Memories and Anecdotes

Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892).

Cranch's own title for this poem was "Enosis," not "Gnosis" as now given; "Enosis" being a Greek word meaning "all in one," which is illustrated by the last verse.

It was first published in the Dial in 1844. "Stanzas" appeared at the head, and at the end was his initial, "C."

CHAPTER IV

Three Years at Smith College—Appreciation of Its Founder—A Successful Lecture Tour—My Trip to Alaska.

"There is nothing so certain as the unexpected," and "if you fit yourself for the wall, you will be put in."

I was in danger of being spoiled by kindness in New York and the surrounding towns, if not in danger of a breakdown from constant activity, literary and social, with club interests and weekend visits at homes of delightful friends on the Hudson, when I was surprised and honoured by a call from President L. Clark Seelye of Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, who invited me to take the position of teacher of English Literature at that college.

I accepted, and remained at Northampton for three years, from 1880-1883. It was a busy life. I went on Saturday afternoons to a class of married ladies at Mrs. Terhune's (Marion Harland) in Springfield, Massachusetts, where her husband was a clergyman in one of the largest churches in that city. I also published several books, and at least two Calendars, while trying to make the students at Smith College enthusiastic workers in my department.

Mrs. Terhune was a versatile and entertaining woman, a most practical housekeeper; and she could tell the very best ghost story I ever heard, for it is of a ghost who for many years was the especial property of her father's family.

When I gave evening lectures at Mrs. Terhune's while at Smith College, I was accustomed to spend the night there. She always insisted upon rising early to see that the table was set properly for me, and she often would bring in something specially tempting of her own cooking. A picture I can never forget is that of Doctor Terhune who, before offering grace at meals, used to stretch out a hand to each of his daughters, and so more closely include them in his petition.

I used no special text-book while at Smith College, and requested my class to question me ten minutes at the close of every recitation. Each girl brought a commonplace book to the recitation room to take notes as I talked. Some of them showed great power of expression while writing on the themes provided. There was a monthly examination, often largely attended by friends out of town. I still keep up my interest in my pupils of that day. One of them told me that they thought at first I was currying popularity, I was so cordial and even affectionate, but they confessed they were mistaken.

Under President Seelye's wise management, Smith College has taken a high position, and is constantly growing better. The tributes to his thirty-seven years in service when he resigned prove how thoroughly he was appreciated. I give a few extracts:

We wish to record the fact that this has been, in a unique degree, your personal work. If you had given the original sum which called the College into being, and had left its administration to others, you would have been less truly the creator of the institution than you have been through your executive efficiency. Your plans have seldom been revised by the Board of Trustees, and your selection of teachers has brought together a faculty which is at least equal to the best of those engaged in the education of women. You have secured for the teachers a freedom of instruction which has inspired them to high attainment and fruitful work. You, with them, have given to the College a commanding position in the country, and have secured for it and for its graduates universal respect. The deep foundations for its success have been intellectual and spiritual, and its abiding work has been the building up of character by contact with character.

Fortunate in her location, fortunate in her large minded trustees, fortunate in the loyal devotedness of her faculty and supremely fortunate has our College been in the consecrated creative genius of her illustrious president. Bringing to his task a noble ideal, with rare sagacity as an administrator; with financial and economic skill rarely found in a scholar and idealist, but necessary to foster into fullest fruitfulness the slender pecuniary resources then at hand; with tact and suavity which made President Seelye's "no," if no were needed, more gracious than "yes" from others; with the force which grasps difficulties fearlessly; with dignified scholarship and a courtly manner, the master builder of our College, under whose hand the little one has become a thousand and the small one a strong republic, has achieved the realization of his high ideal and is crowned with honour and affection.

He has made one ashamed of any but the highest motives, and has taught us that sympathy and love for mankind are the traits for which to strive. The ideals of womanly life which he instilled will ever be held high before us.

There are many distinguished qualities which a college president must possess. He must be idealist, creator, executor, financier, and scholar. President Seelye—is all these—but he had another and a rarer gift which binds and links these qualities together, as the chain on which jewels are strung—President Seelye had immense capacity for work and patient attention for details. It is this unusual combination which has given us a great College, and has given to our president a unique position among educators.

I realize that I must at times have been rather a trying proposition to President Seelye for I was placed in an entirely new world, and having been almost wholly educated by my father, by Dartmouth professors, and by students of the highest scholarship, I never knew the mental friction and the averaging up and down of those accustomed to large classes. I gained far more there than I gave, for I learned my limitations, or some of them, and to try to stick closely to my own work, to be less impulsive, and not offer opinions and suggestions, unasked, undesired, and in that early stage of the college, objectionable. Still, President Seelye writes to me: "I remember you as a very stimulating teacher of English Literature, and I have often heard your pupils, here and afterwards, express great interest in your instruction."

