It was truly a new world through which they made their way—beginnings all about—the roughest, crudest sort of beginnings, glorified by the brightest hopes. Tiny cabins were planted on the edge of the prairies; rough huts of logs were dropped down in clearings in the forest. Everywhere people were working with an energy that could not be daunted—felling trees, sowing, harvesting, building. As they passed by the end of Lake Michigan they caught a glimpse of a small, struggling village in the midst of a dark, hopeless-looking morass, from which they turned aside on seeing the warning sign No bottom here. That little settlement in the swamp was Chicago.
Northward they journeyed to Wisconsin, where on the bluffs above Rock River, not far from Janesville, they found a spot with fertile prairie on one side and sheltering, wooded hills on the other. It seemed as if the place fairly called to them: "This is home. You are my people. My fields and hills and river have been waiting many a year just for you!"
Here Mr. Willard planted the roof-tree, using timber that his own ax had wrested from the forest. Year by year it grew with their life. "Forest Home," as they lovingly called it, was a low, rambling dwelling, covered with trailing vines and all but hidden away in a grove of oaks and evergreens. It seemed as if Nature had taken over the work of their hands—house, barns, fields, and orchards—and made them her dearest care. Here were people after her own heart, people who went out eagerly to meet and use the things that each day brought. They found real zest in plowing fields, laying fences, raising cattle, and learning the ways of soil and weather. They learned how to keep rats and gophers from devouring their crops, how to bank up the house as a protection from hurricanes, and how to fight the prairie fires with fire.
Frank Willard grew as the trees grew, quite naturally, gathering strength from the life about her. She had her share in the daily tasks; she had, too, a chance for free, happy, good times. There was but one other family of children near enough to share their plays, but the fun was never dependent on numbers or novelty. If there were only two members of the "Rustic Club" present, the birds and chipmunks and other wood-creatures supplied every lack. Sometimes when they found themselves longing to "pick up and move back among folks," they played that the farm was a city.
"'My mind to me a kingdom is,'" quoted Frank, optimistically; "and I think if we all put our minds to it, we can manage to people this spot on the map very sociably."
Their city had a model government, and ideal regulations for community health and enjoyment. It had also an enterprising newspaper of which Frank was editor.
Frank was the leader in all of the fun. She was the commanding general in that famous "Indian fight" when, with Mary and Mother, she held the fort against the attack of two dreadful, make-believe savages and a dog. It was due to her strategy that the dog was brought over to their side by an enticing sparerib and the day won. Frank, too, was the captain of their good ship Enterprise.
"If we do live inland, we don't have to think inland, Mary," she said. "What's the use of sitting here in Wisconsin and sighing because we've never seen the ocean. Let's take this hen-coop and go a-sailing. Who knows what magic shores we'll touch beyond our Sea of Fancy!"
A plank was put across the pointed top of the hen-coop, and the children stood at opposite ends steering, slowly when the sea was calm and more energetically when a storm was brewing. The hens clucked and the chickens ran about in a panic, but the captain calmly charted the waters and laid down rules of navigation.
Perhaps, though, the best times of all were those that Frank spent in her retreat at the top of a black oak tree, where she could sit weaving stories of bright romance to her heart's content. On the tree she nailed a sign with this painted warning: "The Eagle's Nest. Beware!" to secure her against intruders. Here she wrote a wonderful novel of adventure, some four hundred pages long.
But this eagle found that the wings of her imagination could not make her entirely free and happy. She had to return from the heights and the high adventures of her favorite heroes to the dull routine of farm life. She was not even allowed to ride, as Oliver was.
"Well, if I can't be trusted to manage a horse, I'll see what can be done with a cow and a saddle. I simply must ride something," Frank declared, with a determined toss of her head.
It took not only determination, but also grim endurance and a sense of fun to help her through this novel experiment, which certainly had in it more excitement than pleasure. However, when her father saw her ride by on her long-horned steed, he said with a laugh:
"You have fairly earned a better mount, Frank. And I suppose there is really no more risk of your breaking your neck with a horse."
That night Frank wrote in her journal:
"Hurrah! rejoice! A new era has this moment been ushered in. Rode a horse through the corn—the acme of my hopes realized."
In the saddle, with the keen breath of a brisk morning in her face, she felt almost free—almost a part of the larger life for which she longed. "I think I'm fonder of anything out of my sphere than anything in it," she said to her mother, whose understanding and sympathy never failed her.
Perhaps she loved especially to pore over a book of astronomy and try to puzzle out the starry paths on the vast prairie of the heavens, because it carried her up and away from her every-day world. Sometimes, however, she was brought back to earth with a rude bump.
"When I had to get dinner one Sunday, I fairly cried," she said. "To come back to frying onions, when I've been among the rings of Saturn, is terrible."
She didn't at all know what it was for which she longed. Only she knew that she didn't want to grow up—to twist up her free curls with spiky hair-pins and to wear long skirts which seemed to make it plain that a weary round of shut-in tasks was all her lot and that the happy days of roaming woods and fields were over.
Through all the girlhood days at "Forest Home" Frank longed for the chance to go to a real school as much as she longed to be free. Oliver went to the Janesville Academy, and later to Beloit College, but she could get only fleeting glimpses of his more satisfying life through the books he brought home and his talks of lectures and professors. She remembered those far-off days at Oberlin as a golden time indeed. There even a girl might have the chance to learn the things that would set her mind and soul free.
It was a great day for Frances and Mary Willard when Mr. Hodge, a Yale man who was, like her father, exiled to a life in a new country, decided to open a school for the children of the neighboring farms. On the never-to-be-forgotten first day the girls got up long before light, put their tin pails of dinner and their satchels of books with their coats, hoods, and mufflers, and then stood watching the clock, whose provokingly measured ticks seemed entirely indifferent to the eager beating of their hearts. At last the hired man yoked the oxen to the long "bob-sled," and Oliver drove them over a new white road to the new school. The doors were not yet open.
"I told you it was much too early," said Oliver. "The idea of being so crazy over the opening of a little two-by-four school like this!"
"It does look like a sort of big ground-nut," said Frank, with a laugh, "but it's ours to crack. Besides, we have a Yale graduate to teach us, and Beloit can't beat that!"
"Let's go over to Mr. Hodge's for the key, and make the fire for him," suggested Mary.
There was an unusually long entry in Frank's diary that night:
At last Professor Hodge appeared, in his long-tailed blue coat with brass buttons, carrying an armful of school-books and a dinner-bell in his hand. He stood on the steps and rang the bell, long, loud, and merrily. My heart bounded, and I said inside of it, so that nobody heard: "At last we are going to school all by ourselves, Mary and I, and we are going to have advantages like other folks, just as Mother said we should." O! goody-goody-goody! I feel satisfied with the world, myself, and the rest of mankind.
This enthusiasm for school and study did not wane as the days went by. "I want to know everything—everything," Frank would declare vehemently. "It is only knowing that can make one free."
The time came when she was to go away to college. Wistfully she went about saying good-by to all the pleasant haunts about "Forest Home." For a long time she sat on her old perch in the "Eagle's nest," looking off towards the river and the hills.
"I think that as I know more, I live more," said Frank to her mother that night. "I am alive to so many things now that I never thought of six months ago; and everything is dearer—is more a part of myself."
The North-West Female College, at Evanston, Illinois, was Frank's alma mater. Here her love of learning made her a leader in all her classes; and her originality, daring, and personal charm made her a leader in the social life of the students. She was editor of the college paper, and first fun-maker of a lively clan whose chief delight it was to shock some of their meek classmates out of their unthinking "goody-goodness." She was known, for instance, to have climbed into the steeple and to have remained on her giddy perch during an entire recitation period in the higher mathematics.
In her days of teaching, Frank was the same alert, free, eager-minded, fun-loving girl. First in a country school near Chicago, and afterward in a seminary in Pittsburg, she was a successful teacher because she never ceased to be a learner.
"Frank, you have the hungriest soul I ever saw in a human being. It will never be satisfied!" said one of her friends.
"I shall never be satisfied until I have entered every open door, and I shall not go in alone," said Frank.
In all of her pursuit of knowledge and culture she was intensely social. She was always learning with others and for others. A bit from her diary in 1866 reveals the spirit in which she worked:
I read a good deal and learn ever so many new things every day. I get so hungry to know things. I'll teach these girls as well as possible.... Girls, girls, girls! Questions upon questions. Dear me, it is no small undertaking to be elder sister to the whole 180 of them. They treat me beautifully, and I think I reciprocate.
"Miss Willard seems to see us not as we are, but as we hope we are becoming," one of her girls said. "And so we simply have to do what she believes we can do."
No one was a stranger or indifferent to her. When her clear blue eyes looked into the eyes of another, they always saw a friend.
Through these early years of teaching Frances Willard was learning not only from constant study and work with others, but also from sorrow. Her sister Mary was taken from her. The story of what her gentle life and loving comradeship meant to Frank is told in the first and best of Miss Willard's books, "Nineteen Beautiful Years," which gives many delightful glimpses of their childhood on the Wisconsin farm and the school-girl years together. Soon after Mary's death "Forest Home" was sold and the family separated. Frank wrote in her journal at this time:
I am to lose sight of the old familiar landmarks; old things are passing from me, whose love is for old things. I am pushing out all by myself into the wide, wide sea.
The writing of the story of Mary's life, together with essays and articles of general interest for the papers and magazines, "took the harm out of life for a while." In all her writing, as in her teaching and later in her public speaking, her instinctive faith in people was the secret of her power and influence as a leader.
"For myself, I liked the world, believed it friendly, and could see no reason why I might not confide in it," she said.
When another sorrow, the loss of her father, threatened to darken her life for a time, a friend came to the rescue and "opened a new door" for her—the door of travel and study abroad. They lived for two and a half years in Europe, and made a journey to Syria and Egypt. During much of this time Miss Willard spent nine hours a day in study. She longed to make her own the impressions of beauty and the haunting charm of the past.
"I must really enter into the life of each place," she said, "if it is only for a few weeks or months. I want to feel that I have a right to the landscape—that I'm not just an intruding tourist, caring only for random sight-seeing."
But Miss Willard brought back much more than a general culture gained through a study of art, history, and literature, and a contact with civilization. She gained, above all, a vital interest in conditions of life, particularly those that concern women and their opportunities for education, self-expression, and service. The Frances E. Willard that the world knows, the organizer and leader in social reform, was born at this time. On her thirtieth birthday she wrote:
I can do so much more when I go home. I shall have a hold on life, and a fitness for it so much more assured. Perhaps—who knows?—there may be noble, wide-reaching work for me in the years ahead.
It seemed to Miss Willard, when she returned to her own country, that there was, after all, no land like America, and no spot anywhere so truly satisfying as Rest Cottage in Evanston, where her mother awaited her home-coming. A signal honor awaited her as well. She was called to be president of her alma mater; and when the college became a part of the North-Western University, she remained as Dean of Women.
At this time many towns and cities of the Middle West were the scene of a strange, pathetic, and heart-stirring movement known as the Temperance Crusade. Gentle, home-loving women, white-haired mothers bent with toil and grief, marched through the streets, singing hymns, praying, and making direct appeals to keepers of saloons "for the sake of humanity and their own souls' sake to quit their soul-destroying business." Their very weakness was their strength. Their simple faith and the things they had suffered through the drink evil pleaded for them. A great religious revival was under way.
In Chicago a band of women who were marching to the City Council to ask that the law for Sunday closing of saloons be enforced were rudely jostled and insulted by a mob. Miss Willard, who had before been deeply stirred by the movement, was now thoroughly aroused. She made several eloquent speeches in behalf of the cause, which was, she said, "everybody's war." Her first instinct was to leave her college and give her all to the work. Then it seemed to her that she ought to help just where she was—that everybody ought. So, just where she was, the young dean devoted her power of eloquent speech and her influence with people to the cause. Day by day her interest in reform became more absorbing. She realized that the early fervor and enthusiasm of the movement needed to be strengthened by "sober second thought" and sound organization.
"If I only had more time—if I were more free!" she exclaimed.
Then the turn of events did indeed free her from her responsibility to her college. A change of policy so altered the conditions of her work that she decided to resign her charge and go east to study the temperance movement. The time came when she had to make a final choice. Two letters reached her on the same day: One asked her to assume the principal-ship of an important school in New York at a large salary; the other begged her to take charge of the Chicago branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union at no salary at all. The girl who had worshiped culture and lived in books decided to accept the second call; and turning her back on a brilliant career and worldly success, she threw in her lot with the most unpopular reform of the day. Frances Willard, the distinguished teacher, writer, and lecturer, became a crusader.
"How can you think it right to give up your interest in literature and art!" wailed one of her friends and admirers.
"What greater art than to try to restore the image of God to faces that have lost it?" replied Miss Willard.
Those early days in Chicago were a brave, splendid time. Often walking miles, because she had no money for car-fare, the inspired crusader "followed the gleam" of her vision of what this woman's movement might accomplish. Where others saw only an uncertain group of overwrought fanatics, she saw an organized army of earnest workers possessed of that "loftiest chivalry which comes as a sequel of their service to the weakest."
"I seemed to see the end from the beginning," she said; "and when one has done that, nothing can discourage or daunt."
Miss Willard often said that she was never happier than during this time, when her spirit was entirely free, because she neither longed for what the world could give nor feared what it might take away. She felt very near to the poor people among whom she worked.
"I am a better friend than you dream," she would say in her heart, while her eyes spoke her sympathy and understanding. "I know more about you than you think, for I am hungry, too."
Of course, in time, the women discovered that their valued leader did not have an independent income as they had imagined (since she had never seemed to give a thought to ways and means for herself), and a sufficient salary was provided for her. But always she spent her income as she spent herself—to the utmost for the work.
The secret of Miss Willard's success as a speaker lay in this entire giving of herself. The intensity of life, the irrepressible humor, the never-failing sympathy, the spirit that hungered after all that was beautiful shone in her clear eyes, and, in the pure, vibrant tones of her wonderful voice, went straight to the hearts of all who listened. She did not enter into her life as a crusader halt and maimed; all of the woman's varied interests and capacities were felt in the work of the reformer.
"She is a great orator because in her words the clear seeing of a perfectly poised mind and the warm feeling of an intensely sympathetic heart are wonderfully blended," said Henry Ward Beecher.
Miss Willard was not only a gifted speaker, whose pure, flame-like spirit enkindled faith and enthusiasm in others; she was also a rare organizer and indefatigable worker. As president of the National Union, she visited nearly every city and town in the United States, and, during a dozen years, averaged one meeting a day. The hours spent on trains were devoted to making plans and preparing addresses. On a trip up the Hudson, while everybody was on deck enjoying the scenery, Miss Willard remained in the cabin busy with pad and pencil.
"I know myself too well to venture out," she said to a friend who remonstrated with her. "There is work that must be done."
Under Miss Willard's leadership the work became a power in the life and progress of the nation and of humanity. There were those who objected the very breadth and inclusiveness of her sympathies and interests, and who protested against the "scatteration" policies, that would, they said, lead to no definite goal.
"I cannot see why any society should impose limitations on any good work," said this broad-minded leader. "Everything is not in the temperance movement, but the temperance movement should be in everything."
In 1898 the loyal crusader was called to lay down her arms and leave the battle to others. She had given so unstintedly to every good work all that she was, that at fifty-eight her powers of endurance were spent. "I am so tired—so tired," she said again and again; and at the last, with a serene smile, "How beautiful it is to be with God!"
In the great hall of the Capitol, where each State has been permitted to place statues of two of its most cherished leaders, Illinois has put the marble figure of Frances E. Willard, the only woman in a company of soldiers and statesmen. In presenting the statue to the nation, Mr. Foss, who represented Miss Willard's own district in Illinois, closed his address with these words:
Frances E. Willard once said: "If I were asked what was the true mission of the ideal woman, I would say, 'It is to make the whole world home-like.'" Illinois, therefore, presents this statue not only as a tribute to her whom it represents,—one of the foremost women of America,—but as a tribute to woman and her mighty influence upon our national life; to woman in the home; to woman wherever she is toiling for the good of humanity; to woman everywhere who has ever stood "For God, for home, for native land."
We have told the story of our mother's life, possibly at too great length; but she herself told it in eight words.
"Tell me," Maud asked her once, "what is the ideal aim of life?"
She paused a moment, and replied, dwelling thoughtfully on each word:
"To learn, to teach, to serve, to enjoy!"
Life of Julia Ward Howe.
TWO little girls were rolling hoops along the street when they suddenly caught them over their little bare arms and drew up close to the railings of a house on the corner.
"There is the wonderful coach and the little girl I told you about, Eliza," whispered Marietta, pushing back the straw bonnet that shaded her face from the sun and pointing with her stick.
It was truly a magnificent yellow coach, pulled by two proud gray horses. Even Cinderella's golden equipage could not have been more splendid. Moreover, the little girl who sat perched upon the bright-blue cushioned seat wore an elegant blue pelisse, that just matched the heavenly color of the lining, and a yellow-satin bonnet that was clearly inspired by the straw-colored outer shell of the chariot itself. The fair chubby face under the satin halo was turned toward the children, and a pair of clear gray eyes regarded them with eager interest.
"She looked as if she wanted to speak!" said Marietta, breathlessly. "Oh, Eliza, did you ever see any one so beautiful? Just like a doll or a fairy-tale princess!"
"Huh!" cried Eliza, the scornful; "didn't you see that she has red hair? Who ever heard of a doll or a princess with red hair?"
"Maybe a witch or a bad fairy turned her spun-gold locks red for spite," suggested Marietta. "Anyway, I wouldn't mind red hair if I was in her place—so rich and all. Wouldn't it be grand to ride in a fine coach and have everything you want even before you stop to wish for it!"
How astonished Marietta would have been if she could have known that the little lady in the chariot was wishing that she were a little girl with a hoop! For even when she was very small Julia Ward had other trials besides the red hair. Nowadays, people realize that red-gold hair is a true "crowning glory," but it wasn't the style to like it in 1825, at the time this story begins. So little Julia's mother tried her best to tone down the bright color with sobering washes and leaden combs. One day, however, the child heard a visitor say, "Your little girl is very beautiful; her hair is pretty, too, with that lovely complexion."
Eagerly Julia climbed upon a chair and then on the high, old-fashioned dressing-table, so that she could gaze in the mirror to her heart's content. "Is that all?" she cried after a moment, and scrambled down, greatly disappointed.
Eliza and Marietta would have been truly amazed if they had known that the little queen of the splendid coach had very little chance for the good times that a child loves. In these days I really believe that people would pity her and say, "Poor little rich girl!" She was brought up with the greatest strictness. There were many lessons,—French, Latin, music, and dancing—for she must have an education that would fit her to shine in her high station. When she went out for an airing, it was always in the big coach, "like a little lady." There was never a chance for a hop-skip-and-jump play-hour. Her delicate cambric dresses and kid slippers were only suited to sedate indoor ways, and even when she was taken to the sea-shore for a holiday, her face was covered with a thick green veil to keep her fair skin from all spot and blemish. Dignity and Duty were the guardian geniuses of Julia Ward's childhood.
Her father, Samuel Ward, was a rich New York banker, with a fine American sense of noblesse oblige. He believed that a man's wealth and influence spell strict accountability to his country and to God, and he lived according to that belief. He believed that as a banker his most vital concern was not to make himself richer and richer, but to manage money matters in such a way as to serve his city and the nation as a whole. In those times of financial stress which came to America in the early part of the nineteenth century, his heroic efforts more than once enabled his bank to weather a financial storm and uphold the credit of the State. On one occasion his loyalty and unflagging zeal secured a loan of five million dollars from the Bank of England in the nick of time to avert disaster.
"Julia," cried her brother, who had just come in from Wall Street, "men have been going up and down the office stairs all day long, carrying little wooden kegs of gold on their backs, marked 'Prime, Ward & King' and filled with English gold!"
Mr. Ward, however, did not see the triumphal procession of the kegs; he was prostrated by a severe illness, due, it was said, to his too exacting labors. Years afterward, Mr. Ward's daughter said that her best inheritance from the old firm was the fact that her father had procured this loan which saved the honor of the Empire State.
"From the time I was a tiny child," said Julia Ward, "I had heard stories of my ancestors—colonial governors and officers in the Revolution, among whom were numbered General Nathanael Greene and General Marion, the 'Swamp Fox' whose 'fortress was the good green wood,' whose 'tent the cypress-tree.' When I thought of the brave and honorable men and the fair and prudent wives and daughters of the line, they seemed to pass before my unworthy self 'terrible as an army with banners'—but there was, too, the trumpet-call of inspiration in the thought that they were truly mine own people."
If a sense of duty and the trumpet-call of her forebears urged little Julia on to application in her early years, she soon learned to love study for its own sake. When, at nine years of age, she began to attend school, she listened to such purpose to the recitations of a class in Italian that she presently handed to the astonished principal a letter correctly written in that language, begging to be admitted to the study of the tongue whose soft musical vowels had charmed her ear. She had not only aptitude, but genuine fondness, for languages, and early tried various experiments in the use of her own. When a child of ten she began to write verse, and thereafter the expression of her thoughts and feelings in poetic form was as natural as breathing.
If you could have seen some of the solemn verses entitled, "All things shall pass," and, "We return no more," written by the child not yet in her teens, you might have said, "What an extraordinary little girl! Has she always been ill, or has she never had a chance for a good time?"
It was certainly true that life seemed a very serious thing to the child. Her eyes were continually turned inward, for they had not been taught to discover and enjoy the things of interest and delight in the real world. New York was in that interesting stage of its growth that followed upon the opening of the Erie Canal. Not yet a city of foreigners,—the melting-pot of all nations,—the commercial opportunities which better communication with the Great Lakes section gave caused unparalleled prosperity. In 1835 the metropolis had a population of 200,000; but Broadway was still in large part a street of dignified brick residences with bright green blinds and brass knockers, along which little girls could roll their hoops. Canal Street was a popular boulevard, with a canal bordered by trees running through the center and a driveway on either side; and the district neighboring on the Battery and Castle Garden was still a place of wealth and fashion.
It is to be doubted, however, if Julia Ward ever saw anything on her drives to call her out of her day-dreaming self. Nor had she eyes for the marvels of nature. The larkspurs and laburnums in the garden had no language that she could understand. "I grew up," she said, "with the city measure of the universe—my own house, somebody else's, the trees in the park, a strip of blue sky overhead, and a great deal about nature read from the best authors, most of which meant nothing at all. Years later I learned to enjoy the drowsy murmur of green fields in midsummer, the song of birds and the ways of shy wood-flowers, when my own children opened the door into that 'mighty world of eye and ear.'"
When Julia was sixteen, the return of her brother from Germany opened a new door of existence to her. She had just left school and had begun to study in real earnest. So serious was she in her devotion to her self-imposed tasks that she sometimes bade a maid tie her in a chair for a certain period. Thus, in bonds, with a mind set free from all temptation to roam, she wrestled with the difficulties of German grammar and came off victorious. But Brother Sam led her to an appreciation of something besides the poetry of Schiller and Goethe. He had a keen and wholesome enjoyment of the world of people, and in the end succeeded in giving his young sister a taste of natural youthful gaiety.
"Sir," said Samuel, Junior, to his father one evening, "you do not keep in view the importance of the social tie."
"The social what?" asked the amazed Puritan.
"The social tie, sir."
"I make small account of that," rejoined the father, coldly.
"I will die in defense of it!" retorted the son, hotly.
The young man found, however, that it was more agreeable to live for the social tie than to die for it. And Julia, beginning to long for something besides family evenings with books and music varied by an occasional lecture or a visit to the house of an uncle, seemed to herself "like a young damsel of olden times, shut up within an enchanted castle." When she was nineteen she decided upon a declaration of independence. If she could only muster the courage to meet her affectionate jailer face to face, she thought that the bars of his prejudice against fashionable society must surely fall.
"I am going to give a party—a party of my very own," she announced to her brothers; "and you must help me with the list of guests."
Having obtained her father's permission to invite a few friends "to spend the evening," she set about her preparations. This first party of her young life should, she resolved, be correct in every detail. The best caterer in New York was engaged, and a popular group of musicians. She even introduced a splendid cut-glass chandelier to supplement the conservative lighting of the drawing-room. "My first party must be a brilliant success," she said, with a smile and a determined tilt of her chin.
A brilliant company was gathered to do the débutante honor on the occasion of her audacious entrance into society. Mr. Ward showed no surprise, however, when he descended the stairs and appeared upon the festive scene. He greeted the guests courteously and watched the dancing without apparent displeasure. Julia, herself, betrayed no more excitement than seemed natural to the acknowledged belle of the evening, but her heart was beating in a fashion not quite in tune with the music of the fiddles. When the last guest had departed she went, according to custom, to bid her father good night. And now came the greatest surprise of all! Mr. Ward took the young girl's hand in his. "My daughter," he said with tender gravity, "I was surprised to see that your idea of 'a few friends' differed widely from mine. After this you need not hesitate to consult me freely and frankly about what you want to do." Then, kissing her good night with his usual affection, he dismissed the subject forever.
Julia's brief skirmish for independence proved not a rebellion, but a revolution. Her brother's marriage to Miss Emily Astor introduced an era of gaiety at this time; and when the young girl had once fairly taken her place in society, there was no such thing as going back to the old life. "Jolie Julie," as she was lovingly called in the home-circle, became a reigning favorite. Even rumors of her amazing blue-stocking tendencies could not spoil her success. It was whispered that she was given to quoting German philosophy and French poetry. "I believe she dreams in Italian," vowed one greatly awed damsel.
However that might be, "Jolie Julie" certainly had a place in the dreams of many. Her beauty and charm won all hearts. The bright hair was now an acknowledged glory above the apple-blossom fairness of her youthful bloom. But it was not alone the loveliness of the delicately molded features and the tender brightness of the clear gray eyes that made her a success. Notwithstanding the early neglect of "the social tie," it was soon plain that she had the unfailing tact, the ready wit, and native good humor that are the chief assets of the social leader who is "born to the purple." Besides, Miss Ward's unusual acquirements could be turned so as to masquerade, in their rosy linings, as accomplishments. Her musical gifts were not reserved for hours of solitary musing, but were freely devoted to the pleasure of her friends; and even the lofty poetic Muse could on occasion indulge in a comic gambol to the great delight of her intimates.
Miss Ward soon tried her wings in other spheres beyond New York. She found a ready welcome in Boston's select inner circle, where she made the acquaintance of Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes, and other leading figures in the literary world. Charles Sumner, the brilliant statesman and reformer, was an intimate friend of her brother, and through him she met Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who not long after became her husband.
From both Longfellow and Sumner Miss Ward had heard glowing accounts of their friend Howe, who was, they declared, the truest hero that America and the nineteenth century had produced and the best of good comrades. He had earned the name of "Chevalier" among his friends because he was "a true Bayard, without fear and without reproach," and because he had, moreover, been made a Knight of St. George by the King of Greece for distinguished services during the Greek war for independence. For six years he had fought with the patriots, both in the field and as surgeon-in-chief. While in hiding with his wounded among the bare rocks of the heights, he had sometimes nothing to eat but roasted wasps and mountain snails. When the people were without food, he had returned to America, related far and wide the story of Greece's struggles and dire need, and brought back a shipload of food and clothing. Having relieved the distress of the people, he had helped them to get in touch with normal existence once more by putting them to work. A hospital was built, and a mole to enclose the harbor at Ægina. Then, after seeing the hitherto distracted peasants begin a new life as self-respecting farmers, he had returned to America.
At this time he was doing pioneer work in the education of the blind. As director of the Perkins Institution, in Boston, he was not only laboring to make more efficient this first school for the blind in America, but he was also going about through the country with his pupils to show something of what might be done in the way of practical training, in order to induce the legislatures of the several States to provide similar institutions for those deprived of sight. In particular, Dr. Howe's success in teaching Laura Bridgman, a blind deaf-mute, was the marvel of the civilized world.
One day, when Longfellow and Sumner were calling upon Miss Ward, they suggested driving over to the Perkins Institution. When they arrived the hero of the hour—and the place—was absent. Before they left, however, Mr. Sumner, who had been looking out of the window, suddenly exclaimed, "There is Howe now on his black horse!" Miss Ward looked with considerable eagerness in her curiosity, and saw, as she afterward said, "a noble rider on a noble steed."
In this way the Chevalier rode into the life of the fair lady. As the knight of the ballad swung the maiden of his choice to the croup of his charger and galloped off with her in the face of her helpless kinsmen, so this serious philanthropist and reformer carried off the lovely society favorite, in spite of the fact that he cared not at all for her gay, care-free world, and was, moreover, twenty years her senior. The following portion of a letter which Miss Ward wrote to her brother Sam shows how completely she was won:
The Chevalier says truly—I am the captive of his bow and spear. His true devotion has won me from the world and from myself. The past is already fading from my sight; already I begin to live with him in the future, which shall be as calmly bright as true love can make it. I am perfectly satisfied to sacrifice to one so noble and earnest the day-dreams of my youth.
Dr. Howe and his bride went to Europe on their wedding-trip—on the same steamer with Horace Mann and his newly made wife, Mary Peabody, the sister of Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne. The teacher of Laura Bridgman was well known in England through Dickens's "American Notes," and people were anxious to do him honor. Dickens not only invited the interesting Americans to dinner, but he offered to pilot Dr. Howe and his brother reformer, Horace Mann, about darkest London and show them the haunts of misery and crime which no one knew better than the author of "Oliver Twist," "Little Dorrit," and "Bleak House." The following note, written in Dickens's characteristic hand, shows the zest with which the great novelist undertook these expeditions and his boyish love of fun:
It had been the plan to go from England to Berlin; but Dr. Howe, who had once incurred the displeasure of the king of Prussia by giving aid to certain Polish refugees, and had, indeed, been held for five weeks in a German prison, was now excluded from the country as a "dangerous person." This greatly amused Horace Mann, who remarked, "When we consider that His Majesty has 200,000 men constantly under arms, and can in need increase the number to two million, we begin to appreciate the estimation in which he holds your single self." When, some years later, the king sent Dr. Howe a medal in recognition of his work for the blind, the Chevalier declared laughingly: "It is worth just what I was obliged to pay for board and lodging while in the Berlin prison. His Majesty is magnanimous!"
After traveling through Switzerland, Italy, and France, the Howes stopped for a second visit to England, where they were entertained for a time by the parents of Florence Nightingale. A warm attachment sprang up between them and the earnest young woman of twenty-four.
"I want to ask your advice, Dr. Howe," said Miss Nightingale, one day. "Would it be unsuitable for a young Englishwoman to devote herself to works of charity in hospitals and wherever needed, just as the Catholic sisters do?"
The doctor replied gravely, "My dear Miss Florence, it would be unusual, and in England whatever is unusual is apt to be thought unsuitable; but I say to you, go forward, if you have a vocation for that way of life; act up to your inspiration, and you will find that there is never anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of others."
After the Howes had returned to Boston and settled down to the work-a-day order in the Institution the young wife's loyalty to the new life was often sorely tried. She loved the sunshine of the bright, gracious world of leisurely, happy people, and she felt herself chilled in this bleak gray place of sober duties. If only she could warm herself at the fire of friendship oftener! But all the pleasant people lived in pleasant places too far from the South Boston institution for the give and take of easy intercourse. Dr. Howe, moreover, was much of the time so absorbed in the causes of which he was champion-in-chief that few hours were saved for quiet fireside enjoyment.
"I hardly know what I should have done in those days," said Mrs. Howe, "without the companionship of my babies and Miss Catherine Beecher's cook-book."
The Chevalier loved to invite for a weekly dinner his especial group of intimates—five choice spirits, among whom Longfellow and Sumner were numbered, who styled themselves "The Five of Clubs." These dinners brought many new problems to the young hostess, who now wished that some portion of her girlhood days lavished on Italian and music had been devoted to the more intimate side of menus. However, she was before long able to take pride in her puddings without renouncing poetry; and to keep an eye on the economy of the kitchen and her sense of humor at the same time, as the following extract from a breezy letter to her sister Louisa can testify:
Our house has been enlivened of late by two delightful visits. The first was from the soap-fat merchant, who gave me thirty-four pounds of good soap for my grease. I was quite beside myself with joy, capered about in the most enthusiastic manner, and was going to hug in turn the soap, the grease, and the man, when I reflected that it would not sound well in history. This morning came the rag man, who takes rags and gives nice tin vessels in exchange.... Both of these were clever transactions. Oh, if you had seen me stand by the soap-fat man, and scrutinize his weights and measures, telling him again and again that it was beautiful grease, and that he must allow me a good price for it—truly, I am a mother in Israel.
The hours spent with her wee daughters were happy times. Sometimes she improvised jingles to amuse Baby Flossy (Florence, after Florence Nightingale) and tease the absorbed father-reformer at the same time: