“Gwine to hang up de sword in Zion?”
and the rest answering,
“Yes, Lord! ’Tis a great camp meeting
In de Promised Land!”
And this spiritual was followed by others, until they went singing into “Headquarters” landing. It is all changed now. The negro has been to the university and got “eddicated” and 363 the white man no longer trusts him, and the white woman fears him.
In the evening hours while Mary was out at various houses, or entertainments I wrote a novel, one of the very best I ever wrote. It was called “The Last of the McAllisters.” I sent it to Henry Holt, being moved to do so by a feeling I could not resist, and cannot explain. He returned it with a letter saying, “If you will write me an American novel as clever and interesting, I will gladly publish it.” This letter, so kind and wise, set me thinking of the possibilities of American history for fiction, and was in fact the seed thought of “The Bow of Orange Ribbon,” and consequently of the series of American historical tales which followed it. The origin of novels is often very interesting, and far to seek.
Early in November, 1880, I had an almost fatal attack of inflammation of the brain, followed before I recovered consciousness, by double pneumonia. At the crisis of the sickness, I was for five days neither here nor there. Where was I? I was in a land where all was of fine shifting sand, a land of such awful silence, that I could feel the deadly stillness. And I wanted to pray, and could not pray. I was conscious of no pain, and no desire, but this terrible, urgent longing to pray, and yet not being able to cry to God for help. To want God, and to have no power to call Him, or to go to Him, was an agony there are no words to express. At last, as I stood helpless and hopeless among mountains of sand, there was a whisper, and the pang of unpermitted prayer was taken away. Then I cried out, “Spare me, Lord, that I may recover strength, before I go hence and be no more forever.” Instantly I was conscious. I knew that I was on earth, in my own room, and I spoke one word, “Mary!”
Mary was kneeling beside me, kissing my almost clay hands and face, and moistening my lips with drops of water. And I knew that I was saved. I knew that God had really given me a new life—a new physical and mental power. Physicians had said, I would never be mentally well again. I was dictating poems and other work to Mary, before I was permitted to have any light in my room—when I lay in my bed, while Mary stood 364 at the open door, writing down my words. My convalescence was rapid and sure. I was in the Astor Library on the twenty-first of March, making notes for an article on “Nollekins, the Sculptor,” for Harper’s Monthly. The next week I went again for notes on “Beating the Bounds” for Mr. Munroe, the editor of Harper’s Young People.
I had been four months in my room. I felt now an urgent necessity to be at work again. I have a list beside me of the work I did in this month of March, and of the work done in the nine months following. It may interest some of my friends to read the list for March, because I was then scarcely out of the shadow of the grave. It includes twelve poems, four for Harper’s Weekly and eight for the Ledger, as follows:
“An old Man’s Valentine.”
“’Tis God’s World After All.”
“Blue and Gray Together.”
“John’s Wife.”
“The Fortune Teller.”
“The Best I Can.”
“The Lover that Comes in the Morning.”
“No Room for Me.”
“When To Drop the Bridle.”
“We’ve Always Been Provided For.”
“When Mother and I Were Married.”
Beside these twelve poems, I went to the library and procured the material for the Nollekins article, a lengthy one which depicted the Georgian life and celebrities; wrote two articles for Lippincott’s, and the school paper called “Beating the Bounds,” for the editor of Harper’s Young People. For the year following, I have a list which shows one hundred and thirty-one poems, eight stories, two of which were long enough to be called novelettes, and twenty-five articles referring mostly to remarkable people, places or events.
But when the home is broken up the family scatters. I felt this painfully, for I missed Lilly constantly, and Mary was a great deal with friends, or away, so that Alice and I were really 365 much alone. I had most of the office work to do, and was obliged to leave her when about it, though I took her with me to the library, if the weather was favorable.
Under these conditions it was as easy for me to go to England as to remain in New York during the summer, and in May, 1882, having just finished and sold to Appleton, my book on the “Children of Shakespeare’s Dramas,” I took Alice and went first to Glasgow and afterwards to Yorkshire; remaining away until Christmas was approaching. During that summer vacation, so-called, I sent back to New York eighty-one poems, stories, and descriptive articles, and this number does not include poems and stories written for English papers and magazines during the same period, but of which I have kept no list. These eighty-one poems and stories were sent to Mary, who managed their sale so well, that all were placed and mostly paid for, when I returned home.
This voyage is memorable to me because of a great salvation. On May the third, 1882, I dreamed that a Presence whose enmity I felt, stood by my bedside and said, “You are going to be lost! You are going to be lost! You are going to be ship-wrecked!” And I answered, even as I slept, “I do not believe you. God is able and willing to keep me in all my ways, and my soul trusteth in Him forever.” Then I awoke, and I said consciously over and over, the words I had said in my dream, and so fell asleep again, fighting the fear in my heart with trust and faith. And again I dreamed a Presence stood by my side, a holy loving Presence, and it said confidently “Go, and the Lord be with thee” (1st Samuel, 17:37). And I opened my eyes full of happiness, and there was no shadow of fear in my heart, and three days afterwards Alice and I sailed in the Devonia for Glasgow. We were, as before said, in Scotland and Yorkshire all summer; but took passage for New York again on the eleventh of November. I held fast to the promise given me, and in pleading it for our return voyage, I was suddenly affected in a remarkable way, by the wording of the promise. For the first time I noticed the word “be” in it. It seemed to stand out more plainly than any other word. Then I understood. God had promised not only to go with me, but to be 366 with me. That was sufficient. There were very few saloon passengers. I remember only two ladies beside Alice and myself, an actress, and a Mrs. Orr of Cornwall-on-Hudson. No one comes into your life for nothing, and the next year being advised to go to the mountains for a month or two, I remembered what this lady had said about Cornwall, and I wrote and asked her if she knew of a house I could rent. She advised me to come and see Cornwall. I did so, took a house for six months, and have been here twenty-eight years.
Our first three days at sea were fine, and the wind favorable; the next day the sea was rough, and I was thrown against the brass pipe of the saloon stove, and my right hand painfully burned. On the eighteenth of November, at eleven o’clock at night, we broke our machinery, and in the morning, when I went on deck, I was appalled by the sight of the deck covered with pieces of iron, and wreckage of every kind; and my heart for a moment failed me. For nine days we drifted helplessly about the Atlantic, but all the time, day and night, men were working steadily to repair our engine. Captain Young, a devout man and a fine sailor, was speechlessly anxious, but he clung to Alice whenever he saw her, for she had told him the ship would reach New York safely; and he believed her.
On the night of the twenty-seventh, after dinner, he asked Alice and me to pray for the ship. “At eight bells,” he said, “listen and pray! We are then going to try the engine. If she works, we may, if God wills, reach our harbor in safety——”
“And if not, Captain?”
“We shall still be in God’s hands.”
With these words he turned away, and Alice and I watched faithfully with the anxious man. At eight bells we were on our knees, and as the bells began to strike, the thud of the engine began with them.
“I told you all would be right,” said Alice, and I kissed her, and both our cheeks were wet.
A few days later in the afternoon, Alice sitting quite alone in the saloon saw smoke coming from a place where smoke had no business. She instantly found an officer, and he ran for the captain. For a few hours there was an unusual commotion, but 367 the subject was not named, and I understood from the captain’s reticence, that danger was over, and that silence was wise, and even imperative. For our long detention at sea, had made both water and provisions very scarce, and there was actual mutiny among the emigrant passengers, whose number was unusually large. It happened, however, that there was a big consignment of nuts on board, and they were given to the angry crowd, who were thus pacified. Two days afterwards we reached our pier in New York harbor, so grateful and happy, that we hardly felt the blustering wind, and snow and cold. We had been threatened with fire, and shipwreck, and mutiny, but all had failed to really injure. Nothing of us had suffered; for He had given His angels charge concerning us.
My readers, I hope, remember what I wrote about charms. They were not my words, but I endorsed them from my experience. Well I confess that this wonderful verse, 1st Samuel, 17:37, has assumed something of the character of a sacred amulet. When I first read it, I wrote the words of the covenant God had given me on a piece of paper, folded the paper with a prayer, and put it into a little pocket of my purse. It remained there for many, many years. Other documents placed beside it became invalid, useless, or outworn, and were destroyed. But the golden promise of God’s constant care remained. On certain occasions, I took it out and reminded God, that it read He would be with me. Finally the writing became so nearly illegible, and the paper so frail I solemnly renewed both, putting this renewal in the same purse pocket, where it remains unto this moment. It will go to the grave with me, for I will never give up that promise. God made it. God will keep it. Whether I deserve it, or not, He will keep it. Yea, if I did not deserve one letter of it, all the more I would plead,
“Because I seek Thee not, Oh, seek Thou me,
Because my lips are dumb, oh, hear the cry
I do not utter as Thou passest by!
Because content I perish far from Thee,
Oh, seize and snatch me from my fate; draw nigh,
And let me blinded, Thy Salvation see.
For, alas! there have been times in the years gone by when I was even in such case, when I went wandering after strange Gods, and New Thought, and my dear, closed Bible reproached me. But of this interlude I will write in its proper place. I name it here, only that I may have the opportunity of thanking God as frequently as I possibly can, for the blessed, eternal possibility of repentance. For well I know, that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and that
“... our place is kept, and it will wait
Ready for us to fill, soon or late;
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be, what we might have been.”
In March and April of 1883 I wrote one of the most interesting of all my Scotch novels. I began it on March twenty-fifth, and finished it on the thirtieth of April. I worked on it nine hours every day excepting four days when I only wrote eight hours. During this same time I wrote the following for Robert Bonner and Harper’s:
Mar. 25th. Finished my long paper on famous Irish women and began my novel, “Cluny MacPherson.”
Mar. 26th. At home all day writing on “Cluny MacPherson.”
Mar. 27th. Ditto.
Mar. 28th. Writing on “Cluny” all morning. Went down to several offices in afternoon. Did nothing in the evening. Had a bad headache.
Mar. 29th. Very sick headache, but wrote “Cato’s Song.”
Mar. 30th. At the last hour wrote “Two Workers” for Bonner, and he praised it very much, a great thing for him to do.
Mar. 31st. Very sick. Went to the dentist’s but could not have anything done.
April 1st. Wrote an “April Wedding” and worked on “Cluny.”
April 2nd. Still sick but on “Cluny,” and wrote “The Reconciliation.”
April 3rd. All day on “Cluny;” in the evening wrote “Lending a Hand.”
April 4th. All day on “Cluny.”
April 5th. All day on “Cluny.”
April 6th. All day on “Cluny,” but am feeling tired.
April 7th. On “Cluny,” very tired. A wet day and Peter Cooper’s funeral.
April 8th. On “Cluny,” and wrote a poem called “O Mollie, How I Love You!”
April 9th. On my novel nine hours.
April 10th. On my novel eight hours.
April 11th. On my novel eight hours.
April 12th. On my novel eight hours, and wrote “Two Ships.”
April 13th. On my novel nine hours.
April 14th. On my novel eight hours.
April 15th, 16th, 17th. Nine hours each.
April 18th. Very sick.
April 19th. Wrote “My Pretty Canary” and “The Little Evangel.”
April 20th. Wrote nine hours on “Cluny.”
April 21st to 28th. I wrote all day long on “Cluny,” but managed to write for Harper’s a poem called, “A Tap at the Door.”
April 29th. On “Cluny,” and wrote for Bonner a poem called, “Take Care.”
April 30th. Wrote “A Birthday,” finished “Cluny” and took it to Mr. Rand, of the Tract House.
Eleven days afterwards I saw Mr. Rand, and he told me they were reading proof, and much pleased with the book, and on February seventeenth, A.D. 1884, I received a letter from the Cluny MacPherson, chief of the clan MacPherson, thanking me 370 for such a good picture of the clan life. The letter was dated from Castle Cluny, but the chief himself filled some important office in the Queen’s Household.
Just about the time that I finished “Cluny MacPherson,” Lilly returned home at my urgent request, and we went to housekeeping in some furnished rooms at 128 East Tenth Street. Then I made a short visit to England, leaving Alice at home with her sisters, as she was very averse to taking another ocean voyage.
My visit to Glasgow this year contained one scene, which made a great impression on me, and the recent death of General Booth brings it back so vividly, that I think my readers will be interested in the picture of this early salvation service.
At that time I had thought little of the movement. What I had seen of its noisy, moblike parades, with their deafening clang of cymbals and drums, and their shouting, jumping excitement, was not calculated to enlist the sympathy of intelligent persons. But then it was not such persons Mr. Booth wished to reach. “I have been sent into the world, to do the Lord’s gutter work,” was his own definition of his mission; and certainly at that day, his methods could only appeal to those on the lowest plane of humanity.
Well, one Saturday night in June, I had been dining with an old friend living beyond Rutherglen Bridge on the east side of the city, and in returning to my hotel, I had to pass through that portion of the old town, where Hamilton Street, High Street, the Saltmarket, and the Trongate pour their night crowd into the open place around the old Cross. The rain was falling in a black, steady downpour. The ragged crowd was swaying to and fro to the sounds of drums and cornets, and above all, I heard the shrill continuous scream of a woman’s voice.
I put down the window of the carriage, and saw the woman. She was marching, with an open Bible in her hands, at the head of a noisy crowd, and reading, or rather reciting, verses from the Gospels. Her face showed deathly white from under her black hood, her voice cut the yellow dismal fog in sharp screaming octaves, her whole appearance was that of one inspired or insane, and the rain poured down on the barefooted women, 371 with ragged kilted petticoats, and wretched little babies hanging over their shoulders, who followed her. I shut the window, and shut my eyes in a kind of horror. I had a feeling, that somewhere, centuries ago, I had seen such a nightmare of black houses, and black rain, and such a heaving and tossing flood of miserable humanity, and somehow it comforted me to hope, that through the tumult, the fierce sorrowful laughter, and drunken jibes, some poor breaking heart must have heard, and understood, that woman’s shrill intensity as she called out, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
I had another experience of the Salvation Army, so perfectly Scotch and so characteristic, that I think my friends will be pleased to hear it. I was coming down the old Shorehead of Arbroath, and I met a band of men and women carrying flags and singing hymns. In Glasgow I had become familiar with these parades, and had been astonished at the toleration with which they were regarded. But the men and women of Arbroath, were of a different spirit and the tumult, and abusive storm of language became so great, that I stepped inside a little shop for shelter. The proprietor, a very dry rusk of a Scotchman, in a green duffle apron, and a red Kilmarnock night cap, was standing at the open door.
“The Salvation Army?” I said inquiringly.
“Ye arena far wrang.”
“What do you think of them?”
“I’m thinking it is better for men to meddle wi’ the things o’ God, which they canna change, than wi’ those o’ the government wi’ which they can wark a’ kinds o’ mischief and mischance. Thae Irish kirns now!” Then his face flushed, angrily, and fixing his eyes on a lad who was in the procession he cried,
“If there isna my Jock wi’ thae loons! Certie, the words arena to seek, that I’ll gie him, when he wins home again!”
“Then you don’t approve of the movement?” I asked.
“What way would I do that?”
“Have you read or heard anything of Mr. Booth?”
“Ow, ay, he is just a parfect Goliath o’ conceit, but he isna the man to hold the deil, for a’ his talk.”
“Is there a deil to hold? You know some ministers have given up the idea of personal devil,” I said; and I quite anticipated the look I got in reply,
“Have they? Ay weel, getting rid o’ the Wicked One, hasna got us rid o’ the wicked. Good day to you, ma’am. I’ll be requiring to go ben.”
These scenes were in the early days of the Salvation Army. A short time afterward, I saw Glasgow ministers of the strictest sect of the Calvinistic Pharisees, with their congregations at their heels, following the music of the Moody and Sankey evangelical movement, and I met their leaders as guests in the most exclusive religious families. After my return home Dr. Talmage, then editor of the Christian At Work, asked me to tell him frankly, which side the paper ought to take.
“The popular side,” I answered.
“Is that for, or against them?”
“For them, decidedly. Sankey’s voice draws the crowd, and then they listen to Moody’s speaking, and so the singing may lead to prayer.”
“You think it will be a success?”
“It is a success,” I answered, “and is going to a very great one.”
Then Dr. Talmage turning to Mr. B—— the active editor said, “The Christian At Work, will stand with Moody and Sankey, Mr. B——. It is the proper thing to do, I suppose?”
“Yes,” I answered, and he then asked if I had “seen anything of General Booth.”
“I have seen him several times,” I replied.
“What kind of a man is Booth?” Dr. Talmage asked.
“A big man, every way. He is the Cromwell of Dissent.” I heard that he was a passionate little Chartist when he was thirteen years old. I will tell you something, a good name is a good fortune, and the name of the Salvation Army was a kind of inspiration. One day a secretary drawing up a paper wrote, “We are a Volunteer Army,” and Mr. Booth took the pen from his hand, crossed out the word “Volunteer” and wrote in its place “Salvation.” He saw in a moment the splendid capabilities of the word, it fitted itself to the work, as promptly 373 as the stuttering out of the word “tee-to-tal” inaugurated the grand successes of the temperance cause.
They are burying William Booth today, and no one can deny that he has fought a good fight; for he, and only he and his army, reach down to that strata of humanity which has fallen below the churches; and which are emphatically “ready to perish.” And if the Salvation Army only succeeds in facing a man around, or in making him take one step upward, instead of downward, there is hope for his next reincarnation.
“What is our Life? A strange mixture of good and evil; of ill-assorted fates and pathetic acquiescences; and of the overpowering certainty of daily needs, against the world of thoughts, and Shadows.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“The object of Life is to gain wisdom through experience, even one life forces us to this conclusion.”
In this year, 1883, I went to England alone, staying most of the time with Mr. Sam Wilson, who had been my friend and playmate when I was six years old. He was then a very tall fine-looking man of fifty-two years of age, with a beautiful and clever wife, and a son studying medicine in Edinburgh University. His handsome residence, with its wealth of flowers, was in the suburbs of Bradford, Yorkshire, and I remained there for many happy weeks; paying a short visit to London in the interval, and loitering some time around Glasgow, from which port I sailed to New York.
But I had a heartache all the time I was away about Mary, who I feared was going to marry, and I did not wish her to do so. I could not find one objection to the young man she intended to espouse. They had been friends for three years, and were truly attached to each other. He was a clever writer, especially for boys, and the first editor of Harper’s Young People. He was fine-looking, gentlemanly, and quite sufficiently good-hearted for the world he was living in, fond of outdoor sports of all kinds, both on land and water, and a traveler who loved ways unknown and adventurous. I believe he was the first white man who penetrated the recesses of the Everglades. Incidentally it may be noticed, that he was a great friend of the Seminole Indians, who lived in the Everglades, and that to this day, he is regarded by them as their true comrade.
So what chance had I against a lover of such manifold 375 attractions? I knew I must lose, and I thought I could bear it better at a distance. In the middle of the Atlantic one night, I dreamed that Robert came to me and said, “This morning, Mary was married to Kirk Munroe.” He said other things, but they were entirely personal, and may not be repeated; but when I awoke I was consoled and reconciled. And it has always been my way to accept the inevitable as cheerfully as possible, so I told myself “I will now forget.” If Mary was happier with a stranger, than with the mother who had cherished and loved her, and worked for her for thirty-three years, well I must be content to shave my own pleasure to increase hers. Had I not done it all the years of her life? It was no new sacrifice. But I said all such things with a swelling heart, and eyes full of unshed tears. Yet the marriage has been a singularly happy and sympathetic one, and though her home is in southern Florida, she comes every year to spend a month with me. And I am now content in her happiness.
With the main events of my business life, Mary’s marriage made no difference. I wrote constantly, and spent my days mostly in the Astor Library and Lilly or I attended to the office work, as was most convenient. The year 1884 found me writing a story called “Sandiland’s Siller” which I finished on the sixteenth of January, noting in my diary, that I was tired, having composed the last six pages, and copied the last thirty-five pages that day. On the following day I took “Sandiland’s” to Dr. Stevenson of the Illustrated Christian Weekly. I mailed a poem called “He That Is Washed” to Mr. Mabie of the Christian Union, “Three Wishes” to The Advance, two little verses to Puck, and wrote “The Household Thrush” for Mr. Bonner. The first three poems had been written at intervals, while I was working on “Sandiland’s Siller;” “The Household Thrush,” only, was written on the seventeenth. About this latter poem the following incident occurred. It contained five verses, the length Mr. Bonner preferred, and the first three verses referred to the thrush. Mr. Bonner read it, and then turning to Lilly said,
“Too much bird, before you come to the girl.”
“Take some of the bird away, Mr. Bonner,” answered Lilly; 376 and he smiled, cut out one verse, and handed her ten dollars. There were things about Mr. Bonner writers did not like, but all appreciated his clever criticisms, and his prompt payment. When Lilly came home and laughingly told me this story I was much amused. We had a merry little lunch together, and then I made three pencil drawings to illustrate an article called “The Fishers of Fife” which I intended to begin the following day.
The list of work done by me from this time to the twenty-sixth of May is hardly credible. On that day I fell from the library steps while sitting on them reading, and hurt my foot and my neck very much. The next day I had a high fever, and was suffering severely from nervous shock. For nine days I was unable to do anything, and by that time the swollen condition of my throat was alarming, and I sent for Dr. Fleuhrer, a very clever surgeon. For fourteen more days I was under his care, then I began to improve, so that on
June 24th. I began an article on the Scotch Highlands for Mr. Mabie.
June 25th. I was writing on the same. Still in bed but mending slowly.
June 26th. Finished and copied the Highland article.
June 27th. I began “Jan Vedder’s Wife,” and on this day also received fifty-five pounds from London for work done for The Leisure Hour and the Sunday Magazine. Lilly was down at Bonner’s when the checks came, but as soon as I showed them to her, she said,
“Mamma, we have now plenty of money to furnish comfortably. Don’t you want your own home, Mamma?”
“O Lilly!” I cried, “there is nothing on earth I want so much. Dear, dear child, go and look for what will suit us. Go tomorrow! Go this afternoon!”
So that afternoon Lilly went home hunting, and I wrote happily on “Jan Vedder’s Wife” and Alice sat sewing beside me, touching my hand every now and then and smiling. On the twenty-eighth the flat suitable was found, and on the thirtieth I managed to get into a cab and go home. All was in confusion, but such happy confusion, that we did not think of sleeping until midnight.
In a week the new home was in perfect order, and I was able to be on the sofa, and to write “Jan Vedder’s Wife” more swiftly and comfortably. So sweet was home! So good was home, that I now felt all things possible, and really I had not been as happy, since Robert and I went into the wood cottage with its domestic ceilings, in Austin, and turned it into the prettiest and happiest of dwellings. Lilly and Alice furnished the rooms as they desired, and I was quite pleased and full of content.
And it was a great joy when the eleventh of July came round to find that my wedding anniversary was not now to be forgotten. In hotels it had seemed out of place to keep it. I do not know why, but it had always slipped past with a kiss and a word or two. But on this happy day, Lilly set a fine dinner, and Mary sent a wedding cake; we had a bottle of sparkling Moselle, and drank silently but lovingly to the memory of those of our household dwelling in the City Celestial; and our tears of love and hope made the wine sacramental—a pledge and token of our remembrance and our thanksgiving.
There does not seem much to write about in the life of a woman lame and sick, and confined to a flat in an upper Park Avenue. But our existence is always a story, for the fruit of life is experience, not happiness. And every experience that helps us in our ultimate aim of becoming a Spiritual Being, though it be as trite as suffering, is worthy of being considered. Chesterton calls Christ’s counsel to “take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?” an amazing command. To the majority it is an amazing command, but writers who love their work understand it. I was busy on “Jan Vedder’s Wife,” and so interested in the story that I forgot I was sick, and the processes of convalescence went right on without my regarding them. When the story was finished I read it to Lilly. It was then complete in four chapters, and she listened to them with critical interest, and when I laid down the manuscript said,
“It is too good for a short story, Mamma; make it into a novel. You have sufficient material and characters, and if 378 the latter are more fully drawn out, the material will be better.”
“But,” I asked, “can we afford it? I shall get one hundred and fifty for it from the Christian Union just as it is, and we need the money.”
“No, we do not,” she replied, “and if we did, I would still say, write it over, Mamma. It is a shame not to write it fully, just because we might want five dollars;” and she pushed my paper and pencils towards me with an encouraging smile. Then I began it all over, and added nearly two hundred pages. When all were corrected and copied I sent it by Lilly to Mr. Bonner. For once this reticent man broke his usual custom, and commented on the work in “the straight-flung words and few,” which reflected him.
“It is a good story, a fine story,” he said. “Take it to Dodd, Mead and Company. It will suit them. It is too good for the Ledger.”
And when Lilly came home, and told me what Mr. Bonner had said, there flashed across my mind a dream I had had a week previously, in which Robert had given me the same advice. Christ said, that if one rose from the dead to inform, or direct us, we would not believe their message, and evidently I had not believed the dead, until they spoke through a mortal whose business capacities I trusted. I have often reproached myself on this score, but—Oh, there is no “but.” I have no excuse for my want of faith.
I had finished the novel of “Jan Vedder’s Wife” on the sixteenth of September, 1884, the seventeenth anniversary of Robert’s death, and on October, the twelfth, I gave up the regular use of crutches, though my foot was extremely weak and painful, and I had nearly constant headaches. But on this date, I began a story called “Janet McFarlane,” which I finished on the twenty-first and sent to the Advance. On the twenty-sixth I began a story called “Paul and Christina,” which was published in the Christian Union and afterwards enlarged to book size and published by Dodd, Mead and Company. On the twenty-eighth, I note that “Mary and Kirk Munroe took tea with us,” so I had by that time conquered my dislike to her 379 marriage; for I do not ask people to eat with me, if I have any ill will toward them. Those who do not understand me, will perhaps live to do so, for
“... soon or late the fact grows plain,
To all through sorrow’s test,
The only folks who give us pain,
Are those we love the best.”
On the first of November I was at the Astor Library again, but did not dare to go upstairs to my alcove. On the second of November I was finishing “Paul and Christina” began on the twenty-sixth of October. On the second, third and fourth of November I was at the library, and on the fifth so ill, I had to summon Dr. Fleuhrer’s help again. I was sick for a week then reviewed and corrected “Paul and Christina” and took it in the afternoon to the Christian Union. On the same day the Sisters from a Religious Order, living near us, began to teach Alice. I say “Sisters” because they were not allowed to go anywhere alone, so one came to teach, and the other came, for what purpose I know not. On the nineteenth I wrote “Going to Church Together,” a poem for Bonner, and a New Year’s article for the Illustrated Christian Weekly; Kirk came to tea. Mary was in Boston with his father and mother. The following day I was at the library and wrote “Lacordaire Dying.” On the twenty-third I wrote “Mary,” a Christmas poem, and Kirk came to tea; we had a pleasant evening, and I wrote in my diary, “He is a nice fellow, after all.” On the twenty-fifth I arranged with the Christian Union for the first study of “Paul and Christina.” They gave me one hundred and twenty dollars, and on the twenty-seventh of November, A.D. 1884, I received a letter from Dodd, Mead and Company accepting “Jan Vedder’s Wife.” It happened to be Thanksgiving Day, and this letter made it a memorable one, for it altered the whole course of my life. I had this letter framed, and it hangs now before me in my study as I write. Time has faded the four lines it contained, but they are graven on memory’s tablet, and the yellow paper and nearly colorless ink cannot hide from me the words 380 of Promise it contained. On the twenty-eighth I saw Mr. Frank Dodd, and arranged with him for the publication of “Jan Vedder’s Wife.” He gave me three hundred dollars for the book, promising to add to this sum if it sold well, and I may mention here, that he subsequently sent me five hundred dollars more. He sent it of his own free will. I made neither claim nor request for it.
Lilly was very proud of this sale, because, as I have related, the book was written at her request. I had not been so far as fortunate with my publishers, as with my editors. Mr. B—— of Appleton’s, with whom I transacted the business relating to my volume on the “Children of Shakespeare’s Dramas,” was an unhappy, unpleasant man to deal with; but he is dead, and I think the Scotch reluctance to speak ill of the dead is at least a wise observance. The publisher of “Cluny MacPherson,” and a volume of “Scottish Tales” was hard and dry as a brush. He had some selfish ideas about the society he represented, but he had no feelings. He had ceased to live with his heart. Mr. Jack Howard was just unfortunate. He was the publisher of the Christian Union and my book, “Romances and Realities,” came out just before the house failed, so that I never received a dollar for it. But that was not Mr. Howard’s fault. He was always courteous and generous about any work I did for him.
Lilly was very proud and happy because, as I have related, the book was written by her advice. “And what do you think of Mr. Dodd, Mamma?” she asked, as we eat drinking tea together. “Is he pleasant? Will you like to write for him?”
“Yes,” I answered. “He is pliant, yet resistant. I dare say he keeps his heart within his head, and so makes an even balance between business keenness and moral emotions.”
“I do not see that, Mamma.”
“It is plain enough, Lilly. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions. So is the heart. We may often trust the latter most safely. I do. Mr. Dodd would consult both.”
“Is he a religious man?”
“How can I tell? I think so, but I am quite sure he is a straight, clean-living man.”
“Is he nice looking?”
“Quite as nice as there is any necessity to be. The spirit of his face is attractive—that is enough.”
“Is he anything like A——?”
“Walking majestically, and radiating awe and temper. No, Lilly, not in the least.”
“Or like B——?”