The only "illuminating" incident in my three years at Smith College was owing to my wish to honour the graduating reception of the Senior class. I pinned my new curtains carefully away, put some candles in the windows, leaving two young ladies of the second year to see that all was safe. The house was the oldest but one in the town; it harboured two aged paralytics whom it would be difficult, if not dangerous, to remove. Six students had their home there. As my fire-guards heard me returning with my sister and some gentlemen of the town, they left the room, the door slammed, a breeze blew the light from the candles to the curtains, and in an instant the curtains were ablaze.

And now the unbelievable sequel. The room seemed all on fire in five minutes. Next, the overhead beam was blazing. I can tell you that the fire was extinguished by those gentlemen, and no one ever knew we had been so near a conflagration until three years later when the kind lady of the house wrote to me: "Dear Friend, did you ever have a fire in your room? In making it over I found some wood badly scorched." I have the most reliable witnesses, or you would never have believed it. In the morning my hostess said to the girls assembled at breakfast: "Miss Sanborn is always rather noisy when she has guests, but I never did hear such a hullabaloo as she made last evening."

It is certain that President Seelye deserves all the appreciation and affectionate regard he received. He has won his laurels and he needs the rest which only resignation could bring. The college is equally fortunate in securing as his successor, Marion LeRoy Burton, who in the coming years may lead the way through broader paths, to greater heights, always keeping President Seelye's ideal of the truly womanly type, in a distinctively woman's college.

As the Rev. Dr. John M. Greene writes me (the clergyman who suggested to Sophia Smith that she give her money to found a college for women, and who at eighty-five years has a perfectly unclouded mind): "I want to say that my ambition for Smith College is that it shall be a real women's college. Too many of our women's colleges are only men's colleges for women."

I desire now to add my tribute to that noble woman, Sophia Smith of Hatfield, Massachusetts.

On April 18, 1796, the town of Hatfield, in town meeting assembled, "voiced to set up two schools, for the schooling of girls four months in the year." The people of that beautiful town seemed to have heard the voice of their coming prophetess, commissioned to speak a word for woman's education, which the world has shown itself ready to hear.

In matters of heredity, Sophia Smith was fortunate. Her paternal grandmother, Mary Morton, was an extraordinary woman. After the death of her husband, she became the legal guardian of her six sons, all young, cared for a large farm, and trained her boys to be useful and respected in the community.

Sophia Smith was born in Hatfield, August 27, 1796; just six months before Mary Lyon was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, about seventeen miles distant. Sophia remembered her grandmother and said: "I looked up to my grandmother with great love and reverence. She, more than once, put her hands on my head and said, 'I want you should grow up, and be a good woman, and try to make the world better.'" And her mother was equally religious, efficient, kind to the poor, sympathetic but not impulsive. Sophia lived in a country farmhouse near the Connecticut River for sixty-eight years. She was sadly hampered physically. One of the historians of Hatfield writes me:

Her infirmity of deafness was troublesome to some extent when she was young, making her shy and retiring. At forty she was absolutely incapable of hearing conversation. She also was lame in one foot and had a withered hand. In spite of this, I think she was an active and spirited girl, about like other girls. She was very fond of social intercourse, especially later in life when my father knew her, but this intercourse was confined to a small circle. Doctor Greene speaks of her timidity also. I know of no traditions about her girlhood. As an example of the thrift of the Smiths, or perhaps I should say, their exactness in all business dealings, my father says that Austin Smith never asked his sisters to sew a button or do repairs on his clothing without paying them a small sum for it, and he always received six cents for doing chores or running errands. No doubt this was a practice maintained from early youth, for when Sophia Smith was born, in 1796, the family was in very moderate circumstances. The whole community was poor for some time after the Revolution, and everyone saved pennies.

As to her education, she used to sit on the doorsteps of the schoolhouse and hear the privileged boys recite their lessons. She also had four or five months of instruction in the schoolhouse, and was a student in Hopkins Academy for a short time and, when fourteen years old, attended school at Hartford, Connecticut, for a term of twelve weeks.

SOPHIA SMITH

Then a long, uneventful, almost shut-in life, and in 1861 her brother Austin left her an estate of about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Hon. George W. Hubbard of Hatfield was her financial adviser. He advised her to found an academy for Hatfield, which she did; and after Doctor Greene had caused her to decide on a college for women, Mr. Hubbard insisted on having it placed at Northampton, Massachusetts, instead of Hatfield, Massachusetts. With her usual modesty, she objected to giving her full name to the college, as it would look as if she were seeking fame for herself. She gave thirty thousand dollars to endow a professorship in the Andover Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts.

She grew old gracefully, never soured by her infirmities, always denying herself to help others and make the world better for her living in it.

Her name must stand side by side with the men who founded Vassar, Wellesley, and Barnard, and that of Mary Lyon to whom women owe the college of Mt. Holyoke.

As Walt Whitman wrote:

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

She was a martyr physically, and mentally a heroine. Let us never fail to honour the woman who founded Smith College.

Extracts from a letter replying to my question: "Is there a full-length portrait of Sophia Smith, now to be seen anywhere in the principal building at Smith College, Northampton?"

How I wish that some generous patron of Smith College might bestow upon it two thousand dollars for a full-length portrait of Sophia Smith to be placed in the large reading room, at the end of which is a full-length portrait of President Seelye. The presence of such a commanding figure seen by hundreds of girls every day would be a subtle and lasting influence.

I like to nibble at a stuffed date, but do not enjoy having my memory stuffed with dates, though I am proud rather than sensitive in regard to my age.

Lady Morgan was unwilling her age should be known, and pleads:

What has a woman to do with dates—cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates—new style, old style, precession of the equinoxes, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in favour of incidents; and an authority more appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoires at eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras signifying nothing (the times themselves out of joint), testifying to the pleasant incidents she recounts and the changes she witnessed. I mean to have none of them!

I hesitate to allude to my next experience after leaving Smith College, for it was so delightful that I am afraid I shall scarcely be believed, and am also afraid that my readers will consider me a "swell head" and my story only fit for a "Vanity Box." Yet I would not leave out one bit of the Western lecture trip. If it were possible to tell of the great kindness shown me at every step of the way without any mention of myself, I would gladly prefer to do that.

After leaving Smith College, I was enjoying commencement festivities in my own home—when another surprising event! Mr. George W. Bartholomew, a graduate of Dartmouth, who was born and brought up in a neighbouring Vermont town, told me when he called that he had established a large and successful school for young ladies in Cincinnati, Ohio, taking a few young ladies to live in his pleasant home. He urged me to go to his school for three months to teach literature, also giving lectures to ladies of the city in his large recitation hall. And he felt sure he could secure me many invitations to lecture in other cities.

Remembering my former Western experience with measles and whooping-cough, I realized that mumps and chicken-pox were still likely to attack me, but the invitation was too tempting, and it was gladly accepted, and I went to Cincinnati in the fall of 1884.

Mrs. Bartholomew I found a charming woman and a most cordial friend. Every day of three months spent in Cincinnati was full of happiness. Mrs. Broadwell, a decided leader in the best social matters, as well as in all public spirited enterprises, I had known years before in Hanover, N.H. Her brother, General William Haines Lytle, had been slain at Chickamauga during the Civil War, just in the full strength and glory of manhood. He wrote that striking poem, beginning: "I am dying, Egypt, dying." Here are two verses of his one poem:

He was engaged to Miss Sarah Doremus, a sister of Professor Doremus of New York. After the terrible shock of his sudden death she never married, but devoted her life to carrying out her sainted mother's missionary projects, once taking a trip alone around the world to visit the missionary stations started by her mother.

As soon as I had arrived at Mr. Bartholomew's, Mrs. Broadwell gave me a dinner. Six unmarried ladies and seven well-known bachelors were the guests, as she wished to give me just what I needed, an endorsement among her own friends. The result was instant and potent.

Everyone at that dinner did something afterwards to entertain me. I was often invited to the opera, always had a box (long-stemmed roses for all the ladies), also to dinner and lunches. If anyone in the city had anything in the way of a rare collection, from old engravings to rare old books, an evening was devoted to showing the collection to me with other friends. One lady, Miss Mary Louise McLaughlin, invited me to lunch with her alone. Her brother, a bachelor lawyer, had at that time the finest private library in the city. She was certainly the most versatile in her accomplishments of anyone I have ever known. She had painted the best full-length portrait of Judge Longworth, father of the husband of Alice Roosevelt. She was a china painter to beat the Chinese, and author of four books on the subject. She was an artist in photography; had a portfolio of off-hand sketches of street gamins, newsboys, etc., full of life and expression. She brought the art of under glaze in china-firing to this country and had discovered a method of etching metal into fine woods for bedroom furniture. She was an expert at wood-carving, taking lessons from Ben Pitman. Was fond of housekeeping and made a success of it in every way. Anything else? Yes, she showed me pieces of her exquisite embroidery and had made an artistic and wholly sane "crazy-quilt" so much in vogue at that time. Her own beautiful china was all painted and finished by herself. As I left her, I felt about two feet high, with a pin head. And yet she was free from the slightest touch of conceit.

Miss Laura MacDonald (daughter of Alexander MacDonald, the business man who took great risks with Mr. John D. Rockefeller in borrowing money to invest largely in oil fields) was my pupil in the school, and through her I became acquainted with her lovely mother, who invited me to her home at Clifton, just out of Cincinnati, to lecture to a select audience of her special friends.

My lectures at Mr. Bartholomew's school were very well attended. Lists of my subjects were sent about widely, and when the day came for my enthusiastic praise of Christopher North (John Wilson), a sweet-faced old lady came up to the desk and placed before me a large bunch of veritable Scotch heather for which she had sent to Scotland.

In Cleveland, where I gave a series of talks, President Cutler, of Adelbert University, rose at the close of the last lecture and, looking genially towards me, made this acknowledgment: "I am free to confess that I have often been charmed by a woman, and occasionally instructed, but never before have I been charmed and instructed by the same woman."

Cleveland showed even then the spirit of the Cleveland of today, which is putting that city in the very first rank of the cities not only of the United States but of the world in civic improvement and municipal progress, morally and physically. Each night of my lectures I was entertained at a different house while there, and as a trifle to show their being in advance of other cities, I noticed that the ladies wore wigs to suit their costumes. That only became the fashion here last winter, but I saw no ultra colours such as we saw last year, green and pink and blue, but only those that suited their style and their costume.

At Chicago I was the guest of Mrs. H.O. Stone, who gave me a dinner and an afternoon reception, where I met many members of various clubs, and the youngest grandmothers I had ever seen. At a lunch given for me by Mrs. Locke, wife of Rev. Clinton B. Locke, I met Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. Wayne MacVeagh, and Mrs. Williams, wife of General Williams, and formerly the wife of Stephen Douglas. Mrs. Locke was the best raconteur of any woman I have ever heard. Dartmouth men drove me to all the show places of that wonderful city. Lectured in Rev. Dr. Little's church parlors. He was not only a New Hampshire man, but born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, where my grandfather lived, and where my mother lived until her marriage.

It is pleasant to record that I was carried along on my lecture tour, sometimes by invitation of a Dartmouth man, again by college girls who had graduated at Smith College; then at Peoria, Illinois; welcomed there by a dear friend from Brooklyn, New York, wife of a business man of that city. I knew of Peoria only as a great place for the manufacture of whisky, and for its cast-iron stoves, but found it a city, magnificently situated on a series of bold bluffs. And when I reached my friend's house, a class of ladies, who had been easily chatting in German, wanted to stay and ask me a few questions. These showed deep thought, wide reading, and finely disciplined minds. Only one reading there in the Congregational Church, where there was such a fearful lack of ventilation that I turned from my manuscript and quoted a bit from the "Apele for Are to the Sextant of the Old Brick Meetinouse by A. Gasper," which proved effectual.

I give this impressive exhortation entire as it should be more generally known.

I went as far as Omaha, and then was asked if I were not going West. The reason for this charming reception was that it was a novelty then to hear a young woman talk in a lively way on striking themes which had been most carefully prepared, and a light touch added, with frequent glints of humour. Byron declared that easy writing was very hard reading. I reversed that method, always working hard over each lecture. For instance, I spent two months in preparing "Bachelor Authors," cramming and condensing, and passing quickly over dangerous ground. With my vocal training I could easily be heard by an audience of five hundred.

A friend was eager to go to Alaska by Seattle; then, after our return, visit Yellowstone Park and San Francisco. She urged me so eloquently to accompany her, that I left my home in Metcalf, Massachusetts, taking great risks in many ways, but wonderful to relate, nothing disastrous occurred.

We scurried by fastest trains across the country to Seattle, just in time to take the Steamer Topeka from Seattle on August 8, 1899, the last boat of the season, and the last chance tourists ever had to see the Muir Glacier in its marvellous glory, as it was broken badly before the next summer.

My friend advised me kindly to ask no questions of the captain, as she knew well what a bore that was. I promised to be exceedingly careful. So, next morning, when that tall and handsome Captain Thompson came around the deck, with a smiling "Good morning," and bowing right and left, I was deeply absorbed in a book; the next time I was looking at a view; another time I played I was fast asleep. He never spoke to me, only stopped an instant before me and walked on. At last, a bow-legged pilot came directly from the captain's office to my open window, bringing to Miss Sanborn a bowl of extra large and luscious strawberries from Douglas Island, quite famous on account of the size and sweetness of this berry. With this gift came a note running thus:

Dear Miss Sanborn:

I am a little puzzled by your frigid manner. Have you any personal prejudice against me? Walter Raymond wrote me before he sailed, to look you up, and do what I could for you, as you were quite a favourite on the Eastern coast, and any kindness shown to you would be considered a personal favour to him, and that he only wished he could take the trip with us.

I was amazed and mortified. I had obeyed my directions too literally, and must and did explain and apologize. After that, such pleasant attentions from him! Invited to call at his office with my friends, to meet desirable passengers, something nice provided for refreshment, and these gentlemen were always ready for cards or conversation. But the great occasion was when I had no idea of such an honour, that the captain said:

"We are soon to pass through the Wrangel Narrows, a dangerous place, and the steering through zigzag lines must be most careful. I am going to smuggle you on to the bridge to see me steer and hear me give my orders that will be repeated below. But as it is against the rule to take a woman up there at such a time, promise me to keep perfectly silent. If you make one remark you lose your life."

I agreed and kept my mouth shut without a muzzle. That "memory" is as clear today as if it had happened yesterday.

One day while reading in my fine stateroom, a lady came to the open door and asked me if I would go out with her on the deck that pleasant afternoon and meet some friends of hers. I thanked her, but refused as I was reading one of Hon. Justin McCarthy's books, and as I had the honour of meeting him and his most interesting wife in New York City at the home of Mrs. Henry M. Field, I was much engrossed in what he wrote. Again, another person came and entreated me to go to the deck; not suspecting any plot to test me, I went with her, and found a crowd gathered there, and a good-looking young man seemed to be haranguing them. He stopped as we came along and after being introduced went on with: "As I was saying, Miss Sanborn, I regard women as greatly our inferiors; in fact, essentially unemotional,—really bovine. Do you really not agree to that?" I almost choked with surprise and wrath, but managed to retort: "I am sorry to suppose your mother was a cow, but she must have been to raise a calf like you." And I walked away to the tune of great applause. It seems someone had said that I was never at a loss when a repartee was needed, and it was proposed to give me an opportunity. Next surprise: a call as we were nearing Seattle from a large and noticeable lady who introduced herself saying:

"I am the president of a club which I started myself, and feel bound to help on. I have followed you about a good deal, and shall be much obliged if you will jot down for me to read to this club everything you have said since you came on board. I know they will enjoy it." I was sorry my memory failed me entirely on that occasion. Still it was a great compliment!

But the Muir Glacier! We had to keep three and a half miles away, lest the steamer be injured by the small icebergs which broke off the immense mass into the water with a thunderous roar. A live glacier advances a certain distance each day and retreats a little. Those who visited the glacier brought back delicate little blue harebells they found growing in the clefts of ice. No description of my impressions? Certainly not! Too much of that has been done already.

We saw curious sights along the way, such as the salmon leaping into a fenced-in pool to deposit their spawn; there they could be easily speared, dried, and pitched into wagons as we pitch hay in New England. I saw the Indians stretching the salmon on boards put up in the sun, their color in the sun a brilliant pinkish red.

I saw bears fishing at the edge of water, really catching fish in their clumsy paws. Other bears were picking strawberries for their cubs. As I watched them strolling away, I thought they might be looking for a stray cow to milk to add flavour to the berries.

We stopped at Wrangel to look at the totem poles, many of which have since been stolen as the Indians did not wish to sell them; our usual method of business with that abused race. Totem poles are genealogical records, and give the history of the family before whose door they stand. No one would quietly take the registered certificates of Revolutionary ancestors searched for with great care from the Colonial Dames or members of the New England Society, and coolly destroy them. I agree with Charles Lamb who said he didn't want to be like a potato, all that was best of him under ground.

At Sitka the brilliant gardens and the large school for Indian girls were the objects of interest. It is a sad fact that the school which teaches these girls cleanly habits, the practical arts of sewing, and cooking simple but appetizing dishes, has made the girls unwilling to return to their dirty homes and the filthy habits of their parents. That would be impossible to them. So they are lured to visit the dance halls in Juneau, where they find admirers of a transient sort, but seldom secure an honest husband.

We called at Skagway, and the lady who was known by us told us there was much stress there placed upon the most formal attention to rigid conventionalities, calls made and returned, cards left and received at just the right time, more than is expected in Boston. And yet that town was hardly started, and dirt and disorder and chaos reigned supreme.

A company of unlucky miners came home in our steamer; no place for them to sleep but on deck near the doors of our stateroom, and they ate at one of the tables after three other hungry sets had been satisfied. A few slept on the tables. All the poultry had been killed and eaten. We found the Chinese cooks tried to make tough meat attractive by pink and yellow sauces. We were glad to leave the steamer to try the ups and downs of Seattle.

CHAPTER V

Frances E. Willard—Walt Whitman—Lady Henry Somerset—Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith—A Teetotaler for Ten Minutes—Olive Thorne Miller—Hearty Praise for Mrs. Lippincott (Grace Greenwood).

I was looking over some letters from Frances E. Willard last week. What a powerful, blessed influence was hers!

Such a rare combination of intense earnestness, persistence, and devotion to a "cause" with a gentle, forgiving, compassionate spirit, and all tempered by perfect self-control.

Visiting in Germantown, Pennsylvania, at the hospitable home of Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith, the Quaker Bible reader and lay evangelist, and writer of cheerful counsel, I found several celebrities among her other guests. Miss Willard and Walt Whitman happened to be present. Whitman was rude and aggressively combative in his attack on the advocate of temperance, and that without the slightest provocation. He declared that all this total abstinence was absolute rot and of no earthly use, and that he hated the sight of these women who went out of their way to be crusading temperance fanatics.

After this outburst he left the room. Miss Willard never alluded to his fiery criticism, didn't seem to know she had been hit, but chatted on as if nothing unpleasant had occurred.

In half an hour he returned; and with a smiling face made a manly apology, and asked to be forgiven for his too severe remarks. Miss Willard met him more than half-way, with generous cordiality, and they became good friends. And when with the women of the circle again she said: "Now wasn't that just grand in that dear old man? I like him the more for his outspoken honesty and his unwillingness to pain me."

How they laboured with "Walt" to induce him to leave out certain of his poems from the next edition! The wife went to her room to pray that he might yield, and the husband argued. But no use, it was all "art" every word, and not one line would he ever give up. The old poet was supposed to be poor and needy, and an enthusiastic daughter of Mrs. Smith had secured quite a sum at college to provide bed linen and blankets for him in the simple cottage at Camden. Whitman was a great, breezy, florid-faced out-of-doors genius, but we all wished he had been a little less au naturel.

To speak once more of Miss Willard, no one enjoyed a really laughable thing more than she did, but I never felt like being a foolish trifler in her presence. Her outlook was so far above mine that I always felt not rebuked, but ashamed of my superficial lightness of manner.

Just one illustration of the unconscious influence of her noble soul and her convincing words:

Many years ago, at an anniversary of Sorosis in New York, I had half promised the persuasive president (Jennie June) that I would say something. The possibility of being called up for an after-dinner speech! Something brief, terse, sparkling, complimentary, satisfactory, and something to raise a laugh! O, you know this agony! I had nothing in particular to say; I wanted to be quiet and enjoy the treat. But between each course I tried hard, while apparently listening to my neighbour, to think up something "neat and appropriate."

This coming martyrdom, which increases in horror as you advance with deceptive gayety, from roast to game, and game to ices, is really one of the severest trials of club life.

Miss Willard was one of the honoured guests of the day, and was called on first. When she arose and began to speak, I felt instantly that she had something to say; something that she felt was important we should hear, and how beautifully, how simply it was said! Not a thought of self, not one instant's hesitation for a thought or a word, yet it was evidently unwritten and not committed to memory. Every eye was drawn to her earnest face; every heart was touched. As she sat down, I rose and left the room rather rapidly; and when my name was called and my fizzling fireworks expected, I was walking up Fifth Avenue, thinking about her and her life-work. The whole experience was a revelation. I had never met such a woman. No affectation, nor pedantry, nor mannishness to mar the effect. It was in part the humiliating contrast between her soul-stirring words and my silly little society effort that drove me from the place, but all petty egotism vanished before the wish to be of real use to others with which her earnestness had inspired me.

One lady told me that after hearing her she felt she could go out and be a praying band all by herself. Indeed she was

A noble woman, true and pure,
Who in the little while she stayed,
Wrought works that shall endure.

She was asked who she would prefer to write a sketch of her and her work and she honoured me by giving me that great pleasure. The book appeared in 1883, entitled Our Famous Women.

Once when Miss Willard was in Boston with Lady Henry Somerset and Anna Gordon, I was delighted by a letter from Frances saying that Lady Henry wanted to know me and could I lunch with them soon at the Abbottsford. I accepted joyously, but next morning's mail brought this depressing decision: "Dear Kate, we have decided that there will be more meat in going to you. When can we come?" I was hardly settled in my house of the Abandoned Farm. There was no furnace in the house, only two servants with me. And it would be impossible to entertain those friends properly in the dead of the winter, and I nearly ready to leave for a milder clime. So I told them the stern facts and lost a rare treat.

This is the end of Miss Willard's good-bye letter to me when returning to England with Lady Henry:

Hoping to see you on my return, and hereby soliciting an exchange of photographs between you and Lady Henry and me,

I am ever and as ever
Yours,
FRANCES WILLARD.

While at Mrs. Smith's home in Germantown, both she and Miss Willard urged me to sign a Temperance Pledge that lay on the table in the library. I would have accepted almost anything either of those good friends presented for my attention. So after thinking seriously I signed. But after going to my room I felt sure that I could never keep that pledge. So I ran downstairs and told them to erase my name, which was done without one word of astonishment or reproof from either.

I wish I knew how to describe Hannah Whitehall Smith as she was in her everyday life. Such simple nobility, such tenderness for the tempted, such a love for sinners, such a longing to show them the better way. She said to me: "If my friends must go to what is called Hell I want to go with them." When a minister, who was her guest, was greatly roused at her lack of belief in eternal punishment and her infinite patience with those who lacked moral strength, he said: "There are surely some sins your daughters could commit which would make you drive them from your home." "There are no sins my daughters could commit which would not make me hug them more closely in my arms and strive to bring them back." Wherewith he exclaimed bitterly: "Madam, you are a mere mucilaginous mess." She made no reply, but her husband soon sent him word that a carriage would be at the door in one hour to convey him to the train for New York.

"If you do not love the birds, you cannot understand them."

I remember enjoying an article on the catbird several years ago in the Atlantic Monthly, and wanting to know more of the woman who had observed a pair of birds so closely, and could make so charming a story of their love-affairs and housekeeping experiences, and thinking that most persons knew next to nothing about birds, their habits, and homes.

Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller, who wrote that bird talk, is now a dear friend of mine, and while spending a day with me lately was kind enough to answer all my questions as to how and where and when she began to study birds. She is not a young woman, is the proud grandmother of seven children; but her bright face crowned with handsome white hair, has that young, alert, happy look that comes with having a satisfying hobby that goes at a lively pace. She said: "I never thought of being anything but a housekeeping mother until I was about thirty-one and my husband lost all his property, and want, or a thousand wants, stared us in the face. Making the children's clothes and my own, and cooking as well, broke down my health, so I bethought me of writing, which I always had a longing to do."

"What did you begin with?"

"Well, pretty poor stuff that no one was anxious to pay for; mostly in essay form expressing my own opinions on various important subjects. But it didn't go. I was complaining of my bad luck to a plain-spoken woman in charge of a circulating library, and she gave me grand advice. 'No one cares a snap for your opinions. You must tell something that folks want to know.'"

"Did you then take up birds?"

"O no; I went into the library, read some of Harriet Martineau's talks on pottery, and told children how a teacup was made and got one dollar for that. But those pot-boilers were not inspiring, and about ten years later a second woman adviser turned my course into another channel."

"How did that come about?"

"I had a bird-loving friend from the West visiting me, and took her to Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to see our birds. She pointed out several, and so interested me in their lives that from that day I began to study them, especially the wood-thrush and catbird. After I had studied them for two years, I wrote what I had seen. From that time my course has seemed marked out for me, and my whole time has been given to this one theme. I think every woman over forty-five ought to take up a fad; they would be much happier and better off."

"You told me once that three women had each in turn changed your career. Do give me the third."

"Well, after my articles and books had met with favour (I have brought out fifteen books), invitations to lecture or talk about birds kept pouring in. I was talking this over with Marion Harland (Mrs. Terhune), declaring I could never appear in public, that I should be frightened out of my wits, and that I must decline. My voice would all go, and my heart jump into my mouth. She exclaimed, 'For a sensible woman, you are the biggest fool I ever met!' This set me thinking, and with many misgivings I accepted an invitation."

"And did you nearly expire with stage fright?"

"Never was scared one bit, my dear. All bird-lovers are the nicest kind of folks, either as an audience or in their own homes. I have made most delightful acquaintances lecturing in fifteen different States; am now booked for a tour in the West, lecturing every day and taking classes into the fields and woods for actual observation. Nesting-time is the best time to study the birds, to know them thoroughly."

"Do you speak about dead birds on hats?"

"Yes, when I am asked to do so. Did you ever hear that Celia Thaxter, finding herself in a car with women whose head-gear emulated a bird-museum, was moved to rise and appeal to them in so kindly a way that some pulled off the feathers then and there, and all promised to reform? She loved birds so truly that she would not be angry when spring after spring they picked her seeds out of her 'Island Garden.'"

"Have you any special magnetic power over birds, so that they will come at your call or rest on your outstretched finger?"

"Not in the least. I just like them, and love to get acquainted with them. Each bird whose acquaintance I make is as truly a discovery to me as if he were totally unknown to the world."

We were sitting by a southern window that looks out on a wide-spreading and ancient elm, my glory and pride. Not one bird had I seen on it that cold, repellent middle of March. But Mrs. Miller looked up, and said: "Your robins have come!" Sure enough I could now see a pair.

"And there are the woodpeckers, but they have stayed all winter. No doubt you have the hooting owls. There's an oriole's nest, badly winter-worn; but they will come back and build again. I see you feed your chickadees and sparrows, because they are so tame and fearless. I'd like to come later and make a list of the birds on your place."

I wonder how many she would find. Visiting at Deerfield, Massachusetts, I said one day to my host, the artist J.W. Champney: "You don't seem to have many birds round you."

"No?" he replied with a mocking rising inflection. "Mrs. Miller, who was with us last week, found thirty-nine varieties in our front yard before breakfast!" Untrained eyes are really blind.

Mrs. Miller is an excellent housekeeper, although a daughter now relieves her of that care. But, speaking at table of this and that dish and vegetable, she promised to send me some splendid receipts for orange marmalade, baked canned corn, scalloped salmon, onion à la crème (delicious), and did carefully copy and send them.

She told me that in Denmark a woman over forty-five is considered gone. If she is poor, a retreat is ready for her without pay; if rich, she would better seek one of the homes provided for aged females who can pay well for a home.

Another thing of interest was the fact that when Mrs. Miller eats no breakfast, her brain is in far better condition to write. She is a Swedenborgian, and I think that persons of that faith have usually a cheerful outlook on life. She was obliged to support herself after forty years of age.

I would add to her advice about a hobby: don't wait till middle age; have one right away, now. Boys always do. I know of one young lady who makes a goodly sum out of home-made marmalade; another who makes dresses for her family and special friends; another who sells three hundred dozen "brown" eggs to one of the best groceries in Boston, and supports herself. By the way, what can you do?

Mrs. Lippincott had such a splendid, magnetic presence, such a handsome face with dark poetic eyes, and accomplished so many unusual things, that, knowing her as I did, I think I should be untrue to her if I did not try to show her as she was in her brilliant prime, and not merely as a punster or a raconteur, or as she appeared in her dramatic recitals, for these were but a small part of the many-sided genius.

When my friend, Mrs. Botta, said one evening to her husband: "Grace writes me that she will be here tomorrow, to spend the Sabbath," and then said to me, "Grace Greenwood, I mean; have you ever met her?" my heart beat very quickly in pleasant anticipation of her coming. Grace Greenwood! Why, I had known her and loved her, at least her writings, ever since I was ten years old.

Those dear books, bound in red, with such pretty pictures—History of My Pets and Recollections of My Childhood, were the most precious volumes in my little library. Anyone who has had pets and lost them (and the one follows the other, for pets always come to some tragic end) will delight in these stories.

And then the Little Pilgrim, which I used to like next best to the Youth's Companion; and in later years her spirited, graceful poetry; her racy magazine stories; her Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe; her sparkling letters to the Tribune, full of reliable news from Washington, graphic descriptions of prominent men and women, capital anecdotes and atrocious puns;—O how glad I should be to look in her face and to shake hands with the author who had given me so much pleasure!

Well, she came, I heard the bell ring, just when she was expected, with a vigorous pull, and, as the door opened, heard her say, in a jolly, soothing way: "Don't get into a passion," to the man who was swearing at her big trunk. And then I ran away, not wishing to intrude, and waited impatiently for dinner and an introduction to my well-beloved heroine.

Grace—Mrs. Lippincott—I found to be a tall, fine-looking lady, with a commanding figure and a face that did not disappoint me, as faces so often do which you have dreamed about. She had dark hair, brown rather than black, which was arranged in becoming puffs round her face; and such eyes! large, dark, magnetic, full of sympathy, of kind, cordial feelings and of quick appreciation of fun. She talked much and well. If I should repeat all the good stories she told us, that happy Saturday night, as we lingered round the table, you would be convulsed with laughter, that is, if I could give them with her gestures, expressions, and vivid word-pictures.

She told one story which well illustrated the almost cruel persistent inquiries of neighbours about someone who is long in dying. An unfortunate husband was bothered each morning by repeated calls from children, who were sent by busy mothers to find out "Just how Miss Blake was feeling this morning." At last this became offensive, and he said: "Well, she's just the same—she ain't no better and she ain't no worse—she keeps just about so—she's just about dead, you can say she's dead."

One Sunday evening she described her talks with the men in the prisons and penitentiaries, to whom she had been lately lecturing, proving that these hardened sinners had much that was good in them, and many longings for a nobler life, in spite of all their sins.

No, I was not disappointed in "G.G." She was just as natural, hearty, and off-hand as when some thirty years ago, she was a romping, harum-scarum, bright-eyed schoolgirl, Sara Clarke, of western New York, who was almost a gypsy in her love for the fields and forests. She was always ready for any out-door exercise or sport. This gave her glorious health, which up to that time she had not lost.

Her nom de plume, which she says she has never been able to drop, was only one of the many alliterative names adopted at that time. Look over the magazines and Annuals of those years, and you will find many such, as "Mary Maywood," "Dora Dashwood," "Ella Ellwood" "Fanny Forrester," "Fanny Fern," "Jennie June," "Minnie Myrtle," and so on through the alphabet, one almost expecting to find a "Ninny Noodle." Examining one of Mrs. Lippincott's first scrapbooks of "Extracts from Newspapers," etc., which she had labelled, "Vanity, all is Vanity," I find many poems in her honour, much enthusiasm over her writings, and much speculation as to who "Grace Greenwood" might really be. The public curiosity was piqued to find out this new author who added to forceful originality "the fascination of splendid gayety and brilliant trifling." John Brougham, the actor and dramatist, thus expressed his interest in a published letter to Willis:

The only person that I am disposed to think, write or talk about at present is your dazzling, bewitching correspondent, "Grace Greenwood." Who is she? that I may swear by her! Where is she? that I may fling myself at her feet! There is a splendour and dash about her pen that carry my fastidious soul captive by a single charge. I shall advertise for her throughout the whole Western country in the terms in which they inquire for Almeyda in Dryden's Don Sebastian: "Have you seen aught of a woman who lacks two of the four elements, who has nothing in her nature but air and fire?"

And here is one of the poetical tributes: