been knocked off, his swollen limbs chafed gently, and
+finding himself comfortable, he exclaimed, "My good man, I must kiss
+you." He showed no violence, ate at the common table, slept in the
+common bedroom, and seemed in a fair way to recovery when, to save the
+expense of three dollars a week for his board and care, the thrifty
+Groton officials took him away. He could be boarded at the almshouse
+for nothing, and, chained in an outbuilding, he would not require any
+care.
+
+We can follow Miss Dix in her career through a dozen states of this
+Union, into the British Provinces, to Scotland and England, thence
+across to the Continent, without repeating these details, if we bear
+in mind that such as we have seen was the condition of the pauper
+insane at that period. Her memorial was presented by Dr. S. G. Howe,
+then happily a member of the Legislature, and a bill was passed, not
+without opposition, but finally passed, enlarging the asylum at
+Worcester to accommodate two hundred additional patients. The
+provision was inadequate, but a reform of old abuses had begun. It was
+her first victory.
+
+Grateful for what had been accomplished in Massachusetts, Miss Dix
+turned to Rhode Island, whose borders she had often approached and
+sometimes crossed in her investigations in the adjoining state. Rhode
+Island was perhaps not less civilized than her neighbor, but Rhode
+Island furnished the prize case of horrors in the mistreatment of
+insanity, a case which in a letter introducing the discoverer, Mr.
+Thomas G. Hazard said went beyond anything he supposed to exist in the
+civilized world. The case was this: Abraham Simmons, a man whose name
+ought to go on the roll of martyrdom, was confined in the town of
+Little Compton, in a cell seven feet square, stone-built,
+stone-roofed, and stone-floored, the entrance double-walled,
+double-doored and double-locked, "excluding both light and fresh air,
+and without accommodation of any description for warming and
+ventilation." When this dungeon was discovered, the walls were covered
+by frost a half inch in thickness; the bed was provided with two
+comfortables, both wet and the outer one stiffly frozen, or, as Miss
+Dix puts it, "only wet straw to lie upon and a sheet of ice for his
+covering." Lest two locks should not be enough to hold this dangerous
+man, his leg was tethered to the stone floor by an ox-chain. "My
+husband," said the mistress, "in winter, sometimes of a morning rakes
+out half a bushel of frost, _and yet he never freezes_; sometimes he
+screams dreadfully and that is the reason we had the double wall and
+two doors in place of one; his cries disturb us in the house." "How
+long has he been here?" "Oh, above three years." Nothing in the
+traditions of the Bastile could exceed these horrors, and yet they
+were not the product of intentional cruelty, but of unfathomable
+stupidity.
+
+Disregarding the well-meant warnings of her attendant that he would
+kill her, Miss Dix took his hands, tried to warm them in her own,
+spoke to him of liberty, care and kindness, and for answer "a tear
+stole over his hollow cheeks, but no words answered my importunities."
+Her next step was to publish the terrible story in the Providence
+Journal, not with a shriek, as might have been expected and justified,
+but with the affected coolness of a naturalist. With grim humor, she
+headed her article, "Astonishing Tenacity of Life," as if it had only
+a scientific interest for anybody. If you doubted the statements, you
+might go and see for yourself: "Should any persons in this
+philanthropic age be disposed from motives of curiosity to visit the
+place, they may rest assured that travelling is considered quite safe
+in that part of the country, however improbable it may seem. The
+people of that region profess the Christian religion, and it is even
+said that they have adopted some forms and ceremonies which they call
+worship. It is not probable, however, that they address themselves to
+poor Simmons' God." Their prayers and his shrieks would make a strange
+discord, she thinks, if they entered the ear of the same deity.
+
+Having reported her discoveries to the men of science, she next
+appealed to the men of wealth. Providence had at that date a
+multi-millionaire, by the name of Butler; he left four millions to his
+heirs. He had never been known as a philanthropist; he did not himself
+suppose that his heart was susceptible. It is said that knowing
+persons smiled when they heard that Miss Dix intended to appeal to
+him. Further, it is said that Mr. Butler, at the interview,
+ingeniously diverted the conversation from topics that threatened to
+be serious. He apparently had no thought of giving Miss Dix a penny.
+At length she rose with the impressive dignity so often noted by her
+pupils and said: "Mr. Butler, I wish you to hear what I have to say. I
+want to bring before you certain facts involving terrible suffering
+to your fellow creatures all around you,--suffering you can relieve.
+My duty will end when I have done this, and with you will rest all
+further responsibility." Mr. Butler heard her respectfully to the end,
+and then asked, "What do you want me to do?" "Sir," she said, "I want
+you to give $50,000 toward the enlargement of the insane hospital in
+this city." "Madam, I'll do it," he said, and much more of his estate
+afterward went the same way.
+
+Three years of devoted study of the problems of insanity, with
+limitless opportunities for personal observation, had given Miss Dix
+an expert knowledge of the subject. She had conceived what an insane
+asylum should be. Hitherto, she had been content to enlarge upon
+foundations already laid; now she would build an asylum herself. She
+saw, we are told, that such an institution as she conceived could not
+be built by private benevolence, but must have behind it a legislative
+appropriation. She chose New Jersey as the field of her experiment.
+Quietly, she entered the state and canvassed its jails and almshouses,
+as she had those of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Next she digested
+her facts in a Memorial to the Legislature. Then, with a political
+shrewdness for which she became celebrated, she selected the member,
+uniting a good heart with a clear head and persistent will, into whose
+hands it should be placed. Much of her success is said to have been
+due to her political sagacity. The superintendent of one of her
+asylums said, "She had an insight into character that was truly
+marvellous; and I have never known anyone, man or woman, who bore more
+distinctly the mark of intellectuality." Having placed her Memorial in
+the hands of a skilful tactician, she retired to a room appropriated
+to her use by the courtesy of the House, where she spent her time
+writing editorials for newspapers, answering the questions of members,
+and holding receptions. "You cannot imagine," she writes a friend,
+"the labor of conversing and convincing. Some evenings I had at once
+twenty gentlemen for three hours' steady conversation." After a
+campaign of two months the bill establishing the New Jersey State
+Lunatic Asylum was passed, and the necessary money appropriated for
+its erection. She was always partial to this first creation of her
+energy and genius. She called it 'her first child,' and there,
+forty-five years later, she returned to pass the last seven years of
+her life, as in a home, a room having been gratefully appropriated to
+her use by the trustees of the asylum.
+
+At this date, Dr. S. G. Howe wrote her: "God grant me to look back
+upon some three years of my life with a part of the self-approval you
+must feel. I ask no higher fortune. No one need say to you, Go on! for
+you have heard a higher than any human voice, and you will follow
+whithersoever it calleth." Indeed, she already had much of her future
+work prepared. While waiting for the Legislature in New Jersey to take
+up her bill, she had canvassed Pennsylvania and had the happiness to
+see a bill pass the Legislature of that State founding the Dixmont
+Hospital, her second child, soon after the birth of her first. The
+Dixmont Hospital is the only one of her many children that she would
+allow to be even indirectly named for her. Meanwhile, she had
+canvassed Kentucky, had been before the Legislature in Tennessee, and,
+seven days after the passage of her bill in New Jersey, she writes
+from a steamer near Charleston, S. C., as follows: "I designed using
+the spring and summer chiefly in examining the jails and poorhouses of
+Indiana and Illinois. Having successfully completed my mission in
+Kentucky, I learned that traveling in those States would be
+difficult, if not impossible, for some weeks to come, on account of
+mud and rains. This decided me to examine the prisons and hospitals of
+New Orleans, and, returning, to see the state prisons of Louisiana at
+Baton Rouge, of Mississippi at Jackson, of Arkansas at Little Rock, of
+Missouri at Jefferson City, and of Illinois at Alton.... I have seen
+incomparably more to approve than to censure in New Orleans. I took
+the resolution, being so far away, of seeing the state institutions of
+Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. Though this has proved
+excessively fatiguing, I rejoice that I have carried out my purpose."
+
+Between June 1843 and August 1847, she states in a letter that she
+traveled 32,470 miles, her conveyance being by steamboat when
+possible; otherwise by stage-coach. It is suggestive of the wrecks and
+delays she had experienced with the shattered coaches and mud roads of
+the south and west that, as we are told, she "made a practice of
+carrying with her an outfit of hammer, wrench, nails, screws, a coil
+of rope, and straps of stout leather, which under many a mishap
+sufficed to put things to rights and enable her to pursue her
+journey." "I have encountered nothing so dangerous as river fords,"
+she writes. "I crossed the Yadkin when it was three-quarters of a mile
+wide, rough bottom, often in places rapid currents; the water always
+up to the carriage bed, and sometimes flowing in. The horses rested
+twice on sand-bars. A few miles beyond the river having just crossed a
+deep branch two hundred yards wide, the axletree broke, and away
+rolled one of the back wheels."
+
+When she said that river fords were her greatest danger, she must have
+forgotten an encounter with a highwayman. She was making a stage
+journey in Michigan, and noticed with some consternation that the
+driver carried a brace of pistols. To her inquiries he explained that
+there had been robberies on the road. "Give me the pistols," she said;
+"I will take care of them." More in awe of her than of robbers, the
+driver reluctantly obeyed. Passing through a dismal forest the
+expected happened. A man seized the horses and demanded her purse. She
+made him a little speech, asked if he was not ashamed, told him her
+business, and concluded, "If you have been unfortunate, are in
+distress and in want of money, I will give you some." Meanwhile the
+robber had turned "deathly pale," and when she had finished,
+exclaimed, "My God, that voice." He had once heard her address the
+prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary. He begged her to pass, and
+declined to take the money she offered. She insisted, lest he might be
+again tempted before he found employment. People obeyed when she
+insisted, and he took her gift and disappeared.
+
+Think of the hotel accommodations,--the tables and beds,--she must
+have encountered in these wild journeys. This is the woman who, a few
+years ago, seemed to be dying with hemorrhages of the lungs. Did she
+have no more of them? Oh, yes; we are assured that "again and again
+she was attacked with hemorrhages and again and again prostrated by
+malarial fever." A physician said, "Her system became actually
+saturated with malaria." Invalid as she almost always was, she had
+left her foot-prints in most of the states of the Union and had
+carried the war into the British Provinces, where she had been the
+means of establishing three insane hospitals: one in Toronto, one in
+Halifax, one at St. John, Newfoundland, besides providing a fleet of
+life-boats at Sable Island, known as "The Graveyard of Ships," off the
+coast of Nova Scotia.
+
+In the United States, during these twelve years, she "promoted and
+secured," to use her own phrase, the enlargement of three asylums: at
+Worcester, Mass., at Providence, R. I., and at Utica, N. Y., and the
+establishment of thirteen, one in each of the following states: New
+Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri,
+Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, and
+Maryland, with the Hospital for Insane Soldiers and Sailors, at
+Washington, D. C.
+
+In 1850, Miss Dix proposed a larger scheme of philanthropy than was
+ever before projected by any mortal. What is more, but for one man,
+she would have carried it out. She petitioned Congress to appropriate
+12,000,000 acres of public lands for the benefit of the indigent
+insane, deaf and dumb, and blind. A bill to that effect was
+introduced, watched by her through two sessions, and finally passed by
+both Houses. She was inundated with congratulations from far and near;
+but the bill was vetoed on constitutional grounds by President Pierce.
+The day for giving away the public lands in sheets had not come.
+
+The blow seems to have been more than Miss Dix could endure. She went
+abroad for change and rest. What rest meant to her, she expresses in
+a letter to a friend at home:
+
+    "Rest is not quitting the active career:
+    Rest is the fitting of self to its sphere."
+
+These lines, borrowed from John S. Dwight have been, not unnaturally,
+attributed to her. She wrote many things perhaps quite as poetical.
+
+Not much of the verse, which came from her prolific pen, was
+considered even by herself to deserve publication, but verse-writing
+is said to had been the never-failing diversion of her leisure hours.
+Mrs. Caroline A. Kennard credits her with the following lines which,
+though very simple, are quite as good as much that has been
+immortalized in our hymn books:
+
+    "In the tender, peaceful moonlight,
+      I am from the world apart,
+    While a flood of golden glory
+      Fills alike my room and heart.
+
+    As I gaze upon the radiance
+      Shining on me from afar,
+    I can almost see beyond it,--
+      Almost see 'the gates ajar.'
+
+    Tender thoughts arise within me
+      Of the friends who've gone before,
+    Absent long but not forgotten,
+      Resting on the other shore.
+
+    And my soul is filled with longing
+      That when done with earth and sin,
+    I may find the gates wide open
+      There for me to enter in."
+
+Apparently, she wrote her poetry for herself, as an unskilled musician
+might play for his own amusement.
+
+The rest which Miss Dix allowed herself between September 1854 and
+September 1856, was to visit the chief hospitals and prisons in
+Europe. Edinburgh, the Channel Islands, Paris, Rome, Naples,
+Constantinople, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen,
+Amsterdam, Brussels, and again Paris and London: these places mark the
+course of her two years' pilgrimage among the prisons and hospitals of
+Europe. She found much to admire in this journey, but sometimes abuses
+to correct. We must content ourselves with an incident from Edinburgh,
+perfectly in character. She found in that city private insane
+hospitals, if they could be dignified by the name, under such
+conditions of mismanagement as shocked even her experienced nerves.
+Having reported the facts to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh to no
+purpose, she was advised to lay the matter before the Home Secretary
+in London. The Provost knew of this intention and resolved to
+forestall her by taking the train for London the next morning; so
+little did he know Miss Dix. She boarded the night train, and was on
+the spot before him, had her interview, secured the appointment of a
+royal commission and, ultimately the correction of the abuses of which
+she had complained.
+
+During the four years that intervened between her return and the
+outbreak of the Civil War, she seems to have travelled over most of
+her old ground in this country, and to have extended her journeys into
+the new states and territories. At the approach of hostilities, it
+fell to Miss Dix to give the President of the Philadelphia and
+Baltimore Railroad the first information of a plot to capture the city
+of Washington and to assassinate Mr. Lincoln. Acting upon this
+information, Gen. Butler's Massachusetts troops were sent by boat
+instead of rail, and Mr. Lincoln was "secretly smuggled through to
+Washington."
+
+By natural selection, Miss Dix was appointed Superintendent of Women
+Nurses in the federal service, by order of the Secretary of War. In
+this capacity she served through the four years' struggle. In a letter
+dated December 7, 1864, she writes: "I take no hour's leisure. I think
+that since the war, I have taken no day's furlough." Her great
+services were officially recognized by Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of
+War.
+
+Having served the country as faithfully as any soldier, during its
+hour of need, she returned to her former work of promoting and
+securing the erection of hospitals and of visiting those before
+established. In 1877, when Miss Dix was seventy-five, Dr. Charles F.
+Folsom, of Boston, in a book entitled "Diseases of the Mind," said of
+her: "Her frequent visits to our institutions of the insane now, and
+her searching criticisms, constitute of themselves a better lunacy
+commission than would be likely to be appointed in many of our
+states."
+
+She was at that date, however, near the end of her active labors. In
+1881, at the age of seventy-nine, she retired to the hospital she had
+been the means of building in Trenton, N. J., and there she remained,
+tenderly, even reverently cared for, until her death in 1887. So
+passed to her rest and her reward one of the most remarkable women of
+her generation.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI
+
+
+[Illustration: SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI]
+
+At Cambridge, it is still possible to pick up interesting
+reminiscences of Longfellow and Lowell from old neighbors or townsmen,
+proud even to have seen these celebrities as familiar objects upon the
+street. "And Margaret Fuller," you suggest, further to tap the memory
+of your venerable friend. He smiles gently and says, Margaret Fuller
+was before his time; he remembers the table-talk of his youth. He
+remembers, when she was a girl at dancing-school, Papanti stopped his
+class and said, "Mees Fuller, Mees Fuller, you sal not be so
+magnee-fee-cent"; he remembers that, being asked if she thought
+herself better than any one else, she calmly said, "Yes, I do"; and he
+remembers that Miss Fuller having announced that she accepted the
+universe, a wit remarked that the universe ought to be greatly obliged
+to her.
+
+Margaret Fuller was born in 1810, a year later than Longfellow, but
+while Longfellow lived until 1882, Margaret was lost at sea thirty
+years before, in 1850. The last four years of her life were spent in
+Italy, so that American memories of Margaret must needs go back to
+1846. Practically it is traditions of her that remain, and not
+memories. As she survives in tradition, she seems to have been a
+person of inordinate vanity, who gave lectures in drawing-rooms and
+called them "conversations," uttered a commonplace with the authority
+of an oracle, and sentimentalized over art, poetry, or religion, while
+she seemed to herself, and apparently to others, to be talking
+philosophy. She took herself in all seriousness as a genius, ran a
+dazzling career of a dozen years or so in Cambridge and Boston, and
+then her light seems to have gone out. She came to the surface, with
+other newness, in the Transcendental era; she was the priestess of its
+mysteries; when that movement ebbed away, her day was over. This is
+the impression one would gather, if he had only current oral
+traditions of Margaret Fuller.
+
+If with this impression, wishing to get a first-hand knowledge of his
+subject, a student were to read the "Works of Margaret Fuller":--"Life
+Within and Without," "At Home and Abroad," "Woman in the Nineteenth
+Century," "Art, Literature, and Drama,"--he would be prepared to find
+eccentricities of style, straining for effect, mystical utterances,
+attempts at profundity, and stilted commonplace. He would, however,
+find nothing of this sort, or of any sort of make believe, but simply
+a writer always in earnest, always convinced, with a fair English
+style, perfectly intelligible, intent upon conveying an idea in the
+simplest manner and generally an idea which approves itself to the
+common-sense of the reader. There is no brilliancy, no ornament,
+little imagination, and not a least glimmer of wit. The absence of wit
+is remarkable, since in conversation, wit was a quality for which
+Margaret was both admired and feared. But as a writer, Margaret was a
+little prosaic,--even her poetry inclined to be prosaic,--but she is
+earnest, noble, temperate, and reasonable. The reader will be
+convinced that there was more in the woman than popular tradition
+recognizes.
+
+One is confirmed in the conviction that the legend does her less than
+justice when he knows the names and the quality of her friends. No
+woman ever had better or more loyal friends than Margaret Fuller.
+Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing
+were among them and compiled her "Memoirs," evidently as a labor of
+love. George William Curtis knew her personally, and called her "a
+scholar, a critic, a thinker, a queen of conversation, above all, a
+person of delicate insight and sympathy, of the most feminine
+refinement of feeling and of dauntless courage." Col. Higginson, a
+fellow-townsman, who from youth to manhood, knew Margaret personally,
+whose sisters were her intimates, whose family, as he tells us, was
+"afterwards closely connected" with hers by marriage, and who has
+studied all the documents and written her biography, says she was a
+"person whose career is more interesting, as it seems to me, than that
+of any other American of her sex; a woman whose aims were high and
+whose services great; one whose intellect was uncommon, whose activity
+was incessant, whose life, varied, and whose death, dramatic."
+
+There still remains the current legend, and a legend, presumably, has
+some foundation. If we attempt to unite the Margaret Fuller of common
+tradition with Margaret Fuller as estimated by her friends, we shall
+assume that she was not a wholly balanced character,--that she must
+have been a great and noble woman to have had such friends, but that
+there may have been in her some element of foolishness which her
+friends excused and at which the public smiled.
+
+Margaret was the fifth in descent from Lieut. Thomas Fuller, who came
+from England in 1638, and who celebrated the event in a poem of which
+the first stanza is as follows:
+
+    "In thirty-eight I set my foot
+      On this New England shore;
+    My thoughts were then to stay one year,
+      And then remain no more."
+
+The poetry is on a level with other colonial poetry of the period.
+
+Timothy Fuller, the grandfather of Margaret, graduated at Harvard
+College in 1760, became a clergyman, and was a delegate to the
+Massachusetts State Convention which adopted the Federal Constitution.
+He had five sons, all of whom became lawyers. "They were in general,"
+says Col. Higginson, "men of great energy, pushing, successful, of
+immense and varied information, of great self-esteem, and without a
+particle of tact." The evidence is that Margaret reproduced, in a
+somewhat exaggerated form, all these Fuller characteristics, good and
+bad. The saying is quoted from Horace Mann that if Margaret
+was unpopular, "it was because she probably inherited the
+disagreeableness of forty Fullers."
+
+Timothy Fuller, Margaret's father, was the oldest of these brothers
+and, Col. Higginson says, "the most successful and the most assured."
+He graduated at Harvard, second in his class, in 1801, lived in
+Cambridge, and represented the Middlesex district in Congress from
+1817 to 1825. He was a "Jeffersonian Democrat" and a personal friend
+and political supporter of John Quincy Adams. He married Margaret, the
+daughter of Major Peter Crane. Mrs. Fuller was as gentle and
+unobtrusive as her stalwart husband was forceful and uncompliant. She
+effaced herself even in her own home, was seen and not heard, though
+apparently not very conspicuously seen. She had eight children, of
+whom Margaret was the first, and when this busy mother escaped from
+the care of the household, it was to take refuge in her flower garden.
+A "fair blossom of the white amaranth," Margaret calls this mother.
+The child's nature took something from both of her parents, and was
+both strong and tender.
+
+Her father assumed the entire charge of Margaret's education, setting
+her studying Latin at the age of six, not an unusual feat in that day
+for a boy, but hitherto unheard of for a girl. Her lessons were
+recited at night, after Mr. Fuller returned from his office in Boston,
+often at a late hour. "High-pressure," says Col. Higginson, "is bad
+enough for an imaginative and excitable child, but high-pressure by
+candle-light is ruinous; yet that was the life she lived." The effect
+of these night lessons was to leave the child's brain both tired and
+excited and in no condition to sleep. It was considered singular that
+she was never ready for bed. She was hustled off to toss on her
+pillow, to see horrid visions, to have nightmare, and sometimes to
+walk in her sleep. Terrible morning headaches followed, and Margaret
+was considered a delicate child. One would like to know what Latin at
+six would have done for her, without those recitations by
+candle-light.
+
+Mr. Fuller did not consider it important that a child should have
+juvenile books and Margaret's light reading consisted of Shakspere,
+Cervantes, and Molière. She gives an interesting account of her
+discovery of Shakspere at the age of eight. Foraging for entertainment
+on a dismal winter Sunday afternoon, she took down a volume of
+Shakspere and was soon lost in the adventures and misadventures of
+Romeo and Juliet. Two hours passed, when the child's exceeding quiet
+attracted attention. "That is no book for Sunday," said her father,
+"put it away." Margaret obeyed, but soon took the book again to follow
+the fortunes of her lovers further. This was a fatal indiscretion; the
+forbidden volume was again taken from her and she was sent to bed as a
+punishment for disobedience.
+
+Meanwhile, the daily lessons to her father or to a private tutor went
+on; Virgil, Horace and Ovid were read in due course, and the study of
+Greek was begun. Margaret never forgave her father for robbing her of
+a proper childhood and substituting a premature scholastic education.
+"I certainly do not wish," she says, "that instead of these masters, I
+had read baby books, written down to children, but I do wish that I
+had read no books at all till later,--that I had lived with toys and
+played in the open air."
+
+Her early and solitary development entailed disadvantages which only a
+very thoughtful parent could have foreseen. When, later, Margaret was
+sent to school, she had no companions in study, being in advance of
+the girls of her age, with whom she played, and too young for the
+older set with whom she was called to recite. "Not only," she says, "I
+was not their schoolmate, but my book-life and lonely habits had given
+a cold aloofness to my whole expression, and veiled my manner with a
+hauteur which turned all hearts away."
+
+The effects of her training upon her health, Margaret appears to have
+exaggerated. She thought it had "checked her growth, wasted her
+constitution," and would bring her to a "premature grave." While her
+lessons to her father by candle-light continued, there were
+sleeplessness, bad dreams, and morning headaches, but after this had
+gone on one year, Mr. Fuller was elected to Congress, spent most of
+his time in Washington, and a private tutor gave the lessons,
+presumably at seasonable hours. No one with a "broken constitution"
+could have performed her later literary labors, and she was not
+threatened with a "premature grave" when Dr. Frederick Henry Hedge
+made her acquaintance in Cambridge society. "Margaret," he says, "was
+then about thirteen,--a child in years, but so precocious in her
+mental and physical development, that she passed for eighteen or
+twenty. Agreeably to this estimate, she had her place in society as a
+full-grown lady. When I recall her personal appearance as she was
+then, and for ten or twelve years subsequent, I have the idea of a
+blooming girl of florid complexion and vigorous health, with a
+tendency to robustness of which she was painfully conscious, and
+which, with little regard to hygienic principles, she endeavored to
+suppress and conceal, thereby preparing for herself much future
+suffering." She had, he says, "no pretensions to beauty then, or at
+any time," yet she "was not plain," a reproach from which she was
+saved "by her blond and abundant hair, by her excellent teeth, by her
+sparkling, dancing, busy eyes," and by a "graceful and peculiar
+carriage of her head and neck." He adds that "in conversation she had
+already, at that early age, begun to distinguish herself, and made
+much the same impression in society that she did in after years," but
+that she had an excessive "tendency to sarcasm" which frightened shy
+young people and made her notoriously unpopular with the ladies.
+
+At this period Margaret attended a seminary for young ladies in
+Boston. Cambridge was then, according to Col. Higginson, a vast,
+sparsely settled village, containing between two and three thousand
+inhabitants. In the Boston school, Dr. Hedge says, "the inexperienced
+country girl was exposed to petty persecutions from the dashing misses
+of the city," and Margaret paid them off by "indiscriminate sarcasms."
+
+Margaret's next two years were spent at a boarding school in Groton.
+Her adventures in this school are supposed to be narrated in her
+dramatic story entitled "Mariana," in the volume called "Summer on the
+Lakes." Mariana at first carried all before her "by her love of wild
+dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion and wit," but abusing
+her privileges, she is overthrown by her rebellious subjects, brought
+to great humiliation, and receives some needed moral instructions.
+
+At fifteen, Margaret returned to Cambridge and resumed her private
+studies, except that, for a Greek recitation, she attended an academy
+in which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was then fitting for college. Her
+day at this period, as she gives it, was occupied thus: she rose
+before five, walked an hour, and practiced at the piano till seven:
+breakfasted and read French till eight; read Brown's philosophy, two
+or three lectures, till half past nine; went to school and studied
+Greek till twelve; recited, went home, and practiced till two; dined;
+lounged half an hour, read two hours in Italian, walked or rode, and
+spent her evenings leisurely with music or friends. Plainly she ought
+to have been one of the learned women of her generation.
+
+A school composition of Margaret impressed her fellow pupil, Dr.
+Holmes, as he relates, with a kind of awe. It began loftily with the
+words, "It is a trite remark," a phrase which seemed to the boy very
+masterful. The girls envied her a certain queenliness of manner. "We
+thought," says one of them, "that if we could only come into school in
+that way, we could know as much Greek as she did." She was accustomed
+to fill the hood of her cloak with books, swing them over her
+shoulder, and march away. "We wished," says this lady, "that our
+mothers would let us have hooded cloaks, that we might carry our books
+in the same way."
+
+It is known that Margaret had several love affairs and, in a later
+letter, she refers to one which belongs to this period, and which
+appears to have been the first of the series. She meets her old adorer
+again at the age of thirty and writes to a friend who knew of the
+youthful episode. He had the same powerful eye, calm wisdom, refined
+observation and "the imposing _maniere d'etre_ which anywhere would
+give him influence among men"; but in herself, she says, "There is
+scarcely a fibre left of the haughty, passionate, ambitious child he
+remembered and loved."
+
+Though a precocious girl and in a way fascinating, there is evidence
+that Margaret was crude and unformed socially, due perhaps to the
+habit of considering her mother as a negligible quantity. Cambridge
+ladies preserved an unpleasant portrait of the child as she appeared
+at a grand reception given by Mr. Fuller to President Adams in 1826,
+"one of the most elaborate affairs of the kind," says Col. Higginson,
+"that had occurred in Cambridge since the ante-revolutionary days of
+the Lechmeres and Vassals." Margaret ought to have been dressed by an
+artist, but apparently, a girl of sixteen, she was left to her own
+devices. She appeared, we are told, with a low-necked dress badly cut,
+tightly laced, her arms held back as if pinioned, her hair curled all
+over her head, and she danced quadrilles very badly. This escapade was
+not allowed to repeat itself. Certain kind and motherly Cambridge
+ladies took the neglected child in hand, tamed her rude strength, and
+subdued her manners. Col. Higginson mentions half a dozen of these
+excellent ladies, among them his mother, at whose feet "this studious,
+self-conscious, overgrown girl" would sit, "covering her hands with
+kisses and treasuring every word."
+
+Chief among Margaret's motherly friends was Mrs. Eliza Farrar, wife of
+a Harvard professor, an authoress of merit, "of uncommon character and
+cultivation, who had lived much in Europe, and who, with no children
+of her own," became a kind of foster-mother to Margaret. She had
+Margaret "constantly at her own house, reformed her hairdresser,
+instructed her dressmaker, and took her to make calls and on
+journeys." Margaret was an apt pupil, and the good training of these
+many Cambridge mothers was apparent when, ten years later, Mr. Emerson
+made her acquaintance. "She was then, as always," he says, "carefully
+and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession."
+
+The seven years in Cambridge, from Margaret's fifteenth to her
+twenty-third year, though uneventful, were, considering merely the
+pleasure of existence, the most delightful of her life. She was a
+school-girl as much or as little as she cared to be; her health, when
+not overtaxed, was perfect; her family though not rich, were in easy
+circumstances; her father was distinguished, having just retired from
+Congress after eight years of creditable service; and, partly perhaps
+from her father's distinction, she had access to the best social
+circles of Cambridge. "In our evening reunions," says Dr. Hedge, "she
+was always conspicuous by the brilliancy of her wit, which needed but
+little provocation to break forth in exuberant sallies, that drew
+around her a knot of listeners, and made her the central attraction of
+the hour. Rarely did she enter a company in which she was not a
+prominent object." Her conversational talent "continued to develop
+itself in these years, and was certainly" he thinks, "her most decided
+gift. One could form no adequate idea of her ability without hearing
+her converse.... For some reason or other, she could never deliver
+herself in print as she did with her lips." Emerson, in perfect
+agreement with this estimate says, "Her pen was a non-conductor." The
+reader will not think this true in her letters, where often the words
+seem to palpitate. Doubtless the world had no business to see her love
+letters, but one will find there a woman who, if she could speak as
+she writes, must have poured herself out in tidal waves.
+
+Dr. Hedge was struck by two traits of Margaret's character, repeatedly
+mentioned by others, but to which it is worth while to have his
+testimony. The first was a passionate love for the beautiful: "I have
+never known one who seemed to derive such satisfaction from beautiful
+forms"; the second was "her intellectual sincerity. Her judgment took
+no bribes from her sex or her sphere, nor from custom, nor tradition,
+nor caprice."
+
+Margaret was nineteen years old when Dr. James Freeman Clarke, then a
+young man in college, made her acquaintance. "We both lived in
+Cambridge," he says, "and from that time until she went to reside in
+Groton in 1833, I saw her or heard from her almost every day. There
+was a family connection between us, and we called each other cousins."
+Possessing in a greater degree than any person he ever knew, the power
+of magnetizing others, she had drawn about her a circle of girl
+friends whom she entertained and delighted by her exuberant talent.
+They came from Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Brookline, and met now at
+one house and now at another of these pleasant towns. Dr. Hedge also
+knows of this charming circle, and says, "she loved to draw these fair
+girls to herself, and make them her guests, and was never so happy as
+when surrounded in company, by such a bevy."
+
+With all her social activity, Margaret kept up her studies at a rate
+that would be the despair of a young man in college. "She already,
+when I first became acquainted with her," says Dr. Clarke, "had become
+familiar with the masterpieces of French, Italian, and Spanish
+literature," and was beginning German, and in about three months, she
+was reading with ease the masterpieces of German literature.
+Meanwhile, she was keeping up her Greek as a pastime, reading over and
+over the dialogues of Plato. Still there is time for Mr. Clarke to
+walk with her for hours beneath the lindens or in the garden, or, on a
+summer's day to ride with her on horseback from Cambridge to
+Newton,--a day he says, "all of a piece, in which my eloquent
+companion helped me to understand my past life and her own."
+
+We cannot wonder that, at the age of twenty-three, Margaret
+reluctantly left Cambridge where there was so much that she loved, and
+went with her family to a farm in Groton where, with certain
+unpleasant school-girl memories, there was nothing that she loved at
+all. In 1833, at the age of sixty-five Mr. Fuller retired from his law
+practice and bought an estate in Groton, with the double purpose of
+farming his lands for income, and, in his leisure, writing a history
+of the United States, for which his public life had been a
+preparation, and towards which he had collected much material.
+Margaret's most exacting duties were the education of the younger
+children, which left her much time for her favorite studies. She had
+correspondents by the score; her friends visited her; Cambridge homes
+were open to her; and Mrs. Farrar took her on a delightful journey to
+Newport, Hudson River and Trenton Falls. Still we cannot add the two
+years in Groton to her happy period, because she allowed herself to be
+intensely miserable. Six years later, in a moment of penitence, she
+said of this period, "Had I been wise in such matters then as now, how
+easy and fair I might have made the whole."
+
+She fought her homesickness by overwork, so that Emerson says, "her
+reading in Groton was at a rate like Gibbon's," and she paid the
+penalty of her excesses by a serious illness which threatened to be
+fatal, and from which perhaps she never fully recovered. It was some
+consolation that her father was melted to an unwonted exhibition of
+tenderness, and that he said to her in this mood, "My dear, I have
+been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you have
+any faults. You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do
+not know that you have a single fault."
+
+Events were soon to make this remark one of her dearest memories. In a
+short time, death separated the father and child, who had been so much
+to each other. In 1835, Mr. Fuller fell a victim to cholera, and died
+in three days. For a year or more, Margaret's heart had been set upon
+a visit to Europe for study; the trip had been promised by her father;
+it had been arranged that she should accompany her friends, the
+Farrars; but the death of Mr. Fuller dissolved this dream, and, in her
+journal, solemnly praying that "duty may now be the first object and
+self set aside," she dedicates her strength to her "mother, brothers,
+and sister." No one can read the "Memoirs" without feeling that she
+kept her vows.
+
+The estate of Mr. Fuller finally yielded $2,000 to each of the seven
+children, much less, Margaret says, than was anticipated. With
+reason, she wrote, "Life, as I look forward, presents a scene of
+struggle and privation only." In the winter, at Mrs. Farrar's,
+Margaret met Mr. Emerson; the summer following she visited at his
+house in Concord. There she met Mr. Alcott and engaged to teach in his
+school in Boston.
+
+Margaret Fuller's visit at Mr. Emerson's in 1836 had for her very
+important consequences. It was the first of many visits and was the
+beginning of an intimacy which takes its place among the most
+interesting literary friendships in the history of letters. To this
+friendship Col. Higginson devotes a separate chapter in his biography
+of Margaret, and in the "Memoirs," under the title of "Visits to
+Concord," Mr. Emerson gives a charming account of it in more than a
+hundred pages.
+
+Mr. Emerson was by no means the stranger to Margaret that she was to
+him. She had sat under his preaching during his pastorate at the
+Second Church in Boston, and "several of his sermons," so she wrote to
+a friend, "stood apart in her memory like landmarks in her spiritual
+history." It appears that she had failed to come to close quarters
+with this timid apostle. A year after he left his pulpit, she wrote of
+him as the "only clergyman of all possible clergymen who eludes my
+acquaintance."
+
+When, at length, she was invited to Concord, it was as Mrs. Emerson's
+guest, not as his: "she came to spend a fortnight with my wife."
+However, at last she was under his roof. "I still remember," he says,
+"the first half hour of her conversation.... Her extreme plainness,--a
+trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,--the nasal tone
+of her voice--all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get
+far.... I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked.... She
+had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give
+an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain
+at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy
+and superabundant life."
+
+The practical outcome of the visit was an engagement to teach in Mr.
+Alcott's school. Under date of August 2, 1836, Mr. Alcott writes,
+"Emerson called this morning and took me to Concord to spend the day.
+At his house, I met Margaret Fuller ... and had some conversation with
+her about taking Miss Peabody's place in my school." That is to say,
+Mr. Emerson had in his house a brilliant young lady who, by stress of
+circumstances, wanted a situation; he had a friend in Boston in whose
+school there was a vacancy; Mr. Emerson, at some pains to himself,
+brought the parties together. Nor was this the last time that Mr.
+Emerson befriended Margaret.
+
+It appears from Mr. Alcott's diary that Miss Fuller began her
+engagement with January, that she taught Latin and French at the
+school, and French, German, and Italian to private classes. For a
+class of beginners, she "thought it good success," she says, "when at
+the end of three months, they could read twenty pages of German at a
+lesson, and very well." An advanced class in German read Goethe's
+Hermann and Dorothea, Goetz von Berlichingen, Iphigenia, and the first
+part of Faust, "three weeks of thorough study," she calls it, "as
+valuable to me as to them."
+
+The class in Italian went at an equal pace. At the same time she had
+three private pupils, to one of whom, every day for ten weeks, she
+taught Latin "orally,"--in other words, Latin conversation. In her
+leisure, she "translated, one evening every week, German authors into
+English for the gratification of Dr. Channing." It is to be hoped that
+she was paid for this service, because she found it far from
+interesting. "It is not very pleasant," she writes, "for Dr. Channing
+takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable to us feminine
+people."
+
+In the spring of 1837, Margaret accepted an invitation to teach in a
+private academy in Providence, R. I.--four hours a day, at a salary of
+$1,000. We are not told how this invitation came to her, but it is not
+difficult to detect the hand of Mr. Emerson. The proprietor of the
+school was an admirer of Emerson, so much so that he brought Emerson
+from Concord in June following, to dedicate a new school building. His
+relation to both parties makes it probable that Margaret owed her
+second engagement, as she did her first, to the good offices of Mr.
+Emerson.
+
+She taught in this school with success, two years, "worshipped by the
+girls," it is said, "but sometimes too sarcastic for the boys." The
+task of teaching, however, was irksome to her, her mind was in
+literature; she had from Mr. Ripley a definite proposition to write a
+"Life of Goethe," a task of which she had dreamed many years; and she
+resigned her position, and withdrew from the profession of
+school-teacher, at the end of 1838. Her life of Goethe was never
+written, but it was always dancing before her eyes and, more than
+once, determined her course.
+
+In the following spring, Margaret took a pleasant house in Jamaica
+Plain, "then and perhaps now," Col. Higginson says, "the most rural
+and attractive suburb of Boston." Here she brought her mother and the
+younger children. Three years later, she removed with them to
+Cambridge, and for the next five years, she kept the family together,
+and made a home for them. In addition to the income of the estate, she
+expected to meet her expenses by giving lessons. Two pupils came with
+her from Providence, and other pupils came for recitations, by whom
+she was paid at the rate of two dollars an hour.
+
+With these resources the life in Jamaica Plain began very quietly and
+pleasantly. To be quiet however was not natural to Margaret. Besides,
+she had fallen upon what, intellectually, were stirring times. It was
+at the high tide of the Transcendental movement. William Henry
+Channing who, like Margaret, was a part of it, says, "the summer of
+1839 saw the full dawn of this strange enthusiasm." As he briefly
+defines it "Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was a
+pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the
+temple of the living God in the soul." Its disciples, says Mr.
+Channing, "were pleasantly nick-named the 'Like-minded,' on the ground
+that no two were of the same opinion." Of this company, he says,
+"Margaret was a member by the grace of nature.... Men, her superiors
+in years, in fame and social position, treated her more with the
+frankness due from equal to equal, than the half condescending
+deference with which scholars are wont to adapt themselves to
+women.... It was evident that they prized her verdict, respected her
+criticism, feared her rebuke, and looked to her as an umpire." In
+speaking, "her opening was deliberate, like the progress of a massive
+force gaining its momentum; but as she felt her way, and moving in a
+congenial element, the sweep of her speech became grand. The style of
+her eloquence was sententious, free from prettiness, direct, vigorous,
+charged with vitality."
+
+It was a saying of hers that if she had been a man, she would have
+aspired to become an orator, and it seems probable she would not have
+aspired in vain. The natural sequel to the occasional discussions of
+the summer was the formation of a class of ladies for Conversation,
+with Margaret as the leader. This class contained twenty-five or
+thirty ladies, among whom were Mrs. George Bancroft, Mrs. Lydia Maria
+Child, Mrs. Horace Mann, Mrs. Theodore Parker, Mrs. Waldo Emerson,
+Mrs. George Ripley, and Mrs. Josiah Quincy. The first series of
+thirteen meetings was immediately followed by a second series; they
+were resumed the next winter and were continued with unabated interest
+for five years.
+
+The subjects considered in these celebrated Conversations ranged over
+a very wide field, from mythology and religion, poetry and art, to
+war, ethics, and sociology. If Margaret had not been brilliant in
+these assemblies, she would have fallen short of herself as she has
+been represented in the Cambridge drawing-rooms. As reported by one of
+the members of the class, "Margaret used to come to the conversations
+very well dressed and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them
+with an exordium in which she gave her leading views,"--a part which
+she is further said to have managed with great skill and charm, after
+which she invited others to join in the discussion. Mr. Emerson tells
+us that the apparent sumptuousness in her attire was imaginary, the
+"effect of a general impression made by her genius and mistakenly
+attributed to some external elegance; for," he says, "I have been told
+by her most intimate friend, who knew every particular of her conduct
+at the time, that there was nothing of especial expense or splendor in
+her toilette."
+
+Mr. Emerson knew a lady "of eminent powers, previously by no means
+partial to Margaret," who said, on leaving one of these assemblies, "I
+never heard, read of, or imagined a conversation at all equal to this
+we have now heard." Many testimonies have been brought together, in
+the "Memoirs," of the enthusiasm and admiration created by Margaret in
+these Conversations. They were probably her most brilliant
+achievements, though, in the nature of the case, nothing survives of
+them but the echo in these recorded memories of participants.
+
+Mr. Emerson says that "the fame of these conversations" led to a
+proposal that Margaret should undertake an evening class to which
+gentlemen should be admitted and that he himself had the pleasure of
+"assisting at one--the second--of these soirees." Margaret "spoke
+well--she could not otherwise,--but I remember that she seemed
+encumbered, or interrupted, by the headiness or incapacity of the
+men." A lady who attended the entire series, a "true hand," he says,
+reports that "all that depended on others entirely failed" and that
+"even in the point of erudition, which Margaret did not profess on the
+subject, she proved the best informed of the party." This testimony is
+worth something in answer to the charge that Margaret's scholarship
+was fictitious, that she had a smattering of many things, but knew
+nothing thoroughly. She seems to have compared well with others, some
+of whom were considered scholars. "Take her as a whole," said Mr.
+Emerson's informant, "she has the most to bestow on others by
+conversation of any person I have ever known."
+
+For these services, Margaret seems to have received liberal
+compensation, though all was so cordial that she says she never had
+the feeling of being "a paid Corinne." For the conversations with
+ladies and gentlemen, according to Mrs. Dall who has published her
+notes of them, the tickets were $20 each, for the series of ten
+evenings.
+
+It appears from his account that Mr. Emerson saw much of Margaret
+during these years and that she was frequently his guest. "The day,"
+he says, "was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory; and I,
+who knew her intimately for ten years,--from July, 1836, till August,
+1846, when she sailed for Europe,--never saw her without a surprise at
+her new powers." She was as busy as he, and they seldom met in the
+forenoon, but "In the evening, she came to the library, and many and
+many a conversation was there held," he tells us, "whose details, if
+they could be preserved, would justify all encomiums. They interested
+me in every manner;--talent, memory, wit, stern introspection, poetic
+play, religion, the finest personal feeling, the aspects of the
+future, each followed each in full activity, and left me, I remember,
+enriched, and sometimes astonished by the gifts of my guest."
+
+She was "rich in friends," and wore them "as a necklace of diamonds
+about her neck." "She was an active and inspiring companion and
+correspondent, and all the art, the thought and nobleness of New
+England seemed, at that moment, related to her and she to it. She was
+everywhere a welcome guest.... Her arrival was a holiday, and so was
+her abode ... all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to
+catch the favorable hour, in walking, riding, or boating to talk with
+this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories,
+tragedies, oracles with her, and, with her broad relations to so many
+fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who
+carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had
+been finally referred."
+
+At a later day, when Margaret was in Italy, reports came back that she
+was making conquests, and having advantageous offers of marriage. Even
+Mr. Emerson expressed surprise at these social successes in a strange
+land, but a lady said to him, "There is nothing extraordinary in it.
+Had she been a man, any one of those fine girls of sixteen, who
+surrounded her here, would have married her: they were all in love
+with her."
+
+"Of personal influence, speaking strictly,--an efflux, that is, purely
+of mind and character," Mr. Emerson thinks she had more than any other
+person he ever knew. Even a recluse like Hawthorne yielded to this
+influence. Hawthorne was married to Miss Sophia Peabody in 1842, and
+began housekeeping in the Old Manse in Concord. The day following
+their engagement Miss Peabody wrote Miss Fuller addressing her "Dear,
+most noble Margaret," and saying, "I feel that you are entitled,
+through our love and regard to be told directly.... Mr. Hawthorne,
+last evening, in the midst of his emotions, so deep and absorbing,
+after deciding, said that Margaret can now, when she visits Mr.
+Emerson spend part of the time with us." A month after the marriage,
+Hawthorne himself wrote to Margaret, "There is nobody to whom I would
+more willingly speak my mind, because I can be certain of being
+understood." Evidently he is not beginning an acquaintance; he already
+knows Margaret intimately and respects her thoroughly. There is no
+evidence, I believe, that during her life, he held any different
+opinion of her.
+
+These facts have become of special interest because, in Italy, eight
+years after her death, he wrote in his Note-Book, that Margaret "had a
+strong and coarse nature" and that "she was a great humbug." The most
+reasonable explanation of this change of view is that Margaret was
+dead, poor woman, and could not speak for herself; that she had fought
+with all her might in an Italian Revolution that had failed; that
+having failed, she and her party were discredited; that her enemies
+survived, and Hawthorne listened to them. However his later opinions
+may be explained, the quality of her friends in America, among whom
+had been Hawthorne himself, is evidence that Margaret was not of a
+"coarse nature," and it is incredible that a "humbug" could have
+imposed herself for five years upon those ladies who attended her
+conversations, not to speak of James Freeman Clarke who was a fair
+scholar and Dr. Hedge who was a very rare scholar.
+
+Margaret had her weaknesses, which her friends do not conceal. It was
+a weakness, not perhaps that she overestimated herself; that might be
+pardoned; but that she took no pains to conceal her high opinion of
+her abilities and worth. One likes to see an appearance of modesty,
+and that little deceit Margaret did not practice. On the contrary, Mr.
+Emerson says, "Margaret at first astonished and then repelled us by a
+complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of
+Scaligar.... In the coolest way, she said to her friends, 'I now know
+all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect
+comparable to my own.'... It is certain that Margaret occasionally let
+slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the
+presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who
+knew her good sense." Col. Higginson quotes a saying about the
+Fullers, that "Their only peculiarity was that they said openly about
+themselves the good and bad things which we commonly suppress about
+ourselves and express only about other people." The common way is not
+more sincere, but it is pleasanter.
+
+In 1840, the second year of Margaret's Conversations, appeared the
+first number of _The Dial_, a literary magazine of limited
+circulation, but destined to a kind of post-mortem immortality. In
+1841, the Community of Brook Farm was established. An interesting
+account of both enterprises, and of Margaret's part in them, is given
+by Mr. Emerson in a paper found in the tenth volume of his collected
+Works. In the preliminary discussions leading to both enterprises,
+Margaret participated. Like Mr. Emerson, she did not have unqualified
+faith in the Brook Farm experiment and did not join the community,
+though she had many friends in it, was a frequent visitor, and had the
+honor to sit for the portrait of "Zenobia" in Mr. Hawthorne's
+Blithedale Romance.
+
+Her part in _The Dial_ was more prominent. She edited the first two
+volumes of the magazine, being then succeeded by Mr. Emerson, and she
+wrote for it a paper entitled "Man vs. Men: Woman vs. Women,"
+afterward expanded and published in a volume under the title, "Woman
+in the Nineteenth Century," her second and most famous book. Her first
+book, "Summer on the Lakes," is an account of a charming journey, with
+the family of James Freeman Clarke and others, by steamboat and farm
+wagon, as far as the Mississippi. It was a voyage of discovery, and
+her account has permanent historic interest.
+
+In 1844, Margaret accepted an advantageous offer to become literary
+editor of the _New York Tribune_, a position which she was admirably
+qualified to fill. A collection of papers from _The Tribune_, under
+the title of "Literature and Art," made up her third book, published
+in 1846, on the eve of her departure for Europe.
+
+During her residence in New York, she became greatly interested in
+philanthropies, especially in the care of prisoners of her own sex.
+She visited the jails and prisons, interviewed the inmates, gave them
+"conversations," and wrought upon them the same miracle which she had
+so often performed in refined drawing-rooms. "If she had been born to
+large fortune," said Mr. Greeley, "a house of refuge for all female
+outcasts desiring to return to the ways of virtue would have been one
+of her most cherished and first realized conceptions."
+
+Early in her New York residence must also have occurred that rather
+mysterious love affair with the young Hebrew, Mr. Nathan, who seems
+first to have charmed her with his music and then with his heart.
+After nearly sixty years, the letters which she wrote him, full of
+consuming fire, have at last seen the light. From a passage in one of
+them, it would seem that marriage was not contemplated by either
+party, that in theory at least they took no thought of the morrow, the
+bliss of the moment being held sufficient. Evidently there was no
+engagement, but no one can doubt that on her part there was love. Of
+course in this changing world, no such relations can be maintained for
+ever, and in the end there will be an awakening, and then pain.
+
+In 1846, Margaret realized her life-dream and went to Europe. Destined
+to a life of adventure, she was accidently separated from her party,
+and spent a perilous night on Ben Lomond, without a particle of
+shelter, in a drenching rain, a thrilling account of which she has
+written. She visited Carlyle and, for a wonder, he let her take a
+share in the conversation. To Mr. Emerson he wrote, Margaret "is very
+narrow sometimes, but she is truly high."
+
+On her way to Italy, the goal of her ambition, she visited George Sand
+and they had such a meeting as two women of genius might. She sailed
+from Genoa for Naples in February, 1847, and arrived in Rome in May
+following. There is much to interest a reader in her Italian life, but
+the one thing which cannot be omitted is the story of her marriage to
+the Marquis Ossoli. Soon after her arrival in Rome, on a visit to St.
+Peter's, Margaret became separated from her friends, whom she did not
+again discover at the place appointed for meeting. A gentleman seeing
+her distress, offered to get her a carriage and, not finding one,
+walked home with her. This was the young Marquis Ossoli, and thus
+fortuitously the acquaintance began, which was continued by occasional
+meetings. The summer Margaret spent in the north of Italy, and when
+she returned to Rome, she took modest apartments in which she received
+her friends every Monday evening, and the Marquis came very regularly.
+
+It was not long however before he confessed his love for her and asked
+her hand in marriage. He was gently rejected, being told that he ought
+to marry a younger woman, and that she would be his friend but not
+his wife. He however persisted, at length won her consent, and they
+were privately married in December. I follow the account of Mrs.
+William Story, wife of the artist, then residing in Rome. The old
+Marquis Ossoli had recently died, leaving an unsettled estate, of
+which his two older sons, both in the Papal service, were the
+executors. "Every one knows," says Mrs. Story, "that law is subject to
+ecclesiastical influence in Rome, and that marriage with a Protestant
+would be destructive of all prospect of favorable administration."
+
+The birth of a child a year later, at Rieti in the Appenines, whither
+Margaret had retired, made secrecy seem more imperative; or, as
+Margaret said, in order to defend the child "from the stings of
+poverty, they were patient waiters for the restored law of the land."
+The Italian Revolution of 1848 was then in progress. Ossoli her
+husband, was a captain in the Civic Guard, on duty in Rome, and the
+letters which she wrote him at this period of trial, were the only
+fragments of her treasures recovered from the wreck in which she
+perished.
+
+Leaving her babe with his nurse, in April following, she visited Rome
+and was shut up in the siege by the French army which had been sent
+to overthrow the provisional government and restore the authority of
+the pope. "Ossoli took station with his men on the walls of the
+Vatican garden where he remained faithfully to the end of the attack.
+Margaret had entire charge of one of the hospitals.... I have walked
+through the wards with her," says Mrs. Story, "and seen how comforting
+was her presence to the poor suffering men. 'How long will the Signora
+stay?' 'When will the Signora come again?' they eagerly asked.... They
+raised themselves up on their elbows to get the last glimpse of her as
+she was going away."
+
+In the midst of these dangers, Margaret confided to Mrs. Story the
+secret of her marriage and placed in her hands the marriage
+certificate and other documents relating to the affair. These papers
+were afterward returned to Margaret and were lost in the wreck.
+
+The failure of the Revolution was the financial ruin of all those who
+had staked their fortunes in it. They had much reason to be thankful
+if they escaped with their lives. By the intervention of friends, the
+Ossolis were dealt with very leniently. Mr. Greenough, the artist,
+interested himself in their behalf and procured for them permission to
+retire, outside the papal territory, to Florence. Ossoli even
+obtained a small part of his patrimony.
+
+Except the disappointment and sorrow over the faded dream of Italian
+Independence, the winter at Florence was one of the bright spots in
+Margaret's life. She was proud of her husband's part in the
+Revolution: "I rejoice," she says, "in all Ossoli did." She had her
+babe with her and her happiness in husband and child was perfect: "My
+love for Ossoli is most pure and tender, nor has any one, except my
+mother or little children, loved me so genuinely as he does.... Ossoli
+seems to me more lovely and good every day; our darling child is well
+now, and every day more gay and playful."
+
+She found pleasant and congenial society: "I see the Brownings often,"
+she says, "and love them both more and more as I know them better. Mr.
+Browning enriches every hour I spend with him, and is a most cordial,
+true, and noble man. One of my most prized Italian friends,
+Marchioness Arconati Visconti, of Milan, is passing the winter here,
+and I see her almost every day." Moreover she was busy with a
+congenial task. At the very opening of the struggle for liberty, she
+planned to write a history of the eventful period, and with this
+purpose, collected material for the undertaking, and already had a
+large part of the work in manuscript. She finished the writing in
+Florence, and much value was set upon it both by herself and by her
+friends in Italy. Mrs. Story says, "in the estimation of most of those
+who were in Italy at the time, the loss of Margaret's history and
+notes is a great and irreparable one. No one could have possessed so
+many avenues of direct information from both sides."
+
+When the spring opened, it was decided to return to America, partly to
+negotiate directly with the publisher, but chiefly because, having
+exhausted her resources, Margaret's pen must henceforth be the main
+reliance of the little family. It is pathetic to know that, after
+their passage had been engaged, "letters came which, had they reached
+her a week earlier, would probably have induced them to remain in
+Italy."
+
+They sailed, May 17, 1850, in a merchant vessel, the only other
+passengers being the baby's nurse and Mr. Horace Sumner, a younger
+brother of Senator Sumner. After a protracted and troubled voyage of
+two months, the vessel arrived off the coast of New Jersey, on July
+18. The "weather was thick.... By nine p. m. there was a gale, by
+midnight a hurricane," and at four o'clock on the morning of July 19,
+the vessel grounded on the shallow sands of Fire Island. The captain
+had died of smallpox on the voyage; his widow, the mate in command of
+the vessel, and four seamen reached the shore; Mr. Sumner and the
+Ossolis perished. The cruel part of the tragedy is that it seems
+probable every soul on board might have been saved. Life-boats, only
+three miles away, did not arrive until noon; that is, after eight
+precious hours had passed. Moreover, in a moment of penitence, one of
+the life-boat crew said, "Oh, if we had known that any such persons of
+importance were on board, we should have done our best."
+
+Margaret, the name by which she will always be known, had passed her
+fortieth birthday at sea on this voyage. It seems a short life in
+which to have crowded so much and such varied experience. She had some
+trials even in her youth, but for two-thirds of her existence, she
+might have been considered a favorite of fortune. In later life, she
+had some battles to fight, but her triumphs were great enough to
+dazzle a person with more modesty than was her endowment. She suffered
+in Italy, both for her child left to strangers in the mountains, and
+for her adopted country, but they were both causes, in which for her,
+suffering was a joy. She did not desire to survive her husband and
+child, nor to leave them behind, and, we may say, happily they all
+went together. "Her life seems to me," says Col. Higginson, "on the
+whole, a triumphant rather than a sad one," and that is a reasonable
+verdict, however difficult to render in the presence of such a tragedy
+as her untimely death.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
+
+
+[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE]
+
+"Is this the little woman who made this great war!" exclaimed
+President Lincoln when, in 1862, Mrs. Stowe was introduced to him.
+There was but one woman in America to whom this could have been said
+without absurdity. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was so conspicuous a factor in
+bringing on the war which abolished American slavery that to credit
+these results to Mrs. Stowe was not fulsome flattery but graceful
+compliment.
+
+There are two excellent biographies of Mrs. Stowe, one published in
+1889, by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and one, in 1897, by Mrs.
+Annie Fields. That work will hardly need to be done again. The object
+of this sketch is to study the influences that moulded Mrs. Stowe, to
+present the salient features of her career, and, incidentally, to
+discover her characteristic qualities. Her fame rests upon her
+literary achievements, and these are comparatively well known. Her
+literary career can hardly be said to have begun until the age of
+forty and, if this were the only interest her life had for us, we
+could pass hastily over her youth. It will be found however that her
+religious development, begun prematurely with her fourth year and
+continued without consideration or discretion until at seventeen she
+became a chronic invalid, gives a kind of tragic interest to her
+earlier years. Her religious education may not have been unique; it
+may have been characteristic of much of the religious life of New
+England, but girls set at work upon the problems of their souls at the
+age of four have seldom attained the distinction of having their
+biographies written, so that one can study their history.
+
+Harriet, the second daughter and seventh child of Lyman Beecher and
+Roxanna Foote, was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 14, 1811. There
+were three Mrs. Lyman Beechers of whom Roxanna Foote was the first.
+The Footes were Episcopalians, Harriet, sister of Roxanna, being as
+Mrs. Stowe says, "the highest of High Churchwomen who in her private
+heart did not consider my father an ordained minister." Roxanna,
+perhaps not so high-church, held out for two years against Dr.
+Beecher's assaults upon her heart and then consented to become his
+wife.
+
+Mrs. Beecher was a refined and cultivated lady who "read all the new
+works that were published at that day," numbered painting among her
+accomplishments, and whose house "was full of little works of
+ingenuity and taste and skill, which had been wrought by her hand:
+pictures of birds and flowers, done with minutest skill"; but her
+greatest charm was a religious nature full of all gentleness and
+sweetness. "In no exigency," says Dr. Beecher, "was she taken by
+surprise. She was just there, quiet as an angel above." There seems to
+have been but one thing which this saintly woman with an Episcopalian
+education could not do to meet the expectations of a Congregational
+parish, and that was that "in the weekly female prayer-meeting she
+could never lead the devotions"; but from this duty she seems to have
+been excused because of her known sensitiveness and timidity.
+
+Mrs. Beecher died when Harriet was in her fourth year, but she left an
+indelible impression upon her family. Her "memory met us everywhere,"
+says Mrs. Stowe; "when father wished to make an appeal to our hearts
+which he knew we could not resist, he spoke of mother." It had been
+the mother's prayer that her sons, of whom there were six, should be
+ministers, and ministers they all were. One incident Mrs. Stowe
+remembered which may be supposed to have set Sunday apart as a day of
+exceptional sanctity. It was that "of our all running and dancing out
+before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning
+and her pleasant voice saying after us, 'Remember the Sabbath day to
+keep it holy.'" Such early religious impressions made upon the mind of
+a child of four would have faded in other surroundings, but it will be
+seen that Harriet's environment gave no rest to her little soul.
+
+After the death of her mother, the child was sent to her grandmother
+Foote's for a long visit. There she fell to the charge of her aunt
+Harriet, than whom, we are told, "a more energetic human being never
+undertook the education of a child." According to her views, "little
+girls were to be taught to move very gently, to speak softly and
+prettily, to say 'Yes ma'am' and 'No ma'am,' never to tear their
+clothes, to sew and knit at regular hours, to go to church on Sunday
+and make all the responses, and to come home and be catechised. I
+remember those catechisings when she used to place my little cousin
+Mary and myself bolt upright at her knee while black Dinah and Harvey,
+the bound boy, were ranged at a respectful distance behind us.... I
+became a proficient in the Church catechism and gave my aunt great
+satisfaction by the old-fashioned gravity and steadiness with which I
+learned to repeat it." This early training in the catechism and the
+responses bore fruit in giving Mrs. Stowe a life-long fondness for the
+Episcopal service and ultimately in taking her into the Episcopal
+Church, of which during her last thirty years she was a communicant.
+Harriet signalized her fifth year by committing to memory twenty-seven
+hymns and "two long chapters of the Bible," and even more perhaps, by
+accidentally discovering in the attic a discarded volume of the
+"Arabian Nights," with which, she says, her fortune was made. It was a
+much more suitable child's book, one would think, than the Church
+catechism or Watts's hymns.
+
+At the age of six Harriet passed to the care of the second Mrs. Lyman
+Beecher, formerly Harriet Porter, of Portland, Maine, apparently a
+lady of great dignity and character. "We felt," says Mrs. Stowe, "a
+little in awe of her, as if she were a strange princess rather than
+our own mamma; but her voice was very sweet, her ways of speaking and
+moving very graceful, and she took us up in her lap and let us play
+with her beautiful hands which seemed wonderful things, made of pearl
+and ornamented with strange rings." It appears she was a faithful
+mother, though a little severe and repressive. Henry Ward Beecher said
+of her: "She did the office-work of a mother if ever a mother did";
+she "performed to the uttermost her duties, according to her ability";
+she "was a woman of profound veneration rather than of a warm loving
+nature. Therefore her prayer was invariably a prayer of deep yearning
+reverence. I remember well the impression which it made on me. There
+was a mystic influence about it. A sort of sympathetic hold it had on
+me, but still I always felt when I went to prayer, as though I were
+going into a crypt, where the sun was not allowed to come; and I
+shrunk from it." To complete the portrait of this conscientious lady
+who was to have the supervision of Harriet from her sixth year, the
+following from a letter of one of the Beecher children is worth
+quoting: "Mamma is well and don't laugh any more than she did."
+Evidently a rather stern and sobering influence had come into the
+Beecher family.
+
+"In her religion," says Mrs. Stowe, "she was distinguished by a most
+unfaltering Christ-worship.... Had it not been that Dr. Payson had
+set up and kept before her a tender, human, loving Christ, she would
+have been only a conscientious bigot. This image, however, gave
+softness and warmth to her religious life, and I have since noticed
+how her Christ-enthusiasm has sprung up in the hearts of all her
+children." This passage is of peculiar interest as it shows the source
+of what Mrs. Stowe loves to call the "Christ-worship" which
+characterized the religion of the younger Beechers. Writing at the age
+of seventeen, when her soul was tossing between Scylla and Charybdis,
+Harriet says: "I feel that I love God,--that is, that I love Christ";
+and in 1876, writing of her brother Henry, she says, "He and I are
+Christ-worshippers, adoring him as the Image of the Invisible
+God." Her son refers us to the twenty-fourth chapter of the
+Minister's Wooing for a complete presentation of this subject "of
+Christ-worship." Mrs. Stowe speaks of this belief as a plain departure
+from ordinary Trinitarianism, as a kind of heresy which it has
+required some courage to hold. The heresy seems to have consisted in
+practically dropping the first and third persons in the Godhead and
+accepting Christ as the only God we know or need to consider.
+
+As Mrs. Stowe during her adult life was an invalid, it is interesting
+to have Mrs. Beecher's testimony that, on her arrival, she was met by
+a lovely family of children and "with heartfelt gratitude," she says,
+"I observed how cheerful and healthy they were." When Harriet was ten
+years of age, she began to attend the Litchfield Academy and was
+recognized as one of its brightest pupils. She especially excelled in
+writing compositions and, at the age of twelve, her essay was one of
+two or three selected to be read at a school exhibition. After
+Harriet's had been read, Dr. Beecher turned to the teacher and asked,
+"Who wrote that composition?" "Your daughter, Sir," was the reply. "It
+was," says Mrs. Stowe, "the proudest moment of my life."
+
+"Can the immortality of the soul be proved by the light of Nature?"
+was the subject of this juvenile composition, a strange choice for a
+girl of twelve summers; but in this family the religious climate was
+tropical, and forced development. As might have been expected, she
+easily proved that nothing of immortality could be known by the light
+of nature. She had been too well instructed to think otherwise. Dr.
+Beecher himself had no good opinion of 'the light of nature.' "They
+say," said he, "that everybody knows about God naturally. A lie. All
+such ideas are by teaching." If Harriet had taken the other side of
+her question and argued as every believer tries to to-day, she would
+have deserved some credit for originality. Nevertheless the form of
+her argument is remarkable for her years, and would not have
+dishonored Dr. Beecher's next sermon. This amazing achievement of a
+girl of twelve can be read in the Life of Mrs. Stowe by her son.
+
+From the Litchfield Academy, Harriet was sent to the celebrated Female
+Seminary established by her sister Catharine at Hartford, Conn. She
+here began the study of Latin and, "at the end of the first year, made
+a translation of Ovid in verse which was read at the final exhibition
+of the school." It was her ambition to be a poet and she began a play
+called 'Cleon,' filling "blank book after blank book with this drama."
+Mrs. Fields prints six pages of this poem and the specimens have more
+than enough merit to convince one that the author might have attained
+distinction as a poet. Her energetic sister Catharine however put an
+end to this innocent diversion, saying that she must not waste her
+time writing poetry but discipline her mind upon Butler's Analogy. To
+enforce compliance, Harriet was assigned to teach the Analogy to a
+class of girls as old as herself, "being compelled to master each
+chapter just ahead of the class." This occupation, with Latin, French
+and Italian, sufficiently protected her from the dissipation of
+writing poetry.
+
+Harriet remained in the Hartford school, as pupil and teacher, from
+her thirteenth to her twenty-third year. In her spiritual history,
+this was an important period. It may seem that her soul had hitherto
+not been neglected but as yet youth and a sunny nature had kept her
+from any agonies of Christian experience. Now her time had come. No
+one under the care of the stern Puritan, Catharine Beecher, would be
+suffered to forget her eternal interests. Both of Mrs. Stowe's
+biographers feel the necessity of making us acquainted with this
+masterful lady, "whose strong, vigorous mind and tremendous
+personality," says Mr. Stowe, "indelibly stamped themselves on the
+sensitive, dreamy, poetic nature of her younger sister."
+
+It was Catharine's distinction to have written, it is claimed, the
+best refutation of Edwards on the Will ever published. She was
+undoubtedly the most acute and vigorous intellect in the Beecher
+family. Like all the members of her remarkable family, she was
+intensely religious and, at the period when Harriet passed to her
+care, gloomily religious. It could not have been otherwise. She had
+been engaged to marry Prof. Alexander Fisher, of Yale College, a young
+man of great promise. Unhappily, he was drowned at sea, and she
+believed his soul was eternally lost. It is futile to ask why Yale
+College should have entrusted a professorship to a man whom the Lord
+would send to perdition, or why Miss Beecher should have loved such an
+abandoned character; it is enough to say that she loved him and that
+she believed his soul to be lost; and was it her fault that she could
+not be a cheerful companion to a young girl of thirteen?
+
+As we have seen, Harriet must not fritter away her time writing plays;
+she must study Butler's Analogy. She must also read Baxter's Saints
+Rest, than which, says Mrs. Stowe, "no book ever affected me more
+powerfully. As I walked the pavements I wished that they might sink
+beneath me if only I might find myself in heaven." In this mental
+condition she went to her home in Litchfield to spend her vacation.
+One dewy fresh Sunday morning of that period stood by itself in her
+memory. "I knew," she says, "it was sacramental Sunday, and thought
+with sadness that when all the good people should take the bread and
+wine I should be left out. I tried hard to think of my sins and count
+them up; but what with the birds, the daisies, and the brooks that
+rippled by the way, it was impossible." The sermon of Dr. Beecher was
+unusually sweet and tender and when he appealed to his hearers to
+trust themselves to Jesus, their faithful friend, she says, "I longed
+to cry out I will. Then the awful thought came over me that I had
+never had any conviction of my sins and consequently could not come to
+him." Happily the inspiration came to her that if she needed
+conviction of sin and Jesus were such a friend, he would give it to
+her; she would trust him for the whole, and she went home illumined
+with joy.
+
+When her father returned, she fell into his arms saying, "Father, I
+have given myself to Jesus and he has taken me." "Is it so?" said he.
+"Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this day." This is
+very sweet and beautiful and it shows that Dr. Beecher had a tender
+heart under his Calvinistic theology. "If she could have been let
+alone," says her son, "and taught to 'look up and not down, forward
+and not back, out and not in,' this religious experience might have
+gone on as sweetly and naturally as the opening of a flower in the
+gentle rays of the sun. But unfortunately this was not possible at a
+time when self-examination was carried to an extreme that was
+calculated to drive a nervous and sensitive child well-nigh
+distracted. First, even her sister Catharine was afraid that there
+might be something wrong in the case of a lamb that had come into the
+fold without being first chased all over the lot by the shepherd:
+great stress being laid on what was called being under conviction.
+Then also the pastor of the First Church in Hartford, a bosom friend
+of Dr. Beecher, looked with melancholy and suspicious eyes on this
+unusual and doubtful path to heaven."
+
+Briefly stated, these two spiritual guides put Harriet through a
+process which brought her to a sense of sin that must have filled
+their hearts with joy. She reached the stage when she wrote to her
+brother Edward: "My whole life is one continued struggle; I do nothing
+right. I am beset behind and before, and my sins take away all my
+happiness."
+
+Unfortunately for her, it was at this stage of Harriet's religious
+experience that Dr. Beecher was called to Boston to stem the rising
+tide of Unitarianism, with its easy notions about conviction of sin
+and other cardinal elements of a true faith. To be thrown into the
+fervors of a crusade was just the experience which Harriet's heated
+brain did not need. Her life at this period was divided between
+Hartford and Boston, but her heart went with Dr. Beecher to his great
+enterprise in Boston, or, as Mrs. Fields says, "This period in Boston
+was the time when Harriet felt she drew nearer to her father than at
+any other period of her life."
+
+It will not be necessary to go farther into this controversy than to
+show what a cauldron it was for the family of Dr. Beecher. In his
+autobiography, Dr. Beecher says, "From the time Unitarianism began to
+show itself in this country, it was as fire in my bones." After his
+call to Boston, he writes again, "My mind had been heating, heating,
+heating. Now I had a chance to strike." The situation that confronted
+him in Boston rather inflamed than subdued his spirit. Let Mrs. Stowe
+tell the story herself. "Calvinism or orthodoxy," she says, "was the
+despised and persecuted form of faith. It was the dethroned royal
+family wandering like a permitted mendicant in the city where it once
+held high court, and Unitarianism reigned in its stead. All the
+literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarians. All the trustees and
+professors of Harvard College were Unitarians. All the élite of wealth
+and fashion crowded Unitarian churches. The judges on the bench were
+Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of church
+organization, so carefully ordained by the Pilgrim Fathers, had been
+nullified. The dominant majority entered at once into possession of
+churches and church property, leaving the orthodox minority to go out
+into schoolhouses and town halls, and build their churches as best
+they could."
+
+We can hardly suppose that Harriet had read the decision of the court,
+or that she deemed it necessary; she knew it was wrong by instinct,
+and the iron entered her soul. The facts appear to have been as
+follows: The old parishes in New England included a given territory
+like a school district or a voting precinct. Members of a given
+parish, if they were communicants, formed themselves into a "church"
+which was the church of that parish. The court decided that this
+church always remained the church of that parish. Members might
+withdraw, but they withdrew as individuals. They could not withdraw
+the church, not even if they constituted a majority.
+
+The correctness of this decision does not concern us here; it is
+enough that Dr. Beecher thought it wrong and that Harriet thought it
+wrong. "The effect of all this," she says, "upon my father's mind was
+to keep him at a white heat of enthusiasm. His family prayers at this
+period, departing from the customary forms of unexcited hours, became
+often upheavings of passionate emotion, such as I shall never forget.
+'Come, Lord Jesus,' he would say, 'here where the bones of the fathers
+rest, here where the crown has been torn from thy brow, come and
+recall thy wandering children. Behold thy flock scattered upon the
+mountain--these sheep, what have they done! Gather them, gather them,
+O good shepherd, for their feet stumble upon the dark mountains.'"
+
+The fierce heat of this period was too much for a tender plant like
+Harriet. For her state of mind, even Catharine thought the Boston home
+life was not entirely suitable. It would be better for her in
+Hartford. "Harriet will have young society here which she cannot have
+at home, and I think cheerful and amusing friends will do much for
+her." Catharine had received a letter from Harriet which, she says,
+"made me feel uneasy," as well it might. Harriet had written her
+sister: "I don't know as I am fit for anything, and I have thought
+that I could wish to die young and let the remembrance of me and my
+faults perish in the grave.... Sometimes I could not sleep, and have
+groaned and cried till midnight, while in the daytime I tried to
+appear cheerful, and succeeded so well that papa reproved me for
+laughing so much." Life was too serious to permit even an affectation
+of gaiety. "The atmosphere of that period," says Mrs. Field, "and the
+terrible arguments of her father and of her sister Catharine were
+sometimes more than she could endure." Her brother Edward was helpful
+and comforting. She thanks him for helping her solve some of her
+problems, but the situation was critical: "I feared that if you left
+me thus I might return to the same dark, desolate state in which I had
+been all summer. I felt that my immortal interest, my happiness for
+both worlds, was depending on the turn my feelings might take."
+
+Dr. Beecher was too much absorbed with his mission to observe what was
+going on in his own family, unless there chanced to be an unexpected
+outburst of gaiety. "Every leisure hour was beset by people who came
+with earnest intention to express to him those various phases of
+weary, restless wandering desire proper to an earnest people whose
+traditional faith has been broken up.... Inquirers were constantly
+coming with every imaginable theological problem ... he was to be seen
+all day talking with whoever would talk ... till an hour or two before
+the time (of service), when he would rush up to his study; ... just as
+the last stroke of the bell was dying away, he would emerge from the
+study with his coat very much awry, come down stairs like a hurricane,
+stand impatiently protesting while female hands that ever lay in wait
+adjusted his cravat and settled his collar ... and hooking wife or
+daughter like a satchel on his arm, away he would start on such a race
+through the streets as left neither brain nor breath till the church
+was gained." Such, very much abbreviated, is Mrs. Stowe's portrait of
+her father at this period. It is a good example of her power of
+delineation; but what a life was this for a half distracted girl like
+Harriet! Much better for her would have been the old serene, peaceful,
+quiet life of Litchfield.
+
+She had several kinds of religious trouble. It troubled her that in
+the book of Job, God should seem "to have stripped a dependent
+creature of all that renders life desirable, and then to have answered
+his complaints from the whirlwind, and, instead of showing mercy and
+pity, to have overwhelmed him with a display of his power and
+justice." It troubled her that when she allowed herself to take a
+milder view of deity, "I feel," she says, "less fear of God and, in
+view of sin, I feel only a sensation of grief." This was an alarming
+decline. It troubled her again that she loved literature, whereas she
+ought only to care for religion. She writes to Edward: "You speak of
+your predilections for literature being a snare to you. I have found
+it so myself." Evidently, as she has before said, she was beset behind
+and before. What was perhaps worst of all, the heavens seemed closed
+to her. Calvinism was pure agnosticism; and she had been educated a
+Calvinist. There was no 'imminent God,' in all and through all, for
+Calvinism; that came in with Transcendentalism, a form of thought
+which never seems to have touched Mrs. Stowe. She seems always to
+have felt, as at this period she writes Edward, that "still, after
+all, God is a being afar off." Nevertheless, there was Christ, but
+Christ at this period was also afar off: "I feel that I love
+God,--that is that I love Christ,--that I find happiness in it, and
+yet it is not that kind of comfort which would arise from free
+communication of my wants and sorrows to a friend. I sometimes wish
+that the Savior were visibly present in this world, that I might go to
+him for a solution of some of my difficulties."
+
+It will be seen from this passage that Harriet's storm-tossed soul was
+settling down upon Christ as the nearest approach to God one could
+gain in the darkness, and with this she taught herself to be content.
+"So, after four years of struggling and suffering," writes her son,
+"she returns to the place where she started from as a child of
+thirteen. It has been like watching a ship with straining masts and
+storm-beaten sails, buffeted by the waves, making for the harbor, and
+coming at last to quiet anchorage." One cannot help reflecting how
+different would have been her experience in the household of Dr.
+Channing; but Dr. Beecher would sooner have trusted her in a den of
+wolves.
+
+Harriet was seventeen years old when, mentally, she reached her quiet
+anchorage but, physically as might be expected, it was with a
+constitution undermined and with health broken. "She had not grown to
+be a strong woman," says Mrs. Fields; "the apparently healthy and
+hearty child had been suffered to think and feel, to study and starve
+(as we say), starve for relaxation, until she became a woman of much
+suffering and many inadequacies of physical life." A year or two later
+Harriet herself writes, "This inner world of mine has become worn out
+and untenable," and again, "About half my time I am scarcely alive....
+I have everything but good health.... Thought, intense emotional
+thought, has been my disease."
+
+At the end of six restless and stormy years, in 1832, Dr. Beecher
+resigned his Boston pastorate to accept the presidency of Lane
+Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio, Catharine and Harriet
+accompanying the family with the purpose of establishing a high grade
+school for young women. The plan was successfully carried out, and the
+"Western Female Institute" marked a new stage in education west of the
+Alleghenies. One of Harriet's early achievements at Cincinnati was the
+publication of a text-book in geography, her first attempt at
+authorship. She made her entry into the field of imaginative
+literature by gaining a prize of $50 for a story printed in _The
+Western Magazine_.
+
+Her connection with the "Western Female Institute" was brief, and the
+prosecution of a literary career was postponed, by her marriage in
+1836, with Prof. Calvin E. Stowe; or, as she announces this momentous
+event: "about half an hour more and your old friend, schoolmate,
+sister, etc., will cease to be Hattie Beecher and change to nobody
+knows who."
+
+The married life of Mrs. Stowe covered a period of fifty years and was
+a conspicuously happy one. Prof. Stowe, who seemed so much like a myth
+to the general public, was a man of great learning and keen
+intelligence, unimaginative as he says himself, but richly endowed
+with "a certain broad humor and drollery." His son tells us that he
+was "an inimitable mimic and story-teller. No small proportion of Mrs.
+Stowe's success as a literary woman is to be attributed to him." The
+Sam Lawson stories are said to be a little more his than hers, being
+"told as they came from Mr. Stowe's lips with little or no
+alteration." For her scholarly husband, Mrs. Stowe had the highest
+appreciation and the prettiest way of expressing it: "If you were not
+already my dearly loved husband," she writes him, "I should certainly
+fall in love with you." Prof. Stowe could also write a love-letter:
+"There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much
+talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation with so little
+affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense; so much
+enterprise with so little extravagance; so much tongue with so little
+scold; so much sweetness with so little softness; so much of so many
+things and so little of so many other things." If a man's wife is to
+have her biography written, he will not be sorry that he has sent her
+some effusive love-letters.
+
+Fourteen years of Mrs. Stowe's beautiful married life were spent in
+Cincinnati, with many vicissitudes of ill-health, some poverty, and
+the birth of six children, three sons and three daughters. One can get
+some idea both of the happiness and the hardship of that life from her
+letters. In 1843, seven years after marriage, she writes, "Our straits
+for money this year are unparalleled even in our annals. Even our
+bright and cheery neighbor Allen begins to look blue, and says $600 is
+the very most we can hope to collect of our salary, once $1,200."
+Again she writes, "I am already half sick from confinement to the
+house and overwork. If I should sew every day for a month to come I
+should not be able to accomplish half of what is to be done." There
+were trials enough during this period, but her severest affliction
+came in its last year, in the loss of an infant son by cholera. That
+was in 1849, when Cincinnati was devastated; when during the months of
+June, July and August more than nine thousand persons died of cholera
+within three miles of her house, and among them she says, "My Charley,
+my beautiful, loving, gladsome baby, so loving, so sweet, so full of
+life and hope and strength."
+
+In these years, Mrs. Stowe's life was too full of domestic care to
+permit many excursions into the field of literature. In 1842, a
+collection of sketches was published by the Harpers under the title of
+the "Mayflower." Occasionally she contributed a bright little story to
+a monthly or an annual. An amusing account is given of the writing of
+one of these stories, by a lady who volunteered to serve as amanuensis
+while Mrs. Stowe dictated, and at the same time supervised a new girl
+in the kitchen: "You may now write," said Mrs. Stowe, "'Her lover
+wept with her, nor dared he again touch the point so sacredly
+guarded--(Mina, roll that crust a little thinner). He spoke in
+soothing tones.--(Mina, poke the coals).'"
+
+These literary efforts, produced under difficulties, inspired Prof.
+Stowe with great confidence in her genius. He wrote her in 1842, "My
+dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book of
+fate." Again he writes, "God has written it in his book that you must
+be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against
+God! You must therefore make all your calculations to spend the rest
+of your life with your pen." Nevertheless the next eight years pass as
+the last six have passed without apparently bringing the dream of a
+literary career nearer fulfilment. With a few strokes of the pen, Mrs.
+Stowe draws a picture of her life at this period: "I was married when
+I was twenty-five years old to a man rich in Greek and Hebrew and,
+alas, rich in nothing else.... During long years of struggling with
+poverty and sickness, and a hot, debilitating climate, my children
+grew up around me. The nursery and the kitchen were my principal
+fields of labor. Some of my friends, pitying my trials, copied and
+sent a number of little sketches from my pen to certain liberally
+paying annuals, with my name. With the first money that I earned in
+this way I bought a feather bed! for as I had married into poverty and
+without a dowry, and as my husband had only a large library of books
+and a good deal of learning, the bed and pillows were thought the most
+profitable investment. After this I thought that I had discovered the
+philosopher's stone. So when a new carpet or mattress was going to be
+needed, or when at the close of the year it began to be evident that
+my family accounts, like poor Dora's, 'wouldn't add up,' then I used
+to say to my faithful friend and factotum Anna, who shared all my joys
+and sorrows, 'Now, if you will keep the babies and attend to things in
+the house for a day, I'll write a piece and then we'll be out of the
+scrape.' So I became an author,--very modest I do assure you."
+
+The hardships and privations of Mrs. Stowe's residence in Cincinnati
+were more than compensated to her by the opportunity it afforded for
+intimate acquaintance with the negro character and personal
+observation of the institution of slavery. Only the breadth of the
+Ohio river separated her from Kentucky, a slave State. While yet a
+teacher in the Female Institute, she spent a vacation upon a Kentucky
+estate, afterward graphically described in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' as Col.
+Shelby's plantation. A companion upon this visit said, "Harriet did
+not seem to notice anything in particular that happened....
+Afterwards, in reading 'Uncle Tom,' I recognized scene after scene of
+that visit portrayed with the most minute fidelity." A dozen years
+before there were any similar demonstrations in Boston, she witnessed
+in 1838, proslavery riots in Cincinnati when Birney's Abolition press
+was wrecked and when Henry Ward Beecher, then a young Cincinnati
+editor, went armed to and from his office. She had had in her service
+a slave girl whose master was searching the city for her, and whose
+rescue had been effected by Prof. Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher who,
+"both armed, drove the fugitive, in a covered wagon, by night, by
+unfrequented roads, twelve miles back into the country, and left her
+in safety." This incident was the basis of "the fugitive's escape from
+Tom Loker and Marks in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"
+
+Lane Theological Seminary, in which Prof. Stowe held a chair, had, it
+is said, "become a hot-bed of abolition." Partly for protection, a
+colony of negroes had settled about the seminary, and these families,
+says Mrs. Stowe, "became my favorite resort in cases of emergency. If
+anyone wishes to have a black face look handsome, let them be left as
+I have been, in feeble health, in oppressive hot weather, with a sick
+baby in arms, and two other ones in the nursery, and not a servant in
+the whole house to do a turn." "Time would fail me," writes Mrs.
+Stowe, "to tell you all that I learned incidentally of the slave
+system in the history of various slaves who came into my family, and
+of the underground railroad which, I may say, ran through our house."
+
+A New England education alone would not have given Mrs. Stowe the
+material to write the story of "Uncle Tom." A youth passed on a
+Southern plantation would have made her callous and indifferent, as it
+did so many tender-hearted women. A New England woman of genius,
+educated in New England traditions, was providentially transferred to
+the heated border line between freedom and slavery and, during
+eighteen years, made to hear a thousand authentic incidents of the
+patriarchal system from the victims themselves. Then "Uncle Tom's
+Cabin" could be written. Perhaps one other element of preparation
+ought to be mentioned since Mrs. Stowe laid stress upon it herself.
+The woman who should write "Uncle Tom's Cabin" needed to be a mother
+who had known what it is to have a child snatched from her arms
+irrevocably and without a moment's notice. It was at her baby's "dying
+bed and at his grave that I learned," she says, "what a poor slave
+mother may feel when her child is torn away from her. In those depths
+of sorrow which seemed to me immeasurable, it was my only prayer to
+God that such anguish might not be suffered in vain.... I allude to
+this because I have often felt that much that is in that book ('Uncle
+Tom') had its roots in the awful scenes and bitter sorrows of that
+summer."
+
+In 1850, this western life, with its mixture of sweet and bitter
+waters, came to an end. The climate of Cincinnati was unfavorable to
+the health of both Mr. and Mrs. Stowe, and Mr. Stowe accepted a
+professorship in Bowdoin College, at the small salary of $1,000 a
+year, declining at the same time an offer from New York city of
+$2,300. Why he accepted the smaller salary is not said. Certainly it
+assured him his old felicity, his Master's blessing upon the poor. The
+situation, however, was better than it seems, as Mrs. Stowe had
+written enough to have confidence in her pen, and she purposed to
+make the family income at least $1,700 by her writings. She
+accomplished much more than that as we shall presently see.
+
+From the car window, as one passes through Brunswick, Maine, he can
+see the house in which Mrs. Stowe passed the three following very
+happy years, in which her seventh child was born, a son who lived to
+be her biographer, and in which she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It will
+be remembered that the year 1850 was made memorable by the enactment
+of the Fugitive Slave Law. How the attempted execution of this law
+affected Mrs. Stowe can be anticipated. "To me," she says, "it is
+incredible, amazing, mournful. I feel as if I should be willing to
+sink with it, were all this sin and misery to sink in the sea.... I
+sobbed, aloud in one pew and Mrs. Judge Reeves in another."
+
+In this mood, Mrs. Stowe received a letter from Mrs. Edward Beecher
+saying, "Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write
+something to make this nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is."
+Her children remember that at the reading of this letter, Mrs. Stowe
+rose from her chair, crushing the letter in her hand, and said, "I
+will write something,--I will if I live." The fulfilment of this vow
+was "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
+
+This story was begun in _The National Era_, on June 5, 1851; it was
+announced to run through three months and it occupied ten. "I could
+not control the story," said Mrs. Stowe; "it wrote itself." Again, she
+said, "I the author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin!' No, indeed. The Lord
+himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest instrument in his hand."
+It has been said that "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' made the crack of the
+slave-driver's whip and the cries of the tortured blacks ring in every
+household in the land, till human hearts could bear it no longer," and
+that it "made the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law an
+impossibility."
+
+It is possible to discuss the question whether "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is
+a work of art, just as it is possible to discuss whether the Sermon on
+the Mount is a work of art, but not whether the story was effective,
+not whether it hit the mark and accomplished its purpose. Mrs. Stowe's
+story is not so much one story as a dozen; in the discriminating
+language of her son, it is "a series of pictures," and who will deny
+that the scenes are skilfully portrayed!
+
+Mrs. Stowe did not know that she had made her fortune; she had not
+written for money; nevertheless when the story was republished in a
+volume, her ten per cent. of the profits brought her $10,000 in four
+months. It went to its third edition in ten days, and one hundred and
+twenty editions, or more than 300,000 copies were sold in this country
+within one year. This astounding popularity was exceeded in Great
+Britain. Not being protected by copyright, eighteen publishing houses
+issued editions varying from 6d to 15s a copy, and in twelve months,
+more than a million and a half of copies had been sold in the British
+dominions. The book was also translated and published in nineteen
+European languages. It was dramatized and brought out in New York in
+1852, and, a year later it was running still. "Everybody goes," it was
+said, "night after night and nothing can stop it." In London, in 1852,
+it was the attraction at two theatres.
+
+What the public thought of the story is evident, nor did competent
+judges dissent. Longfellow said: "It is one of the greatest triumphs
+recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher triumph of
+its moral effect." George Sand said: "Mrs. Stowe is all instinct; it
+is the very reason that she appears to some to have no talent.... I
+cannot say that she has talent as one understands it in the world of
+letters, but she has genius as humanity feels the need of it,--the
+genius of goodness, not that of the man of letters, but of the
+saint.... In matters of art, there is but one rule, to paint and to
+move." I give but a paragraph of a paper which Senator Sumner called
+"a most remarkable tribute, such as was hardly ever offered by such a
+genius to any living mortal."
+
+Apologists for the slave system have declared that "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
+is a libel upon the system. One must do that before he can begin his
+apology; but the remarkable fact is that not even in the South was the
+libel detected at the first. That was an after-thought. Whittier knew
+a lady who read the story "to some twenty young ladies, daughters of
+slave-holders, near New Orleans and amid the scenes described in it,
+and they with one accord pronounced it true." It was not till the sale
+of the book had run to over 100,000 copies that a reaction set in and
+then, strange to say, the note of warning was sounded by that
+infallible authority upon American affairs, the London Times.
+
+In 1852, the year following the publication of "Uncle Tom" Prof. Stowe
+accepted a chair in the Theological Seminary at Andover, and that
+village became the home of the family during the ten following happy
+years. In 1853, Mr. and Mrs. Stowe went to England upon the invitation
+of Anti-Slavery friends who guaranteed and considerably overpaid the
+expenses of the trip. "Should Mrs. Stowe conclude to visit Europe,"
+wrote Senator Sumner, "she will have a triumph." The prediction was
+fulfilled. At Liverpool she is met by friends and breakfasted with a
+little company of thirty or forty people; at Glasgow, she drinks tea
+with two thousand; at Edinburgh there was "another great tea party,"
+and she was presented with a "national penny offering consisting of a
+thousand golden sovereigns on a magnificent silver salver." She had
+the Highlands yet to see as the guest of the Duke of Argyll, not to
+mention London and Paris. After five months, she sailed from Liverpool
+on her return, and is it any wonder that she wrote, "Almost sadly as a
+child might leave its home, I left the shores of kind, strong Old
+England, the mother of us all!"
+
+In 1856, Mrs. Stowe visited Europe a second time for the purpose of
+securing an English copyright upon "Dred," having learned something of
+business by her experience with "Uncle Tom." It will be interesting
+to know that in England "Dred" was considered the better story, that
+100,000 copies of it were sold there in four weeks, and that her
+English publisher issued it in editions of 125,000 copies each. "After
+that," writes Mrs. Stowe, "who cares what the critics say?"
+
+She was abroad nearly a year, visiting France, Switzerland, and Italy,
+and returned in June, 1857, to experience another sad bereavement. Her
+son Henry was a Freshman in Dartmouth college and, while bathing in
+the Connecticut river, he was drowned. This was a severe trial to Mrs.
+Stowe and the more so because, whatever her religion may have done for
+her, the theology in which she had been educated gave no comfort to
+her soul. "Distressing doubts as to Henry's spiritual state were
+rudely thrust upon my soul." These doubts she was able to master at
+least temporarily, by assuming that they were temptations of the
+devil, but three years later in Florence, on a third voyage to Europe,
+she wrote her husband, in reply to his allusions to Henry, "Since I
+have been in Florence, I have been distressed by inexpressible
+yearnings for him,--such sighings and outreachings, with a sense of
+utter darkness and separation, not only from him but from all
+spiritual communion with my God." It will be interesting to know that
+relief was brought her in this painful crisis, by the ministrations of
+spiritualism.
+
+Mrs. Stowe returned in 1860 from her third visit to Europe to find the
+country hovering upon the verge of Civil War. The war brought her
+another sore bereavement. At the battle of Gettysburg, her son, Capt.
+Frederick Stowe, was struck by the fragment of a shell and, though the
+wound healed, he never really recovered. His end was sufficiently
+tragic. With the hope of improving his health by a long sea voyage, he
+sailed from New York for San Francisco by way of Cape Horn. That he
+reached San Francisco in safety, writes his brother, "is known: but
+that is all. No word from him or concerning him has ever reached the
+loving hearts that have waited so anxiously for it, and of his
+ultimate fate nothing is known." Whatever may have been the "spiritual
+state" of this son, Mrs. Stowe had now somewhat modernized her
+theology and could say, "An endless infliction for past sins was once
+the doctrine that we now generally reject.... Of one thing I am
+sure,--probation does not end with this life." To stamp out that very
+heresy had been no small part of Dr. Beecher's mission in Boston.
+
+In 1863, Prof. Stowe having resigned his chair in Andover, Mrs. Stowe
+removed with her family to Hartford where for the remaining
+thirty-three years of her life, she made her summer home. The winter
+of 1866, she spent with her husband in Florida and, the year
+following, she bought in that semi-tropical state an orange orchard,
+the fruit of which the year previous had "brought $2,000 as sold at
+the wharf." Here for sixteen winters Mr. and Mrs. Stowe made their
+home, until her "poor rabbi," as she affectionately calls him, became
+too feeble to bear the long journey from Hartford. There she built a
+small Episcopal church and she invites her brother Charles to become
+an Episcopalian and come and be her minister.
+
+Her son says that "Mrs. Stowe had some years before this joined the
+Episcopal church for the purpose of attending the same communion as
+her daughters." That she desired to attend the same communion as her
+daughters does not seem a sufficient reason for leaving the communion
+of her husband. Certainly, she had other reasons. From her fourth
+year, she had known the service and, as read by her grandmother at
+that time, its prayers "had a different effect upon me," she says,
+"from any other prayers I heard in early life." Moreover, she had a
+mission to the negro race and believed that the Episcopal service is
+specially adapted to their needs: "If my tasks and feelings did not
+incline me toward the Church," she writes her brother, "I should still
+choose it as the best system for training immature minds such as those
+of our negroes. The system was composed with reference to the wants of
+the laboring class of England, at a time when they were as ignorant as
+our negroes are now."
+
+The picture of her southern life which she gives in a letter to George
+Eliot, is very attractive, her husband "sitting on the veranda reading
+all day," but during these years, Mrs. Stowe must have spent much of
+her own time at a writing-table since, for the ten years after 1867,
+when the Florida life began, she published a volume, sometimes two
+volumes, a year. In 1872, she was tempted by the Boston Lecture Bureau
+to give readings from her own works in the principal cities of New
+England, and the following year, the course was repeated in the cities
+of the West. Her audiences were to her amazing. "And how they do
+laugh! We get into regular gales," she writes her lonely husband at
+home.
+
+Her seventieth birthday was celebrated at a gathering of two hundred
+of the leading literary men and women of the land, at the residence of
+Ex-Governor Claflin in Newton. There were poems by Whittier, Dr.
+Holmes, J. T. Trowbridge, Mrs. Whitney, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mrs.
+Fields, and others, many excellent speeches, and finally a speech by
+the little woman herself. This garden party, says her son, was the
+last public appearance of Mrs. Stowe.
+
+Her "rabbi" left her a widow in 1886, dying at the age of 84. Mrs.
+Stowe survived him ten years, dying in 1896, at the age of 85, leaving
+behind her a name loved and honored upon two continents.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
+
+
+[Illustration: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT]
+
+Miss Alcott has been called, perhaps truly, the most popular
+story-teller for children, in her generation. Like those elect souls
+whom the apostle saw arrayed in white robes, she came up through great
+tribulation, paying dearly in labor and privation for her successes,
+but one must pronounce her life happy and fortunate, since she lived
+to enjoy her fame and fortune twenty years, to witness the sale of a
+million volumes of her writings, to receive more than two hundred
+thousand dollars from her publishers, and thereby to accomplish the
+great purpose upon which as a girl she had set her heart, which was,
+to see her father and mother comfortable in their declining years.
+
+Successful as Miss Alcott was as a writer, she was greater as a woman,
+and the story of her life is as interesting,--as full of tragedy and
+comedy,--as the careers of her heroes and heroines. In fact, we have
+reason to believe that the adventures of her characters are often not
+so much invented as remembered, the pranks and frolics of her boys
+and girls being episodes from her own youthful experience. In the
+preface to "Little Women," the most charming of her books, she tells
+us herself that the most improbable incidents are the least imaginary.
+The happy girlhood which she portrays was her own, in spite of
+forbidding conditions. The struggle in which her cheerful nature
+extorted happiness from unwilling fortune, gives a dramatic interest
+to her youthful experiences, as her literary disappointments and
+successes do to the years of her maturity.
+
+Miss Alcott inherited a name which her father's genius had made known
+on both sides of the sea, before her own made it famous in a hundred
+thousand households. Alcott is a derivative from Alcocke, the name by
+which Mr. Alcott himself was known in his boyhood. John Alcocke, born
+in New Haven, Ct., married Mary, daughter of Rev. Abraham Pierson,
+first president of Yale College. He was a man of considerable fortune
+and left 1,200 acres of land to his six children, one of whom was
+Capt. John Alcocke, a man of some distinction in the colonial service.
+Joseph Chatfield Alcocke, son of Capt. John, married Anna, sister of
+Rev. Tillotson Bronson, D.D. Of this marriage, Amos Bronson Alcott,
+father of Louisa, was born, Nov. 29, 1799. The fortunes of Joseph
+Chatfield Alcocke were those of other small farmers of the period, but
+Mrs. Alcocke could not forget that she was the sister of a college
+graduate, and it was worth something to her son to know that he was
+descended from the president of a college. The mother and son early
+settled it that the boy should be a scholar, and the father loyally
+furthered their ambitions, borrowing of his acquaintances such books
+as he discovered and bringing them home for the delectation of his
+studious son. At the age of thirteen, Bronson became a pupil in a
+private school kept by his uncle, Dr. Bronson, and at eighteen, he set
+out for Virginia with the secret purpose of teaching if opportunity
+offered, at the same time taking along a peddler's trunk out of which
+to turn an honest penny and pay the expenses of his journey.
+Circumstances did not favor his becoming a Virginia teacher, but
+between his eighteenth and twenty-third years, he made several
+expeditions into the Southern States as a Yankee peddler, with rather
+negative financial results, but with much enlargement of his
+information and improvement of his rustic manners. Mr. Alcott was
+rather distinguished for his high-bred manners and, on a visit to
+England, there is an amusing incident of his having been mistaken for
+some member of the titled aristocracy.
+
+At the age of twenty-five, Mr. Alcott began his career as a teacher in
+an Episcopal Academy at Cheshire, Ct. His family were Episcopalians,
+and he had been confirmed at sixteen. Since the age of eighteen when
+he started for Virginia as a candidate for a school, he had been
+theorizing upon the art of teaching and had thought out many of the
+principles of what, a century later, began to be called the "New
+Education." He undertook, perhaps too rapidly, to apply his theories
+in the conduct of the Cheshire Academy. His experiments occasioned a
+vast amount of controversy, in which Connecticut conservatism gained a
+victory, and Mr. Alcott retired from the school at the end of two
+years' service. His results however had been sufficient to convince
+him of the soundness of his principles, and to launch him upon the
+troubled career of educational reform.
+
+Among a few intelligent friends and sympathizers who rallied to Mr.
+Alcott's side in this controversy, was Rev. Samuel J. May, a Unitarian
+minister then of Brooklyn, Ct., at whose house, in 1827, Mr. Alcott
+met Mr. May's sister Abbie, who shared fully her brother's enthusiasm
+for the new education and its persecuted apostle. Miss May began her
+relations with Mr. Alcott as his admirer and champion, a dangerous
+part for an enthusiastic young lady to play, as the sequel proved
+when, three years later, she became Mrs. Alcott.
+
+Mrs. Alcott was the daughter of a Boston merchant, Col. Joseph May,
+and his wife, Dorothy Sewall, daughter of Samuel Sewall and his wife,
+Elizabeth Quincy, sister of Dorothy Quincy, wife of John Hancock. By
+the marriage of Joseph May and Dorothy Sewall, two very distinguished
+lines of ancestry had been united. Under her father's roof, Mrs.
+Alcott had enjoyed every comfort and the best of social advantages.
+She was tall, had a fine physique, good intellect, warm affections,
+and generous sympathies, but it would have astonished her to have been
+told that she was bringing to the marriage altar more than she
+received; and however much it may have cost her to be the wife of an
+unworldly idealist, it was precisely his unworldly idealism that first
+won her admiration and then gained her heart.
+
+Life may have been harder for Mrs. Alcott than she anticipated, but
+she knew very well that she was abjuring riches. Two years before her
+marriage, her brother had written her: "Mr. Alcott's mind and heart
+are so much occupied with other things that poverty and riches do not
+seem to concern him much." She had known Mr. Alcott three years and
+had enjoyed ample opportunity to make this observation herself.
+Indeed, two months after her marriage, she wrote her brother, "My
+husband is the perfect personification of modesty and moderation. I am
+not sure that we shall not blush into obscurity and contemplate into
+starvation." That she had not repented of her choice a year later, may
+be judged from a letter to her brother on the first anniversary of her
+marriage: "It has been an eventful year,--a year of trial, of
+happiness, of improvement. I can wish no better fate to any sister of
+my sex than has attended me since my entrance into the conjugal
+state."
+
+That Mr. Alcott, then in his young manhood, had qualities which, for a
+young lady of refinement and culture, would compensate for many
+privations is evident. Whether he was one of the great men of his
+generation or not, there is no doubt he seemed so. When, in 1837, Dr.
+Bartol came to Boston, Mr. Emerson asked him whom he knew in the
+city, and said: "There is but one man, Mr. Alcott." Dr. Bartol seems
+to have come to much the same opinion. He says: "Alcott belonged to
+the Christ class: his manners were the most gentle and gracious, under
+all fair or unfair provocation, I ever beheld; he had a rare inborn
+piety and a god-like incapacity in the purity of his eyes to behold
+iniquity."
+
+These qualities were not visible to the public and have no commercial
+value, but that Mr. Alcott had them is confirmed by the beautiful
+domestic life of the Alcotts, by the unabated love and devotion of
+Mrs. Alcott to her husband in all trials, and the always high and
+always loyal appreciation with which Louisa speaks of her father, even
+when perhaps smiling at his innocent illusions. The character of Mr.
+Alcott is an important element in the life of Louisa because she was
+his daughter, and because, being unmarried, her life and fortunes were
+his, or those of the Alcott family. She had no individual existence.
+
+Two years after the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Alcott, Louisa, their
+second daughter was born in Germantown, Pa., where Mr. Alcott was in
+charge of a school belonging to the Society of Friends, or Quakers.
+The date was November 29, 1832, also Mr. Alcott's birthday, always
+observed as a double festival in the family. In 1834, Mr. Alcott
+opened his celebrated school in Masonic Temple in Boston, Mass., under
+the auspices of Dr. Channing and with the assured patronage of some of
+the most cultivated and influential families in the city. As
+assistants in this school, he had first Miss Sophia Peabody afterward
+Mrs. Hawthorne, her sister Miss Elizabeth Peabody, and finally
+Margaret Fuller.
+
+The school opened prosperously and achieved remarkable success until,
+in 1837, the publication of Mr. Alcott's "Conversations on the
+Gospels" shocked the piety of Boston newspapers, whose persistent and
+virulent attacks frightened the public and caused the withdrawal of
+two-thirds of the pupils. Mr. Emerson came to Mr. Alcott's defence,
+saying: "He is making an experiment in which all the friends of
+education are interested," and asking, "whether it be wise or just to
+add to the anxieties of this enterprise a public clamor against some
+detached sentences of a book which, on the whole, is pervaded by
+original thought and sincere piety." In a private note, Mr. Emerson
+urged Mr. Alcott to give up his school, as the people of Boston were
+not worthy of him. Mr. Alcott had spent more than the income of the
+school in its equipment, creating debts which Louisa afterward paid;
+all his educational ideals were at stake, and he could not accept
+defeat easily. However, in 1839, a colored girl was admitted to the
+school, and all his pupils were withdrawn, except the little negress
+and four whites, three of whom were his own daughters. So ended the
+Temple school. The event was very fateful for the Alcott family, but,
+much as it concerned Mrs. Alcott, there can be no doubt she much
+preferred that the school should end thus, than that Mr. Alcott should
+yield to public clamor on either of the issues which wrecked the
+enterprise.
+
+Louisa was seven years old when this misfortune occurred which shaped
+the rest of her life, fixing the straitened circumstances in which she
+was to pass her youth and preparing the burdens which ultimately were
+to be lifted by her facile pen. Happily the little Alcotts, of whom
+there were three, were too young to feel the perplexities that
+harassed their parents and their early years could hardly have been
+passed more pleasantly or profitably if they had been the daughters of
+millionaires. The family lived very comfortably amidst a fine circle
+of relatives and friends in Boston, preached and practised a
+vegetarian gospel,--rice without sugar and graham meal without butter
+or molasses,--monotonous but wholesome, spent their summers with
+friends at Scituate and, in town or country, partly owing to the
+principles of the new education, partly to the preoccupation of the
+parents, the children of the family were left in large measure to the
+teaching of nature and their own experience.
+
+Very abundant moral instruction there was in this apostolic family,
+both by example and precept, but the young disciples were expected to
+make their own application of the principles. The result, in the case
+of Louisa, was to develop a girl of very enterprising and adventurous
+character, who might have been mistaken for a boy from her sun-burned
+face, vigorous health, and abounding animal spirits. It was her pride
+to drive her hoop around the Common before breakfast and she tells us
+that she admitted to her social circle no girl who could not climb a
+tree and no boy whom she had not beaten in a race. Her autobiography
+of this period, she has given us, very thinly disguised, in "Poppy's
+Pranks."
+
+Meanwhile, her mental faculties were not neglected. Mr. Alcott began
+the education of his children, in a kindergarten way, almost in their
+infancy, and before his Boston school closed, Louisa had two or three
+years in it as a pupil. What his method of education could do with a
+child of eight years is shown by a poem written by Louisa at that age.
+The family were then living in Concord, in the house which, in "Little
+Women," is celebrated as "Meg's first home." One early Spring day,
+Louisa found in the garden a robin, chilled and famished, and wrote
+these lines:
+
+    "Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
+    Fear no harm, and fear no danger;
+    We are glad to see you here,
+    For you sing, Sweet Spring is near.
+
+    Now the white snow melts away;
+    Now the flowers blossom gay:
+    Come, dear bird, and build your nest,
+    For we love our robin best."
+
+It will be remembered that this literary faculty, unusual at the age
+of eight, had been attained by a girl in the physical condition of an
+athlete, who could climb a tree like a squirrel.
+
+Readers of "Little Women" will remember what a child's paradise "Meg's
+first home" was, with its garden full of fruit-trees and shade, and
+its old empty barn which the children alternately turned into a
+drawing-room for company, a gymnasium for romps, and a theatre for
+dramatic performances. "There," says Louisa, "we dramatized the fairy
+tales in great style," Jack the Giant-killer and Cinderella being
+favorites, the passion for the stage which came near making Louisa an
+actress, as also her sister Anna, getting early development.
+
+The fun and frolic of these days were the more enjoyed because they
+alternated with regular duties, with lessons in housework with the
+mother and language lessons with the father, for which he now had
+abundant leisure. As he had no other pupils, he could try all his
+educational experiments in his own family. Among other exercises, the
+children were required to keep a journal, to write in it regularly,
+and to submit it to the examination and criticism of the parents.
+Facility in writing thus became an early acquisition. It was furthered
+by a pretty habit which Mrs. Alcott had of keeping up a little
+correspondence with her children, writing little notes to them when
+she had anything to say in the way of reproof, correction, or
+instruction, receiving their confessions, repentance, and good
+resolutions by the next mail.
+
+Some of these maternal letters are very tender and beautiful. One to
+Louisa at the age of eleven, enclosed a picture of a frail mother
+cared for by a faithful daughter, and says, "I have always liked it
+very much, for I imagined that you might be just such an industrious
+daughter and I such a feeble and loving mother, looking to your labor
+for my daily bread." There was prophecy in this and there was more
+prophecy in the lines with which Louisa replied:
+
+    "I hope that soon, dear mother,
+      You and I may be
+    In the quiet room my fancy
+      Has so often made for thee,--
+
+    The pleasant, sunny chamber,
+      The cushioned easy-chair,
+    The book laid for your reading,
+      The vase of flowers fair;
+
+    The desk beside the window
+      When the sun shines warm and bright,
+    And there in ease and quiet,
+      The promised book you write.
+
+    While I sit close beside you,
+      Content at last to see
+    That you can rest, dear mother,
+      And I can cherish thee."
+
+The versification is still juvenile, but there is no fault in the
+sentiment, and Miss Alcott, in a later note, says, "The dream came
+true, and for the last ten years of her life, Marmee sat in peace with
+every wish granted."
+
+Evidently Louisa had begun to feel the pinch of the family
+circumstances. The income was of the slenderest. Sometimes Mr. Alcott
+gave a lecture or "conversation" and received a few dollars; sometimes
+he did a day's farm work for a neighbor; now and then Mr. Emerson
+called and clandestinely left a bank note, and many valuable packages
+came out from relatives in Boston; but frugal housekeeping was the
+chief asset of the family. Discouraging as the outlook was, some
+bitter experience might have been escaped if the Alcotts had remained
+in Concord, pursuing their unambitious career. It was, however, the
+era of social experiments in New England. The famous Brook Farm
+community was then in the third year of its existence, and it was
+impossible that Mr. Alcott should not sympathize with this effort to
+ease the burden of life, and wish to try his own experiment.
+Therefore, in 1843, being joined by several English socialists, one of
+whom financed the undertaking, Mr. Alcott started a small community on
+a worn-out not to say abandoned farm, which was hopefully christened
+"Fruitlands."
+
+Visiting the community five or six weeks after its inception, Mr.
+Emerson wrote: "The sun and the evening sky do not look calmer than
+Alcott and his family at Fruitlands. They seem to have arrived at the
+fact,--to have got rid of the show, and so to be serene. They look
+well in July; we will see them in December." An inhospitable December
+came upon the promising experiment, as it generally has upon all
+similar enterprises. Under the title Transcendental Wild Oats, in
+"Silver Pitchers," Miss Alcott gives a lively account of the varying
+humors of this disastrous adventure.
+
+Whatever disappointments and privations the enterprise had in store
+for their parents, the situation, with its little daily bustle, its
+limitless range of fields and woods, its flower hunting and berry
+picking, was full of interest and charm for four healthy children all
+under the age of twelve years. The fateful December, to which Mr.
+Emerson postponed his judgment, had not come before the elders were
+debating a dissolution of the community. "Father asked us if we saw
+any reason for us to separate," writes Louisa in her journal. "Mother
+wanted to, she is so tired. I like it." Of course she did; but "not
+the school part," she adds, "nor Mr. L.", who was one of her teachers.
+The inevitable lessons interfered with her proper business.
+
+"Fruitlands" continued for three years with declining fortunes, its
+lack of promise being perhaps a benefit to the family in saving for
+other purposes a small legacy which Mrs. Alcott received from her
+father's estate. With this and a loan of $500 from Mr. Emerson, she
+bought "The Hillside" in Concord, an estate which, after the Alcotts,
+was occupied by Mr. Hawthorne. Thither Mrs. Alcott removed with her
+family in 1846, and the two years that followed is the period which
+Louisa looked back upon as the happiest of her life, "for we had," she
+says, "charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings,
+Hawthornes, and Goodwins, with the illustrious parents and their
+friends to enjoy our pranks and share our excursions." Here the happy
+girlish life was passed which is so charmingly depicted in "Little
+Women," and here at the age of sixteen, Louisa wrote, for the
+entertainment of the little Alcotts and Emersons, a series of pretty
+fairy tales, still to be read in the second volume of Lulu's Library.
+
+Much as there was to enjoy in these surroundings, the problem of
+subsistence had not been solved and, with the growth of her daughters
+toward womanhood, it became more difficult for Mrs. Alcott. The world
+had, apparently, no use for Mr. Alcott; there were six persons to be
+fed and clothed, and no bread-winner in the family. The story is that
+one day, a friend found her in tears and demanded an explanation.
+"Abby Alcott, what does this mean?" asked the visitor, and when Mrs.
+Alcott had made her confessions, her friend said, "Come to Boston and
+I will find you employment."
+
+Accepting the proposition, the family removed to Boston in 1848, and
+Mrs. Alcott became the agent of certain benevolent societies. Mr.
+Alcott taught private classes, or held "conversations"; the older
+daughters, Anna and Louisa, found employment; and we may think of the
+family as fairly comfortable during the seven or eight years of its
+life in Boston. "Our poor little home," says Miss Alcott, "had much
+love and happiness in it, and was a shelter for lost girls, abused
+wives, friendless children, and weak and wicked men. Father and mother
+had no money to give but they gave time, sympathy, help; and if
+blessings would make them rich, they would be millionaires." Fugitive
+slaves were among the homeless who found shelter, one of whom Mrs.
+Alcott concealed in an unused brick oven.
+
+In Miss Alcott's journal of this period, we find the burden of
+existence weighing very heavily upon her, a state of mind apparently
+induced by her first experience in teaching. "School is hard work,"
+she says, "and I feel as though I should like to run away from it. But
+my children get on; so I travel up every day and do my best. I get
+very little time to write or think, for my working days have begun."
+Later, she seems to have seen the value of this experience. "At
+sixteen," she writes, "I began to teach twenty pupils and, for ten
+years, I learned to know and love children."
+
+Amateur theatricals were still the recreation of the Alcott girls, as
+they had been almost from infancy, and the stage presented a
+fascinating alternative to the school-room. "Anna wants to be an
+actress and so do I," writes Louisa at seventeen. "We could make
+plenty of money perhaps, and it is a very gay life. Mother says we are
+too young and must wait. Anna acts splendidly. I like tragic plays and
+shall be a Siddons if I can. We get up harps, dresses, water-falls,
+and thunder, and have great fun." Both of the sisters wrote many
+exciting dramas at this period, and one of Louisa's, "The Rival Prima
+Donnas," was accepted by the manager of the Boston Theatre, who
+"thought it would have a fine run" and sent the author a free pass to
+the theatre, which partly compensated for the non-appearance of the
+play. Some years later, a farce written by Louisa, "Nat Bachelor's
+Pleasure Trip, or the Trials of a Good-Natured Man," was produced at
+the Howard Athenæum, and was favorably received. Christie's experience
+as an actress, in Miss Alcott's novel entitled, "Work," is imaginary
+in its incidents, but autobiographical in its spirit.
+
+All these experiments in dramatic literature, from Jack the
+Giant-Killer on, were training the future story-teller. Miss Alcott's
+first story to see the light was printed in a newspaper at the age of
+twenty, in 1852, though it had been written at sixteen. She received
+$5.00 for it, and the event is interesting as the beginning of her
+fortune. This little encouragement came at a period of considerable
+trial for the family. The following is from her journal of 1853: "In
+January, I started a little school of about a dozen in our parlor. In
+May, my school closed and I went to L. as second girl. I needed the
+change, could do the wash, and was glad to earn my $2.00 a week."
+Notice that this is her summer vacation. "Home in October with $34.00
+for my wages. After two days' rest, began school again with ten
+children." The family distributed themselves as follows: "Anna went to
+Syracuse to teach; father to the west to try his luck,--so poor, so
+hopeful, so serene. God be with him. Mother had several boarders.
+School for me, month after month. I earned a good deal by sewing in
+the evening when my day's work was done."
+
+Mr. Alcott returned from the west, and the account of his adventures
+is very touching: "In February father came home. Paid his way, but no
+more. A dramatic scene when he arrived in the night. We were awakened
+by the bell. Mother flew down crying, My Husband. We rushed after and
+five white figures embraced the half-frozen wanderer who came in,
+hungry, tired, cold, and disappointed, but smiling bravely and as
+serene as ever. We fed and warmed and brooded over him, longing to ask
+if he had made any money; but no one did till little May said, after
+he had told us all the pleasant things, 'Well, did people pay you?'
+Then with a queer look he opened his pocket book, and showed one
+dollar, saying with a smile, 'Only that. My overcoat was stolen, and I
+had to buy a shawl. Many promises were not kept, and traveling is
+costly; but I have opened the way, and another year shall do better.'
+I shall never forget how beautifully mother answered him, though the
+dear, hopeful soul had built much on his success: but with a beaming
+face she kissed him, saying, 'I call that doing very well. Since you
+are safely home, dear, we don't ask anything else.'"
+
+One of Miss Alcott's unfulfilled purposes was to write a story
+entitled "The Pathetic Family." This passage would have found a place
+in it. It deserves to be said that Mr. Alcott's faith that he had
+"opened a way and another year should do better," was justified.
+Fifteen years later, from one of his western tours, he brought home
+$700, but, thanks to Louisa's pen, the family were no longer in such
+desperate need of money.
+
+More than once Miss Alcott declares that no one ever assisted her in
+her struggles, but that was far from true, as appears from many favors
+acknowledged in her journal. It was by the kindness of a lady who
+bought the manuscripts and assumed the risk of publication, that her
+first book, "Flower Fables," was brought out in 1854. It consisted of
+the fairy tales written six years before for the little Emersons. She
+received $32.00, a sum which would have seemed insignificant thirty
+years later when, in 1886, the sale of her books for six months
+brought her $8,000; but she says, "I was prouder over the $32.00 than
+over the $8,000."
+
+The picture of Jo in a garret in "Little Women," planning and writing
+stories, is drawn from Louisa's experiences of the following winter. A
+frequent entry in her journal for this period is "$5.00 for a story"
+and her winter's earnings are summed up, "school, one quarter, $50,
+sewing $50, stories, $20." In December we read, "Got five dollars for
+a tale and twelve for sewing." Teaching, writing, and sewing alternate
+in her life for the next five years, and, for a year or two yet, the
+needle is mightier than the pen; but in 1856, she began to be paid $10
+for a story, and, in 1859, the _Atlantic_ accepted a story and paid
+her $50.
+
+A friend for whose encouragement during these hard years, she
+acknowledges great indebtedness and who appears as one of the
+characters in her story, entitled "Work," was Rev. Theodore Parker, a
+man as helpful, loving, and gentle as she depicts him, but then much
+hated by those called orthodox and hardly in good standing among his
+Unitarian brethren. Miss Alcott, then as ever, had the courage of her
+convictions, was a member of his Music Hall congregation, and a
+regular attendant at his Sunday evening receptions, finding him "very
+friendly to the large, bashful girl who adorns his parlor regularly."
+She "fought for him," she says, when some one said Mr. Parker "was not
+a Christian. He is my sort; for though he may lack reverence for other
+people's God, he works bravely for his own, and turns his back on no
+one who needs help, as some of the pious do." After Mr. Parker's
+death, Miss Alcott, when in Boston, attended the church of Dr. C. A.
+Bartol, who buried her mother, her father and herself.
+
+In 1857, the Alcotts returned to Concord, buying and occupying the
+Orchard House, which thenceforth became their home. Other family
+events of the period were, the death of Miss Alcott's sister
+Elizabeth, Beth in "Little Women," the marriage of Anna, Meg in
+"Little Women," and a proposal of marriage to Louisa, serious enough
+for her to hold a consultation over it with her mother. Miss Alcott is
+said to have been averse to entangling alliances for herself, to have
+married off the heroines in her novels reluctantly at the demand of
+her readers, and never to have enjoyed writing the necessary
+love-passages.
+
+The year 1860, when Miss Alcott is twenty-seven, has the distinction
+of being marked in the heading of her journal as "A Year of Good
+Luck." Her family had attained a comfortable, settled home in Concord;
+Mr. Alcott had been appointed superintendent of public schools, an
+office for which he was peculiarly well qualified and in which he was
+both happy and admirably successful; Anna, the eldest sister, was
+happily married; May, the youngest, was making a reputation as an
+artist; and Louisa, in perfect health, having in May before, "walked
+to Boston, twenty miles, in five hours, and attended an evening
+party," was becoming a regular contributor to the _Atlantic_, and
+receiving $50, $75, and sometimes $100 for her stories.
+
+In these happy conditions, Miss Alcott sat down to a more ambitious
+attempt at authorship and wrote the first rough draft of "Moods," a
+"problem novel" that provoked much discussion and, though it caused
+her more trouble than any other of her books, was always dearest to
+her heart. It was written in a kind of frenzy of poetic enthusiasm.
+"Genius burned so fiercely," she says, "that for four weeks, I wrote
+all day and planned nearly all night, being quite possessed by my
+work. I was perfectly happy, and seemed to have no wants. Finished the
+book, or a rough draft of it, and put it away to settle." It was not
+published till four years later. Even in this year of good luck, there
+seem to have been some privations, as she records being invited to
+attend a John Brown meeting and declining because she "had no good
+gown." She sends a poem instead.
+
+The breaking out of the Civil War stirred Miss Alcott's soul to its
+depths, and we have numerous references to its progress in her
+journal. "I like the stir in the air," she writes, "and long for
+battle like a war-horse when he smells powder." Not being permitted to
+enlist as a soldier, she went into a hospital in Washington as a
+nurse. Her experiences are graphically and dramatically told in
+"Hospital Sketches." That book, chiefly made from her private letters,
+met the demand of the public, eager for any information about the
+great war; it was widely read and, besides putting $200 in her purse,
+gave her a reputation with readers and publishers. Many applications
+for manuscript came in and she was told that "any publisher this side
+of Baltimore would be glad to get a book" from her. "There is a sudden
+hoist," she says, "for a meek and lowly scribbler. Fifteen years of
+hard grubbing may come to something yet." Her receipts for the year
+1863, amounted to $600 and she takes comfort in saying that she had
+spent less than one hundred on herself.
+
+The following year, after having been twice re-written, "Moods" was
+brought out and, thanks to the "Hospital Sketches," had a ready sale.
+Wherever she went, she says, she "found people laughing or crying over
+it, and was continually told how well it was going, how much it was
+liked, how fine a thing I had done." The first edition was exhausted
+in a week. An entire edition was ordered by London publishers. She was
+very well satisfied with the reception of "Moods" at the time, though
+in after years when fifty thousand copies of a book would be printed
+as a first edition, the sale of "Moods" seemed to her inconsiderable.
+
+The present day reader wonders neither at the eagerness of the public
+for the book, nor at the criticisms that were freely made upon it. It
+is interesting from cover to cover and as a study of "a life affected
+by moods, not a discussion of marriage," it is effective. In spite,
+however, of the warning of the author, everyone read it as "a
+discussion of marriage," and few were satisfied. The interest centres
+in the fortunes of a girl who has married the wrong lover, the man to
+whom, by preference, she would have given her heart being supposed to
+be dead. Would that he had been, for then, to all appearance, she
+would have been contented and happy. Unfortunately he returns a year
+too late, finds the girl married and, though endowed with every virtue
+which a novelist can bestow upon her hero, he does not know enough to
+leave the poor woman in peace. On the contrary, he settles down to a
+deliberate siege to find out how she feels, wrings from her the
+confession that she is miserable, as by that time no doubt she was,
+and then convinces her that since she does not love her husband, it is
+altogether wrong to live under the same roof with him. Surely this was
+nobly done. Poor Sylvia loves this villain, Miss Alcott evidently
+loves him, but the bloody-minded reader would like to thrust a knife
+into him. However, he is not a name or a type, but a real man, or one
+could not get so angry with him. All the characters live and breathe
+in these pages, and no criticism was less to the purpose than that
+the situations were unnatural. Miss Alcott says "The relations of
+Warwick, Moor, and Sylvia are pronounced impossible; yet a case of the
+sort exists, and a woman came and asked me how I knew it. I did not
+know or guess, but perhaps felt it, without any other guide, and
+unconsciously put the thing into my book."
+
+Everyone will agree that Miss Alcott had earned a vacation, and it
+came in 1865, in a trip to Europe, where she spent a year, from July
+to July, as the companion of an invalid lady, going abroad for health.
+The necessity of modulating her pace to the movements of a nervous
+invalid involved some discomforts for a person of Miss Alcott's
+pedestrian abilities, but who would not accept some discomforts for a
+year of European travel? She had a reading knowledge of German and
+French, and in the abundant leisure which the long rests of her
+invalid friend forced upon her, she learned to speak French with
+facility.
+
+On her return from Europe, she found her circumstances much improved.
+She had established her position as a regular contributer to the
+_Atlantic_ whose editor, she says, "takes all I'll send." In 1868,
+she was offered and accepted the editorship of _Merry's Museum_ at a
+salary of $500, and, more important, she was asked by Roberts Brothers
+to "write a girl's book." Her response to this proposition was "Little
+Women," which she calls "the first golden egg of the ugly duckling,
+for the copyright made her fortune." Two editions were exhausted in
+six weeks and the book was translated into French, German and Dutch.
+
+"Little Men" was written, a chapter a day, in November of the same
+year, and "An Old-fashioned Girl," a popular favorite, the year
+following. "Hospital Sketches" had not yet outlived its welcome, was
+republished, with some additions, in 1869, and two thousand copies
+were sold the first week. She is able to say, "Paid up all debts,
+thank the Lord, every penny that money can pay,--and now I feel as if
+I could die in peace." Besides, she has invested "$1,200 for a rainy
+day," and is annoyed because "people come and stare at the Alcotts.
+Reporters haunt the place to look at the authoress, who dodges into
+the woods."
+
+The severe application which her achievement had cost had impaired
+Miss Alcott's fine constitution and, in 1870, taking May, her artist
+sister, she made a second trip to Europe, spending the summer in
+France and Switzerland and the winter in Rome. A charming account of
+the adventures of this expedition is given in "Shawl-Straps." A
+pleasant incident of the journey was the receipt of a statement from
+her publisher giving her credit for $6,212, and she is able to say
+that she has "$10,000 well invested and more coming in all the time,"
+and that she thinks "we may venture to enjoy ourselves, after the hard
+times we have had."
+
+In 1872, she published "Work: a story of Experience," and it is for
+the most part, a story of her own experience. "Christie's adventures,"
+she says, "are many of them my own: Mr. Power is Mr. Parker: Mrs.
+Wilkins is imaginary, and all the rest. This was begun at eighteen,
+and never finished till H. W. Beecher wrote me for a serial for the
+_Christian Union_ and paid $3,000 for it." It is one of the most
+deservedly popular of her books.
+
+In 1877, for Roberts Brothers' "No Name Series," Miss Alcott wrote "A
+Modern Mephistopheles," her least agreeable book, but original,
+imaginative, and powerful. The moral of the story is that, in our
+modern life, the devil does not appear with a cloven foot, but as a
+cultivated man of the world. Miss Alcott's Mephistopheles is even
+capable of generous impulses. With the kindness of a Good Samaritan,
+he saves a poor wretch from suicide and then destroys him morally. The
+devil is apparently a mixed character with a decided preponderance of
+sinfulness.
+
+Miss Alcott had now reached her forty-fifth year, had placed her
+family in independent circumstances, thus achieving her early
+ambition, and the effort began to tell upon her health. A succession
+of rapid changes soon came upon her. Mrs. Alcott, having attained her
+seventy-seventh year, was very comfortable for her age. "Mother is
+cosy with her sewing, letters, and the success of her 'girls,'" writes
+Miss Alcott in January; but in June, "Marmee grows more and more
+feeble," and in November the end came. "She fell asleep in my arms,"
+writes Louisa; "My duty is done, and now I shall be glad to follow
+her."
+
+May, the talented artist sister, whom Louisa had educated, had once
+taken to Europe and twice sent abroad for study, was married in London
+in 1878, to a Swiss gentleman of good family and some fortune, Mr.
+Nieriker. The marriage was a very happy one but the joy of the young
+wife was brief. She died the year following, leaving an infant
+daughter as a legacy to Louisa.
+
+Mr. Emerson's death in 1882, was, to her, much like taking a member of
+her own family: "The nearest and dearest friend father ever had and
+the man who helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can
+never tell all he has been to me,--from the time I sang Mignon's song
+under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters _a la Bettine_ to
+him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays
+on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped
+me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature."
+
+Mr. Alcott is still with her, vigorous for his years. In 1879, at the
+age of eighty, he inaugurated the Concord School of Philosophy, "with
+thirty students. Father the dean. He has his dream realized at last,
+and is in glory, with plenty of talk to swim in." The school was, for
+Miss Alcott, an expensive toy with which she was glad to be able to
+indulge her father. Personally she cared little for it. On one of her
+rare visits to it, she was asked her definition of a philosopher, and
+responded instantly: "My definition is of a man up in a balloon, with
+his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth
+and trying to haul him down." For her father's sake, she rejoiced in
+the success of the enterprise. Of the second season, she writes, "The
+new craze flourishes. The first year, Concord people stood aloof; now
+the school is pronounced a success, because it brings money to the
+town. Father asked why we never went, and Anna showed him a long list
+of four hundred names of callers, and he said no more."
+
+In addition to the labors which the school laid upon Mr. Alcott, he
+prepared for the press a volume of sonnets, some of which are
+excellent, especially one to Louisa:
+
+    "Ne'er from thyself by Fame's loud trump beguiled,
+    Sounding in this and the farther hemisphere,--
+    I press thee to my heart as Duty's faithful child."
+
+Mr. Alcott seemed to be renewing his youth but, in November, he was
+prostrated by paralysis. "Forty sonnets last winter," writes Louisa,
+"and fifty lectures at the school last summer, were too much for a man
+of eighty-three." He recovered sufficiently to enjoy his friends and
+his books and lingered six years, every want supplied by his devoted
+daughter.
+
+With Miss Alcott the years go on at a slower pace, the writing of
+books alternating with sleepless nights and attacks of vertigo. "Jo's
+Boys" was written in 1884, fifty thousand copies being printed for the
+first edition. In 1886, her physician forbids her beginning anything
+that will need much thought. Life was closing in upon her, and she did
+not wish to live if she could not be of use. In March, 1888, Mr.
+Alcott failed rapidly, and died on the sixth of the month. Miss Alcott
+visited him and, in the excitement of leave-taking, neglected to wrap
+herself properly, took a fatal cold, and two days after, on the day of
+his burial, she followed him, in the fifty-sixth year of her age. Dr.
+C. A. Bartol, who had just buried her father, said tenderly at her
+funeral: "The two were so wont to be together, God saw they could not
+well live apart."
+
+If Miss Alcott, by the pressure of circumstances, had not been a
+writer of children's books, she might have been a poet, and would,
+from choice, have been a philanthropist and reformer. Having worked
+her own way with much difficulty, it was impossible that she should
+not be interested in lightening the burdens which lay upon women, in
+the race of life, and though never a prominent worker in the cause,
+she was a zealous believer in the right of women to the ballot. She
+attended the Woman's Congress in Syracuse, in 1875, "drove about and
+drummed up women to my suffrage meeting" in Concord, she says, in
+1879, and writes in a letter of 1881, "I for one don't want to be
+ranked among idiots, felons, and minors any longer, for I am none of
+them."
+
+To say that she might have been a poet does her scant justice. She
+wrote two or three fine lyrics which would justify giving her a high
+place among the verse-writers of her generation. "Thoreau's Flute,"
+printed in the _Atlantic_, has been called the most perfect of her
+poems, with a possible exception of a tender tribute to her mother.
+Personally, I consider the lines in memory of her mother one of the
+finest elegiac poems within my knowledge:
+
+    "Mysterious death: who in a single hour
+        Life's gold can so refine,
+        And by thy art divine,
+    Change mortal weakness to immortal power."
+
+There are twelve stanzas of equal strength and beauty. The closing
+lines of this fine eulogy we may apply to Miss Alcott, for both lives
+have the same lesson:
+
+    "Teaching us how to seek the highest goal,
+        To earn the true success,--
+        To live, to love, to bless,--
+    And make death proud to take a royal soul."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Daughters of the Puritans, by Seth Curtis Beach
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Daughters of the Puritans, by Seth Curtis Beach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Daughters of the Puritans
+       A Group of Brief Biographies
+
+Author: Seth Curtis Beach
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2008 [EBook #25582]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAUGHTERS OF THE PURITANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Chris Logan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div id="title_pages">
+<h1>DAUGHTERS<br />
+OF THE PURITANS</h1>
+
+<p class="group">A Group of Brief Biographies</p>
+
+<p class="by">BY</p>
+
+<p class="seth">SETH CURTIS BEACH</p>
+
+<p class="essay"><em>Essay Index Reprint Series</em></p>
+
+<p class="books">BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC.<br />
+<span class="freeport">FREEPORT, NEW YORK</span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<p>First published 1905<br />
+Reprinted 1967</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/child_home.jpg" width="500" height="439" alt="THE HOME OF LYDIA MARIA CHILD AT WAYLAND, MASSACHUSETTS"
+title="THE HOME OF LYDIA MARIA CHILD AT WAYLAND, MASSACHUSETTS" />
+<span class="caption">THE HOME OF LYDIA MARIA CHILD AT WAYLAND, MASSACHUSETTS</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+<thead>
+<tr>
+  <th>&nbsp;</th>
+  <th>PAGE</th>
+</tr>
+</thead>
+<tbody>
+<tr>
+  <td>CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK, 1789&ndash;1867</td>
+  <td class="table_right"><a href="#Chapter_I">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>MARY LOVELL WARE, 1798&ndash;1849</td>
+  <td class="table_right"><a href="#Chapter_II">43</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>LYDIA MARIA CHILD, 1802&ndash;1880</td>
+  <td class="table_right"><a href="#Chapter_III">79</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX, 1802&ndash;1887</td>
+  <td class="table_right"><a href="#Chapter_IV">123</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI, 1810&ndash;1850</td>
+  <td class="table_right"><a href="#Chapter_V">165</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 1811&ndash;1896</td>
+  <td class="table_right"><a href="#Chapter_VI">209</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, 1832&ndash;1888</td>
+  <td class="table_right"><a href="#Chapter_VII">251</a></td>
+</tr>
+</tbody>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_I" id="Chapter_I"></a>I<br /><br />
+CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 436px;">
+<img src="images/sedgwick.jpg" width="436" height="500" alt="CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK" title="CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK" />
+<span class="caption">CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>During the first half of the nineteenth century, Miss Sedgwick would
+doubtless have been considered the queen of American letters, but, in
+the opinion of her friends, the beauty of her character surpassed the
+merit of her books. In 1871, Miss Mary E. Dewey, her life-long
+neighbor, edited a volume of Miss Sedgwick's letters, mostly to
+members of her family, in compliance with the desire of those who knew
+and loved her, "that some printed memorial should exist of a life so
+beautiful and delightful in itself, and so beneficent in its influence
+upon others." Truly a "life beautiful in itself and beneficent in its
+influence," the reader will say, as he lays down this tender volume.</p>
+
+<p>Catharine Maria Sedgwick was born at Stockbridge, Mass., in 1789, the
+first year of the presidency of George Washington. She was a
+descendant from Robert Sedgwick, major-general under Cromwell, and
+governor of Jamaica. Her father, Theodore Sedgwick, was a country boy,
+born in 1746, upon a barren farm in one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> the hill-towns of
+Connecticut. Here the family opened a country store, then added a
+tavern, and with the combined industries of farm, store and tavern,
+Theodore, most fortunate of the sons if not the favorite, was sent to
+Yale college, where he remained, until, in the last year of his
+course, he managed to get himself expelled. He began the study of
+theology, his daughter suggests, in a moment of contrition over
+expulsion from college, but soon turned to the law for which he had
+singular aptitude. He could not have gone far in his legal career
+when, before the age of twenty-one, he married a beautiful girl whose
+memory he always tenderly cherished, as well he might considering his
+part in the tragedy of her early death. He had taken small pox, had
+been duly quarantined and discharged but his young wife combed out the
+tangles of his matted hair, caught the disease, and died, within a
+year after marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage was necessary in those days, his daughter suggests, and the
+year of conventional widowhood having expired, Mr. Sedgwick, then at
+the age of twenty-three, married Miss Pamela Dwight, the mother of his
+four sons, all successful lawyers, and his three daughters, all
+exemplary women. The second Mrs. Sedgwick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> was presumably more
+beautiful than the first; certainly she was more celebrated. She is
+immortalized by her portrait in Griswold's "American Court," and by a
+few complimentary lines in Mrs. Ellet's "Queens of American Society."</p>
+
+<p>Theodore Sedgwick rose to distinction by his energies and talents but,
+as we have seen, he was of sufficiently humble origin, which could not
+have been greatly redeemed by expulsion from college; while at the age
+of twenty-three, that must have been his chief exploit. Social lines
+were very firmly drawn in that old colonial society, before the plough
+of the Revolution went through it, and there was no more aristocratic
+family than the Dwights, in Western Massachusetts.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Quincy gives an account of a visit, in her girlhood, paid to
+the mother of Miss Pamela, Madame Dwight, in her "mansion-house," and
+says that her husband, Brig.-Gen. Joseph Dwight, was "one of the
+leading men of Massachusetts in his day." Madame Dwight was presumably
+not inferior to her husband. She was daughter of Col. Williams, of
+Williamstown, who commanded a brigade in the old French War, and whose
+son founded Williams College. A daughter of Madame Dwight,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> older than
+Pamela, married Mark Hopkins, "a distinguished lawyer of his time,"
+says Madame Quincy, and grandfather of Rev. Mark Hopkins, D.D.,
+perhaps the most illustrious president of the college founded by
+Madame Dwight's family.</p>
+
+<p>The intermarriage of the Williamses, Dwights, and Hopkinses formed a
+fine, aristocratic circle, into which the Sedgwicks were not very
+cordially welcomed. "My mother's family (of this," says Mrs. Sedgwick,
+"I have rather an indefinite impression than any knowledge) objected
+to my father on the score of family, they priding themselves on their
+gentle blood; but as he afterwards rose far beyond their highest
+water-mark, the objection was cast into oblivion by those who made
+it."</p>
+
+<p>A few years after this marriage, the war of the Revolution began. Mr.
+Sedgwick entered the army, served as an officer under Washington,
+whose acquaintance and favor he enjoyed, and from that time, for forty
+years until his death, he was in public life, in positions of
+responsibility and honor. He was member of the Continental Congress,
+member of the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House, Sen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>ator
+from Massachusetts, and, at his death, judge of the Massachusetts
+Supreme Court.</p>
+
+<p>Judge Sedgwick was a staunch Federalist and, in spite of the fact that
+he himself was not born in the purple, he shared the common Federalist
+contempt for the masses. "I remember my father," says Miss Sedgwick,
+"one of the kindest-hearted men and most observant of the rights of
+all beneath him, habitually spoke of the people as 'Jacobins,'
+'sans-culottes,' and 'miscreants.' He&mdash;and this I speak as a type of
+the Federalist party&mdash;dreaded every upward step they made, regarding
+their elevation as a depression, in proportion to their ascension, of
+the intelligence and virtue of the country." "He was born too soon,"
+says his daughter apologetically, "to relish the freedoms of
+democracy, and I have seen his brow lower when a free and easy
+mechanic came to the front door, and upon one occasion, I remember his
+turning off the east steps (I am sure not kicking, but the
+demonstration was unequivocal) a grown up lad who kept his hat on
+after being told to remove it." In these days one would hardly tell
+him to remove it, let alone hustling him off the steps.</p>
+
+<p>The incident shows how far education, prosperity, wealth, and forty
+years of public life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> had transformed the father of Miss Sedgwick from
+the country boy of a hill-farm in Connecticut. More to our present
+purpose, the apologetic way in which Miss Sedgwick speaks of these
+high-bred prejudices of her father, shows that she does not share
+them. "The Federalists," she says, "stood upright, and their feet
+firmly planted on the rock of aristocracy but that rock was bedded in
+the sands, or rather was a boulder from the Old World, and the tide of
+democracy was surely and swiftly undermining it."</p>
+
+<p>When this was written, Miss Sedgwick had made the discovery that,
+while the Federalists had the better "education, intellectual and
+moral," the "democrats had among them much native sagacity" and an
+earnest "determination to work out the theories of the government."
+She is writing to her niece: "All this my dear Alice, as you may
+suppose, is an after-thought. Then I entered fully, and with the faith
+and ignorance of childhood, into the prejudices of the time." Those
+prejudices must have been far behind her when her first story was
+written, "A New England Tale," in which it happens, inadvertently we
+may believe, all the worst knaves are blue-blooded and at least most
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> decent persons are poor and humble. Later we shall see her
+slumming in New York like a Sister of Charity, 'saving those that are
+lost,' a field of labor toward which her Federalist education scarcely
+led.</p>
+
+<p>She could have learned some condescension and humanity from her mother
+who, in spite of her fine birth, seems to have been modest and
+retiring to a degree. She was very reluctant to have her husband
+embark upon a public career; had, her daughter says, "No sympathy with
+what is called honor and distinction"; and wrote her husband a letter
+of protest which is worth quoting if only to show how a well-trained
+wife would write her doting husband something more than a century ago:
+"Pardon me, my dearest Mr. Sedgwick, if I beg you once more to think
+over the matter before you embark in public business. I grant that the
+'call of our country,' the 'voice of fame,' and the 'Honorable' and
+'Right-Honorable,' are high sounding words. 'They play around the
+head, but they come not near the heart.'" However, if he decides for a
+public career, she will submit: "Submission is my duty, and however
+hard, I will try to practice what reason teaches me I am under
+obligation to do." That address, "my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> dearest Mr. Sedgwick," from a
+wife a dozen years after marriage, shows a becoming degree of respect.</p>
+
+<p>We may be sure that this gentle mother would have encouraged no silly
+notions of social distinctions in the minds of her children. Even Mr.
+Sedgwick seems to have had a softer and more human side to his nature
+than we have yet seen. Miss Sedgwick enjoys repeating a story which
+she heard from a then "venerable missionary." The son of the village
+shoemaker, his first upward step was as boy-of-all-work of the clerk
+of courts. He had driven his master to the court session in dignified
+silence, broken on arrival by a curt order to take in the trunk. "As
+he set it down in the entry," says Miss Sedgwick, "my father, then
+judge of the Supreme Judicial Court, was coming down stairs, bringing
+his trunk himself. He set it down, accosted the boy most kindly, and
+gave him his cordial hand. The lad's feelings, chilled by his master's
+haughtiness, at once melted, and took an impression of my father's
+kindness that was never effaced."</p>
+
+<p>The individual is so much a creature of his environment, that I must
+carry these details a little farther. Forty years in public life,
+Judge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> Sedgwick had an extended acquaintance and, according to the
+custom of the time, kept open house. "When I remember," says Miss
+Sedgwick, "how often the great gate swung open for the entrance of
+traveling vehicles, the old mansion seems to me much more like an
+hostelrie of the olden time than the quiet house it now is. My
+father's hospitality was unbounded. It extended from the gentleman in
+his coach, chaise, or on horseback, according to his means or
+necessities, to the poor, lame beggar that would sit half the night
+roasting at the kitchen fire with the negro servants. My father was in
+some sort the chieftain of his family, and his home was their resort
+and resting-place. Uncles and aunts always found a welcome there;
+cousins wintered and summered with us. Thus hospitality was an element
+in our education. It elicited our faculties of doing and suffering. It
+smothered the love and habit of minor comforts and petty physical
+indulgences that belong to a higher state of civilization and generate
+selfishness, and it made regard for others, and small sacrifices for
+them, a habit."</p>
+
+<p>Just one word more about this home, the like of which it would be hard
+to find in our generation: "No bickering or dissention was ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+permitted. Love was the habit, the life of the household rather than
+the law.&mdash;A querulous tone, a complaint, a slight word of dissention,
+was met by that awful frown of my father's. Jove's thunder was to a
+pagan believer but as a summer day's drifting cloud to it. It was not
+so dreadful because it portended punishment,&mdash;it was punishment; it
+was a token of suspension of the approbation and love that were our
+life."</p>
+
+<p>These passages have a twofold value. They tell us in what school Miss
+Sedgwick was educated, and they give us a specimen of her literary
+style. Language is to her a supple instrument, and she makes the
+reader see what she undertakes to relate.</p>
+
+<p>Judge Sedgwick died in Boston, in 1813, when Miss Sedgwick was
+twenty-three. The biographical Dictionaries say he was a member of Dr.
+Channing's church. As Miss Sedgwick relates the facts, he had long
+desired to "make a public profession of religion," but had been
+deterred because he could not conscientiously join the church of his
+family, in Stockbridge, with its Calvinistic confession, and was too
+tender of the feelings of his pastor to join another,&mdash;"unworthy
+motives," says Miss Sedgwick. Briefly stated, he now sent for Dr.
+Channing and re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>ceived from him the communion. Later, Miss Sedgwick
+followed him into the Unitarian fellowship. She, and two distinguished
+brothers, were among the founders of the first Unitarian church in New
+York city.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dewey calls her volume "The Life and Letters" of Miss Sedgwick,
+but the Life is very scantily written. She has given us a picture
+rather than a biography. Indeed, to write a biography of Miss Sedgwick
+is no easy task, there was so much of worth in her character and so
+little of dramatic incident in her career. Independent in her
+circumstances, exempt from struggle for existence or for social
+position, unambitious for literary fame and surprised at its coming,
+unmarried and yet domestic in tastes and habits, at home in any one of
+the five households of her married brothers and sisters, she lived for
+seventy-seven years as a favored guest at the table of fortune. She
+saw things happen to others, but they did not happen to her. It was
+with her as with Whittier's sweet Quakeress:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For all her quiet life flowed on<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As meadow streamlets flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where fresher green reveals alone<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The noiseless ways they go."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>Of her outward career, Miss Dewey truly says: "No striking incidents,
+no remarkable occurrences will be found in it, but the gradual
+unfolding and ripening amid congenial surroundings of a true and
+beautiful soul, a clear and refined intellect, and a singularly
+sympathetic social nature. She was born eighty years ago"&mdash;this was
+written in 1871,&mdash;"when the atmosphere was still electric with the
+storm in which we took our place among the nations, and, passing her
+childhood in the seclusion of a New England valley, while yet her
+family was linked to the great world without by ties both political
+and social, early and deep foundations were laid in her character of
+patriotism, religious feeling, love of nature, and strong attachment
+to home, and to those who made it what it was. And when in later life,
+she took her place among the acknowledged leaders of literature and
+society, these remained the central features of her character, and
+around them gathered all the graceful culture, the active
+philanthropy, the social accomplishment, which made her presence a joy
+wherever it came."</p>
+
+<p>It is not singular if she began her existence at a somewhat advanced
+stage. She was quite sure she remembered incidents that took place
+before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> she was two years old. She remembered a dinner party at which
+Miss Susan Morton, afterward Madame Quincy, was present, and to which
+her father and her brother, Theodore, came from Philadelphia. If you
+are anxious to know what incidents of such an event would fix
+themselves in the mind of a child of two, they were these: She made
+her first attempt to say "Theodore," and "Philadelphia," and she tried
+her baby trick of biting her glass, for which she had doubtless been
+reproved, and watched its effect upon her father. "I recall perfectly
+the feeling with which I turned my eye to him, expecting to see that
+brow cloud with displeasure, but it was smooth as love could make it.
+That consciousness, that glance, that assurance, remained stamped
+indelibly."</p>
+
+<p>"Education in the common sense," says Miss Sedgwick, "I had next to
+none." For schools, she fared like other children in Stockbridge, with
+the difference that her father was "absorbed in political life," her
+mother, in Catharine's youth an invalid, died early, and no one, she
+says, "dictated my studies or overlooked my progress. I remember
+feeling an intense ambition to be at the head of my class, and
+generally being there. Our minds were not weakened by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> too much study;
+reading, spelling, and Dwight's geography were the only paths of
+knowledge into which we were led;" to which accomplishments she adds
+as an after-thought, grammar and arithmetic.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, when in 1838, six of the Sedgwick family travelled
+together through France and Italy, doing much of those sunny lands on
+foot, Miss Sedgwick was interpreter for the party in both countries,
+apparently easy mistress of their respective languages. It is
+remarkable what fine culture seems to have been attainable by a New
+England child born more than a hundred years ago, when Harvard and
+Yale were, as we are told, mere High Schools, and Radcliffe and
+Wellesley were not even dreamed of. Instead of Radcliffe or Wellesley,
+Miss Sedgwick attended a boarding school in Albany, at the age of
+thirteen and, at the age of fifteen, another in Boston, the latter for
+six months, and the former could not have been more than two years.
+Both, according to her, gave her great social advantages, and did
+little for her scholarship. Miss Bell, the head of the Albany school,
+"rose late, was half the time out of the school, and did very little
+when in it."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Paine's school in Boston, let us hope,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> was better; but "I was at
+the most susceptible age. My father's numerous friends in Boston
+opened their doors to me. I was attractive in my appearance"&mdash;she is
+writing this to a niece and it is probably all true&mdash;"and, from always
+associating on equal terms with those much older than myself, I had a
+mental maturity rather striking, and with an ignorance of the world, a
+romantic enthusiasm, an aptitude at admiring and loving that
+altogether made me an object of general interest. I was admired and
+flattered. Harry and Robert were then resident graduates at Cambridge.
+They were too inexperienced to perceive the mistake I was making; they
+were naturally pleased with the attentions I was receiving. The winter
+passed away in a series of bewildering gayeties. I had talent enough
+to be liked by my teachers, and good nature to secure their good will.
+I gave them very little trouble in any way. When I came home from
+Boston I felt the deepest mortification at my waste of time and money,
+though my father never said one word to me on the subject. For the
+only time in my life I rose early to read French, and in a few weeks
+learned more by myself than I had acquired all winter."</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen that she had the ability to study<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> without a teacher,
+and that is an art which, with time at one's disposal and the stimulus
+at hand, assures education. Intellectual stimulus was precisely what
+her home furnished. "I was reared in an atmosphere of high
+intelligence. My father had uncommon mental vigor. So had my brothers.
+Their daily habits and pursuits and pleasures, were intellectual, and
+I naturally imbibed from them a kindred taste. Their talk was not of
+beeves, nor of making money; that now universal passion had not
+entered into men and possessed them as it does now, or if it had, it
+was not in the sanctuary of our home,&mdash;there the money-changers did
+not come."</p>
+
+<p>The more we know of her home life, the less wonder we have at her
+mental development. She says that "at the age of eight, my father,
+whenever he was at home, kept me up and at his side till nine o'clock
+in the evening, to listen to him while he read aloud to the family
+Hume, or Shakspere, or Don Quixote, or Hudibras. Certainly I did not
+understand them, but some glances of celestial light reached my soul,
+and I caught from his magnetic sympathy some elevation of feeling, and
+that love of reading which has been to me an education." A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> modern
+girl is liable to nervous prostration without being kept up till nine
+on such juvenile literature as Hume and Shakspere at the age of eight;
+but Miss Sedgwick was a country girl who, in youth, lived out of doors
+and romped like a boy and, at the age of fifty, led a party of young
+nieces through France, Switzerland, and Italy, much of the way on foot
+and always at their head. Always fortune's favorite, she enjoyed among
+other things remarkably good health.</p>
+
+<p>She thinks she was ten years old when she read Rollin's Ancient
+History, spending the noon intermission, when of course she ought to
+have been at play, out of sight under her desk, where she "read, and
+munched, and forgot myself in Cyrus's greatness."</p>
+
+<p>A winter in New York, where she afterward spent so much of her time,
+was her first absence from home. She had a married sister there whose
+husband was in government employ, and her oldest brother was there
+studying law. She was eleven years old; the date was 1801; and her
+business in New York seems to have been to attend a French Dancing
+School of which at that era there was but one in the city. She saw her
+first play, and used to dry the still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> damp newspaper, in her
+eagerness to read the theatre announcements. She also experienced a
+very severe humiliation. She, with her brother, Theodore, attended a
+large dinner party at the house of a friend of her father. "Our host
+asked me, the only stranger guest, which part of a huge turkey, in
+which he had put his carving fork, I would take. I knew only one point
+of manners for such occasions, dear Alice,&mdash;that I must specify some
+part, and as ill luck would have it, the side-bone came first into my
+head, and 'Side-bone, sir,' I said. Oh what a lecture I got when we
+got home, the wretched little chit that compelled a gentleman to cut
+up a whole turkey to serve her! I cried myself to sleep that night."
+It was too bad to spoil that dinner party for the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother died when Miss Sedgwick was seventeen; her father when she
+was twenty-three. All her brothers and sisters were married and
+living, three of them in New York city, one in Albany, and one, her
+youngest brother, in Lenox. With this brother in Lenox, Miss Sedgwick
+for many happy years, had her home, at least her summer home, having
+five rooms in an annex to his house built for her, into which she
+gathered her household gods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> and where she dispensed hospitality to
+her friends. For many years, New York city was generally her winter
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Theoretically, we have arrived with this maiden at the age of
+twenty-three, but we must go back and read from one or two early
+letters. She is ten years old when, under date of 1800, she writes her
+father: "My dear papa,&mdash;Last week I received a letter from you which
+gave me inexpressible pleasure." This is the child's prattle of a girl
+of ten summers. She writes very circumspectly for her years of a new
+brother-in-law: "I see&mdash;indeed I think I see in Mr. Watson everything
+that is amiable. I am very much pleased with him; indeed we all are."
+The following is dated 1801, when she is eleven: "You say in your last
+letters that the time will soon come when you will take leave of
+Congress forever. That day shall I, in my own mind, celebrate forever;
+yes, as long as I live I shall reflect upon the dear time when my dear
+papa left a public life to live in a retired one with his dear wife
+and children; then you will have the pleasure to think, when you quit
+the doors of the House, that you are going to join your family
+forever; but, my dear papa, I cannot feel as you will when looking
+back on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> your past life in Congress. You will remember how much you
+have exerted yourself in order to save your country."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in the relations of this Sedgwick family, not
+perhaps without parallel, but very beautiful. These brothers and
+sisters write to each other like lovers. To her brother Robert, Miss
+Sedgwick writes, "I have just finished, my dear brother, the second
+perusal of your kind letter received to-day.... I do love my brothers
+with perfect devotedness, and they are such brothers as may put
+gladness into a sister's spirit.... Never, my dear Robert, did brother
+and sister have a more ample experience of the purity of love, and the
+sweet exchange of offices of kindness that binds hearts indissolubly
+together."</p>
+
+<p>There are three letters from Robert Sedgwick to show how he
+reciprocated this affection. He says: "I can never be sufficiently
+grateful to my Maker for having given me such a sister. If I had no
+other sin to answer for than that of being so unworthy of her as I am,
+it would be more than I can bear, and yet when I read your letters I
+almost think that I am what I should be. I know I have a strong
+aspiration to be such, and I am sure they make me better as well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> as
+happier." Again, he says: "Thanks, thanks&mdash;how cold a word, my dearest
+Kate, in return for your heart-cheering letter! It came to me in the
+midst of my Nol Pros., special verdicts, depositions, protests,
+business correspondence, etc., like a visitant from the skies. Indeed,
+my dearest Kate, you may laugh at me if you will for saying so, but
+there is something about your influence over me which seems to have
+shuffled off this mortal coil of earthiness; to be unmixed with
+anything that remains to be perfected; to be perfectly spiritualized,
+and yet to retain its contact with every part of its subject.... Lest
+I should talk foolishly on this subject, I will dismiss it, only
+begging you not to forget how your letters cheer, rejoice, elevate,
+renovate me."</p>
+
+<p>Here is a love-letter from Theodore, her eldest brother: "Having this
+moment perused your letter the third time, I could not help giving you
+an answer to it, though there be nothing in it interrogative. Nor was
+it meant to be tender or sentimental, or learned, but like all your
+letters, it is so sweet, so excellent, so natural, so much without
+art, and yet so much beyond art, that, old, cold, selfish, unthankful
+as I am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> God that I have such a
+sister." Let us revenge ourselves upon these brother and sister lovers
+by saying that perhaps they did not feel any more than some other
+people, only they had a habit of expressing their feelings. If that
+was all, we cannot deny that the habit was very beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Why did Miss Sedgwick never marry? We are not distinctly told; but she
+did not need to, with such lovers in her own family. Besides, how
+could she find any one, in her eyes, equal to those brothers, and how
+could she marry any one of lower merit? "I am satisfied," she writes,
+"by long and delightful experience, that I can never love any body
+better than my brothers. I have no expectation of ever finding their
+equal in worth and attraction, therefore&mdash;do not be alarmed; I am not
+on the verge of a vow of celibacy, nor have I the slightest intention
+of adding any rash resolutions to the ghosts of those that have been
+frightened to death by the terrors of maiden life; but therefore&mdash;I
+shall never change my condition until I change my mind." This is at
+the age of twenty-three.</p>
+
+<p>Later in life, after many changes had come, she seems to have wished
+she had not been so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> very hard to suit. Fifteen years roll away,
+during which we see one suitor after another, dismissed, when she
+writes in a journal not to be read in her life-time, "It is difficult
+for one who began life as I did, the primary object of affection to
+many, to come by degrees to be first to none, and still to have my
+love remain in its full strength, and craving such returns as have no
+substitute.... It is the necessity of a solitary condition, an
+unnatural state.... From my own experience I would not advise any one
+to remain unmarried, for my experience has been a singularly happy
+one. My feelings have never been embittered by those slights and
+taunts that the repulsive and neglected have to endure; there has been
+no period of my life to the present moment when I might not have
+allied myself respectably, and to those sincerely attached to me.... I
+have troops of friends, some devotedly attached to me, and yet the
+result of this very happy experience is that there is no substitute
+for those blessings which Providence has placed first, and ordained
+that they shall be purchased at the dearest sacrifice." Those who have
+paid the price and purchased the blessings may have the satisfaction
+of knowing that, according to Miss Sedgwick's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> mature opinion, they
+have chosen the better part.</p>
+
+<p>We might call this statement the Confessions of an Old Maid who might
+have done better. She closes her testimony with an acknowledgment that
+she "ought to be grateful and humble," and the "hope, through the
+grace of God, to rise more above the world, to attain a higher and
+happier state of feeling, to order my house for that better world
+where self may lose something of its engrossing power." This religious
+attitude was not unusual, nor merely conventional and unmeaning. All
+the Sedgwick family seem to have been constitutionally religious. The
+mother was almost painfully meek in her protest against her husband's
+embarking upon a public career; Mr. Sedgwick has been deterred from
+joining a church only by some impossible articles of puritan divinity,
+but cannot die happy until he has received the communion from Dr.
+Channing; "both my sisters were very religious," says Miss Sedgwick;
+while the letters I have quoted from two of her brothers, young
+lawyers and men of the world, have the devoutness of the psalms. "I
+can never be sufficiently grateful to my Maker for having given me
+such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> sister," says Robert; and Theodore: "selfish, unthankful as I
+am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a
+sister." Of course one can use a religious dialect without meaning
+much by it, but these Sedgwicks were cultivated people, who thought
+for themselves, and did not speak cant to each other.</p>
+
+<p>Since it was a religious impulse that turned Miss Sedgwick's mind to
+literature, it is worth while to follow the thread of her spiritual
+history. This was written at the age of twenty when she was looking
+for a religious experience that never came, and would have considered
+herself one of the wicked: "On no subject would I voluntarily be
+guilty of hypocricy, and on that which involves all the importance of
+our existence I should shrink from the slightest insincerity. You
+misunderstood my last letter. I exposed to you a state of mind and
+feeling produced, not by religious impressions, but by the convictions
+of reason." Of course "reason" was no proper organ of religion; but
+besides this defect, her interest in serious things was liable to
+interruption "by the cares and pleasures of the world" and, perhaps
+worst of all, "I have not a fixed belief on some of the most material
+points of our religion." One does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> see how a person in this state
+of mind should have anything to call "our religion." She seems to have
+advanced much further in a letter to her brother Robert, three years
+later: "I long to see you give your testimony of your acceptance of
+the forgiving love of your Master.</p>
+
+<p>... God grant, in his infinite mercy, that we may all touch the
+garment of our Savior's righteousness and be made whole."</p>
+
+<p>The editor of these letters tells us that Miss Sedgwick is now a
+member of Dr. Mason's church in New York city, having joined at the
+age of twenty, or soon after the letter in which she says she is not
+satisfied on certain points of doctrine. Dr. Mason is described as an
+undiluted Calvinist, "who then was the most conspicuous pulpit orator
+in the country&mdash;a man confident in his faith and bold to audacity."
+Miss Sedgwick stands the strong meat of Calvinism ten years, when we
+have this letter. "I presume you saw the letter I wrote Susan, in
+which I said that I did not think I should go to Dr. Mason's Church
+again.... You know, my dear Frances, that I never adopted some of the
+articles of the creed of that church and some of those upon which the
+doctor is fond of expatiating, and which appear to me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> both
+unscriptural and very unprofitable, and, I think, very demoralizing."</p>
+
+<p>What perhaps stimulated the zeal of Dr. Mason to insist upon doctrines
+always objectionable to Miss Sedgwick, was an attempt then being made
+to establish a Unitarian church in New York city. She has not joined
+in the movement, but does not know but it may come to that. It is a
+critical moment in Miss Sedgwick's history, and it happened at this
+time she went to hear Dr. Mason's farewell sermon. "As usual," she
+says, "he gave the rational Christians an anathema. He said they had
+fellowship with the devil: no, he would not slander the devil, they
+were worse, etc." Very possibly this preaching had its proper effect
+upon many hearers, and they gave the "rational Christians" a wide
+berth, but it precipitated Miss Sedgwick into their ranks. She was not
+then a thorough-going Unitarian, saying, "there are some of your
+articles of unbelief that I am not Protestant enough to subscribe to";
+a little more gentleness on the part of Dr. Mason could have kept her,
+but she could not stand "what seems to me," she says, "a gross
+violation of the religion of the Redeemer, and an insult to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> large
+body of Christians entitled to respect and affection."</p>
+
+<p>She joined the tabooed circle in 1821, and wrote from Stockbridge,
+"Some of my friends here have, as I learn, been a little troubled, but
+after the crime of confessed Unitarianism, nothing can surprise them";
+she longs to look upon a Christian minister who does not regard her as
+"a heathen and a publican." An aunt, very fond of her, said to her,
+one day as they were parting, "Come and see me as often as you can,
+dear, for you know, after this world we shall never meet again."</p>
+
+<p>These religious tribulations incited her to write a short story, after
+the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, to contrast two kinds of
+religion, of one of which she had seen more than was good. The story
+was to appear as a tract, but it outgrew the dimensions of a tract,
+and was published as a book under the title of "A New England Tale."
+It is not a masterpiece of literature but, like all of Miss Sedgwick's
+works, it contains some fine delineations of character and vivid
+descriptions of local scenery. It can be read to-day with interest and
+pleasure. As a dramatic presentation of the self-righteous and the
+meek, in a New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> England country town a century ago, it is very
+effective. "Mrs. Wilson" is perhaps a more stony heart than was common
+among the 'chosen vessels of the Lord,' but so the Pharisee in the
+parable may have been a trifle exaggerated. The advantage of this kind
+of writing is that you do not miss the point of the story.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dewey says The New England Tale gave Miss Sedgwick an "immediate
+position in the world of American literature." Her brother Theodore
+wrote, "It exceeds all my expectations, fond and flattering as they
+were"; her brother Harry, "I think, dear Kate, that your destiny is
+fixed. As you are such a Bibleist, I only say don't put your light
+under a bushel." That the book did not fall still-born is evident when
+he says further, "The orthodox do all they can to put it down." On the
+other hand, her publisher wanted to print a cheap edition of 3,000
+copies for missionary purposes. I should like to see that done to-day
+by some zealous liberal-minded publisher.</p>
+
+<p>The New England Tale appeared in 1822, when Cooper had only published
+"Precaution" and "The Spy." In 1824, Miss Sedgwick published
+"Redwood," of which a second edition was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> called for the same year,
+and which was republished in England and translated into French. It
+reached distinction in the character of Deborah Lenox, of which Miss
+Edgworth said, "It is to America what Scott's characters are to
+Scotland, valuable as original pictures." Redwood was reviewed by
+Bryant in the North American, in an article which, he says, was up to
+that time his "most ambitious attempt in prose." "Hope Leslie"
+appeared in 1827. It was so much better than its predecessors, said
+the <em>Westminster Review</em>, that one would not suppose it by the same
+hand. Sismondi, the Swiss historian, wrote the author a letter of
+thanks and commendation, which was followed by a life-long friendship
+between these two authors. Mrs. Child, then Miss Francis and the
+author of "Hobomok" and "The Rebels," wrote her that she had nearly
+completed a story on Capt. John Smith which now she will not dare to
+print, but she surrenders with less reluctance, she says, "for I love
+my conqueror." "Is not that beautiful?" says Miss Sedgwick. "Better to
+write and to feel such a sentiment than to indite volumes."</p>
+
+<p>"Clarence" was published in 1830, and I am glad to say, she sold the
+rights to the first edi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>tion for $1,200, before the critics got hold
+of it. The scene is laid in New York and in high life. The story, said
+the <em>North American Review</em>, is "improbable" but not "dull." Miss
+Dewey says, "It is the most romantic and at the same time the wittiest
+of her novels," but Bryant says it has been the least read. "The
+Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America," appeared in 1835, and
+Bryant called it "a charming tale of home life, thought by many to be
+the best of her novels properly so called."</p>
+
+<p>If Miss Sedgwick had written none of these more elaborate works, she
+would deserve a permanent place in our literature for a considerable
+library of short stories, among which I should name "A Berkshire
+Tradition," a pathetic tale of the Revolution; "The White Scarf," a
+romantic story of Medi&aelig;val France; "Fanny McDermot," a study of
+conventional morality; "Home," of which the <em>Westminster Review</em> said,
+"We wish this book was in the hands of every mechanic in England";
+"The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man" of which Joseph Curtis, the
+philanthropist, said, "in all his experiences he had never known so
+much good fruit from the publication of any book"; and, not least,
+"Live and let Live: or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> domestic service illustrated," of which Dr.
+Channing wrote, "I cannot, without violence to my feelings, refrain
+from expressing to you the great gratification with which I have read
+your 'Live and let Live.' Thousands will be better and happier for
+it.... Your three last books, I trust, form an era in our literature."</p>
+
+<p>This was high praise, considering that there was then no higher
+literary authority in America than Dr. Channing. However, a message
+from Chief Justice Marshall, through Judge Story, belongs with it:
+"Tell her I have read with great pleasure everything she has written,
+and wish she would write more." She had gained an enviable position in
+literature and she had done a great deal of useful work during the
+fifteen years since the timid appearance of "A New England Tale," but
+she seems to have regarded her books as simply a "by-product": "My
+author existence has always seemed something accidental, extraneous,
+and independent of my inner self. My books have been a pleasant
+occupation and excitement in my life.... But they constitute no
+portion of my happiness&mdash;that is, of such as I derive from the dearest
+relations of life. When I feel that my writings have made any one
+hap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>pier or better, I feel an emotion of gratitude to Him who has made
+me the medium of any blessing to my fellow creatures."</p>
+
+<p>In 1839, Miss Sedgwick went to Europe in company with her brother
+Robert, and other relatives. The party was abroad two years and, on
+its return, Miss Sedgwick collected her European letters and published
+them in two volumes. They give one a view of Europe as seen by an
+intelligent observer still in the first half of the last century. She
+breakfasted with Rogers, the banker and poet, with whom she met
+Macaulay whose conversation was to her "rich and delightful. Some
+might think he talks too much; but none, except from their own
+impatient vanity, could wish it were less." She had tea at Carlyle's,
+found him "simple, natural and kindly, his conversation as picturesque
+as his writings." She "had an amusing evening at Mr. Hallam's"; he
+made her "quite forget he was the sage of the 'Middle Ages.'" At
+Hallam's she met Sydney Smith who was "in the vein, and we saw him, I
+believe, to advantage. His wit is not, as I expected, a succession of
+brilliant explosions but a sparkling stream of humor."</p>
+
+<p>In Geneva, she visited her friends, the Sis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>mondis, and in Turin
+received a call from Silvio Pellico, martyr to Italian liberty. "He is
+of low stature and slightly made, a sort of etching of a man with
+delicate and symmetrical features, just enough body to gravitate and
+keep the spirit from its natural upward flight&mdash;a more shadowy Dr.
+Channing."</p>
+
+<p>Soon after Miss Sedgwick's return from Europe, she became connected
+with the Women's Prison Association of New York City, of which from
+1848 to 1863 she was president. An extract from one letter must
+suffice to suggest the nature of her activities in connection with
+this and kindred philanthropies: "It is now just ten, and I have come
+up from the City Hall, in whose dismal St. Giles precincts I have been
+to see a colored ragged school.... My Sundays are not days of rest....
+My whole soul is sickened; and to-day when I went to church filled
+with people in their fine summer clothes, and heard a magnificent
+sermon from Dr. Dewey, and thought of the streets and dens through
+which I had just walked, I could have cried out, Why are ye here?"</p>
+
+<p>A fellow-member of the Prison Association, who often accompanied her
+on her visits to hospitals and prisons, "especially the Tombs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+Blackwell's, and Randall's Island," says, "In her visitations, she was
+called upon to kneel at the bedside of the sick and dying. The
+sweetness of her spirit, and the delicacy of her nature, felt by all
+who came within her atmosphere, seemed to move the unfortunate to ask
+this office of her, and it was never asked in vain."</p>
+
+<p>Always a philanthropist, Miss Sedgwick was not a "reformer" in the
+technical sense; that is, she did not enlist in the "movements" of her
+generation, for Temperance, or Anti-Slavery, or Woman's Rights. She
+shrunk from the excesses of the "crusaders," but she was never slow in
+striking a blow in a good cause. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published in
+1852, but its indictment of slavery is not more complete than Miss
+Sedgwick made in "Redwood," her second novel, twenty-five years
+before. A planter's boy sees a slave starved to famishing and then
+whipped to death. It hurt his boy heart, but he afterward became
+hardened to such necessary severity and he tells the story to a fellow
+planter with apologies for his youthful sentimentality. Does "Uncle
+Tom's Cabin" show more clearly the two curses of slavery:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> cruelty to
+the slave and demoralization to the master?</p>
+
+<p>She sympathized with the abolitionists in their purpose but not always
+with their methods: "The great event of the past week has been the
+visit of the little apostle of Abolitionism&mdash;Lucy Stone." This was in
+1849 when Mrs. Stone was thirty-one. "She has one of the very sweetest
+voices I ever heard, a readiness of speech and grace that furnish the
+external qualifications of an orator&mdash;a lovely countenance too&mdash;and
+the intensity, entire forgetfulness and the divine calmness that fit
+her to speak in the great cause she has undertaken." But in spite of
+this evident sympathy with the purpose of the Abolitionists, Miss
+Sedgwick declined to attend a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society,
+saying: "It seemed to me that so much had been intemperately said, so
+much rashly urged, on the death of that noble martyr, John Brown, by
+the Abolitionists, that it was not right to appear among them as one
+of them."</p>
+
+<p>Not even Lucy Stone, however, could have felt more horror at the
+institution of slavery. The Compromise Measures of 1850 made her
+shudder: "my hands are cold as ice; the blood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> has curdled in my
+heart; that word <em>compromise</em> has a bad savor when truth and right are
+in question." When the Civil War came, in her seventieth year, she had
+"an intense desire to live to see the conclusion of the struggle," but
+could not conjecture "how peace and good neighborhood are ever to
+follow from this bitter hate." "It is delightful to see the gallantry
+of some of our men, who are repeating the heroic deeds that seemed
+fast receding to fabulous times." Some of these young heroes were very
+near to her. Maj. William Dwight Sedgwick, who fell on the bloody
+field of Antietam was her nephew, Gen. John Sedgwick, killed at the
+battle of Spottsylvania, was her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>As she was not in the Anti-Slavery crusade, so she was not in the
+Woman's Rights crusade. She wished women to have a larger sphere, and
+she did much to enlarge the sphere of her sex, but it was by taking it
+and making it, rather than by talking about it. "Your <em>might</em> must be
+your <em>right</em>," she says in a chapter on The Rights of Women, in "Means
+and Ends." Voting did not seem to her a function suited to women: "I
+cannot believe it was ever intended that women should lead armies,
+harangue in halls of legislation, bustle up to ballot-boxes, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> sit
+on judicial tribunals." The gentle Lucy Stone would not have
+considered this argument conclusive, but it satisfied Miss Sedgwick.</p>
+
+<p>In 1857, after a silence of twenty-two years, in which only short
+stories and one or two biographies came from her hand, she published
+another two-volume novel entitled, "Married or Single." It is perhaps
+her best work; at least it has been so considered by many readers. She
+was then sixty-seven and, though she had ten more years to live, they
+were years of declining power. These last years were spent at the home
+of her favorite niece, Mrs. William Minot, Jr., in West Roxbury,
+Mass., and there tenderly and reverently cared for, she died in 1867.</p>
+
+<p>Bryant, who was her life-long friend, and who, at her instance wrote
+some of his hymns, gives this estimate of her character: "Admirable as
+was her literary life, her home life was more so; and beautiful as
+were the examples set forth in her writings, her own example was, if
+possible, still more beautiful. Her unerring sense of rectitude, her
+love of truth, her ready sympathy, her active and cheerful
+beneficence, her winning and gracious manners, the perfection of high
+breeding, make up a character, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]<br />[Pg 40]</a></span> idea of which, as it rests in my
+mind, I would not exchange for anything in her own interesting works
+of fiction."</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]<br />[Pg 42]<br />[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_II" id="Chapter_II"></a>II<br /><br />
+MARY LOVELL WARE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 437px;">
+<img src="images/ware.jpg" width="437" height="500" alt="MARY LOVELL WARE" title="MARY LOVELL WARE" />
+<span class="caption">MARY LOVELL WARE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of all the saints in the calendar of the Church there is no name more
+worthy of the honor than that of Mary Lovell Ware. The college of
+cardinals, which confers the degree of sainthood for the veneration of
+faithful Catholics, will never recognize her merits and encircle her
+head with a halo, but when the list of Protestant saints is made up,
+the name of Mary L. Ware will be in it, and among the first half dozen
+on the scroll.</p>
+
+<p>The writer was a student in the Divinity School at Cambridge when a
+classmate commended to him the Memoirs of Mrs. Ware as one of the few
+model biographies. It was a book not laid down in the course of study;
+its reading was postponed for that convenient season for which one
+waits so long; but he made a mental note of the "Memoirs of Mary L.
+Ware," which many years did not efface. There is a book one must read,
+he said to himself, if he would die happy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ware's maiden name was Pickard. To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> the end of her days, when she
+put herself in a pillory as she often did, she called herself by her
+maiden name. "That," she would say, "was Mary Pickard." I infer that
+she thought Mary Pickard had been a very bad girl.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother's name was Lovell,&mdash;Mary Lovell,&mdash;granddaughter of "Master
+Lovell," long known as a classical teacher in colonial Boston, and
+daughter of James Lovell, an active Revolutionist, a prominent member
+of the Continental Congress and, from the end of the war to his death,
+Naval officer in the Boston Custom House. Mr. Lovell had eight sons,
+one of whom was a successful London merchant, and one daughter, who
+remained with her parents until at twenty-five she married Mr. Pickard
+and who, when her little girl was five years old returned, as perhaps
+an only daughter should, to take care of her parents in their old age.
+So it happened that the childhood of Mrs. Ware was passed at her
+grandfather Lovell's, in Pearl St., Boston, then an eligible place of
+residence.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pickard was an Englishman by birth, and a merchant with business
+connections in London and Boston, between which cities, for a time,
+his residence alternated. Not much is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> said of him in the Memoirs,
+beyond the fact that he was an Episcopalian with strong attachment to
+the forms of his church, as an Englishman might be expected to be.</p>
+
+<p>Of Mrs. Pickard we learn more. She is said to have possessed a
+vigorous mind, to have been well educated and a fine
+conversationalist, with a commanding figure, benignant countenance,
+and dignified demeanor, so that one said of her, "She seems to have
+been born for an empress." Like her husband she was an Episcopalian
+though, according to the Memoirs, less strenuously Episcopalian than
+Mr. Pickard. She had been reared in a different school. Her
+father,&mdash;Mr. James Lovell&mdash;we are told, was a free-thinker, or as the
+Memoirs put it, "had adopted some infidel principles," and "treated
+religion with little respect in his family." The "infidels" of that
+day were generally good men, only they were not orthodox. Jefferson,
+Madison, Franklin and Washington were such infidels. After Channing's
+day, this kind of man here in New England was absorbed by the
+Unitarian movement, and, as a separate class, disappeared. Mrs.
+Pickard was bred in this school and she appears never to have
+forgotten her home training. "She was unosten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>tatious and charitable,"
+says an early friend, "and her whole life was an exhibition of the
+ascendency of <em>principle</em> over mere taste and feeling."</p>
+
+<p>Her religious attitude becomes interesting, because in an exceptional
+degree, she formed her remarkable daughter,&mdash;who was an only child and
+until the age of thirteen had no teacher except this forceful and
+level-headed mother.</p>
+
+<p>With these antecedents, Mary Lovell Pickard was born in Boston,
+October 2, 1798, John Adams being then President. In 1802, Mary having
+passed her third summer, Mr. Pickard's business called him to London,
+where he resided with his family two years, so that the child's fifth
+birthday was duly celebrated in mid-ocean on the homeward voyage. In a
+letter of Mrs. Pickard, written during this London residence, she
+says, "Mr. Pickard is even more anxious than I to go home. Mary is the
+only contented one. She is happy all the time." There is so much that
+is sad in this record that, before we have done, the reader will be
+glad the little girl had at least a bright and sunny childhood to
+remember. It appears she did remember it. It may not be remarkable,
+but it is interesting, that the experiences of this early London
+life,&mdash;be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>tween her third and fifth year,&mdash;made an indelible
+impression upon her, so that twenty years later when she was again in
+England, much to her own delight, she "recognized her old London home
+and other objects with which she was then familiar."</p>
+
+<p>A lady who was a fellow passenger of the Pickards on their homeward
+voyage was struck by the gentle management of the mother and the easy
+docility of the child. To say, "It will make me unhappy if you do
+that," was an extreme exercise of maternal authority, to which the
+child yielded unresisting obedience. This, of course, is told to the
+credit of the child, but the merit, probably belongs to the mother.
+Doubtless we could all have such children if we were that kind of a
+parent. A little tact, unfailing gentleness, and an infinite self
+control: with these, it would seem one may smile and kiss a child into
+an angel.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving in Boston, Mrs. Pickard took her family to her father's,
+where she remained until her death, and where, we read, "with parents
+and grandparents, Mary found a home whose blessings filled her heart."
+Being an only child, with four elderly persons, Mary was likely to be
+too much petted or too much fret<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>ted. We are glad to know that she was
+not fretted or over-trained. In a letter of retrospect, she writes,
+"For many years a word of blame never reached my ears." An early
+friend of the family writes, "It has been said that Mary was much
+indulged; and I believe it may be said so with truth. But she was not
+indulged in idleness, selfishness, and rudeness; she was indulged in
+healthful sports, in pleasant excursions, and in companionship with
+other children."</p>
+
+<p>Everything went smoothly with her until the age of ten when, rather
+earlier than most children, she discovered her conscience: "At ten
+years of age I waked up to a sense of the danger of the state of
+indulgence in which I was living"; but let us hope the crisis was not
+acute. It does not seem to have been. According to the testimony of
+her first teacher, she was simply precocious morally, but not at all
+morbid. Her school was at Hingham, whither she was sent at the age of
+thirteen. The teacher says that with her "devotedness to the highest
+objects and purposes of our existence, she was one of the most lively
+and playful girls among her companions, and a great favorite with them
+all."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>There seems to have been really no cloud upon her existence up to this
+point,&mdash;the age of thirteen. I have had a reason for dwelling upon
+this charming period of her childhood, untroubled by a cloud, because
+from this date until her death, the hand of God seems to have been
+very heavy upon her, afflictions fell upon her like rain, and it
+required a brave spirit to carry the burdens appointed for her to
+bear. Happily, she had a brave spirit, did not know that her life was
+hard, "gloried in tribulation," like St. Paul, and was never more
+cheerful or thankful than when she was herself an invalid, with an
+invalid husband to be cared for like a baby, seven children to be
+clothed and fed, and not enough money at the year's end to square
+accounts. Ruskin tells of a servant who had served his mother
+faithfully fifty-seven years. "She had," he says, "a natural gift and
+specialty for doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of the
+sick-room; so that she was never quite in her glory unless some of us
+were ill." It will be seen further on that these were only a part of
+the accomplishments of Mrs. Ware. It is fortunate if a woman is so
+made that her spirits rise as her troubles thicken, but the reader of
+the story will be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> thankful that her life was not all a battle, that
+her childhood was more than ordinarily serene and sunny, and that not
+for a dozen years at least, did she have to be a heroine in order to
+be happy.</p>
+
+<p>Mary had been in Hingham about half a year, enjoying her school-girl
+life, when her mother was taken ill, fatally ill as it proved, and the
+child, then at the age of thirteen, was called home and installed in
+the sick-room as nurse. This was the beginning of sorrow. The mother
+lingered through the winter and died in the following May. There
+remained of the family, the grandparents, one son of fine talents, but
+of unfortunate habits, and her father, "broken in spirits and in
+fortune, clinging to his only child with doting and dependent
+affection." We can see that it could not have been a cheerful home for
+a young girl of thirteen. Some thirty years later, she wrote to one of
+her children, "I think I have felt the want all my life of a more
+cheerful home in my early childhood, a fuller participation in the
+pleasures and 'follies' of youth." I put this reflection here, because
+it does not apply to the years preceding the loss of her mother while
+it exactly fits the period that now follows.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>The year following her mother's death, Mary attended a girls' school
+in Boston. A passage from a letter written at this period will show
+something of her quality. It is dated February 27, 1813, when she was
+fourteen and a few months. Besides, she had been at school, six months
+at a time, a total of about one year. She had been mentioning two or
+three novels, and then discourses as follows: "Novels are generally
+supposed to be improper books for young people, as they take up the
+time which ought to be employed in more useful pursuits; which is
+certainly very true; but as a recreation to the mind, such books as
+these cannot possibly do any hurt, as they are good moral lessons.
+Indeed, I think there is scarcely any book from which some good may
+not be derived; though it cannot be expected that any young person has
+judgment enough to leave all the bad and take only the good, when
+there is a great proportion of the former." Perhaps I am wrong in
+thinking this an exhibition of remarkable reflection and expression in
+a girl well under fifteen, whether she had been at school or
+otherwise. Mrs. Ware was always a wonderful letter-writer, though, if
+we take her word for it, she had little of her mother's gift as a
+conversa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>tionalist. It seems to have been a life-long habit to see the
+old year out and the new year in, spending the quiet hours in writing
+letters to her friends. In one of these anniversary letters, written
+when she was fifteen, she says, "I defy anyone to tell from my
+appearance that I have not everything to make me happy. I have much
+and am happy. My little trials are essential to my happiness." In that
+last sentence we have the entire woman. Her trials were always, as she
+thought, essential to her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>On this principle, her next twelve years ought to have been very
+happy, since they were sufficiently full of tribulation. The two years
+following her mother's death, passed in the lonely home in Boston,
+were naturally depressing. Besides, she was born for religion, and the
+experience through which she had passed had created a great hunger in
+her soul. Trinity Church, into which she had been baptized, had not
+yet passed through the hands of Phillips Brooks, and its
+ministrations, admirable as they are for the ordinary child, were
+inadequate for the wants of a thoughtful girl like Mary Pickard. The
+final effect was, she says, to throw her more upon herself and to
+compel her to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> seek, "by reading, meditation and prayer, to find that
+knowledge and stimulus to virtue which I failed to find in the
+ministrations of the Sabbath."</p>
+
+<p>At this critical period, she returned to the school at Hingham, which
+she had left two years before, and there, in the Third Church, then
+presided over by Rev. Henry Colman, one of the fathers of the
+Unitarian heresy, she found peace and satisfaction to her spirit. Ten
+years later, she spent a week in Hingham, visiting friends and
+reviving, as she says, the memory of the "first awakening of my mind
+to high and holy thoughts and resolves." The crisis which, elsewhere,
+we read of at the age of ten, was a subordinate affair. This Hingham
+experience, at the age of sixteen, was really the moral event in her
+history.</p>
+
+<p>As hers was a type of religion,&mdash;she would have said "piety",&mdash;a blend
+of reason and sentiment, peculiar to the Unitarianism of that
+generation, hardly to be found in any household of faith to-day, we
+must let her disclose her inner consciousness. One Saturday morning,
+she writes a long letter to one of her teachers saying that she feels
+it a duty and a privilege "to be a member of the Church of Christ,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+but she fears she does not understand what the relation implies, and
+says, "Tell me if you should consider it a violation of the sacredness
+of the institution, to think I might with impunity be a member of it.
+I am well aware of the condemnation denounced on those who <em>partake</em>
+unworthily." She refers to the Lord's Supper. It is to be hoped that
+her teacher knew enough to give the simple explanation of that dark
+saying of the apostle about eating unworthily. At all events, she
+connected herself with the church, received the communion, and was
+very happy. "From the moment I had decided what to do, not a feeling
+arose which I could wish to suppress; conscious of pure motives, all
+within was calm, and I wondered how I could for a moment hesitate.
+They were feelings I never before experienced, and for once I realized
+that it is only when we are at peace with ourselves that we can enjoy
+true happiness.... I could not sleep, and actually laid awake all
+night out of pure happiness."</p>
+
+<p>After a few months, sooner than she expected, she returns to Boston
+and sits under the ministrations of Dr. Channing, to her an object of
+veneration. She writes that her heart is too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> full for utterance: "It
+will not surprise you that Mr. Channing's sermons are the cause; but
+no account that I could give could convey any idea of them. You have
+heard some of the same class; they so entirely absorb the feelings as
+to render the mind incapable of action, and consequently leave on the
+memory at times no distinct impression." I should like to quote all
+she says of Channing, both as a revelation of him, and of herself. She
+heard him read the psalm, "What shall I render unto God for all his
+mercies?" and says, "The ascription of praise which followed was more
+truly sublime than anything I ever heard or read." It must have been
+an event,&mdash;it certainly was for her,&mdash;to listen to one of Dr.
+Channing's prayers: "It seems often to me, while in the hour of prayer
+I give myself up to the thought of heaven, as though I had in reality
+left the world, and was enjoying what is promised to the Christian. I
+fear, however, these feelings are too often delusive; we substitute
+the love of holiness for the actual possession."</p>
+
+<p>There her sanity comes in to check her emotionalism. She is reflecting
+upon another experience with Dr. Channing when she comes very near
+making a criticism upon him. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> tells us that she does not mean him;
+he is excepted from these remarks, but she says, "There are few
+occasions which will authorize a minister to excite the feelings of an
+audience in a very great degree, and none which can make it allowable
+for him to rest in mere excitement." To complete the portraiture of
+her soul, I will take a passage from a letter written at the age of
+twenty-five, when death has at last stripped her of all her family, "I
+believe that all events that befall us are exactly such as are best
+adapted to improve us; and I find in a perfect confidence in the
+wisdom and love which I know directs them, a source of peace which no
+other thing can give; and in the difficulty which I find in acting
+upon this belief I see a weakness of nature, which those very trials
+are designed to assist us in overcoming, and which trial alone can
+conquer."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Pickards were not common even in that generation, but this creed
+was then common, and this blend of reason and religious feeling,
+fearlessly called "piety," was characteristic of Channing, her
+teacher, and of Henry Ware, afterward her husband. It was the real
+"Channing Unitarianism." Pity there is no more of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>Mary was sixteen years old,&mdash;to be exact, sixteen and a half; the
+serene and beautiful faith of Channing had done its perfect work upon
+her; and she was now ready for whatever fate, or as she would have
+said, Providence, might choose to send. It sent the business failure
+of Mr. Pickard, in which not only his own fortune was swept away but
+also the estate of Mr. Lovell was involved. Upon the knowledge of this
+disaster, Mary wrote a cheerful letter, in which she said: "I should
+be sorry to think you consider me so weak as to bend under a change of
+fortune to which all are liable." Certainly she will not bend, but she
+is obliged to quit school and return to the shattered home.</p>
+
+<p>Before the summer was over, her grandfather, Mr. Lovell, died; whether
+the end was hastened by the financial embarrassments in which Mr.
+Pickard had involved him, is not said. Mrs. Lovell, the grandmother,
+followed her husband in two years,&mdash;for Mary, two years of assiduous
+nursing and tender care. Perhaps one sentence from a letter at this
+time will assist us in picturing her in this exacting service. She
+says that she is leading a monotonous existence, that her animal
+spirits are not sufficient for both duty and solitude, "And when
+evening closes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> and my beloved charge is laid peacefully to rest,
+excitement ceases, and I am thrown on myself for pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>With the death of the grandmother, the home was broken up, and Mary,
+trying to help her father do a little business without capital, went
+to New York city as his commercial agent. Her letters to her father
+are "almost exclusively business letters," and he on his part gives
+her "directions for the sale and purchase, not only of muslins and
+moreens, but also of skins, saltpetre, and the like."</p>
+
+<p>Details of this period of her career are not abundant in the Memoirs,
+and the death of her father, in 1823, put an end to her business
+apprenticeship.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently, she was not entirely destitute. At the time of his
+disaster, her father wrote, "As we calculated you would, after some
+time, have enough to support yourself, without mental or bodily
+exertion." That is, presumably, after the settlement of her
+grandfather's estate. As her biographer says, "Every member of her own
+family had gone, and she had smoothed the passage of everyone." But
+she had many friends, and one is tempted to say, Pity she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> could not
+have settled down in cozy quarters and made herself comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed she did make a fair start. She joined a couple of friends,
+going abroad in search of health, for a visit to England. She had
+relatives on the Lovell side, in comfortable circumstances near
+London, and an aunt on her father's side, in the north of England, in
+straightened circumstances. She resolved to make the acquaintance of
+all these relatives.</p>
+
+<p>The party arrived in Liverpool in April, 1824, and for a year and a
+half, during which their headquarters were in London, Paris was
+visited, Southern England and Wales were explored, and finally the
+Lovell relatives were visited and found to have good hearts and open
+arms. For these eighteen months, Mary Pickard's friends could have
+wished her no more delightful existence. She had tea with Mrs.
+Barbauld, heard Irving, then the famous London preacher, and saw other
+interesting persons and charming things in England. There is material
+for a very interesting chapter upon this delightful experience. It was
+followed by a drama of misery and horror, in which she was both
+spectator and actor, when young and old died around her as if smitten
+by pestilence, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> her own vigorous constitution was irreparably
+broken.</p>
+
+<p>This episode was vastly more interesting to her than the pleasant
+commonplace of travel, and much more in keeping with what seems to
+have been her destiny. In the autumn of her second year abroad, she
+went to discover her aunt, sister of Mr. Pickard, in Yorkshire. The
+writer of the Memoirs says that this visit "forms the most remarkable
+and in some respects the most interesting and important chapter of her
+life." She found her aunt much better than she expected, nearly
+overpowered with joy to see her, living in a little two story cottage
+of four rooms, which far exceeded anything she ever saw for neatness.
+The village bore the peculiarly English name of Osmotherly, and was
+the most primitive place she had ever been in. The inhabitants were
+all of one class and that the poorer class of laborers, ignorant as
+possible, but simple and sociable. Terrible to relate, smallpox,
+typhus fever, and whooping cough were at that moment epidemic in that
+village.</p>
+
+<p>It will be impossible to put the situation before us more briefly than
+by quoting a passage from one of her letters: "My aunt's two daughters
+are married and live in this village;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> one of them, with three
+children, has a husband at the point of death with a fever; his
+brother died yesterday of smallpox, and two of her children have the
+whooping-cough; added to this, their whole dependence is upon their
+own exertions, which are of course entirely stopped now.... You may
+suppose, under such a state of things, I shall find enough to do."</p>
+
+<p>The death of the husband, whom of course Miss Pickard nursed through
+his illness, is reported in the next letter, which contains also this
+characteristic statement, "It seems to me that posts of difficulty are
+my appointed lot and my element, for I do feel lighter and happier
+when I have difficulties to overcome. Could you look in upon me you
+would think it impossible that I could be even tolerably comfortable,
+and yet I am cheerful, and get along as easily as possible, and am in
+truth happy."</p>
+
+<p>Evidently, all we can do with such a person is to congratulate her
+over the most terrible experiences. In a letter five days later, the
+baby dies of whooping-cough, and in her arms; a fortnight later, the
+mother dies of typhus fever; within another month, two boys, now
+orphans, are down with the same fever at once, and one of them dies.
+In the space of eight weeks, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> saw five persons of one family
+buried, and four of them she had nursed. By this time, the aunt was
+ill, and Miss Pickard nursed her to convalescence.</p>
+
+<p>This campaign had lasted three months, and she left the scene of
+combat with a clear conscience. She was allowed a breathing spell of a
+month in which to visit some pleasant friends and recuperate her
+strength, when we find her back in Osmotherly again nursing her aunt.
+It was the end of December and she was the only servant in the house.
+Before this ordeal was over, she was taken ill herself, and had to be
+put to bed and nursed. In crossing a room, a cramp took her; she fell
+on the floor, lay all night in the cold, calling in vain for
+assistance. She did not finally escape from these terrible scenes
+until the end of January, five months from the time she entered them.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Pickard returned to Boston after an absence of about two years
+and a half, during which time, as one of her friends wrote her, "You
+have passed such trying scenes, have so narrowly escaped, and done
+more, much more, than almost any body ever did before." She went away
+a dear school-girl friend and a valued acquaintance; she was welcomed
+home as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> a martyr fit to be canonized, and was received as a
+conquering heroine.</p>
+
+<p>In a letter dated from Gretna Green, where so many run-away lovers
+have been made happy, she playfully reflects upon the possibilities of
+her visit, if only she had a lover, and concludes that she "must
+submit to single blessedness a little longer." Our sympathies would
+have been less taxed if she had submitted to single blessedness to the
+end. Why could she not now be quiet, let well enough alone, and make
+herself comfortable? Destiny had apparently ordered things for her
+quite differently. One cannot avoid his destiny, and it was her
+destiny to marry, and marriage was to bring her great happiness,
+tempered by great sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>The man who was to share her happiness and her sorrows was Rev. Henry
+Ware, Jr., then the almost idolized minister of the Second Church, in
+Boston. Mr. Ware was the son of another Henry Ware, professor of
+theology at Harvard, whose election to the chair of theology in 1806
+opened the great Unitarian controversy. Two sons of Professor Ware
+entered the ministry, Henry and William, the latter the first
+Unitarian minister settled in New York city. Rev. John F. Ware, well
+remembered as pastor of Arling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>ton St. Church in Boston, was the son
+of Henry, so that for more than half a century, the name of Ware was a
+great factor in Unitarian history.</p>
+
+<p>After Dr. Channing, Henry Ware was perhaps the most popular preacher
+in any Boston pulpit. One sermon preached by him on a New Year's eve,
+upon the Duty of Improvement, became memorable. In spite of a violent
+snow storm, the church was filled to overflowing, a delegation coming
+from Cambridge. Of this sermon, a hearer said: "No words from mortal
+lips ever affected me like those." There was a difference between
+Unitarian preaching then and now. That famous sermon closed like this:
+"I charge you, as in the presence of God, who sees and will judge
+you,&mdash;in the name of Jesus Christ, who beseeches you to come to him
+and live,&mdash;by all your hopes of happiness and life,&mdash;I charge you let
+not this year die, and leave you impenitent. Do not dare to utter
+defiance in its decaying hours. But, in the stillness of its awful
+midnight, prostrate yourselves penitently before your Maker; and let
+the morning sun rise upon you, thoughtful and serious men." One does
+not see how the so-called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> 'Evangelicals' could have quarreled with
+that preaching.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ware had been in his parish nine years, his age was thirty-two, he
+was in the prime of life, and at the climax of his power and his
+popularity. Three years before, he had been left a widower with three
+young children, one of whom became Rev. John F. Ware. That these two
+intensely religious natures, that of Mary Pickard and that of Henry
+Ware, should have been drawn together is not singular. In writing to
+his sister, Mr. Ware speaks tenderly of his late wife and says, "I
+have sought for the best mother to her children, and the best I have
+found." Late in life, one of these children said, "Surely God never
+gave a boy such a mother or a man such a friend."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Pickard engaged to be a very docile wife. "Instead of the
+self-dependent self-governed being you have known me," she writes to a
+friend, "I have learned to look to another for guidance and
+happiness." She is "as happy as mortal can be." Indeed it was almost
+too much for earth. "It has made me," she says, "more willing to leave
+the world and enjoy the happiness of heaven than I ever thought I
+should be. Strange that a thing from which of all others,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> I should
+have expected the very opposite effect, should have done this."</p>
+
+<p>The year following the marriage of these saintly lovers,&mdash;one can call
+them nothing less,&mdash;was one of exceeding happiness and of immense
+activity to both. It is not said, but we can see that each must have
+been a tonic to the other. Considerate persons felt a scruple about
+taking any of the time of their pastor's wife. "Mrs. Ware," said one,
+"at home and abroad, is the busiest woman of my acquaintance," and
+others felt that way. Before the year ended, Mrs. Ware had a boy baby
+of her own to increase her occupations and her happiness. It lived a
+few bright years, long enough to become a very attractive child and to
+give a severe wrench to her heart when it left her. This experience
+seems to have a certain fitness in a life in which every joy was to
+bring sorrow and every sorrow, by sheer will, was to be turned to joy.</p>
+
+<p>Of Mr. Ware, it is said that this first year "was one of the most
+active and also, to all human appearance, one of the most successful
+of his ministry." He put more work into his sermons, gave increased
+attention to the details of his parish, delivered a course of
+lectures, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> undertook other enterprises, some of which are
+specified; and, during a temporary absence of Mrs. Ware, wrote her
+that he had hoped he had turned over a new leaf, "but by foolish
+degrees, I have got back to all my accustomed carelessness and waste
+of powers, and am doing nothing in proportion to what I ought to do."</p>
+
+<p>But man is mortal, and there is a limit to human endurance. Mr. Ware
+could not lash himself into greater activity; but he was in good
+condition to be ill. In a journey from Northampton, he was prostrated
+by inflammation of the lungs, with hemorrhages, and after several
+weeks, Mrs. Ware, herself far from well, went to him and finally
+brought him home. This was the beginning of what became a very regular
+annual experience. I met a lady who was brought up on the Memoirs of
+Mary L. Ware, and who briefly put what had impressed her most, in this
+way: She said, "It seemed as though Mr. Ware was always going off on a
+journey for his health, and that Mrs. Ware was always going after him
+to bring him home"; if we remember this statement, and add the fact
+that these calls came more than once when Mrs. Ware was on the sick
+list herself, we shall be able greatly to shorten our history.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>This was the end of Mr. Ware's parish work. He was nursed through the
+winter and, in early spring, Mrs. Ware left her baby and took her
+invalid husband abroad, in pursuit of health, spending a year and a
+half in England, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy. It was, she
+afterward said, the most trying period of her life. Mr. Ware
+alternated between being fairly comfortable and very miserable, so
+that these Memoirs say "He enjoyed much, but suffered more." Still the
+travels would be interesting if we had time to follow them.</p>
+
+<p>Near the close of the first year abroad, Mrs. Ware's second child was
+born in Rome, and, although this was as she would have said,
+"providential," never was a child less needed in a family. Mrs. Ware
+had then two babies on her hands, and of these, her invalid husband
+was the greater care. In the following August, Mrs. Ware arrived in
+Boston with her double charge, and had the happiness to know that Mr.
+Ware was somewhat better in health than when he left home, a year and
+a half before.</p>
+
+<p>His parish, during his absence, had been in the care of a colleague,
+no other than the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you remember the New
+Year's Eve sermon of Mr. Ware, it will be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> evident that he must have
+left behind him a very conservative parish, and you will not be
+surprised that in about four years, Mr. Emerson found his chains
+intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ware had been invited to a professorship in the Harvard Divinity
+School, and it was to this and not to his parish that he returned. For
+the steady, one might say monotonous, duties of his professorship, Mr.
+Ware's health was generally sufficient. The lecture room did not exact
+the several hundred parish calls then demanded by a large city church,
+nor the exhausting effort which Mr. Ware and Dr. Channing put into the
+delivery of a sermon; and the lectures, once prepared, could be
+delivered and re-delivered from year to year. Real leisure was
+impossible to one of Mr. Ware's temperament, but here was a life of
+comparative leisure; and for Mrs. Ware, who shared all the joys and
+sorrows of her husband, the twelve years that follow brought a settled
+existence and very much happiness. Neither her own health nor that of
+her husband was ever very firm, and there was always a great emptiness
+in the family purse, but with Mrs. Ware, these were, as with Paul,
+"light afflictions" which were but for a mo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>ment, and she did not let
+them disturb her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Impossible as it may seem, they contributed to her happiness. She made
+them contribute to it. She says in a letter of 1831, "Of my winter's
+sickness I cannot write; it contained a long life of enjoyment, and
+what I hoped would be profitable thought and reflection." She repeats
+this statement to another correspondent, and says, with apparent
+regret, that the illness did not bring her "to that cheerful
+willingness to resign my life, after which I strove." You cannot send
+this woman any trial which she will not welcome, because she wants to
+be made to want to go to heaven, and she is as yet not quite ready for
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ware has been dangerously ill, and of course she could not spare
+herself for heaven until he recovered, but this trial did something
+quite as good for her: "My husband's danger renewed the so oft
+repeated testimony that strength is ever at hand for those who need
+it, gave me another exercise of trust in that mighty arm which can
+save to the uttermost, and in its result is a new cause for gratitude
+to Him who has so abundantly blessed me all the days of my life." It
+is good to see what the old-fashioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> doctrine that God really is,
+and is good, did for one who actually believed.</p>
+
+<p>That first baby, whom she left behind when she went abroad with her
+invalid husband, died in 1831; the mother fainted when the last breath
+left the little body; but this is the way she writes of it: "I have
+always looked upon the death of children rather as a subject of joy
+than sorrow, and have been perplexed at seeing so many, who would bear
+what seemed to me much harder trials with firmness, so completely
+overwhelmed by this, as is frequently the case."</p>
+
+<p>After that, one is almost ashamed to mention the trifle that the
+income of this family was very small. Mr. Ware, after 1834 <em>Dr.</em> Ware,
+held a new professorship, the endowment of which was yet mostly
+imaginary. The social demands took no account of the family income;
+the unexpected guest always dropping in; at certain times, it is said,
+"shoals of visitors;" and the larder always a little scantily
+furnished. If one wants to know how one ought to live under such
+circumstances, here is your shining example. "There were no apologies
+at that table," we are told. "If unexpected guests were not always
+filled, they were never annoyed, nor suffered to think much about it."
+"I remember," says a guest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> "the wonder I felt at her humility and
+dignity in welcoming to her table on some occasion a troop of
+accidental guests, when she had almost nothing to offer but her
+hospitality. The absence of all apologies and of all mortification,
+the ease and cheerfulness of the conversation, which became the only
+feast, gave me a lesson never forgotten, although never learned."</p>
+
+<p>The problem of dress was as simple to Mrs. Ware as was the
+entertainment of her guests. "As to her attire," says an intimate
+friend, "we should say no one thought of it at all, because of its
+simplicity, and because of her ease of manners and dignity of
+character. Yet the impression is qualified, though in one view
+confirmed, by hearing that, in a new place of residence, so plain was
+her appearance on all occasions, the villagers suspected her of
+reserving her fine clothes for some better class." There are those who
+might consider these circumstances, very sore privations. What Mrs.
+Ware says of them is, "I have not a word of complaint to make. We are
+far better provided for than is necessary to our happiness." I am
+persuaded that this is an immensely wholesome example and that more of
+this kind of woman is needed to mother the children of our generation.
+In a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> letter to one of her daughters, she says she has great sympathy
+with the struggles of young people, that she had struggles too and
+learned her lessons young, that she found very early in life that her
+own position was not in the least affected by these externals, "I soon
+began to look upon my oft-turned dress with something like pride,
+certainly with great complacency; and to see in that and all other
+marks of my mother's prudence and consistency, only so many proofs of
+her dignity and self-respect,&mdash;the dignity and self-respect which grew
+out of her just estimate of the true and the right in herself and in
+the world."</p>
+
+<p>We have seen enough of this woman to discover that she could not be
+made unhappy, and also to discover why. It was because her nature was
+so large and strong and fine. Sometimes she thinks Dr. Ware would be
+better and happier in a parish, "But I have no care about the future
+other than that which one must have,&mdash;a desire to fulfil the duties
+which it may bring." Surely that is being,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Self-poised and independent still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On this world's varying good or ill."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In 1842, Dr. Ware's health became so much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> impaired that Mrs. Ware
+entertains an unfulfilled desire. It is to get away from Cambridge,
+which had become so dear to them all. "I scruple not to say that a
+ten-foot house, and bread and water diet, with a sense of rest to
+<em>him</em>, would be a luxury." The family removed to Framingham, where Dr.
+Ware died, a year later. Whatever tribulations might be in store for
+Mrs. Ware, anxiety on his account was not to be one of them.</p>
+
+<p>Death came on Friday; on Sunday, Mrs. Ware attended church with all
+her family, and the occasion must have been more trying for the
+minister who preached to her than for herself. A short service was
+held that Sunday evening at six, and "Then," she says, "John and I
+brought dear father's body to Cambridge in our own carriage; we could
+not feel willing to let strangers do anything in connection with him
+which we could do ourselves." Think of that dark, silent lonely ride
+from Framingham to Cambridge! But here was a woman who did not spare
+herself, and did not ask what somebody would think of her doings.</p>
+
+<p>After this event, the Memoirs tell us that a gentleman in Milton gave
+her a very earnest invitation to go there and take the instruction of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+three little children in connection with her own. In this occupation
+she spent six years of great outward comfort and usefulness. There is
+much in these years, or in the letters of these years, of great
+interest and moral beauty. Even with young children to leave, she
+speaks of death as serenely as she would of going to Boston. "I do not
+feel that I am essential to my children. I do not feel that I am
+competent to train them."</p>
+
+<p>Of her last illness, one of her children wrote, "Never did a sick room
+have less of the odor of sickness than that. It was the brightest spot
+on earth." "Come with a <em>smile</em>," she said to a friend whom she had
+summoned for a last farewell, and so went this remarkable and
+exceptionally noble woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]<br />[Pg 78]<br />[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_III" id="Chapter_III"></a>III<br /><br />
+LYDIA MARIA CHILD</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 438px;">
+<img src="images/child.jpg" width="438" height="500" alt="LYDIA MARIA CHILD" title="LYDIA MARIA CHILD" />
+<span class="caption">LYDIA MARIA CHILD</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, few names in American
+literature were more conspicuous than that of Lydia Maria Child, and
+among those few, if we except that of Miss Sedgwick, there was
+certainly no woman's name. Speaking with that studied reserve which
+became its dignity, the <em>North American Review</em> said of her: "We are
+not sure that any woman of our country could outrank Mrs. Child. This
+lady has been before the public as an author with much success. And
+she well deserves it, for in all her works, nothing can be found which
+does not commend itself by its tone of healthy morality and good
+sense. Few female writers if any have done more or better things for
+our literature in the lighter or graver departments."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Child began her literary career in 1824 with "Hobomok, a Tale of
+Early Times," and she closed it with a volume of biography, entitled
+"Good Wives," in 1871. Between these two dates, covering forty-seven
+years, her publications extended to more than thirty titles, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+include stories, poems, biographies, studies in history, in household
+economics, in politics, and in religion. "Her books," says Col.
+Higginson, "never seemed to repeat each other and belonged to almost
+as many different departments as there are volumes"; and while writing
+so much, he adds, "she wrote better than most of her contemporaries."</p>
+
+<p>If she had not done many things so well, she would still have the
+distinction of having done several things the first time they were
+ever done at all. It has been claimed that she edited the first
+American magazine for children, wrote the first novel of puritan
+times, published the first American Anti-Slavery book, and compiled
+the first treatise upon what is now known as "Comparative Religions,"
+a science not then named, but now a department in every school of
+theology.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Child's maiden name was Francis, and under that name she won her
+first fame. She was born in Medford, Mass., Feb. 11, 1802. Her father,
+Convers Francis, is said to have been a worthy and substantial
+citizen, a baker by trade, and the author of the "Medford Crackers,"
+in their day second only in popularity to "Medford Rum." He was a man
+of strong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> character, great industry, uncommon love of reading,
+zealous anti-slavery convictions, generous and hospitable. All these
+traits were repeated in his famous daughter. It was the custom of Mr.
+Francis, on the evening before Thanksgiving to gather in his
+dependents and humble friends to the number of twenty or thirty, and
+feast them on chicken pie, doughnuts and other edibles, sending them
+home with provisions for a further festival, including "turnovers" for
+the children. Col. Higginson, who had the incident from Mrs. Child,
+intimates that in this experience she may have discovered how much
+more blessed it is to give than to receive. Certainly, in later life,
+she believed and practiced this doctrine like a devotee.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Child began to climb the hill of knowledge under the instruction
+of a maiden lady known as "Ma'am Betty," who kept school in her
+bedroom which was never in order, drank from the nose of her
+tea-kettle, chewed tobacco and much of it, and was shy to a degree
+said to have been "supernatural," but she knew the way to the hearts
+of children, who were very fond of her and regularly carried her a
+Sunday dinner. After "Ma'am Betty," Mrs. Child at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>tended the public
+schools in Medford and had a year at a Medford private seminary.</p>
+
+<p>These opportunities for education were cut off at the age of twelve
+apparently by some change in the family fortunes which compelled the
+removal of Maria to Norridgewock, Maine, on the borders of the great
+northern wilderness, where a married sister was living. An influence
+to which she gave chief credit for her intellectual development and
+which was not wholly cut off by this removal was that of Convers
+Francis, her favorite brother, next older than herself, afterward
+minister in Watertown, and professor in the Divinity School of Harvard
+University. In later life, Dr. Francis was an encyclopedia of
+information and scholarship, very liberal in his views for the time.
+Theodore Parker used to head pages in his journal with, "Questions to
+ask Dr. Francis."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Francis began to prepare for college when Mrs. Child was nine
+years old. Naturally the little girl wanted to read the books which
+her brother read, and sometimes he seems to have instructed her and
+sometimes he tantalized her, but always he stimulated her. Years
+afterward she wrote him gratefully, "To your early influence, by
+conversation, letters, and example I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> owe it that my busy energies
+took a literary direction at all."</p>
+
+<p>Norridgewock, her home from her twelfth to her eighteenth year, was
+and is a very pretty country village, at that era the residence of
+some very cultivated families, but hardly an educational center. As we
+hear nothing of schools either there or elsewhere we are led to
+suppose that this twelve year old girl had finished her education. If
+she lacked opportunities for culture, she carried with her a desire
+for it, which is half the battle, and she had the intellectual
+stimulus of letters from her brother then in college, who seems to
+have presided over her reading. What we know of her life at this
+period is told in her letters to this brother.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these letters which the editors let us see was written at
+the age of fifteen. "I have," she says, "been busily engaged reading
+Paradise Lost. Homer hurried me along with rapid impetuosity; every
+passion that he portrayed I felt; I loved, hated, and resented just as
+he inspired me. But when I read Milton I felt elevated 'above this
+visible, diurnal sphere.' I could not but admire such astonishing
+grandeur of description, such heavenly sublimity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> style. Much as I
+admire Milton, I must confess that Homer is a much greater favorite."</p>
+
+<p>It is not strange that a studious brother in college would take
+interest in a sister who at the age of fifteen could write him with so
+much intelligence and enthusiasm of her reading. The next letter is
+two years later when she has been reading Scott. She likes Meg
+Merrilies, Diana Vernon, Annot Lyle, and Helen Mac Gregor. She hopes
+she may yet read Virgil in his own tongue, and adds, "I usually spend
+an hour after I retire for the night in reading Gibbon's Roman Empire.
+The pomp of his style at first displeased me, but I think him an able
+historian."</p>
+
+<p>This is from a girl of seventeen living on the edge of the northern
+wilderness, and she is also reading Shakspere. "What a vigorous grasp
+of intellect," she says, "what a glow of imagination he must have
+possessed, but when his fancy drops a little, how apt he is to make
+low attempts at wit, and introduce a forced play upon words." She is
+also reading the Spectator, and does not think Addison so good a
+writer as Johnson, though a more polished one.</p>
+
+<p>What she was doing with her ever busy hands during this period we are
+not told, but her in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>tellectual life ran on in these channels until
+she reaches the age of eighteen, when she is engaged to teach a school
+in Gardiner, Maine, an event which makes her very happy. "I cannot
+talk about books," she writes, "nor anything else until I tell you the
+good news, that I leave Norridgewock as soon as the travelling is
+tolerable and take a school in Gardiner." It is the terrible month of
+March, for country roads in the far north, "the saddest of the year."
+She wishes her brother were as happy as she is, though, "All I expect
+is that, if I am industrious and prudent, I shall be independent."</p>
+
+<p>At the conclusion of her school, she took up her residence with her
+brother in Watertown, Mass., where one year before, he had been
+settled as minister of the first parish. Here a new career opened
+before her. Whittier says that in her Norridgewock period, when she
+first read Waverly at the house of her physician, she laid down the
+book in great excitement, exclaiming, "Why cannot I write a novel?"
+Apparently, she did not undertake the enterprise for two years or
+more. In 1824, one Sunday after morning service, in her brother's
+study, she read an article in the <em>North American Review</em>, in which it
+was pointed out that there were great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> possibilities of romance in
+early American history. Before the afternoon service, she had written
+the first chapter of a novel which was published anonymously the same
+year, under the title of "Hobomok: a Tale of Early Times."</p>
+
+<p>A search through half a dozen Antique Book stores in Boston for a copy
+of this timid literary venture I have found to be fruitless, except
+for the information that there is sometimes a stray copy in stock, and
+that its present value is about three dollars. It is sufficient
+distinction that it was the first attempt to extract a romantic
+element from early New England history. Its reception by the public
+was flattering to a young author. The Boston Athen&aelig;um sent her a
+ticket granting the privileges of its library. So great and perhaps
+unexpected had been its success that for several years, Mrs. Child's
+books bore the signature, "By the author of Hobomok." Even "The Frugal
+Housewife" was "By the author of Hobomok."</p>
+
+<p>In 1825, the author of Hobomok published her second novel, entitled,
+"The Rebels: a Tale of the Revolution." It is a volume of about 300
+pages, and is still very readable. It ran rapidly through several
+editions, and very much increased the reputation of the author of
+Hobo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>mok. The work contains an imaginary speech of James Otis, in
+which it is said, "England might as well dam up the Nile with
+bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in
+this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of
+Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of
+Switzerland." This supposed speech of Otis soon found its way into the
+School Readers of the day, as a genuine utterance of the Revolutionary
+patriot, and as such Col. Higginson says he memorized and declaimed
+it, in his youth.</p>
+
+<p>This literary success was achieved at the age of twenty-three, and the
+same year Miss Francis opened a private school in Watertown, which she
+continued three years, until her marriage gave her other occupations.
+In 1826, she started <em>The Juvenile Miscellany</em>, as already mentioned,
+said to be the first magazine expressly for children, in this country.
+In it, first appeared many of her charming stories afterward gathered
+up in little volumes entitled, "Flowers for Children."</p>
+
+<p>In 1828, she was married to Mr. David Lee Child, then 34 years of age,
+eight years older than herself. Whittier describes him, as a young and
+able lawyer, a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and editor of
+the <em>Massachusetts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> Journal</em>. Mr. Child graduated at Harvard in 1817
+in the class with George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, George B. Emerson,
+and Samuel J. May. Between 1818 and 1824, he was in our diplomatic
+service abroad under Hon. Alexander Everett, at that time, Charg&eacute;
+d'Affaires in the Netherlands. On his return to America, Mr. Child
+studied law in Watertown where, at the house of a mutual friend, he
+met Miss Lydia Maria Francis. She herself reports this interesting
+event under date of Dec. 2, 1824. "Mr. Child dined with us in
+Watertown. He possesses the rich fund of an intelligent traveller,
+without the slightest tinge of a traveller's vanity. Spoke of the
+tardy improvement of the useful arts in Spain and Italy." Nearly two
+months pass, when we have this record: "Jan. 26, 1825. Saw Mr. Child
+at Mr. Curtis's. He is the most gallant man that has lived since the
+sixteenth century and needs nothing but helmet, shield, and
+chain-armor to make him a complete knight of chivalry." Not all the
+meetings are recorded, for, some weeks later, "March 3," we have this
+entry, "One among the many delightful evenings spent with Mr. Child. I
+do not know which to admire most, the vigor of his understanding or
+the ready sparkle of his wit."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>There can be no doubt that she thoroughly enjoyed these interviews,
+and we shall have to discount the statement of any observer who
+gathered a different impression. Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, at whose
+home some of these interviews took place, was a boy of twelve, and may
+have taken the play of wit between the parties too seriously. He says,
+"At first Miss Francis did not like Mr. Child. Their intercourse was
+mostly banter and mutual criticism. Observers said, 'Those two people
+will end in marrying.' Miss Francis was not a beautiful girl in the
+ordinary sense, but her complexion was good, her eyes were bright, her
+mouth expressive and her teeth fine. She had a great deal of wit,
+liked to use it, and did use it upon Mr. Child who was a frequent
+visitor; but her deportment was always maidenly and lady-like."</p>
+
+<p>The engagement happened in this wise. Mr. Child had been admitted to
+the bar and had opened an office in Boston. One evening about nine
+o'clock he rode out to Watertown on horseback and called at the
+Curtises' where Miss Francis then was. "My mother, who believed the
+denouement had come," says Mr. Curtis, "retired to her chamber. Mr.
+Child pressed his suit earnestly. Ten o'clock came, then eleven, then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+twelve. The horse grew impatient and Mr. Child went out once or twice
+to pacify him, and returned. At last, just as the clock was striking
+one, he went. Miss Francis rushed into my mother's room and told her
+she was engaged to Mr. Child."</p>
+
+<p>There are indications in this communication that Mr. Curtis did not
+himself greatly admire Mr. Child and would not have married him, but
+he concedes that, "Beyond all doubt, Mrs. Child was perfectly happy in
+her relations with him, through their long life." After their
+marriage, he says, they went to housekeeping in a "very small house in
+Boston," where Mr. Curtis, then a youth of sixteen, visited them and
+partook of a simple, frugal dinner which the lady cooked and served
+with her own hands, and to which Mr. Child returned from his office,
+"cheery and breezy," and we may hope the vivacity of the host may have
+made up for the frugality of the entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>In "Letters from New York," written to the Boston <em>Courier</em>, she
+speaks tenderly of her Boston home which she calls "Cottage Place" and
+declares it the dearest spot on earth. I assume it was this "very
+small house" where she began her married life, where she dined the
+fastidious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Mr. Curtis, and where she seems to have spent eight or
+nine happy years. Her marriage brought her great happiness. A friend
+says, "The domestic happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Child seemed to me
+perfect. Their sympathies, their admiration of all things good, and
+their hearty hatred of all things mean and evil, were in entire
+unison. Mr. Child shared his wife's enthusiasms and was very proud of
+her. Their affection, never paraded, was always manifest." After Mr.
+Child's death, Mrs. Child said, "I believe a future life would be of
+small value to me, if I were not united to him."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Child was a man of fine intellect, with studious tastes and
+habits, but there is too much reason to believe that his genius did
+not lie in the management of practical life. Details of business were
+apparently out of his sphere. "It was like cutting stones with a
+razor," says one who knew him. "He was a visionary," says another,
+"who always saw a pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow." This was a
+kind of defect which, though it cost her dear, Mrs. Child, of all
+persons, could most easily forgive. One great success he achieved:
+that was in winning and keeping the heart of Mrs. Child. Their married
+life seems to have been one long honey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>moon. "I always depended," she
+says, "upon his richly stored mind, which was able and ready to
+furnish needed information on any subject. He was my walking
+dictionary of many languages, and my universal encyclopedia. In his
+old age, he was as affectionate and devoted as when the lover of my
+youth; nay, he manifested even more tenderness. He was often singing,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There's nothing half so sweet in life<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As love's <em>old</em> dream.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Very often, when he passed me, he would lay his hand softly on my head
+and murmur 'Carum Caput.'... He never would see anything but the
+bright side of my character. He always insisted upon thinking that
+whatever I said was the wisest and whatever I did was the best."</p>
+
+<p>In the anti-slavery conflict, Mr. Child's name was among the earliest,
+and at the beginning of the controversy, few were more prominent. In
+1832, he published in Boston a series of articles upon slavery and the
+slave-trade; in 1836, another series upon the same subject, in
+Philadelphia; in 1837, an elaborate memoir upon the subject for an
+anti-slavery society in France,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> and an able article in a <em>London
+Review</em>. It is said that the speeches of John Quincy Adams in Congress
+were greatly indebted to the writings of Mr. Child, both for facts and
+arguments.</p>
+
+<p>Such, briefly, is the man with whom Mrs. Child is to spend forty-five
+years of her useful and happy life. In 1829, the year after her
+marriage, she put her twelve months of experience and reflection into
+a book entitled, "The Frugal Housewife." "No false pride," she says,
+"or foolish ambition to appear as well as others, should induce a
+person to live a cent beyond the income of which he is assured." "We
+shall never be free from embarrassment until we cease to be ashamed of
+industry and economy." "The earlier children are taught to turn their
+faculties to some account the better for them and for their parents."
+"A child of six years is old enough to be made useful and should be
+taught to consider every day lost in which some little thing has not
+been done to assist others." We are told that a child can be taught to
+braid straw for his hats or to make feather fans; the objection to
+which would be that a modern mother would not let a child wear that
+kind of hat nor carry the fan.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>The following will be interesting if not valuable: "Cheap as stockings
+are, it is good economy to knit them; knit hose wear twice as long as
+woven; and they can be done at odd moments of time which would not be
+otherwise employed." What an age that must have been when one had time
+enough and to spare! Other suggestions are quite as curious. The book
+is "dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy." "The writer,"
+she says, "has no apology to offer for this little book of economical
+hints, except her deep conviction that such a book is needed. In this
+case, renown is out of the question; and ridicule is a matter of
+indifference."</p>
+
+<p>Goethe made poems of his chagrins; Mrs. Child in this instance
+utilized her privations and forced economies to make a book; and a
+wonderfully successful book it was. She was not wrong in supposing it
+would meet a want. During the next seven years, it went through twenty
+editions, or three editions a year; in 1855, it had reached its
+thirty-third edition, averaging little short of one edition a year for
+thirty-six years. Surely this was a result which made a year of
+economical living in a "very small house" worth while.</p>
+
+<p>"The Frugal Housewife" was a true<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> "mother's book," although another
+and later volume was so named. "The Mother's Book" was nearly as
+successful as "The Frugal Housewife," and went through eight American
+editions, twelve English, and one German. The success of these books
+gave Mrs. Child a good income, and she hardly needed to be the "frugal
+housewife" she had been before.</p>
+
+<p>A check soon came to her prosperity. In 1831, she met Garrison and,
+being inflammable, caught fire from his anti-slavery zeal, and became
+one of his earliest and staunchest disciples. The free use of the
+Athen&aelig;um library which had been graciously extended to her ten years
+before, now enabled her to study the subject of slavery in all its
+aspects, historical, legal, theoretical, and practical and, in 1833,
+she embodied the results of her investigations in a book entitled, "An
+Appeal in behalf of the class of Americans called Africans." The
+material is chiefly drawn from Southern sources, the statute books of
+Southern states, the columns of Southern newspapers, and the
+statements and opinions of Southern public men. It is an effective
+book to read even now when one is in a mood to rose-color the old-time
+plantation life and doubtful whether anything could be worse than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> the
+present condition of the negro in the South.</p>
+
+<p>The book had two kinds of effect. It brought upon Mrs. Child the
+incontinent wrath of all persons who, for any reason, thought that the
+only thing to do with slavery was to let it alone. "A lawyer,
+afterward attorney-general," a description that fits Caleb Cushing, is
+said to have used tongs to throw the obnoxious book out of the window;
+the Athen&aelig;um withdrew from Mrs. Child the privileges of its library;
+former friends dropped her acquaintance; Boston society shut its doors
+upon her; the sale of her books fell off; subscriptions to her
+<em>Juvenile Miscellany</em> were discontinued; and the magazine died after a
+successful life of eight years; and Mrs. Child found that she had
+ventured upon a costly experiment. This consequence she had
+anticipated and it had for her no terrors. "I am fully aware," she
+says in her preface, "of the unpopularity of the task I have
+undertaken; but though I expect ridicule, I do not fear it.... Should
+it be the means of advancing even one single hour the inevitable
+progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness
+for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's fame."</p>
+
+<p>Of course a book of such evident significance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> and power would have
+had another effect; by his own acknowledgement, it brought Dr.
+Channing into the anti-slavery crusade, and he published a book upon
+slavery in 1835; it led Dr. John G. Palfry, who had inherited a
+plantation in Louisiana, to emancipate his slaves; and, as he has more
+than once said, it changed the course of Col. T. W. Higginson's life
+and made him an abolitionist. "As it was the first anti-slavery work
+ever printed in America in book form, so," says Col. Higginson, "I
+have always thought it the ablest." Whittier says, "It is no
+exaggeration to say that no man or woman at that period rendered more
+substantial service to the cause of freedom, or made such a 'great
+renunciation' in doing it."</p>
+
+<p>Turning from the real world, which was becoming too hard for her, Mrs.
+Child took refuge in dreamland and wrote "Philothea: a story of
+Ancient Greece," published in 1835. Critics have objected that this
+delightful romance is not an exact reproduction of Greek life, but is
+Hamlet a reproduction of anything that ever happened in Denmark, or
+Browning's Saul of anything that could have happened in Judea, a
+thousand years before Christ? To Lowell, Mrs. Child was and remained
+"Philothea."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> Higginson says that the lines in which Lowell describes
+her in the "Fable for Critics," are the one passage of pure poetry it
+contains, and at the same time the most charming sketch ever made of
+Mrs. Child.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There comes Philothea, her face all aglow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And can't tell which pleases her most&mdash;to relieve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His want, or his story to hear and believe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that talking draws off from the heart its bad blood."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In 1836, Mr. Child went abroad to study the Beet Sugar industry in
+France, Holland, and Germany and, after an absence of a year and a
+half, returned to engage in Beet Sugar Farming at Northampton, Mass.
+He received a silver medal for raw and refined sugar at the Exhibition
+of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association in 1839, and a
+premium of $100 from the Massachusetts Agricultural society the same
+year. He published a well written and edifying book upon "Beet Sugar,"
+giv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>ing the results of his investigations and experiments. It was an
+enterprise of great promise, but has taken half a century, in this
+country, to become a profitable industry.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Child's letters from 1838 to 1841 are dated from Northampton,
+where she is assisting to work out the "Beet Sugar" experiment. It
+would have been a rather grinding experience to any one with less
+cheerfulness than Mrs. Child. She writes, June 9, 1838, "A month
+elapsed before I stepped into the woods which were all around me
+blooming with flowers. I did not go to Mr. Dwight's ordination, nor
+have I yet been to meeting. He has been to see me however, and though
+I left my work in the midst and sat down with a dirty gown and hands
+somewhat grimmed, we were high in the blue in fifteen minutes." Mr.
+Dwight was Rev. John S. Dwight, Brook Farmer, and editor of <em>Dwight's
+Journal of Music</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Half of her published letters are addressed to Mr. or Mrs. Francis G.
+Shaw, parents of Col. Robert G. Shaw. Here is one in 1840, to Mr.
+Shaw, after she had made a trip to Boston. It will be interesting as
+presenting a new aspect of Mrs. Child's nature: "The only thing,
+except meeting dear friends, that attracted me to Bos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>ton was the
+exhibition of statuary.... I am ashamed to say how deeply I am charmed
+with sculpture: ashamed because it seems like affectation in one who
+has had such limited opportunity to become acquainted with the arts. I
+have a little figure of a caryatid which acts upon my spirit like a
+magician's spell.... Many a time this hard summer, I have laid down my
+dish-cloth or broom and gone to refresh my spirit by gazing on it a
+few minutes. It speaks to me. It says glorious things. In summer I
+place flowers before it; and I have laid a garland of acorns and
+amaranths at its feet. I do love every little bit of real sculpture."</p>
+
+<p>Her other artistic passion was music, quite out of her reach at this
+period; but happily, she loved birds and flowers, both of which a Beet
+Sugar Farm in the Connecticut Valley made possible. A family of
+swallows made their nest in her woodshed, husband and wife dividing
+the labors of construction, nursing, and even of incubation, though
+the male bird did not have the same skill and grace as the lady, in
+placing his feet and wings. Mrs. Child gives a pretty account of this
+incident in a letter to one of her little friends, and says, "It seems
+as if I could watch them forever."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> Later, in one of her letters to
+the Boston <em>Courier</em>, she gives a more complete account of the
+episode. Her observations convinced her that birds have to be taught
+to fly, as a child is taught to walk.</p>
+
+<p>When birds and flowers went, she had the autumn foliage, and she
+managed to say a new thing about it: it is "color taking its fond and
+bright farewell of form&mdash;like the imagination giving a deeper, richer,
+and warmer glow to old familiar truths before the winter of
+rationalism comes and places trunk and branches in naked outline
+against the cold, clear sky."</p>
+
+<p>Whether she had been living hitherto in a "rent" we are not told, but
+in a letter of February 8, 1841, she informs us that she is about to
+move to a farm on which "is a sort of a shanty with two rooms and a
+garret. We expect to whitewash it, build a new woodshed, and live
+there next year. I shall keep no help, and there will be room for
+David and me. I intend to half bury it in flowers."</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing fascinating in sordid details, but Mrs. Child in the
+midst of sordid details, is glorious. A month before this last letter,
+her brother, Prof. Francis, had written her apparently wishing her
+more congenial cir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>cumstances; we have only her reply, from which it
+appears her father is under her care. She declines her brother's
+sympathy, and wonders that he can suppose "the deadening drudgery of
+the world" can imprison a soul in its caverns. "It is not merely an
+eloquent phrase," she says, "but a distinct truth that the outward has
+no power over us but that which we voluntarily give it. It is not I
+who drudge; it is merely the case that contains me. I defy all the
+powers of earth and hell to make me scour floors and feed pigs, if I
+choose meanwhile to be off conversing with angels.... If I can in
+quietude and cheerfulness forego my own pleasures and relinquish my
+tastes, to administer to my father's daily comfort, I seem to those
+who live in shadows to be cooking food and mixing medicines, but I am
+in fact making divine works of art which will reveal to me their fair
+proportions in the far eternity." Besides this consolation, she says,
+"Another means of keeping my soul fresh is my intense love of nature.
+Another help, perhaps stronger than either of the two, is domestic
+love."</p>
+
+<p>Her Northampton life was nearer an end than she supposed when she
+wrote these letters; she did not spend the next year in the little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+farm house with "two rooms and a garret"; on May 27th, she dates a
+letter from New York city, where she has gone reluctantly to edit the
+<em>Anti-Slavery Standard</em>. She had been translated from the sphere of
+"cooking food and mixing medicines" to congenial literary occupations;
+she had, let us hope, a salary sufficient for her urgent necessities;
+her home was in the family of the eminent Quaker philanthropist, Isaac
+T. Hopper, who received her as a daughter, and whose kindness she
+repaid by writing his biography. However the venture might come out,
+we would think her life could not well be harder or less attractive
+than it had been, drudging in a dilapidated farm house, and we are
+glad she is well out of it. Strange to say, she did not take our view
+of the situation. We have already seen how independent she was of
+external circumstances. In a letter referred to, dated May 27, she
+chides a friend for writing accounts of her outward life: "What do I
+care whether you live in one room or six? I want to know what your
+spirit is doing. What are you thinking, feeling, and reading?... My
+task here is irksome enough. Your father will tell you that it was not
+zeal for the cause, but love for my husband, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> brought me hither.
+But since it was necessary for me to leave home to be earning
+somewhat, I am thankful that my work is for the anti-slavery cause. I
+have agreed to stay one year. I hope I shall then be able to return to
+my husband and rural home, which is humble enough, yet very
+satisfactory to me. Should the <em>Standard</em> be continued, and my editing
+generally desired, perhaps I could make an arrangement to send
+articles from Northampton. At all events, I trust the weary separation
+from my husband is not to last more than a year. If I am to be away
+from him, I could not be more happily situated than in Friend Hopper's
+family. They treat me the same as a daughter and a sister."</p>
+
+<p>The <em>Anti-Slavery Standard</em> was a new enterprise; its editorship was
+offered to Mr. and Mrs. Childs jointly; Col. Higginson says that Mr.
+Child declined because of ill health; another authority, that he was
+still infatuated with his Beet Sugar, of which Mrs. Child had had more
+than enough; it appears from her letter that neither of them dreamed
+of abandoning the Sugar industry; if the enterprise was folly, they
+were happily united in the folly.</p>
+
+<p>However, of the two, the <em>Anti-Slavery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> Standard</em> was the more
+successful enterprise, and at the end of the two years, Mr. Child
+closed out his Beet Sugar business and joined Mrs. Child in editing
+the paper. Mrs. Child edited the <em>Standard</em> eight years, six of which
+were in conjunction with Mr. Child. They were successful editors; they
+gave the <em>Standard</em> a high literary character, and made it acceptable
+to people of taste and culture who, whatever their sympathy with
+anti-slavery, were often repelled by the unpolished manners of Mr.
+Garrison's paper, <em>The Liberator</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Something of her life outside the <em>Standard</em> office, something of the
+things she saw and heard and enjoyed, during these eight years, can be
+gathered from her occasional letters to the Boston <em>Courier</em>. They are
+interesting still; they will always be of interest to one who cares to
+know old New York, as it was sixty years ago, or from 1840 onward.
+That they were appreciated then is evident from the fact that,
+collected and published in two volumes in 1844, eleven editions were
+called for during the next eight years. Col. Higginson considers these
+eight years in New York the most interesting and satisfactory of Mrs.
+Child's life.</p>
+
+<p>Though we have room for few incidents of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> period, there is one
+too charming to be omitted. A friend went to a flower merchant on
+Broadway to buy a bunch of violets for Mrs. Child's birthday.
+Incidentally, the lady mentioned Mrs. Child; she may have ordered the
+flowers sent to her house. When the lady came to pay for them, the
+florist said, "I cannot take pay for flowers intended for her. She is
+a stranger to me, but she has given my wife and children so many
+flowers in her writings, that I will never take money of her." Another
+pretty incident is this: an unknown friend or admirer always sent Mrs.
+Child the earliest wild flowers of spring and the latest in autumn.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that one of her passions was music, which happily she now
+has opportunities to gratify. "As for amusements," she says, "music is
+the only thing that excites me.... I have a chronic insanity with
+regard to music. It is the only Pegasus which now carries me far up
+into the blue. Thank God for this blessing of mine." I should be glad
+if I had room for her account of an evening under the weird spell of
+Ole Bull. Her moral sense was keener than her &aelig;sthetic, but her
+&aelig;sthetic sense was for keener than that of the average mortal.
+Sometimes she felt, as Paul would have said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> "in a strait betwixt
+two"; in 1847 she writes Mr. Francis G. Shaw: "I am now wholly in the
+dispensation of art, and therefore theologians and reformers jar upon
+me." Reformer as she was and will be remembered, she was easily drawn
+into the dispensation of art; and nature was always with her, so much
+so that Col. Higginson says, "She always seemed to be talking
+radicalism in a greenhouse."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Child retired from the <em>Standard</em> in 1849. Her next
+letters are dated from Newton, Mass. Her father was living upon a
+small place&mdash;a house and garden&mdash;in the neighboring town of Wayland,
+beautifully situated, facing Sudbury Hill, with the broad expanse of
+the river meadows between. Thither Mrs. Child went to take care of him
+from 1852 to 1856, when he died, leaving the charming little home to
+her. There are many traditions of her mode of life in Wayland, but her
+own account is the best: "In 1852, we made our humble home in Wayland,
+Mass., where we spent twenty-two pleasant years, entirely alone,
+without any domestic, mutually serving each other and depending upon
+each other for intellectual companionship." If the memory of Wayland
+people is correct, Mr. Child was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> with her much during the four
+years that her father lived. Her father was old and feeble and Mr.
+Child had not the serene patience of his wife. Life ran more easily
+when Mr. Child was away. Whatever other period in the life of Mrs.
+Child may have been the most satisfactory, this must have been the
+most trying.</p>
+
+<p>Under date of March 23, 1856, happily the last year of this sort of
+widowhood, she writes: "This winter has been the loneliest of my life.
+If you knew my situation you would pronounce it unendurable. I should
+have thought so myself if I had had a foreshadowing of it a few years
+ago. But the human mind can get acclimated to anything. What with
+constant occupation and a happy consciousness of sustaining and
+cheering my poor old father in his descent to the grave, I am almost
+always in a state of serene contentment. In summer, my once
+extravagant love of beauty satisfies itself in watching the birds, the
+insects, and the flowers in my little patch of a garden." She has no
+room for her vases, engravings, and other pretty things; she keeps
+them in a chest, and she says, "when birds and flowers are gone, I
+sometimes take them out as a child does its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> playthings, and sit down
+in the sunshine with them, dreaming over them."</p>
+
+<p>We need not think of her spending much time dreaming over her little
+hoard of artistic treasures. Her real business in this world is
+writing the history of all religions, or "The Progress of Religious
+Ideas in Successive Ages." It was a work begun in New York, as early
+as 1848, finished in Wayland in 1855, published in three large octavo
+volumes and, whatever its merits or success, was the greatest literary
+labor of her life.</p>
+
+<p>Under date of July 14, 1848, she writes to Dr. Francis: "My book gets
+slowly on.... I am going to tell the plain, unvarnished truth, as
+clearly as I can understand it, and let Christians and Infidels,
+Orthodox and Unitarians, Catholics, Protestants, and Swedenborgians
+growl as they like. They will growl if they notice it at all: for each
+will want his own theory favored, and the only thing I have
+conscientiously aimed at is not to favor any theory at all." She may
+have failed in scientific method; but here is a scientific spirit. "In
+her religious speculations," says Whittier, "Mrs. Child moved in the
+very van." In Wayland, she considered herself a parishioner of Dr.
+Edmund<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> H. Sears, whom she calls, "our minister," but she was
+somewhat in advance of Dr. Sears. Her opinions were much nearer akin
+to those of Theodore Parker. Only a Unitarian of that type could
+perhaps at this early period have conceived the history of religion as
+an evolution of one and the same spiritual element "through successive
+ages."</p>
+
+<p>She had not much time to dream over her chest of artistic treasures
+when the assault of Preston S. Brooks upon Senator Sumner called her
+to battle of such force and point that Dr. William H. Furness said, it
+was worth having Sumner's head broken.</p>
+
+<p>When death released her from the care of her father, she took
+"Bleeding Kansas" under her charge. She writes letters to the
+newspapers; she sits up till eleven o'clock, "stitching as fast as my
+fingers could go," making garments for the Kansas immigrants; she
+"stirs up the Wayland women to make garments for Kansas"; she sends
+off Mr. Child to make speeches for Kansas; and then she writes him in
+this manner: "How melancholy I felt when you went off in the morning
+darkness. It seemed as if everything about me was tumbling down; as if
+I were never to have a nest and a mate any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> more." Surely the rest of
+this letter was not written for us to read: "Good, kind, magnanimous
+soul, how I love you. How I long to say over the old prayer again
+every night. It almost made me cry to see how carefully you had
+arranged everything for my comfort before you went; so much kindling
+stuff split up and the bricks piled up to protect my flowers." Here is
+love in a cottage. This life is not all prosaic.</p>
+
+<p>Old anti-slavery friends came to see her and among them Charles
+Sumner, in 1857, spent a couple of hours with her, and left his
+photograph; she met Henry Wilson at the anti-slavery fair and talked
+with him an "hour or so." Whittier says, "Men like Charles Sumner,
+Henry Wilson, Salmon P. Chase, and Governor Andrew availed themselves
+of her foresight and sound judgment of men and measures."</p>
+
+<p>When John Brown was wounded and taken prisoner at Harper's Ferry,
+nothing was more in character for Mrs. Child than to offer her
+services as his nurse. She wrote him under cover of a letter to Gov.
+Wise, of Virginia. The arrival of Mrs. Brown, made Mrs. Child's
+attendance unnecessary, but the incident led to a lively
+correspondence between Mrs. Child and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> Gov. Wise, in which Mrs.
+Senator Mason, of Virginia, joined. Neither of her distinguished
+correspondents possessed the literary skill of Mrs. Child. The entire
+correspondence was collected in a pamphlet of which 300,000 copies
+were sold. On a visit to Whittier at Amesbury, a delegation from a
+Republican political meeting called upon her, saying they wanted to
+see the woman who "poured hot shot into Gov. Wise."</p>
+
+<p>In 1863, after saying that she is "childish enough to talk to the
+picture of a baby that is being washed," she writes her friend, Mrs.
+Shaw, "But you must not suppose that I live for amusement. On the
+contrary I work like a beaver the whole time. Just now I am making a
+hood for a poor neighbor; last week I was making flannels for the
+hospital; odd minutes are filled up ravelling lint; every string that
+I can get sight of I pull for poor Sambo. I write to the <em>Tribune</em>
+about him; I write to the <em>Transcript</em> about him; I write to private
+individuals about him; and I write to the President and members of
+Congress about him; I write to Western Virginia and Missouri about
+him; and I get the articles published too. This shows what progress
+the cause of freedom is making."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> Not everything went to her mind
+however. If we think there has been a falling from grace in the public
+life of our generation, it may do us good to read what she says in
+1863: "This war has furnished many instances of individual nobility,
+but our national record is mean."</p>
+
+<p>In 1864, she published "Looking Toward Sunset," a book designed to
+"present old people with something wholly cheerful." The entire
+edition was exhausted during the holiday season; 4,000 copies were
+sold and more called for. All her profits on the book, she devoted to
+the freedmen, sending $400 as a first instalment. Not only that, but
+she prepared a volume called "The Freedman's Book," which she printed
+at an expense of $600, and distributed among the freedmen 1200 copies
+at her own cost. She once sent Wendell Phillips a check of $100 for
+the freedmen, and when he protested that it was more than she could
+afford, she consented to "think it over." The next day, she made her
+contribution $200. She contributed $20 a year to the American
+Missionary Association toward the support of a teacher for the
+freedmen, and $50 a year to the Anti-Slavery Society. A lady wished,
+through Mr. Phillips, to give Mrs. Child sev<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>eral thousand dollars for
+her comfort. Mrs. Child declined the favor, but was persuaded to
+accept it, and then scrupulously gave away the entire income in
+charity. It is evident she might have made herself very comfortable,
+if it had not given her so much more pleasure to make someone else
+comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Her dress, as neat and clean as that of a Quakeress, was quite as
+plain and far from the latest style. A stranger meeting her in a stage
+coach mistook her for a servant until she began to talk. "Who is that
+woman who dresses like a peasant, and speaks like a scholar?" he asked
+on leaving the coach. Naturally, it was thought Mrs. Child did not
+know how to dress, or, more likely, did not care for pretty things.
+"You accuse me," she writes to Miss Lucy Osgood, "you accuse me of
+being indifferent to externals, whereas the common charge is that I
+think too much of beauty, and say too much about it. I myself think it
+one of my greatest weaknesses. A handsome man, woman or child can
+always make a pack-horse of me. My next neighbor's little boy has me
+completely under his thumb, merely by virtue of his beautiful eyes and
+sweet voice." There was one before her of whom it was said, "He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+denied himself, and took up his cross." It was also said of him,
+"Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor." He never had a
+truer disciple than Mrs. Child.</p>
+
+<p>Not that she ever talked of "crosses." "But why use the word
+sacrifice?" she asks. "I never was conscious of any sacrifice." What
+she gained in moral discipline or a new life, she says, was always
+worth more than the cost. She used an envelope twice, Wendell Phillips
+says; she never used a whole sheet of paper when half of one would do;
+she outdid poverty in her economies, and then gave money as if she had
+thousands. "I seldom have a passing wish for enlarging my income
+except for the sake of doing more for others. My wants are very few
+and simple."</p>
+
+<p>In 1867, Mrs. Child published "A Romance of the Republic," a pathetic
+story, but fascinating, and admirably written; in 1878, appeared a
+book of choice selections, entitled, "Aspirations of the World"; and
+in 1871, a volume of short biographies, entitled "Good Wives," and
+dedicated, to Mr. Child: "To my husband, this book is affectionately
+inscribed, by one who, through every vicissitude, has found in his
+kindness and worth, her purest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> happiness and most constant incentive
+to duty."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Child died in 1874 at the age of eighty, and Mrs. Child followed
+him in 1880, at the age of seventy-eight. After her death, a small
+volume of her letters was published, of which the reader will wish
+there were more. Less than a month before her death, she wrote to a
+friend a list of benevolent enterprises she has in mind and says, "Oh,
+it is such a luxury to be able to give without being afraid. I try not
+to be Quixotic, but I want to rain down blessings on all the world, in
+token of thankfulness for the blessings that have been rained down
+upon me."</p>
+
+<p>It is too late to make amends for omissions in this paper, but it
+would be unjust to Mrs. Child to forget her life-long devotion to the
+interests of her own sex. In 1832, a year before her "Appeal in behalf
+of that class of Americans called Africans,"&mdash;eleven years before the
+appearance of Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century,"
+Mrs. Child published "A History of the Condition of Women in all ages
+and nations," showing her disposition to begin every inquiry with a
+survey of the facts, and also that the "woman question" was the first
+to awaken her interest. Her greatest contribution to the advancement
+of women was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> herself; that is, her own achievements. To the same
+purpose were her biographies of famous women: "Memoirs of Mme. de
+Stael and Mme. Roland" in 1847, and sketches of "Good Wives" in 1871.
+Whittier says, she always believed in woman's right to the ballot, as
+certainly he did, calling it "the greatest social reform of the age."
+In one letter to Senator Sumner, she directly argues the question: "I
+reduce the argument," she says, "to very simple elements. I pay taxes
+for property of my own earning, and I do not believe in 'taxation
+without representation.'" Again: "I am a human being and every human
+being has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax
+him, to imprison him, or to <em>hang</em> him."</p>
+
+<p>A light humor illuminates this argument. Humor was one of her saving
+qualities which, as Whittier says, "kept her philanthropy free from
+any taint of fanaticism." It contributed greatly to her cheerfulness.
+Of her fame, she says playfully: "In a literary point of view I know I
+have only a local reputation, done in water colors."</p>
+
+<p>Could anything have been better said than this of the New England
+April or even May: "What a misnomer in our climate to call this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+season Spring, very much like calling Calvinism religion." Nothing
+could have been keener than certain points scored in her reply to Mrs.
+Senator Mason. Mrs. Mason, remembering with approving conscience her
+own ministries in the slave cabins caring for poor mothers with young
+babies, asks Mrs. Child, in triumph, if she goes among the poor to
+render such services. Mrs. Child replies that she has never known
+mothers under such circumstances to be neglected, "and here at the
+North," said she, "after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell
+the babies." After Gen. Grant's election to the Presidency, a
+procession with a band from Boston, marched to her house and gave her
+a serenade. She says that she joined in the hurrahs "like the
+strong-minded woman that I am. The fact is, I forgot half the time
+whether I belonged to the stronger or weaker sex." Whether she
+belonged to the stronger or weaker sex, is still something of a
+problem. Sensible men would be willing to receive her, should women
+ever refuse to acknowledge her.</p>
+
+<p>Wendell Phillips paid her an appreciative tribute, at her funeral.
+"There were," he said, "all the charms and graceful elements which we
+call feminine, united with a masculine grasp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> and vigor; sound
+judgment and great breadth; large common sense and capacity for
+everyday usefulness, endurance, foresight, strength, and skill." The
+address is given in full in the volume of "Letters." There is also a
+fine poem by Whittier for the same occasion:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Than thine was never turned a fonder heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To nature and to art;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And for the poor deny<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thyself...."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The volume contains a poetical tribute of an earlier date, by Eliza
+Scudder, of which Mrs. Child said, "I never was so touched and pleased
+by any tribute in my life. I cried over the verses and I smiled over
+them." I will close this paper with Miss Scudder's last stanza:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So apt to know, so wise to guide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So tender to redress,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, friend with whom such charms abide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How can I love thee less?"<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]<br />[Pg 122]<br />[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_IV" id="Chapter_IV"></a>IV<br /><br />
+DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 437px;">
+<img src="images/dix.jpg" width="437" height="500" alt="DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX" title="DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX" />
+<span class="caption">DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The career of Dorothy Dix is a romance of philanthropy which the world
+can ill afford to forget. It has been said of her, and it is still
+said, that she was "the most useful and distinguished woman America
+has yet produced." It is the opinion of Mr. Tiffany, her biographer,
+that as the founder of institutions of mercy, she "has simply no peer
+in the annals of Protestantism." To find her parallel one must go to
+the calendar of the Catholic saints,&mdash;St. Theresa, of Spain, or Santa
+Chiara, of Assisi. "Why then," he asks, do the "majority of the
+present generation know little or nothing of so remarkable a story!"
+Till his biography appeared, it might have been answered that the
+story had never been told; now, we should have to say that, with a
+thousand demands upon our time, it has not been read.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothea Lynde Dix&mdash;born February 11, 1802&mdash;was the daughter of Joseph
+Dix and granddaughter of the more eminent Dr. Elijah Dix, of
+Worcester, later of Boston, Mass. Dr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> Dix was born in Watertown,
+Mass., in 1747. At the age of seventeen, he became the office boy of
+Dr. John Green, an eminent physician in Worcester, Mass., and later, a
+student of medicine. After five years, in 1770, he began to practice
+as physician and surgeon in Worcester where he formed a partnership
+with Dr. Sylvester Gardner. It must have been a favorable time for
+young doctors since in 1771, a year after he began to practice, he
+married Dorothy Lynde, of Charlestown, Mass., for whom her little
+granddaughter was named. Mrs. Dix seems to have been a woman of great
+decision of character, and no less precision of thought and action,
+two traits which reappeared conspicuously in our great philanthropist.</p>
+
+<p>Certain qualities of Dr. Dix are also said to have reappeared in his
+granddaughter. He was self-reliant, aggressive, uncompromising,
+public-spirited, and sturdily honest. To his enterprise, Worcester
+owed its first shade trees, planted by him, when shade trees were
+considered great folly, and also the Boston and Worcester turnpike,
+when mud roads were thought to be divinely appointed thoroughfares.
+His integrity is shown by an incident<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> which also throws light upon
+the conditions of a troubled period. His partner, Dr. Gardner, made
+the grave mistake of taking the royal side in the controversies that
+preceded the Revolution, and Worcester became as hot for him as
+Richmond or Charleston was for a Union man in 1861. Dr. Gardner
+disappeared, leaving his effects behind him. After the war, Dr. Dix
+made a voyage to England and honorably settled accounts with his
+former partner.</p>
+
+<p>It was like the enterprising Dr. Dix that he turned this creditable
+act to his financial advantage. On his return to America he brought
+with him a stock of medical books, surgical instruments, and chemical
+apparatus, and became a dealer in physician's supplies, while
+continuing the practice of his profession. His business prospering, in
+1795 he removed to Boston for a larger field, where he opened a drug
+store near Faneuil Hall and established chemical works in South
+Boston. Successful as physician, druggist and manufacturer, he soon
+had money to invest. Maine, with its timber lands, was the Eldorado of
+that era, and Dr. Dix bought thousands of acres in its wilderness,
+where Dixfield in the west, and Dixmont in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> east, townships once
+owned by him, preserve his name and memory.</p>
+
+<p>The house of Dr. Dix in Boston, called the "Dix Mansion," was on
+Washington St., corner of Dix Place, then Orange Court. It had a large
+garden behind it, where originated the Dix pear, once a favorite. Dr.
+Dix died in 1809, when Dorothea was seven years old. Young as she was,
+he was among the most vivid of her childhood memories and by far the
+pleasantest. She seems to have been a favorite with him and it was his
+delight to take her in his chaise on his rounds, talking playfully
+with her and listening to her childish prattle.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Dix, the father of Dorothea, is a vague and shadowy memory. He
+seems to have had little of his father's energy or good sense.
+Unstable in many of his ways, he lived a migratory life, "at various
+spots in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, as well as in Worcester
+and Boston, Mass." When Dorothea was born, he was living at Hampden,
+Maine, adjoining his father's Dixmont properties, presumably as his
+father's land agent. He probably tired of this occupation because it
+interfered with his business. His business seems to have been
+religion. He was a prolific<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> author of religious literature. He was a
+philanthropist after his kind, giving his time without stint to the
+writing of religious tracts, and spending his money in publishing
+them, with little benefit to the world and much detriment to his
+family. In the stitching and pasting of these tracts, the whole
+household were required to assist and it was against this irksome
+taskwork that Dorothea, at the age of twelve, rebelled, running away
+from Worcester, where the family then lived, and finding a refuge with
+her grandmother in Boston. Dorothea afterwards educated her two
+brothers, one of whom became a sea captain and the other a Boston
+merchant.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothea Dix was created by her Maker, but she was given in a plastic
+state, first into the hands of inexorable Madam Dix, and next into
+those of the all-pitying Dr. Channing. Madam Dix is described as a
+fine specimen of the dignified, precise, conscientious New England
+gentlewoman of her generation. Industry, economy, and above all
+thoroughness were the chief articles of her religion, and she
+instilled these virtues into the mind of her granddaughter by the most
+vigorous discipline. A week of solitary confinement was among the
+penal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>ties inflicted upon the hapless child who had failed to reach
+the standard of duty prescribed for her. The standard, with Madam Dix,
+did not differ from perfection discernibly. Mr. Tiffany quotes a lady
+who in her girlhood, as a special reward of merit, was allowed to make
+an entire shirt under the supervision of Madam Dix. It was an
+experience never forgotten. No stitch in the entire garment could be
+allowed to differ perceptibly from every other, but the lady spoke of
+the ordeal with enthusiastic gratitude, declaring that it had been a
+life-long benefit to her to have been compelled to do one piece of
+work thoroughly well.</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew childhood," Miss Dix said pitifully in after life.
+Certainly with this exacting grandmother, there can be no childhood as
+it is understood to-day; but if Dorothea submits to the rigorous
+discipline enforced upon her, she will make a woman of iron fibre who
+will flinch from no hardship and will leave no task undone. Happily
+she did submit to it. The alternative would have been to return to her
+half-vagabond father. Too much discipline or too little was her
+destiny. She preferred to take the medicine in excess, and in the end
+was grateful for it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>Dorothea was so apt a pupil and so ambitious that, at the age of
+fourteen, she returned to Worcester and opened a school for small
+children, prudently lengthening the skirts and sleeves of her dress to
+give dignity and impressiveness to her appearance. Half a century
+later one of these pupils vividly recalled the child-teacher, tall of
+her age, easily blushing, at once beautiful and imposing in manner,
+but inexorably strict in discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothea spent the next four years in Boston in preparation for a more
+ambitious undertaking and, in 1821 at the age of nineteen, she opened
+a day school in Boston in a small house belonging to Madam Dix. The
+school prospered and gradually expanded into a day and boarding
+school, for which the Dix mansion, whither the school was removed,
+furnished convenient space. Madam Dix, enfeebled by age and
+infirmities, laid down the scepter she had wielded, and the premises
+passed virtually into the hands of Dorothea. Thither came pupils from
+"the most prominent families in Boston" and other Massachusetts towns,
+and even from beyond the limits of the State. There also she brought
+her brothers to be educated under her care and started upon a business
+career.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>Hardly had she started her school for the rich and fortunate before,
+anticipating her vocation as a philanthropist, she opened another for
+the poor and destitute. A letter is preserved in which she pleadingly
+asks the conscientious but perhaps stony Madam Dix for the loft over
+the stable for this purpose. "My dear grandmother," she begins, "Had I
+the saint-like eloquence of our minister, I would employ it in
+explaining all the motives, and dwelling on the good, the good to the
+poor, the miserable, the idle, the ignorant, which would follow your
+giving me permission to use the barn chamber for a school-room for
+charitable and religious purposes."</p>
+
+<p>The minister with saint-like eloquence was Dr. Channing. The letter is
+valuable as showing the source of the flame that had fired her
+philanthropic soul. For the finer culture of the heart she had passed
+from the hands of Madam Dix to those of Dr. Channing. The request for
+the room was granted and Mr. Tiffany tells us that "The little
+barn-school proved the nucleus out of which years later was developed
+the beneficent work of the Warren Street Chapel, from which as a
+centre spread far and wide a new ideal of dealing with child<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>hood.
+There first was interest excited in the mind of Rev. Charles Barnard,
+a man of positive spiritual genius in charming and uplifting the
+children of the poor and debased."</p>
+
+<p>Letters from Miss Dix at this period show that she had a sensitive
+nature, easily wrought upon, now inflamed to action and now melted to
+tears. "You say that I weep easily. I was early taught to sorrow, to
+shed tears, and now, when sudden joy lights up or unexpected sorrow
+strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling
+tide of feeling." She is reading a book of poems and weeping over
+it,&mdash;"paying my watery tribute to the genius" of the poet. She longs
+for similar talents that she "might revel in the luxury of those
+mental visions that must hourly entrance a spirit that partakes less
+of earth than heaven." It will be remembered that her father was
+religious even to folly. Here was his child, only by judicious
+training, the stream was turned into channels of wise beneficence.</p>
+
+<p>With the management of two schools, the supervision of the household,
+the care of two younger brothers, and ministries to her grandmother
+already advanced in years, Miss Dix was sufficiently occupied, but she
+found time to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> prepare a text-book upon "Common Things," gathering the
+material as she wrote. This, her first attempt at book-making, issued
+in 1824, was kept in print forty-five years, and went to its sixtieth
+edition in 1869. It was followed the next year by "Hymns for Children"
+selected and altered, and by a book of devotions entitled, "Evening
+Hours." Lengthening the day at both ends, "rising before the sun and
+going to bed after midnight," working while others slept, gave time
+for these extra tasks. Nature exacted her usual penalties. In the
+third year of this arduous labor, threatenings of lung troubles
+appeared which, however, she defied even when "in conducting her
+classes she had to stand with one hand on a desk for support, and the
+other pressed hard to her side as though to repress a hard pain."
+Meanwhile she wrote a bosom friend: "There is in our nature a
+disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which
+unless hourly combated will overcome the best faculties of our minds
+and paralyse our most useful powers.... I have often entertained a
+dread lest I should fall a victim to my besieger, and that fear has
+saved me thus far."</p>
+
+<p>Besides the terror of lapsing into self-indul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>gence, she was
+stimulated to activity by the care of her brothers, for one of whom
+she seems to have felt special anxiety: "Oh, Annie," she writes, "if
+that child is good, I care not how humble his pathway in life. It is
+for him my soul is filled with bitterness when sickness wastes me; it
+is because of him I dread to die." Was there no one to advise her that
+the best care of her brother would be to care for herself, and that if
+she would do more, she must first do less! Where was Dr. Channing who,
+more than any other, was responsible for her intemperate zeal! It
+appears that Dr. Channing, "not without solicitude," as he writes her,
+was watching over his eager disciple. "Your infirm health," he says,
+"seems to darken your prospect of usefulness. But I believe your
+constitution will yet be built up, if you will give it a fair chance.
+You must learn to give up your plans of usefulness as much as those of
+gratification, to the will of God."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dix abandoned her school apparently in 1827, after six years of
+service and at the age of twenty-five. The following spring and summer
+she spent as a governess in the family of Dr. Channing at his summer
+home in Rhode Island. Her duties were light and she lived<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> much in the
+open air, devoting her leisure to botany in which she was already "no
+mean proficient," and to "the marine life of the beautiful region."
+Very pretty letters were exchanged between her and Dr. Channing at the
+termination of the engagement. "We will hear no more of thanks," he
+wrote her, "but your affection for us and our little ones we will
+treasure among our most precious blessings." He invites her to renew
+the relations another year, and so she did.</p>
+
+<p>To avoid the rigors of a New England climate, Miss Dix, for some
+years, spent her winters, now in Philadelphia, now in Alexandria, Va.,
+keeping herself busy with reading "of a very multifarious
+kind,&mdash;poetry, science, biography, and travels,&mdash;besides eking out the
+scanty means she had laid by from her teaching by writing stories and
+compiling floral albums and books of devotion." In 1827, she published
+a volume of "Ten Short Stories for Children" which went to a second
+edition in 1832; in 1828, "Meditations for Private Hours," which went
+through several editions; in 1829, two little books, "The Garland of
+Flora," and "The Pearl, a Christmas Gift."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> Occasional brief
+engagements in teaching are also recorded in this period.</p>
+
+<p>The winter of 1830, she spent with the Channings on the Island of St.
+Croix, in the West Indies, in her old capacity as governess. A
+daughter of Dr. Channing gives an interesting account of the
+preceptress of whom, first and last, she had seen so much. She
+describes Miss Dix as tall and dignified, very shy in manner, strict
+and inflexible in discipline. "From her iron will, it was hopeless to
+appeal. I think she was a very accomplished teacher, active and
+diligent herself, very fond of natural history and botany. She enjoyed
+long rambles, always calling our attention to what was interesting in
+the world around us. I hear that some of her pupils speak of her as
+irascible. I have no such remembrance. Fixed as fate we considered
+her."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dix returned from the West Indies in the spring, very much
+improved in health, and in the autumn, she reopened her school in the
+Dix Mansion, with the same high ideals as before and with such
+improved methods as experience had suggested. Pupils came to her again
+as of old and she soon had as many attendants as her space permitted.
+A feature of the school<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> was a letter-box through which passed a daily
+mail between teacher and pupils and "large bundles of child-letters of
+this period" are still extant, preserved by Miss Dix with scrupulous
+care to the end of life. It was a bright child who wrote as follows:
+"I thought I was doing well until I read your letter, but when you
+said that you were rousing to greater energy, all my satisfaction
+vanished. For if you are not satisfied in some measure with yourself
+and are going to do more than you have done, I don't know what I shall
+do. You do not go to rest until midnight and then you rise very
+early." The physician had administered too strong a tonic for the
+little patient's health.</p>
+
+<p>A lady who, at the age of sixteen, attended this school in 1833,
+writes of her eminent teacher as follows: "She fascinated me from the
+first, as she had done many of my class before me. Next to my mother,
+I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was in the
+prime of her years, tall and of dignified carriage, head finely shaped
+and set, with an abundance of soft, wavy, brown hair." The school
+continued in the full tide of success for five years, during which
+time, by hard labor and close economies, Miss Dix had saved enough to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+secure her "the independence of a modest competence." This seems a
+great achievement, but if one spends nothing for superfluities and
+does most of his labor himself, he can lay by his income, much or
+little. The appointments of the school are said to have been very
+simple, a long table serving as a desk for study, when it was not in
+use for dinner. Only one assistant is mentioned, who gave instruction
+in French and, perhaps, elementary Latin. Surely Miss Dix could handle
+the rest herself. The merit of the school was not in its elaborate
+appointments, but in the personal supervision of its accomplished
+mistress. So the miracle was wrought and at the age of thirty-three,
+Miss Dix had achieved a modest competence.</p>
+
+<p>The undertaking had cost her her health once before, and now it cost
+her her health again. The old symptoms, a troublesome cough, pain in
+the side, and slight hemorrhages, returned and, having dragged her
+frail body through the winter of 1836, Miss Dix reluctantly closed her
+school in the spring and, in obedience to her physician, went to
+Europe for rest, with the intention of spending the summer in England,
+the autumn in France, and the winter in Italy. Prostrated by the
+voyage, she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> carried to a hotel in Liverpool where she was put to
+bed with the forlorn prospect of being confined to her solitary room
+for an indefinite period of convalescence. But again Dr. Channing
+befriended her. From him she had received letters of introduction, one
+of which brought to her side Mr. William Rathbone, a wealthy merchant
+of Liverpool and a prominent English Unitarian. Mr. and Mrs. Rathbone
+insisted upon taking her to their home, a charming residence a few
+miles out of the city. Thither she consented to go for a visit of a
+few weeks, and there she remained, as an honored guest tenderly cared
+for, for eighteen months. "To the end of her days," says her
+biographer, "this period of eighteen months stood out in her memory as
+the jubilee of her life, the sunniest, the most restful, and the
+tenderest to her affections of her whole earthly experience." She
+wrote a Boston friend, "You must imagine me surrounded by every
+comfort, sustained by every tenderness that can cheer, blest in the
+continual kindness of the family in which Providence has placed me,&mdash;I
+with no claim but those of a common nature." And again, "So completely
+am I adopted into the circle of loving spirits that I sometimes
+forget<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> I really am not to consider the bonds transient in their
+binding."</p>
+
+<p>She very much needed these friends and their tender care. Nine months
+after her arrival, we hear of occasional hemorrhages from which she
+has been exempt for ten days, the pain in her side less acute, and her
+physician has given her permission to walk about her room. One would
+think that her career was practically ended, but, strange to say, the
+career which was to make her famous had not yet begun. From this date,
+her convalescence proceeded steadily, and she was able to enjoy much
+in the delightful home and refined social circle in which she found
+herself. "Your remark," she writes a friend, "that I probably enjoy
+more now in social intercourse than I have ever before done is quite
+true. Certainly if I do not improve, it will be through wilful
+self-neglect." Apparently, she was having a glimpse of a less prosaic
+existence than the grinding routine of a boarding school. Madam Dix
+died at the age of ninety-one, leaving her granddaughter, still in
+Europe, a substantial legacy, which sensibly increased her limited
+resources and, when the time came for action, left her free to carry
+out her great schemes of benevolence without hampering personal
+anx<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>ieties. It ought to preserve the memory of Madam Dix that she
+endowed a great philanthropist.</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1837, Miss Dix returned to America, and avoiding the
+New England climate, spent the winter in Washington, D. C., and its
+neighborhood. Apparently, it was not a wholly happy winter, chiefly
+because of her vain and tender longings for the paradise she had left
+across the sea. The Washington of 1837 seemed raw to her after the
+cultivated English home she had discovered. "I was not conscious," she
+writes a friend, "that so great a trial was to meet my return from
+England till the whole force of the contrast was laid before me.... I
+may be too craving of that rich gift, the power of sharing with other
+minds. I have drunk deeply, long, and Oh, how blissfully, at this
+fountain in a foreign clime. Hearts met hearts, minds joined with
+minds, and what were the secondary trials of pain to the enfeebled
+body when daily was administered the soul's medicine and food."
+Surely, that English experience was one upon which not every invalid
+from these shores could count, but when, a few years later, Miss Dix
+returned to England as a kind of angel of mercy, giving back much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+more than she had ever received, the Rathbone family must have been
+glad that they had befriended her in her obscurity and her need.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1841 at the age of thirty-nine that the second chapter in
+the life of Miss Dix began. Note that she had as little thought that
+she was beginning a great career as any one of us that he will date
+all his future from something he has done or experienced to-day. It
+happened that Dr. J. T. G. Nichols, so long the beloved pastor of the
+Unitarian parish in Saco, Maine, was then a student of Divinity at
+Cambridge. He had engaged to assist in a Sunday School in the East
+Cambridge jail, and all the women, twenty in number, had been assigned
+to him. The experience of one session with his class was enough to
+convince him that a young man was very much out of place in that
+position and that a woman, sensible if possible, but a woman
+certainly, was necessary. His mother advised him to consult Miss Dix.
+Not that her health would permit her to take the class, but she could
+advise. On hearing Mr. Nichols' statement, Miss Dix deliberated a
+moment and then said, "I will take the class myself." Mr. Nichols
+protested that this was not to be thought of, in the condition of her
+health, but we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> heard of her iron will: "Fixed as fate we
+considered her," said one of her pupils; and she answered Mr. Nichols,
+"I shall be there next Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning. "After the school was over," says Dr. Nichols,
+"Miss Dix went into the jail and found among the prisoners a few
+insane persons with whom she talked. She noticed that there was no
+stove in their rooms and no means of proper warmth." The date was the
+twenty-eighth of March and the climate was New England, from which
+Miss Dix had so often had to flee. "The jailer said that a fire for
+them was not needed, and would be unsafe. Her repeated solicitations
+were without success." The jailer must have thought he was dealing
+with a woman, not with destiny. "At that time the court was in session
+at East Cambridge, and she caused the case to be brought before it.
+Her request was granted. The cold rooms were warmed. Thus was her
+great work commenced."</p>
+
+<p>Such is Dr. Nichols' brief statement, but the course of events did not
+run so smoothly as we are led to suppose. The case had to be fought
+through the newspapers as well as the court, and here Miss Dix showed
+the generalship which she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> exhibited on many another hard fought
+field. She never went into battle single-handed. She always managed to
+have at her side the best gunners when the real battle began. In the
+East Cambridge skirmish, she had Rev. Robert C. Waterston, Dr. Samuel
+G. Howe, and Charles Sumner. Dr. Howe visited the jail and wrote an
+account for the Boston <em>Advertiser</em>. When this statement was disputed,
+as it was, Mr. Sumner, who had accompanied Dr. Howe, confirmed his
+account and added details of his own. He said that the inmates "were
+cramped together in rooms poorly ventilated and noisome with filth;"
+that "in two cages or pens constructed of plank, within the four stone
+walls of the same room" were confined, and had been for months, a
+raving maniac and an interesting young woman whose mind was so
+slightly obscured that it seemed any moment as if the cloud would pass
+away; that "the whole prison echoed with the blasphemies of the poor
+old woman, while her young and gentle fellow in suffering seemed to
+shrink from her words as from blows;" that the situation was hardly
+less horrid than that of "tying the living to the dead."</p>
+
+<p>Where was Miss Dix during this controversy? Why, she was preparing to
+investigate every jail<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> and almshouse in the State of Massachusetts.
+If this was the way the insane were treated in the city of Cambridge,
+in a community distinguished for enlightenment and humanity, what
+might not be going on in more backward and less favored localities?
+Note-book in hand, going from city to city and from town to town, Miss
+Dix devoted the two following years to answering this question
+exhaustively.</p>
+
+<p>Having gathered her facts, she presented them to the Legislature in a
+Memorial of thirty-two octavo pages, the first of a series of
+seventeen statements and appeals presented to the legislatures of
+different states, as far west as Illinois and as far south as
+Louisiana. "I shall be obliged," she said, "to speak with great
+plainness and to reveal many things revolting to the taste, and from
+which my woman's nature shrinks with peculiar sensitiveness.... I
+proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present
+state of insane persons within this Commonwealth, in cages, closets,
+cellars, stalls, pens, chained, naked, beaten with rods and lashed
+into obedience.... I give a few illustrations but description fades
+before reality." If we could dismiss the subject by saying she reports
+instance after instance where men and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> women were confined in the
+almshouses in Massachusetts in such conditions of inhumanity and
+neglect as no intelligent farmer would tolerate for his swine, we
+could avoid some unpleasant details; but the statement would be
+ineffective because it would seem incredible. At the almshouse in
+Danvers, confined in a remote, low, outbuilding, she found a young
+woman, once respectable, industrious and worthy, whose mind had been
+deranged by disappointments and trials. "There she stood," says Miss
+Dix, "clinging to or beating upon the bars of her caged apartment, the
+contracted size of which afforded space only for increasing
+accumulations of filth,&mdash;a foul spectacle; there she stood, with naked
+arms, dishevelled hair, the unwashed frame invested with fragments of
+unclean garments, the air so extremely offensive, though ventilation
+was afforded on all sides but one, that it was not possible to remain
+beyond a few moments without retreating for recovery to the outward
+air. Irritation of body, produced by utter filth and exposure, incited
+her to the horrid process of tearing off her skin by inches; her neck
+and person were thus disfigured to hideousness.... And who protects
+her," Miss Dix suggestively asks, "who protects her,&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> worse than
+Pariah outcast,&mdash;from other wrongs and blacker outrages!" This
+question had more meaning for Miss Dix than we might suppose, for at
+the almshouse in Worcester she had found an insane Madonna and her
+babe: father unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Fair and beautiful Newton finds a place in this chapter of dishonor,
+with a woman chained, nearly nude, and filthy beyond measure: "Sick,
+horror-struck, and almost incapable of retreating, I gained the
+outward air." A case in Groton attained infamous celebrity, not
+because the shame was without parallel but because the overseers of
+the poor tried to discredit the statements of Miss Dix. The fact was
+that she had understated the case. Dr. Bell of the McLean Asylum,
+confirmed her report and added details. In an outbuilding at the
+almshouse, a young man, slightly deranged but entirely inoffensive,
+was confined by a heavy iron collar to which was attached a chain six
+feet in length, the limit of his possible movements. His hands were
+fastened together by heavy clavises secured by iron bolts. There was
+no window in his dungeon, but for ventilation there was an opening,
+half the size of a sash, closed in cold weather by a board shutter.
+From this cell, he had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> taken to the McLean Asylum, where his
+irons had been knocked off, his swollen limbs chafed gently, and
+finding himself comfortable, he exclaimed, "My good man, I must kiss
+you." He showed no violence, ate at the common table, slept in the
+common bedroom, and seemed in a fair way to recovery when, to save the
+expense of three dollars a week for his board and care, the thrifty
+Groton officials took him away. He could be boarded at the almshouse
+for nothing, and, chained in an outbuilding, he would not require any
+care.</p>
+
+<p>We can follow Miss Dix in her career through a dozen states of this
+Union, into the British Provinces, to Scotland and England, thence
+across to the Continent, without repeating these details, if we bear
+in mind that such as we have seen was the condition of the pauper
+insane at that period. Her memorial was presented by Dr. S. G. Howe,
+then happily a member of the Legislature, and a bill was passed, not
+without opposition, but finally passed, enlarging the asylum at
+Worcester to accommodate two hundred additional patients. The
+provision was inadequate, but a reform of old abuses had begun. It was
+her first victory.</p>
+
+<p>Grateful for what had been accomplished in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Massachusetts, Miss Dix
+turned to Rhode Island, whose borders she had often approached and
+sometimes crossed in her investigations in the adjoining state. Rhode
+Island was perhaps not less civilized than her neighbor, but Rhode
+Island furnished the prize case of horrors in the mistreatment of
+insanity, a case which in a letter introducing the discoverer, Mr.
+Thomas G. Hazard said went beyond anything he supposed to exist in the
+civilized world. The case was this: Abraham Simmons, a man whose name
+ought to go on the roll of martyrdom, was confined in the town of
+Little Compton, in a cell seven feet square, stone-built,
+stone-roofed, and stone-floored, the entrance double-walled,
+double-doored and double-locked, "excluding both light and fresh air,
+and without accommodation of any description for warming and
+ventilation." When this dungeon was discovered, the walls were covered
+by frost a half inch in thickness; the bed was provided with two
+comfortables, both wet and the outer one stiffly frozen, or, as Miss
+Dix puts it, "only wet straw to lie upon and a sheet of ice for his
+covering." Lest two locks should not be enough to hold this dangerous
+man, his leg was tethered to the stone floor by an ox-chain. "My
+husband," said the mis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>tress, "in winter, sometimes of a morning rakes
+out half a bushel of frost, <em>and yet he never freezes</em>; sometimes he
+screams dreadfully and that is the reason we had the double wall and
+two doors in place of one; his cries disturb us in the house." "How
+long has he been here?" "Oh, above three years." Nothing in the
+traditions of the Bastile could exceed these horrors, and yet they
+were not the product of intentional cruelty, but of unfathomable
+stupidity.</p>
+
+<p>Disregarding the well-meant warnings of her attendant that he would
+kill her, Miss Dix took his hands, tried to warm them in her own,
+spoke to him of liberty, care and kindness, and for answer "a tear
+stole over his hollow cheeks, but no words answered my importunities."
+Her next step was to publish the terrible story in the Providence
+Journal, not with a shriek, as might have been expected and justified,
+but with the affected coolness of a naturalist. With grim humor, she
+headed her article, "Astonishing Tenacity of Life," as if it had only
+a scientific interest for anybody. If you doubted the statements, you
+might go and see for yourself: "Should any persons in this
+philanthropic age be disposed from motives of curiosity to visit the
+place, they may rest assured that travelling is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> considered quite safe
+in that part of the country, however improbable it may seem. The
+people of that region profess the Christian religion, and it is even
+said that they have adopted some forms and ceremonies which they call
+worship. It is not probable, however, that they address themselves to
+poor Simmons' God." Their prayers and his shrieks would make a strange
+discord, she thinks, if they entered the ear of the same deity.</p>
+
+<p>Having reported her discoveries to the men of science, she next
+appealed to the men of wealth. Providence had at that date a
+multi-millionaire, by the name of Butler; he left four millions to his
+heirs. He had never been known as a philanthropist; he did not himself
+suppose that his heart was susceptible. It is said that knowing
+persons smiled when they heard that Miss Dix intended to appeal to
+him. Further, it is said that Mr. Butler, at the interview,
+ingeniously diverted the conversation from topics that threatened to
+be serious. He apparently had no thought of giving Miss Dix a penny.
+At length she rose with the impressive dignity so often noted by her
+pupils and said: "Mr. Butler, I wish you to hear what I have to say. I
+want to bring before you certain facts involv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>ing terrible suffering
+to your fellow creatures all around you,&mdash;suffering you can relieve.
+My duty will end when I have done this, and with you will rest all
+further responsibility." Mr. Butler heard her respectfully to the end,
+and then asked, "What do you want me to do?" "Sir," she said, "I want
+you to give $50,000 toward the enlargement of the insane hospital in
+this city." "Madam, I'll do it," he said, and much more of his estate
+afterward went the same way.</p>
+
+<p>Three years of devoted study of the problems of insanity, with
+limitless opportunities for personal observation, had given Miss Dix
+an expert knowledge of the subject. She had conceived what an insane
+asylum should be. Hitherto, she had been content to enlarge upon
+foundations already laid; now she would build an asylum herself. She
+saw, we are told, that such an institution as she conceived could not
+be built by private benevolence, but must have behind it a legislative
+appropriation. She chose New Jersey as the field of her experiment.
+Quietly, she entered the state and canvassed its jails and almshouses,
+as she had those of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Next she digested
+her facts in a Memorial to the Legislature. Then, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> a political
+shrewdness for which she became celebrated, she selected the member,
+uniting a good heart with a clear head and persistent will, into whose
+hands it should be placed. Much of her success is said to have been
+due to her political sagacity. The superintendent of one of her
+asylums said, "She had an insight into character that was truly
+marvellous; and I have never known anyone, man or woman, who bore more
+distinctly the mark of intellectuality." Having placed her Memorial in
+the hands of a skilful tactician, she retired to a room appropriated
+to her use by the courtesy of the House, where she spent her time
+writing editorials for newspapers, answering the questions of members,
+and holding receptions. "You cannot imagine," she writes a friend,
+"the labor of conversing and convincing. Some evenings I had at once
+twenty gentlemen for three hours' steady conversation." After a
+campaign of two months the bill establishing the New Jersey State
+Lunatic Asylum was passed, and the necessary money appropriated for
+its erection. She was always partial to this first creation of her
+energy and genius. She called it 'her first child,' and there,
+forty-five years later, she returned to pass the last seven years of
+her life, as in a home, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> room having been gratefully appropriated to
+her use by the trustees of the asylum.</p>
+
+<p>At this date, Dr. S. G. Howe wrote her: "God grant me to look back
+upon some three years of my life with a part of the self-approval you
+must feel. I ask no higher fortune. No one need say to you, Go on! for
+you have heard a higher than any human voice, and you will follow
+whithersoever it calleth." Indeed, she already had much of her future
+work prepared. While waiting for the Legislature in New Jersey to take
+up her bill, she had canvassed Pennsylvania and had the happiness to
+see a bill pass the Legislature of that State founding the Dixmont
+Hospital, her second child, soon after the birth of her first. The
+Dixmont Hospital is the only one of her many children that she would
+allow to be even indirectly named for her. Meanwhile, she had
+canvassed Kentucky, had been before the Legislature in Tennessee, and,
+seven days after the passage of her bill in New Jersey, she writes
+from a steamer near Charleston, S. C., as follows: "I designed using
+the spring and summer chiefly in examining the jails and poorhouses of
+Indiana and Illinois. Having successfully completed my mission in
+Kentucky, I learned that traveling in those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> States would be
+difficult, if not impossible, for some weeks to come, on account of
+mud and rains. This decided me to examine the prisons and hospitals of
+New Orleans, and, returning, to see the state prisons of Louisiana at
+Baton Rouge, of Mississippi at Jackson, of Arkansas at Little Rock, of
+Missouri at Jefferson City, and of Illinois at Alton.... I have seen
+incomparably more to approve than to censure in New Orleans. I took
+the resolution, being so far away, of seeing the state institutions of
+Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. Though this has proved
+excessively fatiguing, I rejoice that I have carried out my purpose."</p>
+
+<p>Between June 1843 and August 1847, she states in a letter that she
+traveled 32,470 miles, her conveyance being by steamboat when
+possible; otherwise by stage-coach. It is suggestive of the wrecks and
+delays she had experienced with the shattered coaches and mud roads of
+the south and west that, as we are told, she "made a practice of
+carrying with her an outfit of hammer, wrench, nails, screws, a coil
+of rope, and straps of stout leather, which under many a mishap
+sufficed to put things to rights and enable her to pursue her
+journey." "I have encountered nothing so dangerous as river fords,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+she writes. "I crossed the Yadkin when it was three-quarters of a mile
+wide, rough bottom, often in places rapid currents; the water always
+up to the carriage bed, and sometimes flowing in. The horses rested
+twice on sand-bars. A few miles beyond the river having just crossed a
+deep branch two hundred yards wide, the axletree broke, and away
+rolled one of the back wheels."</p>
+
+<p>When she said that river fords were her greatest danger, she must have
+forgotten an encounter with a highwayman. She was making a stage
+journey in Michigan, and noticed with some consternation that the
+driver carried a brace of pistols. To her inquiries he explained that
+there had been robberies on the road. "Give me the pistols," she said;
+"I will take care of them." More in awe of her than of robbers, the
+driver reluctantly obeyed. Passing through a dismal forest the
+expected happened. A man seized the horses and demanded her purse. She
+made him a little speech, asked if he was not ashamed, told him her
+business, and concluded, "If you have been unfortunate, are in
+distress and in want of money, I will give you some." Meanwhile the
+robber had turned "deathly pale," and when she had finished,
+ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>claimed, "My God, that voice." He had once heard her address the
+prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary. He begged her to pass, and
+declined to take the money she offered. She insisted, lest he might be
+again tempted before he found employment. People obeyed when she
+insisted, and he took her gift and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Think of the hotel accommodations,&mdash;the tables and beds,&mdash;she must
+have encountered in these wild journeys. This is the woman who, a few
+years ago, seemed to be dying with hemorrhages of the lungs. Did she
+have no more of them? Oh, yes; we are assured that "again and again
+she was attacked with hemorrhages and again and again prostrated by
+malarial fever." A physician said, "Her system became actually
+saturated with malaria." Invalid as she almost always was, she had
+left her foot-prints in most of the states of the Union and had
+carried the war into the British Provinces, where she had been the
+means of establishing three insane hospitals: one in Toronto, one in
+Halifax, one at St. John, Newfoundland, besides providing a fleet of
+life-boats at Sable Island, known as "The Graveyard of Ships," off the
+coast of Nova Scotia.</p>
+
+<p>In the United States, during these twelve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> years, she "promoted and
+secured," to use her own phrase, the enlargement of three asylums: at
+Worcester, Mass., at Providence, R. I., and at Utica, N. Y., and the
+establishment of thirteen, one in each of the following states: New
+Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri,
+Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, and
+Maryland, with the Hospital for Insane Soldiers and Sailors, at
+Washington, D. C.</p>
+
+<p>In 1850, Miss Dix proposed a larger scheme of philanthropy than was
+ever before projected by any mortal. What is more, but for one man,
+she would have carried it out. She petitioned Congress to appropriate
+12,000,000 acres of public lands for the benefit of the indigent
+insane, deaf and dumb, and blind. A bill to that effect was
+introduced, watched by her through two sessions, and finally passed by
+both Houses. She was inundated with congratulations from far and near;
+but the bill was vetoed on constitutional grounds by President Pierce.
+The day for giving away the public lands in sheets had not come.</p>
+
+<p>The blow seems to have been more than Miss Dix could endure. She went
+abroad for change<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> and rest. What rest meant to her, she expresses in
+a letter to a friend at home:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Rest is not quitting the active career:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rest is the fitting of self to its sphere."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These lines, borrowed from John S. Dwight have been, not unnaturally,
+attributed to her. She wrote many things perhaps quite as poetical.</p>
+
+<p>Not much of the verse, which came from her prolific pen, was
+considered even by herself to deserve publication, but verse-writing
+is said to had been the never-failing diversion of her leisure hours.
+Mrs. Caroline A. Kennard credits her with the following lines which,
+though very simple, are quite as good as much that has been
+immortalized in our hymn books:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In the tender, peaceful moonlight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I am from the world apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While a flood of golden glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fills alike my room and heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As I gaze upon the radiance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shining on me from afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I can almost see beyond it,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Almost see 'the gates ajar.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tender thoughts arise within me<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the friends who've gone before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Absent long but not forgotten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Resting on the other shore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And my soul is filled with longing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That when done with earth and sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I may find the gates wide open<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There for me to enter in."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Apparently, she wrote her poetry for herself, as an unskilled musician
+might play for his own amusement.</p>
+
+<p>The rest which Miss Dix allowed herself between September 1854 and
+September 1856, was to visit the chief hospitals and prisons in
+Europe. Edinburgh, the Channel Islands, Paris, Rome, Naples,
+Constantinople, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen,
+Amsterdam, Brussels, and again Paris and London: these places mark the
+course of her two years' pilgrimage among the prisons and hospitals of
+Europe. She found much to admire in this journey, but sometimes abuses
+to correct. We must content ourselves with an incident from Edinburgh,
+perfectly in character. She found in that city private insane
+hospitals, if they could be dignified by the name, under such
+con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>ditions of mismanagement as shocked even her experienced nerves.
+Having reported the facts to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh to no
+purpose, she was advised to lay the matter before the Home Secretary
+in London. The Provost knew of this intention and resolved to
+forestall her by taking the train for London the next morning; so
+little did he know Miss Dix. She boarded the night train, and was on
+the spot before him, had her interview, secured the appointment of a
+royal commission and, ultimately the correction of the abuses of which
+she had complained.</p>
+
+<p>During the four years that intervened between her return and the
+outbreak of the Civil War, she seems to have travelled over most of
+her old ground in this country, and to have extended her journeys into
+the new states and territories. At the approach of hostilities, it
+fell to Miss Dix to give the President of the Philadelphia and
+Baltimore Railroad the first information of a plot to capture the city
+of Washington and to assassinate Mr. Lincoln. Acting upon this
+information, Gen. Butler's Massachusetts troops were sent by boat
+instead of rail, and Mr. Lincoln was "secretly smuggled through to
+Washington."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>By natural selection, Miss Dix was appointed Superintendent of Women
+Nurses in the federal service, by order of the Secretary of War. In
+this capacity she served through the four years' struggle. In a letter
+dated December 7, 1864, she writes: "I take no hour's leisure. I think
+that since the war, I have taken no day's furlough." Her great
+services were officially recognized by Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of
+War.</p>
+
+<p>Having served the country as faithfully as any soldier, during its
+hour of need, she returned to her former work of promoting and
+securing the erection of hospitals and of visiting those before
+established. In 1877, when Miss Dix was seventy-five, Dr. Charles F.
+Folsom, of Boston, in a book entitled "Diseases of the Mind," said of
+her: "Her frequent visits to our institutions of the insane now, and
+her searching criticisms, constitute of themselves a better lunacy
+commission than would be likely to be appointed in many of our
+states."</p>
+
+<p>She was at that date, however, near the end of her active labors. In
+1881, at the age of seventy-nine, she retired to the hospital she had
+been the means of building in Trenton, N. J., and there she remained,
+tenderly, even rever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>ently cared for, until her death in 1887. So
+passed to her rest and her reward one of the most remarkable women of
+her generation.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]<br />[Pg 164]<br />[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_V" id="Chapter_V"></a>V<br /><br />
+SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 437px;">
+<img src="images/ossoli.jpg" width="437" height="500" alt="SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI" title="SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI" />
+<span class="caption">SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At Cambridge, it is still possible to pick up interesting
+reminiscences of Longfellow and Lowell from old neighbors or townsmen,
+proud even to have seen these celebrities as familiar objects upon the
+street. "And Margaret Fuller," you suggest, further to tap the memory
+of your venerable friend. He smiles gently and says, Margaret Fuller
+was before his time; he remembers the table-talk of his youth. He
+remembers, when she was a girl at dancing-school, Papanti stopped his
+class and said, "Mees Fuller, Mees Fuller, you sal not be so
+magnee-fee-cent"; he remembers that, being asked if she thought
+herself better than any one else, she calmly said, "Yes, I do"; and he
+remembers that Miss Fuller having announced that she accepted the
+universe, a wit remarked that the universe ought to be greatly obliged
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>Margaret Fuller was born in 1810, a year later than Longfellow, but
+while Longfellow lived until 1882, Margaret was lost at sea thirty
+years before, in 1850. The last four years of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> her life were spent in
+Italy, so that American memories of Margaret must needs go back to
+1846. Practically it is traditions of her that remain, and not
+memories. As she survives in tradition, she seems to have been a
+person of inordinate vanity, who gave lectures in drawing-rooms and
+called them "conversations," uttered a commonplace with the authority
+of an oracle, and sentimentalized over art, poetry, or religion, while
+she seemed to herself, and apparently to others, to be talking
+philosophy. She took herself in all seriousness as a genius, ran a
+dazzling career of a dozen years or so in Cambridge and Boston, and
+then her light seems to have gone out. She came to the surface, with
+other newness, in the Transcendental era; she was the priestess of its
+mysteries; when that movement ebbed away, her day was over. This is
+the impression one would gather, if he had only current oral
+traditions of Margaret Fuller.</p>
+
+<p>If with this impression, wishing to get a first-hand knowledge of his
+subject, a student were to read the "Works of Margaret Fuller":&mdash;"Life
+Within and Without," "At Home and Abroad," "Woman in the Nineteenth
+Century," "Art, Literature, and Drama,"&mdash;he would be prepared to find
+eccentricities of style, straining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> for effect, mystical utterances,
+attempts at profundity, and stilted commonplace. He would, however,
+find nothing of this sort, or of any sort of make believe, but simply
+a writer always in earnest, always convinced, with a fair English
+style, perfectly intelligible, intent upon conveying an idea in the
+simplest manner and generally an idea which approves itself to the
+common-sense of the reader. There is no brilliancy, no ornament,
+little imagination, and not a least glimmer of wit. The absence of wit
+is remarkable, since in conversation, wit was a quality for which
+Margaret was both admired and feared. But as a writer, Margaret was a
+little prosaic,&mdash;even her poetry inclined to be prosaic,&mdash;but she is
+earnest, noble, temperate, and reasonable. The reader will be
+convinced that there was more in the woman than popular tradition
+recognizes.</p>
+
+<p>One is confirmed in the conviction that the legend does her less than
+justice when he knows the names and the quality of her friends. No
+woman ever had better or more loyal friends than Margaret Fuller.
+Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing
+were among them and compiled her "Memoirs," evidently as a labor of
+love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> George William Curtis knew her personally, and called her "a
+scholar, a critic, a thinker, a queen of conversation, above all, a
+person of delicate insight and sympathy, of the most feminine
+refinement of feeling and of dauntless courage." Col. Higginson, a
+fellow-townsman, who from youth to manhood, knew Margaret personally,
+whose sisters were her intimates, whose family, as he tells us, was
+"afterwards closely connected" with hers by marriage, and who has
+studied all the documents and written her biography, says she was a
+"person whose career is more interesting, as it seems to me, than that
+of any other American of her sex; a woman whose aims were high and
+whose services great; one whose intellect was uncommon, whose activity
+was incessant, whose life, varied, and whose death, dramatic."</p>
+
+<p>There still remains the current legend, and a legend, presumably, has
+some foundation. If we attempt to unite the Margaret Fuller of common
+tradition with Margaret Fuller as estimated by her friends, we shall
+assume that she was not a wholly balanced character,&mdash;that she must
+have been a great and noble woman to have had such friends, but that
+there may have been in her some element of foolishness which her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+friends excused and at which the public smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Margaret was the fifth in descent from Lieut. Thomas Fuller, who came
+from England in 1638, and who celebrated the event in a poem of which
+the first stanza is as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In thirty-eight I set my foot<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On this New England shore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My thoughts were then to stay one year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And then remain no more."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poetry is on a level with other colonial poetry of the period.</p>
+
+<p>Timothy Fuller, the grandfather of Margaret, graduated at Harvard
+College in 1760, became a clergyman, and was a delegate to the
+Massachusetts State Convention which adopted the Federal Constitution.
+He had five sons, all of whom became lawyers. "They were in general,"
+says Col. Higginson, "men of great energy, pushing, successful, of
+immense and varied information, of great self-esteem, and without a
+particle of tact." The evidence is that Margaret reproduced, in a
+somewhat exaggerated form, all these Fuller characteristics, good and
+bad. The saying is quoted from Horace Mann that if Margaret was
+unpopular,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> "it was because she probably inherited the
+disagreeableness of forty Fullers."</p>
+
+<p>Timothy Fuller, Margaret's father, was the oldest of these brothers
+and, Col. Higginson says, "the most successful and the most assured."
+He graduated at Harvard, second in his class, in 1801, lived in
+Cambridge, and represented the Middlesex district in Congress from
+1817 to 1825. He was a "Jeffersonian Democrat" and a personal friend
+and political supporter of John Quincy Adams. He married Margaret, the
+daughter of Major Peter Crane. Mrs. Fuller was as gentle and
+unobtrusive as her stalwart husband was forceful and uncompliant. She
+effaced herself even in her own home, was seen and not heard, though
+apparently not very conspicuously seen. She had eight children, of
+whom Margaret was the first, and when this busy mother escaped from
+the care of the household, it was to take refuge in her flower garden.
+A "fair blossom of the white amaranth," Margaret calls this mother.
+The child's nature took something from both of her parents, and was
+both strong and tender.</p>
+
+<p>Her father assumed the entire charge of Margaret's education, setting
+her studying Latin at the age of six, not an unusual feat in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> that day
+for a boy, but hitherto unheard of for a girl. Her lessons were
+recited at night, after Mr. Fuller returned from his office in Boston,
+often at a late hour. "High-pressure," says Col. Higginson, "is bad
+enough for an imaginative and excitable child, but high-pressure by
+candle-light is ruinous; yet that was the life she lived." The effect
+of these night lessons was to leave the child's brain both tired and
+excited and in no condition to sleep. It was considered singular that
+she was never ready for bed. She was hustled off to toss on her
+pillow, to see horrid visions, to have nightmare, and sometimes to
+walk in her sleep. Terrible morning headaches followed, and Margaret
+was considered a delicate child. One would like to know what Latin at
+six would have done for her, without those recitations by
+candle-light.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fuller did not consider it important that a child should have
+juvenile books and Margaret's light reading consisted of Shakspere,
+Cervantes, and Moli&egrave;re. She gives an interesting account of her
+discovery of Shakspere at the age of eight. Foraging for entertainment
+on a dismal winter Sunday afternoon, she took down a volume of
+Shakspere and was soon lost in the adventures and misadventures of
+Romeo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> and Juliet. Two hours passed, when the child's exceeding quiet
+attracted attention. "That is no book for Sunday," said her father,
+"put it away." Margaret obeyed, but soon took the book again to follow
+the fortunes of her lovers further. This was a fatal indiscretion; the
+forbidden volume was again taken from her and she was sent to bed as a
+punishment for disobedience.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the daily lessons to her father or to a private tutor went
+on; Virgil, Horace and Ovid were read in due course, and the study of
+Greek was begun. Margaret never forgave her father for robbing her of
+a proper childhood and substituting a premature scholastic education.
+"I certainly do not wish," she says, "that instead of these masters, I
+had read baby books, written down to children, but I do wish that I
+had read no books at all till later,&mdash;that I had lived with toys and
+played in the open air."</p>
+
+<p>Her early and solitary development entailed disadvantages which only a
+very thoughtful parent could have foreseen. When, later, Margaret was
+sent to school, she had no companions in study, being in advance of
+the girls of her age, with whom she played, and too young for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> the
+older set with whom she was called to recite. "Not only," she says, "I
+was not their schoolmate, but my book-life and lonely habits had given
+a cold aloofness to my whole expression, and veiled my manner with a
+hauteur which turned all hearts away."</p>
+
+<p>The effects of her training upon her health, Margaret appears to have
+exaggerated. She thought it had "checked her growth, wasted her
+constitution," and would bring her to a "premature grave." While her
+lessons to her father by candle-light continued, there were
+sleeplessness, bad dreams, and morning headaches, but after this had
+gone on one year, Mr. Fuller was elected to Congress, spent most of
+his time in Washington, and a private tutor gave the lessons,
+presumably at seasonable hours. No one with a "broken constitution"
+could have performed her later literary labors, and she was not
+threatened with a "premature grave" when Dr. Frederick Henry Hedge
+made her acquaintance in Cambridge society. "Margaret," he says, "was
+then about thirteen,&mdash;a child in years, but so precocious in her
+mental and physical development, that she passed for eighteen or
+twenty. Agreeably to this estimate, she had her place in society as a
+full-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>grown lady. When I recall her personal appearance as she was
+then, and for ten or twelve years subsequent, I have the idea of a
+blooming girl of florid complexion and vigorous health, with a
+tendency to robustness of which she was painfully conscious, and
+which, with little regard to hygienic principles, she endeavored to
+suppress and conceal, thereby preparing for herself much future
+suffering." She had, he says, "no pretensions to beauty then, or at
+any time," yet she "was not plain," a reproach from which she was
+saved "by her blond and abundant hair, by her excellent teeth, by her
+sparkling, dancing, busy eyes," and by a "graceful and peculiar
+carriage of her head and neck." He adds that "in conversation she had
+already, at that early age, begun to distinguish herself, and made
+much the same impression in society that she did in after years," but
+that she had an excessive "tendency to sarcasm" which frightened shy
+young people and made her notoriously unpopular with the ladies.</p>
+
+<p>At this period Margaret attended a seminary for young ladies in
+Boston. Cambridge was then, according to Col. Higginson, a vast,
+sparsely settled village, containing between two and three thousand
+inhabitants. In the Boston<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> school, Dr. Hedge says, "the inexperienced
+country girl was exposed to petty persecutions from the dashing misses
+of the city," and Margaret paid them off by "indiscriminate sarcasms."</p>
+
+<p>Margaret's next two years were spent at a boarding school in Groton.
+Her adventures in this school are supposed to be narrated in her
+dramatic story entitled "Mariana," in the volume called "Summer on the
+Lakes." Mariana at first carried all before her "by her love of wild
+dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion and wit," but abusing
+her privileges, she is overthrown by her rebellious subjects, brought
+to great humiliation, and receives some needed moral instructions.</p>
+
+<p>At fifteen, Margaret returned to Cambridge and resumed her private
+studies, except that, for a Greek recitation, she attended an academy
+in which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was then fitting for college. Her
+day at this period, as she gives it, was occupied thus: she rose
+before five, walked an hour, and practiced at the piano till seven:
+breakfasted and read French till eight; read Brown's philosophy, two
+or three lectures, till half past nine; went to school and studied
+Greek till twelve; recited, went home,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> and practiced till two; dined;
+lounged half an hour, read two hours in Italian, walked or rode, and
+spent her evenings leisurely with music or friends. Plainly she ought
+to have been one of the learned women of her generation.</p>
+
+<p>A school composition of Margaret impressed her fellow pupil, Dr.
+Holmes, as he relates, with a kind of awe. It began loftily with the
+words, "It is a trite remark," a phrase which seemed to the boy very
+masterful. The girls envied her a certain queenliness of manner. "We
+thought," says one of them, "that if we could only come into school in
+that way, we could know as much Greek as she did." She was accustomed
+to fill the hood of her cloak with books, swing them over her
+shoulder, and march away. "We wished," says this lady, "that our
+mothers would let us have hooded cloaks, that we might carry our books
+in the same way."</p>
+
+<p>It is known that Margaret had several love affairs and, in a later
+letter, she refers to one which belongs to this period, and which
+appears to have been the first of the series. She meets her old adorer
+again at the age of thirty and writes to a friend who knew of the
+youthful episode. He had the same powerful eye, calm wisdom, refined
+observation and "the imposing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> <em>maniere d'etre</em> which anywhere would
+give him influence among men"; but in herself, she says, "There is
+scarcely a fibre left of the haughty, passionate, ambitious child he
+remembered and loved."</p>
+
+<p>Though a precocious girl and in a way fascinating, there is evidence
+that Margaret was crude and unformed socially, due perhaps to the
+habit of considering her mother as a negligible quantity. Cambridge
+ladies preserved an unpleasant portrait of the child as she appeared
+at a grand reception given by Mr. Fuller to President Adams in 1826,
+"one of the most elaborate affairs of the kind," says Col. Higginson,
+"that had occurred in Cambridge since the ante-revolutionary days of
+the Lechmeres and Vassals." Margaret ought to have been dressed by an
+artist, but apparently, a girl of sixteen, she was left to her own
+devices. She appeared, we are told, with a low-necked dress badly cut,
+tightly laced, her arms held back as if pinioned, her hair curled all
+over her head, and she danced quadrilles very badly. This escapade was
+not allowed to repeat itself. Certain kind and motherly Cambridge
+ladies took the neglected child in hand, tamed her rude strength, and
+subdued her manners. Col. Higginson mentions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> half a dozen of these
+excellent ladies, among them his mother, at whose feet "this studious,
+self-conscious, overgrown girl" would sit, "covering her hands with
+kisses and treasuring every word."</p>
+
+<p>Chief among Margaret's motherly friends was Mrs. Eliza Farrar, wife of
+a Harvard professor, an authoress of merit, "of uncommon character and
+cultivation, who had lived much in Europe, and who, with no children
+of her own," became a kind of foster-mother to Margaret. She had
+Margaret "constantly at her own house, reformed her hairdresser,
+instructed her dressmaker, and took her to make calls and on
+journeys." Margaret was an apt pupil, and the good training of these
+many Cambridge mothers was apparent when, ten years later, Mr. Emerson
+made her acquaintance. "She was then, as always," he says, "carefully
+and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession."</p>
+
+<p>The seven years in Cambridge, from Margaret's fifteenth to her
+twenty-third year, though uneventful, were, considering merely the
+pleasure of existence, the most delightful of her life. She was a
+school-girl as much or as little as she cared to be; her health, when
+not over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>taxed, was perfect; her family though not rich, were in easy
+circumstances; her father was distinguished, having just retired from
+Congress after eight years of creditable service; and, partly perhaps
+from her father's distinction, she had access to the best social
+circles of Cambridge. "In our evening reunions," says Dr. Hedge, "she
+was always conspicuous by the brilliancy of her wit, which needed but
+little provocation to break forth in exuberant sallies, that drew
+around her a knot of listeners, and made her the central attraction of
+the hour. Rarely did she enter a company in which she was not a
+prominent object." Her conversational talent "continued to develop
+itself in these years, and was certainly" he thinks, "her most decided
+gift. One could form no adequate idea of her ability without hearing
+her converse.... For some reason or other, she could never deliver
+herself in print as she did with her lips." Emerson, in perfect
+agreement with this estimate says, "Her pen was a non-conductor." The
+reader will not think this true in her letters, where often the words
+seem to palpitate. Doubtless the world had no business to see her love
+letters, but one will find there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> a woman who, if she could speak as
+she writes, must have poured herself out in tidal waves.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Hedge was struck by two traits of Margaret's character, repeatedly
+mentioned by others, but to which it is worth while to have his
+testimony. The first was a passionate love for the beautiful: "I have
+never known one who seemed to derive such satisfaction from beautiful
+forms"; the second was "her intellectual sincerity. Her judgment took
+no bribes from her sex or her sphere, nor from custom, nor tradition,
+nor caprice."</p>
+
+<p>Margaret was nineteen years old when Dr. James Freeman Clarke, then a
+young man in college, made her acquaintance. "We both lived in
+Cambridge," he says, "and from that time until she went to reside in
+Groton in 1833, I saw her or heard from her almost every day. There
+was a family connection between us, and we called each other cousins."
+Possessing in a greater degree than any person he ever knew, the power
+of magnetizing others, she had drawn about her a circle of girl
+friends whom she entertained and delighted by her exuberant talent.
+They came from Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Brookline, and met now at
+one house and now at another of these pleasant towns.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> Dr. Hedge also
+knows of this charming circle, and says, "she loved to draw these fair
+girls to herself, and make them her guests, and was never so happy as
+when surrounded in company, by such a bevy."</p>
+
+<p>With all her social activity, Margaret kept up her studies at a rate
+that would be the despair of a young man in college. "She already,
+when I first became acquainted with her," says Dr. Clarke, "had become
+familiar with the masterpieces of French, Italian, and Spanish
+literature," and was beginning German, and in about three months, she
+was reading with ease the masterpieces of German literature.
+Meanwhile, she was keeping up her Greek as a pastime, reading over and
+over the dialogues of Plato. Still there is time for Mr. Clarke to
+walk with her for hours beneath the lindens or in the garden, or, on a
+summer's day to ride with her on horseback from Cambridge to
+Newton,&mdash;a day he says, "all of a piece, in which my eloquent
+companion helped me to understand my past life and her own."</p>
+
+<p>We cannot wonder that, at the age of twenty-three, Margaret
+reluctantly left Cambridge where there was so much that she loved, and
+went with her family to a farm in Groton where,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> with certain
+unpleasant school-girl memories, there was nothing that she loved at
+all. In 1833, at the age of sixty-five Mr. Fuller retired from his law
+practice and bought an estate in Groton, with the double purpose of
+farming his lands for income, and, in his leisure, writing a history
+of the United States, for which his public life had been a
+preparation, and towards which he had collected much material.
+Margaret's most exacting duties were the education of the younger
+children, which left her much time for her favorite studies. She had
+correspondents by the score; her friends visited her; Cambridge homes
+were open to her; and Mrs. Farrar took her on a delightful journey to
+Newport, Hudson River and Trenton Falls. Still we cannot add the two
+years in Groton to her happy period, because she allowed herself to be
+intensely miserable. Six years later, in a moment of penitence, she
+said of this period, "Had I been wise in such matters then as now, how
+easy and fair I might have made the whole."</p>
+
+<p>She fought her homesickness by overwork, so that Emerson says, "her
+reading in Groton was at a rate like Gibbon's," and she paid the
+penalty of her excesses by a serious illness which threatened to be
+fatal, and from which perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> she never fully recovered. It was some
+consolation that her father was melted to an unwonted exhibition of
+tenderness, and that he said to her in this mood, "My dear, I have
+been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you have
+any faults. You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do
+not know that you have a single fault."</p>
+
+<p>Events were soon to make this remark one of her dearest memories. In a
+short time, death separated the father and child, who had been so much
+to each other. In 1835, Mr. Fuller fell a victim to cholera, and died
+in three days. For a year or more, Margaret's heart had been set upon
+a visit to Europe for study; the trip had been promised by her father;
+it had been arranged that she should accompany her friends, the
+Farrars; but the death of Mr. Fuller dissolved this dream, and, in her
+journal, solemnly praying that "duty may now be the first object and
+self set aside," she dedicates her strength to her "mother, brothers,
+and sister." No one can read the "Memoirs" without feeling that she
+kept her vows.</p>
+
+<p>The estate of Mr. Fuller finally yielded $2,000 to each of the seven
+children, much less, Margaret says, than was anticipated. With<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+reason, she wrote, "Life, as I look forward, presents a scene of
+struggle and privation only." In the winter, at Mrs. Farrar's,
+Margaret met Mr. Emerson; the summer following she visited at his
+house in Concord. There she met Mr. Alcott and engaged to teach in his
+school in Boston.</p>
+
+<p>Margaret Fuller's visit at Mr. Emerson's in 1836 had for her very
+important consequences. It was the first of many visits and was the
+beginning of an intimacy which takes its place among the most
+interesting literary friendships in the history of letters. To this
+friendship Col. Higginson devotes a separate chapter in his biography
+of Margaret, and in the "Memoirs," under the title of "Visits to
+Concord," Mr. Emerson gives a charming account of it in more than a
+hundred pages.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Emerson was by no means the stranger to Margaret that she was to
+him. She had sat under his preaching during his pastorate at the
+Second Church in Boston, and "several of his sermons," so she wrote to
+a friend, "stood apart in her memory like landmarks in her spiritual
+history." It appears that she had failed to come to close quarters
+with this timid apostle. A year after he left his pulpit, she wrote of
+him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> as the "only clergyman of all possible clergymen who eludes my
+acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>When, at length, she was invited to Concord, it was as Mrs. Emerson's
+guest, not as his: "she came to spend a fortnight with my wife."
+However, at last she was under his roof. "I still remember," he says,
+"the first half hour of her conversation.... Her extreme plainness,&mdash;a
+trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,&mdash;the nasal tone
+of her voice&mdash;all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get
+far.... I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked.... She
+had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give
+an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain
+at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy
+and superabundant life."</p>
+
+<p>The practical outcome of the visit was an engagement to teach in Mr.
+Alcott's school. Under date of August 2, 1836, Mr. Alcott writes,
+"Emerson called this morning and took me to Concord to spend the day.
+At his house, I met Margaret Fuller ... and had some conversation with
+her about taking Miss Peabody's place in my school." That is to say,
+Mr. Emerson had in his house a brilliant young lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> who, by stress of
+circumstances, wanted a situation; he had a friend in Boston in whose
+school there was a vacancy; Mr. Emerson, at some pains to himself,
+brought the parties together. Nor was this the last time that Mr.
+Emerson befriended Margaret.</p>
+
+<p>It appears from Mr. Alcott's diary that Miss Fuller began her
+engagement with January, that she taught Latin and French at the
+school, and French, German, and Italian to private classes. For a
+class of beginners, she "thought it good success," she says, "when at
+the end of three months, they could read twenty pages of German at a
+lesson, and very well." An advanced class in German read Goethe's
+Hermann and Dorothea, Goetz von Berlichingen, Iphigenia, and the first
+part of Faust, "three weeks of thorough study," she calls it, "as
+valuable to me as to them."</p>
+
+<p>The class in Italian went at an equal pace. At the same time she had
+three private pupils, to one of whom, every day for ten weeks, she
+taught Latin "orally,"&mdash;in other words, Latin conversation. In her
+leisure, she "translated, one evening every week, German authors into
+English for the gratification of Dr. Channing." It is to be hoped that
+she was paid for this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> service, because she found it far from
+interesting. "It is not very pleasant," she writes, "for Dr. Channing
+takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable to us feminine
+people."</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1837, Margaret accepted an invitation to teach in a
+private academy in Providence, R. I.&mdash;four hours a day, at a salary of
+$1,000. We are not told how this invitation came to her, but it is not
+difficult to detect the hand of Mr. Emerson. The proprietor of the
+school was an admirer of Emerson, so much so that he brought Emerson
+from Concord in June following, to dedicate a new school building. His
+relation to both parties makes it probable that Margaret owed her
+second engagement, as she did her first, to the good offices of Mr.
+Emerson.</p>
+
+<p>She taught in this school with success, two years, "worshipped by the
+girls," it is said, "but sometimes too sarcastic for the boys." The
+task of teaching, however, was irksome to her, her mind was in
+literature; she had from Mr. Ripley a definite proposition to write a
+"Life of Goethe," a task of which she had dreamed many years; and she
+resigned her position, and withdrew from the profession of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+school-teacher, at the end of 1838. Her life of Goethe was never
+written, but it was always dancing before her eyes and, more than
+once, determined her course.</p>
+
+<p>In the following spring, Margaret took a pleasant house in Jamaica
+Plain, "then and perhaps now," Col. Higginson says, "the most rural
+and attractive suburb of Boston." Here she brought her mother and the
+younger children. Three years later, she removed with them to
+Cambridge, and for the next five years, she kept the family together,
+and made a home for them. In addition to the income of the estate, she
+expected to meet her expenses by giving lessons. Two pupils came with
+her from Providence, and other pupils came for recitations, by whom
+she was paid at the rate of two dollars an hour.</p>
+
+<p>With these resources the life in Jamaica Plain began very quietly and
+pleasantly. To be quiet however was not natural to Margaret. Besides,
+she had fallen upon what, intellectually, were stirring times. It was
+at the high tide of the Transcendental movement. William Henry
+Channing who, like Margaret, was a part of it, says, "the summer of
+1839 saw the full dawn of this strange enthusiasm." As he briefly
+defines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> it "Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was a
+pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the
+temple of the living God in the soul." Its disciples, says Mr.
+Channing, "were pleasantly nick-named the 'Like-minded,' on the ground
+that no two were of the same opinion." Of this company, he says,
+"Margaret was a member by the grace of nature.... Men, her superiors
+in years, in fame and social position, treated her more with the
+frankness due from equal to equal, than the half condescending
+deference with which scholars are wont to adapt themselves to
+women.... It was evident that they prized her verdict, respected her
+criticism, feared her rebuke, and looked to her as an umpire." In
+speaking, "her opening was deliberate, like the progress of a massive
+force gaining its momentum; but as she felt her way, and moving in a
+congenial element, the sweep of her speech became grand. The style of
+her eloquence was sententious, free from prettiness, direct, vigorous,
+charged with vitality."</p>
+
+<p>It was a saying of hers that if she had been a man, she would have
+aspired to become an orator, and it seems probable she would not have
+aspired in vain. The natural sequel to the occasional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> discussions of
+the summer was the formation of a class of ladies for Conversation,
+with Margaret as the leader. This class contained twenty-five or
+thirty ladies, among whom were Mrs. George Bancroft, Mrs. Lydia Maria
+Child, Mrs. Horace Mann, Mrs. Theodore Parker, Mrs. Waldo Emerson,
+Mrs. George Ripley, and Mrs. Josiah Quincy. The first series of
+thirteen meetings was immediately followed by a second series; they
+were resumed the next winter and were continued with unabated interest
+for five years.</p>
+
+<p>The subjects considered in these celebrated Conversations ranged over
+a very wide field, from mythology and religion, poetry and art, to
+war, ethics, and sociology. If Margaret had not been brilliant in
+these assemblies, she would have fallen short of herself as she has
+been represented in the Cambridge drawing-rooms. As reported by one of
+the members of the class, "Margaret used to come to the conversations
+very well dressed and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them
+with an exordium in which she gave her leading views,"&mdash;a part which
+she is further said to have managed with great skill and charm, after
+which she invited others to join in the discussion. Mr. Emerson tells
+us that the apparent sumptuous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>ness in her attire was imaginary, the
+"effect of a general impression made by her genius and mistakenly
+attributed to some external elegance; for," he says, "I have been told
+by her most intimate friend, who knew every particular of her conduct
+at the time, that there was nothing of especial expense or splendor in
+her toilette."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Emerson knew a lady "of eminent powers, previously by no means
+partial to Margaret," who said, on leaving one of these assemblies, "I
+never heard, read of, or imagined a conversation at all equal to this
+we have now heard." Many testimonies have been brought together, in
+the "Memoirs," of the enthusiasm and admiration created by Margaret in
+these Conversations. They were probably her most brilliant
+achievements, though, in the nature of the case, nothing survives of
+them but the echo in these recorded memories of participants.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Emerson says that "the fame of these conversations" led to a
+proposal that Margaret should undertake an evening class to which
+gentlemen should be admitted and that he himself had the pleasure of
+"assisting at one&mdash;the second&mdash;of these soirees." Margaret "spoke
+well&mdash;she could not otherwise,&mdash;but I remember that she seemed
+encumbered, or interrupted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> by the headiness or incapacity of the
+men." A lady who attended the entire series, a "true hand," he says,
+reports that "all that depended on others entirely failed" and that
+"even in the point of erudition, which Margaret did not profess on the
+subject, she proved the best informed of the party." This testimony is
+worth something in answer to the charge that Margaret's scholarship
+was fictitious, that she had a smattering of many things, but knew
+nothing thoroughly. She seems to have compared well with others, some
+of whom were considered scholars. "Take her as a whole," said Mr.
+Emerson's informant, "she has the most to bestow on others by
+conversation of any person I have ever known."</p>
+
+<p>For these services, Margaret seems to have received liberal
+compensation, though all was so cordial that she says she never had
+the feeling of being "a paid Corinne." For the conversations with
+ladies and gentlemen, according to Mrs. Dall who has published her
+notes of them, the tickets were $20 each, for the series of ten
+evenings.</p>
+
+<p>It appears from his account that Mr. Emerson saw much of Margaret
+during these years and that she was frequently his guest. "The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> day,"
+he says, "was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory; and I,
+who knew her intimately for ten years,&mdash;from July, 1836, till August,
+1846, when she sailed for Europe,&mdash;never saw her without a surprise at
+her new powers." She was as busy as he, and they seldom met in the
+forenoon, but "In the evening, she came to the library, and many and
+many a conversation was there held," he tells us, "whose details, if
+they could be preserved, would justify all encomiums. They interested
+me in every manner;&mdash;talent, memory, wit, stern introspection, poetic
+play, religion, the finest personal feeling, the aspects of the
+future, each followed each in full activity, and left me, I remember,
+enriched, and sometimes astonished by the gifts of my guest."</p>
+
+<p>She was "rich in friends," and wore them "as a necklace of diamonds
+about her neck." "She was an active and inspiring companion and
+correspondent, and all the art, the thought and nobleness of New
+England seemed, at that moment, related to her and she to it. She was
+everywhere a welcome guest.... Her arrival was a holiday, and so was
+her abode ... all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to
+catch the favorable hour, in walk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>ing, riding, or boating to talk with
+this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories,
+tragedies, oracles with her, and, with her broad relations to so many
+fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who
+carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had
+been finally referred."</p>
+
+<p>At a later day, when Margaret was in Italy, reports came back that she
+was making conquests, and having advantageous offers of marriage. Even
+Mr. Emerson expressed surprise at these social successes in a strange
+land, but a lady said to him, "There is nothing extraordinary in it.
+Had she been a man, any one of those fine girls of sixteen, who
+surrounded her here, would have married her: they were all in love
+with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Of personal influence, speaking strictly,&mdash;an efflux, that is, purely
+of mind and character," Mr. Emerson thinks she had more than any other
+person he ever knew. Even a recluse like Hawthorne yielded to this
+influence. Hawthorne was married to Miss Sophia Peabody in 1842, and
+began housekeeping in the Old Manse in Concord. The day following
+their engagement Miss Peabody wrote Miss Fuller addressing her "Dear,
+most noble Margaret," and say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>ing, "I feel that you are entitled,
+through our love and regard to be told directly.... Mr. Hawthorne,
+last evening, in the midst of his emotions, so deep and absorbing,
+after deciding, said that Margaret can now, when she visits Mr.
+Emerson spend part of the time with us." A month after the marriage,
+Hawthorne himself wrote to Margaret, "There is nobody to whom I would
+more willingly speak my mind, because I can be certain of being
+understood." Evidently he is not beginning an acquaintance; he already
+knows Margaret intimately and respects her thoroughly. There is no
+evidence, I believe, that during her life, he held any different
+opinion of her.</p>
+
+<p>These facts have become of special interest because, in Italy, eight
+years after her death, he wrote in his Note-Book, that Margaret "had a
+strong and coarse nature" and that "she was a great humbug." The most
+reasonable explanation of this change of view is that Margaret was
+dead, poor woman, and could not speak for herself; that she had fought
+with all her might in an Italian Revolution that had failed; that
+having failed, she and her party were discredited; that her enemies
+survived, and Hawthorne listened to them. However his later opinions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+may be explained, the quality of her friends in America, among whom
+had been Hawthorne himself, is evidence that Margaret was not of a
+"coarse nature," and it is incredible that a "humbug" could have
+imposed herself for five years upon those ladies who attended her
+conversations, not to speak of James Freeman Clarke who was a fair
+scholar and Dr. Hedge who was a very rare scholar.</p>
+
+<p>Margaret had her weaknesses, which her friends do not conceal. It was
+a weakness, not perhaps that she overestimated herself; that might be
+pardoned; but that she took no pains to conceal her high opinion of
+her abilities and worth. One likes to see an appearance of modesty,
+and that little deceit Margaret did not practice. On the contrary, Mr.
+Emerson says, "Margaret at first astonished and then repelled us by a
+complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of
+Scaligar.... In the coolest way, she said to her friends, 'I now know
+all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect
+comparable to my own.'... It is certain that Margaret occasionally let
+slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the
+presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> who
+knew her good sense." Col. Higginson quotes a saying about the
+Fullers, that "Their only peculiarity was that they said openly about
+themselves the good and bad things which we commonly suppress about
+ourselves and express only about other people." The common way is not
+more sincere, but it is pleasanter.</p>
+
+<p>In 1840, the second year of Margaret's Conversations, appeared the
+first number of <em>The Dial</em>, a literary magazine of limited
+circulation, but destined to a kind of post-mortem immortality. In
+1841, the Community of Brook Farm was established. An interesting
+account of both enterprises, and of Margaret's part in them, is given
+by Mr. Emerson in a paper found in the tenth volume of his collected
+Works. In the preliminary discussions leading to both enterprises,
+Margaret participated. Like Mr. Emerson, she did not have unqualified
+faith in the Brook Farm experiment and did not join the community,
+though she had many friends in it, was a frequent visitor, and had the
+honor to sit for the portrait of "Zenobia" in Mr. Hawthorne's
+Blithedale Romance.</p>
+
+<p>Her part in <em>The Dial</em> was more prominent. She edited the first two
+volumes of the magazine, being then succeeded by Mr. Emerson, and she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+wrote for it a paper entitled "Man vs. Men: Woman vs. Women,"
+afterward expanded and published in a volume under the title, "Woman
+in the Nineteenth Century," her second and most famous book. Her first
+book, "Summer on the Lakes," is an account of a charming journey, with
+the family of James Freeman Clarke and others, by steamboat and farm
+wagon, as far as the Mississippi. It was a voyage of discovery, and
+her account has permanent historic interest.</p>
+
+<p>In 1844, Margaret accepted an advantageous offer to become literary
+editor of the <em>New York Tribune</em>, a position which she was admirably
+qualified to fill. A collection of papers from <em>The Tribune</em>, under
+the title of "Literature and Art," made up her third book, published
+in 1846, on the eve of her departure for Europe.</p>
+
+<p>During her residence in New York, she became greatly interested in
+philanthropies, especially in the care of prisoners of her own sex.
+She visited the jails and prisons, interviewed the inmates, gave them
+"conversations," and wrought upon them the same miracle which she had
+so often performed in refined drawing-rooms. "If she had been born to
+large fortune," said Mr. Greeley, "a house of refuge for all female
+outcasts desiring to return to the ways of virtue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> would have been one
+of her most cherished and first realized conceptions."</p>
+
+<p>Early in her New York residence must also have occurred that rather
+mysterious love affair with the young Hebrew, Mr. Nathan, who seems
+first to have charmed her with his music and then with his heart.
+After nearly sixty years, the letters which she wrote him, full of
+consuming fire, have at last seen the light. From a passage in one of
+them, it would seem that marriage was not contemplated by either
+party, that in theory at least they took no thought of the morrow, the
+bliss of the moment being held sufficient. Evidently there was no
+engagement, but no one can doubt that on her part there was love. Of
+course in this changing world, no such relations can be maintained for
+ever, and in the end there will be an awakening, and then pain.</p>
+
+<p>In 1846, Margaret realized her life-dream and went to Europe. Destined
+to a life of adventure, she was accidently separated from her party,
+and spent a perilous night on Ben Lomond, without a particle of
+shelter, in a drenching rain, a thrilling account of which she has
+written. She visited Carlyle and, for a wonder, he let her take a
+share in the conversation. To Mr. Emerson he wrote, Margaret "is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> very
+narrow sometimes, but she is truly high."</p>
+
+<p>On her way to Italy, the goal of her ambition, she visited George Sand
+and they had such a meeting as two women of genius might. She sailed
+from Genoa for Naples in February, 1847, and arrived in Rome in May
+following. There is much to interest a reader in her Italian life, but
+the one thing which cannot be omitted is the story of her marriage to
+the Marquis Ossoli. Soon after her arrival in Rome, on a visit to St.
+Peter's, Margaret became separated from her friends, whom she did not
+again discover at the place appointed for meeting. A gentleman seeing
+her distress, offered to get her a carriage and, not finding one,
+walked home with her. This was the young Marquis Ossoli, and thus
+fortuitously the acquaintance began, which was continued by occasional
+meetings. The summer Margaret spent in the north of Italy, and when
+she returned to Rome, she took modest apartments in which she received
+her friends every Monday evening, and the Marquis came very regularly.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long however before he confessed his love for her and asked
+her hand in marriage. He was gently rejected, being told that he ought
+to marry a younger woman, and that she would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> be his friend but not
+his wife. He however persisted, at length won her consent, and they
+were privately married in December. I follow the account of Mrs.
+William Story, wife of the artist, then residing in Rome. The old
+Marquis Ossoli had recently died, leaving an unsettled estate, of
+which his two older sons, both in the Papal service, were the
+executors. "Every one knows," says Mrs. Story, "that law is subject to
+ecclesiastical influence in Rome, and that marriage with a Protestant
+would be destructive of all prospect of favorable administration."</p>
+
+<p>The birth of a child a year later, at Rieti in the Appenines, whither
+Margaret had retired, made secrecy seem more imperative; or, as
+Margaret said, in order to defend the child "from the stings of
+poverty, they were patient waiters for the restored law of the land."
+The Italian Revolution of 1848 was then in progress. Ossoli her
+husband, was a captain in the Civic Guard, on duty in Rome, and the
+letters which she wrote him at this period of trial, were the only
+fragments of her treasures recovered from the wreck in which she
+perished.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving her babe with his nurse, in April following, she visited Rome
+and was shut up in the siege by the French army which had been sent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+to overthrow the provisional government and restore the authority of
+the pope. "Ossoli took station with his men on the walls of the
+Vatican garden where he remained faithfully to the end of the attack.
+Margaret had entire charge of one of the hospitals.... I have walked
+through the wards with her," says Mrs. Story, "and seen how comforting
+was her presence to the poor suffering men. 'How long will the Signora
+stay?' 'When will the Signora come again?' they eagerly asked.... They
+raised themselves up on their elbows to get the last glimpse of her as
+she was going away."</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of these dangers, Margaret confided to Mrs. Story the
+secret of her marriage and placed in her hands the marriage
+certificate and other documents relating to the affair. These papers
+were afterward returned to Margaret and were lost in the wreck.</p>
+
+<p>The failure of the Revolution was the financial ruin of all those who
+had staked their fortunes in it. They had much reason to be thankful
+if they escaped with their lives. By the intervention of friends, the
+Ossolis were dealt with very leniently. Mr. Greenough, the artist,
+interested himself in their behalf and procured for them permission to
+retire, outside the papal territory,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> to Florence. Ossoli even
+obtained a small part of his patrimony.</p>
+
+<p>Except the disappointment and sorrow over the faded dream of Italian
+Independence, the winter at Florence was one of the bright spots in
+Margaret's life. She was proud of her husband's part in the
+Revolution: "I rejoice," she says, "in all Ossoli did." She had her
+babe with her and her happiness in husband and child was perfect: "My
+love for Ossoli is most pure and tender, nor has any one, except my
+mother or little children, loved me so genuinely as he does.... Ossoli
+seems to me more lovely and good every day; our darling child is well
+now, and every day more gay and playful."</p>
+
+<p>She found pleasant and congenial society: "I see the Brownings often,"
+she says, "and love them both more and more as I know them better. Mr.
+Browning enriches every hour I spend with him, and is a most cordial,
+true, and noble man. One of my most prized Italian friends,
+Marchioness Arconati Visconti, of Milan, is passing the winter here,
+and I see her almost every day." Moreover she was busy with a
+congenial task. At the very opening of the struggle for liberty, she
+planned to write a history of the eventful period, and with this
+purpose, collected material<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> for the undertaking, and already had a
+large part of the work in manuscript. She finished the writing in
+Florence, and much value was set upon it both by herself and by her
+friends in Italy. Mrs. Story says, "in the estimation of most of those
+who were in Italy at the time, the loss of Margaret's history and
+notes is a great and irreparable one. No one could have possessed so
+many avenues of direct information from both sides."</p>
+
+<p>When the spring opened, it was decided to return to America, partly to
+negotiate directly with the publisher, but chiefly because, having
+exhausted her resources, Margaret's pen must henceforth be the main
+reliance of the little family. It is pathetic to know that, after
+their passage had been engaged, "letters came which, had they reached
+her a week earlier, would probably have induced them to remain in
+Italy."</p>
+
+<p>They sailed, May 17, 1850, in a merchant vessel, the only other
+passengers being the baby's nurse and Mr. Horace Sumner, a younger
+brother of Senator Sumner. After a protracted and troubled voyage of
+two months, the vessel arrived off the coast of New Jersey, on July
+18. The "weather was thick.... By nine p. m. there was a gale, by
+midnight a hurri<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>cane," and at four o'clock on the morning of July 19,
+the vessel grounded on the shallow sands of Fire Island. The captain
+had died of smallpox on the voyage; his widow, the mate in command of
+the vessel, and four seamen reached the shore; Mr. Sumner and the
+Ossolis perished. The cruel part of the tragedy is that it seems
+probable every soul on board might have been saved. Life-boats, only
+three miles away, did not arrive until noon; that is, after eight
+precious hours had passed. Moreover, in a moment of penitence, one of
+the life-boat crew said, "Oh, if we had known that any such persons of
+importance were on board, we should have done our best."</p>
+
+<p>Margaret, the name by which she will always be known, had passed her
+fortieth birthday at sea on this voyage. It seems a short life in
+which to have crowded so much and such varied experience. She had some
+trials even in her youth, but for two-thirds of her existence, she
+might have been considered a favorite of fortune. In later life, she
+had some battles to fight, but her triumphs were great enough to
+dazzle a person with more modesty than was her endowment. She suffered
+in Italy, both for her child left to strangers in the mountains, and
+for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> her adopted country, but they were both causes, in which for her,
+suffering was a joy. She did not desire to survive her husband and
+child, nor to leave them behind, and, we may say, happily they all
+went together. "Her life seems to me," says Col. Higginson, "on the
+whole, a triumphant rather than a sad one," and that is a reasonable
+verdict, however difficult to render in the presence of such a tragedy
+as her untimely death.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]<br />[Pg 208]<br />[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_VI" id="Chapter_VI"></a>VI<br /><br />
+HARRIET BEECHER STOWE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<img src="images/stowe.jpg" width="440" height="500" alt="HARRIET BEECHER STOWE" title="HARRIET BEECHER STOWE" />
+<span class="caption">HARRIET BEECHER STOWE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Is this the little woman who made this great war!" exclaimed
+President Lincoln when, in 1862, Mrs. Stowe was introduced to him.
+There was but one woman in America to whom this could have been said
+without absurdity. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was so conspicuous a factor in
+bringing on the war which abolished American slavery that to credit
+these results to Mrs. Stowe was not fulsome flattery but graceful
+compliment.</p>
+
+<p>There are two excellent biographies of Mrs. Stowe, one published in
+1889, by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and one, in 1897, by Mrs.
+Annie Fields. That work will hardly need to be done again. The object
+of this sketch is to study the influences that moulded Mrs. Stowe, to
+present the salient features of her career, and, incidentally, to
+discover her characteristic qualities. Her fame rests upon her
+literary achievements, and these are comparatively well known. Her
+literary career can hardly be said to have begun until the age of
+forty and, if this were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> the only interest her life had for us, we
+could pass hastily over her youth. It will be found however that her
+religious development, begun prematurely with her fourth year and
+continued without consideration or discretion until at seventeen she
+became a chronic invalid, gives a kind of tragic interest to her
+earlier years. Her religious education may not have been unique; it
+may have been characteristic of much of the religious life of New
+England, but girls set at work upon the problems of their souls at the
+age of four have seldom attained the distinction of having their
+biographies written, so that one can study their history.</p>
+
+<p>Harriet, the second daughter and seventh child of Lyman Beecher and
+Roxanna Foote, was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 14, 1811. There
+were three Mrs. Lyman Beechers of whom Roxanna Foote was the first.
+The Footes were Episcopalians, Harriet, sister of Roxanna, being as
+Mrs. Stowe says, "the highest of High Churchwomen who in her private
+heart did not consider my father an ordained minister." Roxanna,
+perhaps not so high-church, held out for two years against Dr.
+Beecher's assaults upon her heart and then consented to become his
+wife.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>Mrs. Beecher was a refined and cultivated lady who "read all the new
+works that were published at that day," numbered painting among her
+accomplishments, and whose house "was full of little works of
+ingenuity and taste and skill, which had been wrought by her hand:
+pictures of birds and flowers, done with minutest skill"; but her
+greatest charm was a religious nature full of all gentleness and
+sweetness. "In no exigency," says Dr. Beecher, "was she taken by
+surprise. She was just there, quiet as an angel above." There seems to
+have been but one thing which this saintly woman with an Episcopalian
+education could not do to meet the expectations of a Congregational
+parish, and that was that "in the weekly female prayer-meeting she
+could never lead the devotions"; but from this duty she seems to have
+been excused because of her known sensitiveness and timidity.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Beecher died when Harriet was in her fourth year, but she left an
+indelible impression upon her family. Her "memory met us everywhere,"
+says Mrs. Stowe; "when father wished to make an appeal to our hearts
+which he knew we could not resist, he spoke of mother." It had been
+the mother's prayer that her sons, of whom there were six, should be
+ministers, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> ministers they all were. One incident Mrs. Stowe
+remembered which may be supposed to have set Sunday apart as a day of
+exceptional sanctity. It was that "of our all running and dancing out
+before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning
+and her pleasant voice saying after us, 'Remember the Sabbath day to
+keep it holy.'" Such early religious impressions made upon the mind of
+a child of four would have faded in other surroundings, but it will be
+seen that Harriet's environment gave no rest to her little soul.</p>
+
+<p>After the death of her mother, the child was sent to her grandmother
+Foote's for a long visit. There she fell to the charge of her aunt
+Harriet, than whom, we are told, "a more energetic human being never
+undertook the education of a child." According to her views, "little
+girls were to be taught to move very gently, to speak softly and
+prettily, to say 'Yes ma'am' and 'No ma'am,' never to tear their
+clothes, to sew and knit at regular hours, to go to church on Sunday
+and make all the responses, and to come home and be catechised. I
+remember those catechisings when she used to place my little cousin
+Mary and myself bolt upright at her knee while black Dinah and Harvey,
+the bound boy, were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> ranged at a respectful distance behind us.... I
+became a proficient in the Church catechism and gave my aunt great
+satisfaction by the old-fashioned gravity and steadiness with which I
+learned to repeat it." This early training in the catechism and the
+responses bore fruit in giving Mrs. Stowe a life-long fondness for the
+Episcopal service and ultimately in taking her into the Episcopal
+Church, of which during her last thirty years she was a communicant.
+Harriet signalized her fifth year by committing to memory twenty-seven
+hymns and "two long chapters of the Bible," and even more perhaps, by
+accidentally discovering in the attic a discarded volume of the
+"Arabian Nights," with which, she says, her fortune was made. It was a
+much more suitable child's book, one would think, than the Church
+catechism or Watts's hymns.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of six Harriet passed to the care of the second Mrs. Lyman
+Beecher, formerly Harriet Porter, of Portland, Maine, apparently a
+lady of great dignity and character. "We felt," says Mrs. Stowe, "a
+little in awe of her, as if she were a strange princess rather than
+our own mamma; but her voice was very sweet, her ways of speaking and
+moving very graceful, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> she took us up in her lap and let us play
+with her beautiful hands which seemed wonderful things, made of pearl
+and ornamented with strange rings." It appears she was a faithful
+mother, though a little severe and repressive. Henry Ward Beecher said
+of her: "She did the office-work of a mother if ever a mother did";
+she "performed to the uttermost her duties, according to her ability";
+she "was a woman of profound veneration rather than of a warm loving
+nature. Therefore her prayer was invariably a prayer of deep yearning
+reverence. I remember well the impression which it made on me. There
+was a mystic influence about it. A sort of sympathetic hold it had on
+me, but still I always felt when I went to prayer, as though I were
+going into a crypt, where the sun was not allowed to come; and I
+shrunk from it." To complete the portrait of this conscientious lady
+who was to have the supervision of Harriet from her sixth year, the
+following from a letter of one of the Beecher children is worth
+quoting: "Mamma is well and don't laugh any more than she did."
+Evidently a rather stern and sobering influence had come into the
+Beecher family.</p>
+
+<p>"In her religion," says Mrs. Stowe, "she was distinguished by a most
+unfaltering Christ-wor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>ship.... Had it not been that Dr. Payson had
+set up and kept before her a tender, human, loving Christ, she would
+have been only a conscientious bigot. This image, however, gave
+softness and warmth to her religious life, and I have since noticed
+how her Christ-enthusiasm has sprung up in the hearts of all her
+children." This passage is of peculiar interest as it shows the source
+of what Mrs. Stowe loves to call the "Christ-worship" which
+characterized the religion of the younger Beechers. Writing at the age
+of seventeen, when her soul was tossing between Scylla and Charybdis,
+Harriet says: "I feel that I love God,&mdash;that is, that I love Christ";
+and in 1876, writing of her brother Henry, she says, "He and I are
+Christ-worshippers, adoring him as the Image of the Invisible God."
+Her son refers us to the twenty-fourth chapter of the Minister's
+Wooing for a complete presentation of this subject "of
+Christ-worship." Mrs. Stowe speaks of this belief as a plain departure
+from ordinary Trinitarianism, as a kind of heresy which it has
+required some courage to hold. The heresy seems to have consisted in
+practically dropping the first and third persons in the Godhead and
+ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>cepting Christ as the only God we know or need to consider.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Stowe during her adult life was an invalid, it is interesting
+to have Mrs. Beecher's testimony that, on her arrival, she was met by
+a lovely family of children and "with heartfelt gratitude," she says,
+"I observed how cheerful and healthy they were." When Harriet was ten
+years of age, she began to attend the Litchfield Academy and was
+recognized as one of its brightest pupils. She especially excelled in
+writing compositions and, at the age of twelve, her essay was one of
+two or three selected to be read at a school exhibition. After
+Harriet's had been read, Dr. Beecher turned to the teacher and asked,
+"Who wrote that composition?" "Your daughter, Sir," was the reply. "It
+was," says Mrs. Stowe, "the proudest moment of my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Can the immortality of the soul be proved by the light of Nature?"
+was the subject of this juvenile composition, a strange choice for a
+girl of twelve summers; but in this family the religious climate was
+tropical, and forced development. As might have been expected, she
+easily proved that nothing of immortality could be known by the light
+of nature. She had been too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> well instructed to think otherwise. Dr.
+Beecher himself had no good opinion of 'the light of nature.' "They
+say," said he, "that everybody knows about God naturally. A lie. All
+such ideas are by teaching." If Harriet had taken the other side of
+her question and argued as every believer tries to to-day, she would
+have deserved some credit for originality. Nevertheless the form of
+her argument is remarkable for her years, and would not have
+dishonored Dr. Beecher's next sermon. This amazing achievement of a
+girl of twelve can be read in the Life of Mrs. Stowe by her son.</p>
+
+<p>From the Litchfield Academy, Harriet was sent to the celebrated Female
+Seminary established by her sister Catharine at Hartford, Conn. She
+here began the study of Latin and, "at the end of the first year, made
+a translation of Ovid in verse which was read at the final exhibition
+of the school." It was her ambition to be a poet and she began a play
+called 'Cleon,' filling "blank book after blank book with this drama."
+Mrs. Fields prints six pages of this poem and the specimens have more
+than enough merit to convince one that the author might have attained
+distinction as a poet. Her energetic sister Catharine however put an
+end to this innocent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> diversion, saying that she must not waste her
+time writing poetry but discipline her mind upon Butler's Analogy. To
+enforce compliance, Harriet was assigned to teach the Analogy to a
+class of girls as old as herself, "being compelled to master each
+chapter just ahead of the class." This occupation, with Latin, French
+and Italian, sufficiently protected her from the dissipation of
+writing poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Harriet remained in the Hartford school, as pupil and teacher, from
+her thirteenth to her twenty-third year. In her spiritual history,
+this was an important period. It may seem that her soul had hitherto
+not been neglected but as yet youth and a sunny nature had kept her
+from any agonies of Christian experience. Now her time had come. No
+one under the care of the stern Puritan, Catharine Beecher, would be
+suffered to forget her eternal interests. Both of Mrs. Stowe's
+biographers feel the necessity of making us acquainted with this
+masterful lady, "whose strong, vigorous mind and tremendous
+personality," says Mr. Stowe, "indelibly stamped themselves on the
+sensitive, dreamy, poetic nature of her younger sister."</p>
+
+<p>It was Catharine's distinction to have written, it is claimed, the
+best refutation of Edwards on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> the Will ever published. She was
+undoubtedly the most acute and vigorous intellect in the Beecher
+family. Like all the members of her remarkable family, she was
+intensely religious and, at the period when Harriet passed to her
+care, gloomily religious. It could not have been otherwise. She had
+been engaged to marry Prof. Alexander Fisher, of Yale College, a young
+man of great promise. Unhappily, he was drowned at sea, and she
+believed his soul was eternally lost. It is futile to ask why Yale
+College should have entrusted a professorship to a man whom the Lord
+would send to perdition, or why Miss Beecher should have loved such an
+abandoned character; it is enough to say that she loved him and that
+she believed his soul to be lost; and was it her fault that she could
+not be a cheerful companion to a young girl of thirteen?</p>
+
+<p>As we have seen, Harriet must not fritter away her time writing plays;
+she must study Butler's Analogy. She must also read Baxter's Saints
+Rest, than which, says Mrs. Stowe, "no book ever affected me more
+powerfully. As I walked the pavements I wished that they might sink
+beneath me if only I might find myself in heaven." In this mental
+condition she went to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> her home in Litchfield to spend her vacation.
+One dewy fresh Sunday morning of that period stood by itself in her
+memory. "I knew," she says, "it was sacramental Sunday, and thought
+with sadness that when all the good people should take the bread and
+wine I should be left out. I tried hard to think of my sins and count
+them up; but what with the birds, the daisies, and the brooks that
+rippled by the way, it was impossible." The sermon of Dr. Beecher was
+unusually sweet and tender and when he appealed to his hearers to
+trust themselves to Jesus, their faithful friend, she says, "I longed
+to cry out I will. Then the awful thought came over me that I had
+never had any conviction of my sins and consequently could not come to
+him." Happily the inspiration came to her that if she needed
+conviction of sin and Jesus were such a friend, he would give it to
+her; she would trust him for the whole, and she went home illumined
+with joy.</p>
+
+<p>When her father returned, she fell into his arms saying, "Father, I
+have given myself to Jesus and he has taken me." "Is it so?" said he.
+"Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this day." This is
+very sweet and beautiful and it shows that Dr. Beecher had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> tender
+heart under his Calvinistic theology. "If she could have been let
+alone," says her son, "and taught to 'look up and not down, forward
+and not back, out and not in,' this religious experience might have
+gone on as sweetly and naturally as the opening of a flower in the
+gentle rays of the sun. But unfortunately this was not possible at a
+time when self-examination was carried to an extreme that was
+calculated to drive a nervous and sensitive child well-nigh
+distracted. First, even her sister Catharine was afraid that there
+might be something wrong in the case of a lamb that had come into the
+fold without being first chased all over the lot by the shepherd:
+great stress being laid on what was called being under conviction.
+Then also the pastor of the First Church in Hartford, a bosom friend
+of Dr. Beecher, looked with melancholy and suspicious eyes on this
+unusual and doubtful path to heaven."</p>
+
+<p>Briefly stated, these two spiritual guides put Harriet through a
+process which brought her to a sense of sin that must have filled
+their hearts with joy. She reached the stage when she wrote to her
+brother Edward: "My whole life is one continued struggle; I do nothing
+right. I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> beset behind and before, and my sins take away all my
+happiness."</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately for her, it was at this stage of Harriet's religious
+experience that Dr. Beecher was called to Boston to stem the rising
+tide of Unitarianism, with its easy notions about conviction of sin
+and other cardinal elements of a true faith. To be thrown into the
+fervors of a crusade was just the experience which Harriet's heated
+brain did not need. Her life at this period was divided between
+Hartford and Boston, but her heart went with Dr. Beecher to his great
+enterprise in Boston, or, as Mrs. Fields says, "This period in Boston
+was the time when Harriet felt she drew nearer to her father than at
+any other period of her life."</p>
+
+<p>It will not be necessary to go farther into this controversy than to
+show what a cauldron it was for the family of Dr. Beecher. In his
+autobiography, Dr. Beecher says, "From the time Unitarianism began to
+show itself in this country, it was as fire in my bones." After his
+call to Boston, he writes again, "My mind had been heating, heating,
+heating. Now I had a chance to strike." The situation that confronted
+him in Boston rather inflamed than subdued his spirit. Let Mrs. Stowe
+tell the story<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> herself. "Calvinism or orthodoxy," she says, "was the
+despised and persecuted form of faith. It was the dethroned royal
+family wandering like a permitted mendicant in the city where it once
+held high court, and Unitarianism reigned in its stead. All the
+literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarians. All the trustees and
+professors of Harvard College were Unitarians. All the &eacute;lite of wealth
+and fashion crowded Unitarian churches. The judges on the bench were
+Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of church
+organization, so carefully ordained by the Pilgrim Fathers, had been
+nullified. The dominant majority entered at once into possession of
+churches and church property, leaving the orthodox minority to go out
+into schoolhouses and town halls, and build their churches as best
+they could."</p>
+
+<p>We can hardly suppose that Harriet had read the decision of the court,
+or that she deemed it necessary; she knew it was wrong by instinct,
+and the iron entered her soul. The facts appear to have been as
+follows: The old parishes in New England included a given territory
+like a school district or a voting precinct. Members of a given
+parish, if they were communicants, formed themselves into a "church"
+which was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> church of that parish. The court decided that this
+church always remained the church of that parish. Members might
+withdraw, but they withdrew as individuals. They could not withdraw
+the church, not even if they constituted a majority.</p>
+
+<p>The correctness of this decision does not concern us here; it is
+enough that Dr. Beecher thought it wrong and that Harriet thought it
+wrong. "The effect of all this," she says, "upon my father's mind was
+to keep him at a white heat of enthusiasm. His family prayers at this
+period, departing from the customary forms of unexcited hours, became
+often upheavings of passionate emotion, such as I shall never forget.
+'Come, Lord Jesus,' he would say, 'here where the bones of the fathers
+rest, here where the crown has been torn from thy brow, come and
+recall thy wandering children. Behold thy flock scattered upon the
+mountain&mdash;these sheep, what have they done! Gather them, gather them,
+O good shepherd, for their feet stumble upon the dark mountains.'"</p>
+
+<p>The fierce heat of this period was too much for a tender plant like
+Harriet. For her state of mind, even Catharine thought the Boston home
+life was not entirely suitable. It would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> be better for her in
+Hartford. "Harriet will have young society here which she cannot have
+at home, and I think cheerful and amusing friends will do much for
+her." Catharine had received a letter from Harriet which, she says,
+"made me feel uneasy," as well it might. Harriet had written her
+sister: "I don't know as I am fit for anything, and I have thought
+that I could wish to die young and let the remembrance of me and my
+faults perish in the grave.... Sometimes I could not sleep, and have
+groaned and cried till midnight, while in the daytime I tried to
+appear cheerful, and succeeded so well that papa reproved me for
+laughing so much." Life was too serious to permit even an affectation
+of gaiety. "The atmosphere of that period," says Mrs. Field, "and the
+terrible arguments of her father and of her sister Catharine were
+sometimes more than she could endure." Her brother Edward was helpful
+and comforting. She thanks him for helping her solve some of her
+problems, but the situation was critical: "I feared that if you left
+me thus I might return to the same dark, desolate state in which I had
+been all summer. I felt that my immortal interest, my happiness for
+both worlds, was depending on the turn my feelings might take."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>Dr. Beecher was too much absorbed with his mission to observe what was
+going on in his own family, unless there chanced to be an unexpected
+outburst of gaiety. "Every leisure hour was beset by people who came
+with earnest intention to express to him those various phases of
+weary, restless wandering desire proper to an earnest people whose
+traditional faith has been broken up.... Inquirers were constantly
+coming with every imaginable theological problem ... he was to be seen
+all day talking with whoever would talk ... till an hour or two before
+the time (of service), when he would rush up to his study; ... just as
+the last stroke of the bell was dying away, he would emerge from the
+study with his coat very much awry, come down stairs like a hurricane,
+stand impatiently protesting while female hands that ever lay in wait
+adjusted his cravat and settled his collar ... and hooking wife or
+daughter like a satchel on his arm, away he would start on such a race
+through the streets as left neither brain nor breath till the church
+was gained." Such, very much abbreviated, is Mrs. Stowe's portrait of
+her father at this period. It is a good example of her power of
+delineation; but what a life was this for a half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> distracted girl like
+Harriet! Much better for her would have been the old serene, peaceful,
+quiet life of Litchfield.</p>
+
+<p>She had several kinds of religious trouble. It troubled her that in
+the book of Job, God should seem "to have stripped a dependent
+creature of all that renders life desirable, and then to have answered
+his complaints from the whirlwind, and, instead of showing mercy and
+pity, to have overwhelmed him with a display of his power and
+justice." It troubled her that when she allowed herself to take a
+milder view of deity, "I feel," she says, "less fear of God and, in
+view of sin, I feel only a sensation of grief." This was an alarming
+decline. It troubled her again that she loved literature, whereas she
+ought only to care for religion. She writes to Edward: "You speak of
+your predilections for literature being a snare to you. I have found
+it so myself." Evidently, as she has before said, she was beset behind
+and before. What was perhaps worst of all, the heavens seemed closed
+to her. Calvinism was pure agnosticism; and she had been educated a
+Calvinist. There was no 'imminent God,' in all and through all, for
+Calvinism; that came in with Transcendentalism, a form of thought
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> never seems to have touched Mrs. Stowe. She seems always to
+have felt, as at this period she writes Edward, that "still, after
+all, God is a being afar off." Nevertheless, there was Christ, but
+Christ at this period was also afar off: "I feel that I love
+God,&mdash;that is that I love Christ,&mdash;that I find happiness in it, and
+yet it is not that kind of comfort which would arise from free
+communication of my wants and sorrows to a friend. I sometimes wish
+that the Savior were visibly present in this world, that I might go to
+him for a solution of some of my difficulties."</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen from this passage that Harriet's storm-tossed soul was
+settling down upon Christ as the nearest approach to God one could
+gain in the darkness, and with this she taught herself to be content.
+"So, after four years of struggling and suffering," writes her son,
+"she returns to the place where she started from as a child of
+thirteen. It has been like watching a ship with straining masts and
+storm-beaten sails, buffeted by the waves, making for the harbor, and
+coming at last to quiet anchorage." One cannot help reflecting how
+different would have been her experience in the household of Dr.
+Channing; but Dr. Beecher would sooner have trusted her in a den of
+wolves.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>Harriet was seventeen years old when, mentally, she reached her quiet
+anchorage but, physically as might be expected, it was with a
+constitution undermined and with health broken. "She had not grown to
+be a strong woman," says Mrs. Fields; "the apparently healthy and
+hearty child had been suffered to think and feel, to study and starve
+(as we say), starve for relaxation, until she became a woman of much
+suffering and many inadequacies of physical life." A year or two later
+Harriet herself writes, "This inner world of mine has become worn out
+and untenable," and again, "About half my time I am scarcely alive....
+I have everything but good health.... Thought, intense emotional
+thought, has been my disease."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of six restless and stormy years, in 1832, Dr. Beecher
+resigned his Boston pastorate to accept the presidency of Lane
+Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio, Catharine and Harriet
+accompanying the family with the purpose of establishing a high grade
+school for young women. The plan was successfully carried out, and the
+"Western Female Institute" marked a new stage in education west of the
+Alleghenies. One of Harriet's early achievements at Cincinnati was the
+publication of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> text-book in geography, her first attempt at
+authorship. She made her entry into the field of imaginative
+literature by gaining a prize of $50 for a story printed in <em>The
+Western Magazine</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Her connection with the "Western Female Institute" was brief, and the
+prosecution of a literary career was postponed, by her marriage in
+1836, with Prof. Calvin E. Stowe; or, as she announces this momentous
+event: "about half an hour more and your old friend, schoolmate,
+sister, etc., will cease to be Hattie Beecher and change to nobody
+knows who."</p>
+
+<p>The married life of Mrs. Stowe covered a period of fifty years and was
+a conspicuously happy one. Prof. Stowe, who seemed so much like a myth
+to the general public, was a man of great learning and keen
+intelligence, unimaginative as he says himself, but richly endowed
+with "a certain broad humor and drollery." His son tells us that he
+was "an inimitable mimic and story-teller. No small proportion of Mrs.
+Stowe's success as a literary woman is to be attributed to him." The
+Sam Lawson stories are said to be a little more his than hers, being
+"told as they came from Mr. Stowe's lips with little or no
+alteration." For her scholarly husband, Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> Stowe had the highest
+appreciation and the prettiest way of expressing it: "If you were not
+already my dearly loved husband," she writes him, "I should certainly
+fall in love with you." Prof. Stowe could also write a love-letter:
+"There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much
+talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation with so little
+affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense; so much
+enterprise with so little extravagance; so much tongue with so little
+scold; so much sweetness with so little softness; so much of so many
+things and so little of so many other things." If a man's wife is to
+have her biography written, he will not be sorry that he has sent her
+some effusive love-letters.</p>
+
+<p>Fourteen years of Mrs. Stowe's beautiful married life were spent in
+Cincinnati, with many vicissitudes of ill-health, some poverty, and
+the birth of six children, three sons and three daughters. One can get
+some idea both of the happiness and the hardship of that life from her
+letters. In 1843, seven years after marriage, she writes, "Our straits
+for money this year are unparalleled even in our annals. Even our
+bright and cheery neighbor Allen begins to look blue, and says $600 is
+the very most we can hope to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> collect of our salary, once $1,200."
+Again she writes, "I am already half sick from confinement to the
+house and overwork. If I should sew every day for a month to come I
+should not be able to accomplish half of what is to be done." There
+were trials enough during this period, but her severest affliction
+came in its last year, in the loss of an infant son by cholera. That
+was in 1849, when Cincinnati was devastated; when during the months of
+June, July and August more than nine thousand persons died of cholera
+within three miles of her house, and among them she says, "My Charley,
+my beautiful, loving, gladsome baby, so loving, so sweet, so full of
+life and hope and strength."</p>
+
+<p>In these years, Mrs. Stowe's life was too full of domestic care to
+permit many excursions into the field of literature. In 1842, a
+collection of sketches was published by the Harpers under the title of
+the "Mayflower." Occasionally she contributed a bright little story to
+a monthly or an annual. An amusing account is given of the writing of
+one of these stories, by a lady who volunteered to serve as amanuensis
+while Mrs. Stowe dictated, and at the same time supervised a new girl
+in the kitchen: "You may now write," said Mrs. Stowe, "'Her lover
+wept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> with her, nor dared he again touch the point so sacredly
+guarded&mdash;(Mina, roll that crust a little thinner). He spoke in
+soothing tones.&mdash;(Mina, poke the coals).'"</p>
+
+<p>These literary efforts, produced under difficulties, inspired Prof.
+Stowe with great confidence in her genius. He wrote her in 1842, "My
+dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book of
+fate." Again he writes, "God has written it in his book that you must
+be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against
+God! You must therefore make all your calculations to spend the rest
+of your life with your pen." Nevertheless the next eight years pass as
+the last six have passed without apparently bringing the dream of a
+literary career nearer fulfilment. With a few strokes of the pen, Mrs.
+Stowe draws a picture of her life at this period: "I was married when
+I was twenty-five years old to a man rich in Greek and Hebrew and,
+alas, rich in nothing else.... During long years of struggling with
+poverty and sickness, and a hot, debilitating climate, my children
+grew up around me. The nursery and the kitchen were my principal
+fields of labor. Some of my friends, pitying my trials, copied and
+sent a number of little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> sketches from my pen to certain liberally
+paying annuals, with my name. With the first money that I earned in
+this way I bought a feather bed! for as I had married into poverty and
+without a dowry, and as my husband had only a large library of books
+and a good deal of learning, the bed and pillows were thought the most
+profitable investment. After this I thought that I had discovered the
+philosopher's stone. So when a new carpet or mattress was going to be
+needed, or when at the close of the year it began to be evident that
+my family accounts, like poor Dora's, 'wouldn't add up,' then I used
+to say to my faithful friend and factotum Anna, who shared all my joys
+and sorrows, 'Now, if you will keep the babies and attend to things in
+the house for a day, I'll write a piece and then we'll be out of the
+scrape.' So I became an author,&mdash;very modest I do assure you."</p>
+
+<p>The hardships and privations of Mrs. Stowe's residence in Cincinnati
+were more than compensated to her by the opportunity it afforded for
+intimate acquaintance with the negro character and personal
+observation of the institution of slavery. Only the breadth of the
+Ohio river separated her from Kentucky, a slave State. While yet a
+teacher in the Female Institute, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> spent a vacation upon a Kentucky
+estate, afterward graphically described in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' as Col.
+Shelby's plantation. A companion upon this visit said, "Harriet did
+not seem to notice anything in particular that happened....
+Afterwards, in reading 'Uncle Tom,' I recognized scene after scene of
+that visit portrayed with the most minute fidelity." A dozen years
+before there were any similar demonstrations in Boston, she witnessed
+in 1838, proslavery riots in Cincinnati when Birney's Abolition press
+was wrecked and when Henry Ward Beecher, then a young Cincinnati
+editor, went armed to and from his office. She had had in her service
+a slave girl whose master was searching the city for her, and whose
+rescue had been effected by Prof. Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher who,
+"both armed, drove the fugitive, in a covered wagon, by night, by
+unfrequented roads, twelve miles back into the country, and left her
+in safety." This incident was the basis of "the fugitive's escape from
+Tom Loker and Marks in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"</p>
+
+<p>Lane Theological Seminary, in which Prof. Stowe held a chair, had, it
+is said, "become a hot-bed of abolition." Partly for protection, a
+colony of negroes had settled about the semi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>nary, and these families,
+says Mrs. Stowe, "became my favorite resort in cases of emergency. If
+anyone wishes to have a black face look handsome, let them be left as
+I have been, in feeble health, in oppressive hot weather, with a sick
+baby in arms, and two other ones in the nursery, and not a servant in
+the whole house to do a turn." "Time would fail me," writes Mrs.
+Stowe, "to tell you all that I learned incidentally of the slave
+system in the history of various slaves who came into my family, and
+of the underground railroad which, I may say, ran through our house."</p>
+
+<p>A New England education alone would not have given Mrs. Stowe the
+material to write the story of "Uncle Tom." A youth passed on a
+Southern plantation would have made her callous and indifferent, as it
+did so many tender-hearted women. A New England woman of genius,
+educated in New England traditions, was providentially transferred to
+the heated border line between freedom and slavery and, during
+eighteen years, made to hear a thousand authentic incidents of the
+patriarchal system from the victims themselves. Then "Uncle Tom's
+Cabin" could be written. Perhaps one other element of preparation
+ought to be mentioned since Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> Stowe laid stress upon it herself.
+The woman who should write "Uncle Tom's Cabin" needed to be a mother
+who had known what it is to have a child snatched from her arms
+irrevocably and without a moment's notice. It was at her baby's "dying
+bed and at his grave that I learned," she says, "what a poor slave
+mother may feel when her child is torn away from her. In those depths
+of sorrow which seemed to me immeasurable, it was my only prayer to
+God that such anguish might not be suffered in vain.... I allude to
+this because I have often felt that much that is in that book ('Uncle
+Tom') had its roots in the awful scenes and bitter sorrows of that
+summer."</p>
+
+<p>In 1850, this western life, with its mixture of sweet and bitter
+waters, came to an end. The climate of Cincinnati was unfavorable to
+the health of both Mr. and Mrs. Stowe, and Mr. Stowe accepted a
+professorship in Bowdoin College, at the small salary of $1,000 a
+year, declining at the same time an offer from New York city of
+$2,300. Why he accepted the smaller salary is not said. Certainly it
+assured him his old felicity, his Master's blessing upon the poor. The
+situation, however, was better than it seems, as Mrs. Stowe had
+written enough to have con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>fidence in her pen, and she purposed to
+make the family income at least $1,700 by her writings. She
+accomplished much more than that as we shall presently see.</p>
+
+<p>From the car window, as one passes through Brunswick, Maine, he can
+see the house in which Mrs. Stowe passed the three following very
+happy years, in which her seventh child was born, a son who lived to
+be her biographer, and in which she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It will
+be remembered that the year 1850 was made memorable by the enactment
+of the Fugitive Slave Law. How the attempted execution of this law
+affected Mrs. Stowe can be anticipated. "To me," she says, "it is
+incredible, amazing, mournful. I feel as if I should be willing to
+sink with it, were all this sin and misery to sink in the sea.... I
+sobbed, aloud in one pew and Mrs. Judge Reeves in another."</p>
+
+<p>In this mood, Mrs. Stowe received a letter from Mrs. Edward Beecher
+saying, "Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write
+something to make this nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is."
+Her children remember that at the reading of this letter, Mrs. Stowe
+rose from her chair, crushing the letter in her hand, and said, "I
+will write something,&mdash;I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> will if I live." The fulfilment of this vow
+was "Uncle Tom's Cabin."</p>
+
+<p>This story was begun in <em>The National Era</em>, on June 5, 1851; it was
+announced to run through three months and it occupied ten. "I could
+not control the story," said Mrs. Stowe; "it wrote itself." Again, she
+said, "I the author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin!' No, indeed. The Lord
+himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest instrument in his hand."
+It has been said that "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' made the crack of the
+slave-driver's whip and the cries of the tortured blacks ring in every
+household in the land, till human hearts could bear it no longer," and
+that it "made the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law an
+impossibility."</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to discuss the question whether "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is
+a work of art, just as it is possible to discuss whether the Sermon on
+the Mount is a work of art, but not whether the story was effective,
+not whether it hit the mark and accomplished its purpose. Mrs. Stowe's
+story is not so much one story as a dozen; in the discriminating
+language of her son, it is "a series of pictures," and who will deny
+that the scenes are skilfully portrayed!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stowe did not know that she had made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> her fortune; she had not
+written for money; nevertheless when the story was republished in a
+volume, her ten per cent. of the profits brought her $10,000 in four
+months. It went to its third edition in ten days, and one hundred and
+twenty editions, or more than 300,000 copies were sold in this country
+within one year. This astounding popularity was exceeded in Great
+Britain. Not being protected by copyright, eighteen publishing houses
+issued editions varying from 6d to 15s a copy, and in twelve months,
+more than a million and a half of copies had been sold in the British
+dominions. The book was also translated and published in nineteen
+European languages. It was dramatized and brought out in New York in
+1852, and, a year later it was running still. "Everybody goes," it was
+said, "night after night and nothing can stop it." In London, in 1852,
+it was the attraction at two theatres.</p>
+
+<p>What the public thought of the story is evident, nor did competent
+judges dissent. Longfellow said: "It is one of the greatest triumphs
+recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher triumph of
+its moral effect." George Sand said: "Mrs. Stowe is all instinct; it
+is the very reason that she appears to some to have no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> talent.... I
+cannot say that she has talent as one understands it in the world of
+letters, but she has genius as humanity feels the need of it,&mdash;the
+genius of goodness, not that of the man of letters, but of the
+saint.... In matters of art, there is but one rule, to paint and to
+move." I give but a paragraph of a paper which Senator Sumner called
+"a most remarkable tribute, such as was hardly ever offered by such a
+genius to any living mortal."</p>
+
+<p>Apologists for the slave system have declared that "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
+is a libel upon the system. One must do that before he can begin his
+apology; but the remarkable fact is that not even in the South was the
+libel detected at the first. That was an after-thought. Whittier knew
+a lady who read the story "to some twenty young ladies, daughters of
+slave-holders, near New Orleans and amid the scenes described in it,
+and they with one accord pronounced it true." It was not till the sale
+of the book had run to over 100,000 copies that a reaction set in and
+then, strange to say, the note of warning was sounded by that
+infallible authority upon American affairs, the London Times.</p>
+
+<p>In 1852, the year following the publication of "Uncle Tom" Prof. Stowe
+accepted a chair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> in the Theological Seminary at Andover, and that
+village became the home of the family during the ten following happy
+years. In 1853, Mr. and Mrs. Stowe went to England upon the invitation
+of Anti-Slavery friends who guaranteed and considerably overpaid the
+expenses of the trip. "Should Mrs. Stowe conclude to visit Europe,"
+wrote Senator Sumner, "she will have a triumph." The prediction was
+fulfilled. At Liverpool she is met by friends and breakfasted with a
+little company of thirty or forty people; at Glasgow, she drinks tea
+with two thousand; at Edinburgh there was "another great tea party,"
+and she was presented with a "national penny offering consisting of a
+thousand golden sovereigns on a magnificent silver salver." She had
+the Highlands yet to see as the guest of the Duke of Argyll, not to
+mention London and Paris. After five months, she sailed from Liverpool
+on her return, and is it any wonder that she wrote, "Almost sadly as a
+child might leave its home, I left the shores of kind, strong Old
+England, the mother of us all!"</p>
+
+<p>In 1856, Mrs. Stowe visited Europe a second time for the purpose of
+securing an English copyright upon "Dred," having learned something of
+business by her experience with "Uncle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> Tom." It will be interesting
+to know that in England "Dred" was considered the better story, that
+100,000 copies of it were sold there in four weeks, and that her
+English publisher issued it in editions of 125,000 copies each. "After
+that," writes Mrs. Stowe, "who cares what the critics say?"</p>
+
+<p>She was abroad nearly a year, visiting France, Switzerland, and Italy,
+and returned in June, 1857, to experience another sad bereavement. Her
+son Henry was a Freshman in Dartmouth college and, while bathing in
+the Connecticut river, he was drowned. This was a severe trial to Mrs.
+Stowe and the more so because, whatever her religion may have done for
+her, the theology in which she had been educated gave no comfort to
+her soul. "Distressing doubts as to Henry's spiritual state were
+rudely thrust upon my soul." These doubts she was able to master at
+least temporarily, by assuming that they were temptations of the
+devil, but three years later in Florence, on a third voyage to Europe,
+she wrote her husband, in reply to his allusions to Henry, "Since I
+have been in Florence, I have been distressed by inexpressible
+yearnings for him,&mdash;such sighings and outreachings, with a sense of
+utter darkness and separation, not only from him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> but from all
+spiritual communion with my God." It will be interesting to know that
+relief was brought her in this painful crisis, by the ministrations of
+spiritualism.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stowe returned in 1860 from her third visit to Europe to find the
+country hovering upon the verge of Civil War. The war brought her
+another sore bereavement. At the battle of Gettysburg, her son, Capt.
+Frederick Stowe, was struck by the fragment of a shell and, though the
+wound healed, he never really recovered. His end was sufficiently
+tragic. With the hope of improving his health by a long sea voyage, he
+sailed from New York for San Francisco by way of Cape Horn. That he
+reached San Francisco in safety, writes his brother, "is known: but
+that is all. No word from him or concerning him has ever reached the
+loving hearts that have waited so anxiously for it, and of his
+ultimate fate nothing is known." Whatever may have been the "spiritual
+state" of this son, Mrs. Stowe had now somewhat modernized her
+theology and could say, "An endless infliction for past sins was once
+the doctrine that we now generally reject.... Of one thing I am
+sure,&mdash;probation does not end with this life." To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> stamp out that very
+heresy had been no small part of Dr. Beecher's mission in Boston.</p>
+
+<p>In 1863, Prof. Stowe having resigned his chair in Andover, Mrs. Stowe
+removed with her family to Hartford where for the remaining
+thirty-three years of her life, she made her summer home. The winter
+of 1866, she spent with her husband in Florida and, the year
+following, she bought in that semi-tropical state an orange orchard,
+the fruit of which the year previous had "brought $2,000 as sold at
+the wharf." Here for sixteen winters Mr. and Mrs. Stowe made their
+home, until her "poor rabbi," as she affectionately calls him, became
+too feeble to bear the long journey from Hartford. There she built a
+small Episcopal church and she invites her brother Charles to become
+an Episcopalian and come and be her minister.</p>
+
+<p>Her son says that "Mrs. Stowe had some years before this joined the
+Episcopal church for the purpose of attending the same communion as
+her daughters." That she desired to attend the same communion as her
+daughters does not seem a sufficient reason for leaving the communion
+of her husband. Certainly, she had other reasons. From her fourth
+year, she had known the service and, as read by her grandmother at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+that time, its prayers "had a different effect upon me," she says,
+"from any other prayers I heard in early life." Moreover, she had a
+mission to the negro race and believed that the Episcopal service is
+specially adapted to their needs: "If my tasks and feelings did not
+incline me toward the Church," she writes her brother, "I should still
+choose it as the best system for training immature minds such as those
+of our negroes. The system was composed with reference to the wants of
+the laboring class of England, at a time when they were as ignorant as
+our negroes are now."</p>
+
+<p>The picture of her southern life which she gives in a letter to George
+Eliot, is very attractive, her husband "sitting on the veranda reading
+all day," but during these years, Mrs. Stowe must have spent much of
+her own time at a writing-table since, for the ten years after 1867,
+when the Florida life began, she published a volume, sometimes two
+volumes, a year. In 1872, she was tempted by the Boston Lecture Bureau
+to give readings from her own works in the principal cities of New
+England, and the following year, the course was repeated in the cities
+of the West. Her audiences were to her amazing. "And how they do
+laugh! We get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> into regular gales," she writes her lonely husband at
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Her seventieth birthday was celebrated at a gathering of two hundred
+of the leading literary men and women of the land, at the residence of
+Ex-Governor Claflin in Newton. There were poems by Whittier, Dr.
+Holmes, J. T. Trowbridge, Mrs. Whitney, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mrs.
+Fields, and others, many excellent speeches, and finally a speech by
+the little woman herself. This garden party, says her son, was the
+last public appearance of Mrs. Stowe.</p>
+
+<p>Her "rabbi" left her a widow in 1886, dying at the age of 84. Mrs.
+Stowe survived him ten years, dying in 1896, at the age of 85, leaving
+behind her a name loved and honored upon two continents.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class="section_break"></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]<br />[Pg 250]<br />[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_VII" id="Chapter_VII"></a>VII<br /><br />
+LOUISA MAY ALCOTT</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 439px;">
+<img src="images/alcott.jpg" width="439" height="500" alt="LOUISA MAY ALCOTT" title="LOUISA MAY ALCOTT" />
+<span class="caption">LOUISA MAY ALCOTT</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Miss Alcott has been called, perhaps truly, the most popular
+story-teller for children, in her generation. Like those elect souls
+whom the apostle saw arrayed in white robes, she came up through great
+tribulation, paying dearly in labor and privation for her successes,
+but one must pronounce her life happy and fortunate, since she lived
+to enjoy her fame and fortune twenty years, to witness the sale of a
+million volumes of her writings, to receive more than two hundred
+thousand dollars from her publishers, and thereby to accomplish the
+great purpose upon which as a girl she had set her heart, which was,
+to see her father and mother comfortable in their declining years.</p>
+
+<p>Successful as Miss Alcott was as a writer, she was greater as a woman,
+and the story of her life is as interesting,&mdash;as full of tragedy and
+comedy,&mdash;as the careers of her heroes and heroines. In fact, we have
+reason to believe that the adventures of her characters are often not
+so much invented as remembered, the pranks and frolics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> of her boys
+and girls being episodes from her own youthful experience. In the
+preface to "Little Women," the most charming of her books, she tells
+us herself that the most improbable incidents are the least imaginary.
+The happy girlhood which she portrays was her own, in spite of
+forbidding conditions. The struggle in which her cheerful nature
+extorted happiness from unwilling fortune, gives a dramatic interest
+to her youthful experiences, as her literary disappointments and
+successes do to the years of her maturity.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Alcott inherited a name which her father's genius had made known
+on both sides of the sea, before her own made it famous in a hundred
+thousand households. Alcott is a derivative from Alcocke, the name by
+which Mr. Alcott himself was known in his boyhood. John Alcocke, born
+in New Haven, Ct., married Mary, daughter of Rev. Abraham Pierson,
+first president of Yale College. He was a man of considerable fortune
+and left 1,200 acres of land to his six children, one of whom was
+Capt. John Alcocke, a man of some distinction in the colonial service.
+Joseph Chatfield Alcocke, son of Capt. John, married Anna, sister of
+Rev. Tillotson Bronson, D.D. Of this marriage, Amos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> Bronson Alcott,
+father of Louisa, was born, Nov. 29, 1799. The fortunes of Joseph
+Chatfield Alcocke were those of other small farmers of the period, but
+Mrs. Alcocke could not forget that she was the sister of a college
+graduate, and it was worth something to her son to know that he was
+descended from the president of a college. The mother and son early
+settled it that the boy should be a scholar, and the father loyally
+furthered their ambitions, borrowing of his acquaintances such books
+as he discovered and bringing them home for the delectation of his
+studious son. At the age of thirteen, Bronson became a pupil in a
+private school kept by his uncle, Dr. Bronson, and at eighteen, he set
+out for Virginia with the secret purpose of teaching if opportunity
+offered, at the same time taking along a peddler's trunk out of which
+to turn an honest penny and pay the expenses of his journey.
+Circumstances did not favor his becoming a Virginia teacher, but
+between his eighteenth and twenty-third years, he made several
+expeditions into the Southern States as a Yankee peddler, with rather
+negative financial results, but with much enlargement of his
+information and improvement of his rustic manners. Mr. Alcott was
+rather distinguished for his high-bred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> manners and, on a visit to
+England, there is an amusing incident of his having been mistaken for
+some member of the titled aristocracy.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of twenty-five, Mr. Alcott began his career as a teacher in
+an Episcopal Academy at Cheshire, Ct. His family were Episcopalians,
+and he had been confirmed at sixteen. Since the age of eighteen when
+he started for Virginia as a candidate for a school, he had been
+theorizing upon the art of teaching and had thought out many of the
+principles of what, a century later, began to be called the "New
+Education." He undertook, perhaps too rapidly, to apply his theories
+in the conduct of the Cheshire Academy. His experiments occasioned a
+vast amount of controversy, in which Connecticut conservatism gained a
+victory, and Mr. Alcott retired from the school at the end of two
+years' service. His results however had been sufficient to convince
+him of the soundness of his principles, and to launch him upon the
+troubled career of educational reform.</p>
+
+<p>Among a few intelligent friends and sympathizers who rallied to Mr.
+Alcott's side in this controversy, was Rev. Samuel J. May, a Unitarian
+minister then of Brooklyn, Ct., at whose house, in 1827, Mr. Alcott
+met Mr. May's sister<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> Abbie, who shared fully her brother's enthusiasm
+for the new education and its persecuted apostle. Miss May began her
+relations with Mr. Alcott as his admirer and champion, a dangerous
+part for an enthusiastic young lady to play, as the sequel proved
+when, three years later, she became Mrs. Alcott.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Alcott was the daughter of a Boston merchant, Col. Joseph May,
+and his wife, Dorothy Sewall, daughter of Samuel Sewall and his wife,
+Elizabeth Quincy, sister of Dorothy Quincy, wife of John Hancock. By
+the marriage of Joseph May and Dorothy Sewall, two very distinguished
+lines of ancestry had been united. Under her father's roof, Mrs.
+Alcott had enjoyed every comfort and the best of social advantages.
+She was tall, had a fine physique, good intellect, warm affections,
+and generous sympathies, but it would have astonished her to have been
+told that she was bringing to the marriage altar more than she
+received; and however much it may have cost her to be the wife of an
+unworldly idealist, it was precisely his unworldly idealism that first
+won her admiration and then gained her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Life may have been harder for Mrs. Alcott than she anticipated, but
+she knew very well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> that she was abjuring riches. Two years before her
+marriage, her brother had written her: "Mr. Alcott's mind and heart
+are so much occupied with other things that poverty and riches do not
+seem to concern him much." She had known Mr. Alcott three years and
+had enjoyed ample opportunity to make this observation herself.
+Indeed, two months after her marriage, she wrote her brother, "My
+husband is the perfect personification of modesty and moderation. I am
+not sure that we shall not blush into obscurity and contemplate into
+starvation." That she had not repented of her choice a year later, may
+be judged from a letter to her brother on the first anniversary of her
+marriage: "It has been an eventful year,&mdash;a year of trial, of
+happiness, of improvement. I can wish no better fate to any sister of
+my sex than has attended me since my entrance into the conjugal
+state."</p>
+
+<p>That Mr. Alcott, then in his young manhood, had qualities which, for a
+young lady of refinement and culture, would compensate for many
+privations is evident. Whether he was one of the great men of his
+generation or not, there is no doubt he seemed so. When, in 1837, Dr.
+Bartol came to Boston, Mr. Emerson asked him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> whom he knew in the
+city, and said: "There is but one man, Mr. Alcott." Dr. Bartol seems
+to have come to much the same opinion. He says: "Alcott belonged to
+the Christ class: his manners were the most gentle and gracious, under
+all fair or unfair provocation, I ever beheld; he had a rare inborn
+piety and a god-like incapacity in the purity of his eyes to behold
+iniquity."</p>
+
+<p>These qualities were not visible to the public and have no commercial
+value, but that Mr. Alcott had them is confirmed by the beautiful
+domestic life of the Alcotts, by the unabated love and devotion of
+Mrs. Alcott to her husband in all trials, and the always high and
+always loyal appreciation with which Louisa speaks of her father, even
+when perhaps smiling at his innocent illusions. The character of Mr.
+Alcott is an important element in the life of Louisa because she was
+his daughter, and because, being unmarried, her life and fortunes were
+his, or those of the Alcott family. She had no individual existence.</p>
+
+<p>Two years after the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Alcott, Louisa, their
+second daughter was born in Germantown, Pa., where Mr. Alcott was in
+charge of a school belonging to the Society<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> of Friends, or Quakers.
+The date was November 29, 1832, also Mr. Alcott's birthday, always
+observed as a double festival in the family. In 1834, Mr. Alcott
+opened his celebrated school in Masonic Temple in Boston, Mass., under
+the auspices of Dr. Channing and with the assured patronage of some of
+the most cultivated and influential families in the city. As
+assistants in this school, he had first Miss Sophia Peabody afterward
+Mrs. Hawthorne, her sister Miss Elizabeth Peabody, and finally
+Margaret Fuller.</p>
+
+<p>The school opened prosperously and achieved remarkable success until,
+in 1837, the publication of Mr. Alcott's "Conversations on the
+Gospels" shocked the piety of Boston newspapers, whose persistent and
+virulent attacks frightened the public and caused the withdrawal of
+two-thirds of the pupils. Mr. Emerson came to Mr. Alcott's defence,
+saying: "He is making an experiment in which all the friends of
+education are interested," and asking, "whether it be wise or just to
+add to the anxieties of this enterprise a public clamor against some
+detached sentences of a book which, on the whole, is pervaded by
+original thought and sincere piety." In a private note, Mr. Emerson
+urged Mr. Alcott to give up his school, as the people of Boston were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+not worthy of him. Mr. Alcott had spent more than the income of the
+school in its equipment, creating debts which Louisa afterward paid;
+all his educational ideals were at stake, and he could not accept
+defeat easily. However, in 1839, a colored girl was admitted to the
+school, and all his pupils were withdrawn, except the little negress
+and four whites, three of whom were his own daughters. So ended the
+Temple school. The event was very fateful for the Alcott family, but,
+much as it concerned Mrs. Alcott, there can be no doubt she much
+preferred that the school should end thus, than that Mr. Alcott should
+yield to public clamor on either of the issues which wrecked the
+enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>Louisa was seven years old when this misfortune occurred which shaped
+the rest of her life, fixing the straitened circumstances in which she
+was to pass her youth and preparing the burdens which ultimately were
+to be lifted by her facile pen. Happily the little Alcotts, of whom
+there were three, were too young to feel the perplexities that
+harassed their parents and their early years could hardly have been
+passed more pleasantly or profitably if they had been the daughters of
+millionaires. The family lived very comfortably amidst a fine circle
+of relatives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> and friends in Boston, preached and practised a
+vegetarian gospel,&mdash;rice without sugar and graham meal without butter
+or molasses,&mdash;monotonous but wholesome, spent their summers with
+friends at Scituate and, in town or country, partly owing to the
+principles of the new education, partly to the preoccupation of the
+parents, the children of the family were left in large measure to the
+teaching of nature and their own experience.</p>
+
+<p>Very abundant moral instruction there was in this apostolic family,
+both by example and precept, but the young disciples were expected to
+make their own application of the principles. The result, in the case
+of Louisa, was to develop a girl of very enterprising and adventurous
+character, who might have been mistaken for a boy from her sun-burned
+face, vigorous health, and abounding animal spirits. It was her pride
+to drive her hoop around the Common before breakfast and she tells us
+that she admitted to her social circle no girl who could not climb a
+tree and no boy whom she had not beaten in a race. Her autobiography
+of this period, she has given us, very thinly disguised, in "Poppy's
+Pranks."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, her mental faculties were not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> neglected. Mr. Alcott began
+the education of his children, in a kindergarten way, almost in their
+infancy, and before his Boston school closed, Louisa had two or three
+years in it as a pupil. What his method of education could do with a
+child of eight years is shown by a poem written by Louisa at that age.
+The family were then living in Concord, in the house which, in "Little
+Women," is celebrated as "Meg's first home." One early Spring day,
+Louisa found in the garden a robin, chilled and famished, and wrote
+these lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Welcome, welcome, little stranger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fear no harm, and fear no danger;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are glad to see you here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For you sing, Sweet Spring is near.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now the white snow melts away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now the flowers blossom gay:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come, dear bird, and build your nest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we love our robin best."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that this literary faculty, unusual at the age
+of eight, had been attained by a girl in the physical condition of an
+athlete, who could climb a tree like a squirrel.</p>
+
+<p>Readers of "Little Women" will remember what a child's paradise "Meg's
+first home" was, with its garden full of fruit-trees and shade,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> and
+its old empty barn which the children alternately turned into a
+drawing-room for company, a gymnasium for romps, and a theatre for
+dramatic performances. "There," says Louisa, "we dramatized the fairy
+tales in great style," Jack the Giant-killer and Cinderella being
+favorites, the passion for the stage which came near making Louisa an
+actress, as also her sister Anna, getting early development.</p>
+
+<p>The fun and frolic of these days were the more enjoyed because they
+alternated with regular duties, with lessons in housework with the
+mother and language lessons with the father, for which he now had
+abundant leisure. As he had no other pupils, he could try all his
+educational experiments in his own family. Among other exercises, the
+children were required to keep a journal, to write in it regularly,
+and to submit it to the examination and criticism of the parents.
+Facility in writing thus became an early acquisition. It was furthered
+by a pretty habit which Mrs. Alcott had of keeping up a little
+correspondence with her children, writing little notes to them when
+she had anything to say in the way of reproof, correction, or
+instruction, receiving their confessions, repentance, and good
+resolutions by the next mail.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>Some of these maternal letters are very tender and beautiful. One to
+Louisa at the age of eleven, enclosed a picture of a frail mother
+cared for by a faithful daughter, and says, "I have always liked it
+very much, for I imagined that you might be just such an industrious
+daughter and I such a feeble and loving mother, looking to your labor
+for my daily bread." There was prophecy in this and there was more
+prophecy in the lines with which Louisa replied:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I hope that soon, dear mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You and I may be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the quiet room my fancy<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has so often made for thee,&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The pleasant, sunny chamber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The cushioned easy-chair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The book laid for your reading,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The vase of flowers fair;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The desk beside the window<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the sun shines warm and bright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there in ease and quiet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The promised book you write.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">While I sit close beside you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Content at last to see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That you can rest, dear mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And I can cherish thee."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>The versification is still juvenile, but there is no fault in the
+sentiment, and Miss Alcott, in a later note, says, "The dream came
+true, and for the last ten years of her life, Marmee sat in peace with
+every wish granted."</p>
+
+<p>Evidently Louisa had begun to feel the pinch of the family
+circumstances. The income was of the slenderest. Sometimes Mr. Alcott
+gave a lecture or "conversation" and received a few dollars; sometimes
+he did a day's farm work for a neighbor; now and then Mr. Emerson
+called and clandestinely left a bank note, and many valuable packages
+came out from relatives in Boston; but frugal housekeeping was the
+chief asset of the family. Discouraging as the outlook was, some
+bitter experience might have been escaped if the Alcotts had remained
+in Concord, pursuing their unambitious career. It was, however, the
+era of social experiments in New England. The famous Brook Farm
+community was then in the third year of its existence, and it was
+impossible that Mr. Alcott should not sympathize with this effort to
+ease the burden of life, and wish to try his own experiment.
+Therefore, in 1843, being joined by several English socialists, one of
+whom financed the undertaking, Mr. Alcott started a small community on
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> worn-out not to say abandoned farm, which was hopefully christened
+"Fruitlands."</p>
+
+<p>Visiting the community five or six weeks after its inception, Mr.
+Emerson wrote: "The sun and the evening sky do not look calmer than
+Alcott and his family at Fruitlands. They seem to have arrived at the
+fact,&mdash;to have got rid of the show, and so to be serene. They look
+well in July; we will see them in December." An inhospitable December
+came upon the promising experiment, as it generally has upon all
+similar enterprises. Under the title Transcendental Wild Oats, in
+"Silver Pitchers," Miss Alcott gives a lively account of the varying
+humors of this disastrous adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever disappointments and privations the enterprise had in store
+for their parents, the situation, with its little daily bustle, its
+limitless range of fields and woods, its flower hunting and berry
+picking, was full of interest and charm for four healthy children all
+under the age of twelve years. The fateful December, to which Mr.
+Emerson postponed his judgment, had not come before the elders were
+debating a dissolution of the community. "Father asked us if we saw
+any reason for us to separate," writes Louisa in her journal. "Mother
+wanted to, she is so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> tired. I like it." Of course she did; but "not
+the school part," she adds, "nor Mr. L.", who was one of her teachers.
+The inevitable lessons interfered with her proper business.</p>
+
+<p>"Fruitlands" continued for three years with declining fortunes, its
+lack of promise being perhaps a benefit to the family in saving for
+other purposes a small legacy which Mrs. Alcott received from her
+father's estate. With this and a loan of $500 from Mr. Emerson, she
+bought "The Hillside" in Concord, an estate which, after the Alcotts,
+was occupied by Mr. Hawthorne. Thither Mrs. Alcott removed with her
+family in 1846, and the two years that followed is the period which
+Louisa looked back upon as the happiest of her life, "for we had," she
+says, "charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings,
+Hawthornes, and Goodwins, with the illustrious parents and their
+friends to enjoy our pranks and share our excursions." Here the happy
+girlish life was passed which is so charmingly depicted in "Little
+Women," and here at the age of sixteen, Louisa wrote, for the
+entertainment of the little Alcotts and Emersons, a series of pretty
+fairy tales, still to be read in the second volume of Lulu's Library.</p>
+
+<p>Much as there was to enjoy in these surround<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>ings, the problem of
+subsistence had not been solved and, with the growth of her daughters
+toward womanhood, it became more difficult for Mrs. Alcott. The world
+had, apparently, no use for Mr. Alcott; there were six persons to be
+fed and clothed, and no bread-winner in the family. The story is that
+one day, a friend found her in tears and demanded an explanation.
+"Abby Alcott, what does this mean?" asked the visitor, and when Mrs.
+Alcott had made her confessions, her friend said, "Come to Boston and
+I will find you employment."</p>
+
+<p>Accepting the proposition, the family removed to Boston in 1848, and
+Mrs. Alcott became the agent of certain benevolent societies. Mr.
+Alcott taught private classes, or held "conversations"; the older
+daughters, Anna and Louisa, found employment; and we may think of the
+family as fairly comfortable during the seven or eight years of its
+life in Boston. "Our poor little home," says Miss Alcott, "had much
+love and happiness in it, and was a shelter for lost girls, abused
+wives, friendless children, and weak and wicked men. Father and mother
+had no money to give but they gave time, sympathy, help; and if
+blessings would make them rich, they would be millionaires." Fugitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+slaves were among the homeless who found shelter, one of whom Mrs.
+Alcott concealed in an unused brick oven.</p>
+
+<p>In Miss Alcott's journal of this period, we find the burden of
+existence weighing very heavily upon her, a state of mind apparently
+induced by her first experience in teaching. "School is hard work,"
+she says, "and I feel as though I should like to run away from it. But
+my children get on; so I travel up every day and do my best. I get
+very little time to write or think, for my working days have begun."
+Later, she seems to have seen the value of this experience. "At
+sixteen," she writes, "I began to teach twenty pupils and, for ten
+years, I learned to know and love children."</p>
+
+<p>Amateur theatricals were still the recreation of the Alcott girls, as
+they had been almost from infancy, and the stage presented a
+fascinating alternative to the school-room. "Anna wants to be an
+actress and so do I," writes Louisa at seventeen. "We could make
+plenty of money perhaps, and it is a very gay life. Mother says we are
+too young and must wait. Anna acts splendidly. I like tragic plays and
+shall be a Siddons if I can. We get up harps, dresses, water-falls,
+and thunder, and have great fun."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> Both of the sisters wrote many
+exciting dramas at this period, and one of Louisa's, "The Rival Prima
+Donnas," was accepted by the manager of the Boston Theatre, who
+"thought it would have a fine run" and sent the author a free pass to
+the theatre, which partly compensated for the non-appearance of the
+play. Some years later, a farce written by Louisa, "Nat Bachelor's
+Pleasure Trip, or the Trials of a Good-Natured Man," was produced at
+the Howard Athen&aelig;um, and was favorably received. Christie's experience
+as an actress, in Miss Alcott's novel entitled, "Work," is imaginary
+in its incidents, but autobiographical in its spirit.</p>
+
+<p>All these experiments in dramatic literature, from Jack the
+Giant-Killer on, were training the future story-teller. Miss Alcott's
+first story to see the light was printed in a newspaper at the age of
+twenty, in 1852, though it had been written at sixteen. She received
+$5.00 for it, and the event is interesting as the beginning of her
+fortune. This little encouragement came at a period of considerable
+trial for the family. The following is from her journal of 1853: "In
+January, I started a little school of about a dozen in our parlor. In
+May, my school closed and I went to L. as second girl. I needed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+change, could do the wash, and was glad to earn my $2.00 a week."
+Notice that this is her summer vacation. "Home in October with $34.00
+for my wages. After two days' rest, began school again with ten
+children." The family distributed themselves as follows: "Anna went to
+Syracuse to teach; father to the west to try his luck,&mdash;so poor, so
+hopeful, so serene. God be with him. Mother had several boarders.
+School for me, month after month. I earned a good deal by sewing in
+the evening when my day's work was done."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Alcott returned from the west, and the account of his adventures
+is very touching: "In February father came home. Paid his way, but no
+more. A dramatic scene when he arrived in the night. We were awakened
+by the bell. Mother flew down crying, My Husband. We rushed after and
+five white figures embraced the half-frozen wanderer who came in,
+hungry, tired, cold, and disappointed, but smiling bravely and as
+serene as ever. We fed and warmed and brooded over him, longing to ask
+if he had made any money; but no one did till little May said, after
+he had told us all the pleasant things, 'Well, did people pay you?'
+Then with a queer look he opened his pocket book, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> showed one
+dollar, saying with a smile, 'Only that. My overcoat was stolen, and I
+had to buy a shawl. Many promises were not kept, and traveling is
+costly; but I have opened the way, and another year shall do better.'
+I shall never forget how beautifully mother answered him, though the
+dear, hopeful soul had built much on his success: but with a beaming
+face she kissed him, saying, 'I call that doing very well. Since you
+are safely home, dear, we don't ask anything else.'"</p>
+
+<p>One of Miss Alcott's unfulfilled purposes was to write a story
+entitled "The Pathetic Family." This passage would have found a place
+in it. It deserves to be said that Mr. Alcott's faith that he had
+"opened a way and another year should do better," was justified.
+Fifteen years later, from one of his western tours, he brought home
+$700, but, thanks to Louisa's pen, the family were no longer in such
+desperate need of money.</p>
+
+<p>More than once Miss Alcott declares that no one ever assisted her in
+her struggles, but that was far from true, as appears from many favors
+acknowledged in her journal. It was by the kindness of a lady who
+bought the manuscripts and assumed the risk of publication, that her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+first book, "Flower Fables," was brought out in 1854. It consisted of
+the fairy tales written six years before for the little Emersons. She
+received $32.00, a sum which would have seemed insignificant thirty
+years later when, in 1886, the sale of her books for six months
+brought her $8,000; but she says, "I was prouder over the $32.00 than
+over the $8,000."</p>
+
+<p>The picture of Jo in a garret in "Little Women," planning and writing
+stories, is drawn from Louisa's experiences of the following winter. A
+frequent entry in her journal for this period is "$5.00 for a story"
+and her winter's earnings are summed up, "school, one quarter, $50,
+sewing $50, stories, $20." In December we read, "Got five dollars for
+a tale and twelve for sewing." Teaching, writing, and sewing alternate
+in her life for the next five years, and, for a year or two yet, the
+needle is mightier than the pen; but in 1856, she began to be paid $10
+for a story, and, in 1859, the <em>Atlantic</em> accepted a story and paid
+her $50.</p>
+
+<p>A friend for whose encouragement during these hard years, she
+acknowledges great indebtedness and who appears as one of the
+characters in her story, entitled "Work," was Rev. Theodore Parker, a
+man as helpful, loving,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> and gentle as she depicts him, but then much
+hated by those called orthodox and hardly in good standing among his
+Unitarian brethren. Miss Alcott, then as ever, had the courage of her
+convictions, was a member of his Music Hall congregation, and a
+regular attendant at his Sunday evening receptions, finding him "very
+friendly to the large, bashful girl who adorns his parlor regularly."
+She "fought for him," she says, when some one said Mr. Parker "was not
+a Christian. He is my sort; for though he may lack reverence for other
+people's God, he works bravely for his own, and turns his back on no
+one who needs help, as some of the pious do." After Mr. Parker's
+death, Miss Alcott, when in Boston, attended the church of Dr. C. A.
+Bartol, who buried her mother, her father and herself.</p>
+
+<p>In 1857, the Alcotts returned to Concord, buying and occupying the
+Orchard House, which thenceforth became their home. Other family
+events of the period were, the death of Miss Alcott's sister
+Elizabeth, Beth in "Little Women," the marriage of Anna, Meg in
+"Little Women," and a proposal of marriage to Louisa, serious enough
+for her to hold a consultation over it with her mother. Miss Alcott is
+said to have been averse to entangling alliances for her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>self, to have
+married off the heroines in her novels reluctantly at the demand of
+her readers, and never to have enjoyed writing the necessary
+love-passages.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1860, when Miss Alcott is twenty-seven, has the distinction
+of being marked in the heading of her journal as "A Year of Good
+Luck." Her family had attained a comfortable, settled home in Concord;
+Mr. Alcott had been appointed superintendent of public schools, an
+office for which he was peculiarly well qualified and in which he was
+both happy and admirably successful; Anna, the eldest sister, was
+happily married; May, the youngest, was making a reputation as an
+artist; and Louisa, in perfect health, having in May before, "walked
+to Boston, twenty miles, in five hours, and attended an evening
+party," was becoming a regular contributor to the <em>Atlantic</em>, and
+receiving $50, $75, and sometimes $100 for her stories.</p>
+
+<p>In these happy conditions, Miss Alcott sat down to a more ambitious
+attempt at authorship and wrote the first rough draft of "Moods," a
+"problem novel" that provoked much discussion and, though it caused
+her more trouble than any other of her books, was always dearest to
+her heart. It was written in a kind of frenzy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> poetic enthusiasm.
+"Genius burned so fiercely," she says, "that for four weeks, I wrote
+all day and planned nearly all night, being quite possessed by my
+work. I was perfectly happy, and seemed to have no wants. Finished the
+book, or a rough draft of it, and put it away to settle." It was not
+published till four years later. Even in this year of good luck, there
+seem to have been some privations, as she records being invited to
+attend a John Brown meeting and declining because she "had no good
+gown." She sends a poem instead.</p>
+
+<p>The breaking out of the Civil War stirred Miss Alcott's soul to its
+depths, and we have numerous references to its progress in her
+journal. "I like the stir in the air," she writes, "and long for
+battle like a war-horse when he smells powder." Not being permitted to
+enlist as a soldier, she went into a hospital in Washington as a
+nurse. Her experiences are graphically and dramatically told in
+"Hospital Sketches." That book, chiefly made from her private letters,
+met the demand of the public, eager for any information about the
+great war; it was widely read and, besides putting $200 in her purse,
+gave her a reputation with readers and publishers. Many applications
+for manuscript<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> came in and she was told that "any publisher this side
+of Baltimore would be glad to get a book" from her. "There is a sudden
+hoist," she says, "for a meek and lowly scribbler. Fifteen years of
+hard grubbing may come to something yet." Her receipts for the year
+1863, amounted to $600 and she takes comfort in saying that she had
+spent less than one hundred on herself.</p>
+
+<p>The following year, after having been twice re-written, "Moods" was
+brought out and, thanks to the "Hospital Sketches," had a ready sale.
+Wherever she went, she says, she "found people laughing or crying over
+it, and was continually told how well it was going, how much it was
+liked, how fine a thing I had done." The first edition was exhausted
+in a week. An entire edition was ordered by London publishers. She was
+very well satisfied with the reception of "Moods" at the time, though
+in after years when fifty thousand copies of a book would be printed
+as a first edition, the sale of "Moods" seemed to her inconsiderable.</p>
+
+<p>The present day reader wonders neither at the eagerness of the public
+for the book, nor at the criticisms that were freely made upon it. It
+is interesting from cover to cover and as a study<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> of "a life affected
+by moods, not a discussion of marriage," it is effective. In spite,
+however, of the warning of the author, everyone read it as "a
+discussion of marriage," and few were satisfied. The interest centres
+in the fortunes of a girl who has married the wrong lover, the man to
+whom, by preference, she would have given her heart being supposed to
+be dead. Would that he had been, for then, to all appearance, she
+would have been contented and happy. Unfortunately he returns a year
+too late, finds the girl married and, though endowed with every virtue
+which a novelist can bestow upon her hero, he does not know enough to
+leave the poor woman in peace. On the contrary, he settles down to a
+deliberate siege to find out how she feels, wrings from her the
+confession that she is miserable, as by that time no doubt she was,
+and then convinces her that since she does not love her husband, it is
+altogether wrong to live under the same roof with him. Surely this was
+nobly done. Poor Sylvia loves this villain, Miss Alcott evidently
+loves him, but the bloody-minded reader would like to thrust a knife
+into him. However, he is not a name or a type, but a real man, or one
+could not get so angry with him. All the characters live and breathe
+in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> these pages, and no criticism was less to the purpose than that
+the situations were unnatural. Miss Alcott says "The relations of
+Warwick, Moor, and Sylvia are pronounced impossible; yet a case of the
+sort exists, and a woman came and asked me how I knew it. I did not
+know or guess, but perhaps felt it, without any other guide, and
+unconsciously put the thing into my book."</p>
+
+<p>Everyone will agree that Miss Alcott had earned a vacation, and it
+came in 1865, in a trip to Europe, where she spent a year, from July
+to July, as the companion of an invalid lady, going abroad for health.
+The necessity of modulating her pace to the movements of a nervous
+invalid involved some discomforts for a person of Miss Alcott's
+pedestrian abilities, but who would not accept some discomforts for a
+year of European travel? She had a reading knowledge of German and
+French, and in the abundant leisure which the long rests of her
+invalid friend forced upon her, she learned to speak French with
+facility.</p>
+
+<p>On her return from Europe, she found her circumstances much improved.
+She had established her position as a regular contributer to the
+<em>Atlantic</em> whose editor, she says, "takes all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> I'll send." In 1868,
+she was offered and accepted the editorship of <em>Merry's Museum</em> at a
+salary of $500, and, more important, she was asked by Roberts Brothers
+to "write a girl's book." Her response to this proposition was "Little
+Women," which she calls "the first golden egg of the ugly duckling,
+for the copyright made her fortune." Two editions were exhausted in
+six weeks and the book was translated into French, German and Dutch.</p>
+
+<p>"Little Men" was written, a chapter a day, in November of the same
+year, and "An Old-fashioned Girl," a popular favorite, the year
+following. "Hospital Sketches" had not yet outlived its welcome, was
+republished, with some additions, in 1869, and two thousand copies
+were sold the first week. She is able to say, "Paid up all debts,
+thank the Lord, every penny that money can pay,&mdash;and now I feel as if
+I could die in peace." Besides, she has invested "$1,200 for a rainy
+day," and is annoyed because "people come and stare at the Alcotts.
+Reporters haunt the place to look at the authoress, who dodges into
+the woods."</p>
+
+<p>The severe application which her achievement had cost had impaired
+Miss Alcott's fine constitution and, in 1870, taking May, her artist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+sister, she made a second trip to Europe, spending the summer in
+France and Switzerland and the winter in Rome. A charming account of
+the adventures of this expedition is given in "Shawl-Straps." A
+pleasant incident of the journey was the receipt of a statement from
+her publisher giving her credit for $6,212, and she is able to say
+that she has "$10,000 well invested and more coming in all the time,"
+and that she thinks "we may venture to enjoy ourselves, after the hard
+times we have had."</p>
+
+<p>In 1872, she published "Work: a story of Experience," and it is for
+the most part, a story of her own experience. "Christie's adventures,"
+she says, "are many of them my own: Mr. Power is Mr. Parker: Mrs.
+Wilkins is imaginary, and all the rest. This was begun at eighteen,
+and never finished till H. W. Beecher wrote me for a serial for the
+<em>Christian Union</em> and paid $3,000 for it." It is one of the most
+deservedly popular of her books.</p>
+
+<p>In 1877, for Roberts Brothers' "No Name Series," Miss Alcott wrote "A
+Modern Mephistopheles," her least agreeable book, but original,
+imaginative, and powerful. The moral of the story is that, in our
+modern life, the devil does not appear with a cloven foot, but as a
+culti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>vated man of the world. Miss Alcott's Mephistopheles is even
+capable of generous impulses. With the kindness of a Good Samaritan,
+he saves a poor wretch from suicide and then destroys him morally. The
+devil is apparently a mixed character with a decided preponderance of
+sinfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Alcott had now reached her forty-fifth year, had placed her
+family in independent circumstances, thus achieving her early
+ambition, and the effort began to tell upon her health. A succession
+of rapid changes soon came upon her. Mrs. Alcott, having attained her
+seventy-seventh year, was very comfortable for her age. "Mother is
+cosy with her sewing, letters, and the success of her 'girls,'" writes
+Miss Alcott in January; but in June, "Marmee grows more and more
+feeble," and in November the end came. "She fell asleep in my arms,"
+writes Louisa; "My duty is done, and now I shall be glad to follow
+her."</p>
+
+<p>May, the talented artist sister, whom Louisa had educated, had once
+taken to Europe and twice sent abroad for study, was married in London
+in 1878, to a Swiss gentleman of good family and some fortune, Mr.
+Nieriker. The marriage was a very happy one but the joy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> the young
+wife was brief. She died the year following, leaving an infant
+daughter as a legacy to Louisa.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Emerson's death in 1882, was, to her, much like taking a member of
+her own family: "The nearest and dearest friend father ever had and
+the man who helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can
+never tell all he has been to me,&mdash;from the time I sang Mignon's song
+under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters <em>a la Bettine</em> to
+him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays
+on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped
+me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Alcott is still with her, vigorous for his years. In 1879, at the
+age of eighty, he inaugurated the Concord School of Philosophy, "with
+thirty students. Father the dean. He has his dream realized at last,
+and is in glory, with plenty of talk to swim in." The school was, for
+Miss Alcott, an expensive toy with which she was glad to be able to
+indulge her father. Personally she cared little for it. On one of her
+rare visits to it, she was asked her definition of a philosopher, and
+responded instantly: "My definition is of a man up in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> balloon, with
+his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth
+and trying to haul him down." For her father's sake, she rejoiced in
+the success of the enterprise. Of the second season, she writes, "The
+new craze flourishes. The first year, Concord people stood aloof; now
+the school is pronounced a success, because it brings money to the
+town. Father asked why we never went, and Anna showed him a long list
+of four hundred names of callers, and he said no more."</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the labors which the school laid upon Mr. Alcott, he
+prepared for the press a volume of sonnets, some of which are
+excellent, especially one to Louisa:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ne'er from thyself by Fame's loud trump beguiled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sounding in this and the farther hemisphere,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I press thee to my heart as Duty's faithful child."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Alcott seemed to be renewing his youth but, in November, he was
+prostrated by paralysis. "Forty sonnets last winter," writes Louisa,
+"and fifty lectures at the school last summer, were too much for a man
+of eighty-three." He recovered sufficiently to enjoy his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> friends and
+his books and lingered six years, every want supplied by his devoted
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>With Miss Alcott the years go on at a slower pace, the writing of
+books alternating with sleepless nights and attacks of vertigo. "Jo's
+Boys" was written in 1884, fifty thousand copies being printed for the
+first edition. In 1886, her physician forbids her beginning anything
+that will need much thought. Life was closing in upon her, and she did
+not wish to live if she could not be of use. In March, 1888, Mr.
+Alcott failed rapidly, and died on the sixth of the month. Miss Alcott
+visited him and, in the excitement of leave-taking, neglected to wrap
+herself properly, took a fatal cold, and two days after, on the day of
+his burial, she followed him, in the fifty-sixth year of her age. Dr.
+C. A. Bartol, who had just buried her father, said tenderly at her
+funeral: "The two were so wont to be together, God saw they could not
+well live apart."</p>
+
+<p>If Miss Alcott, by the pressure of circumstances, had not been a
+writer of children's books, she might have been a poet, and would,
+from choice, have been a philanthropist and reformer. Having worked
+her own way with much difficulty, it was impossible that she should
+not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> interested in lightening the burdens which lay upon women, in
+the race of life, and though never a prominent worker in the cause,
+she was a zealous believer in the right of women to the ballot. She
+attended the Woman's Congress in Syracuse, in 1875, "drove about and
+drummed up women to my suffrage meeting" in Concord, she says, in
+1879, and writes in a letter of 1881, "I for one don't want to be
+ranked among idiots, felons, and minors any longer, for I am none of
+them."</p>
+
+<p>To say that she might have been a poet does her scant justice. She
+wrote two or three fine lyrics which would justify giving her a high
+place among the verse-writers of her generation. "Thoreau's Flute,"
+printed in the <em>Atlantic</em>, has been called the most perfect of her
+poems, with a possible exception of a tender tribute to her mother.
+Personally, I consider the lines in memory of her mother one of the
+finest elegiac poems within my knowledge:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Mysterious death: who in a single hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Life's gold can so refine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And by thy art divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Change mortal weakness to immortal power."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are twelve stanzas of equal strength and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> beauty. The closing
+lines of this fine eulogy we may apply to Miss Alcott, for both lives
+have the same lesson:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Teaching us how to seek the highest goal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To earn the true success,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To live, to love, to bless,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make death proud to take a royal soul."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Daughters of the Puritans, by Seth Curtis Beach
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+Project Gutenberg's Daughters of the Puritans, by Seth Curtis Beach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Daughters of the Puritans
+       A Group of Brief Biographies
+
+Author: Seth Curtis Beach
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2008 [EBook #25582]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAUGHTERS OF THE PURITANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Chris Logan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DAUGHTERS
+OF THE PURITANS
+
+A Group of Brief Biographies
+
+BY
+
+SETH CURTIS BEACH
+
+_Essay Index Reprint Series_
+
+BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC.
+FREEPORT, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+First published 1905
+Reprinted 1967
+
+[Illustration: THE HOME OF LYDIA MARIA CHILD AT WAYLAND,
+MASSACHUSETTS]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+    CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK, 1789-1867                              1
+
+    MARY LOVELL WARE, 1798-1849                                     43
+
+    LYDIA MARIA CHILD, 1802-1880                                    79
+
+    DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX, 1802-1887                                  123
+
+    SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI, 1810-1850                        165
+
+    HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 1811-1896                               209
+
+    LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, 1832-1888                                   251
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK
+
+
+[Illustration: CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK]
+
+During the first half of the nineteenth century, Miss Sedgwick would
+doubtless have been considered the queen of American letters, but, in
+the opinion of her friends, the beauty of her character surpassed the
+merit of her books. In 1871, Miss Mary E. Dewey, her life-long
+neighbor, edited a volume of Miss Sedgwick's letters, mostly to
+members of her family, in compliance with the desire of those who knew
+and loved her, "that some printed memorial should exist of a life so
+beautiful and delightful in itself, and so beneficent in its influence
+upon others." Truly a "life beautiful in itself and beneficent in its
+influence," the reader will say, as he lays down this tender volume.
+
+Catharine Maria Sedgwick was born at Stockbridge, Mass., in 1789, the
+first year of the presidency of George Washington. She was a
+descendant from Robert Sedgwick, major-general under Cromwell, and
+governor of Jamaica. Her father, Theodore Sedgwick, was a country boy,
+born in 1746, upon a barren farm in one of the hill-towns of
+Connecticut. Here the family opened a country store, then added a
+tavern, and with the combined industries of farm, store and tavern,
+Theodore, most fortunate of the sons if not the favorite, was sent to
+Yale college, where he remained, until, in the last year of his
+course, he managed to get himself expelled. He began the study of
+theology, his daughter suggests, in a moment of contrition over
+expulsion from college, but soon turned to the law for which he had
+singular aptitude. He could not have gone far in his legal career
+when, before the age of twenty-one, he married a beautiful girl whose
+memory he always tenderly cherished, as well he might considering his
+part in the tragedy of her early death. He had taken small pox, had
+been duly quarantined and discharged but his young wife combed out the
+tangles of his matted hair, caught the disease, and died, within a
+year after marriage.
+
+Marriage was necessary in those days, his daughter suggests, and the
+year of conventional widowhood having expired, Mr. Sedgwick, then at
+the age of twenty-three, married Miss Pamela Dwight, the mother of his
+four sons, all successful lawyers, and his three daughters, all
+exemplary women. The second Mrs. Sedgwick was presumably more
+beautiful than the first; certainly she was more celebrated. She is
+immortalized by her portrait in Griswold's "American Court," and by a
+few complimentary lines in Mrs. Ellet's "Queens of American Society."
+
+Theodore Sedgwick rose to distinction by his energies and talents but,
+as we have seen, he was of sufficiently humble origin, which could not
+have been greatly redeemed by expulsion from college; while at the age
+of twenty-three, that must have been his chief exploit. Social lines
+were very firmly drawn in that old colonial society, before the plough
+of the Revolution went through it, and there was no more aristocratic
+family than the Dwights, in Western Massachusetts.
+
+Madame Quincy gives an account of a visit, in her girlhood, paid to
+the mother of Miss Pamela, Madame Dwight, in her "mansion-house," and
+says that her husband, Brig.-Gen. Joseph Dwight, was "one of the
+leading men of Massachusetts in his day." Madame Dwight was presumably
+not inferior to her husband. She was daughter of Col. Williams, of
+Williamstown, who commanded a brigade in the old French War, and whose
+son founded Williams College. A daughter of Madame Dwight, older than
+Pamela, married Mark Hopkins, "a distinguished lawyer of his time,"
+says Madame Quincy, and grandfather of Rev. Mark Hopkins, D.D.,
+perhaps the most illustrious president of the college founded by
+Madame Dwight's family.
+
+The intermarriage of the Williamses, Dwights, and Hopkinses formed a
+fine, aristocratic circle, into which the Sedgwicks were not very
+cordially welcomed. "My mother's family (of this," says Mrs. Sedgwick,
+"I have rather an indefinite impression than any knowledge) objected
+to my father on the score of family, they priding themselves on their
+gentle blood; but as he afterwards rose far beyond their highest
+water-mark, the objection was cast into oblivion by those who made
+it."
+
+A few years after this marriage, the war of the Revolution began. Mr.
+Sedgwick entered the army, served as an officer under Washington,
+whose acquaintance and favor he enjoyed, and from that time, for forty
+years until his death, he was in public life, in positions of
+responsibility and honor. He was member of the Continental Congress,
+member of the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House, Senator
+from Massachusetts, and, at his death, judge of the Massachusetts
+Supreme Court.
+
+Judge Sedgwick was a staunch Federalist and, in spite of the fact that
+he himself was not born in the purple, he shared the common Federalist
+contempt for the masses. "I remember my father," says Miss Sedgwick,
+"one of the kindest-hearted men and most observant of the rights of
+all beneath him, habitually spoke of the people as 'Jacobins,'
+'sans-culottes,' and 'miscreants.' He--and this I speak as a type of
+the Federalist party--dreaded every upward step they made, regarding
+their elevation as a depression, in proportion to their ascension, of
+the intelligence and virtue of the country." "He was born too soon,"
+says his daughter apologetically, "to relish the freedoms of
+democracy, and I have seen his brow lower when a free and easy
+mechanic came to the front door, and upon one occasion, I remember his
+turning off the east steps (I am sure not kicking, but the
+demonstration was unequivocal) a grown up lad who kept his hat on
+after being told to remove it." In these days one would hardly tell
+him to remove it, let alone hustling him off the steps.
+
+The incident shows how far education, prosperity, wealth, and forty
+years of public life had transformed the father of Miss Sedgwick from
+the country boy of a hill-farm in Connecticut. More to our present
+purpose, the apologetic way in which Miss Sedgwick speaks of these
+high-bred prejudices of her father, shows that she does not share
+them. "The Federalists," she says, "stood upright, and their feet
+firmly planted on the rock of aristocracy but that rock was bedded in
+the sands, or rather was a boulder from the Old World, and the tide of
+democracy was surely and swiftly undermining it."
+
+When this was written, Miss Sedgwick had made the discovery that,
+while the Federalists had the better "education, intellectual and
+moral," the "democrats had among them much native sagacity" and an
+earnest "determination to work out the theories of the government."
+She is writing to her niece: "All this my dear Alice, as you may
+suppose, is an after-thought. Then I entered fully, and with the faith
+and ignorance of childhood, into the prejudices of the time." Those
+prejudices must have been far behind her when her first story was
+written, "A New England Tale," in which it happens, inadvertently we
+may believe, all the worst knaves are blue-blooded and at least most
+of the decent persons are poor and humble. Later we shall see her
+slumming in New York like a Sister of Charity, 'saving those that are
+lost,' a field of labor toward which her Federalist education scarcely
+led.
+
+She could have learned some condescension and humanity from her mother
+who, in spite of her fine birth, seems to have been modest and
+retiring to a degree. She was very reluctant to have her husband
+embark upon a public career; had, her daughter says, "No sympathy with
+what is called honor and distinction"; and wrote her husband a letter
+of protest which is worth quoting if only to show how a well-trained
+wife would write her doting husband something more than a century ago:
+"Pardon me, my dearest Mr. Sedgwick, if I beg you once more to think
+over the matter before you embark in public business. I grant that the
+'call of our country,' the 'voice of fame,' and the 'Honorable' and
+'Right-Honorable,' are high sounding words. 'They play around the
+head, but they come not near the heart.'" However, if he decides for a
+public career, she will submit: "Submission is my duty, and however
+hard, I will try to practice what reason teaches me I am under
+obligation to do." That address, "my dearest Mr. Sedgwick," from a
+wife a dozen years after marriage, shows a becoming degree of respect.
+
+We may be sure that this gentle mother would have encouraged no silly
+notions of social distinctions in the minds of her children. Even Mr.
+Sedgwick seems to have had a softer and more human side to his nature
+than we have yet seen. Miss Sedgwick enjoys repeating a story which
+she heard from a then "venerable missionary." The son of the village
+shoemaker, his first upward step was as boy-of-all-work of the clerk
+of courts. He had driven his master to the court session in dignified
+silence, broken on arrival by a curt order to take in the trunk. "As
+he set it down in the entry," says Miss Sedgwick, "my father, then
+judge of the Supreme Judicial Court, was coming down stairs, bringing
+his trunk himself. He set it down, accosted the boy most kindly, and
+gave him his cordial hand. The lad's feelings, chilled by his master's
+haughtiness, at once melted, and took an impression of my father's
+kindness that was never effaced."
+
+The individual is so much a creature of his environment, that I must
+carry these details a little farther. Forty years in public life,
+Judge Sedgwick had an extended acquaintance and, according to the
+custom of the time, kept open house. "When I remember," says Miss
+Sedgwick, "how often the great gate swung open for the entrance of
+traveling vehicles, the old mansion seems to me much more like an
+hostelrie of the olden time than the quiet house it now is. My
+father's hospitality was unbounded. It extended from the gentleman in
+his coach, chaise, or on horseback, according to his means or
+necessities, to the poor, lame beggar that would sit half the night
+roasting at the kitchen fire with the negro servants. My father was in
+some sort the chieftain of his family, and his home was their resort
+and resting-place. Uncles and aunts always found a welcome there;
+cousins wintered and summered with us. Thus hospitality was an element
+in our education. It elicited our faculties of doing and suffering. It
+smothered the love and habit of minor comforts and petty physical
+indulgences that belong to a higher state of civilization and generate
+selfishness, and it made regard for others, and small sacrifices for
+them, a habit."
+
+Just one word more about this home, the like of which it would be hard
+to find in our generation: "No bickering or dissention was ever
+permitted. Love was the habit, the life of the household rather than
+the law.--A querulous tone, a complaint, a slight word of dissention,
+was met by that awful frown of my father's. Jove's thunder was to a
+pagan believer but as a summer day's drifting cloud to it. It was not
+so dreadful because it portended punishment,--it was punishment; it
+was a token of suspension of the approbation and love that were our
+life."
+
+These passages have a twofold value. They tell us in what school Miss
+Sedgwick was educated, and they give us a specimen of her literary
+style. Language is to her a supple instrument, and she makes the
+reader see what she undertakes to relate.
+
+Judge Sedgwick died in Boston, in 1813, when Miss Sedgwick was
+twenty-three. The biographical Dictionaries say he was a member of Dr.
+Channing's church. As Miss Sedgwick relates the facts, he had long
+desired to "make a public profession of religion," but had been
+deterred because he could not conscientiously join the church of his
+family, in Stockbridge, with its Calvinistic confession, and was too
+tender of the feelings of his pastor to join another,--"unworthy
+motives," says Miss Sedgwick. Briefly stated, he now sent for Dr.
+Channing and received from him the communion. Later, Miss Sedgwick
+followed him into the Unitarian fellowship. She, and two distinguished
+brothers, were among the founders of the first Unitarian church in New
+York city.
+
+Miss Dewey calls her volume "The Life and Letters" of Miss Sedgwick,
+but the Life is very scantily written. She has given us a picture
+rather than a biography. Indeed, to write a biography of Miss Sedgwick
+is no easy task, there was so much of worth in her character and so
+little of dramatic incident in her career. Independent in her
+circumstances, exempt from struggle for existence or for social
+position, unambitious for literary fame and surprised at its coming,
+unmarried and yet domestic in tastes and habits, at home in any one of
+the five households of her married brothers and sisters, she lived for
+seventy-seven years as a favored guest at the table of fortune. She
+saw things happen to others, but they did not happen to her. It was
+with her as with Whittier's sweet Quakeress:
+
+    "For all her quiet life flowed on
+      As meadow streamlets flow,
+    Where fresher green reveals alone
+      The noiseless ways they go."
+
+Of her outward career, Miss Dewey truly says: "No striking incidents,
+no remarkable occurrences will be found in it, but the gradual
+unfolding and ripening amid congenial surroundings of a true and
+beautiful soul, a clear and refined intellect, and a singularly
+sympathetic social nature. She was born eighty years ago"--this was
+written in 1871,--"when the atmosphere was still electric with the
+storm in which we took our place among the nations, and, passing her
+childhood in the seclusion of a New England valley, while yet her
+family was linked to the great world without by ties both political
+and social, early and deep foundations were laid in her character of
+patriotism, religious feeling, love of nature, and strong attachment
+to home, and to those who made it what it was. And when in later life,
+she took her place among the acknowledged leaders of literature and
+society, these remained the central features of her character, and
+around them gathered all the graceful culture, the active
+philanthropy, the social accomplishment, which made her presence a joy
+wherever it came."
+
+It is not singular if she began her existence at a somewhat advanced
+stage. She was quite sure she remembered incidents that took place
+before she was two years old. She remembered a dinner party at which
+Miss Susan Morton, afterward Madame Quincy, was present, and to which
+her father and her brother, Theodore, came from Philadelphia. If you
+are anxious to know what incidents of such an event would fix
+themselves in the mind of a child of two, they were these: She made
+her first attempt to say "Theodore," and "Philadelphia," and she tried
+her baby trick of biting her glass, for which she had doubtless been
+reproved, and watched its effect upon her father. "I recall perfectly
+the feeling with which I turned my eye to him, expecting to see that
+brow cloud with displeasure, but it was smooth as love could make it.
+That consciousness, that glance, that assurance, remained stamped
+indelibly."
+
+"Education in the common sense," says Miss Sedgwick, "I had next to
+none." For schools, she fared like other children in Stockbridge, with
+the difference that her father was "absorbed in political life," her
+mother, in Catharine's youth an invalid, died early, and no one, she
+says, "dictated my studies or overlooked my progress. I remember
+feeling an intense ambition to be at the head of my class, and
+generally being there. Our minds were not weakened by too much study;
+reading, spelling, and Dwight's geography were the only paths of
+knowledge into which we were led;" to which accomplishments she adds
+as an after-thought, grammar and arithmetic.
+
+Nevertheless, when in 1838, six of the Sedgwick family travelled
+together through France and Italy, doing much of those sunny lands on
+foot, Miss Sedgwick was interpreter for the party in both countries,
+apparently easy mistress of their respective languages. It is
+remarkable what fine culture seems to have been attainable by a New
+England child born more than a hundred years ago, when Harvard and
+Yale were, as we are told, mere High Schools, and Radcliffe and
+Wellesley were not even dreamed of. Instead of Radcliffe or Wellesley,
+Miss Sedgwick attended a boarding school in Albany, at the age of
+thirteen and, at the age of fifteen, another in Boston, the latter for
+six months, and the former could not have been more than two years.
+Both, according to her, gave her great social advantages, and did
+little for her scholarship. Miss Bell, the head of the Albany school,
+"rose late, was half the time out of the school, and did very little
+when in it."
+
+Miss Paine's school in Boston, let us hope, was better; but "I was at
+the most susceptible age. My father's numerous friends in Boston
+opened their doors to me. I was attractive in my appearance"--she is
+writing this to a niece and it is probably all true--"and, from always
+associating on equal terms with those much older than myself, I had a
+mental maturity rather striking, and with an ignorance of the world, a
+romantic enthusiasm, an aptitude at admiring and loving that
+altogether made me an object of general interest. I was admired and
+flattered. Harry and Robert were then resident graduates at Cambridge.
+They were too inexperienced to perceive the mistake I was making; they
+were naturally pleased with the attentions I was receiving. The winter
+passed away in a series of bewildering gayeties. I had talent enough
+to be liked by my teachers, and good nature to secure their good will.
+I gave them very little trouble in any way. When I came home from
+Boston I felt the deepest mortification at my waste of time and money,
+though my father never said one word to me on the subject. For the
+only time in my life I rose early to read French, and in a few weeks
+learned more by myself than I had acquired all winter."
+
+It will be seen that she had the ability to study without a teacher,
+and that is an art which, with time at one's disposal and the stimulus
+at hand, assures education. Intellectual stimulus was precisely what
+her home furnished. "I was reared in an atmosphere of high
+intelligence. My father had uncommon mental vigor. So had my brothers.
+Their daily habits and pursuits and pleasures, were intellectual, and
+I naturally imbibed from them a kindred taste. Their talk was not of
+beeves, nor of making money; that now universal passion had not
+entered into men and possessed them as it does now, or if it had, it
+was not in the sanctuary of our home,--there the money-changers did
+not come."
+
+The more we know of her home life, the less wonder we have at her
+mental development. She says that "at the age of eight, my father,
+whenever he was at home, kept me up and at his side till nine o'clock
+in the evening, to listen to him while he read aloud to the family
+Hume, or Shakspere, or Don Quixote, or Hudibras. Certainly I did not
+understand them, but some glances of celestial light reached my soul,
+and I caught from his magnetic sympathy some elevation of feeling, and
+that love of reading which has been to me an education." A modern
+girl is liable to nervous prostration without being kept up till nine
+on such juvenile literature as Hume and Shakspere at the age of eight;
+but Miss Sedgwick was a country girl who, in youth, lived out of doors
+and romped like a boy and, at the age of fifty, led a party of young
+nieces through France, Switzerland, and Italy, much of the way on foot
+and always at their head. Always fortune's favorite, she enjoyed among
+other things remarkably good health.
+
+She thinks she was ten years old when she read Rollin's Ancient
+History, spending the noon intermission, when of course she ought to
+have been at play, out of sight under her desk, where she "read, and
+munched, and forgot myself in Cyrus's greatness."
+
+A winter in New York, where she afterward spent so much of her time,
+was her first absence from home. She had a married sister there whose
+husband was in government employ, and her oldest brother was there
+studying law. She was eleven years old; the date was 1801; and her
+business in New York seems to have been to attend a French Dancing
+School of which at that era there was but one in the city. She saw her
+first play, and used to dry the still damp newspaper, in her
+eagerness to read the theatre announcements. She also experienced a
+very severe humiliation. She, with her brother, Theodore, attended a
+large dinner party at the house of a friend of her father. "Our host
+asked me, the only stranger guest, which part of a huge turkey, in
+which he had put his carving fork, I would take. I knew only one point
+of manners for such occasions, dear Alice,--that I must specify some
+part, and as ill luck would have it, the side-bone came first into my
+head, and 'Side-bone, sir,' I said. Oh what a lecture I got when we
+got home, the wretched little chit that compelled a gentleman to cut
+up a whole turkey to serve her! I cried myself to sleep that night."
+It was too bad to spoil that dinner party for the little girl.
+
+Her mother died when Miss Sedgwick was seventeen; her father when she
+was twenty-three. All her brothers and sisters were married and
+living, three of them in New York city, one in Albany, and one, her
+youngest brother, in Lenox. With this brother in Lenox, Miss Sedgwick
+for many happy years, had her home, at least her summer home, having
+five rooms in an annex to his house built for her, into which she
+gathered her household gods and where she dispensed hospitality to
+her friends. For many years, New York city was generally her winter
+home.
+
+Theoretically, we have arrived with this maiden at the age of
+twenty-three, but we must go back and read from one or two early
+letters. She is ten years old when, under date of 1800, she writes her
+father: "My dear papa,--Last week I received a letter from you which
+gave me inexpressible pleasure." This is the child's prattle of a girl
+of ten summers. She writes very circumspectly for her years of a new
+brother-in-law: "I see--indeed I think I see in Mr. Watson everything
+that is amiable. I am very much pleased with him; indeed we all are."
+The following is dated 1801, when she is eleven: "You say in your last
+letters that the time will soon come when you will take leave of
+Congress forever. That day shall I, in my own mind, celebrate forever;
+yes, as long as I live I shall reflect upon the dear time when my dear
+papa left a public life to live in a retired one with his dear wife
+and children; then you will have the pleasure to think, when you quit
+the doors of the House, that you are going to join your family
+forever; but, my dear papa, I cannot feel as you will when looking
+back on your past life in Congress. You will remember how much you
+have exerted yourself in order to save your country."
+
+There was something in the relations of this Sedgwick family, not
+perhaps without parallel, but very beautiful. These brothers and
+sisters write to each other like lovers. To her brother Robert, Miss
+Sedgwick writes, "I have just finished, my dear brother, the second
+perusal of your kind letter received to-day.... I do love my brothers
+with perfect devotedness, and they are such brothers as may put
+gladness into a sister's spirit.... Never, my dear Robert, did brother
+and sister have a more ample experience of the purity of love, and the
+sweet exchange of offices of kindness that binds hearts indissolubly
+together."
+
+There are three letters from Robert Sedgwick to show how he
+reciprocated this affection. He says: "I can never be sufficiently
+grateful to my Maker for having given me such a sister. If I had no
+other sin to answer for than that of being so unworthy of her as I am,
+it would be more than I can bear, and yet when I read your letters I
+almost think that I am what I should be. I know I have a strong
+aspiration to be such, and I am sure they make me better as well as
+happier." Again, he says: "Thanks, thanks--how cold a word, my dearest
+Kate, in return for your heart-cheering letter! It came to me in the
+midst of my Nol Pros., special verdicts, depositions, protests,
+business correspondence, etc., like a visitant from the skies. Indeed,
+my dearest Kate, you may laugh at me if you will for saying so, but
+there is something about your influence over me which seems to have
+shuffled off this mortal coil of earthiness; to be unmixed with
+anything that remains to be perfected; to be perfectly spiritualized,
+and yet to retain its contact with every part of its subject.... Lest
+I should talk foolishly on this subject, I will dismiss it, only
+begging you not to forget how your letters cheer, rejoice, elevate,
+renovate me."
+
+Here is a love-letter from Theodore, her eldest brother: "Having this
+moment perused your letter the third time, I could not help giving you
+an answer to it, though there be nothing in it interrogative. Nor was
+it meant to be tender or sentimental, or learned, but like all your
+letters, it is so sweet, so excellent, so natural, so much without
+art, and yet so much beyond art, that, old, cold, selfish, unthankful
+as I am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a
+sister." Let us revenge ourselves upon these brother and sister lovers
+by saying that perhaps they did not feel any more than some other
+people, only they had a habit of expressing their feelings. If that
+was all, we cannot deny that the habit was very beautiful.
+
+Why did Miss Sedgwick never marry? We are not distinctly told; but she
+did not need to, with such lovers in her own family. Besides, how
+could she find any one, in her eyes, equal to those brothers, and how
+could she marry any one of lower merit? "I am satisfied," she writes,
+"by long and delightful experience, that I can never love any body
+better than my brothers. I have no expectation of ever finding their
+equal in worth and attraction, therefore--do not be alarmed; I am not
+on the verge of a vow of celibacy, nor have I the slightest intention
+of adding any rash resolutions to the ghosts of those that have been
+frightened to death by the terrors of maiden life; but therefore--I
+shall never change my condition until I change my mind." This is at
+the age of twenty-three.
+
+Later in life, after many changes had come, she seems to have wished
+she had not been so very hard to suit. Fifteen years roll away,
+during which we see one suitor after another, dismissed, when she
+writes in a journal not to be read in her life-time, "It is difficult
+for one who began life as I did, the primary object of affection to
+many, to come by degrees to be first to none, and still to have my
+love remain in its full strength, and craving such returns as have no
+substitute.... It is the necessity of a solitary condition, an
+unnatural state.... From my own experience I would not advise any one
+to remain unmarried, for my experience has been a singularly happy
+one. My feelings have never been embittered by those slights and
+taunts that the repulsive and neglected have to endure; there has been
+no period of my life to the present moment when I might not have
+allied myself respectably, and to those sincerely attached to me.... I
+have troops of friends, some devotedly attached to me, and yet the
+result of this very happy experience is that there is no substitute
+for those blessings which Providence has placed first, and ordained
+that they shall be purchased at the dearest sacrifice." Those who have
+paid the price and purchased the blessings may have the satisfaction
+of knowing that, according to Miss Sedgwick's mature opinion, they
+have chosen the better part.
+
+We might call this statement the Confessions of an Old Maid who might
+have done better. She closes her testimony with an acknowledgment that
+she "ought to be grateful and humble," and the "hope, through the
+grace of God, to rise more above the world, to attain a higher and
+happier state of feeling, to order my house for that better world
+where self may lose something of its engrossing power." This religious
+attitude was not unusual, nor merely conventional and unmeaning. All
+the Sedgwick family seem to have been constitutionally religious. The
+mother was almost painfully meek in her protest against her husband's
+embarking upon a public career; Mr. Sedgwick has been deterred from
+joining a church only by some impossible articles of puritan divinity,
+but cannot die happy until he has received the communion from Dr.
+Channing; "both my sisters were very religious," says Miss Sedgwick;
+while the letters I have quoted from two of her brothers, young
+lawyers and men of the world, have the devoutness of the psalms. "I
+can never be sufficiently grateful to my Maker for having given me
+such a sister," says Robert; and Theodore: "selfish, unthankful as I
+am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a
+sister." Of course one can use a religious dialect without meaning
+much by it, but these Sedgwicks were cultivated people, who thought
+for themselves, and did not speak cant to each other.
+
+Since it was a religious impulse that turned Miss Sedgwick's mind to
+literature, it is worth while to follow the thread of her spiritual
+history. This was written at the age of twenty when she was looking
+for a religious experience that never came, and would have considered
+herself one of the wicked: "On no subject would I voluntarily be
+guilty of hypocricy, and on that which involves all the importance of
+our existence I should shrink from the slightest insincerity. You
+misunderstood my last letter. I exposed to you a state of mind and
+feeling produced, not by religious impressions, but by the convictions
+of reason." Of course "reason" was no proper organ of religion; but
+besides this defect, her interest in serious things was liable to
+interruption "by the cares and pleasures of the world" and, perhaps
+worst of all, "I have not a fixed belief on some of the most material
+points of our religion." One does not see how a person in this state
+of mind should have anything to call "our religion." She seems to have
+advanced much further in a letter to her brother Robert, three years
+later: "I long to see you give your testimony of your acceptance of
+the forgiving love of your Master.
+
+... God grant, in his infinite mercy, that we may all touch the
+garment of our Savior's righteousness and be made whole."
+
+The editor of these letters tells us that Miss Sedgwick is now a
+member of Dr. Mason's church in New York city, having joined at the
+age of twenty, or soon after the letter in which she says she is not
+satisfied on certain points of doctrine. Dr. Mason is described as an
+undiluted Calvinist, "who then was the most conspicuous pulpit orator
+in the country--a man confident in his faith and bold to audacity."
+Miss Sedgwick stands the strong meat of Calvinism ten years, when we
+have this letter. "I presume you saw the letter I wrote Susan, in
+which I said that I did not think I should go to Dr. Mason's Church
+again.... You know, my dear Frances, that I never adopted some of the
+articles of the creed of that church and some of those upon which the
+doctor is fond of expatiating, and which appear to me both
+unscriptural and very unprofitable, and, I think, very demoralizing."
+
+What perhaps stimulated the zeal of Dr. Mason to insist upon doctrines
+always objectionable to Miss Sedgwick, was an attempt then being made
+to establish a Unitarian church in New York city. She has not joined
+in the movement, but does not know but it may come to that. It is a
+critical moment in Miss Sedgwick's history, and it happened at this
+time she went to hear Dr. Mason's farewell sermon. "As usual," she
+says, "he gave the rational Christians an anathema. He said they had
+fellowship with the devil: no, he would not slander the devil, they
+were worse, etc." Very possibly this preaching had its proper effect
+upon many hearers, and they gave the "rational Christians" a wide
+berth, but it precipitated Miss Sedgwick into their ranks. She was not
+then a thorough-going Unitarian, saying, "there are some of your
+articles of unbelief that I am not Protestant enough to subscribe to";
+a little more gentleness on the part of Dr. Mason could have kept her,
+but she could not stand "what seems to me," she says, "a gross
+violation of the religion of the Redeemer, and an insult to a large
+body of Christians entitled to respect and affection."
+
+She joined the tabooed circle in 1821, and wrote from Stockbridge,
+"Some of my friends here have, as I learn, been a little troubled, but
+after the crime of confessed Unitarianism, nothing can surprise them";
+she longs to look upon a Christian minister who does not regard her as
+"a heathen and a publican." An aunt, very fond of her, said to her,
+one day as they were parting, "Come and see me as often as you can,
+dear, for you know, after this world we shall never meet again."
+
+These religious tribulations incited her to write a short story, after
+the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, to contrast two kinds of
+religion, of one of which she had seen more than was good. The story
+was to appear as a tract, but it outgrew the dimensions of a tract,
+and was published as a book under the title of "A New England Tale."
+It is not a masterpiece of literature but, like all of Miss Sedgwick's
+works, it contains some fine delineations of character and vivid
+descriptions of local scenery. It can be read to-day with interest and
+pleasure. As a dramatic presentation of the self-righteous and the
+meek, in a New England country town a century ago, it is very
+effective. "Mrs. Wilson" is perhaps a more stony heart than was common
+among the 'chosen vessels of the Lord,' but so the Pharisee in the
+parable may have been a trifle exaggerated. The advantage of this kind
+of writing is that you do not miss the point of the story.
+
+Miss Dewey says The New England Tale gave Miss Sedgwick an "immediate
+position in the world of American literature." Her brother Theodore
+wrote, "It exceeds all my expectations, fond and flattering as they
+were"; her brother Harry, "I think, dear Kate, that your destiny is
+fixed. As you are such a Bibleist, I only say don't put your light
+under a bushel." That the book did not fall still-born is evident when
+he says further, "The orthodox do all they can to put it down." On the
+other hand, her publisher wanted to print a cheap edition of 3,000
+copies for missionary purposes. I should like to see that done to-day
+by some zealous liberal-minded publisher.
+
+The New England Tale appeared in 1822, when Cooper had only published
+"Precaution" and "The Spy." In 1824, Miss Sedgwick published
+"Redwood," of which a second edition was called for the same year,
+and which was republished in England and translated into French. It
+reached distinction in the character of Deborah Lenox, of which Miss
+Edgworth said, "It is to America what Scott's characters are to
+Scotland, valuable as original pictures." Redwood was reviewed by
+Bryant in the North American, in an article which, he says, was up to
+that time his "most ambitious attempt in prose." "Hope Leslie"
+appeared in 1827. It was so much better than its predecessors, said
+the _Westminster Review_, that one would not suppose it by the same
+hand. Sismondi, the Swiss historian, wrote the author a letter of
+thanks and commendation, which was followed by a life-long friendship
+between these two authors. Mrs. Child, then Miss Francis and the
+author of "Hobomok" and "The Rebels," wrote her that she had nearly
+completed a story on Capt. John Smith which now she will not dare to
+print, but she surrenders with less reluctance, she says, "for I love
+my conqueror." "Is not that beautiful?" says Miss Sedgwick. "Better to
+write and to feel such a sentiment than to indite volumes."
+
+"Clarence" was published in 1830, and I am glad to say, she sold the
+rights to the first edition for $1,200, before the critics got hold
+of it. The scene is laid in New York and in high life. The story, said
+the _North American Review_, is "improbable" but not "dull." Miss
+Dewey says, "It is the most romantic and at the same time the wittiest
+of her novels," but Bryant says it has been the least read. "The
+Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America," appeared in 1835, and
+Bryant called it "a charming tale of home life, thought by many to be
+the best of her novels properly so called."
+
+If Miss Sedgwick had written none of these more elaborate works, she
+would deserve a permanent place in our literature for a considerable
+library of short stories, among which I should name "A Berkshire
+Tradition," a pathetic tale of the Revolution; "The White Scarf," a
+romantic story of Mediaeval France; "Fanny McDermot," a study of
+conventional morality; "Home," of which the _Westminster Review_ said,
+"We wish this book was in the hands of every mechanic in England";
+"The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man" of which Joseph Curtis, the
+philanthropist, said, "in all his experiences he had never known so
+much good fruit from the publication of any book"; and, not least,
+"Live and let Live: or domestic service illustrated," of which Dr.
+Channing wrote, "I cannot, without violence to my feelings, refrain
+from expressing to you the great gratification with which I have read
+your 'Live and let Live.' Thousands will be better and happier for
+it.... Your three last books, I trust, form an era in our literature."
+
+This was high praise, considering that there was then no higher
+literary authority in America than Dr. Channing. However, a message
+from Chief Justice Marshall, through Judge Story, belongs with it:
+"Tell her I have read with great pleasure everything she has written,
+and wish she would write more." She had gained an enviable position in
+literature and she had done a great deal of useful work during the
+fifteen years since the timid appearance of "A New England Tale," but
+she seems to have regarded her books as simply a "by-product": "My
+author existence has always seemed something accidental, extraneous,
+and independent of my inner self. My books have been a pleasant
+occupation and excitement in my life.... But they constitute no
+portion of my happiness--that is, of such as I derive from the dearest
+relations of life. When I feel that my writings have made any one
+happier or better, I feel an emotion of gratitude to Him who has made
+me the medium of any blessing to my fellow creatures."
+
+In 1839, Miss Sedgwick went to Europe in company with her brother
+Robert, and other relatives. The party was abroad two years and, on
+its return, Miss Sedgwick collected her European letters and published
+them in two volumes. They give one a view of Europe as seen by an
+intelligent observer still in the first half of the last century. She
+breakfasted with Rogers, the banker and poet, with whom she met
+Macaulay whose conversation was to her "rich and delightful. Some
+might think he talks too much; but none, except from their own
+impatient vanity, could wish it were less." She had tea at Carlyle's,
+found him "simple, natural and kindly, his conversation as picturesque
+as his writings." She "had an amusing evening at Mr. Hallam's"; he
+made her "quite forget he was the sage of the 'Middle Ages.'" At
+Hallam's she met Sydney Smith who was "in the vein, and we saw him, I
+believe, to advantage. His wit is not, as I expected, a succession of
+brilliant explosions but a sparkling stream of humor."
+
+In Geneva, she visited her friends, the Sismondis, and in Turin
+received a call from Silvio Pellico, martyr to Italian liberty. "He is
+of low stature and slightly made, a sort of etching of a man with
+delicate and symmetrical features, just enough body to gravitate and
+keep the spirit from its natural upward flight--a more shadowy Dr.
+Channing."
+
+Soon after Miss Sedgwick's return from Europe, she became connected
+with the Women's Prison Association of New York City, of which from
+1848 to 1863 she was president. An extract from one letter must
+suffice to suggest the nature of her activities in connection with
+this and kindred philanthropies: "It is now just ten, and I have come
+up from the City Hall, in whose dismal St. Giles precincts I have been
+to see a colored ragged school.... My Sundays are not days of rest....
+My whole soul is sickened; and to-day when I went to church filled
+with people in their fine summer clothes, and heard a magnificent
+sermon from Dr. Dewey, and thought of the streets and dens through
+which I had just walked, I could have cried out, Why are ye here?"
+
+A fellow-member of the Prison Association, who often accompanied her
+on her visits to hospitals and prisons, "especially the Tombs,
+Blackwell's, and Randall's Island," says, "In her visitations, she was
+called upon to kneel at the bedside of the sick and dying. The
+sweetness of her spirit, and the delicacy of her nature, felt by all
+who came within her atmosphere, seemed to move the unfortunate to ask
+this office of her, and it was never asked in vain."
+
+Always a philanthropist, Miss Sedgwick was not a "reformer" in the
+technical sense; that is, she did not enlist in the "movements" of her
+generation, for Temperance, or Anti-Slavery, or Woman's Rights. She
+shrunk from the excesses of the "crusaders," but she was never slow in
+striking a blow in a good cause. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published in
+1852, but its indictment of slavery is not more complete than Miss
+Sedgwick made in "Redwood," her second novel, twenty-five years
+before. A planter's boy sees a slave starved to famishing and then
+whipped to death. It hurt his boy heart, but he afterward became
+hardened to such necessary severity and he tells the story to a fellow
+planter with apologies for his youthful sentimentality. Does "Uncle
+Tom's Cabin" show more clearly the two curses of slavery: cruelty to
+the slave and demoralization to the master?
+
+She sympathized with the abolitionists in their purpose but not always
+with their methods: "The great event of the past week has been the
+visit of the little apostle of Abolitionism--Lucy Stone." This was in
+1849 when Mrs. Stone was thirty-one. "She has one of the very sweetest
+voices I ever heard, a readiness of speech and grace that furnish the
+external qualifications of an orator--a lovely countenance too--and
+the intensity, entire forgetfulness and the divine calmness that fit
+her to speak in the great cause she has undertaken." But in spite of
+this evident sympathy with the purpose of the Abolitionists, Miss
+Sedgwick declined to attend a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society,
+saying: "It seemed to me that so much had been intemperately said, so
+much rashly urged, on the death of that noble martyr, John Brown, by
+the Abolitionists, that it was not right to appear among them as one
+of them."
+
+Not even Lucy Stone, however, could have felt more horror at the
+institution of slavery. The Compromise Measures of 1850 made her
+shudder: "my hands are cold as ice; the blood has curdled in my
+heart; that word _compromise_ has a bad savor when truth and right are
+in question." When the Civil War came, in her seventieth year, she had
+"an intense desire to live to see the conclusion of the struggle," but
+could not conjecture "how peace and good neighborhood are ever to
+follow from this bitter hate." "It is delightful to see the gallantry
+of some of our men, who are repeating the heroic deeds that seemed
+fast receding to fabulous times." Some of these young heroes were very
+near to her. Maj. William Dwight Sedgwick, who fell on the bloody
+field of Antietam was her nephew, Gen. John Sedgwick, killed at the
+battle of Spottsylvania, was her cousin.
+
+As she was not in the Anti-Slavery crusade, so she was not in the
+Woman's Rights crusade. She wished women to have a larger sphere, and
+she did much to enlarge the sphere of her sex, but it was by taking it
+and making it, rather than by talking about it. "Your _might_ must be
+your _right_," she says in a chapter on The Rights of Women, in "Means
+and Ends." Voting did not seem to her a function suited to women: "I
+cannot believe it was ever intended that women should lead armies,
+harangue in halls of legislation, bustle up to ballot-boxes, or sit
+on judicial tribunals." The gentle Lucy Stone would not have
+considered this argument conclusive, but it satisfied Miss Sedgwick.
+
+In 1857, after a silence of twenty-two years, in which only short
+stories and one or two biographies came from her hand, she published
+another two-volume novel entitled, "Married or Single." It is perhaps
+her best work; at least it has been so considered by many readers. She
+was then sixty-seven and, though she had ten more years to live, they
+were years of declining power. These last years were spent at the home
+of her favorite niece, Mrs. William Minot, Jr., in West Roxbury,
+Mass., and there tenderly and reverently cared for, she died in 1867.
+
+Bryant, who was her life-long friend, and who, at her instance wrote
+some of his hymns, gives this estimate of her character: "Admirable as
+was her literary life, her home life was more so; and beautiful as
+were the examples set forth in her writings, her own example was, if
+possible, still more beautiful. Her unerring sense of rectitude, her
+love of truth, her ready sympathy, her active and cheerful
+beneficence, her winning and gracious manners, the perfection of high
+breeding, make up a character, the idea of which, as it rests in my
+mind, I would not exchange for anything in her own interesting works
+of fiction."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+MARY LOVELL WARE
+
+
+[Illustration: MARY LOVELL WARE]
+
+Of all the saints in the calendar of the Church there is no name more
+worthy of the honor than that of Mary Lovell Ware. The college of
+cardinals, which confers the degree of sainthood for the veneration of
+faithful Catholics, will never recognize her merits and encircle her
+head with a halo, but when the list of Protestant saints is made up,
+the name of Mary L. Ware will be in it, and among the first half dozen
+on the scroll.
+
+The writer was a student in the Divinity School at Cambridge when a
+classmate commended to him the Memoirs of Mrs. Ware as one of the few
+model biographies. It was a book not laid down in the course of study;
+its reading was postponed for that convenient season for which one
+waits so long; but he made a mental note of the "Memoirs of Mary L.
+Ware," which many years did not efface. There is a book one must read,
+he said to himself, if he would die happy.
+
+Mrs. Ware's maiden name was Pickard. To the end of her days, when she
+put herself in a pillory as she often did, she called herself by her
+maiden name. "That," she would say, "was Mary Pickard." I infer that
+she thought Mary Pickard had been a very bad girl.
+
+Her mother's name was Lovell,--Mary Lovell,--granddaughter of "Master
+Lovell," long known as a classical teacher in colonial Boston, and
+daughter of James Lovell, an active Revolutionist, a prominent member
+of the Continental Congress and, from the end of the war to his death,
+Naval officer in the Boston Custom House. Mr. Lovell had eight sons,
+one of whom was a successful London merchant, and one daughter, who
+remained with her parents until at twenty-five she married Mr. Pickard
+and who, when her little girl was five years old returned, as perhaps
+an only daughter should, to take care of her parents in their old age.
+So it happened that the childhood of Mrs. Ware was passed at her
+grandfather Lovell's, in Pearl St., Boston, then an eligible place of
+residence.
+
+Mr. Pickard was an Englishman by birth, and a merchant with business
+connections in London and Boston, between which cities, for a time,
+his residence alternated. Not much is said of him in the Memoirs,
+beyond the fact that he was an Episcopalian with strong attachment to
+the forms of his church, as an Englishman might be expected to be.
+
+Of Mrs. Pickard we learn more. She is said to have possessed a vigorous
+mind, to have been well educated and a fine conversationalist,
+with a commanding figure, benignant countenance, and dignified
+demeanor, so that one said of her, "She seems to have been born for an
+empress." Like her husband she was an Episcopalian though, according
+to the Memoirs, less strenuously Episcopalian than Mr. Pickard. She
+had been reared in a different school. Her father,--Mr. James
+Lovell--we are told, was a free-thinker, or as the Memoirs put it,
+"had adopted some infidel principles," and "treated religion with
+little respect in his family." The "infidels" of that day were
+generally good men, only they were not orthodox. Jefferson, Madison,
+Franklin and Washington were such infidels. After Channing's day, this
+kind of man here in New England was absorbed by the Unitarian
+movement, and, as a separate class, disappeared. Mrs. Pickard was bred
+in this school and she appears never to have forgotten her home
+training. "She was unostentatious and charitable," says an early
+friend, "and her whole life was an exhibition of the ascendency of
+_principle_ over mere taste and feeling."
+
+Her religious attitude becomes interesting, because in an exceptional
+degree, she formed her remarkable daughter,--who was an only child and
+until the age of thirteen had no teacher except this forceful and
+level-headed mother.
+
+With these antecedents, Mary Lovell Pickard was born in Boston,
+October 2, 1798, John Adams being then President. In 1802, Mary having
+passed her third summer, Mr. Pickard's business called him to London,
+where he resided with his family two years, so that the child's fifth
+birthday was duly celebrated in mid-ocean on the homeward voyage. In a
+letter of Mrs. Pickard, written during this London residence, she
+says, "Mr. Pickard is even more anxious than I to go home. Mary is the
+only contented one. She is happy all the time." There is so much that
+is sad in this record that, before we have done, the reader will be
+glad the little girl had at least a bright and sunny childhood to
+remember. It appears she did remember it. It may not be remarkable,
+but it is interesting, that the experiences of this early London
+life,--between her third and fifth year,--made an indelible
+impression upon her, so that twenty years later when she was again in
+England, much to her own delight, she "recognized her old London home
+and other objects with which she was then familiar."
+
+A lady who was a fellow passenger of the Pickards on their homeward
+voyage was struck by the gentle management of the mother and the easy
+docility of the child. To say, "It will make me unhappy if you do
+that," was an extreme exercise of maternal authority, to which the
+child yielded unresisting obedience. This, of course, is told to the
+credit of the child, but the merit, probably belongs to the mother.
+Doubtless we could all have such children if we were that kind of a
+parent. A little tact, unfailing gentleness, and an infinite self
+control: with these, it would seem one may smile and kiss a child into
+an angel.
+
+On arriving in Boston, Mrs. Pickard took her family to her father's,
+where she remained until her death, and where, we read, "with parents
+and grandparents, Mary found a home whose blessings filled her heart."
+Being an only child, with four elderly persons, Mary was likely to be
+too much petted or too much fretted. We are glad to know that she was
+not fretted or over-trained. In a letter of retrospect, she writes,
+"For many years a word of blame never reached my ears." An early
+friend of the family writes, "It has been said that Mary was much
+indulged; and I believe it may be said so with truth. But she was not
+indulged in idleness, selfishness, and rudeness; she was indulged in
+healthful sports, in pleasant excursions, and in companionship with
+other children."
+
+Everything went smoothly with her until the age of ten when, rather
+earlier than most children, she discovered her conscience: "At ten
+years of age I waked up to a sense of the danger of the state of
+indulgence in which I was living"; but let us hope the crisis was not
+acute. It does not seem to have been. According to the testimony of
+her first teacher, she was simply precocious morally, but not at all
+morbid. Her school was at Hingham, whither she was sent at the age of
+thirteen. The teacher says that with her "devotedness to the highest
+objects and purposes of our existence, she was one of the most lively
+and playful girls among her companions, and a great favorite with them
+all."
+
+There seems to have been really no cloud upon her existence up to this
+point,--the age of thirteen. I have had a reason for dwelling upon
+this charming period of her childhood, untroubled by a cloud, because
+from this date until her death, the hand of God seems to have been
+very heavy upon her, afflictions fell upon her like rain, and it
+required a brave spirit to carry the burdens appointed for her to
+bear. Happily, she had a brave spirit, did not know that her life was
+hard, "gloried in tribulation," like St. Paul, and was never more
+cheerful or thankful than when she was herself an invalid, with an
+invalid husband to be cared for like a baby, seven children to be
+clothed and fed, and not enough money at the year's end to square
+accounts. Ruskin tells of a servant who had served his mother
+faithfully fifty-seven years. "She had," he says, "a natural gift and
+specialty for doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of the
+sick-room; so that she was never quite in her glory unless some of us
+were ill." It will be seen further on that these were only a part of
+the accomplishments of Mrs. Ware. It is fortunate if a woman is so
+made that her spirits rise as her troubles thicken, but the reader of
+the story will be thankful that her life was not all a battle, that
+her childhood was more than ordinarily serene and sunny, and that not
+for a dozen years at least, did she have to be a heroine in order to
+be happy.
+
+Mary had been in Hingham about half a year, enjoying her school-girl
+life, when her mother was taken ill, fatally ill as it proved, and the
+child, then at the age of thirteen, was called home and installed in
+the sick-room as nurse. This was the beginning of sorrow. The mother
+lingered through the winter and died in the following May. There
+remained of the family, the grandparents, one son of fine talents, but
+of unfortunate habits, and her father, "broken in spirits and in
+fortune, clinging to his only child with doting and dependent
+affection." We can see that it could not have been a cheerful home for
+a young girl of thirteen. Some thirty years later, she wrote to one of
+her children, "I think I have felt the want all my life of a more
+cheerful home in my early childhood, a fuller participation in the
+pleasures and 'follies' of youth." I put this reflection here, because
+it does not apply to the years preceding the loss of her mother while
+it exactly fits the period that now follows.
+
+The year following her mother's death, Mary attended a girls' school
+in Boston. A passage from a letter written at this period will show
+something of her quality. It is dated February 27, 1813, when she was
+fourteen and a few months. Besides, she had been at school, six months
+at a time, a total of about one year. She had been mentioning two or
+three novels, and then discourses as follows: "Novels are generally
+supposed to be improper books for young people, as they take up the
+time which ought to be employed in more useful pursuits; which is
+certainly very true; but as a recreation to the mind, such books as
+these cannot possibly do any hurt, as they are good moral lessons.
+Indeed, I think there is scarcely any book from which some good may
+not be derived; though it cannot be expected that any young person has
+judgment enough to leave all the bad and take only the good, when
+there is a great proportion of the former." Perhaps I am wrong in
+thinking this an exhibition of remarkable reflection and expression in
+a girl well under fifteen, whether she had been at school or
+otherwise. Mrs. Ware was always a wonderful letter-writer, though, if
+we take her word for it, she had little of her mother's gift as a
+conversationalist. It seems to have been a life-long habit to see the
+old year out and the new year in, spending the quiet hours in writing
+letters to her friends. In one of these anniversary letters, written
+when she was fifteen, she says, "I defy anyone to tell from my
+appearance that I have not everything to make me happy. I have much
+and am happy. My little trials are essential to my happiness." In that
+last sentence we have the entire woman. Her trials were always, as she
+thought, essential to her happiness.
+
+On this principle, her next twelve years ought to have been very
+happy, since they were sufficiently full of tribulation. The two years
+following her mother's death, passed in the lonely home in Boston,
+were naturally depressing. Besides, she was born for religion, and the
+experience through which she had passed had created a great hunger in
+her soul. Trinity Church, into which she had been baptized, had not
+yet passed through the hands of Phillips Brooks, and its
+ministrations, admirable as they are for the ordinary child, were
+inadequate for the wants of a thoughtful girl like Mary Pickard. The
+final effect was, she says, to throw her more upon herself and to
+compel her to seek, "by reading, meditation and prayer, to find that
+knowledge and stimulus to virtue which I failed to find in the
+ministrations of the Sabbath."
+
+At this critical period, she returned to the school at Hingham, which
+she had left two years before, and there, in the Third Church, then
+presided over by Rev. Henry Colman, one of the fathers of the
+Unitarian heresy, she found peace and satisfaction to her spirit. Ten
+years later, she spent a week in Hingham, visiting friends and
+reviving, as she says, the memory of the "first awakening of my mind
+to high and holy thoughts and resolves." The crisis which, elsewhere,
+we read of at the age of ten, was a subordinate affair. This Hingham
+experience, at the age of sixteen, was really the moral event in her
+history.
+
+As hers was a type of religion,--she would have said "piety",--a blend
+of reason and sentiment, peculiar to the Unitarianism of that
+generation, hardly to be found in any household of faith to-day, we
+must let her disclose her inner consciousness. One Saturday morning,
+she writes a long letter to one of her teachers saying that she feels
+it a duty and a privilege "to be a member of the Church of Christ,"
+but she fears she does not understand what the relation implies, and
+says, "Tell me if you should consider it a violation of the sacredness
+of the institution, to think I might with impunity be a member of it.
+I am well aware of the condemnation denounced on those who _partake_
+unworthily." She refers to the Lord's Supper. It is to be hoped that
+her teacher knew enough to give the simple explanation of that dark
+saying of the apostle about eating unworthily. At all events, she
+connected herself with the church, received the communion, and was
+very happy. "From the moment I had decided what to do, not a feeling
+arose which I could wish to suppress; conscious of pure motives, all
+within was calm, and I wondered how I could for a moment hesitate.
+They were feelings I never before experienced, and for once I realized
+that it is only when we are at peace with ourselves that we can enjoy
+true happiness.... I could not sleep, and actually laid awake all
+night out of pure happiness."
+
+After a few months, sooner than she expected, she returns to Boston
+and sits under the ministrations of Dr. Channing, to her an object of
+veneration. She writes that her heart is too full for utterance: "It
+will not surprise you that Mr. Channing's sermons are the cause; but
+no account that I could give could convey any idea of them. You have
+heard some of the same class; they so entirely absorb the feelings as
+to render the mind incapable of action, and consequently leave on the
+memory at times no distinct impression." I should like to quote all
+she says of Channing, both as a revelation of him, and of herself. She
+heard him read the psalm, "What shall I render unto God for all his
+mercies?" and says, "The ascription of praise which followed was more
+truly sublime than anything I ever heard or read." It must have been
+an event,--it certainly was for her,--to listen to one of Dr.
+Channing's prayers: "It seems often to me, while in the hour of prayer
+I give myself up to the thought of heaven, as though I had in reality
+left the world, and was enjoying what is promised to the Christian. I
+fear, however, these feelings are too often delusive; we substitute
+the love of holiness for the actual possession."
+
+There her sanity comes in to check her emotionalism. She is reflecting
+upon another experience with Dr. Channing when she comes very near
+making a criticism upon him. She tells us that she does not mean him;
+he is excepted from these remarks, but she says, "There are few
+occasions which will authorize a minister to excite the feelings of an
+audience in a very great degree, and none which can make it allowable
+for him to rest in mere excitement." To complete the portraiture of
+her soul, I will take a passage from a letter written at the age of
+twenty-five, when death has at last stripped her of all her family, "I
+believe that all events that befall us are exactly such as are best
+adapted to improve us; and I find in a perfect confidence in the
+wisdom and love which I know directs them, a source of peace which no
+other thing can give; and in the difficulty which I find in acting
+upon this belief I see a weakness of nature, which those very trials
+are designed to assist us in overcoming, and which trial alone can
+conquer."
+
+Mary Pickards were not common even in that generation, but this creed
+was then common, and this blend of reason and religious feeling,
+fearlessly called "piety," was characteristic of Channing, her
+teacher, and of Henry Ware, afterward her husband. It was the real
+"Channing Unitarianism." Pity there is no more of it.
+
+Mary was sixteen years old,--to be exact, sixteen and a half; the
+serene and beautiful faith of Channing had done its perfect work upon
+her; and she was now ready for whatever fate, or as she would have
+said, Providence, might choose to send. It sent the business failure
+of Mr. Pickard, in which not only his own fortune was swept away but
+also the estate of Mr. Lovell was involved. Upon the knowledge of this
+disaster, Mary wrote a cheerful letter, in which she said: "I should
+be sorry to think you consider me so weak as to bend under a change of
+fortune to which all are liable." Certainly she will not bend, but she
+is obliged to quit school and return to the shattered home.
+
+Before the summer was over, her grandfather, Mr. Lovell, died; whether
+the end was hastened by the financial embarrassments in which Mr.
+Pickard had involved him, is not said. Mrs. Lovell, the grandmother,
+followed her husband in two years,--for Mary, two years of assiduous
+nursing and tender care. Perhaps one sentence from a letter at this
+time will assist us in picturing her in this exacting service. She
+says that she is leading a monotonous existence, that her animal
+spirits are not sufficient for both duty and solitude, "And when
+evening closes, and my beloved charge is laid peacefully to rest,
+excitement ceases, and I am thrown on myself for pleasure."
+
+With the death of the grandmother, the home was broken up, and Mary,
+trying to help her father do a little business without capital, went
+to New York city as his commercial agent. Her letters to her father
+are "almost exclusively business letters," and he on his part gives
+her "directions for the sale and purchase, not only of muslins and
+moreens, but also of skins, saltpetre, and the like."
+
+Details of this period of her career are not abundant in the Memoirs,
+and the death of her father, in 1823, put an end to her business
+apprenticeship.
+
+Apparently, she was not entirely destitute. At the time of his
+disaster, her father wrote, "As we calculated you would, after some
+time, have enough to support yourself, without mental or bodily
+exertion." That is, presumably, after the settlement of her
+grandfather's estate. As her biographer says, "Every member of her own
+family had gone, and she had smoothed the passage of everyone." But
+she had many friends, and one is tempted to say, Pity she could not
+have settled down in cozy quarters and made herself comfortable.
+
+Indeed she did make a fair start. She joined a couple of friends,
+going abroad in search of health, for a visit to England. She had
+relatives on the Lovell side, in comfortable circumstances near
+London, and an aunt on her father's side, in the north of England, in
+straightened circumstances. She resolved to make the acquaintance of
+all these relatives.
+
+The party arrived in Liverpool in April, 1824, and for a year and a
+half, during which their headquarters were in London, Paris was
+visited, Southern England and Wales were explored, and finally the
+Lovell relatives were visited and found to have good hearts and open
+arms. For these eighteen months, Mary Pickard's friends could have
+wished her no more delightful existence. She had tea with Mrs.
+Barbauld, heard Irving, then the famous London preacher, and saw other
+interesting persons and charming things in England. There is material
+for a very interesting chapter upon this delightful experience. It was
+followed by a drama of misery and horror, in which she was both
+spectator and actor, when young and old died around her as if smitten
+by pestilence, and her own vigorous constitution was irreparably
+broken.
+
+This episode was vastly more interesting to her than the pleasant
+commonplace of travel, and much more in keeping with what seems to
+have been her destiny. In the autumn of her second year abroad, she
+went to discover her aunt, sister of Mr. Pickard, in Yorkshire. The
+writer of the Memoirs says that this visit "forms the most remarkable
+and in some respects the most interesting and important chapter of her
+life." She found her aunt much better than she expected, nearly
+overpowered with joy to see her, living in a little two story cottage
+of four rooms, which far exceeded anything she ever saw for neatness.
+The village bore the peculiarly English name of Osmotherly, and was
+the most primitive place she had ever been in. The inhabitants were
+all of one class and that the poorer class of laborers, ignorant as
+possible, but simple and sociable. Terrible to relate, smallpox,
+typhus fever, and whooping cough were at that moment epidemic in that
+village.
+
+It will be impossible to put the situation before us more briefly than
+by quoting a passage from one of her letters: "My aunt's two daughters
+are married and live in this village; one of them, with three
+children, has a husband at the point of death with a fever; his
+brother died yesterday of smallpox, and two of her children have the
+whooping-cough; added to this, their whole dependence is upon their
+own exertions, which are of course entirely stopped now.... You may
+suppose, under such a state of things, I shall find enough to do."
+
+The death of the husband, whom of course Miss Pickard nursed through
+his illness, is reported in the next letter, which contains also this
+characteristic statement, "It seems to me that posts of difficulty are
+my appointed lot and my element, for I do feel lighter and happier
+when I have difficulties to overcome. Could you look in upon me you
+would think it impossible that I could be even tolerably comfortable,
+and yet I am cheerful, and get along as easily as possible, and am in
+truth happy."
+
+Evidently, all we can do with such a person is to congratulate her
+over the most terrible experiences. In a letter five days later, the
+baby dies of whooping-cough, and in her arms; a fortnight later, the
+mother dies of typhus fever; within another month, two boys, now
+orphans, are down with the same fever at once, and one of them dies.
+In the space of eight weeks, she saw five persons of one family
+buried, and four of them she had nursed. By this time, the aunt was
+ill, and Miss Pickard nursed her to convalescence.
+
+This campaign had lasted three months, and she left the scene of
+combat with a clear conscience. She was allowed a breathing spell of a
+month in which to visit some pleasant friends and recuperate her
+strength, when we find her back in Osmotherly again nursing her aunt.
+It was the end of December and she was the only servant in the house.
+Before this ordeal was over, she was taken ill herself, and had to be
+put to bed and nursed. In crossing a room, a cramp took her; she fell
+on the floor, lay all night in the cold, calling in vain for
+assistance. She did not finally escape from these terrible scenes
+until the end of January, five months from the time she entered them.
+
+Miss Pickard returned to Boston after an absence of about two years
+and a half, during which time, as one of her friends wrote her, "You
+have passed such trying scenes, have so narrowly escaped, and done
+more, much more, than almost any body ever did before." She went away
+a dear school-girl friend and a valued acquaintance; she was welcomed
+home as a martyr fit to be canonized, and was received as a
+conquering heroine.
+
+In a letter dated from Gretna Green, where so many run-away lovers
+have been made happy, she playfully reflects upon the possibilities of
+her visit, if only she had a lover, and concludes that she "must
+submit to single blessedness a little longer." Our sympathies would
+have been less taxed if she had submitted to single blessedness to the
+end. Why could she not now be quiet, let well enough alone, and make
+herself comfortable? Destiny had apparently ordered things for her
+quite differently. One cannot avoid his destiny, and it was her
+destiny to marry, and marriage was to bring her great happiness,
+tempered by great sorrows.
+
+The man who was to share her happiness and her sorrows was Rev. Henry
+Ware, Jr., then the almost idolized minister of the Second Church, in
+Boston. Mr. Ware was the son of another Henry Ware, professor of
+theology at Harvard, whose election to the chair of theology in 1806
+opened the great Unitarian controversy. Two sons of Professor Ware
+entered the ministry, Henry and William, the latter the first
+Unitarian minister settled in New York city. Rev. John F. Ware, well
+remembered as pastor of Arlington St. Church in Boston, was the son
+of Henry, so that for more than half a century, the name of Ware was a
+great factor in Unitarian history.
+
+After Dr. Channing, Henry Ware was perhaps the most popular preacher
+in any Boston pulpit. One sermon preached by him on a New Year's eve,
+upon the Duty of Improvement, became memorable. In spite of a violent
+snow storm, the church was filled to overflowing, a delegation coming
+from Cambridge. Of this sermon, a hearer said: "No words from mortal
+lips ever affected me like those." There was a difference between
+Unitarian preaching then and now. That famous sermon closed like this:
+"I charge you, as in the presence of God, who sees and will judge
+you,--in the name of Jesus Christ, who beseeches you to come to him
+and live,--by all your hopes of happiness and life,--I charge you let
+not this year die, and leave you impenitent. Do not dare to utter
+defiance in its decaying hours. But, in the stillness of its awful
+midnight, prostrate yourselves penitently before your Maker; and let
+the morning sun rise upon you, thoughtful and serious men." One does
+not see how the so-called 'Evangelicals' could have quarreled with
+that preaching.
+
+Mr. Ware had been in his parish nine years, his age was thirty-two, he
+was in the prime of life, and at the climax of his power and his
+popularity. Three years before, he had been left a widower with three
+young children, one of whom became Rev. John F. Ware. That these two
+intensely religious natures, that of Mary Pickard and that of Henry
+Ware, should have been drawn together is not singular. In writing to
+his sister, Mr. Ware speaks tenderly of his late wife and says, "I
+have sought for the best mother to her children, and the best I have
+found." Late in life, one of these children said, "Surely God never
+gave a boy such a mother or a man such a friend."
+
+Miss Pickard engaged to be a very docile wife. "Instead of the
+self-dependent self-governed being you have known me," she writes to a
+friend, "I have learned to look to another for guidance and
+happiness." She is "as happy as mortal can be." Indeed it was almost
+too much for earth. "It has made me," she says, "more willing to leave
+the world and enjoy the happiness of heaven than I ever thought I
+should be. Strange that a thing from which of all others, I should
+have expected the very opposite effect, should have done this."
+
+The year following the marriage of these saintly lovers,--one can call
+them nothing less,--was one of exceeding happiness and of immense
+activity to both. It is not said, but we can see that each must have
+been a tonic to the other. Considerate persons felt a scruple about
+taking any of the time of their pastor's wife. "Mrs. Ware," said one,
+"at home and abroad, is the busiest woman of my acquaintance," and
+others felt that way. Before the year ended, Mrs. Ware had a boy baby
+of her own to increase her occupations and her happiness. It lived a
+few bright years, long enough to become a very attractive child and to
+give a severe wrench to her heart when it left her. This experience
+seems to have a certain fitness in a life in which every joy was to
+bring sorrow and every sorrow, by sheer will, was to be turned to joy.
+
+Of Mr. Ware, it is said that this first year "was one of the most
+active and also, to all human appearance, one of the most successful
+of his ministry." He put more work into his sermons, gave increased
+attention to the details of his parish, delivered a course of
+lectures, and undertook other enterprises, some of which are
+specified; and, during a temporary absence of Mrs. Ware, wrote her
+that he had hoped he had turned over a new leaf, "but by foolish
+degrees, I have got back to all my accustomed carelessness and waste
+of powers, and am doing nothing in proportion to what I ought to do."
+
+But man is mortal, and there is a limit to human endurance. Mr. Ware
+could not lash himself into greater activity; but he was in good
+condition to be ill. In a journey from Northampton, he was prostrated
+by inflammation of the lungs, with hemorrhages, and after several
+weeks, Mrs. Ware, herself far from well, went to him and finally
+brought him home. This was the beginning of what became a very regular
+annual experience. I met a lady who was brought up on the Memoirs of
+Mary L. Ware, and who briefly put what had impressed her most, in this
+way: She said, "It seemed as though Mr. Ware was always going off on a
+journey for his health, and that Mrs. Ware was always going after him
+to bring him home"; if we remember this statement, and add the fact
+that these calls came more than once when Mrs. Ware was on the sick
+list herself, we shall be able greatly to shorten our history.
+
+This was the end of Mr. Ware's parish work. He was nursed through the
+winter and, in early spring, Mrs. Ware left her baby and took her
+invalid husband abroad, in pursuit of health, spending a year and a
+half in England, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy. It was, she
+afterward said, the most trying period of her life. Mr. Ware
+alternated between being fairly comfortable and very miserable, so
+that these Memoirs say "He enjoyed much, but suffered more." Still the
+travels would be interesting if we had time to follow them.
+
+Near the close of the first year abroad, Mrs. Ware's second child was
+born in Rome, and, although this was as she would have said,
+"providential," never was a child less needed in a family. Mrs. Ware
+had then two babies on her hands, and of these, her invalid husband
+was the greater care. In the following August, Mrs. Ware arrived in
+Boston with her double charge, and had the happiness to know that Mr.
+Ware was somewhat better in health than when he left home, a year and
+a half before.
+
+His parish, during his absence, had been in the care of a colleague,
+no other than the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you remember the New
+Year's Eve sermon of Mr. Ware, it will be evident that he must have
+left behind him a very conservative parish, and you will not be
+surprised that in about four years, Mr. Emerson found his chains
+intolerable.
+
+Mr. Ware had been invited to a professorship in the Harvard Divinity
+School, and it was to this and not to his parish that he returned. For
+the steady, one might say monotonous, duties of his professorship, Mr.
+Ware's health was generally sufficient. The lecture room did not exact
+the several hundred parish calls then demanded by a large city church,
+nor the exhausting effort which Mr. Ware and Dr. Channing put into the
+delivery of a sermon; and the lectures, once prepared, could be
+delivered and re-delivered from year to year. Real leisure was
+impossible to one of Mr. Ware's temperament, but here was a life of
+comparative leisure; and for Mrs. Ware, who shared all the joys and
+sorrows of her husband, the twelve years that follow brought a settled
+existence and very much happiness. Neither her own health nor that of
+her husband was ever very firm, and there was always a great emptiness
+in the family purse, but with Mrs. Ware, these were, as with Paul,
+"light afflictions" which were but for a moment, and she did not let
+them disturb her happiness.
+
+Impossible as it may seem, they contributed to her happiness. She made
+them contribute to it. She says in a letter of 1831, "Of my winter's
+sickness I cannot write; it contained a long life of enjoyment, and
+what I hoped would be profitable thought and reflection." She repeats
+this statement to another correspondent, and says, with apparent
+regret, that the illness did not bring her "to that cheerful
+willingness to resign my life, after which I strove." You cannot send
+this woman any trial which she will not welcome, because she wants to
+be made to want to go to heaven, and she is as yet not quite ready for
+it.
+
+Mr. Ware has been dangerously ill, and of course she could not spare
+herself for heaven until he recovered, but this trial did something
+quite as good for her: "My husband's danger renewed the so oft
+repeated testimony that strength is ever at hand for those who need
+it, gave me another exercise of trust in that mighty arm which can
+save to the uttermost, and in its result is a new cause for gratitude
+to Him who has so abundantly blessed me all the days of my life." It
+is good to see what the old-fashioned doctrine that God really is,
+and is good, did for one who actually believed.
+
+That first baby, whom she left behind when she went abroad with her
+invalid husband, died in 1831; the mother fainted when the last breath
+left the little body; but this is the way she writes of it: "I have
+always looked upon the death of children rather as a subject of joy
+than sorrow, and have been perplexed at seeing so many, who would bear
+what seemed to me much harder trials with firmness, so completely
+overwhelmed by this, as is frequently the case."
+
+After that, one is almost ashamed to mention the trifle that the
+income of this family was very small. Mr. Ware, after 1834 _Dr._ Ware,
+held a new professorship, the endowment of which was yet mostly
+imaginary. The social demands took no account of the family income;
+the unexpected guest always dropping in; at certain times, it is said,
+"shoals of visitors;" and the larder always a little scantily
+furnished. If one wants to know how one ought to live under such
+circumstances, here is your shining example. "There were no apologies
+at that table," we are told. "If unexpected guests were not always
+filled, they were never annoyed, nor suffered to think much about it."
+"I remember," says a guest, "the wonder I felt at her humility and
+dignity in welcoming to her table on some occasion a troop of
+accidental guests, when she had almost nothing to offer but her
+hospitality. The absence of all apologies and of all mortification,
+the ease and cheerfulness of the conversation, which became the only
+feast, gave me a lesson never forgotten, although never learned."
+
+The problem of dress was as simple to Mrs. Ware as was the
+entertainment of her guests. "As to her attire," says an intimate
+friend, "we should say no one thought of it at all, because of its
+simplicity, and because of her ease of manners and dignity of
+character. Yet the impression is qualified, though in one view
+confirmed, by hearing that, in a new place of residence, so plain was
+her appearance on all occasions, the villagers suspected her of
+reserving her fine clothes for some better class." There are those who
+might consider these circumstances, very sore privations. What Mrs.
+Ware says of them is, "I have not a word of complaint to make. We are
+far better provided for than is necessary to our happiness." I am
+persuaded that this is an immensely wholesome example and that more of
+this kind of woman is needed to mother the children of our generation.
+In a letter to one of her daughters, she says she has great sympathy
+with the struggles of young people, that she had struggles too and
+learned her lessons young, that she found very early in life that her
+own position was not in the least affected by these externals, "I soon
+began to look upon my oft-turned dress with something like pride,
+certainly with great complacency; and to see in that and all other
+marks of my mother's prudence and consistency, only so many proofs of
+her dignity and self-respect,--the dignity and self-respect which grew
+out of her just estimate of the true and the right in herself and in
+the world."
+
+We have seen enough of this woman to discover that she could not be
+made unhappy, and also to discover why. It was because her nature was
+so large and strong and fine. Sometimes she thinks Dr. Ware would be
+better and happier in a parish, "But I have no care about the future
+other than that which one must have,--a desire to fulfil the duties
+which it may bring." Surely that is being,
+
+    "Self-poised and independent still
+    On this world's varying good or ill."
+
+In 1842, Dr. Ware's health became so much impaired that Mrs. Ware
+entertains an unfulfilled desire. It is to get away from Cambridge,
+which had become so dear to them all. "I scruple not to say that a
+ten-foot house, and bread and water diet, with a sense of rest to
+_him_, would be a luxury." The family removed to Framingham, where Dr.
+Ware died, a year later. Whatever tribulations might be in store for
+Mrs. Ware, anxiety on his account was not to be one of them.
+
+Death came on Friday; on Sunday, Mrs. Ware attended church with all
+her family, and the occasion must have been more trying for the
+minister who preached to her than for herself. A short service was
+held that Sunday evening at six, and "Then," she says, "John and I
+brought dear father's body to Cambridge in our own carriage; we could
+not feel willing to let strangers do anything in connection with him
+which we could do ourselves." Think of that dark, silent lonely ride
+from Framingham to Cambridge! But here was a woman who did not spare
+herself, and did not ask what somebody would think of her doings.
+
+After this event, the Memoirs tell us that a gentleman in Milton gave
+her a very earnest invitation to go there and take the instruction of
+three little children in connection with her own. In this occupation
+she spent six years of great outward comfort and usefulness. There is
+much in these years, or in the letters of these years, of great
+interest and moral beauty. Even with young children to leave, she
+speaks of death as serenely as she would of going to Boston. "I do not
+feel that I am essential to my children. I do not feel that I am
+competent to train them."
+
+Of her last illness, one of her children wrote, "Never did a sick room
+have less of the odor of sickness than that. It was the brightest spot
+on earth." "Come with a _smile_," she said to a friend whom she had
+summoned for a last farewell, and so went this remarkable and
+exceptionally noble woman.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+LYDIA MARIA CHILD
+
+
+[Illustration: LYDIA MARIA CHILD]
+
+In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, few names in American
+literature were more conspicuous than that of Lydia Maria Child, and
+among those few, if we except that of Miss Sedgwick, there was
+certainly no woman's name. Speaking with that studied reserve which
+became its dignity, the _North American Review_ said of her: "We are
+not sure that any woman of our country could outrank Mrs. Child. This
+lady has been before the public as an author with much success. And
+she well deserves it, for in all her works, nothing can be found which
+does not commend itself by its tone of healthy morality and good
+sense. Few female writers if any have done more or better things for
+our literature in the lighter or graver departments."
+
+Mrs. Child began her literary career in 1824 with "Hobomok, a Tale of
+Early Times," and she closed it with a volume of biography, entitled
+"Good Wives," in 1871. Between these two dates, covering forty-seven
+years, her publications extended to more than thirty titles, and
+include stories, poems, biographies, studies in history, in household
+economics, in politics, and in religion. "Her books," says Col.
+Higginson, "never seemed to repeat each other and belonged to almost
+as many different departments as there are volumes"; and while writing
+so much, he adds, "she wrote better than most of her contemporaries."
+
+If she had not done many things so well, she would still have the
+distinction of having done several things the first time they were
+ever done at all. It has been claimed that she edited the first
+American magazine for children, wrote the first novel of puritan
+times, published the first American Anti-Slavery book, and compiled
+the first treatise upon what is now known as "Comparative Religions,"
+a science not then named, but now a department in every school of
+theology.
+
+Mrs. Child's maiden name was Francis, and under that name she won her
+first fame. She was born in Medford, Mass., Feb. 11, 1802. Her father,
+Convers Francis, is said to have been a worthy and substantial
+citizen, a baker by trade, and the author of the "Medford Crackers,"
+in their day second only in popularity to "Medford Rum." He was a man
+of strong character, great industry, uncommon love of reading,
+zealous anti-slavery convictions, generous and hospitable. All these
+traits were repeated in his famous daughter. It was the custom of Mr.
+Francis, on the evening before Thanksgiving to gather in his
+dependents and humble friends to the number of twenty or thirty, and
+feast them on chicken pie, doughnuts and other edibles, sending them
+home with provisions for a further festival, including "turnovers" for
+the children. Col. Higginson, who had the incident from Mrs. Child,
+intimates that in this experience she may have discovered how much
+more blessed it is to give than to receive. Certainly, in later life,
+she believed and practiced this doctrine like a devotee.
+
+Mrs. Child began to climb the hill of knowledge under the instruction
+of a maiden lady known as "Ma'am Betty," who kept school in her
+bedroom which was never in order, drank from the nose of her
+tea-kettle, chewed tobacco and much of it, and was shy to a degree
+said to have been "supernatural," but she knew the way to the hearts
+of children, who were very fond of her and regularly carried her a
+Sunday dinner. After "Ma'am Betty," Mrs. Child attended the public
+schools in Medford and had a year at a Medford private seminary.
+
+These opportunities for education were cut off at the age of twelve
+apparently by some change in the family fortunes which compelled the
+removal of Maria to Norridgewock, Maine, on the borders of the great
+northern wilderness, where a married sister was living. An influence
+to which she gave chief credit for her intellectual development and
+which was not wholly cut off by this removal was that of Convers
+Francis, her favorite brother, next older than herself, afterward
+minister in Watertown, and professor in the Divinity School of Harvard
+University. In later life, Dr. Francis was an encyclopedia of
+information and scholarship, very liberal in his views for the time.
+Theodore Parker used to head pages in his journal with, "Questions to
+ask Dr. Francis."
+
+Dr. Francis began to prepare for college when Mrs. Child was nine
+years old. Naturally the little girl wanted to read the books which
+her brother read, and sometimes he seems to have instructed her and
+sometimes he tantalized her, but always he stimulated her. Years
+afterward she wrote him gratefully, "To your early influence, by
+conversation, letters, and example I owe it that my busy energies
+took a literary direction at all."
+
+Norridgewock, her home from her twelfth to her eighteenth year, was
+and is a very pretty country village, at that era the residence of
+some very cultivated families, but hardly an educational center. As we
+hear nothing of schools either there or elsewhere we are led to
+suppose that this twelve year old girl had finished her education. If
+she lacked opportunities for culture, she carried with her a desire
+for it, which is half the battle, and she had the intellectual
+stimulus of letters from her brother then in college, who seems to
+have presided over her reading. What we know of her life at this
+period is told in her letters to this brother.
+
+The first of these letters which the editors let us see was written at
+the age of fifteen. "I have," she says, "been busily engaged reading
+Paradise Lost. Homer hurried me along with rapid impetuosity; every
+passion that he portrayed I felt; I loved, hated, and resented just as
+he inspired me. But when I read Milton I felt elevated 'above this
+visible, diurnal sphere.' I could not but admire such astonishing
+grandeur of description, such heavenly sublimity of style. Much as I
+admire Milton, I must confess that Homer is a much greater favorite."
+
+It is not strange that a studious brother in college would take
+interest in a sister who at the age of fifteen could write him with so
+much intelligence and enthusiasm of her reading. The next letter is
+two years later when she has been reading Scott. She likes Meg
+Merrilies, Diana Vernon, Annot Lyle, and Helen Mac Gregor. She hopes
+she may yet read Virgil in his own tongue, and adds, "I usually spend
+an hour after I retire for the night in reading Gibbon's Roman Empire.
+The pomp of his style at first displeased me, but I think him an able
+historian."
+
+This is from a girl of seventeen living on the edge of the northern
+wilderness, and she is also reading Shakspere. "What a vigorous grasp
+of intellect," she says, "what a glow of imagination he must have
+possessed, but when his fancy drops a little, how apt he is to make
+low attempts at wit, and introduce a forced play upon words." She is
+also reading the Spectator, and does not think Addison so good a
+writer as Johnson, though a more polished one.
+
+What she was doing with her ever busy hands during this period we are
+not told, but her intellectual life ran on in these channels until
+she reaches the age of eighteen, when she is engaged to teach a school
+in Gardiner, Maine, an event which makes her very happy. "I cannot
+talk about books," she writes, "nor anything else until I tell you the
+good news, that I leave Norridgewock as soon as the travelling is
+tolerable and take a school in Gardiner." It is the terrible month of
+March, for country roads in the far north, "the saddest of the year."
+She wishes her brother were as happy as she is, though, "All I expect
+is that, if I am industrious and prudent, I shall be independent."
+
+At the conclusion of her school, she took up her residence with her
+brother in Watertown, Mass., where one year before, he had been
+settled as minister of the first parish. Here a new career opened
+before her. Whittier says that in her Norridgewock period, when she
+first read Waverly at the house of her physician, she laid down the
+book in great excitement, exclaiming, "Why cannot I write a novel?"
+Apparently, she did not undertake the enterprise for two years or
+more. In 1824, one Sunday after morning service, in her brother's
+study, she read an article in the _North American Review_, in which it
+was pointed out that there were great possibilities of romance in
+early American history. Before the afternoon service, she had written
+the first chapter of a novel which was published anonymously the same
+year, under the title of "Hobomok: a Tale of Early Times."
+
+A search through half a dozen Antique Book stores in Boston for a copy
+of this timid literary venture I have found to be fruitless, except
+for the information that there is sometimes a stray copy in stock, and
+that its present value is about three dollars. It is sufficient
+distinction that it was the first attempt to extract a romantic
+element from early New England history. Its reception by the public
+was flattering to a young author. The Boston Athenaeum sent her a
+ticket granting the privileges of its library. So great and perhaps
+unexpected had been its success that for several years, Mrs. Child's
+books bore the signature, "By the author of Hobomok." Even "The Frugal
+Housewife" was "By the author of Hobomok."
+
+In 1825, the author of Hobomok published her second novel, entitled,
+"The Rebels: a Tale of the Revolution." It is a volume of about 300
+pages, and is still very readable. It ran rapidly through several
+editions, and very much increased the reputation of the author of
+Hobomok. The work contains an imaginary speech of James Otis, in
+which it is said, "England might as well dam up the Nile with
+bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in
+this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of
+Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of
+Switzerland." This supposed speech of Otis soon found its way into the
+School Readers of the day, as a genuine utterance of the Revolutionary
+patriot, and as such Col. Higginson says he memorized and declaimed
+it, in his youth.
+
+This literary success was achieved at the age of twenty-three, and the
+same year Miss Francis opened a private school in Watertown, which she
+continued three years, until her marriage gave her other occupations.
+In 1826, she started _The Juvenile Miscellany_, as already mentioned,
+said to be the first magazine expressly for children, in this country.
+In it, first appeared many of her charming stories afterward gathered
+up in little volumes entitled, "Flowers for Children."
+
+In 1828, she was married to Mr. David Lee Child, then 34 years of age,
+eight years older than herself. Whittier describes him, as a young and
+able lawyer, a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and editor of
+the _Massachusetts Journal_. Mr. Child graduated at Harvard in 1817
+in the class with George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, George B. Emerson,
+and Samuel J. May. Between 1818 and 1824, he was in our diplomatic
+service abroad under Hon. Alexander Everett, at that time, Charge
+d'Affaires in the Netherlands. On his return to America, Mr. Child
+studied law in Watertown where, at the house of a mutual friend, he
+met Miss Lydia Maria Francis. She herself reports this interesting
+event under date of Dec. 2, 1824. "Mr. Child dined with us in
+Watertown. He possesses the rich fund of an intelligent traveller,
+without the slightest tinge of a traveller's vanity. Spoke of the
+tardy improvement of the useful arts in Spain and Italy." Nearly two
+months pass, when we have this record: "Jan. 26, 1825. Saw Mr. Child
+at Mr. Curtis's. He is the most gallant man that has lived since the
+sixteenth century and needs nothing but helmet, shield, and
+chain-armor to make him a complete knight of chivalry." Not all the
+meetings are recorded, for, some weeks later, "March 3," we have this
+entry, "One among the many delightful evenings spent with Mr. Child. I
+do not know which to admire most, the vigor of his understanding or
+the ready sparkle of his wit."
+
+There can be no doubt that she thoroughly enjoyed these interviews,
+and we shall have to discount the statement of any observer who
+gathered a different impression. Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, at whose
+home some of these interviews took place, was a boy of twelve, and may
+have taken the play of wit between the parties too seriously. He says,
+"At first Miss Francis did not like Mr. Child. Their intercourse was
+mostly banter and mutual criticism. Observers said, 'Those two people
+will end in marrying.' Miss Francis was not a beautiful girl in the
+ordinary sense, but her complexion was good, her eyes were bright, her
+mouth expressive and her teeth fine. She had a great deal of wit,
+liked to use it, and did use it upon Mr. Child who was a frequent
+visitor; but her deportment was always maidenly and lady-like."
+
+The engagement happened in this wise. Mr. Child had been admitted to
+the bar and had opened an office in Boston. One evening about nine
+o'clock he rode out to Watertown on horseback and called at the
+Curtises' where Miss Francis then was. "My mother, who believed the
+denouement had come," says Mr. Curtis, "retired to her chamber. Mr.
+Child pressed his suit earnestly. Ten o'clock came, then eleven, then
+twelve. The horse grew impatient and Mr. Child went out once or twice
+to pacify him, and returned. At last, just as the clock was striking
+one, he went. Miss Francis rushed into my mother's room and told her
+she was engaged to Mr. Child."
+
+There are indications in this communication that Mr. Curtis did not
+himself greatly admire Mr. Child and would not have married him, but
+he concedes that, "Beyond all doubt, Mrs. Child was perfectly happy in
+her relations with him, through their long life." After their
+marriage, he says, they went to housekeeping in a "very small house in
+Boston," where Mr. Curtis, then a youth of sixteen, visited them and
+partook of a simple, frugal dinner which the lady cooked and served
+with her own hands, and to which Mr. Child returned from his office,
+"cheery and breezy," and we may hope the vivacity of the host may have
+made up for the frugality of the entertainment.
+
+In "Letters from New York," written to the Boston _Courier_, she
+speaks tenderly of her Boston home which she calls "Cottage Place" and
+declares it the dearest spot on earth. I assume it was this "very
+small house" where she began her married life, where she dined the
+fastidious Mr. Curtis, and where she seems to have spent eight or
+nine happy years. Her marriage brought her great happiness. A friend
+says, "The domestic happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Child seemed to me
+perfect. Their sympathies, their admiration of all things good, and
+their hearty hatred of all things mean and evil, were in entire
+unison. Mr. Child shared his wife's enthusiasms and was very proud of
+her. Their affection, never paraded, was always manifest." After Mr.
+Child's death, Mrs. Child said, "I believe a future life would be of
+small value to me, if I were not united to him."
+
+Mr. Child was a man of fine intellect, with studious tastes and
+habits, but there is too much reason to believe that his genius did
+not lie in the management of practical life. Details of business were
+apparently out of his sphere. "It was like cutting stones with a
+razor," says one who knew him. "He was a visionary," says another,
+"who always saw a pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow." This was a
+kind of defect which, though it cost her dear, Mrs. Child, of all
+persons, could most easily forgive. One great success he achieved:
+that was in winning and keeping the heart of Mrs. Child. Their married
+life seems to have been one long honeymoon. "I always depended," she
+says, "upon his richly stored mind, which was able and ready to
+furnish needed information on any subject. He was my walking
+dictionary of many languages, and my universal encyclopedia. In his
+old age, he was as affectionate and devoted as when the lover of my
+youth; nay, he manifested even more tenderness. He was often singing,
+
+    'There's nothing half so sweet in life
+      As love's _old_ dream.'
+
+Very often, when he passed me, he would lay his hand softly on my head
+and murmur 'Carum Caput.'... He never would see anything but the
+bright side of my character. He always insisted upon thinking that
+whatever I said was the wisest and whatever I did was the best."
+
+In the anti-slavery conflict, Mr. Child's name was among the earliest,
+and at the beginning of the controversy, few were more prominent. In
+1832, he published in Boston a series of articles upon slavery and the
+slave-trade; in 1836, another series upon the same subject, in
+Philadelphia; in 1837, an elaborate memoir upon the subject for an
+anti-slavery society in France, and an able article in a _London
+Review_. It is said that the speeches of John Quincy Adams in Congress
+were greatly indebted to the writings of Mr. Child, both for facts and
+arguments.
+
+Such, briefly, is the man with whom Mrs. Child is to spend forty-five
+years of her useful and happy life. In 1829, the year after her
+marriage, she put her twelve months of experience and reflection into
+a book entitled, "The Frugal Housewife." "No false pride," she says,
+"or foolish ambition to appear as well as others, should induce a
+person to live a cent beyond the income of which he is assured." "We
+shall never be free from embarrassment until we cease to be ashamed of
+industry and economy." "The earlier children are taught to turn their
+faculties to some account the better for them and for their parents."
+"A child of six years is old enough to be made useful and should be
+taught to consider every day lost in which some little thing has not
+been done to assist others." We are told that a child can be taught to
+braid straw for his hats or to make feather fans; the objection to
+which would be that a modern mother would not let a child wear that
+kind of hat nor carry the fan.
+
+The following will be interesting if not valuable: "Cheap as stockings
+are, it is good economy to knit them; knit hose wear twice as long as
+woven; and they can be done at odd moments of time which would not be
+otherwise employed." What an age that must have been when one had time
+enough and to spare! Other suggestions are quite as curious. The book
+is "dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy." "The writer,"
+she says, "has no apology to offer for this little book of economical
+hints, except her deep conviction that such a book is needed. In this
+case, renown is out of the question; and ridicule is a matter of
+indifference."
+
+Goethe made poems of his chagrins; Mrs. Child in this instance
+utilized her privations and forced economies to make a book; and a
+wonderfully successful book it was. She was not wrong in supposing it
+would meet a want. During the next seven years, it went through twenty
+editions, or three editions a year; in 1855, it had reached its
+thirty-third edition, averaging little short of one edition a year for
+thirty-six years. Surely this was a result which made a year of
+economical living in a "very small house" worth while.
+
+"The Frugal Housewife" was a true "mother's book," although another
+and later volume was so named. "The Mother's Book" was nearly as
+successful as "The Frugal Housewife," and went through eight American
+editions, twelve English, and one German. The success of these books
+gave Mrs. Child a good income, and she hardly needed to be the "frugal
+housewife" she had been before.
+
+A check soon came to her prosperity. In 1831, she met Garrison and,
+being inflammable, caught fire from his anti-slavery zeal, and became
+one of his earliest and staunchest disciples. The free use of the
+Athenaeum library which had been graciously extended to her ten years
+before, now enabled her to study the subject of slavery in all its
+aspects, historical, legal, theoretical, and practical and, in 1833,
+she embodied the results of her investigations in a book entitled, "An
+Appeal in behalf of the class of Americans called Africans." The
+material is chiefly drawn from Southern sources, the statute books of
+Southern states, the columns of Southern newspapers, and the
+statements and opinions of Southern public men. It is an effective
+book to read even now when one is in a mood to rose-color the old-time
+plantation life and doubtful whether anything could be worse than the
+present condition of the negro in the South.
+
+The book had two kinds of effect. It brought upon Mrs. Child the
+incontinent wrath of all persons who, for any reason, thought that the
+only thing to do with slavery was to let it alone. "A lawyer,
+afterward attorney-general," a description that fits Caleb Cushing, is
+said to have used tongs to throw the obnoxious book out of the window;
+the Athenaeum withdrew from Mrs. Child the privileges of its library;
+former friends dropped her acquaintance; Boston society shut its doors
+upon her; the sale of her books fell off; subscriptions to her
+_Juvenile Miscellany_ were discontinued; and the magazine died after a
+successful life of eight years; and Mrs. Child found that she had
+ventured upon a costly experiment. This consequence she had
+anticipated and it had for her no terrors. "I am fully aware," she
+says in her preface, "of the unpopularity of the task I have
+undertaken; but though I expect ridicule, I do not fear it.... Should
+it be the means of advancing even one single hour the inevitable
+progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness
+for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's fame."
+
+Of course a book of such evident significance and power would have
+had another effect; by his own acknowledgement, it brought Dr.
+Channing into the anti-slavery crusade, and he published a book upon
+slavery in 1835; it led Dr. John G. Palfry, who had inherited a
+plantation in Louisiana, to emancipate his slaves; and, as he has more
+than once said, it changed the course of Col. T. W. Higginson's life
+and made him an abolitionist. "As it was the first anti-slavery work
+ever printed in America in book form, so," says Col. Higginson, "I
+have always thought it the ablest." Whittier says, "It is no
+exaggeration to say that no man or woman at that period rendered more
+substantial service to the cause of freedom, or made such a 'great
+renunciation' in doing it."
+
+Turning from the real world, which was becoming too hard for her, Mrs.
+Child took refuge in dreamland and wrote "Philothea: a story of
+Ancient Greece," published in 1835. Critics have objected that this
+delightful romance is not an exact reproduction of Greek life, but is
+Hamlet a reproduction of anything that ever happened in Denmark, or
+Browning's Saul of anything that could have happened in Judea, a
+thousand years before Christ? To Lowell, Mrs. Child was and remained
+"Philothea." Higginson says that the lines in which Lowell describes
+her in the "Fable for Critics," are the one passage of pure poetry it
+contains, and at the same time the most charming sketch ever made of
+Mrs. Child.
+
+    "There comes Philothea, her face all aglow;
+    She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe,
+    And can't tell which pleases her most--to relieve
+    His want, or his story to hear and believe.
+    No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails,
+    For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales;
+    She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food,
+    And that talking draws off from the heart its bad blood."
+
+In 1836, Mr. Child went abroad to study the Beet Sugar industry in
+France, Holland, and Germany and, after an absence of a year and a
+half, returned to engage in Beet Sugar Farming at Northampton, Mass.
+He received a silver medal for raw and refined sugar at the Exhibition
+of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association in 1839, and a
+premium of $100 from the Massachusetts Agricultural society the same
+year. He published a well written and edifying book upon "Beet Sugar,"
+giving the results of his investigations and experiments. It was an
+enterprise of great promise, but has taken half a century, in this
+country, to become a profitable industry.
+
+Mrs. Child's letters from 1838 to 1841 are dated from Northampton,
+where she is assisting to work out the "Beet Sugar" experiment. It
+would have been a rather grinding experience to any one with less
+cheerfulness than Mrs. Child. She writes, June 9, 1838, "A month
+elapsed before I stepped into the woods which were all around me
+blooming with flowers. I did not go to Mr. Dwight's ordination, nor
+have I yet been to meeting. He has been to see me however, and though
+I left my work in the midst and sat down with a dirty gown and hands
+somewhat grimmed, we were high in the blue in fifteen minutes." Mr.
+Dwight was Rev. John S. Dwight, Brook Farmer, and editor of _Dwight's
+Journal of Music_.
+
+Half of her published letters are addressed to Mr. or Mrs. Francis G.
+Shaw, parents of Col. Robert G. Shaw. Here is one in 1840, to Mr.
+Shaw, after she had made a trip to Boston. It will be interesting as
+presenting a new aspect of Mrs. Child's nature: "The only thing,
+except meeting dear friends, that attracted me to Boston was the
+exhibition of statuary.... I am ashamed to say how deeply I am charmed
+with sculpture: ashamed because it seems like affectation in one who
+has had such limited opportunity to become acquainted with the arts. I
+have a little figure of a caryatid which acts upon my spirit like a
+magician's spell.... Many a time this hard summer, I have laid down my
+dish-cloth or broom and gone to refresh my spirit by gazing on it a
+few minutes. It speaks to me. It says glorious things. In summer I
+place flowers before it; and I have laid a garland of acorns and
+amaranths at its feet. I do love every little bit of real sculpture."
+
+Her other artistic passion was music, quite out of her reach at this
+period; but happily, she loved birds and flowers, both of which a Beet
+Sugar Farm in the Connecticut Valley made possible. A family of
+swallows made their nest in her woodshed, husband and wife dividing
+the labors of construction, nursing, and even of incubation, though
+the male bird did not have the same skill and grace as the lady, in
+placing his feet and wings. Mrs. Child gives a pretty account of this
+incident in a letter to one of her little friends, and says, "It seems
+as if I could watch them forever." Later, in one of her letters to
+the Boston _Courier_, she gives a more complete account of the
+episode. Her observations convinced her that birds have to be taught
+to fly, as a child is taught to walk.
+
+When birds and flowers went, she had the autumn foliage, and she
+managed to say a new thing about it: it is "color taking its fond and
+bright farewell of form--like the imagination giving a deeper, richer,
+and warmer glow to old familiar truths before the winter of
+rationalism comes and places trunk and branches in naked outline
+against the cold, clear sky."
+
+Whether she had been living hitherto in a "rent" we are not told, but
+in a letter of February 8, 1841, she informs us that she is about to
+move to a farm on which "is a sort of a shanty with two rooms and a
+garret. We expect to whitewash it, build a new woodshed, and live
+there next year. I shall keep no help, and there will be room for
+David and me. I intend to half bury it in flowers."
+
+There is nothing fascinating in sordid details, but Mrs. Child in the
+midst of sordid details, is glorious. A month before this last letter,
+her brother, Prof. Francis, had written her apparently wishing her
+more congenial circumstances; we have only her reply, from which it
+appears her father is under her care. She declines her brother's
+sympathy, and wonders that he can suppose "the deadening drudgery of
+the world" can imprison a soul in its caverns. "It is not merely an
+eloquent phrase," she says, "but a distinct truth that the outward has
+no power over us but that which we voluntarily give it. It is not I
+who drudge; it is merely the case that contains me. I defy all the
+powers of earth and hell to make me scour floors and feed pigs, if I
+choose meanwhile to be off conversing with angels.... If I can in
+quietude and cheerfulness forego my own pleasures and relinquish my
+tastes, to administer to my father's daily comfort, I seem to those
+who live in shadows to be cooking food and mixing medicines, but I am
+in fact making divine works of art which will reveal to me their fair
+proportions in the far eternity." Besides this consolation, she says,
+"Another means of keeping my soul fresh is my intense love of nature.
+Another help, perhaps stronger than either of the two, is domestic
+love."
+
+Her Northampton life was nearer an end than she supposed when she
+wrote these letters; she did not spend the next year in the little
+farm house with "two rooms and a garret"; on May 27th, she dates a
+letter from New York city, where she has gone reluctantly to edit the
+_Anti-Slavery Standard_. She had been translated from the sphere of
+"cooking food and mixing medicines" to congenial literary occupations;
+she had, let us hope, a salary sufficient for her urgent necessities;
+her home was in the family of the eminent Quaker philanthropist, Isaac
+T. Hopper, who received her as a daughter, and whose kindness she
+repaid by writing his biography. However the venture might come out,
+we would think her life could not well be harder or less attractive
+than it had been, drudging in a dilapidated farm house, and we are
+glad she is well out of it. Strange to say, she did not take our view
+of the situation. We have already seen how independent she was of
+external circumstances. In a letter referred to, dated May 27, she
+chides a friend for writing accounts of her outward life: "What do I
+care whether you live in one room or six? I want to know what your
+spirit is doing. What are you thinking, feeling, and reading?... My
+task here is irksome enough. Your father will tell you that it was not
+zeal for the cause, but love for my husband, which brought me hither.
+But since it was necessary for me to leave home to be earning
+somewhat, I am thankful that my work is for the anti-slavery cause. I
+have agreed to stay one year. I hope I shall then be able to return to
+my husband and rural home, which is humble enough, yet very
+satisfactory to me. Should the _Standard_ be continued, and my editing
+generally desired, perhaps I could make an arrangement to send
+articles from Northampton. At all events, I trust the weary separation
+from my husband is not to last more than a year. If I am to be away
+from him, I could not be more happily situated than in Friend Hopper's
+family. They treat me the same as a daughter and a sister."
+
+The _Anti-Slavery Standard_ was a new enterprise; its editorship was
+offered to Mr. and Mrs. Childs jointly; Col. Higginson says that Mr.
+Child declined because of ill health; another authority, that he was
+still infatuated with his Beet Sugar, of which Mrs. Child had had more
+than enough; it appears from her letter that neither of them dreamed
+of abandoning the Sugar industry; if the enterprise was folly, they
+were happily united in the folly.
+
+However, of the two, the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ was the more
+successful enterprise, and at the end of the two years, Mr. Child
+closed out his Beet Sugar business and joined Mrs. Child in editing
+the paper. Mrs. Child edited the _Standard_ eight years, six of which
+were in conjunction with Mr. Child. They were successful editors; they
+gave the _Standard_ a high literary character, and made it acceptable
+to people of taste and culture who, whatever their sympathy with
+anti-slavery, were often repelled by the unpolished manners of Mr.
+Garrison's paper, _The Liberator_.
+
+Something of her life outside the _Standard_ office, something of the
+things she saw and heard and enjoyed, during these eight years, can be
+gathered from her occasional letters to the Boston _Courier_. They are
+interesting still; they will always be of interest to one who cares to
+know old New York, as it was sixty years ago, or from 1840 onward.
+That they were appreciated then is evident from the fact that,
+collected and published in two volumes in 1844, eleven editions were
+called for during the next eight years. Col. Higginson considers these
+eight years in New York the most interesting and satisfactory of Mrs.
+Child's life.
+
+Though we have room for few incidents of this period, there is one
+too charming to be omitted. A friend went to a flower merchant on
+Broadway to buy a bunch of violets for Mrs. Child's birthday.
+Incidentally, the lady mentioned Mrs. Child; she may have ordered the
+flowers sent to her house. When the lady came to pay for them, the
+florist said, "I cannot take pay for flowers intended for her. She is
+a stranger to me, but she has given my wife and children so many
+flowers in her writings, that I will never take money of her." Another
+pretty incident is this: an unknown friend or admirer always sent Mrs.
+Child the earliest wild flowers of spring and the latest in autumn.
+
+I have said that one of her passions was music, which happily she now
+has opportunities to gratify. "As for amusements," she says, "music is
+the only thing that excites me.... I have a chronic insanity with
+regard to music. It is the only Pegasus which now carries me far up
+into the blue. Thank God for this blessing of mine." I should be glad
+if I had room for her account of an evening under the weird spell of
+Ole Bull. Her moral sense was keener than her aesthetic, but her
+aesthetic sense was for keener than that of the average mortal.
+Sometimes she felt, as Paul would have said, "in a strait betwixt
+two"; in 1847 she writes Mr. Francis G. Shaw: "I am now wholly in the
+dispensation of art, and therefore theologians and reformers jar upon
+me." Reformer as she was and will be remembered, she was easily drawn
+into the dispensation of art; and nature was always with her, so much
+so that Col. Higginson says, "She always seemed to be talking
+radicalism in a greenhouse."
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Child retired from the _Standard_ in 1849. Her next
+letters are dated from Newton, Mass. Her father was living upon a
+small place--a house and garden--in the neighboring town of Wayland,
+beautifully situated, facing Sudbury Hill, with the broad expanse of
+the river meadows between. Thither Mrs. Child went to take care of him
+from 1852 to 1856, when he died, leaving the charming little home to
+her. There are many traditions of her mode of life in Wayland, but her
+own account is the best: "In 1852, we made our humble home in Wayland,
+Mass., where we spent twenty-two pleasant years, entirely alone,
+without any domestic, mutually serving each other and depending upon
+each other for intellectual companionship." If the memory of Wayland
+people is correct, Mr. Child was not with her much during the four
+years that her father lived. Her father was old and feeble and Mr.
+Child had not the serene patience of his wife. Life ran more easily
+when Mr. Child was away. Whatever other period in the life of Mrs.
+Child may have been the most satisfactory, this must have been the
+most trying.
+
+Under date of March 23, 1856, happily the last year of this sort of
+widowhood, she writes: "This winter has been the loneliest of my life.
+If you knew my situation you would pronounce it unendurable. I should
+have thought so myself if I had had a foreshadowing of it a few years
+ago. But the human mind can get acclimated to anything. What with
+constant occupation and a happy consciousness of sustaining and
+cheering my poor old father in his descent to the grave, I am almost
+always in a state of serene contentment. In summer, my once
+extravagant love of beauty satisfies itself in watching the birds, the
+insects, and the flowers in my little patch of a garden." She has no
+room for her vases, engravings, and other pretty things; she keeps
+them in a chest, and she says, "when birds and flowers are gone, I
+sometimes take them out as a child does its playthings, and sit down
+in the sunshine with them, dreaming over them."
+
+We need not think of her spending much time dreaming over her little
+hoard of artistic treasures. Her real business in this world is
+writing the history of all religions, or "The Progress of Religious
+Ideas in Successive Ages." It was a work begun in New York, as early
+as 1848, finished in Wayland in 1855, published in three large octavo
+volumes and, whatever its merits or success, was the greatest literary
+labor of her life.
+
+Under date of July 14, 1848, she writes to Dr. Francis: "My book gets
+slowly on.... I am going to tell the plain, unvarnished truth, as
+clearly as I can understand it, and let Christians and Infidels,
+Orthodox and Unitarians, Catholics, Protestants, and Swedenborgians
+growl as they like. They will growl if they notice it at all: for each
+will want his own theory favored, and the only thing I have
+conscientiously aimed at is not to favor any theory at all." She may
+have failed in scientific method; but here is a scientific spirit. "In
+her religious speculations," says Whittier, "Mrs. Child moved in the
+very van." In Wayland, she considered herself a parishioner of Dr.
+Edmund H. Sears, whom she calls, "our minister," but she was
+somewhat in advance of Dr. Sears. Her opinions were much nearer akin
+to those of Theodore Parker. Only a Unitarian of that type could
+perhaps at this early period have conceived the history of religion as
+an evolution of one and the same spiritual element "through successive
+ages."
+
+She had not much time to dream over her chest of artistic treasures
+when the assault of Preston S. Brooks upon Senator Sumner called her
+to battle of such force and point that Dr. William H. Furness said, it
+was worth having Sumner's head broken.
+
+When death released her from the care of her father, she took
+"Bleeding Kansas" under her charge. She writes letters to the
+newspapers; she sits up till eleven o'clock, "stitching as fast as my
+fingers could go," making garments for the Kansas immigrants; she
+"stirs up the Wayland women to make garments for Kansas"; she sends
+off Mr. Child to make speeches for Kansas; and then she writes him in
+this manner: "How melancholy I felt when you went off in the morning
+darkness. It seemed as if everything about me was tumbling down; as if
+I were never to have a nest and a mate any more." Surely the rest of
+this letter was not written for us to read: "Good, kind, magnanimous
+soul, how I love you. How I long to say over the old prayer again
+every night. It almost made me cry to see how carefully you had
+arranged everything for my comfort before you went; so much kindling
+stuff split up and the bricks piled up to protect my flowers." Here is
+love in a cottage. This life is not all prosaic.
+
+Old anti-slavery friends came to see her and among them Charles
+Sumner, in 1857, spent a couple of hours with her, and left his
+photograph; she met Henry Wilson at the anti-slavery fair and talked
+with him an "hour or so." Whittier says, "Men like Charles Sumner,
+Henry Wilson, Salmon P. Chase, and Governor Andrew availed themselves
+of her foresight and sound judgment of men and measures."
+
+When John Brown was wounded and taken prisoner at Harper's Ferry,
+nothing was more in character for Mrs. Child than to offer her
+services as his nurse. She wrote him under cover of a letter to Gov.
+Wise, of Virginia. The arrival of Mrs. Brown, made Mrs. Child's
+attendance unnecessary, but the incident led to a lively
+correspondence between Mrs. Child and Gov. Wise, in which Mrs.
+Senator Mason, of Virginia, joined. Neither of her distinguished
+correspondents possessed the literary skill of Mrs. Child. The entire
+correspondence was collected in a pamphlet of which 300,000 copies
+were sold. On a visit to Whittier at Amesbury, a delegation from a
+Republican political meeting called upon her, saying they wanted to
+see the woman who "poured hot shot into Gov. Wise."
+
+In 1863, after saying that she is "childish enough to talk to the
+picture of a baby that is being washed," she writes her friend, Mrs.
+Shaw, "But you must not suppose that I live for amusement. On the
+contrary I work like a beaver the whole time. Just now I am making a
+hood for a poor neighbor; last week I was making flannels for the
+hospital; odd minutes are filled up ravelling lint; every string that
+I can get sight of I pull for poor Sambo. I write to the _Tribune_
+about him; I write to the _Transcript_ about him; I write to private
+individuals about him; and I write to the President and members of
+Congress about him; I write to Western Virginia and Missouri about
+him; and I get the articles published too. This shows what progress
+the cause of freedom is making." Not everything went to her mind
+however. If we think there has been a falling from grace in the public
+life of our generation, it may do us good to read what she says in
+1863: "This war has furnished many instances of individual nobility,
+but our national record is mean."
+
+In 1864, she published "Looking Toward Sunset," a book designed to
+"present old people with something wholly cheerful." The entire
+edition was exhausted during the holiday season; 4,000 copies were
+sold and more called for. All her profits on the book, she devoted to
+the freedmen, sending $400 as a first instalment. Not only that, but
+she prepared a volume called "The Freedman's Book," which she printed
+at an expense of $600, and distributed among the freedmen 1200 copies
+at her own cost. She once sent Wendell Phillips a check of $100 for
+the freedmen, and when he protested that it was more than she could
+afford, she consented to "think it over." The next day, she made her
+contribution $200. She contributed $20 a year to the American
+Missionary Association toward the support of a teacher for the
+freedmen, and $50 a year to the Anti-Slavery Society. A lady wished,
+through Mr. Phillips, to give Mrs. Child several thousand dollars for
+her comfort. Mrs. Child declined the favor, but was persuaded to
+accept it, and then scrupulously gave away the entire income in
+charity. It is evident she might have made herself very comfortable,
+if it had not given her so much more pleasure to make someone else
+comfortable.
+
+Her dress, as neat and clean as that of a Quakeress, was quite as
+plain and far from the latest style. A stranger meeting her in a stage
+coach mistook her for a servant until she began to talk. "Who is that
+woman who dresses like a peasant, and speaks like a scholar?" he asked
+on leaving the coach. Naturally, it was thought Mrs. Child did not
+know how to dress, or, more likely, did not care for pretty things.
+"You accuse me," she writes to Miss Lucy Osgood, "you accuse me of
+being indifferent to externals, whereas the common charge is that I
+think too much of beauty, and say too much about it. I myself think it
+one of my greatest weaknesses. A handsome man, woman or child can
+always make a pack-horse of me. My next neighbor's little boy has me
+completely under his thumb, merely by virtue of his beautiful eyes and
+sweet voice." There was one before her of whom it was said, "He
+denied himself, and took up his cross." It was also said of him,
+"Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor." He never had a
+truer disciple than Mrs. Child.
+
+Not that she ever talked of "crosses." "But why use the word
+sacrifice?" she asks. "I never was conscious of any sacrifice." What
+she gained in moral discipline or a new life, she says, was always
+worth more than the cost. She used an envelope twice, Wendell Phillips
+says; she never used a whole sheet of paper when half of one would do;
+she outdid poverty in her economies, and then gave money as if she had
+thousands. "I seldom have a passing wish for enlarging my income
+except for the sake of doing more for others. My wants are very few
+and simple."
+
+In 1867, Mrs. Child published "A Romance of the Republic," a pathetic
+story, but fascinating, and admirably written; in 1878, appeared a
+book of choice selections, entitled, "Aspirations of the World"; and
+in 1871, a volume of short biographies, entitled "Good Wives," and
+dedicated, to Mr. Child: "To my husband, this book is affectionately
+inscribed, by one who, through every vicissitude, has found in his
+kindness and worth, her purest happiness and most constant incentive
+to duty."
+
+Mr. Child died in 1874 at the age of eighty, and Mrs. Child followed
+him in 1880, at the age of seventy-eight. After her death, a small
+volume of her letters was published, of which the reader will wish
+there were more. Less than a month before her death, she wrote to a
+friend a list of benevolent enterprises she has in mind and says, "Oh,
+it is such a luxury to be able to give without being afraid. I try not
+to be Quixotic, but I want to rain down blessings on all the world, in
+token of thankfulness for the blessings that have been rained down
+upon me."
+
+It is too late to make amends for omissions in this paper, but it
+would be unjust to Mrs. Child to forget her life-long devotion to the
+interests of her own sex. In 1832, a year before her "Appeal in behalf
+of that class of Americans called Africans,"--eleven years before the
+appearance of Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century,"
+Mrs. Child published "A History of the Condition of Women in all ages
+and nations," showing her disposition to begin every inquiry with a
+survey of the facts, and also that the "woman question" was the first
+to awaken her interest. Her greatest contribution to the advancement
+of women was herself; that is, her own achievements. To the same
+purpose were her biographies of famous women: "Memoirs of Mme. de
+Stael and Mme. Roland" in 1847, and sketches of "Good Wives" in 1871.
+Whittier says, she always believed in woman's right to the ballot, as
+certainly he did, calling it "the greatest social reform of the age."
+In one letter to Senator Sumner, she directly argues the question: "I
+reduce the argument," she says, "to very simple elements. I pay taxes
+for property of my own earning, and I do not believe in 'taxation
+without representation.'" Again: "I am a human being and every human
+being has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax
+him, to imprison him, or to _hang_ him."
+
+A light humor illuminates this argument. Humor was one of her saving
+qualities which, as Whittier says, "kept her philanthropy free from
+any taint of fanaticism." It contributed greatly to her cheerfulness.
+Of her fame, she says playfully: "In a literary point of view I know I
+have only a local reputation, done in water colors."
+
+Could anything have been better said than this of the New England
+April or even May: "What a misnomer in our climate to call this
+season Spring, very much like calling Calvinism religion." Nothing
+could have been keener than certain points scored in her reply to Mrs.
+Senator Mason. Mrs. Mason, remembering with approving conscience her
+own ministries in the slave cabins caring for poor mothers with young
+babies, asks Mrs. Child, in triumph, if she goes among the poor to
+render such services. Mrs. Child replies that she has never known
+mothers under such circumstances to be neglected, "and here at the
+North," said she, "after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell
+the babies." After Gen. Grant's election to the Presidency, a
+procession with a band from Boston, marched to her house and gave her
+a serenade. She says that she joined in the hurrahs "like the
+strong-minded woman that I am. The fact is, I forgot half the time
+whether I belonged to the stronger or weaker sex." Whether she
+belonged to the stronger or weaker sex, is still something of a
+problem. Sensible men would be willing to receive her, should women
+ever refuse to acknowledge her.
+
+Wendell Phillips paid her an appreciative tribute, at her funeral.
+"There were," he said, "all the charms and graceful elements which we
+call feminine, united with a masculine grasp and vigor; sound
+judgment and great breadth; large common sense and capacity for
+everyday usefulness, endurance, foresight, strength, and skill." The
+address is given in full in the volume of "Letters." There is also a
+fine poem by Whittier for the same occasion:
+
+    "Than thine was never turned a fonder heart
+      To nature and to art;
+
+    Yet loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,
+      And for the poor deny
+    Thyself...."
+
+The volume contains a poetical tribute of an earlier date, by Eliza
+Scudder, of which Mrs. Child said, "I never was so touched and pleased
+by any tribute in my life. I cried over the verses and I smiled over
+them." I will close this paper with Miss Scudder's last stanza:
+
+    "So apt to know, so wise to guide,
+      So tender to redress,--
+    O, friend with whom such charms abide,
+      How can I love thee less?"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX
+
+
+[Illustration: DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX]
+
+The career of Dorothy Dix is a romance of philanthropy which the world
+can ill afford to forget. It has been said of her, and it is still
+said, that she was "the most useful and distinguished woman America
+has yet produced." It is the opinion of Mr. Tiffany, her biographer,
+that as the founder of institutions of mercy, she "has simply no peer
+in the annals of Protestantism." To find her parallel one must go to
+the calendar of the Catholic saints,--St. Theresa, of Spain, or Santa
+Chiara, of Assisi. "Why then," he asks, do the "majority of the
+present generation know little or nothing of so remarkable a story!"
+Till his biography appeared, it might have been answered that the
+story had never been told; now, we should have to say that, with a
+thousand demands upon our time, it has not been read.
+
+Dorothea Lynde Dix--born February 11, 1802--was the daughter of Joseph
+Dix and granddaughter of the more eminent Dr. Elijah Dix, of
+Worcester, later of Boston, Mass. Dr. Dix was born in Watertown,
+Mass., in 1747. At the age of seventeen, he became the office boy of
+Dr. John Green, an eminent physician in Worcester, Mass., and later, a
+student of medicine. After five years, in 1770, he began to practice
+as physician and surgeon in Worcester where he formed a partnership
+with Dr. Sylvester Gardner. It must have been a favorable time for
+young doctors since in 1771, a year after he began to practice, he
+married Dorothy Lynde, of Charlestown, Mass., for whom her little
+granddaughter was named. Mrs. Dix seems to have been a woman of great
+decision of character, and no less precision of thought and action,
+two traits which reappeared conspicuously in our great philanthropist.
+
+Certain qualities of Dr. Dix are also said to have reappeared in his
+granddaughter. He was self-reliant, aggressive, uncompromising,
+public-spirited, and sturdily honest. To his enterprise, Worcester
+owed its first shade trees, planted by him, when shade trees were
+considered great folly, and also the Boston and Worcester turnpike,
+when mud roads were thought to be divinely appointed thoroughfares.
+His integrity is shown by an incident which also throws light upon
+the conditions of a troubled period. His partner, Dr. Gardner, made
+the grave mistake of taking the royal side in the controversies that
+preceded the Revolution, and Worcester became as hot for him as
+Richmond or Charleston was for a Union man in 1861. Dr. Gardner
+disappeared, leaving his effects behind him. After the war, Dr. Dix
+made a voyage to England and honorably settled accounts with his
+former partner.
+
+It was like the enterprising Dr. Dix that he turned this creditable
+act to his financial advantage. On his return to America he brought
+with him a stock of medical books, surgical instruments, and chemical
+apparatus, and became a dealer in physician's supplies, while
+continuing the practice of his profession. His business prospering, in
+1795 he removed to Boston for a larger field, where he opened a drug
+store near Faneuil Hall and established chemical works in South
+Boston. Successful as physician, druggist and manufacturer, he soon
+had money to invest. Maine, with its timber lands, was the Eldorado of
+that era, and Dr. Dix bought thousands of acres in its wilderness,
+where Dixfield in the west, and Dixmont in the east, townships once
+owned by him, preserve his name and memory.
+
+The house of Dr. Dix in Boston, called the "Dix Mansion," was on
+Washington St., corner of Dix Place, then Orange Court. It had a large
+garden behind it, where originated the Dix pear, once a favorite. Dr.
+Dix died in 1809, when Dorothea was seven years old. Young as she was,
+he was among the most vivid of her childhood memories and by far the
+pleasantest. She seems to have been a favorite with him and it was his
+delight to take her in his chaise on his rounds, talking playfully
+with her and listening to her childish prattle.
+
+Joseph Dix, the father of Dorothea, is a vague and shadowy memory. He
+seems to have had little of his father's energy or good sense.
+Unstable in many of his ways, he lived a migratory life, "at various
+spots in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, as well as in Worcester
+and Boston, Mass." When Dorothea was born, he was living at Hampden,
+Maine, adjoining his father's Dixmont properties, presumably as his
+father's land agent. He probably tired of this occupation because it
+interfered with his business. His business seems to have been
+religion. He was a prolific author of religious literature. He was a
+philanthropist after his kind, giving his time without stint to the
+writing of religious tracts, and spending his money in publishing
+them, with little benefit to the world and much detriment to his
+family. In the stitching and pasting of these tracts, the whole
+household were required to assist and it was against this irksome
+taskwork that Dorothea, at the age of twelve, rebelled, running away
+from Worcester, where the family then lived, and finding a refuge with
+her grandmother in Boston. Dorothea afterwards educated her two
+brothers, one of whom became a sea captain and the other a Boston
+merchant.
+
+Dorothea Dix was created by her Maker, but she was given in a plastic
+state, first into the hands of inexorable Madam Dix, and next into
+those of the all-pitying Dr. Channing. Madam Dix is described as a
+fine specimen of the dignified, precise, conscientious New England
+gentlewoman of her generation. Industry, economy, and above all
+thoroughness were the chief articles of her religion, and she
+instilled these virtues into the mind of her granddaughter by the most
+vigorous discipline. A week of solitary confinement was among the
+penalties inflicted upon the hapless child who had failed to reach
+the standard of duty prescribed for her. The standard, with Madam Dix,
+did not differ from perfection discernibly. Mr. Tiffany quotes a lady
+who in her girlhood, as a special reward of merit, was allowed to make
+an entire shirt under the supervision of Madam Dix. It was an
+experience never forgotten. No stitch in the entire garment could be
+allowed to differ perceptibly from every other, but the lady spoke of
+the ordeal with enthusiastic gratitude, declaring that it had been a
+life-long benefit to her to have been compelled to do one piece of
+work thoroughly well.
+
+"I never knew childhood," Miss Dix said pitifully in after life.
+Certainly with this exacting grandmother, there can be no childhood as
+it is understood to-day; but if Dorothea submits to the rigorous
+discipline enforced upon her, she will make a woman of iron fibre who
+will flinch from no hardship and will leave no task undone. Happily
+she did submit to it. The alternative would have been to return to her
+half-vagabond father. Too much discipline or too little was her
+destiny. She preferred to take the medicine in excess, and in the end
+was grateful for it.
+
+Dorothea was so apt a pupil and so ambitious that, at the age of
+fourteen, she returned to Worcester and opened a school for small
+children, prudently lengthening the skirts and sleeves of her dress to
+give dignity and impressiveness to her appearance. Half a century
+later one of these pupils vividly recalled the child-teacher, tall of
+her age, easily blushing, at once beautiful and imposing in manner,
+but inexorably strict in discipline.
+
+Dorothea spent the next four years in Boston in preparation for a more
+ambitious undertaking and, in 1821 at the age of nineteen, she opened
+a day school in Boston in a small house belonging to Madam Dix. The
+school prospered and gradually expanded into a day and boarding
+school, for which the Dix mansion, whither the school was removed,
+furnished convenient space. Madam Dix, enfeebled by age and
+infirmities, laid down the scepter she had wielded, and the premises
+passed virtually into the hands of Dorothea. Thither came pupils from
+"the most prominent families in Boston" and other Massachusetts towns,
+and even from beyond the limits of the State. There also she brought
+her brothers to be educated under her care and started upon a business
+career.
+
+Hardly had she started her school for the rich and fortunate before,
+anticipating her vocation as a philanthropist, she opened another for
+the poor and destitute. A letter is preserved in which she pleadingly
+asks the conscientious but perhaps stony Madam Dix for the loft over
+the stable for this purpose. "My dear grandmother," she begins, "Had I
+the saint-like eloquence of our minister, I would employ it in
+explaining all the motives, and dwelling on the good, the good to the
+poor, the miserable, the idle, the ignorant, which would follow your
+giving me permission to use the barn chamber for a school-room for
+charitable and religious purposes."
+
+The minister with saint-like eloquence was Dr. Channing. The letter is
+valuable as showing the source of the flame that had fired her
+philanthropic soul. For the finer culture of the heart she had passed
+from the hands of Madam Dix to those of Dr. Channing. The request for
+the room was granted and Mr. Tiffany tells us that "The little
+barn-school proved the nucleus out of which years later was developed
+the beneficent work of the Warren Street Chapel, from which as a
+centre spread far and wide a new ideal of dealing with childhood.
+There first was interest excited in the mind of Rev. Charles Barnard,
+a man of positive spiritual genius in charming and uplifting the
+children of the poor and debased."
+
+Letters from Miss Dix at this period show that she had a sensitive
+nature, easily wrought upon, now inflamed to action and now melted to
+tears. "You say that I weep easily. I was early taught to sorrow, to
+shed tears, and now, when sudden joy lights up or unexpected sorrow
+strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling
+tide of feeling." She is reading a book of poems and weeping over
+it,--"paying my watery tribute to the genius" of the poet. She longs
+for similar talents that she "might revel in the luxury of those
+mental visions that must hourly entrance a spirit that partakes less
+of earth than heaven." It will be remembered that her father was
+religious even to folly. Here was his child, only by judicious
+training, the stream was turned into channels of wise beneficence.
+
+With the management of two schools, the supervision of the household,
+the care of two younger brothers, and ministries to her grandmother
+already advanced in years, Miss Dix was sufficiently occupied, but she
+found time to prepare a text-book upon "Common Things," gathering the
+material as she wrote. This, her first attempt at book-making, issued
+in 1824, was kept in print forty-five years, and went to its sixtieth
+edition in 1869. It was followed the next year by "Hymns for Children"
+selected and altered, and by a book of devotions entitled, "Evening
+Hours." Lengthening the day at both ends, "rising before the sun and
+going to bed after midnight," working while others slept, gave time
+for these extra tasks. Nature exacted her usual penalties. In the
+third year of this arduous labor, threatenings of lung troubles
+appeared which, however, she defied even when "in conducting her
+classes she had to stand with one hand on a desk for support, and the
+other pressed hard to her side as though to repress a hard pain."
+Meanwhile she wrote a bosom friend: "There is in our nature a
+disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which
+unless hourly combated will overcome the best faculties of our minds
+and paralyse our most useful powers.... I have often entertained a
+dread lest I should fall a victim to my besieger, and that fear has
+saved me thus far."
+
+Besides the terror of lapsing into self-indulgence, she was
+stimulated to activity by the care of her brothers, for one of whom
+she seems to have felt special anxiety: "Oh, Annie," she writes, "if
+that child is good, I care not how humble his pathway in life. It is
+for him my soul is filled with bitterness when sickness wastes me; it
+is because of him I dread to die." Was there no one to advise her that
+the best care of her brother would be to care for herself, and that if
+she would do more, she must first do less! Where was Dr. Channing who,
+more than any other, was responsible for her intemperate zeal! It
+appears that Dr. Channing, "not without solicitude," as he writes her,
+was watching over his eager disciple. "Your infirm health," he says,
+"seems to darken your prospect of usefulness. But I believe your
+constitution will yet be built up, if you will give it a fair chance.
+You must learn to give up your plans of usefulness as much as those of
+gratification, to the will of God."
+
+Miss Dix abandoned her school apparently in 1827, after six years of
+service and at the age of twenty-five. The following spring and summer
+she spent as a governess in the family of Dr. Channing at his summer
+home in Rhode Island. Her duties were light and she lived much in the
+open air, devoting her leisure to botany in which she was already "no
+mean proficient," and to "the marine life of the beautiful region."
+Very pretty letters were exchanged between her and Dr. Channing at the
+termination of the engagement. "We will hear no more of thanks," he
+wrote her, "but your affection for us and our little ones we will
+treasure among our most precious blessings." He invites her to renew
+the relations another year, and so she did.
+
+To avoid the rigors of a New England climate, Miss Dix, for some
+years, spent her winters, now in Philadelphia, now in Alexandria, Va.,
+keeping herself busy with reading "of a very multifarious
+kind,--poetry, science, biography, and travels,--besides eking out the
+scanty means she had laid by from her teaching by writing stories and
+compiling floral albums and books of devotion." In 1827, she published
+a volume of "Ten Short Stories for Children" which went to a second
+edition in 1832; in 1828, "Meditations for Private Hours," which went
+through several editions; in 1829, two little books, "The Garland of
+Flora," and "The Pearl, a Christmas Gift." Occasional brief
+engagements in teaching are also recorded in this period.
+
+The winter of 1830, she spent with the Channings on the Island of St.
+Croix, in the West Indies, in her old capacity as governess. A
+daughter of Dr. Channing gives an interesting account of the
+preceptress of whom, first and last, she had seen so much. She
+describes Miss Dix as tall and dignified, very shy in manner, strict
+and inflexible in discipline. "From her iron will, it was hopeless to
+appeal. I think she was a very accomplished teacher, active and
+diligent herself, very fond of natural history and botany. She enjoyed
+long rambles, always calling our attention to what was interesting in
+the world around us. I hear that some of her pupils speak of her as
+irascible. I have no such remembrance. Fixed as fate we considered
+her."
+
+Miss Dix returned from the West Indies in the spring, very much
+improved in health, and in the autumn, she reopened her school in the
+Dix Mansion, with the same high ideals as before and with such
+improved methods as experience had suggested. Pupils came to her again
+as of old and she soon had as many attendants as her space permitted.
+A feature of the school was a letter-box through which passed a daily
+mail between teacher and pupils and "large bundles of child-letters of
+this period" are still extant, preserved by Miss Dix with scrupulous
+care to the end of life. It was a bright child who wrote as follows:
+"I thought I was doing well until I read your letter, but when you
+said that you were rousing to greater energy, all my satisfaction
+vanished. For if you are not satisfied in some measure with yourself
+and are going to do more than you have done, I don't know what I shall
+do. You do not go to rest until midnight and then you rise very
+early." The physician had administered too strong a tonic for the
+little patient's health.
+
+A lady who, at the age of sixteen, attended this school in 1833,
+writes of her eminent teacher as follows: "She fascinated me from the
+first, as she had done many of my class before me. Next to my mother,
+I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was in the
+prime of her years, tall and of dignified carriage, head finely shaped
+and set, with an abundance of soft, wavy, brown hair." The school
+continued in the full tide of success for five years, during which
+time, by hard labor and close economies, Miss Dix had saved enough to
+secure her "the independence of a modest competence." This seems a
+great achievement, but if one spends nothing for superfluities and
+does most of his labor himself, he can lay by his income, much or
+little. The appointments of the school are said to have been very
+simple, a long table serving as a desk for study, when it was not in
+use for dinner. Only one assistant is mentioned, who gave instruction
+in French and, perhaps, elementary Latin. Surely Miss Dix could handle
+the rest herself. The merit of the school was not in its elaborate
+appointments, but in the personal supervision of its accomplished
+mistress. So the miracle was wrought and at the age of thirty-three,
+Miss Dix had achieved a modest competence.
+
+The undertaking had cost her her health once before, and now it cost
+her her health again. The old symptoms, a troublesome cough, pain in
+the side, and slight hemorrhages, returned and, having dragged her
+frail body through the winter of 1836, Miss Dix reluctantly closed her
+school in the spring and, in obedience to her physician, went to
+Europe for rest, with the intention of spending the summer in England,
+the autumn in France, and the winter in Italy. Prostrated by the
+voyage, she was carried to a hotel in Liverpool where she was put to
+bed with the forlorn prospect of being confined to her solitary room
+for an indefinite period of convalescence. But again Dr. Channing
+befriended her. From him she had received letters of introduction, one
+of which brought to her side Mr. William Rathbone, a wealthy merchant
+of Liverpool and a prominent English Unitarian. Mr. and Mrs. Rathbone
+insisted upon taking her to their home, a charming residence a few
+miles out of the city. Thither she consented to go for a visit of a
+few weeks, and there she remained, as an honored guest tenderly cared
+for, for eighteen months. "To the end of her days," says her
+biographer, "this period of eighteen months stood out in her memory as
+the jubilee of her life, the sunniest, the most restful, and the
+tenderest to her affections of her whole earthly experience." She
+wrote a Boston friend, "You must imagine me surrounded by every
+comfort, sustained by every tenderness that can cheer, blest in the
+continual kindness of the family in which Providence has placed me,--I
+with no claim but those of a common nature." And again, "So completely
+am I adopted into the circle of loving spirits that I sometimes
+forget I really am not to consider the bonds transient in their
+binding."
+
+She very much needed these friends and their tender care. Nine months
+after her arrival, we hear of occasional hemorrhages from which she
+has been exempt for ten days, the pain in her side less acute, and her
+physician has given her permission to walk about her room. One would
+think that her career was practically ended, but, strange to say, the
+career which was to make her famous had not yet begun. From this date,
+her convalescence proceeded steadily, and she was able to enjoy much
+in the delightful home and refined social circle in which she found
+herself. "Your remark," she writes a friend, "that I probably enjoy
+more now in social intercourse than I have ever before done is quite
+true. Certainly if I do not improve, it will be through wilful
+self-neglect." Apparently, she was having a glimpse of a less prosaic
+existence than the grinding routine of a boarding school. Madam Dix
+died at the age of ninety-one, leaving her granddaughter, still in
+Europe, a substantial legacy, which sensibly increased her limited
+resources and, when the time came for action, left her free to carry
+out her great schemes of benevolence without hampering personal
+anxieties. It ought to preserve the memory of Madam Dix that she
+endowed a great philanthropist.
+
+In the autumn of 1837, Miss Dix returned to America, and avoiding the
+New England climate, spent the winter in Washington, D. C., and its
+neighborhood. Apparently, it was not a wholly happy winter, chiefly
+because of her vain and tender longings for the paradise she had left
+across the sea. The Washington of 1837 seemed raw to her after the
+cultivated English home she had discovered. "I was not conscious," she
+writes a friend, "that so great a trial was to meet my return from
+England till the whole force of the contrast was laid before me.... I
+may be too craving of that rich gift, the power of sharing with other
+minds. I have drunk deeply, long, and Oh, how blissfully, at this
+fountain in a foreign clime. Hearts met hearts, minds joined with
+minds, and what were the secondary trials of pain to the enfeebled
+body when daily was administered the soul's medicine and food."
+Surely, that English experience was one upon which not every invalid
+from these shores could count, but when, a few years later, Miss Dix
+returned to England as a kind of angel of mercy, giving back much
+more than she had ever received, the Rathbone family must have been
+glad that they had befriended her in her obscurity and her need.
+
+It was in 1841 at the age of thirty-nine that the second chapter in
+the life of Miss Dix began. Note that she had as little thought that
+she was beginning a great career as any one of us that he will date
+all his future from something he has done or experienced to-day. It
+happened that Dr. J. T. G. Nichols, so long the beloved pastor of the
+Unitarian parish in Saco, Maine, was then a student of Divinity at
+Cambridge. He had engaged to assist in a Sunday School in the East
+Cambridge jail, and all the women, twenty in number, had been assigned
+to him. The experience of one session with his class was enough to
+convince him that a young man was very much out of place in that
+position and that a woman, sensible if possible, but a woman
+certainly, was necessary. His mother advised him to consult Miss Dix.
+Not that her health would permit her to take the class, but she could
+advise. On hearing Mr. Nichols' statement, Miss Dix deliberated a
+moment and then said, "I will take the class myself." Mr. Nichols
+protested that this was not to be thought of, in the condition of her
+health, but we have heard of her iron will: "Fixed as fate we
+considered her," said one of her pupils; and she answered Mr. Nichols,
+"I shall be there next Sunday."
+
+This was the beginning. "After the school was over," says Dr. Nichols,
+"Miss Dix went into the jail and found among the prisoners a few
+insane persons with whom she talked. She noticed that there was no
+stove in their rooms and no means of proper warmth." The date was the
+twenty-eighth of March and the climate was New England, from which
+Miss Dix had so often had to flee. "The jailer said that a fire for
+them was not needed, and would be unsafe. Her repeated solicitations
+were without success." The jailer must have thought he was dealing
+with a woman, not with destiny. "At that time the court was in session
+at East Cambridge, and she caused the case to be brought before it.
+Her request was granted. The cold rooms were warmed. Thus was her
+great work commenced."
+
+Such is Dr. Nichols' brief statement, but the course of events did not
+run so smoothly as we are led to suppose. The case had to be fought
+through the newspapers as well as the court, and here Miss Dix showed
+the generalship which she exhibited on many another hard fought
+field. She never went into battle single-handed. She always managed to
+have at her side the best gunners when the real battle began. In the
+East Cambridge skirmish, she had Rev. Robert C. Waterston, Dr. Samuel
+G. Howe, and Charles Sumner. Dr. Howe visited the jail and wrote an
+account for the Boston _Advertiser_. When this statement was disputed,
+as it was, Mr. Sumner, who had accompanied Dr. Howe, confirmed his
+account and added details of his own. He said that the inmates "were
+cramped together in rooms poorly ventilated and noisome with filth;"
+that "in two cages or pens constructed of plank, within the four stone
+walls of the same room" were confined, and had been for months, a
+raving maniac and an interesting young woman whose mind was so
+slightly obscured that it seemed any moment as if the cloud would pass
+away; that "the whole prison echoed with the blasphemies of the poor
+old woman, while her young and gentle fellow in suffering seemed to
+shrink from her words as from blows;" that the situation was hardly
+less horrid than that of "tying the living to the dead."
+
+Where was Miss Dix during this controversy? Why, she was preparing to
+investigate every jail and almshouse in the State of Massachusetts.
+If this was the way the insane were treated in the city of Cambridge,
+in a community distinguished for enlightenment and humanity, what
+might not be going on in more backward and less favored localities?
+Note-book in hand, going from city to city and from town to town, Miss
+Dix devoted the two following years to answering this question
+exhaustively.
+
+Having gathered her facts, she presented them to the Legislature in a
+Memorial of thirty-two octavo pages, the first of a series of
+seventeen statements and appeals presented to the legislatures of
+different states, as far west as Illinois and as far south as
+Louisiana. "I shall be obliged," she said, "to speak with great
+plainness and to reveal many things revolting to the taste, and from
+which my woman's nature shrinks with peculiar sensitiveness.... I
+proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present
+state of insane persons within this Commonwealth, in cages, closets,
+cellars, stalls, pens, chained, naked, beaten with rods and lashed
+into obedience.... I give a few illustrations but description fades
+before reality." If we could dismiss the subject by saying she reports
+instance after instance where men and women were confined in the
+almshouses in Massachusetts in such conditions of inhumanity and
+neglect as no intelligent farmer would tolerate for his swine, we
+could avoid some unpleasant details; but the statement would be
+ineffective because it would seem incredible. At the almshouse in
+Danvers, confined in a remote, low, outbuilding, she found a young
+woman, once respectable, industrious and worthy, whose mind had been
+deranged by disappointments and trials. "There she stood," says Miss
+Dix, "clinging to or beating upon the bars of her caged apartment, the
+contracted size of which afforded space only for increasing
+accumulations of filth,--a foul spectacle; there she stood, with naked
+arms, dishevelled hair, the unwashed frame invested with fragments of
+unclean garments, the air so extremely offensive, though ventilation
+was afforded on all sides but one, that it was not possible to remain
+beyond a few moments without retreating for recovery to the outward
+air. Irritation of body, produced by utter filth and exposure, incited
+her to the horrid process of tearing off her skin by inches; her neck
+and person were thus disfigured to hideousness.... And who protects
+her," Miss Dix suggestively asks, "who protects her,--that worse than
+Pariah outcast,--from other wrongs and blacker outrages!" This
+question had more meaning for Miss Dix than we might suppose, for at
+the almshouse in Worcester she had found an insane Madonna and her
+babe: father unknown.
+
+Fair and beautiful Newton finds a place in this chapter of dishonor,
+with a woman chained, nearly nude, and filthy beyond measure: "Sick,
+horror-struck, and almost incapable of retreating, I gained the
+outward air." A case in Groton attained infamous celebrity, not
+because the shame was without parallel but because the overseers of
+the poor tried to discredit the statements of Miss Dix. The fact was
+that she had understated the case. Dr. Bell of the McLean Asylum,
+confirmed her report and added details. In an outbuilding at the
+almshouse, a young man, slightly deranged but entirely inoffensive,
+was confined by a heavy iron collar to which was attached a chain six
+feet in length, the limit of his possible movements. His hands were
+fastened together by heavy clavises secured by iron bolts. There was
+no window in his dungeon, but for ventilation there was an opening,
+half the size of a sash, closed in cold weather by a board shutter.
+From this cell, he had been taken to the McLean Asylum, where his
+irons had been knocked off, his swollen limbs chafed gently, and
+finding himself comfortable, he exclaimed, "My good man, I must kiss
+you." He showed no violence, ate at the common table, slept in the
+common bedroom, and seemed in a fair way to recovery when, to save the
+expense of three dollars a week for his board and care, the thrifty
+Groton officials took him away. He could be boarded at the almshouse
+for nothing, and, chained in an outbuilding, he would not require any
+care.
+
+We can follow Miss Dix in her career through a dozen states of this
+Union, into the British Provinces, to Scotland and England, thence
+across to the Continent, without repeating these details, if we bear
+in mind that such as we have seen was the condition of the pauper
+insane at that period. Her memorial was presented by Dr. S. G. Howe,
+then happily a member of the Legislature, and a bill was passed, not
+without opposition, but finally passed, enlarging the asylum at
+Worcester to accommodate two hundred additional patients. The
+provision was inadequate, but a reform of old abuses had begun. It was
+her first victory.
+
+Grateful for what had been accomplished in Massachusetts, Miss Dix
+turned to Rhode Island, whose borders she had often approached and
+sometimes crossed in her investigations in the adjoining state. Rhode
+Island was perhaps not less civilized than her neighbor, but Rhode
+Island furnished the prize case of horrors in the mistreatment of
+insanity, a case which in a letter introducing the discoverer, Mr.
+Thomas G. Hazard said went beyond anything he supposed to exist in the
+civilized world. The case was this: Abraham Simmons, a man whose name
+ought to go on the roll of martyrdom, was confined in the town of
+Little Compton, in a cell seven feet square, stone-built,
+stone-roofed, and stone-floored, the entrance double-walled,
+double-doored and double-locked, "excluding both light and fresh air,
+and without accommodation of any description for warming and
+ventilation." When this dungeon was discovered, the walls were covered
+by frost a half inch in thickness; the bed was provided with two
+comfortables, both wet and the outer one stiffly frozen, or, as Miss
+Dix puts it, "only wet straw to lie upon and a sheet of ice for his
+covering." Lest two locks should not be enough to hold this dangerous
+man, his leg was tethered to the stone floor by an ox-chain. "My
+husband," said the mistress, "in winter, sometimes of a morning rakes
+out half a bushel of frost, _and yet he never freezes_; sometimes he
+screams dreadfully and that is the reason we had the double wall and
+two doors in place of one; his cries disturb us in the house." "How
+long has he been here?" "Oh, above three years." Nothing in the
+traditions of the Bastile could exceed these horrors, and yet they
+were not the product of intentional cruelty, but of unfathomable
+stupidity.
+
+Disregarding the well-meant warnings of her attendant that he would
+kill her, Miss Dix took his hands, tried to warm them in her own,
+spoke to him of liberty, care and kindness, and for answer "a tear
+stole over his hollow cheeks, but no words answered my importunities."
+Her next step was to publish the terrible story in the Providence
+Journal, not with a shriek, as might have been expected and justified,
+but with the affected coolness of a naturalist. With grim humor, she
+headed her article, "Astonishing Tenacity of Life," as if it had only
+a scientific interest for anybody. If you doubted the statements, you
+might go and see for yourself: "Should any persons in this
+philanthropic age be disposed from motives of curiosity to visit the
+place, they may rest assured that travelling is considered quite safe
+in that part of the country, however improbable it may seem. The
+people of that region profess the Christian religion, and it is even
+said that they have adopted some forms and ceremonies which they call
+worship. It is not probable, however, that they address themselves to
+poor Simmons' God." Their prayers and his shrieks would make a strange
+discord, she thinks, if they entered the ear of the same deity.
+
+Having reported her discoveries to the men of science, she next
+appealed to the men of wealth. Providence had at that date a
+multi-millionaire, by the name of Butler; he left four millions to his
+heirs. He had never been known as a philanthropist; he did not himself
+suppose that his heart was susceptible. It is said that knowing
+persons smiled when they heard that Miss Dix intended to appeal to
+him. Further, it is said that Mr. Butler, at the interview,
+ingeniously diverted the conversation from topics that threatened to
+be serious. He apparently had no thought of giving Miss Dix a penny.
+At length she rose with the impressive dignity so often noted by her
+pupils and said: "Mr. Butler, I wish you to hear what I have to say. I
+want to bring before you certain facts involving terrible suffering
+to your fellow creatures all around you,--suffering you can relieve.
+My duty will end when I have done this, and with you will rest all
+further responsibility." Mr. Butler heard her respectfully to the end,
+and then asked, "What do you want me to do?" "Sir," she said, "I want
+you to give $50,000 toward the enlargement of the insane hospital in
+this city." "Madam, I'll do it," he said, and much more of his estate
+afterward went the same way.
+
+Three years of devoted study of the problems of insanity, with
+limitless opportunities for personal observation, had given Miss Dix
+an expert knowledge of the subject. She had conceived what an insane
+asylum should be. Hitherto, she had been content to enlarge upon
+foundations already laid; now she would build an asylum herself. She
+saw, we are told, that such an institution as she conceived could not
+be built by private benevolence, but must have behind it a legislative
+appropriation. She chose New Jersey as the field of her experiment.
+Quietly, she entered the state and canvassed its jails and almshouses,
+as she had those of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Next she digested
+her facts in a Memorial to the Legislature. Then, with a political
+shrewdness for which she became celebrated, she selected the member,
+uniting a good heart with a clear head and persistent will, into whose
+hands it should be placed. Much of her success is said to have been
+due to her political sagacity. The superintendent of one of her
+asylums said, "She had an insight into character that was truly
+marvellous; and I have never known anyone, man or woman, who bore more
+distinctly the mark of intellectuality." Having placed her Memorial in
+the hands of a skilful tactician, she retired to a room appropriated
+to her use by the courtesy of the House, where she spent her time
+writing editorials for newspapers, answering the questions of members,
+and holding receptions. "You cannot imagine," she writes a friend,
+"the labor of conversing and convincing. Some evenings I had at once
+twenty gentlemen for three hours' steady conversation." After a
+campaign of two months the bill establishing the New Jersey State
+Lunatic Asylum was passed, and the necessary money appropriated for
+its erection. She was always partial to this first creation of her
+energy and genius. She called it 'her first child,' and there,
+forty-five years later, she returned to pass the last seven years of
+her life, as in a home, a room having been gratefully appropriated to
+her use by the trustees of the asylum.
+
+At this date, Dr. S. G. Howe wrote her: "God grant me to look back
+upon some three years of my life with a part of the self-approval you
+must feel. I ask no higher fortune. No one need say to you, Go on! for
+you have heard a higher than any human voice, and you will follow
+whithersoever it calleth." Indeed, she already had much of her future
+work prepared. While waiting for the Legislature in New Jersey to take
+up her bill, she had canvassed Pennsylvania and had the happiness to
+see a bill pass the Legislature of that State founding the Dixmont
+Hospital, her second child, soon after the birth of her first. The
+Dixmont Hospital is the only one of her many children that she would
+allow to be even indirectly named for her. Meanwhile, she had
+canvassed Kentucky, had been before the Legislature in Tennessee, and,
+seven days after the passage of her bill in New Jersey, she writes
+from a steamer near Charleston, S. C., as follows: "I designed using
+the spring and summer chiefly in examining the jails and poorhouses of
+Indiana and Illinois. Having successfully completed my mission in
+Kentucky, I learned that traveling in those States would be
+difficult, if not impossible, for some weeks to come, on account of
+mud and rains. This decided me to examine the prisons and hospitals of
+New Orleans, and, returning, to see the state prisons of Louisiana at
+Baton Rouge, of Mississippi at Jackson, of Arkansas at Little Rock, of
+Missouri at Jefferson City, and of Illinois at Alton.... I have seen
+incomparably more to approve than to censure in New Orleans. I took
+the resolution, being so far away, of seeing the state institutions of
+Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. Though this has proved
+excessively fatiguing, I rejoice that I have carried out my purpose."
+
+Between June 1843 and August 1847, she states in a letter that she
+traveled 32,470 miles, her conveyance being by steamboat when
+possible; otherwise by stage-coach. It is suggestive of the wrecks and
+delays she had experienced with the shattered coaches and mud roads of
+the south and west that, as we are told, she "made a practice of
+carrying with her an outfit of hammer, wrench, nails, screws, a coil
+of rope, and straps of stout leather, which under many a mishap
+sufficed to put things to rights and enable her to pursue her
+journey." "I have encountered nothing so dangerous as river fords,"
+she writes. "I crossed the Yadkin when it was three-quarters of a mile
+wide, rough bottom, often in places rapid currents; the water always
+up to the carriage bed, and sometimes flowing in. The horses rested
+twice on sand-bars. A few miles beyond the river having just crossed a
+deep branch two hundred yards wide, the axletree broke, and away
+rolled one of the back wheels."
+
+When she said that river fords were her greatest danger, she must have
+forgotten an encounter with a highwayman. She was making a stage
+journey in Michigan, and noticed with some consternation that the
+driver carried a brace of pistols. To her inquiries he explained that
+there had been robberies on the road. "Give me the pistols," she said;
+"I will take care of them." More in awe of her than of robbers, the
+driver reluctantly obeyed. Passing through a dismal forest the
+expected happened. A man seized the horses and demanded her purse. She
+made him a little speech, asked if he was not ashamed, told him her
+business, and concluded, "If you have been unfortunate, are in
+distress and in want of money, I will give you some." Meanwhile the
+robber had turned "deathly pale," and when she had finished,
+exclaimed, "My God, that voice." He had once heard her address the
+prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary. He begged her to pass, and
+declined to take the money she offered. She insisted, lest he might be
+again tempted before he found employment. People obeyed when she
+insisted, and he took her gift and disappeared.
+
+Think of the hotel accommodations,--the tables and beds,--she must
+have encountered in these wild journeys. This is the woman who, a few
+years ago, seemed to be dying with hemorrhages of the lungs. Did she
+have no more of them? Oh, yes; we are assured that "again and again
+she was attacked with hemorrhages and again and again prostrated by
+malarial fever." A physician said, "Her system became actually
+saturated with malaria." Invalid as she almost always was, she had
+left her foot-prints in most of the states of the Union and had
+carried the war into the British Provinces, where she had been the
+means of establishing three insane hospitals: one in Toronto, one in
+Halifax, one at St. John, Newfoundland, besides providing a fleet of
+life-boats at Sable Island, known as "The Graveyard of Ships," off the
+coast of Nova Scotia.
+
+In the United States, during these twelve years, she "promoted and
+secured," to use her own phrase, the enlargement of three asylums: at
+Worcester, Mass., at Providence, R. I., and at Utica, N. Y., and the
+establishment of thirteen, one in each of the following states: New
+Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri,
+Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, and
+Maryland, with the Hospital for Insane Soldiers and Sailors, at
+Washington, D. C.
+
+In 1850, Miss Dix proposed a larger scheme of philanthropy than was
+ever before projected by any mortal. What is more, but for one man,
+she would have carried it out. She petitioned Congress to appropriate
+12,000,000 acres of public lands for the benefit of the indigent
+insane, deaf and dumb, and blind. A bill to that effect was
+introduced, watched by her through two sessions, and finally passed by
+both Houses. She was inundated with congratulations from far and near;
+but the bill was vetoed on constitutional grounds by President Pierce.
+The day for giving away the public lands in sheets had not come.
+
+The blow seems to have been more than Miss Dix could endure. She went
+abroad for change and rest. What rest meant to her, she expresses in
+a letter to a friend at home:
+
+    "Rest is not quitting the active career:
+    Rest is the fitting of self to its sphere."
+
+These lines, borrowed from John S. Dwight have been, not unnaturally,
+attributed to her. She wrote many things perhaps quite as poetical.
+
+Not much of the verse, which came from her prolific pen, was
+considered even by herself to deserve publication, but verse-writing
+is said to had been the never-failing diversion of her leisure hours.
+Mrs. Caroline A. Kennard credits her with the following lines which,
+though very simple, are quite as good as much that has been
+immortalized in our hymn books:
+
+    "In the tender, peaceful moonlight,
+      I am from the world apart,
+    While a flood of golden glory
+      Fills alike my room and heart.
+
+    As I gaze upon the radiance
+      Shining on me from afar,
+    I can almost see beyond it,--
+      Almost see 'the gates ajar.'
+
+    Tender thoughts arise within me
+      Of the friends who've gone before,
+    Absent long but not forgotten,
+      Resting on the other shore.
+
+    And my soul is filled with longing
+      That when done with earth and sin,
+    I may find the gates wide open
+      There for me to enter in."
+
+Apparently, she wrote her poetry for herself, as an unskilled musician
+might play for his own amusement.
+
+The rest which Miss Dix allowed herself between September 1854 and
+September 1856, was to visit the chief hospitals and prisons in
+Europe. Edinburgh, the Channel Islands, Paris, Rome, Naples,
+Constantinople, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen,
+Amsterdam, Brussels, and again Paris and London: these places mark the
+course of her two years' pilgrimage among the prisons and hospitals of
+Europe. She found much to admire in this journey, but sometimes abuses
+to correct. We must content ourselves with an incident from Edinburgh,
+perfectly in character. She found in that city private insane
+hospitals, if they could be dignified by the name, under such
+conditions of mismanagement as shocked even her experienced nerves.
+Having reported the facts to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh to no
+purpose, she was advised to lay the matter before the Home Secretary
+in London. The Provost knew of this intention and resolved to
+forestall her by taking the train for London the next morning; so
+little did he know Miss Dix. She boarded the night train, and was on
+the spot before him, had her interview, secured the appointment of a
+royal commission and, ultimately the correction of the abuses of which
+she had complained.
+
+During the four years that intervened between her return and the
+outbreak of the Civil War, she seems to have travelled over most of
+her old ground in this country, and to have extended her journeys into
+the new states and territories. At the approach of hostilities, it
+fell to Miss Dix to give the President of the Philadelphia and
+Baltimore Railroad the first information of a plot to capture the city
+of Washington and to assassinate Mr. Lincoln. Acting upon this
+information, Gen. Butler's Massachusetts troops were sent by boat
+instead of rail, and Mr. Lincoln was "secretly smuggled through to
+Washington."
+
+By natural selection, Miss Dix was appointed Superintendent of Women
+Nurses in the federal service, by order of the Secretary of War. In
+this capacity she served through the four years' struggle. In a letter
+dated December 7, 1864, she writes: "I take no hour's leisure. I think
+that since the war, I have taken no day's furlough." Her great
+services were officially recognized by Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of
+War.
+
+Having served the country as faithfully as any soldier, during its
+hour of need, she returned to her former work of promoting and
+securing the erection of hospitals and of visiting those before
+established. In 1877, when Miss Dix was seventy-five, Dr. Charles F.
+Folsom, of Boston, in a book entitled "Diseases of the Mind," said of
+her: "Her frequent visits to our institutions of the insane now, and
+her searching criticisms, constitute of themselves a better lunacy
+commission than would be likely to be appointed in many of our
+states."
+
+She was at that date, however, near the end of her active labors. In
+1881, at the age of seventy-nine, she retired to the hospital she had
+been the means of building in Trenton, N. J., and there she remained,
+tenderly, even reverently cared for, until her death in 1887. So
+passed to her rest and her reward one of the most remarkable women of
+her generation.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI
+
+
+[Illustration: SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI]
+
+At Cambridge, it is still possible to pick up interesting
+reminiscences of Longfellow and Lowell from old neighbors or townsmen,
+proud even to have seen these celebrities as familiar objects upon the
+street. "And Margaret Fuller," you suggest, further to tap the memory
+of your venerable friend. He smiles gently and says, Margaret Fuller
+was before his time; he remembers the table-talk of his youth. He
+remembers, when she was a girl at dancing-school, Papanti stopped his
+class and said, "Mees Fuller, Mees Fuller, you sal not be so
+magnee-fee-cent"; he remembers that, being asked if she thought
+herself better than any one else, she calmly said, "Yes, I do"; and he
+remembers that Miss Fuller having announced that she accepted the
+universe, a wit remarked that the universe ought to be greatly obliged
+to her.
+
+Margaret Fuller was born in 1810, a year later than Longfellow, but
+while Longfellow lived until 1882, Margaret was lost at sea thirty
+years before, in 1850. The last four years of her life were spent in
+Italy, so that American memories of Margaret must needs go back to
+1846. Practically it is traditions of her that remain, and not
+memories. As she survives in tradition, she seems to have been a
+person of inordinate vanity, who gave lectures in drawing-rooms and
+called them "conversations," uttered a commonplace with the authority
+of an oracle, and sentimentalized over art, poetry, or religion, while
+she seemed to herself, and apparently to others, to be talking
+philosophy. She took herself in all seriousness as a genius, ran a
+dazzling career of a dozen years or so in Cambridge and Boston, and
+then her light seems to have gone out. She came to the surface, with
+other newness, in the Transcendental era; she was the priestess of its
+mysteries; when that movement ebbed away, her day was over. This is
+the impression one would gather, if he had only current oral
+traditions of Margaret Fuller.
+
+If with this impression, wishing to get a first-hand knowledge of his
+subject, a student were to read the "Works of Margaret Fuller":--"Life
+Within and Without," "At Home and Abroad," "Woman in the Nineteenth
+Century," "Art, Literature, and Drama,"--he would be prepared to find
+eccentricities of style, straining for effect, mystical utterances,
+attempts at profundity, and stilted commonplace. He would, however,
+find nothing of this sort, or of any sort of make believe, but simply
+a writer always in earnest, always convinced, with a fair English
+style, perfectly intelligible, intent upon conveying an idea in the
+simplest manner and generally an idea which approves itself to the
+common-sense of the reader. There is no brilliancy, no ornament,
+little imagination, and not a least glimmer of wit. The absence of wit
+is remarkable, since in conversation, wit was a quality for which
+Margaret was both admired and feared. But as a writer, Margaret was a
+little prosaic,--even her poetry inclined to be prosaic,--but she is
+earnest, noble, temperate, and reasonable. The reader will be
+convinced that there was more in the woman than popular tradition
+recognizes.
+
+One is confirmed in the conviction that the legend does her less than
+justice when he knows the names and the quality of her friends. No
+woman ever had better or more loyal friends than Margaret Fuller.
+Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing
+were among them and compiled her "Memoirs," evidently as a labor of
+love. George William Curtis knew her personally, and called her "a
+scholar, a critic, a thinker, a queen of conversation, above all, a
+person of delicate insight and sympathy, of the most feminine
+refinement of feeling and of dauntless courage." Col. Higginson, a
+fellow-townsman, who from youth to manhood, knew Margaret personally,
+whose sisters were her intimates, whose family, as he tells us, was
+"afterwards closely connected" with hers by marriage, and who has
+studied all the documents and written her biography, says she was a
+"person whose career is more interesting, as it seems to me, than that
+of any other American of her sex; a woman whose aims were high and
+whose services great; one whose intellect was uncommon, whose activity
+was incessant, whose life, varied, and whose death, dramatic."
+
+There still remains the current legend, and a legend, presumably, has
+some foundation. If we attempt to unite the Margaret Fuller of common
+tradition with Margaret Fuller as estimated by her friends, we shall
+assume that she was not a wholly balanced character,--that she must
+have been a great and noble woman to have had such friends, but that
+there may have been in her some element of foolishness which her
+friends excused and at which the public smiled.
+
+Margaret was the fifth in descent from Lieut. Thomas Fuller, who came
+from England in 1638, and who celebrated the event in a poem of which
+the first stanza is as follows:
+
+    "In thirty-eight I set my foot
+      On this New England shore;
+    My thoughts were then to stay one year,
+      And then remain no more."
+
+The poetry is on a level with other colonial poetry of the period.
+
+Timothy Fuller, the grandfather of Margaret, graduated at Harvard
+College in 1760, became a clergyman, and was a delegate to the
+Massachusetts State Convention which adopted the Federal Constitution.
+He had five sons, all of whom became lawyers. "They were in general,"
+says Col. Higginson, "men of great energy, pushing, successful, of
+immense and varied information, of great self-esteem, and without a
+particle of tact." The evidence is that Margaret reproduced, in a
+somewhat exaggerated form, all these Fuller characteristics, good and
+bad. The saying is quoted from Horace Mann that if Margaret
+was unpopular, "it was because she probably inherited the
+disagreeableness of forty Fullers."
+
+Timothy Fuller, Margaret's father, was the oldest of these brothers
+and, Col. Higginson says, "the most successful and the most assured."
+He graduated at Harvard, second in his class, in 1801, lived in
+Cambridge, and represented the Middlesex district in Congress from
+1817 to 1825. He was a "Jeffersonian Democrat" and a personal friend
+and political supporter of John Quincy Adams. He married Margaret, the
+daughter of Major Peter Crane. Mrs. Fuller was as gentle and
+unobtrusive as her stalwart husband was forceful and uncompliant. She
+effaced herself even in her own home, was seen and not heard, though
+apparently not very conspicuously seen. She had eight children, of
+whom Margaret was the first, and when this busy mother escaped from
+the care of the household, it was to take refuge in her flower garden.
+A "fair blossom of the white amaranth," Margaret calls this mother.
+The child's nature took something from both of her parents, and was
+both strong and tender.
+
+Her father assumed the entire charge of Margaret's education, setting
+her studying Latin at the age of six, not an unusual feat in that day
+for a boy, but hitherto unheard of for a girl. Her lessons were
+recited at night, after Mr. Fuller returned from his office in Boston,
+often at a late hour. "High-pressure," says Col. Higginson, "is bad
+enough for an imaginative and excitable child, but high-pressure by
+candle-light is ruinous; yet that was the life she lived." The effect
+of these night lessons was to leave the child's brain both tired and
+excited and in no condition to sleep. It was considered singular that
+she was never ready for bed. She was hustled off to toss on her
+pillow, to see horrid visions, to have nightmare, and sometimes to
+walk in her sleep. Terrible morning headaches followed, and Margaret
+was considered a delicate child. One would like to know what Latin at
+six would have done for her, without those recitations by
+candle-light.
+
+Mr. Fuller did not consider it important that a child should have
+juvenile books and Margaret's light reading consisted of Shakspere,
+Cervantes, and Moliere. She gives an interesting account of her
+discovery of Shakspere at the age of eight. Foraging for entertainment
+on a dismal winter Sunday afternoon, she took down a volume of
+Shakspere and was soon lost in the adventures and misadventures of
+Romeo and Juliet. Two hours passed, when the child's exceeding quiet
+attracted attention. "That is no book for Sunday," said her father,
+"put it away." Margaret obeyed, but soon took the book again to follow
+the fortunes of her lovers further. This was a fatal indiscretion; the
+forbidden volume was again taken from her and she was sent to bed as a
+punishment for disobedience.
+
+Meanwhile, the daily lessons to her father or to a private tutor went
+on; Virgil, Horace and Ovid were read in due course, and the study of
+Greek was begun. Margaret never forgave her father for robbing her of
+a proper childhood and substituting a premature scholastic education.
+"I certainly do not wish," she says, "that instead of these masters, I
+had read baby books, written down to children, but I do wish that I
+had read no books at all till later,--that I had lived with toys and
+played in the open air."
+
+Her early and solitary development entailed disadvantages which only a
+very thoughtful parent could have foreseen. When, later, Margaret was
+sent to school, she had no companions in study, being in advance of
+the girls of her age, with whom she played, and too young for the
+older set with whom she was called to recite. "Not only," she says, "I
+was not their schoolmate, but my book-life and lonely habits had given
+a cold aloofness to my whole expression, and veiled my manner with a
+hauteur which turned all hearts away."
+
+The effects of her training upon her health, Margaret appears to have
+exaggerated. She thought it had "checked her growth, wasted her
+constitution," and would bring her to a "premature grave." While her
+lessons to her father by candle-light continued, there were
+sleeplessness, bad dreams, and morning headaches, but after this had
+gone on one year, Mr. Fuller was elected to Congress, spent most of
+his time in Washington, and a private tutor gave the lessons,
+presumably at seasonable hours. No one with a "broken constitution"
+could have performed her later literary labors, and she was not
+threatened with a "premature grave" when Dr. Frederick Henry Hedge
+made her acquaintance in Cambridge society. "Margaret," he says, "was
+then about thirteen,--a child in years, but so precocious in her
+mental and physical development, that she passed for eighteen or
+twenty. Agreeably to this estimate, she had her place in society as a
+full-grown lady. When I recall her personal appearance as she was
+then, and for ten or twelve years subsequent, I have the idea of a
+blooming girl of florid complexion and vigorous health, with a
+tendency to robustness of which she was painfully conscious, and
+which, with little regard to hygienic principles, she endeavored to
+suppress and conceal, thereby preparing for herself much future
+suffering." She had, he says, "no pretensions to beauty then, or at
+any time," yet she "was not plain," a reproach from which she was
+saved "by her blond and abundant hair, by her excellent teeth, by her
+sparkling, dancing, busy eyes," and by a "graceful and peculiar
+carriage of her head and neck." He adds that "in conversation she had
+already, at that early age, begun to distinguish herself, and made
+much the same impression in society that she did in after years," but
+that she had an excessive "tendency to sarcasm" which frightened shy
+young people and made her notoriously unpopular with the ladies.
+
+At this period Margaret attended a seminary for young ladies in
+Boston. Cambridge was then, according to Col. Higginson, a vast,
+sparsely settled village, containing between two and three thousand
+inhabitants. In the Boston school, Dr. Hedge says, "the inexperienced
+country girl was exposed to petty persecutions from the dashing misses
+of the city," and Margaret paid them off by "indiscriminate sarcasms."
+
+Margaret's next two years were spent at a boarding school in Groton.
+Her adventures in this school are supposed to be narrated in her
+dramatic story entitled "Mariana," in the volume called "Summer on the
+Lakes." Mariana at first carried all before her "by her love of wild
+dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion and wit," but abusing
+her privileges, she is overthrown by her rebellious subjects, brought
+to great humiliation, and receives some needed moral instructions.
+
+At fifteen, Margaret returned to Cambridge and resumed her private
+studies, except that, for a Greek recitation, she attended an academy
+in which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was then fitting for college. Her
+day at this period, as she gives it, was occupied thus: she rose
+before five, walked an hour, and practiced at the piano till seven:
+breakfasted and read French till eight; read Brown's philosophy, two
+or three lectures, till half past nine; went to school and studied
+Greek till twelve; recited, went home, and practiced till two; dined;
+lounged half an hour, read two hours in Italian, walked or rode, and
+spent her evenings leisurely with music or friends. Plainly she ought
+to have been one of the learned women of her generation.
+
+A school composition of Margaret impressed her fellow pupil, Dr.
+Holmes, as he relates, with a kind of awe. It began loftily with the
+words, "It is a trite remark," a phrase which seemed to the boy very
+masterful. The girls envied her a certain queenliness of manner. "We
+thought," says one of them, "that if we could only come into school in
+that way, we could know as much Greek as she did." She was accustomed
+to fill the hood of her cloak with books, swing them over her
+shoulder, and march away. "We wished," says this lady, "that our
+mothers would let us have hooded cloaks, that we might carry our books
+in the same way."
+
+It is known that Margaret had several love affairs and, in a later
+letter, she refers to one which belongs to this period, and which
+appears to have been the first of the series. She meets her old adorer
+again at the age of thirty and writes to a friend who knew of the
+youthful episode. He had the same powerful eye, calm wisdom, refined
+observation and "the imposing _maniere d'etre_ which anywhere would
+give him influence among men"; but in herself, she says, "There is
+scarcely a fibre left of the haughty, passionate, ambitious child he
+remembered and loved."
+
+Though a precocious girl and in a way fascinating, there is evidence
+that Margaret was crude and unformed socially, due perhaps to the
+habit of considering her mother as a negligible quantity. Cambridge
+ladies preserved an unpleasant portrait of the child as she appeared
+at a grand reception given by Mr. Fuller to President Adams in 1826,
+"one of the most elaborate affairs of the kind," says Col. Higginson,
+"that had occurred in Cambridge since the ante-revolutionary days of
+the Lechmeres and Vassals." Margaret ought to have been dressed by an
+artist, but apparently, a girl of sixteen, she was left to her own
+devices. She appeared, we are told, with a low-necked dress badly cut,
+tightly laced, her arms held back as if pinioned, her hair curled all
+over her head, and she danced quadrilles very badly. This escapade was
+not allowed to repeat itself. Certain kind and motherly Cambridge
+ladies took the neglected child in hand, tamed her rude strength, and
+subdued her manners. Col. Higginson mentions half a dozen of these
+excellent ladies, among them his mother, at whose feet "this studious,
+self-conscious, overgrown girl" would sit, "covering her hands with
+kisses and treasuring every word."
+
+Chief among Margaret's motherly friends was Mrs. Eliza Farrar, wife of
+a Harvard professor, an authoress of merit, "of uncommon character and
+cultivation, who had lived much in Europe, and who, with no children
+of her own," became a kind of foster-mother to Margaret. She had
+Margaret "constantly at her own house, reformed her hairdresser,
+instructed her dressmaker, and took her to make calls and on
+journeys." Margaret was an apt pupil, and the good training of these
+many Cambridge mothers was apparent when, ten years later, Mr. Emerson
+made her acquaintance. "She was then, as always," he says, "carefully
+and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession."
+
+The seven years in Cambridge, from Margaret's fifteenth to her
+twenty-third year, though uneventful, were, considering merely the
+pleasure of existence, the most delightful of her life. She was a
+school-girl as much or as little as she cared to be; her health, when
+not overtaxed, was perfect; her family though not rich, were in easy
+circumstances; her father was distinguished, having just retired from
+Congress after eight years of creditable service; and, partly perhaps
+from her father's distinction, she had access to the best social
+circles of Cambridge. "In our evening reunions," says Dr. Hedge, "she
+was always conspicuous by the brilliancy of her wit, which needed but
+little provocation to break forth in exuberant sallies, that drew
+around her a knot of listeners, and made her the central attraction of
+the hour. Rarely did she enter a company in which she was not a
+prominent object." Her conversational talent "continued to develop
+itself in these years, and was certainly" he thinks, "her most decided
+gift. One could form no adequate idea of her ability without hearing
+her converse.... For some reason or other, she could never deliver
+herself in print as she did with her lips." Emerson, in perfect
+agreement with this estimate says, "Her pen was a non-conductor." The
+reader will not think this true in her letters, where often the words
+seem to palpitate. Doubtless the world had no business to see her love
+letters, but one will find there a woman who, if she could speak as
+she writes, must have poured herself out in tidal waves.
+
+Dr. Hedge was struck by two traits of Margaret's character, repeatedly
+mentioned by others, but to which it is worth while to have his
+testimony. The first was a passionate love for the beautiful: "I have
+never known one who seemed to derive such satisfaction from beautiful
+forms"; the second was "her intellectual sincerity. Her judgment took
+no bribes from her sex or her sphere, nor from custom, nor tradition,
+nor caprice."
+
+Margaret was nineteen years old when Dr. James Freeman Clarke, then a
+young man in college, made her acquaintance. "We both lived in
+Cambridge," he says, "and from that time until she went to reside in
+Groton in 1833, I saw her or heard from her almost every day. There
+was a family connection between us, and we called each other cousins."
+Possessing in a greater degree than any person he ever knew, the power
+of magnetizing others, she had drawn about her a circle of girl
+friends whom she entertained and delighted by her exuberant talent.
+They came from Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Brookline, and met now at
+one house and now at another of these pleasant towns. Dr. Hedge also
+knows of this charming circle, and says, "she loved to draw these fair
+girls to herself, and make them her guests, and was never so happy as
+when surrounded in company, by such a bevy."
+
+With all her social activity, Margaret kept up her studies at a rate
+that would be the despair of a young man in college. "She already,
+when I first became acquainted with her," says Dr. Clarke, "had become
+familiar with the masterpieces of French, Italian, and Spanish
+literature," and was beginning German, and in about three months, she
+was reading with ease the masterpieces of German literature.
+Meanwhile, she was keeping up her Greek as a pastime, reading over and
+over the dialogues of Plato. Still there is time for Mr. Clarke to
+walk with her for hours beneath the lindens or in the garden, or, on a
+summer's day to ride with her on horseback from Cambridge to
+Newton,--a day he says, "all of a piece, in which my eloquent
+companion helped me to understand my past life and her own."
+
+We cannot wonder that, at the age of twenty-three, Margaret
+reluctantly left Cambridge where there was so much that she loved, and
+went with her family to a farm in Groton where, with certain
+unpleasant school-girl memories, there was nothing that she loved at
+all. In 1833, at the age of sixty-five Mr. Fuller retired from his law
+practice and bought an estate in Groton, with the double purpose of
+farming his lands for income, and, in his leisure, writing a history
+of the United States, for which his public life had been a
+preparation, and towards which he had collected much material.
+Margaret's most exacting duties were the education of the younger
+children, which left her much time for her favorite studies. She had
+correspondents by the score; her friends visited her; Cambridge homes
+were open to her; and Mrs. Farrar took her on a delightful journey to
+Newport, Hudson River and Trenton Falls. Still we cannot add the two
+years in Groton to her happy period, because she allowed herself to be
+intensely miserable. Six years later, in a moment of penitence, she
+said of this period, "Had I been wise in such matters then as now, how
+easy and fair I might have made the whole."
+
+She fought her homesickness by overwork, so that Emerson says, "her
+reading in Groton was at a rate like Gibbon's," and she paid the
+penalty of her excesses by a serious illness which threatened to be
+fatal, and from which perhaps she never fully recovered. It was some
+consolation that her father was melted to an unwonted exhibition of
+tenderness, and that he said to her in this mood, "My dear, I have
+been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you have
+any faults. You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do
+not know that you have a single fault."
+
+Events were soon to make this remark one of her dearest memories. In a
+short time, death separated the father and child, who had been so much
+to each other. In 1835, Mr. Fuller fell a victim to cholera, and died
+in three days. For a year or more, Margaret's heart had been set upon
+a visit to Europe for study; the trip had been promised by her father;
+it had been arranged that she should accompany her friends, the
+Farrars; but the death of Mr. Fuller dissolved this dream, and, in her
+journal, solemnly praying that "duty may now be the first object and
+self set aside," she dedicates her strength to her "mother, brothers,
+and sister." No one can read the "Memoirs" without feeling that she
+kept her vows.
+
+The estate of Mr. Fuller finally yielded $2,000 to each of the seven
+children, much less, Margaret says, than was anticipated. With
+reason, she wrote, "Life, as I look forward, presents a scene of
+struggle and privation only." In the winter, at Mrs. Farrar's,
+Margaret met Mr. Emerson; the summer following she visited at his
+house in Concord. There she met Mr. Alcott and engaged to teach in his
+school in Boston.
+
+Margaret Fuller's visit at Mr. Emerson's in 1836 had for her very
+important consequences. It was the first of many visits and was the
+beginning of an intimacy which takes its place among the most
+interesting literary friendships in the history of letters. To this
+friendship Col. Higginson devotes a separate chapter in his biography
+of Margaret, and in the "Memoirs," under the title of "Visits to
+Concord," Mr. Emerson gives a charming account of it in more than a
+hundred pages.
+
+Mr. Emerson was by no means the stranger to Margaret that she was to
+him. She had sat under his preaching during his pastorate at the
+Second Church in Boston, and "several of his sermons," so she wrote to
+a friend, "stood apart in her memory like landmarks in her spiritual
+history." It appears that she had failed to come to close quarters
+with this timid apostle. A year after he left his pulpit, she wrote of
+him as the "only clergyman of all possible clergymen who eludes my
+acquaintance."
+
+When, at length, she was invited to Concord, it was as Mrs. Emerson's
+guest, not as his: "she came to spend a fortnight with my wife."
+However, at last she was under his roof. "I still remember," he says,
+"the first half hour of her conversation.... Her extreme plainness,--a
+trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,--the nasal tone
+of her voice--all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get
+far.... I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked.... She
+had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give
+an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain
+at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy
+and superabundant life."
+
+The practical outcome of the visit was an engagement to teach in Mr.
+Alcott's school. Under date of August 2, 1836, Mr. Alcott writes,
+"Emerson called this morning and took me to Concord to spend the day.
+At his house, I met Margaret Fuller ... and had some conversation with
+her about taking Miss Peabody's place in my school." That is to say,
+Mr. Emerson had in his house a brilliant young lady who, by stress of
+circumstances, wanted a situation; he had a friend in Boston in whose
+school there was a vacancy; Mr. Emerson, at some pains to himself,
+brought the parties together. Nor was this the last time that Mr.
+Emerson befriended Margaret.
+
+It appears from Mr. Alcott's diary that Miss Fuller began her
+engagement with January, that she taught Latin and French at the
+school, and French, German, and Italian to private classes. For a
+class of beginners, she "thought it good success," she says, "when at
+the end of three months, they could read twenty pages of German at a
+lesson, and very well." An advanced class in German read Goethe's
+Hermann and Dorothea, Goetz von Berlichingen, Iphigenia, and the first
+part of Faust, "three weeks of thorough study," she calls it, "as
+valuable to me as to them."
+
+The class in Italian went at an equal pace. At the same time she had
+three private pupils, to one of whom, every day for ten weeks, she
+taught Latin "orally,"--in other words, Latin conversation. In her
+leisure, she "translated, one evening every week, German authors into
+English for the gratification of Dr. Channing." It is to be hoped that
+she was paid for this service, because she found it far from
+interesting. "It is not very pleasant," she writes, "for Dr. Channing
+takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable to us feminine
+people."
+
+In the spring of 1837, Margaret accepted an invitation to teach in a
+private academy in Providence, R. I.--four hours a day, at a salary of
+$1,000. We are not told how this invitation came to her, but it is not
+difficult to detect the hand of Mr. Emerson. The proprietor of the
+school was an admirer of Emerson, so much so that he brought Emerson
+from Concord in June following, to dedicate a new school building. His
+relation to both parties makes it probable that Margaret owed her
+second engagement, as she did her first, to the good offices of Mr.
+Emerson.
+
+She taught in this school with success, two years, "worshipped by the
+girls," it is said, "but sometimes too sarcastic for the boys." The
+task of teaching, however, was irksome to her, her mind was in
+literature; she had from Mr. Ripley a definite proposition to write a
+"Life of Goethe," a task of which she had dreamed many years; and she
+resigned her position, and withdrew from the profession of
+school-teacher, at the end of 1838. Her life of Goethe was never
+written, but it was always dancing before her eyes and, more than
+once, determined her course.
+
+In the following spring, Margaret took a pleasant house in Jamaica
+Plain, "then and perhaps now," Col. Higginson says, "the most rural
+and attractive suburb of Boston." Here she brought her mother and the
+younger children. Three years later, she removed with them to
+Cambridge, and for the next five years, she kept the family together,
+and made a home for them. In addition to the income of the estate, she
+expected to meet her expenses by giving lessons. Two pupils came with
+her from Providence, and other pupils came for recitations, by whom
+she was paid at the rate of two dollars an hour.
+
+With these resources the life in Jamaica Plain began very quietly and
+pleasantly. To be quiet however was not natural to Margaret. Besides,
+she had fallen upon what, intellectually, were stirring times. It was
+at the high tide of the Transcendental movement. William Henry
+Channing who, like Margaret, was a part of it, says, "the summer of
+1839 saw the full dawn of this strange enthusiasm." As he briefly
+defines it "Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was a
+pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the
+temple of the living God in the soul." Its disciples, says Mr.
+Channing, "were pleasantly nick-named the 'Like-minded,' on the ground
+that no two were of the same opinion." Of this company, he says,
+"Margaret was a member by the grace of nature.... Men, her superiors
+in years, in fame and social position, treated her more with the
+frankness due from equal to equal, than the half condescending
+deference with which scholars are wont to adapt themselves to
+women.... It was evident that they prized her verdict, respected her
+criticism, feared her rebuke, and looked to her as an umpire." In
+speaking, "her opening was deliberate, like the progress of a massive
+force gaining its momentum; but as she felt her way, and moving in a
+congenial element, the sweep of her speech became grand. The style of
+her eloquence was sententious, free from prettiness, direct, vigorous,
+charged with vitality."
+
+It was a saying of hers that if she had been a man, she would have
+aspired to become an orator, and it seems probable she would not have
+aspired in vain. The natural sequel to the occasional discussions of
+the summer was the formation of a class of ladies for Conversation,
+with Margaret as the leader. This class contained twenty-five or
+thirty ladies, among whom were Mrs. George Bancroft, Mrs. Lydia Maria
+Child, Mrs. Horace Mann, Mrs. Theodore Parker, Mrs. Waldo Emerson,
+Mrs. George Ripley, and Mrs. Josiah Quincy. The first series of
+thirteen meetings was immediately followed by a second series; they
+were resumed the next winter and were continued with unabated interest
+for five years.
+
+The subjects considered in these celebrated Conversations ranged over
+a very wide field, from mythology and religion, poetry and art, to
+war, ethics, and sociology. If Margaret had not been brilliant in
+these assemblies, she would have fallen short of herself as she has
+been represented in the Cambridge drawing-rooms. As reported by one of
+the members of the class, "Margaret used to come to the conversations
+very well dressed and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them
+with an exordium in which she gave her leading views,"--a part which
+she is further said to have managed with great skill and charm, after
+which she invited others to join in the discussion. Mr. Emerson tells
+us that the apparent sumptuousness in her attire was imaginary, the
+"effect of a general impression made by her genius and mistakenly
+attributed to some external elegance; for," he says, "I have been told
+by her most intimate friend, who knew every particular of her conduct
+at the time, that there was nothing of especial expense or splendor in
+her toilette."
+
+Mr. Emerson knew a lady "of eminent powers, previously by no means
+partial to Margaret," who said, on leaving one of these assemblies, "I
+never heard, read of, or imagined a conversation at all equal to this
+we have now heard." Many testimonies have been brought together, in
+the "Memoirs," of the enthusiasm and admiration created by Margaret in
+these Conversations. They were probably her most brilliant
+achievements, though, in the nature of the case, nothing survives of
+them but the echo in these recorded memories of participants.
+
+Mr. Emerson says that "the fame of these conversations" led to a
+proposal that Margaret should undertake an evening class to which
+gentlemen should be admitted and that he himself had the pleasure of
+"assisting at one--the second--of these soirees." Margaret "spoke
+well--she could not otherwise,--but I remember that she seemed
+encumbered, or interrupted, by the headiness or incapacity of the
+men." A lady who attended the entire series, a "true hand," he says,
+reports that "all that depended on others entirely failed" and that
+"even in the point of erudition, which Margaret did not profess on the
+subject, she proved the best informed of the party." This testimony is
+worth something in answer to the charge that Margaret's scholarship
+was fictitious, that she had a smattering of many things, but knew
+nothing thoroughly. She seems to have compared well with others, some
+of whom were considered scholars. "Take her as a whole," said Mr.
+Emerson's informant, "she has the most to bestow on others by
+conversation of any person I have ever known."
+
+For these services, Margaret seems to have received liberal
+compensation, though all was so cordial that she says she never had
+the feeling of being "a paid Corinne." For the conversations with
+ladies and gentlemen, according to Mrs. Dall who has published her
+notes of them, the tickets were $20 each, for the series of ten
+evenings.
+
+It appears from his account that Mr. Emerson saw much of Margaret
+during these years and that she was frequently his guest. "The day,"
+he says, "was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory; and I,
+who knew her intimately for ten years,--from July, 1836, till August,
+1846, when she sailed for Europe,--never saw her without a surprise at
+her new powers." She was as busy as he, and they seldom met in the
+forenoon, but "In the evening, she came to the library, and many and
+many a conversation was there held," he tells us, "whose details, if
+they could be preserved, would justify all encomiums. They interested
+me in every manner;--talent, memory, wit, stern introspection, poetic
+play, religion, the finest personal feeling, the aspects of the
+future, each followed each in full activity, and left me, I remember,
+enriched, and sometimes astonished by the gifts of my guest."
+
+She was "rich in friends," and wore them "as a necklace of diamonds
+about her neck." "She was an active and inspiring companion and
+correspondent, and all the art, the thought and nobleness of New
+England seemed, at that moment, related to her and she to it. She was
+everywhere a welcome guest.... Her arrival was a holiday, and so was
+her abode ... all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to
+catch the favorable hour, in walking, riding, or boating to talk with
+this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories,
+tragedies, oracles with her, and, with her broad relations to so many
+fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who
+carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had
+been finally referred."
+
+At a later day, when Margaret was in Italy, reports came back that she
+was making conquests, and having advantageous offers of marriage. Even
+Mr. Emerson expressed surprise at these social successes in a strange
+land, but a lady said to him, "There is nothing extraordinary in it.
+Had she been a man, any one of those fine girls of sixteen, who
+surrounded her here, would have married her: they were all in love
+with her."
+
+"Of personal influence, speaking strictly,--an efflux, that is, purely
+of mind and character," Mr. Emerson thinks she had more than any other
+person he ever knew. Even a recluse like Hawthorne yielded to this
+influence. Hawthorne was married to Miss Sophia Peabody in 1842, and
+began housekeeping in the Old Manse in Concord. The day following
+their engagement Miss Peabody wrote Miss Fuller addressing her "Dear,
+most noble Margaret," and saying, "I feel that you are entitled,
+through our love and regard to be told directly.... Mr. Hawthorne,
+last evening, in the midst of his emotions, so deep and absorbing,
+after deciding, said that Margaret can now, when she visits Mr.
+Emerson spend part of the time with us." A month after the marriage,
+Hawthorne himself wrote to Margaret, "There is nobody to whom I would
+more willingly speak my mind, because I can be certain of being
+understood." Evidently he is not beginning an acquaintance; he already
+knows Margaret intimately and respects her thoroughly. There is no
+evidence, I believe, that during her life, he held any different
+opinion of her.
+
+These facts have become of special interest because, in Italy, eight
+years after her death, he wrote in his Note-Book, that Margaret "had a
+strong and coarse nature" and that "she was a great humbug." The most
+reasonable explanation of this change of view is that Margaret was
+dead, poor woman, and could not speak for herself; that she had fought
+with all her might in an Italian Revolution that had failed; that
+having failed, she and her party were discredited; that her enemies
+survived, and Hawthorne listened to them. However his later opinions
+may be explained, the quality of her friends in America, among whom
+had been Hawthorne himself, is evidence that Margaret was not of a
+"coarse nature," and it is incredible that a "humbug" could have
+imposed herself for five years upon those ladies who attended her
+conversations, not to speak of James Freeman Clarke who was a fair
+scholar and Dr. Hedge who was a very rare scholar.
+
+Margaret had her weaknesses, which her friends do not conceal. It was
+a weakness, not perhaps that she overestimated herself; that might be
+pardoned; but that she took no pains to conceal her high opinion of
+her abilities and worth. One likes to see an appearance of modesty,
+and that little deceit Margaret did not practice. On the contrary, Mr.
+Emerson says, "Margaret at first astonished and then repelled us by a
+complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of
+Scaligar.... In the coolest way, she said to her friends, 'I now know
+all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect
+comparable to my own.'... It is certain that Margaret occasionally let
+slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the
+presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who
+knew her good sense." Col. Higginson quotes a saying about the
+Fullers, that "Their only peculiarity was that they said openly about
+themselves the good and bad things which we commonly suppress about
+ourselves and express only about other people." The common way is not
+more sincere, but it is pleasanter.
+
+In 1840, the second year of Margaret's Conversations, appeared the
+first number of _The Dial_, a literary magazine of limited
+circulation, but destined to a kind of post-mortem immortality. In
+1841, the Community of Brook Farm was established. An interesting
+account of both enterprises, and of Margaret's part in them, is given
+by Mr. Emerson in a paper found in the tenth volume of his collected
+Works. In the preliminary discussions leading to both enterprises,
+Margaret participated. Like Mr. Emerson, she did not have unqualified
+faith in the Brook Farm experiment and did not join the community,
+though she had many friends in it, was a frequent visitor, and had the
+honor to sit for the portrait of "Zenobia" in Mr. Hawthorne's
+Blithedale Romance.
+
+Her part in _The Dial_ was more prominent. She edited the first two
+volumes of the magazine, being then succeeded by Mr. Emerson, and she
+wrote for it a paper entitled "Man vs. Men: Woman vs. Women,"
+afterward expanded and published in a volume under the title, "Woman
+in the Nineteenth Century," her second and most famous book. Her first
+book, "Summer on the Lakes," is an account of a charming journey, with
+the family of James Freeman Clarke and others, by steamboat and farm
+wagon, as far as the Mississippi. It was a voyage of discovery, and
+her account has permanent historic interest.
+
+In 1844, Margaret accepted an advantageous offer to become literary
+editor of the _New York Tribune_, a position which she was admirably
+qualified to fill. A collection of papers from _The Tribune_, under
+the title of "Literature and Art," made up her third book, published
+in 1846, on the eve of her departure for Europe.
+
+During her residence in New York, she became greatly interested in
+philanthropies, especially in the care of prisoners of her own sex.
+She visited the jails and prisons, interviewed the inmates, gave them
+"conversations," and wrought upon them the same miracle which she had
+so often performed in refined drawing-rooms. "If she had been born to
+large fortune," said Mr. Greeley, "a house of refuge for all female
+outcasts desiring to return to the ways of virtue would have been one
+of her most cherished and first realized conceptions."
+
+Early in her New York residence must also have occurred that rather
+mysterious love affair with the young Hebrew, Mr. Nathan, who seems
+first to have charmed her with his music and then with his heart.
+After nearly sixty years, the letters which she wrote him, full of
+consuming fire, have at last seen the light. From a passage in one of
+them, it would seem that marriage was not contemplated by either
+party, that in theory at least they took no thought of the morrow, the
+bliss of the moment being held sufficient. Evidently there was no
+engagement, but no one can doubt that on her part there was love. Of
+course in this changing world, no such relations can be maintained for
+ever, and in the end there will be an awakening, and then pain.
+
+In 1846, Margaret realized her life-dream and went to Europe. Destined
+to a life of adventure, she was accidently separated from her party,
+and spent a perilous night on Ben Lomond, without a particle of
+shelter, in a drenching rain, a thrilling account of which she has
+written. She visited Carlyle and, for a wonder, he let her take a
+share in the conversation. To Mr. Emerson he wrote, Margaret "is very
+narrow sometimes, but she is truly high."
+
+On her way to Italy, the goal of her ambition, she visited George Sand
+and they had such a meeting as two women of genius might. She sailed
+from Genoa for Naples in February, 1847, and arrived in Rome in May
+following. There is much to interest a reader in her Italian life, but
+the one thing which cannot be omitted is the story of her marriage to
+the Marquis Ossoli. Soon after her arrival in Rome, on a visit to St.
+Peter's, Margaret became separated from her friends, whom she did not
+again discover at the place appointed for meeting. A gentleman seeing
+her distress, offered to get her a carriage and, not finding one,
+walked home with her. This was the young Marquis Ossoli, and thus
+fortuitously the acquaintance began, which was continued by occasional
+meetings. The summer Margaret spent in the north of Italy, and when
+she returned to Rome, she took modest apartments in which she received
+her friends every Monday evening, and the Marquis came very regularly.
+
+It was not long however before he confessed his love for her and asked
+her hand in marriage. He was gently rejected, being told that he ought
+to marry a younger woman, and that she would be his friend but not
+his wife. He however persisted, at length won her consent, and they
+were privately married in December. I follow the account of Mrs.
+William Story, wife of the artist, then residing in Rome. The old
+Marquis Ossoli had recently died, leaving an unsettled estate, of
+which his two older sons, both in the Papal service, were the
+executors. "Every one knows," says Mrs. Story, "that law is subject to
+ecclesiastical influence in Rome, and that marriage with a Protestant
+would be destructive of all prospect of favorable administration."
+
+The birth of a child a year later, at Rieti in the Appenines, whither
+Margaret had retired, made secrecy seem more imperative; or, as
+Margaret said, in order to defend the child "from the stings of
+poverty, they were patient waiters for the restored law of the land."
+The Italian Revolution of 1848 was then in progress. Ossoli her
+husband, was a captain in the Civic Guard, on duty in Rome, and the
+letters which she wrote him at this period of trial, were the only
+fragments of her treasures recovered from the wreck in which she
+perished.
+
+Leaving her babe with his nurse, in April following, she visited Rome
+and was shut up in the siege by the French army which had been sent
+to overthrow the provisional government and restore the authority of
+the pope. "Ossoli took station with his men on the walls of the
+Vatican garden where he remained faithfully to the end of the attack.
+Margaret had entire charge of one of the hospitals.... I have walked
+through the wards with her," says Mrs. Story, "and seen how comforting
+was her presence to the poor suffering men. 'How long will the Signora
+stay?' 'When will the Signora come again?' they eagerly asked.... They
+raised themselves up on their elbows to get the last glimpse of her as
+she was going away."
+
+In the midst of these dangers, Margaret confided to Mrs. Story the
+secret of her marriage and placed in her hands the marriage
+certificate and other documents relating to the affair. These papers
+were afterward returned to Margaret and were lost in the wreck.
+
+The failure of the Revolution was the financial ruin of all those who
+had staked their fortunes in it. They had much reason to be thankful
+if they escaped with their lives. By the intervention of friends, the
+Ossolis were dealt with very leniently. Mr. Greenough, the artist,
+interested himself in their behalf and procured for them permission to
+retire, outside the papal territory, to Florence. Ossoli even
+obtained a small part of his patrimony.
+
+Except the disappointment and sorrow over the faded dream of Italian
+Independence, the winter at Florence was one of the bright spots in
+Margaret's life. She was proud of her husband's part in the
+Revolution: "I rejoice," she says, "in all Ossoli did." She had her
+babe with her and her happiness in husband and child was perfect: "My
+love for Ossoli is most pure and tender, nor has any one, except my
+mother or little children, loved me so genuinely as he does.... Ossoli
+seems to me more lovely and good every day; our darling child is well
+now, and every day more gay and playful."
+
+She found pleasant and congenial society: "I see the Brownings often,"
+she says, "and love them both more and more as I know them better. Mr.
+Browning enriches every hour I spend with him, and is a most cordial,
+true, and noble man. One of my most prized Italian friends,
+Marchioness Arconati Visconti, of Milan, is passing the winter here,
+and I see her almost every day." Moreover she was busy with a
+congenial task. At the very opening of the struggle for liberty, she
+planned to write a history of the eventful period, and with this
+purpose, collected material for the undertaking, and already had a
+large part of the work in manuscript. She finished the writing in
+Florence, and much value was set upon it both by herself and by her
+friends in Italy. Mrs. Story says, "in the estimation of most of those
+who were in Italy at the time, the loss of Margaret's history and
+notes is a great and irreparable one. No one could have possessed so
+many avenues of direct information from both sides."
+
+When the spring opened, it was decided to return to America, partly to
+negotiate directly with the publisher, but chiefly because, having
+exhausted her resources, Margaret's pen must henceforth be the main
+reliance of the little family. It is pathetic to know that, after
+their passage had been engaged, "letters came which, had they reached
+her a week earlier, would probably have induced them to remain in
+Italy."
+
+They sailed, May 17, 1850, in a merchant vessel, the only other
+passengers being the baby's nurse and Mr. Horace Sumner, a younger
+brother of Senator Sumner. After a protracted and troubled voyage of
+two months, the vessel arrived off the coast of New Jersey, on July
+18. The "weather was thick.... By nine p. m. there was a gale, by
+midnight a hurricane," and at four o'clock on the morning of July 19,
+the vessel grounded on the shallow sands of Fire Island. The captain
+had died of smallpox on the voyage; his widow, the mate in command of
+the vessel, and four seamen reached the shore; Mr. Sumner and the
+Ossolis perished. The cruel part of the tragedy is that it seems
+probable every soul on board might have been saved. Life-boats, only
+three miles away, did not arrive until noon; that is, after eight
+precious hours had passed. Moreover, in a moment of penitence, one of
+the life-boat crew said, "Oh, if we had known that any such persons of
+importance were on board, we should have done our best."
+
+Margaret, the name by which she will always be known, had passed her
+fortieth birthday at sea on this voyage. It seems a short life in
+which to have crowded so much and such varied experience. She had some
+trials even in her youth, but for two-thirds of her existence, she
+might have been considered a favorite of fortune. In later life, she
+had some battles to fight, but her triumphs were great enough to
+dazzle a person with more modesty than was her endowment. She suffered
+in Italy, both for her child left to strangers in the mountains, and
+for her adopted country, but they were both causes, in which for her,
+suffering was a joy. She did not desire to survive her husband and
+child, nor to leave them behind, and, we may say, happily they all
+went together. "Her life seems to me," says Col. Higginson, "on the
+whole, a triumphant rather than a sad one," and that is a reasonable
+verdict, however difficult to render in the presence of such a tragedy
+as her untimely death.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
+
+
+[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE]
+
+"Is this the little woman who made this great war!" exclaimed
+President Lincoln when, in 1862, Mrs. Stowe was introduced to him.
+There was but one woman in America to whom this could have been said
+without absurdity. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was so conspicuous a factor in
+bringing on the war which abolished American slavery that to credit
+these results to Mrs. Stowe was not fulsome flattery but graceful
+compliment.
+
+There are two excellent biographies of Mrs. Stowe, one published in
+1889, by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and one, in 1897, by Mrs.
+Annie Fields. That work will hardly need to be done again. The object
+of this sketch is to study the influences that moulded Mrs. Stowe, to
+present the salient features of her career, and, incidentally, to
+discover her characteristic qualities. Her fame rests upon her
+literary achievements, and these are comparatively well known. Her
+literary career can hardly be said to have begun until the age of
+forty and, if this were the only interest her life had for us, we
+could pass hastily over her youth. It will be found however that her
+religious development, begun prematurely with her fourth year and
+continued without consideration or discretion until at seventeen she
+became a chronic invalid, gives a kind of tragic interest to her
+earlier years. Her religious education may not have been unique; it
+may have been characteristic of much of the religious life of New
+England, but girls set at work upon the problems of their souls at the
+age of four have seldom attained the distinction of having their
+biographies written, so that one can study their history.
+
+Harriet, the second daughter and seventh child of Lyman Beecher and
+Roxanna Foote, was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 14, 1811. There
+were three Mrs. Lyman Beechers of whom Roxanna Foote was the first.
+The Footes were Episcopalians, Harriet, sister of Roxanna, being as
+Mrs. Stowe says, "the highest of High Churchwomen who in her private
+heart did not consider my father an ordained minister." Roxanna,
+perhaps not so high-church, held out for two years against Dr.
+Beecher's assaults upon her heart and then consented to become his
+wife.
+
+Mrs. Beecher was a refined and cultivated lady who "read all the new
+works that were published at that day," numbered painting among her
+accomplishments, and whose house "was full of little works of
+ingenuity and taste and skill, which had been wrought by her hand:
+pictures of birds and flowers, done with minutest skill"; but her
+greatest charm was a religious nature full of all gentleness and
+sweetness. "In no exigency," says Dr. Beecher, "was she taken by
+surprise. She was just there, quiet as an angel above." There seems to
+have been but one thing which this saintly woman with an Episcopalian
+education could not do to meet the expectations of a Congregational
+parish, and that was that "in the weekly female prayer-meeting she
+could never lead the devotions"; but from this duty she seems to have
+been excused because of her known sensitiveness and timidity.
+
+Mrs. Beecher died when Harriet was in her fourth year, but she left an
+indelible impression upon her family. Her "memory met us everywhere,"
+says Mrs. Stowe; "when father wished to make an appeal to our hearts
+which he knew we could not resist, he spoke of mother." It had been
+the mother's prayer that her sons, of whom there were six, should be
+ministers, and ministers they all were. One incident Mrs. Stowe
+remembered which may be supposed to have set Sunday apart as a day of
+exceptional sanctity. It was that "of our all running and dancing out
+before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning
+and her pleasant voice saying after us, 'Remember the Sabbath day to
+keep it holy.'" Such early religious impressions made upon the mind of
+a child of four would have faded in other surroundings, but it will be
+seen that Harriet's environment gave no rest to her little soul.
+
+After the death of her mother, the child was sent to her grandmother
+Foote's for a long visit. There she fell to the charge of her aunt
+Harriet, than whom, we are told, "a more energetic human being never
+undertook the education of a child." According to her views, "little
+girls were to be taught to move very gently, to speak softly and
+prettily, to say 'Yes ma'am' and 'No ma'am,' never to tear their
+clothes, to sew and knit at regular hours, to go to church on Sunday
+and make all the responses, and to come home and be catechised. I
+remember those catechisings when she used to place my little cousin
+Mary and myself bolt upright at her knee while black Dinah and Harvey,
+the bound boy, were ranged at a respectful distance behind us.... I
+became a proficient in the Church catechism and gave my aunt great
+satisfaction by the old-fashioned gravity and steadiness with which I
+learned to repeat it." This early training in the catechism and the
+responses bore fruit in giving Mrs. Stowe a life-long fondness for the
+Episcopal service and ultimately in taking her into the Episcopal
+Church, of which during her last thirty years she was a communicant.
+Harriet signalized her fifth year by committing to memory twenty-seven
+hymns and "two long chapters of the Bible," and even more perhaps, by
+accidentally discovering in the attic a discarded volume of the
+"Arabian Nights," with which, she says, her fortune was made. It was a
+much more suitable child's book, one would think, than the Church
+catechism or Watts's hymns.
+
+At the age of six Harriet passed to the care of the second Mrs. Lyman
+Beecher, formerly Harriet Porter, of Portland, Maine, apparently a
+lady of great dignity and character. "We felt," says Mrs. Stowe, "a
+little in awe of her, as if she were a strange princess rather than
+our own mamma; but her voice was very sweet, her ways of speaking and
+moving very graceful, and she took us up in her lap and let us play
+with her beautiful hands which seemed wonderful things, made of pearl
+and ornamented with strange rings." It appears she was a faithful
+mother, though a little severe and repressive. Henry Ward Beecher said
+of her: "She did the office-work of a mother if ever a mother did";
+she "performed to the uttermost her duties, according to her ability";
+she "was a woman of profound veneration rather than of a warm loving
+nature. Therefore her prayer was invariably a prayer of deep yearning
+reverence. I remember well the impression which it made on me. There
+was a mystic influence about it. A sort of sympathetic hold it had on
+me, but still I always felt when I went to prayer, as though I were
+going into a crypt, where the sun was not allowed to come; and I
+shrunk from it." To complete the portrait of this conscientious lady
+who was to have the supervision of Harriet from her sixth year, the
+following from a letter of one of the Beecher children is worth
+quoting: "Mamma is well and don't laugh any more than she did."
+Evidently a rather stern and sobering influence had come into the
+Beecher family.
+
+"In her religion," says Mrs. Stowe, "she was distinguished by a most
+unfaltering Christ-worship.... Had it not been that Dr. Payson had
+set up and kept before her a tender, human, loving Christ, she would
+have been only a conscientious bigot. This image, however, gave
+softness and warmth to her religious life, and I have since noticed
+how her Christ-enthusiasm has sprung up in the hearts of all her
+children." This passage is of peculiar interest as it shows the source
+of what Mrs. Stowe loves to call the "Christ-worship" which
+characterized the religion of the younger Beechers. Writing at the age
+of seventeen, when her soul was tossing between Scylla and Charybdis,
+Harriet says: "I feel that I love God,--that is, that I love Christ";
+and in 1876, writing of her brother Henry, she says, "He and I are
+Christ-worshippers, adoring him as the Image of the Invisible
+God." Her son refers us to the twenty-fourth chapter of the
+Minister's Wooing for a complete presentation of this subject "of
+Christ-worship." Mrs. Stowe speaks of this belief as a plain departure
+from ordinary Trinitarianism, as a kind of heresy which it has
+required some courage to hold. The heresy seems to have consisted in
+practically dropping the first and third persons in the Godhead and
+accepting Christ as the only God we know or need to consider.
+
+As Mrs. Stowe during her adult life was an invalid, it is interesting
+to have Mrs. Beecher's testimony that, on her arrival, she was met by
+a lovely family of children and "with heartfelt gratitude," she says,
+"I observed how cheerful and healthy they were." When Harriet was ten
+years of age, she began to attend the Litchfield Academy and was
+recognized as one of its brightest pupils. She especially excelled in
+writing compositions and, at the age of twelve, her essay was one of
+two or three selected to be read at a school exhibition. After
+Harriet's had been read, Dr. Beecher turned to the teacher and asked,
+"Who wrote that composition?" "Your daughter, Sir," was the reply. "It
+was," says Mrs. Stowe, "the proudest moment of my life."
+
+"Can the immortality of the soul be proved by the light of Nature?"
+was the subject of this juvenile composition, a strange choice for a
+girl of twelve summers; but in this family the religious climate was
+tropical, and forced development. As might have been expected, she
+easily proved that nothing of immortality could be known by the light
+of nature. She had been too well instructed to think otherwise. Dr.
+Beecher himself had no good opinion of 'the light of nature.' "They
+say," said he, "that everybody knows about God naturally. A lie. All
+such ideas are by teaching." If Harriet had taken the other side of
+her question and argued as every believer tries to to-day, she would
+have deserved some credit for originality. Nevertheless the form of
+her argument is remarkable for her years, and would not have
+dishonored Dr. Beecher's next sermon. This amazing achievement of a
+girl of twelve can be read in the Life of Mrs. Stowe by her son.
+
+From the Litchfield Academy, Harriet was sent to the celebrated Female
+Seminary established by her sister Catharine at Hartford, Conn. She
+here began the study of Latin and, "at the end of the first year, made
+a translation of Ovid in verse which was read at the final exhibition
+of the school." It was her ambition to be a poet and she began a play
+called 'Cleon,' filling "blank book after blank book with this drama."
+Mrs. Fields prints six pages of this poem and the specimens have more
+than enough merit to convince one that the author might have attained
+distinction as a poet. Her energetic sister Catharine however put an
+end to this innocent diversion, saying that she must not waste her
+time writing poetry but discipline her mind upon Butler's Analogy. To
+enforce compliance, Harriet was assigned to teach the Analogy to a
+class of girls as old as herself, "being compelled to master each
+chapter just ahead of the class." This occupation, with Latin, French
+and Italian, sufficiently protected her from the dissipation of
+writing poetry.
+
+Harriet remained in the Hartford school, as pupil and teacher, from
+her thirteenth to her twenty-third year. In her spiritual history,
+this was an important period. It may seem that her soul had hitherto
+not been neglected but as yet youth and a sunny nature had kept her
+from any agonies of Christian experience. Now her time had come. No
+one under the care of the stern Puritan, Catharine Beecher, would be
+suffered to forget her eternal interests. Both of Mrs. Stowe's
+biographers feel the necessity of making us acquainted with this
+masterful lady, "whose strong, vigorous mind and tremendous
+personality," says Mr. Stowe, "indelibly stamped themselves on the
+sensitive, dreamy, poetic nature of her younger sister."
+
+It was Catharine's distinction to have written, it is claimed, the
+best refutation of Edwards on the Will ever published. She was
+undoubtedly the most acute and vigorous intellect in the Beecher
+family. Like all the members of her remarkable family, she was
+intensely religious and, at the period when Harriet passed to her
+care, gloomily religious. It could not have been otherwise. She had
+been engaged to marry Prof. Alexander Fisher, of Yale College, a young
+man of great promise. Unhappily, he was drowned at sea, and she
+believed his soul was eternally lost. It is futile to ask why Yale
+College should have entrusted a professorship to a man whom the Lord
+would send to perdition, or why Miss Beecher should have loved such an
+abandoned character; it is enough to say that she loved him and that
+she believed his soul to be lost; and was it her fault that she could
+not be a cheerful companion to a young girl of thirteen?
+
+As we have seen, Harriet must not fritter away her time writing plays;
+she must study Butler's Analogy. She must also read Baxter's Saints
+Rest, than which, says Mrs. Stowe, "no book ever affected me more
+powerfully. As I walked the pavements I wished that they might sink
+beneath me if only I might find myself in heaven." In this mental
+condition she went to her home in Litchfield to spend her vacation.
+One dewy fresh Sunday morning of that period stood by itself in her
+memory. "I knew," she says, "it was sacramental Sunday, and thought
+with sadness that when all the good people should take the bread and
+wine I should be left out. I tried hard to think of my sins and count
+them up; but what with the birds, the daisies, and the brooks that
+rippled by the way, it was impossible." The sermon of Dr. Beecher was
+unusually sweet and tender and when he appealed to his hearers to
+trust themselves to Jesus, their faithful friend, she says, "I longed
+to cry out I will. Then the awful thought came over me that I had
+never had any conviction of my sins and consequently could not come to
+him." Happily the inspiration came to her that if she needed
+conviction of sin and Jesus were such a friend, he would give it to
+her; she would trust him for the whole, and she went home illumined
+with joy.
+
+When her father returned, she fell into his arms saying, "Father, I
+have given myself to Jesus and he has taken me." "Is it so?" said he.
+"Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this day." This is
+very sweet and beautiful and it shows that Dr. Beecher had a tender
+heart under his Calvinistic theology. "If she could have been let
+alone," says her son, "and taught to 'look up and not down, forward
+and not back, out and not in,' this religious experience might have
+gone on as sweetly and naturally as the opening of a flower in the
+gentle rays of the sun. But unfortunately this was not possible at a
+time when self-examination was carried to an extreme that was
+calculated to drive a nervous and sensitive child well-nigh
+distracted. First, even her sister Catharine was afraid that there
+might be something wrong in the case of a lamb that had come into the
+fold without being first chased all over the lot by the shepherd:
+great stress being laid on what was called being under conviction.
+Then also the pastor of the First Church in Hartford, a bosom friend
+of Dr. Beecher, looked with melancholy and suspicious eyes on this
+unusual and doubtful path to heaven."
+
+Briefly stated, these two spiritual guides put Harriet through a
+process which brought her to a sense of sin that must have filled
+their hearts with joy. She reached the stage when she wrote to her
+brother Edward: "My whole life is one continued struggle; I do nothing
+right. I am beset behind and before, and my sins take away all my
+happiness."
+
+Unfortunately for her, it was at this stage of Harriet's religious
+experience that Dr. Beecher was called to Boston to stem the rising
+tide of Unitarianism, with its easy notions about conviction of sin
+and other cardinal elements of a true faith. To be thrown into the
+fervors of a crusade was just the experience which Harriet's heated
+brain did not need. Her life at this period was divided between
+Hartford and Boston, but her heart went with Dr. Beecher to his great
+enterprise in Boston, or, as Mrs. Fields says, "This period in Boston
+was the time when Harriet felt she drew nearer to her father than at
+any other period of her life."
+
+It will not be necessary to go farther into this controversy than to
+show what a cauldron it was for the family of Dr. Beecher. In his
+autobiography, Dr. Beecher says, "From the time Unitarianism began to
+show itself in this country, it was as fire in my bones." After his
+call to Boston, he writes again, "My mind had been heating, heating,
+heating. Now I had a chance to strike." The situation that confronted
+him in Boston rather inflamed than subdued his spirit. Let Mrs. Stowe
+tell the story herself. "Calvinism or orthodoxy," she says, "was the
+despised and persecuted form of faith. It was the dethroned royal
+family wandering like a permitted mendicant in the city where it once
+held high court, and Unitarianism reigned in its stead. All the
+literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarians. All the trustees and
+professors of Harvard College were Unitarians. All the elite of wealth
+and fashion crowded Unitarian churches. The judges on the bench were
+Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of church
+organization, so carefully ordained by the Pilgrim Fathers, had been
+nullified. The dominant majority entered at once into possession of
+churches and church property, leaving the orthodox minority to go out
+into schoolhouses and town halls, and build their churches as best
+they could."
+
+We can hardly suppose that Harriet had read the decision of the court,
+or that she deemed it necessary; she knew it was wrong by instinct,
+and the iron entered her soul. The facts appear to have been as
+follows: The old parishes in New England included a given territory
+like a school district or a voting precinct. Members of a given
+parish, if they were communicants, formed themselves into a "church"
+which was the church of that parish. The court decided that this
+church always remained the church of that parish. Members might
+withdraw, but they withdrew as individuals. They could not withdraw
+the church, not even if they constituted a majority.
+
+The correctness of this decision does not concern us here; it is
+enough that Dr. Beecher thought it wrong and that Harriet thought it
+wrong. "The effect of all this," she says, "upon my father's mind was
+to keep him at a white heat of enthusiasm. His family prayers at this
+period, departing from the customary forms of unexcited hours, became
+often upheavings of passionate emotion, such as I shall never forget.
+'Come, Lord Jesus,' he would say, 'here where the bones of the fathers
+rest, here where the crown has been torn from thy brow, come and
+recall thy wandering children. Behold thy flock scattered upon the
+mountain--these sheep, what have they done! Gather them, gather them,
+O good shepherd, for their feet stumble upon the dark mountains.'"
+
+The fierce heat of this period was too much for a tender plant like
+Harriet. For her state of mind, even Catharine thought the Boston home
+life was not entirely suitable. It would be better for her in
+Hartford. "Harriet will have young society here which she cannot have
+at home, and I think cheerful and amusing friends will do much for
+her." Catharine had received a letter from Harriet which, she says,
+"made me feel uneasy," as well it might. Harriet had written her
+sister: "I don't know as I am fit for anything, and I have thought
+that I could wish to die young and let the remembrance of me and my
+faults perish in the grave.... Sometimes I could not sleep, and have
+groaned and cried till midnight, while in the daytime I tried to
+appear cheerful, and succeeded so well that papa reproved me for
+laughing so much." Life was too serious to permit even an affectation
+of gaiety. "The atmosphere of that period," says Mrs. Field, "and the
+terrible arguments of her father and of her sister Catharine were
+sometimes more than she could endure." Her brother Edward was helpful
+and comforting. She thanks him for helping her solve some of her
+problems, but the situation was critical: "I feared that if you left
+me thus I might return to the same dark, desolate state in which I had
+been all summer. I felt that my immortal interest, my happiness for
+both worlds, was depending on the turn my feelings might take."
+
+Dr. Beecher was too much absorbed with his mission to observe what was
+going on in his own family, unless there chanced to be an unexpected
+outburst of gaiety. "Every leisure hour was beset by people who came
+with earnest intention to express to him those various phases of
+weary, restless wandering desire proper to an earnest people whose
+traditional faith has been broken up.... Inquirers were constantly
+coming with every imaginable theological problem ... he was to be seen
+all day talking with whoever would talk ... till an hour or two before
+the time (of service), when he would rush up to his study; ... just as
+the last stroke of the bell was dying away, he would emerge from the
+study with his coat very much awry, come down stairs like a hurricane,
+stand impatiently protesting while female hands that ever lay in wait
+adjusted his cravat and settled his collar ... and hooking wife or
+daughter like a satchel on his arm, away he would start on such a race
+through the streets as left neither brain nor breath till the church
+was gained." Such, very much abbreviated, is Mrs. Stowe's portrait of
+her father at this period. It is a good example of her power of
+delineation; but what a life was this for a half distracted girl like
+Harriet! Much better for her would have been the old serene, peaceful,
+quiet life of Litchfield.
+
+She had several kinds of religious trouble. It troubled her that in
+the book of Job, God should seem "to have stripped a dependent
+creature of all that renders life desirable, and then to have answered
+his complaints from the whirlwind, and, instead of showing mercy and
+pity, to have overwhelmed him with a display of his power and
+justice." It troubled her that when she allowed herself to take a
+milder view of deity, "I feel," she says, "less fear of God and, in
+view of sin, I feel only a sensation of grief." This was an alarming
+decline. It troubled her again that she loved literature, whereas she
+ought only to care for religion. She writes to Edward: "You speak of
+your predilections for literature being a snare to you. I have found
+it so myself." Evidently, as she has before said, she was beset behind
+and before. What was perhaps worst of all, the heavens seemed closed
+to her. Calvinism was pure agnosticism; and she had been educated a
+Calvinist. There was no 'imminent God,' in all and through all, for
+Calvinism; that came in with Transcendentalism, a form of thought
+which never seems to have touched Mrs. Stowe. She seems always to
+have felt, as at this period she writes Edward, that "still, after
+all, God is a being afar off." Nevertheless, there was Christ, but
+Christ at this period was also afar off: "I feel that I love
+God,--that is that I love Christ,--that I find happiness in it, and
+yet it is not that kind of comfort which would arise from free
+communication of my wants and sorrows to a friend. I sometimes wish
+that the Savior were visibly present in this world, that I might go to
+him for a solution of some of my difficulties."
+
+It will be seen from this passage that Harriet's storm-tossed soul was
+settling down upon Christ as the nearest approach to God one could
+gain in the darkness, and with this she taught herself to be content.
+"So, after four years of struggling and suffering," writes her son,
+"she returns to the place where she started from as a child of
+thirteen. It has been like watching a ship with straining masts and
+storm-beaten sails, buffeted by the waves, making for the harbor, and
+coming at last to quiet anchorage." One cannot help reflecting how
+different would have been her experience in the household of Dr.
+Channing; but Dr. Beecher would sooner have trusted her in a den of
+wolves.
+
+Harriet was seventeen years old when, mentally, she reached her quiet
+anchorage but, physically as might be expected, it was with a
+constitution undermined and with health broken. "She had not grown to
+be a strong woman," says Mrs. Fields; "the apparently healthy and
+hearty child had been suffered to think and feel, to study and starve
+(as we say), starve for relaxation, until she became a woman of much
+suffering and many inadequacies of physical life." A year or two later
+Harriet herself writes, "This inner world of mine has become worn out
+and untenable," and again, "About half my time I am scarcely alive....
+I have everything but good health.... Thought, intense emotional
+thought, has been my disease."
+
+At the end of six restless and stormy years, in 1832, Dr. Beecher
+resigned his Boston pastorate to accept the presidency of Lane
+Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio, Catharine and Harriet
+accompanying the family with the purpose of establishing a high grade
+school for young women. The plan was successfully carried out, and the
+"Western Female Institute" marked a new stage in education west of the
+Alleghenies. One of Harriet's early achievements at Cincinnati was the
+publication of a text-book in geography, her first attempt at
+authorship. She made her entry into the field of imaginative
+literature by gaining a prize of $50 for a story printed in _The
+Western Magazine_.
+
+Her connection with the "Western Female Institute" was brief, and the
+prosecution of a literary career was postponed, by her marriage in
+1836, with Prof. Calvin E. Stowe; or, as she announces this momentous
+event: "about half an hour more and your old friend, schoolmate,
+sister, etc., will cease to be Hattie Beecher and change to nobody
+knows who."
+
+The married life of Mrs. Stowe covered a period of fifty years and was
+a conspicuously happy one. Prof. Stowe, who seemed so much like a myth
+to the general public, was a man of great learning and keen
+intelligence, unimaginative as he says himself, but richly endowed
+with "a certain broad humor and drollery." His son tells us that he
+was "an inimitable mimic and story-teller. No small proportion of Mrs.
+Stowe's success as a literary woman is to be attributed to him." The
+Sam Lawson stories are said to be a little more his than hers, being
+"told as they came from Mr. Stowe's lips with little or no
+alteration." For her scholarly husband, Mrs. Stowe had the highest
+appreciation and the prettiest way of expressing it: "If you were not
+already my dearly loved husband," she writes him, "I should certainly
+fall in love with you." Prof. Stowe could also write a love-letter:
+"There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much
+talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation with so little
+affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense; so much
+enterprise with so little extravagance; so much tongue with so little
+scold; so much sweetness with so little softness; so much of so many
+things and so little of so many other things." If a man's wife is to
+have her biography written, he will not be sorry that he has sent her
+some effusive love-letters.
+
+Fourteen years of Mrs. Stowe's beautiful married life were spent in
+Cincinnati, with many vicissitudes of ill-health, some poverty, and
+the birth of six children, three sons and three daughters. One can get
+some idea both of the happiness and the hardship of that life from her
+letters. In 1843, seven years after marriage, she writes, "Our straits
+for money this year are unparalleled even in our annals. Even our
+bright and cheery neighbor Allen begins to look blue, and says $600 is
+the very most we can hope to collect of our salary, once $1,200."
+Again she writes, "I am already half sick from confinement to the
+house and overwork. If I should sew every day for a month to come I
+should not be able to accomplish half of what is to be done." There
+were trials enough during this period, but her severest affliction
+came in its last year, in the loss of an infant son by cholera. That
+was in 1849, when Cincinnati was devastated; when during the months of
+June, July and August more than nine thousand persons died of cholera
+within three miles of her house, and among them she says, "My Charley,
+my beautiful, loving, gladsome baby, so loving, so sweet, so full of
+life and hope and strength."
+
+In these years, Mrs. Stowe's life was too full of domestic care to
+permit many excursions into the field of literature. In 1842, a
+collection of sketches was published by the Harpers under the title of
+the "Mayflower." Occasionally she contributed a bright little story to
+a monthly or an annual. An amusing account is given of the writing of
+one of these stories, by a lady who volunteered to serve as amanuensis
+while Mrs. Stowe dictated, and at the same time supervised a new girl
+in the kitchen: "You may now write," said Mrs. Stowe, "'Her lover
+wept with her, nor dared he again touch the point so sacredly
+guarded--(Mina, roll that crust a little thinner). He spoke in
+soothing tones.--(Mina, poke the coals).'"
+
+These literary efforts, produced under difficulties, inspired Prof.
+Stowe with great confidence in her genius. He wrote her in 1842, "My
+dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book of
+fate." Again he writes, "God has written it in his book that you must
+be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against
+God! You must therefore make all your calculations to spend the rest
+of your life with your pen." Nevertheless the next eight years pass as
+the last six have passed without apparently bringing the dream of a
+literary career nearer fulfilment. With a few strokes of the pen, Mrs.
+Stowe draws a picture of her life at this period: "I was married when
+I was twenty-five years old to a man rich in Greek and Hebrew and,
+alas, rich in nothing else.... During long years of struggling with
+poverty and sickness, and a hot, debilitating climate, my children
+grew up around me. The nursery and the kitchen were my principal
+fields of labor. Some of my friends, pitying my trials, copied and
+sent a number of little sketches from my pen to certain liberally
+paying annuals, with my name. With the first money that I earned in
+this way I bought a feather bed! for as I had married into poverty and
+without a dowry, and as my husband had only a large library of books
+and a good deal of learning, the bed and pillows were thought the most
+profitable investment. After this I thought that I had discovered the
+philosopher's stone. So when a new carpet or mattress was going to be
+needed, or when at the close of the year it began to be evident that
+my family accounts, like poor Dora's, 'wouldn't add up,' then I used
+to say to my faithful friend and factotum Anna, who shared all my joys
+and sorrows, 'Now, if you will keep the babies and attend to things in
+the house for a day, I'll write a piece and then we'll be out of the
+scrape.' So I became an author,--very modest I do assure you."
+
+The hardships and privations of Mrs. Stowe's residence in Cincinnati
+were more than compensated to her by the opportunity it afforded for
+intimate acquaintance with the negro character and personal
+observation of the institution of slavery. Only the breadth of the
+Ohio river separated her from Kentucky, a slave State. While yet a
+teacher in the Female Institute, she spent a vacation upon a Kentucky
+estate, afterward graphically described in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' as Col.
+Shelby's plantation. A companion upon this visit said, "Harriet did
+not seem to notice anything in particular that happened....
+Afterwards, in reading 'Uncle Tom,' I recognized scene after scene of
+that visit portrayed with the most minute fidelity." A dozen years
+before there were any similar demonstrations in Boston, she witnessed
+in 1838, proslavery riots in Cincinnati when Birney's Abolition press
+was wrecked and when Henry Ward Beecher, then a young Cincinnati
+editor, went armed to and from his office. She had had in her service
+a slave girl whose master was searching the city for her, and whose
+rescue had been effected by Prof. Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher who,
+"both armed, drove the fugitive, in a covered wagon, by night, by
+unfrequented roads, twelve miles back into the country, and left her
+in safety." This incident was the basis of "the fugitive's escape from
+Tom Loker and Marks in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"
+
+Lane Theological Seminary, in which Prof. Stowe held a chair, had, it
+is said, "become a hot-bed of abolition." Partly for protection, a
+colony of negroes had settled about the seminary, and these families,
+says Mrs. Stowe, "became my favorite resort in cases of emergency. If
+anyone wishes to have a black face look handsome, let them be left as
+I have been, in feeble health, in oppressive hot weather, with a sick
+baby in arms, and two other ones in the nursery, and not a servant in
+the whole house to do a turn." "Time would fail me," writes Mrs.
+Stowe, "to tell you all that I learned incidentally of the slave
+system in the history of various slaves who came into my family, and
+of the underground railroad which, I may say, ran through our house."
+
+A New England education alone would not have given Mrs. Stowe the
+material to write the story of "Uncle Tom." A youth passed on a
+Southern plantation would have made her callous and indifferent, as it
+did so many tender-hearted women. A New England woman of genius,
+educated in New England traditions, was providentially transferred to
+the heated border line between freedom and slavery and, during
+eighteen years, made to hear a thousand authentic incidents of the
+patriarchal system from the victims themselves. Then "Uncle Tom's
+Cabin" could be written. Perhaps one other element of preparation
+ought to be mentioned since Mrs. Stowe laid stress upon it herself.
+The woman who should write "Uncle Tom's Cabin" needed to be a mother
+who had known what it is to have a child snatched from her arms
+irrevocably and without a moment's notice. It was at her baby's "dying
+bed and at his grave that I learned," she says, "what a poor slave
+mother may feel when her child is torn away from her. In those depths
+of sorrow which seemed to me immeasurable, it was my only prayer to
+God that such anguish might not be suffered in vain.... I allude to
+this because I have often felt that much that is in that book ('Uncle
+Tom') had its roots in the awful scenes and bitter sorrows of that
+summer."
+
+In 1850, this western life, with its mixture of sweet and bitter
+waters, came to an end. The climate of Cincinnati was unfavorable to
+the health of both Mr. and Mrs. Stowe, and Mr. Stowe accepted a
+professorship in Bowdoin College, at the small salary of $1,000 a
+year, declining at the same time an offer from New York city of
+$2,300. Why he accepted the smaller salary is not said. Certainly it
+assured him his old felicity, his Master's blessing upon the poor. The
+situation, however, was better than it seems, as Mrs. Stowe had
+written enough to have confidence in her pen, and she purposed to
+make the family income at least $1,700 by her writings. She
+accomplished much more than that as we shall presently see.
+
+From the car window, as one passes through Brunswick, Maine, he can
+see the house in which Mrs. Stowe passed the three following very
+happy years, in which her seventh child was born, a son who lived to
+be her biographer, and in which she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It will
+be remembered that the year 1850 was made memorable by the enactment
+of the Fugitive Slave Law. How the attempted execution of this law
+affected Mrs. Stowe can be anticipated. "To me," she says, "it is
+incredible, amazing, mournful. I feel as if I should be willing to
+sink with it, were all this sin and misery to sink in the sea.... I
+sobbed, aloud in one pew and Mrs. Judge Reeves in another."
+
+In this mood, Mrs. Stowe received a letter from Mrs. Edward Beecher
+saying, "Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write
+something to make this nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is."
+Her children remember that at the reading of this letter, Mrs. Stowe
+rose from her chair, crushing the letter in her hand, and said, "I
+will write something,--I will if I live." The fulfilment of this vow
+was "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
+
+This story was begun in _The National Era_, on June 5, 1851; it was
+announced to run through three months and it occupied ten. "I could
+not control the story," said Mrs. Stowe; "it wrote itself." Again, she
+said, "I the author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin!' No, indeed. The Lord
+himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest instrument in his hand."
+It has been said that "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' made the crack of the
+slave-driver's whip and the cries of the tortured blacks ring in every
+household in the land, till human hearts could bear it no longer," and
+that it "made the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law an
+impossibility."
+
+It is possible to discuss the question whether "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is
+a work of art, just as it is possible to discuss whether the Sermon on
+the Mount is a work of art, but not whether the story was effective,
+not whether it hit the mark and accomplished its purpose. Mrs. Stowe's
+story is not so much one story as a dozen; in the discriminating
+language of her son, it is "a series of pictures," and who will deny
+that the scenes are skilfully portrayed!
+
+Mrs. Stowe did not know that she had made her fortune; she had not
+written for money; nevertheless when the story was republished in a
+volume, her ten per cent. of the profits brought her $10,000 in four
+months. It went to its third edition in ten days, and one hundred and
+twenty editions, or more than 300,000 copies were sold in this country
+within one year. This astounding popularity was exceeded in Great
+Britain. Not being protected by copyright, eighteen publishing houses
+issued editions varying from 6d to 15s a copy, and in twelve months,
+more than a million and a half of copies had been sold in the British
+dominions. The book was also translated and published in nineteen
+European languages. It was dramatized and brought out in New York in
+1852, and, a year later it was running still. "Everybody goes," it was
+said, "night after night and nothing can stop it." In London, in 1852,
+it was the attraction at two theatres.
+
+What the public thought of the story is evident, nor did competent
+judges dissent. Longfellow said: "It is one of the greatest triumphs
+recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher triumph of
+its moral effect." George Sand said: "Mrs. Stowe is all instinct; it
+is the very reason that she appears to some to have no talent.... I
+cannot say that she has talent as one understands it in the world of
+letters, but she has genius as humanity feels the need of it,--the
+genius of goodness, not that of the man of letters, but of the
+saint.... In matters of art, there is but one rule, to paint and to
+move." I give but a paragraph of a paper which Senator Sumner called
+"a most remarkable tribute, such as was hardly ever offered by such a
+genius to any living mortal."
+
+Apologists for the slave system have declared that "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
+is a libel upon the system. One must do that before he can begin his
+apology; but the remarkable fact is that not even in the South was the
+libel detected at the first. That was an after-thought. Whittier knew
+a lady who read the story "to some twenty young ladies, daughters of
+slave-holders, near New Orleans and amid the scenes described in it,
+and they with one accord pronounced it true." It was not till the sale
+of the book had run to over 100,000 copies that a reaction set in and
+then, strange to say, the note of warning was sounded by that
+infallible authority upon American affairs, the London Times.
+
+In 1852, the year following the publication of "Uncle Tom" Prof. Stowe
+accepted a chair in the Theological Seminary at Andover, and that
+village became the home of the family during the ten following happy
+years. In 1853, Mr. and Mrs. Stowe went to England upon the invitation
+of Anti-Slavery friends who guaranteed and considerably overpaid the
+expenses of the trip. "Should Mrs. Stowe conclude to visit Europe,"
+wrote Senator Sumner, "she will have a triumph." The prediction was
+fulfilled. At Liverpool she is met by friends and breakfasted with a
+little company of thirty or forty people; at Glasgow, she drinks tea
+with two thousand; at Edinburgh there was "another great tea party,"
+and she was presented with a "national penny offering consisting of a
+thousand golden sovereigns on a magnificent silver salver." She had
+the Highlands yet to see as the guest of the Duke of Argyll, not to
+mention London and Paris. After five months, she sailed from Liverpool
+on her return, and is it any wonder that she wrote, "Almost sadly as a
+child might leave its home, I left the shores of kind, strong Old
+England, the mother of us all!"
+
+In 1856, Mrs. Stowe visited Europe a second time for the purpose of
+securing an English copyright upon "Dred," having learned something of
+business by her experience with "Uncle Tom." It will be interesting
+to know that in England "Dred" was considered the better story, that
+100,000 copies of it were sold there in four weeks, and that her
+English publisher issued it in editions of 125,000 copies each. "After
+that," writes Mrs. Stowe, "who cares what the critics say?"
+
+She was abroad nearly a year, visiting France, Switzerland, and Italy,
+and returned in June, 1857, to experience another sad bereavement. Her
+son Henry was a Freshman in Dartmouth college and, while bathing in
+the Connecticut river, he was drowned. This was a severe trial to Mrs.
+Stowe and the more so because, whatever her religion may have done for
+her, the theology in which she had been educated gave no comfort to
+her soul. "Distressing doubts as to Henry's spiritual state were
+rudely thrust upon my soul." These doubts she was able to master at
+least temporarily, by assuming that they were temptations of the
+devil, but three years later in Florence, on a third voyage to Europe,
+she wrote her husband, in reply to his allusions to Henry, "Since I
+have been in Florence, I have been distressed by inexpressible
+yearnings for him,--such sighings and outreachings, with a sense of
+utter darkness and separation, not only from him but from all
+spiritual communion with my God." It will be interesting to know that
+relief was brought her in this painful crisis, by the ministrations of
+spiritualism.
+
+Mrs. Stowe returned in 1860 from her third visit to Europe to find the
+country hovering upon the verge of Civil War. The war brought her
+another sore bereavement. At the battle of Gettysburg, her son, Capt.
+Frederick Stowe, was struck by the fragment of a shell and, though the
+wound healed, he never really recovered. His end was sufficiently
+tragic. With the hope of improving his health by a long sea voyage, he
+sailed from New York for San Francisco by way of Cape Horn. That he
+reached San Francisco in safety, writes his brother, "is known: but
+that is all. No word from him or concerning him has ever reached the
+loving hearts that have waited so anxiously for it, and of his
+ultimate fate nothing is known." Whatever may have been the "spiritual
+state" of this son, Mrs. Stowe had now somewhat modernized her
+theology and could say, "An endless infliction for past sins was once
+the doctrine that we now generally reject.... Of one thing I am
+sure,--probation does not end with this life." To stamp out that very
+heresy had been no small part of Dr. Beecher's mission in Boston.
+
+In 1863, Prof. Stowe having resigned his chair in Andover, Mrs. Stowe
+removed with her family to Hartford where for the remaining
+thirty-three years of her life, she made her summer home. The winter
+of 1866, she spent with her husband in Florida and, the year
+following, she bought in that semi-tropical state an orange orchard,
+the fruit of which the year previous had "brought $2,000 as sold at
+the wharf." Here for sixteen winters Mr. and Mrs. Stowe made their
+home, until her "poor rabbi," as she affectionately calls him, became
+too feeble to bear the long journey from Hartford. There she built a
+small Episcopal church and she invites her brother Charles to become
+an Episcopalian and come and be her minister.
+
+Her son says that "Mrs. Stowe had some years before this joined the
+Episcopal church for the purpose of attending the same communion as
+her daughters." That she desired to attend the same communion as her
+daughters does not seem a sufficient reason for leaving the communion
+of her husband. Certainly, she had other reasons. From her fourth
+year, she had known the service and, as read by her grandmother at
+that time, its prayers "had a different effect upon me," she says,
+"from any other prayers I heard in early life." Moreover, she had a
+mission to the negro race and believed that the Episcopal service is
+specially adapted to their needs: "If my tasks and feelings did not
+incline me toward the Church," she writes her brother, "I should still
+choose it as the best system for training immature minds such as those
+of our negroes. The system was composed with reference to the wants of
+the laboring class of England, at a time when they were as ignorant as
+our negroes are now."
+
+The picture of her southern life which she gives in a letter to George
+Eliot, is very attractive, her husband "sitting on the veranda reading
+all day," but during these years, Mrs. Stowe must have spent much of
+her own time at a writing-table since, for the ten years after 1867,
+when the Florida life began, she published a volume, sometimes two
+volumes, a year. In 1872, she was tempted by the Boston Lecture Bureau
+to give readings from her own works in the principal cities of New
+England, and the following year, the course was repeated in the cities
+of the West. Her audiences were to her amazing. "And how they do
+laugh! We get into regular gales," she writes her lonely husband at
+home.
+
+Her seventieth birthday was celebrated at a gathering of two hundred
+of the leading literary men and women of the land, at the residence of
+Ex-Governor Claflin in Newton. There were poems by Whittier, Dr.
+Holmes, J. T. Trowbridge, Mrs. Whitney, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mrs.
+Fields, and others, many excellent speeches, and finally a speech by
+the little woman herself. This garden party, says her son, was the
+last public appearance of Mrs. Stowe.
+
+Her "rabbi" left her a widow in 1886, dying at the age of 84. Mrs.
+Stowe survived him ten years, dying in 1896, at the age of 85, leaving
+behind her a name loved and honored upon two continents.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
+
+
+[Illustration: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT]
+
+Miss Alcott has been called, perhaps truly, the most popular
+story-teller for children, in her generation. Like those elect souls
+whom the apostle saw arrayed in white robes, she came up through great
+tribulation, paying dearly in labor and privation for her successes,
+but one must pronounce her life happy and fortunate, since she lived
+to enjoy her fame and fortune twenty years, to witness the sale of a
+million volumes of her writings, to receive more than two hundred
+thousand dollars from her publishers, and thereby to accomplish the
+great purpose upon which as a girl she had set her heart, which was,
+to see her father and mother comfortable in their declining years.
+
+Successful as Miss Alcott was as a writer, she was greater as a woman,
+and the story of her life is as interesting,--as full of tragedy and
+comedy,--as the careers of her heroes and heroines. In fact, we have
+reason to believe that the adventures of her characters are often not
+so much invented as remembered, the pranks and frolics of her boys
+and girls being episodes from her own youthful experience. In the
+preface to "Little Women," the most charming of her books, she tells
+us herself that the most improbable incidents are the least imaginary.
+The happy girlhood which she portrays was her own, in spite of
+forbidding conditions. The struggle in which her cheerful nature
+extorted happiness from unwilling fortune, gives a dramatic interest
+to her youthful experiences, as her literary disappointments and
+successes do to the years of her maturity.
+
+Miss Alcott inherited a name which her father's genius had made known
+on both sides of the sea, before her own made it famous in a hundred
+thousand households. Alcott is a derivative from Alcocke, the name by
+which Mr. Alcott himself was known in his boyhood. John Alcocke, born
+in New Haven, Ct., married Mary, daughter of Rev. Abraham Pierson,
+first president of Yale College. He was a man of considerable fortune
+and left 1,200 acres of land to his six children, one of whom was
+Capt. John Alcocke, a man of some distinction in the colonial service.
+Joseph Chatfield Alcocke, son of Capt. John, married Anna, sister of
+Rev. Tillotson Bronson, D.D. Of this marriage, Amos Bronson Alcott,
+father of Louisa, was born, Nov. 29, 1799. The fortunes of Joseph
+Chatfield Alcocke were those of other small farmers of the period, but
+Mrs. Alcocke could not forget that she was the sister of a college
+graduate, and it was worth something to her son to know that he was
+descended from the president of a college. The mother and son early
+settled it that the boy should be a scholar, and the father loyally
+furthered their ambitions, borrowing of his acquaintances such books
+as he discovered and bringing them home for the delectation of his
+studious son. At the age of thirteen, Bronson became a pupil in a
+private school kept by his uncle, Dr. Bronson, and at eighteen, he set
+out for Virginia with the secret purpose of teaching if opportunity
+offered, at the same time taking along a peddler's trunk out of which
+to turn an honest penny and pay the expenses of his journey.
+Circumstances did not favor his becoming a Virginia teacher, but
+between his eighteenth and twenty-third years, he made several
+expeditions into the Southern States as a Yankee peddler, with rather
+negative financial results, but with much enlargement of his
+information and improvement of his rustic manners. Mr. Alcott was
+rather distinguished for his high-bred manners and, on a visit to
+England, there is an amusing incident of his having been mistaken for
+some member of the titled aristocracy.
+
+At the age of twenty-five, Mr. Alcott began his career as a teacher in
+an Episcopal Academy at Cheshire, Ct. His family were Episcopalians,
+and he had been confirmed at sixteen. Since the age of eighteen when
+he started for Virginia as a candidate for a school, he had been
+theorizing upon the art of teaching and had thought out many of the
+principles of what, a century later, began to be called the "New
+Education." He undertook, perhaps too rapidly, to apply his theories
+in the conduct of the Cheshire Academy. His experiments occasioned a
+vast amount of controversy, in which Connecticut conservatism gained a
+victory, and Mr. Alcott retired from the school at the end of two
+years' service. His results however had been sufficient to convince
+him of the soundness of his principles, and to launch him upon the
+troubled career of educational reform.
+
+Among a few intelligent friends and sympathizers who rallied to Mr.
+Alcott's side in this controversy, was Rev. Samuel J. May, a Unitarian
+minister then of Brooklyn, Ct., at whose house, in 1827, Mr. Alcott
+met Mr. May's sister Abbie, who shared fully her brother's enthusiasm
+for the new education and its persecuted apostle. Miss May began her
+relations with Mr. Alcott as his admirer and champion, a dangerous
+part for an enthusiastic young lady to play, as the sequel proved
+when, three years later, she became Mrs. Alcott.
+
+Mrs. Alcott was the daughter of a Boston merchant, Col. Joseph May,
+and his wife, Dorothy Sewall, daughter of Samuel Sewall and his wife,
+Elizabeth Quincy, sister of Dorothy Quincy, wife of John Hancock. By
+the marriage of Joseph May and Dorothy Sewall, two very distinguished
+lines of ancestry had been united. Under her father's roof, Mrs.
+Alcott had enjoyed every comfort and the best of social advantages.
+She was tall, had a fine physique, good intellect, warm affections,
+and generous sympathies, but it would have astonished her to have been
+told that she was bringing to the marriage altar more than she
+received; and however much it may have cost her to be the wife of an
+unworldly idealist, it was precisely his unworldly idealism that first
+won her admiration and then gained her heart.
+
+Life may have been harder for Mrs. Alcott than she anticipated, but
+she knew very well that she was abjuring riches. Two years before her
+marriage, her brother had written her: "Mr. Alcott's mind and heart
+are so much occupied with other things that poverty and riches do not
+seem to concern him much." She had known Mr. Alcott three years and
+had enjoyed ample opportunity to make this observation herself.
+Indeed, two months after her marriage, she wrote her brother, "My
+husband is the perfect personification of modesty and moderation. I am
+not sure that we shall not blush into obscurity and contemplate into
+starvation." That she had not repented of her choice a year later, may
+be judged from a letter to her brother on the first anniversary of her
+marriage: "It has been an eventful year,--a year of trial, of
+happiness, of improvement. I can wish no better fate to any sister of
+my sex than has attended me since my entrance into the conjugal
+state."
+
+That Mr. Alcott, then in his young manhood, had qualities which, for a
+young lady of refinement and culture, would compensate for many
+privations is evident. Whether he was one of the great men of his
+generation or not, there is no doubt he seemed so. When, in 1837, Dr.
+Bartol came to Boston, Mr. Emerson asked him whom he knew in the
+city, and said: "There is but one man, Mr. Alcott." Dr. Bartol seems
+to have come to much the same opinion. He says: "Alcott belonged to
+the Christ class: his manners were the most gentle and gracious, under
+all fair or unfair provocation, I ever beheld; he had a rare inborn
+piety and a god-like incapacity in the purity of his eyes to behold
+iniquity."
+
+These qualities were not visible to the public and have no commercial
+value, but that Mr. Alcott had them is confirmed by the beautiful
+domestic life of the Alcotts, by the unabated love and devotion of
+Mrs. Alcott to her husband in all trials, and the always high and
+always loyal appreciation with which Louisa speaks of her father, even
+when perhaps smiling at his innocent illusions. The character of Mr.
+Alcott is an important element in the life of Louisa because she was
+his daughter, and because, being unmarried, her life and fortunes were
+his, or those of the Alcott family. She had no individual existence.
+
+Two years after the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Alcott, Louisa, their
+second daughter was born in Germantown, Pa., where Mr. Alcott was in
+charge of a school belonging to the Society of Friends, or Quakers.
+The date was November 29, 1832, also Mr. Alcott's birthday, always
+observed as a double festival in the family. In 1834, Mr. Alcott
+opened his celebrated school in Masonic Temple in Boston, Mass., under
+the auspices of Dr. Channing and with the assured patronage of some of
+the most cultivated and influential families in the city. As
+assistants in this school, he had first Miss Sophia Peabody afterward
+Mrs. Hawthorne, her sister Miss Elizabeth Peabody, and finally
+Margaret Fuller.
+
+The school opened prosperously and achieved remarkable success until,
+in 1837, the publication of Mr. Alcott's "Conversations on the
+Gospels" shocked the piety of Boston newspapers, whose persistent and
+virulent attacks frightened the public and caused the withdrawal of
+two-thirds of the pupils. Mr. Emerson came to Mr. Alcott's defence,
+saying: "He is making an experiment in which all the friends of
+education are interested," and asking, "whether it be wise or just to
+add to the anxieties of this enterprise a public clamor against some
+detached sentences of a book which, on the whole, is pervaded by
+original thought and sincere piety." In a private note, Mr. Emerson
+urged Mr. Alcott to give up his school, as the people of Boston were
+not worthy of him. Mr. Alcott had spent more than the income of the
+school in its equipment, creating debts which Louisa afterward paid;
+all his educational ideals were at stake, and he could not accept
+defeat easily. However, in 1839, a colored girl was admitted to the
+school, and all his pupils were withdrawn, except the little negress
+and four whites, three of whom were his own daughters. So ended the
+Temple school. The event was very fateful for the Alcott family, but,
+much as it concerned Mrs. Alcott, there can be no doubt she much
+preferred that the school should end thus, than that Mr. Alcott should
+yield to public clamor on either of the issues which wrecked the
+enterprise.
+
+Louisa was seven years old when this misfortune occurred which shaped
+the rest of her life, fixing the straitened circumstances in which she
+was to pass her youth and preparing the burdens which ultimately were
+to be lifted by her facile pen. Happily the little Alcotts, of whom
+there were three, were too young to feel the perplexities that
+harassed their parents and their early years could hardly have been
+passed more pleasantly or profitably if they had been the daughters of
+millionaires. The family lived very comfortably amidst a fine circle
+of relatives and friends in Boston, preached and practised a
+vegetarian gospel,--rice without sugar and graham meal without butter
+or molasses,--monotonous but wholesome, spent their summers with
+friends at Scituate and, in town or country, partly owing to the
+principles of the new education, partly to the preoccupation of the
+parents, the children of the family were left in large measure to the
+teaching of nature and their own experience.
+
+Very abundant moral instruction there was in this apostolic family,
+both by example and precept, but the young disciples were expected to
+make their own application of the principles. The result, in the case
+of Louisa, was to develop a girl of very enterprising and adventurous
+character, who might have been mistaken for a boy from her sun-burned
+face, vigorous health, and abounding animal spirits. It was her pride
+to drive her hoop around the Common before breakfast and she tells us
+that she admitted to her social circle no girl who could not climb a
+tree and no boy whom she had not beaten in a race. Her autobiography
+of this period, she has given us, very thinly disguised, in "Poppy's
+Pranks."
+
+Meanwhile, her mental faculties were not neglected. Mr. Alcott began
+the education of his children, in a kindergarten way, almost in their
+infancy, and before his Boston school closed, Louisa had two or three
+years in it as a pupil. What his method of education could do with a
+child of eight years is shown by a poem written by Louisa at that age.
+The family were then living in Concord, in the house which, in "Little
+Women," is celebrated as "Meg's first home." One early Spring day,
+Louisa found in the garden a robin, chilled and famished, and wrote
+these lines:
+
+    "Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
+    Fear no harm, and fear no danger;
+    We are glad to see you here,
+    For you sing, Sweet Spring is near.
+
+    Now the white snow melts away;
+    Now the flowers blossom gay:
+    Come, dear bird, and build your nest,
+    For we love our robin best."
+
+It will be remembered that this literary faculty, unusual at the age
+of eight, had been attained by a girl in the physical condition of an
+athlete, who could climb a tree like a squirrel.
+
+Readers of "Little Women" will remember what a child's paradise "Meg's
+first home" was, with its garden full of fruit-trees and shade, and
+its old empty barn which the children alternately turned into a
+drawing-room for company, a gymnasium for romps, and a theatre for
+dramatic performances. "There," says Louisa, "we dramatized the fairy
+tales in great style," Jack the Giant-killer and Cinderella being
+favorites, the passion for the stage which came near making Louisa an
+actress, as also her sister Anna, getting early development.
+
+The fun and frolic of these days were the more enjoyed because they
+alternated with regular duties, with lessons in housework with the
+mother and language lessons with the father, for which he now had
+abundant leisure. As he had no other pupils, he could try all his
+educational experiments in his own family. Among other exercises, the
+children were required to keep a journal, to write in it regularly,
+and to submit it to the examination and criticism of the parents.
+Facility in writing thus became an early acquisition. It was furthered
+by a pretty habit which Mrs. Alcott had of keeping up a little
+correspondence with her children, writing little notes to them when
+she had anything to say in the way of reproof, correction, or
+instruction, receiving their confessions, repentance, and good
+resolutions by the next mail.
+
+Some of these maternal letters are very tender and beautiful. One to
+Louisa at the age of eleven, enclosed a picture of a frail mother
+cared for by a faithful daughter, and says, "I have always liked it
+very much, for I imagined that you might be just such an industrious
+daughter and I such a feeble and loving mother, looking to your labor
+for my daily bread." There was prophecy in this and there was more
+prophecy in the lines with which Louisa replied:
+
+    "I hope that soon, dear mother,
+      You and I may be
+    In the quiet room my fancy
+      Has so often made for thee,--
+
+    The pleasant, sunny chamber,
+      The cushioned easy-chair,
+    The book laid for your reading,
+      The vase of flowers fair;
+
+    The desk beside the window
+      When the sun shines warm and bright,
+    And there in ease and quiet,
+      The promised book you write.
+
+    While I sit close beside you,
+      Content at last to see
+    That you can rest, dear mother,
+      And I can cherish thee."
+
+The versification is still juvenile, but there is no fault in the
+sentiment, and Miss Alcott, in a later note, says, "The dream came
+true, and for the last ten years of her life, Marmee sat in peace with
+every wish granted."
+
+Evidently Louisa had begun to feel the pinch of the family
+circumstances. The income was of the slenderest. Sometimes Mr. Alcott
+gave a lecture or "conversation" and received a few dollars; sometimes
+he did a day's farm work for a neighbor; now and then Mr. Emerson
+called and clandestinely left a bank note, and many valuable packages
+came out from relatives in Boston; but frugal housekeeping was the
+chief asset of the family. Discouraging as the outlook was, some
+bitter experience might have been escaped if the Alcotts had remained
+in Concord, pursuing their unambitious career. It was, however, the
+era of social experiments in New England. The famous Brook Farm
+community was then in the third year of its existence, and it was
+impossible that Mr. Alcott should not sympathize with this effort to
+ease the burden of life, and wish to try his own experiment.
+Therefore, in 1843, being joined by several English socialists, one of
+whom financed the undertaking, Mr. Alcott started a small community on
+a worn-out not to say abandoned farm, which was hopefully christened
+"Fruitlands."
+
+Visiting the community five or six weeks after its inception, Mr.
+Emerson wrote: "The sun and the evening sky do not look calmer than
+Alcott and his family at Fruitlands. They seem to have arrived at the
+fact,--to have got rid of the show, and so to be serene. They look
+well in July; we will see them in December." An inhospitable December
+came upon the promising experiment, as it generally has upon all
+similar enterprises. Under the title Transcendental Wild Oats, in
+"Silver Pitchers," Miss Alcott gives a lively account of the varying
+humors of this disastrous adventure.
+
+Whatever disappointments and privations the enterprise had in store
+for their parents, the situation, with its little daily bustle, its
+limitless range of fields and woods, its flower hunting and berry
+picking, was full of interest and charm for four healthy children all
+under the age of twelve years. The fateful December, to which Mr.
+Emerson postponed his judgment, had not come before the elders were
+debating a dissolution of the community. "Father asked us if we saw
+any reason for us to separate," writes Louisa in her journal. "Mother
+wanted to, she is so tired. I like it." Of course she did; but "not
+the school part," she adds, "nor Mr. L.", who was one of her teachers.
+The inevitable lessons interfered with her proper business.
+
+"Fruitlands" continued for three years with declining fortunes, its
+lack of promise being perhaps a benefit to the family in saving for
+other purposes a small legacy which Mrs. Alcott received from her
+father's estate. With this and a loan of $500 from Mr. Emerson, she
+bought "The Hillside" in Concord, an estate which, after the Alcotts,
+was occupied by Mr. Hawthorne. Thither Mrs. Alcott removed with her
+family in 1846, and the two years that followed is the period which
+Louisa looked back upon as the happiest of her life, "for we had," she
+says, "charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings,
+Hawthornes, and Goodwins, with the illustrious parents and their
+friends to enjoy our pranks and share our excursions." Here the happy
+girlish life was passed which is so charmingly depicted in "Little
+Women," and here at the age of sixteen, Louisa wrote, for the
+entertainment of the little Alcotts and Emersons, a series of pretty
+fairy tales, still to be read in the second volume of Lulu's Library.
+
+Much as there was to enjoy in these surroundings, the problem of
+subsistence had not been solved and, with the growth of her daughters
+toward womanhood, it became more difficult for Mrs. Alcott. The world
+had, apparently, no use for Mr. Alcott; there were six persons to be
+fed and clothed, and no bread-winner in the family. The story is that
+one day, a friend found her in tears and demanded an explanation.
+"Abby Alcott, what does this mean?" asked the visitor, and when Mrs.
+Alcott had made her confessions, her friend said, "Come to Boston and
+I will find you employment."
+
+Accepting the proposition, the family removed to Boston in 1848, and
+Mrs. Alcott became the agent of certain benevolent societies. Mr.
+Alcott taught private classes, or held "conversations"; the older
+daughters, Anna and Louisa, found employment; and we may think of the
+family as fairly comfortable during the seven or eight years of its
+life in Boston. "Our poor little home," says Miss Alcott, "had much
+love and happiness in it, and was a shelter for lost girls, abused
+wives, friendless children, and weak and wicked men. Father and mother
+had no money to give but they gave time, sympathy, help; and if
+blessings would make them rich, they would be millionaires." Fugitive
+slaves were among the homeless who found shelter, one of whom Mrs.
+Alcott concealed in an unused brick oven.
+
+In Miss Alcott's journal of this period, we find the burden of
+existence weighing very heavily upon her, a state of mind apparently
+induced by her first experience in teaching. "School is hard work,"
+she says, "and I feel as though I should like to run away from it. But
+my children get on; so I travel up every day and do my best. I get
+very little time to write or think, for my working days have begun."
+Later, she seems to have seen the value of this experience. "At
+sixteen," she writes, "I began to teach twenty pupils and, for ten
+years, I learned to know and love children."
+
+Amateur theatricals were still the recreation of the Alcott girls, as
+they had been almost from infancy, and the stage presented a
+fascinating alternative to the school-room. "Anna wants to be an
+actress and so do I," writes Louisa at seventeen. "We could make
+plenty of money perhaps, and it is a very gay life. Mother says we are
+too young and must wait. Anna acts splendidly. I like tragic plays and
+shall be a Siddons if I can. We get up harps, dresses, water-falls,
+and thunder, and have great fun." Both of the sisters wrote many
+exciting dramas at this period, and one of Louisa's, "The Rival Prima
+Donnas," was accepted by the manager of the Boston Theatre, who
+"thought it would have a fine run" and sent the author a free pass to
+the theatre, which partly compensated for the non-appearance of the
+play. Some years later, a farce written by Louisa, "Nat Bachelor's
+Pleasure Trip, or the Trials of a Good-Natured Man," was produced at
+the Howard Athenaeum, and was favorably received. Christie's experience
+as an actress, in Miss Alcott's novel entitled, "Work," is imaginary
+in its incidents, but autobiographical in its spirit.
+
+All these experiments in dramatic literature, from Jack the
+Giant-Killer on, were training the future story-teller. Miss Alcott's
+first story to see the light was printed in a newspaper at the age of
+twenty, in 1852, though it had been written at sixteen. She received
+$5.00 for it, and the event is interesting as the beginning of her
+fortune. This little encouragement came at a period of considerable
+trial for the family. The following is from her journal of 1853: "In
+January, I started a little school of about a dozen in our parlor. In
+May, my school closed and I went to L. as second girl. I needed the
+change, could do the wash, and was glad to earn my $2.00 a week."
+Notice that this is her summer vacation. "Home in October with $34.00
+for my wages. After two days' rest, began school again with ten
+children." The family distributed themselves as follows: "Anna went to
+Syracuse to teach; father to the west to try his luck,--so poor, so
+hopeful, so serene. God be with him. Mother had several boarders.
+School for me, month after month. I earned a good deal by sewing in
+the evening when my day's work was done."
+
+Mr. Alcott returned from the west, and the account of his adventures
+is very touching: "In February father came home. Paid his way, but no
+more. A dramatic scene when he arrived in the night. We were awakened
+by the bell. Mother flew down crying, My Husband. We rushed after and
+five white figures embraced the half-frozen wanderer who came in,
+hungry, tired, cold, and disappointed, but smiling bravely and as
+serene as ever. We fed and warmed and brooded over him, longing to ask
+if he had made any money; but no one did till little May said, after
+he had told us all the pleasant things, 'Well, did people pay you?'
+Then with a queer look he opened his pocket book, and showed one
+dollar, saying with a smile, 'Only that. My overcoat was stolen, and I
+had to buy a shawl. Many promises were not kept, and traveling is
+costly; but I have opened the way, and another year shall do better.'
+I shall never forget how beautifully mother answered him, though the
+dear, hopeful soul had built much on his success: but with a beaming
+face she kissed him, saying, 'I call that doing very well. Since you
+are safely home, dear, we don't ask anything else.'"
+
+One of Miss Alcott's unfulfilled purposes was to write a story
+entitled "The Pathetic Family." This passage would have found a place
+in it. It deserves to be said that Mr. Alcott's faith that he had
+"opened a way and another year should do better," was justified.
+Fifteen years later, from one of his western tours, he brought home
+$700, but, thanks to Louisa's pen, the family were no longer in such
+desperate need of money.
+
+More than once Miss Alcott declares that no one ever assisted her in
+her struggles, but that was far from true, as appears from many favors
+acknowledged in her journal. It was by the kindness of a lady who
+bought the manuscripts and assumed the risk of publication, that her
+first book, "Flower Fables," was brought out in 1854. It consisted of
+the fairy tales written six years before for the little Emersons. She
+received $32.00, a sum which would have seemed insignificant thirty
+years later when, in 1886, the sale of her books for six months
+brought her $8,000; but she says, "I was prouder over the $32.00 than
+over the $8,000."
+
+The picture of Jo in a garret in "Little Women," planning and writing
+stories, is drawn from Louisa's experiences of the following winter. A
+frequent entry in her journal for this period is "$5.00 for a story"
+and her winter's earnings are summed up, "school, one quarter, $50,
+sewing $50, stories, $20." In December we read, "Got five dollars for
+a tale and twelve for sewing." Teaching, writing, and sewing alternate
+in her life for the next five years, and, for a year or two yet, the
+needle is mightier than the pen; but in 1856, she began to be paid $10
+for a story, and, in 1859, the _Atlantic_ accepted a story and paid
+her $50.
+
+A friend for whose encouragement during these hard years, she
+acknowledges great indebtedness and who appears as one of the
+characters in her story, entitled "Work," was Rev. Theodore Parker, a
+man as helpful, loving, and gentle as she depicts him, but then much
+hated by those called orthodox and hardly in good standing among his
+Unitarian brethren. Miss Alcott, then as ever, had the courage of her
+convictions, was a member of his Music Hall congregation, and a
+regular attendant at his Sunday evening receptions, finding him "very
+friendly to the large, bashful girl who adorns his parlor regularly."
+She "fought for him," she says, when some one said Mr. Parker "was not
+a Christian. He is my sort; for though he may lack reverence for other
+people's God, he works bravely for his own, and turns his back on no
+one who needs help, as some of the pious do." After Mr. Parker's
+death, Miss Alcott, when in Boston, attended the church of Dr. C. A.
+Bartol, who buried her mother, her father and herself.
+
+In 1857, the Alcotts returned to Concord, buying and occupying the
+Orchard House, which thenceforth became their home. Other family
+events of the period were, the death of Miss Alcott's sister
+Elizabeth, Beth in "Little Women," the marriage of Anna, Meg in
+"Little Women," and a proposal of marriage to Louisa, serious enough
+for her to hold a consultation over it with her mother. Miss Alcott is
+said to have been averse to entangling alliances for herself, to have
+married off the heroines in her novels reluctantly at the demand of
+her readers, and never to have enjoyed writing the necessary
+love-passages.
+
+The year 1860, when Miss Alcott is twenty-seven, has the distinction
+of being marked in the heading of her journal as "A Year of Good
+Luck." Her family had attained a comfortable, settled home in Concord;
+Mr. Alcott had been appointed superintendent of public schools, an
+office for which he was peculiarly well qualified and in which he was
+both happy and admirably successful; Anna, the eldest sister, was
+happily married; May, the youngest, was making a reputation as an
+artist; and Louisa, in perfect health, having in May before, "walked
+to Boston, twenty miles, in five hours, and attended an evening
+party," was becoming a regular contributor to the _Atlantic_, and
+receiving $50, $75, and sometimes $100 for her stories.
+
+In these happy conditions, Miss Alcott sat down to a more ambitious
+attempt at authorship and wrote the first rough draft of "Moods," a
+"problem novel" that provoked much discussion and, though it caused
+her more trouble than any other of her books, was always dearest to
+her heart. It was written in a kind of frenzy of poetic enthusiasm.
+"Genius burned so fiercely," she says, "that for four weeks, I wrote
+all day and planned nearly all night, being quite possessed by my
+work. I was perfectly happy, and seemed to have no wants. Finished the
+book, or a rough draft of it, and put it away to settle." It was not
+published till four years later. Even in this year of good luck, there
+seem to have been some privations, as she records being invited to
+attend a John Brown meeting and declining because she "had no good
+gown." She sends a poem instead.
+
+The breaking out of the Civil War stirred Miss Alcott's soul to its
+depths, and we have numerous references to its progress in her
+journal. "I like the stir in the air," she writes, "and long for
+battle like a war-horse when he smells powder." Not being permitted to
+enlist as a soldier, she went into a hospital in Washington as a
+nurse. Her experiences are graphically and dramatically told in
+"Hospital Sketches." That book, chiefly made from her private letters,
+met the demand of the public, eager for any information about the
+great war; it was widely read and, besides putting $200 in her purse,
+gave her a reputation with readers and publishers. Many applications
+for manuscript came in and she was told that "any publisher this side
+of Baltimore would be glad to get a book" from her. "There is a sudden
+hoist," she says, "for a meek and lowly scribbler. Fifteen years of
+hard grubbing may come to something yet." Her receipts for the year
+1863, amounted to $600 and she takes comfort in saying that she had
+spent less than one hundred on herself.
+
+The following year, after having been twice re-written, "Moods" was
+brought out and, thanks to the "Hospital Sketches," had a ready sale.
+Wherever she went, she says, she "found people laughing or crying over
+it, and was continually told how well it was going, how much it was
+liked, how fine a thing I had done." The first edition was exhausted
+in a week. An entire edition was ordered by London publishers. She was
+very well satisfied with the reception of "Moods" at the time, though
+in after years when fifty thousand copies of a book would be printed
+as a first edition, the sale of "Moods" seemed to her inconsiderable.
+
+The present day reader wonders neither at the eagerness of the public
+for the book, nor at the criticisms that were freely made upon it. It
+is interesting from cover to cover and as a study of "a life affected
+by moods, not a discussion of marriage," it is effective. In spite,
+however, of the warning of the author, everyone read it as "a
+discussion of marriage," and few were satisfied. The interest centres
+in the fortunes of a girl who has married the wrong lover, the man to
+whom, by preference, she would have given her heart being supposed to
+be dead. Would that he had been, for then, to all appearance, she
+would have been contented and happy. Unfortunately he returns a year
+too late, finds the girl married and, though endowed with every virtue
+which a novelist can bestow upon her hero, he does not know enough to
+leave the poor woman in peace. On the contrary, he settles down to a
+deliberate siege to find out how she feels, wrings from her the
+confession that she is miserable, as by that time no doubt she was,
+and then convinces her that since she does not love her husband, it is
+altogether wrong to live under the same roof with him. Surely this was
+nobly done. Poor Sylvia loves this villain, Miss Alcott evidently
+loves him, but the bloody-minded reader would like to thrust a knife
+into him. However, he is not a name or a type, but a real man, or one
+could not get so angry with him. All the characters live and breathe
+in these pages, and no criticism was less to the purpose than that
+the situations were unnatural. Miss Alcott says "The relations of
+Warwick, Moor, and Sylvia are pronounced impossible; yet a case of the
+sort exists, and a woman came and asked me how I knew it. I did not
+know or guess, but perhaps felt it, without any other guide, and
+unconsciously put the thing into my book."
+
+Everyone will agree that Miss Alcott had earned a vacation, and it
+came in 1865, in a trip to Europe, where she spent a year, from July
+to July, as the companion of an invalid lady, going abroad for health.
+The necessity of modulating her pace to the movements of a nervous
+invalid involved some discomforts for a person of Miss Alcott's
+pedestrian abilities, but who would not accept some discomforts for a
+year of European travel? She had a reading knowledge of German and
+French, and in the abundant leisure which the long rests of her
+invalid friend forced upon her, she learned to speak French with
+facility.
+
+On her return from Europe, she found her circumstances much improved.
+She had established her position as a regular contributer to the
+_Atlantic_ whose editor, she says, "takes all I'll send." In 1868,
+she was offered and accepted the editorship of _Merry's Museum_ at a
+salary of $500, and, more important, she was asked by Roberts Brothers
+to "write a girl's book." Her response to this proposition was "Little
+Women," which she calls "the first golden egg of the ugly duckling,
+for the copyright made her fortune." Two editions were exhausted in
+six weeks and the book was translated into French, German and Dutch.
+
+"Little Men" was written, a chapter a day, in November of the same
+year, and "An Old-fashioned Girl," a popular favorite, the year
+following. "Hospital Sketches" had not yet outlived its welcome, was
+republished, with some additions, in 1869, and two thousand copies
+were sold the first week. She is able to say, "Paid up all debts,
+thank the Lord, every penny that money can pay,--and now I feel as if
+I could die in peace." Besides, she has invested "$1,200 for a rainy
+day," and is annoyed because "people come and stare at the Alcotts.
+Reporters haunt the place to look at the authoress, who dodges into
+the woods."
+
+The severe application which her achievement had cost had impaired
+Miss Alcott's fine constitution and, in 1870, taking May, her artist
+sister, she made a second trip to Europe, spending the summer in
+France and Switzerland and the winter in Rome. A charming account of
+the adventures of this expedition is given in "Shawl-Straps." A
+pleasant incident of the journey was the receipt of a statement from
+her publisher giving her credit for $6,212, and she is able to say
+that she has "$10,000 well invested and more coming in all the time,"
+and that she thinks "we may venture to enjoy ourselves, after the hard
+times we have had."
+
+In 1872, she published "Work: a story of Experience," and it is for
+the most part, a story of her own experience. "Christie's adventures,"
+she says, "are many of them my own: Mr. Power is Mr. Parker: Mrs.
+Wilkins is imaginary, and all the rest. This was begun at eighteen,
+and never finished till H. W. Beecher wrote me for a serial for the
+_Christian Union_ and paid $3,000 for it." It is one of the most
+deservedly popular of her books.
+
+In 1877, for Roberts Brothers' "No Name Series," Miss Alcott wrote "A
+Modern Mephistopheles," her least agreeable book, but original,
+imaginative, and powerful. The moral of the story is that, in our
+modern life, the devil does not appear with a cloven foot, but as a
+cultivated man of the world. Miss Alcott's Mephistopheles is even
+capable of generous impulses. With the kindness of a Good Samaritan,
+he saves a poor wretch from suicide and then destroys him morally. The
+devil is apparently a mixed character with a decided preponderance of
+sinfulness.
+
+Miss Alcott had now reached her forty-fifth year, had placed her
+family in independent circumstances, thus achieving her early
+ambition, and the effort began to tell upon her health. A succession
+of rapid changes soon came upon her. Mrs. Alcott, having attained her
+seventy-seventh year, was very comfortable for her age. "Mother is
+cosy with her sewing, letters, and the success of her 'girls,'" writes
+Miss Alcott in January; but in June, "Marmee grows more and more
+feeble," and in November the end came. "She fell asleep in my arms,"
+writes Louisa; "My duty is done, and now I shall be glad to follow
+her."
+
+May, the talented artist sister, whom Louisa had educated, had once
+taken to Europe and twice sent abroad for study, was married in London
+in 1878, to a Swiss gentleman of good family and some fortune, Mr.
+Nieriker. The marriage was a very happy one but the joy of the young
+wife was brief. She died the year following, leaving an infant
+daughter as a legacy to Louisa.
+
+Mr. Emerson's death in 1882, was, to her, much like taking a member of
+her own family: "The nearest and dearest friend father ever had and
+the man who helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can
+never tell all he has been to me,--from the time I sang Mignon's song
+under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters _a la Bettine_ to
+him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays
+on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped
+me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature."
+
+Mr. Alcott is still with her, vigorous for his years. In 1879, at the
+age of eighty, he inaugurated the Concord School of Philosophy, "with
+thirty students. Father the dean. He has his dream realized at last,
+and is in glory, with plenty of talk to swim in." The school was, for
+Miss Alcott, an expensive toy with which she was glad to be able to
+indulge her father. Personally she cared little for it. On one of her
+rare visits to it, she was asked her definition of a philosopher, and
+responded instantly: "My definition is of a man up in a balloon, with
+his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth
+and trying to haul him down." For her father's sake, she rejoiced in
+the success of the enterprise. Of the second season, she writes, "The
+new craze flourishes. The first year, Concord people stood aloof; now
+the school is pronounced a success, because it brings money to the
+town. Father asked why we never went, and Anna showed him a long list
+of four hundred names of callers, and he said no more."
+
+In addition to the labors which the school laid upon Mr. Alcott, he
+prepared for the press a volume of sonnets, some of which are
+excellent, especially one to Louisa:
+
+    "Ne'er from thyself by Fame's loud trump beguiled,
+    Sounding in this and the farther hemisphere,--
+    I press thee to my heart as Duty's faithful child."
+
+Mr. Alcott seemed to be renewing his youth but, in November, he was
+prostrated by paralysis. "Forty sonnets last winter," writes Louisa,
+"and fifty lectures at the school last summer, were too much for a man
+of eighty-three." He recovered sufficiently to enjoy his friends and
+his books and lingered six years, every want supplied by his devoted
+daughter.
+
+With Miss Alcott the years go on at a slower pace, the writing of
+books alternating with sleepless nights and attacks of vertigo. "Jo's
+Boys" was written in 1884, fifty thousand copies being printed for the
+first edition. In 1886, her physician forbids her beginning anything
+that will need much thought. Life was closing in upon her, and she did
+not wish to live if she could not be of use. In March, 1888, Mr.
+Alcott failed rapidly, and died on the sixth of the month. Miss Alcott
+visited him and, in the excitement of leave-taking, neglected to wrap
+herself properly, took a fatal cold, and two days after, on the day of
+his burial, she followed him, in the fifty-sixth year of her age. Dr.
+C. A. Bartol, who had just buried her father, said tenderly at her
+funeral: "The two were so wont to be together, God saw they could not
+well live apart."
+
+If Miss Alcott, by the pressure of circumstances, had not been a
+writer of children's books, she might have been a poet, and would,
+from choice, have been a philanthropist and reformer. Having worked
+her own way with much difficulty, it was impossible that she should
+not be interested in lightening the burdens which lay upon women, in
+the race of life, and though never a prominent worker in the cause,
+she was a zealous believer in the right of women to the ballot. She
+attended the Woman's Congress in Syracuse, in 1875, "drove about and
+drummed up women to my suffrage meeting" in Concord, she says, in
+1879, and writes in a letter of 1881, "I for one don't want to be
+ranked among idiots, felons, and minors any longer, for I am none of
+them."
+
+To say that she might have been a poet does her scant justice. She
+wrote two or three fine lyrics which would justify giving her a high
+place among the verse-writers of her generation. "Thoreau's Flute,"
+printed in the _Atlantic_, has been called the most perfect of her
+poems, with a possible exception of a tender tribute to her mother.
+Personally, I consider the lines in memory of her mother one of the
+finest elegiac poems within my knowledge:
+
+    "Mysterious death: who in a single hour
+        Life's gold can so refine,
+        And by thy art divine,
+    Change mortal weakness to immortal power."
+
+There are twelve stanzas of equal strength and beauty. The closing
+lines of this fine eulogy we may apply to Miss Alcott, for both lives
+have the same lesson:
+
+    "Teaching us how to seek the highest goal,
+        To earn the true success,--
+        To live, to love, to bless,--
+    And make death proud to take a royal soul."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Daughters of the Puritans, by Seth Curtis Beach
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