“Self-conscious to the finger tips. No, not in the least.”
“Then like F——?”
“A Philistine, proud of his class, and cheerfully living in Ascalon. No, you are far wrong yet.”
“Then like Dr. D——?”
“When his conscience is taking its usual six days’ sleep. No, you have not guessed at any resemblance. Publishers are as distinct a type of manhood as schoolmasters. They are even different from press men and editors. The latter are often compelled by their duties to waste their moral strength in politics, and their intellect in party journalism. Publishers can mind their own business, and are in no way injured by doing so.”
Thus we talked, as we eat and drank, but without any ill-nature. With the kindly race of editors I had, and have, the strongest sympathies. All that I have known have been kind and helpful to me, and if at times they showed a trifle of the petty unreasonableness of men dressed in a little brief authority, it did not hurt me. I said to myself—how true and striking that phrase is—I said to myself, “It is not you that offends, Amelia. It is something at his home, or down in the office—an unpleasant breakfast, or a disagreeable letter.” So I bore no rancor, and at the next interview all was right. God was very kind and thoughtful for me, when he set me my work among such a kindly, clever, gentlemanly class of workers as editors.
And I confess that I like people with tidal fluctuations of mood and temper. They are full of surprises; you always feel an interest in them. You think about them, and talk of them, and feel that they are as human as yourself. They are far more pleasant than men always cold, businesslike, reticent, polite. These latter are the men you desire to see in bronze, or marble, or even in encyclopedias, rather than in editorial 382 chairs. Even if they are religiously perfect, they are unpleasant in a newspaper sanctum. For it is a trial to our faith in creeds, to find that in business matters, the justified are as selfish and unlovely as the reprobate. So though it is quite correct, that two and two make four, I have a liking for the man with whom the sum of two and two is variable. It is often five and six with me, and it may be ten or twenty, but when it is so, I trust humanity and love God best of all.
If I now copy the closing entry in my diary for the year 1884, it most truly describes my condition at that time.
Dec. 31st. A day of great suffering. I am still very far from well. I have been seven months ill. How my heart would have quailed at the prospect but God has been sufficient. My throat is very bad, my foot, also, and I am generally weary and worn out—and very feeble. Only, thank God, my mind never fails, nor my heart—often. I know in Whom I have trusted for fifty-three years, and I can trust Him for all the rest. I have been copying the “Preacher’s Daughter,” but twenty-four pages wearied me. Mary is in Florida. All the rest as usual. God of my Fathers, accept my gratitude for all Thy great mercies to me.
Amelia E. Barr.
1507 Park Avenue, N.Y.
I open 1885 with the following lines:
Commit Thy ways unto the Lord.
Thy Bread shall be given, and thy water sure.
Let thy widows trust in me.
The first and the last of these directions, were given to me in answer to prayer; the center one was my father’s promise to me, when I bid him farewell forever in this life. I notice, nevertheless, that I am anxious about money matters, that I have six hundred dollars owing me, and cannot collect a dollar, and that I fear the Ledger is not in good circumstances; nothing has been said, I write, and all appears the same, but I feel a change of some kind. I was copying the “Preacher’s Daughter,” but was weak, and it was hard work.
On the fifth of January I note that Dodd, Mead and Company paid me three hundred dollars for “Jan Vedder’s Wife,” and that I had a letter from London promising me money for my work soon, and that I also received a small check from The Advance. So once more I found out how good it is to commit my way unto the Lord, and that He brings things to pass, I cannot move. On the eleventh I see that Lilly was out all day among the shanties with Father B——, a Catholic priest “in the world,” a man of great mercy and piety, with an intellect keen and well cultivated. There were many shanties on the rocks in our vicinity, and Lilly’s missionary spirit had led her to make friends in all of them. She found them Roman Catholics in theory, but altogether negligent in practice. So she took Father B—— to stir up their faith, which he did with an authority they feared and obeyed.
I was ill and nervous at the time, and it did not please me. I asked her what her Grandmother Barr would say, and I assured her she would never leave her a shilling.
“I don’t care either for her shillings or her pounds,” Lilly answered. “I don’t want them. If I have helped one soul back to its faith in God, or even to its faith in good angels to help it to God, that is better than all the gold in Scotland.”
“Angels!” I said. “Do you call Father B—— an angel? and what kind of a way will he lead them?”
“A good way. The way of prayer. And also he will see that they take it. Now that he has found these few sheep in the wilderness, they will have to go back to the fold. That will be good for them everyway.”
“Well, Lilly, I hope you will not take his way.”
“Mamma, dear, we are all going to God, and some like the Roman Catholic way. My own forefathers for eight hundred years did so. They could not all be wrong—abbotts and priors and priests and nuns, all of them. They could not all be wrong.”
“Nor right.”
“Well none of us can deny that while the Huddlestons were of the old profession, they were famous and prosperous. They 384 turned Protestant when that little German body that couldn’t speak a word of English, came to govern us. The idea!”
“Are you going to turn Catholic after all?”
“I am going to be just what my Bible makes me.”
For I may as well state here that Lilly, though born in the very citadel of Calvinism, was a natural Catholic. She loved its ritual, and frequently went to confession. At one time it took all my pleading and influence, and all Dr. Tyng’s eloquence to keep her out of a convent, and I had a year or two of constant fear and watchfulness. This was the year we lived on Lexington Avenue opposite the Dominican Church. There was at that time a priest there called Father McKenna, a holy man entirely separate from the world, night and day either before the altar, or among the most miserable of the living and the dying; and I think he was her inspiration.
For long centuries Lilly’s ancestors had been priests in the old profession, and Furness Abbey is full of their memorial stones as Abbotts of that rich and powerful brotherhood. Catholicism was in her heart and her blood, and she was animated by all the passionate missionary spirit of the old faith. I had much suffering and long months of miserable anxiety on this subject, and doubtless Lilly was just as unhappy, but this is one of those domestic tragedies not for the public ear, and I do not know how I came to write so much about it.
I will, however, let it stand, for I would not be astonished if she yet went back to the Roman Church. Her soul has evidently belonged to it in all its incarnations, and I know that whenever she is in trouble or perplexity she goes to a Catholic priest for advice. One day I asked her, “Why?”
“Because,” she answered, “they never snub or ask me ‘whose daughter art thou.’ They know immediately that I am a Protestant, but they never turn me away. Kindly, and without prejudice they give me the best advice. It never comes out wrong.”
“But why not go to God for advice?”
“Mamma, there are things, like love letters, for instance. Would you go to God with them?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Love letters may be very important 385 things. At any rate, your mother might be better than a priest.”
“Mamma, dear, you know that you have a fixed conviction that love affairs should only occur in books. Now Frank is not a ‘character,’ he is a real, living, very delightful man.”
Then I said no more, for Frank Morgan was then a very sore subject of conversation, and I really was not sure in my own mind what I had against the young man. His parents were wealthy, and he was their only son. He was the captain of his company, handsome, gentlemanly, and particularly respectful and attentive to myself. It was hard to think wrong of him, and yet I did; and it was no use my deciding not to do so, for I invariably went back to my first impressions. This feeling made me patient, and perhaps less watchful and inquisitive than I should have been.
But during the first half of 1885 I was very weak, and seldom out of pain, and on the eighteenth of January I went to see Dr. Fleuhrer, who made me very anxious. He said work and company were killing me, and I must go to the mountains and live more in solitude. When I went home I found Mrs. Van Duzen there, and after dinner Nat Urner and his wife came to spend the evening. The next morning I went to the Methodist Book Concern and wrote a preface for “The Hallam Succession,” a novel written at Dr. Vincent’s request on purely Methodist lines. I wanted to do my very best on this book; for I liked Dr. Vincent, and I liked to write of Methodism, but I did not please myself at all. I was really too sick to write well, and I ought not to have attempted it.
On the twenty-sixth Lilly was at Harper’s and found Miss Van Dyne removed from her place as editress of Young People, and Mr. Conant’s office empty. She said there was general silence and distress; no one would talk, and she came away full of a sense of great trouble. Two days afterwards I went to the Illustrated Christian Weekly, and was shocked to see on the bulletin boards of all the newspapers “S. S. Conant Still Missing.”
I did not stop to read what followed. I was sick at heart, trembling, and glad to get safely into an empty Third Avenue 386 horse-car, and lean for support against its upper-end corner. All the way uptown I was like a woman in a dream, for I was indeed living over a dream I had had a few days previously. This dream had troubled me much at the time, and when I related it to Lilly she listened silently, and made no remark but the following:
“It was an evil dream, and I hope S. S. C. is not going to be ill.”
We seldom called Mr. Conant by his full name. When speaking of him we used his initials, as indeed he generally did himself. S. S. C. stood in every writer’s mind for S. S. Conant. Well, I had dreamed three nights previously of standing in Park Row and looking up to an angry cloud-tossed sky. On this sky I saw the initials S. S. C. blazoned in immense black letters, and, as I watched, great masses of vengeful storm clouds came swiftly toward them, and drove them with a wild passion over the firmament, and out of sight. The dream made a profound impression on me, and when Lilly told me S. S. C. was lost, I answered, “He will not be found.”
“O Mamma, do not say that,” she cried. “When he left the office, he said he was going to the Grand Central Railway Station. How can a man be lost between Harper’s building and the Grand Central—unless he killed himself.”
“He did not do that,” I answered, and then we were silent. Indeed, to me the great wonder of the mysterious disappearance was the dislike of any one to speak of it. The man passed away like a dream that is told.
But I was anxious and unhappy. For years Mr. Conant had bought a large part of my work, and I looked upon him as a sure reliance. Who would take his place? I knew not, but I felt there had been one door closed forever. Then, I bid myself remember, “that as one door shuts, another opens; and that all the keys of the country did not hang from the Harper’s belt.” Still the little poem I wrote for Bonner that night shows the loneliness and longing I had for the love and protection once mine, which I had taken as I had taken hitherto my wonderful health and strength, and the daily bread that had never failed me: