16199	----	[Illustration: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.] MEMOIRS OF THE AUTHOR OF A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. By WILLIAM GODWIN. _LONDON_: PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH.YARD; AND G.G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1798. [Transcriber's Note: corrobation has been corrected to corroboration] MEMOIRS. CHAP. I. 1759-1775. It has always appeared to me, that to give to the public some account of the life of a person of eminent merit deceased, is a duty incumbent on survivors. It seldom happens that such a person passes through life, without being the subject of thoughtless calumny, or malignant misrepresentation. It cannot happen that the public at large should be on a footing with their intimate acquaintance, and be the observer of those virtues which discover themselves principally in personal intercourse. Every benefactor of mankind is more or less influenced by a liberal passion for fame; and survivors only pay a debt due to these benefactors, when they assert and establish on their part, the honour they loved. The justice which is thus done to the illustrious dead, converts into the fairest source of animation and encouragement to those who would follow them in the same carreer. The human species at large is interested in this justice, as it teaches them to place their respect and affection, upon those qualities which best deserve to be esteemed and loved. I cannot easily prevail on myself to doubt, that the more fully we are presented with the picture and story of such persons as the subject of the following narrative, the more generally shall we feel in ourselves an attachment to their fate, and a sympathy in their excellencies. There are not many individuals with whose character the public welfare and improvement are more intimately connected, than the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The facts detailed in the following pages, are principally taken from the mouth of the person to whom they relate; and of the veracity and ingenuousness of her habits, perhaps no one that was ever acquainted with her, entertains a doubt. The writer of this narrative, when he has met with persons, that in any degree created to themselves an interest and attachment in his mind, has always felt a curiosity to be acquainted with the scenes through which they had passed, and the incidents that had contributed to form their understandings and character. Impelled by this sentiment, he repeatedly led the conversation of Mary to topics of this sort; and, once or twice, he made notes in her presence, of a few dates calculated to arrange the circumstances in his mind. To the materials thus collected, he has added an industrious enquiry among the persons most intimately acquainted with her at the different periods of her life. * * * * * Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April 1759. Her father's name was Edward John, and the name of her mother Elizabeth, of the family of Dixons of Ballyshannon in the kingdom of Ireland: her paternal grandfather was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, and is supposed to have left to his son a property of about 10,000l. Three of her brothers and two sisters are still living; their names, Edward, James, Charles, Eliza, and Everina. Of these, Edward only was older than herself; he resides in London. James is in Paris, and Charles in or near Philadelphia in America. Her sisters have for some years been engaged in the office of governesses in private families, and are both at present in Ireland. I am doubtful whether the father of Mary was bred to any profession; but, about the time of her birth, he resorted, rather perhaps as an amusement than a business, to the occupation of farming. He was of a very active, and somewhat versatile disposition, and so frequently changed his abode, as to throw some ambiguity upon the place of her birth. She told me, that the doubt in her mind in that respect, lay between London, and a farm upon Epping Forest, which was the principal scene of the five first years of her life. Mary was distinguished in early youth, by some portion of that exquisite sensibility, soundness of understanding, and decision of character, which were the leading features of her mind through the whole course of her life. She experienced in the first period of her existence, but few of those indulgences and marks of affection, which are principally calculated to sooth the subjection and sorrows of our early years. She was not the favourite either of her father or mother. Her father was a man of a quick, impetuous disposition, subject to alternate fits of kindness and cruelty. In his family he was a despot, and his wife appears to have been the first, and most submissive of his subjects. The mother's partiality was fixed upon the eldest son, and her system of government relative to Mary, was characterized by considerable rigour. She, at length, became convinced of her mistake, and adopted a different plan with her younger daughters. When, in the Wrongs of Woman, Mary speaks of "the petty cares which obscured the morning of her heroine's life; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional submission to orders, which, as a mere child, she soon discovered to be unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory; and the being often obliged to sit, in the presence of her parents, for three or four hours together, without daring to utter a word;" she is, I believe, to be considered as copying the outline of the first period of her own existence. But it was in vain, that the blighting winds of unkindness or indifference, seemed destined to counteract the superiority of Mary's mind. It surmounted every obstacle; and, by degrees, from a person little considered in the family, she became in some sort its director and umpire. The despotism of her education cost her many a heart-ache. She was not formed to be the contented and unresisting subject of a despot; but I have heard her remark more than once, that, when she felt she had done wrong, the reproof or chastisement of her mother, instead of being a terror to her, she found to be the only thing capable of reconciling her to herself. The blows of her father on the contrary, which were the mere ebullitions of a passionate temper, instead of humbling her, roused her indignation. Upon such occasions she felt her superiority, and was apt to betray marks of contempt. The quickness of her father's temper, led him sometimes to threaten similar violence towards his wife. When that was the case, Mary would often throw herself between the despot and his victim, with the purpose to receive upon her own person the blows that might be directed against her mother. She has even laid whole nights upon the landing-place near their chamber-door, when, mistakenly, or with reason, she apprehended that her father might break out into paroxysms of violence. The conduct he held towards the members of his family, was of the same kind as that he observed towards animals. He was for the most part extravagantly fond of them; but, when he was displeased, and this frequently happened, and for very trivial reasons, his anger was alarming. Mary was what Dr. Johnson would have called, "a very good hater." In some instance of passion exercised by her father to one of his dogs, she was accustomed to speak of her emotions of abhorrence, as having risen to agony. In a word, her conduct during her girlish years, was such, as to extort some portion of affection from her mother, and to hold her father in considerable awe. In one respect, the system of education of the mother appears to have had merit. All her children were vigorous and healthy. This seems very much to depend upon the management of our infant years. It is affirmed by some persons of the present day, most profoundly skilled in the sciences of health and disease, that there is no period of human life so little subject to mortality, as the period of infancy. Yet, from the mismanagement to which children are exposed, many of the diseases of childhood are rendered fatal, and more persons die in that, than in any other period of human life. Mary had projected a work upon this subject, which she had carefully considered, and well understood. She has indeed left a specimen of her skill in this respect in her eldest daughter, three years and a half old, who is a singular example of vigorous constitution and florid health. Mr. Anthony Carlisle, surgeon, of Soho-square, whom to name is sufficiently to honour, had promised to revise her production. This is but one out of numerous projects of activity and usefulness, which her untimely death has fatally terminated. The rustic situation in which Mary spent her infancy, no doubt contributed to confirm the stamina of her constitution. She sported in the open air, and amidst the picturesque and refreshing scenes of nature, for which she always retained the most exquisite relish. Dolls and the other amusements usually appropriated to female children, she held in contempt; and felt a much greater propensity to join in the active and hardy sports of her brothers, than to confine herself to those of her own sex. About the time that Mary completed the fifth year of her age, her father removed to a small distance from his former habitation, and took a farm near the Whalebone upon Epping Forest, a little way out of the Chelmsford road. In Michaelmas 1765, he once more changed his residence, and occupied a convenient house behind the town of Barking in Essex, eight miles from London. In this situation some of their nearest neighbours were, Bamber Gascoyne, esquire, successively member of parliament for several boroughs, and his brother, Mr. Joseph Gascoyne. Bamber Gascoyne resided but little on this spot; but his brother was almost a constant inhabitant, and his family in habits of the most frequent intercourse with the family of Mary. Here Mr. Wollstonecraft remained for three years. In September 1796, I accompanied my wife in a visit to this spot. No person reviewed with greater sensibility, the scenes of her childhood. We found the house uninhabited, and the garden in a wild and ruinous state. She renewed her acquaintance with the market-place, the streets, and the wharf, the latter of which we found crowded with barges, and full of activity. In Michaelmas 1768, Mr. Wollstonecraft again removed to a farm near Beverley in Yorkshire. Here the family remained for six years, and consequently, Mary did not quit this residence, till she had attained the age of fifteen years and five months. The principal part of her school-education passed during this period; but it was not to any advantage of infant literature, that she was indebted for her subsequent eminence; her education in this respect was merely such, as was afforded by the day-schools of the place, in which she resided. To her recollections Beverley appeared a very handsome town, surrounded by genteel families, and with a brilliant assembly. She was surprized, when she visited it in 1795, upon her voyage to Norway, to find the reality so very much below the picture in her imagination. Hitherto Mr. Wollstonecraft had been a farmer; but the restlessness of his disposition would not suffer him to content himself with the occupation in which for some years he had been engaged, and the temptation of a commercial speculation of some sort being held out to him, he removed to a house in Queen's-Row, in Hoxton near London, for the purpose of its execution. Here he remained for a year and a half; but, being frustrated in his expectations of profit, he, after that term, gave up the project in which he was engaged, and returned to his former pursuits. During this residence at Hoxton, the writer of these memoirs inhabited, as a student, at the dissenting college in that place. It is perhaps a question of curious speculation to enquire, what would have been the amount of the difference in the pursuits and enjoyments of each party, if they had met, and considered each other with the same distinguishing regard in 1776, as they were afterwards impressed with in the year 1796. The writer had then completed the twentieth, and Mary the seventeenth year of her age. Which would have been predominant; the disadvantages of obscurity, and the pressure of a family; or the gratifications and improvement that might have flowed from their intercourse? One of the acquaintances Mary formed at this time was with a Mr. Clare, who inhabited the next house to that which was tenanted by her father, and to whom she was probably in some degree indebted for the early cultivation of her mind. Mr. Clare was a clergyman, and appears to have been a humourist of a very singular cast. In his person he was deformed and delicate; and his figure, I am told, bore a resemblance to that of the celebrated Pope. He had a fondness for poetry, and was not destitute of taste. His manners were expressive of a tenderness and benevolence, the demonstrations of which appeared to have been somewhat too artificially cultivated. His habits were those of a perfect recluse. He seldom went out of his drawing-room, and he showed to a friend of Mary a pair of shoes, which had served him, he said, for fourteen years. Mary frequently spent days and weeks together, at the house of Mr. Clare. CHAP. II 1775-1783. But a connection more memorable originated about this time, between Mary and a person of her own sex, for whom she contracted a friendship so fervent, as for years to have constituted the ruling passion of her mind. The name of this person was Frances Blood; she was two years older than Mary. Her residence was at that time at Newington Butts, a village near the southern extremity of the metropolis; and the original instrument for bringing these two friends acquainted, was Mrs. Clare, wife of the gentleman already mentioned, who was on a footing of considerable intimacy with both parties. The acquaintance of Fanny, like that of Mr. Clare, contributed to ripen the immature talents of Mary. The situation in which Mary was introduced to her, bore a resemblance to the first interview of Werter with Charlotte. She was conducted to the door of a small house, but furnished with peculiar neatness and propriety. The first object that caught her sight, was a young woman of a slender and elegant form, and eighteen years of age, busily employed in feeding and managing some children, born of the same parents, but considerably inferior to her in age. The impression Mary received from this spectacle was indelible; and, before the interview was concluded, she had taken, in her heart, the vows of an eternal friendship. Fanny was a young woman of extraordinary accomplishments. She sung and played with taste. She drew with exquisite fidelity and neatness; and, by the employment of this talent, for some time maintained her father, mother, and family, but ultimately ruined her health by her extraordinary exertions. She read and wrote with considerable application; and the same ideas of minute and delicate propriety followed her in these, as in her other occupations. Mary, a wild, but animated and aspiring girl of sixteen, contemplated Fanny, in the first instance, with sentiments of inferiority and reverence. Though they were much together, yet, the distance of their habitation being considerable, they supplied the want of mere frequent interviews by an assiduous correspondence. Mary found Fanny's letters better spelt and better indited than her own, and felt herself abashed. She had hitherto paid but a superficial attention to literature. She had read, to gratify the ardour of an inextinguishable thirst of knowledge; but she had not thought of writing as an art. Her ambition to excel was now awakened, and she applied herself with passion and earnestness. Fanny undertook to be her instructor; and, so far as related to accuracy and method, her lessons were given with considerable skill. It has already been mentioned that, in the spring of the year 1776, Mr. Wollstonecraft quitted his situation at Hoxton, and returned to his former agricultural pursuits. The situation upon which he now fixed was in Wales, a circumstance that was felt as a severe blow to Mary's darling spirit of friendship. The principal acquaintance of the Wollstonecrafts in this retirement, was the family of a Mr. Allen, two of whose daughters are since married to the two elder sons of the celebrated English potter, Josiah Wedgwood. Wales however was Mr. Wollstonecraft's residence for little more than a year. He returned to the neighbourhood of London; and Mary, whose spirit of independence was unalterable, had influence enough to determine his choice in favour of the village of Walworth, that she might be near her chosen friend. It was probably before this, that she has once or twice started the idea of quitting her parental roof, and providing for herself. But she was prevailed upon to resign this idea, and conditions were stipulated with her, relative to her having an apartment in the house that should be exclusively her own, and her commanding the other requisites of study. She did not however think herself fairly treated in these instances, and either the conditions abovementioned, or some others, were not observed in the sequel, with the fidelity she expected. In one case, she had procured an eligible situation, and every thing was settled respecting her removal to it, when the intreaties and tears of her mother led her to surrender her own inclinations, and abandon the engagement. These however were only temporary delays. Her propensities continued the same, and the motives by which she was instigated were unabated. In the year 1778, she being nineteen years of age, a proposal was made to her of living as a companion with a Mrs. Dawson of Bath, a widow lady, with one son already adult. Upon enquiry she found that Mrs. Dawson was a woman of great peculiarity of temper, that she had had a variety of companions in succession, and that no one had found it practicable to continue with her. Mary was not discouraged by this information, and accepted the situation, with a resolution that she would effect in this respect, what none of her predecessors had been able to do. In the sequel she had reason to consider the account she had received as sufficiently accurate, but she did not relax in her endeavours. By method, constancy and firmness, she found the means of making her situation tolerable; and Mrs. Dawson would occasionally confess, that Mary was the only person that had lived with her in that situation, in her treatment of whom she had felt herself under any restraint. With Mrs. Dawson she continued to reside for two years, and only left her, summoned by the melancholy circumstance of her mother's rapidly declining health. True to the calls of humanity, Mary felt in this intelligence an irresistible motive, and eagerly returned to the paternal roof, which she had before resolutely quitted. The residence of her father at this time, was at Enfield near London. He had, I believe, given up agriculture from the time of his quitting Wales, it appearing that he now made it less a source of profit than loss, and being thought advisable that he should rather live upon the interest of his property already in possession. The illness of Mrs. Wollstonecraft was lingering, but hopeless. Mary was assiduous in her attendance upon her mother. At first, every attention was received with acknowledgments and gratitude; but, as the attentions grew habitual, and the health of the mother more and more wretched, they were rather exacted, than received. Nothing would be taken by the unfortunate patient, but from the hands of Mary; rest was denied night or day, and by the time nature was exhausted in the parent, the daughter was qualified to assume her place, and become in turn herself a patient. The last words her mother ever uttered were, "A little patience, and all will be over!" and these words are repeatedly referred to by Mary in the course of her writings. Upon the death of Mrs. Wollstonecraft, Mary bid a final adieu to the roof of her father. According to my memorandums, I find her next the inmate of Fanny at Walham Green, near the village of Fulham. Upon what plan they now lived together I am unable to ascertain; certainly not that of Mary's becoming in any degree an additional burthen upon the industry of her friend. Thus situated, their intimacy ripened; they approached more nearly to a footing of equality; and their attachment became more rooted and active. Mary was ever ready at the call of distress, and, in particular, during her whole life was eager and active to promote the welfare of every member of her family. In 1780 she attended the death-bed of her mother; in 1782 she was summoned by a not less melancholy occasion, to attend her sister Eliza, married to a Mr. Bishop, who, subsequently to a dangerous lying-in, remained for some months in a very afflicting situation. Mary continued with her sister without intermission, to her perfect recovery. CHAP. III. 1783-1785. Mary was now arrived at the twenty-fourth year of her age. Her project, five years before, had been personal independence; it was now usefulness. In the solitude of attendance on her sister's illness, and during the subsequent convalescence, she had had leisure to ruminate upon purposes of this sort. Her expanded mind led her to seek something more arduous than the mere removal of personal vexations; and the sensibility of her heart would not suffer her to rest in solitary gratifications. The derangement of her father's affairs daily became more and more glaring; and a small independent provision made for herself and her sisters, appears to have been sacrificed in the wreck. For ten years, from 1782 to 1792, she may be said to have been, in a great degree, the victim of a desire to promote the benefit of others. She did not foresee the severe disappointment with which an exclusive purpose of this sort is pregnant; she was inexperienced enough to lay a stress upon the consequent gratitude of those she benefited; and she did not sufficiently consider that, in proportion as we involve ourselves in the interests and society of others, we acquire a more exquisite sense of their defects, and are tormented with their untractableness and folly. The project upon which she now determined, was no other than that of a day-school, to be superintended by Fanny Blood, herself, and her two sisters. They accordingly opened one in the year 1783, at the village of Islington; but in the course of a few months removed it to Newington Green. Here Mary formed some acquaintances who influenced the future events of her life. The first of these in her own estimation, was Dr. Richard Price, well known for his political and mathematical calculations, and universally esteemed by those who knew him, for the simplicity of his manners, and the ardour of his benevolence. The regard conceived by these two persons for each other, was mutual, and partook of a spirit of the purest attachment. Mary had been bred in the principles of the church of England, but her esteem for this venerable preacher led her occasionally to attend upon his public instructions. Her religion was, in reality, little allied to any system of forms; and, as she has often told me, was founded rather in taste, than in the niceties of polemical discussion. Her mind constitutionally attached itself to the sublime and the amiable. She found an inexpressible delight in the beauties of nature, and in the splendid reveries of the imagination. But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than a vast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with an animating soul. When she walked amidst the wonders of nature, she was accustomed to converse with her God. To her mind he was pictured as not less amiable, generous and kind, than great, wise and exalted. In fact, she had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and her religion was almost entirely of her own creation. But she was not on that account the less attached to it, or the less scrupulous in discharging what she considered as its duties. She could not recollect the time when she had believed the doctrine of future punishments. The tenets of her system were the growth of her own moral taste, and her religion therefore had always been a gratification, never a terror, to her. She expected a future state; but she would not allow her ideas of that future state to be modified by the notions of judgment and retribution. From this sketch, it is sufficiently evident, that the pleasure she took in an occasional attendance upon the sermons of Dr. Price, was not accompanied with a superstitious adherence to his doctrines. The fact is, that, as far down as the year 1787, she regularly frequented public worship, for the most part according to the forms of the church of England. After that period her attendance became less constant, and in no long time was wholly discontinued. I believe it may be admitted as a maxim, that no person of a well furnished mind, that has shaken off the implicit subsection of youth, and is not the zealous partizan of a sect, can bring himself to conform to the public and regular routine of sermons and prayers. Another of the friends she acquired at this period, was Mrs. Burgh, widow of the author of the Political Disquisitions, a woman universally well spoken of for the warmth and purity of her benevolence. Mary, whenever she had occasion to allude to her, to the last period of her life, paid the tribute due to her virtues. The only remaining friend necessary to be enumerated in this place, is the rev. John Hewlet, now master of a boarding-school at Shacklewel near Hackney, whom I shall have occasion to mention hereafter. I have already said that Fanny's health had been materially injured by her incessant labours for the maintenance of her family. She had also suffered a disappointment, which preyed upon her mind. To these different sources of ill health she became gradually a victim; and at length discovered all the symptoms of a pulmonary consumption. By the medical men that attended her, she was advised to try the effects of a southern climate; and, about the beginning of the year 1785, sailed for Lisbon. The first feeling with which Mary had contemplated her friend, was a sentiment of inferiority and reverence; but that, from the operation of a ten years' acquaintance, was considerably changed. Fanny had originally been far before her in literary attainments; this disparity no longer existed. In whatever degree Mary might endeavour to free herself from the delusions of self-esteem, this period of observation upon her own mind and that of her friend, could not pass, without her perceiving that there were some essential characteristics of genius, which she possessed, and in which her friend was deficient. The principal of these was a firmness of mind, an unconquerable greatness of soul, by which, after a short internal struggle, she was accustomed to rise above difficulties and suffering. Whatever Mary undertook, she perhaps in all instances accomplished; and, to her lofty spirit, scarcely anything she desired, appeared hard to perform. Fanny, on the contrary, was a woman of a timid and irresolute nature, accustomed to yield to difficulties, and probably priding herself in this morbid softness of her temper. One instance that I have heard Mary relate of this sort, was, that, at a certain time, Fanny, dissatisfied with her domestic situation, expressed an earnest desire to have a home of her own. Mary, who felt nothing more pressing than to relieve the inconveniences of her friend, determined to accomplish this object for her. It cost her infinite exertions; but at length she was able to announce to Fanny that a house was prepared, and that she was on the spot to receive her. The answer which Fanny returned to the letter of her friend, consisted almost wholly of an enumeration of objections to the quitting her family, which she had not thought of before, but which now appeared to her of considerable weight. The judgment which experience had taught Mary to form of the mind of her friend, determined her in the advice she gave, at the period to which I have brought down the story. Fanny was recommended to seek a softer climate, but she had no funds to defray the expence of such an undertaking. At this time Mr. Hugh Skeys of Dublin, but then resident in the kingdom of Portugal, paid his addresses to her. The state of her health Mary considered as such as scarcely to afford the shadow of a hope; it was not therefore a time at which it was most obvious to think of marriage. She conceived however that nothing should be omitted, which might alleviate, if it could not cure; and accordingly urged her speedy acceptance of the proposal. Fanny accordingly made the voyage to Lisbon; and the marriage took place on the twenty-fourth of February 1785. The change of climate and situation was productive of little benefit; and the life of Fanny was only prolonged by a period of pregnancy, which soon declared itself. Mary, in the mean time, was impressed with the idea that her friend would die in this distant country; and, shocked with the recollection of her separation from the circle of her friends, determined to pass over to Lisbon to attend her. This resolution was treated by her acquaintance as in the utmost degree visionary; but she was not to be diverted from her point. She had not money to defray her expences: she must quit for a long time the school, the very existence of which probably depended upon her exertions. No person was ever better formed for the business of education; if it be not a sort of absurdity to speak of a person as formed for an inferior object, who is in possession of talents, in the fullest degree adequate to something on a more important and comprehensive scale. Mary had a quickness of temper, not apt to take offence with inadvertencies, but which led her to imagine that she saw the mind of the person with whom she had any transaction, and to refer the principle of her approbation or displeasure to the cordiality or injustice of their sentiments. She was occasionally severe and imperious in her resentments; and, when she strongly disapproved, was apt to express her censure in terms that gave a very humiliating sensation to the person against whom it was directed. Her displeasure however never assumed its severest form, but when it was barbed by disappointment. Where she expected little, she was not very rigid in her censure of error. But, to whatever the defects of her temper might amount, they were never exercised upon her inferiors in station or age. She scorned to make use of an ungenerous advantage, or to wound the defenceless. To her servants there never was a mistress more considerate or more kind. With children she was the mirror of patience. Perhaps, in all her extensive experience upon the subject of education, she never betrayed one symptom of irascibility. Her heart was the seat of every benevolent feeling; and accordingly, in all her intercourse with children, it was kindness and sympathy alone that prompted her conduct. Sympathy, when it mounts to a certain height, inevitably begets affection in the person towards whom it is exercised; and I have heard her say, that she never was concerned in the education of one child, who was not personally attached to her, and earnestly concerned, not to incur her displeasure. Another eminent advantage she possessed in the business of education, was that she was little troubled with scepticism and uncertainty. She saw, as it were by intuition, the path which her mind determined to pursue, and had a firm confidence in her own power to effect what she desired. Yet, with all this, she had scarcely a tincture of obstinacy. She carefully watched symptoms as they rose, and the success of her experiments; and governed herself accordingly. While I thus enumerate her more than maternal qualities, it is impossible not to feel a pang at the recollection of her orphan children! Though her friends earnestly dissuaded her from the journey to Lisbon, she found among them a willingness facilitate the execution of her project, when it was once fixed. Mrs. Burgh in particular, supplied her with money, which however she always conceived came from Dr. Price. This loan, I have reason to believe, was faithfully repaid. It was during her residence at Newington Green, that she was introduced to the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, who was at that time considered as in some sort the father of English literature. The doctor treated her with particular kindness and attention, had a long conversation with her, and desired her to repeat her visit often. This she firmly purposed to do; but the news of his last illness, and then of his death, intervened to prevent her making a second visit. Her residence in Lisbon was not long. She arrived but a short time before her friend was prematurely delivered, and the event was fatal to both mother and child. Frances Blood, hitherto the chosen object of Mary's attachment, died on the twenty-ninth of November 1785. It is thus that she speaks of her in her Letters from Norway, written ten years after her decease. "When a warm heart has received strong impressions, they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; and the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly retracing them. I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect views I have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath." CHAP. IV. 1785-1787. No doubt the voyage to Lisbon tended considerably to enlarge the understanding of Mary. She was admitted into the best company the English factory afforded. She made many profound observations on the character of the natives, and the baleful effects of superstition. The obsequies of Fanny, which it was necessary to perform by stealth and in darkness, tended to invigorate these observations in her mind. She sailed upon her voyage home about the twentieth of December. On this occasion a circumstance occurred, that deserves to be recorded. While they were on their passage, they fell in with a French vessel, in great distress, and in daily expectation of foundering at sea, at the same time that it was almost destitute of provisions. The Frenchman hailed them, and intreated the English captain, in consideration of his melancholy situation, to take him and his crew on board. The Englishman represented in reply, that his stock of provisions was by no means adequate to such an additional number of mouths, and absolutely refused compliance. Mary, shocked at his apparent insensibility, took up the cause of the sufferers, and threatened the captain to have him called to a severe account, when he arrived in England. She finally prevailed, and had the satisfaction to reflect, that the persons in question possibly owed their lives to her interposition. When she arrived in England, she found that her school had suffered considerably in her absence. It can be little reproach to any one, to say that they were found incapable of supplying her place. She not only excelled in the management of the children, but had also the talent of being attentive and obliging to the parents, without degrading herself. The period at which I am now arrived is important, as conducting to the first step of her literary carreer. Mr. Hewlet had frequently mentioned literature to Mary as a certain source of pecuniary produce, and had urged her to make trial of the truth of his judgment. At this time she was desirous of assisting the father and mother of Fanny in an object they had in view, the transporting themselves to Ireland; and, as usual, what she desired in a pecuniary view, she was ready to take on herself to effect. For this purpose she wrote a duodecimo pamphlet of one hundred and sixty pages, entitled, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. Mr. Hewlet obtained from the bookseller, Mr. Johnson in St. Paul's Church Yard, ten guineas for the copy-right of this manuscript, which she immediately applied to the object for the sake of which the pamphlet was written. Every thing urged Mary to put an end to the affair of the school. She was dissatisfied with the different appearance it presented upon her return, from the state in which she left it. Experience impressed upon her a rooted aversion to that sort of cohabitation with her sisters, which the project of the school imposed. Cohabitation is a point of delicate experiment, and is, in a majority of instances, pregnant with ill-humour and unhappiness. The activity and ardent spirit of adventure which characterized Mary, were not felt in an equal degree by her sisters, so that a disproportionate share of every burthen attendant upon the situation, fell to her lot. On the other hand, they could scarcely perhaps be perfectly easy, in observing the superior degree of deference and courtship, which her merit extorted from almost every one that knew her. Her kindness for them was not diminished, but she resolved that the mode of its exertion in future should be different, tending to their benefit, without intrenching upon her own liberty. Thus circumstanced, a proposal was made her, such as, regarding only the situations through which she had lately passed, is usually termed advantageous. This was, to accept the office of governess to the daughters of lord viscount Kingsborough, eldest son to the earl of Kingston of the kingdom of Ireland. The terms held out to her were such as she determined to accept, at the same time resolving to retain the situation only for a short time. Independence was the object after which she thirsted, and she was fixed to try whether it might not be found in literary occupation. She was desirous however first to accumulate a small sum of money, which should enable her to consider at leisure the different literary engagements that might offer, and provide in some degree for the eventual deficiency of her earliest attempts. The situation in the family of lord Kingsborough, was offered to her through the medium of the rev. Mr. Prior, at that time one of the under masters of Eton school. She spent some time at the house of this gentleman, immediately after her giving up the school at Newington Green. Here she had an opportunity of making an accurate observation upon the manners and conduct of that celebrated seminary, and the ideas she retained of it were by no means favourable. By all that she saw, she was confirmed in a very favourite opinion of her's, in behalf of day-schools, where, as she expressed it, "children have the opportunity of conversing with children, without interfering with domestic affections, the foundation of virtue." Though her residence in the family of lord Kingsborough continued scarcely more than twelve months, she left behind her, with them and their connections, a very advantageous impression. The governesses the young ladies had hitherto had, were only a species of upper servants, controlled in every thing by the mother; Mary insisted upon the unbounded exercise of her own discretion. When the young ladies heard of their governess coming from England, they heard in imagination of a new enemy, and declared their resolution to guard themselves accordingly. Mary however speedily succeeded in gaining their confidence, and the friendship that soon grew up between her and Margaret King, now countess Mount Cashel, the eldest daughter, was in an uncommon degree cordial and affectionate. Mary always spoke of this young lady in terms of the truest applause, both in relation to the eminence of her intellectual powers, and the ingenuous amiableness of her disposition. Lady Kingsborough, from the best motives, had imposed upon her daughters a variety of prohibitions, both as to the books they should read, and in many other respects. These prohibitions had their usual effects; inordinate desire for the things forbidden, and clandestine indulgence. Mary immediately restored the children to their liberty, and undertook to govern them by their affections only. The consequence was, that their indulgences were moderate, and they were uneasy under any indulgence that had not the sanction of their governess. The salutary effects of the new system of education were speedily visible; and lady Kingsborough soon felt no other uneasiness, than lest the children should love their governess better than their mother. Mary made many friends in Ireland, among the persons who visited lord Kingsborough's house, for she always appeared there with the air of an equal, and not of a dependent. I have heard her mention the ludicrous distress of a woman of quality, whose name I have forgotten, that, in a large company, singled out Mary, and entered into a long conversation with her. After the conversation was over, she enquired whom she had been talking with, and found, to her utter mortification and dismay, that it was Miss King's governess. One of the persons among her Irish acquaintance, whom Mary was accustomed to speak of with the highest respect, was Mr. George Ogle, member of parliament for the county of Wexford. She held his talents in very high estimation; she was strongly prepossessed in favour of the goodness of his heart; and she always spoke of him as the most perfect gentleman she had ever known. She felt the regret of a disappointed friend, at the part he has lately taken in the politics of Ireland. Lord Kingsborough's family passed the summer of the year 1787 at Bristol Hot-Wells, and had formed the project of proceeding from thence to the continent, a tour in which Mary purposed to accompany them. The plan however was ultimately given up, and Mary in consequence closed her connection with them, earlier than she otherwise had purposed to do. At Bristol Hot-Wells she composed the little book which bears the title of Mary, a Fiction. A considerable part of this story consists, with certain modifications, of the incidents of her own friendship with Fanny. All the events that do not relate to that subject are fictitious. This little work, if Mary had never produced any thing else, would serve, with persons of true taste and sensibility, to establish the eminence of her genius. The story is nothing. He that looks into the book only for incident, will probably lay it down with disgust. But the feelings are of the truest and most exquisite class; every circumstance is adorned with that species of imagination, which enlists itself under the banners of delicacy and sentiment. A work of sentiment, as it is called, is too often another name for a work of affectation. He that should imagine that the sentiments of this book are affected, would indeed be entitled to our profoundest commiseration. CHAP. V. 1787-1790. Being now determined to enter upon her literary plan, Mary came immediately from Bristol to the metropolis. Her conduct under this circumstance was such as to do credit both to her own heart, and that of Mr. Johnson, her publisher, between whom and herself there now commenced an intimate friendship. She had seen him upon occasion of publishing her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, and she addressed two or three letters to him during her residence in Ireland. Upon her arrival in London in August 1787, she went immediately to his house, and frankly explained to him her purpose, at the same time requesting his advice and assistance as to its execution. After a short conversation, Mr. Johnson invited her to make his house her home, till she should have suited herself with a fixed residence. She accordingly resided at this time two or three weeks under his roof. At the same period she paid a visit or two of similar duration to some friends, at no great distance from the metropolis. At Michaelmas 1787, she entered upon a house in George street, on the Surry side of Black Friar's Bridge, which Mr. Johnson had provided for her during her excursion into the country. The three years immediately ensuing, may be said, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, to have been the most active period of her life. She brought with her to this habitation, the novel of Mary, which had not yet been sent to the press, and the commencement of a sort of oriental tale, entitled, the Cave of Fancy, which she thought proper afterwards to lay aside unfinished. I am told that at this period she appeared under great dejection of spirits, and filled with melancholy regret for the loss of her youthful friend. A period of two years had elapsed since the death of that friend; but it was possibly the composition of the fiction of Mary, that renewed her sorrows in their original force. Soon after entering upon her new habitation, she produced a little work, entitled, Original Stories from Real Life, intended for the use of children. At the commencement of her literary carreer, she is said to have conceived a vehement aversion to the being regarded, by her ordinary acquaintance, in the character of an author, and to have employed some precautions to prevent its occurrence. The employment which the bookseller suggested to her, as the easiest and most certain source of pecuniary income, of course, was translation. With this view she improved herself in her French, with which she had previously but a slight acquaintance, and acquired the Italian and German languages. The greater part of her literary engagements at this time, were such as were presented to her by Mr. Johnson. She new-modelled and abridged a work, translated from the Dutch, entitled, Young Grandison: she began a translation from the French, of a book, called, the New Robinson; but in this undertaking, she was, I believe, anticipated by another translator: and she compiled a series of extracts in verse and prose, upon the model of Dr. Enfield's Speaker, which bears the title of the Female Reader; but which, from a cause not worth mentioning, has hitherto been printed with a different name in the title-page. About the middle of the year 1788, Mr. Johnson instituted the Analytical Review, in which Mary took a considerable share. She also translated Necker on the Importance of Religious Opinions; made an abridgment of Lavater's Physiognomy, from the French, which has never been published; and compressed Salzmann's Elements of Morality, a German production, into a publication in three volumes duodecimo. The translation of Salzmann produced a correspondence between Mary and the author; and he afterwards repaid the obligation to her in kind, by a German translation of the Rights of Woman. Such were her principal literary occupations, from the autumn of 1787, to the autumn of 1790. It perhaps deserves to be remarked that this sort of miscellaneous literary employment, seems, for the time at least, rather to damp and contract, than to enlarge and invigorate, the genius. The writer is accustomed to see his performances answer the mere mercantile purpose of the day, and confounded with those of persons to whom he is secretly conscious of a superiority. No neighbour mind serves as a mirror to reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its commencement. Among effusions of a nobler cast, I find occasionally interspersed some of that homily-language, which, to speak from my own feelings, is calculated to damp the moral courage, it was intended to awaken. This is probably to be assigned to the causes above described. I have already said that one of the purposes which Mary had conceived, a few years before, as necessary to give a relish to the otherwise insipid, or embittered, draught of human life, was usefulness. On this side, the period of her existence of which I am now treating, is more brilliant, than in a literary view. She determined to apply as great a part as possible of the produce of her present employments, to the assistance of her friends and of the distressed; and, for this purpose, laid down to herself rules of the most rigid economy. She began with endeavouring to promote the interest of her sisters. She conceived that there was no situation in which she could place them, at once so respectable and agreeable, as that of governess in private families. She determined therefore in the first place, to endeavour to qualify them for such an undertaking. Her younger sister she sent to Paris, where she remained near two years. The elder she placed in a school near London, first as a parlour-boarder, and afterwards as a teacher. Her brother James, who had already been at sea, she first took into her house, and next sent to Woolwich for instruction, to qualify him for a respectable situation in the royal navy, where he was shortly after made a lieutenant. Charles, who was her favourite brother, had been articled to the eldest, an attorney in the Minories; but, not being satisfied with his situation, she removed him; and in some time after, having first placed him with a farmer for instruction, she fitted him out for America, where his speculations, founded upon the basis she had provided, are said to have been extremely prosperous. The reason so much of this parental sort of care fell upon her, was, that her father had by this time considerably embarrassed his circumstances. His affairs having grown too complex for himself to disentangle, he had intrusted them to the management of a near relation; but Mary, not being satisfied with the conduct of the business, took them into her own hands. The exertions she made, and the struggle into which she entered however, in this instance, were ultimately fruitless. To the day of her death her father was almost wholly supported by funds which she supplied to him. In addition to her exertions for her own family, she took a young girl of about seven years of age under her protection and care, the niece of Mrs. John Hunter, and of the present Mrs. Skeys, for whose mother, then lately dead, she had entertained a sincere friendship. The period, from the end of the year 1787 to the end of the year 1790, though consumed in labours of little eclat, served still further to establish her in a friendly connection from which she derived many pleasures. Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, contracted a great personal regard for her, which resembled in many respects that of a parent. As she frequented his house, she of course became acquainted with his guests. Among these may be mentioned as persons possessing her esteem, Mr. Bonnycastle, the mathematician, the late Mr. George Anderson, accountant to the board of control, Dr. George Fordyce, and Mr. Fuseli, the celebrated painter. Between both of the two latter and herself, there existed sentiments of genuine affection and friendship. CHAP. VI. 1790-1792. Hitherto the literary carreer of Mary, had for the most part, been silent; and had been productive of income to herself, without apparently leading to the wreath of fame. From this time she was destined to attract the notice of the public, and perhaps no female writer ever obtained so great a degree of celebrity throughout Europe. It cannot be doubted that, while, for three years of literary employment, she "held the noiseless tenor of her way," her mind was insensibly advancing towards a vigorous maturity. The uninterrupted habit of composition gave a freedom and firmness to the expression of her sentiments. The society she frequented, nourished her understanding, and enlarged her mind. The French revolution, while it gave a fundamental shock to the human intellect through every region of the globe, did not fail to produce a conspicuous effect in the progress of Mary's reflections. The prejudices of her early years suffered a vehement concussion. Her respect for establishments was undermined. At this period occurred a misunderstanding upon public grounds, with one of her early friends, whose attachment to musty creeds and exploded absurdities, had been increased, by the operation of those very circumstances, by which her mind had been rapidly advanced in the race of independence. The event, immediately introductory to the rank which from this time she held in the lids of literature, was the publication of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. This book, after having been long promised to the world, finally made its appearance on the first of November 1790; and Mary, full of sentiments of liberty, and impressed with a warm interest in the struggle that was now going on, seized her pen in the first burst of indignation, an emotion of which she was strongly susceptible. She was in the habit of composing with rapidity, and her answer, which was the first of the numerous ones that appeared, obtained extraordinary notice. Marked as it is with the vehemence and impetuousness of its eloquence, it is certainly chargeable with a too contemptuous and intemperate treatment of the great man against whom its attack is directed. But this circumstance was not injurious to the success of the publication. Burke had been warmly loved by the most liberal and enlightened friends of freedom, and they were proportionably inflamed and disgusted by the fury of his assault, upon what they deemed to be its sacred cause. Short as was the time in which Mary composed her Answer to Burke's Reflections, there was one anecdote she told me concerning it, which seems worth recording in this place. It was sent to the press, as is the general practice when the early publication of a piece is deemed a matter of importance, before the composition was finished. When Mary had arrived at about the middle of her work, she was seized with a temporary fit of torpor and indolence, and began to repent of her undertaking. In this state of mind, she called, one evening, as she was in the practice of doing, upon her publisher, for the purpose of relieving herself by an hour or two's conversation. Here, the habitual ingenuousness of her nature, led her to describe what had just past in her thoughts. Mr. Johnson immediately, in a kind and friendly way, intreated her not to put any constraint upon her inclination, and to give herself no uneasiness about the sheets already printed, which he would cheerfully throw aside, if it would contribute to her happiness. Mary had wanted stimulus. She had not expected to be encouraged, in what she well knew to be an unreasonable access of idleness. Her friend's so readily falling in with her ill-humour, and seeming to expect that she would lay aside her undertaking, piqued her pride. She immediately went home; and proceeded to the end of her work, with no other interruptions but what were absolutely indispensible. It is probable that the applause which attended her Answer to Burke, elevated the tone of her mind. She had always felt much confidence in her own powers; but it cannot be doubted, that the actual perception of a similar feeling respecting us in a multitude of others, must increase the confidence, and stimulate the adventure of any human being. Mary accordingly proceeded, in a short time after, to the composition of her most celebrated production, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Never did any author enter into a cause, with a more ardent desire to be found, not a flourishing and empty declaimer, but an effectual champion. She considered herself as standing forth in defence of one half of the human species, labouring under a yoke which, through all the records of time, had degraded them from the station of rational beings, and almost sunk them to the level of the brutes. She saw indeed, that they were often attempted to be held in silken fetters, and bribed into the love of slavery; but the disguise and the treachery served only the more fully to confirm her opposition. She regarded her sex, in the language of Calista, as "In every state of life the slaves of men:" the rich as alternately under the despotism of a father, a brother, and a husband; and the middling and the poorer classes shut out from the acquisition of bread with independence, when they are not shut out from the very means of an industrious subsistence. Such were the views she entertained of the subject; and such the feelings with which she warmed her mind. The work is certainly a very bold and original production. The strength and firmness with which the author repels the opinions of Rousseau, Dr. Gregory, and Dr. James Fordyce, respecting the condition of women, cannot but make a strong impression upon every ingenuous reader. The public at large formed very different opinions respecting the character of the performance. Many of the sentiments are undoubtedly of a rather masculine description. The spirited and decisive way in which the author explodes the system of gallantry, and the species of homage with which the sex is usually treated, shocked the majority. Novelty produced a sentiment in their mind, which they mistook for a sense of injustice. The pretty, soft creatures that are so often to be found in the female sex, and that class of men who believe they could not exist without such pretty, soft creatures to resort to, were in arms against the author of so heretical and blasphemous a doctrine. There are also, it must be confessed, occasional passages of a stern and rugged feature, incompatible with the true stamina of the writer's character. But, if they did not belong to her fixed and permanent character, they belonged to her character _pro tempore_; and what she thought, she scorned to qualify. Yet, along with this rigid, and somewhat amazonian temper, which characterised some parts of the book, it is impossible not to remark a luxuriance of imagination, and a trembling delicacy of sentiment, which would have done honour to a poet, bursting with all the visions of an Armida and a Dido. The contradiction, to the public apprehension, was equally great, as to the person of the author, as it was when they considered the temper of the book. In the champion of her sex, who was described as endeavouring to invest them with all the rights of man, those whom curiosity prompted to seek the occasion of beholding her, expected to find a sturdy, muscular, raw-boned virago; and they were not a little surprised, when, instead of all this, they found a woman, lovely in her person, and, in the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners. The Vindication of the Rights of Woman is undoubtedly a very unequal performance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. When tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, it can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the first class of human productions. But when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it will be read as long as the English language endures. The publication of this book forms an epocha in the subject to which it belongs; and Mary Wollstonecraft will perhaps hereafter be found to have performed more substantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the other writers, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated in the behalf of oppressed and injured beauty. The censure of the liberal critic as to the defects of this performance, will be changed into astonishment, when I tell him, that a work of this inestimable moment, was begun, carried on, and finished in the state in which it now appears, in a period of no more than six weeks. It is necessary here that I should resume the subject of the friendship that subsisted between Mary and Mr. Fuseli, which proved the source of the most memorable events in her subsequent history. He is a native of the republic of Switzerland, but has spent the principal part of his life in the island of Great-Britain. The eminence of his genius can scarcely be disputed; it has indeed received the testimony which is the least to be suspected, that of some of the most considerable of his contemporary artists. He has one of the most striking characteristics of genius, a daring, as well as persevering, spirit of adventure. The work in which he is at present engaged, a series of pictures for the illustration of Milton, upon a very large scale, and produced solely upon the incitement of his own mind, is a proof of this, if indeed his whole life had not sufficiently proved it. Mr. Fuseli is one of Mr. Johnson's oldest friends, and was at this time in the habit of visiting him two or three times a week. Mary, one of whose strongest characteristics was the exquisite sensations of pleasure she felt from the associations of visible objects, had hitherto never been acquainted, or never intimately acquainted, with an eminent painter. The being thus introduced therefore to the society of Mr. Fuseli, was a high gratification to her; while he found in Mary, a person perhaps more susceptible of the emotions painting is calculated to excite, than any other with whom he ever conversed. Painting, and subjects closely connected with painting, were their almost constant topics of conversation; and they found them inexhaustible. It cannot be doubted, but that this was a species of exercise very conducive to the improvement of Mary's mind. Nothing human however is unmixed. If Mary derived improvement from Mr. Fuseli, she may also be suspected of having caught the infection of some of his faults. In early life Mr. Fuseli was ardently attached to literature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him from keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that belles-lettres scholars frequently possess. Of consequence, the favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is with Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection. Milton, Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention. The nearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is Jean Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the opinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau's conception of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortiveness of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts at improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contempt and indifference. One of his favourite positions is the divinity of genius. This is a power that comes complete at once from the hands of the Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real genius are such, in all their grand and most important features, as no subsequent assiduity can amend. Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhat of a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search, in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure. I believe Mary came something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than she went into it. But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary, and this celebrated artist, remains to be told. She saw Mr. Fuseli frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, it was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned. Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius, without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she transferred by association to his person. What she experienced in this respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this circumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she made light of any difficulty that might arise out of them. Not that she was insensible to the value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex, but that she scorned to suppose, that she could feel a struggle, in conforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct. There cannot perhaps be a properer place than the present, to state her principles upon this subject, such at least as they were when I knew her best. She set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of an opposite sex. She regarded it as the principal solace of human life. It was her maxim, "that the imagination should awaken the senses, and not the senses the imagination." In other words, that whatever related to the gratification of the senses, ought to arise, in a human being of a pure mind, only as the consequence of an individual affection. She regarded the manners and habits of the majority of our sex in that respect, with strong disapprobation. She conceived that true virtue would prescribe the most entire celibacy, exclusively of affection, and the most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed.--There is no reason to doubt that, if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period of their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice. As it was, she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate a distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments of personal intercourse and a reciprocation of kindness, without departing in the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself. In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store street, Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had always scrupulously observed a certain degree of elegance, and those temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure. It was in the month of November in the same year (1791), that the writer of this narrative was first in company with the person to whom it relates. He dined with her at a friend's, together with Mr. Thomas Paine and one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, his object being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he had never before conversed. The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutually displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. I had barely looked into her Answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary men are apt to be, with a few offences, against grammar and other minute points of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs. Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine, in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks; the conversation lay principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her, very frequently when I wished to hear Paine. We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the characters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of seeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful. I, on the contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable construction, and particularly, where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue. We ventilated in this way the characters of Voltaire and others, who have obtained from some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater number have treated them with extreme moral severity. Mary was at last provoked to tell me, that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished it, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender. We discussed some questions on the subject of religion, in which her opinions approached much nearer to the received ones, than mine. As the conversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own share in it. We touched upon all topics, without treating forcibly and connectedly upon any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an account of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was not sparing of my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of active and independent thinking. On her side, she did me no part of what perhaps I considered as justice. We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but made a very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance. In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where she continued to reside for upwards of two years. One of her principal inducements to this step, related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had, at first, considered it as reasonable and judicious, to cultivate what I may be permitted to call, a Platonic affection for him; but she did not, in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she had originally expected from it. It was in vain that she enjoyed much pleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardent imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she should have found, if fortune had favoured their more intimate union. She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender charities, which men of sensibility have constantly treated as the dearest band of human society. General conversation and society could not satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass of her species; and she repined when she reflected, that the best years of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her mind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, and mingle in different scenes. It is singular, that during her residence in Store street, which lasted more than twelve months, she produced nothing, except a few articles in the Analytical Review. Her literary meditations were chiefly employed upon the Sequel to the Rights of Woman; but she has scarcely left behind her a single paper, that can, with any certainty, be assigned to have had this destination. CHAP. VII. 1792-1795. The original plan of Mary, respecting her residence in France, had no precise limits in the article of duration; the single purpose she had in view being that of an endeavour to heal her distempered mind. She did not proceed so far as even to discharge her lodging in London; and, to some friends who saw her immediately before her departure, she spoke merely of an absence of six weeks. It is not to be wondered at, that her excursion did not originally seem to produce the effects she had expected from it. She was in a land of strangers; she had no acquaintance; she had even to acquire the power of receiving and communicating ideas with facility in the language of the country. Her first residence was in a spacious mansion to which she had been invited, but the master of which (monsieur Fillietaz) was absent at the time of her arrival. At first therefore she found herself surrounded only with servants. The gloominess of her mind communicated its own colour to the objects she saw; and in this temper she began a series of Letters on the Present Character of the French Nation, one of which she forwarded to her publisher, and which appears in the collection of her posthumous works. This performance she soon after discontinued; and it is, as she justly remarks, tinged with the saturnine temper which at that time pervaded her mind. Mary carried with her introductions to several agreeable families in Paris. She renewed her acquaintance with Paine. There also subsisted a very sincere friendship between her and Helen Maria Williams, author of a collection of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time resided in Paris. Another person, whom Mary always spoke of in terms of ardent commendation, both for the excellence of his disposition, and the force of his genius, was a count Slabrendorf, by birth, I believe, a Swede. It is almost unnecessary to mention, that she was personally acquainted with the majority of the leaders in the French revolution. But the house that, I believe, she principally frequented at this time, was that of Mr. Thomas Christie, a person whose pursuits were mercantile, and who had written a volume on the French revolution. With Mrs. Christie her acquaintance was more intimate than with the husband. It was about four months after her arrival at Paris in December 1792, that she entered into that species of connection, for which her heart secretly panted, and which had the effect of diffusing an immediate tranquillity and cheerfulness over her manners. The person with whom it was formed (for it would be an idle piece of delicacy, to attempt to suppress a name, which is known to every one whom the reputation of Mary has reached), was Mr. Gilbert Imlay, native of the United States of North America. The place at which she first saw Mr. Imlay was at the house of Mr. Christie; and it perhaps deserves to be noticed, that the emotions he then excited in her mind, were, I am told, those of dislike, and that, for some time, she shunned all occasions of meeting him. This sentiment however speedily gave place to one of greater kindness. Previously to the partiality she conceived for him, she had determined upon a journey to Switzerland, induced chiefly by motives of economy. But she had some difficulty in procuring a passport; and it was probably the intercourse that now originated between her and Mr. Imlay, that changed her purpose, and led her to prefer a lodging at Neuilly, a village three miles from Paris. Her habitation here was a solitary house in the midst of a garden, with no other inhabitants than herself and the gardener, an old man, who performed for her many of the offices of a domestic, and would sometimes contend for the honour of making her bed. The gardener had a great veneration for his guest, and would set before her, when alone, some grapes of a particularly fine sort, which she could not without the greatest difficulty obtain, when she had any person with her as a visitor. Here it was that she conceived, and for the most part executed, her Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution[A], into which, as she observes, are incorporated most of the observations she had collected for her Letters, and which was written with more sobriety and cheerfulness than the tone in which they had been commenced. In the evening she was accustomed to refresh herself by a walk in a neighbouring wood, from which her old host in vain endeavoured to dissuade her, by recounting divers horrible robberies and murders that had been committed there. [A] No part of the proposed continuation of this work, has been found among the papers of the author. The commencement of the attachment Mary now formed, had neither confident nor adviser. She always conceived it to be a gross breach of delicacy to have any confidant in a matter of this sacred nature, an affair of the heart. The origin of the connection was about the middle of April 1793, and it was carried on in a private manner for four months. At the expiration of that period a circumstance occurred that induced her to declare it. The French convention, exasperated at the conduct of the British government, particularly in the affair of Toulon, formed a decree against the citizens of this country, by one article of which the English, resident in France, were ordered into prison till the period of a general peace. Mary had objected to a marriage with Mr. Imlay, who, at the time their connection was formed, had no property whatever; because she would not involve him in certain family embarrassments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make him answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her. She however considered their engagement as of the most sacred nature; and they had mutually formed the plan of emigrating to America, as soon as they should have realized a sum, enabling them to do it in the mode they desired. The decree however that I have just mentioned, made it necessary, not that a marriage should actually take place, but that Mary should take the name of Imlay, which, from the nature of their connexion, she conceived herself entitled to do, and obtain a certificate from the American ambassador, as the wife of a native of that country. Their engagement being thus avowed, they thought proper to reside under the same roof, and for that purpose removed to Paris. Mary was now arrived at the situation, which, for two or three preceding years, her reason had pointed out to her as affording the most substantial prospect of happiness. She had been tossed and agitated by the waves of misfortune. Her childhood, as she often said, had known few of the endearments, which constitute the principal happiness of childhood. The temper of her father had early given to her mind a severe cast of thought, and substituted the inflexibility of resistance for the confidence of affection. The cheerfulness of her entrance upon womanhood, had been darkened, by an attendance upon the death-bed of her mother, and the still more afflicting calamity of her eldest sister. Her exertions to create a joint independence for her sisters and herself, had been attended, neither with the success, nor the pleasure, she had hoped from them. Her first youthful passion, her friendship for Fanny, had encountered many disappointments, and, in fine, a melancholy and premature catastrophe. Soon after these accumulated mortifications, she was engaged in a contest with a near relation, whom she regarded as unprincipled, respecting the wreck of her father's fortune. In this affair she suffered the double pain, which arises from moral indignation, and disappointed benevolence. Her exertions to assist almost every member of her family, were great and unremitted. Finally, when she indulged a romantic affection for Mr. Fuseli, and fondly imagined that she should find in it the solace of her cares, she perceived too late, that, by continually impressing on her mind fruitless images of unreserved affection and domestic felicity, it only served to give new pungency to the sensibility that was destroying her. Some persons may be inclined to observe, that the evils here enumerated, are not among the heaviest in the catalogue of human calamities. But evils take their rank, more from the temper of the mind that suffers them, than from their abstract nature. Upon a man of a hard and insensible disposition, the shafts of misfortune often fall pointless and impotent. There are persons, by no means hard and insensible, who, from an elastic and sanguine turn of mind, are continually prompted to look on the fair side of things, and, having suffered one fall, immediately rise again, to pursue their course, with the same eagerness, the same hope, and the same gaiety, as before. On the other hand, we not unfrequently meet with persons, endowed with the most exquisite and delicious sensibility, whose minds seem almost of too fine a texture to encounter the vicissitudes of human affairs, to whom pleasure is transport, and disappointment is agony indescribable. This character is finely pourtrayed by the author of the Sorrows of Werter. Mary was in this respect a female Werter. She brought then, in the present instance, a wounded and sick heart, to take refuge in the bosom of a chosen friend. Let it not however be imagined, that she brought a heart, querulous, and ruined in its taste for pleasure. No; her whole character seemed to change with a change of fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, and she assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. She was like a serpent upon a rock, that casts its slough, and appears again with the brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of its happiest age. She was playful, full of confidence, kindness and sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour and smoothness. Her voice became chearful; her temper overflowing with universal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day to day illuminated her countenance, which all who knew her will so well recollect, and which won, both heart and soul, the affection of almost every one that beheld it. Mary now reposed herself upon a person, of whose honour and principles she had the most exalted idea. She nourished an individual affection, which she saw no necessity of subjecting to restraint; and a heart like her's was not formed to nourish affection by halves. Her conception of Mr. Imlay's "tenderness and worth, had twisted him closely round her heart;" and she "indulged the thought, that she had thrown out some tendrils, to cling to the elm by which she wished to be supported." This was "talking a new language to her;" but, "conscious that she was not a parasite-plant," she was willing to encourage and foster the luxuriancies of affection. Her confidence was entire; her love was unbounded. Now, for the first time in her life she gave a loose to all the sensibilities of her nature. Soon after the time I am now speaking of, her attachment to Mr. Imlay gained a new link, by finding reason to suppose herself with child. Their establishment at Paris, was however broken up almost as soon as formed, by the circumstance of Mr. Imlay's entering into business, urged, as he said, by the prospect of a family, and this being a favourable crisis in French affairs for commercial speculations. The pursuits in which he was engaged, led him in the month of September to Havre de Grace, then called Havre Marat, probably to superintend the shipping of goods, in which he was jointly engaged with some other person or persons. Mary remained in the capital. The solitude in which she was now left, proved an unexpected trial. Domestic affections constituted the object upon which her heart was fixed; and she early felt, with an inward grief, that Mr. Imlay "did not attach those tender emotions round the idea of home," which, every time they recurred, dimmed her eyes with moisture. She had expected his return from week to week, and from month to month, but a succession of business still continued to detain him at Havre. At the same time the sanguinary character which the government of France began every day more decisively to assume, contributed to banish tranquillity from the first months of her pregnancy. Before she left Neuilly, she happened one day to enter Paris on foot (I believe, by the _Place de Louis Quinze_), when an execution, attended with some peculiar aggravations, had just taken place, and the blood of the guillotine appeared fresh upon the pavement. The emotions of her soul burst forth in indignant exclamations, while a prudent bystander warned her of her danger, and intreated her to hasten and hide her discontents. She described to me, more than once, the anguish she felt at hearing of the death of Brissot, Vergniaud, and the twenty deputies, as one of the most intolerable sensations she had ever experienced. Finding the return of Mr. Imlay continually postponed, she determined, in January 1794, to join him at Havre. One motive that influenced her, though, I believe, by no means the principal, was the growing cruelties of Robespierre, and the desire she felt to be in any other place, rather than the devoted city, in the midst of which they were perpetrated. From January to September, Mr. Imlay and Mary lived together, with great harmony, at Havre, where the child, with which she was pregnant, was born, on the fourteenth of May, and named Frances, in remembrance of the dear friend of her youth, whose image could never be erased from her memory. In September, Mr. Imlay took his departure from Havre for the port of London. As this step was said to be necessary in the way of business, he endeavoured to prevail upon Mary to quit Havre, and once more take up her abode at Paris. Robespierre was now no more, and, of consequence, the only objection she had to residing in the capital, was removed. Mr. Imlay was already in London, before she undertook her journey, and it proved the most fatiguing journey she ever made; the carriage, in which she travelled, being overturned no less than four times between Havre and Paris. This absence, like that of the preceding year in which Mr. Imlay had removed to Havre, was represented as an absence that was to have a short duration. In two months he was once again to join her at Paris. It proved however the prelude to an eternal separation. The agonies of such a separation, or rather desertion, great as Mary would have found them upon every supposition, were vastly increased, by the lingering method in which it was effected, and the ambiguity that, for a long time, hung upon it. This circumstance produced the effect, of holding her mind, by force, as it were, to the most painful of all subjects, and not suffering her to derive the just advantage from the energy and elasticity of her character. The procrastination of which I am speaking was however productive of one advantage. It put off the evil day. She did not suspect the calamities that awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additional three months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a very dear rate. Perhaps no human creature ever suffered greater misery, than dyed the whole year 1795, in the life of this incomparable woman. It was wasted in that sort of despair, to the sense of which the mind is continually awakened, by a glimmering of fondly cherished, expiring hope. Why did she thus obstinately cling to an ill-starred, unhappy passion? Because it is of the very essence of affection, to seek to perpetuate itself. He does not love, who can resign this cherished sentiment, without suffering some of the sharpest struggles that our nature is capable of enduring. Add to this, Mary had fixed her heart upon this chosen friend; and one of the last impressions a worthy mind can submit to receive, is that of the worthlessness of the person upon whom it has fixed all its esteem. Mary had struggled to entertain a favourable opinion of human nature; she had unweariedly fought for a kindred mind, in whose integrity and fidelity to take up her rest. Mr. Imlay undertook to prove, in his letters written immediately after their complete separation, that his conduct towards her was reconcilable to the strictest rectitude; but undoubtedly Mary was of a different opinion. Whatever the reader may decide in this respect, there is one sentiment that, I believe, he will unhesitatingly admit: that of pity for the mistake of the man, who, being in possession of such a friendship and attachment as those of Mary, could hold them at a trivial price, and, "like the base Indian, throw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe.[A]" [A] A person, from whose society at this time Mary derived particular gratification, was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had lately become a fugitive from Ireland, in consequence of a political prosecution, and in whom she found those qualities which were always eminently engaging to her, great integrity of disposition, and great kindness of heart. CHAP. VIII. 1795, 1796. In April 1795, Mary returned once more to London, being requested to do so by Mr. Imlay, who even sent a servant to Paris to wait upon her in the journey, before she could complete the necessary arrangements for her departure. But, notwithstanding these favourable appearances, she came to England with a heavy heart, not daring, after all the uncertainties and anguish she had endured, to trust to the suggestions of hope. The gloomy forebodings of her mind, were but too faithfully verified. Mr. Imlay had already formed another connexion; as it is said, with a young actress from a strolling company of players. His attentions therefore to Mary were formal and constrained, and she probably had but little of his society. This alteration could not escape her penetrating glance. He ascribed it to pressure of business, and some pecuniary embarrassments which, at that time, occurred to him; it was of little consequence to Mary what was the cause. She saw, but too well, though she strove not to see, that his affections were lost to her for ever. It is impossible to imagine a period of greater pain and mortification than Mary passed, for about seven weeks, from the sixteenth of April to the sixth of June, in a furnished house that Mr. Imlay had provided for her. She had come over to England, a country for which she, at this time, expressed "a repugnance, that almost amounted to horror," in search of happiness. She feared that that happiness had altogether escaped her; but she was encouraged by the eagerness and impatience which Mr. Imlay at length seemed to manifest for her arrival. When she saw him, all her fears were confirmed. What a picture was she capable of forming to herself, of the overflowing kindness of a meeting, after an interval of so much anguish and apprehension! A thousand images of this sort were present to her burning imagination. It is in vain, on such occasions, for reserve and reproach to endeavour to curb in the emotions of an affectionate heart. But the hopes she nourished were speedily blasted. Her reception by Mr. Imlay, was cold and embarrassed. Discussions ("explanations" they were called) followed; cruel explanations, that only added to the anguish of a heart already overwhelmed in grief! They had small pretensions indeed to explicitness; but they sufficiently told, that the case admitted not of remedy. Mary was incapable of sustaining her equanimity in this pressing emergency. "Love, dear, delusive love!" as she expressed herself to a friend some time afterwards, "rigorous reason had forced her to resign; and now her rational prospects were blasted, just as she had learned to be contented with rational enjoyments". Thus situated, life became an intolerable burthen. While she was absent from Mr. Imlay, she could talk of purposes of reparation and independence. But, now that they were in the same house, she could not withhold herself from endeavours to revive their mutual cordiality; and unsuccessful endeavours continually added fuel to the fire that destroyed her. She formed a desperate purpose to die. This part of the story of Mary is involved in considerable obscurity. I only know, that Mr. Imlay became acquainted with her purpose, at a moment when he was uncertain whether or no it were already executed, and that his feelings were roused by the intelligence. It was perhaps owing to his activity and representations, that her life was, at this time, saved. She determined to continue to exist. Actuated by this purpose, she took a resolution, worthy both of the strength and affectionateness of her mind. Mr. Imlay was involved in a question of considerable difficulty, respecting a mercantile adventure in Norway. It seemed to require the presence of some very judicious agent, to conduct the business to its desired termination. Mary determined to make the voyage, and take the business into her own hands. Such a voyage seemed the most desireable thing to recruit her health, and, if possible, her spirits, in the present crisis. It was also gratifying to her feelings, to be employed in promoting the interest of a man, from whom she had experienced such severe unkindness, but to whom she ardently desired to be reconciled. The moment of desperation I have mentioned, occurred in the close of May, and, in about a week after, she set out upon this new expedition. The narrative of this voyage is before the world, and perhaps a book of travels that so irresistibly seizes on the heart, never, in any other instance, found its way from the press. The occasional harshness and ruggedness of character, that diversify her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, here totally disappear. If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book. She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius which commands all our admiration. Affliction had tempered her heart to a softness almost more than human; and the gentleness of her spirit seems precisely to accord with all the romance of unbounded attachment. Thus softened and improved, thus fraught with imagination and sensibility, with all, and more than all, "that youthful poets fancy, when they love," she returned to England, and, if he had so pleased, to the arms of her former lover. Her return was hastened by the ambiguity, to her apprehension, of Mr. Imlay's conduct. He had promised to meet her upon her return from Norway, probably at Hamburgh; and they were then to pass some time in Switzerland. The style however of his letters to her during her tour, was not such as to inspire confidence; and she wrote to him very urgently, to explain himself, relative to the footing upon which they were hereafter to stand to each other. In his answer, which reached her at Hamburgh, he treated her questions as "extraordinary and unnecessary," and desired her to be at the pains to decide for herself. Feeling herself unable to accept this as an explanation, she instantly determined to sail for London by the very first opportunity, that she might thus bring to a termination the suspence that preyed upon her soul. It was not long after her arrival in London in the commencement of October, that she attained the certainty she sought. Mr. Imlay procured her a lodging. But the neglect she experienced from him after she entered it, flashed conviction upon her, in spite of his asseverations. She made further enquiries, and at length was informed by a servant, of the real state of the case. Under the immediate shock which the painful certainty gave her, her first impulse was to repair to him at the ready-furnished house he had provided for his new mistress. What was the particular nature of their conference I am unable to relate. It is sufficient to say that the wretchedness of the night which succeeded this fatal discovery, impressed her with the feeling, that she would sooner suffer a thousand deaths, than pass another of equal misery. The agony of her mind determined her; and that determination gave her a sort of desperate serenity. She resolved to plunge herself in the Thames; and, not being satisfied with any spot nearer to London, she took a boat, and rowed to Putney. Her first thought had led her to Battersea-bridge, but she found it too public. It was night when she arrived at Putney, and by that time had begun to rain with great violence. The rain suggested to her the idea of walking up and down the bridge, till her clothes were thoroughly drenched and heavy with the wet, which she did for half an hour without meeting a human being. She then leaped from the top of the bridge, but still seemed to find a difficulty in sinking, which she endeavoured to counteract by pressing her clothes closely round her. After some time she became insensible; but she always spoke of the pain she underwent as such, that, though she could afterwards have determined upon almost any other species of voluntary death, it would have been impossible for her to resolve upon encountering the same sensations again. I am doubtful, whether this is to be ascribed to the mere nature of suffocation, or was not rather owing to the preternatural action of a desperate spirit. After having been for a considerable time insensible, she was recovered by the exertions of those by whom the body was found. She had sought, with cool and deliberate firmness, to put a period to her existence, and yet she lived to have every prospect of a long possession of enjoyment and happiness. It is perhaps not an unfrequent case with suicides, that we find reason to suppose, if they had survived their gloomy purpose, that they would, at a subsequent period, have been considerably happy. It arises indeed, in some measure, out of the very nature of a spirit of self-destruction; which implies a degree of anguish, that the constitution of the human mind will not suffer to remain long undiminished. This is a serious reflection, Probably no man would destroy himself from an impatience of present pain, if he felt a moral certainty that there were years of enjoyment still in reserve for him. It is perhaps a futile attempt, to think of reasoning with a man in that state of mind which precedes suicide. Moral reasoning is nothing but the awakening of certain feelings: and the feeling by which he is actuated, is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him with other feelings, that should have force enough to counterbalance it. But, if the prospect of future tranquillity and pleasure cannot be expected to have much weight with a man under an immediate purpose of suicide, it is so much the more to be wished, that men would impress their minds, in their sober moments, with a conception, which, being rendered habitual, seems to promise to act as a successful antidote in a paroxysm of desperation. The present situation of Mary, of necessity produced some further intercourse between her and Mr. Imlay. He sent a physician to her; and Mrs. Christie, at his desire, prevailed on her to remove to her house in Finsbury-square. In the mean time Mr. Imlay assured her that his present was merely a casual, sensual connection; and, of course, fostered in her mind the idea that it would be once more in her choice to live with him. With whatever intention the idea was suggested, it was certainly calculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect however it produced an effect unlike that which might most obviously have been looked for. It roused within her the characteristic energy of mind, which she seemed partially to have forgotten. She saw the necessity of bringing the affair to a point, and not suffering months and years to roll on in uncertainty and suspence. This idea inspired her with an extraordinary resolution. The language she employed, was, in effect, as follows: "If we are ever to live together again, it must be now. We meet now, or we part for ever. You say, You cannot abruptly break off the connection you have formed. It is unworthy of my courage and character, to wait the uncertain issue of that connexion. I am determined to come to a decision. I consent then, for the present, to live with you, and the woman to whom you have associated yourself. I think it important that you should learn habitually to feel for your child the affection of a father. But, if you reject this proposal, here we end. You are now free. We will correspond no more. We will have no intercourse of any kind. I will be to you as a person that is dead." The proposal she made, extraordinary and injudicious as it was, was at first accepted; and Mr. Imlay took her accordingly, to look at a house he was upon the point of hiring, that she might judge whether it was calculated to please her. Upon second thoughts however he retracted his concession. In the following month, Mr. Imlay, and the woman with whom he was at present connected, went to Paris, where they remained three months. Mary had, previously to this, fixed herself in a lodging in Finsbury-place, where, for some time, she saw scarcely any one but Mrs. Christie, for the sake of whose neighbourhood she had chosen this situation; "existing," as she expressed it, "in a living tomb, and her life but an exercise of fortitude, continually on the stretch." Thus circumstanced, it was unavoidable for her thoughts to brood upon a passion, which all that she had suffered had not yet been able to extinguish. Accordingly, as soon as Mr. Imlay returned to England, she could not restrain herself from making another effort, and desiring to see him once more. "During his absence, affection had led her to make numberless excuses for his conduct," and she probably wished to believe that his present connection was, as he represented it, purely of a casual nature. To this application, she observes, that "he returned no other answer, except declaring, with unjustifiable passion, that he would not see her." This answer, though, at the moment, highly irritating to Mary, was not the ultimate close of the affair. Mr. Christie was connected in business with Mr. Imlay, at the same time that the house of Mr. Christie was the only one at which Mary habitually visited. The consequence of this was, that, when Mr. Imlay had been already more than a fortnight in town, Mary called at Mr. Christie's one evening, at a time when Mr. Imlay was in the parlour. The room was full of company. Mrs. Christie heard Mary's voice in the passage, and hastened to her, to intreat her not to make her appearance. Mary however was not to be controlled. She thought, as she afterwards told me, that it was not consistent with conscious rectitude, that she should shrink, as if abashed, from the presence of one by whom she deemed herself injured. Her child was with her. She entered; and, in a firm manner, immediately led up the child, now near two years of age, to the knees of its father. He retired with Mary into another apartment, and promised to dine with her at her lodging, I believe, the next day. In the interview which took place in consequence of this appointment, he expressed himself to her in friendly terms, and in a manner calculated to sooth her despair. Though he could conduct himself, when absent from her, in a way which she censured as unfeeling; this species of sternness constantly expired when he came into her presence. Mary was prepared at this moment to catch at every phantom of happiness; and the gentleness of his carriage, was to her as a sun-beam, awakening the hope of returning day. For an instant she gave herself up to delusive visions; and, even after the period of delirium expired, she still dwelt, with an aching eye, upon the air-built and unsubstantial prospect of a reconciliation. At his particular request, she retained the name of Imlay, which, a short time before, he had seemed to dispute with her. "It was not," as she expresses herself in a letter to a friend, "for the world that she did so--not in the least--but she was unwilling to cut the Gordian knot, or tear herself away in appearance, when she could not in reality". The day after this interview, she set out upon a visit to the country, where she spent nearly the whole of the month of March. It was, I believe, while she was upon this visit, that some epistolary communication with Mr. Imlay, induced her resolutely to expel from her mind, all remaining doubt as to the issue of the affair. Mary was now aware that every demand of forbearance towards him, of duty to her child, and even of indulgence to her own deep-rooted predilection, was discharged. She determined to rouse herself, and cast off for ever an attachment, which to her had been a spring of inexhaustible bitterness. Her present residence among the scenes of nature, was favourable to this purpose. She was at the house of an old and intimate friend, a lady of the name of Cotton, whose partiality for her was strong and sincere. Mrs. Cotton's nearest neighbour was Sir William East, baronet; and, from the joint effect of the kindness of her friend, and the hospitable and distinguishing attentions of this respectable family, she derived considerable benefit. She had been amused and interested in her journey to Norway; but with this difference, that, at that time, her mind perpetually returned with trembling anxiety to conjectures respecting Mr. Imlay's future conduct, whereas now, with a lofty and undaunted spirit, she threw aside every thought that recurred to him, while she felt herself called upon to make one more effort for life and happiness. Once after this, to my knowledge, she saw Mr. Imlay; probably, not long after her return to town. They met by accident upon the New Road; he alighted from his horse, and walked with her for some time; and the rencounter passed, as she assured me, without producing in her any oppressive emotion. Be it observed, by the way, and I may be supposed best to have known the real state of the case, she never spoke of Mr. Imlay with acrimony, and was displeased when any person, in her hearing, expressed contempt of him. She was characterised by a strong sense of indignation; but her emotions of this sort were short-lived, and in no long time subsided into a dignified sereneness and equanimity. The question of her connection with Mr. Imlay, as we have seen, was not completely dismissed, till March 1796. But it is worthy to be observed, that she did not, like ordinary persons under extreme anguish of mind, suffer her understanding, in the mean time, to sink into listlessness and debility. The most inapprehensive reader may conceive what was the mental torture she endured, when he considers, that she was twice, with an interval of four months, from the end of May to the beginning of October, prompted by it to purposes of suicide. Yet in this period she wrote her Letters from Norway. Shortly after its expiration she prepared them for the press, and they were published in the close of that year. In January 1796, she finished the sketch of a comedy, which turns, in the serious scenes, upon the incidents of her own story. It was offered to both the winter-managers, and remained among her papers at the period of her decease; but it appeared to me to be in so crude and imperfect a state, that I judged it most respectful to her memory to commit it to the flames. To understand this extraordinary degree of activity, we must recollect however the entire solitude, in which most of her hours were at that time consumed. CHAP. IX. 1796, 1797. I am now led, by the progress of the story, to the last branch of her history, the connection between Mary and myself. And this I shall relate with the same simplicity that has pervaded every other part of my narrative. If there ever were any motives of prudence or delicacy, that could impose a qualification upon the story, they are now over. They could have no relation but to factitious rules of decorum. There are no circumstances of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason, could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call upon the universe to judge them. An event of the most deplorable sort, has awfully imposed silence upon the gabble of frivolity. We renewed our acquaintance in January 1796, but with no particular effect, except so far as sympathy in her anguish, added in my mind to the respect I had always entertained for her talents. It was in the close of that month that I read her Letters from Norway; and the impression that book produced upon me has been already related. It was on the fourteenth of April that I first saw her after her excursion into Berkshire. On that day she called upon me in Somers Town, she having, since her return, taken a lodging in Cumming-street, Pentonville, at no great distance from the place of my habitation. From that time our intimacy increased, by regular, but almost imperceptible degrees. The partiality we conceived for each other, was in that mode, which I have always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other. In July 1796 I made an excursion into the county of Norfolk, which occupied nearly the whole of that month. During this period Mary removed, from Cumming-street, Pentonville, to Judd place West, which may be considered as the extremity of Somers Town. In the former situation, she had occupied a furnished lodging. She had meditated a tour to Italy or Switzerland, and knew not how soon she should set out with that view. Now however she felt herself reconciled to a longer abode in England, probably without exactly knowing why this change had taken place in her mind. She had a quantity of furniture locked up at a broker's ever since her residence in Store-street, and she now found it adviseable to bring it into use. This circumstance occasioned her present removal. The temporary separation attendant on my little journey, had its effect on the mind of both parties. It gave a space for the maturing of inclination. I believe that, during this interval, each furnished to the other the principal topic of solitary and daily contemplation. Absence bestows a refined and aërial delicacy upon affection, which it with difficulty acquires in any other way. It seems to resemble the communication of spirits, without the medium, or the impediment, of this earthly frame. When we met again, we met with new pleasure, and, I may add, with a more decisive preference for each other. It was however three weeks longer, before the sentiment which trembled upon the tongue, burst from the lips of either. There was, as I have already said, no period of throes and resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting into love. Previously to our mutual declaration, each felt half-assured, yet each felt a certain trembling anxiety to have assurance complete. Mary rested her head upon the shoulder of her lover, hoping to find a heart with which she might safely treasure her world of affection; fearing to commit a mistake, yet, in spite of her melancholy experience, fraught with that generous confidence, which, in a great soul, is never extinguished. I had never loved till now; or, at least, had never nourished a passion to the same growth, or met with an object so consummately worthy. We did not marry. It is difficult to recommend any thing to indiscriminate adoption, contrary to the established rules and prejudices of mankind; but certainly nothing can be so ridiculous upon the face of it, or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiment, as to require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and that which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment when it has arrived at its climax. There were however other reasons why we did not immediately marry. Mary felt an entire conviction of the propriety of her conduct. It would be absurd to suppose that, with a heart withered by desertion, she was not right to give way to the emotions of kindness which our intimacy produced, and to seek for that support in friendship and affection, which could alone give pleasure to her heart, and peace to her meditations. It was only about six months since she had resolutely banished every thought of Mr. Imlay; but it was at least eighteen that he ought to have been banished, and would have been banished, had it not been for her scrupulous pertinacity in determining to leave no measure untried to regain him. Add to this, that the laws of etiquette ordinarily laid down in these cases, are essentially absurd, and that the sentiments of the heart cannot submit to be directed by the rule and the square. But Mary had an extreme aversion to be made the topic of vulgar discussion; and, if there be any weakness in this, the dreadful trials through which she had recently passed, may well plead in its excuse. She felt that she had been too much, and too rudely spoken of, in the former instance; and she could not resolve to do any thing that should immediately revive that painful topic. For myself, it is certain that I had for many years regarded marriage with so well-grounded an apprehension, that, notwithstanding the partiality for Mary that had taken possession of my soul, I should have felt it very difficult, at least in the present stage of our intercourse, to have resolved on such a measure. Thus, partly from similar, and partly from different motives, we felt alike in this, as we did perhaps in every other circumstance that related to our intercourse. I have nothing further that I find it necessary to record, till the commencement of April 1797. We then judged it proper to declare our marriage, which had taken place a little before. The principal motive for complying with this ceremony, was the circumstance of Mary's being in a state of pregnancy. She was unwilling, and perhaps with reason, to incur that exclusion from the society of many valuable and excellent individuals, which custom awards in cases of this sort. I should have felt an extreme repugnance to the having caused her such an inconvenience. And, after the experiment of seven months of as intimate an intercourse as our respective modes of living would admit, there was certainly less hazard to either, in the subjecting ourselves to those consequences which the laws of England annex to the relations of husband and wife. On the sixth of April we entered into possession of a house, which had been taken by us in concert. In this place I have a very curious circumstance to notice, which I am happy to have occasion to mention, as it tends to expose certain regulations of polished society, of which the absurdity vies with the odiousness. Mary had long possessed the advantage of an acquaintance with many persons of genius, and with others whom the effects of an intercourse with elegant society, combined with a certain portion of information and good sense, sufficed to render amusing companions. She had lately extended the circle of her acquaintance in this respect; and her mind, trembling between the opposite impressions of past anguish and renovating tranquillity, found ease in this species of recreation. Wherever Mary appeared, admiration attended upon her. She had always displayed talents for conversation; but maturity of understanding, her travels, her long residence in France, the discipline of affliction, and the smiling, new-born peace which awaked a corresponding smile in her animated countenance, inexpressibly increased them. The way in which the story of Mr. Imlay was treated in these polite circles, was probably the result of the partiality she excited. These elegant personages were divided between their cautious adherence to forms, and the desire to seek their own gratification. Mary made no secret of the nature of her connection with Mr. Imlay; and in one instance, I well know, she put herself to the trouble of explaining it to a person totally indifferent to her, because he never failed to publish every thing he knew, and, she was sure, would repeat her explanation to his numerous acquaintance. She was of too proud and generous a spirit to stoop to hypocrisy. These persons however, in spite of all that could be said, persisted in shutting their eyes, and pretending they took her for a married woman. Observe the consequence of this! While she was, and constantly professed to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the squeamish and the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife, and that by a marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered. Mary and myself, ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements, supposed that our marriage would place her upon a surer footing in the calendar of polished society, than ever. But it forced these people to see the truth, and to confess their belief of what they had carefully been told; and this they could not forgive. Be it remarked, that the date of our marriage had nothing to do with this, that question being never once mentioned during this period. Mary indeed had, till now, retained the name of Imlay which had first been assumed from necessity in France; but its being retained thus long, was purely from the aukwardness that attends the introduction of a change, and not from an apprehension of consequences of this sort. Her scrupulous explicitness as to the nature of her situation, surely sufficed to make the name she bore perfectly immaterial. It is impossible to relate the particulars of such a story, but in the language of contempt and ridicule. A serious reflection however upon the whole, ought to awaken emotions of a different sort. Mary retained the most numerous portion of her acquaintance, and the majority of those whom she principally valued. It was only the supporters and the subjects of the unprincipled manners of a court, that she lost. This however is immaterial. The tendency of the proceeding, strictly considered, and uniformly acted upon, would have been to proscribe her from all valuable society. And who was the person proscribed? The firmest champion, and, as I strongly suspect, the greatest ornament her sex ever had to boast! A woman, with sentiments as pure, as refined, and as delicate, as ever inhabited a human heart! It is fit that such persons should stand by, that we may have room enough for the dull and insolent dictators, the gamblers and demireps of polished society! Two of the persons, the loss of whose acquaintance Mary principally regretted upon this occasion, were Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons. Their acquaintance, it is perhaps fair to observe, is to be ranked among her recent acquisitions. Mrs. Siddons, I am sure, regretted the necessity, which she conceived to be imposed on her by the peculiarity of her situation, to conform to the rules I have described. She is endowed with that rich and generous sensibility, which should best enable its possessor completely to feel the merits of her deceased friend. She very truly observes, in a letter now before me, that the Travels in Norway were read by no one, who was in possession of "more reciprocity of feeling, or more deeply impressed with admiration of the writer's extraordinary powers." Mary felt a transitory pang, when the conviction reached her of so unexpected a circumstance, that was rather exquisite. But she disdained to sink under the injustice (as this ultimately was) of the supercilious and the foolish, and presently shook off the impression of the first surprize. That once subsided, I well know that the event was thought of, with no emotions, but those of superiority to the injustice she sustained; and was not of force enough, to diminish a happiness, which seemed hourly to become more vigorous and firm. I think I may venture to say, that no two persons ever found in each other's society, a satisfaction more pure and refined. What it was in itself, can now only be known, in its full extent, to the survivor. But, I believe, the serenity of her countenance, the increasing sweetness of her manners, and that consciousness of enjoyment that seemed ambitious that every one she saw should be happy as well as herself, were matters of general observation to all her acquaintance. She had always possessed, in an unparalleled degree, the art of communicating happiness, and she was now in the constant and unlimited exercise of it. She seemed to have attained that situation, which her disposition and character imperiously demanded, but which she had never before attained; and her understanding and her heart felt the benefit of it. While we lived as near neighbours only, and before our last removal, her mind had attained considerable tranquillity, and was visited but seldom with those emotions of anguish, which had been but too familiar to her. But the improvement in this respect, which accrued upon our removal and establishment, was extremely obvious. She was a worshipper of domestic life. She loved to observe the growth of affection between me and her daughter, then three years of age, as well as my anxiety respecting the child not yet born. Pregnancy itself, unequal as the decree of nature seems to be in this respect, is the source of a thousand endearments. No one knew better than Mary how to extract sentiments of exquisite delight, from trifles, which a suspicious and formal wisdom would scarcely deign to remark. A little ride into the country with myself and the child, has sometimes produced a sort of opening of the heart, a general expression of confidence and affectionate soul, a sort of infantine, yet dignified endearment, which those who have felt may understand, but which I should in vain attempt to pourtray. In addition to our domestic pleasures, I was fortunate enough to introduce her to some of my acquaintance of both sexes, to whom she attached herself with all the ardour of approbation and friendship. Ours was not an idle happiness, a paradise of selfish and transitory pleasures. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to mention, that, influenced by the ideas I had long entertained upon the subject of cohabitation, I engaged an apartment, about twenty doors from our house in the Polygon, Somers Town, which I designed for the purpose of my study and literary occupations. Trifles however will be interesting to some readers, when they relate to the last period of the life of such a person as Mary. I will add therefore, that we were both of us of opinion, that it was possible for two persons to be too uniformly in each other's society. Influenced by that opinion, it was my practice to repair to the apartment I have mentioned as soon as I rose, and frequently not to make my appearance in the Polygon, till the hour of dinner. We agreed in condemning the notion, prevalent in many situations in life, that a man and his wife cannot visit in mixed society, but in company with each other; and we rather sought occasions of deviating from, than of complying with, this rule. By these means, though, for the most part, we spent the latter half of each day in one another's society, yet we were in no danger of satiety. We seemed to combine, in a considerable degree, the novelty and lively sensation of visit, with the more delicious and heart-felt pleasures of domestic life. Whatever may be thought, in other respects, of the plan we laid down to ourselves, we probably derived a real advantage from it, as to the constancy and uninterruptedness of our literary pursuits. Mary had a variety of projects of this sort, for the exercise of her talents, and the benefit of society; and, if she had lived, I believe the world would have had very little reason to complain of any remission of her industry. One of her projects, which has been already mentioned, was of a series of Letters on the Management of Infants. Though she had been for some time digesting her ideas on this subject with a view to the press, I have found comparatively nothing that she had committed to paper respecting it. Another project, of longer standing, was of a series of books for the instruction of children. A fragment she left in execution of this project, is inserted in her Posthumous Works. But the principal work, in which she was engaged for more than twelve months before her decease, was a novel, entitled, The Wrongs of Woman. I shall not stop here to explain the nature of the work, as so much of it as was already written, is now given to the public. I shall only observe that, impressed, as she could not fail to be, with the consciousness of her talents, she was desirous, in this instance, that they should effect what they were capable of effecting. She was sensible how arduous a task it is to produce a truly excellent novel; and she roused her faculties to grapple with it. All her other works were produced with a rapidity, that did not give her powers time fully to expand. But this was written slowly and with mature consideration. She began it in several forms, which she successively rejected, after they were considerably advanced. She wrote many parts of the work again and again, and, when she had finished what she intended for the first part, she felt herself more urgently stimulated to revise and improve what she had written, than to proceed, with constancy of application, in the parts that were to follow. CHAP. X. I am now led, by the course of my narrative, to the last fatal scene of her life. She was taken in labour on Wednesday, the thirtieth of August. She had been somewhat indisposed on the preceding Friday, the consequence, I believe, of a sudden alarm. But from that time she was in perfect health. She was so far from being under any apprehension as to the difficulties of child-birth, as frequently to ridicule the fashion of ladies in England, who keep their chamber for one full month after delivery. For herself, she proposed coming down to dinner on the day immediately following. She had already had some experience on the subject in the case of Fanny; and I cheerfully submitted in every point to her judgment and her wisdom. She hired no nurse. Influenced by ideas of decorum, which certainly ought to have no place, at least in cases of danger, she determined to have a woman to attend her in the capacity of midwife. She was sensible that the proper business of a midwife, in the instance of a natural labour, is to sit by and wait for the operations of nature, which seldom, in these affairs, demand the interposition of art. At five o'clock in the morning of the day of delivery, she felt what she conceived to be some notices of the approaching labour. Mrs. Blenkinsop, matron and midwife to the Westminster Lying in Hospital, who had seen Mary several times previous to her delivery, was soon after sent for, and arrived about nine. During the whole day Mary was perfectly cheerful. Her pains came on slowly; and, in the morning, she wrote several notes, three addressed to me, who had gone, as usual, to my apartments, for the purpose of study. About two o'clock in the afternoon, she went up to her chamber,--never more to descend. The child was born at twenty minutes after eleven at night. Mary had requested that I would not come into the chamber till all was over, and signified her intention of then performing the interesting office of presenting the new-born child to its father. I was sitting in a parlour; and it was not till after two o'clock on Thursday morning, that I received the alarming intelligence, that the placenta was not yet removed, and that the midwife dared not proceed any further, and gave her opinion for calling in a male practitioner. I accordingly went for Dr. Poignand, physician and man-midwife to the same hospital, who arrived between three and four hours after the birth of the child. He immediately proceeded to the extraction of the placenta, which he brought away in pieces, till he was satisfied that the whole was removed. In that point however it afterwards appeared that he was mistaken. The period from the birth of the child till about eight o'clock the next morning, was a period full of peril and alarm. The loss of blood was considerable, and produced an almost uninterrupted series of fainting fits. I went to the chamber soon after four in the morning, and found her in this state. She told me some time on Thursday, "that she should have died the preceding night, but that she was determined not to leave me." She added, with one of those smiles which so eminently illuminated her countenance, "that I should not be like Porson," alluding to the circumstance of that great man having lost his wife, after being only a few months married. Speaking of what she had already passed through, she declared, "that she had never known what bodily pain was before." On Thursday morning Dr. Poignand repeated his visit. Mary had just before expressed some inclination to see Dr. George Fordyce, a man probably of more science than any other medical professor in England, and between whom and herself there had long subsisted a mutual friendship. I mentioned this to Dr. Poignand, but he rather discountenanced the idea, observing that he saw no necessity for it, and that he supposed Dr. Fordyce was not particularly conversant with obstetrical cases; but that I would do as I pleased. After Dr. Poignand was gone, I determined to send for Dr. Fordyce. He accordingly saw the patient about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon. He however perceived no particular cause of alarm; and, on that or the next day, quoted, as I am told, Mary's case, in a mixed company, as a corroboration of a favourite idea of his, of the propriety of employing females in the capacity of midwives. Mary "had had a woman, and was doing extremely well." What had passed however in the night between Wednesday and Thursday, had so far alarmed me, that I did not quit the house, and scarcely the chamber, during the following day. But my alarms wore off, as time advanced. Appearances were more favourable, than the exhausted state of the patient would almost have permitted me to expect. Friday morning therefore I devoted to a business of some urgency, which called me to different parts of the town, and which, before dinner, I happily completed. On my return, and during the evening, I received the most pleasurable sensations from the promising state of the patient. I was now perfectly satisfied that every thing was safe, and that, if she did not take cold, or suffer from any external accident, her speedy recovery was certain. Saturday was a day less auspicious than Friday, but not absolutely alarming. Sunday, the third of September, I now regard as the day, that finally decided on the fate of the object dearest to my heart that the universe contained. Encouraged by what I considered as the progress of her recovery, I accompanied a friend in the morning in several calls, one of them as far as Kensington, and did not return till dinner-time. On my return I found a degree of anxiety in every face, and was told that she had had a sort of shivering fit, and had expressed some anxiety at the length of my absence. My sister and a friend of hers, had been engaged to dine below stairs, but a message was sent to put them off, and Mary ordered that the cloth should not be laid, as usual, in the room immediately under her on the first floor, but in the ground-floor parlour. I felt a pang at having been so long and so unseasonably absent, and determined that I would not repeat the fault. In the evening she had a second shivering fit, the symptoms of which were in the highest degree alarming. Every muscle of the body trembled, the teeth chattered, and the bed shook under her. This continued probably for five minutes. She told me, after it was over, that it had been a struggle between life and death, and that she had been more than once, in the course of it, at the point of expiring. I now apprehend these to have been the symptoms of a decided mortification, occasioned by the part of the placenta that remained in the womb. At the time however I was far from considering it in that light. When I went for Dr. Poignand, between two and three o'clock on the morning of Thursday, despair was in my heart. The fact of the adhesion of the placenta was stated to me; and, ignorant as I was of obstetrical science, I felt as if the death of Mary was in a manner decided. But hope had re-visited my bosom; and her chearings were so delightful, that I hugged her obstinately to my heart. I was only mortified at what appeared to me a new delay in the recovery I so earnestly longed for. I immediately sent for Dr. Fordyce, who had been with her in the morning, as well as on the three preceding days. Dr. Poignand had also called this morning but declined paying any further visits, as we had thought proper to call in Dr. Fordyce. The progress of the disease was now uninterrupted. On Tuesday I found it necessary again to call in Dr. Fordyce in the afternoon, who brought with him Dr. Clarke of New Burlington-street, under the idea that some operation might be necessary. I have already said, that I pertinaciously persisted in viewing the fair side of things; and therefore the interval between Sunday and Tuesday evening, did not pass without some mixture of cheerfulness. On Monday, Dr. Fordyce forbad the child's having the breast, and we therefore procured puppies to draw off the milk. This occasioned some pleasantry of Mary with me and the other attendants. Nothing could exceed the equanimity, the patience and affectionateness of the poor sufferer. I intreated her to recover; I dwelt with trembling fondness on every favourable circumstance; and, as far it was possible in so dreadful a situation, she, by her smiles and kind speeches, rewarded my affection. Wednesday was to me the day of greatest torture in the melancholy series. It was now decided that the only chance of supporting her through what she had to suffer, was by supplying her rather freely with wine. This task was devolved upon me. I began about four o'clock in the afternoon. But for me, totally ignorant of the nature of diseases and of the human frame, thus to play with a life that now seemed all that was dear to me in the universe, was too dreadful a task. I knew neither what was too much, nor what was too little. Having begun, I felt compelled, under every disadvantage, to go on. This lasted for three hours. Towards the end of that time, I happened foolishly to ask the servant who came out of the room, "What she thought of her mistress?" she replied, "that, in her judgment, she was going as fast as possible." There are moments, when any creature that lives, has power to drive one into madness. I seemed to know the absurdity of this reply; but that was of no consequence. It added to the measure of my distraction. A little after seven I intreated a friend to go for Mr. Carlisle, and bring him instantly wherever he was to be found. He had voluntarily called on the patient on the preceding Saturday, and two or three times since. He had seen her that morning, and had been earnest in recommending the wine-diet. That day he dined four miles out of town, on the side of the metropolis, which was furthest from us. Notwithstanding this, my friend returned with him after three-quarters of an hour's absence. No one who knows my friend, will wonder either at his eagerness or success, when I name Mr. Basil Montagu. The sight of Mr. Carlisle thus unexpectedly, gave me a stronger alleviating sensation, than I thought it possible to experience. Mr. Carlisle left us no more from Wednesday evening, to the hour of her death. It was impossible to exceed his kindness and affectionate attention. It excited in every spectator a sentiment like adoration. His conduct was uniformly tender and anxious, ever upon the watch, observing every symptom, and eager to improve every favourable appearance. If skill or attention could have saved her, Mary would still live. In addition to Mr. Carlisle's constant presence, she had Dr. Fordyce and Dr. Clarke every day. She had for nurses, or rather for friends, watching every occasion to serve her, Mrs. Fenwick, author of an excellent novel, entitled Secrecy, another very kind and judicious lady, and a favourite female servant. I was scarcely ever out of the room. Four friends, Mr. Fenwick, Mr. Basil Montagu, Mr. Marshal, and Mr. Dyson, sat up nearly the whole of the last week of her existence in the house, to be dispatched, on any errand, to any part of the metropolis, at a moment's warning. Mr. Carlisle being in the chamber, I retired to bed for a few hours on Wednesday night. Towards morning he came into my room with an account that the patient was surprisingly better. I went instantly into the chamber. But I now sought to suppress every idea of hope. The greatest anguish I have any conception of, consists in that crushing of a new-born hope which I had already two or three times experienced. If Mary recovered, it was well, and I should see it time enough. But it was too mighty a thought to bear being trifled with, and turned out and admitted in this abrupt way. I had reason to rejoice in the firmness of my gloomy thoughts, when, about ten o'clock on Thursday evening, Mr. Carlisle told us to prepare ourselves, for we had reason to expect the fatal event every moment. To my thinking, she did not appear to be in that state of total exhaustion, which I supposed to precede death; but it is probable that death does not always take place by that gradual process I had pictured to myself; a sudden pang may accelerate his arrival. She did not die on Thursday night. Till now it does not appear that she had any serious thoughts of dying; but on Friday and Saturday, the two last days of her life, she occasionally spoke as if she expected it. This was however only at intervals; the thought did not seem to dwell upon her mind. Mr. Carlisle rejoiced in this. He observed, and there is great force in the suggestion, that there is no more pitiable object, than a sick man, that knows he is dying. The thought must be expected to destroy his courage, to co-operate with the disease, and to counteract every favourable effort of nature. On these two days her faculties were in too decayed a state, to be able to follow any train of ideas with force or any accuracy of connection. Her religion, as I have already shown, was not calculated to be the torment of a sick bed; and, in fact, during her whole illness, not one word of a religious cast fell from her lips. She was affectionate and compliant to the last. I observed on Friday and Saturday nights, that, whenever her attendants recommended to her to sleep, she discovered her willingness to yield, by breathing, perhaps for the space of a minute, in the manner of a person that sleeps, though the effort, from the state of her disorder, usually proved ineffectual. She was not tormented by useless contradiction. One night the servant, from an error in judgment, teazed her with idle expostulations, but she complained of it grievously, and it was corrected. "Pray, pray, do not let her reason with me," was her expression. Death itself is scarcely so dreadful to the enfeebled frame, as the monotonous importunity of nurses ever-lastingly repeated. Seeing that every hope was extinct, I was very desirous of obtaining from her any directions, that she might wish to have followed after her decease. Accordingly, on Saturday morning, I talked to her for a good while of the two children. In conformity to Mr. Carlisle's maxim of not impressing the idea of death, I was obliged to manage my expressions. I therefore affected to proceed wholly upon the ground of her having been very ill, and that it would be some time before she could expect to be well; wishing her to tell me any thing that she would choose to have done respecting the children, as they would now be principally under my care. After having repeated this idea to her in a great variety of forms, she at length said, with a significant tone of voice, "I know what you are thinking of," but added, that she had nothing to communicate to me upon the subject. The shivering fits had ceased entirely for the two last days. Mr. Carlisle observed that her continuance was almost miraculous, and he was on the watch for favourable appearances, believing it highly improper to give up all hope, and remarking, that perhaps one in a million, of persons in her state might possibly recover. I conceive that not one in a million, unites so good a constitution of body and of mind. These were the amusements of persons in the very gulph of despair. At six o'clock on Sunday morning, September the tenth, Mr. Carlisle called me from my bed to which I had retired at one, in conformity to my request, that I might not be left to receive all at once the intelligence that she was no more. She expired at twenty minutes before eight. * * * * * Her remains were deposited, on the fifteenth of September, at ten o'clock in the morning, in the church-yard of the parish church of St. Pancras, Middlesex. A few of the persons she most esteemed, attended the ceremony; and a plain monument is now erecting on the spot, by some of her friends, with the following inscription: +------------------------------+ | MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN, | | AUTHOR OF | | A VINDICATION | | OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. | | BORN, XXVII APRIL MDCCLIX. | | DIED, X SEPTEMBER MDCCXCVII. | +------------------------------+ * * * * * The loss of the world in this admirable woman, I leave to other men to collect; my own I well know, nor can it be improper to describe it. I do not here allude to the personal pleasures I enjoyed in her conversation: these increased every day, in proportion as we knew each other better, and as our mutual confidence increased. They can be measured only by the treasures of her mind, and the virtues of her heart. But this is a subject for meditation, not for words. What I purposed alluding to, was the improvement that I have for ever lost. We had cultivated our powers (if I may venture to use this sort of language) in different directions; I chiefly an attempt at logical and metaphysical distinction, she a taste for the picturesque. One of the leading passions of my mind has been an anxious desire not to be deceived. This has led me to view the topics of my reflection on all sides; and to examine and re-examine without end, the questions that interest me. But it was not merely (to judge at least from all the reports of my memory in this respect) the difference of propensities, that made the difference in our intellectual habits. I have been stimulated, as long as I can remember, by an ambition for intellectual distinction; but, as long as I can remember, I have been discouraged, when I have endeavoured to cast the sum of my intellectual value, by finding that I did not possess, in the degree of some other men, an intuitive perception of intellectual beauty. I have perhaps a strong and lively sense of the pleasures of the imagination; but I have seldom been right in aligning to them their proportionate value, but by dint of persevering examination, and the change and correction of my first opinions. What I wanted in this respect, Mary possessed, in a degree superior to any other person I ever knew. The strength of her mind lay in intuition. She was often right, by this means only, in matters of mere speculation. Her religion, her philosophy, (in both of which the errors were comparatively few, and the strain dignified and generous) were, as I have already said, the pure result of feeling and taste. She adopted one opinion, and rejected another, spontaneously, by a sort of tact, and the force of a cultivated imagination; and yet, though perhaps, in the strict sense of the term, she reasoned little, it is surprising what a degree of soundness is to be found in her determinations. But, if this quality was of use to her in topics that seem the proper province of reasoning, it was much more so in matters directly appealing to the intellectual taste. In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort, there is a kind of witchcraft; when it decides justly, it produces a responsive vibration in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, my oscillation and scepticism were fixed by her boldness. When a true opinion emanated in this way from another mind, the conviction produced in my own assumed a similar character, instantaneous and firm. This species of intellect probably differs from the other, chiefly in the relation of earlier and later. What the one perceives instantaneously (circumstances having produced in it, either a premature attention to objects of this sort, or a greater boldness of decision) the other receives only by degrees. What it wants, seems to be nothing more than a minute attention to first impressions, and a just appreciation of them; habits that are never so effectually generated, as by the daily recurrence of a striking example. This light was lent to me for a very short period, and is now extinguished for ever! While I have described the improvement I was in the act of receiving, I believe I have put down the leading traits of her intellectual character. THE END. 
19718	----	THE BOSTONIANS A NOVEL BY HENRY JAMES IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1921 _First published in 1886_ BOOK SECOND (_Continued_) XXIV A little more than an hour after this he stood in the parlour of Doctor Tarrant's suburban residence, in Monadnoc Place. He had induced a juvenile maid-servant, by an appeal somewhat impassioned, to let the ladies know that he was there; and she had returned, after a long absence, to say that Miss Tarrant would come down to him in a little while. He possessed himself, according to his wont, of the nearest book (it lay on the table, with an old magazine and a little japanned tray containing Tarrant's professional cards--his denomination as a mesmeric healer), and spent ten minutes in turning it over. It was a biography of Mrs. Ada T. P. Foat, the celebrated trance-lecturer, and was embellished by a portrait representing the lady with a surprised expression and innumerable ringlets. Ransom said to himself, after reading a few pages, that much ridicule had been cast upon Southern literature; but if that was a fair specimen of Northern!--and he threw it back upon the table with a gesture almost as contemptuous as if he had not known perfectly, after so long a residence in the North, that it was not, while he wondered whether this was the sort of thing Miss Tarrant had been brought up on. There was no other book to be seen, and he remembered to have read the magazine; so there was finally nothing for him, as the occupants of the house failed still to appear, but to stare before him, into the bright, bare, common little room, which was so hot that he wished to open a window, and of which an ugly, undraped cross-light seemed to have taken upon itself to reveal the poverty. Ransom, as I have mentioned, had not a high standard of comfort and noticed little, usually, how people's houses were furnished--it was only when they were very pretty that he observed; but what he saw while he waited at Doctor Tarrant's made him say to himself that it was no wonder Verena liked better to live with Olive Chancellor. He even began to wonder whether it were for the sake of that superior softness she had cultivated Miss Chancellor's favour, and whether Mrs. Luna had been right about her being mercenary and insincere. So many minutes elapsed before she appeared that he had time to remember he really knew nothing to the contrary, as well as to consider the oddity (so great when one did consider it) of his coming out to Cambridge to see her, when he had only a few hours in Boston to spare, a year and a half after she had given him her very casual invitation. She had not refused to receive him, at any rate; she was free to, if it didn't please her. And not only this, but she was apparently making herself fine in his honour, inasmuch as he heard a rapid footstep move to and fro above his head, and even, through the slightness which in Monadnoc Place did service for an upper floor, the sound of drawers and presses opened and closed. Some one was "flying round," as they said in Mississippi. At last the stairs creaked under a light tread, and the next moment a brilliant person came into the room. His reminiscence of her had been very pretty; but now that she had developed and matured, the little prophetess was prettier still. Her splendid hair seemed to shine; her cheek and chin had a curve which struck him by its fineness; her eyes and lips were full of smiles and greetings. She had appeared to him before as a creature of brightness, but now she lighted up the place, she irradiated, she made everything that surrounded her of no consequence; dropping upon the shabby sofa with an effect as charming as if she had been a nymph sinking on a leopard-skin, and with the native sweetness of her voice forcing him to listen till she spoke again. It was not long before he perceived that this added lustre was simply success; she was young and tender still, but the sound of a great applauding audience had been in her ears; it formed an element in which she felt buoyant and floated. Still, however, her glance was as pure as it was direct, and that fantastic fairness hung about her which had made an impression on him of old, and which reminded him of unworldly places--he didn't know where--convent-cloisters or vales of Arcady. At that other time she had been parti-coloured and bedizened, and she had always an air of costume, only now her costume was richer and more chastened. It was her line, her condition, part of her expression. If at Miss Birdseye's, and afterwards in Charles Street, she might have been a rope-dancer, to-day she made a "scene" of the mean little room in Monadnoc Place, such a scene as a prima donna makes of daubed canvas and dusty boards. She addressed Basil Ransom as if she had seen him the other week and his merits were fresh to her, though she let him, while she sat smiling at him, explain in his own rather ceremonious way why it was he had presumed to call upon her on so slight an acquaintance--on an invitation which she herself had had more than time to forget. His explanation, as a finished and satisfactory thing, quite broke down; there was no more impressive reason than that he had simply wished to see her. He became aware that this motive loomed large, and that her listening smile, innocent as it was, in the Arcadian manner, of mockery, seemed to accuse him of not having the courage of his inclination. He had alluded especially to their meeting at Miss Chancellor's; there it was that she had told him she should be glad to see him in her home. "Oh yes, I remember perfectly, and I remember quite as well seeing you at Miss Birdseye's the night before. I made a speech--don't you remember? That was delightful." "It was delightful indeed," said Basil Ransom. "I don't mean my speech; I mean the whole thing. It was then I made Miss Chancellor's acquaintance. I don't know whether you know how we work together. She has done so much for me." "Do you still make speeches?" Ransom asked, conscious, as soon as he had uttered it, that the question was below the mark. "Still? Why, I should hope so; it's all I'm good for! It's my life--or it's going to be. And it's Miss Chancellor's too. We are determined to do something." "And does she make speeches too?" "Well, she makes mine--or the best part of them. She tells me what to say--the real things, the strong things. It's Miss Chancellor as much as me!" said the singular girl, with a generous complacency which was yet half ludicrous. "I should like to hear you again," Basil Ransom rejoined. "Well, you must come some night. You will have plenty of chances. We are going on from triumph to triumph." Her brightness, her self-possession, her air of being a public character, her mixture of the girlish and the comprehensive, startled and confounded her visitor, who felt that if he had come to gratify his curiosity he should be in danger of going away still more curious than satiated. She added in her gay, friendly, trustful tone--the tone of facile intercourse, the tone in which happy, flower-crowned maidens may have talked to sunburnt young men in the golden age--"I am very familiar with your name; Miss Chancellor has told me all about you." "All about me?" Ransom raised his black eyebrows. "How could she do that? She doesn't know anything about me!" "Well, she told me you are a great enemy to our movement. Isn't that true? I think you expressed some unfavourable idea that day I met you at her house." "If you regard me as an enemy, it's very kind of you to receive me." "Oh, a great many gentlemen call," Verena said, calmly and brightly. "Some call simply to inquire. Some call because they have heard of me, or been present on some occasion when I have moved them. Every one is so interested." "And you have been in Europe," Ransom remarked, in a moment. "Oh yes, we went over to see if they were in advance. We had a magnificent time--we saw all the leaders." "The leaders?" Ransom repeated. "Of the emancipation of our sex. There are gentlemen there, as well as ladies. Olive had splendid introductions in all countries, and we conversed with all the earnest people. We heard much that was suggestive. And as for Europe!"--and the young lady paused, smiling at him and ending in a happy sigh, as if there were more to say on the subject than she could attempt on such short notice. "I suppose it's very attractive," said Ransom encouragingly. "It's just a dream!" "And did you find that they were in advance?" "Well, Miss Chancellor thought they were. She was surprised at some things we observed, and concluded that perhaps she hadn't done the Europeans justice--she has got such an open mind, it's as wide as the sea!--while I incline to the opinion that on the whole _we_ make the better show. The state of the movement there reflects their general culture, and their general culture is higher than ours (I mean taking the term in its broadest sense). On the other hand, the _special_ condition--moral, social, personal--of our sex seems to me to be superior in this country; I mean regarded in relation--in proportion as it were--to the social phase at large. I must add that we did see some noble specimens over there. In England we met some lovely women, highly cultivated, and of immense organising power. In France we saw some wonderful, contagious types; we passed a delightful evening with the celebrated Marie Verneuil; she was released from prison, you know, only a few weeks before. Our total impression was that it is only a question of time--the future is ours. But everywhere we heard one cry--'How long, O Lord, how long?'" Basil Ransom listened to this considerable statement with a feeling which, as the current of Miss Tarrant's facile utterance flowed on, took the form of an hilarity charmed into stillness by the fear of losing something. There was indeed a sweet comicality in seeing this pretty girl sit there and, in answer to a casual, civil inquiry, drop into oratory as a natural thing. Had she forgotten where she was, and did she take him for a full house? She had the same turns and cadences, almost the same gestures, as if she had been on the platform; and the great queerness of it was that, with such a manner, she should escape being odious. She was not odious, she was delightful; she was not dogmatic, she was genial. No wonder she was a success, if she speechified as a bird sings! Ransom could see, too, from her easy lapse, how the lecture-tone was the thing in the world with which, by education, by association, she was most familiar. He didn't know what to make of her; she was an astounding young phenomenon. The other time came back to him afresh, and how she had stood up at Miss Birdseye's; it occurred to him that an element, here, had been wanting. Several moments after she had ceased speaking he became conscious that the expression of his face presented a perceptible analogy to a broad grin. He changed his posture, saying the first thing that came into his head. "I presume you do without your father now." "Without my father?" "To set you going, as he did that time I heard you." "Oh, I see; you thought I had begun a lecture!" And she laughed, in perfect good humour. "They tell me I speak as I talk, so I suppose I talk as I speak. But you mustn't put me on what I saw and heard in Europe. That's to be the title of an address I am now preparing, by the way. Yes, I don't depend on father any more," she went on, while Ransom's sense of having said too sarcastic a thing was deepened by her perfect indifference to it. "He finds his patients draw off about enough, any way. But I owe him everything; if it hadn't been for him, no one would ever have known I had a gift--not even myself. He started me so, once for all, that I now go alone." "You go beautifully," said Ransom, wanting to say something agreeable, and even respectfully tender, to her, but troubled by the fact that there was nothing he could say that didn't sound rather like chaff. There was no resentment in her, however, for in a moment she said to him, as quickly as it occurred to her, in the manner of a person repairing an accidental omission, "It was very good of you to come so far." This was a sort of speech it was never safe to make to Ransom; there was no telling what retribution it might entail. "Do you suppose any journey is too great, too wearisome, when it's a question of so great a pleasure?" On this occasion it was not worse than that. "Well, people _have_ come from other cities," Verena answered, not with pretended humility, but with pretended pride. "Do you know Cambridge?" "This is the first time I have ever been here." "Well, I suppose you have heard of the university; it's so celebrated." "Yes--even in Mississippi. I suppose it's very fine." "I presume it is," said Verena; "but you can't expect me to speak with much admiration of an institution of which the doors are closed to our sex." "Do you then advocate a system of education in common?" "I advocate equal rights, equal opportunities, equal privileges. So does Miss Chancellor," Verena added, with just a perceptible air of feeling that her declaration needed support. "Oh, I thought what she wanted was simply a different inequality--simply to turn out the men altogether," Ransom said. "Well, she thinks we have great arrears to make up. I do tell her, sometimes, that what she desires is not only justice but vengeance. I think she admits that," Verena continued, with a certain solemnity. The subject, however, held her but an instant, and before Ransom had time to make any comment, she went on, in a different tone: "You don't mean to say you live in Mississippi _now_? Miss Chancellor told me when you were in Boston before, that you had located in New York." She persevered in this reference to himself, for when he had assented to her remark about New York, she asked him whether he had quite given up the South. "Given it up--the poor, dear, desolate old South? Heaven forbid!" Basil Ransom exclaimed. She looked at him for a moment with an added softness. "I presume it is natural you should love your home. But I am afraid you think I don't love mine much; I have been here--for so long--so little. Miss Chancellor _has_ absorbed me--there is no doubt about that. But it's a pity I wasn't with her to-day." Ransom made no answer to this; he was incapable of telling Miss Tarrant that if she had been he would not have called upon her. It was not, indeed, that he was not incapable of hypocrisy, for when she had asked him if he had seen his cousin the night before, and he had replied that he hadn't seen her at all, and she had exclaimed with a candour which the next minute made her blush, "Ah, you don't mean to say you haven't forgiven her!"--after this he put on a look of innocence sufficient to carry off the inquiry, "Forgiven her for what?" Verena coloured at the sound of her own words. "Well, I could see how much she felt, that time at her house." "What did she feel?" Basil Ransom asked, with the natural provokingness of a man. I know not whether Verena was provoked, but she answered with more spirit than sequence: "Well, you know you _did_ pour contempt on us, ever so much; I could see how it worked Olive up. Are you not going to see her at all?" "Well, I shall think about that; I am here only for three or four days," said Ransom, smiling as men smile when they are perfectly unsatisfactory. It is very possible that Verena was provoked, inaccessible as she was, in a general way, to irritation; for she rejoined in a moment, with a little deliberate air: "Well, perhaps it's as well you shouldn't go, if you haven't changed at all." "I haven't changed at all," said the young man, smiling still, with his elbows on the arms of his chair, his shoulders pushed up a little, and his thin brown hands interlocked in front of him. "Well, I have had visitors who were quite opposed!" Verena announced, as if such news could not possibly alarm her. Then she added, "How then did you know I was out here?" "Miss Birdseye told me." "Oh, I am so glad you went to see _her_!" the girl cried, speaking again with the impetuosity of a moment before. "I didn't go to see her. I met her in the street, just as she was leaving Miss Chancellor's door. I spoke to her, and accompanied her some distance. I passed that way because I knew it was the direct way to Cambridge--from the Common--and I was coming out to see you any way--on the chance." "On the chance?" Verena repeated. "Yes; Mrs. Luna, in New York, told me you were sometimes here, and I wanted, at any rate, to make the attempt to find you." It may be communicated to the reader that it was very agreeable to Verena to learn that her visitor had made this arduous pilgrimage (for she knew well enough how people in Boston regarded a winter journey to the academic suburb) with only half the prospect of a reward; but her pleasure was mixed with other feelings, or at least with the consciousness that the whole situation was rather less simple than the elements of her life had been hitherto. There was the germ of disorder in this invidious distinction which Mr. Ransom had suddenly made between Olive Chancellor, who was related to him by blood, and herself, who had never been related to him in any way whatever. She knew Olive by this time well enough to wish not to reveal it to her, and yet it would be something quite new for her to undertake to conceal such an incident as her having spent an hour with Mr. Ransom during a flying visit he had made to Boston. She had spent hours with other gentlemen, whom Olive didn't see; but that was different, because her friend knew about her doing it and didn't care, in regard to the persons--didn't care, that is, as she would care in this case. It was vivid to Verena's mind that now Olive _would_ care. She had talked about Mr. Burrage, and Mr. Pardon, and even about some gentlemen in Europe, and she had not (after the first few days, a year and a half before) talked about Mr. Ransom. Nevertheless there were reasons, clear to Verena's view, for wishing either that he would go and see Olive or would keep away from _her_; and the responsibility of treating the fact that he had not so kept away as a secret seemed the greater, perhaps, in the light of this other fact, that so far as simply seeing Mr. Ransom went--why, she quite liked it. She had remembered him perfectly after their two former meetings, superficial as their contact then had been; she had thought of him at moments and wondered whether she should like him if she were to know him better. Now, at the end of twenty minutes, she did know him better, and found that he had rather a curious, but still a pleasant way. There he was, at any rate, and she didn't wish his call to be spoiled by any uncomfortable implication of consequences. So she glanced off, at the touch of Mrs. Luna's name; it seemed to afford relief. "Oh yes, Mrs. Luna--isn't she fascinating?" Ransom hesitated a little. "Well, no, I don't think she is." "You ought to like her--she hates our movement!" And Verena asked, further, numerous questions about the brilliant Adeline; whether he saw her often, whether she went out much, whether she was admired in New York, whether he thought her very handsome. He answered to the best of his ability, but soon made the reflexion that he had not come out to Monadnoc Place to talk about Mrs. Luna; in consequence of which, to change the subject (as well as to acquit himself of a social duty), he began to speak of Verena's parents, to express regret that Mrs. Tarrant had been sick, and fear that he was not to have the pleasure of seeing her. "She is a great deal better," Verena said; "but she's lying down; she lies down a great deal when she has got nothing else to do. Mother's very peculiar," she added in a moment; "she lies down when she feels well and happy, and when she's sick she walks about--she roams all round the house. If you hear her on the stairs a good deal, you can be pretty sure she's very bad. She'll be very much interested to hear about you after you have left." Ransom glanced at his watch. "I hope I am not staying too long--that I am not taking you away from her." "Oh no; she likes visitors, even when she can't see them. If it didn't take her so long to rise, she would have been down here by this time. I suppose you think she has missed me, since I have been so absorbed. Well, so she has, but she knows it's for my good. She would make any sacrifice for affection." The fancy suddenly struck Ransom of asking, in response to this, "And you? would you make any?" Verena gave him a bright natural stare. "Any sacrifice for affection?" She thought a moment, and then she said: "I don't think I have a right to say, because I have never been asked. I don't remember ever to have had to make a sacrifice--not an important one." "Lord! you must have had a happy life!" "I have been very fortunate, I know that. I don't know what to do when I think how some women--how most women--suffer. But I must not speak of that," she went on, with her smile coming back to her. "If you oppose our movement, you won't want to hear of the suffering of women!" "The suffering of women is the suffering of all humanity," Ransom returned. "Do you think any movement is going to stop that--or all the lectures from now to doomsday? We are born to suffer--and to bear it, like decent people." "Oh, I adore heroism!" Verena interposed. "And as for women," Ransom went on, "they have one source of happiness that is closed to us--the consciousness that their presence here below lifts half the load of _our_ suffering." Verena thought this very graceful, but she was not sure it was not rather sophistical; she would have liked to have Olive's judgement upon it. As that was not possible for the present, she abandoned the question (since learning that Mr. Ransom had passed over Olive, to come to her, she had become rather fidgety), and inquired of the young man, irrelevantly, whether he knew any one else in Cambridge. "Not a creature; as I tell you, I have never been here before. Your image alone attracted me; this charming interview will be henceforth my only association with the place." "It's a pity you couldn't have a few more," said Verena musingly. "A few more interviews? I should be unspeakably delighted!" "A few more associations. Did you see the colleges as you came?" "I had a glimpse of a large enclosure, with some big buildings. Perhaps I can look at them better as I go back to Boston." "Oh yes, you ought to see them--they have improved so much of late. The inner life, of course, is the greatest interest, but there is some fine architecture, if you are not familiar with Europe." She paused a moment, looking at him with an eye that seemed to brighten, and continued quickly, like a person who had collected herself for a little jump, "If you would like to walk round a little, I shall be very glad to show you." "To walk round--with you to show me?" Ransom repeated. "My dear Miss Tarrant, it would be the greatest privilege--the greatest happiness--of my life. What a delightful idea--what an ideal guide!" Verena got up; she would go and put on her hat; he must wait a little. Her offer had a frankness and friendliness which gave him a new sensation, and he could not know that as soon as she had made it (though she had hesitated too, with a moment of intense reflexion), she seemed to herself strangely reckless. An impulse pushed her; she obeyed it with her eyes open. She felt as a girl feels when she commits her first conscious indiscretion. She had done many things before which many people would have called indiscreet, but that quality had not even faintly belonged to them in her own mind; she had done them in perfect good faith and with a remarkable absence of palpitation. This superficially ingenuous proposal to walk around the colleges with Mr. Ransom had really another colour; it deepened the ambiguity of her position, by reason of a prevision which I shall presently mention. If Olive was not to know that she had seen him, this extension of their interview would double her secret. And yet, while she saw it grow--this monstrous little mystery--she couldn't feel sorry that she was going out with Olive's cousin. As I have already said, she had become nervous. She went to put on her hat, but at the door of the room she stopped, turned round, and presented herself to her visitor with a small spot in either cheek, which had appeared there within the instant. "I have suggested this, because it seems to me I ought to do something for you--in return," she said. "It's nothing, simply sitting there with me. And we haven't got anything else. This is our only hospitality. And the day seems so splendid." The modesty, the sweetness, of this little explanation, with a kind of intimated desire, constituting almost an appeal, for rightness, which seemed to pervade it, left a fragrance in the air after she had vanished. Ransom walked up and down the room, with his hands in his pockets, under the influence of it, without taking up even once the book about Mrs. Foat. He occupied the time in asking himself by what perversity of fate or of inclination such a charming creature was ranting upon platforms and living in Olive Chancellor's pocket, or how a ranter and sycophant could possibly be so engaging. And she was so disturbingly beautiful, too. This last fact was not less evident when she came down arranged for their walk. They left the house, and as they proceeded he remembered that he had asked himself earlier how he could do honour to such a combination of leisure and ethereal mildness as he had waked up to that morning--a mildness that seemed the very breath of his own latitude. This question was answered now; to do exactly what he was doing at that moment was an observance sufficiently festive. XXV They passed through two or three small, short streets, which, with their little wooden houses, with still more wooden door-yards, looked as if they had been constructed by the nearest carpenter and his boy--a sightless, soundless, interspaced, embryonic region--and entered a long avenue which, fringed on either side with fresh villas, offering themselves trustfully to the public, had the distinction of a wide pavement of neat red brick. The new paint on the square detached houses shone afar off in the transparent air: they had, on top, little cupolas and belvederes, in front a pillared piazza, made bare by the indoor life of winter, on either side a bow-window or two, and everywhere an embellishment of scallops, brackets, cornices, wooden flourishes. They stood, for the most part, on small eminences, lifted above the impertinence of hedge or paling, well up before the world, with all the good conscience which in many cases came, as Ransom saw (and he had noticed the same ornament when he traversed with Olive the quarter of Boston inhabited by Miss Birdseye), from a silvered number, affixed to the glass above the door, in figures huge enough to be read by the people who, in the periodic horse-cars, travelled along the middle of the avenue. It was to these glittering badges that many of the houses on either side owed their principal identity. One of the horse-cars now advanced in the straight, spacious distance; it was almost the only object that animated the prospect, which, in its large cleanness, its implication of strict business-habits on the part of all the people who were not there, Ransom thought very impressive. As he went on with Verena he asked her about the Women's Convention, the year before; whether it had accomplished much work and she had enjoyed it. "What do you care about the work it accomplished?" said the girl. "You don't take any interest in that." "You mistake my attitude. I don't like it, but I greatly fear it." In answer to this Verena gave a free laugh. "I don't believe you fear much!" "The bravest men have been afraid of women. Won't you even tell me whether you enjoyed it? I am told you made an immense sensation there--that you leaped into fame." Verena never waved off an allusion to her ability, her eloquence; she took it seriously, without any flutter or protest, and had no more manner about it than if it concerned the goddess Minerva. "I believe I attracted considerable attention; of course, that's what Olive wants--it paves the way for future work. I have no doubt I reached many that wouldn't have been reached otherwise. They think that's my great use--to take hold of the outsiders, as it were; of those who are prejudiced or thoughtless, or who don't care about anything unless it's amusing. I wake up the attention." "That's the class to which I belong," Ransom said. "Am I not an outsider? I wonder whether you would have reached me--or waked up my attention!" Verena was silent awhile, as they walked; he heard the light click of her boots on the smooth bricks. Then--"I think I _have_ waked it up a little," she replied, looking straight before her. "Most assuredly! You have made me wish tremendously to contradict you." "Well, that's a good sign." "I suppose it was very exciting--your convention," Ransom went on, in a moment; "the sort of thing you would miss very much if you were to return to the ancient fold." "The ancient fold, you say very well, where women were slaughtered like sheep! Oh, last June, for a week, we just quivered! There were delegates from every State and every city; we lived in a crowd of people and of ideas; the heat was intense, the weather magnificent, and great thoughts and brilliant sayings flew round like darting fireflies. Olive had six celebrated, high-minded women staying in her house--two in a room; and in the summer evenings we sat in the open windows, in her parlour, looking out on the bay, with the lights gleaming in the water, and talked over the doings of the morning, the speeches, the incidents, the fresh contributions to the cause. We had some tremendously earnest discussions, which it would have been a benefit to you to hear, or any man who doesn't think that we can rise to the highest point. Then we had some refreshment--we consumed quantities of ice-cream!" said Verena, in whom the note of gaiety alternated with that of earnestness, almost of exaltation, in a manner which seemed to Basil Ransom absolutely and fascinatingly original. "Those were great nights!" she added, between a laugh and a sigh. Her description of the convention put the scene before him vividly; he seemed to see the crowded, overheated hall, which he was sure was filled with carpet-baggers, to hear flushed women, with loosened bonnet-strings, forcing thin voices into ineffectual shrillness. It made him angry, and all the more angry, that he hadn't a reason, to think of the charming creature at his side being mixed up with such elements, pushed and elbowed by them, conjoined with them in emulation, in unsightly strainings and clappings and shoutings, in wordy, windy iteration of inanities. Worst of all was the idea that she should have expressed such a congregation to itself so acceptably, have been acclaimed and applauded by hoarse throats, have been lifted up, to all the vulgar multitude, as the queen of the occasion. He made the reflexion, afterwards, that he was singularly ill-grounded in his wrath, inasmuch as it was none of his business what use Miss Tarrant chose to make of her energies, and, in addition to this, nothing else was to have been expected of her. But that reflexion was absent now, and in its absence he saw only the fact that his companion had been odiously perverted. "Well, Miss Tarrant," he said, with a deeper seriousness than showed in his voice, "I am forced to the painful conclusion that you are simply ruined." "Ruined? Ruined yourself!" "Oh, I know the kind of women that Miss Chancellor had at her house, and what a group you must have made when you looked out at the Back Bay! It depresses me very much to think of it." "We made a lovely, interesting group, and if we had had a spare minute we would have been photographed," Verena said. This led him to ask her if she had ever subjected herself to the process; and she answered that a photographer had been after her as soon as she got back from Europe, and that she had sat for him, and that there were certain shops in Boston where her portrait could be obtained. She gave him this information very simply, without pretence of vagueness of knowledge, spoke of the matter rather respectfully, indeed, as if it might be of some importance; and when he said that he should go and buy one of the little pictures as soon as he returned to town, contented herself with replying, "Well, be sure you pick out a good one!" He had not been altogether without a hope that she would offer to give him one, with her name written beneath, which was a mode of acquisition he would greatly have preferred; but this, evidently, had not occurred to her, and now, as they went further, her thought was following a different train. That was proved by her remarking, at the end of a silence, inconsequently, "Well, it showed I have a great use!" As he stared, wondering what she meant, she explained that she referred to the brilliancy of her success at the convention. "It proved I have a great use," she repeated, "and that is all I care for!" "The use of a truly amiable woman is to make some honest man happy," Ransom said, with a sententiousness of which he was perfectly aware. It was so marked that it caused her to stop short in the middle of the broad walk, while she looked at him with shining eyes. "See here, Mr. Ransom, do you know what strikes me?" she exclaimed. "The interest you take in me isn't really controversial--a bit. It's quite personal!" She was the most extraordinary girl; she could speak such words as those without the smallest look of added consciousness coming into her face, without the least supposable intention of coquetry, or any visible purpose of challenging the young man to say more. "My interest in you--my interest in you," he began. Then hesitating, he broke off suddenly. "It is certain your discovery doesn't make it any less!" "Well, that's better," she went on; "for we needn't dispute." He laughed at the way she arranged it, and they presently reached the irregular group of heterogeneous buildings--chapels, dormitories, libraries, halls--which, scattered among slender trees, over a space reserved by means of a low rustic fence, rather than enclosed (for Harvard knows nothing either of the jealousy or the dignity of high walls and guarded gateways), constitutes the great university of Massachusetts. The yard, or college-precinct, is traversed by a number of straight little paths, over which, at certain hours of the day, a thousand undergraduates, with books under their arm and youth in their step, flit from one school to another. Verena Tarrant knew her way round, as she said to her companion; it was not the first time she had taken an admiring visitor to see the local monuments. Basil Ransom, walking with her from point to point, admired them all, and thought several of them exceedingly quaint and venerable. The rectangular structures of old red brick especially gratified his eye; the afternoon sun was yellow on their homely faces; their windows showed a peep of flower-pots and bright-coloured curtains; they wore an expression of scholastic quietude, and exhaled for the young Mississippian a tradition, an antiquity. "This is the place where I ought to have been," he said to his charming guide. "I should have had a good time if I had been able to study here." "Yes; I presume you feel yourself drawn to any place where ancient prejudices are garnered up," she answered, not without archness. "I know by the stand you take about our cause that you share the superstitions of the old bookmen. You ought to have been at one of those really mediæval universities that we saw on the other side, at Oxford, or Göttingen, or Padua. You would have been in perfect sympathy with their spirit." "Well, I don't know much about those old haunts," Ransom rejoined. "I reckon this is good enough for me. And then it would have had the advantage that your residence isn't far, you know." "Oh, I guess we shouldn't have seen you much at my residence! As you live in New York, you come, but here you wouldn't; that is always the way." With this light philosophy Verena beguiled the transit to the library, into which she introduced her companion with the air of a person familiar with the sanctified spot. This edifice, a diminished copy of the chapel of King's College, at the greater Cambridge, is a rich and impressive institution; and as he stood there, in the bright, heated stillness, which seemed suffused with the odour of old print and old bindings, and looked up into the high, light vaults that hung over quiet book-laden galleries, alcoves and tables, and glazed cases where rarer treasures gleamed more vaguely, over busts of benefactors and portraits of worthies, bowed heads of working students and the gentle creak of passing messengers--as he took possession, in a comprehensive glance, of the wealth and wisdom of the place, he felt more than ever the soreness of an opportunity missed; but he abstained from expressing it (it was too deep for that), and in a moment Verena had introduced him to a young lady, a friend of hers, who, as she explained, was working on the catalogue, and whom she had asked for on entering the library, at a desk where another young lady was occupied. Miss Catching, the first-mentioned young lady, presented herself with promptness, offered Verena a low-toned but appreciative greeting, and, after a little, undertook to explain to Ransom the mysteries of the catalogue, which consisted of a myriad little cards, disposed alphabetically in immense chests of drawers. Ransom was deeply interested, and as, with Verena, he followed Miss Catching about (she was so good as to show them the establishment in all its ramifications), he considered with attention the young lady's fair ringlets and refined, anxious expression, saying to himself that this was in the highest degree a New England type. Verena found an opportunity to mention to him that she was wrapped up in the cause, and there was a moment during which he was afraid that his companion would expose him to her as one of its traducers; but there was that in Miss Catching's manner (and in the influence of the lofty halls) which deprecated loud pleasantry, and seemed to say, moreover, that if she were treated to such a revelation she should not know under what letter to range it. "Now there is one place where perhaps it would be indelicate to take a Mississippian," Verena said, after this episode. "I mean the great place that towers above the others--that big building with the beautiful pinnacles, which you see from every point." But Basil Ransom had heard of the great Memorial Hall; he knew what memories it enshrined, and the worst that he should have to suffer there; and the ornate, overtopping structure, which was the finest piece of architecture he had ever seen, had moreover solicited his enlarged curiosity for the last half-hour. He thought there was rather too much brick about it, but it was buttressed, cloistered, turreted, dedicated, superscribed, as he had never seen anything; though it didn't look old, it looked significant; it covered a large area, and it sprang majestic into the winter air. It was detached from the rest of the collegiate group, and stood in a grassy triangle of its own. As he approached it with Verena she suddenly stopped, to decline responsibility. "Now mind, if you don't like what's inside, it isn't my fault." He looked at her an instant, smiling. "Is there anything against Mississippi?" "Well, no, I don't think she is mentioned. But there is great praise of our young men in the war." "It says they were brave, I suppose." "Yes, it says so in Latin." "Well, so they were--I know something about that," Basil Ransom said. "I must be brave enough to face them--it isn't the first time." And they went up the low steps and passed into the tall doors. The Memorial Hall of Harvard consists of three main divisions: one of them a theatre, for academic ceremonies; another a vast refectory, covered with a timbered roof, hung about with portraits and lighted by stained windows, like the halls of the colleges of Oxford; and the third, the most interesting, a chamber high, dim, and severe, consecrated to the sons of the university who fell in the long Civil War. Ransom and his companion wandered from one part of the building to another, and stayed their steps at several impressive points; but they lingered longest in the presence of the white, ranged tablets, each of which, in its proud, sad clearness, is inscribed with the name of a student-soldier. The effect of the place is singularly noble and solemn, and it is impossible to feel it without a lifting of the heart. It stands there for duty and honour, it speaks of sacrifice and example, seems a kind of temple to youth, manhood, generosity. Most of them were young, all were in their prime, and all of them had fallen; this simple idea hovers before the visitor and makes him read with tenderness each name and place--names often without other history, and forgotten Southern battles. For Ransom these things were not a challenge nor a taunt; they touched him with respect, with the sentiment of beauty. He was capable of being a generous foeman, and he forgot, now, the whole question of sides and parties; the simple emotion of the old fighting-time came back to him, and the monument around him seemed an embodiment of that memory; it arched over friends as well as enemies, the victims of defeat as well as the sons of triumph. "It is very beautiful--but I think it is very dreadful!" This remark, from Verena, called him back to the present. "It's a real sin to put up such a building, just to glorify a lot of bloodshed. If it wasn't so majestic, I would have it pulled down." "That is delightful feminine logic!" Ransom answered. "If, when women have the conduct of affairs, they fight as well as they reason, surely for them too we shall have to set up memorials." Verena retorted that they would reason so well they would have no need to fight--they would usher in the reign of peace. "But this is very peaceful too," she added, looking about her; and she sat down on a low stone ledge, as if to enjoy the influence of the scene. Ransom left her alone for ten minutes; he wished to take another look at the inscribed tablets, and read again the names of the various engagements, at several of which he had been present. When he came back to her she greeted him abruptly, with a question which had no reference to the solemnity of the spot. "If Miss Birdseye knew you were coming out to see me, can't _she_ easily tell Olive? Then won't Olive make her reflexions about your neglect of herself?" "I don't care for her reflexions. At any rate, I asked Miss Birdseye, as a favour, not to mention to her that she had met me," Ransom added. Verena was silent a moment. "Your logic is most as good as a woman's. Do change your mind and go to see her now," she went on. "She will probably be at home by the time you get to Charles Street. If she was a little strange, a little stiff with you before (I know just how she must have been), all that will be different to-day." "Why will it be different?" "Oh, she will be easier, more genial, much softer." "I don't believe it," said Ransom; and his scepticism seemed none the less complete because it was light and smiling. "She is much happier now--she can afford not to mind you." "Not to mind me? That's a nice inducement for a gentleman to go and see a lady!" "Well, she will be more gracious, because she feels now that she is more successful." "You mean because she has brought you out? Oh, I have no doubt that has cleared the air for her immensely, and you have improved her very much. But I have got a charming impression out here, and I have no wish to put another--which won't be charming, anyhow you arrange it--on top of it." "Well, she will be sure to know you have been round here, at any rate," Verena rejoined. "How will she know, unless you tell her?" "I tell her everything," said the girl; and now as soon as she had spoken, she blushed. He stood before her, tracing a figure on the mosaic pavement with his cane, conscious that in a moment they had become more intimate. They were discussing their affairs, which had nothing to do with the heroic symbols that surrounded them; but their affairs had suddenly grown so serious that there was no want of decency in their lingering there for the purpose. The implication that his visit might remain as a secret between them made them both feel it differently. To ask her to keep it so would have been, as it seemed to Ransom, a liberty, and, moreover, he didn't care so much as that; but if she were to prefer to do so such a preference would only make him consider the more that his expedition had been a success. "Oh, then, you can tell her this!" he said in a moment. "If I shouldn't, it would be the first----" And Verena checked herself. "You must arrange that with your conscience," Ransom went on, laughing. They came out of the hall, passed down the steps, and emerged from the Delta, as that portion of the college precinct is called. The afternoon had begun to wane, but the air was filled with a pink brightness, and there was a cool, pure smell, a vague breath of spring. "Well, if I don't tell Olive, then you must leave me here," said Verena, stopping in the path and putting out a hand of farewell. "I don't understand. What has that to do with it? Besides I thought you said you _must_ tell," Ransom added. In playing with the subject this way, in enjoying her visible hesitation, he was slightly conscious of a man's brutality--of being pushed by an impulse to test her good-nature, which seemed to have no limit. It showed no sign of perturbation as she answered: "Well, I want to be free--to do as I think best. And, if there is a chance of my keeping it back, there mustn't be anything more--there must not, Mr. Ransom, really." "Anything more? Why, what are you afraid there will be--if I should simply walk home with you?" "I must go alone, I must hurry back to mother," she said, for all reply. And she again put out her hand, which he had not taken before. Of course he took it now, and even held it a moment; he didn't like being dismissed, and was thinking of pretexts to linger. "Miss Birdseye said you would convert me, but you haven't yet," it came into his head to say. "You can't tell yet; wait a little. My influence is peculiar; it sometimes comes out a long time afterwards!" This speech, on Verena's part, was evidently perfunctory, and the grandeur of her self-reference jocular; she was much more serious when she went on quickly, "Do you mean to say Miss Birdseye promised you that?" "Oh yes. Talk about influence! you should have seen the influence I obtained over her." "Well, what good will it do, if I'm going to tell Olive about your visit?" "Well, you see, I think she hopes you won't. She believes you are going to convert me privately--so that I shall blaze forth, suddenly, out of the darkness of Mississippi, as a first-class proselyte: very effective and dramatic." Verena struck Basil Ransom as constantly simple, but there were moments when her candour seemed to him preternatural. "If I thought that would be the effect, I might make an exception," she remarked, speaking as if such a result were, after all, possible. "Oh, Miss Tarrant, you will convert me enough, any way," said the young man. "Enough? What do you mean by enough?" "Enough to make me terribly unhappy." She looked at him a moment, evidently not understanding; but she tossed him a retort at a venture, turned away, and took her course homeward. The retort was that if he should be unhappy it would serve him right--a form of words that committed her to nothing. As he returned to Boston he saw how curious he should be to learn whether she had betrayed him, as it were, to Miss Chancellor. He might learn through Mrs. Luna; that would almost reconcile him to going to see her again. Olive would mention it in writing to her sister, and Adeline would repeat the complaint. Perhaps she herself would even make him a scene about it; that would be, for him, part of the unhappiness he had foretold to Verena Tarrant. XXVI "Mrs. Henry Burrage, at home Wednesday evening, March 26th, at half-past nine o'clock." It was in consequence of having received a card with these words inscribed upon it that Basil Ransom presented himself, on the evening she had designated, at the house of a lady he had never heard of before. The account of the relation of effect to cause is not complete, however, unless I mention that the card bore, furthermore, in the left-hand lower corner, the words: "An Address from Miss Verena Tarrant." He had an idea (it came mainly from the look and even the odour of the engraved pasteboard) that Mrs. Burrage was a member of the fashionable world, and it was with considerable surprise that he found himself in such an element. He wondered what had induced a denizen of that fine air to send him an invitation; then he said to himself that, obviously, Verena Tarrant had simply requested that this should be done. Mrs. Henry Burrage, whoever she might be, had asked her if she shouldn't like some of her own friends to be present, and she had said, Oh yes, and mentioned him in the happy group. She had been able to give Mrs. Burrage his address, for had it not been contained in the short letter he despatched to Monadnoc Place soon after his return from Boston, in which he thanked Miss Tarrant afresh for the charming hour she had enabled him to spend at Cambridge? She had not answered his letter at the time, but Mrs. Burrage's card was a very good answer. Such a missive deserved a rejoinder, and it was by way of rejoinder that he entered the street car which, on the evening of March 26th, was to deposit him at a corner adjacent to Mrs. Burrage's dwelling. He almost never went to evening parties (he knew scarcely any one who gave them, though Mrs. Luna had broken him in a little), and he was sure this occasion was of festive intention, would have nothing in common with the nocturnal "exercises" at Miss Birdseye's; but he would have exposed himself to almost any social discomfort in order to see Verena Tarrant on the platform. The platform it evidently was to be--private if not public--since one was admitted by a ticket given away if not sold. He took his in his pocket, quite ready to present it at the door. It would take some time for me to explain the contradiction to the reader; but Basil Ransom's desire to be present at one of Verena's regular performances was not diminished by the fact that he detested her views and thought the whole business a poor perversity. He understood her now very well (since his visit to Cambridge); he saw she was honest and natural; she had queer, bad lecture-blood in her veins, and a comically false idea of the aptitude of little girls for conducting movements; but her enthusiasm was of the purest, her illusions had a fragrance, and so far as the mania for producing herself personally was concerned, it had been distilled into her by people who worked her for ends which to Basil Ransom could only appear insane. She was a touching, ingenuous victim, unconscious of the pernicious forces which were hurrying her to her ruin. With this idea of ruin there had already associated itself in the young man's mind, the idea--a good deal more dim and incomplete--of rescue; and it was the disposition to confirm himself in the view that her charm was her own, and her fallacies, her absurdity, a mere reflexion of unlucky circumstance, that led him to make an effort to behold her in the position in which he could least bear to think of her. Such a glimpse was all that was wanted to prove to him that she was a person for whom he might open an unlimited credit of tender compassion. He expected to suffer--to suffer deliciously. By the time he had crossed Mrs. Burrage's threshold there was no doubt whatever in his mind that he was in the fashionable world. It was embodied strikingly in the stout, elderly, ugly lady, dressed in a brilliant colour, with a twinkle of jewels and a bosom much uncovered, who stood near the door of the first room, and with whom the people passing in before him were shaking hands. Ransom made her a Mississipian bow, and she said she was delighted to see him, while people behind him pressed him forward. He yielded to the impulsion, and found himself in a great saloon, amid lights and flowers, where the company was dense, and there were more twinkling, smiling ladies, with uncovered bosoms. It was certainly the fashionable world, for there was no one there whom he had ever seen before. The walls of the room were covered with pictures--the very ceiling was painted and framed. The people pushed each other a little, edged about, advanced and retreated, looking at each other with differing faces--sometimes blandly, unperceivingly, sometimes with a harshness of contemplation, a kind of cruelty, Ransom thought; sometimes with sudden nods and grimaces, inarticulate murmurs, followed by a quick reaction, a sort of gloom. He was now absolutely certain that he was in the best society. He was carried further and further forward, and saw that another room stretched beyond the one he had entered, in which there was a sort of little stage, covered with a red cloth, and an immense collection of chairs, arranged in rows. He became aware that people looked at him, as well as at each other, rather more, indeed, than at each other, and he wondered whether it were very visible in his appearance that his being there was a kind of exception. He didn't know how much his head looked over the heads of others, or that his brown complexion, fuliginous eye, and straight black hair, the leonine fall of which I mentioned in the first pages of this narrative, gave him that relief which, in the best society, has the great advantage of suggesting a topic. But there were other topics besides, as was proved by a fragment of conversation, between two ladies, which reached his ear while he stood rather wistfully wondering where Verena Tarrant might be. "Are you a member?" one of the ladies said to the other. "I didn't know you had joined." "Oh, I haven't; nothing would induce me." "That's not fair; you have all the fun and none of the responsibility." "Oh, the--the fun!" exclaimed the second lady. "You needn't abuse us, or I will never invite you," said the first. "Well, I thought it was meant to be improving; that's all I mean; very good for the mind. Now, this woman to-night; isn't she from Boston?" "Yes, I believe they have brought her on, just for this." "Well, you must be pretty desperate when you have got to go to Boston for your entertainment." "Well, there's a similar society there, and I never heard of their sending to New York." "Of course not, they think they have got everything. But doesn't it make your life a burden thinking what you can possibly have?" "Oh dear, no. I am going to have Professor Gougenheim--all about the Talmud. You must come." "Well, I'll come," said the second lady; "but nothing would induce me to be a regular member." Whatever the mystic circle might be, Ransom agreed with the second lady that regular membership must have terrors, and he admired her independence in such an artificial world. A considerable part of the company had now directed itself to the further apartment--people had begun to occupy the chairs, to confront the empty platform. He reached the wide doors, and saw that the place was a spacious music-room, decorated in white and gold, with a polished floor and marble busts of composers, on brackets attached to the delicate panels. He forbore to enter, however, being shy about taking a seat, and seeing that the ladies were arranging themselves first. He turned back into the first room, to wait till the audience had massed itself, conscious that even if he were behind every one he should be able to make a long neck; and here, suddenly, in a corner, his eyes rested upon Olive Chancellor. She was seated a little apart, in an angle of the room, and she was looking straight at him; but as soon as she perceived that he saw her she dropped her eyes, giving no sign of recognition. Ransom hesitated a moment, but the next he went straight over to her. It had been in his mind that if Verena Tarrant was there, _she_ would be there; an instinct told him that Miss Chancellor would not allow her dear friend to come to New York without her. It was very possible she meant to "cut" him--especially if she knew of his having cut her, the other week, in Boston; but it was his duty to take for granted she would speak to him, until the contrary should be definitely proved. Though he had seen her only twice he remembered well how acutely shy she was capable of being, and he thought it possible one of these spasms had seized her at the present time. When he stood before her he found his conjecture perfectly just; she was white with the intensity of her self-consciousness; she was altogether in a very uncomfortable state. She made no response to his offer to shake hands with her, and he saw that she would never go through that ceremony again. She looked up at him when he spoke to her, and her lips moved; but her face was intensely grave and her eye had almost a feverish light. She had evidently got into her corner to be out of the way; he recognised in her the air of an interloper, as he had felt it in himself. The small sofa on which she had placed herself had the form to which the French give the name of _causeuse_; there was room on it for just another person, and Ransom asked her, with a cheerful accent, if he might sit down beside her. She turned towards him when he had done so, turned everything but her eyes, and opened and shut her fan while she waited for her fit of diffidence to pass away. Ransom himself did not wait; he took a jocular tone about their encounter, asking her if she had come to New York to rouse the people. She glanced round the room; the backs of Mrs. Burrage's guests, mainly, were presented to them, and their position was partly masked by a pyramid of flowers which rose from a pedestal close to Olive's end of the sofa and diffused a fragrance in the air. "Do you call these 'the people'?" she asked. "I haven't the least idea. I don't know who any of them are, not even who Mrs. Henry Burrage is, I simply received an invitation." Miss Chancellor gave him no information on the point he had mentioned; she only said, in a moment: "Do you go wherever you are invited?" "Why, I go if I think I may find you there," the young man replied gallantly. "My card mentioned that Miss Tarrant would give an address, and I knew that wherever she is you are not far off. I have heard you are inseparable, from Mrs. Luna." "Yes, we are inseparable. That is exactly why I am here." "It's the fashionable world, then, you are going to stir up." Olive remained for some time with her eyes fastened to the floor; then she flashed them up at her interlocutor. "It's a part of our life to go anywhere--to carry our work where it seems most needed. We have taught ourselves to stifle repulsion, distaste." "Oh, I think this is very amusing," said Ransom. "It's a beautiful house, and there are some very pretty faces. We haven't anything so brilliant in Mississippi." To everything he said Olive offered at first a momentary silence, but the worst of her shyness was apparently leaving her. "Are you successful in New York? do you like it?" she presently asked, uttering the inquiry in a tone of infinite melancholy, as if the eternal sense of duty forced it from her lips. "Oh, successful! I am not successful as you and Miss Tarrant are; for (to my barbaric eyes) it is a great sign of prosperity to be the heroines of an occasion like this." "Do I look like the heroine of an occasion?" asked Olive Chancellor, without an intention of humour, but with an effect that was almost comical. "You would if you didn't hide yourself away. Are you not going into the other room to hear the speech? Everything is prepared." "I am going when I am notified--when I am invited." There was considerable majesty in her tone, and Ransom saw that something was wrong, that she felt neglected. To see that she was as ticklish with others as she had been with him made him feel forgiving, and there was in his manner a perfect disposition to forget their differences as he said, "Oh, there is plenty of time; the place isn't half full yet." She made no direct rejoinder to this, but she asked him about his mother and sisters, what news he received from the South. "Have they any happiness?" she inquired, rather as if she warned him to take care not to pretend they had. He neglected her warning to the point of saying that there was one happiness they always had--that of having learned not to think about it too much, and to make the best of their circumstances. She listened to this with an air of great reserve, and apparently thought he had wished to give her a lesson; for she suddenly broke out, "You mean that you have traced a certain line for them, and that that's all you know about it!" Ransom stared at her, surprised; he felt, now, that she would always surprise him. "Ah, don't be rough with me," he said, in his soft Southern voice; "don't you remember how you knocked me about when I called on you in Boston?" "You hold us in chains, and then, when we writhe in our agony, you say we don't behave prettily!" These words, which did not lessen Ransom's wonderment, were the young lady's answer to his deprecatory speech. She saw that he was honestly bewildered and that in a moment more he would laugh at her, as he had done a year and a half before (she remembered it as if it had been yesterday); and to stop that off, at any cost, she went on hurriedly--"If you listen to Miss Tarrant, you will know what I mean." "Oh, Miss Tarrant--Miss Tarrant!" And Basil Ransom's laughter came. She had not escaped that mockery, after all, and she looked at him sharply now, her embarrassment having quite cleared up. "What do you know about her? What observation have you had?" Ransom met her eye, and for a moment they scrutinised each other. Did she know of his interview with Verena a month before, and was her reserve simply the wish to place on him the burden of declaring that he had been to Boston since they last met, and yet had not called in Charles Street? He thought there was suspicion in her face; but in regard to Verena she would always be suspicious. If he had done at that moment just what would gratify him he would have said to her that he knew a great deal about Miss Tarrant, having lately had a long walk and talk with her; but he checked himself, with the reflexion that if Verena had not betrayed him it would be very wrong in him to betray her. The sweetness of the idea that she should have thought the episode of his visit to Monadnoc Place worth placing under the rose, was quenched for the moment in his regret at not being able to let his disagreeable cousin know that he had passed _her_ over. "Don't you remember my hearing her speak that night at Miss Birdseye's?" he said presently. "And I met her the next day at your house, you know." "She has developed greatly since then," Olive remarked dryly; and Ransom felt sure that Verena had held her tongue. At this moment a gentleman made his way through the clusters of Mrs. Burrage's guests and presented himself to Olive. "If you will do me the honour to take my arm I will find a good seat for you in the other room. It's getting to be time for Miss Tarrant to reveal herself. I have been taking her into the picture-room; there were some things she wanted to see. She is with my mother now," he added, as if Miss Chancellor's grave face constituted a sort of demand for an explanation of her friend's absence. "She said she was a little nervous; so I thought we would just move about." "It's the first time I have ever heard of that!" said Olive Chancellor, preparing to surrender herself to the young man's guidance. He told her that he had reserved the best seat for her; it was evidently his desire to conciliate her, to treat her as a person of importance. Before leading her away, he shook hands with Ransom and remarked that he was very glad to see him; and Ransom saw that he must be the master of the house, though he could scarcely be the son of the stout lady in the doorway. He was a fresh, pleasant, handsome young man, with a bright friendly manner; he recommended Ransom to take a seat in the other room, without delay; if he had never heard Miss Tarrant he would have one of the greatest pleasures of his life. "Oh, Mr. Ransom only comes to ventilate his prejudices," Miss Chancellor said, as she turned her back to her kinsman. He shrank from pushing into the front of the company, which was now rapidly filling the music-room, and contented himself with lingering in the doorway, where several gentlemen were stationed. The seats were all occupied; all, that is, save one, towards which he saw Miss Chancellor and her companion direct themselves, squeezing and edging past the people who were standing up against the walls. This was quite in front, close to the little platform; every one noticed Olive as she went, and Ransom heard a gentleman near him say to another--"I guess she's one of the same kind." He looked for Verena, but she was apparently keeping out of sight. Suddenly he felt himself smartly tapped on the back, and, turning round, perceived Mrs. Luna, who had been prodding him with her fan. XXVII "You won't speak to me in my own house--that I have almost grown used to; but if you are going to pass me over in public I think you might give me warning first." This was only her archness, and he knew what to make of that now; she was dressed in yellow and looked very plump and gay. He wondered at the unerring instinct by which she had discovered his exposed quarter. The outer room was completely empty; she had come in at the further door and found the field free for her operations. He offered to find her a place where she could see and hear Miss Tarrant, to get her a chair to stand on, even, if she wished to look over the heads of the gentlemen in the doorway; a proposal which she greeted with the inquiry--"Do you suppose I came here for the sake of that chatterbox? haven't I told you what I think of her?" "Well, you certainly did not come here for my sake," said Ransom, anticipating this insinuation; "for you couldn't possibly have known I was coming." "I guessed it--a presentiment told me!" Mrs. Luna declared; and she looked up at him with searching, accusing eyes. "I know what you have come for," she cried in a moment. "You never mentioned to me that you knew Mrs. Burrage!" "I don't--I never had heard of her till she asked me." "Then why in the world _did_ she ask you?" Ransom had spoken a trifle rashly; it came over him, quickly, that there were reasons why he had better not have said that. But almost as quickly he covered up his mistake. "I suppose your sister was so good as to ask for a card for me." "My sister? My grandmother! I know how Olive loves you. Mr. Ransom, you are very deep." She had drawn him well into the room, out of earshot of the group in the doorway, and he felt that if she should be able to compass her wish she would organise a little entertainment for herself, in the outer drawing-room, in opposition to Miss Tarrant's address. "Please come and sit down here a moment; we shall be quite undisturbed. I have something very particular to say to you." She led the way to the little sofa in the corner, where he had been talking with Olive a few minutes before, and he accompanied her, with extreme reluctance, grudging the moments that he should be obliged to give to her. He had quite forgotten that he once had a vision of spending his life in her society, and he looked at his watch as he made the observation: "I haven't the least idea of losing any of the sport in there, you know." He felt, the next instant, that he oughtn't to have said that either; but he was irritated, disconcerted, and he couldn't help it. It was in the nature of a gallant Mississippian to do everything a lady asked him, and he had never, remarkable as it may appear, been in the position of finding such a request so incompatible with his own desires as now. It was a new predicament, for Mrs. Luna evidently meant to keep him if she could. She looked round the room, more and more pleased at their having it to themselves, and for the moment said nothing more about the singularity of his being there. On the contrary, she became freshly jocular, remarked that now they had got hold of him they wouldn't easily let him go, they would make him entertain them, induce him to give a lecture--on the "Lights and Shadows of Southern Life," or the "Social Peculiarities of Mississippi"--before the Wednesday Club. "And what in the world is the Wednesday Club? I suppose it's what those ladies were talking about," Ransom said. "I don't know your ladies, but the Wednesday Club is this thing. I don't mean you and me here together, but all those deluded beings in the other room. It is New York trying to be like Boston. It is the culture, the good form, of the metropolis. You might not think it, but it is. It's the 'quiet set'; they _are_ quiet enough; you might hear a pin drop, in there. Is some one going to offer up a prayer? How happy Olive must be, to be taken so seriously! They form an association for meeting at each other's houses, every week, and having some performance, or some paper read, or some subject explained. The more dreary it is and the more fearful the subject, the more they think it is what it ought to be. They have an idea this is the way to make New York society intellectual. There's a sumptuary law--isn't that what you call it?--about suppers, and they restrict themselves to a kind of Spartan broth. When it's made by their French cooks it isn't bad. Mrs. Burrage is one of the principal members--one of the founders, I believe; and when her turn has come round, formerly--it comes only once in the winter for each--I am told she has usually had very good music. But that is thought rather a base evasion, a begging of the question; the vulgar set can easily keep up with them on music. So Mrs. Burrage conceived the extraordinary idea"--and it was wonderful to hear how Mrs. Luna pronounced that adjective--"of sending on to Boston for that girl. It was her son, of course, who put it into her head; he has been at Cambridge for some years--that's where Verena lived, you know--and he was as thick with her as you please out there. Now that he is no longer there it suits him very well to have her here. She is coming on a visit to his mother when Olive goes. I asked them to stay with me, but Olive declined, majestically; she said they wished to be in some place where they would be free to receive 'sympathising friends.' So they are staying at some extraordinary kind of New Jerusalem boarding-house, in Tenth Street; Olive thinks it's her duty to go to such places. I was greatly surprised that she should let Verena be drawn into such a worldly crowd as this; but she told me they had made up their minds not to let _any_ occasion slip, that they could sow the seed of truth in drawing-rooms as well as in workshops, and that if a single person was brought round to their ideas they should have been justified in coming on. That's what they are doing in there--sowing the seed; but you shall not be the one that's brought round, I shall take care of that. Have you seen my delightful sister yet? The way she _does_ arrange herself when she wants to protest against frills! She looks as if she thought it pretty barren ground round here, now she has come to see it. I don't think she thinks you can be saved in a French dress, anyhow. I must say I call it a _very_ base evasion of Mrs. Burrage's, producing Verena Tarrant; it's worse than the meretricious music. Why didn't she honestly send for a _ballerina_ from Niblo's--if she wanted a young woman capering about on a platform? They don't care a fig about poor Olive's ideas; it's only because Verena has strange hair, and shiny eyes, and gets herself up like a prestidigitator's assistant. I have never understood how Olive can reconcile herself to Verena's really low style of dress. I suppose it's only because her clothes are so fearfully made. You look as if you didn't believe me--but I assure you that the cut is revolutionary; and that's a salve to Olive's conscience." Ransom was surprised to hear that he looked as if he didn't believe her, for he had found himself, after his first uneasiness, listening with considerable interest to her account of the circumstances under which Miss Tarrant was visiting New York. After a moment, as the result of some private reflexion, he propounded this question: "Is the son of the lady of the house a handsome young man, very polite, in a white vest?" "I don't know the colour of his vest--but he has a kind of fawning manner. Verena judges from that that he is in love with her." "Perhaps he is," said Ransom. "You say it was his idea to get her to come on." "Oh, he likes to flirt; that is highly probable." "Perhaps she has brought him round." "Not to where she wants, I think. The property is very large; he will have it all one of these days." "Do you mean she wishes to impose on him the yoke of matrimony?" Ransom asked, with Southern languor. "I believe she thinks matrimony an exploded superstition; but there is here and there a case in which it is still the best thing; when the gentleman's name happens to be Burrage and the young lady's Tarrant. I don't admire 'Burrage' so much myself. But I think she would have captured this present scion if it hadn't been for Olive. Olive stands between them--she wants to keep her in the single sisterhood; to keep her, above all, for herself. Of course she won't listen to her marrying, and she has put a spoke in the wheel. She has brought her to New York; that may seem against what I say; but the girl pulls hard, she has to humour her, to give her her head sometimes, to throw something overboard, in short, to save the rest. You may say, as regards Mr. Burrage, that it's a queer taste in a gentleman; but there is no arguing about that. It's queer taste in a lady, too; for she is a lady, poor Olive. You can see that to-night. She is dressed like a book-agent, but she is more distinguished than any one here. Verena, beside her, looks like a walking advertisement." When Mrs. Luna paused, Basil Ransom became aware that, in the other room, Verena's address had begun; the sound of her clear, bright, ringing voice, an admirable voice for public uses, came to them from the distance. His eagerness to stand where he could hear her better, and see her into the bargain, made him start in his place, and this movement produced an outgush of mocking laughter on the part of his companion. But she didn't say--"Go, go, deluded man, I take pity on you!" she only remarked, with light impertinence, that he surely wouldn't be so wanting in gallantry as to leave a lady absolutely alone in a public place--it was so Mrs. Luna was pleased to qualify Mrs. Burrage's drawing-room--in the face of her entreaty that he would remain with her. She had the better of poor Ransom, thanks to the superstitions of Mississippi. It was in his simple code a gross rudeness to withdraw from conversation with a lady at a party before another gentleman should have come to take one's place; it was to inflict on the lady a kind of outrage. The other gentlemen, at Mrs. Burrage's, were all too well occupied; there was not the smallest chance of one of them coming to his rescue. He couldn't leave Mrs. Luna, and yet he couldn't stay with her and lose the only thing he had come so much out of his way for. "Let me at least find you a place over there, in the doorway. You can stand upon a chair--you can lean on me." "Thank you very much; I would much rather lean on this sofa. And I am much too tired to stand on chairs. Besides, I wouldn't for the world that either Verena or Olive should see me craning over the heads of the crowd--as if I attached the smallest importance to their perorations!" "It isn't time for the peroration yet," Ransom said, with savage dryness; and he sat forward, with his elbow on his knees, his eyes on the ground, a flush in his sallow cheek. "It's never time to say such things as those," Mrs. Luna remarked, arranging her laces. "How do you know what she is saying?" "I can tell by the way her voice goes up and down. It sounds so silly." Ransom sat there five minutes longer--minutes which, he felt, the recording angel ought to write down to his credit--and asked himself how Mrs. Luna could be such a goose as not to see that she was making him hate her. But she was goose enough for anything. He tried to appear indifferent, and it occurred to him to doubt whether the Mississippi system could be right, after all. It certainly hadn't foreseen such a case as this. "It's as plain as day that Mr. Burrage intends to marry her--if he can," he said in a minute; that remark being better calculated than any other he could think of to dissimulate his real state of mind. It drew no rejoinder from his companion, and after an instant he turned his head a little and glanced at her. The result of something that silently passed between them was to make her say, abruptly: "Mr. Ransom, my sister never sent you an invitation to this place. Didn't it come from Verena Tarrant?" "I haven't the least idea." "As you hadn't the least acquaintance with Mrs. Burrage, who else could it have come from?" "If it came from Miss Tarrant, I ought at least to recognise her courtesy by listening to her." "If you rise from this sofa I will tell Olive what I suspect. She will be perfectly capable of carrying Verena off to China--or anywhere out of your reach." "And pray what is it you suspect?" "That you two have been in correspondence." "Tell her whatever you like, Mrs. Luna," said the young man, with the grimness of resignation. "You are quite unable to deny it, I see." "I never contradict a lady." "We shall see if I can't make you tell a fib. Haven't you been seeing Miss Tarrant, too?" "Where should I have seen her? I can't see all the way to Boston, as you said the other day." "Haven't you been there--on secret visits?" Ransom started just perceptibly; but to conceal it, the next instant, he stood up. "They wouldn't be secret if I were to tell you." Looking down at her he saw that her words were a happy hit, not the result of definite knowledge. But she appeared to him vain, egotistical, grasping, odious. "Well, I shall give the alarm," she went on; "that is, I will if you leave me. Is that the way a Southern gentleman treats a lady? Do as I wish, and I will let you off!" "You won't let me off from staying with you." "Is it such a _corvée_? I never heard of such rudeness!" Mrs. Luna cried. "All the same, I am determined to keep you if I can!" Ransom felt that she must be in the wrong, and yet superficially she seemed (and it was quite intolerable) to have right on her side. All this while Verena's golden voice, with her words indistinct, solicited, tantalised his ear. The question had evidently got on Mrs. Luna's nerves; she had reached that point of feminine embroilment when a woman is perverse for the sake of perversity, and even with a clear vision of bad consequences. "You have lost your head," he relieved himself by saying, as he looked down at her. "I wish you would go and get me some tea." "You say that only to embarrass me." He had hardly spoken when a great sound of applause, the clapping of many hands, and the cry from fifty throats of "Brava, brava!" floated in and died away. All Ransom's pulses throbbed, he flung his scruples to the winds, and after remarking to Mrs. Luna--still with all due ceremony--that he feared he must resign himself to forfeiting her good opinion, turned his back upon her and strode away to the open door of the music-room. "Well, I have never been so insulted!" he heard her exclaim, with exceeding sharpness, as he left her; and, glancing back at her, as he took up his position, he saw her still seated on her sofa--alone in the lamp-lit desert--with her eyes making, across the empty space, little vindictive points. Well, she could come where he was, if she wanted him so much; he would support her on an ottoman, and make it easy for her to see. But Mrs. Luna was uncompromising; he became aware, after a minute, that she had withdrawn, majestically, from the place, and he did not see her again that evening. XXVIII He could command the music-room very well from where he stood, behind a thick outer fringe of intently listening men. Verena Tarrant was erect on her little platform, dressed in white, with flowers in her bosom. The red cloth beneath her feet looked rich in the light of lamps placed on high pedestals on either side of the stage; it gave her figure a setting of colour which made it more pure and salient. She moved freely in her exposed isolation, yet with great sobriety of gesture; there was no table in front of her, and she had no notes in her hand, but stood there like an actress before the footlights, or a singer spinning vocal sounds to a silver thread. There was such a risk that a slim provincial girl, pretending to fascinate a couple of hundred _blasé_ New Yorkers by simply giving them her ideas, would fail of her effect, that at the end of a few moments Basil Ransom became aware that he was watching her in very much the same excited way as if she had been performing, high above his head, on the trapeze. Yet, as one listened, it was impossible not to perceive that she was in perfect possession of her faculties, her subject, her audience; and he remembered the other time at Miss Birdseye's well enough to be able to measure the ground she had travelled since then. This exhibition was much more complete, her manner much more assured; she seemed to speak and survey the whole place from a much greater height. Her voice, too, had developed; he had forgotten how beautiful it could be when she raised it to its full capacity. Such a tone as that, so pure and rich, and yet so young, so natural, constituted in itself a talent; he didn't wonder that they had made a fuss about her at the Female Convention, if she filled their hideous hall with such a music. He had read, of old, of the _improvisatrice_ of Italy, and this was a chastened, modern, American version of the type, a New England Corinna, with a mission instead of a lyre. The most graceful part of her was her earnestness, the way her delightful eyes, wandering over the "fashionable audience" (before which she was so perfectly unabashed), as if she wished to resolve it into a single sentient personality, seemed to say that the only thing in life she cared for was to put the truth into a form that would render conviction irresistible. She was as simple as she was charming, and there was not a glance or motion that did not seem part of the pure, still-burning passion that animated her. She had indeed--it was manifest--reduced the company to unanimity; their attention was anything but languid; they smiled back at her when she smiled; they were noiseless, motionless when she was solemn; and it was evident that the entertainment which Mrs. Burrage had had the happy thought of offering to her friends would be memorable in the annals of the Wednesday Club. It was agreeable to Basil Ransom to think that Verena noticed him in his corner; her eyes played over her listeners so freely that you couldn't say they rested in one place more than another; nevertheless, a single rapid ray, which, however, didn't in the least strike him as a deviation from her ridiculous, fantastic, delightful argument, let him now that he had been missed and now was particularly spoken to. This glance was a sufficient assurance that his invitation had come to him by the girl's request. He took for granted the matter of her speech was ridiculous; how could it help being, and what did it signify if it was? She was none the less charming for that, and the moonshine she had been plied with was none the less moonshine for her being charming. After he had stood there a quarter of an hour he became conscious that he should not be able to repeat a word she had said; he had not definitely heeded it, and yet he had not lost a vibration of her voice. He had discovered Olive Chancellor by this time; she was in the front row of chairs, at the end, on the left; her back was turned to him, but he could see half her sharp profile, bent down a little and absolutely motionless. Even across the wide interval her attitude expressed to him a kind of rapturous stillness, the concentration of triumph. There were several irrepressible effusions of applause, instantly self-checked, but Olive never looked up, at the loudest, and such a calmness as that could only be the result of passionate volition. Success was in the air, and she was tasting it; she tasted it, as she did everything, in a way of her own. Success for Verena was success for her, and Ransom was sure that the only thing wanting to her triumph was that he should have been placed in the line of her vision, so that she might enjoy his embarrassment and confusion, might say to him, in one of her dumb, cold flashes--"_Now_ do you think our movement is not a force--_now_ do you think that women are meant to be slaves?" Honestly, he was not conscious of any confusion; it subverted none of his heresies to perceive that Verena Tarrant had even more power to fix his attention than he had hitherto supposed. It was fixed in a way it had not been yet, however, by his at last understanding her speech, feeling it reach his inner sense through the impediment of mere dazzled vision. Certain phrases took on a meaning for him--an appeal she was making to those who still resisted the beneficent influence of the truth. They appeared to be mocking, cynical men, mainly; many of whom were such triflers and idlers, so heartless and brainless that it didn't matter much what they thought on any subject; if the old tyranny needed to be propped up by _them_ it showed it was in a pretty bad way. But there were others whose prejudice was stronger and more cultivated, pretended to rest upon study and argument. To those she wished particularly to address herself; she wanted to waylay them, to say, "Look here, you're all wrong; you'll be so much happier when I have convinced you. Just give me five minutes," she should like to say; "just sit down here and let me ask a simple question. Do you think any state of society can come to good that is based upon an organised wrong?" That was the simple question that Verena desired to propound, and Basil smiled across the room at her with an amused tenderness as he gathered that she conceived it to be a poser. He didn't think it would frighten him much if she were to ask him that, and he would sit down with her for as many minutes as she liked. He, of course, was one of the systematic scoffers, one of those to whom she said--"Do you know how you strike me? You strike me as men who are starving to death while they have a cupboard at home, all full of bread and meat and wine; or as blind, demented beings who let themselves be cast into a debtor's prison, while in their pocket they have the key of vaults and treasure-chests heaped up with gold and silver. The meat and wine, the gold and silver," Verena went on, "are simply the suppressed and wasted force, the precious sovereign remedy, of which society insanely deprives itself--the genius, the intelligence, the inspiration of women. It is dying, inch by inch, in the midst of old superstitions which it invokes in vain, and yet it has the elixir of life in its hands. Let it drink but a draught, and it will bloom once more; it will be refreshed, radiant; it will find its youth again. The heart, the heart is cold, and nothing but the touch of woman can warm it, make it act. We _are_ the Heart of humanity, and let us have the courage to insist on it! The public life of the world will move in the same barren, mechanical, vicious circle--the circle of egotism, cruelty, ferocity, jealousy, greed, of blind striving to do things only for _some_, at the cost of others, instead of trying to do everything for all. All, all? Who dares to say 'all' when we are not there? We are an equal, a splendid, an inestimable part. Try us and you'll see--you will wonder how, without us, society has ever dragged itself even this distance--so wretchedly small compared with what it might have been--on its painful earthly pilgrimage. That is what I should like above all to pour into the ears of those who still hold out, who stiffen their necks and repeat hard, empty formulas, which are as dry as a broken gourd that has been flung away in the desert. I would take them by their selfishness, their indolence, their interest. I am not here to recriminate, nor to deepen the gulf that already yawns between the sexes, and I don't accept the doctrine that they are natural enemies, since my plea is for a union far more intimate--provided it be equal--than any that the sages and philosophers of former times have ever dreamed of. Therefore I shall not touch upon the subject of men's being most easily influenced by considerations of what is most agreeable and profitable for _them_; I shall simply assume that they _are_ so influenced, and I shall say to them that our cause would long ago have been gained if their vision were not so dim, so veiled, even in matters in which their own interests are concerned. If they had the same quick sight as women, if they had the intelligence of the heart, the world would be very different now; and I assure you that half the bitterness of our lot is to see so clearly and not to be able to do! Good gentlemen all, if I could make you believe how much brighter and fairer and sweeter the garden of life would be for you, if you would only let us help you to keep it in order! You would like so much better to walk there, and you would find grass and trees and flowers that would make you think you were in Eden. That is what I should like to press home to each of you, personally, individually--to give him the vision of the world as it hangs perpetually before me, redeemed, transfigured, by a new moral tone. There would be generosity, tenderness, sympathy, where there is now only brute force and sordid rivalry. But you really do strike me as stupid even about your own welfare! Some of you say that we have already all the influence we can possibly require, and talk as if we ought to be grateful that we are allowed even to breathe. Pray, who shall judge what we require if not we ourselves? We require simply freedom; we require the lid to be taken off the box in which we have been kept for centuries. You say it's a very comfortable, cozy, convenient box, with nice glass sides, so that we can see out, and that all that's wanted is to give another quiet turn to the key. That is very easily answered. Good gentlemen, you have never been in the box, and you haven't the least idea how it feels!" The historian who has gathered these documents together does not deem it necessary to give a larger specimen of Verena's eloquence, especially as Basil Ransom, through whose ears we are listening to it, arrived, at this point, at a definite conclusion. He had taken her measure as a public speaker, judged her importance in the field of discussion, the cause of reform. Her speech, in itself, had about the value of a pretty essay, committed to memory and delivered by a bright girl at an "academy"; it was vague, thin, rambling, a tissue of generalities that glittered agreeably enough in Mrs. Burrage's veiled lamplight. From any serious point of view it was neither worth answering nor worth considering, and Basil Ransom made his reflexions on the crazy character of the age in which such a performance as that was treated as an intellectual effort, a contribution to a question. He asked himself what either he or any one else would think of it if Miss Chancellor--or even Mrs. Luna--had been on the platform instead of the actual declaimer. Nevertheless, its importance was high, and consisted precisely, in part, of the fact that the voice was not the voice of Olive or of Adeline. Its importance was that Verena was unspeakably attractive, and this was all the greater for him in the light of the fact, which quietly dawned upon him as he stood there, that he was falling in love with her. It had tapped at his heart for recognition, and before he could hesitate or challenge, the door had sprung open and the mansion was illuminated. He gave no outward sign; he stood gazing as at a picture; but the room wavered before his eyes, even Verena's figure danced a little. This did not make the sequel of her discourse more clear to him; her meaning faded again into the agreeable vague, and he simply felt her presence, tasted her voice. Yet the act of reflexion was not suspended; he found himself rejoicing that she was so weak in argument, so inevitably verbose. The idea that she was brilliant, that she counted as a factor only because the public mind was in a muddle, was not an humiliation but a delight to him; it was a proof that her apostleship was all nonsense, the most passing of fashions, the veriest of delusions, and that she was meant for something divinely different--for privacy, for him, for love. He took no measure of the duration of her talk; he only knew, when it was over and succeeded by a clapping of hands, an immense buzz of voices and shuffling of chairs, that it had been capitally bad, and that her personal success, wrapping it about with a glamour like the silver mist that surrounds a fountain, was such as to prevent its badness from being a cause of mortification to her lover. The company--such of it as did not immediately close together around Verena--filed away into the other rooms, bore him in its current into the neighbourhood of a table spread for supper, where he looked for signs of the sumptuary law mentioned to him by Mrs. Luna. It appeared to be embodied mainly in the glitter of crystal and silver, and the fresh tints of mysterious viands and jellies, which looked desirable in the soft circle projected by lace-fringed lamps. He heard the popping of corks, he felt a pressure of elbows, a thickening of the crowd, perceived that he was glowered at, squeezed against the table, by contending gentlemen who observed that he usurped space, was neither feeding himself nor helping others to feed. He had lost sight of Verena; she had been borne away in clouds of compliment; but he found himself thinking--almost paternally--that she must be hungry after so much chatter, and he hoped some one was getting her something to eat. After a moment, just as he was edging away, for his own opportunity to sup much better than usual was not what was uppermost in his mind, this little vision was suddenly embodied--embodied by the appearance of Miss Tarrant, who faced him, in the press, attached to the arm of a young man now recognisable to him as the son of the house--the smiling, fragrant youth who an hour before had interrupted his colloquy with Olive. He was leading her to the table, while people made way for them, covering Verena with gratulations of word and look. Ransom could see that, according to a phrase which came back to him just then, oddly, out of some novel or poem he had read of old, she was the cynosure of every eye. She looked beautiful, and they were a beautiful couple. As soon as she saw him, she put out her left hand to him--the other was in Mr. Burrage's arm--and said: "Well, don't you think it's all true?" "No, not a word of it!" Ransom answered, with a kind of joyous sincerity. "But it doesn't make any difference." "Oh, it makes a great deal of difference to me!" Verena cried. "I mean to me. I don't care in the least whether I agree with you," Ransom said, looking askance at young Mr. Burrage, who had detached himself and was getting something for Verena to eat. "Ah, well, if you are so indifferent!" "It's not because I'm indifferent!" His eyes came back to her own, the expression of which had changed before they quitted them. She began to complain to her companion, who brought her something very dainty on a plate, that Mr. Ransom was "standing out," that he was about the hardest subject she had encountered yet. Henry Burrage smiled upon Ransom in a way that was meant to show he remembered having already spoken to him, while the Mississippian said to himself that there was nothing on the face of it to make it strange there should be between these fair, successful young persons some such question of love or marriage as Mrs. Luna had tattled about. Mr. Burrage was successful, he could see that in the turn of an eye; not perhaps as having a commanding intellect or a very strong character, but as being rich, polite, handsome, happy, amiable, and as wearing a splendid camellia in his buttonhole. And that _he_, at any rate, thought Verena had succeeded was proved by the casual, civil tone, and the contented distraction of eye, with which he exclaimed, "You don't mean to say you were not moved by that! It's my opinion that Miss Tarrant will carry everything before her." He was so pleased himself, and so safe in his conviction, that it didn't matter to him what any one else thought; which was, after all, just Basil Ransom's own state of mind. "Oh! I didn't say I wasn't moved," the Mississippian remarked. "Moved the wrong way!" said Verena. "Never mind; you'll be left behind." "If I am, you will come back to console me." "_Back?_ I shall never come back!" the girl replied gaily. "You'll be the very first!" Ransom went on, feeling himself now, and as if by a sudden clearing up of his spiritual atmosphere, no longer in the vein for making the concessions of chivalry, and yet conscious that his words were an expression of homage. "Oh, I call that presumptuous!" Mr. Burrage exclaimed, turning away to get a glass of water for Verena, who had refused to accept champagne, mentioning that she had never drunk any in her life and that she associated a kind of iniquity with it. Olive had no wine in her house (not that Verena gave this explanation) but her father's old madeira and a little claret; of the former of which liquors Basil Ransom had highly approved the day he dined with her. "Does he believe in all those lunacies?" he inquired, knowing perfectly what to think about the charge of presumption brought by Mr. Burrage. "Why, he's crazy about our movement," Verena responded. "He's one of my most gratifying converts." "And don't you despise him for it?" "Despise him? Why, you seem to think I swing round pretty often!" "Well, I have an idea that I shall see you swing round yet," Ransom remarked, in a tone in which it would have appeared to Henry Burrage, had he heard these words, that presumption was pushed to fatuity. On Verena, however, they produced no impression that prevented her from saying simply, without the least rancour, "Well, if you expect to draw me back five hundred years, I hope you won't tell Miss Birdseye." And as Ransom did not seize immediately the reason of her allusion, she went on, "You know she is convinced it will be just the other way. I went to see her after you had been at Cambridge--almost immediately." "Darling old lady--I hope she's well," the young man said. "Well, she's tremendously interested." "She's always interested in something, isn't she?" "Well, this time it's in our relations, yours and mine," Verena replied, in a tone in which only Verena could say a thing like that. "You ought to see how she throws herself into them. She is sure it will all work round for your good." "All what, Miss Tarrant?" Ransom asked. "Well, what I told her. She is sure you are going to become one of our leaders, that you are very gifted for treating great questions and acting on masses of people, that you will become quite enthusiastic about our uprising, and that when you go up to the top as one of our champions it will all have been through me." Ransom stood there, smiling at her; the dusky glow in his eyes expressed a softness representing no prevision of such laurels, but which testified none the less to Verena's influence. "And what you want is that I shouldn't undeceive her?" "Well, I don't want you to be hypocritical--if you shouldn't take our side; but I do think that it would be sweet if the dear old thing could just cling to her illusion. She won't live so very long, probably; she told me the other day she was ready for her final rest; so it wouldn't interfere much with your freedom. She feels quite romantic about it--your being a Southerner and all, and not naturally in sympathy with Boston ideas, and your meeting her that way in the street and making yourself known to her. She won't believe but what I shall move you." "Don't fear, Miss Tarrant, she shall be satisfied," Ransom said, with a laugh which he could see she but partially understood. He was prevented from making his meaning more clear by the return of Mr. Burrage, bringing not only Verena's glass of water but a smooth-faced, rosy, smiling old gentleman, who had a velvet waistcoat, and thin white hair, brushed effectively, and whom he introduced to Verena under a name which Ransom recognised as that of a rich and venerable citizen, conspicuous for his public spirit and his large almsgiving. Ransom had lived long enough in New York to know that a request from this ancient worthy to be made known to Miss Tarrant would mark her for the approval of the respectable, stamp her as a success of no vulgar sort; and as he turned away, a faint, inaudible sigh passed his lips, dictated by the sense that he himself belonged to a terribly small and obscure minority. He turned away because, as we know, he had been taught that a gentleman talking to a lady must always do that when a new gentleman is presented; though he observed, looking back, after a minute, that young Mr. Burrage evidently had no intention of abdicating in favour of the eminent philanthropist. He thought he had better go home; he didn't know what might happen at such a party as that, nor when the proceedings might be supposed to terminate; but after considering it a minute he dismissed the idea that there was a chance of Verena's speaking again. If he was a little vague about this, however, there was no doubt in his mind as to the obligation he was under to take leave first of Mrs. Burrage. He wished he knew where Verena was staying; he wanted to see her alone, not in a supper-room crowded with millionaires. As he looked about for the hostess it occurred to him that she would know, and that if he were able to quench a certain shyness sufficiently to ask her, she would tell him. Having satisfied himself presently that she was not in the supper-room, he made his way back to the parlours, where the company now was much diminished. He looked again into the music-room, tenanted only by half-a-dozen couples, who were cultivating privacy among the empty chairs, and here he perceived Mrs. Burrage sitting in conversation with Olive Chancellor (the latter, apparently, had not moved from her place), before the deserted scene of Verena's triumph. His search had been so little for Olive that at the sight of her he faltered a moment; then he pulled himself together, advancing with a consciousness of the Mississippi manner. He felt Olive's eyes receiving him; she looked at him as if it was just the hope that she shouldn't meet him again that had made her remain where she was. Mrs. Burrage got up, as he bade her good-night, and Olive followed her example. "So glad you were able to come. Wonderful creature, isn't she? She can do anything she wants." These words from the elder lady Ransom received at first with a reserve which, as he trusted, suggested extreme respect; and it was a fact that his silence had a kind of Southern solemnity in it. Then he said, in a tone equally expressive of great deliberation: "Yes, madam, I think I never was present at an exhibition, an entertainment of any kind, which held me more completely under the charm." "Delighted you liked it. I didn't know what in the world to have, and this has proved an inspiration--for me as well as for Miss Tarrant. Miss Chancellor has been telling me how they have worked together; it's really quite beautiful. Miss Chancellor is Miss Tarrant's great friend and colleague. Miss Tarrant assures me that she couldn't do anything without her." After which explanation, turning to Olive, Mrs. Burrage murmured: "Let me introduce Mr. ---- introduce Mr. ----" But she had forgotten poor Ransom's name, forgotten who had asked her for a card for him; and, perceiving it, he came to her rescue with the observation that he was a kind of cousin of Miss Olive's, if she didn't repudiate him, and that he knew what a tremendous partnership existed between the two young ladies. "When I applauded I was applauding the firm--that is, you too," he said, smiling, to his kinswoman. "Your applause? I confess I don't understand it," Olive replied, with much promptitude. "Well, to tell the truth, I didn't myself!" "Oh yes, of course, I know; that's why--that's why----" And this further speech of Mrs. Burrage's, in reference to the relationship between the young man and her companion, faded also into vagueness. She had been on the point of saying it was the reason why he was in her house; but she had bethought herself in time that this ought to pass as a matter of course. Basil Ransom could see she was a woman who could carry off an awkwardness like that, and he considered her with a sense of her importance. She had a brisk, familiar, slightly impatient way, and if she had not spoken so fast, and had more of the softness of the Southern matron, she would have reminded him of a certain type of woman he had seen of old, before the changes in his own part of the world--the clever, capable, hospitable proprietress, widowed or unmarried, of a big plantation carried on by herself. "If you are her cousin, do take Miss Chancellor to have some supper--instead of going away," she went on, with her infelicitous readiness. At this Olive instantly seated herself again. "I am much obliged to you; I never touch supper. I shall not leave this room--I like it." "Then let me send you something--or let Mr. ----, your cousin, remain with you." Olive looked at Mrs. Burrage with a strange beseechingness, "I am very tired, I must rest. These occasions leave me exhausted." "Ah yes, I can imagine that. Well, then, you shall be quite quiet--I shall come back to you." And with a smile of farewell for Basil Ransom, Mrs. Burrage moved away. Basil lingered a moment, though he saw that Olive wished to get rid of him. "I won't disturb you further than to ask you a single question," he said. "Where are you staying? I want to come and see Miss Tarrant. I don't say I want to come and see you, because I have an idea that it would give you no pleasure." It had occurred to him that he might obtain their address from Mrs. Luna--he only knew vaguely it was Tenth Street; much as he had displeased her she couldn't refuse him that; but suddenly the greater simplicity and frankness of applying directly to Olive, even at the risk of appearing to brave her, recommended itself. He couldn't, of course, call upon Verena without her knowing it, and she might as well make her protest (since he proposed to pay no heed to it) sooner as later. He had seen nothing, personally, of their life together, but it had come over him that what Miss Chancellor most disliked in him (had she not, on the very threshold of their acquaintance, had a sort of mystical foreboding of it?) was the possibility that he would interfere. It was quite on the cards that he might; yet it was decent, all the same, to ask her rather than any one else. It was better that his interference should be accompanied with all the forms of chivalry. Olive took no notice of his remark as to how she herself might be affected by his visit; but she asked in a moment why he should think it necessary to call on Miss Tarrant. "You know you are not in sympathy," she added, in a tone which contained a really touching element of entreaty that he would not even pretend to prove he was. I know not whether Basil was touched, but he said, with every appearance of a conciliatory purpose--"I wish to thank her for all the interesting information she has given me this evening." "If you think it generous to come and scoff at her, of course she has no defence; you will be glad to know that." "Dear Miss Chancellor, if you are not a defence--a battery of many guns!" Ransom exclaimed. "Well, she at least is not mine!" Olive returned, springing to her feet. She looked round her as if she were really pressed too hard, panting like a hunted creature. "Your defence is your certain immunity from attack. Perhaps if you won't tell me where you are staying, you will kindly ask Miss Tarrant herself to do so. Would she send me a word on a card?" "We are in West Tenth Street," Olive said; and she gave the number. "Of course you are free to come." "Of course I am! Why shouldn't I be? But I am greatly obliged to you for the information. I will ask her to come out, so that you won't see us." And he turned away, with the sense that it was really insufferable, her attempt always to give him the air of being in the wrong. If that was the kind of spirit in which women were going to act when they had more power! XXIX Mrs. Luna was early in the field the next day, and her sister wondered to what she owed the honour of a visit from her at eleven o'clock in the morning. She very soon saw, when Adeline asked her whether it had been she who procured for Basil Ransom an invitation to Mrs. Burrage's. "Me--why in the world should it have been me?" Olive asked, feeling something of a pang at the implication that it had not been Adeline, as she supposed. "I didn't know--but you took him up so." "Why, Adeline Luna, when did I ever----?" Miss Chancellor exclaimed, staring and intensely grave. "You don't mean to say you have forgotten how you brought him on to see you, a year and a half ago!" "I didn't bring him on--I said if he happened to be there." "Yes, I remember how it was: he did happen, and then you happened to hate him, and tried to get out of it." Miss Chancellor saw, I say, why Adeline had come to her at the hour she knew she was always writing letters, after having given her all the attention that was necessary the day before; she had come simply to make herself disagreeable, as Olive knew, of old, the spirit sometimes moved her irresistibly to do. It seemed to her that Adeline had been disagreeable enough in not having beguiled Basil Ransom into a marriage, according to that memorable calculation of probabilities in which she indulged (with a licence that she scarcely liked definitely to recall) when the pair made acquaintance under her eyes in Charles Street, and Mrs. Luna seemed to take to him as much as she herself did little. She would gladly have accepted him as a brother-in-law, for the harm such a relation could do one was limited and definite; whereas in his general capacity of being at large in her life the ability of the young Mississippian to injure her seemed somehow immense. "I wrote to him--that time--for a perfectly definite reason," she said. "I thought mother would have liked us to know him. But it was a mistake." "How do you know it was a mistake? Mother would have liked him, I daresay." "I mean my acting as I did; it was a theory of duty which I allowed to press me too much. I always do. Duty should be obvious; one shouldn't hunt round for it." "Was it very obvious when it brought you on here?" asked Mrs. Luna, who was distinctly out of humour. Olive looked for a moment at the toe of her shoe. "I had an idea that you would have married him by this time," she presently remarked. "Marry him yourself, my dear! What put such an idea into your head?" "You wrote to me at first so much about him. You told me he was tremendously attentive, and that you liked him." "His state of mind is one thing and mine is another. How can I marry every man that hangs about me--that dogs my footsteps? I might as well become a Mormon at once!" Mrs. Luna delivered herself of this argument with a certain charitable air, as if her sister could not be expected to understand such a situation by her own light. Olive waived the discussion, and simply said: "I took for granted _you_ had got him the invitation." "I, my dear? That would be quite at variance with my attitude of discouragement." "Then she simply sent it herself." "Whom do you mean by 'she'?" "Mrs. Burrage, of course." "I thought that you might mean Verena," said Mrs. Luna casually. "Verena--to him? Why in the world----?" And Olive gave the cold glare with which her sister was familiar. "Why in the world not--since she knows him?" "She had seen him twice in her life before last night, when she met him for the third time and spoke to him." "Did she tell you that?" "She tells me everything." "Are you very sure?" "Adeline Luna, what _do_ you mean?" Miss Chancellor murmured. "Are you very sure that last night was only the third time?" Mrs. Luna went on. Olive threw back her head and swept her sister from her bonnet to her lowest flounce. "You have no right to hint at such a thing as that unless you know!" "Oh, I know--I know, at any rate, more than you do!" And then Mrs. Luna, sitting with her sister, much withdrawn, in one of the windows of the big, hot, faded parlour of the boarding-house in Tenth Street, where there was a rug before the chimney representing a Newfoundland dog saving a child from drowning, and a row of chromo-lithographs on the walls, imparted to her the impression she had received the evening before--the impression of Basil Ransom's keen curiosity about Verena Tarrant. Verena must have asked Mrs. Burrage to send him a card, and asked it without mentioning the fact to Olive--for wouldn't Olive certainly have remembered it? It was no use her saying that Mrs. Burrage might have sent it of her own movement, because she wasn't aware of his existence, and why should she be? Basil Ransom himself had told her he didn't know Mrs. Burrage. Mrs. Luna knew whom he knew and whom he didn't, or at least the sort of people, and they were not the sort that belonged to the Wednesday Club. That was one reason why she didn't care about him for any intimate relation--that he didn't seem to have any taste for making nice friends. Olive would know what _her_ taste was in this respect, though it wasn't that young woman's own any more than his. It was positive that the suggestion about the card could only have come from Verena. At any rate Olive could easily ask, or if she was afraid of her telling a fib she could ask Mrs. Burrage. It was true Mrs. Burrage might have been put on her guard by Verena, and would perhaps invent some other account of the matter; therefore Olive had better just believe what _she_ believed, that Verena had secured his presence at the party and had had private reasons for doing so. It is to be feared that Ransom's remark to Mrs. Luna the night before about her having lost her head was near to the mark; for if she had not been blinded by her rancour she would have guessed the horror with which she inspired her sister when she spoke in that offhand way of Verena's lying and Mrs. Burrage's lying. Did people lie like that in Mrs. Luna's set? It was Olive's plan of life not to lie, and attributing a similar disposition to people she liked, it was impossible for her to believe that Verena had had the intention of deceiving her. Mrs. Luna, in a calmer hour, might also have divined that Olive would make her private comments on the strange story of Basil Ransom's having made up to Verena out of pique at Adeline's rebuff; for this was the account of the matter that she now offered to Miss Chancellor. Olive did two things: she listened intently and eagerly, judging there was distinct danger in the air (which, however, she had not wanted Mrs. Luna to tell her, having perceived it for herself the night before); and she saw that poor Adeline was fabricating fearfully, that the "rebuff" was altogether an invention. Mr. Ransom was evidently preoccupied with Verena, but he had not needed Mrs. Luna's cruelty to make him so. So Olive maintained an attitude of great reserve; she did not take upon herself to announce that her own version was that Adeline, for reasons absolutely imperceptible to others, had tried to catch Basil Ransom, had failed in her attempt, and, furious at seeing Verena preferred to a person of her importance (Olive remembered the _spretae injuria formae_), now wished to do both him and the girl an ill turn. This would be accomplished if she could induce Olive to interfere. Miss Chancellor was conscious of an abundant readiness to interfere, but it was not because she cared for Adeline's mortification. I am not sure, even, that she did not think her _fiasco_ but another illustration of her sister's general uselessness, and rather despise her for it; being perfectly able at once to hold that nothing is baser than the effort to entrap a man, and to think it very ignoble to have to renounce it because you can't. Olive kept these reflexions to herself, but she went so far as to say to her sister that she didn't see where the "pique" came in. How could it hurt Adeline that he should turn his attention to Verena? What was Verena to her? "Why, Olive Chancellor, how can you ask?" Mrs. Luna boldly responded. "Isn't Verena everything to you, and aren't you everything to me, and wouldn't an attempt--a successful one--to take Verena away from you knock you up fearfully, and shouldn't I suffer, as you know I suffer, by sympathy?" I have said that it was Miss Chancellor's plan of life not to lie, but such a plan was compatible with a kind of consideration for the truth which led her to shrink from producing it on poor occasions. So she didn't say, "Dear me, Adeline, what humbug! you know you hate Verena and would be very glad if she were drowned!" She only said, "Well, I see; but it's very roundabout." What she did see was that Mrs. Luna was eager to help her to stop off Basil Ransom from "making head," as the phrase was; and the fact that her motive was spite, and not tenderness for the Bostonians, would not make her assistance less welcome if the danger were real. She herself had a nervous dread, but she had that about everything; still, Adeline had perhaps seen something, and what in the world did she mean by her reference to Verena's having had secret meetings? When pressed on this point, Mrs. Luna could only say that she didn't pretend to give definite information, and she wasn't a spy anyway, but that the night before he had positively flaunted in her face his admiration for the girl, his enthusiasm for her way of standing up there. Of course he hated her ideas, but he was quite conceited enough to think she would give them up. Perhaps it was all directed at _her_--as if she cared! It would depend a good deal on the girl herself; certainly, if there was any likelihood of Verena's being affected, she should advise Olive to look out. She knew best what to do; it was only Adeline's duty to give her the benefit of her own impression, whether she was thanked for it or not. She only wished to put her on her guard, and it was just like Olive to receive such information so coldly; she was the most disappointing woman she knew. Miss Chancellor's coldness was not diminished by this rebuke; for it had come over her that, after all, she had never opened herself at that rate to Adeline, had never let her see the real intensity of her desire to keep the sort of danger there was now a question of away from Verena, had given her no warrant for regarding her as her friend's keeper; so that she was taken aback by the flatness of Mrs. Luna's assumption that she was ready to enter into a conspiracy to circumvent and frustrate the girl. Olive put on all her majesty to dispel this impression, and if she could not help being aware that she made Mrs. Luna still angrier, on the whole, than at first, she felt that she would much rather disappoint her than give herself away to her--especially as she was intensely eager to profit by her warning! XXX Mrs. Luna would have been still less satisfied with the manner in which Olive received her proffered assistance had she known how many confidences that reticent young woman might have made her in return. Olive's whole life now was a matter for whispered communications; she felt this herself, as she sought the privacy of her own apartment after her interview with her sister. She had for the moment time to think; Verena having gone out with Mr. Burrage, who had made an appointment the night before to call for her to drive at that early hour. They had other engagements in the afternoon--the principal of which was to meet a group of earnest people at the house of one of the great local promoters. Olive would whisk Verena off to these appointments directly after lunch; she flattered herself that she could arrange matters so that there would not be half an hour in the day during which Basil Ransom, complacently calling, would find the Bostonians in the house. She had had this well in mind when, at Mrs. Burrage's, she was driven to give him their address; and she had had it also in mind that she would ask Verena, as a special favour, to accompany her back to Boston on the next day but one, which was the morning of the morrow. There had been considerable talk of her staying a few days with Mrs. Burrage--staying on after her own departure; but Verena backed out of it spontaneously, seeing how the idea worried her friend. Olive had accepted the sacrifice, and their visit to New York was now cut down, in intention, to four days, one of which, the moment she perceived whither Basil Ransom was tending, Miss Chancellor promised herself also to suppress. She had not mentioned that to Verena yet; she hesitated a little, having a slightly bad conscience about the concessions she had already obtained from her friend. Verena made such concessions with a generosity which caused one's heart to ache for admiration, even while one asked for them; and never once had Olive known her to demand the smallest credit for any virtue she showed in this way, or to bargain for an instant about any effort she made to oblige. She had been delighted with the idea of spending a week under Mrs. Burrage's roof; she had said, too, that she believed her mother would die happy (not that there was the least prospect of Mrs. Tarrant's dying) if she could hear of her having such an experience as that; and yet, perceiving how solemn Olive looked about it, how she blanched and brooded at the prospect, she had offered to give it up, with a smile sweeter, if possible, than any that had ever sat in her eyes. Olive knew what that meant for her, knew what a power of enjoyment she still had, in spite of the tension of their common purpose, their vital work, which had now, as they equally felt, passed into the stage of realisation, of fruition; and that is why her conscience rather pricked her for consenting to this further act of renunciation, especially as their position seemed really so secure, on the part of one who had already given herself away so sublimely. Secure as their position might be, Olive called herself a blind idiot for having, in spite of all her first shrinkings, agreed to bring Verena to New York. Verena had jumped at the invitation, the very unexpectedness of which on Mrs. Burrage's part--it was such an odd idea to have come to a mere worldling--carried a kind of persuasion with it. Olive's immediate sentiment had been an instinctive general fear; but, later, she had dismissed that as unworthy; she had decided (and such a decision was nothing new) that where their mission was concerned they ought to face everything. Such an opportunity would contribute too much to Verena's reputation and authority to justify a refusal at the bidding of apprehensions which were after all only vague. Olive's specific terrors and dangers had by this time very much blown over; Basil Ransom had given no sign of life for ages, and Henry Burrage had certainly got his quietus before they went to Europe. If it had occurred to his mother that she might convert Verena into the animating principle of a big soiree, she was at least acting in good faith, for it could be no more her wish to-day that he should marry Selah Tarrant's daughter than it was her wish a year before. And then they should do some good to the benighted, the most benighted, the fashionable benighted; they should perhaps make them furious--there was always some good in that. Lastly, Olive was conscious of a personal temptation in the matter; she was not insensible to the pleasure of appearing in a distinguished New York circle as a representative woman, an important Bostonian, the prompter, colleague, associate of one of the most original girls of the time. Basil Ransom was the person she had least expected to meet at Mrs. Burrage's; it had been her belief that they might easily spend four days in a city of more than a million of inhabitants without that disagreeable accident. But it had occurred; nothing was wanting to make it seem serious; and, setting her teeth, she shook herself, morally, hard, for having fallen into the trap of fate. Well, she would scramble out, with only a scare, probably. Henry Burrage was very attentive, but somehow she didn't fear him now; and it was only natural he should feel that he couldn't be polite enough, after they had consented to be exploited in that worldly way by his mother. The other danger was the worst; the palpitation of her strange dread, the night of Miss Birdseye's party, came back to her. Mr. Burrage seemed, indeed, a protection; she reflected, with relief, that it had been arranged that after taking Verena to drive in the Park and see the Museum of Art in the morning, they should in the evening dine with him at Delmonico's (he was to invite another gentleman), and go afterwards to the German opera. Olive had kept all this to herself, as I have said; revealing to her sister neither the vividness of her prevision that Basil Ransom would look blank when he came down to Tenth Street and learned they had flitted, nor the eagerness of her desire just to find herself once more in the Boston train. It had been only this prevision that sustained her when she gave Mr. Ransom their number. Verena came to her room shortly before luncheon, to let her know she had returned; and while they sat there, waiting to stop their ears when the gong announcing the repast was beaten, at the foot of the stairs, by a negro in a white jacket, she narrated to her friend her adventures with Mr. Burrage--expatiated on the beauty of the park, the splendour and interest of the Museum, the wonder of the young man's acquaintance with everything it contained, the swiftness of his horses, the softness of his English cart, the pleasure of rolling at that pace over roads as firm as marble, the entertainment he promised them for the evening. Olive listened in serious silence; she saw Verena was quite carried away; of course she hadn't gone so far with her without knowing that phase. "Did Mr. Burrage try to make love to you?" Miss Chancellor inquired at last, without a smile. Verena had taken off her hat to arrange her feather, and as she placed it on her head again, her uplifted arms making a frame for her face, she said: "Yes, I suppose it was meant for love." Olive waited for her to tell more, to tell how she had treated him, kept him in his place, made him feel that that question was over long ago; but as Verena gave her no further information she did not insist, conscious as she always was that in such a relation as theirs there should be a great respect on either side for the liberty of each. She had never yet infringed on Verena's, and of course she wouldn't begin now. Moreover, with the request that she meant presently to make of her she felt that she must be discreet. She wondered whether Henry Burrage were really going to begin again; whether his mother had only been acting in his interest in getting them to come on. Certainly, the bright spot in such a prospect was that if she listened to him she couldn't listen to Basil Ransom; and he _had_ told Olive herself last night, when he put them into their carriage, that he hoped to prove to her yet that he had come round to her gospel. But the old sickness stole upon her again, the faintness of discouragement, as she asked herself why in the name of pity Verena should listen to any one at all but Olive Chancellor. Again it came over her, when she saw the brightness, the happy look, the girl brought back, as it had done in the earlier months, that the great trouble was that weak spot of Verena's, that sole infirmity and subtle flaw, which she had expressed to her very soon after they began to live together, in saying (she remembered it through the ineffaceable impression made by her friend's avowal), "I'll tell you what is the matter with you--you don't dislike men as a class!" Verena had replied on this occasion, "Well, no, I don't dislike them when they are pleasant!" As if organised atrociousness could ever be pleasant! Olive disliked them most when they were least unpleasant. After a little, at present, she remarked, referring to Henry Burrage: "It is not right of him, not decent, after your making him feel how, while he was at Cambridge, he wearied you, tormented you." "Oh, I didn't show anything," said Verena gaily. "I am learning to dissimulate," she added in a moment. "I suppose you have to as you go along. I pretend not to notice." At this moment the gong sounded for luncheon, and the two young women covered up their ears, face to face, Verena with her quick smile, Olive with her pale patience. When they could hear themselves speak, the latter said abruptly: "How did Mrs. Burrage come to invite Mr. Ransom to her party? He told Adeline he had never seen her before." "Oh, I asked her to send him an invitation--after she had written to me, to thank me, when it was definitely settled we should come on. She asked me in her letter if there were any friends of mine in the city to whom I should like her to send cards, and I mentioned Mr. Ransom." Verena spoke without a single instant's hesitation, and the only sign of embarrassment she gave was that she got up from her chair, passing in this manner a little out of Olive's scrutiny. It was easy for her not to falter, because she was glad of the chance. She wanted to be very simple in all her relations with her friend, and of course it was not simple so soon as she began to keep things back. She could at any rate keep back as little as possible, and she felt as if she were making up for a dereliction when she answered Olive's inquiry so promptly. "You never told me of that," Miss Chancellor remarked, in a low tone. "I didn't want to. I know you don't like him, and I thought it would give you pain. Yet I wanted him to be there--I wanted him to hear." "What does it matter--why should you care about him?" "Well, because he is so awfully opposed!" "How do you know that, Verena?" At this point Verena began to hesitate. It was not, after all, so easy to keep back only a little; it appeared rather as if one must either tell everything or hide everything. The former course had already presented itself to her as unduly harsh; it was because it seemed so that she had ended by keeping the incident of Basil Ransom's visit to Monadnoc Place buried in unspoken, in unspeakable, considerations, the only secret she had in the world--the only thing that was all her own. She was so glad to say what she could without betraying herself that it was only after she had spoken that she perceived there was a danger of Olive's pushing the inquiry to the point where, to defend herself as it were, she should be obliged to practise a positive deception; and she was conscious at the same time that the moment her secret was threatened it became dearer to her. She began to pray silently that Olive might not push; for it would be odious, it would be impossible, to defend herself by a lie. Meanwhile, however, she had to answer, and the way she answered was by exclaiming, much more quickly than the reflexions I note might have appeared to permit, "Well, if you can't tell from his appearance! He's the type of the reactionary." Verena went to the toilet-glass to see that she had put on her hat properly, and Olive slowly got up, in the manner of a person not in the least eager for food. "Let him react as he likes--for heaven's sake don't mind him!" That was Miss Chancellor's rejoinder, and Verena felt that it didn't say all that was in her mind. She wished she would come down to luncheon, for she, at least, was honestly hungry. She even suspected Olive had an idea she was afraid to express, such distress it would bring with it. "Well, you know, Verena, this isn't our _real_ life--it isn't our work," Olive went on. "Well, no, it isn't, certainly," said Verena, not pretending at first that she did not know what Olive meant. In a moment, however, she added, "Do you refer to this social intercourse with Mr. Burrage?" "Not to that only." Then Olive asked abruptly, looking at her, "How did you know his address?" "His address?" "Mr. Ransom's--to enable Mrs. Burrage to invite him?" They stood for a moment interchanging a gaze. "It was in a letter I got from him." At these words there came into Olive's face an expression which made her companion cross over to her directly and take her by the hand. But the tone was different from what Verena expected, when she said, with cold surprise: "Oh, you are in correspondence!" It showed an immense effort of self-control. "He wrote to me once--I never told you," Verena rejoined, smiling. She felt that her friend's strange, uneasy eyes searched very far; a little more and they would go to the very bottom. Well, they might go if they would; she didn't, after all, care so much about her secret as that. For the moment, however, Verena did not learn what Olive had discovered, inasmuch as she only remarked presently that it was really time to go down. As they descended the staircase she put her arm into Miss Chancellor's and perceived that she was trembling. Of course there were plenty of people in New York interested in the uprising, and Olive had made appointments, in advance, which filled the whole afternoon. Everybody wanted to meet them, and wanted everybody else to do so, and Verena saw they could easily have quite a vogue, if they only chose to stay and work that vein. Very likely, as Olive said, it wasn't their real life, and people didn't seem to have such a grip of the movement as they had in Boston; but there was something in the air that carried one along, and a sense of vastness and variety, of the infinite possibilities of a great city, which--Verena hardly knew whether she ought to confess it to herself--might in the end make up for the want of the Boston earnestness. Certainly, the people seemed very much alive, and there was no other place where so many cheering reports could flow in, owing to the number of electric feelers that stretched away everywhere. The principal centre appeared to be Mrs. Croucher's, on Fifty-sixth Street, where there was an informal gathering of sympathisers who didn't seem as if they could forgive her when they learned that she had been speaking the night before in a circle in which none of them were acquainted. Certainly, they were very different from the group she had addressed at Mrs. Burrage's, and Verena heaved a thin, private sigh, expressive of some helplessness, as she thought what a big, complicated world it was, and how it evidently contained a little of everything. There was a general demand that she should repeat her address in a more congenial atmosphere; to which she replied that Olive made her engagements for her, and that as the address had been intended just to lead people on, perhaps she would think Mrs. Croucher's friends had reached a higher point. She was as cautious as this because she saw that Olive was now just straining to get out of the city; she didn't want to say anything that would tie them. When she felt her trembling that way before luncheon it made her quite sick to realise how much her friend was wrapped up in her--how terribly she would suffer from the least deviation. After they had started for their round of engagements the very first thing Verena spoke of in the carriage (Olive had taken one, in her liberal way, for the whole time) was the fact that her correspondence with Mr. Ransom, as her friend had called it, had consisted on his part of only one letter. It was a very short one, too; it had come to her a little more than a month before. Olive knew she got letters from gentlemen; she didn't see why she should attach such importance to this one. Miss Chancellor was leaning back in the carriage, very still, very grave, with her head against the cushioned surface, only turning her eyes towards the girl. "You attach importance yourself; otherwise you would have told me." "I knew you wouldn't like it--because you don't like _him_." "I don't think of him," said Olive; "he's nothing to me." Then she added, suddenly, "Have you noticed that I am afraid to face what I don't like?" Verena could not say that she had, and yet it was not just on Olive's part to speak as if she were an easy person to tell such a thing to: the way she lay there, white and weak, like a wounded creature, sufficiently proved the contrary. "You have such a fearful power of suffering," she replied in a moment. To this at first Miss Chancellor made no rejoinder; but after a little she said, in the same attitude, "Yes, _you_ could make me." Verena took her hand and held it awhile. "I never will, till I have been through everything myself." "_You_ were not made to suffer--you were made to enjoy," Olive said, in very much the same tone in which she had told her that what was the matter with her was that she didn't dislike men as a class--a tone which implied that the contrary would have been much more natural and perhaps rather higher. Perhaps it would; but Verena was unable to rebut the charge; she felt this, as she looked out of the window of the carriage at the bright, amusing city, where the elements seemed so numerous, the animation so immense, the shops so brilliant, the women so strikingly dressed, and knew that these things quickened her curiosity, all her pulses. "Well, I suppose I mustn't presume on it," she remarked, glancing back at Olive with her natural sweetness, her uncontradicting grace. That young lady lifted her hand to her lips--held it there a moment; the movement seemed to say, "When you are so divinely docile, how can I help the dread of losing you?" This idea, however, was unspoken, and Olive Chancellor's uttered words, as the carriage rolled on, were different. "Verena, I don't understand why he wrote to you." "He wrote to me because he likes me. Perhaps you'll say you don't understand why he likes me," the girl continued, laughing. "He liked me the first time he saw me." "Oh, that time!" Olive murmured. "And still more the second." "Did he tell you that in his letter?" Miss Chancellor inquired. "Yes, my dear, he told me that. Only he expressed it more gracefully." Verena was very happy to say that; a written phrase of Basil Ransom's sufficiently justified her. "It was my intuition--it was my foreboding!" Olive exclaimed, closing her eyes. "I thought you said you didn't dislike him." "It isn't dislike--it's simple dread. Is that all there is between you?" "Why, Olive Chancellor, what do you think?" Verena asked, feeling now distinctly like a coward. Five minutes afterwards she said to Olive that if it would give her pleasure they would leave New York on the morrow, without taking a fourth day; and as soon as she had done so she felt better, especially when she saw how gratefully Olive looked at her for the concession, how eagerly she rose to the offer in saying, "Well, if you _do_ feel that it isn't our own life--our very own!" It was with these words, and others besides, and with an unusually weak, indefinite kiss, as if she wished to protest that, after all, a single day didn't matter, and yet accepted the sacrifice and was a little ashamed of it--it was in this manner that the agreement as to an immediate retreat was sealed. Verena could not shut her eyes to the fact that for a month she had been less frank, and if she wished to do penance this abbreviation of their pleasure in New York, even if it made her almost completely miss Basil Ransom, was easier than to tell Olive just now that the letter was _not_ all, that there had been a long visit, a talk, and a walk besides, which she had been covering up for ever so many weeks. And of what consequence, anyway, was the missing? Was it such a pleasure to converse with a gentleman who only wanted to let you know--and why he should want it so much Verena couldn't guess--that he thought you quite preposterous? Olive took her from place to place, and she ended by forgetting everything but the present hour, and the bigness and variety of New York, and the entertainment of rolling about in a carriage with silk cushions, and meeting new faces, new expressions of curiosity and sympathy, assurances that one was watched and followed. Mingled with this was a bright consciousness, sufficient for the moment, that one was moreover to dine at Delmonico's and go to the German opera. There was enough of the epicurean in Verena's composition to make it easy for her in certain conditions to live only for the hour. XXXI When she returned with her companion to the establishment in Tenth Street she saw two notes lying on the table in the hall; one of which she perceived to be addressed to Miss Chancellor, the other to herself. The hand was different, but she recognised both. Olive was behind her on the steps, talking to the coachman about sending another carriage for them in half an hour (they had left themselves but just time to dress); so that she simply possessed herself of her own note and ascended to her room. As she did so she felt that all the while she had known it would be there, and was conscious of a kind of treachery, an unfriendly wilfulness, in not being more prepared for it. If she could roll about New York the whole afternoon and forget that there might be difficulties ahead, that didn't alter the fact that there _were_ difficulties, and that they might even become considerable--might not be settled by her simply going back to Boston. Half an hour later, as she drove up the Fifth Avenue with Olive (there seemed to be so much crowded into that one day), smoothing her light gloves, wishing her fan were a little nicer, and proving by the answering, familiar brightness with which she looked out on the lamp-lighted streets that, whatever theory might be entertained as to the genesis of her talent and her personal nature, the blood of the lecture-going, night-walking Tarrants did distinctly flow in her veins; as the pair proceeded, I say, to the celebrated restaurant, at the door of which Mr. Burrage had promised to be in vigilant expectancy of their carriage, Verena found a sufficiently gay and natural tone of voice for remarking to her friend that Mr. Ransom had called upon her while they were out, and had left a note in which there were many compliments for Miss Chancellor. "That's wholly your own affair, my dear," Olive replied, with a melancholy sigh, gazing down the vista of Fourteenth Street (which they happened just then to be traversing, with much agitation), toward the queer barrier of the elevated railway. It was nothing new to Verena that if the great striving of Olive's life was for justice she yet sometimes failed to arrive at it in particular cases; and she reflected that it was rather late for her to say, like that, that Basil Ransom's letters were only his correspondent's business. Had not his kinswoman quite made the subject her own during their drive that afternoon? Verena determined now that her companion should hear all there was to be heard about the letter; asking herself whether, if she told her at present more than she cared to know, it wouldn't make up for her hitherto having told her less. "He brought it with him, written, in case I should be out. He wants to see me to-morrow--he says he has ever so much to say to me. He proposes an hour--says he hopes it won't be inconvenient for me to see him about eleven in the morning; thinks I may have no other engagement so early as that. Of course our return to Boston settles it," Verena added, with serenity. Miss Chancellor said nothing for a moment; then she replied, "Yes, unless you invite him to come on with you in the train." "Why, Olive, how bitter you are!" Verena exclaimed, in genuine surprise. Olive could not justify her bitterness by saying that her companion had spoken as if she were disappointed, because Verena had not. So she simply remarked, "I don't see what he can have to say to you--that would be worth your hearing." "Well, of course, it's the other side. He has got it on the brain!" said Verena, with a laugh which seemed to relegate the whole matter to the category of the unimportant. "If we should stay, would you see him--at eleven o'clock?" Olive inquired. "Why do you ask that--when I have given it up?" "Do you consider it such a tremendous sacrifice?" "No," said Verena good-naturedly; "but I confess I am curious." "Curious--how do you mean?" "Well, to hear the other side." "Oh heaven!" Olive Chancellor murmured, turning her face upon her. "You must remember I have never heard it." And Verena smiled into her friend's wan gaze. "Do you want to hear all the infamy that is in the world?" "No, it isn't that; but the more he should talk the better chance he would give me. I guess I can meet him." "Life is too short. Leave him as he is." "Well," Verena went on, "there are many I haven't cared to move at all, whom I might have been more interested in than in him. But to make him give in just at two or three points--that I should like better than anything I have done." "You have no business to enter upon a contest that isn't equal; and it wouldn't be, with Mr. Ransom." "The inequality would be that I have right on my side." "What is that--for a man? For what was their brutality given them, but to make that up?" "I don't think he's brutal; I should like to see," said Verena gaily. Olive's eyes lingered a little on her own; then they turned away, vaguely, blindly, out of the carriage-window, and Verena made the reflexion that she looked strangely little like a person who was going to dine at Delmonico's. How terribly she worried about everything, and how tragical was her nature; how anxious, suspicious, exposed to subtle influences! In their long intimacy Verena had come to revere most of her friend's peculiarities; they were a proof of her depth and devotion, and were so bound up with what was noble in her that she was rarely provoked to criticise them separately. But at present, suddenly, Olive's earnestness began to appear as inharmonious with the scheme of the universe as if it had been a broken saw; and she was positively glad she had not told her about Basil Ransom's appearance in Monadnoc Place. If she worried so about what she knew, how much would she not have worried about the rest! Verena had by this time made up her mind that her acquaintance with Mr. Ransom was the most episodical, most superficial, most unimportant of all possible relations. Olive Chancellor watched Henry Burrage very closely that evening; she had a special reason for doing so, and her entertainment, during the successive hours, was derived much less from the delicate little feast over which this insinuating proselyte presided, in the brilliant public room of the establishment, where French waiters flitted about on deep carpets and parties at neighbouring tables excited curiosity and conjecture, or even from the magnificent music of _Lohengrin_, than from a secret process of comparison and verification, which shall presently be explained to the reader. As some discredit has possibly been thrown upon her impartiality it is a pleasure to be able to say that on her return from the opera she took a step dictated by an earnest consideration of justice--of the promptness with which Verena had told her of the note left by Basil Ransom in the afternoon. She drew Verena into her room with her. The girl, on the way back to Tenth Street, had spoken only of Wagner's music, of the singers, the orchestra, the immensity of the house, her tremendous pleasure. Olive could see how fond she might become of New York, where that kind of pleasure was so much more in the air. "Well, Mr. Burrage was certainly very kind to us--no one could have been more thoughtful," Olive said; and she coloured a little at the look with which Verena greeted this tribute of appreciation from Miss Chancellor to a single gentleman. "I am so glad you were struck with that, because I do think we have been a little rough to him." Verena's _we_ was angelic. "He was particularly attentive to you, my dear; he has got over me. He looked at you so sweetly. Dearest Olive, if you marry him----!" And Miss Tarrant, who was in high spirits, embraced her companion, to check her own silliness. "He wants you to stay there, all the same. They haven't given _that_ up," Olive remarked, turning to a drawer, out of which she took a letter. "Did he tell you that, pray? He said nothing more about it to me." "When we came in this afternoon I found this note from Mrs. Burrage. You had better read it." And she presented the document, open, to Verena. The purpose of it was to say that Mrs. Burrage could really not reconcile herself to the loss of Verena's visit, on which both she and her son had counted so much. She was sure they would be able to make it as interesting to Miss Tarrant as it would be to themselves. She, Mrs. Burrage, moreover, felt as if she hadn't heard half she wanted about Miss Tarrant's views, and there were so many more who were present at the address, who had come to her that afternoon (losing not a minute, as Miss Chancellor could see) to ask how in the world they too could learn more--how they could get at the fair speaker and question her about certain details. She hoped so much, therefore, that even if the young ladies should be unable to alter their decision about the visit they might at least see their way to staying over long enough to allow her to arrange an informal meeting for some of these poor thirsty souls. Might she not at least talk over the question with Miss Chancellor? She gave her notice that she would attack her on the subject of the visit too. Might she not see her on the morrow, and might she ask of her the very great favour that the interview should be at Mrs. Burrage's own house? She had something very particular to say to her, as regards which perfect privacy was a great consideration, and Miss Chancellor would doubtless recognise that this would be best secured under Mrs. Burrage's roof. She would therefore send her carriage for Miss Chancellor at any hour that would be convenient to the latter. She really thought much good might come from their having a satisfactory talk. Verena read this epistle with much deliberation; it seemed to her mysterious, and confirmed the idea she had received the night before--the idea that she had not got quite a correct impression of this clever, worldly, curious woman on the occasion of her visit to Cambridge, when they met her at her son's rooms. As she gave the letter back to Olive she said, "That's why he didn't seem to believe we are really leaving to-morrow. He knows she had written that, and he thinks it will keep us." "Well, if I were to say it may--should you think me too miserably changeful?" Verena stared, with all her candour, and it was so very queer that Olive should now wish to linger that the sense of it, for the moment, almost covered the sense of its being pleasant. But that came out after an instant, and she said, with great honesty, "You needn't drag me away for consistency's sake. It would be absurd for me to pretend that I don't like being here." "I think perhaps I ought to see her." Olive was very thoughtful. "How lovely it must be to have a secret with Mrs. Burrage!" Verena exclaimed. "It won't be a secret from you." "Dearest, you needn't tell me unless you want," Verena went on, thinking of her own unimparted knowledge. "I thought it was our plan to divide everything. It was certainly mine." "Ah, don't talk about plans!" Verena exclaimed, rather ruefully. "You see, if we _are_ going to stay to-morrow, how foolish it was to have any. There is more in her letter than is expressed," she added, as Olive appeared to be studying in her face the reasons for and against making this concession to Mrs. Burrage, and that was rather embarrassing. "I thought it over all the evening--so that if now you will consent we will stay." "Darling--what a spirit you have got! All through all those dear little dishes--all through _Lohengrin_! As I haven't thought it over at all, you must settle it. You know I am not difficult." "And would you go and stay with Mrs. Burrage, after all, if she should say anything to me that seems to make it desirable?" Verena broke into a laugh. "You know it's not our real life!" Olive said nothing for a moment; then she replied: "Don't think _I_ can forget that. If I suggest a deviation, it's only because it sometimes seems to me that perhaps, after all, almost anything is better than the form reality _may_ take with us." This was slightly obscure, as well as very melancholy, and Verena was relieved when her companion remarked, in a moment, "You must think me strangely inconsequent"; for this gave her a chance to reply, soothingly: "Why, you don't suppose I expect you to keep always screwed up! I will stay a week with Mrs. Burrage, or a fortnight, or a month, or anything you like," she pursued; "anything it may seem to you best to tell her after you have seen her." "Do you leave it all to me? You don't give me much help," Olive said. "Help to what?" "Help to help _you_." "I don't want any help; I am quite strong enough!" Verena cried gaily. The next moment she inquired, in an appeal half comical, half touching, "My dear colleague, why do you make me say such conceited things?" "And if you do stay--just even to-morrow--shall you be--very much of the time--with Mr. Ransom?" As Verena for the moment appeared ironically-minded, she might have found a fresh subject for hilarity in the tremulous, tentative tone in which Olive made this inquiry. But it had not that effect; it produced the first manifestation of impatience--the first, literally, and the first note of reproach--that had occurred in the course of their remarkable intimacy. The colour rose to Verena's cheek, and her eye for an instant looked moist. "I don't know what you always think, Olive, nor why you don't seem able to trust me. You didn't, from the first, with gentlemen. Perhaps you were right then--I don't say; but surely it is very different now. I don't think I ought to be suspected so much. Why have you a manner as if I had to be watched, as if I wanted to run away with every man that speaks to me? I should think I had proved how little I care. I thought you had discovered by this time that I am serious; that I have dedicated my life; that there is something unspeakably dear to me. But you begin again, every time--you don't do me justice. I must take everything that comes. I mustn't be afraid. I thought we had agreed that we were to do our work in the midst of the world, facing everything, keeping straight on, always taking hold. And now that it all opens out so magnificently, and victory is really sitting on our banners, it is strange of you to doubt of me, to suppose I am not more wedded to all our old dreams than ever. I told you the first time I saw you that I could renounce, and knowing better to-day, perhaps, what that means, I am ready to say it again. That I can, that I will! Why, Olive Chancellor," Verena cried, panting, a moment, with her eloquence, and with the rush of a culminating idea, "haven't you discovered by this time that I _have_ renounced?" The habit of public speaking, the training, the practice, in which she had been immersed, enabled Verena to unroll a coil of propositions dedicated even to a private interest with the most touching, most cumulative effect. Olive was completely aware of this, and she stilled herself, while the girl uttered one soft, pleading sentence after another, into the same rapt attention she was in the habit of sending up from the benches of an auditorium. She looked at Verena fixedly, felt that she was stirred to her depths, that she was exquisitely passionate and sincere, that she was a quivering, spotless, consecrated maiden, that she really had renounced, that they were both safe, and that her own injustice and indelicacy had been great. She came to her slowly, took her in her arms and held her long--giving her a silent kiss. From which Verena knew that she believed her. XXXII The hour that Olive proposed to Mrs. Burrage, in a note sent early the next morning, for the interview to which she consented to lend herself, was the stroke of noon; this period of the day being chosen in consequence of a prevision of many subsequent calls upon her time. She remarked in her note that she did not wish any carriage to be sent for her, and she surged and swayed up the Fifth Avenue on one of the convulsive, clattering omnibuses which circulate in that thoroughfare. One of her reasons for mentioning twelve o'clock had been that she knew Basil Ransom was to call at Tenth Street at eleven, and (as she supposed he didn't intend to stay all day) this would give her time to see him come and go. It had been tacitly agreed between them, the night before, that Verena was quite firm enough in her faith to submit to his visit, and that such a course would be much more dignified than dodging it. This understanding passed from one to the other during that dumb embrace which I have described as taking place before they separated for the night. Shortly before noon, Olive, passing out of the house, looked into the big, sunny double parlour, where, in the morning, with all the husbands absent for the day and all the wives and spinsters launched upon the town, a young man desiring to hold a debate with a young lady might enjoy every advantage in the way of a clear field. Basil Ransom was still there; he and Verena, with the place to themselves, were standing in the recess of a window, their backs presented to the door. If he had got up, perhaps he was going, and Olive, softly closing the door again, waited a little in the hall, ready to pass into the back part of the house if she should hear him coming out. No sound, however, reached her ear; apparently he did mean to stay all day, and she should find him there on her return. She left the house, knowing they were looking at her from the window as she descended the steps, but feeling she could not bear to see Basil Ransom's face. As she walked, averting her own, towards the Fifth Avenue, on the sunny side, she was barely conscious of the loveliness of the day, the perfect weather, all suffused and tinted with spring, which sometimes descends upon New York when the winds of March have been stilled; she was given up only to the remembrance of that moment when she herself had stood at a window (the second time he came to see her in Boston), and watched Basil Ransom pass out with Adeline--with Adeline who had seemed capable then of getting such a hold on him but had proved as ineffectual in this respect as she was in every other. She recalled the vision she had allowed to dance before her as she saw the pair cross the street together, laughing and talking, and how it seemed to interpose itself against the fears which already then--so strangely--haunted her. Now that she saw it so fruitless--and that Verena, moreover, had turned out really so great--she was rather ashamed of it; she felt associated, however remotely, in the reasons which had made Mrs. Luna tell her so many fibs the day before, and there could be nothing elevating in that. As for the other reasons why her fidgety sister had failed and Mr. Ransom had held his own course, naturally Miss Chancellor didn't like to think of them. If she had wondered what Mrs. Burrage wished so particularly to talk about, she waited some time for the clearing-up of the mystery. During this interval she sat in a remarkably pretty boudoir, where there were flowers and faiences and little French pictures, and watched her hostess revolve round the subject in circles the vagueness of which she tried to dissimulate. Olive believed she was a person who never could enjoy asking a favour, especially of a votary of the new ideas; and that was evidently what was coming. She had asked one already, but that had been handsomely paid for; the note from Mrs. Burrage which Verena found awaiting her in Tenth Street, on her arrival, contained the largest cheque this young woman had ever received for an address. The request that hung fire had reference to Verena too, of course; and Olive needed no prompting to feel that her friend's being a young person who took money could not make Mrs. Burrage's present effort more agreeable. To this taking of money (for when it came to Verena it was as if it came to her as well) she herself was now completely inured; money was a tremendous force, and when one wanted to assault the wrong with every engine one was happy not to lack the sinews of war. She liked her hostess better this morning than she had liked her before; she had more than ever the air of taking all sorts of sentiments and views for granted between them; which could only be flattering to Olive so long as it was really Mrs. Burrage who made each advance, while her visitor sat watchful and motionless. She had a light, clever, familiar way of traversing an immense distance with a very few words, as when she remarked, "Well, then, it is settled that she will come, and will stay till she is tired." Nothing of the kind had been settled, but Olive helped Mrs. Burrage (this time) more than she knew by saying, "Why do you want her to visit you, Mrs. Burrage? why do you want her socially? Are you not aware that your son, a year ago, desired to marry her?" "My dear Miss Chancellor, that is just what I wish to talk to you about. I am aware of everything; I don't believe you ever met any one who is aware of more things than I." And Olive had to believe this, as Mrs. Burrage held up, smiling, her intelligent, proud, good-natured, successful head. "I knew a year ago that my son was in love with your friend, I know that he has been so ever since, and that in consequence he would like to marry her to-day. I daresay you don't like the idea of her marrying at all; it would break up a friendship which is so full of interest" (Olive wondered for a moment whether she had been going to say "so full of profit") "for you. This is why I hesitated; but since you are willing to talk about it, that is just what I want." "I don't see what good it will do," Olive said. "How can we tell till we try? I never give a thing up till I have turned it over in every sense." It was Mrs. Burrage, however, who did most of the talking; Olive only inserted from time to time an inquiry, a protest, a correction, an ejaculation tinged with irony. None of these things checked or diverted her hostess; Olive saw more and more that she wished to please her, to win her over, to smooth matters down, to place them in a new and original light. She was very clever and (little by little Olive said to herself) absolutely unscrupulous, but she didn't think she was clever enough for what she had undertaken. This was neither more nor less, in the first place, than to persuade Miss Chancellor that she and her son were consumed with sympathy for the movement to which Miss Chancellor had dedicated her life. But how could Olive believe that, when she saw the type to which Mrs. Burrage belonged--a type into which nature herself had inserted a face turned in the very opposite way from all earnest and improving things? People like Mrs. Burrage lived and fattened on abuses, prejudices, privileges, on the petrified, cruel fashions of the past. It must be added, however, that if her hostess was a humbug, Olive had never met one who provoked her less; she was such a brilliant, genial, artistic one, with such a recklessness of perfidy, such a willingness to bribe you if she couldn't deceive you. She seemed to be offering Olive all the kingdoms of the earth if she would only exert herself to bring about a state of feeling on Verena Tarrant's part which would lead the girl to accept Henry Burrage. "We know it's you--the whole business; that you can do what you please. You could decide it to-morrow with a word." She had hesitated at first, and spoken of her hesitation, and it might have appeared that she would need all her courage to say to Olive, that way, face to face, that Verena was in such subjection to her. But she didn't look afraid; she only looked as if it were an infinite pity Miss Chancellor couldn't understand what immense advantages and rewards there would be for her in striking an alliance with the house of Burrage. Olive was so impressed with this, so occupied, even, in wondering what these mystic benefits might be, and whether after all there might not be a protection in them (from something worse), a fund of some sort that she and Verena might convert to a large use, setting aside the mother and son when once they had got what they had to give--she was so arrested with the vague daze of this vision, the sense of Mrs. Burrage's full hands, her eagerness, her thinking it worth while to flatter and conciliate, whatever her pretexts and pretensions might be, that she was almost insensible, for the time, to the strangeness of such a woman's coming round to a positive desire for a connexion with the Tarrants. Mrs. Burrage had indeed explained this partly by saying that her son's condition was wearing her out, and that she would enter into anything that would make him happier, make him better. She was fonder of him than of the whole world beside, and it was an anguish to her to see him yearning for Miss Tarrant only to lose her. She made that charge about Olive's power in the matter in such a way that it seemed at the same time a tribute to her force of character. "I don't know on what terms you suppose me to be with my friend," Olive returned, with considerable majesty. "She will do exactly as she likes, in such a case as the one you allude to. She is absolutely free; you speak as if I were her keeper!" Then Mrs. Burrage explained that of course she didn't mean that Miss Chancellor exercised a conscious tyranny; but only that Verena had a boundless admiration for her, saw through her eyes, took the impress of all her opinions, preferences. She was sure that if Olive would only take a favourable view of her son Miss Tarrant would instantly throw herself into it. "It's very true that you may ask me," added Mrs. Burrage, smiling, "how you can take a favourable view of a young man who wants to marry the very person in the world you want most to keep unmarried!" This description of Verena was of course perfectly correct; but it was not agreeable to Olive to have the fact in question so clearly perceived, even by a person who expressed it with an air intimating that there was nothing in the world _she_ couldn't understand. "Did your son know that you were going to speak to me about this?" Olive asked, rather coldly, waiving the question of her influence on Verena and the state in which she wished her to remain. "Oh yes, poor dear boy; we had a long talk yesterday, and I told him I would do what I could for him. Do you remember the little visit I paid to Cambridge last spring, when I saw you at his rooms? Then it was I began to perceive how the wind was setting; but yesterday we had a real _éclaircissement_. I didn't like it at all, at first; I don't mind telling you that, now--now that I am really enthusiastic about it. When a girl is as charming, as original, as Miss Tarrant, it doesn't in the least matter who she is; she makes herself the standard by which you measure her; she makes her own position. And then Miss Tarrant has such a future!" Mrs. Burrage added, quickly, as if that were the last thing to be overlooked. "The whole question has come up again--the feeling that Henry tried to think dead, or at least dying, has revived, through the--I hardly know what to call it, but I really may say the unexpectedly great effect of her appearance here. She was really wonderful on Wednesday evening; prejudice, conventionality, every presumption there might be against her, had to fall to the ground. I expected a success, but I didn't expect what you gave us," Mrs. Burrage went on, smiling, while Olive noted her "you." "In short, my poor boy flamed up again; and now I see that he will never again care for any girl as he cares for that one. My dear Miss Chancellor, _j'en ai pris mon parti_, and perhaps you know my way of doing that sort of thing. I am not at all good at resigning myself, but I am excellent at taking up a craze. I haven't renounced, I have only changed sides. For or against, I must be a partisan. Don't you know that kind of nature? Henry has put the affair into my hands, and you see I put it into yours. Do help me; let us work together." This was a long, explicit speech for Mrs. Burrage, who dealt, usually, in the cursory and allusive; and she may very well have expected that Miss Chancellor would recognise its importance. What Olive did, in fact, was simply to inquire, by way of rejoinder: "Why did you ask us to come on?" If Mrs. Burrage hesitated now, it was only for twenty seconds. "Simply because we are so interested in your work." "That surprises me," said Olive thoughtfully. "I daresay you don't believe it; but such a judgement is superficial. I am sure we give proof in the offer we make," Mrs. Burrage remarked, with a good deal of point. "There are plenty of girls--without any views at all--who would be delighted to marry my son. He is very clever, and he has a large fortune. Add to that that he's an angel!" That was very true, and Olive felt all the more that the attitude of these fortunate people, for whom the world was so well arranged just as it was, was very curious. But as she sat there it came over her that the human spirit has many variations, that the influence of the truth is great, and that there are such things in life as happy surprises, quite as well as disagreeable ones. Nothing, certainly, forced such people to fix their affections on the daughter of a "healer"; it would be very clumsy to pick her out of her generation only for the purpose of frustrating her. Moreover, her observation of their young host at Delmonico's and in the spacious box at the Academy of Music, where they had privacy and ease, and murmured words could pass without making neighbours more given up to the stage turn their heads--her consideration of Henry Burrage's manner, suggested to her that she had measured him rather scantily the year before, that he was as much in love as the feebler passions of the age permitted (for though Miss Chancellor believed in the amelioration of humanity, she thought there was too much water in the blood of all of us), that he prized Verena for her rarity, which was her genius, her gift, and would therefore have an interest in promoting it, and that he was of so soft and fine a paste that his wife might do what she liked with him. Of course there would be the mother-in-law to count with; but unless she was perjuring herself shamelessly Mrs. Burrage really had the wish to project herself into the new atmosphere, or at least to be generous personally; so that, oddly enough, the fear that most glanced before Olive was not that this high, free matron, slightly irritable with cleverness and at the same time good-natured with prosperity, would bully her son's bride, but rather that she might take too fond a possession of her. It was a fear which may be described as a presentiment of jealousy. It occurred, accordingly, to Miss Chancellor's quick conscience that, possibly, the proposal which presented itself in circumstances so complicated and anomalous was simply a magnificent chance, an improvement on the very best, even, that she had dreamed of for Verena. It meant a large command of money--much larger than her own; the association of a couple of clever people who simulated conviction very well, whether they felt it or not, and who had a hundred useful worldly ramifications, and a kind of social pedestal from which she might really shine afar. The conscience I have spoken of grew positively sick as it thought of having such a problem as that to consider, such an ordeal to traverse. In the presence of such a contingency the poor girl felt grim and helpless; she could only vaguely wonder whether she were called upon in the name of duty to lend a hand to the torture of her own spirit. "And if she should marry him, how could I be sure that--afterwards--you would care so much about the question which has all our thoughts, hers and mine?" This inquiry evolved itself from Olive's rapid meditation; but even to herself it seemed a little rough. Mrs. Burrage took it admirably. "You think we are feigning an interest, only to get hold of her? That's not very nice of you, Miss Chancellor; but of course you have to be tremendously careful. I assure you my son tells me he firmly believes your movement is the great question of the immediate future, that it has entered into a new phase; into what does he call it? the domain of practical politics. As for me, you don't suppose I don't want everything we poor women can get, or that I would refuse any privilege or advantage that's offered me? I don't rant or rave about anything, but I have--as I told you just now--my own quiet way of being zealous. If you had no worse partisan than I, you would do very well. My son has talked to me immensely about your ideas; and even if I should enter into them only because he does, I should do so quite enough. You may say you don't see Henry dangling about after a wife who gives public addresses; but I am convinced that a great many things are coming to pass--very soon, too--that we don't see in advance. Henry is a gentleman to his finger-tips, and there is not a situation in which he will not conduct himself with tact." Olive could see that they really wanted Verena immensely, and it was impossible for her to believe that if they were to get her they would not treat her well. It came to her that they would even overindulge her, flatter her, spoil her; she was perfectly capable, for the moment, of assuming that Verena was susceptible of deterioration and that her own treatment of her had been discriminatingly severe. She had a hundred protests, objections, replies; her only embarrassment could be as to which she should use first. "I think you have never seen Doctor Tarrant and his wife," she remarked, with a calmness which she felt to be very pregnant. "You mean they are absolutely fearful? My son has told me they are quite impossible, and I am quite prepared for that. Do you ask how we should get on with them? My dear young lady, we should get on as you do!" If Olive had answers, so had Mrs. Burrage; she had still an answer when her visitor, taking up the supposition that it was in her power to dispose in any manner whatsoever of Verena, declared that she didn't know why Mrs. Burrage addressed herself to _her_, that Miss Tarrant was free as air, that her future was in her own hands, that such a matter as this was a kind of thing with which it could never occur to one to interfere. "Dear Miss Chancellor, we don't ask you to interfere. The only thing we ask of you is simply _not_ to interfere." "And have you sent for me only for that?" "For that, and for what I hinted at in my note; that you would really exercise your influence with Miss Tarrant to induce her to come to us now for a week or two. That is really, after all, the main thing I ask. Lend her to us, here, for a little while, and we will take care of the rest. That sounds conceited--but she _would_ have a good time." "She doesn't live for that," said Olive. "What I mean is that she should deliver an address every night!" Mrs. Burrage returned, smiling. "I think you try to prove too much. You do believe--though you pretend you don't--that I control her actions, and as far as possible her desires, and that I am jealous of any other relations she may possibly form. I can imagine that we may perhaps have that air, though it only proves how little such an association as ours is understood, and how superficial is still"--Olive felt that her "still" was really historical--"the interpretation of many of the elements in the activity of women, how much the public conscience with regard to them needs to be educated. Your conviction with respect to my attitude being what I believe it to be," Miss Chancellor went on, "I am surprised at your not perceiving how little it is in my interest to deliver my--my victim up to you." If we were at this moment to take, in a single glance, an inside view of Mrs. Burrage (a liberty we have not yet ventured on), I suspect we should find that she was considerably exasperated at her visitor's superior tone, at seeing herself regarded by this dry, shy, obstinate, provincial young woman as superficial. If she liked Verena very nearly as much as she tried to convince Miss Chancellor, she was conscious of disliking Miss Chancellor more than she should probably ever be able to reveal to Verena. It was doubtless partly her irritation that found a voice as she said, after a self-administered pinch of caution not to say too much, "Of course it would be absurd in us to assume that Miss Tarrant would find my son irresistible, especially as she has already refused him. But even if she should remain obdurate, should you consider yourself quite safe as regards others?" The manner in which Miss Chancellor rose from her chair on hearing these words showed her hostess that if she had wished to take a little revenge by frightening her, the experiment was successful. "What others do you mean?" Olive asked, standing very straight, and turning down her eyes as from a great height. Mrs. Burrage--since we have begun to look into her mind we may continue the process--had not meant any one in particular; but a train of association was suddenly kindled in her thought by the flash of the girl's resentment. She remembered the gentleman who had come up to her in the music-room, after Miss Tarrant's address, while she was talking with Olive, and to whom that young lady had given so cold a welcome. "I don't mean any one in particular; but, for instance, there is the young man to whom she asked me to send an invitation to my party, and who looked to me like a possible admirer." Mrs. Burrage also got up; then she stood a moment, closer to her visitor. "Don't you think it's a good deal to expect that, young, pretty, attractive, clever, charming as she is, you should be able to keep her always, to exclude other affections, to cut off a whole side of life, to defend her against dangers--if you call them dangers--to which every young woman who is not positively repulsive is exposed? My dear young lady, I wonder if I might give you three words of advice?" Mrs. Burrage did not wait till Olive had answered this inquiry; she went on quickly, with her air of knowing exactly what she wanted to say and feeling at the same time that, good as it might be, the manner of saying it, like the manner of saying most other things, was not worth troubling much about. "Don't attempt the impossible. You have got hold of a good thing; don't spoil it by trying to stretch it too far. If you don't take the better, perhaps you will have to take the worse; if it's safety you want I should think she was much safer with my son--for with us you know the worst--than as a possible prey to adventurers, to exploiters, or to people who, once they had got hold of her, would shut her up altogether." Olive dropped her eyes; she couldn't endure Mrs. Burrage's horrible expression of being near the mark, her look of worldly cleverness, of a confidence born of much experience. She felt that nothing would be spared her, that she should have to go to the end, that this ordeal also must be faced, and that, in particular, there was a detestable wisdom in her hostess's advice. She was conscious, however, of no obligation to recognise it then and there; she wanted to get off, and even to carry Mrs. Burrage's sapient words along with her--to hurry to some place where she might be alone and think. "I don't know why you have thought it right to send for me only to say this. I take no interest whatever in your son--in his settling in life." And she gathered her mantle more closely about her, turning away. "It is exceedingly kind of you to have come," said Mrs. Burrage imperturbably. "Think of what I have said; I am sure you won't feel that you have wasted your hour." "I have a great many things to think of!" Olive exclaimed insincerely; for she knew that Mrs. Burrage's ideas would haunt her. "And tell her that if she will make us the little visit, all New York shall sit at her feet!" That was what Olive wanted, and yet it seemed a mockery to hear Mrs. Burrage say it. Miss Chancellor retreated, making no response even when her hostess declared again that she was under great obligations to her for coming. When she reached the street she found she was deeply agitated, but not with a sense of weakness; she hurried along, excited and dismayed, feeling that her insufferable conscience was bristling like some irritated animal, that a magnificent offer had really been made to Verena, and that there was no way for her to persuade herself she might be silent about it. Of course, if Verena should be tempted by the idea of being made so much of by the Burrages, the danger of Basil Ransom getting any kind of hold on her would cease to be pressing. That was what was present to Olive as she walked along, and that was what made her nervous, conscious only of this problem that had suddenly turned the bright day to greyness, heedless of the sophisticated-looking people who passed her on the wide Fifth Avenue pavement. It had risen in her mind the day before, planted first by Mrs. Burrage's note; and then, as we know, she had vaguely entertained the conception, asking Verena whether she would make the visit if it were again to be pressed upon them. It had been pressed, certainly, and the terms of the problem were now so much sharper that they seemed cruel. What had been in her own mind was that if Verena should appear to lend herself to the Burrages Basil Ransom might be discouraged--might think that, shabby and poor, there was no chance for him as against people with every advantage of fortune and position. She didn't see him relax his purpose so easily; she knew she didn't believe he was of that pusillanimous fibre. Still, it was a chance, and any chance that might help her had been worth considering. At present she saw it was a question not of Verena's lending herself, but of a positive gift, or at least of a bargain in which the terms would be immensely liberal. It would be impossible to use the Burrages as a shelter on the assumption that they were not dangerous, for they became dangerous from the moment they set up as sympathisers, took the ground that what they offered the girl was simply a boundless opportunity. It came back to Olive, again and again, that this was, and could only be, fantastic and false; but it was always possible that Verena might not think it so, might trust them all the way. When Miss Chancellor had a pair of alternatives to consider, a question of duty to study, she put a kind of passion into it--felt, above all, that the matter must be settled that very hour, before anything in life could go on. It seemed to her at present that she couldn't re-enter the house in Tenth Street without having decided first whether she might trust the Burrages or not. By "trust" them, she meant trust them to fail in winning Verena over, while at the same time they put Basil Ransom on a false scent. Olive was able to say to herself that he probably wouldn't have the hardihood to push after her into those gilded saloons, which, in any event, would be closed to him as soon as the mother and son should discover what he wanted. She even asked herself whether Verena would not be still better defended from the young Southerner in New York, amid complicated hospitalities, than in Boston with a cousin of the enemy. She continued to walk down the Fifth Avenue, without noticing the cross-streets, and after a while became conscious that she was approaching Washington Square. By this time she had also definitely reasoned it out that Basil Ransom and Henry Burrage could not both capture Miss Tarrant, that therefore there could not be two dangers, but only one; that this was a good deal gained, and that it behoved her to determine which peril had most reality, in order that she might deal with that one only. She held her way to the Square, which, as all the world knows, is of great extent and open to the encircling street. The trees and grass-plats had begun to bud and sprout, the fountains plashed in the sunshine, the children of the quarter, both the dingier types from the south side, who played games that required much chalking of the paved walks, and much sprawling and crouching there, under the feet of passers, and the little curled and feathered people who drove their hoops under the eyes of French nursemaids--all the infant population filled the vernal air with small sounds which had a crude, tender quality, like the leaves and the thin herbage. Olive wandered through the place, and ended by sitting down on one of the continuous benches. It was a long time since she had done anything so vague, so wasteful. There were a dozen things which, as she was staying over in New York, she ought to do; but she forgot them, or, if she thought of them, felt that they were now of no moment. She remained in her place an hour, brooding, tremulous, turning over and over certain thoughts. It seemed to her that she was face to face with a crisis of her destiny, and that she must not shrink from seeing it exactly as it was. Before she rose to return to Tenth Street she had made up her mind that there was no menace so great as the menace of Basil Ransom; she had accepted in thought any arrangement which would deliver her from that. If the Burrages were to take Verena they would take her from Olive immeasurably less than he would do; it was from him, from him they would take her most. She walked back to her boarding-house, and the servant who admitted her said, in answer to her inquiry as to whether Verena were at home, that Miss Tarrant had gone out with the gentleman who called in the morning, and had not yet come in. Olive stood staring; the clock in the hall marked three. XXXIII "Come out with me, Miss Tarrant; come out with me. _Do_ come out with me." That was what Basil Ransom had been saying to Verena when they stood where Olive perceived them, in the embrasure of the window. It had of course taken considerable talk to lead up to this; for the tone, even more than the words, indicated a large increase of intimacy. Verena was mindful of this when he spoke; and it frightened her a little, made her uneasy, which was one of the reasons why she got up from her chair and went to the window--an inconsequent movement, inasmuch as her wish was to impress upon him that it was impossible she should comply with his request. It would have served this end much better for her to sit, very firmly, in her place. He made her nervous and restless; she was beginning to perceive that he produced a peculiar effect upon her. Certainly, she had been out with him at home the very first time he called upon her; but it seemed to her to make an important difference that she herself should then have proposed the walk--simply because it was the easiest thing to do when a person came to see you in Monadnoc Place. They had gone out that time because she wanted to, not because he did. And then it was one thing for her to stroll with him round Cambridge, where she knew every step and had the confidence and freedom which came from being on her own ground, and the pretext, which was perfectly natural, of wanting to show him the colleges, and quite another thing to go wandering with him through the streets of this great strange city, which, attractive, delightful as it was, had not the suitableness even of being his home, not his real one. He wanted to show her something, he wanted to show her everything; but she was not sure now--after an hour's talk--that she particularly wanted to see anything more that he could show her. He had shown her a great deal while he sat there, especially what balderdash he thought it--the whole idea of women's being equal to men. He seemed to have come only for that, for he was all the while revolving round it; she couldn't speak of anything but what he brought it back to the question of some new truth like that. He didn't say so in so many words; on the contrary, he was tremendously insinuating and satirical, and pretended to think she had proved all and a great deal more than she wanted to prove; but his exaggeration, and the way he rung all the changes on two or three of the points she had made at Mrs. Burrage's, were just the sign that he was a scoffer of scoffers. He wouldn't do anything but laugh; he seemed to think that he might laugh at her all day without her taking offence. Well, he might if it amused him; but she didn't see why she should ramble round New York with him to give him his opportunity. She had told him, and she had told Olive, that she was determined to produce some effect on him; but now, suddenly, she felt differently about that--she ceased to care whether she produced any effect or not. She didn't see why she should take him so seriously, when he wouldn't take her so; that is, wouldn't take her ideas. She had guessed before that he didn't want to discuss them; this had been in her mind when she said to him at Cambridge that his interest in her was personal, not controversial. Then she had simply meant that, as an inquiring young Southerner, he had wanted to see what a bright New England girl was like; but since then it had become a little more clear to her--her short talk with Ransom at Mrs. Burrage's threw some light upon the question--what the personal interest of a young Southerner (however inquiring merely) might amount to. Did he too want to make love to her? This idea made Verena rather impatient, weary in advance. The thing she desired least in the world was to be put into the wrong with Olive; for she had certainly given her ground to believe (not only in their scene the night before, which was a simple repetition, but all along, from the very first) that she really had an interest which would transcend any attraction coming from such a source as that. If yesterday it seemed to her that she should like to struggle with Mr. Ransom, to refute and convince him, she had this morning gone into the parlour to receive him with the idea that, now they were alone together in a quiet, favourable place, he would perhaps take up the different points of her address one by one, as several gentlemen had done after hearing her on other occasions. There was nothing she liked so well as that, and Olive never had anything to say against it. But he hadn't taken up anything; he had simply laughed and chaffed, and unrolled a string of queer fancies about the delightful way women would fix things when, as she said in her address, they should get out of their box. He kept talking about the box; he seemed as if he wouldn't let go that simile. He said that he had come to look at her through the glass sides, and if he wasn't afraid of hurting her he would smash them in. He was determined to find the key that would open it, if he had to look for it all over the world; it was tantalising only to be able to talk to her through the keyhole. If he didn't want to take up the subject, he at least wanted to take _her_ up--to keep his hand upon her as long as he could. Verena had had no such sensation since the first day she went in to see Olive Chancellor, when she felt herself plucked from the earth and borne aloft. "It's the most lovely day, and I should like so much to show you New York, as you showed me your beautiful Harvard," Basil Ransom went on, pressing her to accede to his proposal. "You said that was the only thing you could do for me then, and so this is the only thing I can do for you here. It would be odious to see you go away, giving me nothing but this stiff little talk in a boarding-house parlour." "Mercy, if you call this stiff!" Verena exclaimed, laughing, while at that moment Olive passed out of the house and descended the steps before her eyes. "My poor cousin's stiff; she won't turn her head a hair's breadth to look at us," said the young man. Olive's figure, as she went by, was, for Verena, full of a queer, touching, tragic expression, saying ever so many things, both familiar and strange; and Basil Ransom's companion privately remarked how little men knew about women, or indeed about what was really delicate, that he, without any cruel intention, should attach an idea of ridicule to such an incarnation of the pathetic, should speak rough, derisive words about it. Ransom, in truth, to-day, was not disposed to be very scrupulous, and he only wanted to get rid of Olive Chancellor, whose image, at last, decidedly bothered and bored him. He was glad to see her go out; but that was not sufficient, she would come back quick enough; the place itself contained her, expressed her. For to-day he wanted to take possession of Verena, to carry her to a distance, to reproduce a little the happy conditions they had enjoyed the day of his visit to Cambridge. And the fact that in the nature of things it could only be for to-day made his desire more keen, more full of purpose. He had thought over the whole question in the last forty-eight hours, and it was his belief that he saw things in their absolute reality. He took a greater interest in her than he had taken in any one yet, but he proposed, after to-day, not to let that accident make any difference. This was precisely what gave its high value to the present limited occasion. He was too shamefully poor, too shabbily and meagrely equipped, to have the right to talk of marriage to a girl in Verena's very peculiar position. He understood now how good that position was, from a worldly point of view; her address at Mrs. Burrage's gave him something definite to go upon, showed him what she could do, that people would flock in thousands to an exhibition so charming (and small blame to them); that she might easily have a big career, like that of a distinguished actress or singer, and that she would make money in quantities only slightly smaller than performers of that kind. Who wouldn't pay half a dollar for such an hour as he had passed at Mrs. Burrage's? The sort of thing she was able to do, to say, was an article for which there was more and more demand--fluent, pretty, third-rate palaver, conscious or unconscious perfected humbug; the stupid, gregarious, gullible public, the enlightened democracy of his native land, could swallow unlimited draughts of it. He was sure she could go, like that, for several years, with her portrait in the druggists' windows and her posters on the fences, and during that time would make a fortune sufficient to keep her in affluence for evermore. I shall perhaps expose our young man to the contempt of superior minds if I say that all this seemed to him an insuperable impediment to his making up to Verena. His scruples were doubtless begotten of a false pride, a sentiment in which there was a thread of moral tinsel, as there was in the Southern idea of chivalry; but he felt ashamed of his own poverty, the positive flatness of his situation, when he thought of the gilded nimbus that surrounded the protégée of Mrs. Burrage. This shame was possible to him even while he was conscious of what a mean business it was to practise upon human imbecility, how much better it was even to be seedy and obscure, discouraged about one's self. He had been born to the prospect of a fortune, and in spite of the years of misery that followed the war had never rid himself of the belief that a gentleman who desired to unite himself to a charming girl couldn't yet ask her to come and live with him in sordid conditions. On the other hand it was no possible basis of matrimony that Verena should continue for his advantage the exercise of her remunerative profession; if he should become her husband he should know a way to strike her dumb. In the midst of this an irrepressible desire urged him on to taste, for once, deeply, all that he was condemned to lose, or at any rate forbidden to attempt to gain. To spend a day with her and not to see her again--that presented itself to him at once as the least and the most that was possible. He did not need even to remind himself that young Mr. Burrage was able to offer her everything _he_ lacked, including the most amiable adhesion to her views. "It will be charming in the Park to-day. Why not take a stroll with me there as I did with you in the little park at Harvard?" he asked, when Olive had disappeared. "Oh, I have seen it, very well, in every corner. A friend of mine kindly took me to drive there yesterday," Verena said. "A friend?--do you mean Mr. Burrage?" And Ransom stood looking at her with his extraordinary eyes. "Of course, I haven't a vehicle to drive you in; but we can sit on a bench and talk." She didn't say it was Mr. Burrage, but she was unable to say it was not, and something in her face showed him that he had guessed. So he went on: "Is it only with him you can go out? Won't he like it, and may you only do what he likes? Mrs. Luna told me he wants to marry you, and I saw at his mother's how he stuck to you. If you are going to marry him, you can drive with him every day in the year, and that's just a reason for your giving me an hour or two now, before it becomes impossible." He didn't mind much what he said--it had been his plan not to mind much to-day--and so long as he made her do what he wanted he didn't care much how he did it. But he saw that his words brought the colour to her face; she stared, surprised at his freedom and familiarity. He went on, dropping the hardness, the irony of which he was conscious, out of his tone. "I know it's no business of mine whom you marry, or even whom you drive with, and I beg your pardon if I seem indiscreet and obtrusive; but I would give anything just to detach you a little from your ties, your belongings, and feel for an hour or two, as if--as if----" And he paused. "As if what?" she asked, very seriously. "As if there were no such person as Mr. Burrage--as Miss Chancellor--in the whole place." This had not been what he was going to say; he used different words. "I don't know what you mean, why you speak of other persons. I can do as I like, perfectly. But I don't know why you should take so for granted that _that_ would be it!" Verena spoke these words not out of coquetry, or to make him beg her more for a favour, but because she was thinking, and she wanted to gain a moment. His allusion to Henry Burrage touched her, his belief that she had been in the Park under circumstances more agreeable than those he proposed. They were not; somehow, she wanted him to know that. To wander there with a companion, slowly stopping, lounging, looking at the animals as she had seen the people do the day before; to sit down in some out-of-the-way part where there were distant views, which she had noticed from her high perch beside Henry Burrage--she had to look down so, it made her feel unduly fine: that was much more to her taste, much more her idea of true enjoyment. It came over her that Mr. Ransom had given up his work to come to her at such an hour; people of his kind, in the morning, were always getting their living, and it was only for Mr. Burrage that it didn't matter, inasmuch as he had no profession. Mr. Ransom simply wanted to give up his whole day. That pressed upon her; she was, as the most good-natured girl in the world, too entirely tender not to feel any sacrifice that was made for her; she had always done everything that people asked. Then, if Olive should make that strange arrangement for her to go to Mrs. Burrage's he would take it as a proof that there was something serious between her and the gentleman of the house, in spite of anything she might say to the contrary; moreover, if she should go she wouldn't be able to receive Mr. Ransom there. Olive would trust her not to, and she must certainly, in future, not disappoint Olive nor keep anything back from her, whatever she might have done in the past. Besides, she didn't want to do that; she thought it much better not. It was this idea of the episode which was possibly in store for her in New York, and from which her present companion would be so completely excluded, that worked upon her now with a rapid transition, urging her to grant him what he asked, so that in advance she should have made up for what she might not do for him later. But most of all she disliked his thinking she was engaged to some one. She didn't know, it is true, why she should mind it; and indeed, at this moment, our young lady's feelings were not in any way clear to her. She did not see what was the use of letting her acquaintance with Mr. Ransom become much closer (since his interest did really seem personal); and yet she presently asked him why he wanted her to go out with him, and whether there was anything particular he wanted to say to her (there was no one like Verena for making speeches apparently flirtatious, with the best faith and the most innocent intention in the world); as if that would not be precisely a reason to make it well she should get rid of him altogether. "Of course I have something particular to say to you--I have a tremendous lot to say to you!" the young man exclaimed. "Far more than I can say in this stuck-up, confined room, which is public, too, so that any one may come in from one moment to another. Besides," he added sophistically, "it isn't proper for me to pay a visit of three hours." Verena did not take up the sophistry, nor ask him whether it would be more proper for her to ramble about the city with him for an equal period; she only said, "Is it something that I shall care to hear, or that will do me any good?" "Well, I hope it will do you good; but I don't suppose you will care much to hear it." Basil Ransom hesitated a moment, smiling at her; then he went on: "It's to tell you, once for all, how much I really do differ from you!" He said this at a venture, but it was a happy inspiration. If it was only that, Verena thought she might go, for that was not personal. "Well, I'm glad you care so much," she answered musingly. But she had another scruple still, and she expressed it in saying that she should like Olive very much to find her when she came in. "That's all very well," Ransom returned; "but does she think that she only has a right to go out? Does she expect you to keep the house because she's abroad? If she stays out long enough, she will find you when she comes in." "Her going out that way--it proves that she trusts me," Verena said, with a candour which alarmed her as soon as she had spoken. Her alarm was just, for Basil Ransom instantly caught up her words, with a great mocking amazement. "Trusts you? and why shouldn't she trust you? Are you a little girl of ten and she your governess? Haven't you any liberty at all, and is she always watching you and holding you to an account? Have you such vagabond instincts that you are only thought safe when you are between four walls?" Ransom was going on to speak, in the same tone, of her having felt it necessary to keep Olive in ignorance of his visit to Cambridge--a fact they had touched on, by implication, in their short talk at Mrs. Burrage's; but in a moment he saw that he had said enough. As for Verena, she had said more than she meant, and the simplest way to unsay it was to go and get her bonnet and jacket and let him take her where he liked. Five minutes later he was walking up and down the parlour, waiting while she prepared herself to go out. They went up to the Central Park by the elevated railway, and Verena reflected, as they proceeded, that anyway Olive was probably disposing of her somehow at Mrs. Burrage's, and that therefore there wasn't much harm in her just taking this little run on her own responsibility, especially as she should only be out an hour--which would be just the duration of Olive's absence. The beauty of the "elevated" was that it took you up to the Park and brought you back in a few minutes, and you had all the rest of the hour to walk about and see the place. It was so pleasant now that one was glad to see it twice over. The long, narrow enclosure, across which the houses in the streets that border it look at each other with their glittering windows, bristled with the raw delicacy of April, and, in spite of its rockwork grottoes and tunnels, its pavilions and statues, its too numerous paths and pavements, lakes too big for the landscape and bridges too big for the lakes, expressed all the fragrance and freshness of the most charming moment of the year. Once Verena was fairly launched the spirit of the day took possession of her; she was glad to have come, she forgot about Olive, enjoyed the sense of wandering in the great city with a remarkable young man who would take beautiful care of her, while no one else in the world knew where she was. It was very different from her drive yesterday with Mr. Burrage, but it was more free, more intense, more full of amusing incident and opportunity. She could stop and look at everything now, and indulge all her curiosities, even the most childish; she could feel as if she were out for the day, though she was not really--as she had not done since she was a little girl, when in the country, once or twice, when her father and mother had drifted into summer quarters, gone out of town like people of fashion, she had, with a chance companion, strayed far from home, spent hours in the woods and fields, looking for raspberries and playing she was a gipsy. Basil Ransom had begun with proposing, strenuously, that she should come somewhere and have luncheon; he had brought her out half an hour before that meal was served in West Tenth Street, and he maintained that he owed her the compensation of seeing that she was properly fed; he knew a very quiet, luxurious French restaurant, near the top of the Fifth Avenue: he didn't tell her that he knew it through having once lunched there in company with Mrs. Luna. Verena for the present declined his hospitality--said she was going to be out so short a time that it wasn't worth the trouble; she should not be hungry, luncheon to her was nothing, she would eat when she went home. When he pressed her she said she would see later, perhaps, if she should find she wanted something. She would have liked immensely to go with him to an eating-house, and yet, with this, she was afraid, just as she was rather afraid, at bottom, and in the intervals of her quick pulsations of amusement, of the whole expedition, not knowing why she had come, though it made her happy, and reflecting that there was really nothing Mr. Ransom could have to say to her that would concern her closely enough. He knew what he intended about her sharing the noon-day repast with him somehow; it had been part of his plan that she should sit opposite him at a little table, taking her napkin out of its curious folds--sit there smiling back at him while he said to her certain things that hummed, like memories of tunes, in his fancy, and they waited till something extremely good, and a little vague, chosen out of a French _carte_, was brought them. That was not at all compatible with her going home at the end of half an hour, as she seemed to expect to. They visited the animals in the little zoological garden which forms one of the attractions of the Central Park; they observed the swans in the ornamental water, and they even considered the question of taking a boat for half an hour, Ransom saying that they needed this to make their visit complete. Verena replied that she didn't see why it should be complete, and after having threaded the devious ways of the Ramble, lost themselves in the Maze, and admired all the statues and busts of great men with which the grounds are decorated, they contented themselves with resting on a sequestered bench, where, however, there was a pretty glimpse of the distance and an occasional stroller creaked by on the asphalt walk. They had had by this time a great deal of talk, none of which, nevertheless, had been serious to Verena's view. Mr. Ransom continued to joke about everything, including the emancipation of women; Verena, who had always lived with people who took the world very earnestly, had never encountered such a power of disparagement or heard so much sarcasm levelled at the institutions of her country and the tendencies of the age. At first she replied to him, contradicted, showed a high spirit of retort, turning his irreverence against himself; she was too quick and ingenious not to be able to think of something to oppose--talking in a fanciful strain--to almost everything he said. But little by little she grew weary and rather sad; brought up, as she had been, to admire new ideas, to criticise the social arrangements that one met almost everywhere, and to disapprove of a great many things, she had yet never dreamed of such a wholesale arraignment as Mr. Ransom's, so much bitterness as she saw lurking beneath his exaggerations, his misrepresentations. She knew he was an intense conservative, but she didn't know that being a conservative could make a person so aggressive and unmerciful. She thought conservatives were only smug and stubborn and self-complacent, satisfied with what actually existed; but Mr. Ransom didn't seem any more satisfied with what existed than with what she wanted to exist, and he was ready to say worse things about some of those whom she would have supposed to be on his own side than she thought it right to say about almost any one. She ceased after a while to care to argue with him, and wondered what could have happened to him to make him so perverse. Probably something had gone wrong in his life--he had had some misfortune that coloured his whole view of the world. He was a cynic; she had often heard about that state of mind, though she had never encountered it, for all the people she had seen only cared, if possible, too much. Of Basil Ransom's personal history she knew only what Olive had told her, and that was but a general outline, which left plenty of room for private dramas, secret disappointments and sufferings. As she sat there beside him she thought of some of these things, asked herself whether they were what he was thinking of when he said, for instance, that he was sick of all the modern cant about freedom and had no sympathy with those who wanted an extension of it. What was needed for the good of the world was that people should make a better use of the liberty they possessed. Such declarations as this took Verena's breath away; she didn't suppose you could hear any one say such a thing as that in the nineteenth century, even the least advanced. It was of a piece with his denouncing the spread of education; he thought the spread of education a gigantic farce--people stuffing their heads with a lot of empty catchwords that prevented them from doing their work quietly and honestly. You had a right to an education only if you had an intelligence, and if you looked at the matter with any desire to see things as they are you soon perceived that an intelligence was a very rare luxury, the attribute of one person in a hundred. He seemed to take a pretty low view of humanity, anyway. Verena hoped that something really bad had happened to him--not by way of gratifying any resentment he aroused in her nature, but to help herself to forgive him for so much contempt and brutality. She wanted to forgive him, for after they had sat on their bench half an hour and his jesting mood had abated a little, so that he talked with more consideration (as it seemed) and more sincerity, a strange feeling came over her, a perfect willingness not to keep insisting on her own side and a desire not to part from him with a mere accentuation of their differences. Strange I call the nature of her reflexions, for they softly battled with each other as she listened, in the warm, still air, touched with the far-away hum of the immense city, to his deep, sweet, distinct voice, expressing monstrous opinions with exotic cadences and mild, familiar laughs, which, as he leaned towards her, almost tickled her cheek and ear. It seemed to her strangely harsh, almost cruel, to have brought her out only to say to her things which, after all, free as she was to contradict them and tolerant as she always tried to be, could only give her pain; yet there was a spell upon her as she listened; it was in her nature to be easily submissive, to like being overborne. She could be silent when people insisted, and silent without acrimony. Her whole relation to Olive was a kind of tacit, tender assent to passionate insistence, and if this had ended by being easy and agreeable to her (and indeed had never been anything else), it may be supposed that the struggle of yielding to a will which she felt to be stronger even than Olive's was not of long duration. Ransom's will had the effect of making her linger even while she knew the afternoon was going on, that Olive would have come back and found her still absent, and would have been submerged again in the bitter waves of anxiety. She saw her, in fact, as she must be at that moment, posted at the window of her room in Tenth Street, watching for some sign of her return, listening for her step on the staircase, her voice in the hall. Verena looked at this image as at a painted picture, perceived all it represented, every detail. If it didn't move her more, make her start to her feet, dart away from Basil Ransom and hurry back to her friend, this was because the very torment to which she was conscious of subjecting that friend made her say to herself that it must be the very last. This was the last time she could ever sit by Mr. Ransom and hear him express himself in a manner that interfered so with her life; the ordeal had been so personal and so complete that she forgot, for the moment, it was also the first time it had occurred. It might have been going on for months. She was perfectly aware that it could bring them to nothing, for one must lead one's own life; it was impossible to lead the life of another, especially when that other was so different, so arbitrary and unscrupulous. XXXIV "I presume you are the only person in this country who feels as you do," she observed at last. "Not the only person who feels so, but very possibly the only person who thinks so. I have an idea that my convictions exist in a vague, unformulated state in the minds of a great many of my fellow-citizens. If I should succeed some day in giving them adequate expression I should simply put into shape the slumbering instincts of an important minority." "I am glad you admit it's a minority!" Verena exclaimed. "That's fortunate for us poor creatures. And what do you call adequate expression? I presume you would like to be President of the United States?" "And breathe forth my views in glowing messages to a palpitating Senate? That is exactly what I should like to be; you read my aspirations wonderfully well." "Well, do you consider that you have advanced far in that direction, as yet?" Verena asked. This question, with the tone in which it happened to be uttered, seemed to the young man to project rather an ironical light upon his present beggarly condition, so that for a moment he said nothing; a moment during which if his neighbour had glanced round at his face she would have seen it ornamented by an incipient blush. Her words had for him the effect of a sudden, though, on the part of a young woman who had of course every right to defend herself, a perfectly legitimate taunt. They appeared only to repeat in another form (so at least his exaggerated Southern pride, his hot sensibility, interpreted the matter) the idea that a gentleman so dreadfully backward in the path of fortune had no right to take up the time of a brilliant, successful girl, even for the purpose of satisfying himself that he renounced her. But the reminder only sharpened his wish to make her feel that if he had renounced, it was simply on account of that same ugly, accidental, outside backwardness; and if he had not, he went so far as to flatter himself, he might triumph over the whole accumulation of her prejudices--over all the bribes of her notoriety. The deepest feeling in Ransom's bosom in relation to her was the conviction that she was made for love, as he had said to himself while he listened to her at Mrs. Burrage's. She was profoundly unconscious of it, and another ideal, crude and thin and artificial, had interposed itself; but in the presence of a man she should really care for, this false, flimsy structure would rattle to her feet, and the emancipation of Olive Chancellor's sex (what sex was it, great heaven? he used profanely to ask himself) would be relegated to the land of vapours, of dead phrases. The reader may imagine whether such an impression as this made it any more agreeable to Basil to have to believe it would be indelicate in him to try to woo her. He would have resented immensely the imputation that he had done anything of that sort yet. "Ah, Miss Tarrant, my success in life is one thing--my ambition is another!" he exclaimed presently, in answer to her inquiry. "Nothing is more possible than that I may be poor and unheard of all my days; and in that case no one but myself will know the visions of greatness I have stifled and buried." "Why do you talk of being poor and unheard of? Aren't you getting on quite well in this city?" This question of Verena's left him no time, or at least no coolness, to remember that to Mrs. Luna and to Olive he had put a fine face on his prospects, and that any impression the girl might have about them was but the natural echo of what these ladies believed. It had to his ear such a subtly mocking, defiant, unconsciously injurious quality, that the only answer he could make to it seemed to him for the moment to be an outstretched arm, which, passing round her waist, should draw her so close to him as to enable him to give her a concise account of his situation in the form of a deliberate kiss. If the moment I speak of had lasted a few seconds longer I know not what monstrous proceeding of this kind it would have been my difficult duty to describe; it was fortunately arrested by the arrival of a nursery-maid pushing a perambulator and accompanied by an infant who toddled in her wake. Both the nurse and her companion gazed fixedly, and it seemed to Ransom even sternly, at the striking couple on the bench; and meanwhile Verena, looking with a quickened eye at the children (she adored children), went on-- "It sounds too flat for you to talk about your remaining unheard of. Of course you are ambitious; any one can see that, to look at you. And once your ambition is excited in any particular direction, people had better look out. With your will!" she added, with a curious mocking candour. "What do you know about my will?" he asked, laughing a little awkwardly, as if he had really attempted to kiss her--in the course of the second independent interview he had ever had with her--and been rebuffed. "I know it's stronger than mine. It made me come out, when I thought I had much better not, and it keeps me sitting here long after I should have started for home." "Give me the day, dear Miss Tarrant, give me the day," Basil Ransom murmured; and as she turned her face upon him, moved by the expression of his voice, he added--"Come and dine with me, since you wouldn't lunch. Are you really not faint and weak?" "I am faint and weak at all the horrible things you have said; I have lunched on abominations. And now you want me to dine with you? Thank you; I think you're cool!" Verena cried, with a laugh which her chronicler knows to have been expressive of some embarrassment, though Basil Ransom did not. "You must remember that I have, on two different occasions, listened to you for an hour, in speechless, submissive attention, and that I shall probably do it a great many times more." "Why should you ever listen to me again, when you loathe my ideas?" "I don't listen to your ideas; I listen to your voice." "Ah, I told Olive!" said Verena, quickly, as if his words had confirmed an old fear; which was general, however, and did not relate particularly to him. Ransom still had an impression that he was not making love to her, especially when he could observe, with all the superiority of a man--"I wonder whether you have understood ten words I have said to you?" "I should think you had made it clear enough--you had rubbed it in!" "What have you understood, then?" "Why, that you want to put us back further than we have been at any period." "I have been joking; I have been piling it up," Ransom said, making that concession unexpectedly to the girl. Every now and then he had an air of relaxing himself, becoming absent, ceasing to care to discuss. She was capable of noticing this, and in a moment she asked--"Why don't you write out your ideas?" This touched again upon the matter of his failure; it was curious how she couldn't keep off it, hit it every time. "Do you mean for the public? I have written many things, but I can't get them printed." "Then it would seem that there are not so many people--so many as you said just now--who agree with you." "Well," said Basil Ransom, "editors are a mean, timorous lot, always saying they want something original, but deadly afraid of it when it comes." "Is it for papers, magazines?" As it sank into Verena's mind more deeply that the contributions of this remarkable young man had been rejected--contributions in which, apparently, everything she held dear was riddled with scorn--she felt a strange pity and sadness, a sense of injustice. "I am very sorry you can't get published," she said, so simply that he looked up at her, from the figure he was scratching on the asphalt with his stick, to see whether such a tone as that, in relation to such a fact, were not "put on." But it was evidently genuine, and Verena added that she supposed getting published was very difficult always; she remembered, though she didn't mention, how little success her father had when he tried. She hoped Mr. Ransom would keep on; he would be sure to succeed at last. Then she continued, smiling, with more irony: "You may denounce me by name if you like. Only please don't say anything about Olive Chancellor." "How little you understand what I want to achieve!" Basil Ransom exclaimed. "There you are--you women--all over; always meaning, yourselves, something personal, and always thinking it is meant by others!" "Yes, that's the charge they make," said Verena gaily. "I don't want to touch you, or Miss Chancellor, or Mrs. Farrinder, or Miss Birdseye, or the shade of Eliza P. Moseley, or any other gifted and celebrated being on earth--or in heaven." "Oh, I suppose you want to destroy us by neglect, by silence!" Verena exclaimed, with the same brightness. "No, I don't want to destroy you, any more than I want to save you. There has been far too much talk about you, and I want to leave you alone altogether. My interest is in my own sex; yours evidently can look after itself. That's what I want to save." Verena saw that he was more serious now than he had been before, that he was not piling it up satirically, but saying really and a trifle wearily, as if suddenly he were tired of much talk, what he meant. "To save it from what?" she asked. "From the most damnable feminisation! I am so far from thinking, as you set forth the other night, that there is not enough women in our general life, that it has long been pressed home to me that there is a great deal too much. The whole generation is womanised; the masculine tone is passing out of the world; it's a feminine, a nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false delicacy and exaggerated solicitudes and coddled sensibilities, which, if we don't soon look out, will usher in the reign of mediocrity, of the feeblest and flattest and the most pretentious that has ever been. The masculine character, the ability to dare and endure, to know and yet not fear reality, to look the world in the face and take it for what it is--a very queer and partly very base mixture--that is what I want to preserve, or rather, as I may say, to recover; and I must tell you that I don't in the least care what becomes of you ladies while I make the attempt!" The poor fellow delivered himself of these narrow notions (the rejection of which by leading periodicals was certainly not a matter for surprise) with low, soft earnestness, bending towards her so as to give out his whole idea, yet apparently forgetting for the moment how offensive it must be to her now that it was articulated in that calm, severe way, in which no allowance was to be made for hyperbole. Verena did not remind herself of this; she was too much impressed by his manner and by the novelty of a man taking that sort of religious tone about such a cause. It told her on the spot, from one minute to the other and once for all, that the man who could give her that impression would never come round. She felt cold, slightly sick, though she replied that now he summed up his creed in such a distinct, lucid way, it was much more comfortable--one knew with what one was dealing; a declaration much at variance with the fact, for Verena had never felt less gratified in her life. The ugliness of her companion's profession of faith made her shiver; it would have been difficult to her to imagine anything more crudely profane. She was determined, however, not to betray any shudder that could suggest weakness, and the best way she could think of to disguise her emotion was to remark in a tone which, although not assumed for that purpose, was really the most effective revenge, inasmuch as it always produced on Ransom's part (it was not peculiar, among women, to Verena) an angry helplessness--"Mr. Ransom, I assure you this is an age of conscience." "That's a part of your cant. It's an age of unspeakable shams, as Carlyle says." "Well," returned Verena, "it's all very comfortable for you to say that you wish to leave us alone. But you can't leave us alone. We are here, and we have got to be disposed of. You have got to put us somewhere. It's a remarkable social system that has no place for _us_!" the girl went on, with her most charming laugh. "No place in public. My plan is to keep you at home and have a better time with you there than ever." "I'm glad it's to be better; there's room for it. Woe to American womanhood when you start a movement for being more--what you like to be--at home!" "Lord, how you're perverted; you, the very genius!" Basil Ransom murmured, looking at her with the kindest eyes. She paid no attention to this, she went on, "And those who have got no home (there are millions, you know), what are you going to do with _them_? You must remember that women marry--are given in marriage--less and less; that isn't their career, as a matter of course, any more. You can't tell them to go and mind their husband and children, when they have no husband and children to mind." "Oh," said Ransom, "that's a detail! And for myself, I confess, I have such a boundless appreciation of your sex in private life that I am perfectly ready to advocate a man's having a half-a-dozen wives." "The civilisation of the Turks, then, strikes you as the highest?" "The Turks have a second-rate religion; they are fatalists, and that keeps them down. Besides, their women are not nearly so charming as ours--or as ours would be if this modern pestilence were eradicated. Think what a confession you make when you say that women are less and less sought in marriage; what a testimony that is to the pernicious effect on their manners, their person, their nature, of this fatuous agitation." "That's very complimentary to me!" Verena broke in, lightly. But Ransom was carried over her interruption by the current of his argument. "There are a thousand ways in which any woman, all women, married or single, may find occupation. They may find it in making society agreeable." "Agreeable to men, of course." "To whom else, pray? Dear Miss Tarrant, what is most agreeable to women is to be agreeable to men! That is a truth as old as the human race, and don't let Olive Chancellor persuade you that she and Mrs. Farrinder have invented any that can take its place, or that is more profound, more durable." Verena waived this point of the discussion; she only said: "Well, I am glad to hear you are prepared to see the place all choked up with old maids!" "I don't object to the _old_ old maids; they were delightful; they had always plenty to do, and didn't wander about the world crying out for a vocation. It is the new old maid that you have invented from whom I pray to be delivered." He didn't say he meant Olive Chancellor, but Verena looked at him as if she suspected him of doing so; and to put her off that scent he went on, taking up what she had said a moment before: "As for its not being complimentary to you, my remark about the effect on the women themselves of this pernicious craze, my dear Miss Tarrant, you may be quite at your ease. You stand apart, you are unique, extraordinary; you constitute a category by yourself. In you the elements have been mixed in a manner so felicitous that I regard you as quite incorruptible. I don't know where you come from nor how you come to be what you are, but you are outside and above all vulgarising influences. Besides, you ought to know," the young man proceeded, in the same cool, mild, deliberate tone, as if he were demonstrating a mathematical solution, "you ought to know that your connexion with all these rantings and ravings is the most unreal, accidental, illusory thing in the world. You think you care about them, but you don't at all. They were imposed upon you by circumstances, by unfortunate associations, and you accepted them as you would have accepted any other burden, on account of the sweetness of your nature. You always want to please some one, and now you go lecturing about the country, and trying to provoke demonstrations, in order to please Miss Chancellor, just as you did it before to please your father and mother. It isn't _you_, the least in the world, but an inflated little figure (very remarkable in its way too) whom you have invented and set on its feet, pulling strings, behind it, to make it move and speak, while you try to conceal and efface yourself there. Ah, Miss Tarrant, if it's a question of pleasing, how much you might please some one else by tipping your preposterous puppet over and standing forth in your freedom as well as in your loveliness!" While Basil Ransom spoke--and he had not spoken just that way yet--Verena sat there deeply attentive, with her eyes on the ground; but as soon as he ceased she sprang to her feet--something made her feel that their association had already lasted quite too long. She turned away from him as if she wished to leave him, and indeed were about to attempt to do so. She didn't desire to look at him now, or even to have much more conversation with him. "Something," I say, made her feel so, but it was partly his curious manner--so serene and explicit, as if he knew the whole thing to an absolute certainty--which partly scared her and partly made her feel angry. She began to move along the path to one of the gates, as if it were settled that they should immediately leave the place. He laid it all out so clearly; if he had had a revelation he couldn't speak otherwise. That description of herself as something different from what she was trying to be, the charge of want of reality, made her heart beat with pain; she was sure, at any rate, it was her real self that was there with him now, where she oughtn't to be. In a moment he was at her side again, going with her; and as they walked it came over her that some of the things he had said to her were far beyond what Olive could have imagined as the very worst possible. What would be her state now, poor forsaken friend, if some of them had been borne to her in the voices of the air? Verena had been affected by her companion's speech (his manner had changed so; it seemed to express something quite different) in a way that pushed her to throw up the discussion and determine that as soon as they should get out of the park she would go off by herself; but she still had her wits about her sufficiently to think it important she should give no sign of discomposure, of confessing that she was driven from the field. She appeared to herself to notice and reply to his extraordinary observations enough, without taking them up too much, when she said, tossing the words over her shoulder at Ransom, while she moved quickly: "I presume, from what you say, that you don't think I have much ability." He hesitated before answering, while his long legs easily kept pace with her rapid step--her charming, touching, hurrying step, which expressed all the trepidation she was anxious to conceal. "Immense ability, but not in the line in which you most try to have it. In a very different line, Miss Tarrant! Ability is no word for it; it's genius!" She felt his eyes on her face--ever so close and fixed there--after he had chosen to reply to her question that way. She was beginning to blush; if he had kept them longer, and on the part of any one else, she would have called such a stare impertinent. Verena had been commended of old by Olive for her serenity "while exposed to the gaze of hundreds"; but a change had taken place, and she was now unable to endure the contemplation of an individual. She wished to detach him, to lead him off again into the general; and for this purpose, at the end of a moment, she made another inquiry: "I am to understand, then, as your last word that you regard us as quite inferior?" "For public, civic uses, absolutely--perfectly weak and second-rate. I know nothing more indicative of the muddled sentiment of the time than that any number of men should be found to pretend that they regard you in any other light. But privately, personally, it's another affair. In the realm of family life and the domestic affections----" At this Verena broke in, with a nervous laugh, "Don't say that; it's only a phrase!" "Well, it's a better one than any of yours," said Basil Ransom, turning with her out of one of the smaller gates--the first they had come to. They emerged into the species of _plaza_ formed by the numbered street which constitutes the southern extremity of the park and the termination of the Sixth Avenue. The glow of the splendid afternoon was over everything, and the day seemed to Ransom still in its youth. The bowers and boskages stretched behind them, the artificial lakes and cockneyfied landscapes, making all the region bright with the sense of air and space, and raw natural tints, and vegetation too diminutive to overshadow. The chocolate-coloured houses, in tall, new rows, surveyed the expanse; the street cars rattled in the foreground, changing horses while the horses steamed, and absorbing and emitting passengers; and the beer-saloons, with exposed shoulders and sides, which in New York do a good deal towards representing the picturesque, the "bit" appreciated by painters, announced themselves in signs of large lettering to the sky. Groups of the unemployed, the children of disappointment from beyond the seas, propped themselves against the low, sunny wall of the park; and on the other side the commercial vista of the Sixth Avenue stretched away with a remarkable absence of aerial perspective. "I must go home; good-bye," Verena said, abruptly, to her companion. "Go home? You won't come and dine, then?" Verena knew people who dined at midday and others who dined in the evening, and others still who never dined at all; but she knew no one who dined at half-past three. Ransom's attachment to this idea therefore struck her as queer and infelicitous, and she supposed it betrayed the habits of Mississippi. But that couldn't make it any more acceptable to her, in spite of his looking so disappointed--with his dimly-glowing eyes--that he was heedless for the moment that the main fact connected with her return to Tenth Street was that she wished to go alone. "I must leave you, right away," she said. "Please don't ask me to stay; you wouldn't if you knew how little I want to!" Her manner was different now, and her face as well, and though she smiled more than ever she had never seemed to him more serious. "Alone, do you mean? Really I can't let you do that," Ransom replied, extremely shocked at this sacrifice being asked of him. "I have brought you this immense distance, I am responsible for you, and I must place you where I found you." "Mr. Ransom, I must, I will!" she exclaimed, in a tone he had not yet heard her use; so that, a good deal amazed, puzzled and pained, he saw that he should make a mistake if he were to insist. He had known that their expedition must end in a separation which could not be sweet, but he had counted on making some of the terms of it himself. When he expressed the hope that she would at least allow him to put her into a car, she replied that she wished no car; she wanted to walk. This image of her "streaking off" by herself, as he figured it, did not mend the matter; but in the presence of her sudden nervous impatience he felt that here was a feminine mystery which must be allowed to take its course. "It costs me more than you probably suspect, but I submit. Heaven guard you and bless you, Miss Tarrant!" She turned her face away from him as if she were straining at a leash; then she rejoined, in the most unexpected manner: "I hope very much you _will_ get printed." "Get my articles published?" He stared, and broke out: "Oh, you delightful being!" "Good-bye," she repeated; and now she gave him her hand. As he held it a moment, and asked her if she were really leaving the city so soon that she mightn't see him again, she answered: "If I stay it will be at a place to which you mustn't come. They wouldn't let you see me." He had not intended to put that question to her; he had set himself a limit. But the limit had suddenly moved on. "Do you mean at that house where I heard you speak?" "I may go there for a few days." "If it's forbidden to me to go and see you there, why did you send me a card?" "Because I wanted to convert you then." "And now you give me up?" "No, no; I want you to remain as you are!" She looked strange, with her more mechanical smile, as she said this, and he didn't know what idea was in her head. She had already left him, but he called after her, "If you do stay, I will come!" She neither turned nor made an answer, and all that was left to him was to watch her till she passed out of sight. Her back, with its charming young form, seemed to repeat that last puzzle, which was almost a challenge. For this, however, Verena Tarrant had not meant it. She wanted, in spite of the greater delay and the way Olive would wonder, to walk home, because it gave her time to think, and think again, how glad she was (really, positively, _now_) that Mr. Ransom was on the wrong side. If he had been on the right----! She did not finish this proposition. She found Olive waiting for her in exactly the manner she had foreseen; she turned to her, as she came in, a face sufficiently terrible. Verena instantly explained herself, related exactly what she had been doing; then went on, without giving her friend time for question or comment: "And you--you paid your visit to Mrs. Burrage?" "Yes, I went through that." "And did she press the question of my coming there?" "Very much indeed." "And what did you say?" "I said very little, but she gave me such assurances----" "That you thought I ought to go?" Olive was silent a moment; then she said: "She declares they are devoted to the cause, and that New York will be at your feet." Verena took Miss Chancellor's shoulders in each of her hands, and gave her back, for an instant, her gaze, her silence. Then she broke out, with a kind of passion: "I don't care for her assurances--I don't care for New York! I won't go to them--I won't--do you understand?" Suddenly her voice changed, she passed her arms round her friend and buried her face in her neck. "Olive Chancellor, take me away, take me away!" she went on. In a moment Olive felt that she was sobbing and that the question was settled, the question she herself had debated in anguish a couple of hours before. BOOK THIRD XXXV The August night had gathered by the time Basil Ransom, having finished his supper, stepped out upon the piazza of the little hotel. It was a very little hotel and of a very slight and loose construction; the tread of a tall Mississippian made the staircase groan and the windows rattle in their frames. He was very hungry when he arrived, having not had a moment, in Boston, on his way through, to eat even the frugal morsel with which he was accustomed to sustain nature between a breakfast that consisted of a cup of coffee and a dinner that consisted of a cup of tea. He had had his cup of tea now, and very bad it was, brought him by a pale, round-backed young lady, with auburn ringlets, a fancy belt, and an expression of limited tolerance for a gentleman who could not choose quickly between fried fish, fried steak, and baked beans. The train for Marmion left Boston at four o'clock in the afternoon, and rambled fitfully toward the southern cape, while the shadows grew long in the stony pastures and the slanting light gilded the straggling, shabby woods, and painted the ponds and marshes with yellow gleams. The ripeness of summer lay upon the land, and yet there was nothing in the country Basil Ransom traversed that seemed susceptible of maturity; nothing but the apples in the little tough, dense orchards, which gave a suggestion of sour fruition here and there, and the tall, bright goldenrod at the bottom of the bare stone dykes. There were no fields of yellow grain; only here and there a crop of brown hay. But there was a kind of soft scrubbiness in the landscape, and a sweetness begotten of low horizons, of mild air, with a possibility of summer haze, of unregarded inlets where on August mornings the water must be brightly blue. Ransom had heard that the Cape was the Italy, so to speak, of Massachusetts; it had been described to him as the drowsy Cape, the languid Cape, the Cape not of storms, but of eternal peace. He knew that the Bostonians had been drawn thither, for the hot weeks, by its sedative influence, by the conviction that its toneless air would minister to perfect rest. In a career in which there was so much nervous excitement as in theirs they had no wish to be wound up when they went out of town; they were sufficiently wound up at all times by the sense of all their sex had been through. They wanted to live idly, to unbend and lie in hammocks, and also to keep out of the crowd, the rush of the watering-place. Ransom could see there was no crowd at Marmion, as soon as he got there, though indeed there was a rush, which directed itself to the only vehicle in waiting outside of the small, lonely, hut-like station, so distant from the village that, as far as one looked along the sandy, sketchy road which was supposed to lead to it, one saw only an empty land on either side. Six or eight men in "dusters," carrying parcels and handbags, projected themselves upon the solitary, rickety carry-all, so that Ransom could read his own fate, while the ruminating conductor of the vehicle, a lean, shambling citizen, with a long neck and a tuft on his chin, guessed that if he wanted to get to the hotel before dusk he would have to strike out. His valise was attached in a precarious manner to the rear of the carry-all. "Well, I'll chance it," the driver remarked sadly, when Ransom protested against its insecure position. He recognised the southern quality of that picturesque fatalism--judged that Miss Chancellor and Verena Tarrant must be pretty thoroughly relaxed if they had given themselves up to the genius of the place. This was what he hoped for and counted on, as he took his way, the sole pedestrian in the group that had quitted the train, in the wake of the overladen carry-all. It helped him to enjoy the first country walk he had had for many months, for more than months, for years, that the reflexion was forced upon him as he went (the mild, vague scenery, just beginning to be dim with twilight, suggested it at every step) that the two young women who constituted, at Marmion, his whole prefigurement of a social circle, must, in such a locality as that, be taking a regular holiday. The sense of all the wrongs they had still to redress must be lighter there than it was in Boston; the ardent young man had, for the hour, an ingenuous hope that they had left their opinions in the city. He liked the very smell of the soil as he wandered along; cool, soft whiffs of evening met him at bends of the road which disclosed very little more--unless it might be a band of straight-stemmed woodland, keeping, a little, the red glow from the west, or (as he went further) an old house, shingled all over, grey and slightly collapsing, which looked down at him from a steep bank, at the top of wooden steps. He was already refreshed; he had tasted the breath of nature, measured his long grind in New York, without a vacation, with the repetition of the daily movement up and down the long, straight, maddening city, like a bucket in a well or a shuttle in a loom. He lit his cigar in the office of the hotel--a small room on the right of the door, where a "register," meagrely inscribed, led a terribly public life on the little bare desk, and got its pages dogs'-eared before they were covered. Local worthies, of a vague identity, used to lounge there, as Ransom perceived the next day, by the hour. They tipped back their chairs against the wall, seldom spoke, and might have been supposed, with their converging vision, to be watching something out of the window, if there had been anything at Marmion to watch. Sometimes one of them got up and went to the desk, on which he leaned his elbows, hunching a pair of sloping shoulders to an uncollared neck. For the fiftieth time he perused the fly-blown page of the recording volume, where the names followed each other with such jumps of date. The others watched him while he did so--or contemplated in silence some "guest" of the hostelry, when such a personage entered the place with an air of appealing from the general irresponsibility of the establishment and found no one but the village-philosophers to address himself to. It was an establishment conducted by invisible, elusive agencies; they had a kind of stronghold in the dining-room, which was kept locked at all but sacramental hours. There was a tradition that a "boy" exercised some tutelary function as regards the crumpled register; but when he was inquired about, it was usually elicited from the impartial circle in the office either that he was somewhere round or that he had gone a-fishing. Except the haughty waitress who has just been mentioned as giving Ransom his supper, and who only emerged at meal-times from her mystic seclusion, this impalpable youth was the single person on the premises who represented domestic service. Anxious lady-boarders, wrapped in shawls, were seen waiting for him, as if he had been the doctor, on horse-hair rocking-chairs, in the little public parlour; others peered vaguely out of back doors and windows, thinking that if he were somewhere round they might see him. Sometimes people went to the door of the dining-room and tried it, shaking it a little, timidly, to see if it would yield; then, finding it fast, came away, looking, if they had been observed, shy and snubbed, at their fellows. Some of them went so far as to say that they didn't think it was a very good hotel. Ransom, however, didn't much care whether it were good or not; he hadn't come to Marmion for the love of the hotel. Now that he had got there, however, he didn't know exactly what to do; his course seemed rather less easy than it had done when, suddenly, the night before, tired, sick of the city-air, and hungry for a holiday, he decided to take the next morning's train to Boston, and there take another to the shores of Buzzard's Bay. The hotel itself offered few resources; the inmates were not numerous; they moved about a little outside, on the small piazza and in the rough yard which interposed between the house and the road, and then they dropped off into the unmitigated dusk. This element, touched only in two or three places by a far-away dim glimmer, presented itself to Ransom as his sole entertainment. Though it was pervaded by that curious, pure, earthy smell which in New England, in summer, hangs in the nocturnal air, Ransom bethought himself that the place might be a little dull for persons who had not come to it, as he had, to take possession of Verena Tarrant. The unfriendly inn, which suggested dreadfully to Ransom (he despised the practice) an early bed-time, seemed to have no relation to anything, not even to itself; but a fellow-tenant of whom he made an inquiry told him the village was sprinkled round. Basil presently walked along the road in search of it, under the stars, smoking one of the good cigars which constituted his only tribute to luxury. He reflected that it would hardly do to begin his attack that night; he ought to give the Bostonians a certain amount of notice of his appearance on the scene. He thought it very possible, indeed, that they might be addicted to the vile habit of "retiring" with the cocks and hens. He was sure that was one of the things Olive Chancellor would do so long as he should stay--on purpose to spite him; she would make Verena Tarrant go to bed at unnatural hours, just to deprive him of his evenings. He walked some distance without encountering a creature or discerning an habitation; but he enjoyed the splendid starlight, the stillness, the shrill melancholy of the crickets, which seemed to make all the vague forms of the country pulsate around him; the whole impression was a bath of freshness after the long strain of the preceding two years and his recent sweltering weeks in New York. At the end of ten minutes (his stroll had been slow) a figure drew near him, at first indistinct, but presently defining itself as that of a woman. She was walking apparently without purpose, like himself, or without other purpose than that of looking at the stars, which she paused for an instant, throwing back her head, to contemplate, as he drew nearer to her. In a moment he was very close; he saw her look at him, through the clear gloom, as they passed each other. She was small and slim; he made out her head and face, saw that her hair was cropped; had an impression of having seen her before. He noticed that as she went by she turned as well as himself, and that there was a sort of recognition in her movement. Then he felt sure that he had seen her elsewhere, and before she had added to the distance that separated them he stopped short, looking after her. She noticed his halt, paused equally, and for a moment they stood there face to face, at a certain interval, in the darkness. "I beg your pardon--is it Doctor Prance?" he found himself demanding. For a minute there was no answer; then came the voice of the little lady: "Yes, sir; I am Doctor Prance. Any one sick at the hotel?" "I hope not; I don't know," Ransom said, laughing. Then he took a few steps, mentioned his name, recalled his having met her at Miss Birdseye's, ever so long before (nearly two years), and expressed the hope that she had not forgotten that. She thought it over a little--she was evidently addicted neither to empty phrases nor to unconsidered assertions. "I presume you mean that night Miss Tarrant launched out so." "That very night. We had a very interesting conversation." "Well, I remember I lost a good deal," said Doctor Prance. "Well, I don't know; I have an idea you made it up in other ways," Ransom returned, laughing still. He saw her bright little eyes engage with his own. Staying, apparently, in the village, she had come out, bare-headed, for an evening walk, and if it had been possible to imagine Doctor Prance bored and in want of recreation, the way she lingered there as if she were quite willing to have another talk might have suggested to Basil Ransom this condition. "Why, don't you consider her career very remarkable?" "Oh yes; everything is remarkable nowadays; we live in an age of wonders!" the young man replied, much amused to find himself discussing the object of his adoration in this casual way, in the dark, on a lonely country-road, with a short-haired female physician. It was astonishing how quickly Doctor Prance and he had made friends again. "I suppose, by the way, you know Miss Tarrant and Miss Chancellor are staying down here?" he went on. "Well, yes, I suppose I know it. I am visiting Miss Chancellor," the dry little woman added. "Oh indeed? I am delighted to hear it!" Ransom exclaimed, feeling that he might have a friend in the camp. "Then you can inform me where those ladies have their house." "Yes, I guess I can tell it in the dark. I will show you round now, if you like." "I shall be glad to see it, though I am not sure I shall go in immediately. I must reconnoitre a little first. That makes me so very happy to have met you. I think it's very wonderful--your knowing me." Doctor Prance did not repudiate this compliment, but she presently observed: "You didn't pass out of my mind entirely, because I have heard about you since, from Miss Birdseye." "Ah yes, I saw her in the spring. I hope she is in health and happiness." "She is always in happiness, but she can't be said to be in health. She is very weak; she is failing." "I am very sorry for that." "She is also visiting Miss Chancellor," Doctor Prance observed, after a pause which was an illustration of an appearance she had of thinking that certain things didn't at all imply some others. "Why, my cousin has got all the distinguished women!" Basil Ransom exclaimed. "Is Miss Chancellor your cousin? There isn't much family resemblance. Miss Birdseye came down for the benefit of the country air, and I came down to see if I could help her to get some good from it. She wouldn't much, if she were left to herself. Miss Birdseye has a very fine character, but she hasn't much idea of hygiene." Doctor Prance was evidently more and more disposed to be chatty. Ransom appreciated this fact, and said he hoped she, too, was getting some good from the country-air--he was afraid she was very much confined to her profession, in Boston; to which she replied--"Well, I was just taking a little exercise along the road. I presume you don't realise what it is to be one of four ladies grouped together in a small frame-house." Ransom remembered how he had liked her before, and he felt that, as the phrase was, he was going to like her again. He wanted to express his good-will to her, and would greatly have enjoyed being at liberty to offer her a cigar. He didn't know what to offer her or what to do, unless he should invite her to sit with him on a fence. He did realise perfectly what the situation in the small frame-house must be, and entered with instant sympathy into the feelings which had led Doctor Prance to detach herself from the circle and wander forth under the constellations, all of which he was sure she knew. He asked her permission to accompany her on her walk, but she said she was not going much further in that direction; she was going to turn round. He turned round with her, and they went back together to the village, in which he at last began to discover a certain consistency, signs of habitation, houses disposed with a rough resemblance to a plan. The road wandered among them with a kind of accommodating sinuosity, and there were even cross-streets, and an oil-lamp on a corner, and here and there the small sign of a closed shop, with an indistinctly countrified lettering. There were lights now in the windows of some of the houses, and Doctor Prance mentioned to her companion several of the inhabitants of the little town, who appeared all to rejoice in the prefix of captain. They were retired shipmasters; there was quite a little nest of these worthies, two or three of whom might be seen lingering in their dim doorways, as if they were conscious of a want of encouragement to sit up, and yet remembered the nights in far-away waters when they would not have thought of turning in at all. Marmion called itself a town, but it was a good deal shrunken since the decline in the shipbuilding interest; it turned out a good many vessels every year, in the palmy days, before the war. There were shipyards still, where you could almost pick up the old shavings, the old nails and rivets, but they were grass-grown now, and the water lapped them without anything to interfere. There was a kind of arm of the sea put in; it went up some way, it wasn't the real sea, but very quiet, like a river; that was more attractive to some. Doctor Prance didn't say the place was picturesque, or quaint, or weird; but he could see that was what she meant when she said it was mouldering away. Even under the mantle of night he himself gathered the impression that it had had a larger life, seen better days. Doctor Prance made no remark designed to elicit from him an account of his motives in coming to Marmion; she asked him neither when he had arrived nor how long he intended to stay. His allusion to his cousinship with Miss Chancellor might have served to her mind as a reason; yet, on the other hand, it would have been open to her to wonder why, if he had come to see the young ladies from Charles Street, he was not in more of a hurry to present himself. It was plain Doctor Prance didn't go into that kind of analysis. If Ransom had complained to her of a sore throat she would have inquired with precision about his symptoms; but she was incapable of asking him any question with a social bearing. Sociably enough, however, they continued to wander through the principal street of the little town, darkened in places by immense old elms, which made a blackness overhead. There was a salt smell in the air, as if they were nearer the water; Doctor Prance said that Olive's house was at the other end. "I shall take it as a kindness if, for this evening, you don't mention that you have happened to meet me," Ransom remarked, after a little. He had changed his mind about giving notice. "Well, I wouldn't," his companion replied; as if she didn't need any caution in regard to making vain statements. "I want to keep my arrival a little surprise for to-morrow. It will be a great pleasure to me to see Miss Birdseye," he went on, rather hypocritically, as if that at bottom had been to his mind the main attraction of Marmion. Doctor Prance did not reveal her private comment, whatever it was, on this intimation; she only said, after some hesitation--"Well, I presume the old lady will take quite an interest in your being here." "I have no doubt she is capable even of that degree of philanthropy." "Well, she has charity for all, but she does--even she--prefer her own side. She regards you as quite an acquisition." Ransom could not but feel flattered at the idea that he had been a subject of conversation--as this implied--in the little circle at Miss Chancellor's; but he was at a loss, for the moment, to perceive what he had done up to this time to gratify the senior member of the group. "I hope she will find me an acquisition after I have been here a few days," he said, laughing. "Well, she thinks you are one of the most important converts yet," Doctor Prance replied, in a colourless way, as if she would not have pretended to explain why. "A convert--me? Do you mean of Miss Tarrant's?" It had come over him that Miss Birdseye, in fact, when he was parting with her after their meeting in Boston, had assented to his request for secrecy (which at first had struck her as somewhat unholy) on the ground that Verena would bring him into the fold. He wondered whether that young lady had been telling her old friend that she had succeeded with him. He thought this improbable; but it didn't matter, and he said, gaily, "Well, I can easily let her suppose so!" It was evident that it would be no easier for Doctor Prance to subscribe to a deception than it had been for her venerable patient; but she went so far as to reply, "Well, I hope you won't let her suppose you are where you were that time I conversed with you. I could see where you were then!" "It was in about the same place you were, wasn't it?" "Well," said Doctor Prance, with a small sigh, "I am afraid I have moved back, if anything!" Her sigh told him a good deal; it seemed a thin, self-controlled protest against the tone of Miss Chancellor's interior, of which it was her present fortune to form a part: and the way she hovered round, indistinct in the gloom, as if she were rather loath to resume her place there, completed his impression that the little doctress had a line of her own. "That, at least, must distress Miss Birdseye," he said reproachfully. "Not much, because I am not of importance. They think women the equals of men; but they are a great deal more pleased when a man joins than when a woman does." Ransom complimented Doctor Prance on the lucidity of her mind, and then he said: "Is Miss Birdseye really sick? Is her condition very precarious?" "Well, she is very old, and very--very gentle," Doctor Prance answered, hesitating a moment for her adjective. "Under those circumstances a person may flicker out." "We must trim the lamp," said Ransom; "I will take my turn, with pleasure, in watching the sacred flame." "It will be a pity if she doesn't live to hear Miss Tarrant's great effort," his companion went on. "Miss Tarrant's? What's that?" "Well, it's the principal interest, in there." And Doctor Prance now vaguely indicated, with a movement of her head, a small white house, much detached from its neighbours, which stood on their left, with its back to the water, at a little distance from the road. It exhibited more signs of animation than any of its fellows; several windows, notably those of the ground floor, were open to the warm evening, and a large shaft of light was projected upon the grassy wayside in front of it. Ransom, in his determination to be discreet, checked the advance of his companion, who added presently, with a short, suppressed laugh--"You can see it is, from that!" He listened, to ascertain what she meant, and after an instant a sound came to his ear--a sound he knew already well, which carried the accents of Verena Tarrant, in ample periods and cadences, out into the stillness of the August night. "Murder, what a lovely voice!" he exclaimed involuntarily. Doctor Prance's eye gleamed towards him a moment, and she observed, humorously (she was relaxing immensely), "Perhaps Miss Birdseye is right!" Then, as he made no rejoinder, only listening to the vocal inflexions that floated out of the house, she went on--"She's practising her speech." "Her speech? Is she going to deliver one here?" "No, as soon as they go back to town--at the Music Hall." Ransom's attention was now transferred to his companion. "Is that why you call it her great effort?" "Well, so they think it, I believe. She practises that way every night; she reads portions of it aloud to Miss Chancellor and Miss Birdseye." "And that's the time you choose for your walk?" Ransom said, smiling. "Well, it's the time my old lady has least need of me; she's too absorbed." Doctor Prance dealt in facts; Ransom had already discovered that; and some of her facts were very interesting. "The Music Hall--isn't that your great building?" he asked. "Well, it's the biggest we've got; it's pretty big, but it isn't so big as Miss Chancellor's ideas," added Doctor Prance. "She has taken it to bring out Miss Tarrant before the general public--she has never appeared that way in Boston--on a great scale. She expects her to make a big sensation. It will be a great night, and they are preparing for it. They consider it her real beginning." "And this is the preparation?" Basil Ransom said. "Yes; as I say, it's their principal interest." Ransom listened, and while he listened he meditated. He had thought it possible Verena's principles might have been shaken by the profession of faith to which he treated her in New York; but this hardly looked like it. For some moments Doctor Prance and he stood together in silence. "You don't hear the words," the doctor remarked, with a smile which, in the dark, looked Mephistophelean. "Oh, I know the words!" the young man exclaimed, with rather a groan, as he offered her his hand for good-night. XXXVI A certain prudence had determined him to put off his visit till the morning; he thought it more probable that at that time he should be able to see Verena alone, whereas in the evening the two young women would be sure to be sitting together. When the morrow dawned, however, Basil Ransom felt none of the trepidation of the procrastinator; he knew nothing of the reception that awaited him, but he took his way to the cottage designated to him over-night by Doctor Prance, with the step of a man much more conscious of his own purpose than of possible obstacles. He made the reflexion, as he went, that to see a place for the first time at night is like reading a foreign author in a translation. At the present hour--it was getting towards eleven o'clock--he felt that he was dealing with the original. The little straggling, loosely-clustered town lay along the edge of a blue inlet, on the other side of which was a low, wooded shore, with a gleam of white sand where it touched the water. The narrow bay carried the vision outward to a picture that seemed at once bright and dim--a shining, slumbering summer sea, and a far-off, circling line of coast, which, under the August sun, was hazy and delicate. Ransom regarded the place as a town because Doctor Prance had called it one; but it was a town where you smelt the breath of the hay in the streets and you might gather blackberries in the principal square. The houses looked at each other across the grass--low, rusty, crooked, distended houses, with dry, cracked faces and the dim eyes of small-paned, stiffly-sliding windows. Their little door-yards bristled with rank, old-fashioned flowers, mostly yellow; and on the quarter that stood back from the sea the fields sloped upward, and the woods in which they presently lost themselves looked down over the roofs. Bolts and bars were not a part of the domestic machinery of Marmion, and the responsive menial, receiving the visitor on the threshold, was a creature rather desired than definitely possessed; so that Basil Ransom found Miss Chancellor's house-door gaping wide (as he had seen it the night before), and destitute even of a knocker or a bell-handle. From where he stood in the porch he could see the whole of the little sitting-room on the left of the hall--see that it stretched straight through to the back windows; that it was garnished with photographs of foreign works of art, pinned upon the walls, and enriched with a piano and other little extemporised embellishments, such as ingenious women lavish upon the houses they hire for a few weeks. Verena told him afterwards that Olive had taken her cottage furnished, but that the paucity of chairs and tables and bedsteads was such that their little party used almost to sit down, to lie down, in turn. On the other hand they had all George Eliot's writings, and two photographs of the Sistine Madonna. Ransom rapped with his stick on the lintel of the door, but no one came to receive him; so he made his way into the parlour, where he observed that his cousin Olive had as many German books as ever lying about. He dipped into this literature, momentarily, according to his wont, and then remembered that this was not what he had come for and that as he waited at the door he had seen, through another door, opening at the opposite end of the hall, signs of a small verandah attached to the other face of the house. Thinking the ladies might be assembled there in the shade, he pushed aside the muslin curtain of the back window, and saw that the advantages of Miss Chancellor's summer residence were in this quarter. There was a verandah, in fact, to which a wide, horizontal trellis, covered with an ancient vine, formed a kind of extension. Beyond the trellis was a small, lonely garden; beyond the garden was a large, vague, woody space, where a few piles of old timber were disposed, and which he afterwards learned to be a relic of the shipbuilding era described to him by Doctor Prance; and still beyond this again was the charming lake-like estuary he had already admired. His eyes did not rest upon the distance; they were attracted by a figure seated under the trellis, where the chequers of sun, in the interstices of the vine leaves, fell upon a bright-coloured rug spread out on the ground. The floor of the roughly-constructed verandah was so low that there was virtually no difference in the level. It took Ransom only a moment to recognise Miss Birdseye, though her back was turned to the house. She was alone; she sat there motionless (she had a newspaper in her lap, but her attitude was not that of a reader), looking at the shimmering bay. She might be asleep; that was why Ransom moderated the process of his long legs as he came round through the house to join her. This precaution represented his only scruple. He stepped across the verandah and stood close to her, but she did not appear to notice him. Visibly, she was dozing, or presumably, rather, for her head was enveloped in an old faded straw hat, which concealed the upper part of her face. There were two or three other chairs near her, and a table on which were half-a-dozen books and periodicals, together with a glass containing a colourless liquid, on the top of which a spoon was laid. Ransom desired only to respect her repose, so he sat down in one of the chairs and waited till she should become aware of his presence. He thought Miss Chancellor's back-garden a delightful spot, and his jaded senses tasted the breeze--the idle, wandering summer wind--that stirred the vine leaves over his head. The hazy shores on the other side of the water, which had tints more delicate than the street vistas of New York (they seemed powdered with silver, a sort of midsummer light), suggested to him a land of dreams, a country in a picture. Basil Ransom had seen very few pictures, there were none in Mississippi; but he had a vision at times of something that would be more refined than the real world, and the situation in which he now found himself pleased him almost as much as if it had been a striking work of art. He was unable to see, as I have said, whether Miss Birdseye were taking in the prospect through open or only, imagination aiding (she had plenty of that), through closed, tired, dazzled eyes. She appeared to him, as the minutes elapsed and he sat beside her, the incarnation of well-earned rest, of patient, submissive superannuation. At the end of her long day's work she might have been placed there to enjoy this dim prevision of the peaceful river, the gleaming shores, of the paradise her unselfish life had certainly qualified her to enter, and which, apparently, would so soon be opened to her. After a while she said, placidly, without turning: "I suppose it's about time I should take my remedy again. It does seem as if she had found the right thing; don't you think so?" "Do you mean the contents of that tumbler? I shall be delighted to give it to you, and you must tell me how much you take." And Basil Ransom, getting up, possessed himself of the glass on the table. At the sound of his voice Miss Birdseye pushed back her straw hat by a movement that was familiar to her, and twisting about her muffled figure a little (even in August she felt the cold, and had to be much covered up to sit out), directed at him a speculative, unastonished gaze. "One spoonful--two?" Ransom asked, stirring the dose and smiling. "Well, I guess I'll take two this time." "Certainly, Doctor Prance couldn't help finding the right thing," Ransom said, as he administered the medicine; while the movement with which she extended her face to take it made her seem doubly childlike. He put down the glass, and she relapsed into her position; she seemed to be considering. "It's homeopathic," she remarked, in a moment. "Oh, I have no doubt of that; I presume you wouldn't take anything else." "Well, it's generally admitted now to be the true system." Ransom moved closer to her, placed himself where she could see him better. "It's a great thing to have the true system," he said, bending towards her in a friendly way; "I'm sure you have it in everything." He was not often hypocritical; but when he was he went all lengths. "Well, I don't know that any one has a right to say that. I thought you were Verena," she added in a moment, taking him in again with her mild, deliberate vision. "I have been waiting for you to recognise me; of course you didn't know I was here--I only arrived last night." "Well, I'm glad you have come to see Olive now." "You remember that I wouldn't do that when I met you last?" "You asked me not to mention to her that I had met you; that's what I principally recall." "And don't you remember what I told you I wanted to do? I wanted to go out to Cambridge and see Miss Tarrant. Thanks to the information that you were so good as to give me, I was able to do so." "Yes, she gave me quite a little description of your visit," said Miss Birdseye, with a smile and a vague sound in her throat--a sort of pensive, private reference to the idea of laughter--of which Ransom never learned the exact significance, though he retained for a long time afterwards a kindly memory of the old lady's manner at the moment. "I don't know how much she enjoyed it, but it was an immense pleasure to me; so great a one that, as you see, I have come to call upon her again." "Then, I presume, she _has_ shaken you?" "She has shaken me tremendously!" said Ransom, laughing. "Well, you'll be a great addition," Miss Birdseye returned. "And this time your visit is also for Miss Chancellor?" "That depends on whether she will receive me." "Well, if she knows you are shaken, that will go a great way," said Miss Birdseye, a little musingly, as if even to her unsophisticated mind it had been manifested that one's relations with Miss Chancellor might be ticklish. "But she can't receive you now--can she?--because she's out. She has gone to the post office for the Boston letters, and they get so many every day that she had to take Verena with her to help her carry them home. One of them wanted to stay with me, because Doctor Prance has gone fishing, but I said I presumed I could be left alone for about seven minutes. I know how they love to be together; it seems as if one _couldn't_ go out without the other. That's what they came down here for, because it's quiet, and it didn't look as if there was any one else they would be much drawn to. So it would be a pity for me to come down after them just to spoil it!" "I am afraid I shall spoil it, Miss Birdseye." "Oh, well, a gentleman," murmured the ancient woman. "Yes, what can you expect of a gentleman? I certainly shall spoil it if I can." "You had better go fishing with Doctor Prance," said Miss Birdseye, with a serenity which showed that she was far from measuring the sinister quality of the announcement he had just made. "I shan't object to that at all. The days here must be very long--very full of hours. Have you got the doctor with you?" Ransom inquired, as if he knew nothing at all about her. "Yes, Miss Chancellor invited us both; she is very thoughtful. She is not merely a theoretic philanthropist--she goes into details," said Miss Birdseye, presenting her large person, in her chair, as if she herself were only an item. "It seems as if we were not so much wanted in Boston, just in August." "And here you sit and enjoy the breeze, and admire the view," the young man remarked, wondering when the two messengers, whose seven minutes must long since have expired, would return from the post office. "Yes, I enjoy everything in this little old-world place; I didn't suppose I should be satisfied to be so passive. It's a great contrast to my former exertions. But somehow it doesn't seem as if there were any trouble, or any wrong round here; and if there should be, there are Miss Chancellor and Miss Tarrant to look after it. They seem to think I had better fold my hands. Besides, when helpful, generous minds begin to flock in from _your_ part of the country," Miss Birdseye continued, looking at him from under the distorted and discoloured canopy of her hat with a benignity which completed the idea in any cheerful sense he chose. He felt by this time that he was committed to rather a dishonest part; he was pledged not to give a shock to her optimism. This might cost him, in the coming days, a good deal of dissimulation, but he was now saved from any further expenditure of ingenuity by certain warning sounds which admonished him that he must keep his wits about him for a purpose more urgent. There were voices in the hall of the house, voices he knew, which came nearer, quickly; so that before he had time to rise one of the speakers had come out with the exclamation--"Dear Miss Birdseye, here are seven letters for you!" The words fell to the ground, indeed, before they were fairly spoken, and when Ransom got up, turning, he saw Olive Chancellor standing there, with the parcel from the post office in her hand. She stared at him in sudden horror; for the moment her self-possession completely deserted her. There was so little of any greeting in her face save the greeting of dismay, that he felt there was nothing for him to say to her, nothing that could mitigate the odious fact of his being there. He could only let her take it in, let her divine that, this time, he was not to be got rid of. In an instant--to ease off the situation--he held out his hand for Miss Birdseye's letters, and it was a proof of Olive's having turned rather faint and weak that she gave them up to him. He delivered the packet to the old lady, and now Verena had appeared in the doorway of the house. As soon as she saw him, she blushed crimson; but she did not, like Olive, stand voiceless. "Why, Mr. Ransom," she cried out, "where in the world were _you_ washed ashore?" Miss Birdseye, meanwhile, taking her letters, had no appearance of observing that the encounter between Olive and her visitor was a kind of concussion. It was Verena who eased off the situation; her gay challenge rose to her lips as promptly as if she had had no cause for embarrassment. She was not confused even when she blushed, and her alertness may perhaps be explained by the habit of public speaking. Ransom smiled at her while she came forward, but he spoke first to Olive, who had already turned her eyes away from him and gazed at the blue sea-view as if she were wondering what was going to happen to her at last. "Of course you are very much surprised to see me; but I hope to be able to induce you to regard me not absolutely in the light of an intruder. I found your door open, and I walked in, and Miss Birdseye seemed to think I might stay. Miss Birdseye, I put myself under your protection; I invoke you; I appeal to you," the young man went on. "Adopt me, answer for me, cover me with the mantle of your charity!" Miss Birdseye looked up from her letters, as if at first she had only faintly heard his appeal. She turned her eyes from Olive to Verena; then she said, "Doesn't it seem as if we had room for all? When I remember what I have seen in the South, Mr. Ransom's being here strikes me as a great triumph." Olive evidently failed to understand, and Verena broke in with eagerness, "It was by my letter, of course, that you knew we were here. The one I wrote just before we came, Olive," she went on. "Don't you remember I showed it to you?" At the mention of this act of submission on her friend's part Olive started, flashing her a strange look; then she said to Basil that she didn't see why he should explain so much about his coming; every one had a right to come. It was a very charming place; it ought to do any one good. "But it will have one defect for you," she added; "three-quarters of the summer residents are women!" This attempted pleasantry on Miss Chancellor's part, so unexpected, so incongruous, uttered with white lips and cold eyes, struck Ransom to that degree by its oddity that he could not resist exchanging a glance of wonder with Verena, who, if she had had the opportunity, could probably have explained to him the phenomenon. Olive had recovered herself, reminded herself that she was safe, that her companion in New York had repudiated, denounced her pursuer; and, as a proof to her own sense of her security, as well as a touching mark to Verena that now, after what had passed, she had no fear, she felt that a certain light mockery would be effective. "Ah, Miss Olive, don't pretend to think I love your sex so little, when you know that what you really object to in me is that I love it too much!" Ransom was not brazen, he was not impudent, he was really a very modest man; but he was aware that whatever he said or did he was condemned to seem impudent now, and he argued within himself that if he was to have the dishonour of being thought brazen he might as well have the comfort. He didn't care a straw, in truth, how he was judged or how he might offend; he had a purpose which swallowed up such inanities as that, and he was so full of it that it kept him firm, balanced him, gave him an assurance that might easily have been confounded with a cold detachment. "This place will do me good," he pursued; "I haven't had a holiday for more than two years, I couldn't have gone another day; I was finished. I would have written to you beforehand that I was coming, but I only started at a few hours' notice. It occurred to me that this would be just what I wanted; I remembered what Miss Tarrant had said in her note, that it was a place where people could lie on the ground and wear their old clothes. I delight to lie on the ground, and all my clothes are old. I hope to be able to stay three or four weeks." Olive listened till he had done speaking; she stood a single moment longer, and then, without a word, a glance, she rushed into the house. Ransom saw that Miss Birdseye was immersed in her letters; so he went straight to Verena and stood before her, looking far into her eyes. He was not smiling now, as he had been in speaking to Olive. "Will you come somewhere apart, where I can speak to you alone?" "Why have you done this? It was not right in you to come!" Verena looked still as if she were blushing, but Ransom perceived he must allow for her having been delicately scorched by the sun. "I have come because it is necessary--because I have something very important to say to you. A great number of things." "The same things you said in New York? I don't want to hear them again--they were horrible!" "No, not the same--different ones. I want you to come out with me, away from here." "You always want me to come out! We can't go out here; we _are_ out, as much as we can be!" Verena laughed. She tried to turn it off--feeling that something really impended. "Come down into the garden, and out beyond there--to the water, where we can speak. It's what I have come for; it was not for what I told Miss Olive!" He had lowered his voice, as if Miss Olive might still hear them, and there was something strangely grave--altogether solemn, indeed--in its tone. Verena looked around her, at the splendid summer day, at the much-swathed, formless figure of Miss Birdseye, holding her letter inside her hat. "Mr. Ransom!" she articulated then, simply; and as her eyes met his again they showed him a couple of tears. "It's not to make you suffer, I honestly believe. I don't want to say anything that will hurt you. How can I possibly hurt you, when I feel to you as I do?" he went on, with suppressed force. She said no more, but all her face entreated him to let her off, to spare her; and as this look deepened, a quick sense of elation and success began to throb in his heart, for it told him exactly what he wanted to know. It told him that she was afraid of him, that she had ceased to trust herself, that the way he had read her nature was the right way (she was tremendously open to attack, she was meant for love, she was meant for him), and that his arriving at the point at which he wished to arrive was only a question of time. This happy consciousness made him extraordinarily tender to her; he couldn't put enough reassurance into his smile, his low murmur, as he said: "Only give me ten minutes; don't receive me by turning me away. It's my holiday--my poor little holiday; don't spoil it." Three minutes later Miss Birdseye, looking up from her letter, saw them move together through the bristling garden and traverse a gap in the old fence which enclosed the further side of it. They passed into the ancient shipyard which lay beyond, and which was now a mere vague, grass-grown approach to the waterside, bestrewn with a few remnants of supererogatory timber. She saw them stroll forward to the edge of the bay and stand there, taking the soft breeze in their faces. She watched them a little, and it warmed her heart to see the stiff-necked young Southerner led captive by a daughter of New England trained in the right school, who would impose her opinions in their integrity. Considering how prejudiced he must have been he was certainly behaving very well; even at that distance Miss Birdseye dimly made out that there was something positively humble in the way he invited Verena Tarrant to seat herself on a low pile of weather-blackened planks, which constituted the principal furniture of the place, and something, perhaps, just a trifle too expressive of righteous triumph in the manner in which the girl put the suggestion by and stood where she liked, a little proudly, turning a good deal away from him. Miss Birdseye could see as much as this, but she couldn't hear, so that she didn't know what it was that made Verena turn suddenly back to him, at something he said. If she had known, perhaps his observation would have struck her as less singular--under the circumstances in which these two young persons met--than it may appear to the reader. "They have accepted one of my articles; I think it's the best." These were the first words that passed Basil Ransom's lips after the pair had withdrawn as far as it was possible to withdraw (in that direction) from the house. "Oh, is it printed--when does it appear?" Verena asked that question instantly; it sprang from her lips in a manner that completely belied the air of keeping herself at a distance from him which she had worn a few moments before. He didn't tell her again this time, as he had told her when, on the occasion of their walk together in New York, she expressed an inconsequent hope that his fortune as a rejected contributor would take a turn--he didn't remark to her once more that she was a delightful being; he only went on (as if her revulsion were a matter of course) to explain everything he could, so that she might as soon as possible know him better and see how completely she could trust him. "That was, at bottom, the reason I came here. The essay in question is the most important thing I have done in the way of a literary attempt, and I determined to give up the game or to persist, according as I should be able to bring it to the light or not. The other day I got a letter from the editor of the _Rational Review_, telling me that he should be very happy to print it, that he thought it very remarkable, and that he should be glad to hear from me again. He shall hear from me again--he needn't be afraid! It contained a good many of the opinions I have expressed to you, and a good many more besides. I really believe it will attract some attention. At any rate, the simple fact that it is to be published makes an era in my life. This will seem pitiful to you, no doubt, who publish yourself, have been before the world these several years, and are flushed with every kind of triumph; but to me it's simply a tremendous affair. It makes me believe I may do something; it has changed the whole way I look at my future. I have been building castles in the air, and I have put you in the biggest and fairest of them. That's a great change, and, as I say, it's really why I came on." Verena lost not a word of this gentle, conciliatory, explicit statement; it was full of surprises for her, and as soon as Ransom had stopped speaking she inquired: "Why, didn't you feel satisfied about your future before?" Her tone made him feel how little she had suspected he could have the weakness of a discouragement, how little of a question it must have seemed to her that he would one day triumph on his own erratic line. It was the sweetest tribute he had yet received to the idea that he might have ability; the letter of the editor of the _Rational Review_ was nothing to it. "No, I felt very blue; it didn't seem to me at all clear that there was a place for me in the world." "Gracious!" said Verena Tarrant. A quarter of an hour later Miss Birdseye, who had returned to her letters (she had a correspondent at Framingham who usually wrote fifteen pages), became aware that Verena, who was now alone, was re-entering the house. She stopped her on her way, and said she hoped she hadn't pushed Mr. Ransom overboard. "Oh no; he has gone off--round the other way." "Well, I hope he is going to speak for us soon." Verena hesitated a moment. "He speaks with the pen. He has written a very fine article--for the _Rational Review_." Miss Birdseye gazed at her young friend complacently; the sheets of her interminable letter fluttered in the breeze. "Well, it's delightful to see the way it goes on, isn't it?" Verena scarcely knew what to say; then, remembering that Doctor Prance had told her that they might lose their dear old companion any day, and confronting it with something Basil Ransom had just said--that the _Rational Review_ was a quarterly and the editor had notified him that his article would appear only in the number after the next--she reflected that perhaps Miss Birdseye wouldn't be there, so many months later, to see how it was her supposed consort had spoken. She might, therefore, be left to believe what she liked to believe, without fear of a day of reckoning. Verena committed herself to nothing more confirmatory than a kiss, however, which the old lady's displaced head-gear enabled her to imprint upon her forehead and which caused Miss Birdseye to exclaim, "Why, Verena Tarrant, how cold your lips are!" It was not surprising to Verena to hear that her lips were cold; a mortal chill had crept over her, for she knew that this time she should have a tremendous scene with Olive. She found her in her room, to which she had fled on quitting Mr. Ransom's presence; she sat in the window, having evidently sunk into a chair the moment she came in, a position from which she must have seen Verena walk through the garden and down to the water with the intruder. She remained as she had collapsed, quite prostrate; her attitude was the same as that other time Verena had found her waiting, in New York. What Olive was likely to say to her first the girl scarcely knew; her mind, at any rate, was full of an intention of her own. She went straight to her and fell on her knees before her, taking hold of the hands which were clasped together, with nervous intensity, in Miss Chancellor's lap. Verena remained a moment, looking up at her, and then said: "There is something I want to tell you now, without a moment's delay; something I didn't tell you at the time it happened, nor afterwards. Mr. Ransom came out to see me once, at Cambridge, a little while before we went to New York. He spent a couple of hours with me; we took a walk together and saw the colleges. It was after that that he wrote to me--when I answered his letter, as I told you in New York. I didn't tell you then of his visit. We had a great deal of talk about him, and I kept that back. I did so on purpose; I can't explain why, except that I didn't like to tell you, and that I thought it better. But now I want you to know everything; when you know that, you _will_ know everything. It was only one visit--about two hours. I enjoyed it very much--he seemed so much interested. One reason I didn't tell you was that I didn't want you to know that he had come on to Boston, and called on me in Cambridge, without going to see you. I thought it might affect you disagreeably. I suppose you will think I deceived you; certainly I left you with a wrong impression. But now I want you to know all--all!" Verena spoke with breathless haste and eagerness; there was a kind of passion in the way she tried to expiate her former want of candour. Olive listened, staring; at first she seemed scarcely to understand. But Verena perceived that she understood sufficiently when she broke out: "You deceived me--you deceived me! Well, I must say I like your deceit better than such dreadful revelations! And what does anything matter when he has come after you now? What does he want--what has he come for?" "He has come to ask me to be his wife." Verena said this with the same eagerness, with as determined an air of not incurring any reproach this time. But as soon as she had spoken she buried her head in Olive's lap. Olive made no attempt to raise it again, and returned none of the pressure of her hands; she only sat silent for a time, during which Verena wondered that the idea of the episode at Cambridge, laid bare only after so many months, should not have struck her more deeply. Presently she saw it was because the horror of what had just happened drew her off from it. At last Olive asked: "Is that what he told you, off there by the water?" "Yes"--and Verena looked up--"he wanted me to know it right away. He says it's only fair to you that he should give notice of his intentions. He wants to try and make me like him--so he says. He wants to see more of me, and he wants me to know him better." Olive lay back in her chair, with dilated eyes and parted lips. "Verena Tarrant, what _is_ there between you? what _can_ I hold on to, what _can_ I believe? Two hours, in Cambridge, before we went to New York?" The sense that Verena had been perfidious there--perfidious in her reticence--now began to roll over her. "Mercy of heaven, how you did act!" "Olive, it was to spare you." "To spare me? If you really wished to spare me he wouldn't be here now!" Miss Chancellor flashed this out with a sudden violence, a spasm which threw Verena off and made her rise to her feet. For an instant the two young women stood confronted, and a person who had seen them at that moment might have taken them for enemies rather than friends. But any such opposition could last but a few seconds. Verena replied, with a tremor in her voice which was not that of passion, but of charity: "Do you mean that I expected him, that I brought him? I never in my life was more surprised at anything than when I saw him there." "Hasn't he the delicacy of one of his own slave-drivers? Doesn't he know you loathe him?" Verena looked at her friend with a degree of majesty which, with her, was rare. "I don't loathe him--I only dislike his opinions." "Dislike! Oh, misery!" And Olive turned away to the open window, leaning her forehead against the lifted sash. Verena hesitated, then went to her, passing her arm round her. "Don't scold me! help me--help me!" she murmured. Olive gave her a sidelong look; then, catching her up and facing her again--"Will you come away, now, by the next train?" "Flee from him again, as I did in New York? No, no, Olive Chancellor, that's not the way," Verena went on, reasoningly, as if all the wisdom of the ages were seated on her lips. "Then how can we leave Miss Birdseye, in her state? We must stay here--we must fight it out here." "Why not be honest, if you have been false--really honest, not only half so? Why not tell him plainly that you love him?" "Love him, Olive? why, I scarcely know him." "You'll have a chance, if he stays a month!" "I don't dislike him, certainly, as you do. But how can I love him when he tells me he wants me to give up everything, all our work, our faith, our future, never to give another address, to open my lips in public? How can I consent to that?" Verena went on, smiling strangely. "He asks you that, just that way?" "No; it's not that way. It's very kindly." "Kindly? Heaven help you, don't grovel! Doesn't he know it's my house?" Olive added, in a moment. "Of course he won't come into it, if you forbid him." "So that you may meet him in other places--on the shore, in the country?" "I certainly shan't avoid him, hide away from him," said Verena proudly. "I thought I made you believe, in New York, that I really cared for our aspirations. The way for me then is to meet him, feeling conscious of my strength. What if I do like him? what does it matter? I like my work in the world, I like everything I believe in, better." Olive listened to this, and the memory of how, in the house in Tenth Street, Verena had rebuked her doubts, professed her own faith anew, came back to her with a force which made the present situation appear slightly less terrific. Nevertheless, she gave no assent to the girl's logic; she only replied: "But you didn't meet him there; you hurried away from New York, after I was willing you should stay. He affected you very much there; you were not so calm when you came back to me from your expedition to the park as you pretend to be now. To get away from him you gave up all the rest." "I know I wasn't so calm. But now I have had three months to think about it--about the way he affected me there. I take it very quietly." "No, you don't; you are not calm now!" Verena was silent a moment, while Olive's eyes continued to search her, accuse her, condemn her. "It's all the more reason you shouldn't give me stab after stab," she replied, with a gentleness which was infinitely touching. It had an instant effect upon Olive; she burst into tears, threw herself on her friend's bosom. "Oh, don't desert me--don't desert me, or you'll kill me in torture," she moaned, shuddering. "You must help me--you must help me!" cried Verena, imploringly too. XXXVII Basil Ransom spent nearly a month at Marmion; in announcing this fact I am very conscious of its extraordinary character. Poor Olive may well have been thrown back into her alarms by his presenting himself there; for after her return from New York she took to her soul the conviction that she had really done with him. Not only did the impulse of revulsion under which Verena had demanded that their departure from Tenth Street should be immediate appear to her a proof that it had been sufficient for her young friend to touch Mr. Ransom's moral texture with her finger, as it were, in order to draw back for ever; but what she had learned from her companion of his own manifestations, his apparent disposition to throw up the game, added to her feeling of security. He had spoken to Verena of their little excursion as his last opportunity, let her know that he regarded it not as the beginning of a more intimate acquaintance but as the end even of such relations as already existed between them. He gave her up, for reasons best known to himself; if he wanted to frighten Olive he judged that he had frightened her enough: his Southern chivalry suggested to him perhaps that he ought to let her off before he had worried her to death. Doubtless, too, he had perceived how vain it was to hope to make Verena abjure a faith so solidly founded; and though he admired her enough to wish to possess her on his own terms, he shrank from the mortification which the future would have in keeping for him--that of finding that, after six months of courting and in spite of all her sympathy, her desire to do what people expected of her, she despised his opinions as much as the first day. Olive Chancellor was able to a certain extent to believe what she wished to believe, and that was one reason why she had twisted Verena's flight from New York, just after she let her friend see how much she should like to drink deeper of the cup, into a warrant for living in a fool's paradise. If she had been less afraid, she would have read things more clearly; she would have seen that we don't run away from people unless we fear them and that we don't fear them unless we know that we are unarmed. Verena feared Basil Ransom now (though this time she declined to run); but now she had taken up her weapons, she had told Olive she was exposed, she had asked _her_ to be her defence. Poor Olive was stricken as she had never been before, but the extremity of her danger gave her a desperate energy. The only comfort in her situation was that this time Verena had confessed her peril, had thrown herself into her hands. "I like him--I can't help it--I do like him. I don't want to marry him, I don't want to embrace his ideas, which are unspeakably false and horrible; but I like him better than any gentleman I have seen." So much as this the girl announced to her friend as soon as the conversation of which I have just given a sketch was resumed, as it was very soon, you may be sure, and very often, in the course of the next few days. That was her way of saying that a great crisis had arrived in her life, and the statement needed very little amplification to stand as a shy avowal that she too had succumbed to the universal passion. Olive had had her suspicions, her terrors, before; but she perceived now how idle and foolish they had been, and that this was a different affair from any of the "phases" of which she had hitherto anxiously watched the development. As I say, she felt it to be a considerable mercy that Verena's attitude was frank, for it gave her something to take hold of; she could no longer be put off with sophistries about receiving visits from handsome and unscrupulous young men for the sake of the opportunities it gave one to convert them. She took hold, accordingly, with passion, with fury; after the shock of Ransom's arrival had passed away she determined that he should not find her chilled into dumb submission. Verena had told her that she wanted her to hold her tight, to rescue her; and there was no fear that, for an instant, she should sleep at her post. "I like him--I like him; but I want to hate----" "You want to hate him!" Olive broke in. "No, I want to hate my liking. I want you to keep before me all the reasons why I should--many of them so fearfully important. Don't let me lose sight of anything! Don't be afraid I shall not be grateful when you remind me." That was one of the singular speeches that Verena made in the course of their constant discussion of the terrible question, and it must be confessed that she made a great many. The strangest of all was when she protested, as she did again and again to Olive, against the idea of their seeking safety in retreat. She said there was a want of dignity in it--that she had been ashamed, afterwards, of what she had done in rushing away from New York. This care for her moral appearance was, on Verena's part, something new; inasmuch as, though she had struck that note on previous occasions--had insisted on its being her duty to face the accidents and alarms of life--she had never erected such a standard in the face of a disaster so sharply possible. It was not her habit either to talk or to think about her dignity, and when Olive found her taking that tone she felt more than ever that the dreadful, ominous, fatal part of the situation was simply that now, for the first time in all the history of their sacred friendship, Verena was not sincere. She was not sincere when she told her that she wanted to be helped against Mr. Ransom--when she exhorted her, that way, to keep everything that was salutary and fortifying before her eyes. Olive did not go so far as to believe that she was playing a part and putting her off with words which, glossing over her treachery, only made it more cruel; she would have admitted that that treachery was as yet unwitting, that Verena deceived herself first of all, thinking she really wished to be saved. Her phrases about her dignity were insincere, as well as her pretext that they must stay to look after Miss Birdseye: as if Doctor Prance were not abundantly able to discharge that function and would not be enchanted to get them out of the house! Olive had perfectly divined by this time that Doctor Prance had no sympathy with their movement, no general ideas; that she was simply shut up to petty questions of physiological science and of her own professional activity. She would never have invited her down if she had realised this in advance so much as the doctor's dry detachment from all their discussions, their readings and practisings, her constant expeditions to fish and botanise, subsequently enabled her to do. She was very narrow, but it did seem as if she knew more about Miss Birdseye's peculiar physical conditions--they were _very_ peculiar--than any one else, and this was a comfort at a time when that admirable woman seemed to be suffering a loss of vitality. "The great point is that it must be met some time, and it will be a tremendous relief to have it over. He is determined to have it out with me, and if the battle doesn't come off to-day we shall have to fight it to-morrow. I don't see why this isn't as good a time as any other. My lecture for the Music Hall is as good as finished, and I haven't got anything else to do; so I can give all my attention to our personal struggle. It requires a good deal, you would admit, if you knew how wonderfully he can talk. If we should leave this place to-morrow he would come after us to the very next one. He would follow us everywhere. A little while ago we could have escaped him, because he says that then he had no money. He hasn't got much now, but he has got enough to pay his way. He is so encouraged by the reception of his article by the editor of the _Rational Review_, that he is sure that in future his pen will be a resource." These remarks were uttered by Verena after Basil Ransom had been three days at Marmion, and when she reached this point her companion interrupted her with the inquiry, "Is that what he proposes to support you with--his pen?" "Oh yes; of course he admits we should be terribly poor." "And this vision of a literary career is based entirely upon an article that hasn't yet seen the light? I don't see how a man of any refinement can approach a woman with so beggarly an account of his position in life." "He says he wouldn't--he would have been ashamed--three months ago; that was why, when we were in New York, and he felt, even then--well (so he says) all he feels now, he made up his mind not to persist, to let me go. But just lately a change has taken place; his state of mind altered completely, in the course of a week, in consequence of the letter that editor wrote him about his contribution, and his paying for it right off. It was a remarkably flattering letter. He says he believes in his future now; he has before him a vision of distinction, of influence, and of fortune, not great, perhaps, but sufficient to make life tolerable. He doesn't think life is very delightful, in the nature of things; but one of the best things a man can do with it is to get hold of some woman (of course, she must please him very much, to make it worth while) whom he may draw close to him." "And couldn't he get hold of any one but you--among all the exposed millions of our sex?" poor Olive groaned. "Why must he pick you out, when everything he knew about you showed you to be, exactly, the very last?" "That's just what I have asked him, and he only remarks that there is no reasoning about such things. He fell in love with me that first evening, at Miss Birdseye's. So you see there was some ground for that mystic apprehension of yours. It seems as if I pleased him more than any one." Olive flung herself over on the couch, burying her face in the cushions, which she tumbled in her despair, and moaning out that he didn't love Verena, he never had loved her, it was only his hatred of their cause that made him pretend it; he wanted to do that an injury, to do it the worst he could think of. He didn't love her, he hated her, he only wanted to smother her, to crush her, to kill her--as she would infallibly see that he would if she listened to him. It was because he knew that her voice had magic in it, and from the moment he caught its first note he had determined to destroy it. It was not tenderness that moved him--it was devilish malignity; tenderness would be incapable of requiring the horrible sacrifice that he was not ashamed to ask, of requiring her to commit perjury and blasphemy, to desert a work, an interest, with which her very heart-strings were interlaced, to give the lie to her whole young past, to her purest, holiest ambitions. Olive put forward no claim of her own, breathed, at first, at least, not a word of remonstrance in the name of her personal loss, of their blighted union; she only dwelt upon the unspeakable tragedy of a defection from their standard, of a failure on Verena's part to carry out what she had undertaken, of the horror of seeing her bright career blotted out with darkness and tears, of the joy and elation that would fill the breast of all their adversaries at this illustrious, consummate proof of the fickleness, the futility, the predestined servility, of women. A man had only to whistle for her, and she who had pretended most was delighted to come and kneel at his feet. Olive's most passionate protest was summed up in her saying that if Verena were to forsake them it would put back the emancipation of women a hundred years. She did not, during these dreadful days, talk continuously; she had long periods of pale, intensely anxious, watchful silence, interrupted by outbreaks of passionate argument, entreaty, invocation. It was Verena who talked incessantly, Verena who was in a state entirely new to her, and, as any one could see, in an attitude entirely unnatural and overdone. If she was deceiving herself, as Olive said, there was something very affecting in her effort, her ingenuity. If she tried to appear to Olive impartial, coldly judicious, in her attitude with regard to Basil Ransom, and only anxious to see, for the moral satisfaction of the thing, how good a case, as a lover, he might make out for himself and how much he might touch her susceptibilities, she endeavoured, still more earnestly, to practise this fraud upon her own imagination. She abounded in every proof that she should be in despair if she should be overborne, and she thought of arguments even more convincing, if possible, than Olive's, why she should hold on to her old faith, why she should resist even at the cost of acute temporary suffering. She was voluble, fluent, feverish; she was perpetually bringing up the subject, as if to encourage her friend, to show how she kept possession of her judgement, how independent she remained. No stranger situation can be imagined than that of these extraordinary young women at this juncture; it was so singular on Verena's part, in particular, that I despair of presenting it to the reader with the air of reality. To understand it, one must bear in mind her peculiar frankness, natural and acquired, her habit of discussing questions, sentiments, moralities, her education, in the atmosphere of lecture-rooms, of _séances_, her familiarity with the vocabulary of emotion, the mysteries of "the spiritual life." She had learned to breathe and move in a rarefied air, as she would have learned to speak Chinese if her success in life had depended upon it; but this dazzling trick, and all her artlessly artful facilities, were not a part of her essence, an expression of her innermost preferences. What _was_ a part of her essence was the extraordinary generosity with which she could expose herself, give herself away, turn herself inside out, for the satisfaction of a person who made demands of her. Olive, as we know, had made the reflexion that no one was naturally less preoccupied with the idea of her dignity, and though Verena put it forward as an excuse for remaining where they were, it must be admitted that in reality she was very deficient in the desire to be consistent with herself. Olive had contributed with all her zeal to the development of Verena's gift; but I scarcely venture to think now, what she may have said to herself, in the secrecy of deep meditation, about the consequences of cultivating an abundant eloquence. Did she say that Verena was attempting to smother her now in her own phrases? did she view with dismay the fatal effect of trying to have an answer for everything? From Olive's condition during these lamentable weeks there is a certain propriety--a delicacy enjoined by the respect for misfortune--in averting our head. She neither ate nor slept; she could scarcely speak without bursting into tears; she felt so implacably, insidiously baffled. She remembered the magnanimity with which she had declined (the winter before the last) to receive the vow of eternal maidenhood which she had at first demanded and then put by as too crude a test, but which Verena, for a precious hour, for ever flown, would _then_ have been willing to take. She repented of it with bitterness and rage; and then she asked herself, more desperately still, whether even if she held that pledge she should be brave enough to enforce it in the face of actual complications. She believed that if it were in her power to say, "No, I won't let you off; I have your solemn word, and I won't!" Verena would bow to that decree and remain with her; but the magic would have passed out of her spirit for ever, the sweetness out of their friendship, the efficacy out of their work. She said to her again and again that she had utterly changed since that hour she came to her, in New York, after her morning with Mr. Ransom, and sobbed out that they must hurry away. Then she had been wounded, outraged, sickened, and in the interval nothing had happened, nothing but that one exchange of letters, which she knew about, to bring her round to a shameless tolerance. Shameless Verena admitted it to be; she assented over and over to this proposition, and explained, as eagerly each time as if it were the first, what it was that had come to pass, what it was that had brought her round. It had simply come over her that she liked him, that this was the true point of view, the only one from which one could consider the situation in a way that would lead to what she called a _real_ solution--a permanent rest. On this particular point Verena never responded, in the liberal way I have mentioned, without asseverating at the same time that what she desired most in the world was to prove (the picture Olive had held up from the first) that a woman _could_ live on persistently, clinging to a great, vivifying, redemptory idea, without the help of a man. To testify to the end against the stale superstition--mother of every misery--that those gentry were as indispensable as they had proclaimed themselves on the house-tops--that, she passionately protested, was as inspiring a thought in the present poignant crisis as it had ever been. The one grain of comfort that Olive extracted from the terrors that pressed upon her was that now she knew the worst; she knew it since Verena had told her, after so long and so ominous a reticence, of the detestable episode at Cambridge. That seemed to her the worst, because it had been thunder in a clear sky; the incident had sprung from a quarter from which, months before, all symptoms appeared to have vanished. Though Verena had now done all she could to make up for her perfidious silence by repeating everything that passed between them as she sat with Mr. Ransom in Monadnoc Place or strolled with him through the colleges, it imposed itself upon Olive that that occasion was the key of all that had happened since, that he had then obtained an irremediable hold upon her. If Verena had spoken at the time, she would never have let her go to New York; the sole compensation for that hideous mistake was that the girl, recognising it to the full, evidently deemed now that she couldn't be communicative enough. There were certain afternoons in August, long, beautiful and terrible, when one felt that the summer was rounding its curve, and the rustle of the full-leaved trees in the slanting golden light, in the breeze that ought to be delicious, seemed the voice of the coming autumn, of the warnings and dangers of life--portentous, insufferable hours when, as she sat under the softly swaying vine-leaves of the trellis with Miss Birdseye and tried, in order to still her nerves, to read something aloud to her guest, the sound of her own quavering voice made her think more of that baleful day at Cambridge than even of the fact that at that very moment Verena was "off" with Mr. Ransom--had gone to take the little daily walk with him to which it had been arranged that their enjoyment of each other's society should be reduced. Arranged, I say; but that is not exactly the word to describe the compromise arrived at by a kind of tacit exchange of tearful entreaty and tightened grasp, after Ransom had made it definite to Verena that he was indeed going to stay a month and she had promised that she would not resort to base evasions, to flight (which would avail her nothing, he notified her), but would give him a chance, would listen to him a few minutes every day. He had insisted that the few minutes should be an hour, and the way to spend it was obvious. They wandered along the waterside to a rocky, shrub-covered point, which made a walk of just the right duration. Here all the homely languor of the region, the mild, fragrant Cape-quality, the sweetness of white sands, quiet waters, low promontories where there were paths among the barberries and tidal pools gleamed in the sunset--here all the spirit of a ripe summer afternoon seemed to hang in the air. There were wood-walks too; they sometimes followed bosky uplands, where accident had grouped the trees with odd effects of "style," and where in grassy intervals and fragrant nooks of rest they came out upon sudden patches of Arcady. In such places Verena listened to her companion with her watch in her hand, and she wondered, very sincerely, how he could care for a girl who made the conditions of courtship so odious. He had recognised, of course, at the very first, that he could not inflict himself again upon Miss Chancellor, and after that awkward morning-call I have described he did not again, for the first three weeks of his stay at Marmion, penetrate into the cottage whose back windows overlooked the deserted shipyard. Olive, as may be imagined, made, on this occasion, no protest for the sake of being ladylike or of preventing him from putting her apparently in the wrong. The situation between them was too grim; it was war to the knife, it was a question of which should pull hardest. So Verena took a tryst with the young man as if she had been a maid-servant and Basil Ransom a "follower." They met a little way from the house; beyond it, outside the village. XXXVIII Olive thought she knew the worst, as we have perceived; but the worst was really something she could not know, inasmuch as up to this time Verena chose as little to confide to her on that one point as she was careful to expatiate with her on every other. The change that had taken place in the object of Basil Ransom's merciless devotion since the episode in New York was, briefly, just this change--that the words he had spoken to her there about her genuine vocation, as distinguished from the hollow and factitious ideal with which her family and her association with Olive Chancellor had saddled her--these words, the most effective and penetrating he had uttered, had sunk into her soul and worked and fermented there. She had come at last to believe them, and that was the alteration, the transformation. They had kindled a light in which she saw herself afresh and, strange to say, liked herself better than in the old exaggerated glamour of the lecture-lamps. She could not tell Olive this yet, for it struck at the root of everything, and the dreadful, delightful sensation filled her with a kind of awe at all that it implied and portended. She was to burn everything she had adored; she was to adore everything she had burned. The extraordinary part of it was that though she felt the situation to be, as I say, tremendously serious, she was not ashamed of the treachery which she--yes, decidedly, by this time she must admit it to herself--she meditated. It was simply that the truth had changed sides; that radiant image began to look at her from Basil Ransom's expressive eyes. She loved, she was in love--she felt it in every throb of her being. Instead of being constituted by nature for entertaining that sentiment in an exceptionally small degree (which had been the implication of her whole crusade, the warrant for her offer of old to Olive to renounce), she was framed, apparently, to allow it the largest range, the highest intensity. It was always passion, in fact; but now the object was other. Formerly she had been convinced that the fire of her spirit was a kind of double flame, one half of which was responsive friendship for a most extraordinary person, and the other pity for the sufferings of women in general. Verena gazed aghast at the colourless dust into which, in three short months (counting from the episode in New York), such a conviction as that could crumble; she felt it must be a magical touch that could bring about such a cataclysm. Why Basil Ransom had been deputed by fate to exercise this spell was more than she could say--poor Verena, who up to so lately had flattered herself that she had a wizard's wand in her own pocket. When she saw him a little way off, about five o'clock--the hour she usually went out to meet him--waiting for her at a bend of the road which lost itself, after a winding, straggling mile or two, in the indented, insulated "point," where the wandering bee droned through the hot hours with a vague, misguided flight, she felt that his tall, watching figure, with the low horizon behind, represented well the importance, the towering eminence he had in her mind--the fact that he was just now, to her vision, the most definite and upright, the most incomparable, object in the world. If he had not been at his post when she expected him she would have had to stop and lean against something, for weakness; her whole being would have throbbed more painfully than it throbbed at present, though finding him there made her nervous enough. And who was he, what was he? she asked herself. What did he offer her besides a chance (in which there was no compensation of brilliancy or fashion) to falsify, in a conspicuous manner, every hope and pledge she had hitherto given? He allowed her, certainly, no illusion on the subject of the fate she should meet as his wife; he flung over it no rosiness of promised ease; he let her know that she should be poor, withdrawn from view, a partner of his struggle, of his severe, hard, unique stoicism. When he spoke of such things as these, and bent his eyes on her, she could not keep the tears from her own; she felt that to throw herself into his life (bare and arid as for the time it was) was the condition of happiness for her, and yet that the obstacles were terrible, cruel. It must not be thought that the revolution which was taking place in her was unaccompanied with suffering. She suffered less than Olive certainly, for her bent was not, like her friend's, in that direction; but as the wheel of her experience went round she had the sensation of being ground very small indeed. With her light, bright texture, her complacent responsiveness, her genial, graceful, ornamental cast, her desire to keep on pleasing others at the time when a force she had never felt before was pushing her to please herself, poor Verena lived in these days in a state of moral tension--with a sense of being strained and aching--which she didn't betray more only because it was absolutely not in her power to look desperate. An immense pity for Olive sat in her heart, and she asked herself how far it was necessary to go in the path of self-sacrifice. Nothing was wanting to make the wrong she should do her complete; she had deceived her up to the very last; only three months earlier she had reasserted her vows, given her word, with every show of fidelity and enthusiasm. There were hours when it seemed to Verena that she must really push her inquiry no further, but content herself with the conclusion that she loved as deeply as a woman could love and that it didn't make any difference. She felt Olive's grasp too clinching, too terrible. She said to herself that she should never dare, that she might as well give up early as late; that the scene, at the end, would be something she couldn't face; that she had no right to blast the poor creature's whole future. She had a vision of those dreadful years; she knew that Olive would never get over the disappointment. It would touch her in the point where she felt everything most keenly; she would be incurably lonely and eternally humiliated. It was a very peculiar thing, their friendship; it had elements which made it probably as complete as any (between women) that had ever existed. Of course it had been more on Olive's side than on hers, she had always known that; but that, again, didn't make any difference. It was of no use for her to tell herself that Olive had begun it entirely and she had only responded out of a kind of charmed politeness, at first, to a tremendous appeal. She had lent herself, given herself, utterly, and she ought to have known better if she didn't mean to abide by it. At the end of three weeks she felt that her inquiry was complete, but that after all nothing was gained except an immense interest in Basil Ransom's views and the prospect of an eternal heartache. He had told her he wanted her to know him, and now she knew him pretty thoroughly. She knew him and she adored him, but it didn't make any difference. To give him up or to give Olive up--this effort would be the greater of the two. If Basil Ransom had the advantage, as far back as that day in New York, of having struck a note which was to reverberate, it may easily be imagined that he did not fail to follow it up. If he had projected a new light into Verena's mind, and made the idea of giving herself to a man more agreeable to her than that of giving herself to a movement, he found means to deepen this illumination, to drag her former standard in the dust. He was in a very odd situation indeed, carrying on his siege with his hands tied. As he had to do everything in an hour a day, he perceived that he must confine himself to the essential. The essential was to show her how much he loved her, and then to press, to press, always to press. His hovering about Miss Chancellor's habitation without going in was a strange regimen to be subjected to, and he was sorry not to see more of Miss Birdseye, besides often not knowing what to do with himself in the mornings and evenings. Fortunately he had brought plenty of books (volumes of rusty aspect, picked up at New York bookstalls), and in such an affair as this he could take the less when the more was forbidden him. For the mornings, sometimes, he had the resource of Doctor Prance, with whom he made a great many excursions on the water. She was devoted to boating and an ardent fisherwoman, and they used to pull out into the bay together, cast their lines, and talk a prodigious amount of heresy. She met him, as Verena met him, "in the environs," but in a different spirit. He was immensely amused at her attitude, and saw that nothing in the world could, as he expressed it, make her wink. She would never blench nor show surprise; she had an air of taking everything abnormal for granted; betrayed no consciousness of the oddity of Ransom's situation; said nothing to indicate she had noticed that Miss Chancellor was in a frenzy or that Verena had a daily appointment. You might have supposed from her manner that it was as natural for Ransom to sit on a fence half a mile off as in one of the red rocking-chairs, of the so-called "Shaker" species, which adorned Miss Chancellor's back verandah. The only thing our young man didn't like about Doctor Prance was the impression she gave him (out of the crevices of her reticence he hardly knew how it leaked) that she thought Verena rather slim. She took an ironical view of almost any kind of courtship, and he could see she didn't wonder women were such featherheads, so long as, whatever brittle follies they cultivated, they could get men to come and sit on fences for them. Doctor Prance told him Miss Birdseye noticed nothing; she had sunk, within a few days, into a kind of transfigured torpor; she didn't seem to know whether Mr. Ransom were anywhere round or not. She guessed she thought he had just come down for a day and gone off again; she probably supposed he just wanted to get toned up a little by Miss Tarrant. Sometimes, out in the boat, when she looked at him in vague, sociable silence, while she waited for a bite (she delighted in a bite), she had an expression of diabolical shrewdness. When Ransom was not scorching there beside her (he didn't mind the sun of Massachusetts), he lounged about in the pastoral land which hung (at a very moderate elevation) above the shore. He always had a book in his pocket, and he lay under whispering trees and kicked his heels and made up his mind on what side he should take Verena the next time. At the end of a fortnight he had succeeded (so he believed, at least) far better than he had hoped, in this sense, that the girl had now the air of making much more light of her "gift." He was indeed quite appalled at the facility with which she threw it over, gave up the idea that it was useful and precious. That had been what he wanted her to do, and the fact of the sacrifice (once she had fairly looked at it) costing her so little only proved his contention, only made it clear that it was not necessary to her happiness to spend half her life ranting (no matter how prettily) in public. All the same he said to himself that, to make up for the loss of whatever was sweet in the reputation of the thing, he should have to be tremendously nice to her in all the coming years. During the first week he was at Marmion she made of him an inquiry which touched on this point. "Well, if it's all a mere delusion, why should this facility have been given me--why should I have been saddled with a superfluous talent? I don't care much about it--I don't mind telling you that; but I confess I should like to know what is to become of all that part of me, if I retire into private life, and live, as you say, simply to be charming for you. I shall be like a singer with a beautiful voice (you have told me yourself my voice is beautiful) who has accepted some decree of never raising a note. Isn't that a great waste, a great violation of nature? Were not our talents given us to use, and have we any right to smother them and deprive our fellow-creatures of such pleasure as they may confer? In the arrangement you propose" (that was Verena's way of speaking of the question of their marriage) "I don't see what provision is made for the poor faithful, dismissed servant. It is all very well to be charming to you, but there are people who have told me that once I get on a platform I am charming to all the world. There is no harm in my speaking of that, because you have told me so yourself. Perhaps you intend to have a platform erected in our front parlour, where I can address you every evening, and put you to sleep after your work. I say our _front_ parlour, as if it were certain we should have two! It doesn't look as if our means would permit that--and we must have some place to dine, if there is to be a platform in our sitting-room." "My dear young woman, it will be easy to solve the difficulty: the dining-table itself shall be our platform, and you shall mount on top of that." This was Basil Ransom's sportive reply to his companion's very natural appeal for light, and the reader will remark that if it led her to push her investigation no further, she was very easily satisfied. There was more reason, however, as well as more appreciation of a very considerable mystery, in what he went on to say. "Charming to me, charming to all the world? What will become of your charm?--is that what you want to know? It will be about five thousand times greater than it is now; that's what will become of it. We shall find plenty of room for your facility; it will lubricate our whole existence. Believe me, Miss Tarrant, these things will take care of themselves. You won't sing in the Music Hall, but you will sing to me; you will sing to every one who knows you and approaches you. Your gift is indestructible; don't talk as if I either wanted to wipe it out or should be able to make it a particle less divine. I want to give it another direction, certainly; but I don't want to stop your activity. Your gift is the gift of expression, and there is nothing I can do for you that will make you less expressive. It won't gush out at a fixed hour and on a fixed day, but it will irrigate, it will fertilise, it will brilliantly adorn your conversation. Think how delightful it will be when your influence becomes really social. Your facility, as you call it, will simply make you, in conversation, the most charming woman in America." It is to be feared, indeed, that Verena was easily satisfied (convinced, I mean, not that she ought to succumb to him, but that there were lovely, neglected, almost unsuspected truths on his side); and there is further evidence on the same head in the fact that after the first once or twice she found nothing to say to him (much as she was always saying to herself) about the cruel effect her apostasy would have upon Olive. She forbore to plead that reason after she had seen how angry it made him, and with how almost savage a contempt he denounced so flimsy a pretext. He wanted to know since when it was more becoming to take up with a morbid old maid than with an honourable young man; and when Verena pronounced the sacred name of friendship he inquired what fanatical sophistry excluded him from a similar privilege. She had told him, in a moment of expansion (Verena believed she was immensely on her guard, but her guard was very apt to be lowered), that his visits to Marmion cast in Olive's view a remarkable light upon his chivalry; she chose to regard his resolute pursuit of Verena as a covert persecution of herself. Verena repented, as soon as she had spoken, of having given further currency to this taunt; but she perceived the next moment no harm was done, Basil Ransom taking in perfectly good part Miss Chancellor's reflexions on his delicacy, and making them the subject of much free laughter. She could not know, for in the midst of his hilarity the young man did not compose himself to tell her, that he had made up his mind on this question before he left New York--as long ago as when he wrote her the note (subsequent to her departure from that city) to which allusion has already been made, and which was simply the fellow of the letter addressed to her after his visit to Cambridge: a friendly, respectful, yet rather pregnant sign that, decidedly, on second thoughts, separation didn't imply for him the intention of silence. We know a little about his second thoughts, as much as is essential, and especially how the occasion of their springing up had been the windfall of an editor's encouragement. The importance of that encouragement, to Basil's imagination, was doubtless much augmented by his desire for an excuse to take up again a line of behaviour which he had forsworn (small as had, as yet, been his opportunity to indulge in it) very much less than he supposed; still, it worked an appreciable revolution in his view of his case, and made him ask himself what amount of consideration he should (from the most refined Southern point of view) owe Miss Chancellor in the event of his deciding to go after Verena Tarrant in earnest. He was not slow to decide that he owed her none. Chivalry had to do with one's relations with people one hated, not with those one loved. He didn't hate poor Miss Olive, though she might make him yet; and even if he did, any chivalry was all moonshine which should require him to give up the girl he adored in order that his third cousin should see he could be gallant. Chivalry was forbearance and generosity with regard to the weak; and there was nothing weak about Miss Olive, she was a fighting woman, and she would fight him to the death, giving him not an inch of odds. He felt that she was fighting there all day long, in her cottage fortress; her resistance was in the air he breathed, and Verena came out to him sometimes quite limp and pale from the tussle. It was in the same jocose spirit with which he regarded Olive's view of the sort of standard a Mississippian should live up to that he talked to Verena about the lecture she was preparing for her great exhibition at the Music Hall. He learned from her that she was to take the field in the manner of Mrs. Farrinder, for a winter campaign, carrying with her a tremendous big gun. Her engagements were all made, her route was marked out; she expected to repeat her lecture in about fifty different places. It was to be called "A Woman's Reason," and both Olive and Miss Birdseye thought it, so far as they could tell in advance, her most promising effort. She wasn't going to trust to inspiration this time; she didn't want to meet a big Boston audience without knowing where she was. Inspiration, moreover, seemed rather to have faded away; in consequence of Olive's influence she had read and studied so much that it seemed now as if everything must take form beforehand. Olive was a splendid critic, whether he liked her or not, and she had made her go over every word of her lecture twenty times. There wasn't an intonation she hadn't made her practise; it was very different from the old system, when her father had worked her up. If Basil considered women superficial, it was a pity he couldn't see what Olive's standard of preparation was, or be present at their rehearsals, in the evening, in their little parlour. Ransom's state of mind in regard to the affair at the Music Hall was simply this--that he was determined to circumvent it if he could. He covered it with ridicule, in talking of it to Verena, and the shafts he levelled at it went so far that he could see she thought he exaggerated his dislike to it. In point of fact he could not have overstated that; so odious did the idea seem to him that she was soon to be launched in a more infatuated career. He vowed to himself that she should never take that fresh start which would commit her irretrievably if she should succeed (and she would succeed--he had not the slightest doubt of her power to produce a sensation in the Music Hall), to the acclamations of the newspapers. He didn't care for her engagements, her campaigns, or all the expectancy of her friends; to "squelch" all that, at a stroke, was the dearest wish of his heart. It would represent to him his own success, it would symbolise his victory. It became a fixed idea with him, and he warned her again and again. When she laughed and said she didn't see how he could stop her unless he kidnapped her, he really pitied her for not perceiving, beneath his ominous pleasantries, the firmness of his resolution. He felt almost capable of kidnapping her. It was palpably in the air that she would become "widely popular," and that idea simply sickened him. He felt as differently as possible about it from Mr. Matthias Pardon. One afternoon, as he returned with Verena from a walk which had been accomplished completely within the prescribed conditions, he saw, from a distance, Doctor Prance, who had emerged bare-headed from the cottage, and, shading her eyes from the red, declining sun, was looking up and down the road. It was part of the regulation that Ransom should separate from Verena before reaching the house, and they had just paused to exchange their last words (which every day promoted the situation more than any others), when Doctor Prance began to beckon to them with much animation. They hurried forward, Verena pressing her hand to her heart, for she had instantly guessed that something terrible had happened to Olive--she had given out, fainted away, perhaps fallen dead, with the cruelty of the strain. Doctor Prance watched them come, with a curious look in her face; it was not a smile, but a kind of exaggerated intimation that she noticed nothing. In an instant she had told them what was the matter. Miss Birdseye had had a sudden weakness; she had remarked abruptly that she was dying, and her pulse, sure enough, had fallen to nothing. She was down on the piazza with Miss Chancellor and herself, and they had tried to get her up to bed. But she wouldn't let them move her; she was passing away, and she wanted to pass away just there, in such a pleasant place, in her customary chair, looking at the sunset. She asked for Miss Tarrant, and Miss Chancellor told her she was out--walking with Mr. Ransom. Then she wanted to know if Mr. Ransom was still there--she supposed he had gone. (Basil knew, by Verena, apart from this, that his name had not been mentioned to the old lady since the morning he saw her.) She expressed a wish to see him--she had something to say to him; and Miss Chancellor told her that he would be back soon, with Verena, and that they would bring him in. Miss Birdseye said she hoped they wouldn't be long, because she was sinking; and Doctor Prance now added, like a person who knew what she was talking about, that it was, in fact, the end. She had darted out two or three times to look for them, and they must step right in. Verena had scarcely given her time to tell her story; she had already rushed into the house. Ransom followed with Doctor Prance, conscious that for him the occasion was doubly solemn; inasmuch as if he was to see poor Miss Birdseye yield up her philanthropic soul, he was on the other hand doubtless to receive from Miss Chancellor a reminder that _she_ had no intention of quitting the game. By the time he had made this reflexion he stood in the presence of his kinswoman and her venerable guest, who was sitting just as he had seen her before, muffled and bonneted, on the back piazza of the cottage. Olive Chancellor was on one side of her holding one of her hands, and on the other was Verena, who had dropped on her knees, close to her, bending over those of the old lady. "Did you ask for me--did you want me?" the girl said tenderly. "I will never leave you again." "Oh, I won't keep you long. I only wanted to see you once more." Miss Birdseye's voice was very low, like that of a person breathing with difficulty; but it had no painful nor querulous note--it expressed only the cheerful weariness which had marked all this last period of her life, and which seemed to make it now as blissful as it was suitable that she should pass away. Her head was thrown back against the top of the chair, the ribbon which confined her ancient hat hung loose, and the late afternoon light covered her octogenarian face and gave it a kind of fairness, a double placidity. There was, to Ransom, something almost august in the trustful renunciation of her countenance; something in it seemed to say that she had been ready long before, but as the time was not ripe she had waited, with her usual faith that all was for the best; only, at present, since the right conditions met, she couldn't help feeling that it was quite a luxury, the greatest she had ever tasted. Ransom knew why it was that Verena had tears in her eyes as she looked up at her patient old friend; she had spoken to him, often, during the last three weeks, of the stories Miss Birdseye had told her of the great work of her life, her mission, repeated year after year, among the Southern blacks. She had gone among them with every precaution, to teach them to read and write; she had carried them Bibles and told them of the friends they had in the North who prayed for their deliverance. Ransom knew that Verena didn't reproduce these legends with a view to making him ashamed of his Southern origin, his connexion with people who, in a past not yet remote, had made that kind of apostleship necessary; he knew this because she had heard what he thought of all that chapter himself; he had given her a kind of historical summary of the slavery question which left her no room to say that he was more tender to that particular example of human imbecility than he was to any other. But she had told him that this was what _she_ would have liked to do--to wander, alone, with her life in her hand, on an errand of mercy, through a country in which society was arrayed against her; she would have liked it much better than simply talking about the right from the gas-lighted vantage of the New England platform. Ransom had replied simply "Balderdash!" it being his theory, as we have perceived, that he knew much more about Verena's native bent than the young lady herself. This did not, however, as he was perfectly aware, prevent her feeling that she had come too late for the heroic age of New England life, and regarding Miss Birdseye as a battered, immemorial monument of it. Ransom could share such an admiration as that, especially at this moment; he had said to Verena, more than once, that he wished he might have met the old lady in Carolina or Georgia before the war--shown her round among the negroes and talked over New England ideas with her; there were a good many he didn't care much about now, but at that time they would have been tremendously refreshing. Miss Birdseye had given herself away so lavishly all her life that it was rather odd there was anything left of her for the supreme surrender. When he looked at Olive he saw that she meant to ignore him; and during the few minutes he remained on the spot his kinswoman never met his eye. She turned away, indeed, as soon as Doctor Prance said, leaning over Miss Birdseye, "I have brought Mr. Ransom to you. Don't you remember you asked for him?" "I am very glad to see you again," Ransom remarked. "It was very good of you to think of me." At the sound of his voice Olive rose and left her place; she sank into a chair at the other end of the piazza, turning round to rest her arms on the back and bury her head in them. Miss Birdseye looked at the young man still more dimly than she had ever done before. "I thought you were gone. You never came back." "He spends all his time in long walks; he enjoys the country so much," Verena said. "Well, it's very beautiful, what I see from here. I haven't been strong enough to move round since the first days. But I am going to move now." She smiled when Ransom made a gesture as if to help her, and added: "Oh, I don't mean I am going to move out of my chair." "Mr. Ransom has been out in a boat with me several times. I have been showing him how to cast a line," said Doctor Prance, who appeared to deprecate a sentimental tendency. "Oh, well, then, you have been one of our party; there seems to be every reason why you should feel that you belong to us." Miss Birdseye looked at the visitor with a sort of misty earnestness, as if she wished to communicate with him further; then her glance turned slightly aside; she tried to see what had become of Olive. She perceived that Miss Chancellor had withdrawn herself, and, closing her eyes, she mused, ineffectually, on the mystery she had not grasped, the peculiarity of Basil Ransom's relations with her hostess. She was visibly too weak to concern herself with it very actively; she only felt, now that she seemed really to be going, a desire to reconcile and harmonise. But she presently exhaled a low, soft sigh--a kind of confession that it was too mixed, that she gave it up. Ransom had feared for a moment that she was about to indulge in some appeal to Olive, some attempt to make him join hands with that young lady, as a supreme satisfaction to herself. But he saw that her strength failed her, and that, besides, things were getting less clear to her; to his considerable relief, inasmuch as, though he would not have objected to joining hands, the expression of Miss Chancellor's figure and her averted face, with their desperate collapse, showed him well enough how _she_ would have met such a proposal. What Miss Birdseye clung to, with benignant perversity, was the idea that, in spite of his exclusion from the house, which was perhaps only the result of a certain high-strung jealousy on Olive's part of her friend's other personal ties, Verena had drawn him in, had made him sympathise with the great reform and desire to work for it. Ransom saw no reason why such an illusion should be dear to Miss Birdseye; his contact with her in the past had been so momentary that he could not account for her taking an interest in his views, in his throwing his weight into the right scale. It was part of the general desire for justice that fermented within her, the passion for progress; and it was also in some degree her interest in Verena--a suspicion, innocent and idyllic, as any such suspicion on Miss Birdseye's part must be, that there was something between them, that the closest of all unions (as Miss Birdseye at least supposed it was) was preparing itself. Then his being a Southerner gave a point to the whole thing; to bring round a Southerner would be a real encouragement for one who had seen, even at a time when she was already an old woman, what was the tone of opinion in the cotton States. Ransom had no wish to discourage her, and he bore well in mind the caution Doctor Prance had given him about destroying her last theory. He only bowed his head very humbly, not knowing what he had done to earn the honour of being the subject of it. His eyes met Verena's as she looked up at him from her place at Miss Birdseye's feet, and he saw she was following his thought, throwing herself into it, and trying to communicate to him a wish. The wish touched him immensely; she was dreadfully afraid he would betray her to Miss Birdseye--let her know how she had cooled off. Verena was ashamed of that now, and trembled at the danger of exposure; her eyes adjured him to be careful of what he said. Her tremor made him glow a little in return, for it seemed to him the fullest confession of his influence she had yet made. "We have been a very happy little party," she said to the old lady. "It is delightful that you should have been able to be with us all these weeks." "It has been a great rest. I am very tired. I can't speak much. It has been a lovely time. I have done so much--so many things." "I guess I wouldn't talk much, Miss Birdseye," said Doctor Prance, who had now knelt down on the other side of her. "We know how much you have done. Don't you suppose every one knows _your_ life?" "It isn't much--only I tried to take hold. When I look back from here, from where we've sat, I can measure the progress. That's what I wanted to say to you and Mr. Ransom--because I'm going fast. Hold on to me, that's right; but you can't keep me. I don't want to stay now; I presume I shall join some of the others that we lost long ago. Their faces come back to me now, quite fresh. It seems as if they might be waiting; as if they were all there; as if they wanted to hear. You mustn't think there's no progress because you don't see it all right off; that's what I wanted to say. It isn't till you have gone a long way that you can feel what's been done. That's what I see when I look back from here; I see that the community wasn't half waked up when I was young." "It is you that have waked it up more than any one else, and it's for that we honour you, Miss Birdseye!" Verena cried, with a sudden violence of emotion. "If you were to live for a thousand years, you would think only of others--you would think only of helping on humanity. You are our heroine, you are our saint, and there has never been any one like you!" Verena had no glance for Ransom now, and there was neither deprecation nor entreaty in her face. A wave of contrition, of shame, had swept over her--a quick desire to atone for her secret swerving by a renewed recognition of the nobleness of such a life as Miss Birdseye's. "Oh, I haven't effected very much; I have only cared and hoped. You will do more than I have ever done--you and Olive Chancellor, because you are young and bright, brighter than I ever was; and besides, everything has got started." "Well, you've got started, Miss Birdseye," Doctor Prance remarked, with raised eyebrows, protesting dryly but kindly, and putting forward, with an air as if, after all, it didn't matter much, an authority that had been superseded. The manner in which this competent little woman indulged her patient showed sufficiently that the good lady was sinking fast. "We will think of you always, and your name will be sacred to us, and that will teach us singleness and devotion," Verena went on, in the same tone, still not meeting Ransom's eyes again, and speaking as if she were trying now to stop herself, to tie herself by a vow. "Well, it's the thing you and Olive have given your lives to that has absorbed me most, of late years. I did want to see justice done--to us. I haven't seen it, but you will. And Olive will. Where is she--why isn't she near me, to bid me farewell? And Mr. Ransom will--and he will be proud to have helped." "Oh, mercy, mercy!" cried Verena, burying her head in Miss Birdseye's lap. "You are not mistaken if you think I desire above all things that your weakness, your generosity, should be protected," Ransom said, rather ambiguously, but with pointed respectfulness. "I shall remember you as an example of what women are capable of," he added; and he had no subsequent compunctions for the speech, for he thought poor Miss Birdseye, for all her absence of profile, essentially feminine. A kind of frantic moan from Olive Chancellor responded to these words, which had evidently struck her as an insolent sarcasm; and at the same moment Doctor Prance sent Ransom a glance which was an adjuration to depart. "Good-bye, Olive Chancellor," Miss Birdseye murmured. "I don't want to stay, though I should like to see what you will see." "I shall see nothing but shame and ruin!" Olive shrieked, rushing across to her old friend, while Ransom discreetly quitted the scene. XXXIX He met Doctor Prance in the village the next morning, and as soon as he looked at her he saw that the event which had been impending at Miss Chancellor's had taken place. It was not that her aspect was funereal; but it contained, somehow, an announcement that she had, for the present, no more thought to give to casting a line. Miss Birdseye had quietly passed away, in the evening, an hour or two after Ransom's visit. They had wheeled her chair into the house; there had been nothing to do but wait for complete extinction. Miss Chancellor and Miss Tarrant had sat by her there, without moving, each of her hands in theirs, and she had just melted away, towards eight o'clock. It was a lovely death; Doctor Prance intimated that she had never seen any that she thought more seasonable. She added that she was a good woman--one of the old sort; and that was the only funeral oration that Basil Ransom was destined to hear pronounced upon Miss Birdseye. The impression of the simplicity and humility of her end remained with him, and he reflected more than once, during the days that followed, that the absence of pomp and circumstance which had marked her career marked also the consecration of her memory. She had been almost celebrated, she had been active, earnest, ubiquitous beyond any one else, she had given herself utterly to charities and creeds and causes; and yet the only persons, apparently, to whom her death made a real difference were three young women in a small "frame-house" on Cape Cod. Ransom learned from Doctor Prance that her mortal remains were to be committed to their rest in the little cemetery at Marmion, in sight of the pretty sea-view she loved to gaze at, among old mossy headstones of mariners and fisher-folk. She had seen the place when she first came down, when she was able to drive out a little, and she had said she thought it must be pleasant to lie there. It was not an injunction, a definite request; it had not occurred to Miss Birdseye, at the end of her days, to take an exacting line or to make, for the first time in eighty years, a personal claim. But Olive Chancellor and Verena had put their construction on her appreciation of the quietest corner of the striving, suffering world so weary a pilgrim of philanthropy had ever beheld. In the course of the day Ransom received a note of five lines from Verena, the purport of which was to tell him that he must not expect to see her again for the present; she wished to be very quiet and think things over. She added the recommendation that he should leave the neighbourhood for three or four days; there were plenty of strange old places to see in that part of the country. Ransom meditated deeply on this missive, and perceived that he should be guilty of very bad taste in not immediately absenting himself. He knew that to Olive Chancellor's vision his conduct already wore that stain, and it was useless, therefore, for him to consider how he could displease her either less or more. But he wished to convey to Verena the impression that he would do anything in the wide world to gratify _her_ except give her up, and as he packed his valise he had an idea that he was both behaving beautifully and showing the finest diplomatic sense. To go away proved to himself how secure he felt, what a conviction he had that however she might turn and twist in his grasp he held her fast. The emotion she had expressed as he stood there before poor Miss Birdseye was only one of her instinctive contortions; he had taken due note of that--said to himself that a good many more would probably occur before she would be quiet. A woman that listens is lost, the old proverb says; and what had Verena done for the last three weeks but listen?--not very long each day, but with a degree of attention of which her not withdrawing from Marmion was the measure. She had not told him that Olive wanted to whisk her away, but he had not needed this confidence to know that if she stayed on the field it was because she preferred to. She probably had an idea she was fighting, but if she should fight no harder than she had fought up to now he should continue to take the same view of his success. She meant her request that he should go away for a few days as something combative; but, decidedly, he scarcely felt the blow. He liked to think that he had great tact with women, and he was sure Verena would be struck with this quality in reading, in the note he presently addressed her in reply to her own, that he had determined to take a little run to Provincetown. As there was no one under the rather ineffectual roof which sheltered him to whose hand he could entrust the billet--at the Marmion hotel one had to be one's own messenger--he walked to the village post-office to request that his note should be put into Miss Chancellor's box. Here he met Doctor Prance, for a second time that day; she had come to deposit the letters by which Olive notified a few of Miss Birdseye's friends of the time and place of her obsequies. This young lady was shut up with Verena, and Doctor Prance was transacting all their business for them. Ransom felt that he made no admission that would impugn his estimate of the sex to which she in a manner belonged, in reflecting that she would acquit herself of these delegated duties with the greatest rapidity and accuracy. He told her he was going to absent himself for a few days, and expressed a friendly hope that he should find her at Marmion on his return. Her keen eye gauged him a moment, to see if he were joking; then she said, "Well, I presume you think I can do as I like. But I can't." "You mean you have got to go back to work?" "Well, yes; my place is empty in the city." "So is every other place. You had better remain till the end of the season." "It's all one season to me. I want to see my office-slate. I wouldn't have stayed so long for any one but her." "Well, then, good-bye," Ransom said. "I shall always remember our little expeditions. And I wish you every professional distinction." "That's why I want to go back," Doctor Prance replied, with her flat, limited manner. He kept her a moment; he wanted to ask her about Verena. While he was hesitating how to form his question she remarked, evidently wishing to leave him a little memento of her sympathy, "Well, I hope you will be able to follow up your views." "My views, Miss Prance? I am sure I have never mentioned them to you!" Then Ransom added, "How is Miss Tarrant to-day? is she more calm?" "Oh no, she isn't calm at all," Doctor Prance answered, very definitely. "Do you mean she's excited, emotional?" "Well, she doesn't talk, she's perfectly still, and so is Miss Chancellor. They're as still as two watchers--they don't speak. But you can hear the silence vibrate." "Vibrate?" "Well, they are very nervous." Ransom was confident, as I say, yet the effort that he made to extract a good omen from this characterisation of the two ladies at the cottage was not altogether successful. He would have liked to ask Doctor Prance whether she didn't think he might count on Verena in the end; but he was too shy for this, the subject of his relations with Miss Tarrant never yet having been touched upon between them; and, besides, he didn't care to hear himself put a question which was more or less an implication of a doubt. So he compromised, with a sort of oblique and general inquiry about Olive; that might draw some light. "What do you think of Miss Chancellor--how does she strike you?" Doctor Prance reflected a little, with an apparent consciousness that he meant more than he asked. "Well, she's losing flesh," she presently replied; and Ransom turned away, not encouraged, and feeling that, no doubt, the little doctress had better go back to her office-slate. He did the thing handsomely, remained at Provincetown a week, inhaling the delicious air, smoking innumerable cigars, and lounging among the ancient wharves, where the grass grew thick and the impression of fallen greatness was still stronger than at Marmion. Like his friends the Bostonians he was very nervous; there were days when he felt he must rush back to the margin of that mild inlet; the voices of the air whispered to him that in his absence he was being outwitted. Nevertheless he stayed the time he had determined to stay; quieting himself with the reflexion that there was nothing they could do to elude him unless, perhaps, they should start again for Europe, which they were not likely to do. If Miss Olive tried to hide Verena away in the United States he would undertake to find her--though he was obliged to confess that a flight to Europe would baffle him, owing to his want of cash for pursuit. Nothing, however, was less probable than that they would cross the Atlantic on the eve of Verena's projected _début_ at the Music Hall. Before he went back to Marmion he wrote to this young lady, to announce his reappearance there and let her know that he expected she would come out to meet him the morning after. This conveyed the assurance that he intended to take as much of the day as he could get; he had had enough of the system of dragging through all the hours till a mere fraction of time was left before night, and he couldn't wait so long, at any rate, the day after his return. It was the afternoon train that had brought him back from Provincetown, and in the evening he ascertained that the Bostonians had not deserted the field. There were lights in the windows of the house under the elms, and he stood where he had stood that evening with Doctor Prance and listened to the waves of Verena's voice, as she rehearsed her lecture. There were no waves this time, no sounds, and no sign of life but the lamps; the place had apparently not ceased to be given over to the conscious silence described by Doctor Prance. Ransom felt that he gave an immense proof of chivalry in not calling upon Verena to grant him an interview on the spot. She had not answered his last note, but the next day she kept the tryst, at the hour he had proposed; he saw her advance along the road, in a white dress, under a big parasol, and again he found himself liking immensely the way she walked. He was dismayed, however, at her face and what it portended; pale, with red eyes, graver than she had ever been before, she appeared to have spent the period of his absence in violent weeping. Yet that it was not for him she had been crying was proved by the very first word she spoke. "I only came out to tell you definitely it's impossible! I have thought over everything, taking plenty of time--over and over; and that is my answer, finally, positively. You must take it--you shall have no other." Basil Ransom gazed, frowning fearfully. "And why not, pray?" "Because I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't!" she repeated passionately, with her altered, distorted face. "Damnation!" murmured the young man. He seized her hand, drew it into his arm, forcing her to walk with him along the road. That afternoon Olive Chancellor came out of her house and wandered for a long time upon the shore. She looked up and down the bay, at the sails that gleamed on the blue water, shifting in the breeze and the light; they were a source of interest to her that they had never been before. It was a day she was destined never to forget; she felt it to be the saddest, the most wounding of her life. Unrest and haunting fear had not possession of her now, as they had held her in New York when Basil Ransom carried off Verena, to mark her for his own, in the park. But an immeasurable load of misery seemed to sit upon her soul; she ached with the bitterness of her melancholy, she was dumb and cold with despair. She had spent the violence of her terror, the eagerness of her grief, and now she was too weary to struggle with fate. She appeared to herself almost to have accepted it, as she wandered forth in the beautiful afternoon with the knowledge that the "ten minutes" which Verena had told her she meant to devote to Mr. Ransom that morning had developed suddenly into an embarkation for the day. They had gone out in a boat together; one of the village worthies, from whom small craft were to be hired, had, at Verena's request, sent his little son to Miss Chancellor's cottage with that information. She had not understood whether they had taken the boatman with them. Even when the information came (and it came at a moment of considerable reassurance), Olive's nerves were not ploughed up by it as they had been, for instance, by the other expedition, in New York; and she could measure the distance she had traversed since then. It had not driven her away on the instant to pace the shore in frenzy, to challenge every boat that passed, and beg that the young lady who was sailing somewhere in the bay with a dark gentleman with long hair should be entreated immediately to return. On the contrary, after the first quiver of pain inflicted by the news she had been able to occupy herself, to look after her house, to write her morning's letters, to go into her accounts, which she had had some time on her mind. She had wanted to put off thinking, for she knew to what hideous recognitions that would bring her round again. These were summed up in the fact that Verena was now not to be trusted for an hour. She had sworn to her the night before, with a face like a lacerated angel's, that her choice was made, that their union and their work were more to her than any other life could ever be, and that she deeply believed that should she forswear these holy things she would simply waste away, in the end, with remorse and shame. She would see Mr. Ransom just once more, for ten minutes, to utter one or two supreme truths to him, and then they would take up their old, happy, active, fruitful days again, would throw themselves more than ever into their splendid effort. Olive had seen how Verena was moved by Miss Birdseye's death, how at the sight of that unique woman's majestically simple withdrawal from a scene in which she had held every vulgar aspiration, every worldly standard and lure, so cheap, the girl had been touched again with the spirit of their most confident hours, had flamed up with the faith that no narrow personal joy could compare in sweetness with the idea of doing something for those who had always suffered and who waited still. This helped Olive to believe that she might begin to count upon her again, conscious as she was at the same time that Verena had been strangely weakened and strained by her odious ordeal. Oh, Olive knew that she loved him--knew what the passion was with which the wretched girl had to struggle; and she did her the justice to believe that her professions were sincere, her effort was real. Harassed and embittered as she was, Olive Chancellor still proposed to herself to be rigidly just, and that is why she pitied Verena now with an unspeakable pity, regarded her as the victim of an atrocious spell, and reserved all her execration and contempt for the author of their common misery. If Verena had stepped into a boat with him half an hour after declaring that she would give him his dismissal in twenty words, that was because he had ways, known to himself and other men, of creating situations without an issue, of forcing her to do things she could do only with sharp repugnance, under the menace of pain that would be sharper still. But all the same, what actually stared her in the face was that Verena was not to be trusted, even after rallying again as passionately as she had done during the days that followed Miss Birdseye's death. Olive would have liked to know the pang of penance that _she_ would have been afraid, in her place, to incur; to see the locked door which _she_ would not have managed to force open! This inexpressibly mournful sense that, after all, Verena, in her exquisite delicacy and generosity, was appointed only to show how women had from the beginning of time been the sport of men's selfishness and avidity, this dismal conviction accompanied Olive on her walk, which lasted all the afternoon, and in which she found a kind of tragic relief. She went very far, keeping in the lonely places, unveiling her face to the splendid light, which seemed to make a mock of the darkness and bitterness of her spirit. There were little sandy coves, where the rocks were clean, where she made long stations, sinking down in them as if she hoped she should never rise again. It was the first time she had been out since Miss Birdseye's death, except the hour when, with the dozen sympathisers who came from Boston, she stood by the tired old woman's grave. Since then, for three days, she had been writing letters, narrating, describing to those who hadn't come; there were some, she thought, who might have managed to do so, instead of despatching her pages of diffuse reminiscence and asking her for all particulars in return. Selah Tarrant and his wife had come, obtrusively, as she thought, for they never had had very much intercourse with Miss Birdseye; and if it was for Verena's sake, Verena was there to pay every tribute herself. Mrs. Tarrant had evidently hoped Miss Chancellor would ask her to stay on at Marmion, but Olive felt how little she was in a state for such heroics of hospitality. It was precisely in order that she should not have to do that sort of thing that she had given Selah such considerable sums, on two occasions, at a year's interval. If the Tarrants wanted a change of air they could travel all over the country--their present means permitted it; they could go to Saratoga or Newport if they liked. Their appearance showed that they could put their hands into their pockets (or into hers); at least Mrs. Tarrant's did. Selah still sported (on a hot day in August) his immemorial waterproof; but his wife rustled over the low tombstones at Marmion in garments of which (little as she was versed in such inquiries) Olive could see that the cost had been large. Besides, after Doctor Prance had gone (when all was over), she felt what a relief it was that Verena and she could be just together--together with the monstrous wedge of a question that had come up between them. That was company enough, great heaven! and she had not got rid of such an inmate as Doctor Prance only to put Mrs. Tarrant in her place. Did Verena's strange aberration, on this particular day, suggest to Olive that it was no use striving, that the world was all a great trap or trick, of which women were ever the punctual dupes, so that it was the worst of the curse that rested upon them that they must most humiliate those who had most their cause at heart? Did she say to herself that their weakness was not only lamentable but hideous--hideous their predestined subjection to man's larger and grosser insistence? Did she ask herself why she should give up her life to save a sex which, after all, didn't wish to be saved, and which rejected the truth even after it had bathed them with its auroral light and they had pretended to be fed and fortified? These are mysteries into which I shall not attempt to enter, speculations with which I have no concern; it is sufficient for us to know that all human effort had never seemed to her so barren and thankless as on that fatal afternoon. Her eyes rested on the boats she saw in the distance, and she wondered if in one of them Verena were floating to her fate; but so far from straining forward to beckon her home she almost wished that she might glide away for ever, that _she_ might never see her again, never undergo the horrible details of a more deliberate separation. Olive lived over, in her miserable musings, her life for the last two years; she knew, again, how noble and beautiful her scheme had been, but how it had all rested on an illusion of which the very thought made her feel faint and sick. What was before her now was the reality, with the beautiful, indifferent sky pouring down its complacent rays upon it. The reality was simply that Verena had been more to her than she ever was to Verena, and that, with her exquisite natural art, the girl had cared for their cause only because, for the time, no interest, no fascination, was greater. Her talent, the talent which was to achieve such wonders, was nothing to her; it was too easy, she could leave it alone, as she might close her piano, for months; it was only to Olive that it was everything. Verena had submitted, she had responded, she had lent herself to Olive's incitement and exhortation, because she was sympathetic and young and abundant and fanciful; but it had been a kind of hothouse loyalty, the mere contagion of example, and a sentiment springing up from within had easily breathed a chill upon it. Did Olive ask herself whether, for so many months, her companion had been only the most unconscious and most successful of humbugs? Here again I must plead a certain incompetence to give an answer. Positive it is that she spared herself none of the inductions of a reverie that seemed to dry up the mists and ambiguities of life. These hours of backward clearness come to all men and women, once at least, when they read the past in the light of the present, with the reasons of things, like unobserved finger-posts, protruding where they never saw them before. The journey behind them is mapped out and figured, with its false steps, its wrong observations, all its infatuated, deluded geography. They understand as Olive understood, but it is probable that they rarely suffer as she suffered. The sense of regret for her baffled calculations burned within her like a fire, and the splendour of the vision over which the curtain of mourning now was dropped brought to her eyes slow, still tears, tears that came one by one, neither easing her nerves nor lightening her load of pain. She thought of her innumerable talks with Verena, of the pledges they had exchanged, of their earnest studies, their faithful work, their certain reward, the winter nights under the lamp, when they thrilled with previsions as just and a passion as high as had ever found shelter in a pair of human hearts. The pity of it, the misery of such a fall after such a flight, could express itself only, as the poor girl prolonged the vague pauses of her unnoticed ramble, in a low, inarticulate murmur of anguish. The afternoon waned, bringing with it the slight chill which, at the summer's end, begins to mark the shortening days. She turned her face homeward, and by this time became conscious that if Verena's companion had not yet brought her back there might be ground for uneasiness as to what had happened to them. It seemed to her that no sail-boat could have put into the town without passing more or less before her eyes and showing her whom it carried; she had seen a dozen, freighted only with the figures of men. An accident was perfectly possible (what could Ransom, with his plantation habits, know about the management of a sail?), and once that danger loomed before her--the signal loveliness of the weather had prevented its striking her before--Olive's imagination hurried, with a bound, to the worst. She saw the boat overturned and drifting out to sea, and (after a week of nameless horror) the body of an unknown young woman, defaced beyond recognition, but with long auburn hair and in a white dress, washed up in some far-away cove. An hour before, her mind had rested with a sort of relief on the idea that Verena should sink for ever beneath the horizon, so that their tremendous trouble might never be; but now, with the lateness of the hour, a sharp, immediate anxiety took the place of that intended resignation; and she quickened her step, with a heart that galloped too as she went. Then it was, above all, that she felt how _she_ had understood friendship, and how never again to see the face of the creature she had taken to her soul would be for her as the stroke of blindness. The twilight had become thick by the time she reached Marmion and paused for an instant in front of her house, over which the elms that stood on the grassy wayside appeared to her to hang a blacker curtain than ever before. There was no candle in any window, and when she pushed in and stood in the hall, listening a moment, her step awakened no answering sound. Her heart failed her; Verena's staying out in a boat from ten o'clock in the morning till nightfall was too unnatural, and she gave a cry, as she rushed into the low, dim parlour (darkened on one side, at that hour, by the wide-armed foliage, and on the other by the veranda and trellis), which expressed only a wild personal passion, a desire to take her friend in her arms again on any terms, even the most cruel to herself. The next moment she started back, with another and a different exclamation, for Verena was in the room, motionless, in a corner--the first place in which she had seated herself on re-entering the house--looking at her with a silent face which seemed strange, unnatural, in the dusk. Olive stopped short, and for a minute the two women remained as they were, gazing at each other in the dimness. After that, too, Olive still said nothing; she only went to Verena and sat down beside her. She didn't know what to make of her manner; she had never been like that before. She was unwilling to speak; she seemed crushed and humbled. This was almost the worst--if anything could be worse than what had gone before; and Olive took her hand with an irresistible impulse of compassion and assurance. From the way it lay in her own she guessed her whole feeling--saw it was a kind of shame, shame for her weakness, her swift surrender, her insane gyration, in the morning. Verena expressed it by no protest and no explanation; she appeared not even to wish to hear the sound of her own voice. Her silence itself was an appeal--an appeal to Olive to ask no questions (she could trust her to inflict no spoken reproach); only to wait till she could lift up her head again. Olive understood, or thought she understood, and the woefulness of it all only seemed the deeper. She would just sit there and hold her hand; that was all she could do; they were beyond each other's help in any other way now. Verena leaned her head back and closed her eyes, and for an hour, as nightfall settled in the room, neither of the young women spoke. Distinctly, it was a kind of shame. After a while the parlour-maid, very casual, in the manner of the servants at Marmion, appeared on the threshold with a lamp; but Olive motioned her frantically away. She wished to keep the darkness. It was a kind of shame. The next morning Basil Ransom rapped loudly with his walking-stick on the lintel of Miss Chancellor's house-door, which, as usual on fine days, stood open. There was no need he should wait till the servant had answered his summons; for Olive, who had reason to believe he would come, and who had been lurking in the sitting-room for a purpose of her own, stepped forth into the little hall. "I am sorry to disturb you; I had the hope that--for a moment--I might see Miss Tarrant." That was the speech with which (and a measured salutation) he greeted his advancing kinswoman. She faced him an instant, and her strange green eyes caught the light. "It's impossible. You may believe that when I say it." "Why is it impossible?" he asked, smiling in spite of an inward displeasure. And as Olive gave him no answer, only gazing at him with a cold audacity which he had not hitherto observed in her, he added a little explanation. "It is simply to have seen her before I go--to have said five words to her. I want her to know that I have made up my mind--since yesterday--to leave this place; I shall take the train at noon." It was not to gratify Olive Chancellor that he had determined to go away, or even that he told her this; yet he was surprised that his words brought no expression of pleasure to her face. "I don't think it is of much importance whether you go away or not. Miss Tarrant herself has gone away." "Miss Tarrant--gone away?" This announcement was so much at variance with Verena's apparent intentions the night before that his ejaculation expressed chagrin as well as surprise, and in doing so it gave Olive a momentary advantage. It was the only one she had ever had, and the poor girl may be excused for having enjoyed it--so far as enjoyment was possible to her. Basil Ransom's visible discomfiture was more agreeable to her than anything had been for a long time. "I went with her myself to the early train; and I saw it leave the station." And Olive kept her eyes unaverted, for the satisfaction of seeing how he took it. It must be confessed that he took it rather ill. He had decided it was best he should retire, but Verena's retiring was another matter. "And where is she gone?" he asked, with a frown. "I don't think I am obliged to tell you." "Of course not! Excuse my asking. It is much better that I should find it out for myself, because if I owed the information to you I should perhaps feel a certain delicacy as regards profiting by it." "Gracious heaven!" cried Miss Chancellor, at the idea of Ransom's delicacy. Then she added more deliberately: "You will not find out for yourself." "You think not?" "I am sure of it!" And her enjoyment of the situation becoming acute, there broke from her lips a shrill, unfamiliar, troubled sound, which performed the office of a laugh, a laugh of triumph, but which, at a distance, might have passed almost as well for a wail of despair. It rang in Ransom's ears as he quickly turned away. XL It was Mrs. Luna who received him, as she had received him on the occasion of his first visit to Charles Street; by which I do not mean quite in the same way. She had known very little about him then, but she knew too much for her happiness to-day, and she had with him now a little invidious, contemptuous manner, as if everything he should say or do could be a proof only of abominable duplicity and perversity. She had a theory that he had treated her shamefully; and he knew it--I do not mean the fact, but the theory: which led him to reflect that her resentments were as shallow as her opinions, inasmuch as if she really believed in her grievance, or if it had had any dignity, she would not have consented to see him. He had not presented himself at Miss Chancellor's door without a very good reason, and having done so he could not turn away so long as there was any one in the house of whom he might have speech. He had sent up his name to Mrs. Luna, after being told that she was staying there, on the mere chance that she would see him; for he thought a refusal a very possible sequel to the letters she had written him during the past four or five months--letters he had scarcely read, full of allusions of the most cutting sort to proceedings of his, in the past, of which he had no recollection whatever. They bored him, for he had quite other matters in his mind. "I don't wonder you have the bad taste, the crudity," she said, as soon as he came into the room, looking at him more sternly than he would have believed possible to her. He saw that this was an allusion to his not having been to see her since the period of her sister's visit to New York; he having conceived for her, the evening of Mrs. Burrage's party, a sentiment of aversion which put an end to such attentions. He didn't laugh, he was too worried and preoccupied; but he replied, in a tone which apparently annoyed her as much as any indecent mirth: "I thought it very possible you wouldn't see me." "Why shouldn't I see you, if I should take it into my head? Do you suppose I care whether I see you or not?" "I supposed you wanted to, from your letters." "Then why did you think I would refuse?" "Because that's the sort of thing women do." "Women--women! You know much about them!" "I am learning something every day." "You haven't learned yet, apparently, to answer their letters. It's rather a surprise to me that you don't pretend not to have received mine." Ransom could smile now; the opportunity to vent the exasperation that had been consuming him almost restored his good humour. "What could I say? You overwhelmed me. Besides, I did answer one of them." "One of them? You speak as if I had written you a dozen!" Mrs. Luna cried. "I thought that was your contention--that you had done me the honour to address me so many. They were crushing, and when a man's crushed, it's all over." "Yes, you look as if you were in very small pieces! I am glad that I shall never see you again." "I can see now why you received me--to tell me that," Ransom said. "It is a kind of pleasure. I am going back to Europe." "Really? for Newton's education?" "Ah, I wonder you can have the face to speak of that--after the way you deserted him!" "Let us abandon the subject, then, and I will tell you what I want." "I don't in the least care what you want," Mrs. Luna remarked. "And you haven't even the grace to ask me where I am going--over there." "What difference does that make to me--once you leave these shores?" Mrs. Luna rose to her feet. "Ah, chivalry, chivalry!" she exclaimed. And she walked away to the window--one of the windows from which Ransom had first enjoyed, at Olive's solicitation, the view of the Back Bay. Mrs. Luna looked forth at it with little of the air of a person who was sorry to be about to lose it. "I am determined you shall know where I am going," she said in a moment. "I am going to Florence." "Don't be afraid!" he replied. "I shall go to Rome." "And you'll carry there more impertinence than has been seen there since the old emperors." "Were the emperors impertinent, in addition to their other vices? I am determined, on my side, that you shall know what I have come for," Ransom said. "I wouldn't ask you if I could ask any one else; but I am very hard pressed, and I don't know who can help me." Mrs. Luna turned on him a face of the frankest derision. "Help you? Do you remember the last time I asked you to help me?" "That evening at Mrs. Burrage's? Surely I wasn't wanting then; I remember urging on your acceptance a chair, so that you might stand on it, to see and to hear." "To see and to hear what, please? Your disgusting infatuation!" "It's just about that I want to speak to you," Ransom pursued. "As you already know all about it, you have no new shock to receive, and I therefore venture to ask you----" "Where tickets for her lecture to-night can be obtained? Is it possible she hasn't sent you one?" "I assure you I didn't come to Boston to hear it," said Ransom, with a sadness which Mrs. Luna evidently regarded as a refinement of outrage. "What I should like to ascertain is where Miss Tarrant may be found at the present moment." "And do you think that's a delicate inquiry to make of _me_?" "I don't see why it shouldn't be, but I know you don't think it is, and that is why, as I say, I mention the matter to you only because I can imagine absolutely no one else who is in a position to assist me. I have been to the house of Miss Tarrant's parents, in Cambridge, but it is closed and empty, destitute of any sign of life. I went there first, on arriving this morning, and rang at this door only when my journey to Monadnoc Place had proved fruitless. Your sister's servant told me that Miss Tarrant was not staying here, but she added that Mrs. Luna was. No doubt you won't be pleased at having been spoken of as a sort of equivalent; and I didn't say to myself--or to the servant--that you would do as well; I only reflected that I could at least try you. I didn't even ask for Miss Chancellor, as I am sure she would give me no information whatever." Mrs. Luna listened to this candid account of the young man's proceedings with her head turned a little over her shoulder at him, and her eyes fixed as unsympathetically as possible upon his own. "What you propose, then, as I understand it," she said in a moment, "is that I should betray my sister to you." "Worse than that; I propose that you should betray Miss Tarrant herself." "What do I care about Miss Tarrant? I don't know what you are talking about." "Haven't you really any idea where she is living? Haven't you seen her here? Are Miss Olive and she not constantly together?" Mrs. Luna, at this, turned full round upon him, and, with folded arms and her head tossed back, exclaimed: "Look here, Basil Ransom, I never thought you were a fool, but it strikes me that since we last met you have lost your wits!" "There is no doubt of that," Ransom answered, smiling. "Do you mean to tell me you don't know everything about Miss Tarrant that can be known?" "I have neither seen her nor heard of her for the last ten weeks; Miss Chancellor has hidden her away." "Hidden her away, with all the walls and fences of Boston flaming to-day with her name?" "Oh yes, I have noticed that, and I have no doubt that by waiting till this evening I shall be able to see her. But I don't want to wait till this evening; I want to see her now, and not in public--in private." "Do you indeed?--how interesting!" cried Mrs. Luna, with rippling laughter. "And pray what do you want to do with her?" Ransom hesitated a little. "I think I would rather not tell you." "Your charming frankness, then, has its limits! My poor cousin, you are really too _naïf_. Do you suppose it matters a straw to me?" Ransom made no answer to this appeal, but after an instant he broke out: "Honestly, Mrs. Luna, can you give me no clue?" "Lord, what terrible eyes you make, and what terrible words you use! 'Honestly,' quoth he! Do you think I am so fond of the creature that I want to keep her all to myself?" "I don't know; I don't understand," said Ransom, slowly and softly, but still with his terrible eyes. "And do you think I understand any better? You are not a very edifying young man," Mrs. Luna went on; "but I really think you have deserved a better fate than to be jilted and thrown over by a girl of that class." "I haven't been jilted. I like her very much, but she never encouraged me." At this Mrs. Luna broke again into articulate scoffing. "It is very odd that at your age you should be so little a man of the world!" Ransom made her no other answer than to remark, thoughtfully and rather absently: "Your sister is really very clever." "By which you mean, I suppose, that I am not!" Mrs. Luna suddenly changed her tone, and said, with the greatest sweetness and humility: "God knows, I have never pretended to be!" Ransom looked at her a moment, and guessed the meaning of this altered note. It had suddenly come over her that with her portrait in half the shop-fronts, her advertisement on all the fences, and the great occasion on which she was to reveal herself to the country at large close at hand, Verena had become so conscious of high destinies that her dear friend's Southern kinsman really appeared to her very small game, and she might therefore be regarded as having cast him off. If this were the case, it would perhaps be well for Mrs. Luna still to hold on. Basil's induction was very rapid, but it gave him time to decide that the best thing to say to his interlocutress was: "On what day do you sail for Europe?" "Perhaps I shall not sail at all," Mrs. Luna replied, looking out of the window. "And in that case--poor Newton's education?" "I should try to content myself with a country which has given you yours." "Don't you want him, then, to be a man of the world?" "Ah, the world, the world!" she murmured, while she watched, in the deepening dusk, the lights of the town begin to reflect themselves in the Back Bay. "Has it been such a source of happiness to me that I belong to it?" "Perhaps, after all, I shall be able to go to Florence!" said Ransom, laughing. She faced him once more, this time slowly, and declared that she had never known anything so strange as his state of mind--she would be so glad to have an explanation of it. With the opinions he professed (it was for them she had liked him--she didn't like his character), why on earth should he be running after a little fifth-rate _poseuse_, and in such a frenzy to get hold of her? He might say it was none of her business, and of course she would have no answer to that; therefore she admitted that she asked simply out of intellectual curiosity, and because one always was tormented at the sight of a painful contradiction. With the things she had heard him say about his convictions and theories, his view of life and the great questions of the future, she should have thought he would find Miss Tarrant's attitudinising absolutely nauseous. Were not her views the same as Olive's and hadn't Olive and he signally failed to hit it off together? Mrs. Luna only asked because she was really quite puzzled. "Don't you know that some minds, when they see a mystery, can't rest till they clear it up?" "You can't be more puzzled than I am," said Ransom. "Apparently the explanation is to be found in a sort of reversal of the formula you were so good, just now, as to apply to me. You like my opinions, but you entertain a different sentiment for my character. I deplore Miss Tarrant's opinions, but her character--well, her character pleases me." Mrs. Luna stared, as if she were waiting, the explanation surely not being complete. "But as much as that?" she inquired. "As much as what?" said Ransom, smiling. Then he added, "Your sister has beaten me." "I thought she had beaten some one of late; she has seemed so gay and happy. I didn't suppose it was _all_ because I was going away." "Has she seemed very gay?" Ransom inquired, with a sinking of the heart. He wore such a long face, as he asked this question, that Mrs. Luna was again moved to audible mirth, after which she explained: "Of course I mean gay for her. Everything is relative. With her impatience for this lecture of her friend's to-night, she's in an unspeakable state! She can't sit still for three minutes, she goes out fifteen times a day, and there has been enough arranging and interviewing, and discussing and telegraphing and advertising, enough wire-pulling and rushing about, to put an army in the field. What is it they are always doing to the armies in Europe?--mobilising them? Well, Verena has been mobilised, and this has been headquarters." "And shall you go to the Music Hall to-night?" "For what do you take me? I have no desire to be shrieked at for an hour." "No doubt, no doubt, Miss Olive must be in a state," Ransom went on, rather absently. Then he said, with abruptness, in a different tone: "If this house has been, as you say, headquarters, how comes it you haven't seen her?" "Seen Olive? I have seen nothing else!" "I mean Miss Tarrant. She must be somewhere--in the place--if she's to speak to-night." "Should you like me to go out and look for her? _Il ne manquerait plus que cela!_" cried Mrs. Luna. "What's the matter with you, Basil Ransom, and what are you after?" she demanded, with considerable sharpness. She had tried haughtiness and she had tried humility, but they brought her equally face to face with a competitor whom she couldn't take seriously, yet who was none the less objectionable for all that. I know not whether Ransom would have attempted to answer her question had an obstacle not presented itself; at any rate, at the moment she spoke, the curtain in the doorway was pushed aside, and a visitor crossed the threshold. "Mercy! how provoking!" Mrs. Luna exclaimed, audibly enough; and without moving from her place she bent an uncharitable eye upon the invader, a gentleman whom Ransom had the sense of having met before. He was a young man with a fresh face and abundant locks, prematurely white; he stood smiling at Mrs. Luna, quite undaunted by the absence of any demonstration in his favour. She looked as if she didn't know him, while Ransom prepared to depart, leaving them to settle it together. "I'm afraid you don't remember me, though I have seen you before," said the young man, very amiably. "I was here a week ago, and Miss Chancellor presented me to you." "Oh yes; she's not at home now," Mrs. Luna returned vaguely. "So I was told--but I didn't let that prevent me." And the young man included Basil Ransom in the smile with which he made himself more welcome than Mrs. Luna appeared disposed to make him, and by which he seemed to call attention to his superiority. "There is a matter on which I want very much to obtain some information, and I have no doubt you will be so good as to give it to me." "It comes back to me--you have something to do with the newspapers," said Mrs. Luna; and Ransom too, by this time, had placed the young man among his reminiscences. He had been at Miss Birdseye's famous party, and Doctor Prance had there described him as a brilliant journalist. It was quite with the air of such a personage that he accepted Mrs. Luna's definition, and he continued to radiate towards Ransom (as if, in return, he remembered _his_ face), while he dropped, confidentially, the word that expressed everything--"The _Vesper_, don't you know?" Then he went on: "Now, Mrs. Luna, I don't care, I'm not going to let you off! We want the last news about Miss Verena, and it has got to come out of this house." "Oh murder!" Ransom muttered, beneath his breath, taking up his hat. "Miss Chancellor has hidden her away; I have been scouring the city in search of her, and her own father hasn't seen her for a week. We have got his ideas; they are very easy to get, but that isn't what we want." "And what do you want?" Ransom was now impelled to inquire, as Mr. Pardon (even the name at present came back to him) appeared sufficiently to have introduced himself. "We want to know how she feels about to-night; what report she makes of her nerves, her anticipations; how she looked, what she had on, up to six o'clock. Gracious! if I could see her I should know what I wanted, and so would she, I guess!" Mr. Pardon exclaimed. "You must know something, Mrs. Luna; it isn't natural you shouldn't. I won't inquire any further where she is, because that might seem a little pushing, if she does wish to withdraw herself--though I am bound to say I think she makes a mistake; we could work up these last hours for her! But can't you tell me any little personal items--the sort of thing the people like? What is she going to have for supper? or is she going to speak--a--without previous nourishment?" "Really, sir, I don't know, and I don't in the least care; I have nothing to do with the business!" Mrs. Luna cried angrily. The reporter stared; then, eagerly, "You have nothing to do with it--you take an unfavourable view, you protest?" And he was already feeling in a side-pocket for his notebook. "Mercy on us! are you going to put _that_ in the paper?" Mrs. Luna exclaimed; and in spite of the sense, detestable to him, that everything he wished most to avert was fast closing over the girl, Ransom broke into cynical laughter. "Ah, but do protest, madam; let us at least have that fragment!" Mr. Pardon went on. "A protest from this house would be a charming note. We _must_ have it--we've got nothing else! The public are almost as much interested in your sister as they are in Miss Verena; they know to what extent she has backed her: and I should be so delighted (I see the heading, from here, so attractive!) just to take down 'What Miss Chancellor's Family Think about It!'" Mrs. Luna sank into the nearest chair, with a groan, covering her face with her hands. "Heaven help me, I am glad I am going to Europe!" "That is another little item--everything counts," said Matthias Pardon, making a rapid entry in his tablets. "May I inquire whether you are going to Europe in consequence of your disapproval of your sister's views?" Mrs. Luna sprang up again, almost snatching the memoranda out of his hand. "If you have the impertinence to publish a word about me, or to mention my name in print, I will come to your office and make such a scene!" "Dearest lady, that would be a godsend!" Mr. Pardon cried enthusiastically; but he put his notebook back into his pocket. "Have you made an exhaustive search for Miss Tarrant?" Basil Ransom asked of him. Mr. Pardon, at this inquiry, eyed him with a sudden, familiar archness, expressive of the idea of competition; so that Ransom added: "You needn't be afraid, I'm not a reporter." "I didn't know but what you had come on from New York." "So I have--but not as the representative of a newspaper." "Fancy his taking you----" Mrs. Luna murmured, with indignation. "Well, I have been everywhere I could think of," Mr. Pardon remarked. "I have been hunting round after your sister's agent, but I haven't been able to catch up with him; I suppose he has been hunting on his side. Miss Chancellor told me--Mrs. Luna may remember it--that she shouldn't be here at all during the week, and that she preferred not to tell me either where or how she was to spend her time until the momentous evening. Of course I let her know that I should find out if I could, and you may remember," he said to Mrs. Luna, "the conversation we had on the subject. I remarked, candidly, that if they didn't look out they would overdo the quietness. Doctor Tarrant has felt very low about it. However, I have done what I could with the material at my command, and the _Vesper_ has let the public know that her whereabouts was the biggest mystery of the season. It's difficult to get round the _Vesper_." "I am almost afraid to open my lips in your presence," Mrs. Luna broke in, "but I must say that I think my sister was strangely communicative. She told you ever so much that I wouldn't have breathed." "I should like to try you with something you know!" Matthias Pardon returned imperturbably. "This isn't a fair trial, because you don't know. Miss Chancellor came round--came round considerably, there's no doubt of that; because a year or two ago she was terribly unapproachable. If I have mollified her, madam, why shouldn't I mollify you? She realises that I can help her now, and as I ain't rancorous I am willing to help her all she'll let me. The trouble is, she won't let me enough, yet; it seems as if she couldn't believe it of me. At any rate," he pursued, addressing himself more particularly to Ransom, "half an hour ago, at the Hall, they knew nothing whatever about Miss Tarrant, beyond the fact that about a month ago she came there, with Miss Chancellor, to try her voice, which rang all over the place, like silver, and that Miss Chancellor guaranteed her absolute punctuality to-night." "Well, that's all that is required," said Ransom, at hazard; and he put out his hand, in farewell, to Mrs. Luna. "Do you desert me already?" she demanded, giving him a glance which would have embarrassed any spectator but a reporter of the _Vesper_. "I have fifty things to do; you must excuse me." He was nervous, restless, his heart was beating much faster than usual; he couldn't stand still, and he had no compunction whatever about leaving her to get rid, by herself, of Mr. Pardon. This gentleman continued to mix in the conversation, possibly from the hope that if he should linger either Miss Tarrant or Miss Chancellor would make her appearance. "Every seat in the Hall is sold; the crowd is expected to be immense. When our Boston public _does_ take an idea!" Mr. Pardon exclaimed. Ransom only wanted to get away, and in order to facilitate his release by implying that in such a case he should see her again, he said to Mrs. Luna, rather hypocritically, from the threshold, "You had really better come to-night." "I am not like the Boston public--I don't take an idea!" she replied. "Do you mean to say you are not going?" cried Mr. Pardon, with widely open eyes, clapping his hand again to his pocket. "Don't you regard her as a wonderful genius?" Mrs. Luna was sorely tried, and the vexation of seeing Ransom slip away from her with his thoughts visibly on Verena, leaving her face to face with the odious newspaper man, whose presence made passionate protest impossible--the annoyance of seeing everything and every one mock at her and fail to compensate her was such that she lost her head, while rashness leaped to her lips and jerked out the answer--"No indeed; I think her a vulgar idiot!" "Ah, madam, I should never permit myself to print that!" Ransom heard Mr. Pardon rejoin reproachfully, as he dropped the _portière_ of the drawing-room. XLI He walked about for the next two hours, walked all over Boston, heedless of his course, and conscious only of an unwillingness to return to his hotel and an inability to eat his dinner or rest his weary legs. He had been roaming in very much the same desperate fashion, at once eager and purposeless, for many days before he left New York, and he knew that his agitation and suspense must wear themselves out. At present they pressed him more than ever; they had become tremendously acute. The early dusk of the last half of November had gathered thick, but the evening was fine and the lighted streets had the animation and variety of a winter that had begun with brilliancy. The shop-fronts glowed through frosty panes, the passers bustled on the pavement, the bells of the street-cars jangled in the cold air, the newsboys hawked the evening papers, the vestibules of the theatres, illuminated and flanked with coloured posters and the photographs of actresses, exhibited seductively their swinging doors of red leather or baize, spotted with little brass nails. Behind great plates of glass the interior of the hotels became visible, with marble-paved lobbies, white with electric lamps, and columns, and Westerners on divans stretching their legs, while behind a counter, set apart and covered with an array of periodicals and novels in paper covers, little boys, with the faces of old men, showing plans of the play-houses and offering librettos, sold orchestra-chairs at a premium. When from time to time Ransom paused at a corner, hesitating which way to drift, he looked up and saw the stars, sharp and near, scintillating over the town. Boston seemed to him big and full of nocturnal life, very much awake and preparing for an evening of pleasure. He passed and repassed the Music Hall, saw Verena immensely advertised, gazed down the vista, the approach for pedestrians, which leads out of School Street, and thought it looked expectant and ominous. People had not begun to enter yet, but the place was ready, lighted and open, and the interval would be only too short. So it appeared to Ransom, while at the same time he wished immensely the crisis were over. Everything that surrounded him referred itself to the idea with which his mind was palpitating, the question whether he might not still intervene as against the girl's jump into the abyss. He believed that all Boston was going to hear her, or that at least every one was whom he saw in the streets; and there was a kind of incentive and inspiration in this thought. The vision of wresting her from the mighty multitude set him off again, to stride through the population that would fight for her. It was not too late, for he felt strong; it would not be too late even if she should already stand there before thousands of converging eyes. He had had his ticket since the morning, and now the time was going on. He went back to his hotel at last for ten minutes, and refreshed himself by dressing a little and by drinking a glass of wine. Then he took his way once more to the Music Hall, and saw that people were beginning to go in--the first drops of the great stream, among whom there were many women. Since seven o'clock the minutes had moved fast--before that they had dragged--and now there was only half an hour. Ransom passed in with the others; he knew just where his seat was; he had chosen it, on reaching Boston, from the few that were left, with what he believed to be care. But now, as he stood beneath the far-away panelled roof, stretching above the line of little tongues of flame which marked its junction with the walls, he felt that this didn't matter much, since he certainly was not going to subside into his place. He was not one of the audience; he was apart, unique, and had come on a business altogether special. It wouldn't have mattered if, in advance, he had got no place at all and had just left himself to pay for standing-room at the last. The people came pouring in, and in a very short time there would only be standing-room left. Ransom had no definite plan; he had mainly wanted to get inside of the building, so that, on a view of the field, he might make up his mind. He had never been in the Music Hall before, and its lofty vaults and rows of overhanging balconies made it to his imagination immense and impressive. There were two or three moments during which he felt as he could imagine a young man to feel who, waiting in a public place, has made up his mind, for reasons of his own, to discharge a pistol at the king or the president. The place struck him with a kind of Roman vastness; the doors which opened out of the upper balconies, high aloft, and which were constantly swinging to and fro with the passage of spectators and ushers, reminded him of the _vomitoria_ that he had read about in descriptions of the Colosseum. The huge organ, the background of the stage--a stage occupied with tiers of seats for choruses and civic worthies--lifted to the dome its shining pipes and sculptured pinnacles, and some genius of music or oratory erected himself in monumental bronze at the base. The hall was so capacious and serious, and the audience increased so rapidly without filling it, giving Ransom a sense of the numbers it would contain when it was packed, that the courage of the two young women, face to face with so tremendous an ordeal, hovered before him as really sublime, especially the conscious tension of poor Olive, who would have been spared none of the anxieties and tremors, none of the previsions of accident or calculations of failure. In the front of the stage was a slim, high desk, like a music-stand, with a cover of red velvet, and near it was a light ornamental chair, on which he was sure Verena would not seat herself, though he could fancy her leaning at moments on the back. Behind this was a kind of semicircle of a dozen arm-chairs, which had evidently been arranged for the friends of the speaker, her sponsors and patrons. The hall was more and more full of premonitory sounds; people making a noise as they unfolded, on hinges, their seats, and itinerant boys, whose voices as they cried out "Photographs of Miss Tarrant--sketch of her life!" or "Portraits of the Speaker--story of her career!" sounded small and piping in the general immensity. Before Ransom was aware of it several of the arm-chairs, in the row behind the lecturer's desk, were occupied, with gaps, and in a moment he recognised, even across the interval, three of the persons who had appeared. The straight-featured woman with bands of glossy hair and eyebrows that told at a distance, could only be Mrs. Farrinder, just as the gentleman beside her, in a white overcoat, with an umbrella and a vague face, was probably her husband Amariah. At the opposite end of the row were another pair, whom Ransom, unacquainted with certain chapters of Verena's history, perceived without surprise to be Mrs. Burrage and her insinuating son. Apparently their interest in Miss Tarrant was more than a momentary fad, since--like himself--they had made the journey from New York to hear her. There were other figures, unknown to our young man, here and there, in the semicircle; but several places were still empty (one of which was of course reserved for Olive), and it occurred to Ransom, even in his preoccupation, that one of them ought to remain so--ought to be left to symbolise the presence, in the spirit, of Miss Birdseye. He bought one of the photographs of Verena, and thought it shockingly bad, and bought also the sketch of her life, which many people seemed to be reading, but crumpled it up in his pocket for future consideration. Verena was not in the least present to him in connexion with this exhibition of enterprise and puffery; what he saw was Olive, struggling and yielding, making every sacrifice of taste for the sake of the largest hearing, and conforming herself to a great popular system. Whether she had struggled or not, there was a catch-penny effect about the whole thing which added to the fever in his cheek and made him wish he had money to buy up the stock of the vociferous little boys. Suddenly the notes of the organ rolled out into the hall, and he became aware that the overture or prelude had begun. This, too, seemed to him a piece of claptrap, but he didn't wait to think of it; he instantly edged out of his place, which he had chosen near the end of a row, and reached one of the numerous doors. If he had had no definite plan he now had at least an irresistible impulse, and he felt the prick of shame at having faltered for a moment. It had been his tacit calculation that Verena, still enshrined in mystery by her companion, would not have reached the scene of her performance till within a few minutes of the time at which she was to come forth; so that he had lost nothing by waiting, up to this moment, before the platform. But now he must overtake his opportunity. Before passing out of the hall into the lobby he paused, and with his back to the stage, gave a look at the gathered auditory. It had become densely numerous, and, suffused with the evenly distributed gaslight, which fell from a great elevation, and the thick atmosphere that hangs for ever in such places, it appeared to pile itself high and to look dimly expectant and formidable. He had a throb of uneasiness at his private purpose of balking it of its entertainment, its victim--a glimpse of the ferocity that lurks in a disappointed mob. But the thought of that danger only made him pass more quickly through the ugly corridors; he felt that his plan was definite enough now, and he found that he had no need even of asking the way to a certain small door (one or more of them), which he meant to push open. In taking his place in the morning he had assured himself as to the side of the house on which (with its approach to the platform) the withdrawing room of singers and speakers was situated; he had chosen his seat in that quarter, and he now had not far to go before he reached it. No one heeded or challenged him; Miss Tarrant's auditors were still pouring in (the occasion was evidently to have been an unprecedented success of curiosity), and had all the attention of the ushers. Ransom opened a door at the end of the passage, and it admitted him into a sort of vestibule, quite bare save that at a second door, opposite to him, stood a figure at the sight of which he paused for a moment in his advance. The figure was simply that of a robust policeman, in his helmet and brass buttons--a policeman who was expecting him--Ransom could see that in a twinkling. He judged in the same space of time that Olive Chancellor had heard of his having arrived and had applied for the protection of this functionary, who was now simply guarding the ingress and was prepared to defend it against all comers. There was a slight element of surprise in this, as he had reasoned that his nervous kinswoman was absent from her house for the day--had been spending it all in Verena's retreat, wherever that was. The surprise was not great enough, however, to interrupt his course for more than an instant, and he crossed the room and stood before the belted sentinel. For a moment neither spoke; they looked at each other very hard in the eyes, and Ransom heard the organ, beyond partitions, launching its waves of sound through the hall. They seemed to be very near it, and the whole place vibrated. The policeman was a tall, lean-faced, sallow man, with a stoop of the shoulders, a small, steady eye, and something in his mouth which made a protuberance in his cheek. Ransom could see that he was very strong, but he believed that he himself was not materially less so. However, he had not come there to show physical fight--a public tussle about Verena was not an attractive idea, except perhaps, after all, if he should get the worst of it, from the point of view of Olive's new system of advertising; and, moreover, it would not be in the least necessary. Still he said nothing, and still the policeman remained dumb, and there was something in the way the moments elapsed and in our young man's consciousness that Verena was separated from him only by a couple of thin planks, which made him feel that she too expected him, but in another sense; that she had nothing to do with this parade of resistance, that she would know in a moment, by quick intuition, that he was there, and that she was only praying to be rescued, to be saved. Face to face with Olive she hadn't the courage, but she would have it with her hand in his. It came to him that there was no one in the world less sure of her business just at that moment than Olive Chancellor; it was as if he could see, through the door, the terrible way her eyes were fixed on Verena while she held her watch in her hand and Verena looked away from her. Olive would have been so thankful that she should begin before the hour, but of course that was impossible. Ransom asked no questions--that seemed a waste of time; he only said, after a minute, to the policeman: "I should like very much to see Miss Tarrant, if you will be so good as to take in my card." The guardian of order, well planted just between him and the handle of the door, took from Ransom the morsel of pasteboard which he held out to him, read slowly the name inscribed on it, turned it over and looked at the back, then returned it to his interlocutor. "Well, I guess it ain't much use," he remarked. "How can you know that? You have no business to decline my request." "Well, I guess I have about as much business as you have to make it." Then he added, "You are just the very man she wants to keep out." "I don't think Miss Tarrant wants to keep me out," Ransom returned. "I don't know much about her, she hasn't hired the hall. It's the other one--Miss Chancellor; it's her that runs this lecture." "And she has asked you to keep me out? How absurd!" exclaimed Ransom ingeniously. "She tells me you're none too fit to be round alone; you have got this thing on the brain. I guess you'd better be quiet," said the policeman. "Quiet? Is it possible to be more quiet than I am?" "Well, I've seen crazy folks that were a good deal like you. If you want to see the speaker why don't you go and set round in the hall, with the rest of the public?" And the policeman waited, in an immovable, ruminating, reasonable manner, for an answer to this inquiry. Ransom had one, on the instant, at his service. "Because I don't want simply to see her; I want also to speak to her--in private." "Yes--it's always intensely private," said the policeman. "Now I wouldn't lose the lecture if I was you. I guess it will do you good." "The lecture?" Ransom repeated, laughing. "It won't take place." "Yes it will--as quick as the organ stops." Then the policeman added, as to himself, "Why the devil don't it?" "Because Miss Tarrant has sent up to the organist to tell him to keep on." "Who has she sent, do you s'pose?" And Ransom's new acquaintance entered into his humour. "I guess Miss Chancellor isn't her nigger." "She has sent her father, or perhaps even her mother. They are in there too." "How do you know that?" asked the policeman consideringly. "Oh, I know everything," Ransom answered, smiling. "Well, I guess they didn't come here to listen to that organ. We'll hear something else before long, if he doesn't stop." "You will hear a good deal, very soon," Ransom remarked. The serenity of his self-confidence appeared at last to make an impression on his antagonist, who lowered his head a little, like some butting animal, and looked at the young man from beneath bushy eyebrows. "Well, I _have_ heard a good deal, since I've been in Boston." "Oh, Boston's a great place," Ransom rejoined inattentively. He was not listening to the policeman or to the organ now, for the sound of voices had reached him from the other side of the door. The policeman took no further notice of it than to lean back against the panels, with folded arms; and there was another pause, between them, during which the playing of the organ ceased. "I will just wait here, with your permission," said Ransom, "and presently I shall be called." "Who do you s'pose will call you?" "Well, Miss Tarrant, I hope." "She'll have to square the other one first." Ransom took out his watch, which he had adapted, on purpose, several hours before, to Boston time, and saw that the minutes had sped with increasing velocity during this interview, and that it now marked five minutes past eight. "Miss Chancellor will have to square the public," he said in a moment; and the words were far from being an empty profession of security, for the conviction already in possession of him, that a drama in which he, though cut off, was an actor, had been going on for some time in the apartment he was prevented from entering, that the situation was extraordinarily strained there, and that it could not come to an end without an appeal to him--this transcendental assumption acquired an infinitely greater force the instant he perceived that Verena was even now keeping her audience waiting. Why didn't she go on? Why, except that she knew he was there, and was gaining time? "Well, I guess she has shown herself," said the door-keeper, whose discussion with Ransom now appeared to have passed, on his own part, and without the slightest prejudice to his firmness, into a sociable, gossiping phase. "If she had shown herself, we should hear the reception, the applause." "Well, there they air; they are going to give it to her," the policeman announced. He had an odious appearance of being in the right, for there indeed they seemed to be--they were giving it to her. A general hubbub rose from the floor and the galleries of the hall--the sound of several thousand people stamping with their feet and rapping with their umbrellas and sticks. Ransom felt faint, and for a little while he stood with his gaze interlocked with that of the policeman. Then suddenly a wave of coolness seemed to break over him, and he exclaimed: "My dear fellow, that isn't applause--it's impatience. It isn't a reception, it's a call!" The policeman neither assented to this proposition nor denied it; he only transferred the protuberance in his cheek to the other side, and observed: "I guess she's sick." "Oh, I hope not!" said Ransom, very gently. The stamping and rapping swelled and swelled for a minute, and then it subsided; but before it had done so Ransom's definition of it had plainly become the true one. The tone of the manifestation was good-humoured, but it was not gratulatory. He looked at his watch again, and saw that five minutes more had elapsed, and he remembered what the newspaperman in Charles Street had said about Olive's guaranteeing Verena's punctuality. Oddly enough, at the moment the image of this gentleman recurred to him, the gentleman himself burst through the other door, in a state of the liveliest agitation. "Why in the name of goodness don't she go on? If she wants to make them call her, they've done it about enough!" Mr. Pardon turned, pressingly, from Ransom to the policeman and back again, and in his preoccupation gave no sign of having met the Mississippian before. "I guess she's sick," said the policeman. "The public'll be sick!" cried the distressed reporter. "If she's sick, why doesn't she send for a doctor? All Boston is packed into this house, and she has got to talk to it. I want to go in and see." "You can't go in," said the policeman drily. "Why can't I go in, I should like to know? I want to go in for the _Vesper_"! "You can't go in for anything. I'm keeping this man out, too," the policeman added genially, as if to make Mr. Pardon's exclusion appear less invidious. "Why, they'd ought to let _you_ in," said Matthias, staring a moment at Ransom. "May be they'd ought, but they won't," the policeman remarked. "Gracious me!" panted Mr. Pardon; "I knew from the first Miss Chancellor would make a mess of it! Where's Mr. Filer?" he went on eagerly, addressing himself apparently to either of the others, or to both. "I guess he's at the door, counting the money," said the policeman. "Well, he'll have to give it back if he don't look out!" "Maybe he will. I'll let _him_ in if he comes, but he's the only one. She is on now," the policeman added, without emotion. His ear had caught the first faint murmur of another explosion of sound. This time, unmistakably, it was applause--the clapping of multitudinous hands, mingled with the noise of many throats. The demonstration, however, though considerable, was not what might have been expected, and it died away quickly. Mr. Pardon stood listening, with an expression of some alarm. "Merciful fathers! can't they give her more than that?" he cried. "I'll just fly round and see!" When he had hurried away again, Ransom said to the policeman--"Who is Mr. Filer?" "Oh, he's an old friend of mine. He's the man that runs Miss Chancellor." "That runs her?" "Just the same as she runs Miss Tarrant. He runs the pair, as you might say. He's in the lecture-business." "Then he had better talk to the public himself." "Oh, _he_ can't talk; he can only boss!" The opposite door at this moment was pushed open again, and a large, heated-looking man, with a little stiff beard on the end of his chin and his overcoat flying behind him, strode forward with an imprecation. "What the h---- are they doing in the parlour? This sort of thing's about played out!" "Ain't she up there now?" the policeman asked. "It's not Miss Tarrant," Ransom said, as if he knew all about it. He perceived in a moment that this was Mr. Filer, Olive Chancellor's agent; an inference instantly followed by the reflexion that such a personage would have been warned against him by his kinswoman and would doubtless attempt to hold him, or his influence, accountable for Verena's unexpected delay. Mr. Filer only glanced at him, however, and to Ransom's surprise appeared to have no theory of his identity; a fact implying that Miss Chancellor had considered that the greater discretion was (except to the policeman) to hold her tongue about him altogether. "Up there? It's her jackass of a father that's up there!" cried Mr. Filer, with his hand on the latch of the door, which the policeman had allowed him to approach. "Is he asking for a doctor?" the latter inquired dispassionately. "You're the sort of doctor he'll want, if he doesn't produce the girl! You don't mean to say they've locked themselves in? What the plague are they after?" "They've got the key on that side," said the policeman, while Mr. Filer discharged at the door a volley of sharp knocks, at the same time violently shaking the handle. "If the door was locked, what was the good of your standing before it?" Ransom inquired. "So as you couldn't do that"; and the policeman nodded at Mr. Filer. "You see your interference has done very little good." "I dunno; she has got to come out yet." Mr. Filer meanwhile had continued to thump and shake, demanding instant admission and inquiring if they were going to let the audience pull the house down. Another round of applause had broken out, directed perceptibly to some apology, some solemn circumlocution, of Selah Tarrant's; this covered the sound of the agent's voice, as well as that of a confused and divided response, proceeding from the parlour. For a minute nothing definite was audible; the door remained closed, and Matthias Pardon reappeared in the vestibule. "He says she's just a little faint--from nervousness. She'll be all ready in about three minutes." This announcement was Mr. Pardon's contribution to the crisis; and he added that the crowd was a lovely crowd, it was a real Boston crowd, it was perfectly good-humoured. "There's a lovely crowd, and a real Boston one too, I guess, in here!" cried Mr. Filer, now banging very hard. "I've handled prima donnas, and I've handled natural curiosities, but I've never seen anything up to this. Mind what I say, ladies; if you don't let me in, I'll smash down the door!" "Don't seem as if _you_ could make it much worse, does it?" the policeman observed to Ransom, strolling aside a little, with the air of being superseded. XLII Ransom made no reply; he was watching the door, which at that moment gave way from within. Verena stood there--it was she, evidently, who had opened it--and her eyes went straight to his. She was dressed in white, and her face was whiter than her garment; above it her hair seemed to shine like fire. She took a step forward; but before she could take another he had come down to her, on the threshold of the room. Her face was full of suffering, and he did not attempt--before all those eyes--to take her hand; he only said in a low tone, "I have been waiting for you--a long time!" "I know it--I saw you in your seat--I want to speak to you." "Well, Miss Tarrant, don't you think you'd better be on the platform?" cried Mr. Filer, making with both his arms a movement as if to sweep her before him, through the waiting-room, up into the presence of the public. "In a moment I shall be ready. My father is making that all right." And, to Ransom's surprise, she smiled, with all her sweetness, at the irrepressible agent; appeared to wish genuinely to reassure him. The three had moved together into the waiting-room, and there at the farther end of it, beyond the vulgar, perfunctory chairs and tables, under the flaring gas, he saw Mrs. Tarrant sitting upright on a sofa, with immense rigidity, and a large flushed visage, full of suppressed distortion, and beside her prostrate, fallen over, her head buried in the lap of Verena's mother, the tragic figure of Olive Chancellor. Ransom could scarcely know how much Olive's having flung herself upon Mrs. Tarrant's bosom testified to the convulsive scene that had just taken place behind the locked door. He closed it again, sharply, in the face of the reporter and the policeman, and at the same moment Selah Tarrant descended, through the aperture leading to the platform, from his brief communion with the public. On seeing Ransom he stopped short, and, gathering his waterproof about him, measured the young man from head to foot. "Well, sir, perhaps _you_ would like to go and explain our hitch," he remarked, indulging in a smile so comprehensive that the corners of his mouth seemed almost to meet behind. "I presume that you, better than any one else, can give them an insight into our difficulties!" "Father, be still; father, it will come out all right in a moment!" cried Verena, below her breath, panting like an emergent diver. "There's one thing I want to know: are we going to spend half an hour talking over our domestic affairs?" Mr. Filer demanded, wiping his indignant countenance. "Is Miss Tarrant going to lecture, or ain't she going to lecture? If she ain't, she'll please to show cause why. Is she aware that every quarter of a second, at the present instant, is worth about five hundred dollars?" "I know that--I know that, Mr. Filer; I will begin in a moment!" Verena went on. "I only want to speak to Mr. Ransom--just three words. They are perfectly quiet--don't you see how quiet they are? They trust me, they trust me, don't they, father? I only want to speak to Mr. Ransom." "Who the devil is Mr. Ransom?" cried the exasperated, bewildered Filer. Verena spoke to the others, but she looked at her lover, and the expression of her eyes was ineffably touching and beseeching. She trembled with nervous passion, there were sobs and supplications in her voice, and Ransom felt himself flushing with pure pity for her pain--her inevitable agony. But at the same moment he had another perception, which brushed aside remorse; he saw that he could do what he wanted, that she begged him, with all her being, to spare her, but that so long as he should protest she was submissive, helpless. What he wanted, in this light, flamed before him and challenged all his manhood, tossing his determination to a height from which not only Doctor Tarrant, and Mr. Filer, and Olive, over there, in her sightless, soundless shame, but the great expectant hall as well, and the mighty multitude, in suspense, keeping quiet from minute to minute and holding the breath of its anger--from which all these things looked small, surmountable, and of the moment only. He didn't quite understand, as yet, however; he saw that Verena had not refused, but temporised, that the spell upon her--thanks to which he should still be able to rescue her--had been the knowledge that he was near. "Come away, come away," he murmured quickly, putting out his two hands to her. She took one of them, as if to plead, not to consent. "Oh, let me off, let me off--for _her_, for the others! It's too terrible, it's impossible!" "What I want to know is why Mr. Ransom isn't in the hands of the police!" wailed Mrs. Tarrant, from her sofa. "I have been, madam, for the last quarter of an hour." Ransom felt more and more that he could manage it, if he only kept cool. He bent over Verena with a tenderness in which he was careless, now, of observation. "Dearest, I told you, I warned you. I left you alone for ten weeks; but could that make you doubt it was coming? Not for worlds, not for millions, shall you give yourself to that roaring crowd. Don't ask me to care for them, or for any one! What do they care for you but to gape and grin and babble? You are mine, you are not theirs." "What under the sun is the man talking about? With the most magnificent audience ever brought together! The city of Boston is under this roof!" Mr. Filer gaspingly interposed. "The city of Boston be damned!" said Ransom. "Mr. Ransom is very much interested in my daughter. He doesn't approve of our views," Selah Tarrant explained. "It's the most horrible, wicked, immoral selfishness I ever heard in my life!" roared Mrs. Tarrant. "Selfishness! Mrs. Tarrant, do you suppose I pretend not to be selfish?" "Do you want us all murdered by the mob, then?" "They can have their money--can't you give them back their money?" cried Verena, turning frantically round the circle. "Verena Tarrant, you don't mean to say you are going to back down?" her mother shrieked. "Good God! that I should make her suffer like this!" said Ransom to himself; and to put an end to the odious scene he would have seized Verena in his arms and broken away into the outer world, if Olive, who at Mrs. Tarrant's last loud challenge had sprung to her feet, had not at the same time thrown herself between them with a force which made the girl relinquish her grasp of Ransom's hand. To his astonishment, the eyes that looked at him out of her scared, haggard face were, like Verena's, eyes of tremendous entreaty. There was a moment during which she would have been ready to go down on her knees to him, in order that the lecture should go on. "If you don't agree with her, take her up on the platform, and have it out there; the public would like that, first-rate!" Mr. Filer said to Ransom, as if he thought this suggestion practical. "She had prepared a lovely address!" Selah remarked mournfully, as if to the company in general. No one appeared to heed the observation, but his wife broke out again. "Verena Tarrant, I should like to slap you! Do you call such a man as that a gentleman? I don't know where your father's spirit is, to let him stay!" Olive, meanwhile, was literally praying to her kinsman. "Let her appear this once, just this once: not to ruin, not to shame! Haven't you any pity; do you want me to be hooted? It's only for an hour. Haven't you any soul?" Her face and voice were terrible to Ransom; she had flung herself upon Verena and was holding her close, and he could see that her friend's suffering was faint in comparison to her own. "Why for an hour, when it's all false and damnable? An hour is as bad as ten years! She's mine or she isn't, and if she's mine, she's all mine!" "Yours! Yours! Verena, think, think what you're doing!" Olive moaned, bending over her. Mr. Filer was now pouring forth his nature in objurgations and oaths, and brandishing before the culprits--Verena and Ransom--the extreme penalty of the law. Mrs. Tarrant had burst into violent hysterics, while Selah revolved vaguely about the room and declared that it seemed as if the better day was going to be put off for quite a while. "Don't you see how good, how sweet they are--giving us all this time? Don't you think that when they behave like that--without a sound, for five minutes--they ought to be rewarded?" Verena asked, smiling divinely, at Ransom. Nothing could have been more tender, more exquisite, than the way she put her appeal upon the ground of simple charity, kindness to the great good-natured, childish public. "Miss Chancellor may reward them in any way she likes. Give them back their money and a little present to each." "Money and presents? I should like to shoot you, sir!" yelled Mr. Filer. The audience had really been very patient, and up to this point deserved Verena's praise; but it was now long past eight o'clock, and symptoms of irritation--cries and groans and hisses--began again to proceed from the hall. Mr. Filer launched himself into the passage leading to the stage, and Selah rushed after him. Mrs. Tarrant extended herself, sobbing, on the sofa, and Olive, quivering in the storm, inquired of Ransom what he wanted her to do, what humiliation, what degradation, what sacrifice he imposed. "I'll do anything--I'll be abject--I'll be vile--I'll go down in the dust!" "I ask nothing of you, and I have nothing to do with you," Ransom said. "That is, I ask, at the most, that you shouldn't expect that, wishing to make Verena my wife, I should say to her, 'Oh yes, you can take an hour or two out of it!' Verena," he went on, "all this is out of it--dreadfully, odiously--and it's a great deal too much! Come, come as far away from here as possible, and we'll settle the rest!" The combined effort of Mr. Filer and Selah Tarrant to pacify the public had not, apparently, the success it deserved; the house continued in uproar and the volume of sound increased. "Leave us alone, leave us alone for a single minute!" cried Verena; "just let me speak to him, and it will be all right!" She rushed over to her mother, drew her, dragged her from the sofa, led her to the door of the room. Mrs. Tarrant, on the way, reunited herself with Olive (the horror of the situation had at least that compensation for her), and, clinging and staggering together, the distracted women, pushed by Verena, passed into the vestibule, now, as Ransom saw, deserted by the policeman and the reporter, who had rushed round to where the battle was thickest. "Oh, why did you come--why, why?" And Verena, turning back, threw herself upon him with a protest which was all, and more than all, a surrender. She had never yet given herself to him so much as in that movement of reproach. "Didn't you expect me, and weren't you sure?" he asked, smiling at her and standing there till she arrived. "I didn't know--it was terrible--it's awful! I saw you in your place, in the house, when you came. As soon as we got here I went out to those steps that go up to the stage and I looked out, with my father--from behind him--and saw you in a minute. Then I felt too nervous to speak! I could never, never, if you were there! My father didn't know you, and I said nothing, but Olive guessed as soon as I came back. She rushed at me, and she looked at me--oh, how she looked! and she guessed. She didn't need to go out to see for herself, and when she saw how I was trembling she began to tremble herself, to believe, as I believed, we were lost. Listen to them, listen to them, in the house! Now I want you to go away--I will see you to-morrow, as long as you wish. That's all I want now; if you will only go away it's not too late, and everything will be all right!" Preoccupied as Ransom was with the simple purpose of getting her bodily out of the place, he could yet notice her strange, touching tone, and her air of believing that she might really persuade him. She had evidently given up everything now--every pretence of a different conviction and of loyalty to her cause; all this had fallen from her as soon as she felt him near, and she asked him to go away just as any plighted maiden might have asked any favour of her lover. But it was the poor girl's misfortune that whatever she did or said, or left unsaid, only had the effect of making her dearer to him and making the people who were clamouring for her seem more and more a raving rabble. He indulged not in the smallest recognition of her request, and simply said, "Surely Olive must have believed, must have known, I would come." "She would have been sure if you hadn't become so unexpectedly quiet after I left Marmion. You seemed to concur, to be willing to wait." "So I was, for a few weeks. But they ended yesterday. I was furious that morning, when I learned your flight, and during the week that followed I made two or three attempts to find you. Then I stopped--I thought it better. I saw you were very well hidden; I determined not even to write. I felt I _could_ wait--with that last day at Marmion to think of. Besides, to leave you with her awhile, for the last, seemed more decent. Perhaps you'll tell me now where you were." "I was with father and mother. She sent me to them that morning, with a letter. I don't know what was in it. Perhaps there was money," said Verena, who evidently now would tell him everything. "And where did they take you?" "I don't know--to places. I was in Boston once, for a day; but only in a carriage. They were as frightened as Olive; they were bound to save me!" "They shouldn't have brought you here to-night then. How could you possibly doubt of my coming?" "I don't know what I thought, and I didn't know, till I saw you, that all the strength I had hoped for would leave me in a flash, and that if I attempted to speak--with you sitting there--I should make the most shameful failure. We had a sickening scene here--I begged for delay, for time to recover. We waited and waited, and when I heard you at the door talking to the policeman, it seemed to me everything was gone. But it will still come back, if you will leave me. They are quiet again--father must be interesting them." "I hope he is!" Ransom exclaimed. "If Miss Chancellor ordered the policeman, she must have expected me." "That was only after she knew you were in the house. She flew out into the lobby with father, and they seized him and posted him there. She locked the door; she seemed to think they would break it down. I didn't wait for that, but from the moment I knew you were on the other side of it I couldn't go on--I was paralysed. It has made me feel better to talk to you--and now I could appear," Verena added. "My darling child, haven't you a shawl or a mantle?" Ransom returned, for all answer, looking about him. He perceived, tossed upon a chair, a long, furred cloak, which he caught up and, before she could resist, threw over her. She even let him arrange it, and, standing there, draped from head to foot in it, contented herself with saying, after a moment: "I don't understand--where shall we go? Where will you take me?" "We shall catch the night-train for New York, and the first thing in the morning we shall be married." Verena remained gazing at him, with swimming eyes. "And what will the people do? Listen, listen!" "Your father is ceasing to interest them. They'll howl and thump, according to their nature." "Ah, their nature's fine!" Verena pleaded. "Dearest, that's one of the fallacies I shall have to woo you from. Hear them, the senseless brutes!" The storm was now raging in the hall, and it deepened, to such a point that Verena turned to him in a supreme appeal. "I could soothe them with a word!" "Keep your soothing words for me--you will have need of them all, in our coming time," Ransom said, laughing. He pulled open the door again, which led into the lobby, but he was driven back, with Verena, by a furious onset from Mrs. Tarrant. Seeing her daughter fairly arrayed for departure, she hurled herself upon her, half in indignation, half in a blind impulse to cling, and with an outpouring of tears, reproaches, prayers, strange scraps of argument and iterations of farewell, closed her about with an embrace which was partly a supreme caress, partly the salutary castigation she had, three minutes before, expressed the wish to administer, and altogether for the moment a check upon the girl's flight. "Mother, dearest, it's all for the best, I can't help it, I love you just the same; let me go, let me go!" Verena stammered, kissing her again, struggling to free herself, and holding out her hand to Ransom. He saw now that she only wanted to get away, to leave everything behind her. Olive was close at hand, on the threshold of the room, and as soon as Ransom looked at her he became aware that the weakness she had just shown had passed away. She had straightened herself again, and she was upright in her desolation. The expression of her face was a thing to remain with him for ever; it was impossible to imagine a more vivid presentment of blighted hope and wounded pride. Dry, desperate, rigid, she yet wavered and seemed uncertain; her pale, glittering eyes straining forward, as if they were looking for death. Ransom had a vision, even at that crowded moment, that if she could have met it there and then, bristling with steel or lurid with fire, she would have rushed on it without a tremor, like the heroine that she was. All this while the great agitation in the hall rose and fell, in waves and surges, as if Selah Tarrant and the agent were talking to the multitude, trying to calm them, succeeding for the moment, and then letting them loose again. Whirled down by one of the fitful gusts, a lady and a gentleman issued from the passage, and Ransom, glancing at them, recognised Mrs. Farrinder and her husband. "Well, Miss Chancellor," said that more successful woman, with considerable asperity, "if this is the way you're going to reinstate our sex!" She passed rapidly through the room, followed by Amariah, who remarked in his transit that it seemed as if there had been a want of organisation, and the two retreated expeditiously, without the lady's having taken the smallest notice of Verena, whose conflict with her mother prolonged itself. Ransom, striving, with all needful consideration for Mrs. Tarrant, to separate these two, addressed not a word to Olive; it was the last of her, for him, and he neither saw how her livid face suddenly glowed, as if Mrs. Farrinder's words had been a lash, nor how, as if with a sudden inspiration, she rushed to the approach to the platform. If he had observed her, it might have seemed to him that she hoped to find the fierce expiation she sought for in exposure to the thousands she had disappointed and deceived, in offering herself to be trampled to death and torn to pieces. She might have suggested to him some feminine firebrand of Paris revolutions, erect on a barricade, or even the sacrificial figure of Hypatia, whirled through the furious mob of Alexandria. She was arrested an instant by the arrival of Mrs. Burrage and her son, who had quitted the stage on observing the withdrawal of the Farrinders, and who swept into the room in the manner of people seeking shelter from a thunderstorm. The mother's face expressed the well-bred surprise of a person who should have been asked out to dinner and seen the cloth pulled off the table; the young man, who supported her on his arm, instantly lost himself in the spectacle of Verena disengaging herself from Mrs. Tarrant, only to be again overwhelmed, and in the unexpected presence of the Mississippian. His handsome blue eyes turned from one to the other, and he looked infinitely annoyed and bewildered. It even seemed to occur to him that he might, perhaps, interpose with effect, and he evidently would have liked to say that, without really bragging, _he_ would at least have kept the affair from turning into a row. But Verena, muffled and escaping, was deaf to him, and Ransom didn't look the right person to address such a remark as that to. Mrs. Burrage and Olive, as the latter shot past, exchanged a glance which represented quick irony on one side and indiscriminating defiance on the other. "Oh, are _you_ going to speak?" the lady from New York inquired, with her cursory laugh. Olive had already disappeared; but Ransom heard her answer flung behind her into the room. "I am going to be hissed and hooted and insulted!" "Olive, Olive!" Verena suddenly shrieked; and her piercing cry might have reached the front. But Ransom had already, by muscular force, wrenched her away, and was hurrying her out, leaving Mrs. Tarrant to heave herself into the arms of Mrs. Burrage, who, he was sure, would, within a minute, loom upon her attractively through her tears, and supply her with a reminiscence, destined to be valuable, of aristocratic support and clever composure. In the outer labyrinth hasty groups, a little scared, were leaving the hall, giving up the game. Ransom, as he went, thrust the hood of Verena's long cloak over her head, to conceal her face and her identity. It quite prevented recognition, and as they mingled in the issuing crowd he perceived the quick, complete, tremendous silence which, in the hall, had greeted Olive Chancellor's rush to the front. Every sound instantly dropped, the hush was respectful, the great public waited, and whatever she should say to them (and he thought she might indeed be rather embarrassed) it was not apparent that they were likely to hurl the benches at her. Ransom, palpitating with his victory, felt now a little sorry for her, and was relieved to know that, even when exasperated, a Boston audience is not ungenerous. "Ah, now I am glad!" said Verena, when they reached the street. But though she was glad, he presently discovered that, beneath her hood, she was in tears. It is to be feared that with the union, so far from brilliant, into which she was about to enter, these were not the last she was destined to shed. THE END 
34413	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) The Love Letters OF Mary Wollstonecraft TO GILBERT IMLAY WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR By Roger Ingpen _ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS_ Philadelphia J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY London: HUTCHINSON & CO. 1908 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT'S LETTERS EDITED BY ROGER INGPEN LEIGH HUNT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Illustrated Edition. 2 Vols. A. CONSTABLE & CO. ONE THOUSAND POEMS FOR CHILDREN: A Collection of Verse Old and New. HUTCHINSON & CO. FORSTER'S LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH. _Abridged._ (Standard Biographies.) HUTCHINSON & CO. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. _Abridged._ (Standard Biographies.) HUTCHINSON & CO. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. Complete. Illustrated Edition. 2 Vols. PITMAN. [Illustration: Mary Wollstonecraft _From an engraving, after the painting by John Opie, R.A._] PREFACE I Of Mary Wollstonecraft's ancestors little is known, except that they were of Irish descent. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, was the son of a prosperous Spitalfields manufacturer of Irish birth, from whom he inherited the sum of ten thousand pounds. He married towards the middle of the eighteenth century Elizabeth Dixon, the daughter of a gentleman in good position, of Ballyshannon, by whom he had six children: Edward, Mary, Everina, Eliza, James, and Charles. Mary, the eldest daughter and second child, was born on April 27, 1759, the birth year of Burns and Schiller, and the last year of George II.'s reign. She passed her childhood, until she was five years old, in the neighbourhood of Epping Forest, but it is doubtful whether she was born there or at Hoxton. Mr. Wollstonecraft followed no profession in particular, although from time to time he dabbled in a variety of pursuits when seized with a desire to make money. He is described as of idle, dissipated habits, and possessed of an ungovernable temper and a restless spirit that urged him to perpetual changes of residence. From Hoxton, where he squandered most of his fortune, he wandered to Essex, and then, among other places, in 1768 to Beverley, in Yorkshire. Later he took up farming at Laugharne in Pembrokeshire, but he at length grew tired of this experiment and returned once more to London. As his fortunes declined, his brutality and selfishness increased, and Mary was frequently compelled to defend her mother from his acts of personal violence, sometimes by thrusting herself bodily between him and his victim. Mrs. Wollstonecraft herself was far from being an amiable woman; a petty tyrant and a stern but incompetent ruler of her household, she treated Mary as the scapegoat of the family. Mary's early years therefore were far from being happy; what little schooling she had was spasmodic, owing to her father's migratory habits. In her sixteenth year, when the Wollstonecrafts were once more in London, Mary formed a friendship with Fanny Blood, a young girl about her own age, which was destined to be one of the happiest events of her life. There was a strong bond of sympathy between the two friends, for Fanny contrived by her work as an artist to be the chief support of her family, as her father, like Mr. Wollstonecraft, was a lazy, drunken fellow. Mary's new friend was an intellectual and cultured girl. She loved music, sang agreeably, was well-read too, for her age, and wrote interesting letters. It was by comparing Fanny Blood's letters with her own, that Mary first recognised how defective her education had been. She applied herself therefore to the task of increasing her slender stock of knowledge--hoping ultimately to become a governess. At length, at the age of nineteen, Mary went to Bath as companion to a tiresome and exacting old lady, a Mrs. Dawson, the widow of a wealthy London tradesman. In spite of many difficulties, she managed to retain her situation for some two years, leaving it only to attend the deathbed of her mother. Mrs. Wollstonecraft's death (in 1780) was followed by the break-up of the home. Mary went to live temporarily with the Bloods at Walham Green, and assisted Mrs. Blood, who took in needle-work; Everina became for a short time housekeeper to her brother Edward, a solicitor; and Eliza married a Mr. Bishop. Mr. Kegan Paul has pointed out that "all the Wollstonecraft sisters were enthusiastic, excitable, and hasty tempered, apt to exaggerate trifles, sensitive to magnify inattention into slights, and slights into studied insults. All had bad health of a kind which is especially trying to the nerves, and Eliza had in excess the family temperament and constitution." Mrs. Bishop's married life from the first was one of utter misery; they were an ill-matched pair, and her peculiar temperament evidently exasperated her husband's worst nature. His outbursts of fury and the scenes of violence of daily occurrence, for which he was responsible, were afterwards described with realistic fidelity by Mary in her novel, "The Wrongs of Women." It was plainly impossible for Mrs. Bishop to continue to live with such a man, and when, in 1782, she became dangerously ill, Mary, with her characteristic good nature, went to nurse her, and soon after assisted her in her flight from her husband. In the following year (1783) Mary set up a school at Islington with Fanny Blood, and she was thus in a position to offer a home to her sisters, Mrs. Bishop and Everina. The school was afterwards moved to Newington Green, where Mary soon had an establishment with some twenty day scholars. After a time, emboldened by her success, she took a larger house; but unfortunately the number of her pupils did not increase in proportion to her obligations, which were now heavier than she could well meet. While Mary was living at Newington Green, she was introduced to Dr. Johnson, who, Godwin says, treated her with particular kindness and attention, and with whom she had a long conversation. He desired her to repeat her visit, but she was prevented from seeing him again by his last illness and death. In the meantime Fanny Blood had impaired her health by overwork, and signs of consumption were already evident. A Mr. Hugh Skeys, who was engaged in business at Lisbon, though somewhat of a weak lover, had long admired Fanny, and wanted to marry her. It was thought that the climate of Portugal might help to restore her health, and she consented, perhaps more on that account than on any other, to become his wife. She left England in February 1785, but her health continued to grow worse. Mary's anxiety for her friend's welfare was such that, on hearing of her grave condition, she at once went off to Lisbon, and arrived after a stormy passage, only in time to comfort Fanny in her dying moments. Mary was almost broken-hearted at the loss of her friend, and she made her stay in Lisbon as short as possible, remaining only as long as was necessary for Mrs. Skeys's funeral. She returned to England to find that the school had greatly suffered by neglect during her absence. In a letter to Mrs. Skeys's brother, George Blood, she says: "The loss of Fanny was sufficient to have thrown a cloud over my brightest days: what effect then must it have, when I am bereft of every other comfort? I have too many debts, the rent is so enormous, and where to go, without money or friends, who can point out?" She thus realised that to continue her school was useless. But her experience as a schoolmistress was to bear fruit in the future. She had observed some of the defects of the educational methods of her time, and her earliest published effort was a pamphlet entitled, "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters," (1787). For this essay she received ten guineas, a sum that she gave to the parents of her friend, Mr. and Mrs. Blood, who were desirous of going over to Ireland. She soon went to Ireland herself, for in the October of 1787 she became governess to the daughters of Lord Kingsborough at Michaelstown, with a salary of forty pounds a year. Lady Kingsborough in Mary's opinion was "a shrewd clever woman, a great talker.... She rouges, and in short is a fine lady without fancy or sensibility. I am almost tormented to death by dogs...." Lady Kingsborough was rather selfish and uncultured, and her chief object was the pursuit of pleasure. She pampered her dogs, much to the disgust of Mary Wollstonecraft, and neglected her children. What views she had on education were narrow. She had been accustomed to submission from her governess, but she learnt before long that Mary was not of a tractable disposition. The children, at first unruly and defiant, "literally speaking, wild Irish, unformed and not very pleasing," soon gave Mary their confidence, and before long their affection. One of her pupils, Margaret King, afterwards Lady Mountcashel, always retained the warmest regard for Mary Wollstonecraft. Lady Mountcashel continued her acquaintance with William Godwin after Mary's death, and later came across Shelley and his wife in Italy. Mary won from the children the affection that they withheld from their mother, consequently, in the autumn of 1788, when she had been with Lady Kingsborough for about a year, she received her dismissal. She had completed by this time the novel to which she gave the name of "Mary," which is a tribute to the memory of her friend Fanny Blood. II And now, in her thirtieth year, Mary Wollstonecraft had concluded her career as a governess, and was resolved henceforth to devote herself to literature. Her chances of success were slender indeed, for she had written nothing to encourage her for such a venture. It was her fortune, however, to make the acquaintance of Joseph Johnson, the humanitarian publisher and bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard, who issued the works of Priestley, Horne Tooke, Gilbert Wakefield, and other men of advanced thought, and she met at his table many of the authors for whom he published, and such eminent men of the day as William Blake, Fuseli, and Tom Paine. Mr. Johnson, who afterwards proved one of her best friends, encouraged her in her literary plans. He was the publisher of her "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters," and had recognised in that little book so much promise, that when she sought his advice, he at once offered to assist her with employment. Mary therefore settled at Michaelmas 1788 in a house in George Street, Blackfriars. She had brought to London the manuscript of her novel "Mary," and she set to work on a book for children entitled "Original Stories from Real Life." Both of these books appeared before the year was out, the latter with quaint plates by William Blake. Mary also occupied some of her time with translations from the French, German, and even Dutch, one of which was an abridged edition of Saltzmann's "Elements of Morality," for which Blake also supplied the illustrations. Besides this work, Johnson engaged Mary as his literary adviser or "reader," and secured her services in connexion with _The Analytical Review_, a periodical that he had recently founded. While she was at George Street she also wrote her "Vindication of the Rights of Man" in a letter to Edmund Burke. Her chief satisfaction in keeping up this house was to have a home where her brothers and sisters could always come when out of employment. She was never weary of assisting them either with money, or by exerting her influence to find them situations. One of her first acts when she settled in London was to send Everina Wollstonecraft to Paris to improve her French accent. Mr. Johnson, who wrote a short account of Mary's life in London at this time, says she often spent her afternoons and evenings at his house, and used to seek his advice, or unburden her troubles to him. Among the many duties she imposed on herself was the charge of her father's affairs, which must indeed have been a profitless undertaking. The most important of Mary Wollstonecraft's labours while she was living at Blackfriars was the writing of the book that is chiefly associated with her name, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." This volume--now much better known by its title than its contents--was dedicated to the astute M. Talleyrand de Périgord, late Bishop of Autun, apparently on account of his authorship of a pamphlet on National Education. It is unnecessary to attempt an analysis of this strikingly original but most unequal book--modern reprints of the work have appeared under the editorship both of Mrs. Fawcett and Mrs. Pennell. It is sufficient to say that it is really a plea for a more enlightened system of education, affecting not only her own sex, but also humanity in its widest sense. Many of her suggestions have long since been put to practical use, such as that of a system of free national education, with equal advantages for boys and girls. The book contains too much theory and is therefore to a great extent obsolete. Mary Wollstonecraft protests against the custom that recognises woman as the plaything of man; she pleads rather for a friendly footing of equality between the sexes, besides claiming a new order of things for women, in terms which are unusually frank. Such a book could not fail to create a sensation, and it speedily made her notorious, not only in this country, but on the Continent, where it was translated into French. It was of course the outcome of the French Revolution; the whole work is permeated with the ideas and ideals of that movement, but whereas the French patriots demanded rights for men, she made the same demands also for women. It is evident that the great historical drama then being enacted in France had made a deep impression on Mary's mind--its influence is stamped on every page of her book, and it was her desire to visit France with Mr. Johnson and Fuseli. Her friends were, however, unable to accompany her, so she went alone in the December of 1792, chiefly with the object of perfecting her French. Godwin states, though apparently in error, that Fuseli was the cause of her going to France, the acquaintance with the painter having grown into something warmer than mere friendship. Fuseli, however, had a wife and was happily married, so Mary "prudently resolved to retire into another country, far remote from the object who had unintentionally excited the tender passion in her breast." She certainly arrived in Paris at a dramatic moment; she wrote on December 24 to her sister Everina: "The day after to-morrow I expect to see the King at the bar, and the consequences that will follow I am almost afraid to anticipate." On the day in question, the 26th, Louis XVI. appeared in the Hall of the Convention to plead his cause through his advocate, Desize, and on the same day she wrote that letter to Mr. Johnson which has so often been quoted: "About nine o'clock this morning," she says, "the King passed by my window, moving silently along (excepting now and then a few strokes on the drum, which rendered the stillness more awful) through empty streets, surrounded by the national guards, who, clustering round the carriage, seemed to deserve their name. The inhabitants flocked to their windows, but the casements were all shut, not a voice was heard, nor did I see anything like an insulting gesture. For the first time since I entered France I bowed to the majesty of the people, and respected the propriety of behaviour so perfectly in unison with my own feelings. I can scarcely tell you why, but an association of ideas made the tears flow insensibly from my eyes, when I saw Louis sitting, with more dignity than I expected from his character, in a hackney coach, going to meet death, where so many of his race had triumphed. My fancy instantly brought Louis XIV. before me, entering the capital with all his pomp, after one of his victories so flattering to his pride, only to see the sunshine of prosperity overshadowed by the sublime gloom of misery...." Mary first went to stay at the house of Madame Filiettaz, the daughter of Madame Bregantz, in whose school at Putney both Mrs. Bishop and Everina Wollstonecraft had been teachers. Mary was now something of a celebrity--"Authorship," she writes, "is a heavy weight for female shoulders, especially in the sunshine of prosperity"--and she carried with her letters of introduction to several influential people in Paris. She renewed her acquaintance with Tom Paine, became intimate with Helen Maria Williams (who is said to have once lived with Imlay), and visited, among others, the house of Mr. Thomas Christie. It was her intention to go to Switzerland, but there was some trouble about her passport, so she settled at Neuilly, then a village three miles from Paris. "Her habitation here," says Godwin, "was a solitary house in the midst of a garden, with no other habitant than herself and the gardener, an old man who performed for her many offices of a domestic, and would sometimes contend for the honour of making her bed. The gardener had a great veneration for his guest, and would set before her, when alone, some grapes of a particularly fine sort, which she could not without the greatest difficulty obtain of him when she had any person with her as a visitor. Here it was that she conceived, and for the most part executed, her historical and moral view of the French Revolution, into which she incorporated most of the observations she had collected for her letters, and which was written with more sobriety and cheerfulness than the tone in which they had been commenced. In the evening she was accustomed to refresh herself by a walk in a neighbouring wood, from which her host in vain endeavoured to dissuade her, by recounting divers horrible robberies and murders that had been committed there." [Illustration: From an engraving by Ridley, dated 1796, after a painting by John Opie, R.A. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. This picture was purchased for the National Gallery at the sale of the late Mr. William Russell. The reason for supposing that it represents Mary Wollstonecraft rests solely on testimony of the engraving in the _Monthly Mirror_ (published during her lifetime), from which this reproduction was made. Mrs. Merritt made an etching of the picture for Mr. Kegan Paul's edition of the "Letters to Imlay." _To face p. xvi_] It is probable that in March 1793 Mary Wollstonecraft first saw Gilbert Imlay. The meeting occurred at Mr. Christie's house, and her immediate impression was one of dislike, so that on subsequent occasions she avoided him. However, her regard for him rapidly changed into friendship, and later into love. Gilbert Imlay was born in New Jersey about 1755. He served as a captain in the American army during the Revolutionary war, and was the author of "A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America," 1792, and a novel entitled "The Emigrants," 1793. In the latter work, as an American, he proposes to "place a mirror to the view of Englishmen, that they may behold the decay of these features that were once so lovely," and further "to prevent the sacrilege which the present practice of matrimonial engagements necessarily produce." It is not known whether these views regarding marriage preceded, or were the result of, his connexion with Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1793 he was engaged in business, probably in the timber trade with Sweden and Norway. In deciding to devote herself to Imlay, Mary sought no advice and took no one into her confidence. She was evidently deeply in love with him, and felt that their mutual confidence shared by no one else gave a sacredness to their union. Godwin, who is our chief authority on the Imlay episode, states that "the origin of the connexion was about the middle of April 1793, and it was carried on in a private manner for about three months." Imlay had no property whatever, and Mary had objected to marry him, because she would not burden him with her own debts, or "involve him in certain family embarrassments," for which she believed herself responsible. She looked upon her connexion with Imlay, however, "as of the most inviolable nature." Then the French Government passed a decree that all British subjects resident in France should go to prison until a general declaration of peace. It therefore became expedient, not that a marriage should take place, for that would necessitate Mary declaring her nationality, but that she should take the name of Imlay, "which," says Godwin, "from the nature of their connexion (formed on her part at least, with no capricious or fickle design), she conceived herself entitled to do, and obtain a certificate from the American Ambassador, as the wife of a native of that country. Their engagement being thus avowed, they thought proper to reside under the same roof, and for that purpose removed to Paris." In a letter from Mary Wollstonecraft to her sister Everina, dated from Havre, March 10, 1794, she describes the climate of France as "uncommonly fine," and praises the common people for their manners; but she is also saddened by the scenes that she had witnessed and adds that "death and misery, in every shape of terror, haunt this devoted country.... If any of the many letters I have written have come to your hands or Eliza's, you know that I am safe, through the protection of an American, a most worthy man who joins to uncommon tenderness of heart and quickness of feeling, a soundness of understanding, and reasonableness of temper rarely to be met with. Having been brought up in the interior parts of America, he is a most natural, unaffected creature." Mary has expressed in the "Rights of Woman" her ideal of the relations between man and wife; she now looked forward to such a life of domestic happiness as she had cherished for some time. She had known much unhappiness in the past. Godwin says: "She brought in the present instance, a wounded and sick heart, to take refuge in the attachment of a chosen friend. Let it not, however, be imagined, that she brought a heart, querulous, and ruined in its taste for pleasure. No; her whole character seemed to change with a change of fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, and she assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. She was playful, full of confidence, kindness, and sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour and smoothness. Her voice became cheerful; her temper overflowing with universal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day to day illuminated her countenance, which all who knew her will so well recollect, and which won, both heart and soul, the affections of almost every one that beheld it." She had now met the man to whom she earnestly believed she could surrender herself with entire devotion. Naturally of an affectionate nature, for the first time in her life, with her impulsive Irish spirit, as Godwin says, "she gave way to all the sensibilities of her nature." The affair was nevertheless doomed to failure from the first. Mary had taken her step without much forethought. She attributed to Imlay "uncommon tenderness of heart," but she did not detect his instability of character. He certainly fascinated her, as he fascinated other women, both before and after his attachment to Mary. He was not the man to be satisfied with one woman as his life-companion. A typical American, he was deeply immersed in business, but his affairs may not have claimed as much of his time as he represented. In the September after he set up house with Mary, that is in '93, the year of the Terror, he left her in Paris while he went to Havre, formerly known as Havre de Grace, but then altered to Havre Marat. It is awful to think what must have been the life of this lonely stranger in Paris at such a time. Yet her letters to Imlay contain hardly a reference to the events of the Revolution. Mary, tired of waiting for Imlay's return to Paris, and sickened with the "growing cruelties of Robespierre," joined him at Havre in January 1794, and on May 14 she gave birth to a girl, whom she named Frances in memory of Fanny Blood, the friend of her youth. There is every evidence throughout her letters to Imlay of how tenderly she loved the little one. In a letter to Everina, dated from Paris on September 20, she speaks thus of little Fanny: "I want you to see my little girl, who is more like a boy. She is ready to fly away with spirits, and has eloquent health in her cheeks and eyes. She does not promise to be a beauty, but appears wonderfully intelligent, and though I am sure she has her father's quick temper and feelings, her good humour runs away with all the credit of my good nursing." In September Imlay left Havre for London, and now that the Terror had subsided Mary returned to Paris. This separation really meant the end of their camaraderie. They were to meet again, but never on the old footing. The journey proved the most fatiguing that she ever made, the carriage in which she travelled breaking down four times between Havre and Paris. Imlay promised to come to Paris in the course of two months, and she expected him till the end of the year with cheerfulness. With the press of business and other distractions his feelings for her and the child had cooled, as the tone of his letters betrayed. For three months longer Imlay put her off with unsatisfactory explanations, but her suspense came to an end in April, when she went to London at his request. Her gravest forebodings proved too true. Imlay was already living with a young actress belonging to a company of strolling players; and it was evident, though at first he protested to the contrary, that Mary was only a second consideration in his life. He provided her, however, with a furnished house, and she did not at once abandon hope of a reconciliation: but when she realised that hope was useless, in her despair she resolved to take her life. Whether she actually attempted suicide, or whether Imlay learnt of her intention in time to prevent her, is not actually known. Imlay was at this time engaged in trade with Norway, and requiring a trustworthy representative to transact some confidential business, it was thought that the journey would restore Mary's health and spirits. She therefore consented to take the voyage, and set out early in April 1795, with a document drawn up by Imlay appointing her as his representative, and describing her as "Mary Imlay, my best friend, and wife," and concluding: "Thus, confiding in the talent, zeal, and earnestness of my dearly beloved friend and companion; I submit the management of these affairs entirely and implicitly to her discretion: Remaining most sincerely and affectionately hers truly, G. Imlay." The letters describing her travels, excluding any personal matters, were issued in 1796, as "Letters from Sweden and Norway," one of her most readable books. The portions eliminated from these letters were printed by Godwin in his wife's posthumous works, and are given in the present volume. She returned to England early in October with a heavy heart. Imlay had promised to meet her on the homeward journey, possibly at Hamburg, and to take her to Switzerland, but she hastened to London to find her suspicions confirmed. He provided her with a lodging, but entirely neglected her for some woman with whom he was living. On first making the discovery of his fresh intrigue, and in her agony of mind, she sought Imlay at the house he had furnished for his new companion. The conference resulted in her utter despair, and she decided to drown herself. She first went to Battersea Bridge, but found too many people there; and therefore walked on to Putney. It was night and raining when she arrived there, and after wandering up and down the bridge for half-an-hour until her clothing was thoroughly drenched she threw herself into the river. She was, however, rescued from the water and, although unconscious, her life was saved. Mary met Imlay casually on two or three other occasions; probably her last sight of him was in the New Road (now Marylebone Road), when "he alighted from his horse, and walked with her some time; and the re-encounter passed," she assured Godwin, "without producing in her any oppressive emotion." Mary refused to accept any pecuniary assistance for herself from Imlay, but he gave a bond for a sum to be settled on her, the interest to be devoted to the maintenance of their child; neither principal nor interest, however, was ever paid. What ultimately became of Imlay is not known. Mary at length resigned herself to the inevitable. Her old friend and publisher, Mr. Johnson, came to her aid, and she resolved to resume her literary work for the support of herself and her child. She was once more seen in literary society. Among the people whom she met at this time was William Godwin. Three years her senior, he was one of the most advanced republicans of the time, the author of "Political Justice" and the novel "Caleb Williams." They had met before, for the first time in November 1791, but she displeased Godwin, because her vivacious gossip silenced the naturally quiet Thomas Paine, whom he was anxious to hear talk. Although they met occasionally afterwards, it was not until 1796 that they became friendly. There must have been something about Godwin that made him extremely attractive to his friends, for he numbered among them some of the most charming women of the day, and such men as Wordsworth, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Shelley were proud to be of his circle. To the members of his family he was of a kind, even affectionate, disposition. Unfortunately, he appears to the worst advantage--a kind of early Pecksniff--in his later correspondence and relations with Shelley, and it is by this correspondence at the present day that he is best known. The fine side-face portrait of Godwin by Northcote, in the National Portrait Gallery, preserves for us all the beauty of his intellectual brow and eyes. Another portrait of Godwin, full-face, with a long sad nose, by Pickersgill, once to be seen in the National Portrait Gallery, is not so pleasing. In a letter to Cottle, Southey gives an unflattering portrait of Godwin at the time of his marriage, which seems to suggest the full-face portrait of the philosopher--"he has large noble eyes, and a _nose_--oh, most abominable nose! Language is not vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward elongation." Godwin describes his courtship with Mary as "friendship melting into love." They agreed to live together, but Godwin took rooms about twenty doors from their home in the Polygon, Somers Town, as it was one of his theories that living together under the same roof is destructive of family happiness. Godwin went to his rooms as soon as he rose in the morning, generally without taking breakfast with Mary, and he sometimes slept at his lodgings. They rarely met again until dinner-time, unless to take a walk together. During the day this extraordinary couple would communicate with each other by means of short letters or notes. Mr. Kegan Paul prints some of these; such as Godwin's: "I will have the honour to dine with you. You ask me whether I can get you four orders. I do not know, but I do not think the thing impossible. How do you do?" And Mary's: "Fanny is delighted with the thought of dining with you. But I wish you to eat your meat first, and let her come up with the pudding. I shall probably knock at your door on my way to Opie's; but should I not find you, let me request you not to be too late this evening. Do not give Fanny butter with her pudding." This note is dated April 20, 1797, and probably fixes the time when Mary was sitting for her portrait to Opie. On the whole, Godwin and Mary lived happily together, with very occasional clouds, mainly due to her over-sensitive nature, and his confirmed bachelor habits. Although both were opposed to matrimony on principle, they were married at Old St. Pancras Church on March 29, 1797, the clerk of the church being witness. Godwin does not mention the event in his carefully registered diary. The reason for the marriage was that Mary was about to become a mother, and it was for the sake of the child that they deemed it prudent to go through the ceremony. But it was not made public at once, chiefly for fear that Johnson should cease to help Mary. Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Reveley, two of Godwin's admirers, were so upset at the announcement of his marriage that they shed tears. An interesting description of Mary at this time is given in Southey's letter to Cottle, quoted above, dated March 13, 1797. He says, "Of all the lions or _literati_ I have seen here, Mary Imlay's countenance is the best, infinitely the best: the only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of Horne Tooke display--an expression indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the most meaning I ever saw." Mary busied herself with literary work; otherwise her short married life was uneventful. Godwin made a journey with his friend Basil Montagu to Staffordshire from June 3 to 20, and the correspondence between husband and wife during this time, which Mr. Paul prints, is most delightful reading, and shows how entirely in sympathy they were. [Illustration: From a photo by Emery, Walker after the picture by Opie (probably painted in April, 1797) in the National Portrait Gallery. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. This picture passed from Godwin's hands on his death to his grandson, Sir Percy Florence Shelley. It was afterwards bequeathed to the nation by his widow, Lady Shelley. It was engraved by Heath (Jan. 1, 1798) for Godwin's memoir of his wife. An engraving of it also appeared in the _Lady's Magazine_, from which the frontispiece to this book was made, and a mezzotint by W. T. Annis was published in 1802. Mrs. Merritt also made an etching of the picture for Mr. Paul's edition of the "Letters to Imlay." _To face p. xxvi_] On August 30, Mary's child was born, not the William so much desired by them both but Mary, who afterwards became Mrs. Shelley. All seemed well with the mother until September 3, when alarming symptoms appeared. The best medical advice was obtained, but after a week's illness, on Sunday morning, the 10th, at twenty minutes to eight, she sank and died. During her illness, when in great agony, an anodyne was administered, which gave Mary some relief, when she exclaimed, "Oh, Godwin, I am in heaven." But, as Mr. Kegan Paul says, "even at that moment Godwin declined to be entrapped into the admission that heaven existed," and his instant reply was: "You mean, my dear, that your physical sensations are somewhat easier." Mary Godwin, however, did not share her husband's religious doubts. Her sufferings had been great, but her death was a peaceful one. Godwin's grief was very deep, as the letters that he wrote immediately after her death, and his tribute to her memory in the "Memoirs" testify. Mary Godwin was buried in Old St. Pancras churchyard on September 15, in the presence of most of her friends. Godwin lived till 1836, when he was laid beside her. Many years afterwards, at the same graveside, Shelley is said to have plighted his troth to Mary Godwin's daughter. In 1851, when the Metropolitan and Midland Railways were constructed at St. Pancras, the graveyard was destroyed, but the bodies of Mary and William Godwin were removed by their grandson, Sir Percy Shelley, to Bournemouth, where they now rest with his remains, and those of his mother, Mrs. Shelley. In the year following Mary's death (1798) Godwin edited his wife's "Posthumous Works," in four volumes, in which appeared the letters to Imlay, and her incomplete novel "The Wrongs of Woman." His tribute to Mary Godwin's memory was also published in 1798, under the title of "Memoirs of the Author of _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman_." Godwin's novel, "St. Leon" came out in 1799; his tragedy "Antonio" was produced only to fail, in 1800, and in 1801, he was wooed and won by Mrs. Clairmont, a widow. The Godwin household was a somewhat mixed one, consisting, as it did, of Fanny Imlay, Mary Godwin, Mrs. Godwin's two children, Charles and Claire Clairmont, and also of William, the only child born of her marriage with Godwin. In 1812 Shelley began a correspondence with Godwin, which ultimately led to Mary Godwin's elopement with the poet. Poor Fanny Imlay, or Godwin, as she was called after her mother's death, died at the age of nineteen by her own hand, in October 1816. Her life had been far from happy in this strange household. She had grown to love Shelley, but his choice had fallen on her half-sister, so she bravely kept her secret to herself. One day she suddenly left home and travelled to Swansea, where she was found lying dead the morning after her arrival, in the inn where she had taken a room, "her long brown hair about her face; a bottle of laudanum upon the table, and a note which ran thus: 'I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare.' She had with her the little Genevan watch, a gift of travel from Mary and Shelley: and in her purse were a few shillings."[1] Shelley, afterwards recalling his last interview with Fanny in London, wrote this stanza: "Her voice did quiver as we parted; Yet knew I not that heart was broken From whence it came, and I departed Heeding not the words then spoken. Misery--O Misery, This world is all too wide for thee!" III The vicissitudes to which Mary Wollstonecraft was so largely a prey during her lifetime seem to have pursued her after death. In her own day recognised as a public character, reviled by most of her contemporaries in terms not less ungentle than Horace Walpole's epithets, "a hyena in petticoats" or "a philosophising serpent," posterity has proved hardly more lenient to her. But the vigorous work of this "female patriot" has saved her name from that descent into obscurity which is the reward of many men and women more talented than Mary Wollstonecraft. Reputed chiefly as an unsexed being, who had written "A Vindication of the Rights of Women," she was not the first woman to hold views on the emancipation of her sex; but her chief crimes were in expressing them for the instruction of the public, and having the courage to live up to her opinions. Whether right or wrong, she paid the penalty of violating custom by discussing forbidden subjects. It is true that she detected many social evils, and suggested some excellent remedies for their amelioration, but the time was not ripe for her book, and she suffered the usual fate of the pioneer. Moreover, her memoir by William Godwin, beautiful as it is in many respects, exercised a distinctly harmful influence in regard to her memory. The very fact that she became the wife of so notorious a man, was sufficient reason to condemn her in the eyes of her countrymen. For two generations after her death practically no attempt was made to remove the stigma from her name. But at length the late Mr. Kegan Paul, a man of wide and generous sympathies, made a serious effort to obtain something like justice for Mary Wollstonecraft. In his book on William Godwin, published in 1876, the true story of Mary's life was told for the first time. It was somewhat of a revelation, for it recorded the history of an unhappy but brave and loyal woman, whose faults proceeded from excessive sensibility and from a heart that was over-susceptible. Mary Wollstonecraft was an idealist in a very matter-of-fact age, and her outlook on life, like that of most idealists, was strongly affected by her imagination. She saw people and events in brilliant lights or sombre shadows--it was a power akin to enthusiasm which enabled her to produce some of her best writing, but it also prevented her from seeing the defects of her worst work. Since Mr. Kegan Paul's memoir, Mary Wollstonecraft has been viewed from an entirely different aspect, and many there are who have come under the spell of her fascinating personality. It is not, however, her message alone that now interests us, but the woman herself, her desires, her aspirations, her struggles, and her love. Pathetic and lonely, she stands out in the faint mists of the past, a woman that will continue to evoke sympathy when her books are no longer read. But it is safe to predict that the pages reprinted in this volume are not destined to share the fate of the rest of her work. Other writers have been unhappy and have known the pains of unrequited love, but Mary Wollstonecraft addressed these letters with a breaking heart to the man whom she adored, the most passionate love letters in our literature. It is true that she was a votary of Rousseau, and that she had probably assimilated from the study of his work not only many of his views, but something of his style; it does not, however, appear that she had any motive in writing these letters other than to plead her cause with Imlay. She was far too sensitive to have intended them for publication, and it was only by a mere chance that they were rescued from oblivion. _December 1907._ PORTRAITS MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (Photogravure) _Frontispiece_ MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, by Opie. From an engraving by Ridley _facing p._ xvi MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, from the picture by Opie _facing p._ xxvi LETTERS TO GILBERT IMLAY LETTER I _Two o'Clock [Paris, June 1793]._ My dear love, after making my arrangements for our snug dinner to-day, I have been taken by storm, and obliged to promise to dine, at an early hour, with the Miss ----s, the _only_ day they intend to pass here. I shall however leave the key in the door, and hope to find you at my fire-side when I return, about eight o'clock. Will you not wait for poor Joan?--whom you will find better, and till then think very affectionately of her. Yours, truly, MARY. I am sitting down to dinner; so do not send an answer. LETTER II _Past Twelve o'Clock, Monday Night [Paris, Aug. 1793]._ I obey an emotion of my heart, which made me think of wishing thee, my love, good-night! before I go to rest, with more tenderness than I can to-morrow, when writing a hasty line or two under Colonel ----'s eye. You can scarcely imagine with what pleasure I anticipate the day, when we are to begin almost to live together; and you would smile to hear how many plans of employment I have in my head, now that I am confident my heart has found peace in your bosom.--Cherish me with that dignified tenderness, which I have only found in you; and your own dear girl will try to keep under a quickness of feeling, that has sometimes given you pain.--Yes, I will be _good_, that I may deserve to be happy; and whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into the miserable state, which rendered life a burthen almost too heavy to be borne. But, good-night!--God bless you! Sterne says, that is equal to a kiss--yet I would rather give you the kiss into the bargain, glowing with gratitude to Heaven, and affection to you. I like the word affection, because it signifies something habitual; and we are soon to meet, to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm. MARY. I will be at the barrier a little after ten o'clock to-morrow.[2]--Yours-- LETTER III _Wednesday Morning [Paris, Aug. 1793]._ You have often called me, dear girl, but you would now say good, did you know how very attentive I have been to the ---- ever since I came to Paris. I am not however going to trouble you with the account, because I like to see your eyes praise me; and Milton insinuates, that, during such recitals, there are interruptions, not ungrateful to the heart, when the honey that drops from the lips is not merely words. Yet, I shall not (let me tell you before these people enter, to force me to huddle away my letter) be content with only a kiss of DUTY--you _must_ be glad to see me--because you are glad--or I will make love to the _shade_ of Mirabeau, to whom my heart continually turned, whilst I was talking with Madame ----, forcibly telling me, that it will ever have sufficient warmth to love, whether I will or not, sentiment, though I so highly respect principle.---- Not that I think Mirabeau utterly devoid of principles--Far from it--and, if I had not begun to form a new theory respecting men, I should, in the vanity of my heart, have _imagined_ that _I_ could have made something of his----it was composed of such materials--Hush! here they come--and love flies away in the twinkling of an eye, leaving a little brush of his wing on my pale cheeks. I hope to see Dr. ---- this morning; I am going to Mr. ----'s to meet him. ----, and some others, are invited to dine with us to-day; and to-morrow I am to spend the day with ----. I shall probably not be able to return to ---- to-morrow; but it is no matter, because I must take a carriage, I have so many books, that I immediately want, to take with me.--On Friday then I shall expect you to dine with me--and, if you come a little before dinner, it is so long since I have seen you, you will not be scolded by yours affectionately, MARY. LETTER IV[3] _Friday Morning [Paris, Sept. 1793]._ A man, whom a letter from Mr. ---- previously announced, called here yesterday for the payment of a draft; and, as he seemed disappointed at not finding you at home, I sent him to Mr. ----. I have since seen him, and he tells me that he has settled the business. So much for business!--May I venture to talk a little longer about less weighty affairs?--How are you?--I have been following you all along the road this comfortless weather; for, when I am absent from those I love, my imagination is as lively, as if my senses had never been gratified by their presence--I was going to say caresses--and why should I not? I have found out that I have more mind than you, in one respect; because I can, without any violent effort of reason, find food for love in the same object, much longer than you can.--The way to my senses is through my heart; but, forgive me! I think there is sometimes a shorter cut to yours. With ninety-nine men out of a hundred, a very sufficient dash of folly is necessary to render a woman _piquante_, a soft word for desirable; and, beyond these casual ebullitions of sympathy, few look for enjoyment by fostering a passion in their hearts. One reason, in short, why I wish my whole sex to become wiser, is, that the foolish ones may not, by their pretty folly, rob those whose sensibility keeps down their vanity, of the few roses that afford them some solace in the thorny road of life. I do not know how I fell into these reflections, excepting one thought produced it--that these continual separations were necessary to warm your affection.--Of late, we are always separating.--Crack!--crack!--and away you go.--This joke wears the sallow cast of thought; for, though I began to write cheerfully, some melancholy tears have found their way into my eyes, that linger there, whilst a glow of tenderness at my heart whispers that you are one of the best creatures in the world.--Pardon then the vagaries of a mind, that has been almost "crazed by care," as well as "crossed in hapless love," and bear with me a _little_ longer!--When we are settled in the country together, more duties will open before me, and my heart, which now, trembling into peace, is agitated by every emotion that awakens the remembrance of old griefs, will learn to rest on yours, with that dignity your character, not to talk of my own, demands. Take care of yourself--and write soon to your own girl (you may add dear, if you please) who sincerely loves you, and will try to convince you of it, by becoming happier. MARY. LETTER V _Sunday Night [Paris, 1793]._ I have just received your letter, and feel as if I could not go to bed tranquilly without saying a few words in reply--merely to tell you, that my mind is serene and my heart affectionate. Ever since you last saw me inclined to faint, I have felt some gentle twitches, which make me begin to think, that I am nourishing a creature who will soon be sensible of my care.--This thought has not only produced an overflowing of tenderness to you, but made me very attentive to calm my mind and take exercise, lest I should destroy an object, in whom we are to have a mutual interest, you know. Yesterday--do not smile!--finding that I had hurt myself by lifting precipitately a large log of wood, I sat down in an agony, till I felt those said twitches again. Are you very busy? * * * * * So you may reckon on its being finished soon, though not before you come home, unless you are detained longer than I now allow myself to believe you will.-- Be that as it may, write to me, my best love, and bid me be patient--kindly--and the expressions of kindness will again beguile the time, as sweetly as they have done to-night.--Tell me also over and over again, that your happiness (and you deserve to be happy!) is closely connected with mine, and I will try to dissipate, as they rise, the fumes of former discontent, that have too often clouded the sunshine, which you have endeavoured to diffuse through my mind. God bless you! Take care of yourself, and remember with tenderness your affectionate MARY. I am going to rest very happy, and you have made me so.--This is the kindest good-night I can utter. LETTER VI _Friday Morning [Paris, Dec. 1793]._ I am glad to find that other people can be unreasonable, as well as myself--for be it known to thee, that I answered thy _first_ letter, the very night it reached me (Sunday), though thou couldst not receive it before Wednesday, because it was not sent off till the next day.--There is a full, true, and particular account.-- Yet I am not angry with thee, my love, for I think that it is a proof of stupidity, and likewise of a milk-and-water affection, which comes to the same thing, when the temper is governed by a square and compass.--There is nothing picturesque in this straight-lined equality, and the passions always give grace to the actions. Recollection now makes my heart bound to thee; but, it is not to thy money-getting face, though I cannot be seriously displeased with the exertion which increases my esteem, or rather is what I should have expected from thy character.--No; I have thy honest countenance before me--Pop--relaxed by tenderness; a little--little wounded by my whims; and thy eyes glistening with sympathy.--Thy lips then feel softer than soft--and I rest my cheek on thine, forgetting all the world.--I have not left the hue of love out of the picture--the rosy glow; and fancy has spread it over my own cheeks, I believe, for I feel them burning, whilst a delicious tear trembles in my eye, that would be all your own, if a grateful emotion directed to the Father of nature, who has made me thus alive to happiness, did not give more warmth to the sentiment it divides--I must pause a moment. Need I tell you that I am tranquil after writing thus?--I do not know why, but I have more confidence in your affection, when absent, than present; nay, I think that you must love me, for, in the sincerity of my heart let me say it, I believe I deserve your tenderness, because I am true, and have a degree of sensibility that you can see and relish. Yours sincerely, MARY. LETTER VII. _Sunday Morning [Paris, Dec. 29, 1793]._ You seem to have taken up your abode at Havre. Pray sir! when do you think of coming home? or, to write very considerately, when will business permit you? I shall expect (as the country people say in England) that you will make a _power_ of money to indemnify me for your absence. * * * * * Well! but, my love, to the old story--am I to see you this week, or this month?--I do not know what you are about--for, as you did not tell me, I would not ask Mr. ----, who is generally pretty communicative. I long to see Mrs. ----; not to hear from you, so do not give yourself airs, but to get a letter from Mr. ----. And I am half angry with you for not informing me whether she had brought one with her or not.--On this score I will cork up some of the kind things that were ready to drop from my pen, which has never been dipt in gall when addressing you; or, will only suffer an exclamation--"The creature!" or a kind look to escape me, when I pass the slippers--which I could not remove from my _falle_ door, though they are not the handsomest of their kind. _Be not too anxious to get money!--for nothing worth having is to be purchased._ God bless you. Yours affectionately, MARY. LETTER VIII _Monday Night [Paris, Dec. 30, 1793]._ My best love, your letter to-night was particularly grateful to my heart, depressed by the letters I received by ----, for he brought me several, and the parcel of books directed to Mr. ---- was for me. Mr. ----'s letter was long and very affectionate; but the account he gives me of his own affairs, though he obviously makes the best of them, has vexed me. A melancholy letter from my sister ---- has also harrassed my mind--that from my brother would have given me sincere pleasure; but for * * * * * There is a spirit of independence in his letter, that will please you; and you shall see it, when we are once more over the fire together.--I think that you would hail him as a brother, with one of your tender looks, when your heart not only gives a lustre to your eye, but a dance of playfulness, that he would meet with a glow half made up of bashfulness, and a desire to please the----where shall I find a word to express the relationship which subsists between us?--Shall I ask the little twitcher?--But I have dropt half the sentence that was to tell you how much he would be inclined to love the man loved by his sister. I have been fancying myself sitting between you, ever since I began to write, and my heart has leaped at the thought! You see how I chat to you. I did not receive your letter till I came home; and I did not expect it, for the post came in much later than usual. It was a cordial to me--and I wanted one. Mr. ---- tells me that he has written again and again.--Love him a little!--It would be a kind of separation, if you did not love those I love. There was so much considerate tenderness in your epistle to-night, that, if it has not made you dearer to me, it has made me forcibly feel how very dear you are to me, by charming away half my cares. Yours affectionately. MARY. LETTER IX _Tuesday Morning [Paris, Dec. 31, 1793]._ Though I have just sent a letter off, yet, as captain ---- offers to take one, I am not willing to let him go without a kind greeting, because trifles of this sort, without having any effect on my mind, damp my spirits:--and you, with all your struggles to be manly, have some of his same sensibility.--Do not bid it begone, for I love to see it striving to master your features; besides, these kind of sympathies are the life of affection: and why, in cultivating our understandings, should we try to dry up these springs of pleasure, which gush out to give a freshness to days browned by care! The books sent to me are such as we may read together; so I shall not look into them till you return; when you shall read, whilst I mend my stockings. Yours truly, MARY. LETTER X _Wednesday Night [Paris, Jan. 1, 1794]._ As I have been, you tell me, three days without writing, I ought not to complain of two: yet, as I expected to receive a letter this afternoon, I am hurt; and why should I, by concealing it, affect the heroism I do not feel? I hate commerce. How differently must ----'s head and heart be organized from mine! You will tell me, that exertions are necessary: I am weary of them! The face of things, public and private, vexes me. The "peace" and clemency which seemed to be dawning a few days ago, disappear again. "I am fallen," as Milton said, "on evil days;" for I really believe that Europe will be in a state of convulsion, during half a century at least. Life is but a labour of patience: it is always rolling a great stone up a hill; for, before a person can find a resting-place, imagining it is lodged, down it comes again, and all the work is to be done over anew! Should I attempt to write any more, I could not change the strain. My head aches, and my heart is heavy. The world appears an "unweeded garden," where "things rank and vile" flourish best. If you do not return soon--or, which is no such mighty matter, talk of it--I will throw your slippers out at window, and be off--nobody knows where. MARY. Finding that I was observed, I told the good women, the two Mrs. ----s, simply that I was with child: and let them stare! and ----, and ----, nay, all the world, may know it for aught I care!--Yet I wish to avoid ----'s coarse jokes. Considering the care and anxiety a woman must have about a child before it comes into the world, it seems to me, by a _natural right_, to belong to her. When men get immersed in the world, they seem to lose all sensations, excepting those necessary to continue or produce life!--Are these the privileges of reason? Amongst the feathered race, whilst the hen keeps the young warm, her mate stays by to cheer her; but it is sufficient for man to condescend to get a child, in order to claim it.--A man is a tyrant! You may now tell me, that, if it were not for me, you would be laughing away with some honest fellows in London. The casual exercise of social sympathy would not be sufficient for me--I should not think such an heartless life worth preserving.--It is necessary to be in good-humour with you, to be pleased with the world. _Thursday Morning [Paris, Jan. 2, 1794]._ I was very low-spirited last night, ready to quarrel with your cheerful temper, which makes absence easy to you.--And, why should I mince the matter? I was offended at your not even mentioning it--I do not want to be loved like a goddess but I wish to be necessary to you. God bless you![4] LETTER XI _Monday Night [Paris, Jan. 1794]._ I have just received your kind and rational letter, and would fain hide my face, glowing with shame for my folly.--I would hide it in your bosom, if you would again open it to me, and nestle closely till you bade my fluttering heart be still, by saying that you forgave me. With eyes overflowing with tears, and in the humblest attitude, I entreat you.--Do not turn from me, for indeed I love you fondly, and have been very wretched, since the night I was so cruelly hurt by thinking that you had no confidence in me---- It is time for me to grow more reasonable, a few more of these caprices of sensibility would destroy me. I have, in fact, been very much indisposed for a few days past, and the notion that I was tormenting, or perhaps killing, a poor little animal, about whom I am grown anxious and tender, now I feel it alive, made me worse. My bowels have been dreadfully disordered, and every thing I ate or drank disagreed with my stomach; still I feel intimations of its existence, though they have been fainter. Do you think that the creature goes regularly to sleep? I am ready to ask as many questions as Voltaire's Man of Forty Crowns. Ah! do not continue to be angry with me! You perceive that I am already smiling through my tears--You have lightened my heart, and my frozen spirits are melting into playfulness. Write the moment you receive this. I shall count the minutes. But drop not an angry word--I cannot now bear it. Yet, if you think I deserve a scolding (it does not admit of a question, I grant), wait till you come back--and then, if you are angry one day, I shall be sure of seeing you the next. ---- did not write to you, I suppose, because he talked of going to Havre. Hearing that I was ill, he called very kindly on me, not dreaming that it was some words that he incautiously let fall, which rendered me so. God bless you, my love; do not shut your heart against a return of tenderness; and, as I now in fancy cling to you, be more than ever my support.--Feel but as affectionate when you read this letter, as I did writing it, and you will make happy your MARY. LETTER XII _Wednesday Morning [Paris, Jan. 1794]._ I will never, if I am not entirely cured of quarrelling, begin to encourage "quick-coming fancies," when we are separated. Yesterday, my love, I could not open your letter for some time; and, though it was not half as severe as I merited, it threw me into such a fit of trembling, as seriously alarmed me. I did not, as you may suppose, care for a little pain on my own account; but all the fears which I have had for a few days past, returned with fresh force. This morning I am better; will you not be glad to hear it? You perceive that sorrow has almost made a child of me, and that I want to be soothed to peace. One thing you mistake in my character, and imagine that to be coldness which is just the contrary. For, when I am hurt by the person most dear to me, I must let out a whole torrent of emotions, in which tenderness would be uppermost, or stifle them altogether; and it appears to me almost a duty to stifle them, when I imagine _that I am treated with coldness_. I am afraid that I have vexed you, my own [Imlay]. I know the quickness of your feelings--and let me, in the sincerity of my heart, assure you, there is nothing I would not suffer to make you happy. My own happiness wholly depends on you--and, knowing you, when my reason is not clouded, I look forward to a rational prospect of as much felicity as the earth affords--with a little dash of rapture into the bargain, if you will look at me, when we work again, as you have sometimes greeted, your humbled, yet most affectionate MARY. LETTER XIII _Thursday Night [Paris, Jan. 1794]._ I have been wishing the time away, my kind love, unable to rest till I knew that my penitential letter had reached your hand--and this afternoon, when your tender epistle of Tuesday gave such exquisite pleasure to your poor sick girl, her heart smote her to think that you were still to receive another cold one.--Burn it also, my [Imlay]; yet do not forget that even those letters were full of love; and I shall ever recollect, that you did not wait to be mollified by my penitence, before you took me again to your heart. I have been unwell, and would not, now I am recovering, take a journey, because I have been seriously alarmed and angry with myself, dreading continually the fatal consequence of my folly.--But, should you think it right to remain at Havre, I shall find some opportunity, in the course of a fortnight, or less perhaps, to come to you, and before then I shall be strong again.--Yet do not be uneasy! I am really better, and never took such care of myself, as I have done since you restored my peace of mind. The girl is come to warm my bed--so I will tenderly say, good-night! and write a line or two in the morning. _Morning._ I wish you were here to walk with me this fine morning! yet your absence shall not prevent me. I have stayed at home too much; though, when I was so dreadfully out of spirits, I was careless of every thing. I will now sally forth (you will go with me in my heart) and try whether this fine bracing air will not give the vigour to the poor babe, it had, before I so inconsiderately gave way to the grief that deranged my bowels, and gave a turn to my whole system. Yours truly MARY IMLAY. LETTER XIV _Saturday Morning [Paris, Feb. 1794]._ The two or three letters, which I have written to you lately, my love, will serve as an answer to your explanatory one. I cannot but respect your motives and conduct. I always respected them; and was only hurt, by what seemed to me a want of confidence, and consequently affection.--I thought also, that if you were obliged to stay three months at Havre, I might as well have been with you.--Well! well, what signifies what I brooded over--Let us now be friends! I shall probably receive a letter from you to-day, sealing my pardon--and I will be careful not to torment you with my querulous humours, at least, till I see you again. Act as circumstances direct, and I will not enquire when they will permit you to return, convinced that you will hasten to your Mary, when you have attained (or lost sight of) the object of your journey. What a picture have you sketched of our fire-side! Yes, my love, my fancy was instantly at work, and I found my head on your shoulder, whilst my eyes were fixed on the little creatures that were clinging about your knees. I did not absolutely determine that there should be six--if you have not set your heart on this round number. I am going to dine with Mrs. ----. I have not been to visit her since the first day she came to Paris. I wish indeed to be out in the air as much as I can; for the exercise I have taken these two or three days past, has been of such service to me, that I hope shortly to tell you, that I am quite well. I have scarcely slept before last night, and then not much.--The two Mrs. ----s have been very anxious and tender. Yours truly MARY. I need not desire you to give the colonel a good bottle of wine. LETTER XV _Sunday Morning [Paris, Feb. 1794]._ I wrote to you yesterday, my [Imlay]; but, finding that the colonel is still detained (for his passport was forgotten at the office yesterday) I am not willing to let so many days elapse without your hearing from me, after having talked of illness and apprehensions. I cannot boast of being quite recovered, yet I am (I must use my Yorkshire phrase; for, when my heart is warm, pop come the expressions of childhood into my head) so _lightsome_, that I think it will not _go badly with me_.--And nothing shall be wanting on my part, I assure you; for I am urged on, not only by an enlivened affection for you, but by a new-born tenderness that plays cheerly round my dilating heart. I was therefore, in defiance of cold and dirt, out in the air the greater part of yesterday; and, if I get over this evening without a return of the fever that has tormented me, I shall talk no more of illness. I have promised the little creature, that its mother, who ought to cherish it, will not again plague it, and begged it to pardon me; and, since I could not hug either it or you to my breast, I have to my heart.--I am afraid to read over this prattle--but it is only for your eye. I have been seriously vexed, to find that, whilst you were harrassed by impediments in your undertakings, I was giving you additional uneasiness.--If you can make any of your plans answer--it is well, I do not think a _little_ money inconvenient; but, should they fail, we will struggle cheerfully together--drawn closer by the pinching blasts of poverty. Adieu, my love! Write often to your poor girl, and write long letters; for I not only like them for being longer, but because more heart steals into them; and I am happy to catch your heart whenever I can. Yours sincerely MARY. LETTER XVI _Tuesday Morning [Paris, Feb. 1794]._ I seize this opportunity to inform you, that I am to set out on Thursday with Mr. ----, and hope to tell you soon (on your lips) how glad I shall be to see you. I have just got my passport, for I do not foresee any impediment to my reaching Havre, to bid you good-night next Friday in my new apartment--where I am to meet you and love, in spite of care, to smile me to sleep--for I have not caught much rest since we parted. You have, by your tenderness and worth, twisted yourself more artfully round my heart, than I supposed possible.--Let me indulge the thought, that I have thrown out some tendrils to cling to the elm by which I wish to be supported.--This is talking a new language for me!--But, knowing that I am not a parasite-plant, I am willing to receive the proofs of affection, that every pulse replies to, when I think of being once more in the same house with you. God bless you! Yours truly MARY. LETTER XVII _Wednesday Morning [Paris, Feb. 1794]._ I only send this as an _avant-coureur_, without jack-boots, to tell you, that I am again on the wing, and hope to be with you a few hours after you receive it. I shall find you well, and composed, I am sure; or, more properly speaking, cheerful.--What is the reason that my spirits are not as manageable as yours? Yet, now I think of it, I will not allow that your temper is even, though I have promised myself, in order to obtain my own forgiveness, that I will not ruffle it for a long, long time--I am afraid to say never. Farewell for a moment!--Do not forget that I am driving towards you in person! My mind, unfettered, has flown to you long since, or rather has never left you. I am well, and have no apprehension that I shall find the journey too fatiguing, when I follow the lead of my heart.--With my face turned to Havre my spirits will not sink--and my mind has always hitherto enabled my body to do whatever I wished. Yours affectionately, MARY. LETTER XVIII _Thursday Morning, Havre, March 12 [1794]._ We are such creatures of habit, my love, that, though I cannot say I was sorry, childishly so, for your going,[5] when I knew that you were to stay such a short time, and I had a plan of employment; yet I could not sleep.--I turned to your side of the bed, and tried to make the most of the comfort of the pillow, which you used to tell me I was churlish about; but all would not do.--I took nevertheless my walk before breakfast, though the weather was not very inviting--and here I am, wishing you a finer day, and seeing you peep over my shoulder, as I write, with one of your kindest looks--when your eyes glisten, and a suffusion creeps over your relaxing features. But I do not mean to dally with you this morning--So God bless you! Take care of yourself--and sometimes fold to your heart your affectionate MARY. LETTER XIX _[Havre, March, 1794]._ Do not call me stupid, for leaving on the table the little bit of paper I was to inclose.--This comes of being in love at the fag-end of a letter of business.--You know, you say, they will not chime together.--I had got you by the fire-side, with the _gigot_ smoking on the board, to lard your poor bare ribs--and behold, I closed my letter without taking the paper up, that was directly under my eyes! What had I got in them to render me so blind?--I give you leave to answer the question, if you will not scold; for I am, Yours most affectionately, MARY. LETTER XX _[Havre] Sunday, August 17 [1794]._ * * * * * I have promised ---- to go with him to his country-house, where he is now permitted to dine--I, and the little darling, to be sure[6]--whom I cannot help kissing with more fondness, since you left us. I think I shall enjoy the fine prospect, and that it will rather enliven, than satiate my imagination. I have called on Mrs. ----. She has the manners of a gentlewoman, with a dash of the easy French coquetry, which renders her _piquante_.--But _Monsieur_ her husband, whom nature never dreamed of casting in either the mould of a gentleman or lover, makes but an aukward figure in the foreground of the picture. The H----s are very ugly, without doubt--and the house smelt of commerce from top to toe--so that his abortive attempt to display taste, only proved it to be one of the things not to be bought with gold. I was in a room a moment alone, and my attention was attracted by the _pendule_--A nymph was offering up her vows before a smoking altar, to a fat-bottomed Cupid (saving your presence), who was kicking his heels in the air.--Ah! kick on, thought I; for the demon of traffic will ever fright away the loves and graces, that streak with the rosy beams of infant fancy the _sombre_ day of life--whilst the imagination, not allowing us to see things as they are, enables us to catch a hasty draught of the running stream of delight, the thirst for which seems to be given only to tantalize us. But I am philosophizing; nay, perhaps you will call me severe, and bid me let the square-headed money-getters alone.--Peace to them! though none of the social sprites (and there are not a few of different descriptions, who sport about the various inlets to my heart) gave me a twitch to restrain my pen. I have been writing on, expecting poor ---- to come; for, when I began, I merely thought of business; and, as this is the idea that most naturally associates with your image, I wonder I stumbled on any other. Yet, as common life, in my opinion, is scarcely worth having, even with a _gigot_ every day, and a pudding added thereunto, I will allow you to cultivate my judgment, if you will permit me to keep alive the sentiments in your heart, which may be termed romantic, because, the offspring of the senses and the imagination, they resemble the mother more than the father,[7] when they produce the suffusion I admire.--In spite of icy age, I hope still to see it, if you have not determined only to eat and drink, and be stupidly useful to the stupid-- Yours, MARY. LETTER XXI _Havre, August 19 [1794] Tuesday._ I received both your letters to-day--I had reckoned on hearing from you yesterday, therefore was disappointed, though I imputed your silence to the right cause. I intended answering your kind letter immediately, that you might have felt the pleasure it gave me; but ---- came in, and some other things interrupted me; so that the fine vapour has evaporated--yet, leaving a sweet scent behind, I have only to tell you, what is sufficiently obvious, that the earnest desire I have shown to keep my place, or gain more ground in your heart, is a sure proof how necessary your affection is to my happiness.--Still I do not think it false delicacy, or foolish pride, to wish that your attention to my happiness should arise _as much_ from love, which is always rather a selfish passion, as reason--that is, I want you to promote my felicity, by seeking your own.--For, whatever pleasure it may give me to discover your generosity of soul, I would not be dependent for your affection on the very quality I most admire. No; there are qualities in your heart, which demand my affection; but, unless the attachment appears to me clearly mutual, I shall labour only to esteem your character, instead of cherishing a tenderness for your person. I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment--This for our little girl was at first very reasonable--more the effect of reason, a sense of duty, than feeling--now, she has got into my heart and imagination, and when I walk out without her, her little figure is ever dancing before me. You too have somehow clung round my heart--I found I could not eat my dinner in the great room--and, when I took up the large knife to carve for myself, tears rushed into my eyes.--Do not however suppose that I am melancholy--for, when you are from me, I not only wonder how I can find fault with you--but how I can doubt your affection. I will not mix any comments on the inclosed (it roused my indignation) with the effusion of tenderness, with which I assure you, that you are the friend of my bosom, and the prop of my heart. MARY. LETTER XXII _Havre, August 20 [1794]._ I want to know what steps you have taken respecting ----. Knavery always rouses my indignation--I should be gratified to hear that the law had chastised ---- severely; but I do not wish you to see him, because the business does not now admit of peaceful discussion, and I do not exactly know how you would express your contempt. Pray ask some questions about Tallien--I am still pleased with the dignity of his conduct.--The other day, in the cause of humanity, he made use of a degree of address, which I admire--and mean to point out to you, as one of the few instances of address which do credit to the abilities of the man, without taking away from that confidence in his openness of heart, which is the true basis of both public and private friendship. Do not suppose that I mean to allude to a little reserve of temper in you, of which I have sometimes complained! You have been used to a cunning woman, and you almost look for cunning--Nay, in _managing_ my happiness, you now and then wounded my sensibility, concealing yourself, till honest sympathy, giving you to me without disguise, lets me look into a heart, which my half-broken one wishes to creep into, to be revived and cherished.--You have frankness of heart, but not often exactly that overflowing (_épanchement de coeur_), which becoming almost childish, appears a weakness only to the weak. But I have left poor Tallien. I wanted you to enquire likewise whether, as a member declared in the convention, Robespierre really maintained a _number_ of mistresses.--Should it prove so, I suspect that they rather flattered his vanity than his senses. Here is a chatting, desultory epistle! But do not suppose that I mean to close it without mentioning the little damsel--who has been almost springing out of my arm--she certainly looks very like you--but I do not love her the less for that, whether I am angry or pleased with you. Yours affectionately, MARY. LETTER XXIII[8] _[Paris] September 22 [1794]._ I have just written two letters, that are going by other conveyances, and which I reckon on your receiving long before this. I therefore merely write, because I know I should be disappointed at seeing any one who had left you, if you did not send a letter, were it ever so short, to tell me why you did not write a longer--and you will want to be told, over and over again, that our little Hercules is quite recovered. Besides looking at me, there are three other things, which delight her--to ride in a coach, to look at a scarlet waistcoat, and hear loud music--yesterday, at the _fête_, she enjoyed the two latter; but, to honour J. J. Rousseau, I intend to give her a sash, the first she has ever had round her--and why not?--for I have always been half in love with him. Well, this you will say is trifling--shall I talk about alum or soap? There is nothing picturesque in your present pursuits; my imagination then rather chuses to ramble back to the barrier with you, or to see you coming to meet me, and my basket of grapes.--With what pleasure do I recollect your looks and words, when I have been sitting on the window, regarding the waving corn! Believe me, sage sir, you have not sufficient respect for the imagination--I could prove to you in a trice that it is the mother of sentiment, the great distinction of our nature, the only purifier of the passions--animals have a portion of reason, and equal, if not more exquisite, senses; but no trace of imagination, or her offspring taste, appears in any of their actions. The impulse of the senses, passions, if you will, and the conclusions of reason, draw men together; but the imagination is the true fire, stolen from heaven, to animate this cold creature of clay, producing all those fine sympathies that lead to rapture, rendering men social by expanding their hearts, instead of leaving them leisure to calculate how many comforts society affords. If you call these observations romantic, a phrase in this place which would be tantamount to nonsensical, I shall be apt to retort, that you are embruted by trade, and the vulgar enjoyments of life--Bring me then back your barrier-face, or you shall have nothing to say to my barrier-girl; and I shall fly from you, to cherish the remembrances that will ever be dear to me; for I am yours truly, MARY. LETTER XXIV _[Paris] Evening, Sept. 23, [1794]._ I have been playing and laughing with the little girl so long, that I cannot take up my pen to address you without emotion. Pressing her to my bosom, she looked so like you (_entre nous_, your best looks, for I do not admire your commercial face) every nerve seemed to vibrate to the touch, and I began to think that there was something in the assertion of man and wife being one--for you seemed to pervade my whole frame, quickening the beat of my heart, and lending me the sympathetic tears you excited. Have I any thing more to say to you? No; not for the present--the rest is all flown away; and, indulging tenderness for you, I cannot now complain of some people here, who have ruffled my temper for two or three days past. _[Paris, 1794] Morning._ Yesterday B---- sent to me for my packet of letters. He called on me before; and I like him better than I did--that is, I have the same opinion of his understanding, but I think with you, he has more tenderness and real delicacy of feeling with respect to women, than are commonly to be met with. His manner too of speaking of his little girl, about the age of mine, interested me. I gave him a letter for my sister, and requested him to see her. I have been interrupted. Mr. ---- I suppose will write about business. Public affairs I do not descant on, except to tell you that they write now with great freedom and truth; and this liberty of the press will overthrow the Jacobins, I plainly perceive. I hope you take care of your health. I have got a habit of restlessness at night, which arises, I believe, from activity of mind; for, when I am alone, that is, not near one to whom I can open my heart, I sink into reveries and trains of thinking, which agitate and fatigue me. This is my third letter; when am I to hear from you? I need not tell you, I suppose, that I am now writing with somebody in the room with me, and ---- is waiting to carry this to Mr. ----'s. I will then kiss the girl for you, and bid you adieu. I desired you, in one of my other letters, to bring back to me your barrier-face--or that you should not be loved by my barrier-girl. I know that you will love her more and more, for she is a little affectionate, intelligent creature, with as much vivacity, I should think, as you could wish for. I was going to tell you of two or three things which displease me here; but they are not of sufficient consequence to interrupt pleasing sensations. I have received a letter from Mr. ----. I want you to bring ---- with you. Madame S---- is by me, reading a German translation of your letters--she desires me to give her love to you, on account of what you say of the negroes. Yours most affectionately, MARY. LETTER XXV _Paris, Sept. 28 [1794]._ I have written to you three or four letters; but different causes have prevented my sending them by the persons who promised to take or forward them. The inclosed is one I wrote to go by B----; yet, finding that he will not arrive, before I hope, and believe, you will have set out on your return, I inclose it to you, and shall give it in charge to ----, as Mr. ---- is detained, to whom I also gave a letter. I cannot help being anxious to hear from you; but I shall not harrass you with accounts of inquietudes, or of cares that arise from peculiar circumstances.--I have had so many little plagues here, that I have almost lamented that I left Havre. ----, who is at best a most helpless creature, is now, on account of her pregnancy, more trouble than use to me, so that I still continue to be almost a slave to the child.--She indeed rewards me, for she is a sweet little creature; for, setting aside a mother's fondness (which, by the bye, is growing on me, her little intelligent smiles sinking into my heart), she has an astonishing degree of sensibility and observation. The other day by B----'s child, a fine one, she looked like a little sprite.--She is all life and motion, and her eyes are not the eyes of a fool--I will swear. I slept at St. Germain's, in the very room (if you have not forgot) in which you pressed me very tenderly to your heart.--I did not forget to fold my darling to mine, with sensations that are almost too sacred to be alluded to. Adieu, my love! Take care of yourself, if you wish to be the protector of your child, and the comfort of her mother. I have received, for you, letters from ----. I want to hear how that affair finishes, though I do not know whether I have most contempt for his folly or knavery. Your own MARY. LETTER XXVI _[Paris] October 1 [1794]._ It is a heartless task to write letters, without knowing whether they will ever reach you.--I have given two to ----, who has been a-going, a-going, every day, for a week past; and three others, which were written in a low-spirited strain, a little querulous or so, I have not been able to forward by the opportunities that were mentioned to me. _Tant mieux!_ you will say, and I will not say nay; for I should be sorry that the contents of a letter, when you are so far away, should damp the pleasure that the sight of it would afford--judging of your feelings by my own. I just now stumbled on one of the kind letters, which you wrote during your last absence. You are then a dear affectionate creature, and I will not plague you. The letter which you chance to receive, when the absence is so long, ought to bring only tears of tenderness, without any bitter alloy, into your eyes. After your return I hope indeed, that you will not be so immersed in business, as during the last three or four months past--for even money, taking into the account all the future comforts it is to procure, may be gained at too dear a rate, if painful impressions are left on the mind.--These impressions were much more lively, soon after you went away, than at present--for a thousand tender recollections efface the melancholy traces they left on my mind--and every emotion is on the same side as my reason, which always was on yours.--Separated, it would be almost impious to dwell on real or imaginary imperfections of character.--I feel that I love you; and, if I cannot be happy with you, I will seek it no where else. My little darling grows every day more dear to me--and she often has a kiss, when we are alone together, which I give her for you, with all my heart. I have been interrupted--and must send off my letter. The liberty of the press will produce a great effect here--the _cry of blood will not be vain_!--Some more monsters will perish--and the Jacobins are conquered.--Yet I almost fear the last flap of the tail of the beast. I have had several trifling teazing inconveniences here, which I shall not now trouble you with a detail of.--I am sending ---- back; her pregnancy rendered her useless. The girl I have got has more vivacity, which is better for the child. I long to hear from you.--Bring a copy of ---- and ---- with you. ---- is still here: he is a lost man.--He really loves his wife, and is anxious about his children; but his indiscriminate hospitality and social feelings have given him an inveterate habit of drinking, that destroys his health, as well as renders his person disgusting.--If his wife had more sense, or delicacy, she might restrain him: as it is, nothing will save him. Yours most truly and affectionately MARY. LETTER XXVII _[Paris] October 26 [1794]._ My dear love, I began to wish so earnestly to hear from you, that the sight of your letters occasioned such pleasurable emotions, I was obliged to throw them aside till the little girl and I were alone together; and this said little girl, our darling, is become a most intelligent little creature, and as gay as a lark, and that in the morning too, which I do not find quite so convenient. I once told you, that the sensations before she was born, and when she is sucking, were pleasant; but they do not deserve to be compared to the emotions I feel, when she stops to smile upon me, or laughs outright on meeting me unexpectedly in the street, or after a short absence. She has now the advantage of having two good nurses, and I am at present able to discharge my duty to her, without being the slave of it. I have therefore employed and amused myself since I got rid of ----, and am making a progress in the language amongst other things. I have also made some new acquaintance. I have almost _charmed_ a judge of the tribunal, R----, who, though I should not have thought it possible, has humanity, if not _beaucoup d'esprit_. But let me tell you, if you do not make haste back, I shall be half in love with the author of the _Marseillaise_, who is a handsome man, a little too broad-faced or so, and plays sweetly on the violin. What do you say to this threat?--why, _entre nous_, I like to give way to a sprightly vein, when writing to you, that is, when I am pleased with you. "The devil," you know, is proverbially said to be "in a good humour, when he is pleased." Will you not then be a good boy, and come back quickly to play with your girls? but I shall not allow you to love the new-comer best. * * * * * My heart longs for your return, my love, and only looks for, and seeks happiness with you; yet do not imagine that I childishly wish you to come back, before you have arranged things in such a manner, that it will not be necessary for you to leave us soon again, or to make exertions which injure your constitution. Yours most truly and tenderly, MARY. P.S. You would oblige me by delivering the inclosed to Mr. ----, and pray call for an answer.--It is for a person uncomfortably situated. LETTER XXVIII _[Paris] Dec. 26 [1794]._ I have been, my love, for some days tormented by fears, that I would not allow to assume a form--I had been expecting you daily--and I heard that many vessels had been driven on shore during the late gale.--Well, I now see your letter--and find that you are safe; I will not regret then that your exertions have hitherto been so unavailing. * * * * * Be that as it may, return to me when you have arranged the other matters, which ---- has been crowding on you. I want to be sure that you are safe--and not separated from me by a sea that must be passed. For, feeling that I am happier than I ever was, do you wonder at my sometimes dreading that fate has not done persecuting me? Come to me, my dearest friend, husband, father of my child!--All these fond ties glow at my heart at this moment, and dim my eyes.--With you an independence is desirable; and it is always within our reach, if affluence escapes us--without you the world again appears empty to me. But I am recurring to some of the melancholy thoughts that have flitted across my mind for some days past, and haunted my dreams. My little darling is indeed a sweet child; and I am sorry that you are not here, to see her little mind unfold itself. You talk of "dalliance;" but certainly no lover was ever more attached to his mistress, than she is to me. Her eyes follow me every where, and by affection I have the most despotic power over her. She is all vivacity or softness--yes; I love her more than I thought I should. When I have been hurt at your stay, I have embraced her as my only comfort--when pleased with you, for looking and laughing like you; nay, I cannot, I find, long be angry with you, whilst I am kissing her for resembling you. But there would be no end to these details. Fold us both to your heart; for I am truly and affectionately Yours, MARY. LETTER XXIX _[Paris] December 28 [1794]._ * * * * * I do, my love, indeed sincerely sympathize with you in all your disappointments.--Yet, knowing that you are well, and think of me with affection, I only lament other disappointments, because I am sorry that you should thus exert yourself in vain, and that you are kept from me. ----, I know, urges you to stay, and is continually branching out into new projects, because he has the idle desire to amass a large fortune, rather an immense one, merely to have the credit of having made it. But we who are governed by other motives, ought not to be led on by him. When we meet, we will discuss this subject--You will listen to reason, and it has probably occurred to you, that it will be better, in future, to pursue some sober plan, which may demand more time, and still enable you to arrive at the same end. It appears to me absurd to waste life in preparing to live. Would it not now be possible to arrange your business in such a manner as to avoid the inquietudes, of which I have had my share since your departure? Is it not possible to enter into business, as an employment necessary to keep the faculties awake, and (to sink a little in the expressions) the pot boiling, without suffering what must ever be considered as a secondary object, to engross the mind, and drive sentiment and affection out of the heart? I am in a hurry to give this letter to the person who has promised to forward it with ----'s. I wish then to counteract, in some measure, what he has doubtless recommended most warmly. Stay, my friend, whilst it is _absolutely_ necessary.--I will give you no tenderer name, though it glows at my heart, unless you come the moment the settling the _present_ objects permit.--_I do not consent_ to your taking any other journey--or the little woman and I will be off, the Lord knows where. But, as I had rather owe every thing to your affection, and, I may add, to your reason, (for this immoderate desire of wealth, which makes ---- so eager to have you remain, is contrary to your principles of action), I will not importune you.--I will only tell you, that I long to see you--and, being at peace with you, I shall be hurt, rather than made angry, by delays.--Having suffered so much in life, do not be surprised if I sometimes, when left to myself, grow gloomy, and suppose that it was all a dream, and that my happiness is not to last. I say happiness, because remembrance retrenches all the dark shades of the picture. My little one begins to show her teeth, and use her legs--She wants you to bear your part in the nursing business, for I am fatigued with dancing her, and yet she is not satisfied--she wants you to thank her mother for taking such care of her, as you only can. Yours truly, MARY. LETTER XXX _[Paris] December 29 [1794]._ Though I suppose you have later intelligence, yet, as ---- has just informed me that he has an opportunity of sending immediately to you, I take advantage of it to inclose you * * * * * How I hate this crooked business! This intercourse with the world, which obliges one to see the worst side of human nature! Why cannot you be content with the object you had first in view, when you entered into this wearisome labyrinth?--I know very well that you have imperceptibly been drawn on; yet why does one project, successful or abortive, only give place to two others? Is it not sufficient to avoid poverty?--I am contented to do my part; and, even here, sufficient to escape from wretchedness is not difficult to obtain. And, let me tell you, I have my project also--and, if you do not soon return, the little girl and I will take care of ourselves; we will not accept any of your cold kindness--your distant civilities--no; not we. This is but half jesting, for I am really tormented by the desire which ---- manifests to have you remain where you are.--Yet why do I talk to you?--If he can persuade you--let him!--for, if you are not happier with me, and your own wishes do not make you throw aside these eternal projects, I am above using any arguments, though reason as well as affection seems to offer them--if our affection be mutual, they will occur to you--and you will act accordingly. Since my arrival here, I have found the German lady, of whom you have heard me speak. Her first child died in the month; but she has another, about the age of my Fanny, a fine little creature. They are still but contriving to live--earning their daily bread--yet, though they are but just above poverty, I envy them.--She is a tender, affectionate mother--fatigued even by her attention.--However she has an affectionate husband in her turn, to render her care light, and to share her pleasure. I will own to you that, feeling extreme tenderness for my little girl, I grow sad very often when I am playing with her, that you are not here, to observe with me how her mind unfolds, and her little heart becomes attached!--These appear to me to be true pleasures--and still you suffer them to escape you, in search of what we may never enjoy.--It is your own maxim to "live in the present moment."--_If you do_--stay, for God's sake; but tell me the truth--if not, tell me when I may expect to see you, and let me not be always vainly looking for you, till I grow sick at heart. Adieu! I am a little hurt.--I must take my darling to my bosom to comfort me. MARY. LETTER XXXI _[Paris] December 30 [1794]._ Should you receive three or four of the letters at once which I have written lately, do not think of Sir John Brute, for I do not mean to wife you. I only take advantage of every occasion, that one out of three of my epistles may reach your hands, and inform you that I am not of ----'s opinion, who talks till he makes me angry, of the necessity of your staying two or three months longer. I do not like this life of continual inquietude--and, _entre nous_, I am determined to try to earn some money here myself, in order to convince you that, if you chuse to run about the world to get a fortune, it is for yourself--for the little girl and I will live without your assistance, unless you are with us. I may be termed proud--Be it so--but I will never abandon certain principles of action. The common run of men have such an ignoble way of thinking, that, if they debauch their hearts, and prostitute their persons, following perhaps a gust of inebriation, they suppose the wife, slave rather, whom they maintain, has no right to complain, and ought to receive the sultan, whenever he deigns to return, with open arms, though his have been polluted by half an hundred promiscuous amours during his absence. I consider fidelity and constancy as two distinct things; yet the former is necessary, to give life to the other--and such a degree of respect do I think due to myself, that, if only probity, which is a good thing in its place, brings you back, never return!--for, if a wandering of the heart, or even a caprice of the imagination detains you--there is an end of all my hopes of happiness--I could not forgive it, if I would. I have gotten into a melancholy mood, you perceive. You know my opinion of men in general; you know that I think them systematic tyrants, and that it is the rarest thing in the world, to meet with a man with sufficient delicacy of feeling to govern desire. When I am thus sad, I lament that my little darling, fondly as I doat on her, is a girl.--I am sorry to have a tie to a world that for me is ever sown with thorns. You will call this an ill-humoured letter, when, in fact, it is the strongest proof of affection I can give, to dread to lose you. ---- has taken such pains to convince me that you must and ought to stay, that it has inconceivably depressed my spirits--You have always known my opinion--I have ever declared, that two people, who mean to live together, ought not to be long separated.--If certain things are more necessary to you than me--search for them--Say but one word, and you shall never hear of me more.--If not--for God's sake, let us struggle with poverty--with any evil, but these continual inquietudes of business, which I have been told were to last but a few months, though every day the end appears more distant! This is the first letter in this strain that I have determined to forward to you; the rest lie by, because I was unwilling to give you pain, and I should not now write, if I did not think that there would be no conclusion to the schemes, which demand, as I am told, your presence. MARY.[9] LETTER XXXII _[Paris] January 9 [1795]._ I just now received one of your hasty _notes_; for business so entirely occupies you, that you have not time, or sufficient command of thought, to write letters. Beware! you seem to be got into a whirl of projects and schemes, which are drawing you into a gulph, that, if it do not absorb your happiness, will infallibly destroy mine. Fatigued during my youth by the most arduous struggles, not only to obtain independence, but to render myself useful, not merely pleasure, for which I had the most lively taste, I mean the simple pleasures that flow from passion and affection, escaped me, but the most melancholy views of life were impressed by a disappointed heart on my mind. Since I knew you, I have been endeavouring to go back to my former nature, and have allowed some time to glide away, winged with the delight which only spontaneous enjoyment can give.--Why have you so soon dissolved the charm. I am really unable to bear the continual inquietude which your and ----'s never-ending plans produce. This you may term want of firmness--but you are mistaken--I have still sufficient firmness to pursue my principle of action. The present misery, I cannot find a softer word to do justice to my feelings, appears to me unnecessary--and therefore I have not firmness to support it as you may think I ought. I should have been content, and still wish, to retire with you to a farm--My God! any thing, but these continual anxieties--any thing but commerce, which debases the mind, and roots out affection from the heart. I do not mean to complain of subordinate inconveniences----yet I will simply observe, that, led to expect you every week, I did not make the arrangements required by the present circumstances, to procure the necessaries of life. In order to have them, a servant, for that purpose only, is indispensible--The want of wood, has made me catch the most violent cold I ever had; and my head is so disturbed by continual coughing, that I am unable to write without stopping frequently to recollect myself.--This however is one of the common evils which must be borne with----bodily pain does not touch the heart, though it fatigues the spirits. Still as you talk of your return, even in February, doubtingly, I have determined, the moment the weather changes, to wean my child.--It is too soon for her to begin to divide sorrow!--And as one has well said, "despair is a freeman," we will go and seek our fortune together. This is not a caprice of the moment--for your absence has given new weight to some conclusions, that I was very reluctantly forming before you left me.--I do not chuse to be a secondary object.--If your feelings were in unison with mine, you would not sacrifice so much to visionary prospects of future advantage. MARY. LETTER XXXIII _[Paris] Jan. 15 [1795]._ I was just going to begin my letter with the fag end of a song, which would only have told you, what I may as well say simply, that it is pleasant to forgive those we love. I have received your two letters, dated the 26th and 28th of December, and my anger died away. You can scarcely conceive the effect some of your letters have produced on me. After longing to hear from you during a tedious interval of suspense, I have seen a superscription written by you.--Promising myself pleasure, and feeling emotion, I have laid it by me, till the person who brought it, left the room--when, behold! on opening it, I have found only half a dozen hasty lines, that have damped all the rising affection of my soul. Well, now for business-- * * * * * My animal is well; I have not yet taught her to eat, but nature is doing the business. I gave her a crust to assist the cutting of her teeth; and now she has two, she makes good use of them to gnaw a crust, biscuit, &c. You would laugh to see her; she is just like a little squirrel; she will guard a crust for two hours; and, after fixing her eye on an object for some time, dart on it with an aim as sure as a bird of prey--nothing can equal her life and spirits. I suffer from a cold; but it does not affect her. Adieu! do not forget to love us--and come soon to tell us that you do. MARY. LETTER XXXIV _[Paris] Jan. 30 [1795]._ From the purport of your last letters, I should suppose that this will scarcely reach you; and I have already written so many letters, that you have either not received, or neglected to acknowledge, I do not find it pleasant, or rather I have no inclination, to go over the same ground again. If you have received them, and are still detained by new projects, it is useless for me to say any more on the subject. I have done with it for ever; yet I ought to remind you that your pecuniary interest suffers by your absence. * * * * * For my part, my head is turned giddy, by only hearing of plans to make money, and my contemptuous feelings have sometimes burst out. I therefore was glad that a violent cold gave me a pretext to stay at home, lest I should have uttered unseasonable truths. My child is well, and the spring will perhaps restore me to myself.--I have endured many inconveniences this winter, which should I be ashamed to mention, if they had been unavoidable. "The secondary pleasures of life," you say, "are very necessary to my comfort:" it may be so; but I have ever considered them as secondary. If therefore you accuse me of wanting the resolution necessary to bear the _common_[10] evils of life; I should answer, that I have not fashioned my mind to sustain them, because I would avoid them, cost what it would---- Adieu! MARY. LETTER XXXV _[Paris] February 9 [1795]._ The melancholy presentiment has for some time hung on my spirits, that we were parted for ever; and the letters I received this day, by Mr. ----, convince me that it was not without foundation. You allude to some other letters, which I suppose have miscarried; for most of those I have got, were only a few hasty lines, calculated to wound the tenderness the sight of the superscriptions excited. I mean not however to complain; yet so many feelings are struggling for utterance, and agitating a heart almost bursting with anguish, that I find it very difficult to write with any degree of coherence. You left me indisposed, though you have taken no notice of it; and the most fatiguing journey I ever had, contributed to continue it. However, I recovered my health; but a neglected cold, and continual inquietude during the last two months, have reduced me to a state of weakness I never before experienced. Those who did not know that the canker-worm was at work at the core, cautioned me about suckling my child too long.--God preserve this poor child, and render her happier than her mother! But I am wandering from my subject: indeed my head turns giddy, when I think that all the confidence I have had in the affection of others is come to this.--I did not expect this blow from you. I have done my duty to you and my child; and if I am not to have any return of affection to reward me, I have the sad consolation of knowing that I deserved a better fate. My soul is weary--I am sick at heart; and, but for this little darling, I would cease to care about a life, which is now stripped of every charm. You see how stupid I am, uttering declamation, when I meant simply to tell you, that I consider your requesting me to come to you, as merely dictated by honour.--Indeed, I scarcely understand you.--You request me to come, and then tell me, that you have not given up all thoughts of returning to this place. When I determined to live with you, I was only governed by affection.--I would share poverty with you, but I turn with affright from the sea of trouble on which you are entering.--I have certain principles of action: I know what I look for to found my happiness on.--It is not money.--With you I wished for sufficient to procure the comforts of life--as it is, less will do.--I can still exert myself to obtain the necessaries of life for my child, and she does not want more at present.--I have two or three plans in my head to earn our subsistence; for do not suppose that, neglected by you, I will lie under obligations of a pecuniary kind to you!--No; I would sooner submit to menial service.--I wanted the support of your affection--that gone, all is over!--I did not think, when I complained of ----'s contemptible avidity to accumulate money, that he would have dragged you into his schemes. I cannot write.--I inclose a fragment of a letter, written soon after your departure, and another which tenderness made me keep back when it was written.--You will see then the sentiments of a calmer, though not a more determined, moment.--Do not insult me by saying, that "our being together is paramount to every other consideration!" Were it, you would not be running after a bubble, at the expence of my peace of mind. Perhaps this is the last letter you will ever receive from me. MARY. LETTER XXXVI _[Paris] Feb. 10 [1795]._ You talk of "permanent views and future comfort"--not for me, for I am dead to hope. The inquietudes of the last winter have finished the business, and my heart is not only broken, but my constitution destroyed. I conceive myself in a galloping consumption, and the continual anxiety I feel at the thought of leaving my child, feeds the fever that nightly devours me. It is on her account that I again write to you, to conjure you, by all that you hold sacred, to leave her here with the German lady you may have heard me mention! She has a child of the same age, and they may be brought up together, as I wish her to be brought up. I shall write more fully on the subject. To facilitate this, I shall give up my present lodgings, and go into the same house. I can live much cheaper there, which is now become an object. I have had 3000 livres from ----, and I shall take one more, to pay my servant's wages, &c. and then I shall endeavour to procure what I want by my own exertions. I shall entirely give up the acquaintance of the Americans. ---- and I have not been on good terms a long time. Yesterday he very unmanlily exulted over me, on account of your determination to stay. I had provoked it, it is true, by some asperities against commerce, which have dropped from me, when we have argued about the propriety of your remaining where you are; and it is no matter, I have drunk too deep of the bitter cup to care about trifles. When you first entered into these plans, you bounded your views to the gaining of a thousand pounds. It was sufficient to have procured a farm in America, which would have been an independence. You find now that you did not know yourself, and that a certain situation in life is more necessary to you than you imagined--more necessary than an uncorrupted heart--For a year or two, you may procure yourself what you call pleasure; eating, drinking, and women; but in the solitude of declining life, I shall be remembered with regret--I was going to say with remorse, but checked my pen. As I have never concealed the nature of my connection with you, your reputation will not suffer. I shall never have a confident: I am content with the approbation of my own mind; and, if there be a searcher of hearts, mine will not be despised. Reading what you have written relative to the desertion of women, I have often wondered how theory and practice could be so different, till I recollected, that the sentiments of passion, and the resolves of reason, are very distinct. As to my sisters, as you are so continually hurried with business, you need not write to them--I shall, when my mind is calmer. God bless you! Adieu! MARY. This has been such a period of barbarity and misery, I ought not to complain of having my share. I wish one moment that I had never heard of the cruelties that have been practised here, and the next envy the mothers who have been killed with their children. Surely I had suffered enough in life, not to be cursed with a fondness, that burns up the vital stream I am imparting. You will think me mad: I would I were so, that I could forget my misery--so that my head or heart would be still.---- LETTER XXXVII _[Paris] Feb. 19 [1795]._ When I first received your letter, putting off your return to an indefinite time, I felt so hurt, that I know not what I wrote. I am now calmer, though it was not the kind of wound over which time has the quickest effect; on the contrary, the more I think, the sadder I grow. Society fatigues me inexpressibly--So much so, that finding fault with every one, I have only reason enough, to discover that the fault is in myself. My child alone interests me, and, but for her, I should not take any pains to recover my health. As it is, I shall wean her, and try if by that step (to which I feel a repugnance, for it is my only solace) I can get rid of my cough. Physicians talk much of the danger attending any complaint on the lungs, after a woman has suckled for some months. They lay a stress also on the necessity of keeping the mind tranquil--and, my God! how has mine be harrassed! But whilst the caprices of other women are gratified, "the wind of heaven not suffered to visit them too rudely," I have not found a guardian angel, in heaven or on earth, to ward off sorrow or care from my bosom. What sacrifices have you not made for a woman you did not respect!--But I will not go over this ground--I want to tell you that I do not understand you. You say that you have not given up all thoughts of returning here--and I know that it will be necessary--nay, is. I cannot explain myself; but if you have not lost your memory, you will easily divine my meaning. What! is our life then only to be made up of separations? and am I only to return to a country, that has not merely lost all charms for me, but for which I feel a repugnance that almost amounts to horror, only to be left there a prey to it! Why is it so necessary that I should return?--brought up here, my girl would be freer. Indeed, expecting you to join us, I had formed some plans of usefulness that have now vanished with my hopes of happiness. In the bitterness of my heart, I could complain with reason, that I am left here dependent on a man, whose avidity to acquire a fortune has rendered him callous to every sentiment connected with social or affectionate emotions.--With a brutal insensibility, he cannot help displaying the pleasure your determination to stay gives him, in spite of the effect it is visible it has had on me. Till I can earn money, I shall endeavour to borrow some, for I want to avoid asking him continually for the sum necessary to maintain me.--Do not mistake me, I have never been refused.--Yet I have gone half a dozen times to the house to ask for it, and come away without speaking--you must guess why--Besides, I wish to avoid hearing of the eternal projects to which you have sacrificed my peace--not remembering--but I will be silent for ever.---- LETTER XXXVIII _[Havre] April 7 [1795]._ Here I am at Havre, on the wing towards you, and I write now, only to tell you, that you may expect me in the course of three or four days; for I shall not attempt to give vent to the different emotions which agitate my heart--You may term a feeling, which appears to me to be a degree of delicacy that naturally arises from sensibility, pride--Still I cannot indulge the very affectionate tenderness which glows in my bosom, without trembling, till I see, by your eyes, that it is mutual. I sit, lost in thought, looking at the sea--and tears rush into my eyes, when I find that I am cherishing any fond expectations.--I have indeed been so unhappy this winter, I find it as difficult to acquire fresh hopes, as to regain tranquillity.--Enough of this--lie still, foolish heart!--But for the little girl, I could almost wish that it should cease to beat, to be no more alive to the anguish of disappointment. Sweet little creature! I deprived myself of my only pleasure, when I weaned her, about ten days ago.--I am however glad I conquered my repugnance.--It was necessary it should be done soon, and I did not wish to embitter the renewal of your acquaintance with her, by putting it off till we met.--It was a painful exertion to me, and I thought it best to throw this inquietude with the rest, into the sack that I would fain throw over my shoulder.--I wished to endure it alone, in short--Yet, after sending her to sleep in the next room for three or four nights, you cannot think with what joy I took her back again to sleep in my bosom! I suppose I shall find you, when I arrive, for I do not see any necessity for your coming to me.--Pray inform Mr. ----, that I have his little friend with me.--My wishing to oblige him, made me put myself to some inconvenience----and delay my departure; which was irksome to me, who have not quite as much philosophy, I would not for the world say indifference, as you. God bless you! Yours truly MARY. LETTER XXXIX _Brighthelmstone, Saturday, April 11 [1795]._ Here we are, my love, and mean to set out early in the morning; and, if I can find you, I hope to dine with you to-morrow.--I shall drive to ----'s hotel, where ---- tells me you have been--and, if you have left it, I hope you will take care to be there to receive us. I have brought with me Mr. ----'s little friend, and a girl whom I like to take care of our little darling--not on the way, for that fell to my share.--But why do I write about trifles?--or any thing?--Are we not to meet soon?--What does your heart say? Yours truly MARY. I have weaned my Fanny, and she is now eating away at the white bread. LETTER XL _[26 Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place] London, Friday, May 22 [1795]._ I have just received your affectionate letter, and am distressed to think that I have added to your embarrassments at this troublesome juncture, when the exertion of all the faculties of your mind appears to be necessary, to extricate you out of your pecuniary difficulties. I suppose it was something relative to the circumstance you have mentioned, which made ---- request to see me to-day, to _converse about a matter of great importance_. Be that as it may, his letter (such is the state of my spirits) inconceivably alarmed me, and rendered the last night as distressing, as the two former had been. I have laboured to calm my mind since you left me--Still I find that tranquillity is not to be obtained by exertion; it is a feeling so different from the resignation of despair!--I am however no longer angry with you--nor will I ever utter another complaint--there are arguments which convince the reason, whilst they carry death to the heart.--We have had too many cruel explanations, that not only cloud every future prospect; but embitter the remembrances which alone give life to affection.--Let the subject never be revived! It seems to me that I have not only lost the hope, but the power of being happy.--Every emotion is now sharpened by anguish.--My soul has been shook, and my tone of feelings destroyed.--I have gone out--and sought for dissipation, if not amusement, merely to fatigue still more, I find, my irritable nerves---- My friend--my dear friend--examine yourself well--I am out of the question; for, alas! I am nothing--and discover what you wish to do--what will render you most comfortable--or, to be more explicit--whether you desire to live with me, or part for ever? When you can once ascertain it, tell me frankly, I conjure you!--for, believe me, I have very involuntarily interrupted your peace. I shall expect you to dinner on Monday, and will endeavour to assume a cheerful face to greet you--at any rate I will avoid conversations, which only tend to harrass your feelings, because I am most affectionately yours, MARY. LETTER XLI _[May 27, 1795] Wednesday._ I inclose you the letter, which you desired me to forward, and I am tempted very laconically to wish you a good morning--not because I am angry, or have nothing to say; but to keep down a wounded spirit.--I shall make every effort to calm my mind--yet a strong conviction seems to whirl round in the very centre of my brain, which, like the fiat of fate, emphatically assures me, that grief has a firm hold of my heart. God bless you! Yours sincerely, MARY. LETTER XLII _[Hull] Wednesday, Two o'Clock [May 27, 1795]._ We arrived here about an hour ago. I am extremely fatigued with the child, who would not rest quiet with any body but me, during the night--and now we are here in a comfortless, damp room, in a sort of a tomb-like house. This however I shall quickly remedy, for, when I have finished this letter, (which I must do immediately, because the post goes out early), I shall sally forth, and enquire about a vessel and an inn. I will not distress you by talking of the depression of my spirits, or the struggle I had to keep alive my dying heart.--It is even now too full to allow me to write with composure.--Imlay,--dear Imlay,--am I always to be tossed about thus?--shall I never find an asylum to rest _contented_ in? How can you love to fly about continually--dropping down, as it were, in a new world--cold and strange!--every other day? Why do you not attach those tender emotions round the idea of home, which even now dim my eyes?--This alone is affection--every thing else is only humanity, electrified by sympathy. I will write to you again to-morrow, when I know how long I am to be detained--and hope to get a letter quickly from you, to cheer yours sincerely and affectionately MARY. Fanny is playing near me in high spirits. She was so pleased with the noise of the mail-horn, she has been continually imitating it.----Adieu! LETTER XLIII _[Hull, May 28, 1795] Thursday._ A lady has just sent to offer to take me to Beverley. I have then only a moment to exclaim against the vague manner in which people give information * * * * * But why talk of inconveniences, which are in fact trifling, when compared with the sinking of the heart I have felt! I did not intend to touch this painful string--God bless you! Yours truly, MARY. LETTER XLIV _[Hull] Friday, June 12 [1795]._ I have just received yours dated the 9th, which I suppose was a mistake, for it could scarcely have loitered so long on the road. The general observations which apply to the state of your own mind, appear to me just, as far as they go; and I shall always consider it as one of the most serious misfortunes of my life, that I did not meet you, before satiety had rendered your senses so fastidious, as almost to close up every tender avenue of sentiment and affection that leads to your sympathetic heart. You have a heart, my friend, yet, hurried away by the impetuosity of inferior feelings, you have sought in vulgar excesses, for that gratification which only the heart can bestow. The common run of men, I know, with strong health and gross appetites, must have variety to banish _ennui_, because the imagination never lends its magic wand, to convert appetite into love, cemented by according reason.--Ah! my friend, you know not the ineffable delight, the exquisite pleasure, which arises from a unison of affection and desire, when the whole soul and senses are abandoned to a lively imagination, that renders every emotion delicate and rapturous. Yes; these are emotions, over which satiety has no power, and the recollection of which, even disappointment cannot disenchant; but they do not exist without self-denial. These emotions, more or less strong, appear to me to be the distinctive characteristic of genius, the foundation of taste, and of that exquisite relish for the beauties of nature, of which the common herd of eaters and drinkers and _child-begeters_, certainly have no idea. You will smile at an observation that has just occurred to me:--I consider those minds as the most strong and original, whose imagination acts as the stimulus to their senses. Well! you will ask, what is the result of all this reasoning? Why I cannot help thinking that it is possible for you, having great strength of mind, to return to nature, and regain a sanity of constitution, and purity of feeling--which would open your heart to me.--I would fain rest there! Yet, convinced more than ever of the sincerity and tenderness of my attachment to you, the involuntary hopes, which a determination to live has revived, are not sufficiently strong to dissipate the cloud, that despair has spread over futurity. I have looked at the sea, and at my child, hardly daring to own to myself the secret wish, that it might become our tomb; and that the heart, still so alive to anguish, might there be quieted by death. At this moment ten thousand complicated sentiments press for utterance, weigh on my heart, and obscure my sight. Are we ever to meet again? and will you endeavour to render that meeting happier than the last? Will you endeavour to restrain your caprices, in order to give vigour to affection, and to give play to the checked sentiments that nature intended should expand your heart? I cannot indeed, without agony, think of your bosom's being continually contaminated; and bitter are the tears which exhaust my eyes, when I recollect why my child and I are forced to stray from the asylum, in which, after so many storms, I had hoped to rest, smiling at angry fate.--These are not common sorrows; nor can you perhaps conceive, how much active fortitude it requires to labour perpetually to blunt the shafts of disappointment. Examine now yourself, and ascertain whether you can live in something like a settled stile. Let our confidence in future be unbounded; consider whether you find it necessary to sacrifice me to what you term "the zest of life;" and, when you have once a clear view of your own motives, of your own incentive to action, do not deceive me! The train of thoughts which the writing of this epistle awoke, makes me so wretched, that I must take a walk, to rouse and calm my mind. But first, let me tell you, that, if you really wish to promote my happiness, you will endeavour to give me as much as you can of yourself. You have great mental energy; and your judgment seems to me so just, that it is only the dupe of your inclination in discussing one subject. The post does not go out to-day. To-morrow I may write more tranquilly. I cannot yet say when the vessel will sail in which I have determined to depart. _[Hull, June 13, 1795] Saturday Morning._ Your second letter reached me about an hour ago. You were certainly wrong, in supposing that I did not mention you with respect; though, without my being conscious of it, some sparks of resentment may have animated the gloom of despair--Yes; with less affection, I should have been more respectful. However the regard which I have for you, is so unequivocal to myself, I imagine that it must be sufficiently obvious to every body else. Besides, the only letter I intended for the public eye was to ----, and that I destroyed from delicacy before you saw them, because it was only written (of course warmly in your praise) to prevent any odium being thrown on you.[11] I am harrassed by your embarrassments, and shall certainly use all my efforts, to make the business terminate to your satisfaction in which I am engaged. My friend--my dearest friend--I feel my fate united to yours by the most sacred principles of my soul, and the yearns of--yes, I will say it--a true, unsophisticated heart. Yours most truly MARY. If the wind be fair, the captain talks of sailing on Monday; but I am afraid I shall be detained some days longer. At any rate, continue to write, (I want this support) till you are sure I am where I cannot expect a letter; and, if any should arrive after my departure, a gentleman (not Mr. ----'s friend, I promise you) from whom I have received great civilities, will send them after me. Do write by every occasion! I am anxious to hear how your affairs go on; and, still more, to be convinced that you are not separating yourself from us. For my little darling is calling papa, and adding her parrot word--Come, Come! And will you not come, and let us exert ourselves?--I shall recover all my energy, when I am convinced that my exertions will draw us more closely together. Once more adieu! LETTER XLV _[Hull] Sunday, June 14 [1795]._ I rather expected to hear from you to-day--I wish you would not fail to write to me for a little time, because I am not quite well--Whether I have any good sleep or not, I wake in the morning in violent fits of trembling--and, in spite of all my efforts, the child--every thing--fatigues me, in which I seek for solace or amusement. Mr. ---- forced on me a letter to a physician of this place; it was fortunate, for I should otherwise have had some difficulty to obtain the necessary information. His wife is a pretty woman (I can admire, you know, a pretty woman, when I am alone) and he an intelligent and rather interesting man.--They have behaved to me with great hospitality; and poor Fanny was never so happy in her life, as amongst their young brood. They took me in their carriage to Beverley, and I ran over my favourite walks, with a vivacity that would have astonished you.--The town did not please me quite so well as formerly--It appeared so diminutive; and, when I found that many of the inhabitants had lived in the same houses ever since I left it, I could not help wondering how they could thus have vegetated, whilst I was running over a world of sorrow, snatching at pleasure, and throwing off prejudices. The place where I at present am, is much improved; but it is astonishing what strides aristocracy and fanaticism have made, since I resided in this country. The wind does not appear inclined to change, so I am still forced to linger--When do you think that you shall be able to set out for France? I do not entirely like the aspect of your affairs, and still less your connections on either side of the water. Often do I sigh, when I think of your entanglements in business, and your extreme restlessness of mind.--Even now I am almost afraid to ask you, whether the pleasure of being free, does not overbalance the pain you felt at parting with me? Sometimes I indulge the hope that you will feel me necessary to you--or why should we meet again?--but, the moment after, despair damps my rising spirits, aggravated by the emotions of tenderness, which ought to soften the cares of life.----God bless you! Yours sincerely and affectionately MARY. LETTER XLVI _[Hull] June 15 [1795]._ I want to know how you have settled with respect to ----. In short, be very particular in your account of all your affairs--let our confidence, my dear, be unbounded.--The last time we were separated, was a separation indeed on your part--Now you have acted more ingenuously, let the most affectionate interchange of sentiments fill up the aching void of disappointment. I almost dread that your plans will prove abortive--yet should the most unlucky turn send you home to us, convinced that a true friend is a treasure, I should not much mind having to struggle with the world again. Accuse me not of pride--yet sometimes, when nature has opened my heart to its author, I have wondered that you did not set a higher value on my heart. Receive a kiss from Fanny, I was going to add, if you will not take one from me, and believe me yours Sincerely MARY. The wind still continues in the same quarter. LETTER XLVII _[Hull, June, 1795] Tuesday Morning._ The captain has just sent to inform me, that I must be on board in the course of a few hours.--I wished to have stayed till to-morrow. It would have been a comfort to me to have received another letter from you--Should one arrive, it will be sent after me. My spirits are agitated, I scarcely know why----The quitting England seems to be a fresh parting.--Surely you will not forget me.--A thousand weak forebodings assault my soul, and the state of my health renders me sensible to every thing. It is surprising that in London, in a continual conflict of mind, I was still growing better--whilst here, bowed down by the despotic hand of fate, forced into resignation by despair, I seem to be fading away--perishing beneath a cruel blight, that withers up all my faculties. The child is perfectly well. My hand seems unwilling to add adieu! I know not why this inexpressible sadness has taken possession of me.--It is not a presentiment of ill. Yet, having been so perpetually the sport of disappointment,--having a heart that has been as it were a mark for misery, I dread to meet wretchedness in some new shape.--Well, let it come--I care not!--what have I to dread, who have so little to hope for! God bless you--I am most affectionately and sincerely yours MARY. LETTER XLVIII _[June 17, 1795] Wednesday Morning._ I was hurried on board yesterday about three o'clock, the wind having changed. But before evening it veered round to the old point; and here we are, in the midst of mists and water, only taking advantage of the tide to advance a few miles. You will scarcely suppose that I left the town with reluctance--yet it was even so--for I wished to receive another letter from you, and I felt pain at parting, for ever perhaps, from the amiable family, who had treated me with so much hospitality and kindness. They will probably send me your letter, if it arrives this morning; for here we are likely to remain, I am afraid to think how long. The vessel is very commodious, and the captain a civil, open-hearted kind of man. There being no other passengers, I have the cabin to myself, which is pleasant; and I have brought a few books with me to beguile weariness; but I seem inclined, rather to employ the dead moments of suspence in writing some effusions, than in reading. What are you about? How are your affairs going on? It may be a long time before you answer these questions. My dear friend, my heart sinks within me!--Why am I forced thus to struggle continually with my affections and feelings?--Ah! why are those affections and feelings the source of so much misery, when they seem to have been given to vivify my heart, and extend my usefulness! But I must not dwell on this subject.--Will you not endeavour to cherish all the affection you can for me? What am I saying?--Rather forget me, if you can--if other gratifications are dearer to you.--How is every remembrance of mine embittered by disappointment? What a world is this!--They only seem happy, who never look beyond sensual or artificial enjoyments.--Adieu! Fanny begins to play with the cabin-boy, and is as gay as a lark.--I will labour to be tranquil; and am in every mood, Yours sincerely MARY. LETTER XLIX _[June 18, 1795] Thursday._ Here I am still--and I have just received your letter of Monday by the pilot, who promised to bring it to me, if we were detained, as he expected, by the wind.--It is indeed wearisome to be thus tossed about without going forward.--I have a violent headache--yet I am obliged to take care of the child, who is a little tormented by her teeth, because ---- is unable to do any thing, she is rendered so sick by the motion of the ship, as we ride at anchor. These are however trifling inconveniences, compared with anguish of mind--compared with the sinking of a broken heart.--To tell you the truth, I never suffered in my life so much from depression of spirits--from despair.--I do not sleep--or, if I close my eyes, it is to have the most terrifying dreams, in which I often meet you with different casts of countenance. I will not, my dear Imlay, torment you by dwelling on my sufferings--and will use all my efforts to calm my mind, instead of deadening it--at present it is most painfully active. I find I am not equal to these continual struggles--yet your letter this morning has afforded me some comfort--and I will try to revive hope. One thing let me tell you--when we meet again--surely we are to meet!--it must be to part no more. I mean not to have seas between us--it is more than I can support. The pilot is hurrying me--God bless you. In spite of the commodiousness of the vessel, every thing here would disgust my senses, had I nothing else to think of--"When the mind's free, the body's delicate;"--mine has been too much hurt to regard trifles. Yours most truly MARY. LETTER L _[June 20, 1795] Saturday._ This is the fifth dreary day I have been imprisoned by the wind, with every outward object to disgust the senses, and unable to banish the remembrances that sadden my heart. How am I altered by disappointment!--When going to Lisbon, ten years ago, the elasticity of my mind was sufficient to ward off weariness--and the imagination still could dip her brush in the rainbow of fancy, and sketch futurity in smiling colours. Now I am going towards the North in search of sunbeams!--Will any ever warm this desolated heart? All nature seems to frown--or rather mourn with me.--Every thing is cold--cold as my expectations! Before I left the shore, tormented, as I now am, by these North east _chillers_, I could not help exclaiming--Give me, gracious Heaven! at least, genial weather, if I am never to meet the genial affection that still warms this agitated bosom--compelling life to linger there. I am now going on shore with the captain, though the weather be rough, to seek for milk, &c. at a little village, and to take a walk--after which I hope to sleep--for, confined here, surrounded by disagreeable smells, I have lost the little appetite I had; and I lie awake, till thinking almost drives me to the brink of madness--only to the brink, for I never forget, even in the feverish slumbers I sometimes fall into, the misery I am labouring to blunt the sense of, by every exertion in my power. Poor ---- still continues sick, and ---- grows weary when the weather will not allow her to remain on deck. I hope this will be the last letter I shall write from England to you--are you not tired of this lingering adieu? Yours truly MARY. LETTER LI _[Hull, June 21, 1795] Sunday Morning._ The captain last night, after I had written my letter to you intended to be left at a little village, offered to go to ---- to pass to-day. We had a troublesome sail--and now I must hurry on board again, for the wind has changed. I half expected to find a letter from you here. Had you written one haphazard, it would have been kind and considerate--you might have known, had you thought, that the wind would not permit me to depart. These are attentions, more grateful to the heart than offers of service--But why do I foolishly continue to look for them? Adieu! adieu! My friend--your friendship is very cold--you see I am hurt.--God bless you! I may perhaps be, some time or other, independent in every sense of the word--Ah! there is but one sense of it of consequence. I will break or bend this weak heart--yet even now it is full. Yours sincerely MARY. The child is well; I did not leave her on board. LETTER LII _[Gothenburg] June 27, Saturday, [1795]._ I arrived in Gothenburg this afternoon, after vainly attempting to land at Arendall. I have now but a moment, before the post goes out, to inform you we have got here; though not without considerable difficulty, for we were set ashore in a boat above twenty miles below. What I suffered in the vessel I will not now descant upon--nor mention the pleasure I received from the sight of the rocky coast.--This morning however, walking to join the carriage that was to transport us to this place, I fell, without any previous warning, senseless on the rocks--and how I escaped with life I can scarcely guess. I was in a stupour for a quarter of an hour; the suffusion of blood at last restored me to my senses--the contusion is great, and my brain confused. The child is well. Twenty miles ride in the rain, after my accident, has sufficiently deranged me--and here I could not get a fire to warm me, or any thing warm to eat; the inns are mere stables--I must nevertheless go to bed. For God's sake, let me hear from you immediately, my friend! I am not well, and yet you see I cannot die. Yours sincerely MARY. LETTER LIII _[Gothenburg] June 29 [1795]._ I wrote to you by the last post, to inform you of my arrival; and I believe I alluded to the extreme fatigue I endured on ship-board, owing to ----'s illness, and the roughness of the weather--I likewise mentioned to you my fall, the effects of which I still feel, though I do not think it will have any serious consequences. ---- will go with me, if I find it necessary to go to ----. The inns here are so bad, I was forced to accept of an apartment in his house. I am overwhelmed with civilities on all sides, and fatigued with the endeavours to amuse me, from which I cannot escape. My friend--my friend, I am not well--a deadly weight of sorrow lies heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life; and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the hopes that alone render them bearable. "How flat, dull, and unprofitable," appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my pillow; but there is a canker-worm in my bosom that never sleeps. MARY. LETTER LIV _[Sweden] July 1 [1795]._ I labour in vain to calm my mind--my soul has been overwhelmed by sorrow and disappointment. Every thing fatigues me--this is a life that cannot last long. It is you who must determine with respect to futurity--and, when you have, I will act accordingly--I mean, we must either resolve to live together, or part for ever, I cannot bear these continual struggles.--But I wish you to examine carefully your own heart and mind; and, if you perceive the least chance of being happier without me than with me, or if your inclination leans capriciously to that side, do not dissemble; but tell me frankly that you will never see me more. I will then adopt the plan I mentioned to you--for we must either live together, or I will be entirely independent. My heart is so oppressed, I cannot write with precision--You know however that what I so imperfectly express, are not the crude sentiments of the moment--You can only contribute to my comfort (it is the consolation I am in need of) by being with me--and, if the tenderest friendship is of any value, why will you not look to me for a degree of satisfaction that heartless affections cannot bestow? Tell me then, will you determine to meet me at Basle?--I shall, I should imagine, be at ---- before the close of August; and, after you settle your affairs at Paris, could we not meet there? God bless you! Yours truly MARY. Poor Fanny has suffered during the journey with her teeth. LETTER LV _[Sweden] July 3 [1795]._ There was a gloominess diffused through your last letter, the impression of which still rests on my mind--though, recollecting how quickly you throw off the forcible feelings of the moment, I flatter myself it has long since given place to your usual cheerfulness. Believe me (and my eyes fill with tears of tenderness as I assure you) there is nothing I would not endure in the way of privation, rather than disturb your tranquillity.--If I am fated to be unhappy, I will labour to hide my sorrows in my own bosom; and you shall always find me a faithful, affectionate friend. I grow more and more attached to my little girl--and I cherish this affection without fear, because it must be a long time before it can become bitterness of soul.--She is an interesting creature.--On ship-board, how often as I gazed at the sea, have I longed to bury my troubled bosom in the less troubled deep; asserting with Brutus, "that the virtue I had followed too far, was merely an empty name!" and nothing but the sight of her--her playful smiles, which seemed to cling and twine round my heart--could have stopped me. What peculiar misery has fallen to my share! To act up to my principles, I have laid the strictest restraint on my very thoughts--yes; not to sully the delicacy of my feelings, I have reined in my imagination; and started with affright from every sensation, (I allude to ----) that stealing with balmy sweetness into my soul, led me to scent from afar the fragrance of reviving nature. My friend, I have dearly paid for one conviction.--Love, in some minds, is an affair of sentiment, arising from the same delicacy of perception (or taste) as renders them alive to the beauties of nature, poetry, &c., alive to the charms of those evanescent graces that are, as it were, impalpable--they must be felt, they cannot be described. Love is a want of my heart. I have examined myself lately with more care than formerly, and find, that to deaden is not to calm the mind--Aiming at tranquillity, I have almost destroyed all the energy of my soul--almost rooted out what renders it estimable--Yes, I have damped that enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into a fuel, that imperceptibly feeds hopes, which aspire above common enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me stupid--soul and body seemed to be fading away before the withering touch of disappointment. I am now endeavouring to recover myself--and such is the elasticity of my constitution, and the purity of the atmosphere here, that health unsought for, begins to reanimate my countenance. I have the sincerest esteem and affection for you--but the desire of regaining peace, (do you understand me?) has made me forget the respect due to my own emotions--sacred emotions, that are the sure harbingers of the delights I was formed to enjoy--and shall enjoy, for nothing can extinguish the heavenly spark. Still, when we meet again, I will not torment you, I promise you. I blush when I recollect my former conduct--and will not in future confound myself with the beings whom I feel to be my inferiors.--I will listen to delicacy, or pride. LETTER LVI _[Sweden] July 4 [1795]._ I hope to hear from you by to-morrow's mail. My dearest friend! I cannot tear my affections from you--and, though every remembrance stings me to the soul, I think of you, till I make allowance for the very defects of character, that have given such a cruel stab to my peace. Still however I am more alive, than you have seen me for a long, long time. I have a degree of vivacity, even in my grief, which is preferable to the benumbing stupour that, for the last year, has frozen up all my faculties.--Perhaps this change is more owing to returning health, than to the vigour of my reason--for, in spite of sadness (and surely I have had my share), the purity of this air, and the being continually out in it, for I sleep in the country every night, has made an alteration in my appearance that really surprises me.--The rosy fingers of health already streak my cheeks--and I have seen a _physical_ life in my eyes, after I have been climbing the rocks, that resembled the fond, credulous hopes of youth. With what a cruel sigh have I recollected that I had forgotten to hope!--Reason, or rather experience, does not thus cruelly damp poor ----'s pleasures; she plays all day in the garden with ----'s children, and makes friends for herself. Do not tell me, that you are happier without us--Will you not come to us in Switzerland? Ah, why do not you love us with more sentiment?--why are you a creature of such sympathy, that the warmth of your feelings, or rather quickness of your senses, hardens your heart?--It is my misfortune, that my imagination is perpetually shading your defects, and lending you charms, whilst the grossness of your senses makes you (call me not vain) overlook graces in me, that only dignity of mind, and the sensibility of an expanded heart can give.--God bless you! Adieu. LETTER LVII _[Sweden] July 7 [1795]._ I could not help feeling extremely mortified last post, at not receiving a letter from you. My being at ---- was but a chance, and you might have hazarded it; and would a year ago. I shall not however complain--There are misfortunes so great, as to silence the usual expressions of sorrow--Believe me, there is such a thing as a broken heart! There are characters whose very energy preys upon them; and who, ever inclined to cherish by reflection some passion, cannot rest satisfied with the common comforts of life. I have endeavoured to fly from myself and launched into all the dissipation possible here, only to feel keener anguish, when alone with my child. Still, could any thing please me--had not disappointment cut me off from life, this romantic country, these fine evenings, would interest me.--My God! can any thing? and am I ever to feel alive only to painful sensations?--But it cannot--it shall not last long. The post is again arrived; I have sent to seek for letters, only to be wounded to the soul by a negative.--My brain seems on fire. I must go into the air. MARY. LETTER LVIII _[Laurvig, Norway] July 14 [1795]._ I am now on my journey to Tonsberg. I felt more at leaving my child, than I thought I should--and, whilst at night I imagined every instant that I heard the half-formed sounds of her voice,--I asked myself how I could think of parting with her for ever, of leaving her thus helpless? Poor lamb! It may run very well in a tale, that "God will temper the winds to the shorn lamb!" but how can I expect that she will be shielded, when my naked bosom has had to brave continually the pitiless storm? Yes; I could add, with poor Lear--What is the war of elements to the pangs of disappointed affection, and the horror arising from a discovery of a breach of confidence, that snaps every social tie! All is not right somewhere!--When you first knew me, I was not thus lost. I could still confide--for I opened my heart to you--of this only comfort you have deprived me, whilst my happiness, you tell me, was your first object. Strange want of judgment! I will not complain; but, from the soundness of your understanding, I am convinced, if you give yourself leave to reflect, you will also feel, that your conduct to me, so far from being generous, has not been just.--I mean not to allude to factitious principles of morality; but to the simple basis of all rectitude.--However I did not intend to argue--Your not writing is cruel--and my reason is perhaps disturbed by constant wretchedness. Poor ---- would fain have accompanied me, out of tenderness; for my fainting, or rather convulsion, when I landed, and my sudden changes of countenance since, have alarmed her so much, that she is perpetually afraid of some accident.--But it would have injured the child this warm season, as she is cutting her teeth. I hear not of your having written to me at Stromstad. Very well! Act as you please--there is nothing I fear or care for! When I see whether I can, or cannot obtain the money I am come here about, I will not trouble you with letters to which you do not reply. LETTER LIX _[Tonsberg] July 18 [1795]._ I am here in Tonsberg, separated from my child--and here I must remain a month at least, or I might as well never have come. * * * * * I have begun ---- which will, I hope, discharge all my obligations of a pecuniary kind.--I am lowered in my own eyes, on account of my not having done it sooner. I shall make no further comments on your silence. God bless you! MARY. LETTER LX _[Tonsberg] July 30 [1795]._ I have just received two of your letters, dated the 26th and 30th of June; and you must have received several from me, informing you of my detention, and how much I was hurt by your silence. * * * * * Write to me then, my friend, and write explicitly. I have suffered, God knows, since I left you. Ah! you have never felt this kind of sickness of heart!--My mind however is at present painfully active, and the sympathy I feel almost rises to agony. But this is not a subject of complaint, it has afforded me pleasure,--and reflected pleasure is all I have to hope for--if a spark of hope be yet alive in my forlorn bosom. I will try to write with a degree of composure. I wish for us to live together, because I want you to acquire an habitual tenderness for my poor girl. I cannot bear to think of leaving her alone in the world, or that she should only be protected by your sense of duty. Next to preserving her, my most earnest wish is not to disturb your peace. I have nothing to expect, and little to fear, in life--There are wounds that can never be healed--but they may be allowed to fester in silence without wincing. When we meet again, you shall be convinced that I have more resolution than you give me credit for. I will not torment you. If I am destined always to be disappointed and unhappy, I will conceal the anguish I cannot dissipate; and the tightened cord of life or reason will at last snap, and set me free. Yes; I shall be happy--This heart is worthy of the bliss its feelings anticipate--and I cannot even persuade myself, wretched as they have made me, that my principles and sentiments are not founded in nature and truth. But to have done with these subjects. * * * * * I have been seriously employed in this way since I came to Tonsberg; yet I never was so much in the air.--I walk, I ride on horseback--row, bathe, and even sleep in the fields; my health is consequently improved. The child, ---- informs me, is well, I long to be with her. Write to me immediately--were I only to think of myself, I could wish you to return to me, poor, with the simplicity of character, part of which you seem lately to have lost, that first attached to you. Yours most affectionately MARY IMLAY I have been subscribing other letters--so I mechanically did the same to yours. LETTER LXI _[Tonsberg] August 5 [1795]._ Employment and exercise have been of great service to me; and I have entirely recovered the strength and activity I lost during the time of my nursing. I have seldom been in better health; and my mind, though trembling to the touch of anguish, is calmer--yet still the same.--I have, it is true, enjoyed some tranquillity, and more happiness here, than for a long--long time past.--(I say happiness, for I can give no other appellation to the exquisite delight this wild country and fine summer have afforded me.)--Still, on examining my heart, I find that it is so constituted, I cannot live without some particular affection--I am afraid not without a passion--and I feel the want of it more in society, than in solitude. * * * * * Writing to you, whenever an affectionate epithet occurs--my eyes fill with tears, and my trembling hand stops--you may then depend on my resolution, when with you. If I am doomed to be unhappy, I will confine my anguish in my own bosom--tenderness, rather than passion, has made me sometimes overlook delicacy--the same tenderness will in future restrain me. God bless you! LETTER LXII _[Tonsberg] August 7 [1795]._ Air, exercise, and bathing, have restored me to health, braced my muscles, and covered my ribs, even whilst I have recovered my former activity.--I cannot tell you that my mind is calm, though I have snatched some moments of exquisite delight, wandering through the woods, and resting on the rocks. This state of suspense, my friend, is intolerable; we must determine on something--and soon;--we must meet shortly, or part for ever. I am sensible that I acted foolishly--but I was wretched--when we were together--Expecting too much, I let the pleasure I might have caught, slip from me. I cannot live with you--I ought not--if you form another attachment. But I promise you, mine shall not be intruded on you. Little reason have I to expect a shadow of happiness, after the cruel disappointments that have rent my heart; but that of my child seems to depend on our being together. Still I do not wish you to sacrifice a chance of enjoyment for an uncertain good. I feel a conviction, that I can provide for her, and it shall be my object--if we are indeed to part to meet no more. Her affection must not be divided. She must be a comfort to me--if I am to have no other--and only know me as her support. I feel that I cannot endure the anguish of corresponding with you--if we are only to correspond.--No; if you seek for happiness elsewhere, my letters shall not interrupt your repose. I will be dead to you. I cannot express to you what pain it gives me to write about an eternal separation.--You must determine--examine yourself--But, for God's sake! spare me the anxiety of uncertainty!--I may sink under the trial; but I will not complain. Adieu! If I had any thing more to say to you, it is all flown, and absorbed by the most tormenting apprehensions; yet I scarcely know what new form of misery I have to dread. I ought to beg your pardon for having sometimes written peevishly; but you will impute it to affection, if you understand anything of the heart of Yours truly MARY. LETTER LXIII _[Tonsberg] August 9 [1795]._ Five of your letters have been sent after me from ----. One, dated the 14th of July, was written in a style which I may have merited, but did not expect from you. However this is not a time to reply to it, except to assure you that you shall not be tormented with any more complaints. I am disgusted with myself for having so long importuned you with my affection.---- My child is very well. We shall soon meet, to part no more, I hope--I mean, I and my girl.--I shall wait with some degree of anxiety till I am informed how your affairs terminate. Yours sincerely MARY. LETTER LXIV _[Gothenburg] August 26 [1795]._ I arrived here last night, and with the most exquisite delight, once more pressed my babe to my heart. We shall part no more. You perhaps cannot conceive the pleasure it gave me, to see her run about, and play alone. Her increasing intelligence attaches me more and more to her. I have promised her that I will fulfil my duty to her; and nothing in future shall make me forget it. I will also exert myself to obtain an independence for her; but I will not be too anxious on this head. I have already told you, that I have recovered my health. Vigour, and even vivacity of mind, have returned with a renovated constitution. As for peace, we will not talk of it. I was not made, perhaps, to enjoy the calm contentment so termed.-- * * * * * You tell me that my letters torture you; I will not describe the effect yours have on me. I received three this morning, the last dated the 7th of this month. I mean not to give vent to the emotions they produced.--Certainly you are right; our minds are not congenial. I have lived in an ideal world, and fostered sentiments that you do not comprehend--or you would not treat me thus. I am not, I will not be, merely an object of compassion--a clog, however light, to teize you. Forget that I exist: I will never remind you. Something emphatical whispers me to put an end to these struggles. Be free--I will not torment, when I cannot please. I can take care of my child; you need not continually tell me that our fortune is inseparable, _that you will try to cherish tenderness_ for me. Do no violence to yourself! When we are separated, our interest, since you give so much weight to pecuniary considerations, will be entirely divided. I want not protection without affection; and support I need not, whilst my faculties are undisturbed. I had a dislike to living in England; but painful feelings must give way to superior considerations. I may not be able to acquire the sum necessary to maintain my child and self elsewhere. It is too late to go to Switzerland. I shall not remain at ----, living expensively. But be not alarmed! I shall not force myself on you any more. Adieu! I am agitated--my whole frame is convulsed--my lips tremble, as if shook by cold, though fire seems to be circulating in my veins. God bless you. MARY. LETTER LXV _[Copenhagen] September 6 [1795]._ I received just now your letter of the 20th. I had written you a letter last night, into which imperceptibly slipt some of my bitterness of soul. I will copy the part relative to business. I am not sufficiently vain to imagine that I can, for more than a moment, cloud your enjoyment of life--to prevent even that, you had better never hear from me--and repose on the idea that I am happy. Gracious God! It is impossible for me to stifle something like resentment, when I receive fresh proofs of your indifference. What I have suffered this last year, is not to be forgotten! I have not that happy substitute for wisdom, insensibility--and the lively sympathies which bind me to my fellow-creatures, are all of a painful kind.--They are the agonies of a broken heart--pleasure and I have shaken hands. I see here nothing but heaps of ruins, and only converse with people immersed in trade and sensuality. I am weary of travelling--yet seem to have no home--no resting-place to look to.--I am strangely cast off.--How often, passing through the rocks, I have thought, "But for this child, I would lay my head on one of them, and never open my eyes again!" With a heart feelingly alive to all the affections of my nature--I have never met with one, softer than the stone that I would fain take for my last pillow. I once thought I had, but it was all a delusion. I meet with families continually, who are bound together by affection or principle--and, when I am conscious that I have fulfilled the duties of my station, almost to a forgetfulness of myself, I am ready to demand, in a murmuring tone, of Heaven, "Why am I thus abandoned?" You say now * * * * * I do not understand you. It is necessary for you to write more explicitly--and determine on some mode of conduct.--I cannot endure this suspense--Decide--Do you fear to strike another blow? We live together, or eternally part!--I shall not write to you again, till I receive an answer to this. I must compose my tortured soul, before I write on indifferent subjects. * * * * * I do not know whether I write intelligibly, for my head is disturbed. But this you ought to pardon--for it is with difficulty frequently that I make out what you mean to say--You write, I suppose, at Mr. ----'s after dinner, when your head is not the clearest--and as for your heart, if you have one, I see nothing like the dictates of affection, unless a glimpse when you mention the child--Adieu! LETTER LXVI _[Hamburg] September 25 [1795]._ I have just finished a letter, to be given in charge to captain ----. In that I complained of your silence, and expressed my surprise that three mails should have arrived without bringing a line for me. Since I closed it, I hear of another, and still no letter.--I am labouring to write calmly--this silence is a refinement on cruelty. Had captain ---- remained a few days longer, I would have returned with him to England. What have I to do here? I have repeatedly written to you fully. Do you do the same--and quickly. Do not leave me in suspense. I have not deserved this of you. I cannot write, my mind is so distressed. Adieu! MARY. LETTER LXVII _[Hamburg] September 27 [1795]._ When you receive this, I shall either have landed, or be hovering on the British coast--your letter of the 18th decided me. By what criterion of principle or affection, you term my questions extraordinary and unnecessary, I cannot determine.--You desire me to decide--I had decided. You must have had long ago two letters of mine, from ----, to the same purport, to consider.--In these, God knows! there was but too much affection, and the agonies of a distracted mind were but too faithfully pourtrayed!--What more then had I to say?--The negative was to come from you.--You had perpetually recurred to your promise of meeting me in the autumn--Was it extraordinary that I should demand a yes, or no?--Your letter is written with extreme harshness, coldness I am accustomed to, in it I find not a trace of the tenderness of humanity, much less of friendship.--I only see a desire to heave a load off your shoulders. I am above disputing about words.--It matters not in what terms you decide. The tremendous power who formed this heart, must have foreseen that, in a world in which self-interest, in various shapes, is the principal mobile, I had little chance of escaping misery.--To the fiat of fate I submit.--I am content to be wretched; but I will not be contemptible.--Of me you have no cause to complain, but for having had too much regard for you--for having expected a degree of permanent happiness, when you only sought for a momentary gratification. I am strangely deficient in sagacity.--Uniting myself to you, your tenderness seemed to make me amends for all my former misfortunes.--On this tenderness and affection with what confidence did I rest!--but I leaned on a spear, that has pierced me to the heart.--You have thrown off a faithful friend, to pursue the caprices of the moment.--We certainly are differently organized; for even now, when conviction has been stamped on my soul by sorrow, I can scarcely believe it possible. It depends at present on you, whether you will see me or not.--I shall take no step, till I see or hear from you. Preparing myself for the worst--I have determined, if your next letter be like the last, to write to Mr. ---- to procure me an obscure lodging, and not to inform any body of my arrival.--There I will endeavour in a few months to obtain the sum necessary to take me to France--from you I will not receive any more.--I am not yet sufficiently humbled to depend on your beneficence. Some people, whom my unhappiness has interested, though they know not the extent of it, will assist me to attain the object I have in view, the independence of my child. Should a peace take place, ready money will go a great way in France--and I will borrow a sum, which my industry _shall_ enable me to pay at my leisure, to purchase a small estate for my girl.--The assistance I shall find necessary to complete her education, I can get at an easy rate at Paris--I can introduce her to such society as she will like--and thus, securing for her all the chance for happiness, which depends on me, I shall die in peace, persuaded that the felicity which has hitherto cheated my expectation, will not always elude my grasp. No poor temptest-tossed mariner ever more earnestly longed to arrive at his port. MARY. I shall not come up in the vessel all the way, because I have no place to go to. Captain ---- will inform you where I am. It is needless to add, that I am not in a state of mind to bear suspense--and that I wish to see you, though it be for the last time. LETTER LXVIII _[Dover] Sunday, October 4 [1795]._ I wrote to you by the packet, to inform you, that your letter of the 18th of last month, had determined me to set out with captain ----; but, as we sailed very quick, I take it for granted, that you have not yet received it. You say, I must decide for myself.--I had decided, that it was most for the interest of my little girl, and for my own comfort, little as I expect, for us to live together; and I even thought that you would be glad, some years hence, when the tumult of business was over, to repose in the society of an affectionate friend, and mark the progress of our interesting child, whilst endeavouring to be of use in the circle you at last resolved to rest in: for you cannot run about for ever. From the tenour of your last letter however, I am led to imagine, that you have formed some new attachment.--If it be so, let me earnestly request you to see me once more, and immediately. This is the only proof I require of the friendship you profess for me. I will then decide, since you boggle about a mere form. I am labouring to write with calmness--but the extreme anguish I feel, at landing without having any friend to receive me, and even to be conscious that the friend whom I most wish to see, will feel a disagreeable sensation at being informed of my arrival, does not come under the description of common misery. Every emotion yields to an overwhelming flood of sorrow--and the playfulness of my child distresses me.--On her account, I wished to remain a few days here, comfortless as is my situation.--Besides, I did not wish to surprise you. You have told me, that you would make any sacrifice to promote my happiness--and, even in your last unkind letter, you talk of the ties which bind you to me and my child.--Tell me, that you wish it, and I will cut this Gordian knot. I now most earnestly intreat you to write to me, without fail, by the return of the post. Direct your letter to be left at the post-office, and tell me whether you will come to me here, or where you will meet me. I can receive your letter on Wednesday morning. Do not keep me in suspense.--I expect nothing from you, or any human being: my die is cast!--I have fortitude enough to determine to do my duty; yet I cannot raise my depressed spirits, or calm my trembling heart.--That being who moulded it thus, knows that I am unable to tear up by the roots the propensity to affection which has been the torment of my life--but life will have an end! Should you come here (a few months ago I could not have doubted it) you will find me at ----. If you prefer meeting me on the road, tell me where. Yours affectionately, MARY. LETTER LXIX _[London, Nov. 1795]._ I write to you now on my knees; imploring you to send my child and the maid with ----, to Paris, to be consigned to the care of Madame ----, rue ----, section de ----. Should they be removed, ---- can give their direction. Let the maid have all my clothes, without distinction. Pray pay the cook her wages, and do not mention the confession which I forced from her--a little sooner or later is of no consequence. Nothing but my extreme stupidity could have rendered me blind so long. Yet, whilst you assured me that you had no attachment, I thought we might still have lived together. I shall make no comments on your conduct; or any appeal to the world. Let my wrongs sleep with me! Soon, very soon shall I be at peace. When you receive this, my burning head will be cold. I would encounter a thousand deaths, rather than a night like the last. Your treatment has thrown my mind into a state of chaos; yet I am serene. I go to find comfort, and my only fear is, that my poor body will be insulted by an endeavour to recal my hated existence. But I shall plunge into the Thames where there is the least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek. God bless you! May you never know by experience what you have made me endure. Should your sensibility ever awake, remorse will find its way to your heart; and, in the midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall appear before you, the victim of your deviation from rectitude. MARY. LETTER LXX _[London, Nov. 1795] Sunday Morning._ I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery. But a fixed determination is not to be baffled by disappointment; nor will I allow that to be a frantic attempt, which was one of the calmest acts of reason. In this respect, I am only accountable to myself. Did I care for what is termed reputation, it is by other circumstances that I should be dishonoured. You say, "that you know not how to extricate ourselves out of the wretchedness into which we have been plunged." You are extricated long since.--But I forbear to comment.--If I am condemned to live longer, it is a living death. It appears to me, that you lay much more stress on delicacy, than on principle; for I am unable to discover what sentiment of delicacy would have been violated, by your visiting a wretched friend--if indeed you have any friendship for me.--But since your new attachment is the only thing sacred in your eyes, I am silent--Be happy! My complaints shall never more damp your enjoyment--perhaps I am mistaken in supposing that even my death could, for more than a moment.--This is what you call magnanimity.--It is happy for yourself, that you possess this quality in the highest degree. Your continually asserting, that you will do all in your power to contribute to my comfort (when you only allude to pecuniary assistance), appears to me a flagrant breach of delicacy.--I want not such vulgar comfort, nor will I accept it. I never wanted but your heart--That gone, you have nothing more to give. Had I only poverty to fear, I should not shrink from life.--Forgive me then, if I say, that I shall consider any direct or indirect attempt to supply my necessities, as an insult which I have not merited--and as rather done out of tenderness for your own reputation, than for me. Do not mistake me; I do not think that you value money (therefore I will not accept what you do not care for) though I do much less, because certain privations are not painful to me. When I am dead, respect for yourself will make you take care of the child. I write with difficulty--probably I shall never write to you again.--Adieu! God bless you! MARY. LETTER LXXI _[London, Nov. 1795] Monday Morning._ I am compelled at last to say that you treat me ungenerously. I agree with you, that * * * * * But let the obliquity now fall on me.--I fear neither poverty nor infamy. I am unequal to the task of writing--and explanations are not necessary. * * * * * My child may have to blush for her mother's want of prudence--and may lament that the rectitude of my heart made me above vulgar precautions; but she shall not despise me for meanness.--You are now perfectly free.--God bless you. MARY. LETTER LXXII _[London, Nov. 1795] Saturday Night._ I have been hurt by indirect enquiries, which appear to me not to be dictated by any tenderness to me.--You ask "If I am well or tranquil?"--They who think me so, must want a heart to estimate my feelings by.--I chuse then to be the organ of my own sentiments. I must tell you, that I am very much mortified by your continually offering me pecuniary assistance--and, considering your going to the new house, as an open avowal that you abandon me, let me tell you that I will sooner perish than receive any thing from you--and I say this at the moment when I am disappointed in my first attempt to obtain a temporary supply. But this even pleases me; an accumulation of disappointments and misfortunes seems to suit the habit of my mind.-- Have but a little patience, and I will remove myself where it will not be necessary for you to talk--of course, not to think of me. But let me see, written by yourself--for I will not receive it through any other medium--that the affair is finished.--It is an insult to me to suppose, that I can be reconciled, or recover my spirits; but, if you hear nothing of me, it will be the same thing to you. MARY. Even your seeing me, has been to oblige other people, and not to sooth my distracted mind. LETTER LXXIII _[London, Nov. 1795] Thursday Afternoon._ Mr. ---- having forgot to desire you to send the things of mine which were left at the house, I have to request you to let ---- bring them to ---- I shall go this evening to the lodging; so you need not be restrained from coming here to transact your business.--And, whatever I may think, and feel--you need not fear that I shall publicly complain--No! If I have any criterion to judge of right and wrong, I have been most ungenerously treated: but, wishing now only to hide myself, I shall be silent as the grave in which I long to forget myself. I shall protect and provide for my child.--I only mean by this to say, that you have nothing to fear from my desperation. Farewel. MARY. LETTER LXXIV _London, November 27 [1795]._ The letter, without an address, which you put up with the letters you returned, did not meet my eyes till just now.--I had thrown the letters aside--I did not wish to look over a register of sorrow. My not having seen it, will account for my having written to you with anger--under the impression your departure, without even a line left for me, made on me, even after your late conduct, which could not lead me to expect much attention to my sufferings. In fact, "the decided conduct, which appeared to me so unfeeling," has almost overturned my reason; my mind is injured--I scarcely know where I am, or what I do.--The grief I cannot conquer (for some cruel recollections never quit me, banishing almost every other) I labour to conceal in total solitude.--My life therefore is but an exercise of fortitude, continually on the stretch--and hope never gleams in this tomb, where I am buried alive. But I meant to reason with you, and not to complain.--You tell me, that I shall judge more coolly of your mode of acting, some time hence." But is it not possible that _passion_ clouds your reason, as much as it does mine?--and ought you not to doubt, whether those principles are so "exalted," as you term them, which only lead to your own gratification? In other words, whether it be just to have no principle of action, but that of following your inclination, trampling on the affection you have fostered, and the expectations you have excited? My affection for you is rooted in my heart.--I know you are not what you now seem--nor will you always act, or feel, as you now do, though I may never be comforted by the change.--Even at Paris, my image will haunt you.--You will see my pale face--and sometimes the tears of anguish will drop on your heart; which you have forced from mine. I cannot write. I thought I could quickly have refuted all your _ingenious_ arguments; but my head is confused.--Right or wrong, I am miserable! It seems to me, that my conduct has always been governed by the strictest principles of justice and truth.--Yet, how wretched have my social feelings, and delicacy of sentiment rendered me!--I have loved with my whole soul, only to discover that I had no chance of a return--and that existence is a burthen without it. I do not perfectly understand you.--If, by the offer of your friendship, you still only mean pecuniary support--I must again reject it.--Trifling are the ills of poverty in the scale of my misfortunes.--God bless you! MARY. I have been treated ungenerously--if I understand what is generosity.--You seem to me only to have been anxious to shake me off--regardless whether you dashed me to atoms by the fall.--In truth I have been rudely handled. _Do you judge coolly_, and I trust you will not continue to call those capricious feelings "the most refined," which would undermine not only the most sacred principles, but the affections which unite mankind.--You would render mothers unnatural--and there would be no such thing as a father!--If your theory of morals is the most "exalted," it is certainly the most easy.--It does not require much magnanimity, to determine to please ourselves for the moment, let others suffer what they will! Excuse me for again tormenting you, my heart thirsts for justice from you--and whilst I recollect that you approved Miss ----'s conduct--I am convinced you will not always justify your own. Beware of the deceptions of passion! It will not always banish from your mind, that you have acted ignobly--and condescended to subterfuge to gloss over the conduct you could not excuse.--Do truth and principle require such sacrifices? LETTER LXXV _London, December 8 [1795]._ Having just been informed that ---- is to return immediately to Paris, I would not miss a sure opportunity of writing, because I am not certain that my last, by Dover has reached you. Resentment, and even anger, are momentary emotions with me--and I wished to tell you so, that if you ever think of me, it may not be in the light of an enemy. That I have not been used _well_ I must ever feel; perhaps, not always with the keen anguish I do at present--for I began even now to write calmly, and I cannot restrain my tears. I am stunned!--Your late conduct still appears to me a frightful dream.--Ah! ask yourself if you have not condescended to employ a little address, I could almost say cunning, unworthy of you?--Principles are sacred things--and we never play with truth, with impunity. The expectation (I have too fondly nourished it) of regaining your affection, every day grows fainter and fainter.--Indeed, it seems to me, when I am more sad than usual, that I shall never see you more.--Yet you will not always forget me.--You will feel something like remorse, for having lived only for yourself--and sacrificed my peace to inferior gratifications. In a comfortless old age, you will remember that you had one disinterested friend, whose heart you wounded to the quick. The hour of recollection will come--and you will not be satisfied to act the part of a boy, till you fall into that of a dotard. I know that your mind, your heart, and your principles of action, are all superior to your present conduct. You do, you must, respect me--and you will be sorry to forfeit my esteem. You know best whether I am still preserving the remembrance of an imaginary being.--I once thought that I knew you thoroughly--but now I am obliged to leave some doubts that involuntarily press on me, to be cleared up by time. You may render me unhappy; but cannot make me contemptible in my own eyes.--I shall still be able to support my child, though I am disappointed in some other plans of usefulness, which I once believed would have afforded you equal pleasure. Whilst I was with you, I restrained my natural generosity, because I thought your property in jeopardy.--When I went to [Sweden], I requested you, _if you could conveniently_, not to forget my father, sisters, and some other people, whom I was interested about.--Money was lavished away, yet not only my requests were neglected, but some trifling debts were not discharged, that now come on me.--Was this friendship--or generosity? Will you not grant you have forgotten yourself? Still I have an affection for you.--God bless you. MARY. LETTER LXXVI _[London, Dec. 1795.]_ As the parting from you for ever is the most serious event of my life, I will once expostulate with you, and call not the language of truth and feeling ingenuity! I know the soundness of your understanding--and know that it is impossible for you always to confound the caprices of every wayward inclination with the manly dictates of principle. You tell me "that I torment you."--Why do I?----Because you cannot estrange your heart entirely from me--and you feel that justice is on my side. You urge, "that your conduct was unequivocal."--It was not.--When your coolness has hurt me, with what tenderness have you endeavoured to remove the impression!--and even before I returned to England, you took great pains to convince me, that all my uneasiness was occasioned by the effect of a worn-out constitution--and you concluded your letter with these words, "Business alone has kept me from you.--Come to any port, and I will fly down to my two dear girls with a heart all their own." With these assurances, is it extraordinary that I should believe what I wished? I might--and did think that you had a struggle with old propensities; but I still thought that I and virtue should at last prevail. I still thought that you had a magnanimity of character, which would enable you to conquer yourself. Imlay, believe me, it is not romance, you have acknowledged to me feelings of this kind.--You could restore me to life and hope, and the satisfaction you would feel, would amply repay you. In tearing myself from you, it is my own heart I pierce--and the time will come, when you will lament that you have thrown away a heart, that, even in the moment of passion, you cannot despise.--I would owe every thing to your generosity--but, for God's sake, keep me no longer in suspense!--Let me see you once more!-- LETTER LXXVII _[London, Dec. 1795.]_ You must do as you please with respect to the child.--I could wish that it might be done soon, that my name may be no more mentioned to you. It is now finished.--Convinced that you have neither regard nor friendship, I disdain to utter a reproach, though I have had reason to think, that the "forbearance" talked of, has not been very delicate.--It is however of no consequence.--I am glad you are satisfied with your own conduct. I now solemnly assure you, that this is an eternal farewel.--Yet I flinch not from the duties which tie me to life. That there is "sophistry" on one side or other, is certain; but now it matters not on which. On my part it has not been a question of words. Yet your understanding or mine must be strangely warped--for what you term "delicacy," appears to me to be exactly the contrary. I have no criterion for morality, and have thought in vain, if the sensations which lead you to follow an ancle or step, be the sacred foundation of principle and affection. Mine has been of a very different nature, or it would not have stood the brunt of your sarcasms. The sentiment in me is still sacred. If there be any part of me that will survive the sense of my misfortunes, it is the purity of my affections. The impetuosity of your senses, may have led you to term mere animal desire, the source of principle; and it may give zest to some years to come.--Whether you will always think so, I shall never know. It is strange that, in spite of all you do, something like conviction forces me to believe, that you are not what you appear to be. I part with you in peace. _Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._ Footnotes: [1] Dowden's "Life of Shelley." [2] The child is in a subsequent letter called the "barrier girl," probably from a supposition that she owed her existence to this interview.--W. G. [3] This and the thirteen following letters appear to have been written during a separation of several months; the date, Paris.--W. G. [4] Some further letters, written during the remainder of the week, in a similar strain to the preceding, appear to have been destroyed by the person to whom they were addressed.--W. G. [5] Imlay went to Paris on March 11, after spending a fortnight at Havre, but he returned to Mary soon after the date of Letter XIX. In August he went to Paris, where he was followed by Mary. In September Imlay visited London on business. [6] The child spoken of in some preceding letters, had now been born a considerable time. She was born, May 14, 1794, and was named Fanny.--W. G. [7] She means, "the latter more than the former."--W. G. [8] This is the first of a series of letters written during a separation of many months, to which no cordial meeting ever succeeded. They were sent from Paris, and bear the address of London.--W. G. [9] The person to whom the letters are addressed [Imlay], was about this time at Ramsgate, on his return, as he professed, to Paris, when he was recalled, as it should seem, to London, by the further pressure of business now accumulated upon him.--W. G. [10] This probably alludes to some expression of [Imlay] the person to whom the letters are addressed, in which he treated as common evils, things upon which the letter-writer was disposed to bestow a different appellation.--W. G. [11] This passage refers to letters written under a purpose of suicide, and not intended to be opened till after the catastrophe.--W. G. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. The word "an" was corrected to "am" on page 151. The unmatched closing quotation mark on page 167 is presented as in the original text. 
13105	----	MEMOIRS OF MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI VOL. I. * * * * * Only a learned and a manly soul I purposed her, that should with even powers The rock, the spindle, and the shears control Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours. BEN JONSON. Però che ogni diletto nostro e doglia Sta in si e nò saper, voler, potere; Adunque quel sol può, che col dovere Ne trae la ragion fuor di sua soglia. Adunque tu, lettor di queste note, S' a te vuoi esser buono, e agli altri caro, Vogli sempre poter quel che tu debbi. LEONARDO DA VINCI BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY. MDCCCLVII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, BY R.F. FULLER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Stereotyped by HOBART & ROBBINS; NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY BOSTON. TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR VOLUME FIRST. I. YOUTH. AUTOBIOGRAPHY PARENTS DEATH IN THE HOUSE OVERWORK THE WORLD OF BOOKS FIRST FRIEND SCHOOL-LIFE SELF-CULTURE II. CAMBRIDGE, _By J.F. Clarke_ FRIENDSHIP CONVERSATION.--SOCIAL INTERCOURSE STUDIES CHARACTER.--AIMS AND IDEAS OF LIFE III. GROTON AND PROVIDENCE. LETTERS AND JOURNALS SAD WELCOME HOME OCCUPATIONS MISS MARTINEAU ILLNESS DEATH OF HER FATHER TRIAL BIRTH-DAY DEATH IN LIFE LITERATURE FAREWELL TO GROTON WINTER IN BOSTON PROVIDENCE SCHOOL EXPERIENCES PERSONS ART FANNY KEMBLE MAGNANIMITY SPIRITUAL LIFE FAREWELL TO SUMMER IV. CONCORD, _By R.W. Emerson_ ARCANA DÆMONOLOGY TEMPERAMENT SELF-ESTEEM BOOKS CRITICISM NATURE ART LETTERS FRIENDSHIP PROBLEMS OF LIFE WOMAN, OR ARTIST? HEROISM TRUTH ECSTASY CONVERSATION V. BOSTON, _By R.W. Emerson_ CONVERSATIONS ON THE FINE ARTS YOUTH. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. * * * * * "Aus Morgenduft gewebt und Sonnenklarheit Der Dichtung Schleir aus der Hand der Wahrheit." GOETHE. "The million stars which tremble O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy." TENNYSON. "Wie leicht ward er dahin gefragen, Was war dem Glücklichen zu schwer! Wie tanzte vor des Lebens Wagen Die luftige Begleitung her! Die Liebe mit dem süssen Lohne, Das Glück mit seinem gold'nen Kranz, Der Ruhm mit seiner Sternenkrone, Die Wahrheit in der Sonne Glanz." SCHILLER What wert thou then? A child most infantine, Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age, In all but its sweet looks and mien divine; Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage A patient warfare thy young heart did wage, When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage To overflow with tears, or converse fraught With passion o'er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.' SHELLE "And I smiled, as one never smiles but once; Then first discovering my own aim's extent, Which sought to comprehend the works of God. And God himself, and all God's intercourse With the human mind." BROWNING. I. YOUTH. * * * * * 'Tieck, who has embodied so many Runic secrets, explained to me what I have often felt toward myself, when he tells of the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted home, sat down on a stone and so pitied herself that she wept. Yet me also, the wonderful bird, singing in the wild forest, has tempted on, and not in vain.' Thus wrote Margaret in the noon of life, when looking back through youth to the "dewy dawn of memory." She was the eldest child of Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane, and was born in Cambridge-Port, Massachusetts, on the 23d of May, 1810. Among her papers fortunately remains this unfinished sketch of youth, prepared by her own hand, in 1840, as the introductory chapter to an autobiographical romance. PARENTS. 'My father was a lawyer and a politician. He was a man largely endowed with that sagacious energy, which the state of New England society, for the last half century, has been so well fitted to develop. His father was a clergyman, settled as pastor in Princeton, Massachusetts, within the bounds of whose parish-farm was Wachuset. His means were small, and the great object of his ambition was to send his sons to college. As a boy, my father was taught to think only of preparing himself for Harvard University, and when there of preparing himself for the profession of Law. As a Lawyer, again, the ends constantly presented were to work for distinction in the community, and for the means of supporting a family. To be an honored citizen, and to have a home on earth, were made the great aims of existence. To open the deeper fountains of the soul, to regard life here as the prophetic entrance to immortality, to develop his spirit to perfection,--motives like these had never been suggested to him, either by fellow-beings or by outward circumstances. The result was a character, in its social aspect, of quite the common sort. A good son and brother, a kind neighbor, an active man of business--in all these outward relations he was but one of a class, which surrounding conditions have made the majority among us. In the more delicate and individual relations, he never approached but two mortals, my mother and myself. 'His love for my mother was the green spot on which he stood apart from the common-places of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence. She was one of those fair and flower-like natures, which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of life--a creature not to be shaped into a merely useful instrument, but bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic birds. Of all persons whom I have known, she had in her most of the angelic,--of that spontaneous love for every living thing, for man, and beast, and tree, which restores the golden age.' DEATH IN THE HOUSE. 'My earliest recollection is of a death,--the death of a sister, two years younger than myself. Probably there is a sense of childish endearments, such as belong to this tie, mingled with that of loss, of wonder, and mystery; but these last are prominent in memory. I remember coming home and meeting our nursery-maid, her face streaming with tears. That strange sight of tears made an indelible impression. I realize how little I was of stature, in that I looked up to this weeping face;--and it has often seemed since, that--full-grown for the life of this earth, I have looked up just so, at times of threatening, of doubt, and distress, and that just so has some being of the next higher order of existences looked down, aware of a law unknown to me, and tenderly commiserating the pain I muse endure in emerging from my ignorance. 'She took me by the hand and led me into a still and dark chamber,--then drew aside the curtain and showed me my sister. I see yet that beauty of death! The highest achievements of sculpture are only the reminder of its severe sweetness. Then I remember the house all still and dark,--the people in their black clothes and dreary faces,--the scent of the newly-made coffin,--my being set up in a chair and detained by a gentle hand to hear the clergyman,--the carriages slowly going, the procession slowly doling out their steps to the grave. But I have no remembrance of what I have since been told I did,--insisting, with loud cries, that they should not put the body in the ground. I suppose that my emotion was spent at the time, and so there was nothing to fix that moment in my memory. 'I did not then, nor do I now, find any beauty in these ceremonies. What had they to do with the sweet playful child? Her life and death were alike beautiful, but all this sad parade was not. Thus my first experience of life was one of death. She who would have been the companion of my life was severed from me, and I was left alone. This has made a vast difference in my lot. Her character, if that fair face promised right, would have been soft, graceful and lively: it would have tempered mine to a gentler and more gradual course. OVERWORK. 'My father,--all whose feelings were now concentred on me,--instructed me himself. The effect of this was so far good that, not passing through the hands of many ignorant and weak persons as so many do at preparatory schools, I was put at once under discipline of considerable severity, and, at the same time, had a more than ordinarily high standard presented to me. My father was a man of business, even in literature; he had been a high scholar at college, and was warmly attached to all he had learned there, both from the pleasure he had derived in the exercise of his faculties and the associated memories of success and good repute. He was, beside, well read in French literature, and in English, a Queen Anne's man. He hoped to make me the heir of all he knew, and of as much more as the income of his profession enabled him to give me means of acquiring. At the very beginning, he made one great mistake, more common, it is to be hoped, in the last generation, than the warnings of physiologists will permit it to be with the next. He thought to gain time, by bringing forward the intellect as early as possible. Thus I had tasks given me, as many and various as the hours would allow, and on subjects beyond my age; with the additional disadvantage of reciting to him in the evening, after he returned from his office. As he was subject to many interruptions, I was often kept up till very late; and as he was a severe teacher, both from his habits of mind and his ambition for me, my feelings were kept on the stretch till the recitations were over. Thus frequently, I was sent to bed several hours too late, with nerves unnaturally stimulated. The consequence was a premature development of the brain, that made me a "youthful prodigy" by day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare, and somnambulism, which at the time prevented the harmonious development of my bodily powers and checked my growth, while, later, they induced continual headache, weakness and nervous affections, of all kinds. As these again re-acted on the brain, giving undue force to every thought and every feeling, there was finally produced a state of being both too active and too intense, which wasted my constitution, and will bring me,--even although I have learned to understand and regulate my now morbid temperament,--to a premature grave. 'No one understood this subject of health then. No one knew why this child, already kept up so late, was still unwilling to retire. My aunts cried out upon the "spoiled child, the most unreasonable child that ever was,--if brother could but open his eyes to see it,--who was never willing to go to bed." They did not know that, so soon as the light was taken away, she seemed to see colossal faces advancing slowly towards her, the eyes dilating, and each feature swelling loathsomely as they came, till at last, when they were about to close upon her, she started up with a shriek which drove them away, but only to return when she lay down again. They did not know that, when at last she went to sleep, it was to dream of horses trampling over her, and to awake once more in fright; or, as she had just read in her Virgil, of being among trees that dripped with blood, where she walked and walked and could not get out, while the blood became a pool and plashed over her feet, and rose higher and higher, till soon she dreamed it would reach her lips. No wonder the child arose and walked in her sleep, moaning all over the house, till once, when they heard her, and came and waked her, and she told what she had dreamed, her father sharply bid her "leave off thinking of such nonsense, or she would be crazy,"--never knowing that he was himself the cause of all these horrors of the night. Often she dreamed of following to the grave the body of her mother, as she had done that of her sister, and woke to find the pillow drenched in tears. These dreams softened her heart too much, and cast a deep shadow over her young days; for then, and later, the life of dreams,--probably because there was in it less to distract the mind from its own earnestness,--has often seemed to her more real, and been remembered with more interest, than that of waking hours. 'Poor child! Far remote in time, in thought, from that period, I look back on these glooms and terrors, wherein I was enveloped, and perceive that I had no natural childhood.' BOOKS. 'Thus passed my first years. My mother was in delicate health, and much absorbed in the care of her younger children. In the house was neither dog nor bird, nor any graceful animated form of existence. I saw no persons who took my fancy, and real life offered no attraction. Thus my already over-excited mind found no relief from without, and was driven for refuge from itself to the world of books. I was taught Latin and English grammar at the same time, and began to read Latin at six years old, after which, for some years, I read it daily. In this branch of study, first by my father, and afterwards by a tutor, I was trained to quite a high degree of precision. I was expected to understand the mechanism of the language thoroughly, and in translating to give the thoughts in as few well-arranged words as possible, and without breaks or hesitation,--for with these my father had absolutely no patience. 'Indeed, he demanded accuracy and clearness in everything: you must not speak, unless you can make your meaning perfectly intelligible to the person addressed; must not express a thought, unless you can give a reason for it, if required; must not make a statement, unless sure of all particulars--such were his rules. "But," "if," "unless," "I am mistaken," and "it may be so," were words and phrases excluded from the province where he held sway. Trained to great dexterity in artificial methods, accurate, ready, with entire command of his resources, he had no belief in minds that listen, wait, and receive. He had no conception of the subtle and indirect motions of imagination and feeling. His influence on me was great, and opposed to the natural unfolding of my character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to infatuation, and self-forgetfulness. He made the common prose world so present to me, that my natural bias was controlled. I did not go mad, as many would do, at being continually roused from my dreams. I had too much strength to be crushed,--and since I must put on the fetters, could not submit to let them impede my motions. My own world sank deep within, away from the surface of my life; in what I did and said I learned to have reference to other minds. But my true life was only the dearer that it was secluded and veiled over by a thick curtain of available intellect, and that coarse, but wearable stuff woven by the ages,--Common Sense. 'In accordance with this discipline in heroic common sense, was the influence of those great Romans, whose thoughts and lives were my daily food during those plastic years. The genius of Rome displayed itself in Character, and scarcely needed an occasional wave of the torch of thought to show its lineaments, so marble strong they gleamed in every light. Who, that has lived with those men, but admires the plain force of fact, of thought passed into action? They take up things with their naked hands. There is just the man, and the block he casts before you,--no divinity, no demon, no unfulfilled aim, but just the man and Rome, and what he did for Rome. Everything turns your attention to what a man can become, not by yielding himself freely to impressions, not by letting nature play freely through him, but by a single thought, an earnest purpose, an indomitable will, by hardihood, self-command, and force of expression. Architecture was the art in which Rome excelled, and this corresponds with the feeling these men of Rome excite. They did not grow,--they built themselves up, or were built up by the fate of Rome, as a temple for Jupiter Stator. The ruined Roman sits among the ruins; he flies to no green garden; he does not look to heaven; if his intent is defeated, if he is less than he meant to be, he lives no more. The names which end in "_us_," seem to speak with lyric cadence. That measured cadence,--that tramp and march,--which are not stilted, because they indicate real force, yet which seem so when compared with any other language,--make Latin a study in itself of mighty influence. The language alone, without the literature, would give one the _thought_ of Rome. Man present in nature, commanding nature too sternly to be inspired by it, standing like the rock amid the sea, or moving like the fire over the land, either impassive, or irresistible; knowing not the soft mediums or fine flights of life, but by the force which he expresses, piercing to the centre. 'We are never better understood than when we speak of a "Roman virtue," a "Roman outline." There is somewhat indefinite, somewhat yet unfulfilled in the thought of Greece, of Spain, of modern Italy; but ROME! it stands by itself, a clear Word. The power of will, the dignity of a fixed purpose is what it utters. Every Roman was an emperor. It is well that the infallible church should have been founded on this rock, that the presumptuous Peter should hold the keys, as the conquering Jove did before his thunderbolts, to be seen of all the world. The Apollo tends flocks with Admetus; Christ teaches by the lonely lake, or plucks wheat as he wanders through the fields some Sabbath morning. They never come to this stronghold; they could not have breathed freely where all became stone as soon as spoken, where divine youth found no horizon for its all-promising glance, but every thought put on, before it dared issue to the day in action, its _toga virilis_. 'Suckled by this wolf, man gains a different complexion from that which is fed by the Greek honey. He takes a noble bronze in camps and battle-fields; the wrinkles of council well beseem his brow, and the eye cuts its way like the sword. The Eagle should never have been used as a symbol by any other nation: it belonged to Rome. 'The history of Rome abides in mind, of course, more than the literature. It was degeneracy for a Roman to use the pen; his life was in the day. The "vaunting" of Rome, like that of the North American Indians, is her proper literature. A man rises; he tells who he is, and what he has done; he speaks of his country and her brave men; he knows that a conquering god is there, whose agent is his own right hand; and he should end like the Indian, "I have no more to say." 'It never shocks us that the Roman is self-conscious. One wants no universal truths from him, no philosophy, no creation, but only his life, his Roman life felt in every pulse, realized in every gesture. The universal heaven takes in the Roman only to make us feel his individuality the more. The Will, the Resolve of Man!--it has been expressed,--fully expressed! 'I steadily loved this ideal in my childhood, and this is the cause, probably, why I have always felt that man must know how to stand firm on the ground, before he can fly. In vain for me are men more, if they are less, than Romans. Dante was far greater than any Roman, yet I feel he was right to take the Mantuan as his guide through hell, and to heaven. 'Horace was a great deal to me then, and is so still. Though his words do not abide in memory, his presence does: serene, courtly, of darting hazel eye, a self-sufficient grace, and an appreciation of the world of stern realities, sometimes pathetic, never tragic. He is the natural man of the world; he is what he ought to be, and his darts never fail of their aim. There is a perfume and raciness, too, which makes life a banquet, where the wit sparkles no less that the viands were bought with blood. 'Ovid gave me not Rome, nor himself, but a view into the enchanted gardens of the Greek mythology. This path I followed, have been following ever since; and now, life half over, it seems to me, as in my childhood, that every thought of which man is susceptible, is intimated there. In those young years, indeed, I did not see what I now see, but loved to creep from amid the Roman pikes to lie beneath this great vine, and see the smiling and serene shapes go by, woven from the finest fibres of all the elements. I knew not why, at that time,--but I loved to get away from the hum of the forum, and the mailed clang of Roman speech, to these shifting shows of nature, these Gods and Nymphs born of the sunbeam, the wave, the shadows on the hill. 'As with Rome I antedated the world of deeds, so I lived in those Greek forms the true faith of a refined and intense childhood. So great was the force of reality with which these forms impressed me, that I prayed earnestly for a sign,--that it would lighten in some particular region of the heavens, or that I might find a bunch of grapes in the path, when I went forth in the morning. But no sign was given, and I was left a waif stranded upon the shores of modern life! 'Of the Greek language, I knew only enough to feel that the sounds told the same story as the mythology;--that the law of life in that land was beauty, as in Rome it was a stern composure. I wish I had learned as much of Greece as of Rome,--so freely does the mind play in her sunny waters, where there is no chill, and the restraint is from within out; for these Greeks, in an atmosphere of ample grace, could not be impetuous, or stern, but loved moderation as equable life always must, for it is the law of beauty. 'With these books I passed my days. The great amount of study exacted of me soon ceased to be a burden, and reading became a habit and a passion. The force of feeling, which, under other circumstances, might have ripened thought, was turned to learn the thoughts of others. This was not a tame state, for the energies brought out by rapid acquisition gave glow enough. I thought with rapture of the all-accomplished man, him of the many talents, wide resources, clear sight, and omnipotent will. A Cæsar seemed great enough. I did not then know that such men impoverish the treasury to build the palace. I kept their statues as belonging to the hall of my ancestors, and loved to conquer obstacles, and fed my youth and strength for their sake. * * * * * 'Still, though this bias was so great that in earliest years I learned, in these ways, how the world takes hold of a powerful nature, I had yet other experiences. None of these were deeper than what I found in the happiest haunt of my childish years,--our little garden. Our house, though comfortable, was very ugly, and in a neighborhood which I detested,--every dwelling and its appurtenances having a _mesquin_ and huddled look. I liked nothing about us except the tall graceful elms before the house, and the dear little garden behind. Our back door opened on a high flight of steps, by which I went down to a green plot, much injured in my ambitious eyes by the presence of the pump and tool-house. This opened into a little garden, full of choice flowers and fruit-trees, which was my mother's delight, and was carefully kept. Here I felt at home. A gate opened thence into the fields,--a wooden gate made of boards, in a high, unpainted board wall, and embowered in the clematis creeper. This gate I used to open to see the sunset heaven; beyond this black frame I did not step, for I liked to look at the deep gold behind it. How exquisitely happy I was in its beauty, and how I loved the silvery wreaths of my protecting vine! I never would pluck one of its flowers at that time, I was so jealous of its beauty, but often since I carry off wreaths of it from the wild-wood, and it stands in nature to my mind as the emblem of domestic love. 'Of late I have thankfully felt what I owe to that garden, where the best hours of my lonely childhood were spent. Within the house everything was socially utilitarian; my books told of a proud world, but in another temper were the teachings of the little garden. There my thoughts could lie callow in the nest, and only be fed and kept warm, not called to fly or sing before the time. I loved to gaze on the roses, the violets, the lilies, the pinks; my mother's hand had planted them, and they bloomed for me. I culled the most beautiful. I looked at them on every side. I kissed them, I pressed them to my bosom with passionate emotions, such as I have never dared express to any human being. An ambition swelled my heart to be as beautiful, as perfect as they. I have not kept my vow. Yet, forgive, ye wild asters, which gleam so sadly amid the fading grass; forgive me, ye golden autumn flowers, which so strive to reflect the glories of the departing distant sun; and ye silvery flowers, whose moonlight eyes I knew so well, forgive! Living and blooming in your unchecked law, ye know nothing of the blights, the distortions, which beset the human being; and which at such hours it would seem that no glories of free agency could ever repay! * * * * * 'There was, in the house, no apartment appropriated to the purpose of a library, but there was in my father's room a large closet filled with books, and to these I had free access when the task-work of the day was done. Its window overlooked wide fields, gentle slopes, a rich and smiling country, whose aspect pleased without much occupying the eye, while a range of blue hills, rising at about twelve miles distance, allured to reverie. "Distant mountains," says Tieck, "excite the fancy, for beyond them we place the scene of our Paradise." Thus, in the poems of fairy adventure, we climb the rocky barrier, pass fearless its dragon caves, and dark pine forests, and find the scene of enchantment in the vale behind. My hopes were never so definite, but my eye was constantly allured to that distant blue range, and I would sit, lost in fancies, till tears fell on my cheek. I loved this sadness; but only in later years, when the realities of life had taught me moderation, did the passionate emotions excited by seeing them again teach how glorious were the hopes that swelled my heart while gazing on them in those early days. 'Melancholy attends on the best joys of a merely ideal life, else I should call most happy the hours in the garden, the hours in the book closet. Here were the best French writers of the last century; for my father had been more than half a Jacobin, in the time when the French Republic cast its glare of promise over the world. Here, too, were the Queen Anne authors, his models, and the English novelists; but among them I found none that charmed me. Smollett, Fielding, and the like, deal too broadly with the coarse actualities of life. The best of their men and women--so merely natural, with the nature found every day--do not meet our hopes. Sometimes the simple picture, warm with life and the light of the common sun, cannot fail to charm,--as in the wedded love of Fielding's Amelia,--but it is at a later day, when the mind is trained to comparison, that we learn to prize excellence like this as it deserves. Early youth is prince-like: it-will bend only to "the king, my father." Various kinds of excellence please, and leave their impression, but the most commanding, alone, is duly acknowledged at that all-exacting age. 'Three great authors it was my fortune to meet at this important period,--all, though of unequal, yet congenial powers,--all of rich and wide, rather than aspiring genius,--all free to the extent of the horizon their eye took in,--all fresh with impulse, racy with experience; never to be lost sight of, or superseded, but always to be apprehended more and more. 'Ever memorable is the day on which I first took a volume of SHAKSPEARE in my hand to read. It was on a Sunday. '--This day was punctiliously set apart in our house. We had family prayers, for which there was no time on other days. Our dinners were different, and our clothes. We went to church. My father put some limitations on my reading, but--bless him for the gentleness which has left me a pleasant feeling for the day!--he did not prescribe what was, but only what was _not_, to be done. And the liberty this left was a large one. "You must not read a novel, or a play;" but all other books, the worst, or the best, were open to me. The distinction was merely technical. The day was pleasing to me, as relieving me from the routine of tasks and recitations; it gave me freer play than usual, and there were fewer things occurred in its course, which reminded me of the divisions of time; still the church-going, where I heard nothing that had any connection with my inward life, and these rules, gave me associations with the day of empty formalities, and arbitrary restrictions; but though the forbidden book or walk always seemed more charming then, I was seldom tempted to disobey.-- 'This Sunday--I was only eight years old--I took from the book-shelf a volume lettered SHAKSPEARE. It was not the first time I had looked at it, but before I had been deterred from attempting to read, by the broken appearance along the page, and preferred smooth narrative. But this time I held in my hand "Romeo and Juliet" long enough to get my eye fastened to the page. It was a cold winter afternoon. I took the book to the parlor fire, and had there been 'seated an hour or two, when my father looked up and asked what I was reading so intently. "Shakspeare," replied the child, merely raising her eye from the page. "Shakspeare,--that won't do; that's no book for Sunday; go put it away and take another." I went as I was bid, but took no other. Returning to my seat, the unfinished story, the personages to whom I was but just introduced, thronged and burnt my brain. I could not bear it long; such a lure it was impossible to resist. I went and brought the book again. There were several guests present, and I had got half through the play before I again attracted attention. "What is that child about that she don't hear a word that's said to her?" quoth my aunt. "What are you reading?" said my father. "Shakspeare" was again the reply, in a clear, though somewhat impatient, tone. "How?" said my father angrily,--then restraining himself before his guests,--"Give me the book and go directly to bed." 'Into my little room no care of his anger followed me. Alone, in the dark, I thought only of the scene placed by the poet before my eye, where the free flow of life, sudden and graceful dialogue, and forms, whether grotesque or fair, seen in the broad lustre of his imagination, gave just what I wanted, and brought home the life I seemed born to live. My fancies swarmed like bees, as I contrived the rest of the story;--what all would do, what say, where go. My confinement tortured me. I could not go forth from this prison to ask after these friends; I could not make my pillow of the dreams about them which yet I could not forbear to frame. Thus was I absorbed when my father entered. He felt it right, before going to rest, to reason with me about my disobedience, shown in a way, as he considered, so insolent. I listened, but could not feel interested in what he said, nor turn my mind from what engaged it. He went away really grieved at my impenitence, and quite at a loss to understand conduct in me so unusual. '--Often since I have seen the same misunderstanding between parent and child,--the parent thrusting the morale, the discipline, of life upon the child, when just engrossed by some game of real importance and great leadings to it. That is only a wooden horse to the father,--the child was careering to distant scenes of conquest and crusade, through a country of elsewhere unimagined beauty. None but poets remember their youth; but the father who does not retain poetical apprehension of the world, free and splendid as it stretches out before the child, who cannot read his natural history, and follow out its intimations with reverence, must be a tyrant in his home, and the purest intentions will not prevent his doing much to cramp him. Each new child is a new Thought, and has bearings and discernings, which the Thoughts older in date know not yet, but must learn.-- 'My attention thus fixed on Shakspeare, I returned to him at every hour I could command. Here was a counterpoise to my Romans, still more forcible than the little garden. My author could read the Roman nature too,--read it in the sternness of Coriolanus, and in the varied wealth of Cæsar. But he viewed these men of will as only one kind of men; he kept them in their place, and I found that he, who could understand the Roman, yet expressed in Hamlet a deeper thought. 'In CERVANTES, I found far less productive talent,--'indeed, a far less powerful genius,--but the same wide wisdom, a discernment piercing the shows and symbols of existence, yet rejoicing in them all, both for their own life, and as signs of the unseen reality. Not that Cervantes philosophized,--his genius was too deeply philosophical for that; he took things as they came before him, and saw their actual relations and bearings. Thus the work he produced was of deep meaning, though he might never have expressed that meaning to himself. It was left implied in the whole. A Coleridge comes and calls Don Quixote the pure Reason, and Sancho the Understanding. Cervantes made no such distinctions in his own mind; but he had seen and suffered enough to bring out all his faculties, and to make him comprehend the higher as well as the lower part of our nature. Sancho is too amusing and sagacious to be contemptible; the Don too noble and clear-sighted towards absolute truth, to be ridiculous. And we are pleased to see manifested in this way, how the lower must follow and serve the higher, despite its jeering mistrust and the stubborn realities which break up the plans of this pure-minded champion. 'The effect produced on the mind is nowise that described by Byron:-- "Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away," &c. 'On the contrary, who is not conscious of a sincere reverence for the Don, prancing forth on his gaunt steed? Who would not rather be he than any of the persons who laugh at him?--Yet the one we would wish to be is thyself, Cervantes, unconquerable spirit! gaining flavor and color like wine from every change, while being carried round the world; in whose eye the serene sagacious laughter could not be dimmed by poverty, slavery, or unsuccessful authorship. Thou art to us still more the Man, though less the Genius, than Shakspeare; thou dost not evade our sight, but, holding the lamp to thine own magic shows, dost enjoy them with us. 'My third friend was MOLIÉRE, one very much lower, both in range and depth, than the-others, but, as far as he goes, of the same character. Nothing secluded or partial is there about his genius,--a man of the world, and a man by himself, as he is. It was, indeed, only the poor social world of Paris that he saw, but he viewed it from the firm foundations of his manhood, and every lightest laugh rings from a clear perception, and teaches life anew. 'These men were all alike in this,--they loved the _natural history_ of man. Not what he should be, but what he is, was the favorite subject of their thought. Whenever a noble leading opened to the eye new paths of light, they rejoiced; but it was never fancy, but always fact, that inspired them. They loved a thorough penetration of the murkiest dens, and most tangled paths of nature; they did not spin from the desires of their own special natures, but reconstructed the world from materials which they collected on every side. Thus their influence upon me was not to prompt me to follow out thought in myself so much as to detect it everywhere, for each of these men is not only a nature, but a happy interpreter of many natures. They taught me to distrust all invention which is not based on a wide experience. Perhaps, too, they taught me to overvalue an outward experience at the expense of inward growth; but all this I did not appreciate till later. 'It will be seen that my youth was not unfriended, since those great minds came to me in kindness. A moment of action in one's self, however, is worth an age of apprehension through others; not that our deeds are better, but that they produce a renewal of our being. I have had more productive moments and of deeper joy, but never hours of more tranquil pleasure than those in which these demi-gods visited me,--and with a smile so familiar, that I imagined the world to be full of such. They did me good, for by them a standard was early given of sight and thought, from which I could never go back, and beneath which I cannot suffer patiently my own life or that of any friend to fall. They did me harm, too, for the child fed with meat instead of milk becomes too soon mature. Expectations and desires were thus early raised, after which I must long toil before they can be realized. How poor the scene around, how tame one's own existence, how meagre and faint every power, with these beings in my mind! Often I must cast them quite aside in order to grow in my small way, and not sink into despair. Certainly I do not wish that instead of these masters I had read baby books, written down to children, and with such ignorant dulness that they blunt the senses and corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. But I do wish that I had read no books at all till later,--that I had lived with toys, and played in the open air. Children should not cull the fruits of reflection and observation early, but expand in the sun, and let thoughts come to them. They should not through books antedate their actual experiences, but should take them gradually, as sympathy and interpretation are needed. With me, much of life was devoured in the bud. FIRST FRIEND. 'For a few months, this bookish and solitary life was invaded by interest in a living, breathing figure. At church, I used to look around with a feeling of coldness and disdain, which, though I now well understand its causes, seems to my wiser mind as odious as it was unnatural. The puny child sought everywhere for the Roman or Shakspeare figures, and she was met by the shrewd, honest eye, the homely decency, or the smartness of a New England village on Sunday. There was beauty, but I could not see it then; it was not of the kind I longed for. In the next pew sat a family who were my especial aversion. There were five daughters, the eldest not above four-and-twenty,--yet they had the old fairy, knowing look, hard, dry, dwarfed, strangers to the All-Fair,--were working-day residents in this beautiful planet. They looked as if their thoughts had never strayed beyond the jobs of the day, and they were glad of it. Their mother was one of those shrunken, faded patterns of woman who have never done anything to keep smooth the cheek and dignify the brow. The father had a Scotch look of shrewd narrowness, and entire self-complacency. I could not endure this family, whose existence contradicted all my visions; yet I could not forbear looking at them. 'As my eye one day was ranging about with its accustomed coldness, and the proudly foolish sense of being in a shroud of thoughts that were not their thoughts, it was arrested by a face most fair, and well-known as it seemed at first glance,--for surely I had met her before and waited for her long. But soon I saw that she was a new apparition foreign to that scene, if not to me. Her dress,--the arrangement of her hair, which had the graceful pliancy of races highly cultivated for long,--the intelligent and full picture of her eye, whose reserve was in its self-possession, not in timidity,--all combined to make up a whole impression, which, though too young to understand, I was well prepared to feel. 'How wearisome now appears that thorough-bred _millefleur_ beauty, the distilled result of ages of European culture! Give me rather the wild heath on the lonely hill-side, than such a rose-tree from the daintily clipped garden. But, then, I had but tasted the cup, and knew not how little it could satisfy; more, more, was all my cry; continued through years, till I had been at the very fountain. Indeed, it was a ruby-red, a perfumed draught, and I need not abuse the wine because I prefer water, but merely say I have had enough of it. Then, the first sight, the first knowledge of such a person was intoxication. 'She was an English lady, who, by a singular chance, was cast upon this region for a few months. Elegant and captivating, her every look and gesture was tuned to a different pitch from anything I had ever known. She was in various ways "accomplished," as it is called, though to what degree I cannot now judge. She painted in oils;--I had never before seen any one use the brush, and days would not have been too long for me to watch the pictures growing beneath her hand. She played the harp; and its tones are still to me the heralds of the promised land I saw before me then. She rose, she looked, she spoke; and the gentle swaying motion she made all through life has gladdened memory, as the stream does the woods and meadows. 'As she was often at the house of one of our neighbors, and afterwards at our own, my thoughts were fixed on her with all the force of my nature. It was my first real interest in my kind, and it engrossed me wholly. I had seen her,--I should see her,--and my mind lay steeped in the visions that flowed from this source. My task-work I went through with, as I have done on similar occasions all my life, aided by pride that could not bear to fail, or be questioned. Could I cease from doing the work of the day, and hear the reason sneeringly given,--"Her head is so completely taken up with ---- that she can do nothing"? Impossible. 'Should the first love be blighted, they say, the mind loses its sense of eternity. All forms of existence seem fragile, the prison of time real, for a god is dead. Equally true is this of friendship. I thank Heaven that this first feeling was permitted its free flow. The years that lay between the woman and the girl only brought her beauty into perspective, and enabled me to see her as I did the mountains from my window, and made her presence to me a gate of Paradise. That which she was, that which she brought, that which she might have brought, were mine, and over a whole region of new life I ruled proprietor of the soil in my own right. 'Her mind was sufficiently unoccupied to delight in my warm devotion. She could not know what it was to me, but the light cast by the flame through so delicate a vase cheered and charmed her. All who saw admired her in their way; but she would lightly turn her head from their hard or oppressive looks, and fix a glance of full-eyed sweetness on the child, who, from a distance, watched all her looks and motions. She did not say much to me--not much to any one; she spoke in her whole being rather than by chosen words. Indeed, her proper speech was dance or song, and what was less expressive did not greatly interest her. But she saw much, having in its perfection the woman's delicate sense for sympathies and attractions. We walked in the fields, alone. Though others were present, her eyes were gliding over all the field and plain for the objects of beauty to which she was of kin. She was not cold to her seeming companions; a sweet courtesy satisfied them, but it hung about her like her mantle that she wore without thinking of it; her thoughts were free, for these civilized beings can really live two lives at the same moment. With them she seemed to be, but her hand was given to the child at her side; others did not observe me, but to her I was the only human presence. Like a guardian spirit she led me through the fields and groves, and every tree, every bird greeted me, and said, what I felt, "She is the first angel of your life." 'One time I had been passing the afternoon with her. She had been playing to me on the harp, and I sat listening in happiness almost unbearable. Some guests were announced. She went into another room to receive them, and I took up her book. It was Guy Mannering, then lately published, and the first of Scott's novels I had ever seen. I opened where her mark lay, and read merely with the feeling of continuing our mutual existence by passing my eyes over the same page where hers had been. It was the description of the rocks on the sea-coast where the little Harry Bertram was lost. I had never seen such places, and my mind was vividly stirred to imagine them. The scene rose before me, very unlike reality, doubtless, but majestic and wild. I was the little Harry Bertram, and had lost her,--all I had to lose,--and sought her vainly in long dark caves that had no end, plashing through the water; while the crags beetled above, threatening to fall and crush the poor child. Absorbed in the painful vision, tears rolled down my cheeks. Just then she entered with light step, and full-beaming eye. When she saw me thus, a soft cloud stole over her face, and clothed every feature with a lovelier tenderness than I had seen there before. She did not question, but fixed on me inquiring looks of beautiful love. I laid my head against her shoulder and wept,--dimly feeling that I must lose her and all,--all who spoke to me of the same things,--that the cold wave must rush over me. She waited till my tears were spent, then rising, took from a little box a bunch of golden amaranths or everlasting flowers, and gave them to me. They were very fragrant. "They came," she said, "from Madeira." These flowers stayed with me seventeen years. "Madeira" seemed to me the fortunate isle, apart in the blue ocean from all of ill or dread. Whenever I saw a sail passing in the distance,--if it bore itself with fulness of beautiful certainty,--I felt that it was going to Madeira. Those thoughts are all gone now. No Madeira exists for me now,--no fortunate purple isle,--and all these hopes and fancies are lifted from the sea into the sky. Yet I thank the charms that fixed them here so long,--fixed them till perfumes like those of the golden flowers were drawn from the earth, teaching me to know my birth-place. 'I can tell little else of this time,--indeed, I remember little, except the state of feeling in which I lived. For I _lived_, and when this is the case, there is little to tell in the form of thought. We meet--at least those who are true to their instincts meet--a succession of persons through our lives, all of whom have some peculiar errand to us. There is an outer circle, whose existence we perceive, but with whom we stand in no real relation. They tell us the news, they act on us in the offices of society, they show us kindness and aversion; but their influence does not penetrate; we are nothing to them, nor they to us, except as a part of the world's furniture. Another circle, within this, are dear and near to us. We know them and of what kind they are. They are to us not mere facts, but intelligible thoughts of the divine mind. We like to see how they are unfolded; we like to meet them and part from them: we like their action upon us and the pause that succeeds and enables us to appreciate its quality. Often we leave them on our path, and return no more, but we bear them in our memory, tales which have been told, and whose meaning has been felt. 'But yet a nearer group there are, beings born under the same star, and bound with us in a common destiny. These are not mere acquaintances, mere friends, but, when we meet, are sharers of our very existence. There is no separation; the same thought is given at the same moment to both,--indeed, it is born of the meeting, and would not otherwise have been called into existence at all. These not only know themselves more, but _are_ more for having met, and regions of their being, which would else have laid sealed in cold obstruction, burst into leaf and bloom and song. 'The times of these meetings are fated, nor will either party be able ever to meet any other person in the same way. Both seem to rise at a glance into that part of the heavens where the word can be spoken, by which they are revealed to one another and to themselves. The step in being thus gained, can never be lost, nor can it be re-trod; for neither party will be again what the other wants. They are no longer fit to interchange mutual influence, for they do not really need it, and if they think they do, it is because they weakly pine after a past pleasure. 'To this inmost circle of relations but few are admitted, because some prejudice or lack of courage has prevented the many from listening to their instincts the first time they manifested themselves. If the voice is once disregarded it becomes fainter each time, till, at last, it is wholly silenced, and the man lives in this world, a stranger to its real life, deluded like the maniac who fancies he has attained his throne, while in reality he is on a bed of musty straw. Yet, if the voice finds a listener and servant the first time of speaking, it is encouraged to more and more clearness. Thus it was with me,--from no merit of mine, but because I had the good fortune to be free enough to yield to my impressions. Common ties had not bound me; there were no traditionary notions in my mind; I believed in nothing merely because others believed in it; I had taken no feelings on trust. Thus my mind was open to their sway. 'This woman came to me, a star from the east, a morning star, and I worshipped her. She too was elevated by that worship, and her fairest self called out. To the mind she brought assurance that there was a region congenial with its tendencies and tastes, a region of elegant culture and intercourse, whose object, fulfilled or not, was to gratify the sense of beauty, not the mere utilities of life. In our relation she was lifted to the top of her being. She had known many celebrities, had roused to passionate desire many hearts, and became afterwards a wife; but I do not believe she ever more truly realized her best self than towards the lonely child whose heaven she was, whose eye she met, and whose possibilities she predicted. "He raised me," said a woman inspired by love, "upon the pedestal of his own high thoughts, and wings came at once, but I did not fly away. I stood there with downcast eyes worthy of his love, for he had made me so." 'Thus we do always for those who inspire us to expect from them the best. That which they are able to be, they become, because we demand it of them. "We expect the impossible--and find it." 'My English friend went across the sea. She passed into her former life, and into ties that engrossed her days. But she has never ceased to think of me. Her thoughts turn forcibly back to the child who was to her all she saw of the really New World. On the promised coasts she had found only cities, careful men and women, the aims and habits of ordinary life in her own land, without that elegant culture which she, probably, over-estimated, because it was her home. But in the mind of the child she found the fresh prairie, the untrodden forests for which she had longed. I saw in her the storied castles, the fair stately parks and the wind laden with tones from the past, which I desired to know. We wrote to one another for many years;--her shallow and delicate epistles did not disenchant me, nor did she fail to see something of the old poetry in my rude characters and stammering speech. But we must never meet again. 'When this friend was withdrawn I fell into a profound depression. I knew not how to exert myself, but lay bound hand and foot. Melancholy enfolded me in an atmosphere, as joy had done. This suffering, too, was out of the gradual and natural course. Those who are really children could not know such love, or feel such sorrow. "I am to blame," said my father, "in keeping her at home so long merely to please myself. She needs to be with other girls, needs play and variety. She does not seem to me really sick, but dull rather. She eats nothing, you say. I see she grows thin. She ought to change the scene." 'I was indeed _dull_. The books, the garden, had lost all charm. I had the excuse of headache, constantly, for not attending to my lessons. The light of life was set, and every leaf was withered. At such an early age there are no back or side scenes where the mind, weary and sorrowful, may retreat. Older, we realize the width of the world more, and it is not easy to despair on any point. The effort at thought to which we are compelled relieves and affords a dreary retreat, like hiding in a brick-kiln till the shower be over. But then all joy seemed to have departed with my friend, and the emptiness of our house stood revealed. This I had not felt while I every day expected to see or had seen her, or annoyance and dulness were unnoticed or swallowed up in the one thought that clothed my days with beauty. But now she was gone, and I was roused from habits of reading or reverie to feel the fiery temper of the soul, and to learn that it must have vent, that it would not be pacified by shadows, neither meet without consuming what lay around it. I avoided the table as much as possible, took long walks and lay in bed, or on the floor of my room. I complained of my head, and it was not wrong to do so, for a sense of dulness and suffocation, if not pain, was there constantly. 'But when it was proposed that I should go to school, that was a remedy I could not listen to with patience for a moment. The peculiarity of my education had separated me entirely from the girls around, except that when they were playing at active games, I would sometimes go out and join them. I liked violent bodily exercise, which always relieved my nerves. But I had no success in associating with them beyond the mere play. Not only I was not their school-mate, but my book-life and lonely habits had given a cold aloofness to my whole expression, and veiled my manner with a hauteur which turned all hearts away. Yet, as this reserve was superficial, and rather ignorance than arrogance, it produced no deep dislike. Besides, the girls supposed me really superior to themselves, and did not hate me for feeling it, but neither did they like me, nor wish to have me with them. Indeed, I had gradually given up all such wishes myself; for they seemed to me rude, tiresome, and childish, as I did to them dull and strange. This experience had been earlier, before I was admitted to any real friendship; but now that I had been lifted into the life of mature years, and into just that atmosphere of European life to which I had before been tending, the thought of sending me to school filled me with disgust. 'Yet what could I tell my father of such feelings? I resisted all I could, but in vain. He had no faith in medical aid generally, and justly saw that this was no occasion for its use. He thought I needed change of scene, and to be roused to activity by other children. "I have kept you at home," he said, "because I took such pleasure in teaching you myself, and besides I knew that you would learn faster with one who is so desirous to aid you. But you will learn fast enough wherever you are, and you ought to be more with others of your own age. I shall soon hear that you are better, I trust."' SCHOOL-LIFE. The school to which Margaret was sent was that of the Misses Prescott, in Groton, Massachusetts. And her experience there has been described with touching truthfulness by herself, in the story of "Mariana."[A] 'At first her school-mates were captivated with her ways; her love of wild dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion and of wit. She was always new, always surprising, and, for a time, charming. 'But after a while, they tired of her. She could never be depended on to join in their plans, yet she expected them, to follow out hers with their whole strength. She was very loving, even infatuated in her own affections, and exacted from those who had professed any love for her the devotion she was willing to bestow. 'Yet there was a vein of haughty caprice in her character, and a love of solitude, which made her at times wish to retire apart, and at these times she would expect to be entirely understood, and let alone, yet to be welcomed back when she returned. She did not thwart others in their humors, but she never doubted of great indulgence from them. 'Some singular habits she had, which, when new, charmed, but, after acquaintance, displeased her companions. She had by nature the same habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning dervishes of the East. Like them she would spin until all around her were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited to great action. Pausing, she would declaim, verses of others, or her own, or act many parts, with strange catchwords and burdens, that seemed to act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to convulse the hearers with laughter, sometimes to melt them to tears. When her power began to languish, she would spin again till fired to re-commence her singular drama, into which she wove figures from the scenes of her earlier childhood, her companions, and the dignitaries she sometimes saw, with fantasies unknown to life, unknown to heaven or earth. 'This excitement, as may be supposed, was not good for her. It usually came on in the evening, and often spoiled her sleep. She would wake in the night, and cheat her restlessness by inventions that teased, while they sometimes diverted her companions. 'She was also a sleep-walker; and this one trait of her case did somewhat alarm her guardians, who, otherwise, showed the profound ignorance as to this peculiar being, usual in the overseeing of the young. They consulted a physician, who said she would outgrow it, and prescribed a milk diet. 'Meantime, the fever of this ardent and too early stimulated nature was constantly increased by the restraints and narrow routine of the boarding school. She was always devising means to break in upon it. She had a taste--which would have seemed ludicrous to her mates, if they had not felt some awe of her, from the touch of genius and power that never left her--for costume and fancy dresses. There was always some sash twisted about her, some drapery, something odd in the arrangement of her hair and dress; so that the methodical preceptress dared not let her go out without a careful scrutiny and remodelling, whose soberizing effects generally disappeared the moment she was in the free air. 'At last a vent was assured for her in private theatricals. Play followed play, and in these and the rehearsals, she found entertainment congenial with her. The principal parts, as a matter of course, fell to her lot; most of the good suggestions and arrangements came from her: and, for a time, she ruled mostly, and shone triumphant. 'During these performances, the girls had heightened their bloom with artificial red; this was delightful to them, it was something so out of the way. But Mariana, after the plays were over, kept her carmine saucer on the dressing-table, and put on her blushes, regularly as the morning. When stared and jeered at, she at first said she did it because she thought it made her look pretty; but, after a while, she became petulant about it,--would make no reply to any joke, but merely kept up the habit. 'This irritated the girls, as all eccentricity does the world in general, more than vice or malignity. They talked it over among themselves till they were wrought up to a desire of punishing, once for all, this sometimes amusing, but so often provoking non-conformist. And having obtained leave of the mistress, they laid, with great glee, a plan, one evening, which was to be carried into execution next day at dinner. 'Among Mariana's irregularities was a great aversion to the meal-time ceremonial,--so long, so tiresome, she found it, to be seated at a certain moment, and to wait while each one was served, at so large a table, where there was scarcely any conversation; and from day to day it became more heavy to sit there, or go there at all; often as possible she excused herself on the ever-convenient plea of headache, and was hardly ever ready when the dinner-bell rang. 'To-day the summons found her on the balcony, but gazing on the beautiful prospect. I have heard her say afterwards, that she had scarcely in her life been so happy,--and she was one with whom happiness was a still rapture. It was one of the most blessed summer days; the shadows of great white clouds empurpled the distant hills for a few moments, only to leave them more golden; the tall grass of the wide fields waved in the softest breeze. Pure blue were the heavens, and the same hue of pure contentment was in the heart of Mariana. 'Suddenly on her bright mood jarred the dinner-bell. At first rose her usual thought, I will not, cannot go; and then the _must_, which daily life can always enforce, even upon the butterflies and birds, came, and she walked reluctantly to her room. She merely changed her dress, and never thought of adding the artificial rose to her cheek. 'When she took her seat in the dining-hall, and was asked if she would be helped, raising her eyes, she saw the person who asked her was deeply rouged, with a bright glaring spot, perfectly round, on either cheek. She looked at the next,--same apparition! She then slowly passed her eyes down the whole line, and saw the same, with a suppressed smile distorting every countenance. Catching the design at once, she deliberately looked along her own side of the table, at every schoolmate in turn; every one had joined in the trick. The teachers strove to be grave, but she saw they enjoyed the joke. The servants could not suppress a titter. 'When Warren Hastings stood at the bar of Westminster Hall,--when the Methodist preacher walked through a line of men, each of whom greeted him with a brickbat or rotten egg,--they had some preparation for the crisis, though it might be very difficult to meet it with an impassible brow. Our little girl was quite unprepared to find herself in the midst of a world which despised her, and triumphed in her disgrace. 'She had ruled like a queen, in the midst of her companions; she had shed her animation through their lives, and loaded them with prodigal favors, nor once suspected that a popular favorite might not be loved. Now she felt that she had been but a dangerous plaything in the hands of those whose hearts she never had doubted. 'Yet the occasion found her equal to it, for Mariana had the kind of spirit which, in a better cause, had made the Roman matron truly say of her death-wound, "It is not painful, Poetus." She did not blench,--she did not change countenance. She swallowed her dinner with apparent composure. She made remarks to those near her, as if she had no eyes. 'The wrath of the foe, of course, rose higher, and the moment they were freed from the restraints of the dining room, they all ran off, gayly calling, and sarcastically laughing, with backward glances, at Mariana, left alone. 'Alone she went to her room, locked the door, and threw herself on the floor in strong convulsions. These had sometimes threatened her life, in earlier childhood, but of later years she had outgrown them. School-hours came, and she was not there. A little girl, sent to her door, could get no answer. The teachers became alarmed, and broke it open. Bitter was their penitence, and that of her companions, at the state in which they found her. For some hours terrible anxiety was felt, but at last nature, exhausted, relieved herself by a deep slumber. 'From this Mariana arose an altered being. She made no reply to the expressions of sorrow from her companions, none to the grave and kind, but undiscerning, comments of her teacher. She did not name the source of her anguish, and its poisoned dart sank deeply in. This was the thought which stung her so:--"What, not one, not a single one, in the hour of trial, to take my part? not one who refused to take part against me?" Past words of love, and caresses, little heeded at the time, rose to her memory, and gave fuel to her distempered heart. Beyond the sense of burning resentment at universal perfidy, she could not get. And Mariana, born for love, now hated all the world. 'The change, however, which these feelings made in her conduct and appearance, bore no such construction to the careless observer. Her gay freaks were quite gone, her wildness, her invention. Her dress was uniform, her manner much subdued. Her chief interest seemed to be now in her studies, and in music. Her companions she never sought; but they, partly from uneasy, remorseful feelings, partly that they really liked her much better now that she did not puzzle and oppress them, sought her continually. And here the black shadow comes upon her life, the only stain upon the history of Mariana. 'They talked to her, as girls having few topics naturally do, of one another. Then the demon rose within her, and spontaneously, without design, generally without words of positive falsehood, she became a genius of discord amongst them. She fanned those flames of envy and jealousy which a wise, true word from a third person will often quench forever; and by a glance, or seemingly light reply, she planted the seeds of dissension, till there was scarcely a peaceful affection, or sincere intimacy, in the circle where she lived, and could not but rule, for she was one whose nature was to that of the others as fire to clay. 'It was at this time that I came to the school, and first saw Mariana. Me she charmed at once, for I was a sentimental child, who, in my early ill health, had been indulged in reading novels, till I had no eyes for the common. It was not, however, easy to approach her. Did I offer to run and fetch her handkerchief, she was obliged to go to her room, and would rather do it herself. She did not like to have people turn over for her the leaves of the music-book as she played. Did I approach my stool to her feet, she moved away as if to give me room. The bunch of wild flowers, which I timidly laid beside her plate, was left untouched. After some weeks, my desire to attract her notice really preyed upon me; and one day, meeting her alone in the entry, I fell upon my knees, and, kissing her hand, cried "O, Mariana, do let me love you, and try to love me a little!" But my idol snatched away her hand, and laughing wildly, ran into her room. After that day, her manner to me was not only cold, but repulsive, and I felt myself scorned. 'Perhaps four months had passed thus, when, one afternoon, it became obvious that something more than common was brewing. Dismay and mystery were written in many faces of the older girls; much whispering was going on in corners. 'In the evening, after prayers, the principal bade us stay; and, in a grave, sad voice, summoned forth Mariana to answer charges to be made against her. 'Mariana stood up and leaned against the chimney-piece. Then eight of the older girls came forward, and preferred against her charges,--alas! too well founded, of calumny and falsehood. 'At first, she defended herself with self-possession and eloquence. But when she found she could no more resist the truth, she suddenly threw herself down, dashing her head with all her force against the iron hearth, on which a fire was burning, and was taken up senseless. 'The affright of those present was great. Now that they had perhaps killed her, they reflected it would have been as well if they had taken warning from the former occasion, and approached very carefully a nature so capable of any extreme. After a while she revived, with a faint groan, amid the sobs of her companions. I was on my knees by the bed, and held her cold hand. One of those most aggrieved took it from me, to beg her pardon, and say, it was impossible not to love her. She made no reply. 'Neither that night, nor for several days, could a word be obtained from her, nor would she touch food; but, when it was presented to her, or any one drew near from any cause, she merely turned away her head, and gave no sign. The teacher saw that some terrible nervous affection had fallen upon her--that she grew more and more feverish. She knew not what to do. 'Meanwhile, a new revolution had taken place in the mind of the passionate but nobly-tempered child. All these months nothing but the sense of injury had rankled in her heart. She had gone on in one mood, doing what the demon prompted, without scruple, and without fear. 'But at the moment of detection, the tide ebbed, and the bottom of her soul lay revealed to her eye. How black, how stained, and sad! Strange, strange, that she had not seen before the baseness and cruelty of falsehood, the loveliness of truth! Now, amid the wreck, uprose the moral nature, which never before had attained the ascendant. "But," she thought, "too late sin is revealed to me in all its deformity, and sin-defiled, I will not, cannot live. The main-spring of life is broken." 'The lady who took charge of this sad child had never well understood her before, but had always looked on her with great tenderness. And now love seemed,--when all around were in the greatest distress, fearing to call in medical aid, fearing to do without it,--to teach her where the only balm was to be found that could heal the wounded spirit. 'One night she came in, bringing a calming draught. Mariana was sitting as usual, her hair loose, her dress the same robe they had put on her at first, her eyes fixed vacantly upon the whited wall. To the proffers and entreaties of her nurse, she made no reply. 'The lady burst into tears, but Mariana did not seem even to observe it. 'The lady then said, "O, my child, do not despair; do not think that one great fault can mar a whole life! Let me trust you; let me tell you the griefs of my sad life. I will tell you, Mariana, what I never expected to impart to any one." 'And so she told her tale. It was one of pain, of shame, borne not for herself, but for one near and dear as herself. Mariana knew the dignity and reserve of this lady's nature. She had often admired to see how the cheek, lovely, but no longer young, mantled with the deepest blush of youth, and the blue eyes were cast down at any little emotion. She had understood the proud sensibility of her character. She fixed her eyes on those now raised to hers, bright with fast-falling tears. She heard the story to the end, and then, without saying a word, stretched out her hand for the cup. 'She returned to life, but it was as one who had passed through the valley of death. The heart of stone was quite broken in her,--the fiery will fallen from flame to coal. When her strength was a little restored, she had all her companions summoned, and said to them,--"I deserved to die, but a generous trust has called me back to life. I will be worthy of it, nor ever betray the trust, or resent injury more. Can you forgive the past?" 'And they not only forgave, but, with love and earnest tears, clasped in their arms the returning sister. They vied with one another in offices of humble love to the humbled one; and let it be recorded, as an instance of the pure honor of which young hearts are capable, that these facts, known to some forty persons, never, so far as I know, transpired beyond those walls. 'It was not long after this that Mariana was summoned home. She went thither a wonderfully instructed being, though in ways those who had sent her forth to learn little dreamed of. 'Never was forgotten the vow of the returning prodigal. Mariana could not _resent_, could not _play false._ The terrible crisis, which she so early passed through, probably prevented the world from hearing much of her. A wild fire was tamed in that hour of penitence at the boarding-school, such as has oftentimes wrapped court and camp in a destructive glow.' [Footnote A: Summer on the Lakes, p. 81.] SELF-CULTURE. Letters written to the beloved teacher, who so wisely befriended Margaret in her trial-hour, will best show how this high-spirited girl sought to enlarge and harmonize her powers. '_Cambridge, July 11, 1825._--Having excused myself from accompanying my honored father to church, which I always do in the afternoon, when possible, I devote to you the hours which Ariosto and Helvetius ask of my eyes,--as, lying on my writing-desk, they put me in mind that they must return this week to their owner. 'You keep me to my promise of giving you some sketch of my pursuits. I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and then practise on the piano, till seven, when we breakfast. Next I read French,--Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe,--till eight, then two or three lectures in Brown's Philosophy. About half-past nine I go to Mr. Perkins's school and study Greek till twelve, when, the school being dismissed, I recite, go home, and practise again till dinner, at two. Sometimes, if the conversation is very agreeable, I lounge for half an hour over the dessert, though rarely so lavish of time. Then, when I can, I read two hours in Italian, but I am often interrupted. At six, I walk, or take a drive. Before going to bed, I play or sing, for half an hour or so, to make all sleepy, and, about eleven, retire to write a little while in my journal, exercises on what I have read, or a series of characteristics which I am filling up according to advice. Thus, you see, I am learning Greek, and making acquaintance with metaphysics, and French and Italian literature. '"How," you will say, "can I believe that my indolent, fanciful, pleasure-loving pupil, perseveres in such a course?" I feel the power of industry growing every day, and, besides the all-powerful motive of ambition, and a new stimulus lately given through a friend, I have learned to believe that nothing, no! not perfection, is unattainable. I am determined on distinction, which formerly I thought to win at an easy rate; but now I see that long years of labor must be given to secure even the "_succès de societé_,"--which, however, shall never content me. I see multitudes of examples of persons of genius, utterly deficient in grace and the power of pleasurable excitement. I wish to combine both. I know the obstacles in my way. I am wanting in that intuitive tact and polish, which nature has bestowed upon some, but which I must acquire. And, on the other hand, my powers of intellect, though sufficient, I suppose, are not well disciplined. Yet all such hindrances may be overcome by an ardent spirit. If I fail, my consolation shall be found in active employment.' * * * * * '_Cambridge, March 5, 1826._--Duke Nicholas is to succeed the Emperor Alexander, thus relieving Europe from the sad apprehension of evil to be inflicted by the brutal Constantine, and yet depriving the Holy Alliance of its very soul. We may now hope more strongly for the liberties of unchained Europe; we look in anxious suspense for the issue of the struggle of Greece, the result of which seems to depend on the new autocrat. I have lately been reading Anastasius, the Greek Gil Bias, which has excited and delighted me; but I do not think you like works of this cast. You did not like my sombre and powerful Ormond,--though this is superior to Ormond in every respect; it translates you to another scene, hurls you into the midst of the burning passions of the East, whose vicissitudes are, however, interspersed by deep pauses of shadowy reflective scenes, which open upon you like the green watered little vales occasionally to be met with in the burning desert. There is enough of history to fix profoundly the attention, and prevent you from revolting from scenes profligate and terrific, and such characters as are never to be met with in our paler climes. How delighted am I to read a book which can absorb me to tears and shuddering,--not by individual traits of beauty, but by the spirit of adventure,--happiness which one seldom enjoys after childhood in this blest age, so philosophic, free, and enlightened to a miracle, but far removed from the ardent dreams and soft credulity of the world's youth. Sometimes I think I would give all our gains for those times when young and old gathered in the feudal hall, listening with soul-absorbing transport to the romance of the minstrel, unrestrained and regardless of criticism, and when they worshipped nature, not as high-dressed and pampered, but as just risen from the bath.' '_Cambridge, May 14, 1826._--I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castiliain ballads, with great delight. There's an assemblage for you. Now tell me, had you rather be the brilliant De Stael or the useful Edgeworth?--though De Stael is useful too, but it is on the grand scale, on liberalizing, regenerating principles, and has not the immediate practical success that Edgeworth has. I met with a parallel the other day between Byron and Rousseau, and had a mind to send it to you, it was so excellent.' * * * * * '_Cambridge, Jan. 10, 1827._--As to my studies, I am engrossed in reading the elder Italian poets, beginning with Berni, from whom I shall proceed to Pulci and Politian. I read very critically. Miss Francis[A] and I think of reading Locke, as introductory to a course of English metaphysics, and then De Stael on Locke's system. Allow me to introduce this lady to you as a most interesting woman, in my opinion. She is a natural person,--a most rare thing in this age of cant and pretension. Her conversation is charming,--she brings all her powers to bear upon it; her style is varied, and she has a very pleasant and spirited way of thinking. I should judge, too, that she possesses peculiar purity of mind. I am going to spend this evening with her, and wish you were to be with us.' * * * * * '_Cambridge, Jan. 3, 1828._--I am reading Sir William Temple's works, with great pleasure. Such enlarged views are rarely to be found combined with such acuteness and discrimination. His style, though diffuse, is never verbose or overloaded, but beautifully expressive; 'tis English, too, though he was an accomplished linguist, and wrote much and well in. French, Spanish, and Latin. The latter he used, as he says of the Bishop of Munster, (with whom he corresponded in that tongue,) "more like a man of the court and of business than a scholar." He affected not Augustan niceties, but his expressions are free and appropriate. I have also read a most entertaining book, which I advise you to read, (if you have not done so already,) Russell's Tour in Germany. There you will find more intelligent and detailed accounts than I have seen anywhere of the state of the German universities, Viennese court, secret associations, Plica Polonica, and other very interesting matters. There is a minute account of the representative government given to his subjects by the Duke of Weimar. I have passed a luxurious afternoon, having been in bed from dinner till tea, reading Rammohun Roy's book, and framing dialogues aloud on every argument beneath the sun. Really, I have not had my mind so exercised for months; and I have felt a gladiatorial disposition lately, and don't enjoy mere light conversation. The love of knowledge is prodigiously kindled within my soul of late; I study much and reflect more, and feel an aching wish for some person with whom I might talk fully and openly. 'Did you ever read the letters and reflections of Prince de Ligne, the most agreeable man of his day? I have just had it, and if it is new to you, I recommend it as an agreeable book to read at night just before you go to bed. There is much curious matter concerning Catharine II.'s famous expedition into Taurida, which puts down some of the romantic stories prevalent on that score, but relates more surprising realities. Also it gives much interesting information about that noble philosopher, Joseph II., and about the Turkish tactics and national character.' * * * * * '_Cambridge, Jan. 1830_.--You need not fear to revive painful recollections. I often think of those sad experiences. True, they agitate me deeply. But it was best so. They have had a most powerful effect on my character. I tremble at whatever looks like dissimulation. The remembrance of that evening subdues every proud, passionate impulse. My beloved supporter in those sorrowful hours, your image shines as fair to my mind's eye as it did in 1825, when I left you with my heart overflowing with gratitude for your singular and judicious tenderness. Can I ever forget that to your treatment in that crisis of youth I owe the true life,--the love of Truth and Honor?' [Footnote A: Lydia Maria Child.] LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE. BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. * * * * * "Extraordinary, generous seeking." GOETHE. "Through, brothers, through,--this be Our watchword in danger or sorrow, Common clay to its mother dust, All nobleness heavenward!" THEODORE KOERNER. "Thou friend whose presence on my youthful heart Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain; How beautiful and calm and free thou wert In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain Of custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, And walk as free as light the clouds among!" SHELLY. "There are not a few instances of that conflict, known also to the fathers, of the spirit with the flesh, the inner with the outer man, of the freedom of the will with the necessity of nature, the pleasure of the individual with the conventions of society, of the emergency of the case with the despotism of the rule. It is this, which, while it makes the interest of life, makes the difficulty of living. It is a struggle, indeed, between unequal powers,--between the man, who is a conscious moral person, and nature, or events, or bodies of men, which either want personality or unity; and hence the man, after fearful and desolating war, sometimes rises on the ruins of all the necessities of nature and all the prescriptions of society. But what these want in personality they possess in number, in recurrency, in invulnerability. The spirit of man, an agent indeed of curious power and boundless resource, but trembling with sensibilities, tender and irritable, goes out against the inexorable conditions of destiny, the lifeless forces of nature, or the ferocious cruelty of the multitude, and long before the hands are weary or the invention exhausted, the heart may be broken in the warfare." N.A. REVIEW, Jan., 1817, article "_Dichtung und Wahrheit_." II. CAMBRIDGE * * * * * The difficulty which we all feel in describing our past intercourse and friendship with Margaret Fuller, is, that the intercourse was so intimate, and the friendship so personal, that it is like making a confession to the public of our most interior selves. For this noble person, by her keen insight and her generous interest, entered into the depth of every soul with which she stood in any real relation. To print one of her letters, is like giving an extract from our own private journal. To relate what she was to us, is to tell how she discerned elements of worth and beauty where others could only have seen what was common-place and poor; it is to say what high hopes, what generous assurance, what a pure ambition, she entertained on our behalf,--a hope and confidence which may well be felt as a rebuke to our low attainments and poor accomplishments. Nevertheless, it seems due to this great soul that those of us who have been blessed and benefited by her friendship should be willing to say what she has done for us,--undeterred by the thought that to reveal her is to expose ourselves. My acquaintance with Sarah Margaret Fuller began in 1829. We both lived in Cambridge, and from that time until she went to Groton to reside, in 1833, I saw her, or heard from her, almost every day. There was a family connection, and we called each other cousin.[A] During this period, her intellect was intensely active. With what eagerness did she seek for knowledge! What fire, what exuberance, what reach, grasp, overflow of thought, shone in her conversation! She needed a friend to whom to speak of her studies, to whom to express the ideas which were dawning and taking shape in her mind. She accepted me for this friend, and to me it was a gift of the gods, an influence like no other. For the first few months of our acquaintance, our intercourse was simply that of two young persons seeking entertainment in each other's society. Perhaps a note written at this time will illustrate the easy and graceful movement of her mind in this superficial kind of intercourse. '_March 16th, 1830. Half-past six, morning_.--I have encountered that most common-place of glories, sunrise, (to say naught of being praised and wondered at by every member of the family in succession,) that I might have leisure to answer your note even as you requested. I thank you a thousand times for "The Rivals."[B] Alas!! I must leave my heart in the book, and spend the livelong morning in reading to a sick lady from some amusing story-book. I tell you of this act of (in my professedly unamiable self) most unwonted charity, for three several reasons. Firstly, and foremostly, because I think that you, being a socialist by vocation, a sentimentalist by nature, and a Channingite from force of circumstances and fashion, will peculiarly admire this little self-sacrifice exploit. Secondly, because 'tis neither conformable to the spirit of the nineteenth century, nor the march of mind, that those churlish reserves should be kept up between _the right and left hands_, which belonged to ages of barbarism and prejudice, and could only have been inculcated for their use. Thirdly, and lastly, the true ladylike reason,--because I would fain have my correspondent enter into and sympathize with my feelings of the moment. 'As to the relationship; 'tis, I find, on inquiry, by no means to be compared with that between myself and ----; of course, the intimacy cannot be so great. But no matter; it will enable me to answer your notes, and you will interest my imagination much more than if I knew you better. But I am exceeding legitimate note-writing limits. With a hope that this epistle may be legible to your undiscerning eyes, I conclude, 'Your cousin only thirty-seven degrees removed, 'M.' The next note which I shall give was written not many days after, and is in quite a different vein. It is memorable to me as laying the foundation of a friendship which brought light to my mind, which enlarged my heart, and gave elevation and energy to my aims and purposes. For nearly twenty years, Margaret remained true to the pledges of this note. In a few years we were separated, but our friendship remained firm. Living in different parts of the country, occupied with different thoughts and duties, making other friends,--sometimes not seeing nor hearing from each other for months,--we never met without my feeling that she was ready to be interested in all my thoughts, to love those whom I loved, to watch my progress, to rebuke my faults and follies, to encourage within me every generous and pure aspiration, to demand of me, always, the best that I could be or do, and to be satisfied with no mediocrity, no conformity to any low standard. And what she thus was to me, she was to many others. Inexhaustible in power of insight, and with a good-will "broad as ether," she could enter into the needs, and sympathize with the various excellences, of the greatest variety of characters. One thing only she demanded of all her friends,--that they should have some "extraordinary generous seeking,"[C] that they should not be satisfied with the common routine of life,--that they should aspire to something higher, better, holier, than they had now attained. Where this element of aspiration existed, she demanded no originality of intellect, no greatness of soul. If these were found, well; but she could love, tenderly and truly, where they were not. But for a worldly character, however gifted, she felt and expressed something very like contempt. At this period, she had no patience with self-satisfied mediocrity. She afterwards learned patience and unlearned contempt; but at the time of which I write, she seemed, and was to the multitude, a haughty and supercilious person,--while to those whom she loved, she was all the more gentle, tender and true. Margaret possessed, in a greater degree than any person I ever knew, the power of so magnetizing others, when she wished, by the power of her mind, that they would lay open to her all the secrets of their nature. She had an infinite curiosity to know individuals,--not the vulgar curiosity which seeks to find out the circumstances of their outward lives, but that which longs to understand the inward springs of thought and action in their souls. This desire and power both rested on a profound conviction of her mind in the individuality of every human being. A human being, according to her faith, was not the result of the presence and stamp of outward circumstances, but an original _monad_, with a certain special faculty, capable of a certain fixed development, and having a profound personal unity, which the ages of eternity might develop, but could not exhaust. I know not if she would have stated her faith in these terms, but some such conviction appeared in her constant endeavor to see and understand the germinal principle, the special characteristic, of every person whom she deemed worthy of knowing at all. Therefore, while some persons study human nature in its universal laws, and become great philosophers, moralists and teachers of the race,--while others study mankind in action, and, seeing the motives and feelings by which masses are swayed, become eminent politicians, sagacious leaders, and eminent in all political affairs,--a few, like Margaret, study character, and acquire the power of exerting profoundest influence on individual souls. I had expressed to her my desire to know something of the history of her mind,--to understand her aims, her hopes, her views of life. In a note written in reply, she answered me thus:-- 'I cannot bring myself to write you what you wished. You would be disappointed, at any rate, after all the solemn note of preparation; the consciousness of this would chill me now. Besides, I cannot be willing to leave with you such absolute _vagaries_ in a tangible, examinable shape. I think of your after-smiles, of your colder moods. But I will tell you, when a fitting opportunity presents, all that can interest you, and perhaps more. And excuse my caution. I do not profess, I may not dare, to be generous in these matters.' To this I replied to the effect that, "in my coldest mood I could not criticize words written in a confiding spirit;" and that, at all events, she must not expect of me a confidence which she dared not return. This was the substance of a note to which Margaret thus replied:-- 'I thank you for your note. Ten minutes before I received it, I scarcely thought that anything again would make my stifled heart throb so warm a pulse of pleasure. Excuse my cold doubts, my selfish arrogance,--you will, when I tell you that this experiment has before had such uniform results; those who professed to seek my friendship, and whom, indeed, I have often truly loved, have always learned to content themselves with that inequality in the connection which I have never striven to veil. Indeed, I have thought myself more valued and better beloved, because the sympathy, the interest, were all on my side. True! such regard could never flatter my pride, nor gratify my affections, since it was paid not to myself, but to the need they had of me; still, it was dear and pleasing, as it has given me an opportunity of knowing and serving many lovely characters; and I cannot see that there is anything else for me to do on earth. And I should rejoice to cultivate generosity, since (see that _since_) affections gentler and more sympathetic are denied me. 'I would have been a true friend to you; ever ready to solace your pains and partake your joy as far as possible. Yet I cannot but rejoice that I have met a person who could discriminate and reject a proffer of this sort. Two years ago I should have ventured to proffer you friendship, indeed, on seeing such an instance of pride in you; but I have gone through a sad process of feeling since, and those emotions, so necessarily repressed, have lost their simplicity, their ardent beauty. _Then_, there was nothing I might not have disclosed to a person capable of comprehending, had I ever seen such an one! Now there are many voices of the soul which I imperiously silence. This results not from any particular circumstance or event, but from a gradual ascertaining of realities. 'I cannot promise you any limitless confidence, but I _can_ promise that no timid caution, no haughty dread shall prevent my telling you the truth of my thoughts on any subject we may have in common. Will this satisfy you? Oh let it! suffer me to know you.' In a postscript she adds, 'No other cousin or friend of any style is to see this note.' So for twenty years it has lain unseen, but for twenty years did we remain true to the pledges of that period. And now that noble heart sleeps beneath the tossing Atlantic, and I feel no reluctance in showing to the world this expression of pure youthful ardor. It may, perhaps, lead some wise worldlings, who doubt the possibility of such a relation, to reconsider the grounds of their scepticism; or, if not that, it may encourage some youthful souls, as earnest and eager as ours, to trust themselves to their hearts' impulse, and enjoy some such blessing as came to us. Let me give extracts from other notes and letters, written by Margaret, about the same period. '_Saturday evening, May 1st_, 1830.--The holy moon and merry-toned wind of this night woo to a vigil at the open window; a half-satisfied interest urges me to live, love and perish! in the noble, wronged heart of Basil;[D] my Journal, which lies before me, tempts to follow out and interpret the as yet only half-understood musings of the past week. Letter-writing, compared with any of these things, takes the ungracious semblance of a duty. I have, nathless, after a two hours' reverie, to which this resolve and its preliminaries have formed excellent warp, determined to sacrifice this hallowed time to you. 'It did not in the least surprise me that you found it impossible at the time to avail yourself of the confidential privileges I had invested you with. On the contrary, I only wonder that we should ever, after such gage given and received, (not by a look or tone, but by letter,) hold any frank communication. Preparations are good in life, prologues ruinous. I felt this even before I sent my note, but could not persuade myself to consign an impulse so embodied, to oblivion, from any consideration of expediency.' * * * * * * * '_May 4th_, 1830.--* * I have greatly wished to see among us such a person of genius as the nineteenth century can afford--_i.e._, one who has tasted in the morning of existence the extremes of good and ill, both imaginative and real. I had imagined a person endowed by nature with that acute sense of Beauty, (_i.e._, Harmony or Truth,) and that vast capacity of desire, which give soul to love and ambition. I had wished this person might grow up to manhood alone (but not alone in crowds); I would have placed him in a situation so retired, so obscure, that he would quietly, but without bitter sense of isolation, stand apart from all surrounding him. I would have had him go on steadily, feeding his mind with congenial love, hopefully confident that if he only nourished his existence into perfect life, Fate would, at fitting season, furnish an atmosphere and orbit meet for his breathing and exercise. I wished he might adore, not fever for, the bright phantoms of his mind's creation, and believe them but the shadows of external things to be met with hereafter. After this steady intellectual growth had brought his powers to manhood, so far as the ideal can do it, I wished this being might be launched into the world of realities, his heart glowing with the ardor of an immortal toward perfection, his eyes searching everywhere to behold it; I wished he might collect into one burning point those withering, palsying convictions, which, in the ordinary routine of things, so gradually pervade the soul; that he might suffer, in brief space, agonies of disappointment commensurate with his unpreparedness and confidence. And I thought, thus thrown back on the representing pictorial resources I supposed him originally to possess, with such material, and the need he must feel of using it, such a man would suddenly dilate into a form of Pride, Power, and Glory,--a centre, round which asking, aimless hearts might rally,--a man fitted to act as interpreter to the one tale of many-languaged eyes! 'What words are these! Perhaps you will feel as if I sought but for the longest and strongest. Yet to my ear they do but faintly describe the imagined powers of such a being.' Margaret's home at this time was in the mansion-house formerly belonging to Judge Dana,--a large, old-fashioned building, since taken down, standing about a quarter of a mile from the Cambridge Colleges, on the main road to Boston. The house stood back from the road, on rising ground, which overlooked an extensive landscape. It was always a pleasure to Margaret to look at the outlines of the distant hills beyond the river, and to have before her this extent of horizon and sky. In the last year of her residence in Cambridge, her father moved to the old Brattle place,--a still more ancient edifice, with large, old-fashioned garden, and stately rows of Linden trees. Here Margaret enjoyed the garden walks, which took the place of the extensive view. During these five years her life was not diversified by events, but was marked by an inward history. Study, conversation, society, friendship, and reflection on the aim and law of life, made up her biography. Accordingly, these topics will constitute the substance of this chapter, though sometimes, in order to give completeness to a subject, we may anticipate a little, and insert passages from the letters and journals of her Groton life. [Footnote A: I had once before seen Margaret, when we were both children about five years of age. She made an impression on my mind which was never effaced, and I distinctly recollect the joyful child, with light flowing locks and bright face, who led me by the hand down the back-steps of her house into the garden. This was when her father lived in Cambridgeport, in a house on Cherry street, in front of which still stand some handsome trees, planted by him in the year of Margaret's birth.] [Footnote B: "The Rivals" was a novel I had lent her,--if I remember right, by the author of "The Collegians;" a writer who in those days interested us not a little.] [Footnote C: These words of Goethe, which I have placed among the mottoes at the beginning of this chapter, were written by Margaret on the first page of a richly gilt and bound blank book, which she gave to me, in 1832, for a private journal. The words of Körner are also translated by herself, and were given to me about the same time.] [Footnote D: The hero of a novel she was reading.] I. FRIENDSHIP. "Friendly love perfecteth mankind." BACON. "To have found favor in thy sight Will still remain A river of thought, that full of light Divides the plain." MILNES. "Cui potest vita esse vitalis, (ut ait Ennius,) quæ non in amici mutatâ benevolentiâ requiescat?"--CICERO. * * * * * It was while living at Cambridge that Margaret commenced several of those friendships which lasted through her life, and which were the channels for so large a part of her spiritual activity. In giving some account of her in these relations, there is only the alternative of a prudent reserve which omits whatever is liable to be misunderstood, or a frank utterance which confides in the good sense and right feeling of the reader. By the last course, we run the risk of allowing our friend to be misunderstood; but by the first we make it certain that the most important part of her character shall not be understood at all. I have, therefore, thought it best to follow, as far as I can, her own ideas on this subject, which I find in two of her letters to myself. The first is dated, Groton, Jan. 8th, 1839. I was at that time editing a theological and literary magazine, in the West, and this letter was occasioned by my asking her to allow me to publish therein certain poems, and articles of hers, which she had given me to read. 'And I wish now, as far as I can, to give my reasons for what you consider absurd squeamishness in me. You may not acquiesce in my view, but I think you will respect it _as_ mine and be willing to act upon it so far as I am concerned. 'Genius seems to me excusable in taking the public for a confidant. Genius is universal, and can appeal to the common heart of man. But even here I would not have it too direct. I prefer to see the thought or feeling made universal. How different the confidence of Goethe, for instance, from that of Byron! 'But for us lesser people, who write verses merely as vents for the overflowings of a personal experience, which in every life of any value craves occasionally the accompaniment of the lyre, it seems to me that all the value of this utterance is destroyed by a hasty or indiscriminate publicity. The moment I lay open my heart, and tell the fresh feeling to any one who chooses to hear, I feel profaned. 'When it has passed into experience, when the flower has gone to seed, I don't care who knows it, or whither they wander. I am no longer it,--I stand on it. I do not know whether this is peculiar to me, or not, but I am sure the moment I cease to have any reserve or delicacy about a feeling, it is on the wane. 'About putting beautiful verses in your Magazine, I have no feeling except what I should have about furnishing a room. I should not put a dressing-case into a parlor, or a book-case into a dressing-room, because, however good things in their place, they were not in place there. And this, not in consideration of the public, but of my own sense of fitness and harmony.' The next extract is from a letter written to me in 1842, after a journey which we had taken to the White Mountains, in the company of my sister, and Mr. and Mrs. Farrar. During this journey Margaret had conversed with me concerning some passages of her private history and experience, and in this letter she asks me to be prudent in speaking of it, giving her reasons as follows:-- '_Cambridge, July 31, 1842._--... I said I was happy in having no secret. It is my nature, and has been the tendency of my life, to wish that all my thoughts and deeds might lie, as the "open secrets" of Nature, free to all who are able to understand them. I have no reserves, except intellectual reserves; for to speak of things to those who cannot receive them is stupidity, rather than frankness. But in this case, I alone am not concerned. Therefore, dear James, give heed to the subject. You have received a key to what was before unknown of your friend; you have made use of it, now let it be buried with the past, over whose passages profound and sad, yet touched with heaven-born beauty, "let silence stand sentinel."' I shall endeavor to keep true to the spirit of these sentences in speaking of Margaret's friendships. Yet not to speak of them in her biography would be omitting the most striking feature of her character. It would be worse than the play of Hamlet with Hamlet omitted. Henry the Fourth without Sully, Gustavus Adolphus without Oxenstiern, Napoleon without his marshals, Socrates without his scholars, would be more complete than Margaret without her friends. So that, in touching on these private relations, we must be everywhere "bold," yet not "too bold." The extracts will be taken indiscriminately from letters written to many friends. The insight which Margaret displayed in finding her friends, the magnetism by which she drew them toward herself, the catholic range of her intimacies, the influence which she exercised to develop the latent germ of every character, the constancy with which she clung to each when she had once given and received confidence, the delicate justice which kept every intimacy separate, and the process of transfiguration which took place when she met any one on this mountain of Friendship, giving a dazzling lustre to the details of common life,--all these should be at least touched upon and illustrated, to give any adequate view of her in these relations. Such a prejudice against her had been created by her faults of manner, that the persons she might most wish to know often retired from her and avoided her. But she was "sagacious of her quarry," and never suffered herself to be repelled by this. She saw when any one belonged to her, and never rested till she came into possession of her property. I recollect a lady who thus fled from her for several years, yet, at last, became most nearly attached to her. This "wise sweet" friend, as Margaret characterized her in two words, a flower hidden in the solitude of deep woods, Margaret saw and appreciated from the first. See how, in the following passage, she describes to one of her friends her perception of character, and her power of attracting it, when only fifteen years old. '_Jamaica Plains, July, 1840_.--Do you remember my telling you, at Cohasset, of a Mr. ---- staying with us, when I was fifteen, and all that passed? Well, I have not seen him since, till, yesterday, he came here. I was pleased to find, that, even at so early an age, I did not overrate those I valued. He was the same as in memory; the powerful eye dignifying an otherwise ugly face; the calm wisdom, and refined observation, the imposing _manière d'être_, which anywhere would give him an influence among men, without his taking any trouble, or making any sacrifice, and the great waves of feeling that seemed to rise as an attractive influence, and overspread his being. He said, nothing since his childhood had been so marked as his visit to our house; that it had dwelt in his thoughts unchanged amid all changes. I could have wished he had never returned to change the picture. He looked at me continually, and said, again and again, he should have known me anywhere; but O how changed I must be since that epoch of pride and fulness! He had with him his son, a wild boy of five years old, all brilliant with health and energy, and with the same powerful eye. He said,--You know I am not one to confound acuteness and rapidity of intellect with real genius; but he is for those an extraordinary child. He would astonish you, but I look deep enough into the prodigy to see the work of an extremely nervous temperament, and I shall make him as dull as I can. "_Margaret_," (pronouncing the name in the same deliberate searching way he used to do,) "I love him so well, I will try to teach him moderation. If I can help it, he shall not feed on bitter ashes, nor try these paths of avarice and ambition." It made me feel very strangely to hear him talk so to my old self. What a gulf between! There is scarce a fibre left of the haughty, passionate, ambitious child he remembered and loved. I felt affection for him still; for his character was formed then, and had not altered, except by ripening and expanding! But thus, in other worlds, we shall remember our present selves.' Margaret's constancy to any genuine relation, once established, was surprising. If her friends' _aim_ changed, so as to take them out of her sphere, she was saddened by it, and did not let them go without a struggle. But wherever they continued "true to the original standard," (as she loved to phrase it) her affectionate interest would follow them unimpaired through all the changes of life. The principle of this constancy she thus expresses in a letter to one of her brothers:-- 'Great and even _fatal_ errors (so far as this life is concerned) could not destroy my friendship for one in whom I am sure of the kernel of nobleness.' She never formed a friendship until she had seen and known this germ of good; and afterwards judged conduct by this. To this germ of good, to this highest law of each individual, she held them true. But never did she act like those who so often judge of their friend from some report of his conduct, as if they had never known him, and allow the inference from a single act to alter the opinion formed by an induction from years of intercourse. From all such weakness Margaret stood wholly free. I have referred to the wide range of Margaret's friendships. Even at this period this variety was very apparent. She was the centre of a group very different from each other, and whose only affinity consisted in their all being polarized by the strong attraction of her mind,--all drawn toward herself. Some of her friends were young, gay and beautiful; some old, sick or studious. Some were children of the world, others pale scholars. Some were witty, others slightly dull. But all, in order to be Margaret's friends, must be capable of seeking something,--capable of some aspiration for the better. And how did she glorify life to all! all that was tame and common vanishing away in the picturesque light thrown over the most familiar things by her rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp insight, her creative imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of her knowledge, and the copious rhetoric which found words and images always apt and always ready. Even then she displayed almost the same marvellous gift of conversation which afterwards dazzled all who knew her,--with more perhaps of freedom, since she floated on the flood of our warm sympathies. Those who know Margaret only by her published writings know her least; her notes and letters contain more of her mind; but it was only in conversation that she was perfectly free and at home. Margaret's constancy in friendship caused her to demand it in others, and thus she was sometimes exacting. But the pure Truth of her character caused her to express all such feelings with that freedom and simplicity that they became only as slight clouds on a serene sky, giving it a tenderer beauty, and casting picturesque shades over the landscape below. From her letters to different friends I select a few examples of these feelings. 'The world turns round and round, and you too must needs be negligent and capricious. You have not answered my note; you have not given me what I asked. You do not come here. Do not you act so,--it is the drop too much. The world seems not only turning but tottering, when my kind friend plays such a part.' * * * * * 'You need not have delayed your answer so long; why not at once answer the question I asked? Faith is not natural to me; for the love I feel to others is not in the idleness of poverty, nor can I persist in believing the best; merely to save myself pain, or keep a leaning place for the weary heart. But I should believe you, because I have seen that your feelings are strong and constant; they have never disappointed me, when closely scanned.' * * * * * '_July 6, 1832._--I believe I behaved very badly the other evening. I did not think so yesterday. I had been too surprised and vexed to recover very easily, but to-day my sophistries have all taken wing, and I feel that nothing good could have made me act with such childish petulance and bluntness towards one who spoke from friendly emotions. Be at peace; I will astonish you by my repose, mildness, and self-possession. No, that is silly; but I believe it cannot be right to be on such terms with any one, that, on the least vexation, I indulge my feelings at his or her expense. We will talk less, but we shall be very good friends still, I hope. Shall not we?' In the last extract, we have an example of that genuine humility, which, being a love of truth, underlaid her whole character, notwithstanding its seeming pride. She could not have been great as she was, without it.[A] '_December 19th, 1829._--I shall always be glad to have you come to me when saddened. The melancholic does not misbecome you. The lights of your character are _wintry_. They are generally inspiriting, life-giving, but, if perpetual, would glare too much on the tired sense; one likes sometimes a cloudy day, with its damp and warmer breath,--its gentle, down-looking shades. Sadness in some is intolerably ungraceful and oppressive; it affects one like a cold rainy day in June or September, when all pleasure departs with the sun; everything seems out of place and irrelative to the time; the clouds are fog, the atmosphere leaden,--but 'tis not so with you.' Of her own truthfulness to her friends, which led her frankly to speak to them of their faults or dangers, her correspondence gives constant examples. The first is from a letter of later date than properly belongs to this chapter, but is so wholly in her spirit of candor that I insert it here. It is from a letter written in 1843. 'I have been happy in the sight of your pure design, of the sweetness and serenity of your mind. In the inner sanctuary we met. But I shall say a few blunt words, such as were frequent in the days of intimacy, and, if they are needless, you will let them fall to the ground. Youth is past, with its passionate joys and griefs, its restlessness, its vague desires. You have chosen your path, you have rounded out your lot, your duties are before you. _Now_ beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dulness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness. Remember the limitations that threaten every professional man, only to be guarded against by great earnestness and watchfulness. So take care of yourself, and let not the intellect more than the spirit be quenched. * * * * * 'It is such a relief to me to be able to speak to you upon a subject which I thought would never lie open between us. Now there will be no place which does not lie open to the light. I can always say what I feel. And the way in which you took it, so like yourself, so manly and noble, gives me the assurance that I shall have the happiness of seeing in you that symmetry, that conformity in the details of life with the highest aims, of which I have sometimes despaired. How much higher, dear friend, is "the mind, the music breathing from the" _life_, than anything we can say! Character is higher than intellect; this I have long felt to be true; may we both live as if we knew it. * * 'I hope and believe we may be yet very much to each other. Imperfect as I am, I feel myself not unworthy to be a true friend. Neither of us is unworthy. In few natures does such love for the good and beautiful survive the ruin of all youthful hopes, the wreck of all illusions.' * * * * * 'I supposed our intimacy would terminate when I left Cambridge. Its continuing to subsist is a matter of surprise to me. And I expected, ere this, you would have found some Hersilia, or such-like, to console you for losing your Natalia. See, my friend, I am three and twenty. I believe in love and friendship, but I cannot but notice that circumstances have appalling power, and that those links which are not riveted by situation, by _interest_, (I mean, not mere worldly interest, but the instinct of self-preservation,) may be lightly broken by a chance touch. I speak not in misanthropy, I believe "Die Zeit ist schlecht, doch giebts noch grosse Herzen." 'Surely I maybe pardoned for aiming at the same results with the chivalrous "gift of the Gods." I cannot endure to be one of those shallow beings who can never get beyond the primer of experience,--who are ever saying,-- "Ich habe geglaubt, _nun glaube ich erst recht_, Und geht es auch wunderlich, geht es auch schlecht, Ich bleibe in glaubigen Orden." Yet, when you write, write freely, and if I don't like what you say, let me say so. I have ever been frank, as if I expected to be intimate with you good three-score years and ten. I am sure we shall always esteem each other. I have that much faith.' * * * * * '_Jan_. 1832.--All that relates to--must be interesting to me, though I never voluntarily think of him now. The apparent caprice of his conduct has shaken my faith, but not destroyed my hope. That hope, if I, who have so mistaken others, may dare to think I know myself, was never selfish. It is painful to lose a friend whose knowledge and converse mingled so intimately with the growth of my mind,--an early friend to whom I was all truth and frankness, seeking nothing but equal truth and frankness in return. But this evil may be borne; the hard, the lasting evil was to learn to distrust my own heart, and lose all faith in my power of knowing others. In this letter I see again that peculiar pride, that contempt of the forms and shows of goodness, that fixed resolve to be anything but "like unto the Pharisees," which were to my eye such happy omens. Yet how strangely distorted are all his views! The daily influence of his intercourse with me was like the breath he drew; it has become a part of him. Can he escape from himself? Would he be unlike all other mortals? His feelings are as false as those of Alcibiades. He influenced me, and helped form me to what I am. Others shall succeed him. Shall I be ashamed to owe anything to friendship? But why do I talk?--a child might confute him by defining the term _human being_. He will gradually work his way into light; if too late for our friendship, not, I trust, too late for his own peace and honorable well-being. I never insisted on being the instrument of good to him. I practised no little arts, no! not to effect the good of the friend I loved. I have prayed to Heaven, (surely we are sincere when doing that,) to guide him in the best path for him, however far from me that path might lead. The lesson I have learned may make me a more useful friend, a more efficient aid to others than I could be to him; yet I hope I shall not be denied the consolation of knowing surely, one day, that all which appeared evil in the companion of happy years was but error.' * * * * * 'I think, since you have seen so much of my character, that you must be sensible that any reserves with those whom I call my friends, do not arise from duplicity, but an instinctive feeling that I could not be understood. I can truly say that I wish no one to overrate me; undeserved regard could give me no pleasure; nor will I consent to practise charlatanism, either in friendship or anything else.' * * * * * 'You ought not to think I show a want of generous confidence, if I sometimes try the ground on which I tread, to see if perchance it may return the echoes of hollowness.' * * * * * 'Do not cease to respect me as formerly. It seems to me that I have reached the "parting of the ways" in my life, and all the knowledge which I have toiled to gain only serves to show me the disadvantages of each. None of those who think themselves my friends can aid me; each, careless, takes the path to which present convenience impels; and all would smile or stare, could they know the aching and measureless wishes, the sad apprehensiveness, which make me pause and strain my almost hopeless gaze to the distance. What wonder if my present conduct should be mottled by selfishness and incertitude? Perhaps you, who _can_ make your views certain, cannot comprehend me; though you showed me last night a penetration which did not flow from sympathy. But this I may say--though the glad light of hope and ambitious confidence, which has vitalized my mind, should be extinguished forever, I will not in life act a mean, ungenerous, or useless part. Therefore, let not a slight thing lessen your respect for me. If you feel as much pain as I do, when obliged to diminish my respect for any person, you will be glad of this assurance. I hope you will not think this note in the style of a French novel.' [Footnote A: According to Dryden's beautiful statement-- 'For as high turrets, in their airy sweep Require foundations, in proportion deep And lofty cedars as far upward shoot As to the nether heavens they drive the root; So low did her secure foundation lie, She was not humble, but humility.'] POWER OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 'Do you remember a conversation we had in the garden, one starlight evening, last summer, about the incalculable power which outward circumstances have over the character? You would not sympathize with the regrets I expressed, that mine had not been formed amid scenes and persons of nobleness and beauty, eager passions and dignified events, instead of those secret trials and petty conflicts which make my transition state so hateful to my memory and my tastes. You then professed the faith which I resigned with such anguish,--the faith which a Schiller could never attain,--a faith in the power of the human will. Yet now, in every letter, you talk to me of the power of circumstances. You tell me how changed you are. Every one of your letters is different from the one preceding, and all so altered from your former self. For are you not leaving all our old ground, and do you not apologize to me for all your letters? Why do you apologize? I think I know you very, very well; considering that we are both human, and have the gift of concealing our thoughts with words. Nay, further--I do not believe you will be able to become anything which I cannot understand. I know I can sympathize with all who feel and think, from a Dryfesdale up to a Max Piccolomini. You say, you have become a machine. If so, I shall expect to find you a grand, high-pressure, wave-compelling one--requiring plenty of fuel. You must be a steam-engine, and move some majestic fabric at the rate of thirty miles an hour along the broad waters of the nineteenth century. None of your pendulum machines for me! I should, to be sure, turn away my head if I should hear you tick, and mark the quarters of hours; but the buzz and whiz of a good large life-endangerer would be music to mine ears. Oh, no! sure there is no danger of your requiring to be set down quite on a level, kept in a still place, and wound up every eight days. Oh no, no! you are not one of that numerous company, who --"live and die, Eat, drink, wake, sleep between, Walk, talk like clock-work too, So pass in order due, Over the scene, To where the past--_is_ past, The future--nothing yet," &c. &c. But we must all be machines: you shall be a steam-engine;--shall be a mill, with extensive water-privileges,--and I will be a spinning jenny. No! upon second thoughts, I will not be a machine. I will be an instrument, not to be confided to vulgar hands,--for instance, a chisel to polish marble, or a whetstone to sharpen steel!' In an unfinished tale, Margaret has given the following studies of character. She is describing two of the friends of the hero of her story. Unquestionably the traits here given were taken from life, though it might not be easy to recognize the portrait of any individual in either sketch. Yet we insert it here to show her own idea of this relation, and her fine feeling of the action and reaction of these subtle intimacies. 'Now, however, I found companions, in thought, at least One, who had great effect on my mind, I may call Lytton. He was as premature as myself; at thirteen a man in the range of his thoughts, analyzing motives, and explaining principles, when he ought to have been playing cricket, or hunting in the woods. The young Arab, or Indian, may dispense with mere play, and enter betimes into the histories and practices of manhood, for all these are, in their modes of life, closely connected with simple nature, and educate the body no less than the mind; but the same good cannot be said of lounging lazily under a tree, while mentally accompanying Gil Blas through his course of intrigue and adventure, and visiting with him the impure atmosphere of courtiers, picaroons, and actresses. This was Lytton's favorite reading; his mind, by nature subtle rather than daring, would in any case have found its food in the now hidden workings of character and passion, the by-play of life, the unexpected and seemingly incongruous relations to be found there. He loved the natural history of man, not religiously, but for entertainment. What he sought, he found, but paid the heaviest price. All his later days were poisoned by his subtlety, which made it impossible for him to look at any action with a single and satisfied eye. He tore the buds open to see if there were no worm sheathed in the blushful heart, and was so afraid of overlooking some mean possibility, that he lost sight of virtue. Grubbing like a mole beneath the surface of earth, rather than reading its living language above, he had not faith enough to believe in the flower, neither faith enough to mine for the gem, and remains at penance in the limbo of halfnesses, I trust not forever. Then all his characteristics wore brilliant hues. He was very witty, and I owe to him the great obligation of being the first and only person who has excited me to frequent and boundless gayety. The sparks of his wit were frequent, slight surprises; his was a slender dart, and rebounded easily to the hand. I like the scintillating, arrowy wit far better than broad, genial humor. The light metallic touch pleases me. When wit appears as fun and jollity, she wears a little of the Silenus air;--the Mercurial is what I like. 'In later days,--for my intimacy with him lasted many years,--he became the feeder of my intellect. He delighted to ransack the history of a nation, of an art or a science, and bring to me all the particulars. Telling them fixed them in his own memory, which was the most tenacious and ready I have ever known; he enjoyed my clear perception as to their relative value, and I classified them in my own way. As he was omnivorous, and of great mental activity, while my mind was intense, though rapid in its movements, and could only give itself to a few things of its own accord, I traversed on the wings of his effort large demesnes that would otherwise have remained quite unknown to me. They were not, indeed, seen to the same profit as my own province, whose tillage I knew, and whose fruits were the answer to my desire; but the fact of seeing them at all gave a largeness to my view, and a candor to my judgment. I could not be ignorant how much there was I did not know, nor leave out of sight the many sides to every question, while, by the law of affinity, I chose my own. 'Lytton was not loved by any one. He was not positively hated, or disliked; for there was nothing which the general mind could take firm hold of enough for such feelings. Cold, intangible, he was to play across the life of others. A momentary resentment was sometimes felt at a presence which would not mingle with theirs; his scrutiny, though not hostile, was recognized as unfeeling and impertinent, and his mirth unsettled all objects from their foundations. But he was soon forgiven and forgotten. Hearts went not forth to war against or to seek one who was a mere experimentalist and observer in existence. For myself, I did not love, perhaps, but was attached to him, and the attachment grew steadily, for it was founded, not on what I wanted of him, but on his truth to himself. His existence was a real one; he was not without a pathetic feeling of his wants, but was never tempted to supply them by imitating the properties of any other character. He accepted the law of his being, and never violated it. This is next best to the nobleness which transcends it. I did not disapprove, even when I disliked, his acts. 'Amadin, my other companion, was as slow and deep of feeling, as Lytton was brilliant, versatile, and cold. His temperament was generally grave, even to apparent dulness; his eye gave little light, but a slow fire burned in its depths. His was a character not to be revealed to himself, or others, except by the important occasions of life. Though every day, no doubt, deepened and enriched him, it brought little that he could show or recall. But when his soul, capable of religion, capable of love, was moved, all his senses were united in the word or action that followed, and the impression made on you was entire. I have scarcely known any capable of such true manliness as he. His poetry, written, or unwritten, was the experience of life. It lies in few lines, as yet, but not one of them will ever need to be effaced. 'Early that serious eye inspired in me a trust that has never been deceived. There was no magnetism in him, no lights and shades that could stir the imagination; no bright ideal suggested by him stood between the friend and his self. As the years matured that self, I loved him more, and knew him as he knew himself, always in the present moment; he could never occupy my mind in absence.' Another of her early friends, Rev. F.H. Hedge, has sketched his acquaintance with her in the following paper, communicated by him for these memoirs. Somewhat older than Margaret, and having enjoyed an education at a German university, his conversation was full of interest and excitement to her. He opened to her a whole world of thoughts and speculations which gave movement to her mind in a congenial direction. * * * * * "My acquaintance with Margaret commenced in the year 1823, at Cambridge, my native place and hers. I was then a member of Harvard College, in which my father held one of the offices of instruction, and I used frequently to meet her in the social circles of which the families connected with the college formed the nucleus. Her father, at this time, represented the county of Middlesex in the Congress of the United States. "Margaret was then about thirteen,--a child in years, but so precocious in her mental and physical developments, that she passed for eighteen or twenty. Agreeably to this estimate, she had her place in society, as a lady full-grown. "When I recall her personal appearance, as it was then and for ten or twelve years subsequent to this, I have the idea of a blooming girl of a florid complexion and vigorous health, with a tendency to robustness, of which she was painfully conscious, and which, with little regard to hygienic principles, she endeavored to suppress or conceal, thereby preparing for herself much future suffering. With no pretensions to beauty then, or at any time, her face was one that attracted, that awakened a lively interest, that made one desirous of a nearer acquaintance. It was a face that fascinated, without satisfying. Never seen in repose, never allowing a steady perusal of its features, it baffled every attempt to judge the character by physiognomical induction. You saw the evidence of a mighty force, but what direction that force would assume,--whether it would determine itself to social triumphs, or to triumphs of art,--it was impossible to divine. Her moral tendencies, her sentiments, her true and prevailing character, did not appear in the lines of her face. She seemed equal to anything, but might not choose to put forth her strength. You felt that a great possibility lay behind that brow, but you felt, also, that the talent that was in her might miscarry through indifference or caprice. "I said she had no pretensions to beauty. Yet she was not plain. She escaped the reproach of positive plainness, by her blond and abundant hair, by her excellent teeth, by her sparkling, dancing, busy eyes, which, though usually half closed from near-sightedness, shot piercing glances at those with whom she conversed, and, most of all, by the very peculiar and graceful carriage of her head and neck, which all who knew her will remember as the most characteristic trait in her personal appearance. "In conversation she had already, at that early age, begun to distinguish herself, and made much the same impression in society that she did in after years, with the exception, that, as she advanced in life, she learned to control that tendency to sarcasm,--that disposition to 'quiz,'--which was then somewhat excessive. It frightened shy young people from her presence, and made her, for a while, notoriously unpopular with the ladies of her circle. "This propensity seems to have been aggravated by unpleasant encounters in her school-girl experience. She was a pupil of Dr. Park, of Boston, whose seminary for young ladies was then at the height of a well-earned reputation, and whose faithful and successful endeavors in this department have done much to raise the standard of female education among us. Here the inexperienced country girl was exposed to petty persecutions from the dashing misses of the city, who pleased themselves with giggling criticisms not inaudible, nor meant to be inaudible to their subject, on whatsoever in dress and manner fell short of the city mark. Then it was first revealed to her young heart, and laid up for future reflection, how large a place in woman's world is given to fashion and frivolity. Her mind reacted on these attacks with indiscriminate sarcasms. She made herself formidable by her wit, and, of course, unpopular. A root of bitterness sprung up in her which years of moral culture were needed to eradicate. "Partly to evade the temporary unpopularity into which she had fallen, and partly to pursue her studies secure from those social avocations which were found unavoidable in the vicinity of Cambridge and Boston, in 1824 or 5 she was sent to Groton, where she remained two years in quiet seclusion. "On her return to Cambridge, in 1826, I renewed my acquaintance, and an intimacy was then formed, which continued until her death. The next seven years, which were spent in Cambridge, were years of steady growth, with little variety of incident, and little that was noteworthy of outward experience, but with great intensity of the inner life. It was with her, as with most young women, and with most young men, too, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, a period of preponderating sentimentality, a period of romance and of dreams, of yearning and of passion. She pursued at this time, I think, no systematic study, but she read with the heart, and was learning more from social experience than from books. "I remember noting at this time a trait which continued to be a prominent one through life,--I mean, a passionate love for the beautiful, which comprehended all the kingdoms of nature and art. I have never known one who seemed to derive such satisfaction from the contemplation of lovely forms. "Her intercourse with girls of her own age and standing was frank and excellent. Personal attractions, and the homage which they received, awakened in her no jealousy. She envied not their success, though vividly aware of the worth of beauty, and inclined to exaggerate her own deficiencies in that kind. On the contrary, she loved to draw these fair girls to herself, and to make them her guests, and was never so happy as when surrounded, in company, with such a bevy. This attraction was mutual, as, according to Goethe, every attraction is. Where she felt an interest, she awakened an interest. Without flattery or art, by the truth and nobleness of her nature, she won the confidence, and made herself the friend and intimate, of a large number of young ladies,--the belles of their day,--with most of whom she remained in correspondence during the greater part of her life. "In our evening re-unions she was always conspicuous by the brilliancy of her wit, which needed but little provocation to break forth in exuberant sallies, that drew around her a knot of listeners, and made her the central attraction of the hour. Rarely did she enter a company in which she was not a prominent object. "I have spoken of her conversational talent. It continued to develop itself in these years, and was certainly her most decided gift. One could form no adequate idea of her ability without hearing her converse. She did many things well, but nothing so well as she talked. It is the opinion of all her friends, that her writings do her very imperfect justice. For some reason or other, she could never deliver herself in print as she did with her lips. She required the stimulus of attentive ears, and answering eyes, to bring out all her power. She must have her auditory about her. "Her conversation, as it was then, I have seldom heard equalled. It was not so much attractive as commanding. Though remarkably fluent and select, it was neither fluency, nor choice diction, nor wit, nor sentiment, that gave it its peculiar power, but accuracy of statement, keen discrimination, and a certain weight of judgment, which contrasted strongly and charmingly with the youth and sex of the speaker. I do not remember that the vulgar charge of talking 'like a book' was ever fastened upon her, although, by her precision, she might seem to have incurred it. The fact was, her speech, though finished and true as the most deliberate rhetoric of the pen, had always an air of spontaneity which made it seem the grace of the moment,--the result of some organic provision that made finished sentences as natural to her as blundering and hesitation are to most of us. With a little more imagination, she would have made an excellent improvisatrice. "Here let me say a word respecting the character of Margaret's mind. It was what in woman is generally called a masculine mind; that is, its action was determined by ideas rather than by sentiments. And yet, with this masculine trait, she combined a woman's appreciation of the beautiful in sentiment and the beautiful in action. Her intellect was rather solid than graceful, yet no one was more alive to grace. She was no artist,--she would never have written an epic, or romance, or drama,--yet no one knew better the qualities which go to the making of these; and though catholic as to kind, no one was more rigorously exacting as to quality. Nothing short of the best in each kind would content her. "She wanted imagination, and she wanted productiveness. She wrote with difficulty. Without external pressure, perhaps, she would never have written at all. She was dogmatic, and not creative. Her strength was in characterization and in criticism. Her _critique_ on Goethe, in the second volume of the Dial, is, in my estimation, one of the best things she has written. And, as far as it goes, it is one of the best criticisms extant of Goethe. "What I especially admired in her was her intellectual sincerity. Her judgments took no bribe from her sex or her sphere, nor from custom nor tradition, nor caprice. She valued truth supremely, both for herself and others. The question with her was not what should be believed, or what ought to be true, but what _is_ true. Her yes and no were never conventional; and she often amazed people by a cool and unexpected dissent from the common-places of popular acceptation." * * * * * Margaret, we have said, saw in each of her friends the secret interior capability, which might become hereafter developed into some special beauty or power. By means of this penetrating, this prophetic insight, she gave each to himself, acted on each to draw out his best nature, gave him an ideal out of which he could draw strength and liberty hour by hour. Thus her influence was ever ennobling, and each felt that in her society he was truer, wiser, better, and yet more free and happy, than elsewhere. The "dry light" which Lord Bacon loved, she never knew; her light was life, was love, was warm with sympathy and a boundless energy of affection and hope. Though her love flattered and charmed her friends, it did not spoil them, for they knew her perfect truth. They knew that she loved them, not for what she imagined, but for what she saw, though she saw it only in the germ. But as the Greeks beheld a Persephone and Athene in the passing stranger, and ennobled humanity into ideal beauty, Margaret saw all her friends thus idealized. She was a balloon of sufficient power to take us all up with her into the serene depth of heaven, where she loved to float, far above the low details of earthly life. Earth lay beneath us as a lovely picture,--its sounds came up mellowed into music. Margaret was, to persons younger than herself, a Makaria and Natalia. She was wisdom and intellectual beauty, filling life with a charm and glory "known to neither sea nor land." To those of her own age she was sibyl and seer,--a prophetess, revealing the future, pointing the path, opening their eyes to the great aims only worthy of pursuit in life. To those older than herself she was like the Euphorion in Goethe's drama, child of Faust and Helen,--a wonderful union of exuberance and judgment, born of romantic fulness and classic limitation. They saw with surprise her clear good-sense balancing her now of sentiment and ardent courage. They saw her comprehension of both sides of every question, and gave her their confidence, as to one of equal age, because of so ripe a judgment. But it was curious to see with what care and conscience she kept her friendships distinct. Her fine practical understanding, teaching her always the value of limits, enabled her to hold apart all her intimacies, nor did one ever encroach on the province of the other. Like a moral Paganini, she played always on a single string, drawing from each its peculiar music,--bringing wild beauty from the slender wire, no less than from the deep-sounding harp string. Some of her friends had little to give her when compared with others; but I never noticed that she sacrificed in any respect the smaller faculty to the greater. She fully realized that the Divine Being makes each part of this creation divine, and that He dwells in the blade of grass as really if not as fully as in the majestic oak which has braved the storm for a hundred years. She felt in full the thought of a poem which she once copied for me from Barry Cornwall, which begins thus:-- "She was not fair, nor full of grace, Nor crowned with thought, nor aught beside No wealth had she of mind or face, To win our love, or gain our pride,-- No lover's thought her heart could touch,-- No poet's dream was round her thrown; And yet we miss her--ah, so much! Now--she has flown." I will close this section of Cambridge Friendship with the two following passages, the second of which was written to some one unknown to me: 'Your letter was of cordial sweetness to me, as is ever the thought of our friendship,--that sober-suited friendship, of which the web was so deliberately and well woven, and which wears so well. * * * * * 'I want words to express the singularity of all my past relations; yet let me try. 'From a very early age I have felt that I was not born to the common womanly lot. I knew I should never find a being who could keep the key of my character; that there would be none on whom I could always lean, from whom I could always learn; that I should be a pilgrim and sojourner on earth, and that the birds and foxes would be surer of a place to lay the head than I. You understand me, of course; such beings can only find their homes in hearts. All material luxuries, all the arrangements of society, are mere conveniences to them. 'This thought, all whose bearings I did not, indeed, understand, affected me sometimes with sadness, sometimes with pride. I mourned that I never should have a thorough experience of life, never know the full riches of my being; I was proud that I was to test myself in the sternest way, that I was always to return to myself, to be my own priest, pupil, parent, child, husband, and wife. All this I did not understand as I do now; but this destiny of the thinker, and (shall I dare to say it?) of the poetic priestess, sibylline, dwelling in the cave, or amid the Lybian sands, lay yet enfolded in my mind. Accordingly, I did not look on any of the persons, brought into relation with me, with common womanly eyes. 'Yet, as my character is, after all, still more feminine than masculine, it would sometimes happen that I put more emotion into a state than I myself knew. I really was capable or attachment, though it never seemed so till the hour of separation. And if a connexion was torn up by the roots, the soil of my existence showed an unsightly wound, which long refused to clothe itself in verdure. 'With regard to yourself, I was to you all that I wished to be. I knew that I reigned in your thoughts in my own way. And I also lived with you more truly and freely than with any other person. We were truly friends, but it was not friends as men are friends to one another, or as brother and sister. There was, also, that pleasure, which may, perhaps, be termed conjugal, of finding oneself in an alien nature. Is there any tinge of love in this? Possibly! At least, in comparing it with my relation to--, I find _that_ was strictly fraternal. I valued him for himself. I did not care for an influence over him, and was perfectly willing to have one or fifty rivals in his heart. * * * * 'I think I may say, I never loved. I but see my possible life reflected on the clouds. As in a glass darkly, I have seen what I might feel as child, wife, mother, but I have never really approached the close relations of life. A sister I have truly been to many,--a brother to more,--a fostering nurse to, oh how many! The bridal hour of many a spirit, when first it was wed, I have shared, but said adieu before the wine was poured out at the banquet. And there is one I always love in my poetic hour, as the lily looks up to the star from amid the waters; and another whom I visit as the bee visits the flower, when I crave sympathy. Yet those who live would scarcely consider that I am among the living,--and I am isolated, as you say. 'My dear--, all is well; all has helped me to decipher the great poem of the universe. I can hardly describe to you the happiness which floods my solitary hours. My actual life is yet much clogged and impeded, but I have at last got me an oratory; where I can retire and pray. With your letter, vanished a last regret. You did not act or think unworthily. It is enough. As to the cessation of our confidential inter course, circumstances must have accomplished that long ago; my only grief was that you should do it with your own free will, and for reasons that I thought unworthy. I long to honor you, to be honored by you. Now we will have free and noble thoughts of one another, and all that is best of our friendship shall remain.' II. CONVERSATION.--SOCIAL INTERCOURSE. "Be thou what thou singly art, and personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature, and live but one man." SIR THOMAS BROWNE. "Ah, how mournful look in letters Black on white, the words to me, Which from lips of thine cast fetters Bound the heart, or set It free." GOETHE, _translated by J.S. Dwight_. "Zu erfinden, zu beschliessen, Bleibe, Kunstler, oft allein; Deines Wirkes zu geniessen Eile freudig zum Verein, Hier im Ganzen schau erfahre Deines eignes Lebenslauf, Und die Thaten mancher Jahre Gehn dir in dem Nachbar auf." GOETHE, _Artist's Song_. * * * * * When I first knew Margaret, she was much in society, but in a circle of her own,--of friends whom she had drawn around her, and whom she entertained and delighted by her exuberant talent. Of those belonging to this circle, let me recall a few characters. The young girls whom Margaret had attracted were very different from herself, and from each other. From Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Brookline, they came to her, and the little circle of companions would meet now in one house, and now in another, of these pleasant towns. There was A----, a dark-haired, black-eyed beauty, with clear olive complexion, through which the rich blood flowed. She was bright, beauteous, and cold as a gem,--with clear perceptions of character within a narrow limit,--enjoying society, and always surrounded with admirers, of whose feelings she seemed quite unconscious. While they were just ready to die of unrequited love, she stood untouched as Artemis, scarcely aware of the deadly arrows which had flown from her silver bow. I remember that Margaret said, that Tennyson's little poem of the skipping-rope must have been written for her,--where the lover expressing his admiration of the fairy-like motion and the light grace of the lady, is told-- "Get off, or else my skipping-rope Will hit you in the eye." Then there was B----, the reverse of all this,--tender, susceptible, with soft blue eyes, and mouth of trembling sensibility. How sweet were her songs, in which a single strain of pure feeling ever reminded me of those angel symphonies,-- "In all whose music, the pathetic minor Our ears will cross--" and when she sang or spoke, her eyes had often the expression of one looking _in_ at her thought, not _out_ at her companion. Then there was C----, all animated and radiant with joyful interest in life,--seeing with ready eye the beauty of Nature and of Thought,--entering with quick sympathy into all human interest, taking readily everything which belonged to her, and dropping with sure instinct whatever suited her not. Unknown to her was struggle, conflict, crisis; she grew up harmonious as the flower, drawing nutriment from earth and air,--from "common things which round us lie," and equally from the highest thoughts and inspirations. Shall I also speak of D----, whose beauty had a half-voluptuous character, from those ripe red lips, those ringlets overflowing the well-rounded shoulders, and the hazy softness of those large eyes? Or of E----, her companion, beautiful too, but in a calmer, purer style,--with eye from which looked forth self-possession, truth and fortitude? Others, well worth notice, I must not notice now. But among the young men who surrounded Margaret, a like variety prevailed. One was to her interesting, on account of his quick, active intellect, and his contempt for shows and pretences; for his inexhaustible wit, his exquisite taste, his infinitely varied stores of information, and the poetic view which he took of life, painting it with Rembrandt depths of shadow and bursts of light. Another she gladly went to for his compact, thoroughly considered views of God and the world,--for his culture, so much more deep and rich than any other we could find here,--for his conversation, opening in systematic form new fields of thought. Yet men of strong native talent, and rich character, she also liked well to know, however deficient in culture, knowledge, or power of utterance. Each was to her a study, and she never rested till she had found the bottom of every mind,--till she had satisfied herself of its capacity and currents,--measuring it with her sure line, as --"All human wits Are measured, but a few." It was by her singular gift of speech that she cast her spells and worked her wonders in this little circle. Full of thoughts and full of words; capable of poetic improvisation, had there not been a slight overweight of a tendency to the tangible and real; capable of clear, complete, philosophic statement, but for the strong tendency to life which melted down evermore in its lava-current the solid blocks of thought; she was yet, by these excesses, better fitted for the arena of conversation. Here she found none adequate for the equal encounter; when she laid her lance in rest, every champion must go down before it. How fluent her wit, which, for hour after hour, would furnish best entertainment, as she described scenes where she had lately been, or persons she had lately seen! Yet she readily changed from gay to grave, and loved better the serious talk which opened the depths of life. Describing a conversation in relation to Christianity, with a friend of strong mind, who told her he had found, in this religion, a home for his best and deepest thoughts, she says--' Ah! what a pleasure 'to meet with such a daring, yet realizing, mind as his!' But her catholic taste found satisfaction in intercourse with persons quite different from herself in opinions and tendencies, as the following letter, written in her twentieth year, will indicate: * * * * * 'I was very happy, although greatly restrained by the apprehension of going a little too far with these persons of singular refinement and settled opinions. 'However, I believe I did pretty well, though I did make one or two little mistakes, when most interested; but I was not so foolish as to try to retrieve them. One occasion more particularly, when Mr. G----, after going more fully into his poetical opinions than I could have expected, stated his sentiments: first, that Wordsworth had, in truth, guided, or, rather, completely vivified the poetry of this age; secondly, that 't was his influence which had, in reality, given all his better individuality to Byron. He recurred again and again to this opinion, _con amore_, and seemed to wish much for an answer; but I would not venture, though 'twas hard for me to forbear, I knew so well what I thought. Mr. G----'s Wordsworthianism, however, is excellent; his beautiful simplicity of taste, and love of truth, have preserved him from any touch of that vague and imbecile enthusiasm, which has enervated almost all the exclusive and determined admirers of the great poet whom I have known in these parts. His reverence, his feeling, are thoroughly intelligent. Everything in his mind is well defined; and his horror of the vague, and false, nay, even (suppose another horror here, for grammar's sake) of the startling and paradoxical, have their beauty. I think I could know Mr. G---- long, and see him perpetually, without any touch of satiety; such variety is made by the very absence of pretension, and the love of truth. I found much amusement in leading him to sketch the scenes and persons which Lockhart portrays in such glowing colors, and which he, too, has seen with the _eye of taste_, but how different!' * * * * * Our friend was well aware that her _forte_ was in conversation. Here she felt at home. Here she felt her power, and the excitement which the presence of living persons brought, gave all her faculties full activity 'After all,' she says, in a letter, 'this writing is mighty dead. Oh, for my dear old Greeks, who talked everything--not to shine as in the Parisian saloons, but to learn, to teach, to vent the heart, to clear the mind!' Again, in 1832:-- 'Conversation is my natural element. I need to be called out, and never think alone, without imagining some companion. Whether this be nature or the force of circumstances, I know not; it is my habit, and bespeaks a second-rate mind.' I am disposed to think, much as she excelled in general conversation, that her greatest mental efforts were made in intercourse with individuals. All her friends will unite in the testimony, that whatever they may have known of wit and eloquence in others, they have never seen one who, like her, by the conversation of an hour or two, could not merely entertain and inform, but make an epoch in one's life. We all dated back to this or that conversation with Margaret, in which we took a complete survey of great subjects, came to some clear view of a difficult question, saw our way open before us to a higher plane of life, and were led to some definite resolution or purpose which has had a bearing on all our subsequent career. For Margaret's conversation turned, at such times, to life,--its destiny, its duty, its prospect. With comprehensive glance she would survey the past, and sum up, in a few brief words, its results; she would then turn to the future, and, by a natural order, sweep through its chances and alternatives,--passing ever into a more earnest tone, into a more serious view,--and then bring all to bear on the present, till its duties grew plain, and its opportunities attractive. Happy he who can lift conversation, without loss of its cheer, to the highest uses! Happy he who has such a gift as this, an original faculty thus accomplished by culture, by which he can make our common life rich, significant and fair,--can give to the hour a beauty and brilliancy which shall make it eminent long after, amid dreary years of level routine! I recall many such conversations. I remember one summer's day, in which we rode together, on horseback, from Cambridge to Newton,--a day all of a piece, in which my eloquent companion helped me to understand my past life, and her own,--a day which left me in that calm repose which comes to us, when we clearly apprehend what we ought to do, and are ready to attempt it. I recall other mornings when, not having seen her for a week or two, I would walk with her for hours, beneath the lindens or in the garden, while we related to each other what we had read in our German studies. And I always left her astonished at the progress of her mind, at the amount of new thoughts she had garnered, and filled with a new sense of the worth of knowledge, and the value of life. There were other conversations, in which, impelled by the strong instinct of utterance, she would state, in words of tragical pathos, her own needs and longings,--her demands on life,--the struggles of mind, and of heart,--her conflicts with self, with nature, with the limitations of circumstances, with insoluble problems, with an unattainable desire. She seemed to feel relief from the expression of these thoughts, though she gained no light from her companion. Many such conversations I remember, while she lived in Cambridge, and one such in Groton; but afterwards, when I met her, I found her mind risen above these struggles, and in a self-possessed state which needed no such outlet for its ferment. It is impossible to give any account of _these_ conversations; but I add a few scraps, to indicate, however slightly, something of her ordinary manner. 'Rev. Mr. ---- preached a sermon on TIME. But what business had he to talk about time? We should like well to hear the opinions of a great man, who had made good use of time; but not of a little man, who had not used it to any purpose. I wished to get up and tell him to speak of something which he knew and felt.' * * * * * 'The best criticism on those sermons which proclaim so loudly the dignity of human nature was from our friend E.S. She said, coming out from Dr. Channing's church, that she felt fatigued by the demands the sermon made on her, and would go home and read what Jesus said,--"_Ye are of more value than many sparrows." That_ she could bear; it did not seem exaggerated praise.' * * * * * 'The Swedenborgians say, "that is _Correspondence_," and the phrenologists, "that it is _Approbativeness,_" and so think they know all about it. It would not be so, if we could be like the birds,--make one method, and then desert it, and make a new one,--as they build their nests.' * * * * * 'As regards crime, we cannot understand what we have not _already_ felt;--thus, all crimes have formed part of our minds. We do but recognize one part of ourselves in the worst actions of others. When you take the subject in this light, do you not incline to consider the capacity for action as something widely differing from the experience of a feeling?' * * * * * 'How beautiful the life of Benvenuto Cellini! How his occupations perpetually impelled to thought,--to gushings of thought naturally excited!' * * * * * 'Father lectured me for looking satirical when the man of Words spake, and so attentive to the man of Truth,--that is, of God.' Margaret used often to talk about the books which she and I were reading. GODWIN. 'I think you will be more and more satisfied with Godwin. He has fully lived the double existence of man, and he casts the reflexes on his magic mirror from a height where no object in life's panorama can cause one throb of delirious hope or grasping ambition. At any rate, if you study him, you may know all he has to tell. He is quite free from vanity, and conceals not miserly any of his treasures from the knowledge of posterity. M'LLE. D'ESPINASSE. 'I am swallowing by gasps that _cauldrony_ beverage of selfish passion and morbid taste, the letters of M'lle D'Espinasse. It is good for me. How odious is the abandonment of passion, such as this, unshaded by pride or delicacy, unhallowed by religion,--a selfish craving only; every source of enjoyment stifled to cherish this burning thirst. Yet the picture, so minute in its touches, is true as death. I should not like Delphine now.' Events in life, apparently trivial, often seemed to her full of mystic significance, and it was her pleasure to turn such to poetry. On one occasion, the sight of a passion-flower, given by one lady to another, and then lost, appeared to her so significant of the character, relation, and destiny of the two, that it drew from her lines of which two or three seem worth preserving, as indicating her feeling of social relations. 'Dear friend, my heart grew pensive when I saw The flower, for thee so sweetly set apart, By one whose passionless though tender heart Is worthy to bestow, as angels are, By an unheeding hand conveyed away, To close, in unsoothed night, the promise of its day. * * * * * 'The mystic flower read in thy soul-filled eye To its life's question the desired reply, But came no nearer. On thy gentle breast It hoped to find the haven of its rest; But in cold night, hurried afar from thee, It closed its once half-smiling destiny. 'Yet thus, methinks, it utters as it dies,-- "By the pure truth of those calm, gentle eyes Which saw my life should find its aim in thine, I see a clime where no strait laws confine. In that blest land where _twos_ ne'er know a _three_, Save as the accord of their fine sympathy, O, best-loved, I will wait for thee!"' III. STUDIES. "Nur durch das Morgenthor des Schönen Drangst du in der Erkenntniss Land; An höhen Glanz sich zu gewöhnen Uebt sich, am Reize der Verstand. Was bei dem Saitenklang der Musen Mit süssem Beben dich, durchdrang, Erzog die Kraft in deinem Busen, Die sich dereinst zum Weltgeist schwang." SCHILLER. "To work, with heart resigned and spirit strong; Subdue, with patient toil, life's bitter wrong, Through Nature's dullest, as her brightest ways, We will march onward, singing to thy praise." E.S., _in the Dial_. "The peculiar nature of the scholar's occupation consists in this,--that science, and especially that side of it from which he conceives of the whole, shall continually burst forth before him in new and fairer forms. Let this fresh spiritual youth never grow old within him; let no form become fixed and rigid; let each sunrise bring him new joy and love in his vocation, and larger views of its significance." FICHTE. * * * * * Of Margaret's studies while at Cambridge, I knew personally only of the German. She already, when I first became acquainted with her, had become familiar with the masterpieces of French, Italian and Spanish literature. But all this amount of reading had not made her "deep-learned in books and shallow in herself;" for she brought to the study of most writers "a spirit and genius equal or superior."--so far, at least, as the analytic understanding was concerned. Every writer whom she studied, as every person whom she knew, she placed in his own class, knew his relation to other writers, to the world, to life, to nature, to herself. Much as they might delight her, they never swept her away. She breasted the current of their genius, as a stately swan moves up a stream, enjoying the rushing water the more because she resists it. In a passionate love-struggle she wrestled thus with the genius of De Staël, of Rousseau, of Alfieri, of Petrarch. The first and most striking element in the genius of Margaret was the clear, sharp understanding, which keenly distinguished between things different, and kept every thought, opinion, person, character, in its own place, not to be confounded with any other. The god Terminus presided over her intellect. She knew her thoughts as we know each other's faces; and opinions, with most of us so vague, shadowy, and shifting, were in her mind substantial and distinct realities. Some persons see distinctions, others resemblances; but she saw both. No sophist could pass on her a counterfeit piece of intellectual money; but also she recognized the one pure metallic basis in coins of different epochs, and when mixed with a very ruinous alloy. This gave a comprehensive quality to her mind most imposing and convincing, as it enabled her to show the one Truth, or the one Law, manifesting itself in such various phenomena. Add to this her profound faith in truth, which made her a Realist of that order that thoughts to her were things. The world of her thoughts rose around her mind as a panorama,--the sun-in the sky, the flowers distinct in the foreground, the pale mountain sharply, though faintly, cutting the sky with its outline in the distance,--and all in pure light and shade, all in perfect perspective. Margaret began to study German early in 1832. Both she and I were attracted towards this literature, at the same time, by the wild bugle-call of Thomas Carlyle, in his romantic articles on Richter, Schiller, and Goethe, which appeared in the old Foreign Review, the Edinburgh Review, and afterwards in the Foreign Quarterly. I believe that in about three months from the time that Margaret commenced German, she was reading with ease the masterpieces of its literature. Within the year, she had read Goethe's Faust, Tasso, Iphigenia, Hermann and Dorothea, Elective Affinities, and Memoirs; Tieck's William Lovel, Prince Zerbino, and other works; Körner, Novalis, and something of Richter; all of Schiller's principal dramas, and his lyric poetry. Almost every evening I saw her, and heard an account of her studies. Her mind opened under this influence, as the apple-blossom at the end of a warm week in May. The thought and the beauty of this rich literature equally filled her mind and fascinated her imagination. * * * * * But if she studied books thus earnestly, still more frequently did she turn to the study of men. Authors and their personages were not ideal beings merely, but full of human blood and life. So living men and women were idealized again, and transfigured by her rapid fancy,--every trait intensified, developed, ennobled. Lessing says that "The true portrait painter will paint his subject, flattering him as art ought to flatter,--painting the face not as it actually is, but as creation designed, omitting the imperfections arising from the resistance of the material worked in." Margaret's portrait-painting intellect treated persons in this way. She saw them as God designed them,--omitting the loss from wear and tear, from false position, from friction of untoward circumstances. If we may be permitted to take a somewhat transcendental distinction, she saw them not as they _actually_ were, but as they _really_ were. This accounts for her high estimate of her friends,--too high, too flattering, indeed, but justified to her mind by her knowledge of their interior capabilities. * * * * * The following extract illustrates her power, even at the age of nineteen, of comprehending the relations of two things lying far apart from each other, and of rising to a point of view which could overlook both:-- 'I have had,--while staying a day or two in Boston,--some of Shirley's, Ford's, and Hey wood's plays from the Athenæum. There are some noble strains of proud rage, and intellectual, but most poetical, all-absorbing, passion. One of the finest fictions I recollect in those specimens of the Italian novelists,--which you, I think, read when I did,--noble, where it illustrated the Italian national spirit, is ruined by the English novelist, who has transplanted it to an uncongenial soil; yet he has given it beauties which an Italian eye could not see, by investing the actors with deep, continuing, truly English affections.' * * * * * The following criticism on some of the dialogues of Plato, (dated June 3d, 1833,) in a letter returning the book, illustrates her downright way of asking world-revered authors to accept the test of plain common sense. As a finished or deliberate opinion, it ought not to be read; for it was not intended as such, but as a first impression hastily sketched. But read it as an illustration of the method in which her mind worked, and you will see that she meets the great Plato modestly, but boldly, on human ground, asking him for satisfactory proof of all that he says, and treating him as a human being, speaking to human beings. '_June_ 3, 1833.--I part with Plato with regret. I could have wished to "enchant myself," as Socrates would say, with him some days longer. Eutyphron is excellent. Tis the best specimen I have ever seen of that mode of convincing. There is one passage in which Socrates, as if it were _aside_,--since the remark is quite away from the consciousness of Eutyphron,--declares, "qu'il aimerait incomparablement mieux des principes fixes et inébranlables à l'habilité de Dédale avec les tresors de Tantale." I delight to hear such things from those whose lives have given the right to say them. For 'tis not always true what Lessing says, and I, myself, once thought,-- "F.--Von was fur Tugenden spricht er denn? MINNA.----Er spricht von keiner; denn ihn fehlt keine." For the mouth sometimes talketh virtue from the overflowing of the heart, as well as love, anger, &c. '"Crito" I have read only once, but like it. I have not got it in my heart though, so clearly as the others. The "Apology" I deem only remarkable for the noble tone of sentiment, and beautiful calmness. I was much affected by Phaedo, but think the argument weak in many respects. The nature of abstract ideas is clearly set forth; but there is no justice in reasoning, from their existence, that our souls have lived previous to our present state, since it was as easy for the Deity to create at once the idea of beauty within us, as the sense which brings to the soul intelligence that it exists in some outward shape. He does not clearly show his opinion of what the soul is; whether eternal _as_ the Deity, created _by_ the Deity, or how. In his answer to Simmias, he takes advantage of the general meaning of the words harmony, discord, &c. The soul might be a result, without being a harmony. But I think too many things to write, and some I have not had time to examine. Meanwhile I can think over parts, and say to myself, "beautiful," "noble," and use this as one of my enchantments.' * * * * * 'I send two of your German books. It pains me to part with Ottilia. I wish we could learn books, as we do pieces of music, and repeat them, in the author's order, when taking a solitary walk. But, now, if I set out with an Ottilia, this wicked fairy association conjures up such crowds of less lovely companions, that I often cease to feel the influence of the elect one. I don't like Goethe so well as Schiller now. I mean, I am not so happy in reading him. That perfect wisdom and _merciless_ nature seems cold, after those seducing pictures of forms more beautiful than truth. Nathless, I should like to read the second part of Goethe's Memoirs, if you do not use it now.' * * * * * 1832.--I am thinking how I omitted to talk a volume to you about the "Elective Affinities." Now I shall never say half of it, for which I, on my own account, am sorry. But two or three things I would ask:-- 'What do you think of Charlotte's proposition, that the accomplished pedagogue must be tiresome in society? 'Of Ottilia's, that the afflicted, and ill-educated, are oftentimes singled out by fate to instruct others, and her beautiful reasons why? 'And what have you thought of the discussion touching graves and monuments? 'I am now going to dream of your sermon, and of Ottilia's china-asters. Both shall be driven from my head to-morrow, for I go to town, allured by despatches from thence, promising much entertainment. Woe unto them if they disappoint me! 'Consider it, I pray you, as the "nearest duty" to answer my questions, and not act as you did about the sphinx-song.' * * * * * 'I have not anybody to speak to, that does not talk common-place, and I wish to talk about such an uncommon person,--about Novalis! a wondrous youth, and who has only written one volume. That is pleasant! I feel as though I could pursue my natural mode with him, get acquainted, then make my mind easy in the belief that I know all that is to be known. And he died at twenty-nine, and, as with Körner, your feelings may be single; you will never be called upon to share his experience, and compare his future feelings with his present. And his life was so full and so still. Then it is a relief, after feeling the immense superiority of Goethe. It seems to me as if the mind of Goethe had embraced the universe. I have felt this lately, in reading his lyric poems. I am enchanted while I read. He comprehends every feeling I have ever had so perfectly, expresses it so beautifully: but when I shut the book, it seems as if I had lost my personal identity; all my feelings linked with such an immense variety that belong to beings I had thought so different. What can I bring? There is no answer in my mind, except "It is so," or "It will be so," or "No doubt such and such feel so." Yet, while my judgment becomes daily more tolerant towards others, the same attracting and repelling work is going on in my feelings. But I persevere in reading the great sage, some part of every day, hoping the time will come, when I shall not feel so overwhelmed, and leave off this habit of wishing to grasp the whole, and be contented to learn a little every day, as becomes a pupil. 'But now the one-sidedness, imperfection, and glow, of a mind like that of Novalis, seem refreshingly human to me. I have wished fifty times to write some letters giving an account, first, of his very pretty life, and then of his one volume, as I re-read it, chapter by chapter. If you will pretend to be very much interested, perhaps I will get a better pen, and write them to you.' * * NEED OF COMMUNION. '_Aug_. 7, 1832.--I feel quite lost; it is so long since I have talked myself. To see so many acquaintances, to talk so many words, and never tell my mind completely on any subject--to say so many things which do not seem called out, makes me feel strangely vague and movable. ''Tis true, the time is probably near when I must live alone, to all intents and purposes,--separate entirely my acting from my thinking world, take care of my ideas without aid,--except from the illustrious dead,--answer my own questions, correct my own feelings, and do all that hard work for myself. How tiresome 'tis to find out all one's self-delusion! I thought myself so very independent, because I could conceal some feelings at will, and did not need the same excitement as other young characters did. And I am not independent, nor never shall be, while I can get anybody to minister to me. But I shall go where there is never a spirit to come, if I call ever so loudly. 'Perhaps I shall talk to you about Körner, but need not write. He charms me, and has become a fixed star in the heaven of my thought; but I understand all that he excites perfectly. I felt very '_new_ about Novalis,--"the good Novalis," as you call him after Mr. Carlyle. He is, indeed, _good_, most enlightened, yet most pure; every link of his experience framed--no, _beaten_--from the tried gold. 'I have read, thoroughly, only two of his pieces, "Die Lehrlinge zu Sais," and "Heinrich von Ofterdingen." From the former I have only brought away piecemeal impressions, but the plan and treatment of the latter, I believe, I understand. It describes the development of poetry in a mind; and with this several other developments are connected. I think I shall tell you all I know about it, some quiet time after your return, but if not, will certainly keep a Novalis-journal for you some favorable season, when I live regularly for a fort night.' * * * * * '_June_, 1833.--I return Lessing. I could hardly get through Miss Sampson. E. Galeotti is good in the same way as Minna. Well-conceived and sustained characters, interesting situations, but never that profound knowledge of human nature, those minute beauties, and delicate vivifying traits, which lead on so in the writings of some authors, who may be nameless. I think him easily followed; strong, but not deep.' * * * * * '_May_, 1833.--_Groton_.--I think you are wrong in applying your artistical ideas to occasional poetry. An epic, a drama, must have a fixed form in the mind of the poet from the first; and copious draughts of ambrosia quaffed in the heaven of thought, soft fanning gales and bright light from the outward world, give muscle and bloom,--that is, give life,--to this skeleton. But all occasional poems must be moods, and can a mood have a form fixed and perfect, more than a wave of the sea?' * * * * * 'Three or four afternoons I have passed very happily at my beloved haunt in the wood, reading Goethe's "Second Residence in Rome." Your pencil-marks show that you have been before me. I shut the book each time with an earnest desire to live as he did,--always to have some engrossing object of pursuit. I sympathize deeply with a mind in that state. While mine is being used up by ounces, I wish pailfuls might be poured into it. I am dejected and uneasy when I see no results from my daily existence, but I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.' * * * * * * * 'I think I am less happy, in many respects, than you, but particularly in this. You can speak freely to me of all your circumstances and feelings, can you not? It is not possible for me to be so profoundly frank with any earthly friend. Thus my heart has no proper home; it only can prefer some of its visiting-places to others; and with deep regret I realize that I have, at length, entered on the concentrating stage of life. It was not time. I had been too sadly cramped. I had not learned enough, and must always remain imperfect. Enough! I am glad I have been able to say so much.' * * * * * 'I have read nothing,--to signify,--except Goethe's "Campagne in Frankreich." Have you looked through it, and do you remember his intercourse with the Wertherian Plessing? That tale pained me exceedingly. We cry, "help, help," and there is no help--in man at least. How often I have thought, if I could see Goethe, and tell him my state of mind, he would support and guide me! He would be able to understand; he would show me how to rule circumstances, instead of being ruled by them; and, above all, he would not have been so sure that all would be for the best, without our making an effort to act out the oracles; he would have wished to see me what Nature intended. But his conduct to Plessing and Ohlenschlager shows that to him, also, an appeal would have been vain.' 'Do you really believe there is anything "all-comprehending" but religion? Are not these distinctions imaginary? Must not the philosophy of every mind, or set of minds, be a system suited to guide them, and give a home where they can bring materials among which to accept, reject, and shape at pleasure? Novalis calls those, who harbor these ideas, "unbelievers;" but hard names make no difference. He says with disdain, "To _such_, philosophy is only a system which will spare them the trouble of reflecting." Now this is just my case. I _do_ want a system which shall suffice to my character, and in whose applications I shall have faith. I do not wish to _reflect_ always, if reflecting must be always about one's identity, whether "_ich_" am the true "_ich_" &c. I wish to arrive at that point where I can trust myself, and leave off saying, "It seems to me," and boldly feel, It _is_ so TO ME. My character has got its natural regulator, my heart beats, my lips speak truth, I can walk alone, or offer my arm to a friend, or if I lean on another, it is not the debility of sickness, but only wayside weariness. This is the philosophy _I_ want; this much would satisfy _me_. 'Then Novalis says, "Philosophy is the art of discovering the place of truth in every encountered event and circumstance, to attune all relations to truth." 'Philosophy is peculiarly home-sickness; an over-mastering desire to be at home. 'I think so; but what is there _all-comprehending_; eternally-conscious, about that?' * * * * * '_Sept.,_ 1832.--"Not see the use of metaphysics?" A moderate portion, taken at stated intervals, I hold to be of much use as discipline of the faculties. I only object to them as having an absorbing and anti-productive tendency. But 'tis not always so; may not be so with you. Wait till you are two years older, before you decide that 'tis your vocation. Time enough at six-and-twenty to form yourself into a metaphysical philosopher. The brain does not easily get too dry for _that_. Happy you, in these ideas which give you a tendency to optimism. May you become a proselyte to that consoling faith. I shall never be able to follow you, but shall look after you with longing eyes.' * * * * * '_Groton._--Spring has come, and I shall see you soon. If I could pour into your mind all the ideas which have passed through mine, you would be well entertained, I think, for three or four days. But no hour will receive aught beyond its own appropriate wealth. 'I am at present engaged in surveying the level on which the public mind is poised. I no longer lie in wait for the tragedy and comedy of life; the rules of its _prose_ engage my attention. I talk incessantly with common-place people, full of curiosity to ascertain the process by which materials, apparently so jarring and incapable of classification, get united into that strange whole, the American public. I have read all Jefferson's letters, the North American, the daily papers, &c., without end. H. seems to be weaving his Kantisms into the American system in a tolerably happy manner.' * * * * * * * 'George Thompson has a voice of uncommon compass and beauty; never sharp in its highest, or rough and husky in its lowest, tones. A perfect enunciation, every syllable round and energetic; though his manner was the one I love best, very rapid, and full of eager climaxes. Earnestness in every part,--sometimes impassioned earnestness,--a sort of "Dear friends, believe, _pray_ believe, I love you, and you MUST believe as I do" expression, even in the argumentative parts. I felt, as I have so often done before, if I were a man, the gift I would choose should be that of eloquence. That power of forcing the vital currents of thousands of human hearts into ONE current, by the constraining power of that most delicate instrument, the voice, is so intense,--yes, I would prefer it to a more extensive fame, a more permanent influence.' 'Did I describe to you my feelings on hearing Mr. Everett's eulogy on Lafayette? No; I did not. That was exquisite. The old, hackneyed story; not a new anecdote, not a single reflection of any value; but the manner, the _manner_^ the delicate inflections of voice, the elegant and appropriate gesture, the sense of beauty produced by the whole, which thrilled us all to tears, flowing from a deeper and purer source than that which answers to pathos. This was fine; but I prefer the Thompson manner. Then there is Mr. Webster's, unlike either; simple grandeur, nobler, more impressive, less captivating. I have heard few fine speakers; I wish I could hear a thousand. Are you vexed by my keeping the six volumes of your Goethe? I read him very little either; I have so little time,--many things to do at home,--my three children, and three pupils besides, whom I instruct. 'By the way, I have always thought all that was said about the anti-religious tendency of a classical education to be old wives' tales. But their puzzles about Virgil's notions of heaven and virtue, and his gracefully-described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my opinions; and I suspect, from reminiscences of my own mental history, that if all governors do not think the same 't is from want of that intimate knowledge of their pupils' minds which I naturally possess. I really find it difficult to keep their _morale_ steady, and am inclined to think many of my own sceptical sufferings are traceable to this source. I well remember what reflections arose in my childish mind from a comparison of the Hebrew history, where every moral obliquity is shown out with such naïveté, and the Greek history, full of sparkling deeds and brilliant sayings, and their gods and goddesses, the types of beauty and power, with the dazzling veil of flowery language and poetical imagery cast over their vices and failings.' * * * * * 'My own favorite project, since I began seriously to entertain any of that sort, is six historical tragedies; of which I have the plans of three quite perfect. However, the attempts I have made on them have served to show me the vast difference between conception and execution. Yet I am, though abashed, not altogether discouraged. My next favorite plan is a series of tales illustrative of Hebrew history. The proper junctures have occurred to me during my late studies on the historical books of the Old Testament. This task, however, requires a thorough and imbuing knowledge of the Hebrew manners and spirit, with a chastened energy of imagination, which I am as yet far from possessing. But if I should be permitted peace and time to follow out my ideas, I have hopes. Perhaps it is a weakness to confide to you embryo designs, which never may glow into life, or mock me by their failure.' * * * * * 'I have long had a suspicion that no mind can systematize its knowledge, and carry on the concentrating processes, without some fixed opinion on the subject of metaphysics. But that indisposition, or even dread of the study, which you may remember, has kept me from meddling with it, till lately, in meditating on the life of Goethe, I thought I must get some idea of the history of philosophical opinion in Germany, that I might be able to judge of the influence it exercised upon his mind. I think I can comprehend him every other way, and probably interpret him satisfactorily to others,--if I can get the proper materials. When I was in Cambridge, I got Fichte and Jacobi; I was much interrupted, but some time and earnest thought I devoted. Fichte I could not understand at all; though the treatise which I read was one intended to be popular, and which he says must compel (_bezwingen_) to conviction. Jacobi I could understand in details, but not in system. It seemed to me that his mind must have been moulded by some other mind, with which I ought to be acquainted, in order to know him well,--perhaps Spinoza's. Since I came home, I have been consulting Buhle's and Tennemann's histories of philosophy, and dipping into Brown, Stewart, and that class of books.' * * * * * 'After I had cast the burden of my cares upon you, I rested, and read Petrarch for a day or two. But that could not last. I had begun to "take an account of stock," as Coleridge calls it, and was forced to proceed. He says few persons ever did this faithfully, without being dissatisfied with the result, and lowering their estimate of their supposed riches. With me it has ended in the most humiliating sense of poverty; and only just enough pride is left to keep your poor friend off the parish. As it is, I have already asked items of several besides yourself; but, though they have all given what they had, it has by no means answered my purpose; and I have laid their gifts aside, with my other hoards, which gleamed so fairy bright, and are now, in the hour of trial, turned into mere slate-stones. I am not sure that even if I do find the philosopher's stone, I shall be able to transmute them into the gold they looked so like formerly. It will be long before I can give a distinct, and at the same time concise, account of my present state. I believe it is a great era. I am thinking now,--really thinking, I believe; certainly it seems as if I had never done so before. If it does not kill me, something will come of it. Never was my mind so active; and the subjects are God, the universe, immortality. But shall I be fit for anything till I have absolutely re-educated myself? Am I, can I make myself, fit to write an account of half a century of the existence of one of the master-spirits of this world? It seems as if I had been very arrogant to dare to think it; yet will I not shrink back from what I have undertaken,--even by failure I shall learn much.' * * * * * 'I am shocked to perceive you think I am _writing_ the life of Goethe. No, indeed! I shall need a great deal of preparation before I shall have it clear in my head, I have taken a great many notes; but I shall not begin to write it, till it all lies mapped out before me. I have no materials for ten years of his life, from the time he went to Weimar, up to the Italian journey. Besides, I wish to see the books that have been written about him in Germany, by friend or foe. I wish to look at the matter from all sides. New lights are constantly dawning on me; and I think it possible I shall come out from the Carlyle view, and perhaps from yours, and distaste you, which will trouble me. * * 'How am I to get the information I want, unless I go to Europe? To whom shall I write to choose my materials? I have thought of Mr. Carlyle, but still more of Goethe's friend, Von Muller. I dare say he would be pleased at the idea of a life of G. written in this hemisphere, and be very willing to help me. If you have anything to tell me, you will, and not mince matters. Of course, my impressions of Goethe's works cannot be influenced by information I get about his _life_; but, as to this latter, I suspect I must have been hasty in my inferences. I apply to you without scruple. There are subjects on which men and women usually talk a great deal, but apart from one another. You, however, are well aware that I am very destitute of what is commonly _called_ modesty. With regard to this, how fine the remark of our present subject: "Courage and modesty are virtues which every sort of society reveres, because they are virtues which cannot be counterfeited; also, they are known by the _same hue_." When that blush does not come naturally to my face, I do not drop a veil to make people think it is there. All this may be very unlovely, but it is _I_.' CHANNING ON SLAVERY. 'This is a noble work. So refreshing its calm, benign atmosphere, after the pestilence-bringing gales of the day. It comes like a breath borne over some solemn sea which separates us from an island of righteousness. How valuable is it to have among us a man who, standing apart from the conflicts of the herd, watches the principles that are at work, with a truly paternal love for what is human, and may be permanent; ready at the proper point to give his casting-vote to the cause of Right! The author has amplified on the grounds of his faith, to a degree that might seem superfluous, if the question had not become so utterly bemazed and bedarkened of late. After all, it is probable that, in addressing the public at large, it is _not_ best to express a thought in as few words as possible; there is much classic authority for diffuseness.' RICHTER. _Groton_.--'Ritcher says, the childish heart vies in the height of its surges with the manly, only is not furnished with _lead_ for sounding them. 'How thoroughly am I converted to the love of Jean Paul, and wonder at the indolence or shallowness which could resist so long, and call his profuse riches want of system! What a mistake! System, plan, there is, but on so broad a basis that I did not at first comprehend it. In every page I am forced to pencil. I will make me a book, or, as he would say, bind me a bouquet from his pages, and wear it on my heart of hearts, and be ever refreshing my wearied inward sense with its exquisite fragrance. I must have improved, to love him as I do.' IV. CHARACTER.--AIMS AND IDEAS OF LIFE. "O friend, how flat and tasteless such a life! Impulse gives birth to impulse, deed to deed, Still toilsomely ascending step by step, Into an unknown realm of dark blue clouds. What crowns the ascent? Speak, or I go no further. I need a goal, an aim. I cannot toil, _Because the steps are here_ in their ascent Tell me THE END, or I sit still and weep." "NATURLICHE TOCHTER," _Translated by Margaret._ "And so he went onward, ever onward, for twenty-seven years--then, indeed, he had gone far enough." GOETHE'S _words concerning Schiller_ * * * * * I would say something of Margaret's inward condition, of her aims and views in life, while in Cambridge, before closing this chapter of her story. Her powers, whether of mind, heart, or will, have been sufficiently indicated in what has preceded. In the sketch of her friendships and of her studies, we have seen the affluence of her intellect, and the deep tenderness of her woman's nature. We have seen the energy which she displayed in study and labor. But to what _aim_ were these powers directed? Had she any clear view of the demands and opportunities of life, any definite plan, any high, pure purpose? This is, after all, the test question, which detects the low-born and low-minded wearer of the robe of gold,-- "Touch them inwardly, they smell of copper." Margaret's life _had an aim_, and she was, therefore, essentially a moral person, and not merely an overflowing genius, in whom "impulse gives birth to impulse, deed to deed." This aim was distinctly apprehended and steadily pursued by her from first to last. It was a high, noble one, wholly religious, almost Christian. It gave dignity to her whole career, and made it heroic. This aim, from first to last, was SELF-CULTURE. If she ever was ambitious of knowledge and talent, as a means of excelling others, and gaining fame, position, admiration,--this vanity had passed before I knew her, and was replaced by the profound desire for a full development of her whole nature, by means of a full experience of life. In her description of her own youth, she says, 'VERY EARLY I KNEW THAT THE ONLY OBJECT IN LIFE WAS TO GROW.' This is the passage:-- 'I was now in the hands of teachers, who had not, since they came on the earth, put to themselves one intelligent question as to their business here. Good dispositions and employment for the heart gave a tone to all they said, which was pleasing, and not perverting. They, no doubt, injured those who accepted the husks they proffered for bread, and believed that exercise of memory was study, and to know what others knew, was the object of study. But to me this was all penetrable. I had known great living minds.--I had seen how they took their food and did their exercise, and what their objects were. _Very early I knew that the only object in life was to grow_. I was often false to this knowledge, in idolatries of particular objects, or impatient longings for happiness, but I have never lost sight of it, have always been controlled by it, and this first gift of thought has never been superseded by a later love.' In this she spoke truth. The good and the evil which flow from this great idea of self-development she fully realized. This aim of life, originally self-chosen, was made much more clear to her mind by the study of Goethe, the great master of this school, in whose unequalled eloquence this doctrine acquires an almost irresistible beauty and charm. "Wholly religious, and almost Christian," I said, was this aim. It was religious, because it recognized something divine, infinite, imperishable in the human soul,--something divine in outward nature and providence, by which the soul is led along its appointed way. It was almost Christian in its superiority to all low, worldly, vulgar thoughts and cares; in its recognition of a high standard of duty, and a great destiny for man. In its strength, Margaret was enabled to do and bear, with patient fortitude, what would have crushed a soul not thus supported. Yet it is not the highest aim, for in all its forms, whether as personal improvement, the salvation of the soul, or ascetic religion, it has at its core a profound selfishness. Margaret's soul was too generous for any low form of selfishness. Too noble to become an Epicurean, too large-minded to become a modern ascetic, the defective nature of her rule of life, showed itself in her case, only in a certain supercilious tone toward "the vulgar herd," in the absence (at this period) of a tender humanity, and in an idolatrous hero-worship of genius and power. Afterward, too, she may have suffered from her desire for a universal human experience, and an unwillingness to see that we must often be content to enter the Kingdom, of Heaven halt and maimed,--that a perfect development here must often be wholly renounced. But how much better to pursue with devotion, like that of Margaret, an imperfect aim, than to worship with lip-service, as most persons do, even though it be in a loftier temple, and before a holier shrine! With Margaret, the doctrine of self-culture was a devotion to which she sacrificed all earthly hopes and joys,--everything but manifest duty. And so her course was "onward, ever onward," like that of Schiller, to her last hour of life. Burned in her cheek with ever deepening fire The spirit's YOUTH, which never passes by;-- The COURAGE which, though worlds in hate conspire, Conquers, at last, their dull hostility;-- The lofty FAITH, which, ever mounting higher, Now presses on, now waiteth patiently,-- With which the good tends ever to his goal, With which day finds, at last, the earnest soul. But this high idea which governed our friend's life, brought her into sharp conflicts, which constituted the pathos and tragedy of her existence,--first with her circumstances, which seemed so inadequate to the needs of her nature,--afterwards with duties to relatives and friends,--and, finally, with the law of the Great Spirit, whose will she found it so hard to acquiesce in. The circumstances in which Margaret lived appeared to her life a prison. She had no room for utterance, no sphere adequate; her powers were unemployed. With what eloquence she described this want of a field! Often have I listened with wonder and admiration, satisfied that she exaggerated the evil, and yet unable to combat her rapid statements. Could she have seen in how few years a way would open before her, by which she could emerge into an ample field,--how soon she would find troops of friends, fit society, literary occupation, and the opportunity of studying the great works of art in their own home,--she would have been spared many a sharp pang. Margaret, like every really earnest and deep nature, felt the necessity of a religious faith as the foundation of character. The first notice which I find of her views on this point is contained in the following letter to one of her youthful friends, when only nineteen:-- * * * * * 'I have hesitated much whether to tell you what you ask about my religion. You are mistaken! I have not formed an opinion. I have determined not to form settled opinions at present. Loving or feeble natures need a positive religion, a visible refuge, a protection, as much in the passionate season of youth as in those stages nearer to the grave. But mine is not such. My pride is superior to any feelings I have yet experienced: my affection is strong admiration, not the necessity of giving or receiving assistance or sympathy. When disappointed, I do not ask or wish consolation,--I wish to know and feel my pain, to investigate its nature and its source; I will not have my thoughts diverted, or my feelings soothed; 'tis therefore that my young life is so singularly barren of illusions. I know, I feel the time must come when this proud and impatient heart shall be stilled, and turn from the ardors of Search and Action, to lean on something above. But--shall I say it?--the thought of that calmer era is to me a thought of deepest sadness; so remote from my present being is that future existence, which still the mind may conceive. I believe in Eternal Progression. I believe in a God, a Beauty and Perfection to which I am to strive all my life for assimilation. From these two articles of belief, I draw the rules by which I strive to regulate my life. But, though I reverence all religions as necessary to the happiness of man, I am yet ignorant of the religion of Revelation. Tangible promises! well defined hopes! are things of which I do not _now_ feel the need. At present, my soul is intent on this life, and I think of religion as its rule; and, in my opinion, this is the natural and proper course from youth to age. What I have written is not hastily concocted, it has a meaning. I have given you, in this little space, the substance of many thoughts, the clues to many cherished opinions. 'Tis a subject on which I rarely speak. I never said so much but once before. I have here given you all I know, or think, on the most important of subjects--could you but read understandingly!' * * * * * I find, in her journals for 1833, the following passages, expressing the religious purity of her aspirations at that time:-- 'Blessed Father, nip every foolish wish in blossom. Lead me _any way_ to truth and goodness; but if it might be, I would not pass from idol to idol. Let no mean sculpture deform a mind disorderly, perhaps ill-furnished, but spacious and life-warm. Remember thy child, such as thou madest her, and let her understand her little troubles, when possible, oh, beautiful Deity!' * * * * * '_Sunday morning_.--Mr.--preached on the nature of our duties, social and personal. The sweet dew of truth penetrated my heart like balm. He pointed out the various means of improvement, whereby the humblest of us may be beneficent at last. How just, how nobly true,--how modestly, yet firmly uttered,--his opinions of man,--of time,--of God! 'My heart swelled with prayer. I began to feel hope that time and toil might strengthen me to despise the "vulgar parts of felicity," and live as becomes an immortal creature. I am sure, quite sure, that I am getting into the right road. Oh, lead me, my Father! root out false pride and selfishness from my heart; inspire me with virtuous energy, and enable me to improve every talent for the eternal good of myself and others.' A friend of Margaret, some years older than herself, gives me the following narrative:-- "I was," says she, in substance, "suffering keenly from a severe trial, and had secluded myself from all my friends, when Margaret, a girl of twenty, forced her way to me. She sat with me, and gave me her sympathy, and, with most affectionate interest, sought to draw me away from my gloom. As far as she was able, she gave me comfort. But as my thoughts were then much led to religious subjects, she sought to learn my religious experience, and listened to it with great interest. I told her how I had sat in darkness for two long years, waiting for the light, and in full faith that it would come; how I had kept my soul patient and quiet,--had surrendered self-will to God's will,--had watched and waited till at last His great mercy came in an infinite peace to my soul. Margaret was never weary of asking me concerning this state, and said, 'I would gladly give all my talents and knowledge for such an experience as this.' "Several years after," continues this friend, "I was travelling with her, and we sat, one lovely night, looking at the river, as it rolled beneath the yellow moonlight. We spoke again of God's light in the soul, and I said--'Margaret! has that light dawned on _your_ soul?' She answered, 'I think it has. But, oh! it is so glorious that I fear it will not be permanent, and so precious that I dare not speak of it, lest it should be gone.' "That was the whole of our conversation, and I did not speak to her again concerning it." * * * * * Before this time, however, during her residence at Cambridge, she seemed to reach the period of her existence in which she descended lowest into the depths of gloom. She felt keenly, at this time, the want of a home for her heart. Full of a profound tendency toward life, capable of an ardent love, her affections were thrown back on her heart, to become stagnant, and for a while to grow bitter there; Then it was that she felt how empty and worthless were all the attainments and triumphs of the mere intellect; then it was that "she went about to cause her heart to despair of all the labor she had taken under the sun." Had she not emerged from this valley of the shadow of death, and come on to a higher plane of conviction and hope, her life would have been a most painful tragedy. But, when we know how she passed on and up, ever higher and higher, to the mountain-top, leaving one by one these dark ravines and mist-shrouded valleys, and ascending to where a perpetual sunshine lay, above the region of clouds, and was able to overlook with eagle glance the widest panorama,--we can read, with sympathy indeed, but without pain, the following extracts from a journal:-- 'It was Thanksgiving day, (Nov., 1831,) and I was obliged to go to church, or exceedingly displease my father. I almost always suffered much in church from a feeling of disunion with the hearers and dissent from the preacher; but to-day, more than ever before, the services jarred upon me from their grateful and joyful tone. I was wearied out with mental conflicts, and in a mood of most childish, child-like sadness. I felt within myself great power, and generosity, and tenderness; but it seemed to me as if they were all unrecognized, and as if it was impossible that they should be used in life. I was only one-and-twenty; the past was worthless, the future hopeless; yet I could not remember ever voluntarily to have done a wrong thing, and my aspiration seemed very high. I looked round the church, and envied all the little children; for I supposed they had parents who protected them, so that they could never know this strange anguish, this dread uncertainty. I knew not, then, that none could have any father but God. I knew not, that I was not the only lonely one, that I was not the selected Oedipus, the special victim of an iron law. I was in haste for all to be over, that I might get into the free air. * * 'I walked away over the fields as fast as I could walk. This was my custom at that time, when I could no longer bear the weight of my feelings, and fix my attention on any pursuit; for I do believe I never voluntarily gave way to these thoughts one moment. The force I exerted I think, even now, greater than I ever knew in any other character. But when I could bear myself no longer, I walked many hours, till the anguish was wearied out, and I returned in a state of prayer. To-day all seemed to have reached its height. It seemed as if I could never return to a world in which I had no place,--to the mockery of humanities. I could not act a part, nor seem to live any longer. It was a sad and sallow day of the late autumn. Slow processions of sad clouds were passing over a cold blue sky; the hues of earth were dull, and gray, and brown, with sickly struggles of late green here and there; sometimes a moaning gust of wind drove late, reluctant leaves across the path;--there was no life else. In the sweetness of my present peace, such days seem to me made to tell man the worst of his lot; but still that November wind can bring a chill of memory. 'I paused beside a little stream, which I had envied in the merry fulness of its spring life. It was shrunken, voiceless, choked with withered leaves. I marvelled that it did not quite lose itself in the earth. There was no stay for me, and I went on and on, till I came to where the trees were thick about a little pool, dark and silent. I sat down there. I did not think; all was dark, and cold, and still. Suddenly the sun shone out with that transparent sweetness, like the last smile of a dying lover, which it will use when it has been unkind all a cold autumn day. And, even then, passed into my thought a beam from its true sun, from its native sphere, which has never since departed from me. I remembered how, a little child. I had stopped myself one day on the stairs, and asked, how came I here? How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller? What does it mean? What shall I do about it? I remembered all the times and ways in which the same thought had returned. I saw how long it must be before the soul can learn to act under these limitations of time and space, and human nature; but I saw, also, that it MUST do it,--that it must make all this false true,--and sow new and immortal plants in the garden of God, before it could return again. I saw there was no self; that selfishness was all folly, and the result of circumstance; that it was only because I thought self real that I suffered; that I had only to live in the idea of the ALL, and all was mine. This truth came to me, and I received it unhesitatingly; so that I was for that hour taken up into God. In that true ray most of the relations of earth seemed mere films, phenomena. * * 'My earthly pain at not being recognized never went deep after this hour. I had passed the extreme of passionate sorrow; and all check, all failure, all ignorance, have seemed temporary ever since. When I consider that this will be nine years ago next November, I am astonished that I have not gone on faster since; that I am not yet sufficiently purified to be taken back to God. Still, I did but touch then on the only haven of Insight. You know what I would say. I was dwelling in the ineffable, the unutterable. But the sun of earth set, and it grew dark around; the moment came for me to go. I had never been accustomed to walk alone at night, for my father was very strict on that subject, but now I had not one fear. When I came back, the moon was riding clear above the houses. I went into the churchyard, and there offered a prayer as holy, if not as deeply true, as any I know now; a prayer, which perhaps took form as the guardian angel of my life. If that word in the Bible, Selah, means what gray-headed old men think it does, when they read aloud, it should be written here,--Selah! 'Since that day, I have never more been completely engaged in self; but the statue has been emerging, though slowly, from the block. Others may not see the promise even of its pure symmetry, but I do, and am learning to be patient. I shall be all human yet; and then the hour will come to leave humanity, and live always in the pure ray. 'This first day I was taken up; but the second time the Holy Ghost descended like a dove. I went out again for a day, but this time it was spring. I walked in the fields of Groton. But I will not describe that day; its music still sounds too sweetly near. Suffice it to say, I gave it all into our Father's hands, and was no stern-weaving Fate more, but one elected to obey, and love, and at last know. Since then I have suffered, as I must suffer again, till all the complex be made simple, but I have never been in discord with the grand harmony.' GROTON AND PROVIDENCE. LETTERS AND JOURNALS. * * * * * "What hath not man sought out and found, But his dear God? Who yet his glorious love Embosoms in us, mellowing the ground With showers, and frosts, with love and awe." HERBERT. "No one need pride himself upon Genius, for it is the free-gift of God; but of honest Industry and true devotion to his destiny any man may well be proud; indeed, this thorough, integrity of purpose is itself the Divine Idea in its most common form, and no really honest mind is without communion with God" FICHTE. "God did anoint thee with his odorous oil, To wrestle, not to reign; and he assigns All thy tears over, like pure crystallines, For younger fellow-workers of the soil To wear for amulets. So others shall Take patience, labor, to their hearts and hands, From thy hands, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer, And God's grace fructify through thee to all." ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. "While I was restless, nothing satisfied, Distrustful, most perplexed--yet felt somehow A mighty power was brooding, taking shape Within me; and this lasted till one night When, as I sat revolving it and more, A still voice from without said,--'Seest thou not, Desponding child, whence came defeat and loss? Even from thy strength.'" BROWNING. III. GROTON AND PROVIDENCE. * * * * * 'Heaven's discipline has been invariable to me. The seemingly most pure and noble hopes have been blighted; the seemingly most promising connections broken. The lesson has been endlessly repeated: "Be humble, patient, self-sustaining; hope only for occasional aids; love others, but not engrossingly, for by being much alone your appointed task can best be done!" What a weary work is before me, ere that lesson shall be fully learned! Who shall wonder at the stiff-necked, and rebellious folly of young Israel, bowing down to a brute image, though the prophet was bringing messages from the holy mountain, while one's own youth is so obstinately idolatrous! Yet will I try to keep the heart with diligence, nor ever fear that the sun is gone out because I shiver in the cold and dark!' Such was the tone of resignation in which Margaret wrote from Groton, Massachusetts, whither, much to her regret, her father removed in the spring of 1833. Extracts from letters and journals will show how stern was her schooling there, and yet how constant was her faith, that "God keeps a niche In heaven to hold our idols! And albeit He breaks them to our faces, and denies That our close kisses should impair their white, I know we shall behold them raised, complete, The dust shook from their beauty,--glorified, New Memnons singing in the great God-light." SAD WELCOME HOME. '_Groton, April_ 25, 1833.--I came hither, summoned by the intelligence, that our poor--had met with a terrible accident. I found the dear child,--who had left me so full of joy and eagerness, that I thought with a sigh, not of envy, how happy he, at least, would be here,--burning with fever. He had expected me impatiently, and was very faint lest it should not be "Margaret" who had driven up. I confess I greeted our new home with a flood of bitter tears. He behaves with great patience, sweetness, and care for the comfort of others. This has been a severe trial for mother, fatigued, too, as she was, and full of care; but her conduct is angelic. I try to find consolation in all kinds of arguments, and to distract my thoughts till the precise amount of injury is surely known. I am not idle a moment. When not-with--, in whose room I sit, sewing, and waiting upon him, or reading aloud a great part of the day, I solace my soul with Goethe, and follow his guidance into realms of the "Wahren, Guten, and Schönen."' OCCUPATIONS. '_May_, 1833.--As to German, I have done less than I hoped, so much had the time been necessarily broken up. I have with me the works of Goethe which I have not yet read, and am now engaged upon "Kunst and Alterthum," and "Campagne in Frankreich." I still prefer Goethe to any one, and, as I proceed, find more and more to learn, and am made to feel that my general notion of his mind is most imperfect, and needs testing and sifting. 'I brought your beloved Jean Paul with me, too. I cannot yet judge well, but think we shall not be intimate. His infinitely variegated, and certainly most exquisitely colored, web fatigues attention. I prefer, too, wit to humor, and daring imagination to the richest fancy. Besides, his philosophy and religion seem to be of the sighing sort, and, having some tendency that way myself, I want opposing force in a favorite author. Perhaps I have spoken unadvisedly; if so, I shall recant on further knowledge.' And thus recant she did, when familiar acquaintance with the genial and sagacious humorist had won for him her reverent love. RICHTER. 'Poet of Nature! Gentlest of the wise, Most airy of the fanciful, most keen Of satirists!--thy thoughts, like butterflies, Still near the sweetest scented flowers have been With Titian's colors thou canst sunset paint, With Raphael's dignity, celestial love; With Hogarth's pencil, each deceit and feint Of meanness and hypocrisy reprove; Canst to devotion's highest flight sublime Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art, Dissolve, in purifying tears, the heart, Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime; The fond illusions of the youth and maid, At which so many world-formed sages sneer, When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed, Our natural religion must appear. All things in thee tend to one polar star, Magnetic all thy influences are!' 'Some murmur at the "want of system" in Richter's writings. 'A labyrinth! a flowery wilderness! Some in thy "slip-boxes" and "honey-moons" Complain of--_want of order_, I confess, But not of _system_ in its highest sense. Who asks a guiding clue through this wide mind, In love of Nature such will surely find. In tropic climes, live like the tropic bird, Whene'er a spice-fraught grove may tempt thy stay; Nor be by cares of colder climes disturbed-- No frost the summer's bloom shall drive away; Nature's wide temple and the azure dome Have plan enough, for the free spirit's home!' 'Your Schiller has already given me great pleasure. I have been reading the "Revolt in the Netherlands" with intense interest, and have reflected much upon it. The volumes are numbered in my little book-case, and as the eye runs over them, I thank the friendly heart that put all this genius and passion within my power. 'I am glad, too, that you thought of lending me "Bigelow's Elements." I have studied the Architecture attentively, till I feel quite mistress of it all. But I want more engravings, Vitruvius, Magna Græcia, the Ionian Antiquities, &c. Meanwhile, I have got out all our tours in Italy. Forsyth, a book I always loved much, I have re-read with increased pleasure, by this new light. Goethe, too, studied architecture while in Italy; so his books are full of interesting information; and Madame De Stael, though not deep, is tasteful.' * * * * * 'American History! Seriously, my mind is regenerating as to my country, for I am beginning to appreciate the United States and its great men. The violent antipathies,--the result of an exaggerated love for, shall I call it by so big a name as the "poetry of being?"--and the natural distrust arising from being forced to hear the conversation of half-bred men, all whose petty feelings were roused to awkward life by the paltry game of local politics,--are yielding to reason and calmer knowledge. Had I but been educated in the knowledge of such men as Jefferson, Franklin, Rush! I have learned now to know them partially. And I rejoice, if only because my father and I can have so much in common on this topic. All my other pursuits have led me away from him; here he has much information and ripe judgment. But, better still, I hope to feel no more that sometimes despairing, sometimes insolently contemptuous, feeling of incongeniality with my time and place. Who knows but some proper and attainable object of pursuit may present itself to the cleared eye? At any rate, wisdom is good, if it brings neither bliss nor glory.' * * * * * _March_, 1834.--Four pupils are a serious and fatiguing charge for one of my somewhat ardent and impatient disposition. Five days in the week I have given daily lessons in three languages, in Geography and History, besides many other exercises on alternate days. This has consumed often eight, always five hours of my day. There has been, also, a great deal of needle-work to do, which is now nearly finished, so that I shall not be obliged to pass my time about it when everything looks beautiful, as I did last summer. We have had very poor servants, and, for some time past, only one. My mother has been often ill. My grandmother, who passed the winter with us, has been ill. Thus, you may imagine, as I am the only grown-up daughter, that my time has been considerably taxed. 'But as, sad or merry, I must always be learning, I laid down a course of study at the beginning of winter, comprising certain subjects, about which I had always felt deficient. These were the History and Geography of modern Europe, beginning the former in the fourteenth century; the Elements of Architecture; the works of Alfieri, with his opinions on them; the historical and critical works of Goethe and Schiller, and the outlines of history of our own country. 'I chose this time as one when I should have nothing to distract or dissipate my mind. I have nearly completed this course, in the style I proposed,--not minute or thorough. I confess,--though I have had only three evenings in the week, and chance hours in the day, for it. I am very glad I have undertaken it, and feel the good effects already. Occasionally, I try my hand at composition, but have not completed anything to my own satisfaction. I have sketched a number of plans, but if ever accomplished, it must be in a season of more joyful energy, when my mind has been renovated, and refreshed by change of scene or circumstance. My translation of Tasso cannot be published at present, if 'it ever is.' * * * * * 'My object is to examine thoroughly, as far as my time and abilities will permit, the evidences of the Christian Religion. I have endeavored to get rid of this task as much and as long as possible; to be content with superficial notions, and, if I may so express it, to adopt religion as a matter of taste. But I meet with infidels very often; two or three of my particular friends are deists; and their arguments, with distressing sceptical notions of my own, are haunting me forever. I must satisfy myself; and having once begun, I shall go on as far as I can. 'My mind often swells with thoughts on these subjects, which I long to pour out on some person of superior calmness and strength, and fortunate in more accurate knowledge. I should feel such a quieting reaction. But, generally, it seems best that I should go through these conflicts alone. The process will be slower, more irksome, more distressing, but the results will be my own, and I shall feel greater confidence in them.' MISS MARTINEAU. In the summer of 1835, Margaret found a fresh stimulus to self-culture in the society of Miss Martineau, whom she met while on a visit at Cambridge, in the house of her friend, Mrs. Farrar. How animating this intercourse then was to her, appears from her journals. Miss Martineau received me so kindly as to banish all embarrassment at once. We had some talk about "Carlyleism," and I was not quite satisfied with the ground she took, but there was no opportunity for full discussion. I wished to give myself wholly up to receive an impression of her. What shrewdness in detecting various shades of character! Yet, what she said of Hannah More and Miss Edgeworth, grated upon my feelings.' Again, later:-- 'I cannot conceive how we chanced upon the subject of our conversation, but never shall I forget what she said. It has bound me to her. In that hour, most unexpectedly to me, we passed the barrier that separates acquaintance from friendship, and I saw how greatly her heart is to be valued.' And again:-- 'We sat together close to the pulpit. I was deeply moved by Mr.--'s manner of praying for "our friends," and I put up this prayer for my companion, which I recorded, as it rose in my heart: "Author of good, Source of all beauty and holiness, thanks to Thee for the purifying, elevating communion that I have enjoyed with this beloved and revered being. Grant, that the thoughts she has awakened, and the bright image of her existence, may live in my memory, inciting my earth-bound spirit to higher words and deeds. May her path be guarded and blessed. May her noble mind be kept firmly poised in its native truth, unsullied by prejudice or error, and strong to resist whatever outwardly or inwardly shall war against its high vocation. May each day bring to this generous seeker new riches of true philosophy and of Divine Love. And, amidst all trials, give her to know and feel that Thou, the All-sufficing, art with her, leading her on through eternity to likeness of Thyself." * * * * * 'I sigh for an intellectual guide. Nothing but the sense of what God has done for me, in bringing me nearer to himself, saves me from despair. With what envy I looked at Flaxman's picture of Hesiod sitting at the feet of the Muse! How blest would it be to be thus instructed in one's vocation! Anything would I do and suffer, to be sure that, when leaving earth, I should not be haunted with recollections of "aims unreached, occasions lost." I have hoped some friend would do,--what none has ever yet done,--comprehend me wholly, mentally, and morally, and enable me better to comprehend myself. I have had some hope that Miss Martineau might be this friend, but cannot yet tell. She has what I want,--vigorous reasoning powers, invention, clear views of her objects,--and she has been trained to the best means of execution. Add to this, that there are no strong intellectual sympathies between us, such as would blind her to my defects.' * * * * * 'A delightful letter from Miss Martineau. I mused long upon the noble courage with which she stepped forward into life, and the accurate judgment with which she has become acquainted with its practical details, without letting her fine imagination become tamed. I shall be cheered and sustained, amidst all fretting and uncongenial circumstances, by remembrance of her earnest love of truth and ardent faith.' ILLNESS 'A terrible feeling in my head, but kept about my usual avocations. Read Ugo Foscolo's Sepolcri, and Pindemonti's answer, but could not relish either, so distressing was the weight on the top of the brain; sewed awhile, and then went out to get warm, but could not, though I walked to the very end of Hazel-grove, and the sun was hot upon me. Sat down, and, though seemingly able to think with only the lower part of my head, meditated literary plans, with full hope that, if I could command leisure, I might do something good. It seemed as if I should never reach home, as I was obliged to sit down incessantly. 'For nine long days and nights, without intermission, all was agony,--fever and dreadful pain in my head. Mother tended me like an angel all that time, scarcely ever leaving me, night or day. My father, too, habitually so sparing in tokens of affection, was led by his anxiety to express what he felt towards me in stronger terms than he had ever used in the whole course of my life. He thought I might not recover, and one morning, coming into my room, after a few moments' conversation, he said: "My dear, I have been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you have any _faults_. You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do not know that you have a single fault." These words,--so strange from him, who had scarce ever in my presence praised me, and who, as I knew, abstained from praise as hurtful to his children,--affected me to tears at the time, although I could not foresee how dear and consolatory this extravagant expression of regard would very soon become. The family were deeply moved by the fervency of his prayer of thanksgiving, on the Sunday morning when I was somewhat recovered; and to mother he said, "I have no room for a painful thought now that our daughter is restored." 'For myself, I thought I should die; but I was calm, and looked to God without fear. When I remembered how much struggle awaited me if I remained, and how improbable it was that any of my cherished plans would bear fruit, I felt willing to go. But Providence did not so will it. A much darker dispensation for our family was in store.' DEATH OF HER FATHER. 'On the evening of the 30th of September, 1835, my father was seized with cholera, and on the 2d of October, was a corpse. For the first two days, my grief, under this calamity, was such as I dare not speak of. But since my father's head is laid in the dust, I feel an awful calm, and am becoming familiar with the thoughts of being an orphan. I have prayed to God that duty may now be the first object, and self set aside. May I have light and strength to do what is right, in the highest sense, for my mother, brothers, and sister. * * 'It has been a gloomy week, indeed. The children have all been ill, and dearest mother is overpowered with sorrow, fatigue, and anxiety. I suppose she must be ill too, when the children recover. I shall endeavor to keep my mind steady, by remembering that there is a God, and that grief is but for a season. Grant, oh Father, that neither the joys nor sorrows of this past year shall have visited my heart in vain! Make me wise and strong for the performance of immediate duties, and ripen me, by what means Thou seest best, for those which lie beyond. 'My father's image follows me constantly. Whenever I am in my room, he seems to open the door, and to look on me with a complacent, tender smile. What would I not give to have it in my power, to make that heart once more beat with joy! The saddest feeling is the remembrance of little things, in which I have fallen short of love and duty. I never sympathized in his liking for this farm, and secretly wondered how a mind which had, for thirty years, been so widely engaged in the affairs of men, could care so much for trees and crops. But now, amidst the beautiful autumn days, I walk over the grounds, and look with painful emotions at every little improvement. He had selected a spot to place a seat where I might go to read alone, and had asked me to visit it. I contented myself with "When you please, father;" but we never went! What would I not now give, if I had fixed a time, and shown more interest! A day or two since, I went there. The tops of the distant blue hills were veiled in delicate autumn haze; soft silence brooded over the landscape; on one side, a brook gave to the gently sloping meadow spring-like verdure; on the other, a grove,--which he had named for me,--lay softly glowing in the gorgeous hues of October. It was very sad. May this sorrow give me a higher sense of duty in the relationships which remain. 'Dearest mother is worn to a shadow. Sometimes, when I look on her pale face, and think of all her grief, and the cares and anxieties which now beset her, I am appalled by the thought that she may not continue with us long. Nothing sustains me now but the thought that God, who saw fit to restore me to life when I was so very willing to leave it,--more so, perhaps than I shall ever be again,--must have some good work for me to do.' * * * * * '_Nov. 3, 1835_.--I thought I should be able to write ere now, how our affairs were settled, but that time has not come yet. My father left no will, and, in consequence, our path is hedged in by many petty difficulties. He has left less property than we had anticipated, for he was not fortunate in his investments in real estate. There will, however, be enough to maintain my mother, and educate the children decently. I have often had reason to regret being of the softer sex, and never more than now. If I were an eldest son, I could be guardian to my brothers and sister, administer the estate, and really become the head of my family. As it is, I am very ignorant of the management and value of property, and of practical details. I always hated the din of such affairs, and hoped to find a life-long refuge from them in the serene world of literature and the arts. But I am now full of desire to learn them, that I may be able to advise and act, where it is necessary. The same mind which has made other attainments, can, in time, compass these, however uncongenial to its nature and habits.' * * * * * 'I shall be obliged to give up selfishness in the end. May God enable me to see the way clear, and not to let down the intellectual, in raising the moral tone of my mind. Difficulties and duties became distinct the very night after my father's death, and a solemn prayer was offered then, that I might combine what is due to others with what is due to myself. The spirit of that prayer I shall constantly endeavor to maintain. What ought to be done for a few months to come is plain, and, as I proceed, the view will open.' TRIAL. The death of her father brought in its train a disappointment as keen as Margaret could well have been called on to bear. For two years and more she had been buoyed up to intense effort by the promise of a visit to Europe, for the end of completing her culture. And as the means of equitably remunerating her parents for the cost of such a tour, she had faithfully devoted herself to the teaching of the younger members of the family. Her honored friends, Professor and Mrs. Farrar, who were about visiting the Old World, had invited her to be their companion; and, as Miss Martineau was to return to England in the ship with them, the prospect before her was as brilliant with generous hopes as her aspiring imagination could conceive. But now, in her journal of January 1, 1836, she writes:-- 'The New-year opens upon me under circumstances inexpressibly sad. I must make the last great sacrifice, and, apparently, for evil to me and mine. Life, as I look forward, presents a scene of struggle and privation only. Yet "I bate not a jot of heart," though much "of hope." My difficulties are not to be compared with those over which many strong souls have triumphed. Shall I then despair? If I do, I am not a strong soul.' Margaret's family treated her, in this exigency, with the grateful consideration due to her love, and urgently besought her to take the necessary means, and fulfil her father's plan. But she could not make up her mind to forsake them, preferring rather to abandon her long-cherished literary designs. Her struggles and her triumph thus appear in her letters:-- '_January 30, 1836_.--I was a great deal with Miss Martineau, while in Cambridge, and love her more than ever. She is to stay till August, and go to England with Mr. and Mrs. Farrar. If I should accompany them I shall be with her while in London, and see the best literary society. If I should go, you will be with mother the while, will not you?[A] Oh, dear E----, you know not how I fear and tremble to come to a decision. My temporal all seems hanging upon it, and the prospect is most alluring. A few thousand dollars would make all so easy, so safe. As it is, I cannot tell what is coming to us, for the estate will not be settled when I go. I pray to God ceaselessly that I may decide wisely.' * * * * * '_April 17th, 1836_.--If I am not to go with you I shall be obliged to tear my heart, by a violent effort, from its present objects and natural desires. But I shall feel the necessity, and will do it if the life-blood follows through the rent. Probably, I shall not even think it best to correspond with you at all while you are in Europe. Meanwhile, let us be friends indeed. The generous and unfailing love which you have shown me during these three years, when I could be so little to you, your indulgence for my errors and fluctuations, your steady faith in my intentions, have done more to shield and sustain me than any other earthly influence. If I must now learn to dispense with feeling them constantly near me, at least their remembrance can never, never be less dear. I suppose I ought, instead of grieving that we are soon to be separated, now to feel grateful for an intimacy of extraordinary permanence, and certainly of unstained truth and perfect freedom on both sides. 'As to my feelings, I take no pleasure in speaking of them; but I know not that I could give you a truer impression of them, than by these lines which I translate from the German of Uhland. They are entitled "JUSTIFICATION." "Our youthful fancies, idly fired, The fairest visions would embrace; These, with impetuous tears desired, Float upward into starry space; Heaven, upon the suppliant wild, Smiles down a gracious _No_!--In vain The strife! Yet be consoled, poor child, For the wish passes with the pain. But when from such idolatry The heart has turned, and wiser grown, In earnestness and purity Would make a nobler plan its own,-- Yet, after all its zeal and care, Must of its chosen aim despair,-- Some bitter tears may be forgiven By _Man_, at least,--_we trust, by Heaven_."' [Footnote A: Her eldest brother.] BIRTH-DAY. '_May 23d, 1836_.--I have just been reading Goethe's Lebensregel. It is easy to say "Do not trouble yourself with useless regrets for the past; enjoy the present, and leave the future to God." But it is _not_ easy for characters, which are by nature neither _calm_ nor _careless_, to act upon these rules. I am rather of the opinion of Novalis, that "Wer sich der hochsten Lieb ergeben Genest von ihnen Wunden nie." 'But I will endeavor to profit by the instructions of the great philosopher who teaches, I think, what Christ did, to use without overvaluing the world. 'Circumstances have decided that I must not go to Europe, and shut upon me the door, as I think, forever, to the scenes I could have loved. Let me now try to forget myself, and act for others' sakes. What I can do with my pen, I know not. At present, I feel no confidence or hope. The expectations so many have been led to cherish by my conversational powers, I am disposed to deem ill-founded. I do not think I can produce a valuable work. I do not feel in my bosom that confidence necessary to sustain me in such undertakings,--the confidence of genius. But I am now but just recovered from bodily illness, and still heart-broken by sorrow and disappointment. I may be renewed again, and feel differently. If I do not soon, I will make up my mind to teach. I can thus get money, which I will use for the benefit of my dear, gentle, suffering mother,--my brothers and sister. This will be the greatest consolation to me, at all events.' DEATH IN LIFE. 'The moon tempted me out, and I set forth for a house at no great distance. The beloved south-west was blowing; the heavens were flooded with light, which could not diminish the tremulously pure radiance of the evening star; the air was full of spring sounds, and sweet spring odors came up from the earth. I felt that happy sort of feeling, as if the soul's pinions were budding. My mind was full of poetic thoughts, and nature's song of promise was chanting in my heart. 'But what a change when I entered that human dwelling! I will try to give you an impression of what you, I fancy, have never come in contact with. The little room--they have but one--contains a bed, a table, and some old chairs. A single stick of wood burns in the fire-place. It is not needed now, but those who sit near it have long ceased to know what spring is. They are all frost. Everything is old and faded, but at the same time as clean and carefully mended as possible. For all they know of pleasure is to get strength to sweep those few boards, and mend those old spreads and curtains. That sort of self-respect they have, and it is all of pride their many years of poor-tith has left them. 'And there they sit,--mother and daughter! In the mother, ninety years have quenched every thought and every feeling, except an imbecile interest about her daughter, and the sort of self-respect I just spoke of. Husband, sons, strength, health, house and lands, all are gone. And yet these losses have not had power to bow that palsied head to the grave. Morning by morning she rises without a hope, night by night she lies down vacant or apathetic; and the utmost use she can make of the day is to totter three or four times across the floor by the assistance of her staff. Yet, though we wonder that she is still permitted to cumber the ground, joyless and weary, "the tomb of her dead self," we look at this dry leaf, and think how green it once was, and how the birds sung to it in its summer day. 'But can we think of spring, or summer, or anything joyous or really life-like, when we look at the daughter?--that bloodless effigy of humanity, whose care is to eke out this miserable existence by means of the occasional doles of those who know how faithful and good a child she has been to that decrepit creature; who thinks herself happy if she can be well enough, by hours of patient toil, to perform those menial services which they both require; whose talk is of the price of pounds of sugar, and ounces of tea, and yards of flannel; whose only intellectual resource is hearing five or six verses of the Bible read every day,--"my poor head," she says, "cannot bear any more;" and whose only hope is the death to which she has been so slowly and wearily advancing, through many years like this. 'The saddest part is, that she does _not wish_ for death. She clings to this sordid existence. Her soul is now so habitually enwrapt in the meanest cares, that if she were to be lifted two or three steps upward, she would not know what to do with life; how, then, shall she soar to the celestial heights? Yet she ought; for she has ever been good, and her narrow and crushing duties have been performed with a self-sacrificing constancy, which I, for one, could never hope to equal. 'While I listened to her,--and I often think it good for me to listen to her patiently,--the expressions you used in your letter, about "drudgery," occurred to me. I remember the time when I, too, deified the "soul's impulses." It is a noble worship; but, if we do not aid it by a just though limited interpretation of what "Ought" means, it will degenerate into idolatry. For a time it was so with me, and I am not yet good enough to love the _Ought_. 'Then I came again into the open air, and saw those resplendent orbs moving so silently, and thought that they were perhaps tenanted, not only by beings in whom I can see the germ of a possible angel, but by myriads like this poor creature, in whom that germ is, so far as we can see, blighted entirely, I could not help saying, "O my Father! Thou, whom we are told art all Power, and also all Love, how canst Thou suffer such even transient specks on the transparence of Thy creation? These grub-like lives, undignified even by passion,--these life-long quenchings of the spark divine.--why dost Thou suffer them? Is not Thy paternal benevolence impatient till such films be dissipated?" 'Such questionings once had power to move my spirit deeply; now, they but shade my mind for an instant. I have faith in a glorious explanation, that shall make manifest perfect justice and perfect wisdom.' LITERATURE. Cut off from access to the scholars, libraries, lectures, galleries of art, museums of science, antiquities, and historic scenes of Europe, Margaret bent her powers to use such opportunities of culture as she could command in her solitary country-home. Journals and letters thus bear witness to her zeal:-- 'I am having one of my "intense" times, devouring book after book. I never stop a minute, except to talk with mother, having laid all little duties on the shelf for a few days. Among other things, I have twice read through the life of Sir J. Mackintosh; and it has suggested so much to me, that I am very sorry I did not talk it over with you. It is quite gratifying, after my late chagrin, to find Sir James, with all his metaphysical turn, and ardent desire to penetrate it, puzzling so over the German philosophy, and particularly what I was myself troubled about, at Cambridge,--Jacobi's letters to Fichte. 'Few things have ever been written more discriminating or more beautiful than his strictures upon the Hindoo character, his portrait of Fox, and his second letter to Robert Hall, after his recovery from derangement. Do you remember what he says of the want of brilliancy in Priestley's moral sentiments? Those remarks, though slight, seem to me to show the quality of his mind more decidedly than anything in the book. That so much learning, benevolence, and almost unparalleled fairness of mind, should be in a great measure lost to the world, for want of earnestness of purpose, might impel us to attach to the latter attribute as much importance as does the wise uncle in Wilhelm Meister.' * * * * * 'As to what you say of Shelley, it is true that the unhappy influences of early education prevented his ever attaining clear views of God, life, and the soul. At thirty, he was still a seeker,--an experimentalist. But then his should not be compared with such a mind as ----'s, which, having no such exuberant fancy to tame, nor various faculties to develop, naturally comes to maturity sooner. Had Shelley lived twenty years longer, I have no doubt he would have become a fervent Christian, and thus have attained that mental harmony which was necessary to him. It is true, too, as you say, that we always feel a melancholy imperfection in what he writes. But I love to think of those other spheres in which so pure and rich a being shall be perfected; and I cannot allow his faults of opinion and sentiment to mar my enjoyment of the vast capabilities, and exquisite perception of beauty, displayed everywhere in his poems.' * * * * * '_March 17, 1836_.--I think Herschel will be very valuable to me, from the slight glance I have taken of it, and I thank Mr. F.; but do not let him expect anything of me because I have ventured on a book so profound as the Novum Organum. I have been examining myself with severity, intellectually as well as morally, and am shocked to find how vague and superficial is all my knowledge. I am no longer surprised that I should have appeared harsh and arrogant in my strictures to one who, having a better-disciplined mind, is more sensible of the difficulties in the way of really knowing and doing anything, and who, having more Wisdom, has more Reverence too. All that passed at your house will prove very useful to me; and I trust that I am approximating somewhat to that genuine humility which is so indispensable to true regeneration. But do not speak of this to--, for I am not yet sure of the state of my mind.' * * * * * '1836.--I have, for the time, laid aside _De Stael_ and _Bacon_, for _Martineau_ and _Southey_. I find, with delight, that the former has written on the very subjects I wished most to talk out with her, and probably I shall receive more from her in this way than by personal intercourse,--for I think more of her character when with her, and am stimulated through my affections. As to Southey, I am steeped to the lips in enjoyment. I am glad I did not know this poet earlier; for I am now just ready to receive his truly exalting influences in some degree. I think, in reading, I shall place him next to Wordsworth. I have finished Herschel, and really believe I am a little wiser. I have read, too, Heyne's letters twice, Sartor Resartus once, some of Goethe's late diaries, Coleridge's Literary Remains, and drank a great deal from Wordsworth. By the way, do you know his "Happy Warrior"? I find my insight of this sublime poet perpetually deepening.' * * * * * 'Mr. ---- says the Wanderjahre is "_wise._" It must be presumed so; and yet one is not satisfied. I was perfectly so with my manner of interpreting the Lehrjahre; but this sequel keeps jerking my clue, and threatens to break it. I do not know our Goethe yet. I have changed my opinion about his religious views many times. Sometimes I am tempted to think that it is only his wonderful knowledge of human nature which has excited in me such reverence for his philosophy, and that no worthy fabric has been elevated on this broad foundation. Yet often, when suspecting that I have found a huge gap, the next turning it appears that it was but an air-hole, and there is a brick all ready to stop it. On the whole, though my enthusiasm for the Goetherian philosophy is checked, my admiration for the genius of Goethe is in nowise lessened, and I stand in a sceptical attitude, ready to try his philosophy, and, if needs must, play the Eclectic.' 'Did I write that a kind-hearted neighbor, fearing I might be _dull_, sent to offer me the use of a _book-caseful_ of Souvenirs, Gems, and such-like glittering ware? I took a two or three year old "Token," and chanced on a story, called the "Gentle Boy," which I remembered to have heard was written by somebody in Salem. It is marked by so much grace and delicacy of feeling, that I am very desirous to know the author, whom I take to be a lady.' * * 'With regard to what you say about the American Monthly, my answer is, I would gladly sell some part of my mind for lucre, to get the command of time; but I will not sell my soul: that is, I am perfectly willing to take the trouble of writing for money to pay the seamstress; but I am _not_ willing to have what I write mutilated, or what I ought to say dictated to suit the public taste. You speak of my writing about Tieck. It is my earnest wish to interpret the German authors of whom I am most fond to such Americans as are ready to receive. Perhaps some might sneer at the notion of my becoming a teacher; but where I love so much, surely I might inspire others to love a little; and I think this kind of culture would be precisely the counterpoise required by the utilitarian tendencies of our day and place. My very imperfections may be of value. While enthusiasm is yet fresh, while I am still a novice, it may be more easy to communicate with those quite uninitiated, than when I shall have attained to a higher and calmer state of knowledge. I hope a periodical may arise, by and by, which may think me worthy to furnish a series of articles on German literature, giving room enough and perfect freedom to say what I please. In this case, I should wish to devote at least eight numbers to Tieck, and should use the Garden of Poesy, and my other translations. 'I have sometimes thought of translating his Little Red Riding Hood, for children. If it could be adorned with illustrations, like those in the "Story without an End," it would make a beautiful little book; but I do not know that this could be done in Boston. There is much meaning that children could not take in; but, as they would never discover this till able to receive the whole, the book corresponds exactly with my notions of what a child's book should be. 'I should like to begin the proposed series with a review of Heyne's letters on German Literature, which afford excellent opportunity for some preparatory hints. My plans are so undecided for several coming months, that I cannot yet tell whether I shall have the time and tranquillity needed to write out the whole course, though much tempted by the promise of perfect liberty. I could engage, however, to furnish at least two articles on Novalis and Körner. I trust you will be interested in my favorite Körner. Great is my love for both of them. But I wish to write something which shall not only _be_ free from exaggeration, but which shall _seem_ so, to those unacquainted with their works. 'I have so much reading to go through with this month, that I have but few hours for correspondents. I have already discussed five volumes in German, two in French, three in English, and not without thought and examination. 'Tell--that I read "Titan" by myself, in the afternoons and evenings of about three weeks. She need not be afraid to undertake it. Difficulties of detail may, perhaps, not be entirely conquered without a master or a good commentary, but she could enjoy all that is most valuable alone. I should be very unwilling to read it with a person of narrow or unrefined mind; for it is a noble work, and fit to raise a reader into that high serene of thought where pedants cannot enter.' FAREWELL TO GROTON. 'The place is beautiful, in its way, but its scenery is too tamely smiling and sleeping. My associations with it are most painful. There darkened round us the effects of my father's ill-judged exchange,--ill-judged, so far at least as regarded himself, mother, and me,--all violently rent from the habits of our former life, and cast upon toils for which we were unprepared: there my mother's health was impaired, and mine destroyed; there my father died; there were undergone the miserable perplexities of a family that has lost its head; there I passed through the conflicts needed to give up all which my heart had for years desired, and to tread a path for which I had no skill, and no-call, except that it must be trodden by some one, and I alone was ready. Wachuset and the Peterboro' hills are blended in my memory with hours of anguish as great as I am capable of suffering. I used to look at them towering to the sky, and feel that I, too, from birth, had longed to rise, and, though for the moment crushed, was not subdued. 'But if those beautiful hills, and wide, rich fields, saw this sad lore well learned, they also saw some precious lessons given in faith, fortitude, self-command, and unselfish love. There too, in solitude, the mind acquired more power of concentration, and discerned the beauty of strict method; there too, more than all, the heart was awakened to sympathize with the ignorant, to pity the vulgar, to hope for the seemingly worthless, and to commune with the Divine Spirit of Creation, which cannot err, which never sleeps, which will not permit evil to be permanent, nor its aim of beauty in the smallest particular eventually to fail.' WINTER IN BOSTON. In the autumn of 1836 Margaret went to Boston, with the two-fold design of teaching Latin and French in Mr. Alcott's school, which was then highly prosperous, and of forming classes of young ladies in French, German, and Italian. Her view of Mr. Alcott's plan of education was thus hinted in a journal, one day, after she had been talking with him, and trying to place herself in his mental position:-- _Mr. A._ 'O for the safe and natural way of Intuition! I cannot grope like a mole in the gloomy passages of experience. To the attentive spirit, the revelation contained in books is only so far valuable as it comments upon, and corresponds with, the universal revelation. Yet to me, a being social and sympathetic by natural impulse, though recluse and contemplative by training and philosophy, the character and life of Jesus have spoken more forcibly than any fact recorded in human history. This story of incarnate Love has given me the key to all mysteries, and showed me what path should be taken in returning to the Fountain of Spirit. Seeing that other redeemers have imperfectly fulfilled their tasks, I have sought a new way. They all, it seemed to me, had tried to influence the human being at too late a day, and had laid their plans too wide. They began with men; I will begin with babes. They began with the world; I will begin with the family. So I preach the Gospel of the Nineteenth Century.' _M_. 'But, preacher, you make _three_ mistakes. 'You do not understand the nature of Genius or creative power. 'You do not understand the reaction of matter on spirit. 'You are too impatient of the complex; and, not enjoying variety in unity, you become lost in abstractions, and cannot illustrate your principles.' On the other hand, Mr. Alcott's impressions of Margaret were thus noted in his diaries:-- "She is clearly a person given to the boldest speculation, and of liberal and varied acquirements. Not wanting in imaginative power, she has the rarest good sense and discretion. She adopts the Spiritual Philosophy, and has the subtlest perception of its bearings. She takes large and generous views of all subjects, and her disposition is singularly catholic. The blending of sentiment and of wisdom in her is most remarkable; and her taste is as fine as her prudence. I think her the most brilliant talker of the day. She has a quick and comprehensive wit, a firm command of her thoughts, and a speech to win the ear of the most cultivated." In her own classes Margaret was very successful, and thus in a letter sums up the results:-- 'I am still quite unwell, and all my pursuits and propensities have a tendency to make my head worse. It is but a bad head,--as bad as if I were a great man! I am not entitled to so bad a head by anything I have done; but I flatter myself it is very interesting to suffer so much, and a fair excuse for not writing pretty letters, and saying to my friends the good things I think about them. 'I was so desirous of doing all I could, that I took a great deal more upon myself than I was able to bear. Yet now that the twenty-five weeks of incessant toil are over, I rejoice in it all, and would not have done an iota less. I have fulfilled all my engagements faithfully; have acquired more power of attention, self-command, and fortitude; have acted in life as I thought I would in my lonely meditations; and have gained some knowledge of means. Above all,--blessed be the Father of our spirits!--my aims are the same as they were in the happiest flight of youthful fancy. I have learned too, at last, to rejoice in all past pain, and to see that my spirit has been judiciously tempered for its work. In future I may sorrow, but can I ever despair? 'The beginning of the winter was forlorn. I was always ill; and often thought I might not live, though the work was but just begun. The usual disappointments, too, were about me. Those from whom aid was expected failed, and others who aided did not understand my aims. Enthusiasm for the things loved best fled when I seemed to be buying and selling them. I could not get the proper point of view, and could not keep a healthful state of mind. Mysteriously a gulf seemed to have opened between me and most intimate friends, and for the first time for many years I was entirely, absolutely, alone. Finally, my own character and designs lost all romantic interest, and I felt vulgarized, profaned, forsaken,--though obliged to smile brightly and talk wisely all the while. But these clouds at length passed away. 'And now let me try to tell you what has been done. To one class I taught the German language, and thought it good success, when, at the end of three months, they could read twenty pages of German at a lesson, and very well. This class, of course, was not interesting, except in the way of observation and analysis of language. 'With more advanced pupils I read, in twenty-four weeks, Schiller's Don Carlos, Artists, and Song of the Bell, besides giving a sort of general lecture on Schiller; Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea, Goetz von Berlichingen, Iphigenia, first part of Faust,--three weeks of thorough study this, as valuable to me as to them,--and Clavigo,--thus comprehending samples of all his efforts in poetry, and bringing forward some of his prominent opinions; Lessing's Nathan, Minna, Emilia Galeotti; parts of Tieck's Phantasus, and nearly the whole first volume of Richter's Titan. 'With the Italian class, I read parts of Tasso, Petrarch--whom they came to almost adore,--Ariosto, Alfieri, and the whole hundred cantos of the Divina Commedia, with the aid of the fine Athenæum copy, Flaxman's designs, and all the best commentaries. This last piece of work was and will be truly valuable to myself. 'I had, besides, three private pupils, Mrs. ----, who became very attractive to me, ----, and little ----, who had not the use of his eyes. I taught him Latin orally, and read the History of England and Shakspeare's historical plays in connection. This lesson was given every day for ten weeks, and was very interesting, though very fatiguing. The labor in Mr. Alcott's school was also quite exhausting. I, however, loved the children, and had many valuable thoughts suggested, and Mr. A.'s society was much to me. 'As you may imagine, the Life of Goethe is not yet written; but I have studied and thought about it much. It grows in my mind with everything that does grow there. My friends in Europe have sent me the needed books on the subject, and I am now beginning to work in good earnest. It is very possible that the task may be taken from me by somebody in England, or that in doing it I may find myself incompetent; but I go on in hope, secure, at all events, that it will be the means of the highest culture.' In addition to other labors, Margaret translated, one evening every week, German authors into English, for the gratification of Dr. Channing; their chief reading being in De Wette and Herder. 'It was not very pleasant,' she writes, 'for Dr. C. takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable to us feminine people, with our habits of ducking, diving, or flying for truth. Doubtless, however, he makes better use of what he gets, and if his sympathies were livelier he would not view certain truths in so steady a light. But there is much more talking than reading; and I like talking with him. I do not feel that constraint which some persons complain of, but am perfectly free, though less called out than by other intellects of inferior power. I get too much food for thought from him, and am not bound to any tiresome formality of respect on account of his age and rank in the world of intellect. He seems desirous to meet even one young and obscure as myself on equal terms, and trusts to the elevation of his thoughts to keep him in his place.' She found higher satisfaction still in his preaching:-- 'A discourse from Dr. C. on the spirituality of man's nature. This was delightful! I came away in the most happy, hopeful, and heroic mood. The tone of the discourse was so dignified, his manner was so benignant and solemnly earnest, in his voice there was such a concentration of all his force, physical and moral, to give utterance to divine truth, that I felt purged as by fire. If some speakers feed intellect more, Dr. C. feeds the whole spirit. O for a more calm, more pervading faith in the divinity of my own nature! I am so far from being thoroughly tempered and seasoned, and am sometimes so presumptuous, at others so depressed. Why cannot I lay more to heart the text, "God is never in a hurry: let man be patient and confident"? PROVIDENCE. In the spring of 1837, Margaret received a very favorable offer to become a principal teacher in the Greene Street School, at Providence, R.I. 'The proposal is, that I shall teach the elder girls my favorite branches, for four hours a day,--choosing my own hours, and arranging the course,--for a thousand dollars a year, if, upon trial, I am well enough pleased to stay. This would be independence, and would enable me to do many slight services for my family. But, on the other hand, I am not sure that I shall like the situation, and am sanguine that, by perseverance, the plan of classes in Boston might be carried into full effect. Moreover, Mr. Ripley,--who is about publishing a series of works on Foreign Literature,--has invited me to prepare the "Life of Goethe," on very advantageous terms. This I should much prefer. Yet when the thousand petty difficulties which surround us are considered, it seems unwise to relinquish immediate independence.' She accepted, therefore, the offer which promised certain means of aiding her family, and reluctantly gave up the precarious, though congenial, literary project. SCHOOL EXPERIENCES. 'The new institution of which I am to be "Lady Superior" was dedicated last Saturday. People talk to me of the good I am to do; but the last fortnight has been so occupied in the task of arranging many scholars of various ages and unequal training, that I cannot yet realize this new era. * * 'The gulf is vast, wider than I could have conceived possible, between me and my pupils; but the sight of such deplorable ignorance, such absolute burial of the best powers, as I find in some instances, makes me comprehend, better than before, how such a man as Mr. Alcott could devote his life to renovate elementary education. I have pleasant feelings when I see that a new world has already been opened to them. * * 'Nothing of the vulgar feeling towards teachers, too often to be observed in schools, exists towards me. The pupils seem to reverence my tastes and opinions in all things; they are docile, decorous, and try hard to please; they are in awe of my displeasure, but delighted whenever permitted to associate with me on familiar terms. As I treat them like ladies, they are anxious to prove that they deserve to be so treated. * * 'There is room here for a great move in the cause of education, and if I could resolve on devoting five or six years to this school, a good work might, doubtless, be done. Plans are becoming complete in my mind, ways and means continually offer, and, so far as I have tried them, they succeed. I am left almost as much at liberty as if no other person was concerned. Some sixty scholars are more or less under my care, and many of them begin to walk in the new paths pointed out. General activity of mind, accuracy in processes, constant looking for principles, and search after the good and the beautiful, are the habits I strive to develop. * * 'I will write a short record of the last day at school. For a week past I have given the classes in philosophy, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral science, short lectures on the true objects of study, with advice as to their future course; and to-day, after recitation, I expressed my gratification that the minds of so many had been opened to the love of good and beauty. 'Then came the time for last words. First, I called into the recitation room the boys who had been under my care. They are nearly all interesting, and have showed a chivalric feeling in their treatment of me. People talk of women not being able to govern boys; but I have always found it a very easy task. He must be a coarse boy, indeed, who, when addressed in a resolute, yet gentle manner, by a lady, will not try to merit her esteem. These boys have always rivalled one another in respectful behavior. I spoke a few appropriate words to each, mentioning his peculiar errors and good deeds, mingling some advice with more love, which will, I hope, make it remembered. We took a sweet farewell. With the younger girls I had a similar interview.' 'Then I summoned the elder girls, who have been my especial charge. I reminded them of the ignorance in which some of them were found, and showed them how all my efforts had necessarily been directed to stimulating their minds,--leaving undone much which, under other circumstances, would have been deemed indispensable. I thanked them for the favorable opinion of my government which they had so generally expressed, but specified three instances in which I had been unjust. I thanked them, also, for the moral beauty of their conduct, bore witness that an appeal to conscience had never failed, and told them of my happiness in having the faith thus confirmed, that young persons can be best guided by addressing their highest nature. I declared my consciousness of having combined, not only in speech but in heart, tolerance and delicate regard for the convictions of their parents, with fidelity to my own, frankly uttered. I assured them of my true friendship, proved by my never having cajoled or caressed them into good. Every word of praise had been earned; all my influence over them was rooted in reality; I had never softened nor palliated their faults; I had appealed, not to their weakness, but to their strength; I had offered to them, always, the loftiest motives, and had made every other end subordinate to that of spiritual growth. With a heartfelt blessing, I dismissed them; but none stirred, and we all sat for some moments, weeping. Then I went round the circle and bade each, separately, farewell.' PERSONS. Margaret's Providence journals are made extremely piquant and entertaining, by her life-like portraiture of people and events; and every page attests the scrupulous justice with which she sought to penetrate through surfaces to reality, and, forgetting personal prejudices, to apply universally the test of truth. A few sketches of public characters may suffice to show with what sagacious, all-observing eyes, she looked about her. 'At the whig caucus, I heard TRISTAM BURGESS,--"The old bald Eagle!" His baldness increases the fine effect of his appearance, for it seems as if the locks had retreated, that the contour of his very strongly marked head might be revealed to every eye. His _personnel_, as well as I could see, was fitted to command respect rather than admiration. He is a venerable, not a beautiful old man. 'He is a rhetorician,--if I could judge from this sample; style in woven and somewhat ornate, matter frequently wrought up to a climax, manner rather declamatory, though strictly that of a gentleman and a scholar. One art in his oratory was, no doubt, very effective, before he lost force and distinctness of voice. I allude to his way,--after having reasoned a while, till he has reached the desired conclusion,--of leaning forward, with hands reposing but figure very earnest, and communicating, confidentially as it were, the result to the audience. The impression produced in former days, when those low, emphatic passages could be distinctly heard, must have been very strong. Yet there is too much apparent trickery in this, to bear frequent repetition. His manner is well adapted for argument, and for the expression either of satire or of chivalric sentiment.' * * * * * 'Mr. JOHN NEAL addressed my girls on the destiny and vocation of Woman in this country. He gave, truly, a _manly_ view, though not the view of common men, and it was pleasing to watch his countenance, where energy is animated by genius. He then spoke to the boys, in the most noble and liberal spirit, on the exercise of political rights. If there is one among them who has the germ of a truly independent man, too generous to become a party tool, and with soul enough to think, as well as feel, for himself, those words were not spoken in vain. He was warmed up into giving a sketch of his boyhood. It was an eloquent narrative, and is ineffaceably impressed on my memory, with every look and gesture of the speaker. What gave chief charm to this history was its fearless ingenuousness. It was delightful to note the impression produced by his magnetic genius and independent character. 'In the evening we had a long conversation upon Woman, Whigism, modern English Poets, Shakspeare,--and, in particular, Richard the Third,--about which we had actually a fight. Mr. Neal does not argue quite fairly, for he uses reason while it lasts, and then helps himself out with wit, sentiment and assertion. I should quarrel with his definitions upon almost every subject, but his fervid eloquence, brilliancy, endless resource, and ready tact, give him great advantage. There was a sort of exaggeration and coxcombry in his talk; but his lion-heart, and keen sense of the ludicrous, alike in himself as in others, redeem them. I should not like to have my motives scrutinized as he would scrutinize them, for I prefer rather to disclose them myself than to be found out; but I was dissatisfied in parting from this remarkable man before having seen him more thoroughly. * * * * * 'Mr. WHIPPLE addressed the meeting at length. His presence is not imposing, though his face is intellectual. It is difficult to look at him, for you cannot be taken prisoner by his eye, while, _en revanche_, he can look at you as long as he pleases; and, as usual, with one who can get the better of his auditors, he does not call out the best in them. His gestures are remarkably fine, free, graceful, and expressive. He has no natural advantages of voice,--for it is without compass, depth, sweetness,--and has none of the winning tones which reach the inmost soul, and none of the tones of passionate energy, which raise you out of your own world into the speaker's. But his modulation is smooth, measured, dignified, though occasionally injured by too elaborate a swell, and his enunciation is admirable. 'His theme was one which has been so thoroughly discussed that novelty was not to be looked for; but his method and arrangement were excellent, though parts were too much expanded, and the whole might well have been condensed. There were many felicitous popular hits. The humorous touches were skilful, and the illustrations on a broad scale good, though in single images he failed. Altogether, there was a pervading air of ease and mastery, which showed him fit to be a leader of the flock. Though not a man of the Webster class, he is among the first of the second class of men who apply their powers to practical purposes,--and that is saying much.' * * * * * 'I went to hear JOSEPH JOHN GURNEY, one of the most distinguished and influential, it is said, of the English Quakers. He is a thick-set, beetle-browed man, with a well-to-do-in-the-world air of pious stolidity. I was grievously disappointed; for Quakerism has at times looked lovely to me, and I had expected at least a spiritual exposition of its doctrines from the brother of Mrs. Fry. But his manner was as wooden as his matter, and had no merit but that of distinct elocution. His sermon was a tissue of texts, illy selected, and worse patched together, in proof of the assertion that a belief in the Trinity is the one thing needful, and that reason, unless manacled by a creed, is the one thing dangerous. His figures were paltry, his thoughts narrowed down, and his very sincerity made corrupt by spiritual pride. One could not but pity his notions of the Holy Ghost, and his bat-like fear of light. His Man-God seemed to be the keeper of a mad-house, rather than the informing Spirit of all spirits. After finishing his discourse, Mr. G. sang a prayer, in a tone of mingled shout and whine, and then requested his audience to sit a while in devout meditation. For one, I passed the interval in praying for him, that the thick film of self-complacency might be removed from the eyes of his spirit, so that he might no more degrade religion.' * * * * * 'Mr. HAGUE is of the Baptist persuasion, and is very popular with his own sect. He is small, and carries his head erect; he has a high and intellectual, though not majestic, forehead; his brows are lowering and, when knit in indignant denunciation, give a thunderous look to the countenance, and beneath them flash, sparkle, and flame,--for all that may be said of light in rapid motion is true of them,--his dark eyes. Hazel and blue eyes with their purity, steadfastness, subtle penetration and radiant hope, may persuade and win, but black is the color to command. His mouth has an equivocal expression, but as an orator perhaps he gains power by the air of mystery this gives. 'He has a very active intellect, sagacity and elevated sentiment; and, feeling strongly that God is love, can never preach without earnestness. His power comes first from his glowing vitality of temperament. While speaking, his every muscle is in action, and all his action is towards one object. There is perfect _abandon_. He is permeated, overborne, by his thought. This lends a charm above grace, though incessant nervousness and heat injure his manner. He is never violent, though often vehement; pleading tones in his voice redeem him from coarseness, even when most eager; and he throws himself into the hearts of his hearers, not in weak need of sympathy, but in the confidence of generous emotion. His second attraction is his individuality. He speaks direct from the conviction of his spirit, without temporizing, or artificial method. His is the "unpremeditated art," and therefore successful. He is full of intellectual life; his mind has not been fettered by dogmas, and the worship of beauty finds a place there. I am much interested in this truly animated being.' * * * * * 'Mr. R.H. DANA has been giving us readings in the English dramatists, beginning with Shakspeare. The introductory was beautiful. After assigning to literature its high place in the education of the human soul, he announced his own view in giving these readings: that he should never pander to a popular love of excitement, but quietly, without regard to brilliancy or effect, would tell what had struck him in these poets; that he had no belief in artificial processes of acquisition or communication, and having never learned anything except through love, he had no hope of teaching any but loving spirits, &c. All this was arrayed in a garb of most delicate grace; but a man of such genuine refinement undervalues the cannon-blasts and rockets which are needed to rouse the attention of the vulgar. His naïve gestures, the rapt expression of his face, his introverted eye, and the almost childlike simplicity of his pathos, carry one back into a purer atmosphere, to live over again youth's fresh emotions. I greatly enjoyed his readings in Hamlet, and have reviewed in connection what Goethe and Coleridge have said. Both have successfully seized on the main points in the character of Hamlet, and Mr. D. took nearly the same range. His views of Ophelia, however, are unspeakably more just than are those of Serlo in Wilhelm Meister. I regret that the whole course is not to be on Shakspeare, for I should like to read with him all the plays. 'I never have met with a person of finer perceptions. He leaves out nothing; though he over-refines on some passages. He has the most exquisite taste, and freshens the souls of his hearers with ever new beauty. He is greatly indebted to the delicacy of his physical organization for the delicacy of his mental appreciation. But when he has told you what _he_ likes, the pleasure of intercourse is over: for he is a man of prejudice more than of reason, and though he can make a lively _exposé_ of his thoughts and feelings, he does not justify them. In a word, Mr. Dana has the charms and the defects of one whose object in life has been to preserve his individuality unprofaned.' ART. While residing at Providence, and during her visits to Boston, in her vacations, Margaret's mind was opening more and more to the charms of art. 'The Ton-Kunst, the Ton-Welt, give me now more stimulus than the written Word; for music seems to contain everything in nature, unfolded into perfect harmony. In it the _all_ and _each_ are manifested in most rapid transition; the spiral and undulatory movement of beautiful creation is felt throughout, and, as we listen, thought is most clearly, because most mystically, perceived. * * 'I have been to hear Neukomm's Oratorio of David. It is to music what Barry Cornwall's verses and Talfourd's Ion are to poetry. It is completely modern, and befits an age of consciousness. Nothing can be better arranged as a drama; the parts are in excellent gradation, the choruses are grand and effective, the composition, as a whole, brilliantly imposing. Yet it was dictated by taste and science only. Where are the enrapturing visions from the celestial world which shone down upon Haydn and Mozart; where the revelations from the depths of man's nature, which impart such passion to the symphonies of Beethoven; where, even, the fascinating fairy land, gay with delight, of Rossini? O, Genius! none but thee shall make our hearts and heads throb, our cheeks crimson, our eyes overflow, or fill our whole being with the serene joy of faith.' * * 'I went to see Vandenhoff twice, in Brutus and Virginius. Another fine specimen of the conscious school; no inspiration, yet much taste. Spite of the thread-paper Tituses, the chambermaid Virginias, the washerwoman Tullias, and the people, made up of half a dozen chimney-sweeps, in carters' frocks and red nightcaps, this man had power to recall a thought of the old stately Roman, with his unity of will and deed. He was an admirable _father_, that fairest, noblest part,--with a happy mixture of dignity and tenderness, blending the delicate sympathy of the companion with the calm, wisdom of the teacher, and showing beneath the zone of duty a heart that has not forgot to throb with youthful love. This character,--which did actual fathers know how to be, they would fulfil the order of nature, and image Deity to their children,--Vandenhoff represented sufficiently, at least, to call up the beautiful ideal.' FANNY KEMBLE. 'When in Boston, I saw the Kembles twice,--in "Much ado about Nothing," and "The Stranger." The first night I felt much disappointed in Miss K. In the gay parts a coquettish, courtly manner marred the wild mirth and wanton wit of Beatrice. Yet, in everything else, I liked her conception of the part; and where she urges Benedict to fight with Claudio, and where she reads Benedict's sonnet, she was admirable. But I received no more pleasure from Miss K.'s acting out the part than I have done in reading it, and this disappointed me. Neither did I laugh, but thought all the while of Miss K.,--how very graceful she was, and whether this and that way of rendering the part was just. I do not believe she has comic power within herself, though tasteful enough to comprehend any part. So I went home, vexed because my "heart was not full," and my "brain not on fire" with enthusiasm. I drank my milk, and went to sleep, as on other dreary occasions, and dreamed not of Miss Kemble. 'Next night, however, I went expectant, and all my soul was satisfied. I saw her at a favorable distance, and she looked beautiful. And as the scene rose in interest, her attitudes, her gestures, had the expression which an Angelo could give to sculpture. After she tells her story,--and I was almost suffocated by the effort she made to divulge her sin and fall,--she sunk to the earth, her head bowed upon her knee, her white drapery falling in large, graceful folds about this broken piece of beautiful humanity, _crushed_ in the very manner so well described by Scott when speaking of a far different person, "not as one who intentionally stoops, kneels, or prostrates himself to excite compassion, but like a man borne down on all sides by the pressure of some invisible force, which crushes him to the earth without power of resistance." A movement of abhorrence from me, as her insipid confidante turned away, attested the triumph of the poet-actress. Had not all been over in a moment, I believe I could not have refrained from rushing forward to raise the fair frail being, who seemed so prematurely humbled in her parent dust. I burst into tears; and, with the stifled, hopeless feeling of a real sorrow, continued to weep till the very end; nor could I recover till I left the house. 'That is genius, which could give such life to this play; for, if I may judge from other parts, it is defaced by inflated sentiments, and verified by few natural touches. I wish I had it to read, for I should like to recall her every tone and look.' * * * * * 'I have been studying Flaxman and Retzsch. How pure, how immortal, the language of Form! Fools cannot fancy they fathom its meaning; witless _dillettanti_ cannot degrade it by hackneyed usage; none but genius can create or reproduce it. Unlike the colorist, he who expresses his thought in form is secure as man can be against the ravages of time.' * * * * * 'I went to the Athenæum in an agonizing conflict of mind, when some high influence was needed to rouse me from the state of sickly sensitiveness, which, much as I despise, I cannot wholly conquer. How soothing it was to feel the blessed power of the Ideal world, to be surrounded, once more with the records of lives poured out in embodying thought in beauty! I seemed to breathe my native atmosphere, and smoothed my ruffled pinions.' * * * * * 'No wonder God made a world to express his thought. Who, that has a soul for beauty, does not feel the need of creating, and that the power of creation alone can satisfy the spirit? When I thus reflect, the Artist seems the only fortunate man. Had I but as much creative genius as I have apprehensiveness!' * * * * * 'How transcendently lovely was the face of one young angel by Raphael! It was the perfection of physical, moral, and mental life. Variegated wings, of pinkish-purple touched with green, like the breasts of doves, and in perfect harmony with the complexion, spring from the shoulders upwards, and against them leans the divine head. The eye seems fixed on the centre of being, and the lips are gently parted, as if uttering strains of celestial melody.' * * * * * 'The head of Aspasia was instinct with the voluptuousness of intellect. From the eyes, the cheek, the divine lip, one might hive honey. Both the Loves were exquisite: one, that zephyr sentiment which visits all the roses of life; the other, the Amore Greco, may be fitly described in these words of Landor: "There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water; there is a silence in it which suspends the foot, and the folded arms and the dejected head are the images it reflects. No voice shakes its surface; the Muses themselves approach it with a tardy and a timid step, with a low and tremulous and melancholy song."' * * * * * 'The Sibyl I understood. What grace in that beautiful oval! what apprehensiveness in the eye! Such is female Genius; it alone understands the God. The Muses only sang the praises of Apollo; the Sibyls interpreted his will. Nay, she to whom it was offered, refused the divine union, and preferred remaining a satellite to being absorbed into the sun. You read in the eye of this one, and the observation is confirmed by the low forehead, that the secret of her inspiration lay in the passionate enthusiasm of her nature, rather than in the ideal perfection of any faculty. * * * * * 'A Christ, by Raphael, that I saw the other night, brought Christianity more home to my heart, made me more long to be like Jesus, than ever did sermon. It is from one of the Vatican frescoes. The Deity,--a stern, strong, wise man, of about forty-five, in a square velvet cap, truly the Jewish God, inflexibly just, yet jealous and wrathful,--is at the top of the picture, looking with a gaze of almost frowning scrutiny down into his world. A step below is the Son. Stately angelic shapes kneel near him in dignified adoration,--brothers, but not peers. A cloud of more ecstatic seraphs floats behind the Father. At the feet of the Son is the Holy Ghost, the Heavenly Dove. In the description, by a connoisseur, of this picture, read to me while I was looking at it, it is spoken of as in Raphael's first manner, cold, hard, trammeled. But to me how did that face proclaim the Infinite Love! His head is bent back, as if seeking to behold the Father. His attitude expresses the need of adoring something higher, in order to keep him at his highest. What sweetness, what purity, in the eyes! I can never express it; but I felt, when looking at it, the beauty of reverence, of self-sacrifice, to a degree that stripped the Apollo of his beams.' MAGNANIMITY. Immediately after reading Miss Martineau's book on America, Margaret felt bound in honor to write her a letter, the magnanimity of which is brought out in full relief, by contrast with the expressions already given of her affectionate regard. Extracts from this letter, recorded in her journals, come here rightfully in place:-- 'On its first appearance, the book was greeted by a volley of coarse and outrageous abuse, and the nine days' wonder was followed by a nine days' hue-and-cry. It was garbled, misrepresented, scandalously ill-treated. This was all of no consequence. The opinion of the majority you will find expressed in a late number of the North American Review. I should think the article, though ungenerous, not more so than great part of the critiques upon your book. 'The minority may be divided into two classes: The one, consisting of those who knew you but slightly, either personally, or in your writings. These have now read your book; and, seeing in it your high ideal standard, genuine independence, noble tone of sentiment, vigor of mind and powers of picturesque description, they value your book very much, and rate you higher for it. 'The other comprises those who were previously aware of these high qualities,--and who, seeing in a book to which they had looked for a lasting monument to your fame, a degree of presumptuousness, irreverence, inaccuracy, hasty generalization, and ultraism on many points, which they did not expect, lament the haste in which you have written, and the injustice which you have consequently done to so important a task, and to your own powers of being and doing. To this class I belong. 'I got the book as soon as it came out,--long before I received the copy endeared by your handwriting,--and devoted myself to reading it. I gave myself up to my natural impressions, without seeking to ascertain those of others. Frequently I felt pleasure and admiration, but more frequently disappointment, sometimes positive distaste. 'There are many topics treated of in this book of which I am not a judge; but I do pretend, even where I cannot criticize in detail, to have an opinion as to the general tone of thought. When Herschel writes his Introduction to Natural Philosophy, I cannot test all he says, but I cannot err about his fairness, his manliness, and wide range of knowledge. When Jouffroy writes his lectures, I am not conversant with all his topics of thought, but I can appreciate his lucid style and admirable method. When Webster speaks on the currency, I do not understand the subject, but I do understand his mode of treating it, and can see what a blaze of light streams from his torch. When Harriet Martineau writes about America, I often cannot test that rashness and inaccuracy of which I hear so much, but I can feel that they exist. A want of soundness, of habits of patient investigation, of completeness, of arrangement, are felt throughout the book; and, for all its fine descriptions of scenery, breadth of reasoning, and generous daring, I cannot be happy in it, because it is not worthy of my friend, and I think a few months given to ripen it, to balance, compare, and mellow, would have made it so. * * 'Certainly you show no spirit of harshness towards this country in general. I think your tone most kindly. But many passages are deformed by intemperance of epithet. * * Would your heart, could you but investigate the matter, approve such overstatement, such a crude, intemperate tirade as you have been guilty of about Mr. Alcott,--a true and noble man, a philanthropist, whom a true and noble woman, also a philanthropist, should have delighted to honor; whose disinterested and resolute efforts, for the redemption of poor humanity, all independent and faithful minds should sustain, since the "broadcloth" vulgar will be sure to assail them; a philosopher, worthy of the palmy times of ancient Greece; a man whom Carlyle and Berkely, whom you so uphold, would delight to honor; a man whom the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror as the worldlings of ancient Athens did Socrates. They smile to hear their verdict confirmed from the other side of the Atlantic, by their censor, Harriet Martineau. 'I do not like that your book should be an abolition book. You might have borne your testimony as decidedly as you pleased; but why leaven the whole book with it? This subject haunts us on almost every page. It _is_ a great subject, but your book had other purposes to fulfil. 'I have thought it right to say all this to you, since I felt it. I have shrunk from the effort, for I fear that I must lose you. Not that I think all authors are like Gil Bias' archbishop. No; if your heart turns from me, I shall still love you, still think you noble. I know it must be so trying to fail of sympathy, at such a time, where we expect it. And, besides, I felt from the book that the sympathy between us is less general than I had supposed, it was so strong on several points. It is strong enough for me to love you ever, and I could no more have been happy in your friendship, if I had not spoken out now.' SPIRITUAL LIFE. 'You question me as to the nature of the benefits conferred upon me by Mr. E.'s preaching. I answer, that his influence has been more beneficial to me than that of any American, and that from him I first learned what is meant by an inward life. Many other springs have since fed the stream of living waters, but he first opened the fountain. That the "mind is its own place," was a dead phrase to me, till he cast light upon my mind. Several of his sermons stand apart in memory, like landmarks of my spiritual history. It would take a volume to tell what this one influence did for me. But perhaps I shall some time see that it was best for me to be forced to help myself.' * * * * * 'Some remarks which I made last night trouble me, and I cannot fix my attention upon other things till I have qualified them. I suffered myself to speak in too unmeasured terms, and my expressions were fitted to bring into discredit the religious instruction which has been given me, or which I have sought. 'I do not think "all men are born for the purpose of unfolding beautiful ideas;" for the vocation of many is evidently the culture of affections by deeds of kindness. But I do think that the vocations of men and women differ, and that those who are forced to act out of their sphere are shorn of inward and outward brightness. 'For myself, I wish to say, that, if I am in a mood of darkness and despondency, I nevertheless consider such a mood unworthy of a Christian, or indeed of any one who believes in the immortality of the soul. No one, who had steady faith in this and in the goodness of God, could be otherwise than cheerful. I reverence the serenity of a truly religious mind so much, that I think, if I live, I may some time attain to it. 'Although I do not believe in a Special Providence regulating outward events, and could not reconcile such a belief with what I have seen of life, I do not the less believe in the paternal government of a Deity. That He should visit the souls of those who seek Him seems to me the nobler way to conceive of his influence. And if there were not some error in my way of seeking, I do not believe I should suffer from languor or deadness on spiritual subjects, at the time when I have most need to feel myself at home there. To find this error is my earnest wish; and perhaps I am now travelling to that end, though by a thorny road. It is a mortification to find so much yet to do; for at one time the scheme of things seemed so clear, that, with Cromwell, I might say, "I was once in grace." With my mind I prize high objects as much as then: it is my heart which is cold. And sometimes I fear that the necessity of urging them on those under my care dulls my sense of their beauty. It is so hard to prevent one's feelings from evaporating in words.' * * * * * '"The faint sickness of a wounded heart." How frequently do these words of Beckford recur to my mind! His prayer, imperfect as it is, says more to me than many a purer aspiration. It breathes such an experience of impassioned anguish. He had everything,--health, personal advantages, almost boundless wealth, genius, exquisite taste, culture; he could, in some way, express his whole being. Yet well-nigh he sank beneath the sickness of the wounded heart; and solitude, "country of the unhappy," was all he craved at last. 'Goethe, too, says he has known, in all his active, wise, and honored life, no four weeks of happiness. This teaches me on the other side; for, like Goethe, I have never given way to my feelings, but have lived active, thoughtful, seeking to be wise. Yet I have long days and weeks of heartache; and at those times, though I am busy every moment, and cultivate every pleasant feeling, and look always upwards to the pure ideal region, yet this ache is like a bodily wound, whose pain haunts even when it is not attended to, and disturbs the dreams of the patient who has fallen asleep from exhaustion. 'There is a German in Boston, who has a wound in his breast, received in battle long ago. It never troubles him, except when he sings, and then, if he gives out his voice with much expression, it opens, and cannot, for a long time, be stanched again. So with me: when I rise into one of those rapturous moods of thought, such as I had a day or two since, my wound opens again, and all I can do is to be patient, and let it take its own time to skin over. I see it will never do more. Some time ago I thought the barb was fairly out; but no, the fragments rankle there still, and will, while there is any earth attached to my spirit. Is it not because, in my pride, I held the mantle close, and let the weapon, which some friendly physician might have extracted, splinter in the wound?' * * * * * '_Sunday, July_, 1838.--I partook, for the first time, of the Lord's Supper. I had often wished to do so, but had not been able to find a clergyman,--from whom I could be willing to receive it,--willing to admit me on my own terms. Mr. H---- did so; and I shall ever respect and value him, if only for the liberality he displayed on this occasion. It was the Sunday after the death of his wife, a lady whom I truly honored, and should, probably, had we known one another longer, have also loved. She was the soul of truth and honor; her mind was strong, her reverence for the noble and beautiful fervent, her energy in promoting the best interests of those who came under her influence unusual. She was as full of wit and playfulness as of goodness. Her union with her husband was really one of mind and heart, of mutual respect and tenderness; likeness in unlikeness made it strong. I wished particularly to share in this rite on an occasion so suited to bring out its due significance.' FAREWELL TO SUMMER. 'The Sun, the Moon, the Waters, and the Air, The hopeful, holy, terrible, and fair, All that is ever speaking, never spoken, Spells that are ever breaking, never broken, Have played upon my soul; and every string Confessed the touch, which once could make it ring Celestial notes. And still, though changed the tone, Though damp and jarring fall the lyre hath known It would, if fitly played, its deep notes wove Into one tissue of belief and love, Yield melodies for angel audience meet, And pæans fit Creative Power to greet. O injured lyre! thy golden frame is marred, No garlands deck thee, no libations poured Tell to the earth the triumphs of thy song; No princely halls echo thy strains along. But still the strings are there; and, if they break, Even in death rare melody will make, Might'st thou once more be tuned, and power be given To tell in numbers all thou canst of heaven!' VISITS TO CONCORD. BY R.W. EMERSON. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM MADAME ARCONATI TO R.W. EMERSON. Je n'ai point rencontré, dans ma vie, de femme plus noble; ayant autant de sympathie pour ses semblables, et dont l'esprit fut plus vivifiant. Je me suis tout de suite sentie attirée par elle. Quand je fis sa connoissance, j'ignorais que ce fut une femme remarquable. IV. VISITS TO CONCORD. * * * * * I became acquainted with Margaret in 1835. Perhaps it was a year earlier that Henry Hedge, who had long been her friend, told me of her genius and studies, and loaned me her manuscript translation of Goethe's Tasso. I was afterwards still more interested in her, by the warm praises of Harriet Martineau, who had become acquainted with her at Cambridge, and who, finding Margaret's fancy for seeing me, took a generous interest in bringing us together. I remember, during a week in the winter of 1835-6, in which Miss Martineau was my guest, she returned again and again to the topic of Margaret's excelling genius and conversation, and enjoined it on me to seek her acquaintance: which I willingly promised. I am not sure that it was not in Miss Martineau's company, a little earlier, that I first saw her. And I find a memorandum, in her own journal, of a visit, made by my brother Charles and myself, to Miss Martineau, at Mrs. Farrar's. It was not, however, till the next July, after a little diplomatizing in billets by the ladies, that her first visit to our house was arranged, and she came to spend a fortnight with my wife. I still remember the first half-hour of Margaret's conversation. She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fulness and tenacity of life. She was rather under the middle height; her complexion was fair, with strong fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness,--a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,--the nasal tone of her voice,--all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get far. It is to be said, that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and the women did not like one who despised them. I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's foibles. I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked; for I was, at that time, an eager scholar of ethics, and had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism, and I found something profane in the hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me, and, when I returned to my library, had much to think of the crackling of thorns under a pot. Margaret, who had stuffed me out as a philosopher, in her own fancy, was too intent on establishing a good footing between us, to omit any art of winning. She studied my tastes, piqued and amused me, challenged frankness by frankness, and did not conceal the good opinion of me she brought with her, nor her wish to please. She was curious to know my opinions and experiences. Of course, it was impossible long to hold out against such urgent assault. She had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life. This rumor was much spread abroad, that she was sneering, scoffing, critical, disdainful of humble people, and of all but the intellectual. I had heard it whenever she was named. It was a superficial judgment. Her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent, the play of superabundant animal spirits. And it will be seen, in the sequel, that her mind presently disclosed many moods and powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each, that quite effaced this first impression, in the opulence of the following pictures. Let us hear what she has herself to say on the subject of tea-table-talk, in a letter to a young lady, to whom she was already much attached:-- I am repelled by your account of your party. It is beneath you to amuse yourself with active satire, with what is vulgarly called quizzing. When such a person as ---- chooses to throw himself in your way, I sympathize with your keen perception of his ridiculous points. But to laugh a whole evening at vulgar nondescripts,--is that an employment for one who was born passionately to love, to admire, to sustain truth? This would be much more excusable in a chameleon like me. Yet, whatever may be the vulgar view of my character, I can truly say, I know not the hour in which I ever looked for the ridiculous. It has always been forced upon me, and is the accident of my existence. I would not want the sense of it when it comes, for that would show an obtuseness of mental organization; but, on peril of my soul, I would not move an eyelash to look for it.' When she came to Concord, she was already rich in friends, rich in experiences, rich in culture. She was well read in French, Italian, and German literature. She had learned Latin and a little Greek. But her English reading was incomplete; and, while she knew Molière, and Rousseau, and any quantity of French letters, memoirs, and novels, and was a dear student of Dante and Petrarca, and knew German books more cordially than any other person, she was little read in Shakspeare; and I believe I had the pleasure of making her acquainted with Chaucer, with Ben Jonson, with Herbert, Chapman, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, with Bacon, and Sir Thomas Browne. I was seven years her senior, and had the habit of idle reading in old English books, and, though riot much versed, yet quite enough to give me the right to lead her. She fancied that her sympathy and taste had led her to an exclusive culture of southern European books. She had large experiences. She had been a precocious scholar at Dr. Park's school; good in mathematics and in languages. Her father, whom she had recently lost had been proud of her, and petted her. She had drawn at Cambridge, numbers of lively young men about her. She had had a circle of young women who were devoted to her, and who described her as "a wonder of intellect, who had yet no religion." She had drawn to her every superior young man or young woman she had met, and whole romances of life and love had been confided, counselled, thought, and lived through, in her cognizance and sympathy. These histories are rapid, so that she had already beheld many times the youth, meridian, and old age of passion. She had, besides, selected, from so many, a few eminent companions, and already felt that she was not likely to see anything more beautiful than her beauties, anything more powerful and generous than her youths. She had found out her own secret by early comparison, and knew what power to draw confidence, what necessity to lead in every circle, belonged of right to her. Her powers were maturing, and nobler sentiments were subliming the first heats and rude experiments. She had outward calmness and dignity. She had come to the ambition to be filled with all nobleness. Of the friends who surrounded her, at that period, it is neither easy to speak, nor not to speak. A life of Margaret is impossible without them, she mixed herself so inextricably with her company; and when this little book was first projected, it was proposed to entitle it "Margaret and her Friends," the subject persisting to offer itself in the plural number. But, on trial, that form proved impossible, and it only remained that the narrative, like a Greek tragedy, should suppose the chorus always on the stage, sympathizing and sympathized with by the queen of the scene. Yet I remember these persons as a fair, commanding troop, every one of them adorned by some splendor of beauty, of grace, of talent, or of character, and comprising in their band persons who have since disclosed sterling worth and elevated aims in the conduct of life. Three beautiful women,--either of whom would have been the fairest ornament of Papanti's Assemblies, but for the presence of the other,--were her friends. One of these early became, and long remained, nearly the central figure in Margaret's brilliant circle, attracting to herself, by her grace and her singular natural eloquence, every feeling of affection, hope, and pride. Two others I recall, whose rich and cultivated voices in song were,--one a little earlier, the other a little later,--the joy of every house into which they came; and, indeed, Margaret's taste for music was amply gratified in the taste and science which several persons among her intimate friends possessed. She was successively intimate with two sisters, whose taste for music had been opened, by a fine and severe culture, to the knowledge and to the expression of all the wealth of the German masters. I remember another, whom every muse inspired, skilful alike with the pencil and the pen, and by whom both were almost contemned for their inadequateness, in the height and scope of her aims. 'With her,' said Margaret, 'I can talk of anything. She is like me. She is able to look facts in the face. We enjoy the clearest, widest, most direct communication. She may be no happier than ----, but she will know her own mind too clearly to make any great mistake in conduct, and will learn a deep meaning from her days.' 'It is not in the way of tenderness that I love ----. I prize her always; and this is all the love some natures ever know. And I also feel that I may always expect she will be with me. I delight to picture to myself certain persons translated, illuminated. There are a few in whom I see occasionally the future being piercing, promising,--whom I can strip of all that masks their temporary relations, and elevate to their natural position. Sometimes I have not known these persons intimately,--oftener I have; for it is only in the deepest hours that this light is likely to break out. But some of those I have best befriended I cannot thus portray, and very few men I can. It does not depend at all on the beauty of their forms, at present; it is in the eye and the smile, that the hope shines through. I can see exactly how ---- will look: not like this angel in the paper; she will not bring flowers, but a living coal, to the lips of the singer; her eyes will not burn as now with smothered fires, they will be ever deeper, and glow more intensely; her cheek will be smooth, but marble pale; her gestures nobly free, but few.' Another was a lady who was devoted to landscape-painting, and who enjoyed the distinction of being the only pupil of Allston, and who, in her alliance with Margaret, gave as much honor as she received, by the security of her spirit, and by the heroism of her devotion to her friend. Her friends called her "the perpetual peace-offering," and Margaret says of her,--'She is here, and her neighborhood casts the mildness and purity too of the moonbeam on the else parti-colored scene.' There was another lady, more late and reluctantly entering Margaret's circle, with a mind as high, and more mathematically exact, drawn by taste to Greek, as Margaret to Italian genius, tempted to do homage to Margaret's flowing expressive energy, but still more inclined and secured to her side by the good sense and the heroism which Margaret disclosed, perhaps not a little by the sufferings which she addressed herself to alleviate, as long as Margaret lived. Margaret had a courage in her address which it was not easy to resist. She called all her friends by their Christian names. In their early intercourse I suppose this lady's billets were more punctiliously worded than Margaret liked; so she subscribed herself, in reply, 'Your affectionate "Miss Fuller."' When the difficulties were at length surmounted, and the conditions ascertained on which two admirable persons could live together, the best understanding grew up, and subsisted during her life. In her journal is a note:-- 'Passed the morning in Sleepy Hollow, with ----. What fine, just distinctions she made! Worlds grew clearer as we talked. I grieve to see her fine frame subject to such rude discipline. But she truly said, "I am not a failed experiment; for, in the bad hours, I do not forget what I thought in the better."' None interested her more at that time, and for many years after, than a youth with whom she had been acquainted in Cambridge before he left the University, and the unfolding of whose powers she had watched with the warmest sympathy. He was an amateur, and, but for the exactions not to be resisted of an _American_, that is to say, of a commercial, career,--his acceptance of which she never ceased to regard as an apostasy,--himself a high artist. He was her companion, and, though much younger, her guide in the study of art. With him she examined, leaf by leaf, the designs of Raphael, of Michel Angelo, of Da Vinci, of Guercino, the architecture of the Greeks, the books of Palladio, the Ruins, and Prisons of Piranesi; and long kept up a profuse correspondence on books and studies in which they had a mutual interest. And yet, as happened so often, these literary sympathies, though sincere, were only veils and occasions to beguile the time, so profound was her interest in the character and fortunes of her friend. There was another youth, whom she found later, of invalid habit, which had infected in some degree the tone of his mind, but of a delicate and pervasive insight, and the highest appreciation for genius in letters, arts, and life. Margaret describes 'his complexion as clear in its pallor, and his eye steady.' His turn of mind, and his habits of life, had almost a monastic turn,--a jealousy of the common tendencies of literary men either to display or to philosophy. Margaret was struck with the singular fineness of his perceptions, and the pious tendency of his thoughts, and enjoyed with him his proud reception, not as from above, but almost on equal ground, of Homer and Æschylus, of Dante and Petrarch, of Montaigne, of Calderon, of Goethe. Margaret wished, also, to defend his privacy from the dangerous solicitations to premature authorship:-- 'His mind should be approached close by one who needs its fragrance. All with him leads rather to glimpses and insights, than to broad, comprehensive views. Till he needs the public, the public does not need him. The lonely lamp, the niche, the dark cathedral grove, befit him best. Let him shroud himself in the symbols of his native ritual, till he can issue forth on the wings of song.' She was at this time, too, much drawn also to a man of poetic sensibility, and of much reading,--which he took the greatest pains to conceal,--studious of the art of poetry, but still more a poet in his conversation than in his poems,--who attracted Margaret by the flowing humor with which he filled the present hour, and the prodigality with which he forgot all the past. 'Unequal and uncertain,' she says, 'but in his good moods, of the best for a companion, absolutely abandoned to the revelations of the moment, without distrust or check of any kind, unlimited and delicate, abundant in thought, and free of motion, he enriches life, and fills the hour.' 'I wish I could retain ----'s talk last night. It was wonderful; it was about all the past experiences frozen down in the soul, and the impossibility of being penetrated by anything. "Had I met you," said he, "when I was young!--but now nothing can penetrate." Absurd as was what he said, on one side, it was the finest poetic-inspiration on the other, painting the cruel process of life, except where genius continually burns over the stubble fields. "Life," he said, "is continually eating us up." He said, "Mr. E. is quite wrong about books. He wants them all good; now I want many bad. Literature is not merely a collection of gems, but a great system of interpretation." He railed at me as artificial. "It don't strike me when you are alone with me," he says; "but it does when others are present. You don't follow out the fancy of the moment; you converse; you have treasured thoughts to tell; you are disciplined,--artificial." I pleaded guilty, and observed that I supposed that it must be so with one of any continuity of thought, or earnestness of character. "As to that," says he, "I shall not like you the better for your excellence. I don't know what is the matter. I feel strongly attracted towards you; but there is a drawback in my mind,--I don't know exactly what. You will always be wanting to grow forward; now I like to grow backward, too. You are too ideal. Ideal people anticipate their lives; and they make themselves and everybody around them restless, by always being beforehand with themselves." 'I listened attentively; for what he said was excellent. Following up the humor of the moment, he arrests admirable thoughts on the wing. But I cannot but see, that what they say of my or other obscure lives is true of every prophetic, of every tragic character. And then I like to have them make me look on that side, and reverence the lovely forms of nature, and the shifting moods, and the clinging instincts. But I must not let them disturb me. There is an only guide, the voice in the heart, that asks, "Was thy wish sincere? If so, thou canst not stray from nature, nor be so perverted but she will make thee true again." I must take my own path, and learn from them all, without being paralyzed for the day. We need great energy, faith, and self-reliance to endure to-day. My age may not be the best, my position may be bad, my character ill-formed; but Thou, oh Spirit! hast no regard to aught but the seeking heart; and, if I try to walk upright, wilt guide me. What despair must he feel, who, after a whole life passed in trying to build up himself, resolves that it would have been far better if he had kept still as the clod of the valley, or yielded easily as the leaf to every breeze! A path has been appointed me. I have walked in it as steadily as I could. I am what I am; that which I am not, teach me in the others. I will bear the pain of imperfection, but not of doubt. E. must not shake me in my worldliness, nor ---- in the fine motion that has given me what I have of life, nor this child of genius make me lay aside the armor, without which I had lain bleeding on the field long since; but, if they can keep closer to nature, and learn to interpret her as souls, also, let me learn from them what I have not.' And, in connection with this conversation, she has copied the following lines which this gentleman addressed to her:-- "TO MARGARET. I mark beneath thy life the virtue shine That deep within the star's eye opes its day; I clutch the gorgeous thoughts thou throw'st away From the profound unfathomable mine, And with them this mean common hour do twine, As glassy waters on the dry beach play. And I were rich as night, them to combine With, my poor store, and warm me with thy ray. From the fixed answer of those dateless eyes I meet bold hints of spirit's mystery As to what's past, and hungry prophecies Of deeds to-day, and things which are to be; Of lofty life that with the eagle flies, And humble love that clasps humanity." I have thus vaguely designated, among the numerous group of her friends, only those who were much in her company, in the early years of my acquaintance with her. She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other, that Margaret seemed to represent them all, and, to know her, was to acquire a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them. She was an active, inspiring companion and correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New England, seemed, at that moment, related to her, and she to it. She was everywhere a welcome guest. The houses of her friends in town and country were open to her, and every hospitable attention eagerly offered. Her arrival was a holiday, and so was her abode. She stayed a few days, often a week, more seldom a month, and all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to catch the favorable hour, in walking, riding, or boating, to talk with this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her, and, with her broad web of relations to so many fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had been finally referred. Persons were her game, specially, if marked by fortune, or character, or success;--to such was she sent. She addressed them with a hardihood,--almost a haughty assurance,--queen-like. Indeed, they fell in her way, where the access might have seemed difficult, by wonderful casualties; and the inveterate recluse, the coyest maid, the waywardest poet, made no resistance, but yielded at discretion, as if they had been waiting for her, all doors to this imperious dame. She disarmed the suspicion of recluse scholars by the absence of bookishness. The ease with which she entered into conversation made them forget all they had heard of her; and she was infinitely less interested in literature than in life. They saw she valued earnest persons, and Dante, Petrarch, and Goethe, because they thought as she did, and gratified her with high portraits, which she was everywhere seeking. She drew her companions to surprising confessions. She was the wedding-guest, to whom the long-pent story must be told; and they were not less struck, on reflection, at the suddenness of the friendship which had established, in one day, new and permanent covenants. She extorted the secret of life, which cannot be told without setting heart and mind in a glow; and thus had the best of those she saw. Whatever romance, whatever virtue, whatever impressive experience,--this came to her; and she lived in a superior circle; for they suppressed all their common-place in her presence. She was perfectly true to this confidence. She never confounded relations, but kept a hundred fine threads in her hand, without crossing or entangling any. An entire intimacy, which seemed to make both sharers of the whole horizon of each others' and of all truth, did not yet make her false to any other friend; gave no title to the history that an equal trust of another friend had put in her keeping. In this reticence was no prudery and no effort. For, so rich her mind, that she never was tempted to treachery, by the desire of entertaining. The day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory; and I, who knew her intimately for ten years,--from July, 1836, till August, 1846, when she sailed for Europe,--never saw her without surprise at her new powers. Of the conversations above alluded to, the substance was whatever was suggested by her passionate wish for equal companions, to the end of making life altogether noble. With the firmest tact she led the discourse into the midst of their daily living and working, recognizing the good-will and sincerity which each man has in his aims, and treating so playfully and intellectually all the points, that one seemed to see his life _en beau_, and was flattered by beholding what he had found so tedious in its workday weeds, shining in glorious costume. Each of his friends passed before him in the new light; hope seemed to spring under his feet, and life was worth living. The auditor jumped for joy, and thirsted for unlimited draughts. What! is this the dame, who, I heard, was sneering and critical? this the blue-stocking, of whom I stood in terror and dislike? this wondrous woman, full of counsel, full of tenderness, before whom every mean thing is ashamed, and hides itself; this new Corinne, more variously gifted, wise, sportive, eloquent, who seems to have learned all languages, Heaven knows when or how,--I should think she was born to them,--magnificent, prophetic, reading my life at her will, and puzzling me with riddles like this, 'Yours is an example of a destiny springing from character:' and, again, 'I see your destiny hovering before you, but it always escapes from you.' The test of this eloquence was its range. It told on children, and on old people; on men of the world, and on sainted maids. She could hold them all by her honeyed tongue. A lady of the best eminence, whom Margaret occasionally visited, in one of our cities of spindles, speaking one day of her neighbors, said, "I stand in a certain awe of the moneyed men, the manufacturers, and so on, knowing that they will have small interest in Plato, or in Biot; but I saw them approach Margaret, with perfect security, for she could give them bread that they could eat." Some persons are thrown off their balance when in society; others are thrown on to balance; the excitement of company, and the observation of other characters, correct their biases. Margaret always appeared to unexpected advantage in conversation with a large circle. She had more sanity than any other; whilst, in private, her vision was often through colored lenses. Her talents were so various, and her conversation so rich and entertaining, that one might talk with her many times, by the parlor fire, before he discovered the strength which served as foundation to so much accomplishment and eloquence. But, concealed under flowers and music, was the broadest good sense, very well able to dispose of all this pile of native and foreign ornaments, and quite able to work without them. She could always rally on this, in every circumstance, and in every company, and find herself on a firm footing of equality with any party whatever, and make herself useful, and, if need be, formidable. The old Anaximenes, seeking, I suppose, for a source sufficiently diffusive, said, that Mind must be _in the air_, which, when all men breathed, they were filled with one intelligence. And when men have larger measures of reason, as Æsop, Cervantes, Franklin, Scott, they gain in universality, or are no longer confined to a few associates, but are good company for all persons,--philosophers, women, men of fashion, tradesmen, and servants. Indeed, an older philosopher than Anaximenes, namely, language itself, had taught to distinguish superior or purer sense as _common_ sense. Margaret had, with certain limitations, or, must we say, _strictures_, these larger lungs, inhaling this universal element, and could speak to Jew and Greek, free and bond, to each in his own tongue. The Concord stage-coachman distinguished her by his respect, and the chambermaid was pretty sure to confide to her, on the second day, her homely romance. I regret that it is not in my power to give any true report of Margaret's conversation. She soon became an established friend and frequent inmate of our house, and continued, thenceforward, for years, to come, once in three or four months, to spend a week or a fortnight with us. She adopted all the people and all the interests she found here. Your people shall be my people, and yonder darling boy I shall cherish as my own. Her ready sympathies endeared her to my wife and my mother, each of whom highly esteemed her good sense and sincerity. She suited each, and all. Yet, she was not a person to be suspected of complaisance, and her attachments, one might say, were chemical. She had so many tasks of her own, that she was a very easy guest to entertain, as she could be left to herself, day after day, without apology. According to our usual habit, we seldom met in the forenoon. After dinner, we read something together, or walked, or rode. In the evening, she came to the library, and many and many a conversation was there held, whose details, if they could be preserved, would justify all encomiums. They interested me in every manner;--talent, memory, wit, stern introspection, poetic play, religion, the finest personal feeling, the aspects of the future, each followed each in full activity, and left me, I remember, enriched and sometimes astonished by the gifts of my guest. Her topics were numerous, but the cardinal points of poetry, love, and religion, were never far off. She was a student of art, and, though untravelled, knew, much better than most persons who had been abroad, the conventional reputation of each of the masters. She was familiar with all the field of elegant criticism in literature. Among the problems of the day, these two attracted her chiefly, Mythology and Demonology; then, also, French Socialism, especially as it concerned woman; the whole prolific family of reforms, and, of course, the genius and career of each remarkable person. She had other friends, in this town, beside those in my house. A lady, already alluded to, lived in the village, who had known her longer than I, and whose prejudices Margaret had resolutely fought down, until she converted her into the firmest and most efficient of friends. In 1842, Nathaniel Hawthorne, already then known to the world by his Twice-Told Tales, came to live in Concord, in the "Old Manse," with his wife, who was herself an artist. With these welcomed persons Margaret formed a strict and happy acquaintance. She liked their old house, and the taste which had filled it with new articles of beautiful form, yet harmonized with the antique furniture left by the former proprietors. She liked, too, the pleasing walks, and rides, and boatings, which that neighborhood commanded. In 1842, William Ellery Channing, whose wife was her sister, built a house in Concord, and this circumstance made a new tie and another home for Margaret. ARCANA. It was soon evident that there was somewhat a little pagan about her; that she had some faith more or less distinct in a fate, and in a guardian genius; that her fancy, or her pride, had played with her religion. She had a taste for gems, ciphers, talismans, omens, coincidences, and birth-days. She had a special love for the planet Jupiter, and a belief that the month of September was inauspicious to her. She never forgot that her name, Margarita, signified a pearl. 'When I first met with the name Leila,' she said, 'I knew, from the very look and sound, it was mine; I knew that it meant night,--night, which brings out stars, as sorrow brings out truths.' Sortilege she valued. She tried _sortes biblicæ_, and her hits were memorable. I think each new book which interested her, she was disposed to put to this test, and know if it had somewhat personal to say to her. As happens to such persons, these guesses were justified by the event. She chose carbuncle for her own stone, and when a dear friend was to give her a gem, this was the one selected. She valued what she had somewhere read, that carbuncles are male and female. The female casts out light, the male has his within himself. 'Mine,' she said, 'is the male.' And she was wont to put on her carbuncle, a bracelet, or some selected gem, to write letters to certain friends. One of her friends she coupled with the onyx, another in a decided way with the amethyst. She learned that the ancients esteemed this gem a talisman to dispel intoxication, to give good thoughts and understanding 'The Greek meaning is _antidote against drunkenness_.' She characterized her friends by these stones, and wrote to the last mentioned, the following lines:-- 'TO ----. 'Slow wandering on a tangled way, To their lost child pure spirits say:-- The diamond marshal thee by day, By night, the carbuncle defend, Heart's blood of a bosom friend. On thy brow, the amethyst, Violet of purest earth, When by fullest sunlight kissed, Best reveals its regal birth; And when that haloed moment flies, Shall keep thee steadfast, chaste, and wise.' Coincidences, good and bad, _contretemps_, seals, ciphers, mottoes, omens, anniversaries, names, dreams, are all of a certain importance to her. Her letters are often dated on some marked anniversary of her own, or of her correspondent's calendar. She signalized saints' days, "All-Souls," and "All-Saints," by poems, which had for her a mystical value. She remarked a preëstablished harmony of the names of her personal friends, as well as of her historical favorites; that of Emanuel, for Swedenborg; and Rosencrantz, for the head of the Rosicrucians. 'If Christian Rosencrantz,' she said, 'is not a made name, the genius of the age interfered in the baptismal rite, as in the cases of the archangels of art, Michael and Raphael, and in giving the name of Emanuel to the captain of the New Jerusalem. _Sub rosa crux_, I think, is the true derivation, and not the chemical one, generation, corruption, &c.' In this spirit, she soon surrounded herself with a little mythology of her own. She had a series of anniversaries, which she kept. Her seal-ring of the flying Mercury had its legend. She chose the _Sistrum_ for her emblem, and had it carefully drawn with a view to its being engraved on a gem. And I know not how many verses and legends came recommended to her by this symbolism. Her dreams, of course, partook of this symmetry. The same dream returns to her periodically, annually, and punctual to its night. One dream she marks in her journal as repeated for the fourth time:-- 'In C., I at last distinctly recognized the figure of the early vision, whom I found after I had left A., who led me, on the bridge, towards the city, glittering in sunset, but, midway, the bridge went under water. I have often seen in her face that it was she, but refused to believe it.' She valued, of course, the significance of flowers, and chose emblems for her friends from her garden. 'TO ----, WITH HEARTSEASE. 'Content, in purple lustre clad, Kingly serene, and golden glad, No demi-hues of sad contrition, No pallors of enforced submission;-- Give me such content as this, And keep awhile the rosy bliss.' DÆMONOLOGY. This catching at straws of coincidence, where all is geometrical, seems the necessity of certain natures. It, is true, that, in every good work, the particulars are right, and, that every spot of light on the ground, under the trees, is a perfect image of the sun. Yet, for astronomical purposes, an observatory is better than an orchard; and in a universe which is nothing but generations, or an unbroken suite of cause and effect, to infer Providence, because a man happens to find a shilling on the pavement just when he wants one to spend, is puerile, and much as if each of us should date his letters and notes of hand from his own birthday, instead of from Christ's or the king's reign, or the current Congress. These, to be sure, are also, at first, petty and private beginnings, but, by the world of men, clothed with a social and cosmical character. It will be seen, however, that this propensity Margaret held with certain tenets of fate, which always swayed her, and which Goethe, who had found room and fine names for all this in his system, had encouraged; and, I may add, which her own experiences, early and late, seemed strangely to justify. Some extracts, from her letters to different persons, will show how this matter lay in her mind. '_December 17, 1829_.--The following instance of beautiful credulity, in Rousseau, has taken my mind greatly. This remote seeking for the decrees of fate, this feeling of a destiny, casting its shadows from the very morning of thought, is the most beautiful species of idealism in our day. 'Tis finely manifested in Wallenstein, where the two common men sum up their superficial observations on the life and doings of Wallenstein, and show that, not until this agitating crisis, have they caught any idea of the deep thoughts which shaped that hero, who has, without their feeling it, moulded _their_ existence. '"Tasso," says Rousseau, "has predicted my misfortunes. Have you remarked that Tasso has this peculiarity, that you cannot take from his work a single strophe, nor from any strophe a single line, nor from any line a single word, without disarranging the whole poem? Very well! take away the strophe I speak of, the stanza has no connection with those that precede or follow it; it is absolutely useless. _Tasso probably wrote it involuntarily, and without comprehending it himself_." 'As to the impossibility of taking from Tasso without disarranging the poem, &c., I dare say 'tis not one whit more justly said of his, than, of any other narrative poem. _Mais, n'importe_, 'tis sufficient if Rousseau believed this. I found the stanza in question; admire its meaning beauty. 'I hope you have Italian enough to appreciate the singular perfection in expression. If not, look to Fairfax's Jerusalem Delivered, Canto 12, Stanza 77; but Rousseau says these lines have no connection with what goes before, or after; _they are preceded_, stanza 76, by these three lines, which he does not think fit to mention.' * * * * * "Misero mostro d'infelice amore; Misero mostro a cui sol pena è degna Dell' immensa impietà, la vita indegna." "Vivrò fra i miei tormenti e fra le cure, Mie giuste furie, forsennato errante. Paventerò l'ombre solinghe e scure, Che l'primo error mi recheranno avante E del sol che scoprì le mie sventure, A schivo ed in orrore avrò il sembiante. Temerò me medesmo; e da me stesso Sempre fuggendo, avrò me sempre appresso." LA GERUSALEMME: LIBERATA, C. XII. 76, 77. TO R.W.E. '_Dec._12, 1843.--When Goethe received a letter from Zelter, with a handsome superscription, he said. "Lay that aside; it is Zelter's true hand-writing. Every man has a dæmon, who is busy to confuse and limit his life. No way is the action of this power more clearly shown, than in the hand-writing. On this occasion, the evil influences have been evaded; the mood, the hand, the pen and paper have conspired to let our friend write truly himself." 'You may perceive, I quote from memory, as the sentences are anything but Goethean; but I think often of this little passage. With me, for weeks and months, the dæmon works his will. Nothing succeeds with me. I fall ill, or am otherwise interrupted. At these times, whether of frost, or sultry weather, I would gladly neither plant nor reap,--wait for the better times, which sometimes come, when I forget that sickness is ever possible; when all interruptions are upborne like straws on the full stream of my life, and the words that accompany it are as much in harmony as sedges murmuring near the bank. Not all, yet not unlike. But it often happens, that something presents itself, and must be done, in the bad time; nothing presents itself in the good: so I, like the others, seem worse and poorer than I am.' In another letter to an earlier friend, she expatiates a little. 'As to the Dæmoniacal, I know not that I can say to you anything more precise than you find from Goethe. There are no precise terms for such thoughts. The word _instinctive_ indicates their existence. I intimated it in the little piece on the Drachenfels. It may be best understood, perhaps, by a symbol. As the sun shines from the serene heavens, dispelling noxious exhalations, and calling forth exquisite thoughts on the surface of earth in the shape of shrub or flower, so gnome-like works the fire within the hidden caverns and secret veins of earth, fashioning existences which have a longer share in time, perhaps, because they are not immortal in thought. Love, beauty, wisdom, goodness are intelligent, but this power moves only to seize its prey. It is not necessarily either malignant or the reverse, but it has no scope beyond demonstrating its existence. When conscious, self-asserting, it becomes (as power working for its own sake, unwilling to acknowledge love for its superior, must) the devil. That is the legend of Lucifer, the star that would not own its centre. Yet, while it is unconscious, it is not devilish, only dæmoniac. In nature, we trace it in all volcanic workings, in a boding position of lights, in whispers of the wind, which has no pedigree; in deceitful invitations of the water, in the sullen rock, which never shall find a voice, and in the shapes of all those beings who go about seeking what they may devour. We speak of a mystery, a dread; we shudder, but we approach still nearer, and a part of our nature listens, sometimes answers to this influence, which, if not indestructible, is at least indissolubly linked with the existence of matter. 'In genius, and in character, it works, as you say, instinctively; it refuses to be analyzed by the understanding, and is most of all inaccessible to the person who possesses it. We can only say, I have it, he has it. You have seen it often in the eyes of those Italian faces you like. It is most obvious in the eye. As we look on such eyes, we think on the tiger, the serpent, beings who lurk, glide, fascinate, mysteriously control. For it is occult by its nature, and if it could meet you on the highway, and be familiarly known as an acquaintance, could not exist. The angels of light do not love, yet they do not insist on exterminating it. 'It has given rise to the fables of wizard, enchantress, and the like; these beings are scarcely good, yet not necessarily bad. Power tempts them. They draw their skills from the dead, because their being is coeval with that of matter, and matter is the mother of death.' In later days, she allowed herself sometimes to dwell sadly on the resistances which she called her fate, and remarked, that 'all life that has been or could be natural to me, is invariably denied.' She wrote long afterwards:-- 'My days at Milan were not unmarked. I have known some happy hours, but they all lead to sorrow, and not only the cups of wine, but of milk, seem drugged with poison, for me. It does not seem to be my fault, this destiny. I do not court these things,--they come. I am a poor magnet, with power to be wounded by the bodies I attract.' TEMPERAMENT. I said that Margaret had a broad good sense, which brought her near to all people. I am to say that she had also a strong temperament, which is that counter force which makes individuality, by driving all the powers in the direction of the ruling thought or feeling, and, when it is allowed full sway, isolating them. These two tendencies were always invading each other, and now one and now the other carried the day. This alternation perplexes the biographer, as it did the observer. We contradict on the second page what we affirm on the first: and I remember how often I was compelled to correct my impressions of her character when living; for after I had settled it once for all that she wanted this or that perception, at our next interview she would say with emphasis the very word. I think, in her case, there was something abnormal in those obscure habits and necessities which we denote by the word Temperament. In the first days of our acquaintance, I felt her to be a foreigner,--that, with her, one would always be sensible of some barrier, as if in making up a friendship with a cultivated Spaniard or Turk. She had a strong constitution, and of course its reactions were strong; and this is the reason why in all her life she has so much to say of her _fate_. She was in jubilant spirits in the morning, and ended the day with nervous headache, whose spasms, my wife told me, produced total prostration. She had great energy of speech and action, and seemed formed for high emergencies. Her life concentrated itself on certain happy days, happy hours, happy moments. The rest was a void. She had read that a man of letters must lose many days, to work well in one. Much more must a Sappho or a sibyl. The capacity of pleasure was balanced by the capacity of pain. 'If I had wist!--' she writes, 'I am a worse self-tormentor than Rousseau, and all my riches are fuel to the fire. My beautiful lore, like the tropic clime, hatches scorpions to sting me. There is a verse, which Annie of Lochroyan sings about her ring, that torments my memory, 'tis so true of myself.' When I found she lived at a rate so much faster than mine, and which was violent compared with mine, I foreboded rash and painful crises, and had a feeling as if a voice cried, _Stand from under!_--as if, a little further on, this destiny was threatened with jars and reverses, which no friendship could avert or console. This feeling partly wore off, on better acquaintance, but remained latent; and I had always an impression that her energy was too much a force of blood, and therefore never felt the security for her peace which belongs to more purely intellectual natures. She seemed more vulnerable. For the same reason, she remained inscrutable to me; her strength was not my strength,--her powers were a surprise. She passed into new states of great advance, but I understood these no better. It were long to tell her peculiarities. Her childhood was full of presentiments. She was then a somnambulist. She was subject to attacks of delirium, and, later, perceived that she had spectral illusions. When she was twelve, she had a determination of blood to the head. 'My parents,' she said, 'were much mortified to see the fineness of my complexion destroyed. My own vanity was for a time severely wounded; but I recovered, and made up my mind to be bright and ugly.' She was all her lifetime the victim of disease and pain. She read and wrote in bed, and believed that she could understand anything better when she was ill. Pain acted like a girdle, to give tension to her powers. A lady, who was with her one day during a terrible attack of nervous headache, which made Margaret totally helpless, assured me that Margaret was yet in the finest vein of humor, and kept those who were assisting her in a strange, painful excitement, between laughing and crying, by perpetual brilliant sallies. There were other peculiarities of habit and power. When she turned her head on one side, she alleged she had second sight, like St. Francis. These traits or predispositions made her a willing listener to all the uncertain science of mesmerism and its goblin brood, which have been rife in recent years. She had a feeling that she ought to have been a man, and said of herself, 'A man's ambition with a woman's heart, is an evil lot.' In some verses which she wrote 'To the Moon,' occur these lines:-- 'But if I steadfast gaze upon thy face, A human secret, like my own, I trace; For, through the woman's smile looks the male eye.' And she found something of true portraiture in a disagreeable novel of Balzac's, "_Le Livre Mystique_," in which an equivocal figure exerts alternately a masculine and a feminine influence on the characters of the plot. Of all this nocturnal element in her nature she was very conscious, and was disposed, of course, to give it as fine names as it would carry, and to draw advantage from it. 'Attica,' she said to a friend, 'is your province, Thessaly is mine: Attica produced the marble wonders, of the great geniuses; but Thessaly is the land of magic.' 'I have a great share of Typhon to the Osiris, wild rush and leap, blind force for the sake of force.' * * * * * 'Dante, thou didst not describe, in all thy apartments of Inferno, this tremendous repression of an existence half unfolded; this swoon as the soul was ready to be born.' * * * * * 'Every year I live, I dislike routine more and more, though I see that society rests on that, and other falsehoods. The more I screw myself down to hours, the more I become expert at giving out thought and life in regulated rations,--the more I weary of this world, and long to move upon the wing, without props and sedan chairs.' TO R.W.E. '_Dec._ 26, 1839.--If you could look into my mind just now, you would send far from you those who love and hate. I am on the Drachenfels, and cannot get off; it is one of my naughtiest moods. Last Sunday, I wrote a long letter, describing it in prose and verse, and I had twenty minds to send it you as a literary curiosity; then I thought, this might destroy relations, and I might not be able to be calm and chip marble with you any more, if I talked to you in magnetism and music; so I sealed and sent it in the due direction. 'I remember you say, that forlorn seasons often turn out the most profitable. Perhaps I shall find it so. I have been reading Plato all the week, because I could not write. I hoped to be tuned up thereby. I perceive, with gladness, a keener insight in myself, day by day; yet, after all, could not make a good statement this morning on the subject of beauty.' She had, indeed, a rude strength, which, if it could have been supported by an equal health, would have given her the efficiency of the strongest men. As it was, she had great power of work. The account of her reading in Groton is at a rate like Gibbon's, and, later, that of her writing, considered with the fact that writing was not grateful to her, is incredible. She often proposed to her friends, in the progress of intimacy, to write every day. 'I think less than a daily offering of thought and feeling would not content me, so much seems to pass unspoken.' In Italy, she tells Madame Arconati, that she has 'more than a hundred correspondents;' and it was her habit there to devote one day of every week to those distant friends. The facility with which she assumed stints of literary labor, which veteran feeders of the press would shrink from,--assumed and performed,--when her friends were to be served, I have often observed with wonder, and with fear, when I considered the near extremes of ill-health, and the manner in which her life heaped itself in high and happy moments, which were avenged by lassitude and pain. 'As each task comes,' she said, 'I borrow a readiness from its aspect, as I always do brightness from the face of a friend. Yet, as soon as the hour is past, I sink.' I think most of her friends will remember to have felt, at one time or another, some uneasiness, as if this athletic soul craved a larger atmosphere than it found; as if she were ill-timed and mis-mated, and felt in herself a tide of life, which compared with the slow circulation of others as a torrent with a rill. She found no full expression of it but in music. Beethoven's Symphony was the only right thing the city of the Puritans had for her. Those to whom music has a representative value, affording them a stricter copy of their inward life than any other of the expressive arts, will, perhaps, enter into the spirit which dictated the following letter to her patron saint, on her return, one evening, from the Boston Academy of Music. TO BEETHOVEN. '_Saturday Evening. 25th Nov._, 1843. 'My only friend, 'How shall I thank thee for once more breaking the chains of my sorrowful slumber? My heart beats. I live again, for I feel that I am worthy audience for thee, and that my being would be reason enough for thine. 'Master, my eyes are always clear. I see that the universe is rich, if I am poor. I see the insignificance of my sorrows. In my will, I am not a captive; in my intellect, not a slave. Is it then my fault that the palsy of my affections benumbs my whole life? 'I know that the curse is but for the time. I know what the eternal justice promises. But on this one sphere, it is sad. Thou didst say, thou hadst no friend but thy art. But that one is enough. I have no art, in which to vent the swell of a soul as deep as thine, Beethoven, and of a kindred frame. Thou wilt not think me presumptuous in this saying, as another might. I have always known that thou wouldst welcome and know me, as would no other who ever lived upon the earth since its first creation. 'Thou wouldst forgive me, master, that I have not been true to my eventual destiny, and therefore have suffered on every side "the pangs of despised love." Thou didst the same; but thou didst borrow from those errors the inspiration of thy genius. Why is it not thus with me? Is it because, as a woman, I am bound by a physical-law, which prevents the soul from manifesting itself? Sometimes the moon seems mockingly to say so,--to say that I, too, shall not shine, unless I can find a sun. O, cold and barren moon, tell a different tale! 'But thou, oh blessed master! dost answer all my questions, and make it my privilege to be. Like a humble wife to the sage, or poet, it is my triumph that I can understand and cherish thee: like a mistress, I arm thee for the fight: like a young daughter, I tenderly bind thy wounds. Thou art to me beyond compare, for thou art all I want. No heavenly sweetness of saint or martyr, no many-leaved Raphael, no golden Plato, is anything to me, compared with thee. The infinite Shakspeare, the stern Angelo, Dante,--bittersweet like thee,--are no longer seen in thy presence. And, beside these names, there are none that could vibrate in thy crystal sphere. Thou hast all of them, and that ample surge of life besides, that great winged being which they only dreamed of. There is none greater than Shakspeare; he, too, is a god; but his creations are successive; thy _fiat_ comprehends them all. 'Last summer, I met thy mood in nature, on those wide impassioned plains flower and crag-bestrown. There, the tide of emotion had rolled over, and left the vision of its smiles and sobs, as I saw to-night from thee. 'If thou wouldst take me wholly to thyself--! I am lost in this world, where I sometimes meet angels, but of a different star from mine. Even so does thy spirit plead with all spirits. But thou dost triumph and bring them all in. 'Master, I have this summer envied the oriole which had even a swinging nest in the high bough. I have envied the least flower that came to seed, though that seed were strown to the wind. But I envy none when I am with thee.' SELF-ESTEEM. Margaret at first astonished and repelled us by a complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of Scaliger. She spoke, in the quietest manner, of the girls she had formed, the young men who owed everything to her, the fine companions she had long ago exhausted. In the coolest way, she said to her friends, 'I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.' In vain, on one occasion, I professed my reverence for a youth of genius, and my curiosity in his future,--'O no, she was intimate with his mind,' and I 'spoiled him, by overrating him.' Meantime, we knew that she neither had seen, nor would see, his subtle superiorities. I have heard, that from the beginning of her life, she idealized herself as a sovereign. She told--she early saw herself to be intellectually superior to those around her, and that for years she dwelt upon the idea, until she believed that she was not her parents' child, but an European princess confided to their care. She remembered, that, when a little girl, she was walking one day under the apple trees with such an air and step, that her father pointed her out to her sister, saying, _Incedit regina._ And her letters sometimes convey these exultations, as the following, which was written to a lady, and which contained Margaret's translation of Goethe's "Prometheus." To ----. 1838.--Which of us has not felt the questionings expressed in this bold fragment? Does it not seem, were we gods, or could steal their fire, we would make men not only happier, but free,--glorious? Yes, my life is strange; thine is strange. We are, we shall be, in this life, mutilated beings, but there is in my bosom a faith, that I shall see the reason; a glory, that I can endure to be so imperfect; and a feeling, ever elastic, that fate and time shall have the shame and the blame, if I am mutilated. I will do all I can,--and, if one cannot succeed, there is a beauty in martyrdom. Your letters are excellent. I did not mean to check your writing, only I thought that you might wish a confidence that I must anticipate with a protest. But I take my natural position always: and the more I see, the more I feel that it is regal. Without throne, sceptre, or guards, still a queen. It is certain that Margaret occasionally let slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She could say, as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of somebody, 'He appreciates _me_.' There was something of hereditary organization in this, and something of unfavorable circumstance in the fact, that she had in early life no companion, and few afterwards, in her finer studies; but there was also an ebullient sense of power, which she felt to be in her, which as yet had found no right channels. I remember she once said to me, what I heard as a mere statement of fact, and nowise as unbecoming, that 'no man gave such invitation to her mind as to tempt her to a full expression; that she felt a power to enrich her thought with such wealth and variety of embellishment as would, no doubt, be tedious to such as she conversed with.' Her impatience she expressed as she could. 'I feel within myself,' she said, 'an immense force, but I cannot bring it out. It may sound like a joke, but I do feel something corresponding to that tale of the Destinies falling in love with Hermes.' In her journal, in the summer of 1844, she writes:-- 'Mrs. Ware talked with me about education,--wilful education,--in which she is trying to get interested. I talk with a Goethean moderation on this subject, which rather surprises her and ----, who are nearer the entrance of the studio. I am really old on this subject. In near eight years' experience, I have learned as much as others would in eighty, from my great talent at explanation, tact in the use of means, and immediate and invariable power over the minds of my pupils. My wish has been, to purify my own conscience, when near them; give clear views of the aims of this life; show them where the magazines of knowledge lie; and leave the rest to themselves and the Spirit, who must teach and help them to self-impulse. I told Mrs. W. it was much if we did not injure them; if they were passing the time in a way that was _not bad_, so that good influences have a chance. Perhaps people in general must expect greater outward results, or they would feel no interest.' Again: 'With the intellect I always have, always shall, overcome; but that is not the half of the work. The life, the life! O, my God! shall the life never be sweet?' I have inquired diligently of those who saw her often, and in different companies, concerning her habitual tone, and something like this is the report:--In conversation, Margaret seldom, except as a special grace, admitted others upon an equal ground with herself. She was exceedingly tender, when she pleased to be, and most cherishing in her influence; but to elicit this tenderness, it was necessary to submit first to her personally. When a person was overwhelmed by her, and answered not a word, except, "Margaret, be merciful to me, a sinner," then her love and tenderness would come like a seraph's, and often an acknowledgment that she had been too harsh, and even a craving for pardon, with a humility,--which, perhaps, she had caught from the other. But her instinct was not humility,--that was always an afterthought. This arrogant tone of her conversation, if it came to be the subject of comment, of course, she defended, and with such broad good nature, and on grounds of simple truth, as were not easy to set aside. She quoted from Manzoni's _Carmagnola_, the lines:-- "Tolga il ciel che alcuno Piu altamente di me pensi ch'io stesso." "God forbid that any one should conceive more highly of me than I myself." Meantime, the tone of her journals is humble, tearful, religious, and rises easily into prayer. I am obliged to an ingenious correspondent for the substance of the following account of this idiosyncrasy:-- Margaret was one of the few persons who looked upon life as an art, and every person not merely as an artist, but as a work of art. She looked upon herself as a living statue, which should always stand on a polished pedestal, with right accessories, and under the most fitting lights. She would have been glad to have everybody so live and act. She was annoyed when they did not, and when they did not regard her from the point of view which alone did justice to her. No one could be more lenient in her judgments of those whom she saw to be living in this light. Their faults were to be held as "the disproportions of the ungrown giant." But the faults of persons who were unjustified by this ideal, were odious. Unhappily, her constitutional self-esteem sometimes blinded the eyes that should have seen that an idea lay at the bottom of some lives which she did not quite so readily comprehend as beauty; that truth had other manifestations than those which engaged her natural sympathies; that sometimes the soul illuminated only the smallest arc--of a circle so large that it was lost in the clouds of another world. This apology reminds me of a little speech once made to her, at his own house, by Dr. Channing, who held her in the highest regard: "Miss Fuller, when I consider that you are and have all that Miss ---- has so long wished for, and that you scorn her, and that she still admires you,--I think her place in heaven will be very high." But qualities of this kind can only be truly described by the impression they make on the bystander; and it is certain that her friends excused in her, because she had a right to it, a tone which they would have reckoned intolerable in any other. Many years since, one of her earliest and fastest friends quoted Spenser's sonnet as accurately descriptive of Margaret:-- "Rudely thou wrongest my dear heart's desire, In finding fault with her too portly pride; The thing which I do most in her admire Is of the world unworthy most envied. For, in those lofty looks is close implied Scorn of base things, disdain of foul dishonor, Threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so wide That loosely they ne dare to look upon her: Such pride is praise, such portliness is honor, That boldened innocence bears in her eyes; And her fair countenance, like a goodly banner, Spreads in defiance of all enemies. Was never in this world aught worthy tried, Without a spark of some self-pleasing pride." BOOKS. She had been early remarked for her sense and sprightliness, and for her skill in school exercises. Now she had added wide reading, and of the books most grateful to her. She had read the Italian poets by herself, and from sympathy. I said, that, by the leading part she naturally took, she had identified herself with all the elegant culture in this country. Almost every person who had any distinction for wit, or art, or scholarship, was known to her; and she was familiar with the leading books and topics. There is a kind of undulation in the popularity of the great writers, even of the first rank. We have seen a recent importance given to Behmen and Swedenborg; and Shakspeare has unquestionably gained with the present generation. It is distinctive, too, of the taste of the period,--the new vogue given to the genius of Dante. An edition of Cary's translation, reprinted in Boston, many years ago, was rapidly sold; and, for the last twenty years, all studious youths and maidens have been reading the Inferno. Margaret had very early found her way to Dante, and from a certain native preference which she felt or fancied for the Italian genius. The following letter, though of a later date, relates to these studies:-- TO R.W.E. '_December_, 1842.--When you were here, you seemed to think I might perhaps have done something on the _Vita Nuova_; and the next day I opened the book, and considered how I could do it. But you shall not expect that, either, for your present occasion. When I first mentioned it to you, it was only as a piece of Sunday work, which I thought of doing for you alone; and because it has never seemed to me you entered enough into the genius of the Italian to apprehend the mind, which has seemed so great to me, and a star unlike, if not higher than all the others in our sky. Else, I should have given you the original, rather than any version of mine. I intended to translate the poems, with which it is interspersed, into plain prose. Milnes and Longfellow have tried each their power at doing it in verse, and have done better, probably, than I could, yet not well. But this would not satisfy me for the public. Besides, the translating Dante is a piece of literary presumption, and challenges a criticism to which I am not sure that I am, as the Germans say, _gewachsen_. Italian, as well as German, I learned by myself, unassisted, except as to the pronunciation. I have never been brought into connection with minds trained to any severity in these kinds of elegant culture. I have used all the means within my reach, but my not going abroad is an insuperable defect in the technical part of my education. I was easily capable of attaining excellence, perhaps mastery, in the use of some implements. Now I know, at least, _what I do not know_, and I get along by never voluntarily going beyond my depth, and, when called on to do it, stating my incompetency. At moments when I feel tempted to regret that I could not follow out the plan I had marked for myself, and develop powers which are not usual here, I reflect, that if I had attained high finish and an easy range in these respects, I should not have been thrown back on my own resources, or known them as I do. But Lord Brougham should not translate Greek orations, nor a maid-of-all-work attempt such a piece of delicate handling as to translate the _Vita Nuova_.' Here is a letter, without date, to another correspondent: 'To-day, on reading over some of the sonnets of Michel Angelo, I felt them more than usual. I know not why I have not read them thus before, except that the beauty was pointed out to me at first by another, instead of my coming unexpectedly upon it of myself. All the great writers, all the persons who have been dear to me, I have found and chosen; they have not been proposed to me. My intimacy with them came upon me as natural eras, unexpected and thrice dear. Thus I have appreciated, but not been able to feel, Michel Angelo as a poet. 'It is a singular fact in my mental history, that, while I understand the principles and construction of language much better than formerly, I cannot read so well _les langues méridionales_. I suppose it is that I am less _méridionale_ myself. I understand the genius of the north better than I did.' Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, were her friends among the old poets,--for to Ariosto she assigned a far lower place,--Alfieri and Manzoni, among the new. But what was of still more import to her education, she had read German books, and, for the three years before I knew her, almost exclusively,--Lessing, Schiller, Richter, Tieck, Novalis, and, above all, GOETHE. It was very obvious, at the first intercourse with her, though her rich and busy mind never reproduced undigested reading, that the last writer,--food or poison,--the most powerful of all mental reagents,--the pivotal mind in modern literature,--for all before him are ancients, and all who have read him are moderns,--that this mind had been her teacher, and, of course, the place was filled, nor was there room for any other. She had that symptom which appears in all the students of Goethe,--an ill-dissembled contempt of all criticism on him which they hear from others, as if it were totally irrelevant; and they are themselves always preparing to say the right word,--a _prestige_ which is allowed, of course, until they do speak: when they have delivered their volley, they pass, like their foregoers, to the rear. The effect on Margaret was complete. She was perfectly timed to it. She found her moods met, her topics treated, the liberty of thought she loved, the same climate of mind. Of course, this book superseded all others, for the time, and tinged deeply all her thoughts. The religion, the science, the Catholicism, the worship of art, the mysticism and dæmonology, and withal the clear recognition of moral distinctions as final and eternal, all charmed her; and Faust, and Tasso, and Mignon, and Makaria, and Iphigenia, became irresistible names. It was one of those agreeable historical coincidences, perhaps invariable, though not yet registered, the simultaneous appearance of a teacher and of pupils, between whom exists a strict affinity. Nowhere did Goethe find a braver, more intelligent, or more sympathetic reader. About the time I knew her, she was meditating a biography of Goethe, and did set herself to the task in 1837. She spent much time on it, and has left heaps of manuscripts, which are notes, transcripts, and studies in that direction. But she wanted leisure and health to finish it, amid the multitude of projected works with which her brain teemed. She used great discretion on this point, and made no promises. In 1839, she published her translation of Eckermann, a book which makes the basis of the translation of Eckermann since published in London, by Mr. Oxenford. In the Dial, in July, 1841, she wrote an article on Goethe, which is, on many accounts, her best paper. CRITICISM. Margaret was in the habit of sending to her correspondents, in lieu of letters, sheets of criticism on her recent readings. From such quite private folios, never intended for the press, and, indeed, containing here and there names and allusions, which it is now necessary to veil or suppress, I select the following notices, chiefly of French books. Most of these were addressed to me, but the three first to an earlier friend. 'Reading Schiller's introduction to the Wars of the League, I have been led back to my old friend, the Duke of Sully, and his charming king. He was a man, that Henri! How gay and graceful seems his unflinching frankness! He wore life as lightly as the feather in his cap. I have become much interested, too, in the two Guises, who had seemed to me mere intriguers, and not of so splendid abilities, when I was less able to appreciate the difficulties they daily and hourly combated. I want to read some more books about them. Do you know whether I could get Matthieu, or de Thou, or the Memoirs of the House of Nevers? 'I do not think this is a respectable way of passing my summer, but I cannot help it. 'I never read any life of Molière. Are the facts very interesting? You see clearly in his writing what he was: a man not high, not poetic; but firm, wide, genuine, whose clearsightedness only made him more noble. I love him well that he could see without showing these myriad mean faults of the social man, and yet make no nearer approach to misanthropy than his Alceste. These witty Frenchmen. Rabelais, Montaigne, Molière, are great as were their marshals and _preux chevaliers_; when the Frenchman tries to be poetical, he becomes theatrical, but he can be romantic, and also dignified, maugre shrugs and snuff-boxes.' * * * * * '_Thursday Evening_.--Although I have been much engaged these two days. I have read Spiridion twice. I could have wished to go through it the second time more at leisure, but as I am going away, I thought I would send it back, lest it should be wanted before my return. 'The development of the religious sentiment being the same as in Hélene, I at first missed the lyric effusion of that work, which seems to me more and more beautiful, as I think of it more. This, however, was a mere prejudice, of course, as the thought here is poured into a quite different mould, and I was not troubled by it on a second reading. 'Again, when I came to look at the work by itself, I thought the attempt too bold. A piece of character-painting does not seem to be the place for a statement of these wide and high subjects. For here the philosophy is not merely implied in the poetry and religion, but assumes to show a face of its own. And, as none should meddle with these matters who are not in earnest, so, such will prefer to find the thought of a teacher or fellow-disciple expressed as directly and as bare of ornament as possible. 'I was interested in De Wette's Theodor, and that learned and (_on dit_) profound man seemed to me so to fail, that I did not finish the book, nor try whether I could believe the novice should ever arrive at manly stature. 'I am not so clear as to the scope and bearing of this book, as of that. I suppose if I were to read Lamennais, or L'Erminier, I should know what they all want or intend. And if you meet with _Les paroles d'un Croyant_, I will beg you to get it for me, for I am more curious than ever. I had supposed the view taken by these persons in France, to be the same with that of Novalis and the German Catholics, in which I have been deeply interested. But from this book, it would seem to approach the faith of some of my friends here, which has been styled Psychotheism. And the gap in the theoretical fabric is the same as with them. I read with unutterable interest the despair of Alexis in his Eclectic course, his return to the teachings of external nature, his new birth, and consequent appreciation of poetry and music. But the question of Free Will,--how to reconcile its workings with necessity and compensation,--how to reconcile the life of the heart with that of the intellect,--how to listen to the whispering breeze of Spirit, while breasting, as a man should, the surges of the world,--these enigmas Sand and her friends seem to have solved no better than M.F. and her friends. 'The practical optimism is much the same as ours, except that there is more hope for the masses--soon. 'This work is written with great vigor, scarce any faltering on the wing. The horrors are disgusting, as are those of every writer except Dante. Even genius should content itself in dipping the pencil in cloud and mist. The apparitions of Spiridion are managed with great beauty. As in Hélene, as in Novalis, I recognized, with delight, the eye that gazed, the ear that listened, till the spectres came, as they do to the Highlander on his rocky couch, to the German peasant on his mountain. How different from the vulgar eye which looks, but never sees! Here the beautiful apparition advances from the solar ray, or returns to the fountain of light and truth, as it should, when eagle eyes are gazing. 'I am astonished at her insight into the life of thought. She must know it through some man. Women, under any circumstances, can scarce do more than dip the foot in this broad and deep river; they have not strength to contend with the current. Brave, if they do not delicately shrink from the cold water. No Sibyls have existed like those of Michel Angelo; those of Raphael are the true brides of a God, but not themselves divine. It is easy for women to be heroic in action, but when it comes to interrogating God, the universe, the soul, and, above all, trying to live above their own hearts, they dart down to their nests like so many larks, and, if they cannot find them, fret like the French Corinne. Goethe's Makaria was born of the stars. Mr. Flint's Platonic old lady a _lusus naturæ_, and the Dudevant has loved a philosopher. 'I suppose the view of the present state of Catholicism no way exaggerated. Alexis is no more persecuted than Abelard was, and is so, for the same reasons. From the examinations of the Italian convents in Leopold's time, it seems that the grossest materialism not only reigns, but is taught and professed in them. And Catholicism loads and infects as all dead forms do, however beautiful and noble during their lives.' * * GEORGE SAND, AGAIN. '1839.--When I first knew George Sand, I thought I found tried the experiment I wanted. I did not value Bettine so much; she had not pride enough for me; only now when I am sure of myself, would I pour out my soul at the feet of another. In the assured soul it is kingly prodigality; in one which cannot forbear, it is mere babyhood. I love _abandon_ only when natures are capable of the extreme reverse. I knew Bettine would end in nothing, when I read her book. I knew she could not outlive her love. 'But in _Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre_, which I read first, I saw the knowledge of the passions, and of social institutions, with the celestial choice which rose above them. I loved Hélene, who could so well hear the terrene voices, yet keep her eye fixed on the stars. That would be my wish, also, to know all, then choose; I ever revered her, for I was not sure that I could have resisted the call of the Now, could have left the spirit, and gone to God. And, at a more ambitious age, I could not have refused the philosopher. But I hoped from her steadfastness, and I thought I heard the last tones of a purified life:--Gretchen, in the golden cloud, raised above all past delusions, worthy to redeem and upbear the wise man, who stumbled into the pit of error while searching for truth. 'Still, in _André_, and in _Jacques_, I traced the same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance only to learn to appreciate the liberty of law, to know that license is the foe of freedom. And, though the sophistry of passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of purest hue seemed to grow upon the dank and dirty ground. I thought she had cast aside the slough of her past life, and began a new existence beneath the sun of a true Ideal. 'But here (in the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_) what do I see? An unfortunate bewailing her loneliness, bewailing her mistakes, writing for money! She has genius, and a manly grasp of mind, but not a manly heart! Will there never be a being to combine a mail's mind and woman's heart, and who yet finds life too rich to weep over? Never? 'When I read in _Leone Lioni_ the account of the jeweller's daughter's life with her mother, passed in dress and in learning to be looked at when dressed, _avec un front impassible_, it reminded me exceedingly of ----, and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive _naïveté_, a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the dupe of Lioni. 'If I were a man, and wished a wife, as many do, merely as an ornament, or silken toy, I would take ---- as soon as any I know. Her fantastic, impassioned, and mutable nature would yield an inexhaustible amusement. She is capable of the most romantic actions;--wild as the falcon, and voluptuous as the tuberose,--yet she has not in her the elements of romance, like a deeper and less susceptible nature. My cold and reasoning E., with her one love lying, perhaps, never to be unfolded, beneath such sheaths of pride and reserve, would make a far better heroine. 'Both these characters are natural, while S. and T. are _naturally factitious_, because so imitative, and her mother differs from Juliet and her mother, by the impulse a single strong character gave them. Even at this distance of time, there is a slight but perceptible taste of iron in the water. 'George Sand disappoints me, as almost all beings have, especially since I have been brought close to her person by the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_. Her remarks on Lavater seem really shallow, and hasty, _à la mode du genre feménin_. No self-ruling Aspasia she, but a frail woman mourning over a lot. Any peculiarity in her destiny seems accidental. She is forced to this and that, to earn her bread forsooth! 'Yet her style,--with what a deeply smouldering fire it burns!--not vehement, but intense, like Jean Jacques.' ALFRED DE VIGNY. '_Sept._, 1839. '"La harpe tremble encore, et la flûte soupire." 'Sometimes we doubt this, and think the music has finally ceased, so sultry still lies the air around us, or only disturbed by the fife and drum of talent, calling to the parade-ground of social life. The ear grows dull. '"Faith asks her daily bread, And Fancy is no longer fed." 'So materialistic is the course of common life, that we _ask daily_ new Messiahs from literature and art, to turn us from the Pharisaic observance of law, to the baptism of spirit. But stars arise upon our murky sky, and the flute _soupire_ from the quarter where we least expect it. '_La jeune France_! I had not believed in this youthful pretender. I thought she had no pure blood in her veins, no aristocratic features in her face, no natural grace in her gait. I thought her an illegitimate child of the generous, but extravagant youth of Germany. I thought she had been left at the foundling hospital, as not worth a parent's care, and that now, grown up, she was trying to prove at once her parentage and her charms by certificates which might be headed, Innocent Adultery, Celestial Crime, &c. 'The slight acquaintance I had with Hugo, and company, did not dispel these impressions. And I thought Chateaubriand (far too French for my taste also,) belonged to _l'ancien régime_, and that Béranger and Courier stood apart. Nodier, Paul de Kock, Sue, Jules Janin, I did not know, except through the absurd reports of English reviewers; Le Maistre and Lamennais, as little. 'But I have now got a peep at this galaxy. I begin to divine the meaning of St. Simonianism, Cousinism, and the movement which the same causes have produced in belles-lettres. I perceive that _la jeune France_ is the legitimate, though far younger sister of Germany; taught by her, but not born of her, but of a common mother. I see, at least begin to see, what she has learned from England, and what the bloody rain of the revolution has done to fertilize her soil, naturally too light. 'Blessed be the early days when I sat at the feet of Rousseau, prophet sad and stately as any of Jewry! Every onward movement of the age, every downward step into the solemn depths of my own soul, recalls thy oracles, O Jean Jacques! But as these things only glimmer upon me at present, clouds of rose and amber, in the perspective of a long, dim woodland glade, which I must traverse if I would get a fair look at them from the hill-top,--as I cannot, to say sooth, get the works of these always working geniuses, but by slow degrees, in a country that has no heed of them till her railroads and canals are finished,--I need not jot down my petty impressions of the movement writers. I wish to speak of one among them, aided, honored by them, but not of them. He is to _la jeune France_ rather the herald of a tourney, or the master of ceremonies at a patriotic festival, than a warrior for her battles, or an advocate to win her cause. 'The works of M. de Vigny having come in my way, I have read quite through this thick volume. 'I read, a year since, in the London and Westminster, an admirable sketch of Armand Carrel. The writer speaks particularly of the use of which Carrel's experience of practical life had been to him as an author; how it had tempered and sharpened the blade of his intellect to the Damascene perfection. It has been of like use to de Vigny, though not in equal degree. 'De Vigny _passed_,--but for manly steadfastness, he would probably say _wasted_,--his best years in the army. He is now about forty; and we have in this book the flower of these best years. It is a night-blooming Cereus, for his days were passed in the duties of his profession. These duties, so tiresome and unprofitable in time of peace, were the ground in which the seed sprang up, which produced these many-leaved and calm night-flowers. 'The first portion of this volume, _Servitude et Grandeurs Militaires_, contains an account of the way in which he received his false tendency. Cherished on the "wounded knees" of his aged father, he listened to tales of the great Frederic, whom the veteran had known personally. After an excellent sketch of the king, he says: "I expatiate here, almost in spite of myself, because this was the first great man whose portrait was thus drawn for me at home,--a portrait after nature,--and because my admiration of him was the first symptom of my useless love of arms,--the first cause of one of the most complete delusions of my life." This admiration for the great king remained so lively in his mind, that even Bonaparte in his gestures seemed to him, in later days, a plagiarist. 'At the military school, "the drum stifled the voices of our masters, and the mysterious voices of books seemed to us cold and pedantic. Tropes and logarithms seemed to us only steps to mount to the star of the Legion of Honor,--the fairest star of heaven to us children." '"No meditation could keep long in chains heads made constantly giddy by the noise of cannon and bells for the _Te Deum_. When one of our former comrades returned to pay us a visit in uniform, and his arm in a scarf, we blushed at our books, and threw them at the heads of our teachers. Our teachers were always reading us bulletins from the _grande armée_, and our cries of _Vive l'Empereur_ interrupted Tacitus and Plato. Our preceptors resembled heralds of arms, our study halls barracks, and our examinations reviews." 'Thus was he led into the army; and, he says, "It was only very late, that I perceived that my services were one long mistake, and that I had imported into a life altogether active, a nature altogether contemplative." 'He entered the army at the time of Napoleon's fall, and, like others, wasted life in waiting for war. For these young persons could not believe that peace and calm were possible to France; could not believe that she could lead any life but one of conquest. 'As De Vigny was gradually undeceived, he says: "Loaded with an ennui which I did not dream of in a life I had so ardently desired, it became a necessity to me to detach myself by night from the vain and tiresome tumult of military days. From these nights, in which I enlarged in silence the knowledge I had acquired from our public and tumultuous studies, proceeded my poems and books. From these days, there remain to me these recollections, whose chief traits I here assemble around one idea. For, not reckoning for the glory of arms, either on the present or future, I sought it in the souvenirs of my comrades. My own little adventures will not serve, except as frame to those pictures of the military life, and of the manners of our armies, all whose traits are by no means known." 'And thus springs up, in the most natural manner, this little book on the army. 'It has the truth, the delicacy, and the healthiness of a production native to the soil; the merit of love-letters, journals, lyric poems, &c., written without any formal intention of turning life into a book, but because the writer could not help it. What, more than anything else, engaged the attention of De Vigny, was the false position of two beings towards a factitious society: the soldier, now that standing armies are the mode, and the poet, now that Olympic games or pastimes are not the mode. He has treated the first best, because with profounder _connoissance du fait_. For De Vigny is not a poet; he has only an eye to perceive the existence of these birds of heaven. But in few ways, except their own broken harp-tone's thrill, have their peculiar sorrows and difficulties been so well illustrated. The character of the soldier, with its virtues and faults, is portrayed with such delicacy, that to condense would ruin. The peculiar reserve, the habit of duty, the beauty of a character which cannot look forward, and need not look back, are given with distinguished finesse. 'Of the three stories which adorn this part of the book, _Le Cachet Rouge_ is the loveliest, _La Canne au Jonc_ the noblest. Never was anything more sweetly naïve than parts of _Le Cachet Rouge_. _La pauvre petite femme_, she was just such a person as my ----. And then the farewell injunctions,--_du pauvre petite maré_,--the nobleness and the coarseness of the poor captain. It is as original as beautiful, _c'est dire beaucoup_. In _La Canne au Jonc_, Collingwood, who embodies the high feeling of duty, is taken too raw out of a book,--his letters to his daughters. But the effect on the character of _le Capitaine Renaud_, and the unfolding of his interior life, are done with the spiritual beauty of Manzoni. '_Cinq-Mars_ is a romance in the style of Walter Scott. It is well brought out, figures in good relief, lights well distributed, sentiment high, but nowhere exaggerated, knowledge exact, and the good and bad of human nature painted with that impartiality which becomes a man, and a man of the world. All right, no failure anywhere; also, no wonderful success, no genius, no magic. It is one of those works which I should consider only excusable as the amusement of leisure hours; and, though few could write it, chiefly valuable to the writer. 'Here he has arranged, as in a bouquet, what he knew,--and a great deal it is,--of the time of Louis XIII., as he has of the Regency in "La Marechale d'Ancre,"--a much finer work, indeed one of the best-arranged and finished modern dramas. The Leonora Galigai is better than anything I have seen in Victor Hugo, and as good as Schiller. Stello is a bolder attempt. It is the history of three poets,--Gilbert, André Chenier, Chatterton. He has also written a drama called Chatterton, inferior to the story here. The "marvellous boy" seems to have captivated his imagination marvellously. In thought, these productions are worthless; for taste, beauty of sentiment, and power of description, remarkable. His advocacy of the poets' cause is about as effective and well-planned as Don Quixote's tourney with the wind-mill. How would you provide for the poet _bon homme_ De Vigny?--from a joint-stock company Poet's Fund, or how? 'His translation of Othello, which I glanced at, is good for a Frenchman. 'Among his poems, La Frégate, La Sérieuse, Madame de Soubise, and Dolorida, please me especially. The last has an elegiac sweetness and finish, which are rare. It also makes a perfect gem of a cabinet picture. Some have a fine strain of natural melody, and give you at once the key-note of the situation, as this:-- '"J'aime le son du cor le soir, au fond des bois, Soit qu'il chante," &c. And '"Qu'il est doux, qu'il est doux d'ecouter les histoires Des histoires du temps passe Quand les branches des arbres sont noires, Quand la neige est essaisse, et charge un sol glacé, Quand seul dans un ciel pâle un peuplier s'élance, Quand sous le manteau blanc qui vient de le cacher L'immobile corbeau sur l'arbre se balance Comme la girouette au bout du long clocher." 'These poems generally are only interesting as the leisure hours of an interesting man. 'De Vigny writes in an excellent style; soft, fresh, deliberately graceful. Such a style is like fine manners; you think of the words select, appropriate, rather than distinguished, or beautiful. De Vigny is a perfect gentleman; and his refinement is rather that of the gentleman than that of the poets whom he is so full of. In character, he looks naturally at those things which interest the man of honor and the man of taste. But for literature, he would have known nothing about the poets. He should be the elegant and instructive companion of social, not the priest or the minstrel of solitary hours. 'Neither has he logic or grasp with his reasoning powers, though of this, also, he is ambitious. Observation is his forte. To see, and to tell with grace, often with dignity and pathos, what he sees, is his proper vocation. Yet, where he fails, he has too much tact and modesty to be despised; and we cannot enough admire the absence of faults in a man whose ambition soared so much beyond his powers, and in an age and a country so full of false taste. He is never seduced into sentimentality, paradox, violent contrast, and, above all, never makes the mistake of confounding the horrible with the sublime. Above all, he never falls into the error, common to merely elegant minds, of painting leading minds "_en gigantesque_." His Richelieu and his Bonaparte are treated with great calmness, and with dignified ease, almost as beautiful as majestic superiority. 'In this volume is contained all that is on record of the inner life of a man of forty years. How many suns, how many rains and dews, to produce a few buds and flowers, some sweet, but not rich fruit! We cannot help demanding of the man of talent that he should be like "the orange tree, that busy plant." But, as Landor says, "He who has any thoughts of any worth can, and probably will, afford to let the greater part lie fallow." 'I have not made a note upon De Vigny's notions of abnegation, which he repeats as often as Dr. Channing the same watch-word of self-sacrifice. It is that my views are not yet matured, and I can have no judgment on the point.' BÉRANGER. '_Sept._, 1839.--I have lately been reading some of Béranger's _chansons_. The hour was not propitious. I was in a mood the very reverse of Roger Bontemps, and beset with circumstances the most unsuited to make me sympathize with the prayer-- '"Pardonnez la gaieté De ma philosophie;" yet I am not quite insensible to their wit, high sentiment, and spontaneous grace. A wit that sparkles all over the ocean of life, a sentiment that never puts the best foot forward, but prefers the tone of delicate humor, to the mouthings of tragedy; a grace so aerial, that it nowhere requires the aid of a thought, for in the light refrains of these productions, the meaning is felt as much as in the most pointed lines. Thus, in "Les Mirmidons," the refrain-- '"Mirmidons, race féconde, Mirmidons Enfin nous commandons, Jupiter livre le monde, Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons, (bis.)" 'The swarming of the insects about the dead lion is expressed as forcibly as in the most sarcastic passage of the chanson. In "La Faridondaine" every sound is a witticism, and levels to the ground a bevy of what Byron calls "garrison people." "Halte là! ou la système des interpretations" is equally witty, though there the form seems to be as much in the saying, as in the comic melody of sound. 'In "Adieux à la Campagne," "Souvenirs du Peuple," "La Déesse de la Liberté," "La Convoi de David," a melancholy pathos breathes, which touches the heart the more that it is so unpretending. "Ce n'est plus Lisette," "Mon Habit," "L'Indépendant," "Vous vieillirez, O ma belle Maitresse," a gentle graceful sadness wins us. In "Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens," "Les Etoiles qui filent," "Les Conseils de Lise," "Treize à Table," a noble dignity is admired, while such as "La Fortune" and "La Métempsycose" are inimitable in their childlike playfulness. "Ma Vocation" I have had and admired for many years. He is of the pure ore, a darling fairy changling of great mother Nature; the poet of the people, and, therefore, of all in the upper classes sufficiently intelligent and refined to appreciate the wit and sentiment of the people. But his wit is so truly French in its lightness and sparkling, feathering vivacity, that one like me, accustomed to the bitterness of English tonics, suicidal November melancholy, and Byronic wrath of satire, cannot appreciate him at once. But when used to the gentler stimuli, we like them best, and we also would live awhile in the atmosphere of music and mirth, content if we have "bread for to-day, and hope for to-morrow." 'There are fine lines in his "Cinq Mai;" the sentiment is as grand as Manzoni's, though not sustained by the same majestic sweep of diction, as,-- '"Ce rocher repousse l'espérance, L'Aigle n'est plus dans le secret des dieux, Il fatiguait la victoire à le suivre, Elle était lasse: il ne l'attendit pas." 'And from "La Gérontocratie, ou les infiniment petits:" '"Combien d'imperceptibles êtres, De petits jésuites bilieux! De milliers d'autres petits prêtres, Lui portent de petits bons dieux." 'But wit, poet, man of honor, tailor's grandson and fairy's favorite, he must speak for himself, and the best that can be felt or thought of him cannot be said in the way of criticism. I will copy and keep a few of his songs. I should like to keep the whole collection by me, and take it up when my faith in human nature required the gentlest of fortifying draughts. 'How fine his answer to those who asked about the "de" before his name!-- '"Je suis vilain, Vilain, vilain," &c. J'honore une race commune, Car, sensible, quoique malin, Je n'ai flatté que l'infortune." 'In a note to "Couplets on M. Laisney, _imprimeur à Peronne_," he says: "It was in his printing-house that I was put to prentice; not having been able to learn orthography, he imparted to me the taste for poetry, gave me lessons in versification, and corrected my first essays." 'Of Bonaparte,-- '"Un conquérant, dans sa fortune altière, Se fit un jeu des sceptres et des lois, Et de ses pieds on peut voir la poussière Empreinte encore sur le bandeau des rois." 'I admire, also, "Le Violon brisé," for its grace and sweetness. How fine Béranger on Waterloo!-- '"Its name shall never sadden verse of mine."' TO R.W.E. '_Niagara, 1st June, 1843_.--I send you a token, made by the hands of some Seneca Indian lady. If you use it for a watch-pocket, hang it, when you travel, at the head of your bed, and you may dream of Niagara. If you use it for a purse, you can put in it alms for poets and artists, and the subscription-money you receive for Mr. Carlyle's book. His book, as it happened, you gave me as a birthday gift, and you may take this as one to you; for, on yours, was W.'s birthday, J.'s wedding-day, and the day of ----'s death, and we set out on this journey. Perhaps there is something about it on the purse. The "number five which nature loves," is repeated on it. 'Carlyle's book I have, in some sense, read. It is witty, full of pictures, as usual. I would have gone through with it, if only for the sketch of Samson, and two or three bits of fun which happen to please me. No doubt it may be of use to rouse the unthinking to a sense of those great dangers and sorrows. But how open is he to his own assault. He rails himself out of breath at the short-sighted, and yet sees scarce a step before him. There is no valuable doctrine in his book, except the Goethean, _Do to-day the nearest duty_. Many are ready for that, could they but find the way. This he does not show. His proposed measures say nothing. Educate the people. That cannot be done by books, or voluntary effort, under these paralyzing circumstances. Emigration! According to his own estimate of the increase of population, relief that way can have very slight effect. He ends as he began; as he did in Chartism. Everything is very bad. You are fools and hypocrites, or you would make it better. I cannot but sympathize with him about hero-worship; for I, too, have had my fits of rage at the stupid irreverence of little minds, which also is made a parade of by the pedantic and the worldly. Yet it is a good sign. Democracy is the way to the new aristocracy, as irreligion to religion. By and by, if there are great men, they will not be brilliant exceptions, redeemers, but favorable samples of their kind. 'Mr. C.'s tone is no better than before. He is not loving, nor large; but he seems more healthy and gay. 'We have had bad weather here, bitterly cold. The place is what I expected: it is too great and beautiful to agitate or surprise: it satisfies: it does not excite thought, but fully occupies. All is calm; even the rapids do not hurry, as we see them in smaller streams. The sound, the sight, fill the senses and the mind. 'At Buffalo, some ladies called on us, who extremely regretted they could not witness our emotions, on first seeing Niagara. "Many," they said, "burst into tears; but with those of most sensibility, the hands become cold as ice, and they would not mind if buckets of cold water were thrown over them!"' NATURE. Margaret's love of beauty made her, of course, a votary of nature, but rather for pleasurable excitement than with a deep poetic feeling. Her imperfect vision and her bad health were serious impediments to intimacy with woods and rivers. She had never paid,--and it is a little remarkable,--any attention to natural sciences. She neither botanized, nor geologized, nor dissected. Still she delighted in short country rambles, in the varieties of landscape, in pastoral country, in mountain outlines, and, above all, in the sea-shore. At Nantasket Beach, and at Newport, she spent a month or two of many successive summers. She paid homage to rocks, woods, flowers, rivers, and the moon. She spent a good deal of time out of doors, sitting, perhaps, with a book in some sheltered recess commanding a landscape. She watched, by day and by night, the skies and the earth, and believed she knew all their expressions. She wrote in her journal, or in her correspondence, a series of "moonlights," in which she seriously attempts to describe the light and scenery of successive nights of the summer moon. Of course, her raptures must appear sickly and superficial to an observer, who, with equal feeling, had better powers of observation. Nothing is more rare than a talent to describe landscape, and, especially, skyscape, or cloudscape, although a vast number of letters, from correspondents between the ages of twenty and thirty, are filled with experiments in this kind. Margaret, in her turn, made many vain attempts, and, to a lover of nature, who knows that every day has new and inimitable lights and shades, one of these descriptions is as vapid as the raptures of a citizen arrived at his first meadow. Of course, he is charmed, but, of course, he cannot tell what he sees, or what pleases him. Yet Margaret often speaks with a certain tenderness and beauty of the impressions made upon her. TO ----. '_Fishkill, 25 Nov., 1844_.--You would have been happy as I have been in the company of the mountains. They are companions both bold and calm. They exhilarate and they satisfy. To live, too, on the bank of the great river so long, has been the realization of a dream. Though I have been reading and thinking, yet this has been my life.' 'After they were all in bed,' she writes from the "Manse," in Concord, 'I went out, and walked till near twelve. The moonlight filled my heart. These embowering elms stood in solemn black, the praying monastics of this holy night; full of grace, in every sense; their life so full, so hushed; not a leaf stirred.' * * * * * 'You say that nature does not keep her promise; but, surely, she satisfies us now and then for the time. The drama is always in progress, but here and there she speaks out a sentence, full in its cadence, complete in its structure; it occupies, for the time, the sense and the thought. We have no care for promises. Will you say it is the superficialness of my life, that I have known hours with men and nature, that bore their proper fruit,--all present ate and were filled, and there were taken up of the fragments twelve baskets full? Is it because of the superficial mind, or the believing heart, that I can say this?' * * * * * 'Only through emotion do we know thee, Nature! We lean upon thy breast, and feel its pulses vibrate to our own. That is knowledge, for that is love. Thought will never reach it.' ART. There are persons to whom a gallery is everywhere a home. In this country, the antique is known only by plaster casts, and by drawings. The BOSTON ATHENÆUM,--on whose sunny roof and beautiful chambers may the benediction of centuries of students rest with mine!--added to its library, in 1823, a small, but excellent museum of the antique sculpture, in plaster;--the selection being dictated, it is said, by no less an adviser than Canova. The Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venuses, Diana, the head of the Phidian Jove, Bacchus, Antinous, the Torso Hercules, the Discobolus, the Gladiator Borghese, the Apollino,--all these, and more, the sumptuous gift of Augustus Thorndike. It is much that one man should have power to confer on so many, who never saw him, a benefit so pure and enduring. To these were soon added a heroic line of antique busts, and, at last, by Horatio Greenough, the Night and Day of Michel Angelo. Here was old Greece and old Italy brought bodily to New England, and a verification given to all our dreams and readings. It was easy to collect, from the drawing-rooms of the city, a respectable picture-gallery for a summer exhibition. This was also done, and a new pleasure was invented for the studious, and a new home for the solitary. The Brimmer donation, in 1838, added a costly series of engravings, chiefly of the French and Italian museums, and the drawings of Guercino, Salvator Rosa, and other masters. The separate chamber in which these collections were at first contained, made a favorite place of meeting for Margaret and a few of her friends, who were lovers of these works. First led perhaps by Goethe, afterwards by the love she herself conceived for them, she read everything that related to Michel Angelo and Raphael. She read, pen in hand, Quatremère de Quincy's lives of those two painters, and I have her transcripts and commentary before me. She read Condivi, Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini, Duppa, Fuseli, and Von Waagen,--great and small. Every design of Michel, the four volumes of Raphael's designs, were in the rich portfolios of her most intimate friend. 'I have been very happy,' she writes, 'with four hundred and seventy designs of Raphael in my possession for a week.' * * * * * These fine entertainments were shared with many admirers, and, as I now remember them, certain months about the years 1839, 1840, seem colored with the genius of these Italians. Our walls were hung with prints of the Sistine frescoes; we were all petty collectors; and prints of Correggio and Guercino took the place, for the time, of epics and philosophy. In the summer of 1839, Boston was still more rightfully adorned with the Allston Gallery; and the sculptures of our compatriots Greenough, and Crawford, and Powers, were brought hither. The following lines were addressed by Margaret to the Orpheus:-- 'CRAWFORD'S ORPHEUS. 'Each Orpheus must to the abyss descend, For only thus the poet can be wise,-- Must make the sad Persephone his friend, And buried love to second life arise; Again his love must lose, through too much love, Must lose his life by living life too true; For what he sought below has passed above, Already done is all that he would do; Must tune all being with his single lyre; Must melt all rocks free from their primal pain, Must search all nature with his one soul's fire; Must bind anew all forms in heavenly chain: If he already sees what he must do, Well may he shade his eyes from the far-shining view.' Margaret's love of art, like that of most cultivated persons in this country, was not at all technical, but truly a sympathy with the artist, in the protest which his work pronounced on the deformity of our daily manners; her co-perception with him of the eloquence of form; her aspiration with him to a fairer life. As soon as her conversation ran into the mysteries of manipulation and artistic effect, it was less trustworthy. I remember that in the first times when I chanced to see pictures with her, I listened reverently to her opinions, and endeavored to see what she saw. But, on several occasions, finding myself unable to reach it, I came to suspect my guide, and to believe, at last, that her taste in works of art, though honest, was not on universal, but on idiosyncratic, grounds. As it has proved one of the most difficult problems of the practical astronomer to obtain an achromatic telescope, so an achromatic eye, one of the most needed, is also one of the rarest instruments of criticism. She was very susceptible to pleasurable stimulus, took delight in details of form, color, and sound. Her fancy and imagination were easily stimulated to genial activity, and she erroneously thanked the artist for the pleasing emotions and thoughts that rose in her mind. So that, though capable of it, she did not always bring that highest tribunal to a work of art, namely, the calm presence of greatness, which only greatness in the object can satisfy. Yet the opinion was often well worth hearing on its own account, though it might be wide of the mark as criticism. Sometimes, too, she certainly brought to beautiful objects a fresh and appreciating love; and her written notes, especially on sculpture, I found always original and interesting. Here are some notes on the Athenæum Gallery of Sculpture, in August, 1840, which she sent me in manuscript:-- 'Here are many objects worth study. There is Thorwaldsen's Byron. This is the truly beautiful, the ideal Byron. This head is quite free from the got-up, caricatured air of disdain, which disfigures most likenesses of him, as it did himself in real life; yet sultry, stern, all-craving, all-commanding. Even the heavy style of the hair, too closely curled for grace, is favorable to the expression of concentrated life. While looking at this head, you learn to account for the grand failure in the scheme of his existence. The line of the cheek and chin are here, as usual, of unrivalled beauty. 'The bust of Napoleon is here also, and will naturally be named, in connection with that of Byron, since the one in letters, the other in arms, represented more fully than any other the tendency of their time; more than any other gave it a chance for reaction. There was another point of resemblance in the external being of the two, perfectly corresponding with that of the internal, a sense of which peculiarity drew on Byron some ridicule. I mean that it was the intention of nature, that neither should ever grow fat, but remain a Cassius in the commonwealth. And both these heads are taken while they were at an early age, and so thin as to be still beautiful. This head of Napoleon is of a stern beauty. A head must be of a style either very stern or very chaste, to make a deep impression on the beholder; there must be a great force of will and withholding of resources, giving a sense of depth below depth, which we call sternness; or else there must be that purity, flowing as from an inexhaustible fountain through every lineament, which drives far off or converts all baser natures. Napoleon's head is of the first description; it is stern, and not only so, but ruthless. Yet this ruthlessness excites no aversion; the artist has caught its true character, and given us here the Attila, the instrument of fate to serve a purpose not his own. While looking on it, came full to mind the well-known lines,-- '"Speak gently of his crimes: Who knows, Scourge of God, but in His eyes, those crimes Were virtues?" His brows are tense and damp with the dews of thought. In that head you see the great future, careless of the black and white stones; and even when you turn to the voluptuous beauty of the mouth, the impression remains so strong, that Russia's snows, and mountains of the slain, seem the tragedy that must naturally follow the appearance of such an actor. You turn from him, feeling that he is a product not of the day, but of the ages, and that the ages must judge him. 'Near him is a head of Ennius, very intellectual; self-centred and self-fed; but wrung and gnawed by unceasing thoughts. 'Yet, even near the Ennius and Napoleon, our American men look worthy to be perpetuated in marble or bronze, if it were only for their air of calm, unpretending sagacity. If the young American were to walk up an avenue lined with such effigies, he might not feel called to such greatness as the strong Roman wrinkles tell of, but he must feel that he could not live an idle life, and should nerve himself to lift an Atlas weight without repining or shrinking. 'The busts of Everett and Allston, though admirable as every-day likenesses, deserved a genius of a different order from Clevenger. Clevenger gives the man as he is at the moment, but does not show the possibilities of his existence. Even thus seen, the head of Mr. Everett brings back all the age of Pericles, so refined and classic is its beauty. The two busts of Mr. Webster, by Clevenger and Powers, are the difference between prose,--healthy and energetic prose, indeed, but still prose,--and poetry. Clevenger's is such as we see Mr. Webster on any public occasion, when his genius is not called forth. No child could fail to recognize it in a moment. Powers' is not so good as a likeness, but has the higher merit of being an ideal of the orator and statesman at a great moment. It is quite an American Jupiter in its eagle calmness of conscious power. 'A marble copy of the beautiful Diana, not so spirited as the Athenæum cast. S. C---- thought the difference was one of size. This work may be seen at a glance; yet does not tire one after survey. It has the freshness of the woods, and of morning dew. I admire those long lithe limbs, and that column of a throat. The Diana is a woman's ideal of beauty; its elegance, its spirit, its graceful, peremptory air, are what we like in our own sex: the Venus is for men. The sleeping Cleopatra cannot be looked at enough; always her sleep seems sweeter and more graceful, always more wonderful the drapery. A little Psyche, by a pupil of Bartolini, pleases us much thus far. The forlorn sweetness with which she sits there, crouched down like a bruised butterfly, and the languid tenacity of her mood, are very touching. The Mercury and Ganymede with the Eagle, by Thorwaldsen, are still as fine as on first acquaintance. Thorwaldsen seems the grandest and simplest of modern sculptors. There is a breadth in his thought, a freedom in his design, we do not see elsewhere. 'A spaniel, by Gott, shows great talent, and knowledge of the animal. The head is admirable; it is so full of playfulness and of doggish knowingness.' I am tempted, by my recollection of the pleasure it gave her, to insert here a little poem, addressed to Margaret by one of her friends, on the beautiful imaginative picture in the gallery of 1840, called "The Dream." "A youth, with gentle brow and tender cheek, Dreams in a place so silent, that no bird, No rustle of the leaves his slumbers break; Only soft tinkling from the stream is heard, As in bright little waves it comes to greet The beauteous One, and play upon his feet. "On a low bank, beneath the thick shade thrown, Soft gleams over his brown hair are flitting, His golden plumes, bending, all lovely shone; It seemed an angel's home where he was sitting, Erect, beside, a silver lily grew, And over all the shadow its sweet beauty threw. "Dreams he of life? O, then a noble maid Toward him floats, with eyes of starry light, In richest robes all radiantly arrayed, To be his ladye and his dear delight. Ah no! the distance shows a winding stream; No lovely ladye moves, no starry eyes do gleam. "Cold is the air, and cold the mountains blue; The banks are brown, and men are lying there, Meagre and old; O, what have they to do With joyous visions of a youth so fair? He must not ever sleep as they are sleeping, Onward through life he must be ever sweeping. "Let the pale glimmering distance pass away; Why in the twilight art thou slumbering there? Wake, and come forth into triumphant day; Thy life and deeds must all be great and fair. Canst thou not from the lily learn true glory, Pure, lofty, lowly?--such should be thy story. "But no! thou lovest the deep-eyéd Past, And thy heart clings to sweet remembrances; In dim cathedral aisles thou'lt linger last, And fill thy mind with flitting fantasies. But know, dear One, the world is rich to-day, And the unceasing God gives glory forth alway." I have said she was never weary of studying Michel Angelo and Raphael; and here are some manuscript "notes," which she sent me one day, containing a clear expression of her feeling toward each of these masters, after she had become tolerably familiar with their designs, as far as prints could carry her:-- 'On seeing such works as these of Michel Angelo, we feel the need of a genius scarcely inferior to his own, which should invent some word, or some music, adequate to express our feelings, and relieve us from the Titanic oppression. '"Greatness," "majesty," "strength,"--to these words we had before thought we attached their proper meaning. But now we repent that they ever passed our lips. Created anew by the genius of this man, we would create language anew, and give him a word of response worthy his sublime profession of faith. Could we not at least have reserved "godlike" for him? For never till now did we appreciate the primeval vigor of creation, the instant swiftness with which thought can pass to deed; never till now appreciate the passage, "Let there be light, and there was light," which, be grateful, Michel! was clothed in human word before thee. 'One feels so repelled and humbled, on turning from Raphael to his contemporary, that I could have hated him as a Gentile Choragus might hate the prophet Samuel. Raphael took us to his very bosom, as if we had been fit for disciples,-- '"Parting with smiles the hair upon the brow, And telling me none ever was preferred" 'This man waves his serpent wand over me, and beauty's self seems no better than a golden calf! 'I could not bear M. De Quincy for intimating that the archangel Michel could be jealous; yet I can easily see that he might have given cause, by undervaluing his divine contemporary. Raphael was so sensuous, so lovely and loving. All undulates to meet the eye, glides or floats upon the soul's horizon, as soft as is consistent with perfectly distinct and filled-out forms. The graceful Lionardo might see his pictures in moss; the beautiful Raphael on the cloud, or wave, or foliage; but thou, Michel, didst look straight upwards to the heaven, and grasp and bring thine down from the very sun of invention. 'How Raphael revels in the image! His life is all reproduced; nothing was abstract or conscious. Pantheism, Polytheism, Greek god of Beauty, Apollo Musagetes,--what need of life beyond the divine work? "I paint," said he, "from an idea that comes into my mind." 'But thou, Michel, didst not only feel but see the divine Ideal. Thine is the conscious monotheism of Jewry. Like thy own Moses, even on the mount of celestial converse, thou didst ask thy God to show now his face, and didst write his words, not in the alphabet of flowers, but on stone tables. 'It is, indeed, the two geniuses of Greece and Jewry, which are reproduced in these two men. Thaumaturgus nature saw fit to wait but a very few years before using these moulds again, in smaller space. Would you read the Bible aright? look at Michel; the Greek Mythology? look at Raphael. Would you know how the sublime coëxists with the beautiful, or the beautiful with the sublime? would you see power and truth regnant on the one side, with beauty and love harmonious and ministrant, but subordinate; or would you look at the other aspect of Deity?--study here. Would you open all the founts of marvel, admiration, and tenderness?--study both. 'One is not higher than the other; yet I am conscious of a slight rebuke from Michel, for having so poured out my soul at the feet of his brother angel. He seems to remind of Mr. E.'s view, and ask, "Why did you not question whether there was not aught else? why not reserve some inaccessible stronghold for me? why did you unlock the floodgates of the mind to such tides of emotion?" But there is no reality or permanence in this; it is only a reminder that the feminine part of human nature must not be dominant. 'The prophets of Michel Angelo excite all my admiration at the man capable of giving to such a physique an expression which commands it. The soul is worthily lodged in these powerful frames; and she has the ease and dignity of one accustomed to command, and to command servants able to obey her hests. Who else could have so animated such forms, that they are imposing, but never heavy? The strong man is made so majestic by his office, that you scarcely feel how strong he is. The wide folds of the drapery, the breadth of light and shade, are great as anything in "the large utterance of the early gods." 'How they read,--these prophets and sibyls! Never did the always-baffled, always reäspiring hope of the finite to compass the infinite find such expression, except in the _sehnsucht_ of music. They are buried in the volume. They cannot believe that it has not somewhere been revealed, the word of enigma, the link between the human and divine, matter and spirit. Evidently, they hope to find it on the very next page. I have always thought, that clearly enough did nature and the soul's own consciousness respond to the craving for immortality. I have thought it great weakness to need the voucher of a miracle, or of any of those direct interpositions of a divine power, which, in common parlance, are alone styled revelation. When the revelations of nature seemed to me so clear, I had thought it was the weakness of the heart, or the dogmatism of the understanding, which had such need of _a book_. But in these figures of Michel, the highest power seizes upon a scroll, hoping that some other mind may have dived to the depths of eternity for the desired pearl, and enable him, without delay, consciously to embrace the Everlasting Now. 'How fine the attendant intelligences! So youthful and fresh, yet so strong. Some merely docile and reverent, others eager for utterance before the thought be known,--so firm is the trust in its value, so great the desire for sympathy. Others so brilliant in the attention of the inquiring eye, so intelligent in every feature, that they seem to divine the whole, before they hear it. 'Zachariah is much the finer of the two prophets. 'Of the sibyls, the _Cumæa_ would be disgusting, from her overpowering strength in the feminine form, if genius had not made her tremendous. Especially the bosom gives me a feeling of faintness and aversion I cannot express. The female breast looks made for the temple of sweet and chaste thoughts, while this is so formed as to remind you of the lioness in her lair, and suggest a word which I will not write. 'The _Delphica_ is even beautiful, in Michel's fair, calm, noble style, like the mother and child asleep in the _Persica_, and _Night_ in the casts I have just seen. 'The _Libica_ is also more beautiful than grand. Her adjuncts are admirable. The elder figure, in the lowest pannel,--with what eyes of deep experience, and still unquenched enthusiasm, he sits meditating on the past! The figures at top are fiery with genius, especially the melancholy one, worthy to lift any weight, if he did but know how to set about it. As it is, all his strength may be wasted, yet he no whit the less noble. 'But the _Persica_ is my favorite above all. She is the true sibyl. All the grandeur of that wasted frame comes from within. The life of thought has wasted the fresh juices of the body, and hardened the sere leaf of her cheek to parchment; every lineament is sharp, every tint tarnished; her face is seamed with wrinkles,--usually as repulsive on a woman's face as attractive on a man. We usually feel, on looking at a woman, as if Nature had given them their best dower, and Experience could prove little better than a step-dame. But here, her high ambition and devotion to the life of thought gives her the masculine privilege of beauty in advancing years. Read on, hermitess of the world! what thou seekest is not there, yet thou dost not seek in vain. 'The adjuncts to this figure are worthy of it. On the right, below, those two divine sleepers, redeeming human nature, and infolding expectation in a robe of pearly sheen. Here is the sweetness of strength,--honey to the valiant; on the other side, its awfulness,--meat to the strong man. His sleep is more powerful than the waking of myriads of other men. What will he do when he has recruited his strength in this night's slumber? What wilt thou sing of it, wild-haired child of the lyre? 'I admire the heavy fall of the sleeper's luxuriant hair, which reminds one of the final shutting down of night upon a sullen twilight. 'The other figures, too, are full of augury, sad but life-like, in its poetry. On the shield, how perfectly is the expression of being struck home to the heart given! I wish I could have that shield, in some shape. Only a single blow was needed; the hand was sure, the breast shrinking, but unresisting. Die, child of my affection, child of my old age! Let the blood follow to the hilt, for it is the sword of the Lord! 'In looking again, this shield is on the _Libica_, and that of the _Persica_ represents conquest, not sacrifice. 'Over all these figures broods the spirit of prophecy. You see their sternest deed is under the theocratic form. There is pride in action, but no selfism in these figures. 'When I first came to Michel, I clung to the beautiful Raphael, and feared his Druidical axe. But now, after the sibyls of Michel, it is unsafe to look at those of Raphael; for they seem weak, which is not so, only seems so, beside the sterner ideal. 'The beauty of composition here is great, and you feel that Michel's works are looked at fragment-wise in comparison. Here the eye glides along so naturally, does so easily justice to each part.' LETTERS. I fear the remark already made on that susceptibility to details in art and nature which precluded the exercise of Margaret's sound catholic judgment, must be extended to more than her connoisseurship. She _had_ a sound judgment, on which, in conversation, she could fall back, and anticipate and speak the best sense of the largest company. But, left to herself, and in her correspondence, she was much the victim of Lord Bacon's _idols of the cave_, or self-deceived by her own phantasms. I have looked over volumes of her letters to me and others. They are full of probity, talent, wit, friendship, charity, and high aspiration. They are tainted with a mysticism, which to me appears so much an affair of constitution, that it claims no more respect than the charity or patriotism of a man who has dined well, and feels better for it. One sometimes talks with a genial _bon vivant_, who looks as if the omelet and turtle have got into his eyes. In our noble Margaret, her personal feeling colors all her judgment of persons, of books, of pictures, and even of the laws of the world. This is easily felt in ordinary women, and a large deduction is civilly made on the spot by whosoever replies to their remark. But when the speaker has such brilliant talent and literature as Margaret, she gives so many fine names to these merely sensuous and subjective phantasms, that the hearer is long imposed upon, and thinks so precise and glittering nomenclature cannot be of mere _muscae volitantes_, phoenixes of the fancy, but must be of some real ornithology, hitherto unknown to him. This mere feeling exaggerates a host of trifles into a dazzling mythology. But when one goes to sift it, and find if there be a real meaning, it eludes search. Whole sheets of warm, florid writing are here, in which the eye is caught by "sapphire," "heliotrope," "dragon," "aloes," "Magna Dea," "limboes," "stars," and "purgatory," but can connect all this, or any part of it, with no universal experience. In short, Margaret often loses herself in sentimentalism. That dangerous vertigo nature in her case adopted, and was to make respectable. As it sometimes happens that a grandiose style, like that of the Alexandrian Platonists, or like Macpherson's Ossian, is more stimulating to the imagination of nations, than the true Plato, or than the simple poet, so here was a head so creative of new colors, of wonderful gleams,--so iridescent, that it piqued curiosity, and stimulated thought, and communicated mental activity to all who approached her; though her perceptions were not to be compared to her fancy, and she made numerous mistakes. Her integrity was perfect, and she was led and followed by love, and was really bent on truth, but too indulgent to the meteors of her fancy. FRIENDSHIP. "Friends she must have, but in no one could find A tally fitted to so large a mind." It is certain that Margaret, though unattractive in person, and assuming in manners, so that the girls complained that "she put upon them," or, with her burly masculine existence, quite reduced them to satellites, yet inspired an enthusiastic attachment. I hear from one witness, as early as 1829, that "all the girls raved about Margaret Fuller," and the same powerful magnetism wrought, as she went on, from year to year, on all ingenuous natures. The loveliest and the highest endowed women were eager to lay their beauty, their grace, the hospitalities of sumptuous homes, and their costly gifts, at her feet. When I expressed, one day, many years afterwards, to a lady who knew her well, some surprise at the homage paid her by men in Italy,--offers of marriage having there been made her by distinguished parties,--she replied: "There is nothing extraordinary in it. Had she been a man, any one of those fine girls of sixteen, who surrounded her here, would have married her: they were all in love with her, she understood them so well." She had seen many persons, and had entire confidence in her own discrimination of characters. She saw and foresaw all in the first interview. She had certainly made her own selections with great precision, and had not been disappointed. When pressed for a reason, she replied, in one instance, 'I have no good reason to give for what I think of ----. It is a dæmoniacal intimation. Everybody at ---- praised her, but their account of what she said gave me the same unfavorable feeling. This is the first instance in which I have not had faith, if you liked a person. Perhaps I am wrong now; perhaps, if I saw her, a look would give me a needed clue to her character, and I should change my feeling. Yet I have never been mistaken in these intimations, as far as I recollect. I hope I am now.' I am to add, that she gave herself to her friendships with an entireness not possible to any but a woman, with a depth possible to few women. Her friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman with women, were not unmingled with passion, and had passages of romantic sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have heard with the ear, but could not trust my profane pen to report. There were, also, the ebbs and recoils from the other party,--the mortal unequal to converse with an immortal,--ingratitude, which was more truly incapacity, the collapse of overstrained affections and powers. At all events, it is clear that Margaret, later, grew more strict, and values herself with her friends on having the tie now "redeemed from all search after Eros." So much, however, of intellectual aim and activity mixed with her alliances, as to breathe a certain dignity and myrrh through them all. She and her friends are fellow-students with noblest moral aims. She is there for help and for counsel. 'Be to the best thou knowest ever true!' is her language to one. And that was the effect of her presence. Whoever conversed with her felt challenged by the strongest personal influence to a bold and generous life. To one she wrote,-- 'Could a word from me avail you, I would say, that I have firm faith that nature cannot be false to her child, who has shown such an unalterable faith in her piety towards her.' * * * * * 'These tones of my dear ----'s lyre are of the noblest. Will they sound purely through her experiences? Will the variations be faithful to the theme? Not always do those who most devoutly long for the Infinite, know best how to modulate their finite into a fair passage of the eternal Harmony. 'How many years was it the cry of my spirit,-- "Give, give, ye mighty Gods! Why do ye thus hold back?"-- and, I suppose, all noble young persons think for the time that they would have been more generous than the Olympians. But when we have learned the high lesson _to deserve_,--that boon of manhood,--we see they esteemed us too much, to give what we had not earned.' The following passages from her journal and her letters are sufficiently descriptive, each in its way, of her strong affections. 'At Mr. G.'s we looked over prints, the whole evening, in peace. Nothing fixed my attention so much as a large engraving of Madame Recamier in her boudoir. I have so often thought over the intimacy between her and Madame De Stael. 'It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man. I like to be sure of it, for it is the same love which angels feel, where-- '"Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib." 'It is regulated by the same law as that of love between persons of different sexes; only it is purely intellectual and spiritual. Its law is the desire of the spirit to realize a whole, which makes it seek in another being what it finds not in itself. Thus the beautiful seek the strong, and the strong the beautiful; the mute seeks the eloquent, &c.; the butterfly settles always on the dark flower. Why did Socrates love Alcibiades? Why did Körner love Schneider? How natural is the love of Wallenstein for Max; that of De Stael for De Recamier; mine for ----. I loved ----, for a time, with as much passion as I was then strong enough to feel. Her face was always gleaming before me; her voice was always echoing in my ear; all poetic thoughts clustered round the dear image. This love was a key which unlocked for me many a treasure which I still possess; it was the carbuncle which cast light into many of the darkest caverns of human nature. She loved me, too, though not so much, because her nature was "less high, less grave, less large, less deep." But she loved more tenderly, less passionately. She loved me, for I well remember her suffering when she first could feel my faults, and knew one part of the exquisite veil rent away; how she wished to stay apart, and weep the whole day. * * * * * 'I do not love her now with passion, but I still feel towards her as I can to no other woman. I thought of all this as I looked at Madame Recamier.' * * * * * TO R.W.E. '_7th Feb., 1843._--I saw the letter of your new friend, and liked it much; only, at this distance, one could not be sure whether it was the nucleus or the train of a comet, that lightened afar. The daemons are not busy enough at the births of most men. They do not give them individuality deep enough for truth to take root in. Such shallow natures cannot resist a strong head; its influence goes right through them. It is not stopped and fermented long enough. But I do not understand this hint of hesitation, because you have many friends already. We need not economize, we need not hoard these immortal treasures. Love and thought are not diminished by diffusion. In the widow's cruse is oil enough to furnish light for all the world.' * * * * * TO R.W.E. '_15th March, 1842._--It is to be hoped, my best one, that the experiences of life will yet correct your vocabulary, and that you will not always answer the burst of frank affection by the use of such a word as "flattery." 'Thou knowest, O all-seeing Truth! whether that hour is base or unworthy thee, in which the heart turns tenderly towards some beloved object, whether stirred by an apprehension of its needs, or of its present beauty, or of its great promise; when it would lay before it all the flowers of hope and love, would soothe its weariness as gently as might the sweet south, and _flatter_ it by as fond an outbreak of pride and devotion as is seen on the sunset clouds. Thou knowest whether these promptings, whether these longings, be not truer than intellectual scrutiny of the details of character; than cold distrust of the exaggerations even of heart. What we hope, what we think of those we love, is true, true as the fondest dream of love and friendship that ever shone upon the childish heart. 'The faithful shall yet meet a full-eyed love, ready as profound, that never needs turn the key on its retirement, or arrest the stammering of an overweening trust.' * * * * * TO ---- 'I wish I could write you often, to bring before you the varied world-scene you cannot so well go out to unfold for yourself. But it was never permitted me, even where I wished it most. But the forest leaves fall unseen, and make a soil on which shall be reared the growths and fabrics of a nobler era. This thought rounds off each day. Your letter was a little golden key to a whole volume of thoughts and feelings. I cannot make the one bright drop, like champagne in ice, but must pour a full gush, if I speak at all, and not think whether the water is clear either.' With this great heart, and these attractions, it was easy to add daily to the number of her friends. With her practical talent, her counsel and energy, she was pretty sure to find clients and sufferers enough, who wished to be guided and supported. 'Others,' she said, 'lean on this arm, which I have found so frail. Perhaps it is strong enough to have drawn a sword, but no better suited to be used as a _bolt_, than that of Lady Catharine Douglas, of loyal memory.' She could not make a journey, or go to an evening party, without meeting a new person, who wished presently to impart his history to her. Very early, she had written to ----, 'My museum is so well furnished, that I grow lazy about collecting new specimens of human nature.' She had soon enough examples of the historic development of rude intellect under the first rays of culture. But, in a thousand individuals, the process is much the same; and, like a professor too long pent in his college, she rejoiced in encountering persons of untutored grace and strength, and felt no wish to prolong the intercourse when culture began to have its effect I find in her journal a characteristic note, on receiving a letter on books and speculations, from one whom she had valued for his heroic qualities in a life of adventure:-- 'These letters of ---- are beautiful, and moved me deeply. It looks like the birth of a soul. But I loved _thee_, fair, rich _earth_,--and all that is gone forever. This that comes now, we know in much farther stages. Yet there is silver sweet in the tone, generous nobility in the impulses.' * * * * * 'Poor Tasso in the play offered his love and service too officiously to all. They all rejected it, and declared him mad, because he made statements too emphatic of his feelings. If I wanted only ideal figures to think about, there are those in literature I like better than any of your living ones. But I want far more. I want habitual intercourse, cheer, inspiration, tenderness. I want these for myself; I want to impart them. I have done as Timon did, for these last eight years. My early intercourses were more equal, because more natural. Since I took on me the vows of renunciation, I have acted like a prodigal. Like Timon, I have loved to give, perhaps not from beneficence, but from restless love. Now, like Fortunatus, I find my mistresses will not thank me for fires made of cinnamon; rather they run from too rich an odor. What shall I do? not curse, like him, (oh base!) nor dig my grave in the marge of the salt tide. Give an answer to my questions, dæmon! Give a rock for my feet, a bird of peaceful and sufficient song within my breast! I return to thee, my Father, from the husks that have been offered me. But I return as one who meant not to leave Thee.' Of course, she made large demands on her companions, and would soon come to sound their knowledge, and guess pretty nearly the range of their thoughts. There yet remained to command her constancy, what she valued more, the quality and affection proper to each. But she could rarely find natures sufficiently deep and magnetic. With her sleepless curiosity, her magnanimity, and her diamond-ring, like Annie of Lochroyan's, to exchange for gold or for pewter, she might be pardoned for her impatient questionings. To me, she was uniformly generous; but neither did I escape. Our moods were very different; and I remember, that, at the very time when I, slow and cold, had come fully to admire her genius, and was congratulating myself on the solid good understanding that subsisted between us, I was surprised with hearing it taxed by her with superficiality and halfness. She stigmatized our friendship as commercial. It seemed, her magnanimity was not met, but I prized her only for the thoughts and pictures she brought me;--so many thoughts, so many facts yesterday,--so many to-day;--when there was an end of things to tell, the game was up: that, I did not know, as a friend should know, to prize a silence as much as a discourse,--and hence a forlorn feeling was inevitable; a poor counting of thoughts, and a taking the census of virtues, was the unjust reception so much love found. On one occasion, her grief broke into words like these: 'The religious nature remained unknown to you, because it could not proclaim itself, but claimed to be divined. The deepest soul that approached you was, in your eyes, nothing but a magic lantern, always bringing out pretty shows of life.' But as I did not understand the discontent then,--of course, I cannot now. It was a war of temperaments, and could not be reconciled by words; but, after each party had explained to the uttermost, it was necessary to fall back on those grounds of agreement which remained and leave the differences henceforward in respectful silence. The recital may still serve to show to sympathetic persons the true lines and enlargements of her genius. It is certain that this incongruity never interrupted for a moment the intercourse, such as it was, that existed between us. I ought to add here, that certain mental changes brought new questions into conversation. In the summer of 1840, she passed into certain religious states, which did not impress me as quite healthy, or likely to be permanent; and I said, "I do not understand your tone; it seems exaggerated. You are one who can afford to speak and to hear the truth. Let us hold hard to the common-sense, and let us speak in the positive degree." And I find, in later letters from her, sometimes playful, sometimes grave allusions to this explanation. 'Is ---- there? Does water meet water?--no need of wine, sugar, spice, or even a _soupçon_ of lemon to remind of a tropical climate? I fear me not. Yet, dear positives, believe me superlatively yours, MARGARET.' The following letter seems to refer, under an Eastern guise, and with something of Eastern exaggeration of compliment too, to some such native sterilities in her correspondent:--- * * * * * TO R.W.E. '_23d Feb., 1840._--I am like some poor traveller of the desert, who saw, at early morning, a distant palm, and toiled all day to reach it. All day he toiled. The unfeeling sun shot pains into his temples; the burning air, filled with sand, checked his breath; he had no water, and no fountain sprung along his path. But his eye was bright with courage, for he said, "When I reach the lonely palm, I will lie beneath its shade. I will refresh myself with its fruit. Allah has reared it to such a height, that it may encourage the wandering, and bless and sustain the faint and weary." But when he reached it, alas! it had grown too high to shade the weary man at its foot. On it he saw no clustering dates, and its one draught of wine was far beyond his reach. He saw at once that it was so. A child, a bird, a monkey, might have climbed to reach it. A rude hand might have felled the whole tree; but the full-grown man, the weary man, the gentle-hearted, religious man, was no nearer to its nourishment for being close to the root; yet he had not force to drag himself further, and leave at once the aim of so many fond hopes, so many beautiful thoughts. So he lay down amid the inhospitable sands. The night dews pierced his exhausted frame; the hyena laughed, the lion roared, in the distance; the stars smiled upon him satirically from their passionless peace; and he knew they were like the sun, as unfeeling, only more distant. He could not sleep for famine. With the dawn he arose. The palm stood as tall, as inaccessible, as ever; its leaves did not so much as rustle an answer to his farewell sigh. On and on he went, and came, at last, to a living spring. The spring was encircled by tender verdure, wild fruits ripened near, and the clear waters sparkled up to tempt his lip. The pilgrim rested, and refreshed himself, and looked back with less pain to the unsympathizing palm, which yet towered in the distance. 'But the wanderer had a mission to perform, which must have forced him to leave at last both palm and fountain. So on and on he went, saying to the palm, "Thou art for another;" and to the gentle waters, "I will return." 'Not far distant was he when the sirocco came, and choked with sand the fountain, and uprooted the fruit-trees. When years have passed, the waters will have forced themselves up again to light, and a new oasis will await a new wanderer. Thou, Sohrab, wilt, ere that time, have left thy bones at Mecca. Yet the remembrance of the fountain cheers thee as a blessing; that of the palm haunts thee as a pang. 'So talks the soft spring gale of the Shah Nameh. Genuine Sanscrit I cannot write. My Persian and Arabic you love not. Why do I write thus to one who must ever regard the deepest tones of my nature as those of childish fancy or worldly discontent?' PROBLEMS OF LIFE. Already, too, at this time, each of the main problems of human life had been closely scanned and interrogated by her, and some of them had been much earlier settled. A worshipper of beauty, why could not she also have been beautiful?--of the most radiant sociality, why should not she have been so placed, and so decorated, as to have led the fairest and highest? In her journal is a bitter sentence, whose meaning I cannot mistake: 'Of a disposition that requires the most refined, the most exalted tenderness, without charms to inspire it:--poor Mignon! fear not the transition through death; no penal fires can have in store worse torments than thou art familiar with already.' In the month of May, she writes:-- 'When all things are blossoming, it seems so strange not to blossom too; that the quick thought within cannot remould its tenement. Man is the slowest aloes, and I am such a shabby plant, of such coarse tissue. I hate not to be beautiful, when all around is so.' Again, after recording a visit to a family, whose taste and culture, united to the most liberal use of wealth, made the most agreeable of homes, she writes: 'Looking out on the wide view, I felt the blessings of my comparative freedom. I stand in no false relations. Who else is so happy? Here are these fair, unknowing children envying the depth of my mental life. They feel withdrawn by sweet duties from reality. Spirit! I accept; teach me to prize and use whatsoever is given me.' 'At present,' she writes elsewhere, 'it skills not. I am able to take the superior view of life, and my place in it. But I know the deep yearnings of the heart and the bafflings of time will be felt again, and then I shall long for some dear hand to hold. But I shall never forget that my curse is nothing, compared with that of those who have entered into those relations, but not made them real; who only _seem_ husbands, wives, and friends.' 'I remain fixed to be, without churlishness or coldness, as much alone as possible. It is best for me. I am not fitted to be loved, and it pains me to have close dealings with those who do not love, to whom my feelings are "strange." Kindness and esteem are very well. I am willing to receive and bestow them; but these alone are not worth feelings such as mine. And I wish I may make no more mistakes, but keep chaste for mine own people.' There is perhaps here, as in a passage of the same journal quoted already, an allusion to a verse in the ballad of the Lass of Lochroyan:-- "O yours was gude, and gude enough, But aye the best was mine; For yours was o' the gude red gold, But mine o' the diamond fine." 'There is no hour of absolute beauty in all my past, though some have been made musical by heavenly hope, many dignified by intelligence. Long urged by the Furies, I rest again in the temple of Apollo. Celestial verities dawn constellated as thoughts in the Heaven of my mind. 'But, driven from home to home, as a renouncer, I get the picture and the poetry of each. Keys of gold, silver, iron, and lead, are in my casket. No one loves me; but I love many a good deal, and see, more or less, into their eventual beauty. Meanwhile, I have no fetter on me, no engagement, and, as I look on others,--almost every other,--can I fail to feel this a great privilege? I have nowise tied my hands or feet; yet the varied calls on my sympathy have been such, that I hope not to be made partial, cold, or ignorant, by this isolation. I have no child; but now, as I look on these lovely children of a human birth, what low and neutralizing cares they bring with them to the mother! The children of the muse come quicker, and have not on them the taint of earthly corruption.' Practical questions in plenty the days and months brought her to settle,--questions requiring all her wisdom, and sometimes more than all. None recurs with more frequency, at one period, in her journals, than the debate with herself, whether she shall make literature a profession. Shall it be woman, or shall it be artist? WOMAN, OR ARTIST? Margaret resolved, again and again, to devote herself no more to these disappointing forms of men and women, but to the children of the muse. 'The _dramatis personæ_' she said, 'of my poems shall henceforth be chosen from the children of immortal Muse. I fix my affections no more on these frail forms.' But it was vain; she rushed back again to persons, with a woman's devotion. Her pen was a non-conductor. She always took it up with some disdain, thinking it a kind of impiety to attempt to report a life so warm and cordial, and wrote on the fly-leaf of her journal,-- '"_Scrivo sol per sfogar' l'interno_."' 'Since you went away,' she said, 'I have thought of many things I might have told you, but I could not bear to be eloquent and poetical. It is a mockery thus to play the artist with life, and dip the brush in one's own heart's blood. One would fain be no more artist, or philosopher, or lover, or critic, but a soul ever rushing forth in tides of genial life.' * * * * * '_26 Dec., 1842._--I have been reading the lives of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and of Sir Kenelm Digby. These splendid, chivalrous, and thoughtful Englishmen are meat which my soul loveth, even as much as my Italians. What I demand of men,--that they could act out all their thoughts,--these have. They are lives;--and of such I do not care if they had as many faults as there are days in the year,--there is the energy to redeem them. Do you not admire Lord Herbert's two poems on life, and the conjectures concerning celestial life? I keep reading them.' * * * * * 'When I look at my papers, I feel as if I had never had a thought that was worthy the attention of any but myself; and 'tis only when, on talking with people, I find I tell them what they did not know, that my confidence at all returns.' * * * * * 'My verses,--I am ashamed when I think there is scarce a line of poetry in them,--all rhetorical and impassioned, as Goethe said of De Stael. However, such as they are, they have been overflowing drops from the somewhat bitter cup of my existence.' * * * * * 'How can I ever write with this impatience of detail? I shall never be an artist; I have no patient love of execution; I am delighted with my sketch, but if I try to finish it, I am chilled. Never was there a great sculptor who did not love to chip the marble.' * * * * * 'I have talent and knowledge enough to furnish a dwelling for friendship, but not enough to deck with golden gifts a Delphi for the world.' * * * * * 'Then a woman of tact and brilliancy, like me, has an undue advantage in conversation with men. They are astonished at our instincts. They do not see where we got our knowledge; and, while they tramp on in their clumsy way, we wheel, and fly, and dart hither and thither, and seize with ready eye all the weak points, like Saladin in the desert. It is quite another thing when we come to write, and, without suggestion from another mind, to declare the positive amount of thought that is in us. Because we seemed to know all, they think we can tell all; and, finding we can tell so little, lose faith in their first opinion of us, _which, nathless, was true_.' And again: 'These gentlemen are surprised that I write no better, because I talk so well. But I have served a long apprenticeship to the one, none to the other. I shall write better, but never, I think, so well as I talk; for then I feel inspired. The means are pleasant; my voice excites me, my pen never. I shall not be discouraged, nor take for final what they say, but sift from it the truth, and use it. I feel the strength to dispense with all illusions. I will stand steady, and rejoice in the severest probations.' * * * * * 'What a vulgarity there seems in this writing for the multitude! We know not yet, have not made ourselves known to a single soul, and shall we address those still more unknown? Shall we multiply our connections, and thus make them still more superficial? 'I would go into the crowd, and meet men for the day, to help them for the day, but for that intercourse which most becomes us. Pericles, Anaxagoras, Aspasia, Cleone, is circle wide enough for me. I should think all the resources of my nature, and all the tribute it could enforce from external nature, none too much to furnish the banquet for this circle. 'But where to find fit, though few, representatives for all we value in humanity? Where obtain those golden keys to the secret treasure-chambers of the soul? No samples are perfect. We must look abroad into the wide circle, to seek a little here, and a little there, to make up our company. And is not the "prent book" a good beacon-light to tell where we wait the bark?--a reputation, the means of entering the Olympic game, where Pindar may perchance be encountered? 'So it seems the mind must reveal its secret; must reproduce. And I have no castle, and no natural circle, in which I might live, like the wise Makaria, observing my kindred the stars, and gradually enriching my archives. Makaria here must go abroad, or the stars would hide their light, and the archive remain a blank. 'For all the tides of life that flow within me, I am dumb and ineffectual, when it comes to casting my thought into a form. No old one suits me. If I could invent one, it seems to me the pleasure of creation would make it possible for me to write. What shall I do, dear friend? I want force to be either a genius or a character. One should be either private or public. I love best to be a woman; but womanhood is at present too straitly-bounded to give me scope. At hours, I live truly as a woman; at others, I should stifle; as, on the other hand, I should palsy, when I would play the artist.' HEROISM. These practical problems Margaret had to entertain and to solve the best way she could. She says truly, 'there was none to take up her burden whilst she slept.' But she was formed for action, and addressed herself quite simply to her part. She was a woman, an orphan, without beauty, without money; and these negatives will suggest what difficulties were to be surmounted where the tasks dictated by her talents required the good-will of "good society," in the town where she was to teach and write. But she was even-tempered and erect, and, if her journals are sometimes mournful, her mind was made up, her countenance beamed courage and cheerfulness around her. Of personal influence, speaking strictly,--an efflux, that is, purely of mind and character, excluding all effects of power, wealth, fashion, beauty, or literary fame,--she had an extraordinary degree; I think more than any person I have known. An interview with her was a joyful event. Worthy men and women, who had conversed with her, could not forget her, but worked bravely on in the remembrance that this heroic approver had recognized their aims. She spoke so earnestly, that the depth of the sentiment prevailed, and not the accidental expression, which might chance to be common. Thus I learned, the other day, that, in a copy of Mrs. Jameson's Italian Painters, against a passage describing Correggio as a true servant of God in his art, above sordid ambition, devoted to truth, "one of those superior beings of whom there are so few;" Margaret wrote on the margin, 'And yet all might be such.' The book lay long on the table of the owner, in Florence, and chanced to be read there by a young artist of much talent. "These words," said he, months afterwards, "struck out a new strength in me. They revived resolutions long fallen away, and made me set my face like a flint." But Margaret's courage was thoroughly sweet in its temper. She accused herself in her youth of unamiable traits, but, in all the later years of her life, it is difficult to recall a moment of malevolence. The friends whom her strength of mind drew to her, her good heart held fast; and few persons were ever the objects of more persevering kindness. Many hundreds of her letters remain, and they are alive with proofs of generous friendship given and received. Among her early friends, Mrs. Farrar, of Cambridge, appears to have discovered, at a critical moment in her career, the extraordinary promise of the young girl, and some false social position into which her pride and petulance, and the mistakes of others, had combined to bring her, and she set herself, with equal kindness and address, to make a second home for Margaret in her own house, and to put her on the best footing in the agreeable society of Cambridge. She busied herself, also, as she could, in removing all superficial blemishes from the gem. In a well-chosen travelling party, made up by Mrs. Farrar, and which turned out to be the beginning of much happiness by the friendships then formed, Margaret visited, in the summer of 1835, Newport, New York, and Trenton Falls; and, in the autumn, made the acquaintance, at Mrs. F.'s house, of Miss Martineau, whose friendship, at that moment, was an important stimulus to her mind. Mrs. Farrar performed for her, thenceforward, all the offices of an almost maternal friendship. She admired her genius, and wished that all should admire it. She counselled and encouraged her, brought to her side the else unsuppliable aid of a matron and a lady, sheltered her in sickness, forwarded her plans with tenderness and constancy, to the last. I read all this in the tone of uniform gratitude and love with which this lady is mentioned in Margaret's letters. Friendships like this praise both parties; and the security with which people of a noble disposition approached Margaret, indicated the quality of her own infinite tenderness. A very intelligent woman applied to her what Stilling said of Goethe: "Her heart, which few knew, was as great as her mind, which all knew;" and added, that, "in character, Margaret was, of all she had beheld, the largest woman, and not a woman who wished, to be a man." Another lady added, "She never disappointed you. To any one whose confidence she had once drawn out, she was thereafter faithful. She could talk of persons, and never gossip; for she had a fine instinct that kept her from any reality, and from any effect of treachery." I was still more struck with the remark that followed. "Her life, since she went abroad, is wholly unknown to me; but I have an unshaken trust that what Margaret did she can defend." She was a right brave and heroic woman. She shrunk from no duty, because of feeble nerves. Although, after her father died, the disappointment of not going to Europe with Miss Martineau and Mrs. Farrar was extreme, and her mother and sister wished her to take her portion of the estate and go; and, on her refusal, entreated the interference of friends to overcome her objections; Margaret would not hear of it, and devoted herself to the education of her brothers and sisters, and then to the making a home for the family. She was exact and punctual in money matters, and maintained herself, and made her full contribution to the support of her family, by the reward of her labors as a teacher, and in her conversation classes. I have a letter from her at Jamaica Plain, dated November, 1840, which begins, 'This day I write you from my own hired house, and am full of the dignity of citizenship. Really, it is almost happiness. I retain, indeed, some cares and responsibilities; but these will sit light as feathers, for I can take my own time for them. Can it be that this peace will be mine for five whole months? At any rate, five days have already been enjoyed.' Here is another, written in the same year:-- 'I do not wish to talk to you of my ill-health, except that I like you should know when it makes me do anything badly, since I wish you to excuse and esteem me. But let me say, once for all, in reply to your letter, that you are mistaken if you think I ever wantonly sacrifice my health. I have learned that we cannot injure ourselves without injuring others; and besides, that we have no right; for ourselves are all we know of heaven. I do not try to domineer over myself. But, unless I were sure of dying, I cannot dispense with making some exertion, both for the present and the future. There is no mortal, who, if I laid down my burden, would take care of it while I slept. Do not think me weakly disinterested, or, indeed, disinterested at all.' Every one of her friends knew assuredly that her sympathy and aid would not fail them when required. She went, from the most joyful of all bridals, to attend a near relative during a formidable surgical operation. She was here to help others. As one of her friends writes, 'She helped whoever knew her.' She adopted the interests of humble persons, within her circle, with heart-cheering warmth, and her ardor in the cause of suffering and degraded women, at Sing-Sing, was as irresistible as her love of books. She had, many years afterwards, scope for the exercise of all her love and devotion, in Italy, but she came to it as if it had been her habit and her natural sphere. The friends who knew her in that country, relate, with much surprise, that she, who had all her lifetime drawn people by her wit, should recommend herself so highly, in Italy, by her tenderness and large affection. Yet the tenderness was only a face of the wit; as before, the wit was raised above all other wit by the affection behind it. And, truly, there was an ocean of tears always, in her atmosphere, ready to fall. There was, at New York, a poor adventurer, half patriot, half author, a miserable man, always in such depths of distress, with such squadrons of enemies, that no charity could relieve, and no intervention save him. He believed Europe banded for his destruction, and America corrupted to connive at it. Margaret listened to these woes with such patience and mercy, that she drew five hundred dollars, which had been invested for her in a safe place, and put them in those hapless hands, where, of course, the money was only the prey of new rapacity, to be bewailed by new reproaches. When one of her friends had occasion to allude to this, long afterwards, she replied:-- 'In answer to what you say of ----, I wish, indeed, the little effort I made for him had been wiselier applied. Yet these are not the things one regrets. It will not do to calculate too closely with the affectionate human impulse. We must consent to make many mistakes, or we should move too slow to help our brothers much. I am sure you do not regret what you spent on Miani, and other worthless people. As things looked then, it would have been wrong not to have risked the loss.' TRUTH. But Margaret crowned all her talents and virtues with a love of truth, and the power to speak it. In great and in small matters, she was a woman of her word, and gave those who conversed with her the unspeakable comfort that flows from plain dealing. Her nature was frank and transparent, and she had a right to say, as she says in her journal:-- 'I have the satisfaction of knowing, that, in my counsels, I have given myself no air of being better than I am.' And again:-- 'In the chamber of death, I prayed in very early years, "Give me truth; cheat me by no illusion." O, the granting of this prayer is sometimes terrible to me! I walk over the burning ploughshares, and they sear my feet. Yet nothing but truth will do; no love will serve that is not eternal, and as large as the universe; no philanthropy in executing whose behests I myself become unhealthy; no creative genius which bursts asunder my life, to leave it a poor black chrysalid behind. And yet this last is too true of me.' She describes a visit made in May, 1844, at the house of some valued friends in West Roxbury, and adds: 'We had a long and deep conversation, happy in its candor. Truth, truth, thou art the great preservative! Let free air into the mind, and the pestilence cannot lurk in any corner.' And she uses the following language in an earnest letter to another friend:-- 'My own entire sincerity, in every passage of life, gives me a right to expect that I shall be met by no unmeaning phrases or attentions.' * * * * * 'Reading to-day a few lines of ----, I thought with refreshment of such lives as T.'s, and V.'s, and W.'s, so private and so true, where each line written is really the record of a thought or a feeling. I hate poems which are a melancholy monument of culture for the sake of being cultivated, not of growing.' Even in trifles, one might find with her the advantage and the electricity of a little honesty. I have had from an eye-witness a note of a little scene that passed in Boston, at the Academy of Music. A party had gone early, and taken an excellent place to hear one of Beethoven's symphonies. Just behind them were soon seated a young lady and two gentlemen, who made an incessant buzzing, in spite of bitter looks cast on them by the whole neighborhood, and destroyed all the musical comfort. After all was over, Margaret leaned across one seat, and catching the eye of this girl, who was pretty and well-dressed, said, in her blandest, gentlest voice, "May I speak with you one moment?" "Certainly," said the young lady, with a fluttered, pleased look, bending forward. "I only wish to say," said Margaret, "that I trust, that, in the whole course of your life, you will not suffer so great a degree of annoyance as you have inflicted on a large party of lovers of music this evening." This was said with the sweetest air, as if to a little child, and it was as good as a play to see the change of countenance which the young lady exhibited, who had no replication to make to so Christian a blessing. On graver occasions, the same habit was only more stimulated; and I cannot remember certain passages which called it into play, without new regrets at the costly loss which our community sustains in the loss of this brave and eloquent soul. People do not speak the truth, not for the want of not knowing and preferring it, but because they have not the organ to speak it adequately. It requires a clear sight, and, still more, a high spirit, to deal with falsehood in the decisive way. I have known several honest persons who valued truth as much as Peter and John, but, when they tried to speak it, _they_ grew red and black in the face instead of Ananias, until, after a few attempts, they decided that aggressive truth was not their vocation, and confined themselves thenceforward to silent honesty, except on rare occasions, when either an extreme outrage, or a happier inspiration, loosened their tongue. But a soul is now and then incarnated, whom indulgent nature has not afflicted with any cramp or frost, but who can speak the right word at the right moment, qualify the selfish and hypocritical act with its real name, and, without any loss of serenity, hold up the offence to the purest daylight. Such a truth-speaker is worth more than the best police, and more than the laws or governors; for these do not always know their own side, but will back the crime for want of this very truth-speaker to expose them. That is the theory of the newspaper,--to supersede official by intellectual influence. But, though the apostles establish the journal, it usually happens that, by some strange oversight, Ananias slips into the editor's chair. If, then, we could be provided with a fair proportion of truth-speakers, we could very materially and usefully contract the legislative and the executive functions. Still, the main sphere for this nobleness is private society, where so many mischiefs go unwhipped, being out of the cognizance of law, and supposed to be nobody's business. And society is, at all times, suffering for want of judges and headsmen, who will mark and lop these malefactors. Margaret suffered no vice to insult her presence, but called the offender to instant account, when the law of right or of beauty was violated. She needed not, of course, to go out of her way to find the offender, and she never did, but she had the courage and the skill to cut heads off which were not worn with honor in her presence. Others might abet a crime by silence, if they pleased; she chose to clear herself of all complicity, by calling the act by its name. It was curious to see the mysterious provocation which the mere presence of insight exerts in its neighborhood. Like moths about a lamp, her victims voluntarily came to judgment: conscious persons, encumbered with egotism; vain persons, bent on concealing some mean vice; arrogant reformers, with some halting of their own; the compromisers, who wished to reconcile right and wrong;--all came and held out their palms to the wise woman, to read their fortunes, and they were truly told. Many anecdotes have come to my ear, which show how useful the glare of her lamp proved in private circles, and what dramatic situations it created. But these cannot be told. The valor for dragging the accused spirits among his acquaintance to the stake is not in the heart of the present writer. The reader must be content to learn that she knew how, without loss of temper, to speak with unmistakable plainness to any party, when she felt that the truth or the right was injured. For the same reason, I omit one or two letters, most honorable both to her mind and heart, in which she felt constrained to give the frankest utterance to her displeasure. Yet I incline to quote the testimony of one witness, which is so full and so pointed, that I must give it as I find it. "I have known her, by the severity of her truth, mow down a crop of evil, like the angel of retribution itself, and could not sufficiently admire her courage. A conversation she had with Mr. ----, just before he went to Europe, was one of these things; and there was not a particle of ill-will in it, but it was truth which she could not help seeing and uttering, nor he refuse to accept. "My friends told me of a similar verdict, pronounced upon Mr. ----, at Paris, which they said was perfectly tremendous. They themselves sat breathless; Mr. ---- was struck dumb; his eyes fixed on her with wonder and amazement, yet gazing too with an attention which seemed like fascination. When she had done, he still looked to see if she was to say more, and when he found she had really finished, he arose, took his hat, said faintly, 'I thank you.' and left the room. He afterwards said to Mr. ----, 'I never shall speak ill of her. She has done me good.' And this was the greater triumph, for this man had no theories of impersonality, and was the most egotistical and irritable of self-lovers, and was so unveracious, that one had to hope in charity that his organ for apprehending truth was deficient." ECSTASY. I have alluded to the fact, that, in the summer of 1840, Margaret underwent some change in the tone and the direction of her thoughts, to which she attributed a high importance. I remember, at an earlier period, when in earnest conversation with her, she seemed to have that height and daring, that I saw she was ready to do whatever she thought; and I observed that, with her literary riches, her invention and wit, her boundless fun and drollery, her light satire, and the most entertaining conversation in America, consisted a certain pathos of sentiment, and a march of character, threatening to arrive presently at the shores and plunge into the sea of Buddhism and mystical trances. The literature of asceticism and rapturous piety was familiar to her. The conversation of certain mystics, who had appeared in Boston about this time, had interested her, but in no commanding degree. But in this year, 1840, in which events occurred which combined great happiness and pain for her affections, she remained for some time in a sort of ecstatic solitude. She made many attempts to describe her frame of mind to me, but did not inspire me with confidence that she had now come to any experiences that were profound or permanent. She was vexed at the want of sympathy on my part, and I again felt that this craving for sympathy did not prove the inspiration. There was a certain restlessness and fever, which I did not like should deceive a soul which was capable of greatness. But jets of magnanimity were always natural to her; and her aspiring mind, eager for a higher and still a higher ground, made her gradually familiar with the range of the mystics, and, though never herself laid in the chamber called Peace, never quite authentically and originally speaking from the absolute or prophetic mount, yet she borrowed from her frequent visits to its precincts an occasional enthusiasm, which gave a religious dignity to her thought. 'I have plagues about me, but they don't touch me now. I thank nightly the benignant Spirit, for the unaccustomed serenity in which it enfolds me. '---- is very wretched; and once I could not have helped taking on me all his griefs, and through him the griefs of his class; but now I drink only the wormwood of the minute, and that has always equal parts,--a drop of sweet to a drop of bitter. But I shall never be callous, never unable to understand _home-sickness_. Am not I, too, one of the band who know not where to lay their heads? Am I wise enough to hear such things? Perhaps not; but happy enough, surely. For that Power which daily makes me understand the value of the little wheat amid the field of tares, and shows me how the kingdom of heaven is sown in the earth like a grain of mustard-seed, is good to me, and bids me call unhappiness happy.' * * * * * TO ---- '_March_, 1842.--My inward life has been more rich and deep, and of more calm and musical flow than ever before. It seems to me that Heaven, whose course has ever been to cross-bias me, as Herbert said, is no niggard in its compensations. I have indeed been forced to take up old burdens, from which I thought I had learned what they could teach; the pen has been snatched from my hand just as I most longed to use it; I have been forced to dissipate, when I most wished to concentrate; to feel the hourly presence of others' mental wants, when, it seemed, I was just on the point of satisfying my own. But a new page is turned, and an era begun, from which I am not yet sufficiently remote to describe it as I would. I have lived a life, if only in the music I have heard, and one development seemed to follow another therein, as if bound together by destiny, and all things were done for me. All minds, all scenes, have ministered to me. Nature has seemed an ever-open secret; the Divine, a sheltering love; truth, an always-springing fountain; and my soul more alone, and less lonely, more hopeful, patient, and, above all, more gentle and humble in its living. New minds have come to reveal themselves to me, though I do not wish it, for I feel myself inadequate to the ties already formed. I have not strength or time to meet the thoughts of those I love already. But these new have come with gifts too fair to be refused, and which have cheered my passive mind.' * * * * * '_June_, 1844.--Last night, in the boat, I could not help thinking, each has something, none has enough. I fear to want them all; and, through ages, if not forever, promises and beckons the life of reception, of renunciation. Passing every seven days from one region to the other, the maiden grows weary of _packing the trunk_, yet blesses Thee, O rich God!' Her letters at this period betray a pathetic alternation of feeling, between her aspiring for a rest in the absolute Centre, and her necessity of a perfect sympathy with her friends. She writes to one of them:-- 'What I want, the word I crave, I do not expect to hear from the lips of man. I do not wish to be, I do not wish to have, a _mediator_; yet I cannot help wishing, when I am with you, that some tones of the longed-for music could be vibrating in the air around us. But I will not be impatient again; for, though I am but as I am, I like not to feel the eyes I have loved averted.' CONVERSATION. I have separated and distributed as I could some of the parts which blended in the rich composite energy which Margaret exerted during the ten years over which my occasional interviews with her were scattered. It remains to say, that all these powers and accomplishments found their best and only adequate channel in her conversation;--a conversation which those who have heard it, unanimously, as far as I know, pronounced to be, in elegance, in range, in flexibility, and adroit transition, in depth, in cordiality, and in moral aim, altogether admirable; surprising and cheerful as a poem, and communicating its own civility and elevation like a charm to all hearers. She was here, among our anxious citizens, and frivolous fashionists, as if sent to refine and polish her countrymen, and announce a better day. She poured a stream of amber over the endless store of private anecdotes, of bosom histories, which her wonderful persuasion drew forth, and transfigured them into fine fables. Whilst she embellished the moment, her conversation had the merit of being solid and true. She put her whole character into it, and had the power to inspire. The companion was made a thinker, and went away quite other than he came. The circle of friends who sat with her were not allowed to remain spectators or players, but she converted them into heroes, if she could. The muse woke the muses, and the day grew bright and eventful. Of course, there must be, in a person of such sincerity, much variety of aspect, according to the character of her company. Only, in Margaret's case, there is almost an agreement in the testimony to an invariable power over the minds of all. I conversed lately with a gentleman who has vivid remembrances of his interviews with her in Boston, many years ago, who described her in these terms:--"No one ever came so near. Her mood applied itself to the mood of her companion, point to point, in the most limber, sinuous, vital way, and drew out the most extraordinary narratives; yet she had a light sort of laugh, when all was said, as if she thought she could live over that revelation. And this sufficient sympathy she had for all persons indifferently,--for lovers, for artists, and beautiful maids, and ambitious young statesmen, and for old aunts, and coach-travellers. Ah! she applied herself to the mood of her companion, as the sponge applies itself to water." The description tallies well enough with my observation. I remember she found, one day, at my house, her old friend Mr. ----, sitting with me. She looked at him attentively, and hardly seemed to know him. In the afternoon, he invited her to go with him to Cambridge. The next, day she said to me, 'You fancy that you know--. It is too absurd; you have never seen him. When I found him here, sitting like a statue, I was alarmed, and thought him ill. You sit with courteous, _un_confiding smile, and suppose him to be a mere man of talent. He is so with you. But the moment I was alone with him, he was another creature; his manner, so glassy and elaborate before, was full of soul, and the tones of his voice entirely different.' And I have no doubt that she saw expressions, heard tones, and received thoughts from her companions, which no one else ever saw or heard from the same parties, and that her praise of her friends, which seemed exaggerated, was her exact impression. We were all obliged to recall Margaret's testimony, when we found we were sad blockheads to other people. I find among her letters many proofs of this power of disposing equally the hardest and the most sensitive people to open their hearts, on very short acquaintance. Any casual rencontré, in a walk, in a steamboat, at a concert, became the prelude to unwonted confidences. * * * * * 1843.--'I believe I told you about one new man, a Philistine, at Brook Farm. He reproved me, as such people are wont, for my little faith. At the end of the first meeting in the hall, he seemed to me perfectly hampered in his old ways and technics, and I thought he would not open his mind to the views of others for years, if ever. After I wrote, we had a second meeting, by request, on personal relations; at the end of which, he came to me, and expressed delight, and a feeling of new light and life, in terms whose modesty might have done honor to the wisest.' * * * * * 'This afternoon we met Mr. ---- in his wood; and he sat down and told us the story of his life, his courtship, and painted the portraits of his father and mother with most amusing naïveté. He says:--"How do you think I offered myself? I never had told Miss ---- that I loved her; never told her she was handsome; and I went to her, and said, 'Miss ----, I've come to offer myself; but first I'll give you my character. I'm very poor; you'll have to work: I'm very cross and irascible; you'll have everything to bear: and I've liked many other pretty girls. Now what do you say?' and she said, 'I'll have you:' and she's been everything to me." '"My mother was a Calvinist, very strict, but she was always reading 'Abelard and Eloisa,' and crying over it. At sixteen I said to her: 'Mother, you've brought me up well; you've kept me strict. Why don't I feel that regeneration they talk of? why an't I one of the elect?' And she talked to me about the potter using his clay as he pleased; and I said: 'Mother, God is not a potter: He's a perfect being; and he can't treat the vessels he makes, anyhow, but with perfect justice, or he's no God. So I'm no Calvinist.'"' * * * * * Here is a very different picture:-- '---- has infinite grace and shading in her character: a springing and tender fancy, a Madonna depth of meditative softness, and a purity which has been unstained, and keeps her dignified even in the most unfavorable circumstances. She was born for the love and ornament of life. I can scarcely forbear weeping sometimes, when I look on her, and think what happiness and beauty she might have conferred. She is as yet all unconscious of herself, and she rather dreads being with me, because I make her too conscious. She was on the point, at ----, of telling me all she knew of herself; but I saw she dreaded, while she wished, that I should give a local habitation and a name to what lay undefined, floating before her, the phantom of her destiny; or rather lead her to give it, for she always approaches a tragical clearness when talking with me.' * * * * * '---- has been to see us. But it serves not to know such a person, who perpetually defaces the high by such strange mingling with the low. It certainly is not pleasant to hear of God and Miss Biddeford in a breath. To me, this hasty attempt at skimming from the deeps of theosophy is as unpleasant as the rude vanity of reformers. Dear Beauty! where, where, amid these morasses and pine barrens, shall we make thee a temple? where find a Greek to guard it,--clear-eyed, deep-thoughted, and delicate enough to appreciate the relations and gradations which nature always observes?' An acute and illuminated woman, who, in this age of indifferentism, holds on with both hands to the creed of the Pilgrims, writes of Margaret, whom she saw but once:--"She looked very sensible, but as if contending with ill health and duties. She lay, all the day and evening, on the sofa, and catechized me, who told my literal traditions, like any old bobbin-woman." I add the testimony of a man of letters, and most competent observer, who had, for a long time, opportunities of daily intercourse with her:-- "When I knew Margaret, I was so young, and perhaps too much disposed to meet people on my own ground, that I may not be able to do justice to her. Her nature was so large and receptive, so sympathetic with youth and genius, so aspiring, and withal so womanly in her understanding, that she made her companion think more of himself, and of a common life, than of herself. She was a companion as few others, if indeed any one, have been. Her heart was underneath her intellectualness, her mind was reverent, her spirit devout; a thinker without dryness; a scholar without pedantry. She could appreciate the finest thoughts, and knew the rich soil and large fields of beauty that made the little vase of otto. With her unusual wisdom and religious spirit, she seemed like the priestess of the youth, opening to him the fields of nature; but she was more than a priestess, a companion also. As I recall her image, I think she may have been too intellectual, and too conscious of intellectual relation, so that she was not sufficiently self-centred on her own personality; and hence something of a duality: but I may not be correct in this impression." CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. BY R.W. EMERSON. "Do not scold me; they are guests of my eyes. Do not frown,--they want no bread; they are guests of my words." TARTAR ECLOGUES V. CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. * * * * * In the year 1839, Margaret removed from Groton, and, with her mother and family, took a house at Jamaica Plain, five miles from Boston. In November of the next year the family removed to Cambridge, and rented a house there, near their old home. In 1841, Margaret took rooms for the winter in town, retaining still the house in Cambridge. And from the day of leaving Groton, until the autumn of 1844, when she removed to New York, she resided in Boston, or its immediate vicinity. Boston was her social centre. There were the libraries, galleries, and concerts which she loved; there were her pupils and her friends; and there were her tasks, and the openings of a new career. I have vaguely designated some of the friends with whom she was on terms of intimacy at the time when I was first acquainted with her. But the range of her talents required an equal compass in her society; and she gradually added a multitude of names to the list. She knew already all the active minds at Cambridge; and has left a record of one good interview she had with Allston. She now became intimate with Doctor Channing, and interested him to that point in some of her studies, that, at his request, she undertook to render some selections of German philosophy into English for him. But I believe this attempt was soon abandoned. She found a valuable friend in the late Miss Mary Rotch, of New Bedford, a woman of great strength of mind, connected with the Quakers not less by temperament than by birth, and possessing the best lights of that once spiritual sect. At Newport, Margaret had made the acquaintance of an elegant scholar, in Mr. Calvert, of Maryland. In Providence, she had won, as by conquest, such a homage of attachment, from young and old, that her arrival there, one day, on her return from a visit to Bristol, was a kind of ovation. In Boston, she knew people of every class,--merchants, politicians, scholars, artists, women, the migratory genius, and the rooted capitalist,--and, amongst all, many excellent people, who were every day passing, by new opportunities, conversations, and kind offices, into the sacred circle of friends. The late Miss Susan Burley had many points of attraction for her, not only in her elegant studies, but also in the deep interest which that lady took in securing the highest culture for women. She was very well read, and, avoiding abstractions, knew how to help herself with examples and facts. A friendship that proved of great importance to the next years was that established with Mr. George Ripley; an accurate scholar, a man of character, and of eminent powers of conversation, and already then deeply engaged in plans of an expansive practical bearing, of which the first fruit was the little community which nourished for a few years at Brook Farm. Margaret presently became connected with him in literary labors, and, as long as she remained in this vicinity, kept up her habits of intimacy with the colonists of Brook Farm. At West-Roxbury, too, she knew and prized the heroic heart, the learning and wit of Theodore Parker, whose literary aid was, subsequently, of the first importance to her. She had an acquaintance, for many years,--subject, no doubt, to alternations of sun and shade,--with Mr. Alcott. There was much antagonism in their habitual views, but each learned to respect the genius of the other. She had more sympathy with Mr. Alcott's English friend, Charles Lane, an ingenious mystic, and bold experimenter in practical reforms, whose dexterity and temper in debate she frankly admired, whilst his asceticism engaged her reverence. Neither could some marked difference of temperament remove her from the beneficent influences of Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who, by her constitutional hospitality to excellence, whether mental or moral, has made her modest abode for so many years the inevitable resort of studious feet, and a private theatre for the exposition of every question of letters, of philosophy, of ethics, and of art. The events in Margaret's life, up to the year 1840, were few, and not of that dramatic interest which readers love. Of the few events of her bright and blameless years, how many are private, and must remain so. In reciting the story of an affectionate and passionate woman, the voice lowers itself to a whisper, and becomes inaudible. A woman in our society finds her safety and happiness in exclusions and privacies. She congratulates herself when she is not called to the market, to the courts, to the polls, to the stage, or to the orchestra. Only the most extraordinary genius can make the career of an artist secure and agreeable to her. Prescriptions almost invincible the female lecturer or professor of any science must encounter; and, except on points where the charities which are left to women as their legitimate province interpose against the ferocity of laws, with us a female politician is unknown. Perhaps this fact, which so dangerously narrows the career of a woman, accuses the tardiness of our civility, and many signs show that a revolution is already on foot. Margaret had no love of notoriety, or taste for eccentricity, to goad her, and no weak fear of either. Willingly she was confined to the usual circles and methods of female talent. She had no false shame. Any task that called out her powers was good and desirable. She wished to live by her strength. She could converse, and teach, and write. She took private classes of pupils at her own house. She organized, with great success, a school for young ladies at Providence, and gave four hours a day to it, during two years. She translated Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, and published in 1839. In 1841, she translated the Letters of Gunderode and Bettine, and published them as far as the sale warranted the work. In 1843, she made a tour to Lake Superior and to Michigan, and published an agreeable narrative of it, called "Summer on the Lakes." Apparently a more pretending, but really also a private and friendly service, she edited the "Dial," a quarterly journal, for two years from its first publication in 1840. She was eagerly solicited to undertake the charge of this work, which, when it began, concentrated a good deal of hope and affection. It had its origin in a club of speculative students, who found the air in America getting a little close and stagnant; and the agitation had perhaps the fault of being too secondary or bookish in its origin, or caught not from primary instincts, but from English, and still more from German books. The journal was commenced with much hope, and liberal promises of many coöperators. But the workmen of sufficient culture for a poetical and philosophical magazine were too few; and, as the pages were filled by unpaid contributors, each of whom had, according to the usage and necessity of this country, some paying employment, the journal did not get his best work, but his second best. Its scattered writers had not digested their theories into a distinct dogma, still less into a practical measure which the public could grasp; and the magazine was so eclectic and miscellaneous, that each of its readers and writers valued only a small portion of it. For these reasons it never had a large circulation, and it was discontinued after four years. But the Dial betrayed, through all its juvenility, timidity, and conventional rubbish, some sparks of the true love and hope, and of the piety to spiritual law, which had moved its friends and founders, and it was received by its early subscribers with almost a religious welcome. Many years after it was brought to a close, Margaret was surprised in England by very warm testimony to its merits; and, in 1848, the writer of these pages found it holding the same affectionate place in many a private bookshelf in England and Scotland, which it had secured at home. Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious labor from those who served it, and from Margaret most of all. As editor, she received a compensation for the first years, which was intended to be two hundred dollars _per annum_, but which, I fear, never reached even that amount. But it made no difference to her exertion. She put so much heart into it that she bravely undertook to open, in the Dial, the subjects which most attracted her; and she treated, in turn, Goethe, and Beethoven, the Rhine and the Romaic Ballads, the Poems of John Sterling, and several pieces of sentiment, with a spirit which spared no labor; and, when the hard conditions of journalism held her to an inevitable day, she submitted to jeopardizing a long-cherished subject, by treating it in the crude and forced article for the month. I remember, after she had been compelled by ill health to relinquish the journal into my hands, my grateful wonder at the facility with which she assumed the preparation of laborious articles, that might have daunted the most practised scribe. But in book or journal she found a very imperfect expression of herself, and it was the more vexatious, because she was accustomed to the clearest and fullest. When, therefore, she had to choose an employment that should pay money, she consulted her own genius, as well as the wishes of a multitude of friends, in opening a class for conversation. In the autumn of 1839, she addressed the following letter, intended for circulation, to Mrs. George Ripley, in which her general design was stated:-- 'My dear friend:--The advantages of a weekly meeting, for conversation, might be great enough to repay the trouble of attendance, if they consisted only in supplying a point of union to well-educated and thinking women, in a city which, with great pretensions to mental refinement, boasts, at present, nothing of the kind, and where I have heard many, of mature age, wish for some such means of stimulus and cheer, and those younger, for a place where they could state their doubts and difficulties, with a hope of gaining aid from the experience or aspirations of others. And, if my office were only to suggest topics, which would lead to conversation of a better order than is usual at social meetings, and to turn back the current when digressing into personalities or common-places, so that what is valuable in the experience of each might be brought to bear upon all, I should think the object not unworthy of the effort. 'But my ambition goes much further. It is to pass in review the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavor to place them in due relation to one another in our minds. To systematize thought, and give a precision and clearness in which our sex are so deficient, chiefly, I think, because they have so few inducements to test and classify what they receive. To ascertain what pursuits are best suited to us, in our time and state of society, and how we may make best use of our means for building up the life of thought upon the life of action. 'Could a circle be assembled in earnest, desirous to answer the questions,--What were we born to do? and how shall we do it?--which so few ever propose to themselves till their best years are gone by, I should think the undertaking a noble one, and, if my resources should prove sufficient to make me its moving spring, I should be willing to give to it a large portion of those coming years, which will, as I hope, be my best. I look upon it with no blind enthusiasm, nor unlimited faith, but with a confidence that I have attained a distinct perception of means, which, if there are persons competent to direct them, can supply a great want, and promote really high objects. So far as I have tried them yet, they have met with success so much beyond my hopes, that my faith will not easily be shaken, nor my earnestness chilled. Should I, however, be disappointed in Boston, I could hardly hope that such a plan could be brought to bear on general society, in any other city of the United States. But I do not fear, if a good beginning can be made. I am confident that twenty persons cannot be brought together from better motives than vanity or pedantry, to talk upon such subjects as we propose, without finding in themselves great deficiencies, which they will be very desirous to supply. 'Should the enterprise fail, it will be either from incompetence in me, or that sort of vanity in them which wears the garb of modesty. On the first of these points, I need not speak. I cannot be supposed to have felt so much the wants of others, without feeling my own still more deeply. And, from the depth of this feeling, and the earnestness it gave, such power as I have yet exerted has come. Of course, those who are inclined to meet me, feel a confidence in me, and should they be disappointed, I shall regret it not solely or most on my own account. I have not given my gauge without measuring my capacity to sustain defeat. For the other, I know it is very hard to lay aside the shelter of vague generalities, the art of coterie criticism, and the "delicate disdains" of _good society_, and fearlessly meet the light, even though it flow from the sun of truth. Yet, as, without such generous courage, nothing of value can be learned or done, I hope to see many capable of it; willing that others should think their sayings crude, shallow, or tasteless, if, by such unpleasant means, they may attain real health and vigor, which need no aid from rouge or candle-light, to brave the light of the world. 'Since I saw you, I have been told of persons who are desirous to join the class, "if only they need not talk." I am so sure that the success of the whole depends on conversation being general, that I do not wish any one to come, who does not intend, if possible, to take an active part. No one will be forced, but those who do not talk will not derive the same advantages with those who openly state their impressions, and can consent to have it known that they learn by blundering, as is the destiny of man here below. And general silence, or side talks, would paralyze me. I should feel coarse and misplaced, were I to harangue over-much. In former instances, I have been able to make it easy and even pleasant, to twenty-five out of thirty, to bear their part, to question, to define, to state, and examine opinions. If I could not do as much now, I should consider myself as unsuccessful, and should withdraw. But I shall expect communication to be effected by degrees, and to do a great deal myself at the first meetings. My method has been to open a subject,--for instance, Poetry, as expressed in-- External Nature; The life of man; Literature; The fine arts; or, The history of a nation to be studied in-- Its religious and civil institutions; Its literature and arts; The characters of its great men; and, after as good a general statement as I know how to make, select a branch of the subject, and lead others to give their thoughts upon it. When they have not been successful in verbal utterance of their thoughts, I have asked them to attempt it in writing. At the next meeting, I would read these "skarts of pen and ink" aloud, and canvass their adequacy, without mentioning the names of the writers. I found this less necessary, as I proceeded, and my companions attained greater command both of thought and language; but for a time it was useful, and may be now. Great advantage in point of discipline may be derived from even this limited use of the pen. 'I do not wish, at present, to pledge myself to any course of subjects. Generally, I may say, they will be such as literature and the arts present in endless profusion. Should a class be brought together, I should wish, first, to ascertain our common ground, and, in the course of a few meetings, should see whether it be practicable to follow out the design in my mind, which, as yet, would look too grand on paper. 'Let us see whether there will be any organ, before noting down the music to which it may give breath.' Accordingly, a class of ladies assembled at Miss Peabody's rooms, in West Street, on the 6th November, 1839. Twenty-five were present, and the circle comprised some of the most agreeable and intelligent women to be found in Boston and its neighborhood. The following brief report of this first day's meeting remains:-- 'Miss Fuller enlarged, in her introductory conversation, on the topics which she touched in her letter to Mrs. Ripley. 'Women are now taught, at school, all that men are; they run over, superficially, even _more_ studies, without being really taught anything. When they come to the business of life, they find themselves inferior, and all their studies have not given them that practical good sense, and mother wisdom, and wit, which grew up with our grandmothers at the spinning-wheel. But, with this difference; men are called on, from a very early period, to reproduce all that they learn. Their college exercises, their political duties, their professional studies, the first actions of life in any direction, call on them to put to use what they have learned. But women learn without any attempt to reproduce. Their only reproduction is for purposes of display. 'It is to supply this defect,' Miss Fuller said, 'that these conversations have been planned. She was not here to teach; but she had had some experience in the management of such a conversation as was now proposed; she meant to give her view on each subject, and provoke the thoughts of others. 'It would be best to take subjects on which we know words, and have vague impressions, and compel ourselves to define those words. We should have, probably, mortifications to suffer; but we should be encouraged by the rapid gain that comes from making a simple and earnest effort for expression.' Miss Fuller had proposed the Grecian Mythology as the subject of the first conversations, and now gave her reasons for the choice. 'It is quite separated from all exciting local subjects. It is serious, without being solemn, and without excluding any mode of intellectual action; it is playful, as well as deep. It is sufficiently wide, for it is a complete expression of the cultivation of a nation. It is objective and tangible. It is, also, generally known, and associated with all our ideas of the arts. 'It originated in the eye of the Greek. He lived out of doors: his climate was genial, his senses were adapted to it. He was vivacious and intellectual, and personified all he beheld. He _saw_ the oreads, naiads, nereids. Their forms, as poets and painters give them, are the very lines of nature humanized, as the child's eye sees faces in the embers or in the clouds. 'Other forms of the mythology, as Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, are great instincts, or ideas, or facts of the internal constitution, separated and personified.' After exhibiting their enviable mental health, and rebutting the cavils of some of the speakers,--who could not bear, in Christian times, by Christian ladies, that heathen Greeks should be envied,--Miss Fuller declared, 'that she had no desire to go back, and believed we have the elements of a deeper civilization; yet, the Christian was in its infancy; the Greek in its maturity; nor could she look on the expression of a great nation's intellect, as insignificant. These fables of the Gods were the result of the universal sentiments of religion, aspiration, intellectual action, of a people, whose political and æsthetic life had become immortal; and we must leave off despising, if we would begin to learn.' The reporter closes her account by saying:--"Miss Fuller's thoughts were much illustrated, and all was said with the most captivating address and grace, and with beautiful modesty. The position in which she placed herself with respect to the rest, was entirely ladylike, and companionable. She told what she intended, the earnest purpose with which she came, and, with great tact, indicated the indiscretions that might spoil the meeting." Here is Margaret's own account of the first days. TO R.W.E. '_25th Nov._, 1839.--My class is prosperous. I was so fortunate as to rouse, at once, the tone of simple earnestness, which can scarcely, when once awakened, cease to vibrate. All seem in a glow, and quite as receptive as I wish. They question and examine, yet follow leadings; and thoughts, not opinions, have ruled the hour every time. There are about twenty-five members, and every one, I believe, full of interest. The first time, ten took part in the conversation; the last, still more. Mrs. ---- came out in a way that surprised me. She seems to have shaken off a wonderful number of films. She showed pure vision, sweet sincerity, and much talent. Mrs. ---- ---- keeps us in good order, and takes care that Christianity and morality are not forgotten. The first day's topic was, the genealogy of heaven and earth; then the Will, (Jupiter); the Understanding, (Mercury): the second day's, the celestial inspiration of genius, perception, and transmission of divine law, (Apollo); the terrene inspiration, the impassioned abandonment of genius, (Bacchus). Of the thunderbolt, the caduceus, the ray, and the grape, having disposed as well as might be, we came to the wave, and the sea-shell it moulds to Beauty, and Love her parent and her child. 'I assure you, there is more Greek than Bostonian spoken at the meetings; and we may have pure honey of Hymettus to give you yet.' To another friend she wrote:-- 'The circle I meet interests me. So even devoutly thoughtful seems their spirit, that, from the very first, I took my proper place, and never had the feeling I dreaded, of display, of a paid Corinne. I feel as I would, truly a teacher and a guide. All are intelligent; five or six have talent. But I am never driven home for ammunition; never put to any expense; never truly called out. What I have is always enough; though I feel how superficially I am treating my subject.' Here is an extract from the letter of a lady, who joined the class, for the first time, at the eighth meeting, to her friend in New Haven:-- "Christmas made a holiday for Miss Fuller's class, but it met on Saturday, at noon. As I sat there, my heart overflowed with joy at the sight of the bright circle, and I longed to have you by my side, for I know not where to look for so much character, culture, and so much love of truth and beauty, in any other circle of women and girls. The names and faces would not mean so much to you as to me, who have seen more of the lives, of which they are the sign. Margaret, beautifully dressed, (don't despise that, for it made a fine picture,) presided with more dignity and grace than I had thought possible. The subject was Beauty. Each had written her definition, and Margaret began with reading her own. This called forth questions, comments, and illustrations, on all sides. The style and manner, of course, in this age, are different, but the question, the high point from which it was considered, and the earnestness and simplicity of the discussion, as well as the gifts and graces of the speakers, gave it the charm of a Platonic dialogue. There was no pretension or pedantry in a word that was said. The tone of remark and question was simple as that of children in a school class; and, I believe, every one was gratified." The conversations thus opened proceeded with spirit and success. Under the mythological forms, room was found for opening all the great questions, on which Margaret and her friends wished to converse. Prometheus was made the type of Pure Reason; Jupiter, of Will; Juno, the passive side of the same, or Obstinacy; Minerva, Intellectual Power, Practical Reason; Mercury, Executive Power, Understanding; Apollo was Genius, the Sun; Bacchus was Geniality, the Earth's answer. "Apollo and Bacchus were contrasted," says the reporter. "Margaret unfolded her idea of Bacchus. His whole life was triumph. Born from fire; a divine frenzy; the answer of the earth to the sun,--of the warmth of joy to the light of genius. He is beautiful, also; not severe in youthful beauty, like Apollo; but exuberant,--liable to excess. She spoke of the fables of his destroying Pentheus, &c., and suggested the interpretations. This Bacchus was found in Scripture. The Indian Bacchus is glowing; he is the genial apprehensive power; the glow of existence; mere joy." Venus was Grecian womanhood, instinctive; Diana, chastity; Mars, Grecian manhood, instinctive. Venus made the name for a conversation on Beauty, which was extended through four meetings, as it brought in irresistibly the related topics of poetry, genius, and taste. Neptune was Circumstance; Pluto, the Abyss, the Undeveloped; Pan, the glow and sportiveness and music of Nature; Ceres, the productive power of Nature; Proserpine, the Phenomenon. Under the head of Venus, in the fifth conversation, the story of Cupid and Psyche was told with fitting beauty, by Margaret; and many fine conjectural interpretations suggested from all parts of the room. The ninth conversation turned on the distinctive qualities of poetry, discriminating it from the other fine arts. Rhythm and Imagery, it was agreed, were distinctive. An episode to dancing, which the conversation took, led Miss Fuller to give the thought that lies at the bottom of different dances. Of her lively description the following record is preserved:-- 'Gavottes, shawl dances, and all of that kind, are intended merely to exhibit the figure in as many attitudes as possible. They have no character, and say nothing, except, Look! how graceful I am! 'The minuet is conjugal; but the wedlock is chivalric. Even so would Amadis wind slow, stately, calm, through the mazes of life, with Oriana, when he had made obeisances enough to win her for a partner. 'English, German, Swiss, French, and Spanish dances all express the same things, though in very different ways. Love and its life are still the theme. 'In the English country dance, the pair who have chosen one another, submit decorously to the restraints of courtship and frequent separations, cross hands, four go round, down outside, in the most earnest, lively, complacent fashion. If they join hands to go down the middle, and exhibit their union to all spectators, they part almost as soon as meet, and disdain not to give hands right and left to the most indifferent persons, like marriage in its daily routine. 'In the Swiss, the man pursues, stamping with energy, marking the time by exulting flings, or snapping of the fingers, in delighted confidence of succeeding at last; but the maiden coyly, demurely, foots it round, yet never gets out of the way, intending to be won. 'The German asks his _madchen_ if she will, with him, for an hour forget the cares and common-places of life in a tumult of rapturous sympathy, and she smiles with Saxon modesty her _Ja_. He sustains her in his arms; the music begins. At first, in willing mazes they calmly imitate the planetary orbs, but the melodies flow quicker, their accordant hearts beat higher, and they whirl at last into giddy raptures, and dizzy evolutions, which steal from life its free-will and self-collection, till nothing is left but mere sensation. 'The French couple are somewhat engaged with one another, but almost equally so with the world around them. They think it well to vary existence with plenty of coquetry and display. First, the graceful reverence to one another, then to their neighbors. Exhibit your grace in the _chassé_,--made apparently solely for the purpose of _déchasséing_;--then civil intimacy between the ladies, in _la chaine_, then a decorous promenade of partners, then right and left with all the world, and balance, &c. The quadrille also offers opportunity for talk. Looks and sympathetic motions are not enough for our Parisian friends, unless eked out by words. 'The impassioned bolero and fandango are the dances for me. They are not merely loving, but living; they express the sweet Southern ecstasy at the mere gift of existence. These persons are together, they live, they are beautiful; how can they say this in sufficiently plain terms?--I love, I live, I am beautiful!--I put on my festal dress to do honor to my happiness; I shake my castanets, that my hands, too, may be busy; I _felice,--felicissima_!' This first series of conversations extended to thirteen, the class meeting once a week at noon, and remaining together for two hours. The class were happy, and the interest increased. A new series of thirteen more weeks followed, and the general subject of the new course was "the Fine Arts." A few fragmentary notes only of these hours have been shown me, but all those who bore any part in them testify to their entire success. A very competent witness has given me some interesting particulars:-- "Margaret used to come to the conversations very well dressed, and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent, from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess, and from the gracefulness with which they were brought down, at last, to a possible level for others to follow. She made a pause, and invited the others to come in. Of course, it was not easy for every one to venture her remark, after an eloquent discourse, and in the presence of twenty superior women, who were all inspired. But whatever was said, Margaret knew how to seize the good meaning of it with hospitality, and to make the speaker feel glad, and not sorry, that she had spoken. She showed herself thereby fit to preside at such meetings, and imparted to the susceptible a wonderful reliance on her genius." In her writing she was prone to spin her sentences without a sure guidance, and beyond the sympathy of her reader. But in discourse, she was quick, conscious of power, in perfect tune with her company, and would pause and turn the stream with grace and adroitness, and with so much spirit, that her face beamed, and the young people came away delighted, among other things, with "her beautiful looks." When she was intellectually excited, or in high animal spirits, as often happened, all deformity of features was dissolved in the power of the expression. So I interpret this repeated story of sumptuousness of dress, that this appearance, like her reported beauty, was simply an effect of a general impression of magnificence made by her genius, and mistakenly attributed to some external elegance; for I have been told by her most intimate friend, who knew every particular of her conduct at that time, that there was nothing of special expense or splendor in her toilette. The effect of the winter's work was happiest. Margaret was made intimately known to many excellent persons.[A] In this company of matrons and maids, many tender spirits had been set in ferment. A new day had dawned for them; new thoughts had opened; the secret of life was shown, or, at least, that life had a secret. They could not forget what they had heard, and what they had been surprised into saying. A true refinement had begun to work in many who had been slaves to trifles. They went home thoughtful and happy, since the steady elevation of Margaret's aim had infused a certain unexpected greatness of tone into the conversation. It was, I believe, only an expression of the feeling of the class, the remark made, perhaps at the next year's course, by a lady of eminent powers, previously by no means partial to Margaret, and who expressed her frank admiration on leaving the house:--"I never heard, read of, or imagined a conversation at all equal to this we have now heard." The strongest wishes were expressed, on all sides, that the conversations should be renewed at the beginning of the following winter. Margaret willingly consented; but, as I have already intimated, in the summer and autumn of 1840, she had retreated to some interior shrine, and believed that she came into life and society with some advantage from this devotion. Of this feeling the new discussion bore evident traces. Most of the last year's class returned, and new members gave in their names. The first meeting was holden on the twenty-second of November, 1840. By all accounts it was the best of all her days. I have again the notes, taken at the time, of the excellent lady at whose house it was held, to furnish the following sketch of the first and the following meetings. I preface these notes by an extract from a letter of Margaret. TO W.H.C. '_Sunday, Nov. 8th, 1840_.--On Wednesday I opened with my class. It was a noble meeting. I told them the great changes in my mind, and that I could not be sure they would be satisfied with me now, as they were when I was in deliberate possession of myself. I tried to convey the truth, and though I did not arrive at any full expression of it, they all, with glistening eyes, seemed melted into one love. Our relation is now perfectly true, and I do not think they will ever interrupt me. ---- sat beside me, all glowing; and the moment I had finished, she began to speak. She told me afterwards, she was all kindled, and none there could be strangers to her more. I was really delighted by the enthusiasm of Mrs. ----. I did not expect it. All her best self seemed called up, and she feels that these meetings will be her highest pleasure. ----, too, was most beautiful. I went home with Mrs. F., and had a long attack of nervous headache. She attended anxiously on me, and asked if it would be so all winter. I said, if it were I did not care; and truly I feel just now such a separation from pain and illness,--such a consciousness of true life, while suffering most,--that pain has no effect but to steal some of my time.' [Footnote A: A friend has furnished me with the names of so many of the ladies as she recollects to have met, at one or another time, at these classes. Some of them were perhaps only occasional members. The list recalls how much talent, beauty, and worth were at that time constellated here:-- Mrs. George Bancroft, Mrs. Barlow, Miss Burley, Mrs. L.M. Child, Miss Mary Channing, Miss Sarah Clarke, Mrs. E.P. Clark, Miss Dorr, Mrs. Edwards, Mrs. R.W. Emerson, Mrs. Farrar, Miss S.J. Gardiner, Mrs. R.W. Hooper, Mrs. S. Hooper, Miss Haliburton, Miss Howes, Miss E. Hoar, Miss Marianne Jackson, Mrs. T. Lee, Miss Littlehale, Mrs. E.G. Loring, Mrs. Mack, Mrs. Horace Mann, Mrs. Newcomb, Mrs. Theodore Parker, Miss E.P. Peabody, Miss S. Peabody, Mrs. S. Putnam, Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Josiah Quincy, Miss B. Randall, Mrs. Samuel Ripley, Mrs. George Ripley, Mrs. George Russell, Miss Ida Russell, Mrs. Frank Shaw, Miss Anna B. Shaw, Miss Caroline Sturgis, Miss Tuckerman, Miss Maria White, Mrs. S.G. Ward, Miss Mary Ward, Mrs. W. Whiting.] CONVERSATIONS ON THE FINE ARTS. "Miss Fuller's fifth conversation was pretty much a monologue of her own. The company collected proved much larger than any of us had anticipated: a chosen company,--several persons from homes out of town, at considerable inconvenience; and, in one or two instances, fresh from extreme experiences of joy and grief,--which Margaret felt a very grateful tribute to her. She knew no one came for experiment, but all in earnest love and trust, and was moved by it quite to the heart, which threw an indescribable charm of softness over her brilliancy. It is sometimes said, that women never are so lovely and enchanting in the company of their own sex, merely, but it requires the other to draw them out. Certain it is that Margaret never appears, when I see her, either so brilliant and deep in thought, or so desirous to please, or so modest, or so heart-touching, as in this very party. Well, she began to say how gratifying it was to her to see so many come, because all knew why they came,--that it was to learn from each other and ourselves the highest ends of life, where there could be no excitements and gratifications of personal ambition, &c. She spoke of herself, and said she felt she had undergone changes in her own mind since the last winter, as doubtless we all felt we had done; that she was conscious of looking at all things less objectively,--more from the law with which she identified herself. This, she stated, was the natural progress of our individual being, when we did not hinder its development, to advance from objects to law, from the circumference of being, where we found ourselves at our birth, to the centre. "This advance was enacted poesy. We could not, in our individual lives, amid the disturbing influences of other wills, which had as much right to their own action as we to ours, enact poetry entirely; the discordant, the inferior, the prose, would intrude, but we should always keep in mind that poetry of life was not something aside,--a path that might or might not be trod,--it was the only path of the true soul; and prose you may call the deviation. We might not always be poetic in life, but we might and should be poetic in our thought and intention. The fine arts were one compensation for the necessary prose of life. The man who could not write his thought of beauty in his life,--the materials of whose life would not work up into poetry,--wrote it in stone, drew it on canvas, breathed it in music, or built it in lofty rhyme. In this statement, however, she guarded her meaning, and said that to seek beauty was to miss it often. We should only seek to live as harmoniously with the great laws as our social and other duties permitted, and solace ourselves with poetry and the fine arts." I find a further record by the same friendly scribe, which seems a second and enlarged account of the introductory conversation, or else a sketch of the course of thought which ran through several meetings, and which very naturally repeated occasionally the same thoughts. I give it as I find it:-- "She then recurred to the last year's conversations; and, first, the Grecian mythologies, which she looked at as symbolical of a deeper intellectual and æsthetic life than we were wont to esteem it, when looking at it from a narrow religious point of view. We had merely skimmed along the deeper study. She spoke of the conversations on the different part played by Inspiration and Will in the works of man, and stated the different views of inspiration,--how some had felt it was merely perception; others apprehended it as influx upon the soul from the soul-side of its being. Then she spoke of the conversation upon poesy as the ground of all the fine arts, and also of the true art of life; it being not merely truth, not merely good, but the beauty which integrates both. On this poesy, she dwelt long, aiming to show how life,--perfect life,--could be the only perfect manifestation of it. Then she spoke of the individual as surrounded, however, by _prose_,--so we may here call the manifestation of the temporary, in opposition to the eternal, always trenching on it, and circumscribing and darkening. She spoke of the acceptance of this limitation, but it should be called by the right name, and always measured; and we should inwardly cling to the truth that poesy was the natural life of the soul; and never yield inwardly to the common notion that poesy was a luxury, out of the common track; but maintain in word and life that prose carried the soul out of its track; and then, perhaps, it would not injure us to walk in these by-paths, when forced thither. She admitted that prose was the necessary human condition, and quickened our life indirectly by necessitating a conscious demand on the source of life. In reply to a remark I made, she very strongly stated the difference between a poetic and a _dilettante_ life, and sympathized with the sensible people who were tired of hearing all the young ladies of Boston sighing like furnace after being beautiful. Beauty was something very different from prettiness, and a microscopic vision missed the grand whole. The fine arts were our compensation for not being able to live out our poesy, amid the conflicting and disturbing forces of this moral world in which we are. In sculpture, the heights to which our being comes are represented; and its nature is such as to allow us to leave out all that vulgarizes,--all that bridges over to the actual from the ideal. She dwelt long upon sculpture, which seems her favorite art. That was grand, when a man first thought to engrave his idea of man upon a stone, the most unyielding and material of materials,--the backbone of this phenomenal earth,--and, when he did not succeed, that he persevered; and so, at last, by repeated efforts, the Apollo came to be. "But, no; music she thought the greatest of arts,--expressing what was most interior,--what was too fine to be put into any material grosser than air; conveying from soul to soul the most secret motions of feeling and thought. This was the only fine art which might be thought to be nourishing now. The others had had their day. This was advancing upon a higher intellectual ground. "Of painting she spoke, but not so well. She seemed to think painting worked more by illusion than sculpture. It involved more prose, from its representing more objects. She said nothing adequate about _color_. "She dwelt upon the histrionic art as the most complete, its organ being the most flexible and powerful. "She then spoke of life, as the art, of which these all were beautiful symbols; and said, in recurring to her opinions expressed last winter, of Dante and Wordsworth, that she had taken another view, deeper, and more in accordance with some others which were then expressed. She acknowledged that Wordsworth had done more to make all men poetical, than perhaps any other; that he was the poet of reflection; that where he failed to poetize his subject, his simple faith intimated to the reader a poetry that he did not find in the book. She admitted that Dante's Narrative was instinct with the poetry concentrated often in single words. She uttered her old heresies about Milton, however, unmodified. "I do not remember the transition to modern poetry and Milnes; but she read (very badly indeed) the Legendary Tale. "We then had three conversations upon Sculpture, one of which was taken up very much in historical accounts of the sculpture of the ancients, in which color was added to form, and which seemed to prove that they were not, after all, sufficiently intellectual to be operated on by form exclusively. The question, of course, arose whether there was a modern sculpture, and why not. This led us to speak of the Greek sculpture as growing naturally out of their life and religion, and how alien it was to our life and to our religion. The Swiss lion, carved by Thorwaldsen out of the side of a mountain rock, was described as a natural growth. Those who had seen it described it; and Mrs. ---- spoke of it. She was also led to the story of her acquaintance with Thorwaldsen, and drew tears from many eyes with her natural eloquence. "Mrs. C. asked, if sculpture could express as well as painting the idea of immortality. "Margaret thought the Greek art expressed immortality as much as Christian art, but did not throw it into the future, by preëminence. They expressed it in the present, by casting out of the mortal body every expression of infirmity and decay. The idealization of the human form makes a God. The fact that man can conceive and express this perfection of being, is as good a witness to immortality, as the look of aspiration in the countenance of a Magdalen. "It is quite beyond the power of my memory to recall all the bright utterances of Margaret, in these conversations on Sculpture. It was a favorite subject with her. Then came two or three conversations on Painting, in which it seemed to be conceded that color expressed passion, whilst sculpture more severely expressed thought: yet painting did not exclude the expression of thought, or sculpture that of feeling,--witness Niobe,--but it must be an universal feeling, like the maternal sentiment." * * * * * "_March 22, 1841_.--The question of the day was, What is life? "Let us define, each in turn, our idea of living. Margaret did not believe we had, any of us, a distinct idea of life. "A.S. thought so great a question ought to be given for a written definition. 'No,' said Margaret, 'that is of no use. When we go away to think of anything, we never do think. We all talk of life. We all have some thought now. Let us tell it. C----, what is life?' "C---- replied,--'It is to laugh, or cry, according to our organization.' "'Good,' said Margaret, 'but not grave enough. Come, what is life? I know what I think; I want you to find out what you think.' "Miss P. replied,--'Life is division from one's principle of life in order to a conscious reörganization. We are cut up by time and circumstance, in order to feel our reproduction of the eternal law.' "Mrs. E.,--'We live by the will of God, and the object of life is to submit,' and went on into Calvinism. "Then came up all the antagonisms of Fate and Freedom. "Mrs. H. said,--'God created us in order to have a perfect sympathy from us as free beings.' "Mrs. A.B. said she thought the object of life was to attain absolute freedom. At this Margaret immediately and visibly kindled. "C.S. said,--'God creates from the fulness of life, and cannot but create; he created us to overflow, without being exhausted, because what he created, necessitated new creation. It is not to make us happy, but creation is his happiness and ours.' "Margaret was then pressed to say what she considered life to be. "Her answer was so full, clear, and concise, at once, that it cannot but be marred by being drawn through the scattering medium of my memory. But here are some fragments of her satisfying statement. "She began with God as Spirit, Life, so full as to create and love eternally, yet capable of pause. Love and creativeness are dynamic forces, out of which we, individually, as creatures, go forth bearing his image, that is, having within our being the same dynamic forces, by which we also add constantly to the total sum of existence, and shaking off ignorance, and its effects, and by becoming more ourselves, i.e., more divine;--destroying sin in its principle, we attain to absolute freedom, we return to God, conscious like himself, and, as his friends, giving, as well as receiving, felicity forevermore. In short, we become gods, and able to give the life which we now feel ourselves able only to receive. "On Saturday morning, Mrs. L.E. and Mrs. E.H. were present, and begged Margaret to repeat the statement concerning life, with which she closed the last conversation. Margaret said she had forgotten every word she said. She must have been inspired by a good genius, to have so satisfied everybody.--but the good genius had left her. She would try, however, to say what she thought, and trusted it would resemble what she had said already. She then went into the matter, and, true enough, she did not use a single word she used before." The fame of these conversations spread wide through all families and social circles of the ladies attending, and the golden report they gave, led to a proposal, that Margaret should undertake an evening class, of four or five lessons, to which gentlemen should also be admitted. This was put in effect, in the course of the winter, and I had myself the pleasure of assisting at one--the second--of these soirées. The subject was Mythology, and several gentlemen took part in it. Margaret spoke well,--she could not otherwise,--but I remember that she seemed encumbered, or interrupted, by the headiness or incapacity of the men, whom she had not had the advantage of training, and who fancied, no doubt, that, on such a question, they, too, must assert and dogmatize. But, how well or ill they fared, may still be known; since the same true hand which reported for the Ladies' Class, drew up, at the time, the following note of the Evenings of Mythology. My distance from town, and engagements, prevented me from attending again. I was told that on the preceding and following evenings the success was more decisive. "Margaret's plan, in these conversations, was a very noble one, and, had it been seconded, as she expected, they would have been splendid. She thought, that, by admitting gentlemen, who had access, by their classical education, to the whole historical part of the mythology, her own comparative deficiency, as she felt it, in this part of learning, would be made up; and that taking her stand on the works of art, which were the final development in Greece of these multifarious fables, the whole subject might be swept from zenith to nadir. But all that depended on others entirely failed. Mr. W. contributed some isolated facts,--told the etymology of names, and cited a few fables not so commonly known as most; but, even in the point of erudition, which Margaret did not profess, on the subject, she proved the best informed of the party, while no one brought an idea, except herself. "Her general idea was, that, upon the Earth-worship and Sabæanism of earlier ages, the Grecian genius acted to humanize and idealize, but, still, with some regard to the original principle. What was a seed, or a root, merely, in the Egyptian mind, became a flower in Greece,--Isis, and Osiris, for instance, are reproduced in Ceres and Proserpine, with some loss of generality, but with great gain of beauty; Hermes, in Mercury, with only more grace of form, though with great loss of grandeur; but the loss of grandeur was also an advance in philosophy, in this instance, the brain in the hand being the natural consequence of the application of Idea to practice,--the Hermes of the Egyptians. "I do not feel that the class, by their apprehension of Margaret, do any justice to the scope and depth of her views. They come,--myself among the number,--I confess,--to be entertained; but she has a higher purpose. She, amid all her infirmities, studies and thinks with the seriousness of one upon oath, and there has not been a single conversation this winter, in either class, that had not in it the spirit which giveth life. Just in proportion to the importance of the subject, does she tax her mind, and say what is most important; while, of necessity, nothing is reported from the conversations but her brilliant sallies, her occasional paradoxes of form, and, sometimes, her impatient reacting upon dulness and frivolity. In particular points, I know, some excel her; in particular departments I sympathize more with some other persons; but, take her as a whole, she has the most to bestow on others by conversation of any person I have ever known. I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in her presence. She distances all who talk with her. "Mr. E. only served to display her powers. With his sturdy reiteration of his uncompromising idealism, his absolute denial of the fact of human nature, he gave her opportunity and excitement to unfold and illustrate her realism and acceptance of conditions. What is so noble is, that her realism is transparent with idea,--her human nature is the germ of a divine life. She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion, as Mr. E. does, but by comprehension,--and so, no poorest, saddest spirit, but she will lead to hope and faith. I have thought, sometimes, that her acceptance of evil was _too great_,--that her theory of the good to be educed proved too much. But in a conversation I had with her yesterday, I understood her better than I had done. 'It might never be sin to us, at the moment,' she said, 'it must be an excess, on which conscience puts the restraint.'" The classes thus formed were renewed in November of each year, until Margaret's removal to New York, in 1844. But the notes of my principal reporter fail me at this point. Afterwards, I have only a few sketches from a younger hand. In November, 1841, the class numbered from twenty-five to thirty members: the general subject is stated as "Ethics." And the influences on Woman seem to have been discussed under the topics of the Family, the School, the Church, Society, and Literature. In November, 1842, Margaret writes that the meetings have been unusually spirited, and congratulates herself on the part taken in them by Miss Burley, as 'a presence so positive as to be of great value to me.' The general subject I do not find. But particular topics were such as these:--"Is the ideal first or last; divination or experience?" "Persons who never awake to life in this world." "Mistakes;" "Faith;" "Creeds;" "Woman;" "Dæmonology;" "Influence;" "Catholicism" (Roman); "The Ideal." In the winter of 1843-4, the general subject was "Education." Culture, Ignorance, Vanity, Prudence, Patience, and Health, appear to have been the titles of conversations, in which wide digressions, and much autobiographic illustration, with episodes on War, Bonaparte, Goethe, and Spinoza, were mingled. But the brief narrative may wind up with a note from Margaret on the last day. '_28th April, 1844_.--It was the last day with my class. How noble has been my experience of such relations now for six years, and with so many and so various minds! Life is worth living, is it not? 'We had a most animated meeting. On bidding me good-bye, they all, and always, show so much good-will and love, that I feel I must really have become a friend to them. I was then loaded with beautiful gifts, accompanied with those little delicate poetic traits, of which I should delight to tell you, if we were near. Last came a beautiful bouquet, passion-flower, heliotrope, and soberer blooms. Then I went to take my repose on C----'s sofa, and we had a most serene afternoon together.' 
19717	----	THE BOSTONIANS A NOVEL BY HENRY JAMES IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1921 _First Published in_ 1886 BOOK FIRST I "Olive will come down in about ten minutes; she told me to tell you that. About ten; that is exactly like Olive. Neither five nor fifteen, and yet not ten exactly, but either nine or eleven. She didn't tell me to say she was glad to see you, because she doesn't know whether she is or not, and she wouldn't for the world expose herself to telling a fib. She is very honest, is Olive Chancellor; she is full of rectitude. Nobody tells fibs in Boston; I don't know what to make of them all. Well, I am very glad to see you, at any rate." These words were spoken with much volubility by a fair, plump, smiling woman who entered a narrow drawing-room in which a visitor, kept waiting for a few moments, was already absorbed in a book. The gentleman had not even needed to sit down to become interested: apparently he had taken up the volume from a table as soon as he came in, and, standing there, after a single glance round the apartment, had lost himself in its pages. He threw it down at the approach of Mrs. Luna, laughed, shook hands with her, and said in answer to her last remark, "You imply that you do tell fibs. Perhaps that is one." "Oh no; there is nothing wonderful in my being glad to see you," Mrs. Luna rejoined, "when I tell you that I have been three long weeks in this unprevaricating city." "That has an unflattering sound for me," said the young man. "I pretend not to prevaricate." "Dear me, what's the good of being a Southerner?" the lady asked. "Olive told me to tell you she hoped you will stay to dinner. And if she said it, she does really hope it. She is willing to risk that." "Just as I am?" the visitor inquired, presenting himself with rather a work-a-day aspect. Mrs. Luna glanced at him from head to foot, and gave a little smiling sigh, as if he had been a long sum in addition. And, indeed, he was very long, Basil Ransom, and he even looked a little hard and discouraging, like a column of figures, in spite of the friendly face which he bent upon his hostess's deputy, and which, in its thinness, had a deep dry line, a sort of premature wrinkle, on either side of the mouth. He was tall and lean, and dressed throughout in black; his shirt-collar was low and wide, and the triangle of linen, a little crumpled, exhibited by the opening of his waistcoat, was adorned by a pin containing a small red stone. In spite of this decoration the young man looked poor--as poor as a young man could look who had such a fine head and such magnificent eyes. Those of Basil Ransom were dark, deep, and glowing; his head had a character of elevation which fairly added to his stature; it was a head to be seen above the level of a crowd, on some judicial bench or political platform, or even on a bronze medal. His forehead was high and broad, and his thick black hair, perfectly straight and glossy, and without any division, rolled back from it in a leonine manner. These things, the eyes especially, with their smouldering fire, might have indicated that he was to be a great American statesman; or, on the other hand, they might simply have proved that he came from Carolina or Alabama. He came, in fact, from Mississippi, and he spoke very perceptibly with the accent of that country. It is not in my power to reproduce by any combination of characters this charming dialect; but the initiated reader will have no difficulty in evoking the sound, which is to be associated in the present instance with nothing vulgar or vain. This lean, pale, sallow, shabby, striking young man, with his superior head, his sedentary shoulders, his expression of bright grimness and hard enthusiasm, his provincial, distinguished appearance, is, as a representative of his sex, the most important personage in my narrative; he played a very active part in the events I have undertaken in some degree to set forth. And yet the reader who likes a complete image, who desires to read with the senses as well as with the reason, is entreated not to forget that he prolonged his consonants and swallowed his vowels, that he was guilty of elisions and interpolations which were equally unexpected, and that his discourse was pervaded by something sultry and vast, something almost African in its rich, basking tone, something that suggested the teeming expanse of the cotton-field. Mrs. Luna looked up at all this, but saw only a part of it; otherwise she would not have replied in a bantering manner, in answer to his inquiry: "Are you ever different from this?" Mrs. Luna was familiar--intolerably familiar. Basil Ransom coloured a little. Then he said: "Oh yes; when I dine out I usually carry a six-shooter and a bowie-knife." And he took up his hat vaguely--a soft black hat with a low crown and an immense straight brim. Mrs. Luna wanted to know what he was doing. She made him sit down; she assured him that her sister quite expected him, would feel as sorry as she could ever feel for anything--for she was a kind of fatalist, anyhow--if he didn't stay to dinner. It was an immense pity--she herself was going out; in Boston you must jump at invitations. Olive, too, was going somewhere after dinner, but he mustn't mind that; perhaps he would like to go with her. It wasn't a party--Olive didn't go to parties; it was one of those weird meetings she was so fond of. "What kind of meetings do you refer to? You speak as if it were a rendezvous of witches on the Brocken." "Well, so it is; they are all witches and wizards, mediums, and spirit-rappers, and roaring radicals." Basil Ransom stared; the yellow light in his brown eyes deepened. "Do you mean to say your sister's a roaring radical?" "A radical? She's a female Jacobin--she's a nihilist. Whatever is, is wrong, and all that sort of thing. If you are going to dine with her, you had better know it." "Oh, murder!" murmured the young man vaguely, sinking back in his chair with his arms folded. He looked at Mrs. Luna with intelligent incredulity. She was sufficiently pretty; her hair was in clusters of curls, like bunches of grapes; her tight bodice seemed to crack with her vivacity; and from beneath the stiff little plaits of her petticoat a small fat foot protruded, resting upon a stilted heel. She was attractive and impertinent, especially the latter. He seemed to think it was a great pity, what she had told him; but he lost himself in this consideration, or, at any rate, said nothing for some time, while his eyes wandered over Mrs. Luna, and he probably wondered what body of doctrine _she_ represented, little as she might partake of the nature of her sister. Many things were strange to Basil Ransom; Boston especially was strewn with surprises, and he was a man who liked to understand. Mrs. Luna was drawing on her gloves; Ransom had never seen any that were so long; they reminded him of stockings, and he wondered how she managed without garters above the elbow. "Well, I suppose I might have known that," he continued, at last. "You might have known what?" "Well, that Miss Chancellor would be all that you say. She was brought up in the city of reform." "Oh, it isn't the city; it's just Olive Chancellor. She would reform the solar system if she could get hold of it. She'll reform you, if you don't look out. That's the way I found her when I returned from Europe." "Have you been in Europe?" Ransom asked. "Mercy, yes! Haven't you?" "No, I haven't been anywhere. Has your sister?" "Yes; but she stayed only an hour or two. She hates it; she would like to abolish it. Didn't you know I had been to Europe?" Mrs. Luna went on, in the slightly aggrieved tone of a woman who discovers the limits of her reputation. Ransom reflected he might answer her that until five minutes ago he didn't know she existed; but he remembered that this was not the way in which a Southern gentleman spoke to ladies, and he contented himself with saying that he must condone his Boeotian ignorance (he was fond of an elegant phrase); that he lived in a part of the country where they didn't think much about Europe, and that he had always supposed she was domiciled in New York. This last remark he made at a venture, for he had, naturally, not devoted any supposition whatever to Mrs. Luna. His dishonesty, however, only exposed him the more. "If you thought I lived in New York, why in the world didn't you come and see me?" the lady inquired. "Well, you see, I don't go out much, except to the courts." "Do you mean the law-courts? Every one has got some profession over here! Are you very ambitious? You look as if you were." "Yes, very," Basil Ransom replied, with a smile, and the curious feminine softness with which Southern gentlemen enunciate that adverb. Mrs. Luna explained that she had been living in Europe for several years--ever since her husband died--but had come home a month before, come home with her little boy, the only thing she had in the world, and was paying a visit to her sister, who, of course, was the nearest thing after the child. "But it isn't the same," she said. "Olive and I disagree so much." "While you and your little boy don't," the young man remarked. "Oh no, I never differ from Newton!" And Mrs. Luna added that now she was back she didn't know what she should do. That was the worst of coming back; it was like being born again, at one's age--one had to begin life afresh. One didn't even know what one had come back for. There were people who wanted one to spend the winter in Boston; but she couldn't stand that--she knew, at least, what she had not come back for. Perhaps she should take a house in Washington; did he ever hear of that little place? They had invented it while she was away. Besides, Olive didn't want her in Boston, and didn't go through the form of saying so. That was one comfort with Olive; she never went through any forms. Basil Ransom had got up just as Mrs. Luna made this last declaration; for a young lady had glided into the room, who stopped short as it fell upon her ears. She stood there looking, consciously and rather seriously, at Mr. Ransom; a smile of exceeding faintness played about her lips--it was just perceptible enough to light up the native gravity of her face. It might have been likened to a thin ray of moonlight resting upon the wall of a prison. "If that were true," she said, "I shouldn't tell you that I am very sorry to have kept you waiting." Her voice was low and agreeable--a cultivated voice--and she extended a slender white hand to her visitor, who remarked with some solemnity (he felt a certain guilt of participation in Mrs. Luna's indiscretion) that he was intensely happy to make her acquaintance. He observed that Miss Chancellor's hand was at once cold and limp; she merely placed it in his, without exerting the smallest pressure. Mrs. Luna explained to her sister that her freedom of speech was caused by his being a relation--though, indeed, he didn't seem to know much about them. She didn't believe he had ever heard of her, Mrs. Luna, though he pretended, with his Southern chivalry, that he had. She must be off to her dinner now, she saw the carriage was there, and in her absence Olive might give any version of her she chose. "I have told him you are a radical, and you may tell him, if you like, that I am a painted Jezebel. Try to reform him; a person from Mississippi is sure to be all wrong. I shall be back very late; we are going to a theatre-party; that's why we dine so early. Good-bye, Mr. Ransom," Mrs. Luna continued, gathering up the feathery white shawl which added to the volume of her fairness. "I hope you are going to stay a little, so that you may judge us for yourself. I should like you to see Newton, too; he is a noble little nature, and I want some advice about him. You only stay to-morrow? Why, what's the use of that? Well, mind you come and see me in New York; I shall be sure to be part of the winter there. I shall send you a card; I won't let you off. Don't come out; my sister has the first claim. Olive, why don't you take him to your female convention?" Mrs. Luna's familiarity extended even to her sister; she remarked to Miss Chancellor that she looked as if she were got up for a sea-voyage. "I am glad I haven't opinions that prevent my dressing in the evening!" she declared from the doorway. "The amount of thought they give to their clothing, the people who are afraid of looking frivolous!" II Whether much or little consideration had been directed to the result, Miss Chancellor certainly would not have incurred this reproach. She was habited in a plain dark dress, without any ornaments, and her smooth, colourless hair was confined as carefully as that of her sister was encouraged to stray. She had instantly seated herself, and while Mrs. Luna talked she kept her eyes on the ground, glancing even less toward Basil Ransom than toward that woman of many words. The young man was therefore free to look at her; a contemplation which showed him that she was agitated and trying to conceal it. He wondered why she was agitated, not foreseeing that he was destined to discover, later, that her nature was like a skiff in a stormy sea. Even after her sister had passed out of the room she sat there with her eyes turned away, as if there had been a spell upon her which forbade her to raise them. Miss Olive Chancellor, it may be confided to the reader, to whom in the course of our history I shall be under the necessity of imparting much occult information, was subject to fits of tragic shyness, during which she was unable to meet even her own eyes in the mirror. One of these fits had suddenly seized her now, without any obvious cause, though, indeed, Mrs. Luna had made it worse by becoming instantly so personal. There was nothing in the world so personal as Mrs. Luna; her sister could have hated her for it if she had not forbidden herself this emotion as directed to individuals. Basil Ransom was a young man of first-rate intelligence, but conscious of the narrow range, as yet, of his experience. He was on his guard against generalisations which might be hasty; but he had arrived at two or three that were of value to a gentleman lately admitted to the New York bar and looking out for clients. One of them was to the effect that the simplest division it is possible to make of the human race is into the people who take things hard and the people who take them easy. He perceived very quickly that Miss Chancellor belonged to the former class. This was written so intensely in her delicate face that he felt an unformulated pity for her before they had exchanged twenty words. He himself, by nature, took things easy; if he had put on the screw of late, it was after reflexion, and because circumstances pressed him close. But this pale girl, with her light-green eyes, her pointed features and nervous manner, was visibly morbid; it was as plain as day that she was morbid. Poor Ransom announced this fact to himself as if he had made a great discovery; but in reality he had never been so "Boeotian" as at that moment. It proved nothing of any importance, with regard to Miss Chancellor, to say that she was morbid; any sufficient account of her would lie very much to the rear of that. Why was she morbid, and why was her morbidness typical? Ransom might have exulted if he had gone back far enough to explain that mystery. The women he had hitherto known had been mainly of his own soft clime, and it was not often they exhibited the tendency he detected (and cursorily deplored) in Mrs. Luna's sister. That was the way he liked them--not to think too much, not to feel any responsibility for the government of the world, such as he was sure Miss Chancellor felt. If they would only be private and passive, and have no feeling but for that, and leave publicity to the sex of tougher hide! Ransom was pleased with the vision of that remedy; it must be repeated that he was very provincial. These considerations were not present to him as definitely as I have written them here; they were summed up in the vague compassion which his cousin's figure excited in his mind, and which was yet accompanied with a sensible reluctance to know her better, obvious as it was that with such a face as that she must be remarkable. He was sorry for her, but he saw in a flash that no one could help her: that was what made her tragic. He had not, seeking his fortune, come away from the blighted South, which weighed upon his heart, to look out for tragedies; at least he didn't want them outside of his office in Pine Street. He broke the silence ensuing upon Mrs. Luna's departure by one of the courteous speeches to which blighted regions may still encourage a tendency, and presently found himself talking comfortably enough with his hostess. Though he had said to himself that no one could help her, the effect of his tone was to dispel her shyness; it was her great advantage (for the career she had proposed to herself) that in certain conditions she was liable suddenly to become bold. She was reassured at finding that her visitor was peculiar; the way he spoke told her that it was no wonder he had fought on the Southern side. She had never yet encountered a personage so exotic, and she always felt more at her ease in the presence of anything strange. It was the usual things of life that filled her with silent rage; which was natural enough, inasmuch as, to her vision, almost everything that was usual was iniquitous. She had no difficulty in asking him now whether he would not stay to dinner--she hoped Adeline had given him her message. It had been when she was upstairs with Adeline, as his card was brought up, a sudden and very abnormal inspiration to offer him this (for her) really ultimate favour; nothing could be further from her common habit than to entertain alone, at any repast, a gentleman she had never seen. It was the same sort of impulse that had moved her to write to Basil Ransom, in the spring, after hearing accidentally that he had come to the North and intended, in New York, to practise his profession. It was her nature to look out for duties, to appeal to her conscience for tasks. This attentive organ, earnestly consulted, had represented to her that he was an offshoot of the old slave-holding oligarchy which, within her own vivid remembrance, had plunged the country into blood and tears, and that, as associated with such abominations, he was not a worthy object of patronage for a person whose two brothers--her only ones--had given up life for the Northern cause. It reminded her, however, on the other hand, that he too had been much bereaved, and, moreover, that he had fought and offered his own life, even if it had not been taken. She could not defend herself against a rich admiration--a kind of tenderness of envy--of any one who had been so happy as to have that opportunity. The most secret, the most sacred hope of her nature was that she might some day have such a chance, that she might be a martyr and die for something. Basil Ransom had lived, but she knew he had lived to see bitter hours. His family was ruined; they had lost their slaves, their property, their friends and relations, their home; had tasted of all the cruelty of defeat. He had tried for a while to carry on the plantation himself, but he had a millstone of debt round his neck, and he longed for some work which would transport him to the haunts of men. The State of Mississippi seemed to him the state of despair; so he surrendered the remnants of his patrimony to his mother and sisters, and, at nearly thirty years of age, alighted for the first time in New York, in the costume of his province, with fifty dollars in his pocket and a gnawing hunger in his heart. That this incident had revealed to the young man his ignorance of many things--only, however, to make him say to himself, after the first angry blush, that here he would enter the game and here he would win it--so much Olive Chancellor could not know; what was sufficient for her was that he had rallied, as the French say, had accepted the accomplished fact, had admitted that North and South were a single, indivisible political organism. Their cousinship--that of Chancellors and Ransoms--was not very close; it was the kind of thing that one might take up or leave alone, as one pleased. It was "in the female line," as Basil Ransom had written, in answering her letter with a good deal of form and flourish; he spoke as if they had been royal houses. Her mother had wished to take it up; it was only the fear of seeming patronising to people in misfortune that had prevented her from writing to Mississippi. If it had been possible to send Mrs. Ransom money, or even clothes, she would have liked that; but she had no means of ascertaining how such an offering would be taken. By the time Basil came to the North--making advances, as it were--Mrs. Chancellor had passed away; so it was for Olive, left alone in the little house in Charles Street (Adeline being in Europe), to decide. She knew what her mother would have done, and that helped her decision; for her mother always chose the positive course. Olive had a fear of everything, but her greatest fear was of being afraid. She wished immensely to be generous, and how could one be generous unless one ran a risk? She had erected it into a sort of rule of conduct that whenever she saw a risk she was to take it; and she had frequent humiliations at finding herself safe after all. She was perfectly safe after writing to Basil Ransom; and, indeed, it was difficult to see what he could have done to her except thank her (he was only exceptionally superlative) for her letter, and assure her that he would come and see her the first time his business (he was beginning to get a little) should take him to Boston. He had now come, in redemption of his grateful vow, and even this did not make Miss Chancellor feel that she had courted danger. She saw (when once she had looked at him) that he would not put those worldly interpretations on things which, with her, it was both an impulse and a principle to defy. He was too simple--too Mississippian--for that; she was almost disappointed. She certainly had not hoped that she might have struck him as making unwomanly overtures (Miss Chancellor hated this epithet almost as much as she hated its opposite); but she had a presentiment that he would be too good-natured, primitive to that degree. Of all things in the world, contention was most sweet to her (though why it is hard to imagine, for it always cost her tears, headaches, a day or two in bed, acute emotion), and it was very possible Basil Ransom would not care to contend. Nothing could be more displeasing than this indifference when people didn't agree with you. That he should agree she did not in the least expect of him; how could a Mississippian agree? If she had supposed he would agree, she would not have written to him. III When he had told her that if she would take him as he was he should be very happy to dine with her, she excused herself a moment and went to give an order in the dining-room. The young man, left alone, looked about the parlour--the two parlours which, in their prolonged, adjacent narrowness, formed evidently one apartment--and wandered to the windows at the back, where there was a view of the water; Miss Chancellor having the good fortune to dwell on that side of Charles Street toward which, in the rear, the afternoon sun slants redly, from an horizon indented at empty intervals with wooden spires, the masts of lonely boats, the chimneys of dirty "works," over a brackish expanse of anomalous character, which is too big for a river and too small for a bay. The view seemed to him very picturesque, though in the gathered dusk little was left of it save a cold yellow streak in the west, a gleam of brown water, and the reflexion of the lights that had begun to show themselves in a row of houses, impressive to Ransom in their extreme modernness, which overlooked the same lagoon from a long embankment on the left, constructed of stones roughly piled. He thought this prospect, from a city-house, almost romantic; and he turned from it back to the interior illuminated now by a lamp which the parlour-maid had placed on a table while he stood at the window as to something still more genial and interesting. The artistic sense in Basil Ransom had not been highly cultivated; neither (though he had passed his early years as the son of a rich man) was his conception of material comfort very definite; it consisted mainly of the vision of plenty of cigars and brandy and water and newspapers, and a cane-bottomed arm-chair of the right inclination, from which he could stretch his legs. Nevertheless it seemed to him he had never seen an interior that was so much an interior as this queer corridor-shaped drawing-room of his new-found kinswoman; he had never felt himself in the presence of so much organised privacy or of so many objects that spoke of habits and tastes. Most of the people he had hitherto known had no tastes; they had a few habits, but these were not of a sort that required much upholstery. He had not as yet been in many houses in New York, and he had never before seen so many accessories. The general character of the place struck him as Bostonian; this was, in fact, very much what he had supposed Boston to be. He had always heard Boston was a city of culture, and now there was culture in Miss Chancellor's tables and sofas, in the books that were everywhere, on little shelves like brackets (as if a book were a statuette), in the photographs and watercolours that covered the walls, in the curtains that were festooned rather stiffly in the doorways. He looked at some of the books and saw that his cousin read German; and his impression of the importance of this (as a symptom of superiority) was not diminished by the fact that he himself had mastered the tongue (knowing it contained a large literature of jurisprudence) during a long, empty, deadly summer on the plantation. It is a curious proof of a certain crude modesty inherent in Basil Ransom that the main effect of his observing his cousin's German books was to give him an idea of the natural energy of Northerners. He had noticed it often before; he had already told himself that he must count with it. It was only after much experience he made the discovery that few Northerners were, in their secret soul, so energetic as he. Many other persons had made it before that. He knew very little about Miss Chancellor; he had come to see her only because she wrote to him; he would never have thought of looking her up, and since then there had been no one in New York he might ask about her. Therefore he could only guess that she was a rich young woman; such a house, inhabited in such a way by a quiet spinster, implied a considerable income. How much? he asked himself; five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand a year? There was richness to our panting young man in the smallest of these figures. He was not of a mercenary spirit, but he had an immense desire for success, and he had more than once reflected that a moderate capital was an aid to achievement. He had seen in his younger years one of the biggest failures that history commemorates, an immense national _fiasco_, and it had implanted in his mind a deep aversion to the ineffectual. It came over him, while he waited for his hostess to reappear, that she was unmarried as well as rich, that she was sociable (her letter answered for that) as well as single; and he had for a moment a whimsical vision of becoming a partner in so flourishing a firm. He ground his teeth a little as he thought of the contrasts of the human lot; this cushioned feminine nest made him feel unhoused and underfed. Such a mood, however, could only be momentary, for he was conscious at bottom of a bigger stomach than all the culture of Charles Street could fill. Afterwards, when his cousin had come back and they had gone down to dinner together, where he sat facing her at a little table decorated in the middle with flowers, a position from which he had another view, through a window where the curtain remained undrawn by her direction (she called his attention to this--it was for his benefit), of the dusky, empty river, spotted with points of light--at this period, I say, it was very easy for him to remark to himself that nothing would induce him to make love to such a type as that. Several months later, in New York, in conversation with Mrs. Luna, of whom he was destined to see a good deal, he alluded by chance to this repast, to the way her sister had placed him at table, and to the remark with which she had pointed out the advantage of his seat. "That's what they call in Boston being very 'thoughtful,'" Mrs. Luna said, "giving you the Back Bay (don't you hate the name?) to look at, and then taking credit for it." This, however, was in the future; what Basil Ransom actually perceived was that Miss Chancellor was a signal old maid. That was her quality, her destiny; nothing could be more distinctly written. There are women who are unmarried by accident, and others who are unmarried by option; but Olive Chancellor was unmarried by every implication of her being. She was a spinster as Shelley was a lyric poet, or as the month of August is sultry. She was so essentially a celibate that Ransom found himself thinking of her as old, though when he came to look at her (as he said to himself) it was apparent that her years were fewer than his own. He did not dislike her, she had been so friendly; but, little by little, she gave him an uneasy feeling--the sense that you could never be safe with a person who took things so hard. It came over him that it was because she took things hard she had sought his acquaintance; it had been because she was strenuous, not because she was genial; she had had in her eye--and what an extraordinary eye it was!--not a pleasure, but a duty. She would expect him to be strenuous in return; but he couldn't--in private life, he couldn't; privacy for Basil Ransom consisted entirely in what he called "laying off." She was not so plain on further acquaintance as she had seemed to him at first; even the young Mississippian had culture enough to see that she was refined. Her white skin had a singular look of being drawn tightly across her face; but her features, though sharp and irregular, were delicate in a fashion that suggested good breeding. Their line was perverse, but it was not poor. The curious tint of her eyes was a living colour; when she turned it upon you, you thought vaguely of the glitter of green ice. She had absolutely no figure, and presented a certain appearance of feeling cold. With all this, there was something very modern and highly developed in her aspect; she had the advantages as well as the drawbacks of a nervous organisation. She smiled constantly at her guest, but from the beginning to the end of dinner, though he made several remarks that he thought might prove amusing, she never once laughed. Later, he saw that she was a woman without laughter; exhilaration, if it ever visited her, was dumb. Once only, in the course of his subsequent acquaintance with her, did it find a voice; and then the sound remained in Ransom's ear as one of the strangest he had heard. She asked him a great many questions, and made no comment on his answers, which only served to suggest to her fresh inquiries. Her shyness had quite left her, it did not come back; she had confidence enough to wish him to see that she took a great interest in him. Why should she? he wondered, He couldn't believe he was one of _her_ kind; he was conscious of much Bohemianism--he drank beer, in New York, in cellars, knew no ladies, and was familiar with a "variety" actress. Certainly, as she knew him better, she would disapprove of him, though, of course, he would never mention the actress, nor even, if necessary, the beer. Ransom's conception of vice was purely as a series of special cases, of explicable accidents. Not that he cared; if it were a part of the Boston character to be inquiring, he would be to the last a courteous Mississippian. He would tell her about Mississippi as much as she liked; he didn't care how much he told her that the old ideas in the South were played out. She would not understand him any the better for that; she would not know how little his own views could be gathered from such a limited admission. What her sister imparted to him about her mania for "reform" had left in his mouth a kind of unpleasant aftertaste; he felt, at any rate, that if she had the religion of humanity--Basil Ransom had read Comte, he had read everything--she would never understand him. He, too, had a private vision of reform, but the first principle of it was to reform the reformers. As they drew to the close of a meal which, in spite of all latent incompatibilities, had gone off brilliantly, she said to him that she should have to leave him after dinner, unless perhaps he should be inclined to accompany her. She was going to a small gathering at the house of a friend who had asked a few people, "interested in new ideas," to meet Mrs. Farrinder. "Oh, thank you," said Basil Ransom. "Is it a party? I haven't been to a party since Mississippi seceded." "No; Miss Birdseye doesn't give parties. She's an ascetic." "Oh, well, we have had our dinner," Ransom rejoined, laughing. His hostess sat silent a moment, with her eyes on the ground; she looked at such times as if she were hesitating greatly between several things she might say, all so important that it was difficult to choose. "I think it might interest you," she remarked presently. "You will hear some discussion, if you are fond of that. Perhaps you wouldn't agree," she added, resting her strange eyes on him. "Perhaps I shouldn't--I don't agree with everything," he said, smiling and stroking his leg. "Don't you care for human progress?" Miss Chancellor went on. "I don't know--I never saw any. Are you going to show me some?" "I can show you an earnest effort towards it. That's the most one can be sure of. But I am not sure you are worthy." "Is it something very Bostonian? I should like to see that," said Basil Ransom. "There are movements in other cities. Mrs. Farrinder goes everywhere; she may speak to-night." "Mrs. Farrinder, the celebrated----?" "Yes, the celebrated; the great apostle of the emancipation of women. She is a great friend of Miss Birdseye." "And who is Miss Birdseye?" "She is one of our celebrities. She is the woman in the world, I suppose, who has laboured most for every wise reform. I think I ought to tell you," Miss Chancellor went on in a moment, "she was one of the earliest, one of the most passionate, of the old Abolitionists." She had thought, indeed, she ought to tell him that, and it threw her into a little tremor of excitement to do so. Yet, if she had been afraid he would show some irritation at this news, she was disappointed at the geniality with which he exclaimed: "Why, poor old lady--she must be quite mature!" It was therefore with some severity that she rejoined: "She will never be old. She is the youngest spirit I know. But if you are not in sympathy, perhaps you had better not come," she went on. "In sympathy with what, dear madam?" Basil Ransom asked, failing still, to her perception, to catch the tone of real seriousness. "If, as you say, there is to be a discussion, there will be different sides, and of course one can't sympathise with both." "Yes, but every one will, in his way--or in her way--plead the cause of the new truths. If you don't care for them, you won't go with us." "I tell you I haven't the least idea what they are! I have never yet encountered in the world any but old truths--as old as the sun and moon. How can I know? But _do_ take me; it's such a chance to see Boston." "It isn't Boston--it's humanity!" Miss Chancellor, as she made this remark, rose from her chair, and her movement seemed to say that she consented. But before she quitted her kinsman to get ready, she observed to him that she was sure he knew what she meant; he was only pretending he didn't. "Well, perhaps, after all, I have a general idea," he confessed; "but don't you see how this little reunion will give me a chance to fix it?" She lingered an instant, with her anxious face. "Mrs. Farrinder will fix it!" she said; and she went to prepare herself. It was in this poor young lady's nature to be anxious, to have scruple within scruple and to forecast the consequences of things. She returned in ten minutes, in her bonnet, which she had apparently assumed in recognition of Miss Birdseye's asceticism. As she stood there drawing on her gloves--her visitor had fortified himself against Mrs. Farrinder by another glass of wine--she declared to him that she quite repented of having proposed to him to go; something told her that he would be an unfavourable element. "Why, is it going to be a spiritual _séance_?" Basil Ransom asked. "Well, I have heard at Miss Birdseye's some inspirational speaking." Olive Chancellor was determined to look him straight in the face as she said this; her sense of the way it might strike him operated as a cogent, not as a deterrent, reason. "Why, Miss Olive, it's just got up on purpose for me!" cried the young Mississippian, radiant, and clasping his hands. She thought him very handsome as he said this, but reflected that unfortunately men didn't care for the truth, especially the new kinds, in proportion as they were good-looking. She had, however, a moral resource that she could always fall back upon; it had already been a comfort to her, on occasions of acute feeling, that she hated men, as a class, anyway. "And I want so much to see an old Abolitionist; I have never laid eyes on one," Basil Ransom added. "Of course you couldn't see one in the South; you were too afraid of them to let them come there!" She was now trying to think of something she might say that would be sufficiently disagreeable to make him cease to insist on accompanying her; for, strange to record--if anything, in a person of that intense sensibility, be stranger than any other--her second thought with regard to having asked him had deepened with the elapsing moments into an unreasoned terror of the effect of his presence. "Perhaps Miss Birdseye won't like you," she went on, as they waited for the carriage. "I don't know; I reckon she will," said Basil Ransom good-humouredly. He evidently had no intention of giving up his opportunity. From the window of the dining-room, at that moment, they heard the carriage drive up. Miss Birdseye lived at the South End; the distance was considerable, and Miss Chancellor had ordered a hackney-coach, it being one of the advantages of living in Charles Street that stables were near. The logic of her conduct was none of the clearest; for if she had been alone she would have proceeded to her destination by the aid of the street-car; not from economy (for she had the good fortune not to be obliged to consult it to that degree), and not from any love of wandering about Boston at night (a kind of exposure she greatly disliked), but by reason of a theory she devotedly nursed, a theory which bade her put off invidious differences and mingle in the common life. She would have gone on foot to Boylston Street, and there she would have taken the public conveyance (in her heart she loathed it) to the South End. Boston was full of poor girls who had to walk about at night and to squeeze into horse-cars in which every sense was displeased; and why should she hold herself superior to these? Olive Chancellor regulated her conduct on lofty principles, and this is why, having to-night the advantage of a gentleman's protection, she sent for a carriage to obliterate that patronage. If they had gone together in the common way she would have seemed to owe it to him that she should be so daring, and he belonged to a sex to which she wished to be under no obligations. Months before, when she wrote to him, it had been with the sense, rather, of putting _him_ in debt. As they rolled toward the South End, side by side, in a good deal of silence, bouncing and bumping over the railway-tracks very little less, after all, than if their wheels had been fitted to them, and looking out on either side at rows of red houses, dusky in the lamp-light, with protuberant fronts, approached by ladders of stone; as they proceeded, with these contemplative undulations, Miss Chancellor said to her companion, with a concentrated desire to defy him, as a punishment for having thrown her (she couldn't tell why) into such a tremor: "Don't you believe, then, in the coming of a better day--in its being possible to do something for the human race?" Poor Ransom perceived the defiance, and he felt rather bewildered; he wondered what type, after all, he _had_ got hold of, and what game was being played with him. Why had she made advances, if she wanted to pinch him this way? However, he was good for any game--that one as well as another--and he saw that he was "in" for something of which he had long desired to have a nearer view. "Well, Miss Olive," he answered, putting on again his big hat, which he had been holding in his lap, "what strikes me most is that the human race has got to bear its troubles." "That's what men say to women, to make them patient in the position they have made for them." "Oh, the position of women!" Basil Ransom exclaimed. "The position of women is to make fools of men. I would change my position for yours any day," he went on. "That's what I said to myself as I sat there in your elegant home." He could not see, in the dimness of the carriage, that she had flushed quickly, and he did not know that she disliked to be reminded of certain things which, for her, were mitigations of the hard feminine lot. But the passionate quaver with which, a moment later, she answered him sufficiently assured him that he had touched her at a tender point. "Do you make it a reproach to me that I happen to have a little money? The dearest wish of my heart is to do something with it for others--for the miserable." Basil Ransom might have greeted this last declaration with the sympathy it deserved, might have commended the noble aspirations of his kinswoman. But what struck him, rather, was the oddity of so sudden a sharpness of pitch in an intercourse which, an hour or two before, had begun in perfect amity, and he burst once more into an irrepressible laugh. This made his companion feel, with intensity, how little she was joking. "I don't know why I should care what you think," she said. "Don't care--don't care. What does it matter? It is not of the slightest importance." He might say that, but it was not true; she felt that there were reasons why she should care. She had brought him into her life, and she should have to pay for it. But she wished to know the worst at once. "Are you against our emancipation?" she asked, turning a white face on him in the momentary radiance of a street-lamp. "Do you mean your voting and preaching and all that sort of thing?" He made this inquiry, but seeing how seriously she would take his answer, he was almost frightened, and hung fire. "I will tell you when I have heard Mrs. Farrinder." They had arrived at the address given by Miss Chancellor to the coachman, and their vehicle stopped with a lurch. Basil Ransom got out; he stood at the door with an extended hand, to assist the young lady. But she seemed to hesitate; she sat there with her spectral face. "You hate it!" she exclaimed, in a low tone. "Miss Birdseye will convert me," said Ransom, with intention; for he had grown very curious, and he was afraid that now, at the last, Miss Chancellor would prevent his entering the house. She alighted without his help, and behind her he ascended the high steps of Miss Birdseye's residence. He had grown very curious, and among the things he wanted to know was why in the world this ticklish spinster had written to him. IV She had told him before they started that they should be early; she wished to see Miss Birdseye alone, before the arrival of any one else. This was just for the pleasure of seeing her--it was an opportunity; she was always so taken up with others. She received Miss Chancellor in the hall of the mansion, which had a salient front, an enormous and very high number--756--painted in gilt on the glass light above the door, a tin sign bearing the name of a doctress (Mary J. Prance) suspended from one of the windows of the basement, and a peculiar look of being both new and faded--a kind of modern fatigue--like certain articles of commerce which are sold at a reduction as shop-worn. The hall was very narrow; a considerable part of it was occupied by a large hat-tree, from which several coats and shawls already depended; the rest offered space for certain lateral demonstrations on Miss Birdseye's part. She sidled about her visitors, and at last went round to open for them a door of further admission, which happened to be locked inside. She was a little old lady, with an enormous head; that was the first thing Ransom noticed--the vast, fair, protuberant, candid, ungarnished brow, surmounting a pair of weak, kind, tired-looking eyes, and ineffectually balanced in the rear by a cap which had the air of falling backward, and which Miss Birdseye suddenly felt for while she talked, with unsuccessful irrelevant movements. She had a sad, soft, pale face, which (and it was the effect of her whole head) looked as if it had been soaked, blurred, and made vague by exposure to some slow dissolvent. The long practice of philanthropy had not given accent to her features; it had rubbed out their transitions, their meanings. The waves of sympathy, of enthusiasm, had wrought upon them in the same way in which the waves of time finally modify the surface of old marble busts, gradually washing away their sharpness, their details. In her large countenance her dim little smile scarcely showed. It was a mere sketch of a smile, a kind of instalment, or payment on account; it seemed to say that she would smile more if she had time, but that you could see, without this, that she was gentle and easy to beguile. She always dressed in the same way: she wore a loose black jacket, with deep pockets, which were stuffed with papers, memoranda of a voluminous correspondence; and from beneath her jacket depended a short stuff dress. The brevity of this simple garment was the one device by which Miss Birdseye managed to suggest that she was a woman of business, that she wished to be free for action. She belonged to the Short-Skirts League, as a matter of course; for she belonged to any and every league that had been founded for almost any purpose whatever. This did not prevent her being a confused, entangled, inconsequent, discursive old woman, whose charity began at home and ended nowhere, whose credulity kept pace with it, and who knew less about her fellow-creatures, if possible, after fifty years of humanitary zeal, than on the day she had gone into the field to testify against the iniquity of most arrangements. Basil Ransom knew very little about such a life as hers, but she seemed to him a revelation of a class, and a multitude of socialistic figures, of names and episodes that he had heard of, grouped themselves behind her. She looked as if she had spent her life on platforms, in audiences, in conventions, in phalansteries, in _séances_; in her faded face there was a kind of reflexion of ugly lecture-lamps; with its habit of an upward angle, it seemed turned toward a public speaker, with an effort of respiration in the thick air in which social reforms are usually discussed. She talked continually, in a voice of which the spring seemed broken, like that of an over-worked bell-wire; and when Miss Chancellor explained that she had brought Mr. Ransom because he was so anxious to meet Mrs. Farrinder, she gave the young man a delicate, dirty, democratic little hand, looking at him kindly, as she could not help doing, but without the smallest discrimination as against others who might not have the good fortune (which involved, possibly, an injustice) to be present on such an interesting occasion. She struck him as very poor, but it was only afterward that he learned she had never had a penny in her life. No one had an idea how she lived; whenever money was given her she gave it away to a negro or a refugee. No woman could be less invidious, but on the whole she preferred these two classes of the human race. Since the Civil War much of her occupation was gone; for before that her best hours had been spent in fancying that she was helping some Southern slave to escape. It would have been a nice question whether, in her heart of hearts, for the sake of this excitement, she did not sometimes wish the blacks back in bondage. She had suffered in the same way by the relaxation of many European despotisms, for in former years much of the romance of her life had been in smoothing the pillow of exile for banished conspirators. Her refugees had been very precious to her; she was always trying to raise money for some cadaverous Pole, to obtain lessons for some shirtless Italian. There was a legend that an Hungarian had once possessed himself of her affections, and had disappeared after robbing her of everything she possessed. This, however, was very apocryphal, for she had never possessed anything, and it was open to grave doubt that she could have entertained a sentiment so personal. She was in love, even in those days, only with causes, and she languished only for emancipations. But they had been the happiest days, for when causes were embodied in foreigners (what else were the Africans?), they were certainly more appealing. She had just come down to see Doctor Prance--to see whether she wouldn't like to come up. But she wasn't in her room, and Miss Birdseye guessed she had gone out to her supper; she got her supper at a boarding-table about two blocks off. Miss Birdseye expressed the hope that Miss Chancellor had had hers; she would have had plenty of time to take it, for no one had come in yet; she didn't know what made them all so late. Ransom perceived that the garments suspended to the hat-rack were not a sign that Miss Birdseye's friends had assembled; if he had gone a little further still he would have recognised the house as one of those in which mysterious articles of clothing are always hooked to something in the hall. Miss Birdseye's visitors, those of Doctor Prance, and of other tenants--for Number 756 was the common residence of several persons, among whom there prevailed much vagueness of boundary--used to leave things to be called for; many of them went about with satchels and reticules, for which they were always looking for places of deposit. What completed the character of this interior was Miss Birdseye's own apartment, into which her guests presently made their way, and where they were joined by various other members of the good lady's circle. Indeed, it completed Miss Birdseye herself, if anything could be said to render that office to this essentially formless old woman, who had no more outline than a bundle of hay. But the bareness of her long, loose, empty parlour (it was shaped exactly like Miss Chancellor's) told that she had never had any needs but moral needs, and that all her history had been that of her sympathies. The place was lighted by a small hot glare of gas, which made it look white and featureless. It struck even Basil Ransom with its flatness, and he said to himself that his cousin must have a very big bee in her bonnet to make her like such a house. He did not know then, and he never knew, that she mortally disliked it, and that in a career in which she was constantly exposing herself to offence and laceration, her most poignant suffering came from the injury of her taste. She had tried to kill that nerve, to persuade herself that taste was only frivolity in the disguise of knowledge; but her susceptibility was constantly blooming afresh and making her wonder whether an absence of nice arrangements were a necessary part of the enthusiasm of humanity. Miss Birdseye was always trying to obtain employment, lessons in drawing, orders for portraits, for poor foreign artists, as to the greatness of whose talent she pledged herself without reserve; but in point of fact she had not the faintest sense of the scenic or plastic side of life. Toward nine o'clock the light of her hissing burners smote the majestic person of Mrs. Farrinder, who might have contributed to answer that question of Miss Chancellor's in the negative. She was a copious, handsome woman, in whom angularity had been corrected by the air of success; she had a rustling dress (it was evident what _she_ thought about taste), abundant hair of a glossy blackness, a pair of folded arms, the expression of which seemed to say that rest, in such a career as hers, was as sweet as it was brief, and a terrible regularity of feature. I apply that adjective to her fine placid mask because she seemed to face you with a question of which the answer was preordained, to ask you how a countenance could fail to be noble of which the measurements were so correct. You could contest neither the measurements nor the nobleness, and had to feel that Mrs. Farrinder imposed herself. There was a lithographic smoothness about her, and a mixture of the American matron and the public character. There was something public in her eye, which was large, cold, and quiet; it had acquired a sort of exposed reticence from the habit of looking down from a lecture-desk, over a sea of heads, while its distinguished owner was eulogised by a leading citizen. Mrs. Farrinder, at almost any time, had the air of being introduced by a few remarks. She talked with great slowness and distinctness, and evidently a high sense of responsibility; she pronounced every syllable of every word and insisted on being explicit. If, in conversation with her, you attempted to take anything for granted, or to jump two or three steps at a time, she paused, looking at you with a cold patience, as if she knew that trick, and then went on at her own measured pace. She lectured on temperance and the rights of women; the ends she laboured for were to give the ballot to every woman in the country and to take the flowing bowl from every man. She was held to have a very fine manner, and to embody the domestic virtues and the graces of the drawing-room; to be a shining proof, in short, that the forum, for ladies, is not necessarily hostile to the fireside. She had a husband, and his name was Amariah. Doctor Prance had come back from supper and made her appearance in response to an invitation that Miss Birdseye's relaxed voice had tinkled down to her from the hall over the banisters, with much repetition, to secure attention. She was a plain, spare young woman, with short hair and an eye-glass; she looked about her with a kind of near-sighted deprecation, and seemed to hope that she should not be expected to generalise in any way, or supposed to have come up for any purpose more social than to see what Miss Birdseye wanted this time. By nine o'clock twenty other persons had arrived, and had placed themselves in the chairs that were ranged along the sides of the long, bald room, in which they ended by producing the similitude of an enormous street-car. The apartment contained little else but these chairs, many of which had a borrowed aspect, an implication of bare bedrooms in the upper regions; a table or two with a discoloured marble top, a few books, and a collection of newspapers piled up in corners. Ransom could see for himself that the occasion was not crudely festive; there was a want of convivial movement, and, among most of the visitors, even of mutual recognition. They sat there as if they were waiting for something; they looked obliquely and silently at Mrs. Farrinder, and were plainly under the impression that, fortunately, they were not there to amuse themselves. The ladies, who were much the more numerous, wore their bonnets, like Miss Chancellor; the men were in the garb of toil, many of them in weary-looking overcoats. Two or three had retained their overshoes, and as you approached them the odour of the india-rubber was perceptible. It was not, however, that Miss Birdseye ever noticed anything of that sort; she neither knew what she smelled nor tasted what she ate. Most of her friends had an anxious, haggard look, though there were sundry exceptions--half-a-dozen placid, florid faces. Basil Ransom wondered who they all were; he had a general idea they were mediums, communists, vegetarians. It was not, either, that Miss Birdseye failed to wander about among them with repetitions of inquiry and friendly absences of attention; she sat down near most of them in turn, saying "Yes, yes," vaguely and kindly, to remarks they made to her, feeling for the papers in the pockets of her loosened bodice, recovering her cap and sacrificing her spectacles, wondering most of all what had been her idea in convoking these people. Then she remembered that it had been connected in some way with Mrs. Farrinder; that this eloquent woman had promised to favour the company with a few reminiscences of her last campaign; to sketch even, perhaps, the lines on which she intended to operate during the coming winter. This was what Olive Chancellor had come to hear; this would be the attraction for the dark-eyed young man (he looked like a genius) she had brought with her. Miss Birdseye made her way back to the great lecturess, who was bending an indulgent attention on Miss Chancellor; the latter compressed into a small space, to be near her, and sitting with clasped hands and a concentration of inquiry which by contrast made Mrs. Farrinder's manner seem large and free. In her transit, however, the hostess was checked by the arrival of fresh pilgrims; she had no idea she had mentioned the occasion to so many people--she only remembered, as it were, those she had forgotten--and it was certainly a proof of the interest felt in Mrs. Farrinder's work. The people who had just come in were Doctor and Mrs. Tarrant and their daughter Verena; he was a mesmeric healer and she was of old Abolitionist stock. Miss Birdseye rested her dim, dry smile upon the daughter, who was new to her, and it floated before her that she would probably be remarkable as a genius; her parentage was an implication of that. There was a genius for Miss Birdseye in every bush. Selah Tarrant had effected wonderful cures; she knew so many people--if they would only try him. His wife was a daughter of Abraham Greenstreet; she had kept a runaway slave in her house for thirty days. That was years before, when this girl must have been a child; but hadn't it thrown a kind of rainbow over her cradle, and wouldn't she naturally have some gift? The girl was very pretty, though she had red hair. V Mrs. Farrinder, meanwhile, was not eager to address the assembly. She confessed as much to Olive Chancellor, with a smile which asked that a temporary lapse of promptness might not be too harshly judged. She had addressed so many assemblies, and she wanted to hear what other people had to say. Miss Chancellor herself had thought so much on the vital subject; would not she make a few remarks and give them some of her experiences? How did the ladies on Beacon Street feel about the ballot? Perhaps she could speak for _them_ more than for some others. That was a branch of the question on which, it might be, the leaders had not information enough; but they wanted to take in everything, and why shouldn't Miss Chancellor just make that field her own? Mrs. Farrinder spoke in the tone of one who took views so wide that they might easily, at first, before you could see how she worked round, look almost meretricious; she was conscious of a scope that exceeded the first flight of your imagination. She urged upon her companion the idea of labouring in the world of fashion, appeared to attribute to her familiar relations with that mysterious realm, and wanted to know why she shouldn't stir up some of her friends down there on the Mill-dam? Olive Chancellor received this appeal with peculiar feelings. With her immense sympathy for reform, she found herself so often wishing that reformers were a little different. There was something grand about Mrs. Farrinder; it lifted one up to be with her: but there was a false note when she spoke to her young friend about the ladies in Beacon Street. Olive hated to hear that fine avenue talked about as if it were such a remarkable place, and to live there were a proof of worldly glory. All sorts of inferior people lived there, and so brilliant a woman as Mrs. Farrinder, who lived at Roxbury, ought not to mix things up. It was, of course, very wretched to be irritated by such mistakes; but this was not the first time Miss Chancellor had observed that the possession of nerves was not by itself a reason for embracing the new truths. She knew her place in the Boston hierarchy, and it was not what Mrs. Farrinder supposed; so that there was a want of perspective in talking to her as if she had been a representative of the aristocracy. Nothing could be weaker, she knew very well, than (in the United States) to apply that term too literally; nevertheless, it would represent a reality if one were to say that, by distinction, the Chancellors belonged to the _bourgeoisie_--the oldest and best. They might care for such a position or not (as it happened, they were very proud of it), but there they were, and it made Mrs. Farrinder seem provincial (there was something provincial, after all, in the way she did her hair too) not to understand. When Miss Birdseye spoke as if one were a "leader of society," Olive could forgive her even that odious expression, because, of course, one never pretended that she, poor dear, had the smallest sense of the real. She was heroic, she was sublime, the whole moral history of Boston was reflected in her displaced spectacles; but it was a part of her originality, as it were, that she was deliciously provincial. Olive Chancellor seemed to herself to have privileges enough without being affiliated to the exclusive set and having invitations to the smaller parties, which were the real test; it was a mercy for her that she had not that added immorality on her conscience. The ladies Mrs. Farrinder meant (it was to be supposed she meant some particular ones) might speak for themselves. She wished to work in another field; she had long been preoccupied with the romance of the people. She had an immense desire to know intimately some _very_ poor girl. This might seem one of the most accessible of pleasures; but, in point of fact, she had not found it so. There were two or three pale shop-maidens whose acquaintance she had sought; but they had seemed afraid of her, and the attempt had come to nothing. She took them more tragically then they took themselves; they couldn't make out what she wanted them to do, and they always ended by being odiously mixed up with Charlie. Charlie was a young man in a white overcoat and a paper collar; it was for him, in the last analysis, that they cared much the most. They cared far more about Charlie than about the ballot. Olive Chancellor wondered how Mrs. Farrinder would treat that branch of the question. In her researches among her young townswomen she had always found this obtrusive swain planted in her path, and she grew at last to dislike him extremely. It filled her with exasperation to think that he should be necessary to the happiness of his victims (she had learned that whatever they might talk about with her, it was of him and him only that they discoursed among themselves), and one of the main recommendations of the evening club for her fatigued, underpaid sisters, which it had long been her dream to establish, was that it would in some degree undermine his position--distinct as her prevision might be that he would be in waiting at the door. She hardly knew what to say to Mrs. Farrinder when this momentarily misdirected woman, still preoccupied with the Mill-dam, returned to the charge. "We want labourers in that field, though I know two or three lovely women--sweet _home-women_--moving in circles that are for the most part closed to every new voice, who are doing their best to help on the fight. I have several names that might surprise you, names well known on State Street. But we can't have too many recruits, especially among those whose refinement is generally acknowledged. If it be necessary, we are prepared to take certain steps to conciliate the shrinking. Our movement is for all--it appeals to the most delicate ladies. Raise the standard among them, and bring me a thousand names. I know several that I should like to have. I look after the details as well as the big currents," Mrs. Farrinder added, in a tone as explanatory as could be expected of such a woman, and with a smile of which the sweetness was thrilling to her listener. "I can't talk to those people, I can't!" said Olive Chancellor, with a face which seemed to plead for a remission of responsibility. "I want to give myself up to others; I want to know everything that lies beneath and out of sight, don't you know? I want to enter into the lives of women who are lonely, who are piteous. I want to be near to them--to help them. I want to do something--oh, I should like so to speak!" "We should be glad to have you make a few remarks at present," Mrs. Farrinder declared, with a punctuality which revealed the faculty of presiding. "Oh dear, no, I can't speak; I have none of that sort of talent. I have no self-possession, no eloquence; I can't put three words together. But I do want to contribute." "What _have_ you got?" Mrs. Farrinder inquired, looking at her interlocutress, up and down, with the eye of business, in which there was a certain chill. "Have you got money?" Olive was so agitated for the moment with the hope that this great woman would approve of her on the financial side that she took no time to reflect that some other quality might, in courtesy, have been suggested. But she confessed to possessing a certain capital, and the tone seemed rich and deep in which Mrs. Farrinder said to her, "Then contribute that!" She was so good as to develop this idea, and her picture of the part Miss Chancellor might play by making liberal donations to a fund for the diffusion among the women of America of a more adequate conception of their public and private rights--a fund her adviser had herself lately inaugurated--this bold, rapid sketch had the vividness which characterised the speaker's most successful public efforts. It placed Olive under the spell; it made her feel almost inspired. If her life struck others in that way--especially a woman like Mrs. Farrinder, whose horizon was so full--then there must be something for her to do. It was one thing to choose for herself, but now the great representative of the enfranchisement of their sex (from every form of bondage) had chosen for her. The barren, gas-lighted room grew richer and richer to her earnest eyes; it seemed to expand, to open itself to the great life of humanity. The serious, tired people, in their bonnets and overcoats, began to glow like a company of heroes. Yes, she would do something, Olive Chancellor said to herself; she would do something to brighten the darkness of that dreadful image that was always before her, and against which it seemed to her at times that she had been born to lead a crusade--the image of the unhappiness of women. The unhappiness of women! The voice of their silent suffering was always in her ears, the ocean of tears that they had shed from the beginning of time seemed to pour through her own eyes. Ages of oppression had rolled over them; uncounted millions had lived only to be tortured, to be crucified. They were her sisters, they were her own, and the day of their delivery had dawned. This was the only sacred cause; this was the great, the just revolution. It must triumph, it must sweep everything before it; it must exact from the other, the brutal, blood-stained, ravening race, the last particle of expiation! It would be the greatest change the world had seen; it would be a new era for the human family, and the names of those who had helped to show the way and lead the squadrons would be the brightest in the tables of fame. They would be names of women weak, insulted, persecuted, but devoted in every pulse of their being to the cause, and asking no better fate than to die for it. It was not clear to this interesting girl in what manner such a sacrifice (as this last) would be required of her, but she saw the matter through a kind of sunrise-mist of emotion which made danger as rosy as success. When Miss Birdseye approached, it transfigured her familiar, her comical shape, and made the poor little humanitary hack seem already a martyr. Olive Chancellor looked at her with love, remembered that she had never, in her long, unrewarded, weary life, had a thought or an impulse for herself. She had been consumed by the passion of sympathy; it had crumpled her into as many creases as an old glazed, distended glove. She had been laughed at, but she never knew it; she was treated as a bore, but she never cared. She had nothing in the world but the clothes on her back, and when she should go down into the grave she would leave nothing behind her but her grotesque, undistinguished, pathetic little name. And yet people said that women were vain, that they were personal, that they were interested! While Miss Birdseye stood there, asking Mrs. Farrinder if she wouldn't say something, Olive Chancellor tenderly fastened a small battered brooch which confined her collar and which had half detached itself. VI "Oh, thank you," said Miss Birdseye, "I shouldn't like to lose it; it was given me by Mirandola!" He had been one of her refugees in the old time, when two or three of her friends, acquainted with the limits of his resources, wondered how he had come into possession of the trinket. She had been diverted again, after her greeting with Doctor and Mrs. Tarrant, by stopping to introduce the tall, dark young man whom Miss Chancellor had brought with her to Doctor Prance. She had become conscious of his somewhat sombre figure, uplifted against the wall, near the door; he was leaning there in solitude, unacquainted with opportunities which Miss Birdseye felt to be, collectively, of value, and which were really, of course, what strangers came to Boston for. It did not occur to her to ask herself why Miss Chancellor didn't talk to him, since she had brought him; Miss Birdseye was incapable of a speculation of this kind. Olive, in fact, had remained vividly conscious of her kinsman's isolation until the moment when Mrs. Farrinder lifted her, with a word, to a higher plane. She watched him across the room; she saw that he might be bored. But she proposed to herself not to mind that; she had asked him, after all, not to come. Then he was no worse off than others; he was only waiting, like the rest; and before they left she would introduce him to Mrs. Farrinder. She might tell that lady who he was first; it was not every one that would care to know a person who had borne such a part in the Southern disloyalty. It came over our young lady that when she sought the acquaintance of her distant kinsman she had indeed done a more complicated thing than she suspected. The sudden uneasiness that he flung over her in the carriage had not left her, though she felt it less now she was with others, and especially that she was close to Mrs. Farrinder, who was such a fountain of strength. At any rate, if he was bored, he could speak to some one; there were excellent people near him, even if they _were_ ardent reformers. He could speak to that pretty girl who had just come in--the one with red hair--if he liked; Southerners were supposed to be so chivalrous! Miss Birdseye reasoned much less, and did not offer to introduce him to Verena Tarrant, who was apparently being presented by her parents to a group of friends at the other end of the room. It came back to Miss Birdseye, in this connexion, that, sure enough, Verena had been away for a long time--for nearly a year; had been on a visit to friends in the West, and would therefore naturally be a stranger to most of the Boston circle. Doctor Prance was looking at her--at Miss Birdseye--with little, sharp, fixed pupils; and the good lady wondered whether she were angry at having been induced to come up. She had a general impression that when genius was original its temper was high, and all this would be the case with Doctor Prance. She wanted to say to her that she could go down again if she liked; but even to Miss Birdseye's unsophisticated mind this scarcely appeared, as regards a guest, an adequate formula of dismissal. She tried to bring the young Southerner out; she said to him that she presumed they would have some entertainment soon--Mrs. Farrinder could be interesting when she tried! And then she bethought herself to introduce him to Doctor Prance; it might serve as a reason for having brought her up. Moreover, it would do her good to break up her work now and then; she pursued her medical studies far into the night, and Miss Birdseye, who was nothing of a sleeper (Mary Prance, precisely, had wanted to treat her for it), had heard her, in the stillness of the small hours, with her open windows (she had fresh air on the brain), sharpening instruments (it was Miss Birdseye's mild belief that she dissected), in a little physiological laboratory which she had set up in her back room, the room which, if she hadn't been a doctor, might have been her "chamber," and perhaps was, even with the dissecting, Miss Birdseye didn't know! She explained her young friends to each other, a trifle incoherently, perhaps, and then went to stir up Mrs. Farrinder. Basil Ransom had already noticed Doctor Prance; he had not been at all bored, and had observed every one in the room, arriving at all sorts of ingenious inductions. The little medical lady struck him as a perfect example of the "Yankee female"--the figure which, in the unregenerate imagination of the children of the cotton-States, was produced by the New England school-system, the Puritan code, the ungenial climate, the absence of chivalry. Spare, dry, hard, without a curve, an inflexion or a grace, she seemed to ask no odds in the battle of life and to be prepared to give none. But Ransom could see that she was not an enthusiast, and after his contact with his cousin's enthusiasm this was rather a relief to him. She looked like a boy, and not even like a good boy. It was evident that if she had been a boy, she would have "cut" school, to try private experiments in mechanics or to make researches in natural history. It was true that if she had been a boy she would have borne some relation to a girl, whereas Doctor Prance appeared to bear none whatever. Except her intelligent eye, she had no features to speak of. Ransom asked her if she were acquainted with the lioness, and on her staring at him, without response, explained that he meant the renowned Mrs. Farrinder. "Well, I don't know as I ought to say that I'm acquainted with her; but I've heard her on the platform. I have paid my half-dollar," the doctor added, with a certain grimness. "Well, did she convince you?" Ransom inquired. "Convince me of what, sir?" "That women are so superior to men." "Oh, deary me!" said Doctor Prance, with a little impatient sigh; "I guess I know more about women than she does." "And that isn't your opinion, I hope," said Ransom, laughing. "Men and women are all the same to me," Doctor Prance remarked. "I don't see any difference. There is room for improvement in both sexes. Neither of them is up to the standard." And on Ransom's asking her what the standard appeared to her to be, she said, "Well, they ought to live better; that's what they ought to do." And she went on to declare, further, that she thought they all talked too much. This had so long been Ransom's conviction that his heart quite warmed to Doctor Prance, and he paid homage to her wisdom in the manner of Mississippi--with a richness of compliment that made her turn her acute, suspicious eye upon him. This checked him; she was capable of thinking that _he_ talked too much--she herself having, apparently, no general conversation. It was german to the matter, at any rate, for him to observe that he believed they were to have a lecture from Mrs. Farrinder--he didn't know why she didn't begin. "Yes," said Doctor Prance, rather dryly, "I suppose that's what Miss Birdseye called me up for. She seemed to think I wouldn't want to miss that." "Whereas, I infer, you could console yourself for the loss of the oration," Ransom suggested. "Well, I've got some work. I don't want any one to teach me what a woman can do!" Doctor Prance declared. "She can find out some things, if she tries. Besides, I am familiar with Mrs. Farrinder's system; I know all she has got to say." "Well, what is it, then, since she continues to remain silent?" "Well, what it amounts to is just that women want to have a better time. That's what it comes to in the end. I am aware of that, without her telling me." "And don't you sympathise with such an aspiration?" "Well, I don't know as I cultivate the sentimental side," said Doctor Prance. "There's plenty of sympathy without mine. If they want to have a better time, I suppose it's natural; so do men too, I suppose. But I don't know as it appeals to me--to make sacrifices for it; it ain't such a wonderful time--the best you _can_ have!" This little lady was tough and technical; she evidently didn't care for great movements; she became more and more interesting to Basil Ransom, who, it is to be feared, had a fund of cynicism. He asked her if she knew his cousin, Miss Chancellor, whom he indicated, beside Mrs. Farrinder; _she_ believed, on the contrary, in wonderful times (she thought they were coming); she had plenty of sympathy, and he was sure she was willing to make sacrifices. Doctor Prance looked at her across the room for a moment; then she said she didn't know her, but she guessed she knew others like her--she went to see them when they were sick. "She's having a private lecture to herself," Ransom remarked; whereupon Doctor Prance rejoined, "Well, I guess she'll have to pay for it!" She appeared to regret her own half-dollar, and to be vaguely impatient of the behaviour of her sex. Ransom became so sensible of this that he felt it was indelicate to allude further to the cause of woman, and, for a change, endeavoured to elicit from his companion some information about the gentlemen present. He had given her a chance, vainly, to start some topic herself; but he could see that she had no interests beyond the researches from which, this evening, she had been torn, and was incapable of asking him a personal question. She knew two or three of the gentlemen; she had seen them before at Miss Birdseye's. Of course she knew principally ladies; the time hadn't come when a lady-doctor was sent for by a gentleman, and she hoped it never would, though some people seemed to think that this was what lady-doctors were working for. She knew Mr. Pardon; that was the young man with the "side-whiskers" and the white hair; he was a kind of editor, and he wrote, too, "over his signature"--perhaps Basil had read some of his works; he was under thirty, in spite of his white hair. He was a great deal thought of in magazine circles. She believed he was very bright--but she hadn't read anything. She didn't read much--not for amusement; only the _Transcript_. She believed Mr. Pardon sometimes wrote in the _Transcript_; well, she supposed he _was_ very bright. The other that she knew--only she didn't know him (she supposed Basil would think that queer)--was the tall, pale gentleman, with the black moustache and the eye-glass. She knew him because she had met him in society; but she didn't know him--well, because she didn't want to. If he should come and speak to her--and he looked as if he were going to work round that way--she should just say to him, "Yes, sir," or "No, sir," very coldly. She couldn't help it if he did think her dry; if _he_ were a little more dry, it might be better for him. What was the matter with him? Oh, she thought she had mentioned that; he was a mesmeric healer, he made miraculous cures. She didn't believe in his system or disbelieve in it, one way or the other; she only knew that she had been called to see ladies he had worked on, and she found that he had made them lose a lot of valuable time. He talked to them--well, as if he didn't know what he was saying. She guessed he was quite ignorant of physiology, and she didn't think he ought to go round taking responsibilities. She didn't want to be narrow, but she thought a person ought to know something. She supposed Basil would think her very uplifted; but he had put the question to her, as she might say. All she could say was she didn't want him to be laying his hands on any of _her_ folks; it was all done with the hands--what wasn't done with the tongue! Basil could see that Doctor Prance was irritated; that this extreme candour of allusion to her neighbour was probably not habitual to her, as a member of a society in which the casual expression of strong opinion generally produced waves of silence. But he blessed her irritation, for him it was so illuminating; and to draw further profit from it he asked her who the young lady was with the red hair--the pretty one, whom he had only noticed during the last ten minutes. She was Miss Tarrant, the daughter of the healer; hadn't she mentioned his name? Selah Tarrant; if he wanted to send for him. Doctor Prance wasn't acquainted with her, beyond knowing that she was the mesmerist's only child, and having heard something about her having some gift--she couldn't remember which it was. Oh, if she was his child, she would be sure to have some gift--if it was only the gift of the g----well, she didn't mean to say that; but a talent for conversation. Perhaps she could die and come to life again; perhaps she would show them her gift, as no one seemed inclined to do anything. Yes, she was pretty-appearing, but there was a certain indication of anæmia, and Doctor Prance would be surprised if she didn't eat too much candy. Basil thought she had an engaging exterior; it was his private reflexion, coloured doubtless by "sectional" prejudice, that she was the first pretty girl he had seen in Boston. She was talking with some ladies at the other end of the room; and she had a large red fan, which she kept constantly in movement. She was not a quiet girl; she fidgeted, was restless, while she talked, and had the air of a person who, whatever she might be doing, would wish to be doing something else. If people watched her a good deal, she also returned their contemplation, and her charming eyes had several times encountered those of Basil Ransom. But they wandered mainly in the direction of Mrs. Farrinder--they lingered upon the serene solidity of the great oratress. It was easy to see that the girl admired this beneficent woman, and felt it a privilege to be near her. It was apparent, indeed, that she was excited by the company in which she found herself; a fact to be explained by a reference to that recent period of exile in the West, of which we have had a hint, and in consequence of which the present occasion may have seemed to her a return to intellectual life. Ransom secretly wished that his cousin--since fate was to reserve for him a cousin in Boston--had been more like that. By this time a certain agitation was perceptible; several ladies, impatient of vain delay, had left their places, to appeal personally to Mrs. Farrinder, who was presently surrounded with sympathetic remonstrants. Miss Birdseye had given her up; it had been enough for Miss Birdseye that she should have said, when pressed (so far as her hostess, muffled in laxity, could press) on the subject of the general expectation, that she could only deliver her message to an audience which she felt to be partially hostile. There was no hostility there; they were all only too much in sympathy. "I don't require sympathy," she said, with a tranquil smile, to Olive Chancellor; "I am only myself, I only rise to the occasion, when I see prejudice, when I see bigotry, when I see injustice, when I see conservatism, massed before me like an army. Then I feel--I feel as I imagine Napoleon Bonaparte to have felt on the eve of one of his great victories. I _must_ have unfriendly elements--I like to win them over." Olive thought of Basil Ransom, and wondered whether he would do for an unfriendly element. She mentioned him to Mrs. Farrinder, who expressed an earnest hope that if he were opposed to the principles which were so dear to the rest of them, he might be induced to take the floor and testify on his own account. "I should be so happy to answer him," said Mrs. Farrinder, with supreme softness. "I should be so glad, at any rate, to exchange ideas with him." Olive felt a deep alarm at the idea of a public dispute between these two vigorous people (she had a perception that Ransom would be vigorous), not because she doubted of the happy issue, but because she herself would be in a false position, as having brought the offensive young man, and she had a horror of false positions. Miss Birdseye was incapable of resentment; she had invited forty people to hear Mrs. Farrinder speak, and now Mrs. Farrinder wouldn't speak. But she had such a beautiful reason for it! There was something martial and heroic in her pretext, and, besides, it was so characteristic, so free, that Miss Birdseye was quite consoled, and wandered away, looking at her other guests vaguely, as if she didn't know them from each other, while she mentioned to them, at a venture, the excuse for their disappointment, confident, evidently, that they would agree with her it was very fine. "But we can't pretend to be on the other side, just to start her up, can we?" she asked of Mr. Tarrant, who sat there beside his wife with a rather conscious but by no means complacent air of isolation from the rest of the company. "Well, I don't know--I guess we are all solid here," this gentleman replied, looking round him with a slow, deliberate smile, which made his mouth enormous, developed two wrinkles, as long as the wings of a bat, on either side of it, and showed a set of big, even, carnivorous teeth. "Selah," said his wife, laying her hand on the sleeve of his waterproof, "I wonder whether Miss Birdseye would be interested to hear Verena." "Well, if you mean she sings, it's a shame I haven't got a piano," Miss Birdseye took upon herself to respond. It came back to her that the girl had a gift. "She doesn't want a piano--she doesn't want anything," Selah remarked, giving no apparent attention to his wife. It was a part of his attitude in life never to appear to be indebted to another person for a suggestion, never to be surprised or unprepared. "Well, I don't know that the interest in singing is so general," said Miss Birdseye, quite unconscious of any slackness in preparing a substitute for the entertainment that had failed her. "It isn't singing, you'll see," Mrs. Tarrant declared. "What is it, then?" Mr. Tarrant unfurled his wrinkles, showed his back teeth. "It's inspirational." Miss Birdseye gave a small, vague, unsceptical laugh. "Well, if you can guarantee that----" "I think it would be acceptable," said Mrs. Tarrant; and putting up a half-gloved, familiar hand, she drew Miss Birdseye down to her, and the pair explained in alternation what it was their child could do. Meanwhile, Basil Ransom confessed to Doctor Prance that he was, after all, rather disappointed. He had expected more of a programme; he wanted to hear some of the new truths. Mrs. Farrinder, as he said, remained within her tent, and he had hoped not only to see these distinguished people but also to listen to them. "Well, _I_ ain't disappointed," the sturdy little doctress replied. "If any question had been opened, I suppose I should have had to stay." "But I presume you don't propose to retire." "Well, I've got to pursue my studies some time. I don't want the gentlemen-doctors to get ahead of me." "Oh, no one will ever get ahead of you, I'm very sure. And there is that pretty young lady going over to speak to Mrs. Farrinder. She's going to beg her for a speech--Mrs. Farrinder can't resist that." "Well, then, I'll just trickle out before she begins. Good-night, sir," said Doctor Prance, who by this time had begun to appear to Ransom more susceptible of domestication, as if she had been a small forest-creature, a catamount or a ruffled doe, that had learned to stand still while you stroked it, or even to extend a paw. She ministered to health, and she was healthy herself; if his cousin could have been even of this type Basil would have felt himself more fortunate. "Good-night, Doctor," he replied. "You haven't told me, after all, your opinion of the capacity of the ladies." "Capacity for what?" said Doctor Prance. "They've got a capacity for making people waste time. All I know is that I don't want any one to tell _me_ what a lady can do!" And she edged away from him softly, as if she had been traversing a hospital-ward, and presently he saw her reach the door, which, with the arrival of the later comers, had remained open. She stood there an instant, turning over the whole assembly a glance like the flash of a watchman's bull's-eye, and then quickly passed out. Ransom could see that she was impatient of the general question and bored with being reminded, even for the sake of her rights, that she was a woman--a detail that she was in the habit of forgetting, having as many rights as she had time for. It was certain that whatever might become of the movement at large, Doctor Prance's own little revolution was a success. VII She had no sooner left him than Olive Chancellor came towards him with eyes that seemed to say, "I don't care whether you are here now or not--I'm all right!" But what her lips said was much more gracious; she asked him if she mightn't have the pleasure of introducing him to Mrs. Farrinder. Ransom consented, with a little of his Southern flourish, and in a moment the lady got up to receive him from the midst of the circle that now surrounded her. It was an occasion for her to justify her reputation of an elegant manner, and it must be impartially related that she struck Ransom as having a dignity in conversation and a command of the noble style which could not have been surpassed by a daughter--one of the most accomplished, most far-descended daughters--of his own latitude. It was as if she had known that he was not eager for the changes she advocated, and wished to show him that, especially to a Southerner who had bitten the dust, her sex could be magnanimous. This knowledge of his secret heresy seemed to him to be also in the faces of the other ladies, whose circumspect glances, however (for he had not been introduced), treated it as a pity rather than as a shame. He was conscious of all these middle-aged feminine eyes, conscious of curls, rather limp, that depended from dusky bonnets, of heads poked forward, as if with a waiting, listening, familiar habit, of no one being very bright or gay--no one, at least, but that girl he had noticed before, who had a brilliant head, and who now hovered on the edge of the conclave. He met her eye again; she was watching him too. It had been in his thought that Mrs. Farrinder, to whom his cousin might have betrayed or misrepresented him, would perhaps defy him to combat, and he wondered whether he could pull himself together (he was extremely embarrassed) sufficiently to do honour to such a challenge. If she would fling down the glove on the temperance question, it seemed to him that it would be in him to pick it up; for the idea of a meddling legislation on this subject filled him with rage; the taste of liquor being good to him, and his conviction strong that civilisation itself would be in danger if it should fall into the power of a herd of vociferating women (I am but the reporter of his angry _formulae_) to prevent a gentleman from taking his glass. Mrs. Farrinder proved to him that she had not the eagerness of insecurity; she asked him if he wouldn't like to give the company some account of the social and political condition of the South. He begged to be excused, expressing at the same time a high sense of the honour done him by such a request, while he smiled to himself at the idea of his extemporising a lecture. He smiled even while he suspected the meaning of the look Miss Chancellor gave him: "Well, you are not of much account after all!" To talk to those people about the South--if they could have guessed how little he cared to do it! He had a passionate tenderness for his own country, and a sense of intimate connexion with it which would have made it as impossible for him to take a roomful of Northern fanatics into his confidence as to read aloud his mother's or his mistress's letters. To be quiet about the Southern land, not to touch her with vulgar hands, to leave her alone with her wounds and her memories, not prating in the market-place either of her troubles or her hopes, but waiting as a man should wait, for the slow process, the sensible beneficence, of time--this was the desire of Ransom's heart, and he was aware of how little it could minister to the entertainment of Miss Birdseye's guests. "We know so little about the women of the South; they are very voiceless," Mrs. Farrinder remarked. "How much can we count upon them? in what numbers would they flock to our standard? I have been recommended not to lecture in the Southern cities." "Ah, madam, that was very cruel advice--for us!" Basil Ransom exclaimed, with gallantry. "_I_ had a magnificent audience last spring in St. Louis," a fresh young voice announced, over the heads of the gathered group--a voice which, on Basil's turning, like every one else, for an explanation, appeared to have proceeded from the pretty girl with red hair. She had coloured a little with the effort of making this declaration, and she stood there smiling at her listeners. Mrs. Farrinder bent a benignant brow upon her, in spite of her being, evidently, rather a surprise. "Oh, indeed; and your subject, my dear young lady?" "The past history, the present condition, and the future prospects of our sex." "Oh, well, St. Louis--that's scarcely the South," said one of the ladies. "I'm sure the young lady would have had equal success at Charleston or New Orleans," Basil Ransom interposed. "Well, I wanted to go farther," the girl continued, "but I had no friends. I have friends in St. Louis." "You oughtn't to want for them anywhere," said Mrs. Farrinder, in a manner which, by this time, had quite explained her reputation. "I am acquainted with the loyalty of St. Louis." "Well, after that, you must let me introduce Miss Tarrant; she's perfectly dying to know you, Mrs. Farrinder." These words emanated from one of the gentlemen, the young man with white hair, who had been mentioned to Ransom by Doctor Prance as a celebrated magazinist. He, too, up to this moment, had hovered in the background, but he now gently clove the assembly (several of the ladies made way for him), leading in the daughter of the mesmerist. She laughed and continued to blush--her blush was the faintest pink; she looked very young and slim and fair as Mrs. Farrinder made way for her on the sofa which Olive Chancellor had quitted. "I _have_ wanted to know you; I admire you so much; I hoped so you would speak to-night. It's too lovely to see you, Mrs. Farrinder." So she expressed herself, while the company watched the encounter with a look of refreshed inanition. "You don't know who I am, of course; I'm just a girl who wants to thank you for all you have done for us. For you have spoken for us girls, just as much as--just as much as----" She hesitated now, looking about with enthusiastic eyes at the rest of the group, and meeting once more the gaze of Basil Ransom. "Just as much as for the old women," said Mrs. Farrinder genially. "You seem very well able to speak for yourself." "She speaks so beautifully--if she would only make a little address," the young man who had introduced her remarked. "It's a new style, quite original," he added. He stood there with folded arms, looking down at his work, the conjunction of the two ladies, with a smile; and Basil Ransom, remembering what Miss Prance had told him, and enlightened by his observation in New York of some of the sources from which newspapers are fed, was immediately touched by the conviction that he perceived in it the material of a paragraph. "My dear child, if you'll take the floor, I'll call the meeting to order," said Mrs. Farrinder. The girl looked at her with extraordinary candour and confidence. "If I could only hear you first--just to give me an atmosphere." "I've got no atmosphere; there's very little of the Indian summer about _me_! I deal with facts--hard facts," Mrs. Farrinder replied. "Have you ever heard me? If so, you know how crisp I am." "Heard you? I've lived on you! It's so much to me to see you. Ask mother if it ain't!" She had expressed herself, from the first word she uttered, with a promptness and assurance which gave almost the impression of a lesson rehearsed in advance. And yet there was a strange spontaneity in her manner, and an air of artless enthusiasm, of personal purity. If she was theatrical, she was naturally theatrical. She looked up at Mrs. Farrinder with all her emotion in her smiling eyes. This lady had been the object of many ovations; it was familiar to her that the collective heart of her sex had gone forth to her; but, visibly, she was puzzled by this unforeseen embodiment of gratitude and fluency, and her eyes wandered over the girl with a certain reserve, while, within the depth of her eminently public manner, she asked herself whether Miss Tarrant were a remarkable young woman or only a forward minx. She found a response which committed her to neither view; she only said, "We want the young--of course we want the young!" "Who is that charming creature?" Basil Ransom heard his cousin ask, in a grave, lowered tone, of Matthias Pardon, the young man who had brought Miss Tarrant forward. He didn't know whether Miss Chancellor knew him, or whether her curiosity had pushed her to boldness. Ransom was near the pair, and had the benefit of Mr. Pardon's answer. "The daughter of Doctor Tarrant, the mesmeric healer--Miss Verena. She's a high-class speaker." "What do you mean?" Olive asked. "Does she give public addresses?" "Oh yes, she has had quite a career in the West. I heard her last spring at Topeka. They call it inspirational. I don't know what it is--only it's exquisite; so fresh and poetical. She has to have her father to start her up. It seems to pass into her." And Mr. Pardon indulged in a gesture intended to signify the passage. Olive Chancellor made no rejoinder save a low, impatient sigh; she transferred her attention to the girl, who now held Mrs. Farrinder's hand in both her own, and was pleading with her just to prelude a little. "I want a starting-point--I want to know where I am," she said. "Just two or three of your grand old thoughts." Basil stepped nearer to his cousin; he remarked to her that Miss Verena was very pretty. She turned an instant, glanced at him, and then said, "Do you think so?" An instant later she added, "How you must hate this place!" "Oh, not now, we are going to have some fun," Ransom replied good-humouredly, if a trifle coarsely; and the declaration had a point, for Miss Birdseye at this moment reappeared, followed by the mesmeric healer and his wife. "Ah, well, I see you are drawing her out," said Miss Birdseye to Mrs. Farrinder; and at the idea that this process had been necessary Basil Ransom broke into a smothered hilarity, a spasm which indicated that, for him, the fun had already begun, and procured him another grave glance from Miss Chancellor. Miss Verena seemed to him as far "out" as a young woman could be. "Here's her father, Doctor Tarrant--he has a wonderful gift--and her mother--she was a daughter of Abraham Greenstreet." Miss Birdseye presented her companion; she was sure Mrs. Farrinder would be interested; she wouldn't want to lose an opportunity, even if for herself the conditions were not favourable. And then Miss Birdseye addressed herself to the company more at large, widening the circle so as to take in the most scattered guests, and evidently feeling that after all it was a relief that one happened to have an obscurely inspired maiden on the premises when greater celebrities had betrayed the whimsicality of genius. It was a part of this whimsicality that Mrs. Farrinder--the reader may find it difficult to keep pace with her variations--appeared now to have decided to utter a few of her thoughts, so that her hostess could elicit a general response to the remark that it would be delightful to have both the old school and the new. "Well, perhaps you'll be disappointed in Verena," said Mrs. Tarrant, with an air of dolorous resignation to any event, and seating herself, with her gathered mantle, on the edge of a chair, as if she, at least, were ready, whoever else might keep on talking. "It isn't _me_, mother," Verena rejoined, with soft gravity, rather detached now from Mrs. Farrinder, and sitting with her eyes fixed thoughtfully on the ground. With deference to Mrs. Tarrant, a little more talk was necessary, for the young lady had as yet been insufficiently explained. Miss Birdseye felt this, but she was rather helpless about it, and delivered herself, with her universal familiarity, which embraced every one and everything, of a wandering, amiable tale, in which Abraham Greenstreet kept reappearing, in which Doctor Tarrant's miraculous cures were specified, with all the facts wanting, and in which Verena's successes in the West were related, not with emphasis or hyperbole, in which Miss Birdseye never indulged, but as accepted and recognised wonders, natural in an age of new revelations. She had heard of these things in detail only ten minutes before, from the girl's parents, but her hospitable soul had needed but a moment to swallow and assimilate them. If her account of them was not very lucid, it should be said in excuse for her that it was impossible to have any idea of Verena Tarrant unless one had heard her, and therefore still more impossible to give an idea to others. Mrs. Farrinder was perceptibly irritated; she appeared to have made up her mind, after her first hesitation, that the Tarrant family were fantastical and compromising. She had bent an eye of coldness on Selah and his wife--she might have regarded them all as a company of mountebanks. "Stand up and tell us what you have to say," she remarked, with some sternness, to Verena, who only raised her eyes to her, silently now, with the same sweetness, and then rested them on her father. This gentleman seemed to respond to an irresistible appeal; he looked round at the company with all his teeth, and said that these flattering allusions were not so embarrassing as they might otherwise be, inasmuch as any success that he and his daughter might have had was so thoroughly impersonal: he insisted on that word. They had just heard her say, "It is not _me_, mother," and he and Mrs. Tarrant and the girl herself were all equally aware it was not she. It was some power outside--it seemed to flow through her; he couldn't pretend to say why his daughter should be called, more than any one else. But it seemed as if she _was_ called. When he just calmed her down by laying his hand on her a few moments, it seemed to come. It so happened that in the West it had taken the form of a considerable eloquence. She had certainly spoken with great facility to cultivated and high-minded audiences. She had long followed with sympathy the movement for the liberation of her sex from every sort of bondage; it had been her principal interest even as a child (he might mention that at the age of nine she had christened her favourite doll Eliza P. Moseley, in memory of a great precursor whom they all reverenced), and now the inspiration, if he might call it so, seemed just to flow in that channel. The voice that spoke from her lips seemed to want to take that form. It didn't seem as if it _could_ take any other. She let it come out just as it would--she didn't pretend to have any control. They could judge for themselves whether the whole thing was not quite unique. That was why he was willing to talk about his own child that way, before a gathering of ladies and gentlemen; it was because they took no credit--they felt it was a power outside. If Verena felt she was going to be stimulated that evening, he was pretty sure they would be interested. Only he should have to request a few moments' silence, while she listened for the voice. Several of the ladies declared that they should be delighted--they hoped that Miss Tarrant was in good trim; whereupon they were corrected by others, who reminded them that it wasn't _her_--she had nothing to do with it--so her trim didn't matter; and a gentleman added that he guessed there were many present who had conversed with Eliza P. Moseley. Meanwhile Verena, more and more withdrawn into herself, but perfectly undisturbed by the public discussion of her mystic faculty, turned yet again, very prettily, to Mrs. Farrinder, and asked her if she wouldn't strike out--just to give her courage. By this time Mrs. Farrinder was in a condition of overhanging gloom; she greeted the charming suppliant with the frown of Juno. She disapproved completely of Doctor Tarrant's little speech, and she had less and less disposition to be associated with a miracle-monger. Abraham Greenstreet was very well, but Abraham Greenstreet was in his grave; and Eliza P. Moseley, after all, had been very tepid. Basil Ransom wondered whether it were effrontery or innocence that enabled Miss Tarrant to meet with such complacency the aloofness of the elder lady. At this moment he heard Olive Chancellor, at his elbow, with the tremor of excitement in her tone, suddenly exclaim: "Please begin, please begin! A voice, a human voice, is what we want." "I'll speak after you, and if you're a humbug, I'll expose you!" Mrs. Farrinder said. She was more majestic than facetious. "I'm sure we are all solid, as Doctor Tarrant says. I suppose we want to be quiet," Miss Birdseye remarked. VIII Verena Tarrant got up and went to her father in the middle of the room; Olive Chancellor crossed and resumed her place beside Mrs. Farrinder on the sofa the girl had quitted; and Miss Birdseye's visitors, for the rest, settled themselves attentively in chairs or leaned against the bare sides of the parlour. Verena took her father's hands, held them for a moment, while she stood before him, not looking at him, with her eyes towards the company; then, after an instant, her mother, rising, pushed forward, with an interesting sigh, the chair on which she had been sitting. Mrs. Tarrant was provided with another seat, and Verena, relinquishing her father's grasp, placed herself in the chair, which Tarrant put in position for her. She sat there with closed eyes, and her father now rested his long, lean hands upon her head. Basil Ransom watched these proceedings with much interest, for the girl amused and pleased him. She had far more colour than any one there, for whatever brightness was to be found in Miss Birdseye's rather faded and dingy human collection had gathered itself into this attractive but ambiguous young person. There was nothing ambiguous, by the way, about her confederate; Ransom simply loathed him, from the moment he opened his mouth; he was intensely familiar--that is, his type was; he was simply the detested carpet-bagger. He was false, cunning, vulgar, ignoble; the cheapest kind of human product. That he should be the father of a delicate, pretty girl, who was apparently clever too, whether she had a gift or no, this was an annoying, disconcerting fact. The white, puffy mother, with the high forehead, in the corner there, looked more like a lady; but if she were one, it was all the more shame to her to have mated with such a varlet, Ransom said to himself, making use, as he did generally, of terms of opprobrium extracted from the older English literature. He had seen Tarrant, or his equivalent, often before; he had "whipped" him, as he believed, controversially, again and again, at political meetings in blighted Southern towns, during the horrible period of reconstruction. If Mrs. Farrinder had looked at Verena Tarrant as if she were a mountebank, there was some excuse for it, inasmuch as the girl made much the same impression on Basil Ransom. He had never seen such an odd mixture of elements; she had the sweetest, most unworldly face, and yet, with it, an air of being on exhibition, of belonging to a troupe, of living in the gaslight, which pervaded even the details of her dress, fashioned evidently with an attempt at the histrionic. If she had produced a pair of castanets or a tambourine, he felt that such accessories would have been quite in keeping. Little Doctor Prance, with her hard good sense, had noted that she was anæmic, and had intimated that she was a deceiver. The value of her performance was yet to be proved, but she was certainly very pale, white as women are who have that shade of red hair; they look as if their blood had gone into it. There was, however, something rich in the fairness of this young lady; she was strong and supple, there was colour in her lips and eyes, and her tresses, gathered into a complicated coil, seemed to glow with the brightness of her nature. She had curious, radiant, liquid eyes (their smile was a sort of reflexion, like the glisten of a gem), and though she was not tall, she appeared to spring up, and carried her head as if it reached rather high. Ransom would have thought she looked like an Oriental, if it were not that Orientals are dark; and if she had only had a goat she would have resembled Esmeralda, though he had but a vague recollection of who Esmeralda had been. She wore a light-brown dress, of a shape that struck him as fantastic, a yellow petticoat, and a large crimson sash fastened at the side; while round her neck, and falling low upon her flat young chest, she had a double chain of amber beads. It must be added that, in spite of her melodramatic appearance, there was no symptom that her performance, whatever it was, would be of a melodramatic character. She was very quiet now, at least (she had folded her big fan), and her father continued the mysterious process of calming her down. Ransom wondered whether he wouldn't put her to sleep; for some minutes her eyes had remained closed; he heard a lady near him, apparently familiar with phenomena of this class, remark that she was going off. As yet the exhibition was not exciting, though it was certainly pleasant to have such a pretty girl placed there before one, like a moving statue. Doctor Tarrant looked at no one as he stroked and soothed his daughter; his eyes wandered round the cornice of the room, and he grinned upward, as if at an imaginary gallery. "Quietly--quietly," he murmured from time to time. "It will come, my good child, it will come. Just let it work--just let it gather. The spirit, you know; you've got to let the spirit come out when it will." He threw up his arms at moments, to rid himself of the wings of his long waterproof, which fell forward over his hands. Basil Ransom noticed all these things, and noticed also, opposite, the waiting face of his cousin, fixed, from her sofa, upon the closed eyes of the young prophetess. He grew more impatient at last, not of the delay of the edifying voice (though some time had elapsed), but of Tarrant's grotesque manipulations, which he resented as much as if he himself had felt their touch, and which seemed a dishonour to the passive maiden. They made him nervous, they made him angry, and it was only afterwards that he asked himself wherein they concerned him, and whether even a carpet-bagger hadn't a right to do what he pleased with his daughter. It was a relief to him when Verena got up from her chair, with a movement which made Tarrant drop into the background as if his part were now over. She stood there with a quiet face, serious and sightless; then, after a short further delay, she began to speak. She began incoherently, almost inaudibly, as if she were talking in a dream. Ransom could not understand her; he thought it very queer, and wondered what Doctor Prance would have said. "She's just arranging her ideas, and trying to get in report; she'll come out all right." This remark he heard dropped in a low tone by the mesmeric healer; "in report" was apparently Tarrant's version of _en rapport_. His prophecy was verified, and Verena did come out, after a little; she came out with a great deal of sweetness--with a very quaint and peculiar effect. She proceeded slowly, cautiously, as if she were listening for the prompter, catching, one by one, certain phrases that were whispered to her a great distance off, behind the scenes of the world. Then memory, or inspiration, returned to her, and presently she was in possession of her part. She played it with extraordinary simplicity and grace; at the end of ten minutes Ransom became aware that the whole audience--Mrs. Farrinder, Miss Chancellor, and the tough subject from Mississippi--were under the charm. I speak of ten minutes, but to tell the truth the young man lost all sense of time. He wondered afterwards how long she had spoken; then he counted that her strange, sweet, crude, absurd, enchanting improvisation must have lasted half an hour. It was not what she said; he didn't care for that, he scarcely understood it; he could only see that it was all about the gentleness and goodness of women, and how, during the long ages of history, they had been trampled under the iron heel of man. It was about their equality--perhaps even (he was not definitely conscious) about their superiority. It was about their day having come at last, about the universal sisterhood, about their duty to themselves and to each other. It was about such matters as these, and Basil Ransom was delighted to observe that such matters as these didn't spoil it. The effect was not in what she said, though she said some such pretty things, but in the picture and figure of the half-bedizened damsel (playing, now again, with her red fan), the visible freshness and purity of the little effort. When she had gained confidence she opened her eyes, and their shining softness was half the effect of her discourse. It was full of school-girl phrases, of patches of remembered eloquence, of childish lapses of logic, of flights of fancy which might indeed have had success at Topeka; but Ransom thought that if it had been much worse it would have been quite as good, for the argument, the doctrine, had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was simply an intensely personal exhibition, and the person making it happened to be fascinating. She might have offended the taste of certain people--Ransom could imagine that there were other Boston circles in which she would be thought pert; but for himself all he could feel was that to _his_ starved senses she irresistibly appealed. He was the stiffest of conservatives, and his mind was steeled against the inanities she uttered--the rights and wrongs of women, the equality of the sexes, the hysterics of conventions, the further stultification of the suffrage, the prospect of conscript mothers in the national Senate. It made no difference; she didn't mean it, she didn't know what she meant, she had been stuffed with this trash by her father, and she was neither more nor less willing to say it than to say anything else; for the necessity of her nature was not to make converts to a ridiculous cause, but to emit those charming notes of her voice, to stand in those free young attitudes, to shake her braided locks like a naiad rising from the waves, to please every one who came near her, and to be happy that she pleased. I know not whether Ransom was aware of the bearings of this interpretation, which attributed to Miss Tarrant a singular hollowness of character; he contented himself with believing that she was as innocent as she was lovely, and with regarding her as a vocalist of exquisite faculty, condemned to sing bad music. How prettily, indeed, she made some of it sound! "Of course I only speak to women--to my own dear sisters; I don't speak to men, for I don't expect them to like what I say. They pretend to admire us very much, but I should like them to admire us a little less and to trust us a little more. I don't know what we have ever done to them that they should keep us out of everything. We have trusted _them_ too much, and I think the time has come now for us to judge them, and say that by keeping us out we don't think they have done so well. When I look around me at the world, and at the state that men have brought it to, I confess I say to myself, "Well, if women had fixed it this way I should like to know what they would think of it!" When I see the dreadful misery of mankind and think of the suffering of which at any hour, at any moment, the world is full, I say that if this is the best they can do by themselves, they had better let us come in a little and see what _we_ can do. We couldn't possibly make it worse, could we? If we had done only this, we shouldn't boast of it. Poverty, and ignorance, and crime; disease, and wickedness, and wars! Wars, always more wars, and always more and more. Blood, blood--the world is drenched with blood! To kill each other, with all sorts of expensive and perfected instruments, that is the most brilliant thing they have been able to invent. It seems to me that we might stop it, we might invent something better. The cruelty--the cruelty; there is so much, so much! Why shouldn't tenderness come in? Why should our woman's hearts be so full of it, and all so wasted and withered, while armies and prisons and helpless miseries grow greater all the while? I am only a girl, a simple American girl, and of course I haven't seen much, and there is a great deal of life that I don't know anything about. But there are some things I feel--it seems to me as if I had been born to feel them; they are in my ears in the stillness of the night and before my face in the visions of the darkness. It is what the great sisterhood of women might do if they should all join hands, and lift up their voices above the brutal uproar of the world, in which it is so hard for the plea of mercy or of justice, the moan of weakness and suffering, to be heard. We should quench it, we should make it still, and the sound of our lips would become the voice of universal peace! For this we must trust one another, we must be true and gentle and kind. We must remember that the world is ours too, ours--little as we have ever had to say about anything!--and that the question is _not_ yet definitely settled whether it shall be a place of injustice or a place of love!" It was with this that the young lady finished her harangue, which was not followed by her sinking exhausted into her chair or by any of the traces of a laboured climax. She only turned away slowly towards her mother, smiling over her shoulder at the whole room, as if it had been a single person, without a flush in her whiteness, or the need of drawing a longer breath. The performance had evidently been very easy to her, and there might have been a kind of impertinence in her air of not having suffered from an exertion which had wrought so powerfully on every one else. Ransom broke into a genial laugh, which he instantly swallowed again, at the sweet grotesqueness of this virginal creature's standing up before a company of middle-aged people to talk to them about "love," the note on which she had closed her harangue. It was the most charming touch in the whole thing, and the most vivid proof of her innocence. She had had immense success, and Mrs. Tarrant, as she took her into her arms and kissed her, was certainly able to feel that the audience was not disappointed. They were exceedingly affected; they broke into exclamations and murmurs. Selah Tarrant went on conversing ostentatiously with his neighbours, slowly twirling his long thumbs and looking up at the cornice again, as if there could be nothing in the brilliant manner in which his daughter had acquitted herself to surprise _him_, who had heard her when she was still more remarkable, and who, moreover, remembered that the affair was so impersonal. Miss Birdseye looked round at the company with dim exultation; her large mild cheeks were shining with unwiped tears. Young Mr. Pardon remarked, in Ransom's hearing, that he knew parties who, if they had been present, would want to engage Miss Verena at a high figure for the winter campaign. And Ransom heard him add in a lower tone: "There's money for some one in that girl; you see if she don't have quite a run!" As for our Mississippian he kept his agreeable sensation for himself, only wondering whether he might not ask Miss Birdseye to present him to the heroine of the evening. Not immediately, of course, for the young man mingled with his Southern pride a shyness which often served all the purpose of humility. He was aware how much he was an outsider in such a house as that, and he was ready to wait for his coveted satisfaction till the others, who all hung together, should have given her the assurance of an approval which she would value, naturally, more than anything he could say to her. This episode had imparted animation to the assembly; a certain gaiety, even, expressed in a higher pitch of conversation, seemed to float in the heated air. People circulated more freely, and Verena Tarrant was presently hidden from Ransom's sight by the close-pressed ranks of the new friends she had made. "Well, I never heard it put _that_ way!" Ransom heard one of the ladies exclaim; to which another replied that she wondered one of their bright women hadn't thought of it before. "Well, it _is_ a gift, and no mistake," and "Well, they may call it what they please, it's a pleasure to listen to it"--these genial tributes fell from the lips of a pair of ruminating gentlemen. It was affirmed within Ransom's hearing that if they had a few more like that the matter would soon be fixed; and it was rejoined that they couldn't expect to have a great many--the style was so peculiar. It was generally admitted that the style was peculiar, but Miss Tarrant's peculiarity was the explanation of her success. IX Ransom approached Mrs. Farrinder again, who had remained on her sofa with Olive Chancellor; and as she turned her face to him he saw that she had felt the universal contagion. Her keen eye sparkled, there was a flush on her matronly cheek, and she had evidently made up her mind what line to take. Olive Chancellor sat motionless; her eyes were fixed on the floor with the rigid, alarmed expression of her moments of nervous diffidence; she gave no sign of observing her kinsman's approach. He said something to Mrs. Farrinder, something that imperfectly represented his admiration of Verena; and this lady replied with dignity that it was no wonder the girl spoke so well--she spoke in such a good cause. "She is very graceful, has a fine command of language; her father says it's a natural gift." Ransom saw that he should not in the least discover Mrs. Farrinder's real opinion, and her dissimulation added to his impression that she was a woman with a policy. It was none of his business whether in her heart she thought Verena a parrot or a genius; it was perceptible to him that she saw she would be effective, would help the cause. He stood almost appalled for a moment, as he said to himself that she would take her up and the girl would be ruined, would force her note and become a screamer. But he quickly dodged this vision, taking refuge in a mechanical appeal to his cousin, of whom he inquired how she liked Miss Verena. Olive made no answer; her head remained averted, she bored the carpet with her conscious eyes. Mrs. Farrinder glanced at her askance, and then said to Ransom serenely: "You praise the grace of your Southern ladies, but you have had to come North to see a human gazelle. Miss Tarrant is of the best New England stock--what _I_ call the best!" "I'm sure from what I have seen of the Boston ladies, no manifestation of grace can excite my surprise," Ransom rejoined, looking, with his smile, at his cousin. "She has been powerfully affected," Mrs. Farrinder explained, very slightly dropping her voice, as Olive, apparently, still remained deaf. Miss Birdseye drew near at this moment; she wanted to know if Mrs. Farrinder didn't want to express some acknowledgment, on the part of the company at large, for the real stimulus Miss Tarrant had given them. Mrs. Farrinder said: Oh yes, she would speak now with pleasure; only she must have a glass of water first. Miss Birdseye replied that there was some coming in a moment; one of the ladies had asked for it, and Mr. Pardon had just stepped down to draw some. Basil took advantage of this intermission to ask Miss Birdseye if she would give him the great privilege of an introduction to Miss Verena. "Mrs. Farrinder will thank her for the company," he said, laughing, "but she won't thank her for me." Miss Birdseye manifested the greatest disposition to oblige him; she was so glad he had been impressed. She was proceeding to lead him toward Miss Tarrant when Olive Chancellor rose abruptly from her chair and laid her hand, with an arresting movement, on the arm of her hostess. She explained to her that she must go, that she was not very well, that her carriage was there; also that she hoped Miss Birdseye, if it was not asking too much, would accompany her to the door. "Well, you are impressed too," said Miss Birdseye, looking at her philosophically. "It seems as if no one had escaped." Ransom was disappointed; he saw he was going to be taken away, and, before he could suppress it, an exclamation burst from his lips--the first exclamation he could think of that would perhaps check his cousin's retreat: "Ah, Miss Olive, are you going to give up Mrs. Farrinder?" At this Miss Olive looked at him, showed him an extraordinary face, a face he scarcely understood or even recognised. It was portentously grave, the eyes were enlarged, there was a red spot in each of the cheeks, and as directed to him, a quick, piercing question, a kind of leaping challenge, in the whole expression. He could only answer this sudden gleam with a stare, and wonder afresh what trick his Northern kinswoman was destined to play him. Impressed too? He should think he had been! Mrs. Farrinder, who was decidedly a woman of the world, came to his assistance, or to Miss Chancellor's, and said she hoped very much Olive wouldn't stay--she felt these things too much. "If you stay, I won't speak," she added; "I should upset you altogether." And then she continued, tenderly, for so preponderantly intellectual a nature: "When women feel as you do, how can I doubt that we shall come out all right?" "Oh, we shall come out all right, I guess," murmured Miss Birdseye. "But you must remember Beacon Street," Mrs. Farrinder subjoined. "You must take advantage of your position--you must wake up the Back Bay!" "I'm sick of the Back Bay!" said Olive fiercely; and she passed to the door with Miss Birdseye, bidding good-bye to no one. She was so agitated that, evidently, she could not trust herself, and there was nothing for Ransom but to follow. At the door of the room, however, he was checked by a sudden pause on the part of the two ladies: Olive stopped and stood there hesitating. She looked round the room and spied out Verena, where she sat with her mother, the centre of a gratified group; then, throwing back her head with an air of decision, she crossed over to her. Ransom said to himself that now, perhaps, was his chance, and he quickly accompanied Miss Chancellor. The little knot of reformers watched her as she arrived; their faces expressed a suspicion of her social importance, mingled with conscientious scruples as to whether it were right to recognise it. Verena Tarrant saw that she was the object of this manifestation, and she got up to meet the lady whose approach was so full of point. Ransom perceived, however, or thought he perceived, that she recognised nothing; she had no suspicions of social importance. Yet she smiled with all her radiance, as she looked from Miss Chancellor to him; smiled because she liked to smile, to please, to feel her success--or was it because she was a perfect little actress, and this was part of her training? She took the hand that Olive put out to her; the others, rather solemnly, sat looking up from their chairs. "You don't know me, but I want to know you," Olive said. "I can thank you now. Will you come and see me?" "Oh yes; where do you live?" Verena answered, in the tone of a girl for whom an invitation (she hadn't so many) was always an invitation. Miss Chancellor syllabled her address, and Mrs. Tarrant came forward, smiling. "I know about you, Miss Chancellor. I guess your father knew my father--Mr. Greenstreet. Verena will be very glad to visit you. We shall be very happy to see you in _our_ home." Basil Ransom, while the mother spoke, wanted to say something to the daughter, who stood there so near him, but he could think of nothing that would do; certain words that came to him, his Mississippi phrases, seemed patronising and ponderous. Besides, he didn't wish to assent to what she had said; he wished simply to tell her she was delightful, and it was difficult to mark that difference. So he only smiled at her in silence, and she smiled back at him--a smile that seemed to him quite for himself. "Where do you live?" Olive asked; and Mrs. Tarrant replied that they lived at Cambridge, and that the horse-cars passed just near their door. Whereupon Olive insisted "Will you come very soon?" and Verena said, Oh yes, she would come very soon, and repeated the number in Charles Street, to show that she had taken heed of it. This was done with childlike good faith. Ransom saw that she would come and see any one who would ask her like that, and he regretted for a minute that he was not a Boston lady, so that he might extend to her such an invitation. Olive Chancellor held her hand a moment longer, looked at her in farewell, and then, saying, "Come, Mr. Ransom," drew him out of the room. In the hall they met Mr. Pardon, coming up from the lower regions with a jug of water and a tumbler. Miss Chancellor's hackney-coach was there, and when Basil had put her into it she said to him that she wouldn't trouble him to drive with her--his hotel was not near Charles Street. He had so little desire to sit by her side--he wanted to smoke--that it was only after the vehicle had rolled off that he reflected upon her coolness, and asked himself why the deuce she had brought him away. She _was_ a very odd cousin, was this Boston cousin of his. He stood there a moment, looking at the light in Miss Birdseye's windows and greatly minded to re-enter the house, now he might speak to the girl. But he contented himself with the memory of her smile, and turned away with a sense of relief, after all, at having got out of such wild company, as well as with (in a different order) a vulgar consciousness of being very thirsty. X Verena Tarrant came in the very next day from Cambridge to Charles Street; that quarter of Boston is in direct communication with the academic suburb. It hardly seemed direct to poor Verena, perhaps, who, in the crowded street-car which deposited her finally at Miss Chancellor's door, had to stand up all the way, half suspended by a leathern strap from the glazed roof of the stifling vehicle, like some blooming cluster dangling in a hothouse. She was used, however, to these perpendicular journeys, and though, as we have seen, she was not inclined to accept without question the social arrangements of her time, it never would have occurred to her to criticise the railways of her native land. The promptness of her visit to Olive Chancellor had been an idea of her mother's, and Verena listened open-eyed while this lady, in the seclusion of the little house in Cambridge, while Selah Tarrant was "off," as they said, with his patients, sketched out a line of conduct for her. The girl was both submissive and unworldly, and she listened to her mother's enumeration of the possible advantages of an intimacy with Miss Chancellor as she would have listened to any other fairy-tale. It was still a part of the fairy-tale when this zealous parent put on with her own hands Verena's smart hat and feather, buttoned her little jacket (the buttons were immense and gilt), and presented her with twenty cents to pay her car-fare. There was never any knowing in advance how Mrs. Tarrant would take a thing, and even Verena, who, filially, was much less argumentative than in her civic and, as it were, public capacity, had a perception that her mother was queer. She was queer, indeed--a flaccid, relaxed, unhealthy, whimsical woman, who still had a capacity to cling. What she clung to was "society," and a position in the world which a secret whisper told her she had never had and a voice more audible reminded her she was in danger of losing. To keep it, to recover it, to reconsecrate it, was the ambition of her heart; this was one of the many reasons why Providence had judged her worthy of having so wonderful a child. Verena was born not only to lead their common sex out of bondage, but to remodel a visiting-list which bulged and contracted in the wrong places, like a country-made garment. As the daughter of Abraham Greenstreet, Mrs. Tarrant had passed her youth in the first Abolitionist circles, and she was aware how much such a prospect was clouded by her union with a young man who had begun life as an itinerant vendor of lead-pencils (he had called at Mr. Greenstreet's door in the exercise of this function), had afterwards been for a while a member of the celebrated Cayuga community, where there were no wives, or no husbands, or something of that sort (Mrs. Tarrant could never remember), and had still later (though before the development of the healing faculty) achieved distinction in the spiritualistic world. (He was an extraordinarily favoured medium, only he had had to stop for reasons of which Mrs. Tarrant possessed her version.) Even in a society much occupied with the effacement of prejudice there had been certain dim presumptions against this versatile being, who naturally had not wanted arts to ingratiate himself with Miss Greenstreet, her eyes, like his own, being fixed exclusively on the future. The young couple (he was considerably her elder) had gazed on the future together until they found that the past had completely forsaken them and that the present offered but a slender foothold. Mrs. Tarrant, in other words, incurred the displeasure of her family, who gave her husband to understand that, much as they desired to remove the shackles from the slave, there were kinds of behaviour which struck them as too unfettered. These had prevailed, to their thinking, at Cayuga, and they naturally felt it was no use for him to say that his residence there had been (for him--the community still existed) but a momentary episode, inasmuch as there was little more to be urged for the spiritual picnics and vegetarian camp-meetings in which the discountenanced pair now sought consolation. Such were the narrow views of people hitherto supposed capable of opening their hearts to all salutary novelties, but now put to a genuine test, as Mrs. Tarrant felt. Her husband's tastes rubbed off on her soft, moist moral surface, and the couple lived in an atmosphere of novelty, in which, occasionally, the accommodating wife encountered the fresh sensation of being in want of her dinner. Her father died, leaving, after all, very little money; he had spent his modest fortune upon the blacks. Selah Tarrant and his companion had strange adventures; she found herself completely enrolled in the great irregular army of nostrum-mongers, domiciled in humanitary Bohemia. It absorbed her like a social swamp; she sank into it a little more every day, without measuring the inches of her descent. Now she stood there up to her chin; it may probably be said of her that she had touched bottom. When she went to Miss Birdseye's it seemed to her that she re-entered society. The door that admitted her was not the door that admitted some of the others (she should never forget the tipped-up nose of Mrs. Farrinder), and the superior portal remained ajar, disclosing possible vistas. She had lived with long-haired men and short-haired women, she had contributed a flexible faith and an irremediable want of funds to a dozen social experiments, she had partaken of the comfort of a hundred religions, had followed innumerable dietary reforms, chiefly of the negative order, and had gone of an evening to a _séance_ or a lecture as regularly as she had eaten her supper. Her husband always had tickets for lectures; in moments of irritation at the want of a certain sequence in their career, she had remarked to him that it was the only thing he did have. The memory of all the winter nights they had tramped through the slush (the tickets, alas! were not car-tickets) to hear Mrs. Ada T. P. Foat discourse on the "Summer-land," came back to her with bitterness. Selah was quite enthusiastic at one time about Mrs. Foat, and it was his wife's belief that he had been "associated" with her (that was Selah's expression in referring to such episodes) at Cayuga. The poor woman, matrimonially, had a great deal to put up with; it took, at moments, all her belief in his genius to sustain her. She knew that he was very magnetic (that, in fact, was his genius), and she felt that it was his magnetism that held her to him. He had carried her through things where she really didn't know what to think; there were moments when she suspected that she had lost the strong moral sense for which the Greenstreets were always so celebrated. Of course a woman who had had the bad taste to marry Selah Tarrant would not have been likely under any circumstances to possess a very straight judgement; but there is no doubt that this poor lady had grown dreadfully limp. She had blinked and compromised and shuffled; she asked herself whether, after all, it was any more than natural that she should have wanted to help her husband, in those exciting days of his mediumship, when the table, sometimes, wouldn't rise from the ground, the sofa wouldn't float through the air, and the soft hand of a lost loved one was not so alert as it might have been to visit the circle. Mrs. Tarrant's hand was soft enough for the most supernatural effect, and she consoled her conscience on such occasions by reflecting that she ministered to a belief in immortality. She was glad, somehow, for Verena's sake, that they had emerged from the phase of spirit-intercourse; her ambition for her daughter took another form than desiring that she, too, should minister to a belief in immortality. Yet among Mrs. Tarrant's multifarious memories these reminiscences of the darkened room, the waiting circle, the little taps on table and wall, the little touches on cheek and foot, the music in the air, the rain of flowers, the sense of something mysteriously flitting, were most tenderly cherished. She hated her husband for having magnetised her so that she consented to certain things, and even did them, the thought of which to-day would suddenly make her face burn; hated him for the manner in which, somehow, as she felt, he had lowered her social tone; yet at the same time she admired him for an impudence so consummate that it had ended (in the face of mortifications, exposures, failures, all the misery of a hand-to-mouth existence) by imposing itself on her as a kind of infallibility. She knew he was an awful humbug, and yet her knowledge had this imperfection, that he had never confessed it--a fact that was really grand when one thought of his opportunities for doing so. He had never allowed that he wasn't straight; the pair had so often been in the position of the two augurs behind the altar, and yet he had never given her a glance that the whole circle mightn't have observed. Even in the privacy of domestic intercourse he had phrases, excuses, explanations, ways of putting things, which, as she felt, were too sublime for just herself; they were pitched, as Selah's nature was pitched, altogether in the key of public life. So it had come to pass, in her distended and demoralised conscience, that with all the things she despised in her life and all the things she rather liked, between being worn out with her husband's inability to earn a living and a kind of terror of his consistency (he had a theory that they lived delightfully), it happened, I say, that the only very definite criticism she made of him to-day was that he didn't know how to speak. That was where the shoe pinched--that was where Selah was slim. He couldn't hold the attention of an audience, he was not acceptable as a lecturer. He had plenty of thoughts, but it seemed as if he couldn't fit them into each other. Public speaking had been a Greenstreet tradition, and if Mrs. Tarrant had been asked whether in her younger years she had ever supposed she should marry a mesmeric healer, she would have replied: "Well, I never thought I should marry a gentleman who would be silent on the platform!" This was her most general humiliation; it included and exceeded every other, and it was a poor consolation that Selah possessed as a substitute--his career as a healer, to speak of none other, was there to prove it--the eloquence of the hand. The Greenstreets had never set much store on manual activity; they believed in the influence of the lips. It may be imagined, therefore, with what exultation, as time went on, Mrs. Tarrant found herself the mother of an inspired maiden, a young lady from whose lips eloquence flowed in streams. The Greenstreet tradition would not perish, and the dry places of her life would, perhaps, be plentifully watered. It must be added that, of late, this sandy surface had been irrigated, in moderation, from another source. Since Selah had addicted himself to the mesmeric mystery, their home had been a little more what the home of a Greenstreet should be. He had "considerable many" patients, he got about two dollars a sitting, and he had effected some most gratifying cures. A lady in Cambridge had been so much indebted to him that she had recently persuaded them to take a house near her, in order that Doctor Tarrant might drop in at any time. He availed himself of this convenience--they had taken so many houses that another, more or less, didn't matter--and Mrs. Tarrant began to feel as if they really had "struck" something. Even to Verena, as we know, she was confused and confusing; the girl had not yet had an opportunity to ascertain the principles on which her mother's limpness was liable suddenly to become rigid. This phenomenon occurred when the vapours of social ambition mounted to her brain, when she extended an arm from which a crumpled dressing-gown fluttered back to seize the passing occasion. Then she surprised her daughter by a volubility of exhortation as to the duty of making acquaintances, and by the apparent wealth of her knowledge of the mysteries of good society. She had, in particular, a way of explaining confidentially--and in her desire to be graphic she often made up the oddest faces--the interpretation that you must sometimes give to the manners of the best people, and the delicate dignity with which you should meet them, which made Verena wonder what secret sources of information she possessed. Verena took life, as yet, very simply; she was not conscious of so many differences of social complexion. She knew that some people were rich and others poor, and that her father's house had never been visited by such abundance as might make one ask one's self whether it were right, in a world so full of the disinherited, to roll in luxury. But except when her mother made her slightly dizzy by a resentment of some slight that she herself had never perceived, or a flutter over some opportunity that appeared already to have passed (while Mrs. Tarrant was looking for something to "put on"), Verena had no vivid sense that she was not as good as any one else, for no authority appealing really to her imagination had fixed the place of mesmeric healers in the scale of fashion. It was impossible to know in advance how Mrs. Tarrant would take things. Sometimes she was abjectly indifferent; at others she thought that every one who looked at her wished to insult her. At moments she was full of suspicion of the ladies (they were mainly ladies) whom Selah mesmerised; then again she appeared to have given up everything but her slippers and the evening-paper (from this publication she derived inscrutable solace), so that if Mrs. Foat in person had returned from the summer-land (to which she had some time since taken her flight), she would not have disturbed Mrs. Tarrant's almost cynical equanimity. It was, however, in her social subtleties that she was most beyond her daughter; it was when she discovered extraordinary though latent longings on the part of people they met to make their acquaintance, that the girl became conscious of how much she herself had still to learn. All her desire was to learn, and it must be added that she regarded her mother, in perfect good faith, as a wonderful teacher. She was perplexed sometimes by her worldliness; that, somehow, was not a part of the higher life which every one in such a house as theirs must wish above all things to lead; and it was not involved in the reign of justice, which they were all trying to bring about, that such a strict account should be kept of every little snub. Her father seemed to Verena to move more consecutively on the high plane; though his indifference to old-fashioned standards, his perpetual invocation of the brighter day, had not yet led her to ask herself whether, after all, men are more disinterested than women. Was it interest that prompted her mother to respond so warmly to Miss Chancellor, to say to Verena, with an air of knowingness, that the thing to do was to go in and see her _immediately_? No italics can represent the earnestness of Mrs. Tarrant's emphasis. Why hadn't she said, as she had done in former cases, that if people wanted to see them they could come out to their home; that she was not so low down in the world as not to know there was such a ceremony as leaving cards? When Mrs. Tarrant began on the question of ceremonies she was apt to go far; but she had waived it in this case; it suited her more to hold that Miss Chancellor had been very gracious, that she was a most desirable friend, that she had been more affected than any one by Verena's beautiful outpouring; that she would open to her the best saloons in Boston; that when she said "Come soon" she meant the very next day, that this was the way to take it, anyhow (one must know when to go forward gracefully); and that in short she, Mrs. Tarrant, knew what she was talking about. Verena accepted all this, for she was young enough to enjoy any journey in a horse-car, and she was ever-curious about the world; she only wondered a little how her mother knew so much about Miss Chancellor just from looking at her once. What Verena had mainly observed in the young lady who came up to her that way the night before was that she was rather dolefully dressed, that she looked as if she had been crying (Verena recognised that look quickly, she had seen it so much), and that she was in a hurry to get away. However, if she was as remarkable as her mother said, one would very soon see it; and meanwhile there was nothing in the girl's feeling about herself, in her sense of her importance, to make it a painful effort for her to run the risk of a mistake. She had no particular feeling about herself; she only cared, as yet, for outside things. Even the development of her "gift" had not made her think herself too precious for mere experiments; she had neither a particle of diffidence nor a particle of vanity. Though it would have seemed to you eminently natural that a daughter of Selah Tarrant and his wife should be an inspirational speaker, yet, as you knew Verena better, you would have wondered immensely how she came to issue from such a pair. Her ideas of enjoyment were very simple; she enjoyed putting on her new hat, with its redundancy of feather, and twenty cents appeared to her a very large sum. XI "I was certain you would come--I have felt it all day--something told me!" It was with these words that Olive Chancellor greeted her young visitor, coming to her quickly from the window, where she might have been waiting for her arrival. Some weeks later she explained to Verena how definite this prevision had been, how it had filled her all day with a nervous agitation so violent as to be painful. She told her that such forebodings were a peculiarity of her organisation, that she didn't know what to make of them, that she had to accept them; and she mentioned, as another example, the sudden dread that had come to her the evening before in the carriage, after proposing to Mr. Ransom to go with her to Miss Birdseye's. This had been as strange as it had been instinctive, and the strangeness, of course, was what must have struck Mr. Ransom; for the idea that he might come had been hers, and yet she suddenly veered round. She couldn't help it; her heart had begun to throb with the conviction that if he crossed that threshold some harm would come of of it for her. She hadn't prevented him, and now she didn't care, for now, as she intimated, she had the interest of Verena, and that made her indifferent to every danger, to every ordinary pleasure. By this time Verena had learned how peculiarly her friend was constituted, how nervous and serious she was, how personal, how exclusive, what a force of will she had, what a concentration of purpose. Olive had taken her up, in the literal sense of the phrase, like a bird of the air, had spread an extraordinary pair of wings, and carried her through the dizzying void of space. Verena liked it, for the most part; liked to shoot upward without an effort of her own and look down upon all creation, upon all history, from such a height. From this first interview she felt that she was seized, and she gave herself up, only shutting her eyes a little, as we do whenever a person in whom we have perfect confidence proposes, with our assent, to subject us to some sensation. "I want to know you," Olive said, on this occasion; "I felt that I must last night, as soon as I heard you speak. You seem to me very wonderful. I don't know what to make of you. I think we ought to be friends; so I just asked you to come to me straight off, without preliminaries, and I believed you would come. It is so _right_ that you have come, and it proves how right I was." These remarks fell from Miss Chancellor's lips one by one, as she caught her breath, with the tremor that was always in her voice, even when she was the least excited, while she made Verena sit down near her on the sofa, and looked at her all over in a manner that caused the girl to rejoice at having put on the jacket with the gilt buttons. It was this glance that was the beginning; it was with this quick survey, omitting nothing, that Olive took possession of her. "You are very remarkable; I wonder if you know how remarkable!" she went on, murmuring the words as if she were losing herself, becoming inadvertent in admiration. Verena sat there smiling, without a blush, but with a pure, bright look which, for her, would always make protests unnecessary. "Oh, it isn't me, you know; it's something outside!" She tossed this off lightly, as if she were in the habit of saying it, and Olive wondered whether it were a sincere disclaimer or only a phrase of the lips. The question was not a criticism, for she might have been satisfied that the girl was a mass of fluent catch-words and yet scarcely have liked her the less. It was just as she was that she liked her; she was so strange, so different from the girls one usually met, seemed to belong to some queer gipsy-land or transcendental Bohemia. With her bright, vulgar clothes, her salient appearance, she might have been a rope-dancer or a fortune-teller; and this had the immense merit, for Olive, that it appeared to make her belong to the "people," threw her into the social dusk of that mysterious democracy which Miss Chancellor held that the fortunate classes know so little about, and with which (in a future possibly very near) they will have to count. Moreover, the girl had moved her as she had never been moved, and the power to do that, from whatever source it came, was a force that one must admire. Her emotion was still acute, however much she might speak to her visitor as if everything that had happened seemed to her natural; and what kept it, above all, from subsiding was her sense that she found here what she had been looking for so long--a friend of her own sex with whom she might have a union of soul. It took a double consent to make a friendship, but it was not possible that this intensely sympathetic girl would refuse. Olive had the penetration to discover in a moment that she was a creature of unlimited generosity. I know not what may have been the reality of Miss Chancellor's other premonitions, but there is no doubt that in this respect she took Verena's measure on the spot. This was what she wanted; after that the rest didn't matter; Miss Tarrant might wear gilt buttons from head to foot, her soul could not be vulgar. "Mother told me I had better come right in," said Verena, looking now about the room, very glad to find herself in so pleasant a place, and noticing a great many things that she should like to see in detail. "Your mother saw that I meant what I said; it isn't everybody that does me the honour to perceive that. She saw that I was shaken from head to foot. I could only say three words--I couldn't have spoken more! What a power--what a power, Miss Tarrant!" "Yes, I suppose it is a power. If it wasn't a power, it couldn't do much with me!" "You are so simple--so much like a child," Olive Chancellor said. That was the truth, and she wanted to say it because, quickly, without forms or circumlocutions, it made them familiar. She wished to arrive at this; her impatience was such that before the girl had been five minutes in the room she jumped to her point--inquired of her, interrupting herself, interrupting everything: "Will you be my friend, my friend of friends, beyond every one, everything, for ever and for ever?" Her face was full of eagerness and tenderness. Verena gave a laugh of clear amusement, without a shade of embarrassment or confusion. "Perhaps you like me too much." "Of course I like you too much! When I like, I like too much. But of course it's another thing, your liking me," Olive Chancellor added. "We must wait--we must wait. When I care for anything, I can be patient." She put out her hand to Verena, and the movement was at once so appealing and so confident that the girl instinctively placed her own in it. So, hand in hand, for some moments, these two young women sat looking at each other. "There is so much I want to ask you," said Olive. "Well, I can't say much except when father has worked on me," Verena answered with an ingenuousness beside which humility would have seemed pretentious. "I don't care anything about your father," Olive Chancellor rejoined very gravely, with a great air of security. "He is very good," Verena said simply. "And he's wonderfully magnetic." "It isn't your father, and it isn't your mother; I don't think of them, and it's not them I want. It's only you--just as you are." Verena dropped her eyes over the front of her dress. "Just as she was" seemed to her indeed very well. "Do you want me to give up----?" she demanded, smiling. Olive Chancellor drew in her breath for an instant, like a creature in pain; then, with her quavering voice, touched with a vibration of anguish, she said; "Oh, how can I ask you to give up? _I_ will give up--I will give up everything!" Filled with the impression of her hostess's agreeable interior, and of what her mother had told her about Miss Chancellor's wealth, her position in Boston society, Verena, in her fresh, diverted scrutiny of the surrounding objects, wondered what could be the need of this scheme of renunciation. Oh no, indeed, she hoped she wouldn't give up--at least not before she, Verena, had had a chance to see. She felt, however, that for the present there would be no answer for her save in the mere pressure of Miss Chancellor's eager nature, that intensity of emotion which made her suddenly exclaim, as if in a nervous ecstasy of anticipation, "But we must wait! Why do we talk of this? We must wait! All will be right," she added more calmly, with great sweetness. Verena wondered afterward why she had not been more afraid of her--why, indeed, she had not turned and saved herself by darting out of the room. But it was not in this young woman's nature to be either timid or cautious; she had as yet to make acquaintance with the sentiment of fear. She knew too little of the world to have learned to mistrust sudden enthusiasms, and if she had had a suspicion it would have been (in accordance with common worldly knowledge) the wrong one--the suspicion that such a whimsical liking would burn itself out. She could not have that one, for there was a light in Miss Chancellor's magnified face which seemed to say that a sentiment, with her, might consume its object, might consume Miss Chancellor, but would never consume itself. Verena, as yet, had no sense of being scorched; she was only agreeably warmed. She also had dreamed of a friendship, though it was not what she had dreamed of most, and it came over her that this was the one which fortune might have been keeping. She never held back. "Do you live here all alone?" she asked of Olive. "I shouldn't if you would come and live with me!" Even this really passionate rejoinder failed to make Verena shrink; she thought it so possible that in the wealthy class people made each other such easy proposals. It was a part of the romance, the luxury, of wealth; it belonged to the world of invitations, in which she had had so little share. But it seemed almost a mockery when she thought of the little house in Cambridge, where the boards were loose in the steps of the porch. "I must stay with my father and mother," she said. "And then I have my work, you know. That's the way I must live now." "Your work?" Olive repeated, not quite understanding. "My gift," said Verena, smiling. "Oh yes, you must use it. That's what I mean; you must move the world with it; it's divine." It was so much what she meant that she had lain awake all night thinking of it, and the substance of her thought was that if she could only rescue the girl from the danger of vulgar exploitation, could only constitute herself her protectress and devotee, the two, between them, might achieve the great result. Verena's genius was a mystery, and it might remain a mystery; it was impossible to see how this charming, blooming, simple creature, all youth and grace and innocence, got her extraordinary powers of reflexion. When her gift was not in exercise she appeared anything but reflective, and as she sat there now, for instance, you would never have dreamed that she had had a vivid revelation. Olive had to content herself, provisionally, with saying that her precious faculty had come to her just as her beauty and distinction (to Olive she was full of that quality) had come; it had dropped straight from heaven, without filtering through her parents, whom Miss Chancellor decidedly did not fancy. Even among reformers she discriminated; she thought all wise people wanted great changes, but the votaries of change were not necessarily wise. She remained silent a little, after her last remark, and then she repeated again, as if it were the solution of everything, as if it represented with absolute certainty some immense happiness in the future--"We must wait, we must wait!" Verena was perfectly willing to wait, though she did not exactly know what they were to wait for, and the aspiring frankness of her assent shone out of her face, and seemed to pacify their mutual gaze. Olive asked her innumerable questions; she wanted to enter into her life. It was one of those talks which people remember afterwards, in which every word has been given and taken, and in which they see the signs of a beginning that was to be justified. The more Olive learnt of her visitor's life the more she wanted to enter into it, the more it took her out of herself. Such strange lives are led in America, she always knew that; but this was queerer than anything she had dreamed of, and the queerest part was that the girl herself didn't appear to think it queer. She had been nursed in darkened rooms, and suckled in the midst of manifestations; she had begun to "attend lectures," as she said, when she was quite an infant, because her mother had no one to leave her with at home. She had sat on the knees of somnambulists, and had been passed from hand to hand by trance-speakers; she was familiar with every kind of "cure," and had grown up among lady-editors of newspapers advocating new religions, and people who disapproved of the marriage-tie. Verena talked of the marriage-tie as she would have talked of the last novel--as if she had heard it as frequently discussed; and at certain times, listening to the answers she made to her questions, Olive Chancellor closed her eyes in the manner of a person waiting till giddiness passed. Her young friend's revelations actually gave her a vertigo; they made her perceive everything from which she should have rescued her. Verena was perfectly uncontaminated, and she would never be touched by evil; but though Olive had no views about the marriage-tie except that she should hate it for herself--that particular reform she did not propose to consider--she didn't like the "atmosphere" of circles in which such institutions were called into question. She had no wish now to enter into an examination of that particular one; nevertheless, to make sure, she would just ask Verena whether she disapproved of it. "Well, I must say," said Miss Tarrant, "I prefer free unions." Olive held her breath an instant; such an idea was so disagreeable to her. Then, for all answer, she murmured, irresolutely, "I wish you would let me help you!" Yet it seemed, at the same time, that Verena needed little help, for it was more and more clear that her eloquence, when she stood up that way before a roomful of people, was literally inspiration. She answered all her friend's questions with a good-nature which evidently took no pains to make things plausible, an effort to oblige, not to please; but, after all, she could give very little account of herself. This was very visible when Olive asked her where she had got her "intense realisation" of the suffering of women; for her address at Miss Birdseye's showed that she, too (like Olive herself), had had that vision in the watches of the night. Verena thought a moment, as if to understand what her companion referred to, and then she inquired, always smiling, where Joan of Arc had got her idea of the suffering of France. This was so prettily said that Olive could scarcely keep from kissing her; she looked at the moment as if, like Joan, she might have had visits from the saints. Olive, of course, remembered afterwards that it had not literally answered the question; and she also reflected on something that made an answer seem more difficult--the fact that the girl had grown up among lady-doctors, lady-mediums, lady-editors, lady-preachers, lady-healers, women who, having rescued themselves from a passive existence, could illustrate only partially the misery of the sex at large. It was true that they might have illustrated it by their talk, by all they had "been through" and all they could tell a younger sister; but Olive was sure that Verena's prophetic impulse had not been stirred by the chatter of women (Miss Chancellor knew that sound as well as any one); it had proceeded rather out of their silence. She said to her visitor that whether or no the angels came down to her in glittering armour, she struck her as the only person she had yet encountered who had exactly the same tenderness, the same pity, for women that she herself had. Miss Birdseye had something of it, but Miss Birdseye wanted passion, wanted keenness, was capable of the weakest concessions. Mrs. Farrinder was not weak, of course, and she brought a great intellect to the matter; but she was not personal enough--she was too abstract. Verena was not abstract; she seemed to have lived in imagination through all the ages. Verena said she _did_ think she had a certain amount of imagination; she supposed she couldn't be so effective on the platform if she hadn't a rich fancy. Then Olive said to her, taking her hand again, that she wanted her to assure her of this--that it was the only thing in all the world she cared for, the redemption of women, the thing she hoped under Providence to give her life to. Verena flushed a little at this appeal, and the deeper glow of her eyes was the first sign of exaltation she had offered. "Oh yes--I want to give my life!" she exclaimed, with a vibrating voice; and then she added gravely, "I want to do something great!" "You will, you will, we both will!" Olive Chancellor cried, in rapture. But after a little she went on: "I wonder if you know what it means, young and lovely as you are--giving your life!" Verena looked down for a moment in meditation. "Well," she replied, "I guess I have thought more than I appear." "Do you understand German? Do you know 'Faust'?" said Olive. "'_Entsagen sollst du, sollst entsagen!_'" "I don't know German; I should like so to study it; I want to know everything." "We will work at it together--we will study everything." Olive almost panted; and while she spoke the peaceful picture hung before her of still winter evenings under the lamp, with falling snow outside, and tea on a little table, and successful renderings, with a chosen companion, of Goethe, almost the only foreign author she cared about; for she hated the writing of the French, in spite of the importance they have given to women. Such a vision as this was the highest indulgence she could offer herself; she had it only at considerable intervals. It seemed as if Verena caught a glimpse of it too, for her face kindled still more, and she said she should like that ever so much. At the same time she asked the meaning of the German words. "'Thou shalt renounce, refrain, abstain!' That's the way Bayard Taylor has translated them," Olive answered. "Oh, well, I guess I can abstain!" Verena exclaimed, with a laugh. And she got up rather quickly, as if by taking leave she might give a proof of what she meant. Olive put out her hands to hold her, and at this moment one of the _portières_ of the room was pushed aside, while a gentleman was ushered in by Miss Chancellor's little parlour-maid. XII Verena recognised him; she had seen him the night before at Miss Birdseye's, and she said to her hostess, "Now I must go--you have got another caller!" It was Verena's belief that in the fashionable world (like Mrs. Farrinder, she thought Miss Chancellor belonged to it--thought that, in standing there, she herself was in it)--in the highest social walks it was the custom of a prior guest to depart when another friend arrived. She had been told at people's doors that she could not be received because the lady of the house had a visitor, and she had retired on these occasions with a feeling of awe much more than a sense of injury. They had not been the portals of fashion, but in this respect, she deemed, they had emulated such bulwarks. Olive Chancellor offered Basil Ransom a greeting which she believed to be consummately lady-like, and which the young man, narrating the scene several months later to Mrs. Luna, whose susceptibilities he did not feel himself obliged to consider (she considered his so little), described by saying that she glared at him. Olive had thought it very possible he would come that day if he was to leave Boston; though she was perfectly mindful that she had given him no encouragement at the moment they separated. If he should not come she should be annoyed, and if he should come she should be furious; she was also sufficiently mindful of that. But she had a foreboding that, of the two grievances, fortune would confer upon her only the less; the only one she had as yet was that he had responded to her letter--a complaint rather wanting in richness. If he came, at any rate, he would be likely to come shortly before dinner, at the same hour as yesterday. He had now anticipated this period considerably, and it seemed to Miss Chancellor that he had taken a base advantage of her, stolen a march upon her privacy. She was startled, disconcerted, but as I have said, she was rigorously lady-like. She was determined not again to be fantastic, as she had been about his coming to Miss Birdseye's. The strange dread associating itself with that was something which, she devoutly trusted, she had felt once for all. She didn't know what he could do to her; he hadn't prevented, on the spot though he was, one of the happiest things that had befallen her for so long--this quick, confident visit of Verena Tarrant. It was only just at the last that he had come in, and Verena must go now; Olive's detaining hand immediately relaxed itself. It is to be feared there was no disguise of Ransom's satisfaction at finding himself once more face to face with the charming creature with whom he had exchanged that final speechless smile the evening before. He was more glad to see her than if she had been an old friend, for it seemed to him that she had suddenly become a new one. "The delightful girl," he said to himself; "she smiles at me as if she liked me!" He could not know that this was fatuous, that she smiled so at every one; the first time she saw people she treated them as if she recognised them. Moreover, she did not seat herself again in his honour; she let it be seen that she was still going. The three stood there together in the middle of the long, characteristic room, and, for the first time in her life, Olive Chancellor chose not to introduce two persons who met under her roof. She hated Europe, but she could be European if it were necessary. Neither of her companions had an idea that in leaving them simply planted face to face (the terror of the American heart) she had so high a warrant; and presently Basil Ransom felt that he didn't care whether he were introduced or not, for the greatness of an evil didn't matter if the remedy were equally great. "Miss Tarrant won't be surprised if I recognise her--if I take the liberty to speak to her. She is a public character; she must pay the penalty of her distinction." These words he boldly addressed to the girl, with his most gallant Southern manner, saying to himself meanwhile that she was prettier still by daylight. "Oh, a great many gentlemen have spoken to me," Verena said. "There were quite a number at Topeka----" And her phrase lost itself in her look at Olive, as if she were wondering what was the matter with her. "Now, I am afraid you are going the very moment I appear," Ransom went on. "Do you know that's very cruel to me? I know what your ideas are--you expressed them last night in such beautiful language; of course you convinced me. I am ashamed of being a man; but I am, and I can't help it, and I'll do penance any way you may prescribe. _Must_ she go, Miss Olive?" he asked of his cousin. "Do you flee before the individual male?" And he turned to Verena. This young lady gave a laugh that resembled speech in liquid fusion. "Oh no; I like the individual!" As an incarnation of a "movement," Ransom thought her more and more singular, and he wondered how she came to be closeted so soon with his kinswoman, to whom, only a few hours before, she had been a complete stranger. These, however, were doubtless the normal proceedings of women. He begged her to sit down again; he was sure Miss Chancellor would be sorry to part with her. Verena, looking at her friend, not for permission, but for sympathy, dropped again into a chair, and Ransom waited to see Miss Chancellor do the same. She gratified him after a moment, because she could not refuse without appearing to put a hurt upon Verena; but it went hard with her, and she was altogether discomposed. She had never seen any one so free in her own drawing-room as this loud Southerner, to whom she had so rashly offered a footing; he extended invitations to her guests under her nose. That Verena should do as he asked her was a signal sign of the absence of that "home-culture" (it was so that Miss Chancellor expressed the missing quality) which she never supposed the girl possessed: fortunately, as it would be supplied to her in abundance in Charles Street. (Olive of course held that home-culture was perfectly compatible with the widest emancipation.) It was with a perfectly good conscience that Verena complied with Basil Ransom's request; but it took her quick sensibility only a moment to discover that her friend was not pleased. She scarcely knew what had ruffled her, but at the same instant there passed before her the vision of the anxieties (of this sudden, unexplained sort, for instance, and much worse) which intimate relations with Miss Chancellor might entail. "Now, I want you to tell me this," Basil Ransom said, leaning forward towards Verena, with his hands on his knees, and completely oblivious to his hostess. "Do you really believe all that pretty moonshine you talked last night? I could have listened to you for another hour; but I never heard such monstrous sentiments, I must protest--I must, as a calumniated, misrepresented man. Confess you meant it as a kind of _reductio ad absurdum_--a satire on Mrs. Farrinder?" He spoke in a tone of the freest pleasantry, with his familiar, friendly Southern cadence. Verena looked at him with eyes that grew large. "Why, you don't mean to say you don't believe in our cause?" "Oh, it won't do--it won't do!" Ransom went on, laughing. "You are on the wrong tack altogether. Do you really take the ground that your sex has been without influence? Influence? Why, you have led us all by the nose to where we are now! Wherever we are, it's all you. You are at the bottom of everything." "Oh yes, and we want to be at the top," said Verena. "Ah, the bottom is a better place, depend on it, when from there you move the whole mass! Besides, you are on the top as well; you are everywhere, you are everything. I am of the opinion of that historical character--wasn't he some king?--who thought there was a lady behind everything. Whatever it was, he held, you have only to look for her; she is the explanation. Well, I always look for her, and I always find her; of course, I am always delighted to do so; but it proves she is the universal cause. Now, you don't mean to deny that power, the power of setting men in motion. You are at the bottom of all the wars." "Well, I am like Mrs. Farrinder; I like opposition," Verena exclaimed, with a happy smile. "That proves, as I say, how in spite of your expressions of horror you delight in the shock of battle. What do you say to Helen of Troy and the fearful carnage she excited? It is well known that the Empress of France was at the bottom of the last war in that country. And as for our four fearful years of slaughter, of course, you won't deny that there the ladies were the great motive power. The Abolitionists brought it on, and were not the Abolitionists principally females? Who was that celebrity that was mentioned last night?--Eliza P. Moseley. I regard Eliza as the cause of the biggest war of which history preserves the record." Basil Ransom enjoyed his humour the more because Verena appeared to enjoy it; and the look with which she replied to him, at the end of this little tirade, "Why, sir, you ought to take the platform too; we might go round together as poison and antidote!"--this made him feel that he had convinced her, for the moment, quite as much as it was important he should. In Verena's face, however, it lasted but an instant--an instant after she had glanced at Olive Chancellor, who, with her eyes fixed intently on the ground (a look she was to learn to know so well), had a strange expression. The girl slowly got up; she felt that she must go. She guessed Miss Chancellor didn't like this handsome joker (it was so that Basil Ransom struck her); and it was impressed upon her ("in time," as she thought) that her new friend would be more serious even than she about the woman-question, serious as she had hitherto believed herself to be. "I should like so much to have the pleasure of seeing you again," Ransom continued. "I think I should be able to interpret history for you by a new light." "Well, I should be very happy to see you in my home." These words had barely fallen from Verena's lips (her mother told her they were, in general, the proper thing to say when people expressed such a desire as that; she must not let it be assumed that she would come first to them)--she had hardly uttered this hospitable speech when she felt the hand of her hostess upon her arm and became aware that a passionate appeal sat in Olive's eyes. "You will just catch the Charles Street car," that young woman murmured, with muffled sweetness. Verena did not understand further than to see that she ought already to have departed; and the simplest response was to kiss Miss Chancellor, an act which she briefly performed. Basil Ransom understood still less, and it was a melancholy commentary on his contention that men are not inferior, that this meeting could not come, however rapidly, to a close without his plunging into a blunder which necessarily aggravated those he had already made. He had been invited by the little prophetess, and yet he had not been invited; but he did not take that up, because he must absolutely leave Boston on the morrow, and, besides, Miss Chancellor appeared to have something to say to it. But he put out his hand to Verena and said, "Good-bye, Miss Tarrant; are we not to have the pleasure of hearing you in New York? I am afraid we are sadly sunk." "Certainly, I should like to raise my voice in the biggest city," the girl replied. "Well, try to come on. I won't refute you. It would be a very stupid world, after all, if we always knew what women were going to say." Verena was conscious of the approach of the Charles Street car, as well as of the fact that Miss Chancellor was in pain; but she lingered long enough to remark that she could see he had the old-fashioned ideas--he regarded woman as the toy of man. "Don't say the toy--say the joy!" Ransom exclaimed. "There is one statement I will venture to advance; I am quite as fond of you as you are of each other!" "Much he knows about that!" said Verena, with a side-long smile at Olive Chancellor. For Olive, it made her more beautiful than ever; still, there was no trace of this mere personal elation in the splendid sententiousness with which, turning to Mr. Ransom, she remarked: "What women may be, or may not be, to each other, I won't attempt just now to say; but what _the truth_ may be to a human soul, I think perhaps even a woman may faintly suspect!" "The truth? My dear cousin, your truth is a most vain thing!" "Gracious me!" cried Verena Tarrant; and the gay vibration of her voice as she uttered this simple ejaculation was the last that Ransom heard of her. Miss Chancellor swept her out of the room, leaving the young man to extract a relish from the ineffable irony with which she uttered the words "even a woman." It was to be supposed, on general grounds, that she would reappear, but there was nothing in the glance she gave him, as she turned her back, that was an earnest of this. He stood there a moment, wondering; then his wonder spent itself on the page of a book which, according to his habit at such times, he had mechanically taken up, and in which he speedily became interested. He read it for five minutes in an uncomfortable-looking attitude, and quite forgot that he had been forsaken. He was recalled to this fact by the entrance of Mrs. Luna, arrayed as if for the street, and putting on her gloves again--she seemed always to be putting on her gloves. She wanted to know what in the world he was doing there alone--whether her sister had not been notified. "Oh yes," said Ransom, "she has just been with me, but she has gone downstairs with Miss Tarrant." "And who in the world is Miss Tarrant?" Ransom was surprised that Mrs. Luna should not know of the intimacy of the two young ladies, in spite of the brevity of their acquaintance, being already so great. But, apparently, Miss Olive had not mentioned her new friend. "Well, she is an inspirational speaker--the most charming creature in the world!" Mrs. Luna paused in her manipulations, gave an amazed, amused stare, then caused the room to ring with her laughter. "You don't mean to say you are converted--already?" "Converted to Miss Tarrant, decidedly." "You are not to belong to any Miss Tarrant; you are to belong to me," Mrs. Luna said, having thought over her Southern kinsman during the twenty-four hours, and made up her mind that he would be a good man for a lone woman to know. Then she added: "Did you come here to meet her--the inspirational speaker?" "No; I came to bid your sister good-bye." "Are you really going? I haven't made you promise half the things I want yet. But we will settle that in New York. How do you get on with Olive Chancellor?" Mrs. Luna continued, making her points, as she always did, with eagerness, though her roundness and her dimples had hitherto prevented her from being accused of that vice. It was her practice to speak of her sister by her whole name, and you would have supposed, from her usual manner of alluding to her, that Olive was much the older, instead of having been born ten years later than Adeline. She had as many ways as possible of marking the gulf that divided them; but she bridged it over lightly now by saying to Basil Ransom; "Isn't she a dear old thing?" This bridge, he saw, would not bear his weight, and her question seemed to him to have more audacity than sense. Why should she be so insincere? She might know that a man couldn't recognise Miss Chancellor in such a description as that. She was not old--she was sharply young; and it was inconceivable to him, though he had just seen the little prophetess kiss her, that she should ever become any one's "dear." Least of all was she a "thing"; she was intensely, fearfully, a person. He hesitated a moment, and then he replied: "She's a very remarkable woman." "Take care--don't be reckless!" cried Mrs. Luna. "Do you think she is very dreadful?" "Don't say anything against my cousin," Basil answered; and at that moment Miss Chancellor re-entered the room. She murmured some request that he would excuse her absence, but her sister interrupted her with an inquiry about Miss Tarrant. "Mr. Ransom thinks her wonderfully charming. Why didn't you show her to me? Do you want to keep her all to yourself?" Olive rested her eyes for some moments upon Mrs. Luna, without speaking. Then she said: "Your veil is not put on straight, Adeline." "I look like a monster--that, evidently, is what you mean!" Adeline exclaimed, going to the mirror to rearrange the peccant tissue. Miss Chancellor did not again ask Ransom to be seated; she appeared to take it for granted that he would leave her now. But instead of this he returned to the subject of Verena; he asked her whether she supposed the girl would come out in public--would go about like Mrs. Farrinder? "Come out in public!" Olive repeated; "in public? Why, you don't imagine that pure voice is to be hushed?" "Oh, hushed, no! it's too sweet for that. But not raised to a scream; not forced and cracked and ruined. She oughtn't to become like the others. She ought to remain apart." "Apart--_apart_?" said Miss Chancellor; "when we shall all be looking to her, gathering about her, praying for her!" There was an exceeding scorn in her voice. "If _I_ can help her, she shall be an immense power for good." "An immense power for quackery, my dear Miss Olive!" This broke from Basil's lips in spite of a vow he had just taken not to say anything that should "aggravate" his hostess, who was in a state of tension it was not difficult to detect. But he had lowered his tone to friendly pleading, and the offensive word was mitigated by his smile. She moved away from him, backwards, as if he had given her a push. "Ah, well, now you are reckless," Mrs. Luna remarked, drawing out her ribbons before the mirror. "I don't think you would interfere if you knew how little you understand us," Miss Chancellor said to Ransom. "Whom do you mean by 'us'--your whole delightful sex? I don't understand _you_, Miss Olive." "Come away with me, and I'll explain her as we go," Mrs. Luna went on, having finished her toilet. Ransom offered his hand in farewell to his hostess; but Olive found it impossible to do anything but ignore the gesture. She could not have let him touch her. "Well, then, if you must exhibit her to the multitude, bring her on to New York," he said, with the same attempt at a light treatment. "You'll have _me_ in New York--you don't want any one else!" Mrs. Luna ejaculated, coquettishly. "I have made up my mind to winter there now." Olive Chancellor looked from one to the other of her two relatives, one near and the other distant, but each so little in sympathy with her, and it came over her that there might be a kind of protection for her in binding them together, entangling them with each other. She had never had an idea of that kind in her life before, and that this sudden subtlety should have gleamed upon her as a momentary talisman gives the measure of her present nervousness. "If I could take her to New York, I would take her farther," she remarked, hoping she was enigmatical. "You talk about 'taking' her, as if you were a lecture-agent. Are you going into that business?" Mrs. Luna asked. Ransom could not help noticing that Miss Chancellor would not shake hands with him, and he felt, on the whole, rather injured. He paused a moment before leaving the room--standing there with his hand on the knob of the door. "Look here, Miss Olive, what did you write to me to come and see you for?" He made this inquiry with a countenance not destitute of gaiety, but his eyes showed something of that yellow light--just momentarily lurid--of which mention has been made. Mrs. Luna was on her way downstairs, and her companions remained face to face. "Ask my sister--I think she will tell you," said Olive, turning away from him and going to the window. She remained there, looking out; she heard the door of the house close, and saw the two cross the street together. As they passed out of sight her fingers played, softly, a little air upon the pane; it seemed to her that she had had an inspiration. Basil Ransom, meanwhile, put the question to Mrs. Luna. "If she was not going to like me, why in the world did she write to me?" "Because she wanted you to know me--she thought _I_ would like you!" And apparently she had not been wrong; for Mrs. Luna, when they reached Beacon Street, would not hear of his leaving her to go her way alone, would not in the least admit his plea that he had only an hour or two more in Boston (he was to travel, economically, by the boat) and must devote the time to his business. She appealed to his Southern chivalry, and not in vain; practically, at least, he admitted the rights of women. XIII Mrs. Tarrant was delighted, as may be imagined, with her daughter's account of Miss Chancellor's interior, and the reception the girl had found there; and Verena, for the next month, took her way very often to Charles Street. "Just you be as nice to her as you know how," Mrs. Tarrant had said to her; and she reflected with some complacency that her daughter did know--she knew how to do everything of that sort. It was not that Verena had been taught; that branch of the education of young ladies which is known as "manners and deportment" had not figured, as a definite head, in Miss Tarrant's curriculum. She had been told, indeed, that she must not lie nor steal; but she had been told very little else about behaviour; her only great advantage, in short, had been the parental example. But her mother liked to think that she was quick and graceful, and she questioned her exhaustively as to the progress of this interesting episode; she didn't see why, as she said, it shouldn't be a permanent "stand-by" for Verena. In Mrs. Tarrant's meditations upon the girl's future she had never thought of a fine marriage as a reward of effort; she would have deemed herself very immoral if she had endeavoured to capture for her child a rich husband. She had not, in fact, a very vivid sense of the existence of such agents of fate; all the rich men she had seen already had wives, and the unmarried men, who were generally very young, were distinguished from each other not so much by the figure of their income, which came little into question, as by the degree of their interest in regenerating ideas. She supposed Verena would marry some one, some day, and she hoped the personage would be connected with public life--which meant, for Mrs. Tarrant, that his name would be visible, in the lamp-light, on a coloured poster, in the doorway of Tremont Temple. But she was not eager about this vision, for the implications of matrimony were for the most part wanting in brightness--consisted of a tired woman holding a baby over a furnace-register that emitted lukewarm air. A real lovely friendship with a young woman who had, as Mrs. Tarrant expressed it, "prop'ty," would occupy agreeably such an interval as might occur before Verena should meet her sterner fate; it would be a great thing for her to have a place to run into when she wanted a change, and there was no knowing but what it might end in her having two homes. For the idea of the home, like most American women of her quality, Mrs. Tarrant had an extreme reverence; and it was her candid faith that in all the vicissitudes of the past twenty years she had preserved the spirit of this institution. If it should exist in duplicate for Verena, the girl would be favoured indeed. All this was as nothing, however, compared with the fact that Miss Chancellor seemed to think her young friend's gift _was_ inspirational, or at any rate, as Selah had so often said, quite unique. She couldn't make out very exactly, by Verena, what she thought; but if the way Miss Chancellor had taken hold of her didn't show that she believed she could rouse the people, Mrs. Tarrant didn't know what it showed. It was a satisfaction to her that Verena evidently responded freely; she didn't think anything of what she spent in car-tickets, and indeed she had told her that Miss Chancellor wanted to stuff her pockets with them. At first she went in because her mother liked to have her; but now, evidently, she went because she was so much drawn. She expressed the highest admiration of her new friend; she said it took her a little while to see into her, but now that she did, well, she was perfectly splendid. When Verena wanted to admire she went ahead of every one, and it was delightful to see how she was stimulated by the young lady in Charles Street. They thought everything of each other--that was very plain; you could scarcely tell which thought most. Each thought the other so noble, and Mrs. Tarrant had a faith that between them they _would_ rouse the people. What Verena wanted was some one who would know how to handle her (her father hadn't handled anything except the healing, up to this time, with real success), and perhaps Miss Chancellor would take hold better than some that made more of a profession. "It's beautiful, the way she draws you out," Verena had said to her mother; "there's something so searching that the first time I visited her it quite realised my idea of the Day of Judgement. But she seems to show all that's in herself at the same time, and then you see how lovely it is. She's just as pure as she can live; you see if she is not, when you know her. She's so noble herself that she makes you feel as if you wouldn't want to be less so. She doesn't care for anything but the elevation of our sex; if she can work a little toward that, it's all she asks. I can tell you, she kindles me; she does, mother, really. She doesn't care a speck what she wears--only to have an elegant parlour. Well, she _has_ got that; it's a regular dream-like place to sit. She's going to have a tree in, next week; she says she wants to see me sitting under a tree. I believe it's some oriental idea; it has lately been introduced in Paris. She doesn't like French ideas as a general thing; but she says this has more nature than most. She has got so many of her own that I shouldn't think she would require to borrow any. I'd sit in a forest to hear her bring some of them out," Verena went on, with characteristic raciness. "She just quivers when she describes what our sex has been through. It's so interesting to me to hear what I have always felt. If she wasn't afraid of facing the public, she would go far ahead of me. But she doesn't want to speak herself; she only wants to call me out. Mother, if she doesn't attract attention to me there isn't any attention to be attracted. She says I have got the gift of expression--it doesn't matter where it comes from. She says it's a great advantage to a movement to be personified in a bright young figure. Well, of course I'm young, and I feel bright enough when once I get started. She says my serenity while exposed to the gaze of hundreds is in itself a qualification; in fact, she seems to think my serenity is quite God-given. She hasn't got much of it herself; she's the most emotional woman I have met, up to now. She wants to know how I can speak the way I do unless I feel; and of course I tell her I do feel, so far as I realise. She seems to be realising all the time; I never saw any one that took so little rest. She says I ought to do something great, and she makes me feel as if I should. She says I ought to have a wide influence, if I can obtain the ear of the public; and I say to her that if I do it will be all her influence." Selah Tarrant looked at all this from a higher standpoint than his wife; at least such an attitude on his part was to be inferred from his increased solemnity. He committed himself to no precipitate elation at the idea of his daughter's being taken up by a patroness of movements who happened to have money; he looked at his child only from the point of view of the service she might render to humanity. To keep her ideal pointing in the right direction, to guide and animate her moral life--this was a duty more imperative for a parent so closely identified with revelations and panaceas than seeing that she formed profitable worldly connexions. He was "off," moreover, so much of the time that he could keep little account of her comings and goings, and he had an air of being but vaguely aware of whom Miss Chancellor, the object now of his wife's perpetual reference, might be. Verena's initial appearance in Boston, as he called her performance at Miss Birdseye's, had been a great success; and this reflexion added, as I say, to his habitually sacerdotal expression. He looked like the priest of a religion that was passing through the stage of miracles; he carried his responsibility in the general elongation of his person, of his gestures (his hands were now always in the air, as if he were being photographed in postures), of his words and sentences, as well as in his smile, as noiseless as a patent hinge, and in the folds of his eternal waterproof. He was incapable of giving an off-hand answer or opinion on the simplest occasion, and his tone of high deliberation increased in proportion as the subject was trivial or domestic. If his wife asked him at dinner if the potatoes were good, he replied that they were strikingly fine (he used to speak of the newspaper as "fine"--he applied this term to objects the most dissimilar), and embarked on a parallel worthy of Plutarch, in which he compared them with other specimens of the same vegetable. He produced, or would have liked to produce, the impression of looking above and beyond everything, of not caring for the immediate, of reckoning only with the long run. In reality he had one all-absorbing solicitude--the desire to get paragraphs put into the newspapers, paragraphs of which he had hitherto been the subject, but of which he was now to divide the glory with his daughter. The newspapers were his world, the richest expression, in his eyes, of human life; and, for him, if a diviner day was to come upon earth, it would be brought about by copious advertisement in the daily prints. He looked with longing for the moment when Verena should be advertised among the "personals," and to his mind the supremely happy people were those (and there were a good many of them) of whom there was some journalistic mention every day in the year. Nothing less than this would really have satisfied Selah Tarrant; his ideal of bliss was to be as regularly and indispensably a component part of the newspaper as the title and date, or the list of fires, or the column of Western jokes. The vision of that publicity haunted his dreams, and he would gladly have sacrificed to it the innermost sanctities of home. Human existence to him, indeed, was a huge publicity, in which the only fault was that it was sometimes not sufficiently effective. There had been a Spiritualist paper of old which he used to pervade; but he could not persuade himself that through this medium his personality had attracted general attention; and, moreover, the sheet, as he said, was played out anyway. Success was not success so long as his daughter's _physique_, the rumour of her engagement, were not included in the "Jottings" with the certainty of being extensively copied. The account of her exploits in the West had not made their way to the seaboard with the promptitude that he had looked for; the reason of this being, he supposed, that the few addresses she had made had not been lectures, announced in advance, to which tickets had been sold, but incidents, of abrupt occurrence, of certain multitudinous meetings, where there had been other performers better known to fame. They had brought in no money; they had been delivered only for the good of the cause. If it could only be known that she spoke for nothing, that might deepen the reverberation; the only trouble was that her speaking for nothing was not the way to remind him that he had a remunerative daughter. It was not the way to stand out so very much either, Selah Tarrant felt; for there were plenty of others that knew how to make as little money as she would. To speak--that was the one thing that most people were willing to do for nothing; it was not a line in which it was easy to appear conspicuously disinterested. Disinterestedness, too, was incompatible with receipts; and receipts were what Selah Tarrant was, in his own parlance, after. He wished to bring about the day when they would flow in freely; the reader perhaps sees the gesture with which, in his colloquies with himself, he accompanied this mental image. It seemed to him at present that the fruitful time was not far off; it had been brought appreciably nearer by that fortunate evening at Miss Birdseye's. If Mrs. Farrinder could be induced to write an "open letter" about Verena, that would do more than anything else. Selah was not remarkable for delicacy of perception, but he knew the world he lived in well enough to be aware that Mrs. Farrinder was liable to rear up, as they used to say down in Pennsylvania, where he lived before he began to peddle lead-pencils. She wouldn't always take things as you might expect, and if it didn't meet her views to pay a public tribute to Verena, there wasn't any way known to Tarrant's ingenious mind of getting round her. If it was a question of a favour from Mrs. Farrinder, you just had to wait for it, as you would for a rise in the thermometer. He had told Miss Birdseye what he would like, and she seemed to think, from the way their celebrated friend had been affected, that the idea might take her some day of just letting the public know all she had felt. She was off somewhere now (since that evening), but Miss Birdseye had an idea that when she was back in Roxbury she would send for Verena and give her a few points. Meanwhile, at any rate, Selah was sure he had a card; he felt there was money in the air. It might already be said there were receipts from Charles Street; that rich, peculiar young woman seemed to want to lavish herself. He pretended, as I have intimated, not to notice this; but he never saw so much as when he had his eyes fixed on the cornice. He had no doubt that if he should make up his mind to take a hall some night, she would tell him where the bill might be sent. That was what he was thinking of now, whether he had better take a hall right away, so that Verena might leap at a bound into renown, or wait till she had made a few more appearances in private, so that curiosity might be worked up. These meditations accompanied him in his multifarious wanderings through the streets and the suburbs of the New England capital. As I have also mentioned, he was absent for hours--long periods during which Mrs. Tarrant, sustaining nature with a hard-boiled egg and a doughnut, wondered how in the world he stayed his stomach. He never wanted anything but a piece of pie when he came in; the only thing about which he was particular was that it should be served up hot. She had a private conviction that he partook, at the houses of his lady patients, of little lunches; she applied this term to any episodical repast, at any hour of the twenty-four. It is but fair to add that once, when she betrayed her suspicion, Selah remarked that the only refreshment _he_ ever wanted was the sense that he was doing some good. This effort with him had many forms; it involved, among other things, a perpetual perambulation of the streets, a haunting of horse-cars, railway-stations, shops that were "selling off." But the places that knew him best were the offices of the newspapers and the vestibules of the hotels--the big marble-paved chambers of informal reunion which offer to the streets, through high glass plates, the sight of the American citizen suspended by his heels. Here, amid the piled-up luggage, the convenient spittoons, the elbowing loungers, the disconsolate "guests," the truculent Irish porters, the rows of shaggy-backed men in strange hats, writing letters at a table inlaid with advertisements, Selah Tarrant made innumerable contemplative stations. He could not have told you, at any particular moment, what he was doing; he only had a general sense that such places were national nerve-centres, and that the more one looked in, the more one was "on the spot." The _penetralia_ of the daily press were, however, still more fascinating, and the fact that they were less accessible, that here he found barriers in his path, only added to the zest of forcing an entrance. He abounded in pretexts; he even sometimes brought contributions; he was persistent and penetrating, he was known as the irrepressible Tarrant. He hung about, sat too long, took up the time of busy people, edged into the printing-rooms when he had been eliminated from the office, talked with the compositors till they set up his remarks by mistake, and to the newsboys when the compositors had turned their backs. He was always trying to find out what was "going in"; he would have liked to go in himself, bodily, and, failing in this, he hoped to get advertisements inserted gratis. The wish of his soul was that he might be interviewed; that made him hover at the editorial elbow. Once he thought he had been, and the headings, five or six deep, danced for days before his eyes; but the report never appeared. He expected his revenge for this the day after Verena should have burst forth; he saw the attitude in which he should receive the emissaries who would come after his daughter. XIV "We ought to have some one to meet her," Mrs. Tarrant said; "I presume she wouldn't care to come out just to see us." "She," between the mother and the daughter, at this period, could refer only to Olive Chancellor, who was discussed in the little house at Cambridge at all hours and from every possible point of view. It was never Verena now who began, for she had grown rather weary of the topic; she had her own ways of thinking of it, which were not her mother's, and if she lent herself to this lady's extensive considerations it was because that was the best way of keeping her thoughts to herself. Mrs. Tarrant had an idea that she (Mrs. Tarrant) liked to study people, and that she was now engaged in an analysis of Miss Chancellor. It carried her far, and she came out at unexpected times with her results. It was still her purpose to interpret the world to the ingenious mind of her daughter, and she translated Miss Chancellor with a confidence which made little account of the fact that she had seen her but once, while Verena had this advantage nearly every day. Verena felt that by this time she knew Olive very well, and her mother's most complicated versions of motive and temperament (Mrs. Tarrant, with the most imperfect idea of the meaning of the term, was always talking about people's temperament) rendered small justice to the phenomena it was now her privilege to observe in Charles Street. Olive was much more remarkable than Mrs. Tarrant suspected, remarkable as Mrs. Tarrant believed her to be. She had opened Verena's eyes to extraordinary pictures, made the girl believe that she had a heavenly mission, given her, as we have seen, quite a new measure of the interest of life. These were larger consequences than the possibility of meeting the leaders of society at Olive's house. She had met no one, as yet, but Mrs. Luna; her new friend seemed to wish to keep her quite for herself. This was the only reproach that Mrs. Tarrant directed to the new friend as yet; she was disappointed that Verena had not obtained more insight into the world of fashion. It was one of the prime articles of her faith that the world of fashion was wicked and hollow, and, moreover, Verena told her that Miss Chancellor loathed and despised it. She could not have informed you wherein it would profit her daughter (for the way those ladies shrank from any new gospel was notorious); nevertheless she was vexed that Verena shouldn't come back to her with a little more of the fragrance of Beacon Street. The girl herself would have been the most interested person in the world if she had not been the most resigned; she took all that was given her and was grateful, and missed nothing that was withheld; she was the most extraordinary mixture of eagerness and docility. Mrs. Tarrant theorised about temperaments and she loved her daughter; but she was only vaguely aware of the fact that she had at her side the sweetest flower of character (as one might say) that had ever bloomed on earth. She was proud of Verena's brightness, and of her special talent; but the commonness of her own surface was a non-conductor of the girl's quality. Therefore she thought that it would add to her success in life to know a few high-flyers, if only to put them to shame; as if anything could add to Verena's success, as if it were not supreme success simply to have been made as she was made. Mrs. Tarrant had gone into town to call upon Miss Chancellor; she carried out this resolve, on which she had bestowed infinite consideration, independently of Verena. She had decided that she had a pretext; her dignity required one, for she felt that at present the antique pride of the Greenstreets was terribly at the mercy of her curiosity. She wished to see Miss Chancellor again, and to see her among her charming appurtenances, which Verena had described to her with great minuteness. The pretext that she would have valued most was wanting--that of Olive's having come out to Cambridge to pay the visit that had been solicited from the first; so she had to take the next best--she had to say to herself that it was her duty to see what she should think of a place where her daughter spent so much time. To Miss Chancellor she would appear to have come to thank her for her hospitality; she knew, in advance, just the air she should take (or she fancied she knew it--Mrs. Tarrant's were not always what she supposed), just the _nuance_ (she had also an impression she knew a little French) of her tone. Olive, after the lapse of weeks, still showed no symptoms of presenting herself, and Mrs. Tarrant rebuked Verena with some sternness for not having made her feel that this attention was due to the mother of her friend. Verena could scarcely say to her she guessed Miss Chancellor didn't think much of that personage, true as it was that the girl had discerned this angular fact, which she attributed to Olive's extraordinary comprehensiveness of view. Verena herself did not suppose that her mother occupied a very important place in the universe; and Miss Chancellor never looked at anything smaller than that. Nor was she free to report (she was certainly now less frank at home, and, moreover, the suspicion was only just becoming distinct to her) that Olive would like to detach her from her parents altogether, and was therefore not interested in appearing to cultivate relations with them. Mrs. Tarrant, I may mention, had a further motive: she was consumed with the desire to behold Mrs. Luna. This circumstance may operate as a proof that the aridity of her life was great, and if it should have that effect I shall not be able to gainsay it. She had seen all the people who went to lectures, but there were hours when she desired, for a change, to see some who didn't go; and Mrs. Luna, from Verena's description of her, summed up the characteristics of this eccentric class. Verena had given great attention to Olive's brilliant sister; she had told her friend everything now--everything but one little secret, namely, that if she could have chosen at the beginning she would have liked to resemble Mrs. Luna. This lady fascinated her, carried off her imagination to strange lands; she should enjoy so much a long evening with her alone, when she might ask her ten thousand questions. But she never saw her alone, never saw her at all but in glimpses. Adeline flitted in and out, dressed for dinners and concerts, always saying something worldly to the young woman from Cambridge, and something to Olive that had a freedom which she herself would probably never arrive at (a failure of foresight on Verena's part). But Miss Chancellor never detained her, never gave Verena a chance to see her, never appeared to imagine that she could have the least interest in such a person; only took up the subject again after Adeline had left them--the subject, of course, which was always the same, the subject of what they should do together for their suffering sex. It was not that Verena was not interested in that--gracious, no; it opened up before her, in those wonderful colloquies with Olive, in the most inspiring way; but her fancy would make a dart to right or left when other game crossed their path, and her companion led her, intellectually, a dance in which her feet--that is, her head--failed her at times for weariness. Mrs. Tarrant found Miss Chancellor at home, but she was not gratified by even the most transient glimpse of Mrs. Luna; a fact which, in her heart, Verena regarded as fortunate, inasmuch as (she said to herself) if her mother, returning from Charles Street, began to explain Miss Chancellor to her with fresh energy, and as if she (Verena) had never seen her, and up to this time they had had nothing to say about her, to what developments (of the same sort) would not an encounter with Adeline have given rise? When Verena at last said to her friend that she thought she ought to come out to Cambridge--she didn't understand why she didn't--Olive expressed her reasons very frankly, admitted that she was jealous, that she didn't wish to think of the girl's belonging to any one but herself. Mr. and Mrs. Tarrant would have authority, opposed claims, and she didn't wish to see them, to remember that they existed. This was true, so far as it went; but Olive could not tell Verena everything--could not tell her that she hated that dreadful pair at Cambridge. As we know, she had forbidden herself this emotion as regards individuals; and she flattered herself that she considered the Tarrants as a type, a deplorable one, a class that, with the public at large, discredited the cause of the new truths. She had talked them over with Miss Birdseye (Olive was always looking after her now and giving her things--the good lady appeared at this period in wonderful caps and shawls--for she felt she couldn't thank her enough), and even Doctor Prance's fellow-lodger, whose animosity to flourishing evils lived in the happiest (though the most illicit) union with the mania for finding excuses, even Miss Birdseye was obliged to confess that if you came to examine his record, poor Selah didn't amount to so very much. How little he amounted to Olive perceived after she had made Verena talk, as the girl did immensely, about her father and mother--quite unconscious, meanwhile, of the conclusions she suggested to Miss Chancellor. Tarrant was a moralist without moral sense--that was very clear to Olive as she listened to the history of his daughter's childhood and youth, which Verena related with an extraordinary artless vividness. This narrative, tremendously fascinating to Miss Chancellor, made her feel in all sorts of ways--prompted her to ask herself whether the girl was also destitute of the perception of right and wrong. No, she was only supremely innocent; she didn't understand, she didn't interpret nor see the _portée_ of what she described; she had no idea whatever of judging her parents. Olive had wished to "realise" the conditions in which her wonderful young friend (she thought her more wonderful every day) had developed, and to this end, as I have related, she prompted her to infinite discourse. But now she was satisfied, the realisation was complete, and what she would have liked to impose on the girl was an effectual rupture with her past. That past she by no means absolutely deplored, for it had the merit of having initiated Verena (and her patroness, through her agency) into the miseries and mysteries of the People. It was her theory that Verena (in spite of the blood of the Greenstreets, and, after all, who were they?) was a flower of the great Democracy, and that it was impossible to have had an origin less distinguished than Tarrant himself. His birth, in some unheard-of place in Pennsylvania, was quite inexpressibly low, and Olive would have been much disappointed if it had been wanting in this defect. She liked to think that Verena, in her childhood, had known almost the extremity of poverty, and there was a kind of ferocity in the joy with which she reflected that there had been moments when this delicate creature came near (if the pinch had only lasted a little longer) to literally going without food. These things added to her value for Olive; they made that young lady feel that their common undertaking would, in consequence, be so much more serious. It is always supposed that revolutionists have been goaded, and the goading would have been rather deficient here were it not for such happy accidents in Verena's past. When she conveyed from her mother a summons to Cambridge for a particular occasion, Olive perceived that the great effort must now be made. Great efforts were nothing new to her--it was a great effort to live at all--but this one appeared to her exceptionally cruel. She determined, however, to make it, promising herself that her first visit to Mrs. Tarrant should also be her last. Her only consolation was that she expected to suffer intensely; for the prospect of suffering was always, spiritually speaking, so much cash in her pocket. It was arranged that Olive should come to tea (the repast that Selah designated as his supper), when Mrs. Tarrant, as we have seen, desired to do her honour by inviting another guest. This guest, after much deliberation between that lady and Verena, was selected, and the first person Olive saw on entering the little parlour in Cambridge was a young man with hair prematurely, or, as one felt that one should say, precociously white, whom she had a vague impression she had encountered before, and who was introduced to her as Mr. Matthias Pardon. She suffered less than she had hoped--she was so taken up with the consideration of Verena's interior. It was as bad as she could have desired; desired in order to feel that (to take her out of such a _milieu_ as that) she should have a right to draw her altogether to herself. Olive wished more and more to extract some definite pledge from her; she could hardly say what it had best be as yet; she only felt that it must be something that would have an absolute sanctity for Verena and would bind them together for life. On this occasion it seemed to shape itself in her mind; she began to see what it ought to be, though she also saw that she would perhaps have to wait awhile. Mrs. Tarrant, too, in her own house, became now a complete figure; there was no manner of doubt left as to her being vulgar. Olive Chancellor despised vulgarity, had a scent for it which she followed up in her own family, so that often, with a rising flush, she detected the taint even in Adeline. There were times, indeed, when every one seemed to have it, every one but Miss Birdseye (who had nothing to do with it--she was an antique) and the poorest, humblest people. The toilers and spinners, the very obscure, these were the only persons who were safe from it. Miss Chancellor would have been much happier if the movements she was interested in could have been carried on only by the people she liked, and if revolutions, somehow, didn't always have to begin with one's self--with internal convulsions, sacrifices, executions. A common end, unfortunately, however fine as regards a special result, does not make community impersonal. Mrs. Tarrant, with her soft corpulence, looked to her guest very bleached and tumid; her complexion had a kind of withered glaze; her hair, very scanty, was drawn off her forehead _à la Chinoise_; she had no eyebrows, and her eyes seemed to stare, like those of a figure of wax. When she talked and wished to insist, and she was always insisting, she puckered and distorted her face, with an effort to express the inexpressible, which turned out, after all, to be nothing. She had a kind of doleful elegance, tried to be confidential, lowered her voice and looked as if she wished to establish a secret understanding, in order to ask her visitor if she would venture on an apple-fritter. She wore a flowing mantle, which resembled her husband's waterproof--a garment which, when she turned to her daughter or talked about her, might have passed for the robe of a sort of priestess of maternity. She endeavoured to keep the conversation in a channel which would enable her to ask sudden incoherent questions of Olive, mainly as to whether she knew the principal ladies (the expression was Mrs. Tarrant's), not only in Boston, but in the other cities which, in her nomadic course, she herself had visited. Olive knew some of them, and of some of them had never heard; but she was irritated, and pretended a universal ignorance (she was conscious that she had never told so many fibs), by which her hostess was much disconcerted, although her questions had apparently been questions pure and simple, leading nowhither and without bearings on any new truth. XV Tarrant, however, kept an eye in that direction; he was solemnly civil to Miss Chancellor, handed her the dishes at table over and over again, and ventured to intimate that the apple-fritters were very fine; but, save for this, alluded to nothing more trivial than the regeneration of humanity and the strong hope he felt that Miss Birdseye would again have one of her delightful gatherings. With regard to this latter point he explained that it was not in order that he might again present his daughter to the company, but simply because on such occasions there was a valuable interchange of hopeful thought, a contact of mind with mind. If Verena had anything suggestive to contribute to the social problem, the opportunity would come--that was part of their faith. They couldn't reach out for it and try and push their way; if they were wanted, their hour would strike; if they were not, they would just keep still and let others press forward who seemed to be called. If they were called, they would know it; and if they weren't, they could just hold on to each other as they had always done. Tarrant was very fond of alternatives, and he mentioned several others; it was never his fault if his listeners failed to think him impartial. They hadn't much, as Miss Chancellor could see; she could tell by their manner of life that they hadn't raked in the dollars; but they had faith that, whether one raised one's voice or simply worked on in silence, the principal difficulties would straighten themselves out; and they had also a considerable experience of great questions. Tarrant spoke as if, as a family, they were prepared to take charge of them on moderate terms. He always said "ma'am" in speaking to Olive, to whom, moreover, the air had never been so filled with the sound of her own name. It was always in her ear, save when Mrs. Tarrant and Verena conversed in prolonged and ingenuous asides; this was still for her benefit, but the pronoun sufficed them. She had wished to judge Doctor Tarrant (not that she believed he had come honestly by his title), to make up her mind. She had done these things now, and she expressed to herself the kind of man she believed him to be in reflecting that if she should offer him ten thousand dollars to renounce all claim to Verena, keeping--he and his wife--clear of her for the rest of time, he would probably say, with his fearful smile, "Make it twenty, money down, and I'll do it." Some image of this transaction, as one of the possibilities of the future, outlined itself for Olive among the moral incisions of that evening. It seemed implied in the very place, the bald bareness of Tarrant's temporary lair, a wooden cottage, with a rough front yard, a little naked piazza, which seemed rather to expose than to protect, facing upon an unpaved road, in which the footway was overlaid with a strip of planks. These planks were embedded in ice or in liquid thaw, according to the momentary mood of the weather, and the advancing pedestrian traversed them in the attitude, and with a good deal of the suspense, of a rope-dancer. There was nothing in the house to speak of; nothing, to Olive's sense, but a smell of kerosene; though she had a consciousness of sitting down somewhere--the object creaked and rocked beneath her--and of the table at tea being covered with a cloth stamped in bright colours. As regards the pecuniary transaction with Selah, it was strange how she should have seen it through the conviction that Verena would never give up her parents. Olive was sure that she would never turn her back upon them, would always share with them. She would have despised her had she thought her capable of another course; yet it baffled her to understand why, when parents were so trashy, this natural law should not be suspended. Such a question brought her back, however, to her perpetual enigma, the mystery she had already turned over in her mind for hours together--the wonder of such people being Verena's progenitors at all. She had explained it, as we explain all exceptional things, by making the part, as the French say, of the miraculous. She had come to consider the girl as a wonder of wonders, to hold that no human origin, however congruous it might superficially appear, would sufficiently account for her; that her springing up between Selah and his wife was an exquisite whim of the creative force; and that in such a case a few shades more or less of the inexplicable didn't matter. It was notorious that great beauties, great geniuses, great characters, take their own times and places for coming into the world, leaving the gaping spectators to make them "fit in," and holding from far-off ancestors, or even, perhaps, straight from the divine generosity, much more than from their ugly or stupid progenitors. They were incalculable phenomena, anyway, as Selah would have said. Verena, for Olive, was the very type and model of the "gifted being"; her qualities had not been bought and paid for; they were like some brilliant birthday-present, left at the door by an unknown messenger, to be delightful for ever as an inexhaustible legacy, and amusing for ever from the obscurity of its source. They were superabundantly crude as yet--happily for Olive, who promised herself, as we know, to train and polish them--but they were as genuine as fruit and flowers, as the glow of the fire or the plash of water. For her scrutinising friend Verena had the disposition of the artist, the spirit to which all charming forms come easily and naturally. It required an effort at first to imagine an artist so untaught, so mistaught, so poor in experience; but then it required an effort also to imagine people like the old Tarrants, or a life so full as her life had been of ugly things. Only an exquisite creature could have resisted such associations, only a girl who had some natural light, some divine spark of taste. There were people like that, fresh from the hand of Omnipotence; they were far from common, but their existence was as incontestable as it was beneficent. Tarrant's talk about his daughter, her prospects, her enthusiasm, was terribly painful to Olive; it brought back to her what she had suffered already from the idea that he laid his hands upon her to make her speak. That he should be mixed up in any way with this exercise of her genius was a great injury to the cause, and Olive had already determined that in future Verena should dispense with his co-operation. The girl had virtually confessed that she lent herself to it only because it gave him pleasure, and that anything else would do as well, anything that would make her quiet a little before she began to "give out." Olive took upon herself to believe that _she_ could make her quiet, though, certainly, she had never had that effect upon any one; she would mount the platform with Verena if necessary, and lay her hands upon her head. Why in the world had a perverse fate decreed that Tarrant should take an interest in the affairs of Woman--as if she wanted _his_ aid to arrive at her goal; a charlatan of the poor, lean, shabby sort, without the humour, brilliancy, prestige, which sometimes throw a drapery over shallowness? Mr. Pardon evidently took an interest as well, and there was something in his appearance that seemed to say that his sympathy would not be dangerous. He was much at his ease, plainly, beneath the roof of the Tarrants, and Olive reflected that though Verena had told her much about him, she had not given her the idea that he was as intimate as that. What she had mainly said was that he sometimes took her to the theatre. Olive could enter, to a certain extent, into that; she herself had had a phase (some time after her father's death--her mother's had preceded his--when she bought the little house in Charles Street and began to live alone), during which she accompanied gentlemen to respectable places of amusement. She was accordingly not shocked at the idea of such adventures on Verena's part; than which, indeed, judging from her own experience, nothing could well have been less adventurous. Her recollections of these expeditions were as of something solemn and edifying--of the earnest interest in her welfare exhibited by her companion (there were few occasions on which the young Bostonian appeared to more advantage), of the comfort of other friends sitting near, who were sure to know whom she was with, of serious discussion between the acts in regard to the behaviour of the characters in the piece, and of the speech at the end with which, as the young man quitted her at her door, she rewarded his civility--"I must thank you for a very pleasant evening." She always felt that she made that too prim; her lips stiffened themselves as she spoke. But the whole affair had always a primness; this was discernible even to Olive's very limited sense of humour. It was not so religious as going to evening-service at King's Chapel; but it was the next thing to it. Of course all girls didn't do it; there were families that viewed such a custom with disfavour. But this was where the girls were of the romping sort; there had to be some things they were known not to do. As a general thing, moreover, the practice was confined to the decorous; it was a sign of culture and quiet tastes. All this made it innocent for Verena, whose life had exposed her to much worse dangers; but the thing referred itself in Olive's mind to a danger which cast a perpetual shadow there--the possibility of the girl's embarking with some ingenuous youth on an expedition that would last much longer than an evening. She was haunted, in a word, with the fear that Verena would marry, a fate to which she was altogether unprepared to surrender her; and this made her look with suspicion upon all male acquaintance. Mr. Pardon was not the only one she knew; she had an example of the rest in the persons of two young Harvard law-students, who presented themselves after tea on this same occasion. As they sat there Olive wondered whether Verena had kept something from her, whether she were, after all (like so many other girls in Cambridge), a college-"belle," an object of frequentation to undergraduates. It was natural that at the seat of a big university there should be girls like that, with students dangling after them, but she didn't want Verena to be one of them. There were some that received the Seniors and Juniors; others that were accessible to Sophomores and Freshmen. Certain young ladies distinguished the professional students; there was a group, even, that was on the best terms with the young men who were studying for the Unitarian ministry in that queer little barrack at the end of Divinity Avenue. The advent of the new visitors made Mrs. Tarrant bustle immensely; but after she had caused every one to change places two or three times with every one else the company subsided into a circle which was occasionally broken by wandering movements on the part of her husband, who, in the absence of anything to say on any subject whatever, placed himself at different points in listening attitudes, shaking his head slowly up and down, and gazing at the carpet with an air of supernatural attention. Mrs. Tarrant asked the young men from the Law School about their studies, and whether they meant to follow them up seriously; said she thought some of the laws were very unjust, and she hoped they meant to try and improve them. She had suffered by the laws herself, at the time her father died; she hadn't got half the prop'ty she should have got if they had been different. She thought they should be for public matters, not for people's private affairs; the idea always seemed to her to keep you down if you _were_ down, and to hedge you in with difficulties. Sometimes she thought it was a wonder how she had developed in the face of so many; but it was a proof that freedom was everywhere, if you only knew how to look for it. The two young men were in the best humour; they greeted these sallies with a merriment of which, though it was courteous in form, Olive was by no means unable to define the spirit. They talked naturally more with Verena than with her mother; and while they were so engaged Mrs. Tarrant explained to her who they were, and how one of them, the smaller, who was not quite so spruce, had brought the other, his particular friend, to introduce him. This friend, Mr. Burrage, was from New York; he was very fashionable, he went out a great deal in Boston ("I have no doubt you know some of the places," said Mrs. Tarrant); his "fam'ly" was very rich. "Well, he knows plenty of that sort," Mrs. Tarrant went on, "but he felt unsatisfied; he didn't know any one like _us_. He told Mr. Gracie (that's the little one) that he felt as if he _must_; it seemed as if he couldn't hold out. So we told Mr. Gracie, of course, to bring him right round. Well, I hope he'll get something from us, I'm sure. He has been reported to be engaged to Miss Winkworth; I have no doubt you know who I mean. But Mr. Gracie says he hasn't looked at her more than twice. That's the way rumours fly round in that set, I presume. Well, I am glad we are not in it, wherever we are! Mr. Gracie is very different; he is intensely plain, but I believe he is very learned. You don't think him plain? Oh, you don't know? Well, I suppose you don't care, you must see so many. But I must say, when a young man looks like that, I call him painfully plain. I heard Doctor Tarrant make the remark the last time he was here. I don't say but what the plainest are the best. Well, I had no idea we were going to have a party when I asked you. I wonder whether Verena hadn't better hand the cake; we generally find the students enjoy it so much." This office was ultimately delegated to Selah, who, after a considerable absence, reappeared with a dish of dainties, which he presented successively to each member of the company. Olive saw Verena lavish her smiles on Mr. Gracie and Mr. Burrage; the liveliest relation had established itself, and the latter gentleman in especial abounded in appreciative laughter. It might have been fancied, just from looking at the group, that Verena's vocation was to smile and talk with young men who bent towards her; might have been fancied, that is, by a person less sure of the contrary than Olive, who had reason to know that a "gifted being" is sent into the world for a very different purpose, and that making the time pass pleasantly for conceited young men is the last duty you are bound to think of if you happen to have a talent for embodying a cause. Olive tried to be glad that her friend had the richness of nature that makes a woman gracious without latent purposes; she reflected that Verena was not in the smallest degree a flirt, that she was only enchantingly and universally genial, that nature had given her a beautiful smile, which fell impartially on every one, man and woman, alike. Olive may have been right, but it shall be confided to the reader that in reality she never knew, by any sense of her own, whether Verena were a flirt or not. This young lady could not possibly have told her (even if she herself knew, which she didn't), and Olive, destitute of the quality, had no means of taking the measure in another of the subtle feminine desire to please. She could see the difference between Mr. Gracie and Mr. Burrage; her being bored by Mrs. Tarrant's attempting to point it out is perhaps a proof of that. It was a curious incident of her zeal for the regeneration of her sex that manly things were, perhaps on the whole, what she understood best. Mr. Burrage was rather a handsome youth, with a laughing, clever face, a certain sumptuosity of apparel, an air of belonging to the "fast set"--a precocious, good-natured man of the world, curious of new sensations and containing, perhaps, the making of a _dilettante_. Being, doubtless, a little ambitious, and liking to flatter himself that he appreciated worth in lowly forms, he had associated himself with the ruder but at the same time acuter personality of a genuine son of New England, who had a harder head than his own and a humour in reality more cynical, and who, having earlier knowledge of the Tarrants, had undertaken to show him something indigenous and curious, possibly even fascinating. Mr. Gracie was short, with a big head; he wore eye-glasses, looked unkempt, almost rustic, and said good things with his ugly lips. Verena had replies for a good many of them, and a pretty colour came into her face as she talked. Olive could see that she produced herself quite as well as one of these gentlemen had foretold the other that she would. Miss Chancellor knew what had passed between them as well as if she had heard it; Mr. Gracie had promised that he would lead her on, that she should justify his description and prove the raciest of her class. They would laugh about her as they went away, lighting their cigars, and for many days afterwards their discourse would be enlivened with quotations from the "women's rights girl." It was amazing how many ways men had of being antipathetic; these two were very different from Basil Ransom, and different from each other, and yet the manner of each conveyed an insult to one's womanhood. The worst of the case was that Verena would be sure not to perceive this outrage--not to dislike them in consequence. There were so many things that she hadn't yet learned to dislike, in spite of her friend's earnest efforts to teach her. She had the idea vividly (that was the marvel) of the cruelty of man, of his immemorial injustice; but it remained abstract, platonic; she didn't detest him in consequence. What was the use of her having that sharp, inspired vision of the history of the sex (it was, as she had said herself, exactly like Joan of Arc's absolutely supernatural apprehension of the state of France) if she wasn't going to carry it out, if she was going to behave as the ordinary pusillanimous, conventional young lady? It was all very well for her to have said that first day that she would renounce: did she look, at such a moment as this, like a young woman who had renounced? Suppose this glittering, laughing Burrage youth, with his chains and rings and shining shoes, should fall in love with her and try to bribe her, with his great possessions, to practise renunciations of another kind--to give up her holy work and to go with him to New York, there to live as his wife, partly bullied, partly pampered, in the accustomed Burrage manner? There was as little comfort for Olive as there had been on the whole alarm in the recollection of that off-hand speech of Verena's about her preference for "free unions." This had been mere maiden flippancy; she had not known the meaning of what she said. Though she had grown up among people who took for granted all sorts of queer laxities, she had kept the consummate innocence of the American girl, that innocence which was the greatest of all, for it had survived the abolition of walls and locks; and of the various remarks that had dropped from Verena expressing this quality that startling observation certainly expressed it most. It implied, at any rate, that unions of some kind or other had her approval, and did not exclude the dangers that might arise from encounters with young men in search of sensations. XVI Mr. Pardon, as Olive observed, was a little out of this combination; but he was not a person to allow himself to droop. He came and seated himself by Miss Chancellor and broached a literary subject; he asked her if she were following any of the current "serials" in the magazines. On her telling him that she never followed anything of that sort, he undertook a defence of the serial system, which she presently reminded him that she had not attacked. He was not discouraged by this retort, but glided gracefully off to the question of Mount Desert; conversation on some subject or other being evidently a necessity of his nature. He talked very quickly and softly, with words, and even sentences, imperfectly formed; there was a certain amiable flatness in his tone, and he abounded in exclamations--"Goodness gracious!" and "Mercy on us!"--not much in use among the sex whose profanity is apt to be coarse. He had small, fair features, remarkably neat, and pretty eyes, and a moustache that he caressed, and an air of juvenility much at variance with his grizzled locks, and the free familiar reference in which he was apt to indulge to his career as a journalist. His friends knew that in spite of his delicacy and his prattle he was what they called a live man; his appearance was perfectly reconcilable with a large degree of literary enterprise. It should be explained that for the most part they attached to this idea the same meaning as Selah Tarrant--a state of intimacy with the newspapers, the cultivation of the great arts of publicity. For this ingenuous son of his age all distinction between the person and the artist had ceased to exist; the writer was personal, the person food for newsboys, and everything and every one were every one's business. All things, with him, referred themselves to print, and print meant simply infinite reporting, a promptitude of announcement, abusive when necessary, or even when not, about his fellow-citizens. He poured contumely on their private life, on their personal appearance, with the best conscience in the world. His faith, again, was the faith of Selah Tarrant--that being in the newspapers is a condition of bliss, and that it would be fastidious to question the terms of the privilege. He was an _enfant de la balle_, as the French say; he had begun his career, at the age of fourteen, by going the rounds of the hotels, to cull flowers from the big, greasy registers which lie on the marble counters; and he might flatter himself that he had contributed in his measure, and on behalf of a vigilant public opinion, the pride of a democratic State, to the great end of preventing the American citizen from attempting clandestine journeys. Since then he had ascended other steps of the same ladder; he was the most brilliant young interviewer on the Boston press. He was particularly successful in drawing out the ladies; he had condensed into shorthand many of the most celebrated women of his time--some of these daughters of fame were very voluminous--and he was supposed to have a remarkably insinuating way of waiting upon _prime donne_ and actresses the morning after their arrival, or sometimes the very evening, while their luggage was being brought up. He was only twenty-eight years old, and, with his hoary head, was a thoroughly modern young man; he had no idea of not taking advantage of all the modern conveniences. He regarded the mission of mankind upon earth as a perpetual evolution of telegrams; everything to him was very much the same, he had no sense of proportion or quality; but the newest thing was what came nearest exciting in his mind the sentiment of respect. He was an object of extreme admiration to Selah Tarrant, who believed that he had mastered all the secrets of success, and who, when Mrs. Tarrant remarked (as she had done more than once) that it looked as if Mr. Pardon was really coming after Verena, declared that if he was, he was one of the few young men he should want to see in that connexion, one of the few he should be willing to allow to handle her. It was Tarrant's conviction that if Matthias Pardon should seek Verena in marriage, it would be with a view to producing her in public; and the advantage for the girl of having a husband who was at the same time reporter, interviewer, manager, agent, who had the command of the principal "dailies," would write her up and work her, as it were, scientifically--the attraction of all this was too obvious to be insisted on. Matthias had a mean opinion of Tarrant, thought him quite second-rate, a votary of played-out causes. It was his impression that he himself was in love with Verena, but his passion was not a jealous one, and included a remarkable disposition to share the object of his affection with the American people. He talked some time to Olive about Mount Desert, told her that in his letters he had described the company at the different hotels. He remarked, however, that a correspondent suffered a good deal to-day from the competition of the "lady-writers"; the sort of article they produced was sometimes more acceptable to the papers. He supposed she would be glad to hear that--he knew she was so interested in woman's having a free field. They certainly made lovely correspondents; they picked up something bright before you could turn round; there wasn't much you could keep away from them; you had to be lively if you wanted to get there first. Of course, they were naturally more chatty, and that was the style of literature that seemed to take most to-day; only they didn't write much but what ladies would want to read. Of course, he knew there were millions of lady-readers, but he intimated that _he_ didn't address himself exclusively to the gynecæum; he tried to put in something that would interest all parties. If you read a lady's letter you knew pretty well in advance what you would find. Now, what he tried for was that you shouldn't have the least idea; he always tried to have something that would make you jump. Mr. Pardon was not conceited more, at least, than is proper when youth and success go hand in hand, and it was natural he should not know in what spirit Miss Chancellor listened to him. Being aware that she was a woman of culture his desire was simply to supply her with the pabulum that she would expect. She thought him very inferior; she had heard he was intensely bright, but there was probably some mistake; there couldn't be any danger for Verena from a mind that took merely a gossip's view of great tendencies. Besides, he wasn't half educated, and it was her belief, or at least her hope, that an educative process was now going on for Verena (under her own direction) which would enable her to make such a discovery for herself. Olive had a standing quarrel with the levity, the good-nature, of the judgements of the day; many of them seemed to her weak to imbecility, losing sight of all measures and standards, lavishing superlatives, delighted to be fooled. The age seemed to her relaxed and demoralised, and I believe she looked to the influx of the great feminine element to make it feel and speak more sharply. "Well, it's a privilege to hear you two talk together," Mrs. Tarrant said to her; "it's what I call real conversation. It isn't often we have anything so fresh; it makes me feel as if I wanted to join in. I scarcely know whom to listen to most; Verena seems to be having such a time with those gentlemen. First I catch one thing and then another; it seems as if I couldn't take it all in. Perhaps I ought to pay more attention to Mr. Burrage; I don't want him to think we are not so cordial as they are in New York." She decided to draw nearer to the trio on the other side of the room, for she had perceived (as she devoutly hoped Miss Chancellor had not) that Verena was endeavouring to persuade either of her companions to go and talk to her dear friend, and that these unscrupulous young men, after a glance over their shoulder, appeared to plead for remission, to intimate that this was not what they had come round for. Selah wandered out of the room again with his collection of cakes, and Mr. Pardon began to talk to Olive about Verena, to say that he felt as if he couldn't say all he did feel with regard to the interest she had shown in her. Olive could not imagine why he was called upon to say or to feel anything, and she gave him short answers; while the poor young man, unconscious of his doom, remarked that he hoped she wasn't going to exercise any influence that would prevent Miss Tarrant from taking the rank that belonged to her. He thought there was too much hanging back; he wanted to see her in a front seat; he wanted to see her name in the biggest kind of bills and her portrait in the windows of the stores. She had genius, there was no doubt of that, and she would take a new line altogether. She had charm, and there was a great demand for that nowadays in connexion with new ideas. There were so many that seemed to have fallen dead for want of it. She ought to be carried straight ahead; she ought to walk right up to the top. There was a want of bold action; he didn't see what they were waiting for. He didn't suppose they were waiting till she was fifty years old; there were old ones enough in the field. He knew that Miss Chancellor appreciated the advantage of her girlhood, because Miss Verena had told him so. Her father was dreadfully slack, and the winter was ebbing away. Mr. Pardon went so far as to say that if Dr. Tarrant didn't see his way to do something, he should feel as if he should want to take hold himself. He expressed a hope at the same time that Olive had not any views that would lead her to bring her influence to bear to make Miss Verena hold back; also that she wouldn't consider that he pressed in too much. He knew that was a charge that people brought against newspaper-men--that they were rather apt to cross the line. He only worried because he thought those who were no doubt nearer to Miss Verena than he could hope to be were not sufficiently alive. He knew that she had appeared in two or three parlours since that evening at Miss Birdseye's, and he had heard of the delightful occasion at Miss Chancellor's own house, where so many of the first families had been invited to meet her. (This was an allusion to a small luncheon-party that Olive had given, when Verena discoursed to a dozen matrons and spinsters, selected by her hostess with infinite consideration and many spiritual scruples; a report of the affair, presumably from the hand of the young Matthias, who naturally had not been present, appeared with extraordinary promptness in an evening-paper.) That was very well so far as it went, but he wanted something on another scale, something so big that people would have to go round if they wanted to get past. Then lowering his voice a little, he mentioned what it was: a lecture in the Music Hall, at fifty cents a ticket, without her father, right there on her own basis. He lowered his voice still more and revealed to Miss Chancellor his innermost thought, having first assured himself that Selah was still absent and that Mrs. Tarrant was inquiring of Mr. Burrage whether he visited much on the new land. The truth was, Miss Verena wanted to "shed" her father altogether; she didn't want him pawing round her that way before she began; it didn't add in the least to the attraction. Mr. Pardon expressed the conviction that Miss Chancellor agreed with him in this, and it required a great effort of mind on Olive's part, so small was her desire to act in concert with Mr. Pardon, to admit to herself that she did. She asked him, with a certain lofty coldness--he didn't make her shy, now, a bit--whether he took a great interest in the improvement of the position of women. The question appeared to strike the young man as abrupt and irrelevant, to come down on him from a height with which he was not accustomed to hold intercourse. He was used to quick operations, however, and he had only a moment of bright blankness before replying: "Oh, there is nothing I wouldn't do for the ladies; just give me a chance and you'll see." Olive was silent a moment. "What I mean is--is your sympathy a sympathy with our sex, or a particular interest in Miss Tarrant?" "Well, sympathy is just sympathy--that's all I can say. It takes in Miss Verena and it takes in all others--except the lady-correspondents," the young man added, with a jocosity which, as he perceived even at the moment, was lost on Verena's friend. He was not more successful when he went on: "It takes in even you, Miss Chancellor!" Olive rose to her feet, hesitating; she wanted to go away, and yet she couldn't bear to leave Verena to be exploited, as she felt that she would be after her departure, that indeed she had already been, by those offensive young men. She had a strange sense, too, that her friend had neglected her for the last half-hour, had not been occupied with her, had placed a barrier between them--a barrier of broad male backs, of laughter that verged upon coarseness, of glancing smiles directed across the room, directed to Olive, which seemed rather to disconnect her with what was going forward on that side than to invite her to take part in it. If Verena recognised that Miss Chancellor was not in report, as her father said, when jocose young men ruled the scene, the discovery implied no great penetration; but the poor girl might have reflected further that to see it taken for granted that she was unadapted for such company could scarcely be more agreeable to Olive than to be dragged into it. This young lady's worst apprehensions were now justified by Mrs. Tarrant's crying to her that she must not go, as Mr. Burrage and Mr. Gracie were trying to persuade Verena to give them a little specimen of inspirational speaking, and she was sure her daughter would comply in a moment if Miss Chancellor would just tell her to compose herself. They had got to own up to it, Miss Chancellor could do more with her than any one else; but Mr. Gracie and Mr. Burrage had excited her so that she was afraid it would be rather an unsuccessful effort. The whole group had got up, and Verena came to Olive with her hands outstretched and no signs of a bad conscience in her bright face. "I know you like me to speak so much--I'll try to say something if you want me to. But I'm afraid there are not enough people; I can't do much with a small audience." "I wish we had brought some of our friends--they would have been delighted to come if we had given them a chance," said Mr. Burrage. "There is an immense desire throughout the University to hear you, and there is no such sympathetic audience as an audience of Harvard men. Gracie and I are only two, but Gracie is a host in himself, and I am sure he will say as much of me." The young man spoke these words freely and lightly, smiling at Verena, and even a little at Olive, with the air of one to whom a mastery of clever "chaff" was commonly attributed. "Mr. Burrage listens even better than he talks," his companion declared. "We have the habit of attention at lectures, you know. To be lectured by you would be an advantage indeed. We are sunk in ignorance and prejudice." "Ah, my prejudices," Burrage went on; "if you could see them--I assure you they are something monstrous!" "Give them a regular ducking and make them gasp," Matthias Pardon cried. "If you want an opportunity to act on Harvard College, now's your chance. These gentlemen will carry the news; it will be the narrow end of the wedge." "I can't tell what you like," Verena said, still looking into Olive's eyes. "I'm sure Miss Chancellor likes everything here," Mrs. Tarrant remarked, with a noble confidence. Selah had reappeared by this time; his lofty, contemplative person was framed by the doorway. "Want to try a little inspiration?" he inquired, looking round on the circle with an encouraging inflexion. "I'll do it alone, if you prefer," Verena said soothingly to her friend. "It might be a good chance to try without father." "You don't mean to say you ain't going to be supported?" Mrs. Tarrant exclaimed, with dismay. "Ah, I beseech you, give us the whole programme--don't omit any leading feature!" Mr. Burrage was heard to plead. "My only interest is to draw her out," said Selah, defending his integrity. "I will drop right out if I don't seem to vitalise. I have no desire to draw attention to my own poor gifts." This declaration appeared to be addressed to Miss Chancellor. "Well, there will be more inspiration if you don't touch her," Matthias Pardon said to him. "It will seem to come right down from--well, wherever it does come from." "Yes, we don't pretend to say that," Mrs. Tarrant murmured. This little discussion had brought the blood to Olive's face; she felt that every one present was looking at her--Verena most of all--and that here was a chance to take a more complete possession of the girl. Such chances were agitating; moreover, she didn't like, on any occasion, to be so prominent. But everything that had been said was benighted and vulgar; the place seemed thick with the very atmosphere out of which she wished to lift Verena. They were treating her as a show, as a social resource, and the two young men from the College were laughing at her shamelessly. She was not meant for that, and Olive would save her. Verena was so simple, she couldn't see herself; she was the only pure spirit in the odious group. "I want you to address audiences that are worth addressing--to convince people who are serious and sincere." Olive herself, as she spoke, heard the great shake in her voice. "Your mission is not to exhibit yourself as a pastime for individuals, but to touch the heart of communities, of nations." "Dear madam, I'm sure Miss Tarrant will touch my heart!" Mr. Burrage objected, gallantly. "Well, I don't know but she judges you young men fairly," said Mrs. Tarrant, with a sigh. Verena, diverted a moment from her communion with her friend, considered Mr. Burrage with a smile. "I don't believe you have got any heart, and I shouldn't care much if you had!" "You have no idea how much the way you say that increases my desire to hear you speak." "Do as you please, my dear," said Olive, almost inaudibly. "My carriage must be there--I must leave you, in any case." "I can see you don't want it," said Verena, wondering. "You would stay if you liked it, wouldn't you?" "I don't know what I should do. Come out with me!" Olive spoke almost with fierceness. "Well, you'll send them away no better than they came," said Matthias Pardon. "I guess you had better come round some other night," Selah suggested pacifically, but with a significance which fell upon Olive's ear. Mr. Gracie seemed inclined to make the sturdiest protest. "Look here, Miss Tarrant; do you want to save Harvard College, or do you not?" he demanded, with a humorous frown. "I didn't know _you_ were Harvard College!" Verena returned as humorously. "I am afraid you are rather disappointed in your evening if you expected to obtain some insight into our ideas," said Mrs. Tarrant, with an air of impotent sympathy, to Mr. Gracie. "Well, good-night, Miss Chancellor," she went on; "I hope you've got a warm wrap. I suppose you'll think we go a good deal by what you say in this house. Well, most people don't object to that. There's a little hole right there in the porch; it seems as if Doctor Tarrant couldn't remember to go for the man to fix it. I am afraid you'll think we're too much taken up with all these new hopes. Well, we _have_ enjoyed seeing you in our home; it quite raises my appetite for social intercourse. Did you come out on wheels? I can't stand a sleigh myself; it makes me sick." This was her hostess's response to Miss Chancellor's very summary farewell, uttered as the three ladies proceeded together to the door of the house. Olive had got herself out of the little parlour with a sort of blind, defiant dash; she had taken no perceptible leave of the rest of the company. When she was calm she had very good manners, but when she was agitated she was guilty of lapses, every one of which came back to her, magnified, in the watches of the night. Sometimes they excited remorse, and sometimes triumph; in the latter case she felt that she could not have been so justly vindictive in cold blood. Tarrant wished to guide her down the steps, out of the little yard, to her carriage; he reminded her that they had had ashes sprinkled on the planks on purpose. But she begged him to let her alone, she almost pushed him back; she drew Verena out into the dark freshness, closing the door of the house behind her. There was a splendid sky, all blue-black and silver--a sparkling wintry vault, where the stars were like a myriad points of ice. The air was silent and sharp, and the vague snow looked cruel. Olive knew now very definitely what the promise was that she wanted Verena to make; but it was too cold, she could keep her there bareheaded but an instant. Mrs. Tarrant, meanwhile, in the parlour, remarked that it seemed as if she couldn't trust Verena with her own parents; and Selah intimated that, with a proper invitation, his daughter would be very happy to address Harvard College at large. Mr. Burrage and Mr. Gracie said they would invite her on the spot, in the name of the University; and Matthias Pardon reflected (and asserted) with glee that this would be the newest thing yet. But he added that they would have a high time with Miss Chancellor first, and this was evidently the conviction of the company. "I can see you are angry at something," Verena said to Olive, as the two stood there in the starlight. "I hope it isn't me. What have I done?" "I am not angry--I am anxious. I am so afraid I shall lose you. Verena, don't fail me--don't fail me!" Olive spoke low, with a kind of passion. "Fail you? How can I fail?" "You can't, of course you can't. Your star is above you. But don't listen to _them_." "To whom do you mean, Olive? To my parents?" "Oh no, not your parents," Miss Chancellor replied, with some sharpness. She paused a moment, and then she said: "I don't care for your parents. I have told you that before; but now that I have seen them--as they wished, as you wished, and I didn't--I don't care for them; I must repeat it, Verena. I should be dishonest if I let you think I did." "Why, Olive Chancellor!" Verena murmured, as if she were trying, in spite of the sadness produced by this declaration, to do justice to her friend's impartiality. "Yes, I am hard; perhaps I am cruel; but we must be hard if we wish to triumph. Don't listen to young men when they try to mock and muddle you. They don't care for you; they don't care for _us_. They care only for their pleasure, for what they believe to be the right of the stronger. The stronger? I am not so sure!" "Some of them care so much--are supposed to care too much--for us," Verena said, with a smile that looked dim in the darkness. "Yes, if we will give up everything. I have asked you before--are you prepared to give up?" "Do you mean, to give _you_ up?" "No, all our wretched sisters--all our hopes and purposes--all that we think Sacred and worth living for!" "Oh, they don't want that, Olive." Verena's smile became more distinct, and she added: "They don't want so much as that!" "Well, then, go in and speak for them--and sing for them--and dance for them!" "Olive, you are cruel!" "Yes, I am. But promise me one thing, and I shall be--oh, so tender!" "What a strange place for promises," said Verena, with a shiver, looking about her into the night. "Yes, I am dreadful; I know it. But promise." And Olive drew the girl nearer to her, flinging over her with one hand the fold of a cloak that hung ample upon her own meagre person, and holding her there with the other, while she looked at her, suppliant but half hesitating. "Promise!" she repeated. "Is it something terrible?" "Never to listen to one of them, never to be bribed----" At this moment the house-door was opened again, and the light of the hall projected itself across the little piazza. Matthias Pardon stood in the aperture, and Tarrant and his wife, with the two other visitors, appeared to have come forward as well, to see what detained Verena. "You seem to have started a kind of lecture out here," Mr. Pardon said. "You ladies had better look out, or you'll freeze together!" Verena was reminded by her mother that she would catch her death, but she had already heard sharply, low as they were spoken, five last words from Olive, who now abruptly released her and passed swiftly over the path from the porch to her waiting carriage. Tarrant creaked along, in pursuit, to assist Miss Chancellor; the others drew Verena into the house. "Promise me not to marry!"--that was what echoed in her startled mind, and repeated itself there when Mr. Burrage returned to the charge, asking her if she wouldn't at least appoint some evening when they might listen to her. She knew that Olive's injunction ought not to have surprised her; she had already felt it in the air; she would have said at any time, if she had been asked, that she didn't suppose Miss Chancellor would want her to marry. But the idea, uttered as her friend had uttered it, had a new solemnity, and the effect of that quick, violent colloquy was to make her nervous and impatient, as if she had had a sudden glimpse of futurity. That was rather awful, even if it represented the fate one would like. When the two young men from the College pressed their petition, she asked, with a laugh that surprised them, whether they wished to "mock and muddle" her. They went away, assenting to Mrs. Tarrant's last remark: "I am afraid you'll feel that you don't quite understand us yet." Matthias Pardon remained; her father and mother, expressing their perfect confidence that he would excuse them, went to bed and left him sitting there. He stayed a good while longer, nearly an hour, and said things that made Verena think that _he_, perhaps, would like to marry her. But while she listened to him, more abstractedly than her custom was, she remarked to herself that there could be no difficulty in promising Olive so far as he was concerned. He was very pleasant, and he knew an immense deal about everything, or, rather, about every one, and he would take her right into the midst of life. But she didn't wish to marry him, all the same, and after he had gone she reflected that, once she came to think of it, she didn't want to marry any one. So it would be easy, after all, to make Olive that promise, and it would give her so much pleasure! XVII The next time Verena saw Olive she said to her that she was ready to make the promise she had asked the other night; but, to her great surprise, this young woman answered her by a question intended to check such rashness. Miss Chancellor raised a warning finger; she had an air of dissuasion almost as solemn as her former pressure; her passionate impatience appeared to have given way to other considerations, to be replaced by the resignation that comes with deeper reflexion. It was tinged in this case, indeed, by such bitterness as might be permitted to a young lady who cultivated the brightness of a great faith. "Don't you want any promise at present?" Verena asked. "Why, Olive, how you change!" "My dear child, you are so young--so strangely young. I am a thousand years old; I have lived through generations--through centuries. I know what I know by experience; you know it by imagination. That is consistent with your being the fresh, bright creature that you are. I am constantly forgetting the difference between us--that you are a mere child as yet, though a child destined for great things. I forgot it the other night, but I have remembered it since. You must pass through a certain phase, and it would be very wrong in me to pretend to suppress it. That is all clear to me now; I see it was my jealousy that spoke--my restless, hungry jealousy. I have far too much of that; I oughtn't to give any one the right to say that it's a woman's quality. I don't want your signature; I only want your confidence--only what springs from that. I hope with all my soul that you won't marry; but if you don't it must not be because you have promised me. You know what I think--that there is something noble done when one makes a sacrifice for a great good. Priests--when they were real priests--never married, and what you and I dream of doing demands of us a kind of priesthood. It seems to me very poor, when friendship and faith and charity and the most interesting occupation in the world--when such a combination as this doesn't seem, by itself, enough to live for. No man that I have ever seen cares a straw in his heart for what we are trying to accomplish. They hate it; they scorn it; they will try to stamp it out whenever they can. Oh yes, I know there are men who pretend to care for it; but they are not really men, and I wouldn't be sure even of them! Any man that one would look at--with him, as a matter of course, it is war upon us to the knife. I don't mean to say there are not some male beings who are willing to patronise us a little; to pat us on the back and recommend a few moderate concessions; to say that there _are_ two or three little points in which society has not been quite just to us. But any man who pretends to accept our programme _in toto_, as you and I understand it, of his own free will, before he is forced to--such a person simply schemes to betray us. There are gentlemen in plenty who would be glad to stop your mouth by kissing you! If you become dangerous some day to their selfishness, to their vested interests, to their immorality--as I pray heaven every day, my dear friend, that you may!--it will be a grand thing for one of them if he can persuade you that he loves you. Then you will see what he will do with you, and how far his love will take him! It would be a sad day for you and for me and for all of us if you were to believe something of that kind. You see I am very calm now; I have thought it all out." Verena had listened with earnest eyes. "Why, Olive, you are quite a speaker yourself!" she exclaimed. "You would far surpass me if you would let yourself go." Miss Chancellor shook her head with a melancholy that was not devoid of sweetness. "I can speak to _you_; but that is no proof. The very stones of the street--all the dumb things of nature--might find a voice to talk to you. I have no facility; I am awkward and embarrassed and dry." When this young lady, after a struggle with the winds and waves of emotion, emerged into the quiet stream of a certain high reasonableness, she presented her most graceful aspect; she had a tone of softness and sympathy, a gentle dignity, a serenity of wisdom, which sealed the appreciation of those who knew her well enough to like her, and which always impressed Verena as something almost august. Such moods, however, were not often revealed to the public at large; they belonged to Miss Chancellor's very private life. One of them had possession of her at present, and she went on to explain the inconsequence which had puzzled her friend with the same quiet clearness, the detachment from error, of a woman whose self-scrutiny has been as sharp as her deflexion. "Don't think me capricious if I say I would rather trust you without a pledge. I owe you, I owe every one, an apology for my rudeness and fierceness at your mother's. It came over me--just seeing those young men--how exposed you are; and the idea made me (for the moment) frantic. I see your danger still, but I see other things too, and I have recovered my balance. You must be safe, Verena--you must be saved; but your safety must not come from your having tied your hands. It must come from the growth of your perception; from your seeing things, of yourself, sincerely and with conviction, in the light in which I see them; from your feeling that for your work your freedom is essential, and that there is no freedom for you and me save in religiously _not_ doing what you will often be asked to do--and I never!" Miss Chancellor brought out these last words with a proud jerk which was not without its pathos. "Don't promise, don't promise!" she went on. "I would far rather you didn't. But don't fail me--don't fail me, or I shall die!" Her manner of repairing her inconsistency was altogether feminine: she wished to extract a certainty at the same time that she wished to deprecate a pledge, and she would have been delighted to put Verena into the enjoyment of that freedom which was so important for her by preventing her exercising it in a particular direction. The girl was now completely under her influence; she had latent curiosities and distractions--left to herself, she was not always thinking of the unhappiness of women; but the touch of Olive's tone worked a spell, and she found something to which at least a portion of her nature turned with eagerness in her companion's wider knowledge, her elevation of view. Miss Chancellor was historic and philosophic; or, at any rate, she appeared so to Verena, who felt that through such an association one might at last intellectually command all life. And there was a simpler impulse; Verena wished to please her if only because she had such a dread of displeasing her. Olive's displeasures, disappointments, disapprovals were tragic, truly memorable; she grew white under them, not shedding many tears, as a general thing, like inferior women (she cried when she was angry, not when she was hurt), but limping and panting, morally, as if she had received a wound that she would carry for life. On the other hand, her commendations, her satisfactions were as soft as a west wind; and she had this sign, the rarest of all, of generosity, that she liked obligations of gratitude when they were not laid upon her by men. Then, indeed, she scarcely recognised them. She considered men in general as so much in the debt of the opposite sex that any individual woman had an unlimited credit with them; she could not possibly overdraw the general feminine account. The unexpected temperance of her speech on this subject of Verena's accessibility to matrimonial error seemed to the girl to have an antique beauty, a wisdom purged of worldly elements; it reminded her of qualities that she believed to have been proper to Electra or Antigone. This made her wish the more to do something that would gratify Olive; and in spite of her friend's dissuasion she declared that she should like to promise. "I will promise, at any rate, not to marry any of those gentlemen that were at the house," she said. "Those seemed to be the ones you were principally afraid of." "You will promise not to marry any one you don't like," said Olive. "That would be a great comfort!" "But I do like Mr. Burrage and Mr. Gracie." "And Mr. Matthias Pardon? What a name!" "Well, he knows how to make himself agreeable. He can tell you everything you want to know." "You mean everything you don't! Well, if you like every one, I haven't the least objection. It would only be preferences that I should find alarming. I am not the least afraid of your marrying a repulsive man; your danger would come from an attractive one." "I'm glad to hear you admit that some _are_ attractive!" Verena exclaimed, with the light laugh which her reverence for Miss Chancellor had not yet quenched. "It sometimes seems as if there weren't any you could like!" "I can imagine a man I should like very much," Olive replied, after a moment. "But I don't like those I see. They seem to me poor creatures." And, indeed, her uppermost feeling in regard to them was a kind of cold scorn; she thought most of them palterers and bullies. The end of the colloquy was that Verena, having assented, with her usual docility, to her companion's optimistic contention that it was a "phase," this taste for evening-calls from collegians and newspaper-men, and would consequently pass away with the growth of her mind, remarked that the injustice of men might be an accident or might be a part of their nature, but at any rate she should have to change a good deal before she should want to marry. About the middle of December Miss Chancellor received a visit from Matthias Pardon, who had come to ask her what she meant to do about Verena. She had never invited him to call upon her, and the appearance of a gentleman whose desire to see her was so irrepressible as to dispense with such a preliminary was not in her career an accident frequent enough to have taught her equanimity. She thought Mr. Pardon's visit a liberty; but, if she expected to convey this idea to him by withholding any suggestion that he should sit down, she was greatly mistaken, inasmuch as he cut the ground from under her feet by himself offering her a chair. His manner represented hospitality enough for both of them, and she was obliged to listen, on the edge of her sofa (she could at least seat herself where she liked), to his extraordinary inquiry. Of course she was not obliged to answer it, and indeed she scarcely understood it. He explained that it was prompted by the intense interest he felt in Miss Verena; but that scarcely made it more comprehensible, such a sentiment (on his part) being such a curious mixture. He had a sort of enamel of good humour which showed that his indelicacy was his profession; and he asked for revelations of the _vie intime_ of his victims with the bland confidence of a fashionable physician inquiring about symptoms. He wanted to know what Miss Chancellor meant to do, because if she didn't mean to do anything, he had an idea--which he wouldn't conceal from her--of going into the enterprise himself. "You see, what I should like to know is this: do you consider that she belongs to you, or that she belongs to the people? If she belongs to you, why don't you bring her out?" He had no purpose and no consciousness of being impertinent; he only wished to talk over the matter sociably with Miss Chancellor. He knew, of course, that there was a presumption she would not be sociable, but no presumption had yet deterred him from presenting a surface which he believed to be polished till it shone; there was always a larger one in favour of his power to penetrate and of the majesty of the "great dailies." Indeed, he took so many things for granted that Olive remained dumb while she regarded them; and he availed himself of what he considered as a fortunate opening to be really very frank. He reminded her that he had known Miss Verena a good deal longer than she; he had travelled out to Cambridge the other winter (when he could get an off-night), with the thermometer at ten below zero. He had always thought her attractive, but it wasn't till this season that his eyes had been fully opened. Her talent had matured, and now he had no hesitation in calling her brilliant. Miss Chancellor could imagine whether, as an old friend, he could watch such a beautiful unfolding with indifference. She would fascinate the people, just as she had fascinated her (Miss Chancellor), and, he might be permitted to add, himself. The fact was, she was a great card, and some one ought to play it. There never had been a more attractive female speaker before the American public; she would walk right past Mrs. Farrinder, and Mrs. Farrinder knew it. There was room for both, no doubt, they had such a different style; anyhow, what he wanted to show was that there was room for Miss Verena. She didn't want any more tuning-up, she wanted to break right out. Moreover, he felt that any gentleman who should lead her to success would win her esteem; he might even attract her more powerfully--who could tell? If Miss Chancellor wanted to attach her permanently, she ought to push her right forward. He gathered from what Miss Verena had told him that she wanted to make her study up the subject a while longer--follow some kind of course. Well, now, he could assure her that there was no preparation so good as just seeing a couple of thousand people down there before you who have paid their money to have you tell them something. Miss Verena was a natural genius, and he hoped very much she wasn't going to take the nature out of her. She could study up as she went along; she had got the great thing that you couldn't learn, a kind of divine afflatus, as the ancients used to say, and she had better just begin on that. He wouldn't deny what was the matter with _him_; he was quite under the spell, and his admiration made him want to see her where she belonged. He shouldn't care so much how she got there, but it would certainly add to his pleasure if he could show her up to her place. Therefore, would Miss Chancellor just tell him this: How long did she expect to hold her back; how long did she expect a humble admirer to wait? Of course he hadn't come there to cross-question her; there was one thing he trusted he always kept clear of; when he was indiscreet he wanted to know it. He had come with a proposal of his own, and he hoped it would seem a sufficient warrant for his visit. Would Miss Chancellor be willing to divide a--the--well, he might call it the responsibilities? Couldn't they run Miss Verena together? In this case every one would be satisfied. She could travel round with her as her companion, and he would see that the American people walked up. If Miss Chancellor would just let her go a little, he would look after the rest. He wanted no odds; he only wanted her for about an hour and a half three or four evenings a week. Olive had time, in the course of this appeal, to make her faculties converge, to ask herself what she could say to this prodigious young man that would make him feel as how base a thing she held his proposal that they should constitute themselves into a company for drawing profit from Verena. Unfortunately, the most sarcastic inquiry that could occur to her as a response was also the most obvious one, so that he hesitated but a moment with his rejoinder after she had asked him how many thousands of dollars he expected to make. "For Miss Verena? It depends upon the time. She'd run for ten years, at least. I can't figure it up till all the States have been heard from," he said, smiling. "I don't mean for Miss Tarrant, I mean for you," Olive returned, with the impression that she was looking him straight in the eye. "Oh, as many as you'll leave me!" Matthias Pardon answered, with a laugh that contained all, and more than all, the jocularity of the American press. "To speak seriously," he added, "I don't want to make money out of it." "What do you want to make then?" "Well, I want to make history! I want to help the ladies." "The ladies?" Olive murmured. "What do you know about ladies?" she was on the point of adding, when his promptness checked her. "All over the world. I want to work for their emancipation. I regard it as the great modern question." Miss Chancellor got up now; this was rather too strong. Whether, eventually, she was successful in what she attempted, the reader of her history will judge; but at this moment she had not that promise of success which resides in a willingness to make use of every aid that offers. Such is the penalty of being of a fastidious, exclusive, uncompromising nature; of seeing things not simply and sharply, but in perverse relations, in intertwisted strands. It seemed to our young lady that nothing could be less attractive than to owe her emancipation to such a one as Matthias Pardon; and it is curious that those qualities which he had in common with Verena, and which in her seemed to Olive romantic and touching--her having sprung from the "people," had an acquaintance with poverty, a hand-to-mouth development, and an experience of the seamy side of life--availed in no degree to conciliate Miss Chancellor. I suppose it was because he was a man. She told him that she was much obliged to him for his offer, but that he evidently didn't understand Verena and herself. No, not even Miss Tarrant, in spite of his long acquaintance with her. They had no desire to be notorious; they only wanted to be useful. They had no wish to make money; there would always be plenty of money for Miss Tarrant. Certainly, she should come before the public, and the world would acclaim her and hang upon her words; but crude, precipitate action was what both of them least desired. The change in the dreadful position of women was not a question for to-day simply, or for to-morrow, but for many years to come; and there would be a great deal to think of, to map out. One thing they were determined upon--that men shouldn't taunt them with being superficial. When Verena should appear it would be armed at all points, like Joan of Arc (this analogy had lodged itself in Olive's imagination); she should have facts and figures; she should meet men on their own ground. "What we mean to do, we mean to do well," Miss Chancellor said to her visitor, with considerable sternness; leaving him to make such an application to himself as his fancy might suggest. This announcement had little comfort for him; he felt baffled and disheartened--indeed, quite sick. Was it not sickening to hear her talk of this dreary process of preparation?--as if any one cared about that, and would know whether Verena were prepared or not! Had Miss Chancellor no faith in her girlhood? didn't she know what a card that would be? This was the last inquiry Olive allowed him the opportunity of making. She remarked to him that they might talk for ever without coming to an agreement--their points of view were so far apart. Besides, it was a woman's question; what they wanted was for women, and it should be by women. It had happened to the young Matthias more than once to be shown the way to the door, but the path of retreat had never yet seemed to him so unpleasant. He was naturally amiable, but it had not hitherto befallen him to be made to feel that he was not--and could not be--a factor in contemporary history: here was a rapacious woman who proposed to keep that favourable setting for herself. He let her know that she was right-down selfish, and that if she chose to sacrifice a beautiful nature to her antediluvian theories and love of power, a vigilant daily press--whose business it was to expose wrong-doing--would demand an account from her. She replied that, if the newspapers chose to insult her, that was their own affair; one outrage the more to the sex in her person was of little account. And after he had left her she seemed to see the glow of dawning success; the battle had begun, and something of the ecstasy of the martyr. XVIII Verena told her, a week after this, that Mr. Pardon wanted so much she should say she would marry him; and she added, with evident pleasure at being able to give her so agreeable a piece of news, that she had declined to say anything of the sort. She thought that now, at least, Olive must believe in her; for the proposal was more attractive than Miss Chancellor seemed able to understand. "He does place things in a very seductive light," Verena said; "he says that if I become his wife I shall be carried straight along by a force of excitement of which at present I have no idea. I shall wake up famous, if I marry him; I have only got to give out my feelings, and he will take care of the rest. He says every hour of my youth is precious to me, and that we should have a lovely time travelling round the country. I think you ought to allow that all that is rather dazzling--for I am not naturally concentrated, like you!" "He promises you success. What do you call success?" Olive inquired, looking at her friend with a kind of salutary coldness--a suspension of sympathy--with which Verena was now familiar (though she liked it no better than at first), and which made approbation more gracious when approbation came. Verena reflected a moment, and then answered, smiling, but with confidence: "Producing a pressure that shall be irresistible. Causing certain laws to be repealed by Congress and by the State legislatures, and others to be enacted." She repeated the words as if they had been part of a catechism committed to memory, while Olive saw that this mechanical tone was in the nature of a joke that she could not deny herself; they had had that definition so often before, and Miss Chancellor had had occasion so often to remind her what success _really_ was. Of course it was easy to prove to her now that Mr. Pardon's glittering bait was a very different thing; was a mere trap and lure, a bribe to vanity and impatience, a device for making her give herself away--let alone fill his pockets while she did so. Olive was conscious enough of the girl's want of continuity; she had seen before how she could be passionately serious at times, and then perversely, even if innocently, trivial--as just now, when she seemed to wish to convert one of their most sacred formulas into a pleasantry. She had already quite recognised, however, that it was not of importance that Verena should be just like herself; she was all of one piece, and Verena was of many pieces, which had, where they fitted together, little capricious chinks, through which mocking inner lights seemed sometimes to gleam. It was a part of Verena's being unlike her that she should feel Mr. Pardon's promise of eternal excitement to be a brilliant thing, should indeed consider Mr. Pardon with any tolerance at all. But Olive tried afresh to allow for such aberrations, as a phase of youth and suburban culture; the more so that, even when she tried most, Verena reproached her--so far as Verena's incurable softness could reproach--with not allowing enough. Olive didn't appear to understand that, while Matthias Pardon drew that picture and tried to hold her hand (this image was unfortunate), she had given one long, fixed, wistful look, through the door he opened, at the bright tumult of the world, and then had turned away, solely for her friend's sake, to an austerer probation and a purer effort; solely for her friend's, that is, and that of the whole enslaved sisterhood. The fact remained, at any rate, that Verena had made a sacrifice; and this thought, after a while, gave Olive a greater sense of security. It seemed almost to seal the future; for Olive knew that the young interviewer would not easily be shaken off, and yet she was sure that Verena would never yield to him. It was true that at present Mr. Burrage came a great deal to the little house at Cambridge; Verena told her about that, told her so much that it was almost as good as if she had told her all. He came without Mr. Gracie now; he could find his way alone, and he seemed to wish that there should be no one else. He had made himself so pleasant to her mother that she almost always went out of the room; that was the highest proof Mrs. Tarrant could give of her appreciation of a "gentleman-caller." They knew everything about him by this time; that his father was dead, his mother very fashionable and prominent, and he himself in possession of a handsome patrimony. They thought ever so much of him in New York. He collected beautiful things, pictures and antiques and objects that he sent for to Europe on purpose, many of which were arranged in his rooms at Cambridge. He had intaglios and Spanish altar-cloths and drawings by the old masters. He was different from most others; he seemed to want so much to enjoy life, and to think you easily could if you would only let yourself go. Of course--judging by what _he_ had--he appeared to think you required a great many things to keep you up. And then Verena told Olive--she could see it was after a little delay--that he wanted her to come round to his place and see his treasures. He wanted to show them to her, he was so sure she would admire them. Verena was sure also, but she wouldn't go alone, and she wanted Olive to go with her. They would have tea, and there would be other ladies, and Olive would tell her what she thought of a life that was so crowded with beauty. Miss Chancellor made her reflexions on all this, and the first of them was that it was happy for her that she had determined for the present to accept these accidents, for otherwise might she not now have had a deeper alarm? She wished to heaven that conceited young men with time on their hands would leave Verena alone; but evidently they wouldn't, and her best safety was in seeing as many as should turn up. If the type should become frequent, she would very soon judge it. If Olive had not been so grim, she would have had a smile to spare for the frankness with which the girl herself adopted this theory. She was eager to explain that Mr. Burrage didn't seem at all to want what poor Mr. Pardon had wanted; he made her talk about her views far more than that gentleman, but gave no sign of offering himself either as a husband or as a lecture-agent. The furthest he had gone as yet was to tell her that he liked her for the same reason that he liked old enamels and old embroideries; and when she said that she didn't see how she resembled such things, he had replied that it was because she was so peculiar and so delicate. She might be peculiar, but she had protested against the idea that she was delicate; it was the last thing that she wanted to be thought; and Olive could see from this how far she was from falling in with everything he said. When Miss Chancellor asked if she respected Mr. Burrage (and how solemn Olive could make that word she by this time knew), she answered, with her sweet, vain laugh, but apparently with perfect good faith, that it didn't matter whether she did or not, for what was the whole thing but simply a phase--the very one they had talked about? The sooner she got through it the better, was it not?--and she seemed to think that her transit would be materially quickened by a visit to Mr. Burrage's rooms. As I say, Verena was pleased to regard the phase as quite inevitable, and she had said more than once to Olive that if their struggle was to be with men, the more they knew about them the better. Miss Chancellor asked her why her mother should not go with her to see the curiosities, since she mentioned that their possessor had not neglected to invite Mrs. Tarrant; and Verena said that this, of course, would be very simple--only her mother wouldn't be able to tell her so well as Olive whether she ought to respect Mr. Burrage. This decision as to whether Mr. Burrage should be respected assumed in the life of these two remarkable young women, pitched in so high a moral key, the proportions of a momentous event. Olive shrank at first from facing it--not, indeed, the decision--for we know that her own mind had long since been made up in regard to the quantity of esteem due to almost any member of the other sex--but the incident itself, which, if Mr. Burrage should exasperate her further, might expose her to the danger of appearing to Verena to be unfair to him. It was her belief that he was playing a deeper game than the young Matthias, and she was very willing to watch him; but she thought it prudent not to attempt to cut short the phase (she adopted that classification) prematurely--an imputation she should incur if, without more delay, she were to "shut down," as Verena said, on the young connoisseur. It was settled, therefore, that Mrs. Tarrant should, with her daughter, accept Mr. Burrage's invitation; and in a few days these ladies paid a visit to his apartments. Verena subsequently, of course, had much to say about it, but she dilated even more upon her mother's impressions than upon her own. Mrs. Tarrant had carried away a supply which would last her all winter; there had been some New York ladies present who were "on" at that moment, and with whom her intercourse was rich in emotions. She had told them all that she should be happy to see them in her home, but they had not yet picked their way along the little planks of the front yard. Mr. Burrage, at all events, had been quite lovely, and had talked about his collections, which were wonderful, in the most interesting manner. Verena inclined to think he was to be respected. He admitted that he was not really studying law at all; he had only come to Cambridge for the form; but she didn't see why it wasn't enough when you made yourself as pleasant as that. She went so far as to ask Olive whether taste and art were not something, and her friend could see that she was certainly very much involved in the phase. Miss Chancellor, of course, had her answer ready. Taste and art were good when they enlarged the mind, not when they narrowed it. Verena assented to this, and said it remained to be seen what effect they had had upon Mr. Burrage--a remark which led Olive to fear that at such a rate much would remain, especially when Verena told her, later, that another visit to the young man's rooms was projected, and that this time she must come, he having expressed the greatest desire for the honour, and her own wish being greater still that they should look at some of his beautiful things together. A day or two after this, Mr. Henry Burrage left a card at Miss Chancellor's door, with a note in which he expressed the hope that she would take tea with him on a certain day on which he expected the company of his mother. Olive responded to this invitation, in conjunction with Verena; but in doing so she was in the position, singular for her, of not quite understanding what she was about. It seemed to her strange that Verena should urge her to take such a step when she was free to go without her, and it proved two things: first, that she was much interested in Mr. Henry Burrage, and second, that her nature was extraordinarily beautiful. Could anything, in effect, be less underhand than such an indifference to what she supposed to be the best opportunities for carrying on a flirtation? Verena wanted to know the truth, and it was clear that by this time she believed Olive Chancellor to have it, for the most part, in her keeping. Her insistence, therefore, proved, above all, that she cared more for her friend's opinion of Henry Burrage than for her own--a reminder, certainly, of the responsibility that Olive had incurred in undertaking to form this generous young mind, and of the exalted place that she now occupied in it. Such revelations ought to have been satisfactory; if they failed to be completely so, it was only on account of the elder girl's regret that the subject as to which her judgement was wanted should be a young man destitute of the worst vices. Henry Burrage had contributed to throw Miss Chancellor into a "state," as these young ladies called it, the night she met him at Mrs. Tarrant's; but it had none the less been conveyed to Olive by the voices of the air that he was a gentleman and a good fellow. This was painfully obvious when the visit to his rooms took place; he was so good-humoured, so amusing, so friendly and considerate, so attentive to Miss Chancellor, he did the honours of his bachelor-nest with so easy a grace, that Olive, part of the time, sat dumbly shaking her conscience, like a watch that wouldn't go, to make it tell her some better reason why she shouldn't like him. She saw that there would be no difficulty in disliking his mother; but that, unfortunately, would not serve her purpose nearly so well. Mrs. Burrage had come to spend a few days near her son; she was staying at an hotel in Boston. It presented itself to Olive that after this entertainment it would be an act of courtesy to call upon her; but here, at least, was the comfort that she could cover herself with the general absolution extended to the Boston temperament and leave her alone. It was slightly provoking, indeed, that Mrs. Burrage should have so much the air of a New Yorker who didn't particularly notice whether a Bostonian called or not; but there is ever an imperfection, I suppose, in even the sweetest revenge. She was a woman of society, large and voluminous, fair (in complexion) and regularly ugly, looking as if she ought to be slow and rather heavy, but disappointing this expectation by a quick, amused utterance, a short, bright, summary laugh, with which she appeared to dispose of the joke (whatever it was) for ever, and an air of recognising on the instant everything she saw and heard. She was evidently accustomed to talk, and even to listen, if not kept waiting too long for details and parentheses; she was not continuous, but frequent, as it were, and you could see that she hated explanations, though it was not to be supposed that she had anything to fear from them. Her favours were general, not particular; she was civil enough to every one, but not in any case endearing, and perfectly genial without being confiding, as people were in Boston when (in moments of exaltation) they wished to mark that they were not suspicious. There was something in her whole manner which seemed to say to Olive that she belonged to a larger world than hers; and our young lady was vexed at not hearing that she had lived for a good many years in Europe, as this would have made it easy to classify her as one of the corrupt. She learned, almost with a sense of injury, that neither the mother nor the son had been longer beyond the seas than she herself; and if they were to be judged as triflers they must be dealt with individually. Was it an aid to such a judgement to see that Mrs. Burrage was very much pleased with Boston, with Harvard College, with her son's interior, with her cup of tea (it was old Sèvres), which was not half so bad as she had expected, with the company he had asked to meet her (there were three or four gentlemen, one of whom was Mr. Gracie), and, last, not least, with Verena Tarrant, whom she addressed as a celebrity, kindly, cleverly, but without maternal tenderness or anything to mark the difference in their age? She spoke to her as if they were equals in that respect, as if Verena's genius and fame would make up the disparity, and the girl had no need of encouragement and patronage. She made no direct allusion, however, to her particular views, and asked her no question about her "gift"--an omission which Verena thought strange, and, with the most speculative candour, spoke of to Olive afterwards. Mrs. Burrage seemed to imply that every one present had some distinction and some talent, that they were all good company together. There was nothing in her manner to indicate that she was afraid of Verena on her son's account; she didn't resemble a person who would like him to marry the daughter of a mesmeric healer, and yet she appeared to think it charming that he should have such a young woman there to give gusto to her hour at Cambridge. Poor Olive was, in the nature of things, entangled in contradictions; she had a horror of the idea of Verena's marrying Mr. Burrage, and yet she was angry when his mother demeaned herself as if the little girl with red hair, whose freshness she enjoyed, could not be a serious danger. She saw all this through the blur of her shyness, the conscious, anxious silence to which she was so much of the time condemned. It may therefore be imagined how sharp her vision would have been could she only have taken the situation more simply; for she was intelligent enough not to have needed to be morbid, even for purposes of self-defence. I must add, however, that there was a moment when she came near being happy--or, at any rate, reflected that it was a pity she could not be so. Mrs. Burrage asked her son to play "some little thing," and he sat down to his piano and revealed a talent that might well have gratified that lady's pride. Olive was extremely susceptible to music, and it was impossible to her not to be soothed and beguiled by the young man's charming art. One "little thing" succeeded another; his selections were all very happy. His guests sat scattered in the red firelight, listening, silent, in comfortable attitudes; there was a faint fragrance from the burning logs, which mingled with the perfume of Schubert and Mendelssohn; the covered lamps made a glow here and there, and the cabinets and brackets produced brown shadows, out of which some precious object gleamed--some ivory carving or cinque-cento cup. It was given to Olive, under these circumstances, for half an hour, to surrender herself, to enjoy the music, to admit that Mr. Burrage played with exquisite taste, to feel as if the situation were a kind of truce. Her nerves were calmed, her problems--for the time--subsided. Civilisation, under such an influence, in such a setting, appeared to have done its work; harmony ruled the scene; human life ceased to be a battle. She went so far as to ask herself why one should have a quarrel with it; the relations of men and women, in that picturesque grouping, had not the air of being internecine. In short, she had an interval of unexpected rest, during which she kept her eyes mainly on Verena, who sat near Mrs. Burrage, letting herself go, evidently, more completely than Olive. To her, too, music was a delight, and her listening face turned itself to different parts of the room, unconsciously, while her eyes vaguely rested on the _bibelots_ that emerged into the firelight. At moments Mrs. Burrage bent her countenance upon her and smiled, at random, kindly; and then Verena smiled back, while her expression seemed to say that, oh yes, she was giving up everything, all principles, all projects. Even before it was time to go, Olive felt that they were both (Verena and she) quite demoralised, and she only summoned energy to take her companion away when she heard Mrs. Burrage propose to her to come and spend a fortnight in New York. Then Olive exclaimed to herself, "Is it a plot? Why in the world can't they let her alone?" and prepared to throw a fold of her mantle, as she had done before, over her young friend. Verena answered, somewhat impetuously, that she should be delighted to visit Mrs. Burrage; then checked her impetuosity, after a glance from Olive, by adding that perhaps this lady wouldn't ask her if she knew what strong ground she took on the emancipation of women. Mrs. Burrage looked at her son and laughed; she said she was perfectly aware of Verena's views, and that it was impossible to be more in sympathy with them than she herself. She took the greatest interest in the emancipation of women; she thought there was so much to be done. These were the only remarks that passed in reference to the great subject; and nothing more was said to Verena, either by Henry Burrage or by his friend Gracie, about her addressing the Harvard students. Verena had told her father that Olive had put her veto upon that, and Tarrant had said to the young men that it seemed as if Miss Chancellor was going to put the thing through in her own way. We know that he thought this way very circuitous; but Miss Chancellor made him feel that she was in earnest, and that idea frightened the resistance out of him--it had such terrible associations. The people he had ever seen who were most in earnest were a committee of gentlemen who had investigated the phenomena of the "materialisation" of spirits, some ten years before, and had bent the fierce light of the scientific method upon him. To Olive it appeared that Mr. Burrage and Mr. Gracie had ceased to be jocular; but that did not make them any less cynical. Henry Burrage said to Verena, as she was going, that he hoped she would think seriously of his mother's invitation; and she replied that she didn't know whether she should have much time in the future to give to people who already approved of her views: she expected to have her hands full with the others, who didn't. "Does your scheme of work exclude all distraction, all recreation, then?" the young man inquired; and his look expressed real suspense. Verena referred the matter, as usual, with her air of bright, ungrudging deference, to her companion. "Does it, should you say--our scheme of work?" "I am afraid the distraction we have had this afternoon must last us for a long time," Olive said, without harshness, but with considerable majesty. "Well, now, _is_ he to be respected?" Verena demanded, as the two young women took their way through the early darkness, pacing quietly side by side, in their winter-robes, like women consecrated to some holy office. Olive turned it over a moment. "Yes, very much--as a pianist!" Verena went into town with her in the horse-car--she was staying in Charles Street for a few days--and that evening she startled Olive by breaking out into a reflexion very similar to the whimsical falterings of which she herself had been conscious while they sat in Mr. Burrage's pretty rooms, but against which she had now violently reacted. "It would be very nice to do that always--just to take men as they are, and not to have to think about their badness. It would be very nice not to have so many questions, but to think they were all comfortably answered, so that one could sit there on an old Spanish leather chair, with the curtains drawn and keeping out the cold, the darkness, all the big, terrible, cruel world--sit there and listen for ever to Schubert and Mendelssohn. _They_ didn't care anything about female suffrage! And I didn't feel the want of a vote to-day at all, did you?" Verena inquired, ending, as she always ended in these few speculations, with an appeal to Olive. This young lady thought it necessary to give her a very firm answer. "I always feel it--everywhere--night and day. I feel it _here_"; and Olive laid her hand solemnly on her heart. "I feel it as a deep, unforgettable wrong; I feel it as one feels a stain that is on one's honour." Verena gave a clear laugh, and after that a soft sigh, and then said, "Do you know, Olive, I sometimes wonder whether, if it wasn't for you, I should feel it so very much!" "My own friend," Olive replied, "you have never yet said anything to me which expressed so clearly the closeness and sanctity of our union." "You do keep me up," Verena went on. "You are my conscience." "I should like to be able to say that you are my form--my envelope. But you are too beautiful for that!" So Olive returned her friend's compliment; and later she said that, of course, it would be far easier to give up everything and draw the curtains to and pass one's life in an artificial atmosphere, with rose-coloured lamps. It would be far easier to abandon the struggle, to leave all the unhappy women of the world to their immemorial misery, to lay down one's burden, close one's eyes to the whole dark picture, and, in short, simply expire. To this Verena objected that it would not be easy for her to expire at all; that such an idea was darker than anything the world contained; that she had not done with life yet, and that she didn't mean to allow her responsibilities to crush her. And then the two young women concluded, as they had concluded before, by finding themselves completely, inspiringly in agreement, full of the purpose to live indeed, and with high success; to become great, in order not to be obscure, and powerful, in order not to be useless. Olive had often declared before that her conception of life was as something sublime or as nothing at all. The world was full of evil, but she was glad to have been born before it had been swept away, while it was still there to face, to give one a task and a reward. When the great reforms should be consummated, when the day of justice should have dawned, would not life perhaps be rather poor and pale? She had never pretended to deny that the hope of fame, of the very highest distinction, was one of her strongest incitements; and she held that the most effective way of protesting against the state of bondage of women was for an individual member of the sex to become illustrious. A person who might have overheard some of the talk of this possibly infatuated pair would have been touched by their extreme familiarity with the idea of earthly glory. Verena had not invented it, but she had taken it eagerly from her friend, and she returned it with interest. To Olive it appeared that just this partnership of their two minds--each of them, by itself, lacking an important group of facets--made an organic whole which, for the work in hand, could not fail to be brilliantly effective. Verena was often far more irresponsive than she liked to see her; but the happy thing in her composition was that, after a short contact with the divine idea--Olive was always trying to flash it at her, like a jewel in an uncovered case--she kindled, flamed up, took the words from her friend's less persuasive lips, resolved herself into a magical voice, became again the pure young sibyl. Then Olive perceived how fatally, without Verena's tender notes, her crusade would lack sweetness, what the Catholics call unction; and, on the other hand, how weak Verena would be on the statistical and logical side if she herself should not bring up the rear. Together, in short, they would be complete, they would have everything, and together they would triumph. XIX This idea of their triumph, a triumph as yet ultimate and remote, but preceded by the solemn vista of an effort so religious as never to be wanting in ecstasy, became tremendously familiar to the two friends, but especially to Olive, during the winter of 187-, a season which ushered in the most momentous period of Miss Chancellor's life. About Christmas a step was taken which advanced her affairs immensely, and put them, to her apprehension, on a regular footing. This consisted in Verena's coming in to Charles Street to stay with her, in pursuance of an arrangement on Olive's part with Selah Tarrant and his wife that she should remain for many months. The coast was now perfectly clear. Mrs. Farrinder had started on her annual grand tour; she was rousing the people, from Maine to Texas; Matthias Pardon (it was to be supposed) had received, temporarily at least, his quietus; and Mrs. Luna was established in New York, where she had taken a house for a year, and whence she wrote to her sister that she was going to engage Basil Ransom (with whom she was in communication for this purpose) to do her law-business. Olive wondered what law-business Adeline could have, and hoped she would get into a pickle with her landlord or her milliner, so that repeated interviews with Mr. Ransom might become necessary. Mrs. Luna let her know very soon that these interviews had begun; the young Mississippian had come to dine with her; he hadn't got started much, by what she could make out, and she was even afraid that he didn't dine every day. But he wore a tall hat now, like a Northern gentleman, and Adeline intimated that she found him really attractive. He had been very nice to Newton, told him all about the war (quite the Southern version, of course, but Mrs. Luna didn't care anything about American politics, and she wanted her son to know all sides), and Newton did nothing but talk about him, calling him "Rannie," and imitating his pronunciation of certain words. Adeline subsequently wrote that she had made up her mind to put her affairs into his hands (Olive sighed, not unmagnanimously, as she thought of her sister's "affairs"), and later still she mentioned that she was thinking strongly of taking him to be Newton's tutor. She wished this interesting child to be privately educated, and it would be more agreeable to have in that relation a person who was already, as it were, a member of the family. Mrs. Luna wrote as if he were prepared to give up his profession to take charge of her son, and Olive was pretty sure that this was only a part of her grandeur, of the habit she had contracted, especially since living in Europe, of speaking as if in every case she required special arrangements. In spite of the difference in their age, Olive had long since judged her, and made up her mind that Adeline lacked every quality that a person needed to be interesting in her eyes. She was rich (or sufficiently so), she was conventional and timid, very fond of attentions from men (with whom indeed she was reputed bold, but Olive scorned such boldness as that), given up to a merely personal, egotistical, instinctive life, and as unconscious of the tendencies of the age, the revenges of the future, the new truths and the great social questions, as if she had been a mere bundle of dress-trimmings, which she very nearly was. It was perfectly observable that she had no conscience, and it irritated Olive deeply to see how much trouble a woman was spared when she was constructed on that system. Adeline's "affairs," as I have intimated, her social relations, her views of Newton's education, her practice and her theory (for she had plenty of that, such as it was, heaven save the mark!), her spasmodic disposition to marry again, and her still sillier retreats in the presence of danger (for she had not even the courage of her frivolity), these things had been a subject of tragic consideration to Olive ever since the return of the elder sister to America. The tragedy was not in any particular harm that Mrs. Luna could do her (for she did her good, rather, that is, she did her honour by laughing at her), but in the spectacle itself, the drama, guided by the hand of fate, of which the small, ignoble scenes unrolled themselves so logically. The _dénouement_ would of course be in keeping, and would consist simply of the spiritual death of Mrs. Luna, who would end by understanding no common speech of Olive's at all, and would sink into mere worldly plumpness, into the last complacency, the supreme imbecility, of petty, genteel conservatism. As for Newton, he would be more utterly odious, if possible, as he grew up, than he was already; in fact, he would not grow up at all, but only grow down, if his mother should continue her infatuated system with him. He was insufferably forward and selfish; under the pretext of keeping him, at any cost, refined, Adeline had coddled and caressed him, having him always in her petticoats, remitting his lessons when he pretended he had an earache, drawing him into the conversation, letting him answer her back, with an impertinence beyond his years, when she administered the smallest check. The place for him, in Olive's eyes, was one of the public schools, where the children of the people would teach him his small importance, teach it, if necessary, by the aid of an occasional drubbing; and the two ladies had a grand discussion on this point before Mrs. Luna left Boston--a scene which ended in Adeline's clutching the irrepressible Newton to her bosom (he came in at the moment), and demanding of him a vow that he would live and die in the principles of his mother. Mrs. Luna declared that if she must be trampled upon--and very likely it was her fate!--she would rather be trampled upon by men than by women, and that if Olive and her friends should get possession of the government they would be worse despots than those who were celebrated in history. Newton took an infant oath that he would never be a destructive, impious radical, and Olive felt that after this she needn't trouble herself any more about her sister, whom she simply committed to her fate. That fate might very properly be to marry an enemy of her country, a man who, no doubt, desired to treat women with the lash and manacles, as he and his people had formerly treated the wretched coloured race. If she was so fond of the fine old institutions of the past, he would supply them to her in abundance; and if she wanted so much to be a conservative, she could try first how she liked being a conservative's wife. If Olive troubled herself little about Adeline, she troubled herself more about Basil Ransom; she said to herself that since he hated women who respected themselves (and each other), destiny would use him rightly in hanging a person like Adeline round his neck. That would be the way poetic justice ought to work, for him--and the law that our prejudices, when they act themselves out, punish us in doing so. Olive considered all this, as it was her effort to consider everything, from a very high point of view, and ended by feeling sure it was not for the sake of any nervous personal security that she desired to see her two relations in New York get mixed up together. If such an event as their marriage would gratify her sense of fitness, it would be simply as an illustration of certain laws. Olive, thanks to the philosophic cast of her mind, was exceedingly fond of illustrations of laws. I hardly know, however, what illumination it was that sprang from her consciousness (now a source of considerable comfort) that Mrs. Farrinder was carrying the war into distant territories, and would return to Boston only in time to preside at a grand Female Convention, already advertised to take place in Boston in the month of June. It was agreeable to her that this imperial woman should be away; it made the field more free, the air more light; it suggested an exemption from official criticism. I have not taken space to mention certain episodes of the more recent intercourse of these ladies, and must content myself with tracing them, lightly, in their consequences. These may be summed up in the remark, which will doubtless startle no one by its freshness, that two imperial women are scarcely more likely to hit it off together, as the phrase is, than two imperial men. Since that party at Miss Birdseye's, so important in its results for Olive, she had had occasion to approach Mrs. Farrinder more nearly, and those overtures brought forth the knowledge that the great leader of the feminine revolution was the one person (in that part of the world) more concentrated, more determined, than herself. Miss Chancellor's aspirations, of late, had been immensely quickened; she had begun to believe in herself to a livelier tune than she had ever listened to before; and she now perceived that when spirit meets spirit there must either be mutual absorption or a sharp concussion. It had long been familiar to her that she should have to count with the obstinacy of the world at large, but she now discovered that she should have to count also with certain elements in the feminine camp. This complicated the problem, and such a complication, naturally, could not make Mrs. Farrinder appear more easy to assimilate. If Olive's was a high nature and so was hers, the fault was in neither; it was only an admonition that they were not needed as landmarks in the same part of the field. If such perceptions are delicate as between men, the reader need not be reminded of the exquisite form they may assume in natures more refined. So it was that Olive passed, in three months, from the stage of veneration to that of competition; and the process had been accelerated by the introduction of Verena into the fold. Mrs. Farrinder had behaved in the strangest way about Verena. First she had been struck with her, and then she hadn't; first she had seemed to want to take her in, then she had shied at her unmistakably--intimating to Olive that there were enough of that kind already. Of "that kind" indeed!--the phrase reverberated in Miss Chancellor's resentful soul. Was it possible she didn't know the kind Verena was of, and with what vulgar aspirants to notoriety did she confound her? It had been Olive's original desire to obtain Mrs. Farrinder's stamp for her _protégée_; she wished her to hold a commission from the commander-in-chief. With this view the two young women had made more than one pilgrimage to Roxbury, and on one of these occasions the sibylline mood (in its most charming form) had descended upon Verena. She had fallen into it, naturally and gracefully, in the course of talk, and poured out a stream of eloquence even more touching than her regular discourse at Miss Birdseye's. Mrs. Farrinder had taken it rather dryly, and certainly it didn't resemble her own style of oratory, remarkable and cogent as this was. There had been considerable question of her writing a letter to the New York _Tribune_, the effect of which should be to launch Miss Tarrant into renown; but this beneficent epistle never appeared, and now Olive saw that there was no favour to come from the prophetess of Roxbury. There had been primnesses, pruderies, small reserves, which ended by staying her pen. If Olive didn't say at once that she was jealous of Verena's more attractive manner, it was only because such a declaration was destined to produce more effect a little later. What she did say was that evidently Mrs. Farrinder wanted to keep the movement in her own hands--viewed with suspicion certain romantic, esthetic elements which Olive and Verena seemed to be trying to introduce into it. They insisted so much, for instance, on the historic unhappiness of women; but Mrs. Farrinder didn't appear to care anything for that, or indeed to know much about history at all. She seemed to begin just to-day, and she demanded their rights for them whether they were unhappy or not. The upshot of this was that Olive threw herself on Verena's neck with a movement which was half indignation, half rapture; she exclaimed that they would have to fight the battle without human help, but, after all, it was better so. If they were all in all to each other, what more could they want? They would be isolated, but they would be free; and this view of the situation brought with it a feeling that they had almost already begun to be a force. It was not, indeed, that Olive's resentment faded quite away; for not only had she the sense, doubtless very presumptuous, that Mrs. Farrinder was the only person thereabouts of a stature to judge her (a sufficient cause of antagonism in itself, for if we like to be praised by our betters we prefer that censure should come from the other sort), but the kind of opinion she had unexpectedly betrayed, after implying such esteem in the earlier phase of their intercourse, made Olive's cheeks occasionally flush. She prayed heaven that _she_ might never become so personal, so narrow. She was frivolous, worldly, an amateur, a trifler, a frequenter of Beacon Street; her taking up Verena Tarrant was only a kind of elderly, ridiculous doll-dressing: this was the light in which Miss Chancellor had reason to believe that it now suited Mrs. Farrinder to regard her! It was fortunate, perhaps, that the misrepresentation was so gross; yet, none the less, tears of wrath rose more than once to Olive's eyes when she reflected that this particular wrong had been put upon her. Frivolous, worldly, Beacon Street! She appealed to Verena to share in her pledge that the world should know in due time how much of that sort of thing there was about her. As I have already hinted, Verena at such moments quite rose to the occasion; she had private pangs at committing herself to give the cold shoulder to Beacon Street for ever; but she was now so completely in Olive's hands that there was no sacrifice to which she would not have consented in order to prove that her benefactress was not frivolous. The matter of her coming to stay for so long in Charles Street was arranged during a visit that Selah Tarrant paid there at Miss Chancellor's request. This interview, which had some curious features, would be worth describing but I am forbidden to do more than mention the most striking of these. Olive wished to have an understanding with him; wished the situation to be clear, so that, disagreeable as it would be to her to receive him, she sent him a summons for a certain hour--an hour at which she had planned that Verena should be out of the house. She withheld this incident from the girl's knowledge, reflecting with some solemnity that it was the first deception (for Olive her silence was a deception) that she had yet practised on her friend, and wondering whether she should have to practise others in the future. She then and there made up her mind that she would not shrink from others should they be necessary. She notified Tarrant that she should keep Verena a long time, and Tarrant remarked that it was certainly very pleasant to see her so happily located. But he also intimated that he should like to know what Miss Chancellor laid out to do with her; and the tone of this suggestion made Olive feel how right she had been to foresee that their interview would have the stamp of business. It assumed that complexion very definitely when she crossed over to her desk and wrote Mr. Tarrant a cheque for a very considerable amount. "Leave us alone--entirely alone--for a year, and then I will write you another": it was with these words she handed him the little strip of paper that meant so much, feeling, as she did so, that surely Mrs. Farrinder herself could not be less amateurish than that. Selah looked at the cheque, at Miss Chancellor, at the cheque again, at the ceiling, at the floor, at the clock, and once more at his hostess; then the document disappeared beneath the folds of his waterproof, and she saw that he was putting it into some queer place on his queer person. "Well, if I didn't believe you were going to help her to develop," he remarked; and he stopped, while his hands continued to fumble, out of sight, and he treated Olive to his large joyless smile. She assured him that he need have no fear on that score; Verena's development was the thing in the world in which she took most interest; she should have every opportunity for a free expansion. "Yes, that's the great thing," Selah said; "it's more important than attracting a crowd. That's all we shall ask of you; let her act out her nature. Don't all the trouble of humanity come from our being pressed back? Don't shut down the cover, Miss Chancellor; just let her overflow!" And again Tarrant illuminated his inquiry, his metaphor, by the strange and silent lateral movement of his jaws. He added, presently, that he supposed he should have to fix it with Mis' Tarrant; but Olive made no answer to that; she only looked at him with a face in which she intended to express that there was nothing that need detain him longer. She knew it had been fixed with Mrs. Tarrant; she had been over all that with Verena, who had told her that her mother was willing to sacrifice her for her highest good. She had reason to know (not through Verena, of course) that Mrs. Tarrant had embraced, tenderly, the idea of a pecuniary compensation, and there was no fear of her making a scene when Tarrant should come back with a cheque in his pocket. "Well, I trust she _may_ develop, richly, and that you may accomplish what you desire; it seems as if we had only a little way to go further," that worthy observed, as he erected himself for departure. "It's not a little way; it's a very long way," Olive replied, rather sternly. Tarrant was on the threshold; he lingered a little, embarrassed by her grimness, for he himself had always inclined to rose-coloured views of progress, of the march of truth. He had never met any one so much in earnest as this definite, literal young woman, who had taken such an unhoped-for fancy to his daughter; whose longing for the new day had such perversities of pessimism, and who, in the midst of something that appeared to be terribly searching in her honesty, was willing to corrupt him, as a father, with the most extravagant orders on her bank. He hardly knew in what language to speak to her; it seemed as if there was nothing soothing enough, when a lady adopted that tone about a movement which was thought by some of the brightest to be so promising. "Oh, well, I guess there's some kind of mysterious law...." he murmured, almost timidly; and so he passed from Miss Chancellor's sight. XX She hoped she should not soon see him again, and there appeared to be no reason she should, if their intercourse was to be conducted by means of cheques. The understanding with Verena was, of course, complete; she had promised to stay with her friend as long as her friend should require it. She had said at first that she couldn't give up her mother, but she had been made to feel that there was no question of giving up. She should be as free as air, to go and come; she could spend hours and days with her mother, whenever Mrs. Tarrant required her attention; all that Olive asked of her was that, for the time, she should regard Charles Street as her home. There was no struggle about this, for the simple reason that by the time the question came to the front Verena was completely under the charm. The idea of Olive's charm will perhaps make the reader smile; but I use the word not in its derived, but in its literal sense. The fine web of authority, of dependence, that her strenuous companion had woven about her, was now as dense as a suit of golden mail; and Verena was thoroughly interested in their great undertaking; she saw it in the light of an active, enthusiastic faith. The benefit that her father desired for her was now assured; she expanded, developed, on the most liberal scale. Olive saw the difference, and you may imagine how she rejoiced in it; she had never known a greater pleasure. Verena's former attitude had been girlish submission, grateful, curious sympathy. She had given herself, in her young, amused surprise, because Olive's stronger will and the incisive proceedings with which she pointed her purpose drew her on. Besides, she was held by hospitality, the vision of new social horizons, the sense of novelty, and the love of change. But now the girl was disinterestedly attached to the precious things they were to do together; she cared about them for themselves, believed in them ardently, had them constantly in mind. Her share in the union of the two young women was no longer passive, purely appreciative; it was passionate, too, and it put forth a beautiful energy. If Olive desired to get Verena into training, she could flatter herself that the process had already begun, and that her colleague enjoyed it almost as much as she. Therefore she could say to herself, without the imputation of heartlessness, that when she left her mother it was for a noble, a sacred use. In point of fact, she left her very little, and she spent hours in jingling, aching, jostled journeys between Charles Street and the stale suburban cottage. Mrs. Tarrant sighed and grimaced, wrapped herself more than ever in her mantle, said she didn't know as she was fit to struggle alone, and that, half the time, if Verena was away, she wouldn't have the nerve to answer the door-bell; she was incapable, of course, of neglecting such an opportunity to posture as one who paid with her heart's blood for leading the van of human progress. But Verena had an inner sense (she judged her mother now, a little, for the first time) that she would be sorry to be taken at her word, and that she felt safe enough in trusting to her daughter's generosity. She could not divest herself of the faith--even now that Mrs. Luna was gone, leaving no trace, and the grey walls of a sedentary winter were apparently closing about the two young women--she could not renounce the theory that a residence in Charles Street must at least produce some contact with the brilliant classes. She was vexed at her daughter's resignation to not going to parties and to Miss Chancellor's not giving them; but it was nothing new for her to have to practise patience, and she could feel, at least, that it was just as handy for Mr. Burrage to call on the child in town, where he spent half his time, sleeping constantly at Parker's. It was a fact that this fortunate youth called very often, and Verena saw him with Olive's full concurrence whenever she was at home. It had now been quite agreed between them that no artificial limits should be set to the famous phase; and Olive had, while it lasted, a sense of real heroism in steeling herself against uneasiness. It seemed to her, moreover, only justice that she should make some concession; if Verena made a great sacrifice of filial duty in coming to live with her (this, of course, should be permanent--she would buy off the Tarrants from year to year), she must not incur the imputation (the world would judge her, in that case, ferociously) of keeping her from forming common social ties. The friendship of a young man and a young woman was, according to the pure code of New England, a common social tie; and as the weeks elapsed Miss Chancellor saw no reason to repent of her temerity. Verena was not falling in love; she felt that she should know it, should guess it on the spot. Verena was fond of human intercourse; she was essentially a sociable creature; she liked to shine and smile and talk and listen; and so far as Henry Burrage was concerned he introduced an element of easy and convenient relaxation into a life now a good deal stiffened (Olive was perfectly willing to own it) by great civic purposes. But the girl was being saved, without interference, by the simple operation of her interest in those very designs. From this time there was no need of putting pressure on her; her own springs were working; the fire with which she glowed came from within. Sacredly, brightly single she would remain; her only espousals would be at the altar of a great cause. Olive always absented herself when Mr. Burrage was announced; and when Verena afterwards attempted to give some account of his conversation she checked her, said she would rather know nothing about it--all with a very solemn mildness; this made her feel very superior, truly noble. She knew by this time (I scarcely can tell how, since Verena could give her no report) exactly what sort of a youth Mr. Burrage was: he was weakly pretentious, softly original, cultivated eccentricity, patronised progress, liked to have mysteries, sudden appointments to keep, anonymous persons to visit, the air of leading a double life, of being devoted to a girl whom people didn't know, or at least didn't meet. Of course he liked to make an impression on Verena; but what he mainly liked was to play her off upon the other girls, the daughters of fashion, with whom he danced at Papanti's. Such were the images that proceeded from Olive's rich moral consciousness. "Well, he _is_ greatly interested in our movement": so much Verena once managed to announce; but the words rather irritated Miss Chancellor, who, as we know, did not care to allow for accidental exceptions in the great masculine conspiracy. In the month of March Verena told her that Mr. Burrage was offering matrimony--offering it with much insistence, begging that she would at least wait and think of it before giving him a final answer. Verena was evidently very glad to be able to say to Olive that she had assured him she couldn't think of it, and that if he expected this he had better not come any more. He continued to come, and it was therefore to be supposed that he had ceased to count on such a concession; it was now Olive's opinion that he really didn't desire it. She had a theory that he proposed to almost any girl who was not likely to accept him--did it because he was making a collection of such episodes--a mental album of declarations, blushes, hesitations, refusals that just missed imposing themselves as acceptances, quite as he collected enamels and Cremona violins. He would be very sorry indeed to ally himself to the house of Tarrant; but such a fear didn't prevent him from holding it becoming in a man of taste to give that encouragement to low-born girls who were pretty, for one looked out for the special cases in which, for reasons (even the lowest might have reasons), they wouldn't "rise." "I told you I wouldn't marry him, and I won't," Verena said, delightedly, to her friend; her tone suggested that a certain credit belonged to her for the way she carried out her assurance. "I never thought you would, if you didn't want to," Olive replied to this; and Verena could have no rejoinder but the good-humour that sat in her eyes, unable as she was to say that she had wanted to. They had a little discussion, however, when she intimated that she pitied him for his discomfiture, Olive's contention being that, selfish, conceited, pampered and insincere, he might properly be left now to digest his affront. Miss Chancellor felt none of the remorse now that she would have felt six months before at standing in the way of such a chance for Verena, and she would have been very angry if any one had asked her if she were not afraid of taking too much upon herself. She would have said, moreover, that she stood in no one's way, and that even if she were not there Verena would never think seriously of a frivolous little man who fiddled while Rome was burning. This did not prevent Olive from making up her mind that they had better go to Europe in the spring; a year's residence in that quarter of the globe would be highly agreeable to Verena, and might even contribute to the evolution of her genius. It cost Miss Chancellor an effort to admit that any virtue still lingered in the elder world, and that it could have any important lesson for two such good Americans as her friend and herself; but it suited her just then to make this assumption, which was not altogether sincere. It was recommended by the idea that it would get her companion out of the way--out of the way of officious fellow-citizens--till she should be absolutely firm on her feet, and would also give greater intensity to their own long conversation. On that continent of strangers they would cleave more closely still to each other. This, of course, would be to fly before the inevitable "phase," much more than to face it; but Olive decided that if they should reach unscathed the term of their delay (the first of July) she should have faced it as much as either justice or generosity demanded. I may as well say at once that she traversed most of this period without further serious alarms and with a great many little thrills of bliss and hope. Nothing happened to dissipate the good omens with which her partnership with Verena Tarrant was at present surrounded. They threw themselves into study; they had innumerable big books from the Athenæum, and consumed the midnight oil. Henry Burrage, after Verena had shaken her head at him so sweetly and sadly, returned to New York, giving no sign; they only heard that he had taken refuge under the ruffled maternal wing. (Olive, at least, took for granted the wing was ruffled; she could fancy how Mrs. Burrage would be affected by the knowledge that her son had been refused by the daughter of a mesmeric healer. She would be almost as angry as if she had learnt that he had been accepted.) Matthias Pardon had not yet taken his revenge in the newspapers; he was perhaps nursing his thunderbolts; at any rate, now that the operatic season had begun, he was much occupied in interviewing the principal singers, one of whom he described in one of the leading journals (Olive, at least, was sure it was only he who could write like that) as "a dear little woman with baby dimples and kittenish movements." The Tarrants were apparently given up to a measure of sensual ease with which they had not hitherto been familiar, thanks to the increase of income that they drew from their eccentric protectress. Mrs. Tarrant now enjoyed the ministrations of a "girl"; it was partly her pride (at any rate, she chose to give it this turn) that her house had for many years been conducted without the element--so debasing on both sides--of servile, mercenary labour. She wrote to Olive (she was perpetually writing to her now, but Olive never answered) that she was conscious of having fallen to a lower plane, but she admitted that it was a prop to her wasted spirit to have some one to converse with when Selah was off. Verena, of course, perceived the difference, which was inadequately explained by the theory of a sudden increase of her father's practice (nothing of her father's had ever increased like that), and ended by guessing the cause of it--a discovery which did not in the least disturb her equanimity. She accepted the idea that her parents should receive a pecuniary tribute from the extraordinary friend whom she had encountered on the threshold of womanhood, just as she herself accepted that friend's irresistible hospitality. She had no worldly pride, no traditions of independence, no ideas of what was done and what was not done; but there was only one thing that equalled this perfectly gentle and natural insensibility to favours--namely, the inveteracy of her habit of not asking them. Olive had had an apprehension that she would flush a little at learning the terms on which they should now be able to pursue their career together; but Verena never changed colour; it was either not new or not disagreeable to her that the authors of her being should be bought off, silenced by money, treated as the troublesome of the lower orders are treated when they are not locked up; so that her friend had a perception, after this, that it would probably be impossible in any way ever to offend her. She was too rancourless, too detached from conventional standards, too free from private self-reference. It was too much to say of her that she forgave injuries, since she was not conscious of them; there was in forgiveness a certain arrogance of which she was incapable, and her bright mildness glided over the many traps that life sets for our consistency. Olive had always held that pride was necessary to character, but there was no peculiarity of Verena's that could make her spirit seem less pure. The added luxuries in the little house at Cambridge, which even with their help was still such a penal settlement, made her feel afresh that before she came to the rescue the daughter of that house had traversed a desert of sordid misery. She had cooked and washed and swept and stitched; she had worked harder than any of Miss Chancellor's servants. These things had left no trace upon her person or her mind; everything fresh and fair renewed itself in her with extraordinary facility, everything ugly and tiresome evaporated as soon as it touched her; but Olive deemed that, being what she was, she had a right to immense compensations. In the future she should have exceeding luxury and ease, and Miss Chancellor had no difficulty in persuading herself that persons doing the high intellectual and moral work to which the two young ladies in Charles Street were now committed owed it to themselves, owed it to the groaning sisterhood, to cultivate the best material conditions. She herself was nothing of a sybarite, and she had proved, visiting the alleys and slums of Boston in the service of the Associated Charities, that there was no foulness of disease or misery she feared to look in the face; but her house had always been thoroughly well regulated, she was passionately clean, and she was an excellent woman of business. Now, however, she elevated daintiness to a religion; her interior shone with superfluous friction, with punctuality, with winter roses. Among these soft influences Verena herself bloomed like the flower that attains such perfection in Boston. Olive had always rated high the native refinement of her country-women, their latent "adaptability," their talent for accommodating themselves at a glance to changed conditions; but the way her companion rose with the level of the civilisation that surrounded her, the way she assimilated all delicacies and absorbed all traditions, left this friendly theory halting behind. The winter days were still, indoors, in Charles Street, and the winter nights secure from interruption. Our two young women had plenty of duties, but Olive had never favoured the custom of running in and out. Much conference on social and reformatory topics went forward under her roof, and she received her colleagues--she belonged to twenty associations and committees--only at pre-appointed hours, which she expected them to observe rigidly. Verena's share in these proceedings was not active; she hovered over them, smiling, listening, dropping occasionally a fanciful though never an idle word, like some gently animated image placed there for good omen. It was understood that her part was before the scenes, not behind; that she was not a prompter, but (potentially, at least) a "popular favourite," and that the work over which Miss Chancellor presided so efficiently was a general preparation of the platform on which, later, her companion would execute the most striking steps. The western windows of Olive's drawing-room, looking over the water, took in the red sunsets of winter; the long, low bridge that crawled, on its staggering posts, across the Charles; the casual patches of ice and snow; the desolate suburban horizons, peeled and made bald by the rigour of the season; the general hard, cold void of the prospect; the extrusion, at Charlestown, at Cambridge, of a few chimneys and steeples, straight, sordid tubes of factories and engine-shops, or spare, heavenward finger of the New England meeting-house. There was something inexorable in the poverty of the scene, shameful in the meanness of its details, which gave a collective impression of boards and tin and frozen earth, sheds and rotting piles, railway-lines striding flat across a thoroughfare of puddles, and tracks of the humbler, the universal horse-car, traversing obliquely this path of danger; loose fences, vacant lots, mounds of refuse, yards bestrewn with iron pipes, telegraph poles, and bare wooden backs of places. Verena thought such a view lovely, and she was by no means without excuse when, as the afternoon closed, the ugly picture was tinted with a clear, cold rosiness. The air, in its windless chill, seemed to tinkle like a crystal, the faintest gradations of tone were perceptible in the sky, the west became deep and delicate, everything grew doubly distinct before taking on the dimness of evening. There were pink flushes on snow, "tender" reflexions in patches of stiffened marsh, sounds of car-bells, no longer vulgar, but almost silvery, on the long bridge, lonely outlines of distant dusky undulations against the fading glow. These agreeable effects used to light up that end of the drawing-room, and Olive often sat at the window with her companion before it was time for the lamp. They admired the sunsets, they rejoiced in the ruddy spots projected upon the parlour-wall, they followed the darkening perspective in fanciful excursions. They watched the stellar points come out at last in a colder heaven, and then, shuddering a little, arm in arm, they turned away, with a sense that the winter night was even more cruel than the tyranny of men--turned back to drawn curtains and a brighter fire and a glittering tea-tray and more and more talk about the long martyrdom of women, a subject as to which Olive was inexhaustible and really most interesting. There were some nights of deep snowfall, when Charles Street was white and muffled and the door-bell foredoomed to silence, which seemed little islands of lamp-light, of enlarged and intensified vision. They read a great deal of history together, and read it ever with the same thought--that of finding confirmation in it for this idea that their sex had suffered inexpressibly, and that at any moment in the course of human affairs the state of the world would have been so much less horrible (history seemed to them in every way horrible) if women had been able to press down the scale. Verena was full of suggestions which stimulated discussions; it was she, oftenest, who kept in view the fact that a good many women in the past had been entrusted with power and had not always used it amiably, who brought up the wicked queens, the profligate mistresses of kings. These ladies were easily disposed of between the two, and the public crimes of Bloody Mary, the private misdemeanours of Faustina, wife of the pure Marcus Aurelius, were very satisfactorily classified. If the influence of women in the past accounted for every act of virtue that men had happened to achieve, it only made the matter balance properly that the influence of men should explain the casual irregularities of the other sex. Olive could see how few books had passed through Verena's hands, and how little the home of the Tarrants had been a house of reading; but the girl now traversed the fields of literature with her characteristic lightness of step. Everything she turned to or took up became an illustration of the facility, the "giftedness," which Olive, who had so little of it, never ceased to wonder at and prize. Nothing frightened her; she always smiled at it, she could do anything she tried. As she knew how to do other things, she knew how to study; she read quickly and remembered infallibly; could repeat, days afterward, passages that she appeared only to have glanced at. Olive, of course, was more and more happy to think that their cause should have the services of an organisation so rare. All this doubtless sounds rather dry, and I hasten to add that our friends were not always shut up in Miss Chancellor's strenuous parlour. In spite of Olive's desire to keep her precious inmate to herself and to bend her attention upon their common studies, in spite of her constantly reminding Verena that this winter was to be purely educative and that the platitudes of the satisfied and unregenerate would have little to teach her, in spite, in short, of the severe and constant duality of our young women, it must not be supposed that their life had not many personal confluents and tributaries. Individual and original as Miss Chancellor was universally acknowledged to be, she was yet a typical Bostonian, and as a typical Bostonian she could not fail to belong in some degree to a "set." It had been said of her that she was in it but not of it; but she was of it enough to go occasionally into other houses and to receive their occupants in her own. It was her belief that she filled her tea-pot with the spoon of hospitality, and made a good many select spirits feel that they were welcome under her roof at convenient hours. She had a preference for what she called _real_ people, and there were several whose reality she had tested by arts known to herself. This little society was rather suburban and miscellaneous; it was prolific in ladies who trotted about, early and late, with books from the Athenæum nursed behind their muff, or little nosegays of exquisite flowers that they were carrying as presents to each other. Verena, who, when Olive was not with her, indulged in a good deal of desultory contemplation at the window, saw them pass the house in Charles Street, always apparently straining a little, as if they might be too late for something. At almost any time, for she envied their preoccupation, she would have taken the chance with them. Very often, when she described them to her mother, Mrs. Tarrant didn't know who they were; there were even days (she had so many discouragements) when it seemed as if she didn't want to know. So long as they were not some one else, it seemed to be no use that they were themselves; whoever they were, they were sure to have that defect. Even after all her mother's disquisitions Verena had but vague ideas as to whom she would have liked them to be; and it was only when the girl talked of the concerts, to all of which Olive subscribed and conducted her inseparable friend, that Mrs. Tarrant appeared to feel in any degree that her daughter was living up to the standard formed for her in their Cambridge home. As all the world knows, the opportunities in Boston for hearing good music are numerous and excellent, and it had long been Miss Chancellor's practice to cultivate the best. She went in, as the phrase is, for the superior programmes, and that high, dim, dignified Music Hall, which has echoed in its time to so much eloquence and so much melody, and of which the very proportions and colour seem to teach respect and attention, shed the protection of its illuminated cornice, this winter, upon no faces more intelligently upturned than those of the young women for whom Bach and Beethoven only repeated, in a myriad forms, the idea that was always with them. Symphonies and fugues only stimulated their convictions, excited their revolutionary passion, led their imagination further in the direction in which it was always pressing. It lifted them to immeasurable heights; and as they sat looking at the great florid, sombre organ, overhanging the bronze statue of Beethoven, they felt that this was the only temple in which the votaries of their creed could worship. And yet their music was not their greatest joy, for they had two others which they cultivated at least as zealously. One of these was simply the society of old Miss Birdseye, of whom Olive saw more this winter than she had ever seen before. It had become apparent that her long and beautiful career was drawing to a close, her earnest, unremitting work was over, her old-fashioned weapons were broken and dull. Olive would have liked to hang them up as venerable relics of a patient fight, and this was what she seemed to do when she made the poor lady relate her battles--never glorious and brilliant, but obscure and wastefully heroic--call back the figures of her companions in arms, exhibit her medals and scars. Miss Birdseye knew that her uses were ended; she might pretend still to go about the business of unpopular causes, might fumble for papers in her immemorial satchel and think she had important appointments, might sign petitions, attend conventions, say to Doctor Prance that if she would only make her sleep she should live to see a great many improvements yet; she ached and was weary, growing almost as glad to look back (a great anomaly for Miss Birdseye) as to look forward. She let herself be coddled now by her friends of the new generation; there were days when she seemed to want nothing better than to sit by Olive's fire and ramble on about the old struggles, with a vague, comfortable sense--no physical rapture of Miss Birdseye's could be very acute--of immunity from wet feet, from the draughts that prevail at thin meetings, of independence of street-cars that would probably arrive overflowing; and also a pleased perception, not that she was an example to these fresh lives which began with more advantages than hers, but that she was in some degree an encouragement, as she helped them to measure the way the new truths had advanced--being able to tell them of such a different state of things when she was a young lady, the daughter of a very talented teacher (indeed her mother had been a teacher too), down in Connecticut. She had always had for Olive a kind of aroma of martyrdom, and her battered, unremunerated, un-pensioned old age brought angry tears, springing from depths of outraged theory, into Miss Chancellor's eyes. For Verena, too, she was a picturesque humanitary figure. Verena had been in the habit of meeting martyrs from her childhood up, but she had seen none with so many reminiscences as Miss Birdseye, or who had been so nearly scorched by penal fires. She had had escapes, in the early days of abolitionism, which it was a marvel she could tell with so little implication that she had shown courage. She had roamed through certain parts of the South, carrying the Bible to the slave; and more than one of her companions, in the course of these expeditions, had been tarred and feathered. She herself, at one season, had spent a month in a Georgian jail. She had preached temperance in Irish circles where the doctrine was received with missiles; she had interfered between wives and husbands mad with drink; she had taken filthy children, picked up in the street, to her own poor rooms, and had removed their pestilent rags and washed their sore bodies with slippery little hands. In her own person she appeared to Olive and Verena a representative of suffering humanity; the pity they felt for her was part of their pity for all who were weakest and most hardly used; and it struck Miss Chancellor (more especially) that this frumpy little missionary was the last link in a tradition, and that when she should be called away the heroic age of New England life--the age of plain living and high thinking, of pure ideals and earnest effort, of moral passion and noble experiment--would effectually be closed. It was the perennial freshness of Miss Birdseye's faith that had had such a contagion for these modern maidens, the unquenched flame of her transcendentalism, the simplicity of her vision, the way in which, in spite of mistakes, deceptions, the changing fashions of reform, which make the remedies of a previous generation look as ridiculous as their bonnets, the only thing that was still actual for her was the elevation of the species by the reading of Emerson and the frequentation of Tremont Temple. Olive had been active enough, for years, in the city-missions; she too had scoured dirty children, and, in squalid lodging-houses, had gone into rooms where the domestic situation was strained and the noises made the neighbours turn pale. But she reflected that after such exertions she had the refreshment of a pretty house, a drawing-room full of flowers, a crackling hearth, where she threw in pine-cones and made them snap, an imported tea-service, a Chickering piano, and the _Deutsche Rundschau_; whereas Miss Birdseye had only a bare, vulgar room, with a hideous flowered carpet (it looked like a dentist's), a cold furnace, the evening paper, and Doctor Prance. Olive and Verena were present at another of her gatherings before the winter ended; it resembled the occasion that we described at the beginning of this history, with the difference that Mrs. Farrinder was not there to oppress the company with her greatness, and that Verena made a speech without the co-operation of her father. This young lady had delivered herself with even finer effect than before, and Olive could see how much she had gained, in confidence and range of allusion, since the educative process in Charles Street began. Her _motif_ was now a kind of unprepared tribute to Miss Birdseye, the fruit of the occasion and of the unanimous tenderness of the younger members of the circle, which made her a willing mouthpiece. She pictured her laborious career, her early associates (Eliza P. Moseley was not neglected as Verena passed), her difficulties and dangers and triumphs, her humanising effect upon so many, her serene and honoured old age--expressed, in short, as one of the ladies said, just the very way they all felt about her. Verena's face brightened and grew triumphant as she spoke, but she brought tears into the eyes of most of the others. It was Olive's opinion that nothing could be more graceful and touching, and she saw that the impression made was now deeper than on the former evening. Miss Birdseye went about with her eighty years of innocence, her undiscriminating spectacles, asking her friends if it wasn't perfectly splendid; she took none of it to herself, she regarded it only as a brilliant expression of Verena's gift. Olive thought, afterwards, that if a collection could only be taken up on the spot, the good lady would be made easy for the rest of her days; then she remembered that most of her guests were as impecunious as herself. I have intimated that our young friends had a source of fortifying emotion which was distinct from the hours they spent with Beethoven and Bach, or in hearing Miss Birdseye describe Concord as it used to be. This consisted in the wonderful insight they had obtained into the history of feminine anguish. They perused that chapter perpetually and zealously, and they derived from it the purest part of their mission. Olive had pored over it so long, so earnestly, that she was now in complete possession of the subject; it was the one thing in life which she felt she had really mastered. She was able to exhibit it to Verena with the greatest authority and accuracy, to lead her up and down, in and out, through all the darkest and most tortuous passages. We know that she was without belief in her own eloquence, but she was very eloquent when she reminded Verena how the exquisite weakness of women had never been their defence, but had only exposed them to sufferings more acute than masculine grossness can conceive. Their odious partner had trampled upon them from the beginning of time, and their tenderness, their abnegation, had been his opportunity. All the bullied wives, the stricken mothers, the dishonoured, deserted maidens who have lived on the earth and longed to leave it, passed and repassed before her eyes, and the interminable dim procession seemed to stretch out a myriad hands to her. She sat with them at their trembling vigils, listened for the tread, the voice, at which they grew pale and sick, walked with them by the dark waters that offered to wash away misery and shame, took with them, even, when the vision grew intense, the last shuddering leap. She had analysed to an extraordinary fineness their susceptibility, their softness; she knew (or she thought she knew) all the possible tortures of anxiety, of suspense and dread; and she had made up her mind that it was women, in the end, who had paid for everything. In the last resort the whole burden of the human lot came upon them; it pressed upon them far more than on the others, the intolerable load of fate. It was they who sat cramped and chained to receive it; it was they who had done all the waiting and taken all the wounds. The sacrifices, the blood, the tears, the terrors were theirs. Their organism was in itself a challenge to suffering, and men had practised upon it with an impudence that knew no bounds. As they were the weakest most had been wrung from them, and as they were the most generous they had been most deceived. Olive Chancellor would have rested her case, had it been necessary, on those general facts; and her simple and comprehensive contention was that the peculiar wretchedness which had been the very essence of the feminine lot was a monstrous artificial imposition, crying aloud for redress. She was willing to admit that women, too, could be bad; that there were many about the world who were false, immoral, vile. But their errors were as nothing to their sufferings; they had expiated, in advance, an eternity, if need be, of misconduct. Olive poured forth these views to her listening and responsive friend; she presented them again and again, and there was no light in which they did not seem to palpitate with truth. Verena was immensely wrought upon; a subtle fire passed into her; she was not so hungry for revenge as Olive, but at the last, before they went to Europe (I shall take no place to describe the manner in which she threw herself into that project), she quite agreed with her companion that after so many ages of wrong (it would also be after the European journey) men must take _their_ turn, men must pay! BOOK SECOND XXI Basil Ransom lived in New York, rather far to the eastward, and in the upper reaches of the town; he occupied two small shabby rooms in a somewhat decayed mansion which stood next to the corner of the Second Avenue. The corner itself was formed by a considerable grocer's shop, the near neighbourhood of which was fatal to any pretensions Ransom and his fellow-lodgers might have had in regard to gentility of situation. The house had a red, rusty face, and faded green shutters, of which the slats were limp and at variance with each other. In one of the lower windows was suspended a fly-blown card, with the words "Table Board" affixed in letters cut (not very neatly) out of coloured paper, of graduated tints, and surrounded with a small band of stamped gilt. The two sides of the shop were protected by an immense pent-house shed, which projected over a greasy pavement and was supported by wooden posts fixed in the curbstone. Beneath it, on the dislocated flags, barrels and baskets were freely and picturesquely grouped; an open cellarway yawned beneath the feet of those who might pause to gaze too fondly on the savoury wares displayed in the window; a strong odour of smoked fish, combined with a fragrance of molasses, hung about the spot; the pavement, toward the gutters, was fringed with dirty panniers, heaped with potatoes, carrots, and onions; and a smart, bright waggon, with the horse detached from the shafts, drawn up on the edge of the abominable road (it contained holes and ruts a foot deep, and immemorial accumulations of stagnant mud), imparted an idle, rural, pastoral air to a scene otherwise perhaps expressive of a rank civilisation. The establishment was of the kind known to New Yorkers as a Dutch grocery; and red-faced, yellow-haired, bare-armed vendors might have been observed to lounge in the doorway. I mention it not on account of any particular influence it may have had on the life or the thoughts of Basil Ransom, but for old acquaintance sake and that of local colour; besides which, a figure is nothing without a setting, and our young man came and went every day, with rather an indifferent, unperceiving step, it is true, among the objects I have briefly designated. One of his rooms was directly above the street-door of the house; such a dormitory, when it is so exiguous, is called in the nomenclature of New York a "hall bedroom." The sitting-room, beside it, was slightly larger, and they both commanded a row of tenements no less degenerate than Ransom's own habitation--houses built forty years before, and already sere and superannuated. These were also painted red, and the bricks were accentuated by a white line; they were garnished, on the first floor, with balconies covered with small tin roofs, striped in different colours, and with an elaborate iron lattice-work, which gave them a repressive, cage-like appearance, and caused them slightly to resemble the little boxes for peeping unseen into the street, which are a feature of oriental towns. Such posts of observation commanded a view of the grocery on the corner, of the relaxed and disjointed roadway, enlivened at the curbstone with an occasional ash-barrel or with gas-lamps drooping from the perpendicular, and westward, at the end of the truncated vista, of the fantastic skeleton of the Elevated Railway, overhanging the transverse longitudinal street, which it darkened and smothered with the immeasurable spinal column and myriad clutching paws of an antediluvian monster. If the opportunity were not denied me here, I should like to give some account of Basil Ransom's interior, of certain curious persons of both sexes, for the most part not favourites of fortune, who had found an obscure asylum there; some picture of the crumpled little _table d'hôte_, at two dollars and a half a week, where everything felt sticky, which went forward in the low-ceiled basement, under the conduct of a couple of shuffling negresses, who mingled in the conversation and indulged in low, mysterious chuckles when it took a facetious turn. But we need, in strictness, concern ourselves with it no further than to gather the implication that the young Mississippian, even a year and a half after that momentous visit of his to Boston, had not made his profession very lucrative. He had been diligent, he had been ambitious, but he had not yet been successful. During the few weeks preceding the moment at which we meet him again, he had even begun to lose faith altogether in his earthly destiny. It became much of a question with him whether success in any form was written there; whether for a hungry young Mississippian, without means, without friends, wanting, too, in the highest energy, the wisdom of the serpent, personal arts and national prestige, the game of life was to be won in New York. He had been on the point of giving it up and returning to the home of his ancestors, where, as he heard from his mother, there was still just a sufficient supply of hot corn-cake to support existence. He had never believed much in his luck, but during the last year it had been guilty of aberrations surprising even to a constant, an imperturbable, victim of fate. Not only had he not extended his connexion, but he had lost most of the little business which was an object of complacency to him a twelvemonth before. He had had none but small jobs, and he had made a mess of more than one of them. Such accidents had not had a happy effect upon his reputation; he had been able to perceive that this fair flower may be nipped when it is so tender a bud as scarcely to be palpable. He had formed a partnership with a person who seemed likely to repair some of his deficiencies--a young man from Rhode Island, acquainted, according to his own expression, with the inside track. But this gentleman himself, as it turned out, would have been better for a good deal of remodelling, and Ransom's principal deficiency, which was, after all, that of cash, was not less apparent to him after his colleague, prior to a sudden and unexplained departure for Europe, had drawn the slender accumulations of the firm out of the bank. Ransom sat for hours in his office, waiting for clients who either did not come, or, if they did come, did not seem to find him encouraging, as they usually left him with the remark that they would think what they would do. They thought to little purpose, and seldom reappeared, so that at last he began to wonder whether there were not a prejudice against his Southern complexion. Perhaps they didn't like the way he spoke. If they could show him a better way, he was willing to adopt it; but the manner of New York could not be acquired by precept, and example, somehow, was not in this case contagious. He wondered whether he were stupid and unskilled, and he was finally obliged to confess to himself that he was unpractical. This confession was in itself a proof of the fact, for nothing could be less fruitful than such a speculation, terminating in such a way. He was perfectly aware that he cared a great deal for the theory, and so his visitors must have thought when they found him, with one of his long legs twisted round the other, reading a volume of De Tocqueville. That was the land of reading he liked; he had thought a great deal about social and economical questions, forms of government and the happiness of peoples. The convictions he had arrived at were not such as mix gracefully with the time-honoured verities a young lawyer looking out for business is in the habit of taking for granted; but he had to reflect that these doctrines would probably not contribute any more to his prosperity in Mississippi than in New York. Indeed, he scarcely could think of the country where they would be a particular advantage to him. It came home to him that his opinions were stiff, whereas in comparison his effort was lax; and he accordingly began to wonder whether he might not make a living by his opinions. He had always had a desire for public life; to cause one's ideas to be embodied in national conduct appeared to him the highest form of human enjoyment. But there was little enough that was public in his solitary studies, and he asked himself what was the use of his having an office at all, and why he might not as well carry on his profession at the Astor Library, where, in his spare hours and on chance holidays, he did an immense deal of suggestive reading. He took copious notes and memoranda, and these things sometimes shaped themselves in a way that might possibly commend them to the editors of periodicals. Readers perhaps would come, if clients didn't; so he produced, with a great deal of labour, half-a-dozen articles, from which, when they were finished, it seemed to him that he had omitted all the points he wished most to make, and addressed them to the powers that preside over weekly and monthly publications. They were all declined with thanks, and he would have been forced to believe that the accent of his languid clime brought him luck as little under the pen as on the lips, had not another explanation been suggested by one of the more explicit of his oracles, in relation to a paper on the rights of minorities. This gentleman pointed out that his doctrines were about three hundred years behind the age; doubtless some magazine of the sixteenth century would have been very happy to print them. This threw light on his own suspicion that he was attached to causes that could only, in the nature of things, be unpopular. The disagreeable editor was right about his being out of date, only he had got the time wrong. He had come centuries too soon; he was not too old, but too new. Such an impression, however, would not have prevented him from going into politics, if there had been any other way to represent constituencies than by being elected. People might be found eccentric enough to vote for him in Mississippi, but meanwhile where should he find the twenty-dollar greenbacks which it was his ambition to transmit from time to time to his female relations, confined so constantly to a farinaceous diet? It came over him with some force that his opinions would not yield interest, and the evaporation of this pleasing hypothesis made him feel like a man in an open boat, at sea, who should just have parted with his last rag of canvas. I shall not attempt a complete description of Ransom's ill-starred views, being convinced that the reader will guess them as he goes, for they had a frolicsome, ingenious way of peeping out of the young man's conversation. I shall do them sufficient justice in saying that he was by natural disposition a good deal of a stoic, and that, as the result of a considerable intellectual experience, he was, in social and political matters, a reactionary. I suppose he was very conceited, for he was much addicted to judging his age. He thought it talkative, querulous, hysterical, maudlin, full of false ideas, of unhealthy germs, of extravagant, dissipated habits, for which a great reckoning was in store. He was an immense admirer of the late Thomas Carlyle, and was very suspicious of the encroachments of modern democracy. I know not exactly how these queer heresies had planted themselves, but he had a longish pedigree (it had flowered at one time with English royalists and cavaliers), and he seemed at moments to be inhabited by some transmitted spirit of a robust but narrow ancestor, some broad-faced wig-wearer or sword-bearer, with a more primitive conception of manhood than our modern temperament appears to require, and a programme of human felicity much less varied. He liked his pedigree, he revered his forefathers, and he rather pitied those who might come after him. In saying so, however, I betray him a little, for he never mentioned such feelings as these. Though he thought the age too talkative, as I have hinted, he liked to talk as well as any one; but he could hold his tongue, if that were more expressive, and he usually did so when his perplexities were greatest. He had been sitting for several evenings in a beer-cellar, smoking his pipe with a profundity of reticence. This attitude was so unbroken that it marked a crisis--the complete, the acute consciousness of his personal situation. It was the cheapest way he knew of spending an evening. At this particular establishment the _Schoppen_ were very tall and the beer was very good; and as the host and most of the guests were German, and their colloquial tongue was unknown to him, he was not drawn into any undue expenditure of speech. He watched his smoke and he thought, thought so hard that at last he appeared to himself to have exhausted the thinkable. When this moment of combined relief and dismay arrived (on the last of the evenings that we are concerned with), he took his way down Third Avenue and reached his humble dwelling. Till within a short time there had been a resource for him at such an hour and in such a mood; a little variety-actress, who lived in the house, and with whom he had established the most cordial relations, was often having her supper (she took it somewhere, every night, after the theatre) in the dim, close dining-room, and he used to drop in and talk to her. But she had lately married, to his great amusement, and her husband had taken her on a wedding-tour, which was to be at the same time professional. On this occasion he mounted, with rather a heavy tread, to his rooms, where (on the rickety writing-table in the parlour) he found a note from Mrs. Luna. I need not reproduce it _in extenso_; a pale reflexion of it will serve. She reproached him with neglecting her, wanted to know what had become of him, whether he had grown too fashionable for a person who cared only for serious society. She accused him of having changed, and inquired as to the reason of his coldness. Was it too much to ask whether he could tell her at least in what manner she had offended him? She used to think they were so much in sympathy--he expressed her own ideas about everything so vividly. She liked intellectual companionship, and she had none now. She hoped very much he would come and see her--as he used to do six months before--the following evening; and however much she might have sinned or he might have altered, she was at least always his affectionate cousin Adeline. "What the deuce does she want of me now?" It was with this somewhat ungracious exclamation that he tossed away his cousin Adeline's missive. The gesture might have indicated that he meant to take no notice of her; nevertheless, after a day had elapsed, he presented himself before her. He knew what she wanted of old--that is, a year ago; she had wanted him to look after her property and to be tutor to her son. He had lent himself, good-naturedly, to this desire--he was touched by so much confidence--but the experiment had speedily collapsed. Mrs. Luna's affairs were in the hands of trustees, who had complete care of them, and Ransom instantly perceived that his function would be simply to meddle in things that didn't concern him. The levity with which she had exposed him to the derision of the lawful guardians of her fortune opened his eyes to some of the dangers of cousinship; nevertheless he said to himself that he might turn an honest penny by giving an hour or two every day to the education of her little boy. But this, too, proved a brief illusion. Ransom had to find his time in the afternoon; he left his business at five o'clock and remained with his young kinsman till the hour of dinner. At the end of a few weeks he thought himself lucky in retiring without broken shins. That Newton's little nature was remarkable had often been insisted on by his mother; but it was remarkable, Ransom saw, for the absence of any of the qualities which attach a teacher to a pupil. He was in truth an insufferable child, entertaining for the Latin language a personal, physical hostility, which expressed itself in convulsions of rage. During these paroxysms he kicked furiously at every one and everything--at poor "Rannie," at his mother, at Messrs. Andrews and Stoddard, at the illustrious men of Rome, at the universe in general, to which, as he lay on his back on the carpet, he presented a pair of singularly active little heels. Mrs. Luna had a way of being present at his lessons, and when they passed, as sooner or later they were sure to, into the stage I have described, she interceded for her overwrought darling, reminded Ransom that these were the signs of an exquisite sensibility, begged that the child might be allowed to rest a little, and spent the remainder of the time in conversation with the preceptor. It came to seem to him, very soon, that he was not earning his fee; besides which, it was disagreeable to him to have pecuniary relations with a lady who had not the art of concealing from him that she liked to place him under obligations. He resigned his tutorship, and drew a long breath, having a vague feeling that he had escaped a danger. He could not have told you exactly what it was, and he had a certain sentimental, provincial respect for women which even prevented him from attempting to give a name to it in his own thoughts. He was addicted with the ladies to the old forms of address and of gallantry; he held that they were delicate, agreeable creatures, whom Providence had placed under the protection of the bearded sex; and it was not merely a humorous idea with him that whatever might be the defects of Southern gentlemen, they were at any rate remarkable for their chivalry. He was a man who still, in a slangy age, could pronounce that word with a perfectly serious face. This boldness did not prevent him from thinking that women were essentially inferior to men, and infinitely tiresome when they declined to accept the lot which men had made for them. He had the most definite notions about their place in nature, in society, and was perfectly easy in his mind as to whether it excluded them from any proper homage. The chivalrous man paid that tax with alacrity. He admitted their rights; these consisted in a standing claim to the generosity and tenderness of the stronger race. The exercise of such feelings was full of advantage for both sexes, and they flowed most freely, of course, when women were gracious and grateful. It may be said that he had a higher conception of politeness than most of the persons who desired the advent of female law-makers. When I have added that he hated to see women eager and argumentative, and thought that their softness and docility were the inspiration, the opportunity (the highest) of man, I shall have sketched a state of mind which will doubtless strike many readers as painfully crude. It had prevented Basil Ransom, at any rate, from putting the dots on his _i_'s, as the French say, in this gradual discovery that Mrs. Luna was making love to him. The process went on a long time before he became aware of it. He had perceived very soon that she was a tremendously familiar little woman--that she took, more rapidly than he had ever known, a high degree of intimacy for granted. But as she had seemed to him neither very fresh nor very beautiful, so he could not easily have represented to himself why she should take it into her head to marry (it would never have occurred to him to doubt that she wanted marriage) an obscure and penniless Mississippian, with womenkind of his own to provide for. He could not guess that he answered to a certain secret ideal of Mrs. Luna's, who loved the landed gentry even when landless, who adored a Southerner under any circumstances, who thought her kinsman a fine, manly, melancholy, disinterested type, and who was sure that her views of public matters, the questions of the age, the vulgar character of modern life, would meet with a perfect response in his mind. She could see by the way he talked that he was a conservative, and this was the motto inscribed upon her own silken banner. She took this unpopular line both by temperament and by reaction from her sister's "extreme" views, the sight of the dreadful people that they brought about her. In reality, Olive was distinguished and discriminating, and Adeline was the dupe of confusions in which the worse was apt to be mistaken for the better. She talked to Ransom about the inferiority of republics, the distressing persons she had met abroad in the legations of the United States, the bad manners of servants and shopkeepers in that country, the hope she entertained that "the good old families" would make a stand; but he never suspected that she cultivated these topics (her treatment of them struck him as highly comical) for the purpose of leading him to the altar, of beguiling the way. Least of all could he suppose that she would be indifferent to his want of income--a point in which he failed to do her justice; for, thinking the fact that he had remained poor a proof of delicacy in that shopkeeping age, it gave her much pleasure to reflect that, as Newton's little property was settled on him (with safeguards which showed how long-headed poor Mr. Luna had been, and large-hearted, too, since to what he left _her_ no disagreeable conditions, such as eternal mourning, for instance, were attached)--that as Newton, I say, enjoyed the pecuniary independence which befitted his character, her own income was ample even for two, and she might give herself the luxury of taking a husband who should owe her something. Basil Ransom did not divine all this, but he divined that it was not for nothing that Mrs. Luna wrote him little notes every other day, that she proposed to drive him in the Park at unnatural hours, and that when he said he had his business to attend to, she replied: "Oh, a plague on your business! I am sick of that word--one hears of nothing else in America. There are ways of getting on without business, if you would only take them!" He seldom answered her notes, and he disliked extremely the way in which, in spite of her love of form and order, she attempted to clamber in at the window of one's house when one had locked the door; so that he began to interspace his visits considerably, and at last made them very rare. When I reflect on his habits of almost superstitious politeness to women, it comes over me that some very strong motive must have operated to make him give his friendly--his only too friendly--cousin the cold shoulder. Nevertheless, when he received her reproachful letter (after it had had time to work a little), he said to himself that he had perhaps been unjust and even brutal, and as he was easily touched by remorse of this kind, he took up the broken thread. XXII As he sat with Mrs. Luna, in her little back drawing-room, under the lamp, he felt rather more tolerant than before of the pressure she could not help putting upon him. Several months had elapsed, and he was no nearer to the sort of success he had hoped for. It stole over him gently that there was another sort, pretty visibly open to him, not so elevated nor so manly, it is true, but on which he should after all, perhaps, be able to reconcile it with his honour to fall back. Mrs. Luna had had an inspiration; for once in her life she had held her tongue. She had not made him a scene, there had been no question of an explanation; she had received him as if he had been there the day before, with the addition of a spice of mysterious melancholy. She might have made up her mind that she had lost him as what she had hoped, but that it was better than desolation to try and keep him as a friend. It was as if she wished him to see now how she tried. She was subdued and consolatory, she waited upon him, moved away a screen that intercepted the fire, remarked that he looked very tired, and rang for some tea. She made no inquiry about his affairs, never asked if he had been busy and prosperous; and this reticence struck him as unexpectedly delicate and discreet; it was as if she had guessed, by a subtle feminine faculty, that his professional career was nothing to boast of. There was a simplicity in him which permitted him to wonder whether she had not improved. The lamp-light was soft, the fire crackled pleasantly, everything that surrounded him betrayed a woman's taste and touch; the place was decorated and cushioned in perfection, delightfully private and personal, the picture of a well-appointed home. Mrs. Luna had complained of the difficulties of installing one's self in America, but Ransom remembered that he had received an impression similar to this in her sister's house in Boston, and reflected that these ladies had, as a family-trait, the art of making themselves comfortable. It was better for a winter's evening than the German beer-cellar (Mrs. Luna's tea was excellent), and his hostess herself appeared to-night almost as amiable as the variety-actress. At the end of an hour he felt, I will not say almost marriageable, but almost married. Images of leisure played before him, leisure in which he saw himself covering foolscap paper with his views on several subjects, and with favourable illustrations of Southern eloquence. It became tolerably vivid to him that if editors wouldn't print one's lucubrations, it would be a comfort to feel that one was able to publish them at one's own expense. He had a moment of almost complete illusion. Mrs. Luna had taken up her bit of crochet; she was sitting opposite to him, on the other side of the fire. Her white hands moved with little jerks as she took her stitches, and her rings flashed and twinkled in the light of the hearth. Her head fell a little to one side, exhibiting the plumpness of her chin and neck, and her dropped eyes (it gave her a little modest air) rested quietly on her work. A silence of a few moments had fallen upon their talk, and Adeline--who decidedly _had_ improved--appeared also to feel the charm of it, not to wish to break it. Basil Ransom was conscious of all this, and at the same time he was vaguely engaged in a speculation. If it gave one time, if it gave one leisure, was not that in itself a high motive? Thorough study of the question he cared for most--was not the chance for _that_ an infinitely desirable good? He seemed to see himself, to feel himself, in that very chair, in the evenings of the future, reading some indispensable book in the still lamp-light--Mrs. Luna knew where to get such pretty mellowing shades. Should he not be able to act in that way upon the public opinion of his time, to check certain tendencies, to point out certain dangers, to indulge in much salutary criticism? Was it not one's duty to put one's self in the best conditions for such action? And as the silence continued he almost fell to musing on his duty, almost persuaded himself that the moral law commanded him to marry Mrs. Luna. She looked up presently from her work, their eyes met, and she smiled. He might have believed she had guessed what he was thinking of. This idea startled him, alarmed him a little, so that when Mrs. Luna said, with her sociable manner, "There is nothing I like so much, of a winter's night, as a cosy _tête-à-tête_ by the fire. It's quite like Darby and Joan; what a pity the kettle has ceased singing!"--when she uttered these insinuating words he gave himself a little imperceptible shake, which was, however, enough to break the spell, and made no response more direct than to ask her, in a moment, in a tone of cold, mild curiosity, whether she had lately heard from her sister, and how long Miss Chancellor intended to remain in Europe. "Well, you _have_ been living in your hole!" Mrs. Luna exclaimed. "Olive came home six weeks ago. How long did you expect her to endure it?" "I am sure I don't know; I have never been there," Ransom replied. "Yes, that's what I like you for," Mrs. Luna remarked sweetly. "If a man is nice without it, it's such a pleasant change." The young man started, then gave a natural laugh. "Lord, how few reasons there must be!" "Oh, I mention that one because I can tell it. I shouldn't care to tell the others." "I am glad you have some to fall back upon, the day I should go," Ransom went on. "I thought you thought so much of Europe." "So I do; but it isn't everything," said Mrs. Luna philosophically. "You had better go there with me," she added, with a certain inconsequence. "One would go to the end of the world with so irresistible a lady!" Ransom exclaimed, falling into the tone which Mrs. Luna always found so unsatisfactory. It was a part of his Southern gallantry--his accent always came out strongly when he said anything of that sort--and it committed him to nothing in particular. She had had occasion to wish, more than once, that he wouldn't be so beastly polite, as she used to hear people say in England. She answered that she didn't care about ends, she cared about beginnings; but he didn't take up the declaration; he returned to the subject of Olive, wanted to know what she had done over there, whether she had worked them up much. "Oh, of course, she fascinated every one," said Mrs. Luna. "With her grace and beauty, her general style, how could she help that?" "But did she bring them round, did she swell the host that is prepared to march under her banner?" "I suppose she saw plenty of the strong-minded, plenty of vicious old maids, and fanatics, and frumps. But I haven't the least idea what she accomplished--what they call 'wonders,' I suppose." "Didn't you see her when she returned?" Basil Ransom asked. "How could I see her? I can see pretty far, but I can't see all the way to Boston." And then, in explaining that it was at this port that her sister had disembarked, Mrs. Luna further inquired whether he could imagine Olive doing anything in a first-rate way, as long as there were inferior ones. "Of course she likes bad ships--Boston steamers--just as she likes common people, and red-haired hoydens, and preposterous doctrines." Ransom was silent a moment. "Do you mean the--a--rather striking young lady whom I met in Boston a year ago last October? What was her name?--Miss Tarrant? Does Miss Chancellor like her as much as ever?" "Mercy! don't you know she took her to Europe? It was to form _her_ mind she went. Didn't I tell you that last summer? You used to come to see me then." "Oh yes, I remember," Ransom said, rather musingly. "And did she bring her back?" "Gracious, you don't suppose she would leave her! Olive thinks she's born to regenerate the world." "I remember you telling me that, too. It comes back to me. Well, is her mind formed?" "As I haven't seen it, I cannot tell you." "Aren't you going on there to see----" "To see whether Miss Tarrant's mind is formed?" Mrs. Luna broke in. "I will go if you would like me to. I remember your being immensely excited about her that time you met her. Don't you recollect that?" Ransom hesitated an instant. "I can't say I do. It is too long ago." "Yes, I have no doubt that's the way you change, about women! Poor Miss Tarrant, if she thinks she made an impression on you!" "She won't think about such things as that, if her mind has been formed by your sister," Ransom said. "It does come back to me now, what you told me about the growth of their intimacy. And do they mean to go on living together for ever?" "I suppose so--unless some one should take it into his head to marry Verena." "Verena--is that her name?" Ransom asked. Mrs. Luna looked at him with a suspended needle. "Well! have you forgotten that too? You told me yourself you thought it so pretty, that time in Boston, when you walked me up the hill." Ransom declared that he remembered that walk, but didn't remember everything he had said to her; and she suggested, very satirically, that perhaps he would like to marry Verena himself--he seemed so interested in her. Ransom shook his head sadly, and said he was afraid he was not in a position to marry; whereupon Mrs. Luna asked him what he meant--did he mean (after a moment's hesitation) that he was too poor? "Never in the world--I am very rich; I make an enormous income!" the young man exclaimed; so that, remarking his tone, and the slight flush of annoyance that rose to his face, Mrs. Luna was quick enough to judge that she had overstepped the mark. She remembered (she ought to have remembered before) that he had never taken her in the least into his confidence about his affairs. That was not the Southern way, and he was at least as proud as he was poor. In this surmise she was just; Basil Ransom would have despised himself if he had been capable of confessing to a woman that he couldn't make a living. Such questions were none of their business (their business was simply to be provided for, practise the domestic virtues, and be charmingly grateful), and there was, to his sense, something almost indecent in talking about them. Mrs. Luna felt doubly sorry for him as she perceived that he denied himself the luxury of sympathy (that is, of hers), and the vague but comprehensive sigh that passed her lips as she took up her crochet again was unusually expressive of helplessness. She said that of course she knew how great his talents were--he could do anything he wanted; and Basil Ransom wondered for a moment whether, if she were to ask him point-blank to marry her, it would be consistent with the high courtesy of a Southern gentleman to refuse. After she should be his wife he might of course confess to her that he was too poor to marry, for in that relation even a Southern gentleman of the highest tone must sometimes unbend. But he didn't in the least long for this arrangement, and was conscious that the most pertinent sequel to her conjecture would be for him to take up his hat and walk away. Within five minutes, however, he had come to desire to do this almost as little as to marry Mrs. Luna. He wanted to hear more about the girl who lived with Olive Chancellor. Something had revived in him--an old curiosity, an image half effaced--when he learned that she had come back to America. He had taken a wrong impression from what Mrs. Luna said, nearly a year before, about her sister's visit to Europe; he had supposed it was to be a long absence, that Miss Chancellor wanted perhaps to get the little prophetess away from her parents, possibly even away from some amorous entanglement. Then, no doubt, they wanted to study up the woman-question with the facilities that Europe would offer; he didn't know much about Europe, but he had an idea that it was a great place for facilities. His knowledge of Miss Chancellor's departure, accompanied by her young companion, had checked at the time, on Ransom's part, a certain habit of idle but none the less entertaining retrospect. His life, on the whole, had not been rich in episode, and that little chapter of his visit to his queer, clever, capricious cousin, with his evening at Miss Birdseye's, and his glimpse, repeated on the morrow, of the strange, beautiful, ridiculous, red-haired young _improvisatrice_, unrolled itself in his memory like a page of interesting fiction. The page seemed to fade, however, when he heard that the two girls had gone, for an indefinite time, to unknown lands; this carried them out of his range, spoiled the perspective, diminished their actuality; so that for several months past, with his increase of anxiety about his own affairs, and the low pitch of his spirits, he had not thought at all about Verena Tarrant. The fact that she was once more in Boston, with a certain contiguity that it seemed to imply between Boston and New York, presented itself now as important and agreeable. He was conscious that this was rather an anomaly, and his consciousness made him, had already made him, dissimulate slightly. He did not pick up his hat to go; he sat in his chair taking his chance of the tax which Mrs. Luna might lay upon his urbanity. He remembered that he had not made, as yet, any very eager inquiry about Newton, who at this late hour had succumbed to the only influence that tames the untamable and was sleeping the sleep of childhood, if not of innocence. Ransom repaired his neglect in a manner which elicited the most copious response from his hostess. The boy had had a good many tutors since Ransom gave him up, and it could not be said that his education languished. Mrs. Luna spoke with pride of the manner in which he went through them; if he did not master his lessons, he mastered his teachers, and she had the happy conviction that she gave him every advantage. Ransom's delay was diplomatic, but at the end of ten minutes he returned to the young ladies in Boston; he asked why, with their aggressive programme, one hadn't begun to feel their onset, why the echoes of Miss Tarrant's eloquence hadn't reached his ears. Hadn't she come out yet in public? was she not coming to stir them up in New York? He hoped she hadn't broken down. "She didn't seem to break down last summer, at the Female Convention," Mrs. Luna replied. "Have you forgotten that too? Didn't I tell you of the sensation she produced there, and of what I heard from Boston about it? Do you mean to say I didn't give you that "Transcript," with the report of her great speech? It was just before they sailed for Europe; she went off with flying colours, in a blaze of fireworks." Ransom protested that he had not heard this affair mentioned till that moment, and then, when they compared dates, they found it had taken place just after his last visit to Mrs. Luna. This, of course, gave her a chance to say that he had treated her even worse than she supposed; it had been her impression, at any rate, that they had talked together about Verena's sudden bound into fame. Apparently she confounded him with some one else, that was very possible; he was not to suppose that he occupied such a distinct place in her mind, especially when she might die twenty deaths before he came near her. Ransom demurred to the implication that Miss Tarrant was famous; if she were famous, wouldn't she be in the New York papers? He hadn't seen her there, and he had no recollection of having encountered any mention at the time (last June, was it?) of her exploits at the Female Convention. A local reputation doubtless she had, but that had been the case a year and a half before, and what was expected of her then was to become a first-class national glory. He was willing to believe that she had created some excitement in Boston, but he shouldn't attach much importance to that till one began to see her photograph in the stores. Of course, one must give her time, but he had supposed Miss Chancellor was going to put her through faster. If he had taken a contradictious tone on purpose to draw Mrs. Luna out, he could not have elicited more of the information he desired. It was perfectly true that he had seen no reference to Verena's performances in the preceding June; there were periods when the newspapers seemed to him so idiotic that for weeks he never looked at one. He learned from Mrs. Luna that it was not Olive who had sent her the "Transcript" and in letters had added some private account of the doings at the convention to the testimony of that amiable sheet; she had been indebted for this service to a "gentleman-friend," who wrote her everything that happened in Boston, and what every one had every day for dinner. Not that it was necessary for her happiness to know; but the gentleman she spoke of didn't know what to invent to please her. A Bostonian couldn't imagine that one didn't want to know, and that was their idea of ingratiating themselves, or, at any rate, it was his, poor man. Olive would never have gone into particulars about Verena; she regarded her sister as quite too much one of the profane, and knew Adeline couldn't understand why, when she took to herself a bosom-friend, she should have been at such pains to select her in just the most dreadful class in the community. Verena was a perfect little adventuress, and quite third-rate into the bargain; but, of course, she was a pretty girl enough, if one cared for hair of the colour of cochineal. As for her people, they were too absolutely awful; it was exactly as if she, Mrs. Luna, had struck up an intimacy with the daughter of her chiropodist. It took Olive to invent such monstrosities, and to think she was doing something great for humanity when she did so; though, in spite of her wanting to turn everything over, and put the lowest highest, she could be just as contemptuous and invidious, when it came to really mixing, as if she were some grand old duchess. She must do her the justice to say that she hated the Tarrants, the father and mother; but, all the same, she let Verena run to and fro between Charles Street and the horrible hole they lived in, and Adeline knew from that gentleman who wrote so copiously that the girl now and then spent a week at a time at Cambridge. Her mother, who had been ill for some weeks, wanted her to sleep there. Mrs. Luna knew further, by her correspondent, that Verena had--or had had the winter before--a great deal of attention from gentlemen. She didn't know how she worked that into the idea that the female sex was sufficient to itself; but she had grounds for saying that this was one reason why Olive had taken her abroad. She was afraid Verena would give in to some man, and she wanted to make a break. Of course, any such giving in would be very awkward for a young woman who shrieked out on platforms that old maids were the highest type. Adeline guessed Olive had perfect control of her now, unless indeed she used the expeditions to Cambridge as a cover for meeting gentlemen. She was an artful little minx, and cared as much for the rights of women as she did for the Panama Canal; the only right of a woman she wanted was to climb up on top of something, where the men could look at her. She would stay with Olive as long as it served her purpose, because Olive, with her great respectability, could push her, and counteract the effect of her low relations, to say nothing of paying all her expenses and taking her the tour of Europe. "But, mark my words," said Mrs. Luna, "she will give Olive the greatest cut she has ever had in her life. She will run off with some lion-tamer; she will marry a circus-man!" And Mrs. Luna added that it would serve Olive Chancellor right. But she would take it hard; look out for tantrums then! Basil Ransom's emotions were peculiar while his hostess delivered herself, in a manner at once casual and emphatic, of these rather insidious remarks. He took them all in, for they represented to him certain very interesting facts; but he perceived at the same time that Mrs. Luna didn't know what she was talking about. He had seen Verena Tarrant only twice in his life, but it was no use telling him that she was an adventuress--though, certainly, it _was_ very likely she would end by giving Miss Chancellor a cut. He chuckled, with a certain grimness, as this image passed before him; it was not unpleasing, the idea that he should be avenged (for it would avenge him to know it) upon the wanton young woman who had invited him to come and see her in order simply to slap his face. But he had an odd sense of having lost something in not knowing of the other girl's appearance at the Women's Convention--a vague feeling that he had been cheated and trifled with. The complaint was idle, inasmuch as it was not probable he could have gone to Boston to listen to her; but it represented to him that he had not shared, even dimly and remotely, in an event which concerned her very closely. Why should he share, and what was more natural than that the things which concerned her closely should not concern him at all? This question came to him only as he walked home that evening; for the moment it remained quite in abeyance: therefore he was free to feel also that his imagination had been rather starved by his ignorance of the fact that she was near him again (comparatively), that she was in the dimness of the horizon (no longer beyond the curve of the globe), and yet he had not perceived it. This sense of personal loss, as I have called it, made him feel, further, that he had something to make up, to recover. He could scarcely have told you how he would go about it; but the idea, formless though it was, led him in a direction very different from the one he had been following a quarter of an hour before. As he watched it dance before him he fell into another silence, in the midst of which Mrs. Luna gave him another mystic smile. The effect of it was to make him rise to his feet; the whole landscape of his mind had suddenly been illuminated. Decidedly, it was _not_ his duty to marry Mrs. Luna, in order to have means to pursue his studies; he jerked himself back, as if he had been on the point of it. "You don't mean to say you are going already? I haven't said half I wanted to!" she exclaimed. He glanced at the clock, saw it was not yet late, took a turn about the room, then sat down again in a different place, while she followed him with her eyes, wondering what was the matter with him. Ransom took good care not to ask her what it was she had still to say, and perhaps it was to prevent her telling him that he now began to talk, freely, quickly, in quite a new tone. He stayed half an hour longer, and made himself very agreeable. It seemed to Mrs. Luna now that he had every distinction (she had known he had most), that he was really a charming man. He abounded in conversation, till at last he took up his hat in earnest; he talked about the state of the South, its social peculiarities, the ruin wrought by the war, the dilapidated gentry, the queer types of superannuated fire-eaters, ragged and unreconciled, all the pathos and all the comedy of it, making her laugh at one moment, almost cry at another, and say to herself throughout that when he took it into his head there was no one who could make a lady's evening pass so pleasantly. It was only afterwards that she asked herself why he had not taken it into his head till the last, so quickly. She delighted in the dilapidated gentry; her taste was completely different from her sister's, who took an interest only in the lower class, as it struggled to rise; what Adeline cared for was the fallen aristocracy (it seemed to be falling everywhere very much; was not Basil Ransom an example of it? was he not like a French _gentilhomme de province_ after the Revolution? or an old monarchical _émigré_ from the Languedoc?), the despoiled patriciate, I say, whose attitude was noble and touching, and toward whom one might exercise a charity as discreet as their pride was sensitive. In all Mrs. Luna's visions of herself, her discretion was the leading feature. "Are you going to let ten years elapse again before you come?" she asked, as Basil Ransom bade her good-night. "You must let me know, because between this and your next visit I shall have time to go to Europe and come back. I shall take care to arrive the day before." Instead of answering this sally, Ransom said, "Are you not going one of these days to Boston? Are you not going to pay your sister another visit?" Mrs. Luna stared. "What good will that do _you_? Excuse my stupidity," she added; "of course, it gets me away. Thank you very much!" "I don't want you to go away; but I want to hear more about Miss Olive." "Why in the world? You know you loathe her!" Here, before Ransom could reply, Mrs. Luna again overtook herself. "I verily believe that by Miss Olive you mean Miss Verena!" Her eyes charged him a moment with this perverse intention; then she exclaimed, "Basil Ransom, _are_ you in love with that creature?" He gave a perfectly natural laugh, not pleading guilty, in order to practise on Mrs. Luna, but expressing the simple state of the case. "How should I be? I have seen her but twice in my life." "If you had seen her more, I shouldn't be afraid! Fancy your wanting to pack me off to Boston!" his hostess went on. "I am in no hurry to stay with Olive again; besides, that girl takes up the whole house. You had better go there yourself." "I should like nothing better," said Ransom. "Perhaps you would like me to ask Verena to spend a month with me--it might be a way of attracting you to the house," Adeline went on, in the tone of exuberant provocation. Ransom was on the point of replying that it would be a better way than any other, but he checked himself in time; he had never yet, even in joke, made so crude, so rude a speech to a lady. You only knew when he was joking with women by his super-added civility. "I beg you to believe there is nothing I would do for any woman in the world that I wouldn't do for you," he said, bending, for the last time, over Mrs. Luna's plump hand. "I shall remember that and keep you up to it!" she cried after him, as he went. But even with this rather lively exchange of vows he felt that he had got off rather easily. He walked slowly up Fifth Avenue, into which, out of Adeline's cross-street, he had turned, by the light of a fine winter moon; and at every corner he stopped a minute, lingered in meditation, while he exhaled a soft, vague sigh. This was an unconscious, involuntary expression of relief, such as a man might utter who had seen himself on the point of being run over and yet felt that he was whole. He didn't trouble himself much to ask what had saved him; whatever it was it had produced a reaction, so that he felt rather ashamed of having found his look-out of late so blank. By the time he reached his lodgings, his ambition, his resolution, had rekindled; he had remembered that he formerly supposed he was a man of ability, that nothing particular had occurred to make him doubt it (the evidence was only negative, not positive), and that at any rate he was young enough to have another try. He whistled that night as he went to bed. XXIII Three weeks afterward he stood in front of Olive Chancellor's house, looking up and down the street and hesitating. He had told Mrs. Luna that he should like nothing better than to make another journey to Boston; and it was not simply because he liked it that he had come. I was on the point of saying that a happy chance had favoured him, but it occurs to me that one is under no obligation to call chances by nattering epithets when they have been waited for so long. At any rate, the darkest hour is before the dawn; and a few days after that melancholy evening I have described, which Ransom spent in his German beer-cellar, before a single glass, soon emptied, staring at his future with an unremunerated eye, he found that the world appeared to have need of him yet. The "party," as he would have said (I cannot pretend that his speech was too heroic for that), for whom he had transacted business in Boston so many months before, and who had expressed at the time but a limited appreciation of his services (there had been between the lawyer and his client a divergence of judgement), observing, apparently, that they proved more fruitful than he expected, had reopened the affair and presently requested Ransom to transport himself again to the sister city. His errand demanded more time than before, and for three days he gave it his constant attention. On the fourth he found he was still detained; he should have to wait till the evening--some important papers were to be prepared. He determined to treat the interval as a holiday, and he wondered what one could do in Boston to give one's morning a festive complexion. The weather was brilliant enough to minister to any illusion, and he strolled along the streets, taking it in. In front of the Music Hall and of Tremont Temple he stopped, looking at the posters in the doorway; for was it not possible that Miss Chancellor's little friend might be just then addressing her fellow-citizens? Her name was absent, however, and this resource seemed to mock him. He knew no one in the place but Olive Chancellor, so there was no question of a visit to pay. He was perfectly resolved that he would never go near _her_ again; she was doubtless a very superior being, but she had been too rough with him to tempt him further. Politeness, even a largely-interpreted "chivalry", required nothing more than he had already done; he had quitted her, the other year, without telling her that she was a vixen, and that reticence was chivalrous enough. There was also Verena Tarrant, of course; he saw no reason to dissemble when he spoke of her to himself, and he allowed himself the entertainment of feeling that he should like very much to see her again. Very likely she wouldn't seem to him the same; the impression she had made upon him was due to some accident of mood or circumstance; and, at any rate, any charm she might have exhibited then had probably been obliterated by the coarsening effect of publicity and the tonic influence of his kinswoman. It will be observed that in this reasoning of Basil Ransom's the impression was freely recognised, and recognised as a phenomenon still present. The attraction might have vanished, as he said to himself, but the mental picture of it was yet vivid. The greater the pity that he couldn't call upon Verena (he called her by her name in his thoughts, it was so pretty) without calling upon Olive, and that Olive was so disagreeable as to place that effort beyond his strength. There was another consideration, with Ransom, which eminently belonged to the man; he believed that Miss Chancellor had conceived, in the course of those few hours, and in a manner that formed so absurd a sequel to her having gone out of her way to make his acquaintance, such a dislike to him that it would be odious to her to see him again within her doors; and he would have felt indelicate in taking warrant from her original invitation (before she had seen him) to inflict on her a presence which he had no reason to suppose the lapse of time had made less offensive. She had given him no sign of pardon or penitence in any of the little ways that are familiar to women--by sending him a message through her sister, or even a book, a photograph, a Christmas card, or a newspaper, by the post. He felt, in a word, not at liberty to ring at her door; he didn't know what kind of a fit the sight of his long Mississippian person would give her, and it was characteristic of him that he should wish so to spare the sensibilities of a young lady whom he had not found tender; being ever as willing to let women off easily in the particular case as he was fixed in the belief that the sex in general requires watching. Nevertheless, he found himself, at the end of half an hour, standing on the only spot in Charles Street which had any significance for him. It had occurred to him that if he couldn't call upon Verena without calling upon Olive, he should be exempt from that condition if he called upon Mrs. Tarrant. It was not her mother, truly, who had asked him, it was the girl herself; and he was conscious, as a candid young American, that a mother is always less accessible, more guarded by social prejudice, than a daughter. But he was at a pass in which it was permissible to strain a point, and he took his way in the direction in which he knew that Cambridge lay, remembering that Miss Tarrant's invitation had reference to that quarter and that Mrs. Luna had given him further evidence. Had she not said that Verena often went back there for visits of several days--that her mother had been ill and she gave her much care? There was nothing inconceivable in her being engaged at that hour (it was getting to be one o'clock) in one of those expeditions--nothing impossible in the chance that he might find her in Cambridge. The chance, at any rate, was worth taking; Cambridge, moreover, was worth seeing, and it was as good a way as another of keeping his holiday. It occurred to him, indeed, that Cambridge was a big place, and that he had no particular address. This reflexion overtook him just as he reached Olive's house, which, oddly enough, he was obliged to pass on his way to the mysterious suburb. That is partly why he paused there; he asked himself for a moment why he shouldn't ring the bell and obtain his needed information from the servant, who would be sure to be able to give it to him. He had just dismissed this method, as of questionable taste, when he heard the door of the house open, within the deep embrasure in which, in Charles Street, the main portals are set, and which are partly occupied by a flight of steps protected at the bottom by a second door, whose upper half, in either wing, consists of a sheet of glass. It was a minute before he could see who had come out, and in that minute he had time to turn away and then to turn back again, and to wonder which of the two inmates would appear to him, or whether he should behold neither or both. The person who had issued from the house descended the steps very slowly, as if on purpose to give him time to escape; and when at last the glass doors were divided they disclosed a little old lady. Ransom was disappointed; such an apparition was so scantily to his purpose. But the next minute his spirits rose again, for he was sure that he had seen the little old lady before. She stopped on the side-walk, and looked vaguely about her, in the manner of a person waiting for an omnibus or a street-car; she had a dingy, loosely-habited air, as if she had worn her clothes for many years and yet was even now imperfectly acquainted with them; a large, benignant face, caged in by the glass of her spectacles, which seemed to cover it almost equally everywhere, and a fat, rusty satchel, which hung low at her side, as if it wearied her to carry it. This gave Ransom time to recognise her; he knew in Boston no such figure as that save Miss Birdseye. Her party, her person, the exalted account Miss Chancellor gave of her, had kept a very distinct place in his mind; and while she stood there in dim circumspection she came back to him as a friend of yesterday. His necessity gave a point to the reminiscences she evoked; it took him only a moment to reflect that she would be able to tell him where Verena Tarrant was at that particular time, and where, if need be, her parents lived. Her eyes rested on him, and as she saw that he was looking at her she didn't go through the ceremony (she had broken so completely with all conventions) of removing them; he evidently represented nothing to her but a sentient fellow-citizen in the enjoyment of his rights, which included that of staring. Miss Birdseye's modesty had never pretended that it was not to be publicly challenged; there were so many bright new motives and ideas in the world that there might even be reasons for looking at her. When Ransom approached her and, raising his hat with a smile, said, "Shall I stop this car for you, Miss Birdseye?" she only looked at him more vaguely, in her complete failure to seize the idea that this might be simply Fame. She had trudged about the streets of Boston for fifty years, and at no period had she received that amount of attention from dark-eyed young men. She glanced, in an unprejudiced way, at the big parti-coloured human van which now jingled, toward them from out of the Cambridge road. "Well, I should like to get into it, if it will take me home," she answered. "Is this a South End car?" The vehicle had been stopped by the conductor, on his perceiving Miss Birdseye; he evidently recognised her as a frequent passenger. He went, however, through none of the forms of reassurance beyond remarking, "You want to get right in here--quick," but stood with his hand raised, in a threatening way, to the cord of his signal-bell. "You must allow me the honour of taking you home, madam; I will tell you who I am," Basil Ransom said, in obedience to a rapid reflexion. He helped her into the car, the conductor pressed a fraternal hand upon her back, and in a moment the young man was seated beside her, and the jingling had recommenced. At that hour of the day the car was almost empty, and they had it virtually to themselves. "Well, I know you are some one; I don't think you belong round here," Miss Birdseye declared, as they proceeded. "I was once at your house--on a very interesting occasion. Do you remember a party you gave, a year ago last October, to which Miss Chancellor came, and another young lady, who made a wonderful speech?" "Oh yes! when Verena Tarrant moved us all so! There were a good many there; I don't remember all." "I was one of them," Basil Ransom said; "I came with Miss Chancellor, who is a kind of relation of mine, and you were very good to me." "What did I do?" asked Miss Birdseye candidly. Then, before he could answer her, she recognised him. "I remember you now, and Olive bringing you! You're a Southern gentleman--she told me about you afterwards. You don't approve of our great struggle--you want us to be kept down." The old lady spoke with perfect mildness, as if she had long ago done with passion and resentment. Then she added, "Well, I presume we can't have the sympathy of all." "Doesn't it look as if you had my sympathy, when I get into a car on purpose to see you home--one of the principal agitators?" Ransom inquired, laughing. "Did you get in on purpose?" "Quite on purpose. I am not so bad as Miss Chancellor thinks me." "Oh, I presume you have your ideas," said Miss Birdseye. "Of course, Southerners have peculiar views. I suppose they retain more than one might think. I hope you won't ride too far--I know my way round Boston." "Don't object to me, or think me officious," Ransom replied. "I want to ask you something." Miss Birdseye looked at him again. "Oh yes, I place you now; you conversed some with Doctor Prance." "To my great edification!" Ransom exclaimed. "And I hope Doctor Prance is well." "She looks after every one's health but her own," said Miss Birdseye, smiling. "When I tell her that, she says she hasn't got any to look after. She says she's the only woman in Boston that hasn't got a doctor. She was determined she wouldn't be a patient, and it seemed as if the only way not to be one was to be a doctor. She is trying to make me sleep; that's her principal occupation." "Is it possible you don't sleep yet?" Ransom asked, almost tenderly. "Well, just a little. But by the time I get to sleep I have to get up. I can't sleep when I want to live." "You ought to come down South," the young man suggested. "In that languid air you would doze deliciously!" "Well, I don't want to be languid," said Miss Birdseye. "Besides, I have been down South, in the old times, and I can't say they let me sleep very much; they were always round after me!" "Do you mean on account of the negroes?" "Yes, I couldn't think of anything else then. I carried them the Bible." Ransom was silent a moment; then he said, in a tone which evidently was carefully considerate, "I should like to hear all about that!" "Well, fortunately, we are not required now; we are required for something else." And Miss Birdseye looked at him with a wandering, tentative humour, as if he would know what she meant. "You mean for the other slaves!" he exclaimed, with a laugh. "You can carry them all the Bibles you want." "I want to carry them the Statute-book; that must be our Bible now." Ransom found himself liking Miss Birdseye very much, and it was quite without hypocrisy or a tinge too much of the local quality in his speech that he said: "Wherever you go, madam, it will matter little what you carry. You will always carry your goodness." For a minute she made no response. Then she murmured: "That's the way Olive Chancellor told me you talked." "I am afraid she has told you little good of me." "Well, I am sure she thinks she is right." "Thinks it?" said Ransom. "Why, she knows it, with supreme certainty! By the way, I hope she is well." Miss Birdseye stared again. "Haven't you seen her? Are you not visiting?" "Oh no, I am not visiting! I was literally passing her house when I met you." "Perhaps you live here now," said Miss Birdseye. And when he had corrected this impression, she added, in a tone which showed with what positive confidence he had now inspired her, "Hadn't you better drop in?" "It would give Miss Chancellor no pleasure," Basil Ransom rejoined. "She regards me as an enemy in the camp." "Well, she is very brave." "Precisely. And I am very timid." "Didn't you fight once?" "Yes; but it was in such a good cause!" Ransom meant this allusion to the great Secession and, by comparison, to the attitude of the resisting male (laudable even as that might be), to be decently jocular; but Miss Birdseye took it very seriously, and sat there for a good while as speechless as if she meant to convey that she had been going on too long now to be able to discuss the propriety of the late rebellion. The young man felt that he had silenced her, and he was very sorry; for, with all deference to the disinterested Southern attitude toward the unprotected female, what he had got into the car with her for was precisely to make her talk. He had wished for general, as well as for particular, news of Verena Tarrant; it was a topic on which he had proposed to draw Miss Birdseye out. He preferred not to broach it himself, and he waited awhile for another opening. At last, when he was on the point of exposing himself by a direct inquiry (he reflected that the exposure would in any case not be long averted), she anticipated him by saying, in a manner which showed that her thoughts had continued in the same train, "I wonder very much that Miss Tarrant didn't affect you that evening!" "Ah, but she did!" Ransom said, with alacrity. "I thought her very charming!" "Didn't you think her very reasonable?" "God forbid, madam! I consider women have no business to be reasonable." His companion turned upon him, slowly and mildly, and each of her glasses, in her aspect of reproach, had the glitter of an enormous tear. "Do you regard us, then, simply as lovely baubles?" The effect of this question, as coming from Miss Birdseye, and referring in some degree to her own venerable identity, was such as to move him to irresistible laughter. But he controlled himself quickly enough to say, with genuine expression, "I regard you as the dearest thing in life, the only thing which makes it worth living!" "Worth living for--you! But for us?" suggested Miss Birdseye. "It's worth any woman's while to be admired as I admire you. Miss Tarrant, of whom we were speaking, affected me, as you say, in this way--that I think more highly still, if possible, of the sex which produced such a delightful young lady." "Well, we think everything of her here," said Miss Birdseye. "It seems as if it were a real gift." "Does she speak often--is there any chance of my hearing her now?" "She raises her voice a good deal in the places round--like Framingham and Billerica. It seems as if she were gathering strength, just to break over Boston like a wave. In fact she did break, last summer. She is a growing power since her great success at the convention." "Ah! her success at the convention was very great?" Ransom inquired, putting discretion into his voice. Miss Birdseye hesitated a moment, in order to measure her response by the bounds of righteousness. "Well," she said, with the tenderness of a long retrospect, "I have seen nothing like it since I last listened to Eliza P. Moseley." "What a pity she isn't speaking somewhere to-night!" Ransom exclaimed. "Oh, to-night she's out in Cambridge. Olive Chancellor mentioned that." "Is she making a speech there?" "No; she's visiting her home." "I thought her home was in Charles Street?" "Well, no; that's her residence--her principal one--since she became so united to your cousin. Isn't Miss Chancellor your cousin?" "We don't insist on the relationship," said Ransom, smiling. "Are they very much united, the two young ladies?" "You would say so if you were to see Miss Chancellor when Verena rises to eloquence. It's as if the chords were strung across her own heart; she seems to vibrate, to echo with every word. It's a very close and very beautiful tie, and we think everything of it here. They will work together for a great good!" "I hope so," Ransom remarked. "But in spite of it Miss Tarrant spends a part of her time with her father and mother." "Yes, she seems to have something for every one. If you were to see her at home, you would think she was all the daughter. She leads a lovely life!" said Miss Birdseye. "See her at home? That's exactly what I want!" Ransom rejoined, feeling that if he was to come to this he needn't have had scruples at first. "I haven't forgotten that she invited me, when I met her." "Oh, of course she attracts many visitors," said Miss Birdseye, limiting her encouragement to this statement. "Yes; she must be used to admirers. And where, in Cambridge, do her family live?" "Oh, it's on one of those little streets that don't seem to have very much of a name. But they do call it--they do call it----" she meditated audibly. This process was interrupted by an abrupt allocution from the conductor. "I guess you change here for _your_ place. You want one of them blue cars." The good lady returned to a sense of the situation, and Ransom helped her out of the vehicle, with the aid, as before, of a certain amount of propulsion from the conductor. Her road branched off to the right, and she had to wait on the corner of a street, there being as yet no blue car within hail. The corner was quiet and the day favourable to patience--a day of relaxed rigour and intense brilliancy. It was as if the touch of the air itself were gloved, and the street-colouring had the richness of a superficial thaw. Ransom, of course, waited with his philanthropic companion, though she now protested more vigorously against the idea that a gentleman from the South should pretend to teach an old abolitionist the mysteries of Boston. He promised to leave her when he should have consigned her to the blue car; and meanwhile they stood in the sun, with their backs against an apothecary's window, and she tried again, at his suggestion, to remember the name of Doctor Tarrant's street. "I guess if you ask for Doctor Tarrant, any one can tell you," she said; and then suddenly the address came to her--the residence of the mesmeric healer was in Monadnoc Place. "But you'll have to ask for that, so it comes to the same," she went on. After this she added, with a friendliness more personal, "Ain't you going to see your cousin too?" "Not if I can help it!" Miss Birdseye gave a little ineffectual sigh. "Well, I suppose every one must act out their ideal. That's what Olive Chancellor does. She's a very noble character." "Oh yes, a glorious nature." "You know their opinions are just the same--hers and Verena's," Miss Birdseye placidly continued. "So why should you make a distinction?" "My dear madam," said Ransom, "does a woman consist of nothing but her opinions? I like Miss Tarrant's lovely face better, to begin with." "Well, she _is_ pretty-looking." And Miss Birdseye gave another sigh, as if she had had a theory submitted to her--that one about a lady's opinions--which, with all that was unfamiliar and peculiar lying behind it, she was really too old to look into much. It might have been the first time she really felt her age. "There's a blue car," she said, in a tone of mild relief. "It will be some moments before it gets here. Moreover, I don't believe that at bottom they _are_ Miss Tarrant's opinions," Ransom added. "You mustn't think she hasn't a strong hold of them," his companion exclaimed, more briskly. "If you think she is not sincere, you are very much mistaken. Those views are just her life." "Well, _she_ may bring me round to them," said Ransom, smiling. Miss Birdseye had been watching her blue car, the advance of which was temporarily obstructed. At this, she transferred her eyes to him, gazing at him solemnly out of the pervasive window of her spectacles. "Well, I shouldn't wonder if she did! Yes, that will be a good thing. I don't see how you can help being a good deal shaken by her. She has acted on so many." "I see: no doubt she will act on me." Then it occurred to Ransom to add: "By the way, Miss Birdseye, perhaps you will be so kind as not to mention this meeting of ours to my cousin, in case of your seeing her again. I have a perfectly good conscience in not calling upon her, but I shouldn't like her to think that I announced my slighting intention all over the town. I don't want to offend her, and she had better not know that I have been in Boston. If you don't tell her, no one else will." "Do you wish me to conceal----?" murmured Miss Birdseye, panting a little. "No, I don't want you to conceal anything. I only want you to let this incident pass--to say nothing." "Well, I never did anything of that kind." "Of what kind?" Ransom was half vexed, half touched by her inability to enter into his point of view, and her resistance made him hold to his idea the more. "It is very simple, what I ask of you. You are under no obligation to tell Miss Chancellor everything that happens to you, are you?" His request seemed still something of a shock to the poor old lady's candour. "Well, I see her very often, and we talk a great deal. And then--won't Verena tell her?" "I have thought of that--but I hope not." "She tells her most everything. Their union is so close." "She won't want her to be wounded," Ransom said ingeniously. "Well, you _are_ considerate." And Miss Birdseye continued to gaze at him. "It's a pity you can't sympathise." "As I tell you, perhaps Miss Tarrant will bring me round. You have before you a possible convert," Ransom went on, without, I fear, putting up the least little prayer to heaven that his dishonesty might be forgiven. "I should be very happy to think that--after I have told you her address in this secret way." A smile of infinite mildness glimmered in Miss Birdseye's face, and she added: "Well, I guess that will be your fate. She _has_ affected so many. I would keep very quiet if I thought that. Yes, she will bring you round." "I will let you know as soon as she does," Basil Ransom said. "Here is your car at last." "Well, I believe in the victory of the truth. I won't say anything." And she suffered the young man to lead her to the car, which had now stopped at their corner. "I hope very much I shall see you again," he remarked, as they went. "Well, I am always round the streets, in Boston." And while, lifting and pushing, he was helping again to insert her into the oblong receptacle, she turned a little and repeated, "She _will_ affect you! If that's to be your secret, I will keep it," Ransom heard her subjoin. He raised his hat and waved her a farewell, but she didn't see him; she was squeezing further into the car and making the discovery that this time it was full and there was no seat for her. Surely, however, he said to himself, every man in the place would offer his own to such an innocent old dear. END OF VOL. I 
12044	----	THE GRIMKÉ SISTERS SARAH AND ANGELINA GRIMKÉ _THE FIRST AMERICAN WOMEN ADVOCATES OF ABOLITION AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS_ By CATHERINE H. BIRNEY "The glory of all glories is the glory of self-sacrifice." 1885 PREFACE. It was with great diffidence, from inexperience in literary work of such length, that I engaged to write the biography which I now present to the public. But the diaries and letters placed in my hands lightened the work of composition, and it has been a labor of affection as well as of duty to pay what tribute I might to the memory of two of the noblest women of the country, whom I learned to love and venerate during a residence of nearly two years under the same roof, and who, to the end of their lives, honored me with their friendship. C.H.B. Washington City, Sept., 1885. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Childhood of Sarah, 7. Practical teachings, 9. Teaching slaves, 11. Sarah a godmother, 13. Their mother, 15. CHAPTER II. Thirst for knowledge, 17. Religious impressions, 19. Providence interposes, 21. Their father's death-bed, 23. Sarah and slavery, 25. Salvation by works, 27. The Friends, 29. Sarah resists the call, 31. Sarah leaves Charleston, 33. CHAPTER III. Sarah a Quaker, 35. Visit to Charleston, 37. Angelina, 39. Angelina's slave, 41. Angelina converted, 43. Sarah's heart trial, 45. CHAPTER IV. Contrasts, 47. Spiritual change, 49. Novels and finery, 51. Plain dress, 53. CHAPTER V. Angelina's progress, 55. Abandons Presbyterianism, 57. Adopts Quakerism, 59. A Quaker quarrel, 61. Angelina goes north, 63. Trimming a cap, 65. CHAPTER VI. Christian frugality, 67. Christian reproofs, 69. Faithful testimony, 71. Sitting in silence, 73. Sympathy with slaves, 75. Intercedes for a slave, 77. A sin to joke, 79. Introspection, 81. CHAPTER VII. Intellectual power, 83. Anti-slavery in 1829, 85. Bane of slavery, 87. Longs to leave home, 89. Narrow life, 91. Farewell to home, 93. CHAPTER VIII. Not in favor, 95. Doubts, 97. Benevolent activities, 99. Nullification, 101. Thomas Grimké, 103. Quaker time-serving, 105. Separation, 107. CHAPTER IX. Visits Catherine Beecher, 109. Morbid feelings, 111. Growing out of Quakerism, 113. Lane Seminary debate, 115. Death of Thomas Grimké, 117. The cause of peace, 119. CHAPTER X. Sarah Douglass, 121. The fire kindled, 123. Letter to Garrison, 125. Apology for letter, 127. Publication of letter, 129. Sarah disapproves, 131. CHAPTER XI. Practical efforts, 133. Visit to Providence, 135. The sisters differ, 137. Elizur Wright's invitation, 139. Asking advice of Sarah, 141. The last straw, 143. Sarah resolves to leave Philadelphia, 145. Angelina's A.S. feelings, 147. Her clear convictions, 149. CHAPTER XII. The sisters together, 151. A rebellious Quaker, 153. Removal to New York, 155. The anti-slavery leaders, 157. T.D. Weld, 159. Epistle to the clergy, 161. First speeches to women, 163. Lectures, 165. Disregard of the color line, 167. Henry B. Stanton, 169. Success on the platform, 171. They go to Boston, 173. CHAPTER XIII. Woman's rights, 175. Sentiment at Boston, 177. Speaking to men, 179. Women's preaching, 181. Opposition, 183. The pastoral letter, 185. Mixed audiences, 187. Hardships--eloquence, 189. Sarah prefers the pen, 191. A public debate, 193. Sarah's impulsiveness, 195. CHAPTER XIV. Catherine Beecher, 197-99. Woman and abolition, 201. Whittier's letter, 203. Weld's letter, 205. Weld's third letter, 207. How reforms fail, 209. Friendly criticism, 211. No human government-ism, 213. The sisters desist, 215. Weld on dress, 217. Henry C. Wright, 219. Friendship renewed, 221. CHAPTER XV. Crowded audiences, 223. Sickness, 225. The Massachusetts legislature, Speeches in Boston, 229. Angelina's marriage, 231. The ceremony, 233. Pennsylvania Hall, 235. The mob, 237. Last public speech, 239. Burning the hall, 241. CHAPTER XVI. Disownment, 243. The home, 245. Self-denial, 247. Sarah Douglass, 249. An ex-slave, 251. Uses of retirement, 253. Mutual love, 255. "Slavery as it is," 257. Going to church, 259. The baby, 261. Life at Belleville, 263-5. Educators, 267. Piety, 269. Christianity, 271. CHAPTER XVII. Eagleswood, 273. Sarah as teacher, 265. Sarah at sixty-two, 277. Love of children, 279. Success of the school, 281. Affliction, 283. War to end in freedom, 285. Sisterly affection, 287. The colored nephews, 289. The discovery, 291. A visit to nephews, 293. Nephews educated, 295. Voting petitions, 297. Work for charities, 299. Contented old age, 301. CHAPTER XVIII. Sarah's sickness, 303. Death of Sarah, 305. Eulogies, 307. Paralysis, 309. Sublime patience, 311. Death of Angelina, 313. Elizur Wright, 315. Wendell Phillips, 317. The lesson of two lives, 319. THE SISTERS GRIMKÉ. CHAPTER I. Sarah and Angelina Grimké were born in Charleston, South Carolina; Sarah, Nov. 26, 1792; Angelina, Feb. 20, 1805. They were the daughters of the Hon. John Fauchereau Grimké, a colonel in the revolutionary war, and judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina. His ancestors were German on the father's side, French on the mother's; the Fauchereau family having left France in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. From his German father and Huguenot mother, Judge Grimké inherited not only intellectual qualities of a high order, but an abiding consciousness of his right to think for himself, a spirit of hostility to the Roman Catholic priesthood and church, and faith in the Calvinistic theology. Though he exhibited, during the course of his life, a freedom from certain social prejudices general among people of his class at Charleston, he seems to have never wavered in his adhesion to the tenets of his forefathers. That they were ever questioned in his household is not probable. From a diary kept by him, it appears that his favorite subject of thought for many years was moral discipline, and he was fond of searching out and transcribing the opinions of various authors on this subject. His family was wealthy and influential, and he received all the advantages which such circumstances could give. As was the custom among people of means in those days, he was sent to England for his collegiate course, and, after being graduated at Oxford, he studied law and practised for a while in London, having his rooms in the Temple. With a fine person, a cultivated mind and a generous allowance, he became a favorite in the fashionable and aristocratic society of Great Britain; nevertheless, he did not hesitate to quit the pleasant life he was leading and return home as soon as his native country seemed to need him. He speedily raised a company of cavalry in Charleston, and cast his lot with the patriots whom he found in arms against the mother-country. We have no record of his deeds, but we know that he distinguished himself at Eutaw Springs and at Yorktown, where he was attached to Lafayette's brigade. When the war was over, Col. Grimké began the practice of law in Charleston, and rose in a few years to the front rank at the bar. He held various honorable offices before he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of the State. Early in life Judge Grimké married Mary Smith of Irish and English-Puritan stock. She was the great granddaughter of the second Landgrave of South Carolina, and descended on her mother's side from that famous rebel chieftain, Sir Roger Moore, of Kildare, who would have stormed Dublin Castle with his handful of men, and whose handsome person, gallant manners, and chivalric courage made him the idol of his party and the hero of song and story. Fourteen children were born to this couple, all of whom were more or less remarkable for the traits which would naturally be expected from such ancestry, while in several of them the old Huguenot-Puritan infusion colored every mental and moral quality. This was especially notable in Sarah Moore Grimké, the sixth child, who even in her childhood continually surprised her family by her independence, her sturdy love of truth, and her clear sense of justice. Her conscientiousness was such that she never sought to conceal or even excuse anything wrong she did, but accepted submissively whatever punishment or reprimand was inflicted upon her. Between Sarah and her brother Thomas, six years her senior, an early friendship was formed, which was ever a source of gratification to both, and which continued without a break until his death. To the influence of his high, strong nature she attributed to a great extent her early tendency to think and reason upon subjects much beyond her age. Until she was twelve years old, a great deal of her time was passed in study with this brother, her bright, active mind eagerly reaching after the kind of knowledge which in those days was considered food too strong for the intellect of a girl. She begged hard to be permitted to study Latin, and began to do so in private, but her parents, and even her brother, discouraged this, and she reluctantly gave it up. Judge Grimké's position, character, and wealth placed his family among the leaders of the very exclusive society of Charleston. His children were accustomed to luxury and display, to the service of slaves, and to the indulgence of every selfish whim, although the father's practical common sense led him to protest against the habits to which such indulgences naturally led. He was necessarily much from home, but, when leisure permitted, his great pleasure was teaching his children and discussing various topics with them. To Sarah he paid particular attention, her superior mental qualities exciting his admiration and pride. He is said to have frequently declared that if she had been of the other sex she would have made the greatest jurist in the land. In his own habits, Judge Grimké was prudent and singularly economical, and, in spite of discouraging surroundings, endeavored to instil lessons of simplicity into his children. An extract from one of Sarah's letters will illustrate this. Referring in 1863 to her early life, she thus writes to a friend:-- "Father was pre-eminently a man of common sense, and economy was one of his darling virtues. I suppose I inherited some of the latter quality, for from early life I have been renowned for gathering up the fragments that nothing be lost, so that it was quite a common saying in the family: 'Oh, give it to Sally; she'll find use for it,' when anything was to be thrown away. Only once within my memory did I depart from this law of my nature. I went to our country residence to pass the summer with father. He had deposited a number of useful odds and ends in a drawer. Now little miss, being installed as housekeeper to papa, and for the first time in her life being queen--at least so she fancied--of all she surveyed, went to work searching every cranny, and prying into every drawer, and woe betide anything which did not come up to my idea of neat housekeeping. When I chanced across the drawer of scraps I at once condemned them to the flames. Such a place of disorder could not be tolerated in my dominions. I never thought of the contingency of papa's shirts, etc., wanting mending; my oversight, however, did not prevent the natural catastrophe of clothes wearing out, and one day papa brought me a garment to mend, 'Oh,' said I, tossing it carelessly aside, 'that hole is too big to darn.' "'Certainly, my dear,' he replied, 'but you can put a piece in. Look in such a drawer, and you will find plenty to patch with.' "But behold the drawer was empty. Happily, I had commuted the sentence of burning to that of distribution to the slaves, one of whom furnished me the piece, and mended the garment ten times better than I could have done. So I was let to go unwhipped of justice for that misdemeanor, and perhaps that was the lesson which burnt into my soul. My story doesn't sound Southerny, does it? Well, here is something more. During that summer, father had me taught to spin and weave negro cloth. Don't suppose I ever did anything worth while; only it was one of his maxims: 'Never lose an opportunity of learning what is useful. If you never need the knowledge, it will be no burden to have it; and if you should, you will be thankful to have it.' So I had to use my delicate fingers now and then to shell corn, a process which sometimes blistered them, and was sent into the field to pick cotton occasionally. Perhaps I am indebted partially to this for my life-long detestation of slavery, as it brought me in close contact with these unpaid toilers." Doubtless she had many a talk with these "unpaid toilers," and learned from them the inner workings of a system which her friends would fain have taught her to view as fair and merciful. Children are born without prejudice, and the young children of Southern planters never felt or made any difference between their white and colored playmates. The instances are many of their revolt and indignation when first informed that there must be a difference. So that there is nothing singular in the fact that Sarah Grimké, to use her own words, early felt such an abhorrence of the whole institution of slavery, that she was sure it was born in her. Several of her brothers and sisters felt the same. But she differed from other children in the respect that her sensibilities were so acute, her heart so tender, that she made the trials of the slaves her own, and grieved that she could neither share nor mitigate them. So deeply did she feel for them that she was frequently found in some retired spot weeping, after one of the slaves had been punished. She remembered that once, when she was not more than four or five years old, she accidentally witnessed the terrible whipping of a servant woman. As soon as she could escape from the house, she rushed out sobbing, and half an hour afterwards her nurse found her on the wharf, begging a sea captain to take her away to some place where such things were not done. She told me once that often, when she knew one of the servants was to be punished, she would shut herself up and pray earnestly that the whipping might be averted; "and sometimes," she added, "my prayers were answered in very unexpected ways." Writing to a young friend, a few years before her death, she says: "When I was about your age, we spent six months of the year in the back country, two hundred miles from Charleston, where we would live for months without seeing a white face outside of the home circle. It was often lonely, but we had many out-door enjoyments, and were very happy. I, however, always had one terrible drawback. Slavery was a millstone about my neck, and marred my comfort from the time I can remember myself. My chief pleasure was riding on horseback daily. 'Hiram' was a gentle, spirited, beautiful creature. He was neither slave nor slave owner, and I loved and enjoyed him thoroughly." When she was quite young her father gave her a little African girl to wait on her. To this child, the only slave she ever owned, she became much attached, treating her as an equal, and sharing all her privileges with her. But the little girl died after a few years, and though her youthful mistress was urged to take another, she refused, saying she had no use for her, and preferred to wait on herself. It was not until she was more than twelve years old that, at her mother's urgent request, she consented to have a dressing-maid. Judge Grimké, his family and connections, were all High-Church Episcopalians, tenacious of every dogma, and severe upon any neglect of the religious forms of church or household worship. Nothing but sickness excused any member of the family, servants included, from attending morning prayers, and every Sunday the well-appointed carriage bore those who wished to attend church to the most fashionable one in the city. The children attended Sabbath-school regularly, and in the afternoon the girls who were old enough taught classes in the colored school. Here, Sarah was the only one who ever caused any trouble. She could never be made to understand the wisdom which included the spelling-book, in the hands of slaves, among the dangerous weapons, and she constantly fretted because she could only give her pupils oral instruction. She longed to teach them to read, for many of them were pining for the knowledge which the "poor white trash" rejected; but the laws of the State not only prohibited the teaching of slaves, but provided fines and imprisonment for those who ventured to indulge their fancy in that way. So that, argue as she might, and as she did, the privilege of opening the storehouse of learning to those thirsty souls was denied her. "But," she writes, "my great desire in this matter would not be totally suppressed, and I took an almost malicious satisfaction in teaching my little waiting-maid at night, when she was supposed to be occupied in combing and brushing my long locks. The light was put out, the keyhole screened, and flat on our stomachs before the fire, with the spelling-book under our eyes, we defied the laws of South Carolina." But this dreadful crime was finally discovered, and poor Hetty barely escaped a whipping; and her bold young mistress had to listen to a severe lecture on the enormity of her conduct. When Sarah was about twelve years old, two important events occurred to interrupt the even tenor of her life. Her brother Thomas was sent off to Yale College, leaving her companionless and inconsolable, until, a few weeks later, the birth of a little sister brought comfort and joy to her heart. This sister was Angelina Emily, the last child of her parents, and the pet and darling of Sarah from the moment the light dawned upon her blue eyes. Sarah seems to have felt for this new baby not only more than the ordinary affection of a sister, but the yearning tenderness of a mother, and a mysterious affinity which foreshadowed the heart and soul sympathy which, notwithstanding the twelve years' difference in their ages, made them as one through life. She at once begged that she might stand godmother for her sister; but her parents, thinking this desire only a childish whim, refused. She was seriously in earnest, however, and day after day renewed her entreaties, answering her father's arguments that she was too young for such a responsibility by saying that she would be old enough when it became necessary to exercise any of the responsibility. Seeing finally that her heart was so set upon it, her parents consented; and joyfully she stood at the baptismal font, and promised to train this baby sister in the way she should go. Many years afterwards, in describing her feelings on this occasion, she said: "I had been taught to believe in the efficacy of prayer, and I well remember, after the ceremony was over, slipping out and shutting myself up in my own room, where, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I prayed that God would make me worthy of the task I had assumed, and help me to guide and direct my precious child. Oh, how good I resolved to be, how careful in all my conduct, that my life might be blessed to her!" Entering in such a spirit upon the duties she had taken upon herself, we cannot over estimate her influence in forming the character and training the mind of this "precious Nina," as she so often called her. And, as we shall see, for very many years Angelina followed closely where Sarah led, treading almost in her footsteps, until the seed sown by the older sister, ripening, bore its fruit in a power and strength and individuality which gave her the leadership, and caused Sarah to fall back and gaze with wonder upon development so much beyond her thoughts or hopes. From the first, Sarah took almost entire charge of her little god-daughter; and, as "Nina" grew out of her babyhood, Sarah continued to exercise such general supervision over her that the child learned to look up to her as to a mother, and frequently when together, and in her correspondence for many years, addressed her as "Mother." It does not appear that Judge Grimké entertained any views differing greatly from those of intelligent men in the society about him. He was a man of wide culture, varied experience of life, and a diligent student. Therefore, as he made a companion of his bright and promising daughter, he doubtless did much to sharpen her intellect, as well as to deepen her conscientiousness and sense of religious obligation. Her brother Thomas, too, added another strong influence to her mental development. She was nearly fifteen when he returned from college, bringing with him many new ideas, most of them quite original, and which he at once set to work to study more closely, with a view to putting them into practical operation. Sarah was his confidante and his amanuensis; and, looking up to him almost as to a demi-god, she readily fell in with his opinions, and made many of them her own. Of her mother there is little mention in the early part of her life. Mrs. Grimké appears to have been a very devout woman, of rather narrow views, and undemonstrative in her affections. She was, however, intelligent, and had a taste for reading, especially theological works. Her son Thomas speaks of her as having read Stratton's book on the priesthood, and inferring from its implications the sect to which the author belonged. The oldest of her children was only nineteen when Angelina was born. The burdens laid upon her were many and great; and we cannot wonder that she was nervous, exhausted, and irritable. The house was large, and kept in the style common in that day among wealthy Southern people. The servants were numerous, and had, no doubt, the usual idle, pilfering habits of slaves. All provisions were kept under lock and key, and given out with scrupulous exactitude, and incessant watchfulness as to details was a necessity. As children multiplied, Mrs. Grimké appears to have lost all power of controlling either them or her servants. She was impatient with the former, and resorted with the latter to the punishments commonly inflicted by slaveowners. These severities alienated her children still more from her, and they showed her little respect or affection. It never appears to have occurred to any of them to try to relieve her of her cares; and it is probable she was more sinned against than sinning,--a sadly burdened and much-tried woman. From numerous allusions to her in the diaries and letters, the evidence of an ill-regulated household is plain, as also the feelings of the children towards her. From Angelina's diary we copy the following:-- "On 2d day I had some conversation with sister Mary on the deplorable state of our family, and to-day with Eliza. They complain very much of the servants being so rude, and doing so much as they please. But I tried to convince them that the servants were just what the family was, that they were not at all more rude and selfish and disobliging than they themselves were. I gave one or two instances of the manner in which they treated mother and each other, and asked how they could expect the servants to behave in any other way when they had such examples continually before them, and queried in which such conduct was most culpable. Eliza always admits what I say to be true, but, as I tell her, never profits by it.... Sister Mary is somewhat different; she will not condemn herself.... She will acknowledge the sad state of the family, but seems to think mother is altogether to blame. And dear mother seems to resist all I say: she will neither acknowledge the state of the family nor her own faults, and always is angry when I speak to her.... Sometimes when I look back to the first years of my religious life, and remember how unremittingly I labored with mother, though in a very wrong spirit, being alienated from her and destitute of the spirit of love and forbearance, my heart is very sore." This unfortunate state of things prevailed until the children were grown, and with more or less amelioration after that time. Sarah's natural tenderness, and the sense of justice which, as she grew to womanhood, was so conspicuous in Angelina, drew their mother nearer to them than to her other children, though Thomas always wrote of her affectionately and respectfully. She, however, with her rigid orthodox beliefs, could never understand her "alien daughters," as she called them; and she never ceased to wonder how such strange fledglings could have come from her nest. It was only when they had proved by years of self-sacrifice the earnestness of their peculiar views that she learned to respect them; and, though they never succeeded in converting her from her inherited opinions, she was towards the last years of her life brought into something like affectionate sympathy with them. CHAPTER II. It was quite the custom in the last century and the beginning of the present one for cultivated people to keep diaries, in which the incidents of each day were jotted down, accompanied by the expression of private opinions and feelings. Women, especially, found this diary a pleasant sort of confessional, a confidante to whose pages they could entrust their most secret thoughts without fear of rebuke or betrayal. Sarah Grimké's diary, covering over five hundred pages of closely written manuscript, though not begun until 1821, gives many reminiscences of her youth, and describes with painful conscientiousness her religious experiences. She also repeatedly regrets the fact that her education, though what was considered at that time a good one, was entirely superficial, embracing only that kind of knowledge which is acquired for display. What useful information she received she owed to the conversations of her father and her brother Thomas, her "beloved companion and friend." There is no doubt that this want of proper training was to her a cause of regret during her whole life. With her, learning was always a passion; and, in passing, I may say she never thought herself too old for study and the acquisition of knowledge. As she grew up, and saw the very different education her brothers were receiving, her ambition and independence were fired, and she longed to share their advantages. But in vain she entreated permission to do so. The only answer she received was: "You are a girl; what do you want of Latin and Greek and philosophy? You can never use them." And when it was discovered that she was secretly studying law, and was ambitious to stand side by side with her brother at the bar, smiles and sneers rebuked her "unwomanly" aspirations. And though she argued the point with much spirit, unable to see why the mere fact of being a girl should confine her to the necessity of being a "doll, a coquette, a fashionable fool," she failed to secure a single adherent to her strong-minded ideas. Her nature thus denied its proper nutriment, and her most earnest desires crushed, she sought relief in another direction. Painting, poetry, general reading occupied her leisure time, while she was receiving private tuition from the best masters in Charleston. At sixteen she was introduced into society, or, as she phrases it, "initiated into the circles of dissipation and folly." In her account of the life she led in those circles she does not spare herself. "I believe," she writes, "for the short space I was exhibited on this theatre, few have exceeded me in extravagance of every kind, and in the sinful indulgence of pride and vanity, sentiments which, however, were strongly mingled with a sense of their insufficiency to produce even earthly happiness, with an eager desire for intellectual pursuits, and a thorough contempt for the trifles I was engaged in. Often during this period have I returned home, sick of the frivolous beings I had been with, mortified at my own folly, and weary of the ball-room and its gilded toys. Night after night, as I glittered now in this gay scene, now in that, my soul has been disturbed by the query, 'Where are the talents committed to thy charge?' But the intrusive thought would be silenced by the approach of some companion, or a call to join the dance, or by the presentation of the stimulating cordial, and my remorse and my hopeless desires would be drowned for the time being. Once, in utter disgust, I made a resolution to abstain from such amusements; but it was made in self-will, and did not stand long, though I was so earnest that I gave away much of my finery. I cannot look back to those years without a blush of shame, a feeling of anguish at the utter perversion of the ends of my being. But for my tutelary god, my idolized brother, my young, passionate nature, stimulated by that love of admiration which carries many a high and noble soul down the stream of folly to the whirlpool of an unhallowed marriage, I had rushed into this lifelong misery. Happily for me, this butterfly life did not last long. My ardent nature had another channel opened for it, through which it rushed with its usual impetuosity. I was converted, and turned over to doing good." Up to this time she was a communicant in the Episcopal church, and a regular attendant on its various services. But, as she records, her heart was never touched, her soul never stirred. She heard the same things preached week after week,--the necessity of coming to Christ and the danger of delay,--and she wondered at her insensibility. She joined in family worship, and was scrupulously exact in her private devotions; but all was done mechanically, from habit, and no quickening sense of her "awful condition" came to her until she went one night, on the invitation of a friend, to hear a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Henry Kolloch, celebrated for his eloquence. He preached a thrilling sermon, and Sarah was deeply moved. But the impression soon wore off, and she returned to her gay life with renewed ardor. A year after, the same minister revisited Charleston; and again she went to hear him, and again felt the "arrows of conscience," and again disregarded the solemn warning. The journal continues:-- "After this he came no more; and in the winter of 1813-14 I was led in an unusual degree into scenes of dissipation and frivolity. It seemed as if my cup of worldly pleasure was filled to the brim; and after enjoying all the city afforded, I went into the country in the spring with a fashionable acquaintance, designing to finish my wild career there." While on this visit, she accidentally met the Rev. Dr. Kolloch, and became acquainted with him. He seems to have taken a warm interest in her spiritual welfare, and his conversations made a serious impression on her which her gay friends tried to remove. But her sensitive spirit was so affected by his admonitions, and warnings of the awful consequences of persisting in a course of conduct which must eventually lead to everlasting punishment, that she was made very miserable. She trembled as he portrayed her doom, and wept bitterly; but, though she assented to the truth of his declarations, she did not feel quite prepared to give up the pomps and vanities of her life, unsatisfactory as they were. A sore conflict began in her mind, and she could take no pleasure in anything. Dr. Kolloch's parting question to her, spoken in the most solemn tones, "Can you, then, dare to hesitate?" rang continually in her ears; and the next few days and nights were passed in a turmoil of various feelings, until, exhausted, she gave up the struggle, and acknowledged herself sensible of the emptiness of worldly gratifications, and thought she was willing to resign all for Christ. She returned home sorrowful and heavy-hearted. The glory of the world was stained, and she no longer dared to participate in its vain pleasures. She felt "loaded down with iniquity," and, almost sinking under a sense of her guilt and her danger, she secluded herself from society, and put away her ornaments, "determined to purchase Heaven at any price." But she found no relief in these sacrifices; and, after enduring much trial at her ill success, she wrote to Dr. Kolloch, informing him of her state of mind. "Over his answer," she writes, "I shed many tears; but, instead of prostrating myself in deep abasement before the Lord, and craving his pardon, I was desirous of doing something which might claim his approbation and disperse the thick cloud which seemed to hide him from me. I therefore set earnestly to work to do good according to my capacity. I fed the hungry and clothed the naked, I visited the sick and afflicted, and vainly hoped these outside works would purify a heart defiled with the pride of life, still the seat of carnal propensities and evil passions; but here, too, I failed. I went mourning on my way under the curse of a broken law; and, though I often watered my couch with my tears, and pleaded with my Maker, yet I knew nothing of the sanctifying influence of his holy spirit, and, not finding that happiness in religion I anticipated, I, by degrees, through the persuasions of companions and the inclination of my depraved heart, began to go a little more into society, and to resume my former style of dressing, though in comparative moderation." She then states how, some time after she had thus departed from her Christian profession. Dr. Kolloch came once more, and his sad and earnest rebukes made her unutterably wretched. But she tried to stifle the voice of conscience by entering more and more into worldly amusements, until she had lost nearly all spiritual sense. Her disposition became soured by incessantly yielding to temptation, and she adds:-- "I know not where I might have been landed, had not the merciful interposition of Providence stopped my progress." This "merciful interposition of Providence" was nothing less than the declining health of her father; and it affords, indeed, a curious comment on the old Orthodox teachings, that this young woman, devotedly attached to her father, and fully appreciating his value to his family, should have regarded his ill-health as sent by God for her especial benefit, to interrupt her worldly course, and compass her salvation. Judge Grimké's illness continued for a year or more; and so faithfully did Sarah nurse him that when it was decided that he should go to Philadelphia to consult Dr. Physic, she was chosen to accompany him. This first visit to the North was the most important event of Sarah's life, for the influences and impressions there received gave some shape to her vague and wayward fancies, and showed her a gleam of the light beyond the tangled path which still stretched before her. She found lodgings for her father and herself in a Quaker family whose name is not mentioned. About their life there, little is said; Sarah being too much occupied with the care of her dear invalid to take much interest in her new surroundings. Judge Grimké's health continued to decline. His daughter's account of the last days of his life is very touching, and shows not only how deep was her religious feeling, but how tender and yet how strong she was all through this great trial. The father and daughter, strangers in a strange land, drawn more closely together by his suffering and her necessary care, became friends. indeed; their attachment increasing day by day, until, ere their final separation, they loved each other with that fervent affection which grows only with true sympathy and unbounded confidence. Sarah thus wrote of it:-- "I regard this as the greatest blessing, next to my conversion, I have ever received from God, and I think if all my future life is passed in affliction this mercy alone should make me willingly, yea, cheerfully and joyously, submit to the chastisements of the Lord." During their stay in Philadelphia, she had hoped for her father's recovery, but when, by the doctor's advice, they went to Long Branch, and she saw how weak and ill he was, this hope forsook her, and she describes her agony as something never to be effaced from her memory. Doubtless this was intensified by her lone and friendless position. They were in a tavern, without one human being to soothe them or sympathize with them. "But," she writes, "let me here acknowledge the mercy of that Being whose everlasting arms supported me in this hour of suffering. After the first burst of grief I became calm, and felt an assurance that He in whom I trusted would never leave nor forsake me, and that I would have strength given me, even to the performance of the last sad duties. But the end was not yet; the disease fluctuated, some days arousing a gleam of hope, only to be extinguished by the next day's weakness. Alas! I was compelled to see that death was certainly, though slowly, approaching, and all feeling for my own suffering was sunk in anxiety to contribute to my father's comfort, and smooth his passage to the grave. And, blessed be God, I was not only able to minister to many of his temporal wants, but permitted to strengthen his hopes of a happy immortality. I prayed with him and read to him, and I cannot recollect hearing an impatient expression from him during his whole illness, or a wish that his sufferings might be lessened or abridged. He often tried to conceal his bodily pain, and to soothe me by every appearance of cheerful piety. Thus he lingered until the 6th of August, when he grew visibly worse. Many incoherent expressions escaped him, but even then how tenderly he spoke of me, I ever shall remember.... About eight o'clock I moved him to his own bed, and, sitting down, prepared to watch by him. He entreated me to lie down, and I told him when he slept I would. "'Oh, God,' he exclaimed with fervent energy, 'how sweet to sleep and wake in heaven!' This last desire was realized. He clasped one of my hands, and as I bent over him and arranged his pillow he put his arm around me. I did not stir; apparently he slept. But the relaxed grasp, the dewy coldness, the damps of death which stood upon his forehead, all told me that he was hastening fast to Jesus. Alone, at the hour of midnight, I sat by this bed of death. My eyes were fixed on that face whose calmness seemed to say, 'I rest in peace.' A gentle pressure of the hand, and a scarcely audible respiration, alone indicated that life was not extinct; at length that pressure ceased, and the strained ear could no longer hear a breath. I continued gazing on the lifeless form, closed his eyes and kissed him. His spirit, freed from the shackles of mortality, had sprung to its source, the bosom of his God. I passed the rest of the night alone." And alone, the only mourner, this brave, heart-stricken girl followed the remains of her beloved father to the grave. When all was over she went back to Philadelphia, where she remained two or three months, and then returned to Charleston. During the season of family mourning which followed, having nothing especial to do, Sarah became more than ever concerned about her spiritual welfare. She constantly deplored her lukewarmness, and regarded herself as standing on the edge of a precipice from which she had no power to withdraw. The subject of slavery began now also to agitate her mind. After her residence in Philadelphia, where doubtless she had to listen to some sharp reflections on the Southern institution, it seemed more than ever abhorrent to her, but it does not appear that she gave utterance to her feelings on more than one or two occasions. Even her diary contains only a slight and occasional reference to them. She saw, she says, how useless it was to discuss the subject, as even Angelina, the child of her own training, could see nothing wrong in the mere fact of slave-holding, if the slaves were kindly treated. Her brother Thomas, to whom she might have opened her overburdened heart, and received from his affection and good sense, comfort and strength, she saw little of; besides, he was a slave-owner, and among his numerous reform theories of education, politics, and religion, he does not seem to have thought of touching slavery. He was a leading member of the bar, very busy with his literary work, had a wife and family, and resided out of the city. Alone, therefore, Sarah brooded over her trials, and those of the slaves, "until they became like a canker, incessantly gnawing." Upon the latter she could only look as one in bonds herself, powerless to prevent or ameliorate them. Her sole consolation was teaching the objects of her compassion, within the lawful restrictions, whenever she could find the opportunity. But she began to look upon the world as a wilderness of desolation and suffering, and herself as the most miserable of sinners, fast hastening to destruction. In this frame of mind she was induced to listen to the doctrine of universal salvation, and eagerly adopted it, hoping thereby to find relief from her doubts and fears. Her mother discovered this with horror, and, trembling for her daughter's safety, she aroused herself to argue so strongly against what she termed the false and awful doctrine, that, though Sarah refused to acknowledge the force of all she said, it had its effect, and she gradually lost her hold on her new belief. But losing that, she lost all hope. "Wormwood and gall" were her portion, and, while she fulfilled the outward duties of religion, dreariness and settled despondency took possession of her mind. She writes: "Tears never moistened my eyes; to prayer I was a stranger. With Job I dared to curse the day of my birth. One day I was tempted to say something of the kind to my mother. She was greatly shocked, and reproved me seriously. I craved a hiding-place in the grave, as a rest from the distress of my feelings, thinking that no estate could be worse than the present. Sometimes, being unable to pray, unable to command one feeling of good, either natural or spiritual, I was tempted to commit some great crime, thinking I could repent and thus restore my lost sensibility. On this I often meditated, and assuredly should have fallen into this snare had not the mercy of God still followed me." I might go on for many pages painting this dreary picture of a misdirected life, but enough has been quoted at present to show Sarah Grimké's strong, earnest, impressionable nature, and the effects upon it of the teachings of the old theology, mingled with the narrow Southern ideas of usefulness and woman's sphere. Endowed with a superior intellect, with a most benevolent and unselfish disposition, with a cheerful, loving nature, she desired above all things to be an active, useful member of society. But every noble impulse was strangled at its birth by the iron bands of a religion that taught the crucifixion of every natural feeling as the most acceptable offering to a stern and relentless God. She was now twenty-eight years of age, and with the exception of the period devoted to her father she had as yet thought and worked only for herself. I do not mean that she neglected home duties, or her private charities and visits to the afflicted, but all these offices were performed from one especial motive and with the same end in view to avert from herself the wrath of her Maker. This one thought filled all her mind. All else was as nothing. Family and friends, home and humanity, were of importance only as they furthered this object. It is in this spirit that she mentioned her father's illness and death, and the heroic, self-sacrificing death, by shipwreck, of her brother Benjamin, to which she could resign herself from a conviction that the stroke was sent as a chastisement to her, and was a merciful dispensation to draw his young wife nearer to God. We read not one word of solicitude for mother, or brothers, or sisters, not a single prayer for their conversion. She was too busy watching and weeping over her own short-comings to concern herself about their doom. The long diary is filled with the reiteration of her fears, her sorrows, and her prayers. Many years afterwards she thus referred to this condition of her mind:-- "I cannot without shuddering look back to that period. How dreadful did the state of my mind become! Nothing interested me; I fulfilled my duties without any feeling of satisfaction, in gloomy silence. My lips moved in prayer, my feet carried me to the holy sanctuary, but my heart was estranged from piety. I felt as if my doom was irrevocably fixed, and I was destined to that fire which is never quenched. I have never experienced any feeling so terrific as the despair of salvation. My soul still remembers the wormwood and the gall, still remembers how awful the conviction that every door of hope was closed, and that I was given over unto death." Naturally, such a strain at last impaired her health, and, her mother becoming alarmed, she was sent in the autumn of 1820 to North Carolina, where several relatives owned plantations on the Cape Fear River. She was welcomed with great affection, especially by her aunt, the wife of her uncle James Smith, and mother of Barnwell Rhett. (This name was assumed by him on the inheritance of property from a relative of that name.) In the village near which this aunt lived there was no place of worship except the Methodist meeting-house. Sarah attended this; and under the earnest and alarming preaching she heard there, together with association with some of the most spiritual-minded of the members, she was aroused from her apathetic state, and was enabled to join in their services with some interest. She even offered up prayer with them, and at one of their love feasts delivered a public testimony to the truths of the gospel. Thus associated with them, she was induced to examine their principles and doctrines, but found them as faulty as all the rest she had from time to time investigated. She therefore soon decided not to become one of them. From her earliest serious impressions, she had been dissatisfied with Episcopacy, feeling its forms lifeless; but now, after having carefully considered the various other sects, and finding error in all, she concluded to remain in the church whose doctrines at least satisfied her as well as those of any other, and were those of her mother and her family. Of the Society of Friends she knew little, and that little was unfavorable. To a remark made one day by her mother, relative to her turning Quaker, she replied, with some warmth:-- "Anything but a Quaker or a Catholic!" Having made up her mind that the Friends were wrong, she had steadily refused, during her stay in Philadelphia, to attend their meetings or read any of their writings. Nevertheless many things about them, scarcely noticed at the time,--their quiet dress, orderly manner of life and gentle tones of voice, together with their many acts of kindness to her and her father,--came back to her after she had left them, and especially impressed her as contrasting so strongly with the slack habits and irregular discipline which made her own home so unhappy. On the vessel which carried her from Philadelphia to Charleston, after her father's death, was a party of Friends; and in the seven days which it then required to make the voyage, an intimacy sprang up between them and Sarah which influenced her whole after-life. From one of them she had accepted a copy of Woolman's works,--evidence that there must have been religious discussions between them. And that there was talk-- probably some jesting--in the family about Quakers is shown by the little incident Sarah relates of her brother Thomas presenting her, soon after her return from North Carolina, with a volume of Quaker writings he had picked up at some sale. He placed it in her hand, saying jocosely,-- "Thee had better turn Quaker, Sally; thy long face would suit well their sober dress." She was, as we have said, of a naturally cheerful disposition; but her false views of religion led her to believe that "by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better," and she shed more tears, and offered up more petitions for forgiveness, over occasional irresistible merriment than I have space to record. She accepted the book from her brother, read it, and, needing some explanation of portions of it, wrote to one of the Friends in Philadelphia whose acquaintance she had made on the vessel. A correspondence ensued, which resulted after some months in her entire conversion to Quakerism. She had now reached, she thought, a resting-place for her weary, sore-travailed spirit; and, like a tired pilgrim, she dropped all her burdens beside this fresh stream, from whose waters she expected to drink such cooling draughts. The quiet of the little meeting-house in Charleston, the absence of ornament and ceremony, the silent worship by the few members, the affectionate thee and thou, all soothed her restless soul for a while, and a sweet calm fell upon her. But she believed that God constantly spoke to her heart, directing her by the still, small voice; and the fidelity with which she obeyed this invisible guide was not only a real detriment to her spiritual progress, but the cause of much distress to her. When, as sometimes happened from various causes, she failed in obedience, her mental suffering was intense, and in abject humility she accepted as punishment any mortification or sorrow that came to her afterwards. As a sequence to this hallucination, she also had visions at various times, and saw and communed with spirits, and did not hesitate to acknowledge their influence and to respect their intimations. So marvellously real were her feelings on these points that her immediate friends, though greatly deploring their effect upon her, seldom ventured any remonstrance against them. Now, under the influence of her new belief, the impression of a divine call to be made upon her deepened, and soon took shape in the persuasion that it was to be a call to the ministry. Her soul recoiled at the very thought of work so solemn, and she prayed the Lord to spare her; but the more she prayed, the stronger and clearer the intimations became, until she felt that no loop-hole of escape was left her from obedience to her Master's will. From the publicity the work involved, she intuitively shrank. Her natural sensitiveness and all the prejudices of her life rebelled against it, and she could not look forward to it without fear and trembling. Every meeting now found her, she says, like a craven, dreading to hear the summons which would oblige her to rise and open her lips before the two or three gathered there. Vainly did she try to "hide herself from the Lord." The evidence came distinctly to her one morning that some words of admonition were required of her; but so appalling did the act appear to her that she trembled, hesitated, resisted, and was silent. Sorrow and remorse at once filled her soul; and, feeling that she had sinned against the Holy Ghost, she thought that God never could forgive her, and that no sacrifice she could ever offer could atone for this first act of disobedience. Through long and dreary years it was the spectre that never would down, but stood ready to point its accusing finger whenever she was tempted to seek the cause of her disappointments and sorrows. Thus, in the very outset of her new departure, arose apprehensions which followed her continually, robbing her religious exercises of all peace, and bringing her such a depth of misery that, she says, it almost destroyed her soul. The frequent letters of her Quaker friend, though calculated to soothe and encourage her, were all firm on the point of implicit obedience to the movements of the Spirit; and she found herself in a straight and narrow path, from which she was not allowed to deviate. To this friend, Israel Morris, Sarah seems to have confessed all her shortcomings, all her fears, until, encouraged by his sympathy, and led by her longing for a wider field of action, she began to contemplate a removal to the North. There were other causes which urged her to seek another home. The inharmonious life in her family, joined to the reproaches and ridicule constantly aimed at her, and which stung her to the quick, naturally inspired the desire to go where she would be rid of it all, and live in peace. In her religious exaltation, it was easy for her to persuade herself that she was moved to make this important change by the Lord's command. She sincerely believed it was so, and speaks of it as an unmistakable call, not to be disregarded, to go forth from that land, and her work would be shown her. Naturally, Philadelphia was the spot to which she was directed. When informed of her desires, Israel Morris not only gave his approval, but invited her to a home in his family. A door of shelter and safety being thus thrown open to her, she no longer hesitated, but at once made known her intention to her relatives. There seems to have been little or no opposition offered to a step so serious; in fact, her brothers and sisters, though much attached to her,--for her loving nature was irresistible,--evidently felt it a relief when she was gone, her strict and pious life being a constant rebuke to their worldly views and practices. Her sister Anna, at her urgent request, accompanied her on the voyage. This sister, the widow of an Episcopal clergyman, though a defender of slavery as an institution, recognized its evil influences on the society where it existed, and gladly accepted the opportunity offered to take her young daughter away from them. It was necessary, too, that she should do something to increase her slender income, and Sarah advised opening a small school in Philadelphia,--a thing which she could not have done in Charleston without a sacrifice of her own social position and of the family pride. There is nothing said of the parting, even from Angelina, though we know it must have been a hard trial for Sarah to leave this young sister, just budding into womanhood, and surrounded by all the snares whose alluring influences she understood so well. That she could consent to leave her thus is perhaps the strongest proof of her faith in the imperative nature of the summons to which she felt she was yielding obedience. The exiles reached Philadelphia without accident in the latter part of May, 1821. Lodgings were found for Mrs. Frost and her child, and Sarah went at once to the residence of her friend, Israel Morris. CHAPTER III. It is very much to be regretted that all of Sarah Grimké's letters to Angelina, and to other members of her family at this time, were, at her own request, destroyed as received. They would not only have afforded most interesting reading, but would have thrown light on much which, without them, is necessarily obscure. Nor were there more than twenty-five or thirty of Angelina's letters preserved, and they were written between the years 1826 and 1828. We therefore have but little data by which to follow Sarah's life during the five years succeeding her return to Philadelphia, and before she again went, to Charleston; or Angelina's life at home, during the same period. Sarah's diary, frequently interrupted, continues to record her religious sorrows, for these followed her even into the peaceful home at "Greenhill Farm," the name of Israel Morris's place, where she was received and treated like a near and dear relative; and it was but natural and proper that she should be so accepted by the members of Mr. Morris's family. He was literally her only friend at the North. Through his influence she had been brought into the Quaker religion, and encouraged to leave her mother and native land. She was entirely unpractised in the ways of the world, and was besides in very narrow circumstances, her only available income being the interest on $10,000, the sum left by Judge Grimké to each of his children. The estate had not yet been settled up. Add to all this the virtue of hospitality, inculcated by the Quaker doctrine, and it seems perfectly natural that Sarah should accept the offer of her friend in the spirit in which it was made, and feel grateful to her Heavenly Father that such a refuge was provided for her. The notes in her journal for that summer are rather meagre. She attended meeting regularly, but made no formal application to be received into the Society of Friends. It would hardly have been considered so soon; she must first go through a season of probation. How hard this was is told in the lamentations and prayers which she confided to her diary. The "fearful act of disobedience" of which she was guilty in Charleston lay as a heavy load on her spirit, troubling her thoughts by day and her dreams by night, until she says: "At times I am almost led to believe I shall never know good any more." Notwithstanding these trying spiritual exercises, the summer seems to have passed in more peace than she had dared to hope for. Israel Morris was a truly good man, with a strong, genial nature, which must have had a soothing effect upon Sarah's troubled spirit. But before many months her thoughts began to turn back to home. Her mother's want of spirituality, from her standpoint, grieved her greatly. The accounts she received of the disorder in the family added to her anxieties, and she felt that her influence was needed to bring about harmony, and to guide her mother on the road to Zion. She laid the case before the Lord, and, receiving no intimation that she would be doing a wrong thing, she decided to return to Charleston. Before leaving Philadelphia, however, she felt that it was her duty to assume the full Quaker dress. She had worn plain colors from the time she began to attend meeting in her native city, but the clothes were not fashioned after the Quaker style, and she still indulged herself in occasionally wearing a becoming black dress; though when she did so, she not only felt uncomfortable herself, but knew that she made many of her friends so. "Persisting in so doing," she says, "I have since been made sensible, manifested a want of condescension entirely unbecoming a Christian, and one day conviction was so strong on this subject, that, as I was dressing, I felt as if I could not proceed, but sat down with my dress half on, and these words passed through my mind: Can it be of any consequence in the sight of God whether I wear a black dress or not? The evidence was clear that it was not, but that self-will was the cause of my continuing to do it. For this I suffered much, but was at length strengthened to cast away this idol." Remembering the fashionable life she had once led, and her natural taste for the beautiful in all things, it must have been something of a sacrifice, even though sustained by her religious exaltation, to lay aside everything pretty and becoming, and, denying herself even so much as a flower from nature's own fields, to array herself in the scant and sober dress of drab, the untrimmed kerchief, and the poke bonnet. Writing from Greenhill in October, she says: "On last Fifth Day I changed my dress for the more plain one of the Quakers, not because I think making my clothes in their peculiar manner makes me any better, but because I believe it was laid upon me, seeing that my natural will revolted from the idea of assuming this garb. I trust I have made this change in a right spirit, and with a single eye to my dear Redeemer. It was accompanied by a feeling of much peace." Late in the autumn she sailed for Charleston, and was received by the home circle with affection, though her plain dress gave occasion for some slighting remarks. These, however, no longer affected her as they once had done, and she bore them in silence. Surrounded by her family, all of whom she warmly loved, in spite of their want of sympathy with her, rooming with her "precious child," with full opportunity to counsel and direct her, and intent upon carrying out reform in the household, she was for a time almost contented. She took up her old routine, her charities, and her schools, and attended meeting regularly. But a very few weeks sufficed to make her realize her utter inability to harmonize the discordant elements in her home, or to make more than a transient impression upon her mother. Day by day she became more discouraged; everything seemed to conspire to thwart her efforts for good, which were misconstrued and misunderstood. Surrounded, too, and besieged by all the familiar influences of her old life, it became harder to sustain her peculiar views and habits, and spiritual luke-warmness gained rapidly upon her. With deep humility she acknowledged the mistake she had made in going back to Charleston, which place was evidently not the vineyard in which she could labor to any profit. In July she was again in Philadelphia, a member now of the family of Catherine Morris, sister to Israel. Here she remained until after her admission into Friends' Society, when, feeling it her duty to make herself independent of the friends who had been so kind to her, she cast about her for something to do, and was mortified and chagrined to find there was nothing suited to her capacity. "Oh!" she exclaims, "had I received the education I desired, had I been bred to the profession of the law, I might have been a useful member of society, and instead of myself and my property being taken care of, I might have been a protector of the helpless, a pleader for the poor and unfortunate." The industrial avenues for women were few and narrow in those days; and for the want of some practical knowledge, the doors Sarah Grimké might have entered were closed to her, and she was finally forced to abandon her hopes of independence, and to again accept a home for the winter in Israel Morris's house, now in the city. It must not be supposed, however, that either here or at Catherine's, where she afterwards made her steady home, she was a burden or a hindrance. She was too energetic and too conscientious to be a laggard anywhere. So kind and so thoughtful was she, so helpful in sickness, so sympathetic in joy and in sorrow, that she more than earned her frugal board wherever she went. Could she only have been persuaded that it was right to yield to her naturally cheerful temper, she would have been a delightful companion at all times; but her sadness frequently affected her friends, and even drew forth an occasional reproof. The ministry, that dreadful requirement which she felt sure the Lord would make of her, was ever before her, and in fear and trembling she awaited the moment when the command would be given, "Arise and speak." This painful preparation went on year after year, but her advance towards her expected goal was very slow. She would occasionally nerve herself to speak a few words of admonition in a small meeting, make a short prayer, or quote a text of scripture, but her services were limited to these efforts. She often feared that she was restrained by her desire that her first attempt at exhorting should be a brilliant success, and place her at once where she would be a power in the meetings; and she prayed constantly for a clear manifestation, something she could not mistake, that she might not be tempted by the hope of relief from present suffering to move prematurely in the "awful work." Thus she waited, trying to restrain and satisfy her impatient yearnings for some real, living work by teaching charity schools, visiting prisons, and going through the duties of monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings. But she could not shut out from herself the doubts that would force themselves forward, that her time was not employed as it should be. We hear nothing of her family during these years, nothing to indicate any change in their condition or in their feelings. We know, however, that Sarah kept up a frequent correspondence with her mother and with Angelina, and that chiefly through her admonitions the latter was turned from her worldly life to more serious concerns. Like Sarah, Angelina grew up a gay, fashionable girl. Her personal beauty and qualities of mind and heart challenged the admiration of all who came in contact with her. More brilliant than Sarah, she was also more self-reliant, and, though quite as sympathetic and sensitive, she was neither so demonstrative nor so tender in her feelings as her elder sister, and her manner being more dignified and positive, she inspired, even in those nearest to her, a certain degree of awe which forbade, perhaps, the fulness of confidence which Sarah's greater gentleness always invited. Her frankness and scrupulous conscientiousness were equal to Sarah's, but she always preserved her individuality and her right to think for herself. Once convinced, she could maintain her opinion against all arguments and persuasions, no matter from whom. As an illustration of this, it is related of her that when she was about thirteen years of age the bishop of the diocese called to talk to her about being confirmed. She had, of course, been baptized when an infant, and he told her she was now old enough to take upon herself the vows then made for her. She asked the meaning of confirmation, and was referred to the prayer-book. After reading the rite over, she said:-- "I cannot be confirmed, for I cannot promise what is here required." The bishop urged that it was a form which all went through who had been baptized in the Church, and expected to remain in it. Looking him calmly in the face, she said, in a tone whose decision could not be questioned:-- "If, with my feelings and views as they now are, I should go through that form, it would be acting a lie. I cannot do it." And no persuasions could induce her to consent. Like Sarah, she felt much for the slaves, and was ever kind to them, thoughtful, and considerate. She, too, suffered keenly when punishments were inflicted upon them; and no one could listen without tears to the account she gave of herself, as a little girl, stealing out of the house after dark with a bottle of oil with which to anoint the wounds of some poor creature who had been torn by the lash. Earlier than Sarah, she recognized the whole injustice of the system, and refused ever to have anything to do with it. She did once own a woman, but under the following circumstances:-- "I had determined," she writes, "never to own a slave; but, finding that my mother could not manage Kitty, I undertook to do so, if I could have her without any interference from anyone. This could not be unless she was mine, and purely from notions of duty I consented to own her. Soon after, one of my mother's servants quarrelled with her, and beat her. I determined she should not be subject to such abuse, and I went out to find her a place in some Christian family. My steps were ordered by the Lord. I succeeded in my desire, and placed her with a religious friend, where she was kindly treated." Afterwards, when the woman had become a good Methodist, Angelina transferred the ownership to her mother, not wishing to receive the woman's wages,--to take, as she said, money which that poor creature had earned. There is no evidence that, up to the time of her first visit to Philadelphia, in 1828, she saw anything sinful in owning slaves; indeed, Sarah distinctly says she did not. She took the Bible as authority for the right to own them, and their cruel treatment by their masters was all that distressed her for many years. Like most of her young companions, Angelina had great respect for the ordinary observances of religion without much devotional sense of its sacred obligations. But Sarah did not neglect her duty as godmother. Her searching inquiries and solemn warnings had their effect, and soon awakened a slumbering conscience. But its upbraidings were not accepted unquestionably by Angelina, as they had been by Sarah. They only stung her into a desire for investigation. She must know the why; and her strong self-reliance helped her judgment, and buoyed her up amid waves of doubt and anxiety that would have submerged her more timid sister. In the first letter of hers that was preserved, written in January, 1826, we are introduced to her religious feelings, and find that they were formed by the pattern set by Sarah, save that they lacked Sarah's earnestness and sincere conviction. She acknowledges herself a poor, miserable sinner, but the tone is that of confidence that she will come out all right, and that it isn't really such a dreadful thing to be a sinner after all. In this letter, too, she mentions the death of her brother Benjamin, and in the same spirit in which Sarah wrote of it. "I was in Beaufort," she says, "when the news of my dear Ben's fate arrived. You may well suppose it was a great shock to my feelings, but I did not for one moment doubt all was right. This blow has been dealt by the hand of mercy. We have been much comforted in this dispensation. I have felt that it was good for me, and I think I have been thankful for it." And further on: "If this affliction will only make Mary (Benjamin's wife) a real Christian, how small will be the price of her salvation!" Poor Ben! heroic, self-sacrificing soul, he was not a professing Christian. In this same letter she expresses the desire to become a communicant of the Episcopal Church. But she did not wait for Sarah's answer. Before it came, she and one of her sisters had joined the Church. This was in January. Before a month had passed she began to be dissatisfied, and grew more and more so as time went on. Why, it is not difficult to surmise. From having been accustomed to much society and genial intercourse, she found herself, from her own choice, shut out from it all, and imprisoned within the rigid formalism and narrow exclusiveness of a proud, aristocratic church society. The compensation of knowing herself a lamb of this flock was not sufficient. She starved, she says, on the cold water of Episcopacy, and, to her mother's distress, began going to the Presbyterian church, just as Sarah had done. In April, she writes thus to her sister:-- "O, my dear mother, I have joyful news to tell you. God has given me a new heart. He has renewed a right spirit within me. This is news which has occasioned even the angels in heaven to rejoice; surely, then, as a Christian, as my sister and my mother, you will also greatly rejoice. For many years I hardened my heart, and would not listen to God's admonitions to flee from the wrath to come. Now I feel as if I could give up all for Christ, and that if I no longer live in conformity to the world, I can be saved." She then states that this change was brought about by the preaching of Mr. McDowell, the Presbyterian minister, and that she can never be grateful enough, as his ministry had been blessed to the saving of her soul. A little further on she adds:-- "The Presbyterians, I think, enjoy so many privileges that, on this account, I would wish to be one. They have their monthly concert and prayer-meetings, Bible-classes, weekly prayer-meetings, morning and evening, and many more which spring from different circumstances. I trust, my dear mother, you will approve of what I have done. I cannot but think if I had been taking an improper step, my conscience would have warned me of it, but, far otherwise, I have gone on my way rejoicing. "Mr. Hanckel sent me a note and a tract persuasive of my remaining in his church. The latter I think the most bigoted thing I ever read. He said he would call and see me on the subject. I trust and believe God will give me words whereby to refute his arguments. Brother Tom sanctioned my change, for his liberal mind embraces all classes of Christians in the arms of charity and love, and he thinks everyone right to sit under that minister, and choose that form, which makes the deepest impression on the heart. I feel that I have begun a great work, and must be diligent. Adieu, my dear mother. You must write soon to your daughter, and tell her all your mind on this subject." There is something very refreshing in all this, after poor Sarah's pages of bitterness and self-reproach. At that time, at any rate, Angelina enjoyed her religion. It was to her the fulfilment of promise. Sarah experienced little of its satisfactions, and groaned and wept under its requirements, from a sense of her utter unworthiness to accept any of its blessings. And this difference between the sisters continued always. Angelina knew that humility was the chief of the Christian virtues, and often she believed she had attained to it; but there was too much self-assertion, too much of the pride of power, in her composition, to permit her to go down into the depths, and prostrate herself in the dust as Sarah did. She could turn her full gaze to the sun, and bask in its genial beams, while Sarah felt unworthy to be touched by a single ray, and looked up to its light with imploring but shaded eyes. In November, 1827, Sarah again visited Charleston. Her heart yearned for Angelina, whose religious state excited her tenderest solicitude, and called for her wisest counsel. For that enthusiastic young convert was again running off the beaten track, and picking flaws in her new doctrines. But there was another reason why Sarah desired to absent herself from Philadelphia for a while. I can touch but lightly on this experience of her life, for her sensitive soul quivered under any allusion to it; and though her diary contains many references to it, they are chiefly in the form of prayers for submission to her trial, and strength to bear it. But it was the key-note to the dirge which sounded ever after in her heart, mingling its mournful numbers with every joy, even after she had risen beyond her religious horrors. For months she fought against this new snare of Satan, as she termed it, this plain design to draw her thoughts from God, and compass her destruction. The love of Christ should surely be enough for her, and any craving for earthly affection was the evidence of an unsanctified heart. In a delicate reference to this, in after years, she says:-- "It is a beautiful theory, but my experience belies it, that God can be all in all to man. There are moments, diamond points in life, when God fills the yearning soul, and supplies all our needs, through the richness of his mercy in Christ Jesus. But human hearts are created for human hearts to love and be loved by, and their claims are as true and as sacred as those of the spirit." It was very soon after her first doubts concerning her worthiness to accept the happiness offered to her that she determined to go to Charleston and put her feelings to the test of absence and unbiased reflection. The entry in her diary of November 22d is as follows:-- "Landed this morning in Charleston, and was welcomed by my dear mother with tears of pleasure and tenderness, as she folded me once more to her bosom. My dear sisters, too, greeted me with all the warmth of affection. It is a blessing to find them all seriously disposed, and my precious Angelina one of the Master's chosen vessels. What a mercy!" CHAPTER IV. The strong contrast between Sarah and Angelina Grimké was shown not only in their religious feelings, but in their manner of treating the ordinary concerns of life, and in carrying out their convictions of duty. In her humility, and in her strong reliance on the "inner light," Sarah refused to trust her own judgment, even in the merest trifles, such as the lending of a book to a friend, postponing the writing of a letter, or sweeping a room to-day, when it might be better to defer it until to-morrow. She says of this: "Perhaps to some who have been led by higher ways than I have been into a knowledge of the truth, it may appear foolish to think of seeking direction in little things, but my mind has for a long time been in a state in which I have often felt a fear how I came in or went out, and I have found it a precious thing to stop and consult the mind of truth, and be governed thereby." The following incident, one out of many, will illustrate the sincerity of her conviction on this point. "In this frame of mind I went to meeting, and it being a rainy day I took a large, handsome umbrella, which I had accepted from brother Henry, accepted doubtfully, therefore wrongfully, and have never felt quite easy to use it, which, however, I have done a few times. After I was in meeting, I was much tried with a wandering mind, and every now and then the umbrella would come before me, so that I sat trying to wait on my God, and he showed me that I must not only give up this little thing, but return it to brother. Glad to purchase peace, I yielded; then the reasoner said I could put it away and not use it, but this language was spoken: 'I have shown thee what was required of thee.' It seemed to me that a little light came through a narrow passage, when my will was subdued. Now this is a marvellous thing to me, as marvellous as the dealings of the Lord with me in what may appear great things." In a note she adds: "This little sacrifice was made. I sent the umbrella with an affectionate note to brother, and believe it gave him no offence to have it returned. And sweet has been the recompense--even peace." Whenever she acted from her own impulses, she was very clever in finding out some disappointment or mistake, which she could claim as a punishment for her self-will. As sympathy was the strongest quality of her moral nature, she suffered intensely when, impelled by a sense of duty, she offered a rebuke of any kind. The tenderest pity stirred her heart for wrong-doers, and though she never spared the sinner, it was always manifest that she loved him while hating his sin. Angelina, on the other hand, was wonderfully well satisfied with her own power of distinguishing right from wrong; this power being, she believed, the gift of the Spirit to her. She sought her object, dreading no consequences, and if disaster followed she comforted herself with the feeling that she had acted according to her best light. She was a faithful disciple of every cause she espoused, and scrupulously exact in obeying even its implied provisions. In this there was no hesitancy. No matter who was offended, or what sacrifices to herself it involved, the law, the strict letter of the law, must be carried out. In the early years of her religious life, she frequently felt called upon to rebuke those about her. She did it unhesitatingly, and as a righteous and an inflexible judge. In order to make these differences between the sisters more plain, differences which harmonized singularly with their unity in other respects, I shall be obliged, at the risk of wearying the reader, to make some further extracts from their diaries, before entering upon that portion of their lives in which they became so closely identified. After Sarah's return home, in 1827, we learn more of her mother and of the family generally, and see, though with them, how far apart she really was from them. The second entry in her diary at that date shows the beginning of this. "23d. Have been favored with strength to absent myself from family prayers. A great trial this to Angelina and myself, and something the rest cannot understand. But I have a testimony to bear against will worship, and oh, that I may be faithful to this and to all the testimonies which we as a Society are called to declare. "26th. Am this day thirty-five years old. A serious consideration that I have passed so many years to so little profit. "How little mother seems to know when I am sitting solemnly beside her, of the supplications which arise for her, under the view of her having ere long to give an account of the deeds done in the body." A month later she writes: "The subject of returning to Philadelphia has been revived before me. It seems like a fresh trial, and as if, did my Master permit, here would I stay, and in the bosom of my family be content to dwell; but if he orders it otherwise, great as will be the struggle, may I submit in humble faith." By the following extracts it will be seen that living under the daily and hourly influence of Sarah, Angelina was slowly but surely imbibing the fresh milk of Quakerism, and was preparing for another great change on her spiritual journey. In March, 1828, she wrote as follows to her sister, Mrs. Frost, in Philadelphia:-- "I think I can say that it was owing in a great measure to my peculiar state of mind that I did not write to you for so long. During that time it seemed as though the Lord was driving me from everything on which I had rested for happiness, in order to bring me to Christ alone. My dear little church, in which I delighted once to dwell, seemed to have Ichabod written upon its walls, and I felt as though it was a cross for me to go into it. At times I thought the Saviour meant to bring me out of it, and I could weep at the bare thought of being separated from people I loved so dearly. Like Abraham, I had gone out from my kindred into a strange land, and I have often thought that by faith I was joined to that body of Christians, for I certainly knew nothing at all about them at that time." In the latter part of the letter she mentions the visit to her of an Episcopal minister, from near Beaufort. He asked her if she could not do something to remove the lukewarmness from the Episcopal Church, and if a real evangelical minister was sent there would she not return to it. "But," she says, "I told him I could not conscientiously belong to any church which exalted itself above all others, and excluded ministers of other denominations from its pulpit. The principle of _liberty_ is what especially endears the Presbyterian church to me. Our pulpit is open to all Christians, and, as I have often heard my dear pastor remark, our communion table is the _Lord's table_, and all his children are cheerfully received at it." About the same time Sarah says in her diary: "My dear Angelina observed to-day, 'I do not know what is the matter with me; some time ago I could talk to the poor people, but now it seems as if my lips were absolutely sealed. I cannot get the words out.' I mark with intense interest her progress in the divine life, believing she is raised up to declare the wonderful works of God to the children of men." In the latter part of March, 1828, she makes the following entry: "On the eve of my departure from home, all before me lies in darkness save this one step, to go at this time in the _Langdon Cheeves_. This seems peremptory, and at times precious promises have been annexed to obedience,--'Go, and I will be with thee.'" Angelina had been very happy during the year spent in the Presbyterian Church, all its requirements suiting her temperament exactly. Her energy and activity found full exercise in various works of charity, in visiting the prison, where she delighted to exhort the prisoners, in reading, and especially in expounding the scriptures to the sick and aged; in zealously forwarding missionary work, and in warm interest in all the social exercises of the society. She was petted by the pastor, and admired by the congregation. It was very pleasant to her to feel that she not only conformed to all her duties, but was regarded as a shining light, destined to do much to build up the church. She still retained most of her old friendships in the Episcopal church, which had not given up all hope of luring her back to its fold. Altogether, life had gone smoothly with her, and she was well satisfied. The change which she now contemplated was a revolution. It was to break up all the old habits and associations, disturb life-long friendships, and, stripping her of the attractions of society and church intercourse, leave her standing alone, a spectacle to the eyes of those who gazed, a wonder and a grief to her friends. But all this Sarah had warned her of, and all this she felt able to endure. Self-sacrifice, self-immolation, in fact, was what Sarah taught; and, although Angelina never learned the lesson fully, she made a conscientious effort to understand and practise it. She began very shortly after Sarah's arrival at home. In January her diary records the following offering made to the Moloch of Quakerism:-- "To-day I have torn up my novels. My mind has long been troubled about them. I did not dare either to sell them or lend them out, and yet I had not resolution to destroy them until this morning, when, in much mercy, strength was granted." Sarah in her diary thus refers to this act: "This morning my dear Angelina proposed destroying Scott's novels, which she had purchased before she was serious. Perhaps I strengthened her a little, and accordingly they were cut up. She also gave me some elegant articles to stuff a cushion, believing that, as we were commanded to lead holy and unblamable lives, so we must not sanction sin in others by giving them what we had put away ourselves." Angelina also says, "A great deal of my finery, too, I have put beyond the reach of anyone." An explanation of this is given in a copy of a paper which was put into the cushion alluded to by Sarah. The copy is in her handwriting. "Believing that if ever the contents of this cushion, in the lapse of years, come to be inspected (when, mayhap, its present covering should be destroyed by time and service), they will excite some curiosity in those who will behold the strange assemblage of handsome lace veils, flounces, and trimmings, and caps, this may inform them that in the winter of 1827-8, Sarah M. Grimké, being on a visit to her friends in Charleston, undertook the economical task of making a rag carpet, and with the shreds thereof concluded to stuff this cushion. Having made known her intention, she solicited contributions from all the family, which they furnished liberally, and several of them having relinquished the vanities of the world to seek a better inheritance, they threw into the treasury much which they had once used to decorate the poor tabernacle of clay. Now it happened that on the 10th day of the first month that, sitting at her work and industriously cutting her scraps, her well-beloved sister Angelina proposed adding to the collection for the cushion two handsome lace veils, a lace flounce, and other laces, etc., which were accepted, and are accordingly in this medley. This has been done under feelings of duty, believing that, as we are called with a high and holy calling, and forbidden to adorn these bodies, but to wear the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, as we have ourselves laid aside these superfluities of naughtiness, so we should not in any measure contribute to the destroying of others, knowing that we shall be called to give an account of the deeds done in the body." This was at least consistent, and in this light cannot be condemned. From that time Angelina kept up this kind of sacrifices, which were gladly made, and for which she seems to have found ample compensation in her satisfied sense of duty. One day she records: "I have just untrimmed my hat, and have put nothing but a band of ribbon around it, and taken the lace out of the inside. I do want, if I _am_ a Christian, to look like one. I think that professors of religion ought so to dress that wherever they are seen all around may feel they are _condemning_ the world and all its trifling vanities." A little later, she writes: "My attention has lately been called to the duty of Christians dressing _quite_ plain. When I was first brought to the feet of Jesus, I learned this lesson in part, but I soon forgot much of it. Now I find my views stricter and clearer than they ever were. The first thing I gave up was a cashmere mantle which cost twenty dollars. I had not felt easy with it for some months, and finally determined never to wear it again, though I had no money at the time to replace it with anything else. However, I gave it up in faith, and the Lord provided for me. This part of Scripture came very forcibly to my mind, and very sweetly, too, 'And Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord.' It was then clearly revealed to me that if the true ark Christ Jesus was really introduced into the temple of the heart, that every idol would fall before it." Elsewhere she mentions that she had begun with this mantle by cutting off the border; but this compromise did not satisfy conscience. But the work thus begun did not ripen until some time after Sarah's departure, though the preparation for it went daily and silently on. Sarah in the meanwhile was once more quietly settled at Catherine Morris' house in Philadelphia. But we must leave this much-tried pilgrim for a little while, and record the progress of her young disciple on the path which, through much tribulation, led her at last to her sister's side, and to that work which was even now preparing for them both. CHAPTER V. Angelina's diary, commenced in 1828, is most characteristic, and in the very beginning shows that inclination to the consideration and discussion of serious questions which in after years so distinguished her. It is rather remarkable to find a girl of twenty-three scribbling over several pages about the analogy existing between the natural and the spiritual world, or discussing with herself the question: "Are seasons of darkness always occasioned by sin?" or giving a long list of reasons why she differs from commentators upon certain texts of scriptures. She enjoyed this kind of thinking and writing, and seems to have been unwearying in her search after authorities to sustain her views. The maxims, too, which she was fond of jotting down here and there, and which furnished the texts for long dissertations, show the serious drift of her thoughts, and their clearness and beauty. From this time it is interesting to follow her spiritual progress, so like and yet so unlike Sarah's. She, also, early in her religious life, was impressed with the feeling that she would be called to some great work. In the winter of 1828, she writes:-- "It does appear to me, and it has appeared so ever since I had a hope, that there was a work before me to which all my other duties and trials were only preparatory. I have no idea what it is, and I may be mistaken, but it does seem that if I am obedient to the 'still small voice' in my heart, that it will lead me and cause me to glorify my Master in a more honorable work than any in which I have been yet engaged." Knowing Sarah's convictions at this time, it is easy to imagine the long, confidential talks she must have had with Angelina, and the loving persuasion used to bring this dear sister into the same communion with herself, and it is no marvel that she succeeded. Angelina's nature was an earnest one, and she ever sought the truth, and the best in every doctrine, and this remained with her after the rest was rejected. The Presbyterian Church satisfied her better than the Episcopal, but if Sarah or anyone else could show her a brighter light to guide her, a better path leading to the same goal, she would have thought it a heinous offence against God and her own true nature to reject it. That no desire for novelty impelled her in her then contemplated change, and that she foresaw all she would have to contend with, and the sacrifices she would have to make, is evident from several passages like the following:-- "Yesterday I was thrown into great exercise of mind. The Lord more clearly than ever unfolded his design of appointing me another field of labor, and at the same time I felt released from the cross of conducting family worship. I feel that very soon all the burdens will drop from my hands, and all the cords by which I have been bound to many Christian friends will be broken asunder. Soon I shall be a stranger among those with whom I took sweet counsel, and shall have to tread the wine press alone and be forsaken of all." A day or two after she says:-- "This morning I felt no condemnation when I went into family prayers, and did not lead as usual in the duties. I felt that my Master had stripped me of the priest's garments, and put them on my mother. May He be pleased to anoint her for these sacred duties." Her impressions may be accounted for by the influence of Sarah's feelings regarding herself, and as there was then no other field of public usefulness open to women, especially among the Quakers, than the ministry, her mind naturally settled upon that as her prospective work. But, unlike Sarah, the anticipation inspired her with no dread, no doubt even of her ability to perform the duties, or of her entire acceptance in them. It is true she craved of the Lord guidance and help, but she was confident she would receive all she needed, and in this state of mind she was better fitted, perhaps, to wait patiently for her summons than Sarah was. She gives a minute and very interesting account of the successive steps by which she was led to feel that she could no longer worship in the Presbyterian Church, and we see the workings of Sarah's influence through it all. But it was not until after Sarah left for Philadelphia that Angelina took any decided measures to release herself from the old bonds. All winter it had grieved her to think of leaving a church which she had called the cradle of her soul, and where she had enjoyed so many privileges. She loved everything connected with it; the pastor to whom she had looked up as her spiritual guide; the members with whom she had been so intimately associated, and the Sunday-school in which she was much beloved, and where she felt she was doing a good work. Again and again she asked herself: "How can I give them up?" Her friends all noticed the decline of her interest in the church work and services, and commented upon it. But she shrank for a long time from any open avowal of her change of views, preferring to let her conduct tell the story. And in this she was straightforward and open enough, not hesitating to act at once upon each new light as it was given to her. First came the putting away of everything like ornament about her dress. "Even the bows on my shoes," she says, "must go," and then continues:-- "My friends tell me that I render myself ridiculous, and expose the cause of Jesus to reproach, on account of my plain dressing. They tell me it is wrong to make myself so conspicuous. But the more I ponder on the subject, the more I feel that I am called with a high and holy calling, and that I ought to be peculiar, and cannot be too zealous. I rejoice to look forward to the time when Christians will follow the apostolical injunction to 'keep their garments unspotted from the world;' and is not every conformity to it a spot on the believer's character? I think it is, and I bless the Lord that He has been pleased to bring my mind to a contemplation of this subject. I pray that He may strengthen me to keep the resolution to dress always in the following style: A hat over the face, without any bows of ribbon or lace; no frills or trimmings on any part of my dress, and materials _not_ the finest." This simplicity in dress, and the sinfulness of every self-indulgence, she also taught to her Sunday-school scholars with more or less success, as one example out of several of a similar character will show. "Yesterday," she writes, "I met my class, and think it was a profitable meeting to all. One of them has entertained a hope for about a year. She asked me if I thought it wrong to plant geraniums? I told her _I_ had no time for such things. She then said that she had once taken great pleasure in cultivating them, but lately she had felt so much condemnation that she had given it up entirely. Another professed to have some little hope in the Saviour, and remarked that I had changed her views with regard to dress very much, that she had taken off her rings and flounces, and hoped never to wear them again. Her hat also distressed her. It was almost new, and she could not afford to get another. I told her if she would send it to me I would try to change it. Two others came who felt a little, but are still asleep. A good work is evidently begun. May it be carried triumphantly on." Towards spring she began to absent herself from the weekly prayer-meetings, to stop her active charities, and to withdraw herself more from the family and social circle. In April she writes in her diary:-- "My mind is composed, and I cannot but feel astonished at the total change which has passed over me in the last six months. I once delighted in going to meeting four and five times every week, but now my Master says, 'Be still,' and I would rather be at home; for I find that every stream from which I used to drink the waters of salvation is dry, and that I have been led to the fountain itself. And is it possible, I would ask myself to-night, is it possible that I have this day paid my last visit to the Presbyterian Church? that I have taught my interesting class for the last time? Is it right that I should separate myself from a people whom I have loved so tenderly, and who have been the helpers of my joy? Is it right to give up instructing those dear children, whom I have so often carried in the arms of faith and love to the throne of grace? Reason would sternly answer, _No_, but the Spirit whispers, 'Come out from among them!' I am sure if I refuse the call of my Master to the Society of Friends, I shall be a dead member in the Presbyterian Church. I have read none of their books for fear of being convinced of their principles, but the Lord has taught me Himself, and I feel that He who is Head over all things, has called me to follow Him into the little silent meeting which is in this city." And into the little silent meeting she went,--little, indeed, as the only regular attendants were two old men; and silent, chiefly because between these two there was a bitter feud, and the communion of spirit was naturally preferred to vocal intercession. When Angelina became aware of this state of feeling, and saw that the two old Quakers always left the meeting-house without shaking hands, as it was the custom to do, she became much troubled, and for several weeks much of the comfort of attending meeting was destroyed. "The more I thought of it," she writes to Sarah, "the clearer became the conviction that I must write to J.K. (the one with whom she was best acquainted). This I did, after asking counsel of the Lord, for full well did I know that I should expose myself to the anger and rudeness of J.K., by touching on a point which I believed was already sore from the prickings of conscience. His reply was even harsher than I expected; but, though it did wound my feelings, it convinced me that he needed just what I wrote, and that the pure witness within him condemned him. My letter, I think, was written in conformity to the direction given by Paul to Timothy, 'Rebuke not an _elder_, but entreat him as a father,' and in a spirit of love and tenderness. His answer spoke a spirit too proud to brook even the meekest remonstrance, and he tried to justify his conduct by saying that D.L. was a thief and a slave-holder, and had cheated him out of a large sum of money, etc. I answered him, expressing my belief that, let D.L.'s moral character be what it might, the Christian ought to be gentle and courteous to all men; and that we were bound to love our enemies, which was not at all inconsistent with the obligation to bear a decided testimony against all that we believed contrary to the precepts of the Bible. He sent me another letter, in which he declared D.L. was to him as a 'heathen and a publican,' and I was a 'busybody in other men's matters.' Here I think the matter will end. I feel that I have done what was required of me, and I am willing he should think of me as he does, so long as I enjoy the testimony of a good conscience." We cannot wonder that Angelina drew upon herself, as Sarah had done, the arrows of ridicule; and that taunts and sneers followed her, as she walked alone in her simple dress to her humble place of worship. But we marvel that one situated as she was,--young, naturally gay and brilliant, the centre of a large circle of fashionable friends, the ewe lamb of an influential religious society,--should have unflinchingly maintained her position under persecutions and trials that would have made many an older disciple succumb. That they were martyrdom to her proud spirit there can be no doubt; but, sustained by the inner light, the conviction that she was right, she could put every temptation behind her, and resist even the prayers and tears of her mother. Her withdrawal from the Presbyterian Church caused the most intense excitement in the community, and every effort was made to reclaim her. The Rev. Mr. McDowell, her pastor, visited her, and remonstrated with her in the most feeling manner, assuring her of his profound pity, as she was evidently under a delusion of the arch-adversary. Members of the congregation made repeated calls upon her, urging every argument they could think of to convince her she was deceived. Some expressed a fear that her mind was a little unbalanced, and shook their heads over the possible result; others declared that she was committing a great impropriety to shut herself up every Sunday with two old men. This, Angelina informed them, was a mistake, as the windows and doors were wide open, and the gate also. Others of her friends assured her with tears in their eyes that they would pray to the Lord to bring her back to the path of duty she had forsaken. The superintendent of the Sunday-school came also to plead with her, in the name of the children she was abandoning. Some of the scholars themselves came and implored her not to leave them. "But," she writes, "none of these things turn me a hair's breadth, for I have the witness in myself that I have done as the Master commanded. Some tell me this is a judgment on me for sin committed; and some say it is a chastisement to Mr. McDowell for going away last summer." (During the prevalence of an epidemic the summer before, the Presbyterian pastor had been much blamed for deserting his flock and fleeing to the sea-shore until all danger was past.) By all this it will be seen that Angelina was regarded as too precious a jewel in the crown of the Church to be relinquished without a struggle. But satisfied as was her conscience, Angelina's natural feelings could not be immediately stifled. Though not so sensitive or so affectionate as Sarah, she was quite as proud, and valued as greatly the good opinion of her family and friends. She could not feel herself an outcast, an object of pity and derision, without being deeply affected by it. Her health gave way under the pressure, and a change of scene and climate was recommended. Sarah at once urged that she join her in Philadelphia; and, this meeting the approbation of her mother, she sailed for the North in July (1828). In Sarah's diary, about this time, we find the following entry:-- "13th. My beloved Angelina arrived yesterday. Peace has, I believe, been the covering of our minds; and in thinking of her to-day, and trying to feel whether I should advise her not to adopt immediately the garb of a Quaker, the language presented itself, 'Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.' So I dared not meddle with her." The summer was a peaceful and delightful one to Angelina. She was the guest of Catherine Morris, and was treated like a daughter by all the kind Quaker circle. The novelty of her surroundings, the fresh scenes and new ideas constantly presented before her, opened up a field of thought whose boundaries only she had until then touched, but which she soon began eagerly and conscientiously to explore. Two extracts from letters written by her at that time will show how strict she was in her Quaker principles, and also that the persuasion that she was to be given some great work to do was becoming even more firmly grounded. To Sarah, who was absent from her for a short time, she writes:-- "Dear Mother: My mind begins to be much exercised. I scarcely want to converse at all, and believe it best I should be much alone. Sister Anna is very kind in leaving me to myself. She appears to feel much for me, but I do not feel at liberty to ask her what occasions the tears which at times flow as she throws her arms around me. I sometimes think she sees more than I do about myself. I often tremble when I think of the future, and fear that I am not entirely resigned to my Master's will. Read the first chapter of Jeremiah; it rests much on my mind, and distresses me; and though I would wish to put far off the evil day, yet I am urged continually to pray that the Lord would cut short the work of preparation." Her sister Anna (Mrs. Frost) was one of those who thought Angelina was under a terrible delusion, and mourned over her wasted energies. But it is certainly singular that the chapter to which she refers, taken in connection with the work with which she afterwards became identified, should have made the impression on her mind which it evidently did, as she repeatedly alludes to it. This letter is the last in which she addresses Sarah as _mother_. Their Quaker friends all objected to the habit, and it was dropped. In another letter she describes a visit she made to a friend in the country, and says:-- "I have already had reason to feel my great need of watchfulness here. Yesterday the nurse gave me a cap to tuck and trim for the baby. My hands actually trembled as I worked on it, and yet I had not faithfulness enough to refuse to do it. This text was repeatedly presented to me, 'Happy is he who condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.' While working, my heart was lifted up to the Father of mercies for strength to bear my testimony against such vanities; and when I put the cap into Clara's hands, I begged her not to give me any more such work to do, as I felt it a duty to bear my testimony against dress, and believed it sinful in me to assist anyone in doing what I was convinced was sinful, and assured her of my willingness to do any plain work. She laughed at my scruples, but my agitated mind was calmed, and I was satisfied to be thought foolish for Christ's sake. Thomas (Clara's husband) and I had along talk about Quakers yesterday. I tried to convince him that they do not reject the Bible, explained the reason of their not calling it the word of God, and got him to acknowledge that in several texts I repeated the word was the Spirit. We conversed on the ordinances. He did not argue much for them, but was immovable in his opinions. He thinks if all Quakers were like _me_, he could like them, but believes I have carried all the good of Presbyterianism into the Society, therefore they cannot be judged of by me." On the 11th of November Sarah writes: "Parted with my dearly beloved sister Angelina this afternoon. We have been one another's consolation and strength in the Lord, mingling sweetly in exercise, and bearing one another's burdens." The first entry in Angelina's diary after her return to Charleston is as follows: "Once more in the bosom of my family. My prayer is that our coming together may be for the better, not for the worse." Considering the agitation which had been going on at the North for several years concerning slavery, we must suppose that Angelina and Sarah Grimké heard it frequently discussed, and had its features brought before them in a stronger light than that in which they had previously viewed them. In Sarah's mind, absorbed as it was at that time by her own sorrows and by the deeply-rooted conviction of her prospective and dreaded call to the ministry, there appears to have been no room for any other subject, if we except the strife then going on in the Quaker Church, and which called forth all her sympathy for the Orthodox portion, and her strong denunciation of the Hicksites. But upon Angelina every word she heard against the institution which she had always abhorred, but accepted as a necessary evil, made an indelible impression, which deepened when she was again face to face with its odious lineaments. This begins to show itself soon after her return home, as will be seen by the following extract:-- "Since my arrival I have enjoyed a continuation of that rest from exercise of mind which began last spring, until to-night. My soul is sorrowful, and my heart bleeds. I am ready to exclaim, When shall I be released from this land of slavery! But if my suffering for these poor creatures can at all ameliorate their condition, surely I ought to be quite willing, and I can now bless the Lord that my labor is not all in vain, though much remains to be done yet." The secluded and inactive life she now led confirmed the opinion of her Presbyterian friends that she was a backslider in the divine life. I must reserve for another chapter the recital of Angelina's efforts to open the eyes of the members of her household to the unchristian life they were leading, and the sins they were multiplying on their heads by their treatments of those they held in bondage. CHAPTER VI. Many things about the home life which habit had prevented Angelina from remarking before, now, since her visit among Friends, struck her as sinful, and inconsistent with a Christian profession. Only a few days after her return, she thus writes in her diary:-- "I am much tried at times at the manner in which I am obliged to live here in so much luxury and ease, and raised so far above the poor, and spending so much on my board. I want to live in plainness and simplicity and economy, for so should every Christian do. I am at a loss how to act, for if I live with mother, which seems the proper place for me, I must live in this way in a great degree. It is true I can always take the plainest food, and this I do generally, believing that whether at home or abroad I ought to eat nothing I think too sumptuous for a _servant_ of Jesus Christ. For this reason, when I took tea at a minister's house a few evenings since, I did not touch the richest cakes, nor the fruit and nuts handed, after tea; and when paying a visit the other morning, I refused cake and wine, although I felt fatigued, and would have liked something plain to eat. But it is not only the food I eat at mother's, but the whole style of living is a direct departure from the simplicity that is in Christ. The Lord's poor tell me they do not like to come to such a fine house to see me; and if they come, instead of being able to read a lesson of frugality, and deadness to the world, they must go away lamenting over the inconsistency of a sister professor. One thing is very hard to bear--I feel obliged to pay five dollars a week for board, though I disapprove of this extravagance, and am actually accessory in maintaining this style of living, when I know it is wrong, and am thereby prevented from giving to the poor as liberally as I would like." She and Sarah had for several years, when at home, paid board regularly to their mother, and this was probably one thing which irritated the other members of the family, several of whom were living in idleness on their mother, doing nothing and paying nothing. The brothers at least could not but feel the implied rebuke. As we have seen, she was not at all backward in expressing her disapprobation, when she found her silent testimony was disregarded or misunderstood; and her language was generally rather forcible. This, of course, was trying to those who did not see the necessity of living according to her standard, and very trying to Angelina, whose convictions were clear, and whose interest in her relatives was as tender as it was sincere. Scarcely a day passed that something did not occur to wound her feelings, shock her religious prejudices, or arouse her righteous indignation. Slavery was always the cause of the latter, and for the others ample reason was to be found in what she styled the vain lusts of the world, and in the coldness and irritability of some members of the family. Unrestrained self-indulgence, joined to high-strung and undisciplined tempers, made of what should have been a united, bright, and charming home circle, a place of constant discord, jealousy, and unhappiness. Sarah had borne this state of things better than Angelina could, her extreme gentleness and kindness disarming all unkind feelings in others. But even she was forced to flee from it at last. The record is a most painful one, and it gives another evidence of Angelina's sense of her own power, and of her reliance on divine help, that she should for one moment have contemplated effecting any change. But the respite from those dissensions, and the rest thus given to her spirit by her visit North, softened the bitter feelings she had once entertained, and when she returned home it was with sentiments of affection for everyone, and especially for her mother, from whom she had been grievously estranged. She prayed that she might not do or say anything to alienate them further from her; but when she fully realized, as she had never yet done, the sad condition of things, she could not keep silent. She felt it her duty to speak, and she did so, kindly and affectionately, but unsparingly. She relates many incidents proving this, and showing also how badly her reproofs were received. The mistake she made, and which in after years she freely acknowledged, was in excess of zeal. But Angelina was a born radical, and if a thing was wrong, it was wrong, and she could not see why it should not be righted at once. Temporizing with a wrong, or compromising with it in any way, were things outside of her reasoning, and she never would admit that they were justifiable under any circumstances. It was, of course, difficult to apply this principle in the desired reform of her mother's inherited and life-long prejudices. Hence the incessant chafing and irritation which daily made Angelina feel more keenly her isolated position, and caused her to turn with increasing longing to the North, where her beloved sister and many dear friends were in sympathy with her. To illustrate what I have said, one or two examples will be sufficient. She was much troubled because her mother had the drawing-room repainted and handsomely papered. Mrs. Grimké doubtless selected a paper in harmony with the house and furniture, and had no suspicion that she was thereby committing a sin. But Angelina thought it entirely too fine, and felt that she could never sit in the room. When the work was at last finished, and some friends were invited to tea, and afterwards repaired to the newly-decorated apartment, Angelina did not accompany them, but remained below, reading alone, much disturbed during the evening by the talking and laughing up stairs. Her mother did not notice her absence, or ascribed it to some other cause; but Angelina explained it to her some time afterwards, when, she says, a way seemed to open for it. "I spoke to her of how great a trial it was to me to see her living in the luxury she did, and explained to her that it was not, as she seemed to think, because I did not wish to see brother John and sister Sally that I was tried at their dining here every week, but it was the parade and profusion which was displayed when they came. I spoke also of the drawing-room, and remarked it was as much my feeling about _that_ which had prevented my coming into the room when M.A. and others drank tea here, as my objection to fashionable company. She said it was very hard that she could not give her children what food she chose, or have a room papered, without being found fault with; that, indeed, she was weary of being continually blamed about everything she did, and she wished she could be let alone, for she saw no sin in these things. 'I trust,' I said, 'that I do not speak to thee, mother, in the spirit thou art now speaking to me; nothing but my conviction that I am bound to bear my testimony to the truth could induce me to find fault with thee. In doing so, I am acting with eternity in view. I am acting in reference to that awful hour when I shall stand at thy death-bed, or thou by mine.' Interrupting me, she said if _I_ was so constantly found fault with, I would not bear it either; for her part, she was quite discouraged. 'Oh, mother,' said I, 'there is something in thee so alienated from the love of Christ that thou canst not bear to be found fault with.' 'Yes,' she said, 'you and Sally always say _I_ speak in a wrong spirit, but both of you in a right one.' She then went on to say how much I was changed, about slavery, for instance, for when I was first serious I thought it was right, and never condemned it. I replied that I acted according to the light I had. 'Well, then,' she continued, 'you are not to expect everyone to think like Quakers.' I remarked that true believers had but one leader, who would, if they followed Him, guide them into all truth, and teach them the same things. She again spoke of my turning Quaker, and said it was because I was a Quaker that I disapproved of a great many things that nobody but Quakers could see any harm in. I was much roused at this, and said with a good deal of energy, 'Dear mother, what but the _power_ of God could ever have made _me_ change my sentiments?' Some very painful conversation followed about Kitty. I did not hesitate to say that no one with _Christian_ feelings could have treated her as she was treated before I took her; her condition was a disgrace to the name of Christian. She reminded me that _I_ had advised the very method that had been adopted with her. This stung me to the quick. 'Not after I professed Christianity,' I eagerly replied, 'and that I should have done so before, only proved the wretched manner of my education.' But mother is perfectly blind as to the miserable manner in which she brought us up. During the latter part of the conversation I was greatly excited, for so acute have been my sufferings on account of slavery, and so strong my feelings of indignation in looking upon its oppressions and degradations, that I cannot command my feelings in speaking of what my own eyes have seen, and thus, I believe, I lost the satisfaction I should otherwise have felt for speaking the truth." Though constantly disregarded, taunted, and thwarted, Angelina faithfully persevered in her efforts at reform, at the same time as faithfully striving after more meekness and singleness of purpose herself. After a while, she obtained two concessions from which she hoped much: one, that the servants should come to her in the library every day for religious instruction; the other, that her mother would sit with her in silence every evening for half an hour before tea. The servants came as directed, and Angelina made her instructions so interesting that soon some of the neighbors' servants asked to be admitted, and then her mother and one or two of her sisters joined the meetings; and though no very marked fruit of her labors appeared for some time, she persevered, with a firm faith that the seed she was sowing would not all be scattered to the winds. The proposal to her mother to sit in silence for a while with her every evening was in accordance with the Quaker practices. She thought they would both find it profitable, and that it would be the means of forming a bond of union between them. The mother's assent to this was certainly an amiable concession to her daughter's views, enhanced by the regularity with which she kept the appointment, although the dark, silent room must have been at times a trifle wearisome. Angelina always sat on a low seat beside her, with her head in her mother's lap, and very rarely was the silence broken. The practice was kept up until the mosquitoes obliged them to discontinue it. That it did not prove entirely satisfactory, we judge from several entries in the diary like the following:-- "I still sit in silence with dear mother, but feel very sensibly that she takes no interest at all in it; still, I do not like to relinquish the habit, believing it may yet be blessed. Eliza came this evening, as she has several times before. It was a season of great deadness, and yet I am glad to sit even thus, for where there is communion there will be some union." Her position was certainly a difficult and a painful one; for, apart from other troubles, her eyes were now fully open to all the iniquities of the slave system, and she could neither stay in nor go out without having some of its miserable features forced upon her notice. In the view of her after-work, it is interesting to note the beginning of her strong feelings on the subject, as well as her faithful crusades against it in her own family. In April, 1829, she writes as follows in her diary:-- "Whilst returning from meeting this morning, I saw before me a colored woman who in much distress was vindicating herself to two white boys, one about eighteen, the other fifteen, who walked on each side of her. The dreadful apprehension that they were leading her to the workhouse crossed my mind, and I would have avoided her if I could. As I approached, the younger said to her, 'I will have you tied up.' My knees smote together, and my heart sank within me. As I passed them, she exclaimed, 'Missis!' But I felt all I had to do was to suffer the pain of seeing her. My lips were sealed, and my soul earnestly craved a willingness to bear the exercise which was laid on me. How long, O Lord, how long wilt thou suffer the foot of the oppressor to stand on the neck of the slave! None but those who know from experience what it is to live in a land of bondage can form any idea of what is endured by those whose eyes are open to the enormities of slavery, and whose hearts are tender enough to feel for these miserable creatures. For two or three months after my return here it seemed to me that all the cruelty and unkindness which I had from my infancy seen practised towards them came back to my mind as though it was only yesterday. And as to the house of correction, it seemed as though its doors were unbarred to me, and the wretched, lacerated inmates of its cold, dark cells were presented to my view. Night and day they were before me, and yet my hands were bound as with chains of iron. I could do nothing but weep over the scenes of horror which passed in review before my mind. Sometimes I felt as though I was willing to fly from Carolina, be the consequences what they might. At others, it seemed as though the very exercises I was suffering under were preparing me for future usefulness to them; and this,--_hope_, I can scarcely call it, for my very soul trembled at the solemn thought of such a work being placed in my feeble and unworthy hands,--this idea was the means of reconciling me to suffer, and causing me to feel something of a willingness to pass through any trials, if I could only be the means of exposing the cruelty and injustice which was practised in the institution of oppression, and of bringing to light the hidden things of darkness, of revealing the secrets of iniquity and abolishing its present regulations,--above all, of exposing the awful sin of professors of religion sending their slaves to such a place of cruelty, and having them whipped so that when they come out they can scarcely walk, or having them put upon the treadmill until they are lamed for days afterwards. These are not things I have heard; no, my own eyes have looked upon them and wept over them. Such was the opinion I formed of the workhouse that for many months whilst I was a teacher in the Sunday-school, having a scholar in my class who was the daughter of the master of it, I had frequent occasion to go to it to mark her lessons, and no one can imagine my feelings in walking down that street. It seemed as though I was walking on the very confines of hell; and this winter, being obliged to pass it to pay a visit to a friend, I suffered so much that I could not get over it for days, and wondered how any real Christian could live near such a place." It may appear to some who read this biography that Angelina's expressions of feeling were over-strained. But it was not so. Her nervous organization was exceedingly delicate, and became more so after she began to give her best thoughts to the cause of humanity. In her own realization, at least, of the suffering of others there was no exaggeration. Not long after making the above record of her feelings on this subject, she narrates the following incident:-- "I have been suffering for the last two days on account of Henry's boy having run away, because he was threatened with a whipping. Oh, who can paint the horrors of slavery! And yet, so hard is the natural heart that I am constantly told that the situation of slaves is very good, much better than that of their owners. How strange that anyone should believe such an absurdity, or try to make others believe it! No wonder poor John ran away at the threat of a flogging, when he has told me more than once that when H. last whipped him he was in pain for a week afterwards. I don't know how the boy must have felt, but I know that that night was one of agony to me; for it was not only dreadful to hear the blows, but the oaths and curses H. uttered went like daggers to my heart. And this was done, too, in the house of one who is regarded as a light in the church. O Jesus, where is thy meek and merciful disposition to be found now? Are the marks of discipleship changed, or who are thy true disciples? Last night I lay awake weeping over the condition of John, and it seemed as though that was all I could do. But at last I was directed to go to H. and tenderly remonstrate with him. I sought strength, and was willing to do so, if the impression continued. To-day, was somewhat released from this exercise, though still suffering, and almost thought it would not be required. But at dusk it returned; and, having occasion to go into H.'s room for something, I broached the subject as guardedly and mildly as possible, first passing my arm around him, and leaning my head on his shoulder. He very openly acknowledged that he meant to give John such a whipping as would cure him of ever doing the same thing again, and that he deserved to be whipped until he could not stand. I said that would be treating him worse than he would treat his horse. He now became excited, and replied that he considered his horse no comparison better than John, and would _not_ treat _it_ so. By this time my heart was full, and I felt so much overcome as to be compelled to seat myself, or rather to fall into a chair before him, but I don't think he observed this. The conversation proceeded. I pleaded the cause of humanity. He grew very angry, and said I had no business to be meddling with him, that he never did so with me. I said if I had ever done anything to offend him I was very sorry for it, but I had tried to do everything to please him. He said I had come from the North expressly to be miserable myself and make everyone in the house so, and that I had much better go and live at the North. I told him that I was not ignorant that both C. and himself would be very glad if I did, and that as soon as I felt released from Carolina I would go; but that I had believed it my duty to return this winter, though I knew I was coming back to suffer. He again accused me of meddling with his private affairs, which he said I had no right to do. I told him I could not but lift up my voice against his manner of treating John. He said rather than suffer the continual condemnation of his conduct by me, he would leave mother's house. I appealed to the witness in his own bosom as to the truth of what I urged. To my surprise he readily acknowledged that he felt something within him which fully met all I asserted, and that I had harrowed his feelings and made him wretched. Much more passed. I alluded to his neglect of me, and testified that I had experienced no feeling but that of love towards him and all the family, and a desire to do all I could to oblige them; and I left the room in tears. I retired to bless my Saviour for the strength he had granted, and to implore his continued support." "7th. Surely my heart ought to be lifted to my blessed Master in emotions of gratitude and praise. His boy came home last night a short time after our conversation, and instead of punishing him, as I am certain he intended to do, he merely told him to go about his business. I was amazed last night after all my sufferings were over, and I was made willing to leave all things in my Father's hands, to see John in the house. This was a renewed proof to me how necessary it is for us to watch for the right _time_ in which to do things. If I had not spoken just when I did, I could not have done so before John's return. He has escaped entirely.... Oh, how earnestly two nights ago did I pray for a release from this land of slavery, and how my heart still pants after it! And yet, I think, I trust it is in submission to my Heavenly Father's will. I feel comfortable to-night; my relief from suffering about John is so great that other trials seem too light to name." "8th. My heart sings aloud for joy. I feel the sweet testimony of a good conscience, the reward of obedience in speaking to H. Dear boy, he has good, tender feelings naturally, but a false education has nearly destroyed them, and his own perverted judgment as to what is manly and what is necessary in the government of slaves has done the rest. Lord, open thou his eyes." On the 13th of March she says: "To-day, for the first time, I ironed my clothes, and felt as though it was an acceptable sacrifice. This seemed part of the preparation for my removal to the North. I felt fearful lest this object was a stronger incentive to me than the desire to glorify my divine Master." There was doubtless some truth in the charge brought against her by her brothers, that her face was a perpetual condemnation of them. Referring to a call she received from some friends, she says:-- "An emptiness and vapidness pervaded all they said about religion. I was silent most of the time, and fear what I did say sprang from a feeling of too great indignation. Just before they went away, I joined in a joke; much condemnation was felt, for the language to me constantly is, 'I have called _thee_ with a _high_ and _holy_ calling,' and it seems as though solemnity ought always to pervade my mind too much to allow me ever to joke, but my natural vivacity is hard to bridle and subdue." The bond between Sarah and Angelina was growing stronger every day, their separation in matters of religion from the other members of the family serving more than anything else to draw them closely and lovingly together. Every letter from Sarah was hailed as a messenger of peace and joy, and to her Angelina turned for counsel and sympathy. It is very pleasant to read such words as the following, and know that they expressed the inmost feelings of Angelina's heart:-- "Thou art, dearest, my best beloved, and often does my heart expand with gratitude to the Giver of all good for the gift of such a friend, who has been the helper of my joy and the lifter up of my hands when they were ready to hang down in hopeless despair. Often do I look back to those days of conflict and suffering through which I passed last winter, when thou alone seemed to know of the deep baptisms wherewith I was baptized, and to be qualified to speak the words of encouragement and reproof which I believe were blessed to my poor soul. "I received another long letter from thee this afternoon. I cannot tell thee what a consolation thy letters are to her who feels like an exile, a stranger in the place of her nativity, 'as unknown, and yet well known,' and one of the very least where she was once among the greatest." In one of her letters, written soon after her return home, she thus speaks of her Quaker dress:-- "I thought I should find it so trying to dress like a Quaker here; but it has been made so easy that if it is a cross I do not feel the weight of it.... It appears to me that at present I am to be little and unknown, and that the most that is required of me is that I bear a decided testimony against dress. I am literally as a wonder unto many, but though I am as a gazing-stock--perhaps a laughing-stock--in the midst of them, yet I scarcely feel it, so sensible am I of the presence and approbation of Him for whose sake I count it a high privilege to endure scorn and derision. I begin to feel that it is a solemn thing even to dress like a Quaker, as by so doing I profess a belief in the purest principles of the Bible, and warrant the expectation in others that my life will exhibit to all around those principles drawn out in living characters." There is a pride of conscience in all this, strongly contrasting with Sarah's want of self-confidence when travelling the same path. If Angelina suffered for her religion, no one suspected it, and for this very reason she was enabled to exert a stronger influence upon those about her than Sarah ever could have done. She herself saw the great points of difference between them, and frequently alluded to them. On one page of her diary she writes:-- "I have been reading dear sister's diary the last two days, and find she has suffered great conflict of mind, particularly about her call to the ministry, and I am led to look at the contrast between our feelings on the subject. I clearly saw winter before last that my having been appointed to this work was the great reason why I was called out of the Presbyterian Society, but I don't think my will has ever rebelled against it. "So far from murmuring against the appointment, I have felt exceedingly impatient at not being permitted to enter upon my work at once; and this is probably an evidence that I am not prepared for it. But it is hard for me to _be_ and to _do_ nothing. My restless, ambitious temper, so different from dear sister's, craves high duties and high attainments, and I have at times thought that this ambition was a motive to me to do my duty and submit my will. The hope of attaining to great eminence in the divine life has often prompted me to give up in little things, to bend to existing circumstances, to be willing for the time to be trampled upon. These are my temptations. For a long time it seemed to me I did everything from a hope of applause. I could not even write in my diary without a feeling that I was doing it in the hope that it would one day meet the eye of the public. Last winter I wrote more freely in it, and am still permitted to do so. Very often, when thinking of my useless state at present, something of disappointment is felt that I am as nothing, and this language has been presented with force, 'Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not.'" CHAPTER VII. At this time of her life, ere a single sorrow had thrown its shadow across her heart, and all her tears were shed for other's woes, we see very distinctly Angelina's peculiar characteristics. Her conscientiousness and her pride are especially conspicuous. The former, with its attendant sacrifices at the shrine of religious principle, had the effect of silencing criticism after a while, and inspiring a respect which touched upon veneration. One of her sisters, in referring to this, says:-- "Though we considered her views entirely irrational, yet so absolute was her sense of duty, her superiority to public sentiment, and her moral courage, that she seemed to us almost like one inspired, and we all came to look upon her with a feeling of awe." Of her pride--"that stumbling block," as she calls it, to Christian meekness--she herself writes:-- "My pride is my bane. In examining myself, I blush to confess this fault, so great do I find its proportions. I am all pride, and I fear I am even proud of my pride." But hers was not the pride that includes personal vanity or the desire for the applause of the multitude, for of these two elements few ever had less; neither was there any haughtiness in it, only the dignity which comes from the conscious possession of rare advantages, joined to the desire to use them to the glory of something better than self. Still it was pride, and, in her eyes, sinful, and called for all her efforts to subdue its manifestations. It especially troubled her whenever she entered into any argument or discussion, both of which she was rather fond of inviting. She knew full well her intellectual power, and thoroughly enjoyed its exercise. I regret that space does not permit me to copy her discussion with the Rev. Mr. McDowell on Presbyterianism; her answers to the questions given her when arraigned before the Sessions for having left the Church; her conversation on Orthodoxy with some Hicksites who called on her, and her arguments on silent worship. They all show remarkable reasoning power, great lucidity of thought, and great faculty of expression for so young a woman. But, interesting as is the whole history of Angelina's last year in Charleston, I may not dwell longer upon it, but hasten towards that period when the reason for all this mental and spiritual preparation was made manifest in the work in which she became as a "light upon the hill top," and, which, as long as it lasted, filled the measure of her desires full to the brim. As it is important to show just what her views and feelings about slavery were at this time, and as they can be better narrated in her own words than in mine, I shall quote from her diary and a few letters all that relates to the subject. In May, 1829, we find this short sentence in her diary:-- "May it not be laid down as an axiom, that that system must be radically wrong which can only be supported by transgressing the laws of God." "3d Mo. 20th. Could I think I was in the least advancing the glory of God by staying here, I think I would be satisfied, but I am doing nothing. Though 'the fields are white for harvest, yet am I standing idle in the market place.' I am often tempted to ask, Why am I kept in such a situation, a poor unworthy worm, feeding on luxuries my soul abhors, tended by slaves, who (I think) I would rather serve than be served by, and whose bondage I deeply deplore? Oh! why am I kept in Carolina? But the answer seems to be: 'I have set thee as a sign to the people.' Lord, give me patience to stand still." "29th. At times slavery is a heavy burden to my heart. Last night I was led to speak of this subject, of all others the sorest on which to touch a Carolinian. The depravity of slaves was spoken of with contempt, and one said they were fitted to hold no other place than the one they do. I asked what had made them so depraved? Was it not because of their degraded situations, and was it not white people who had placed them and kept them in this situation, and were _they_ not to blame for it? Was it not a fact that the minds of slaves were totally uncultivated, and their souls no more cared for by their owners than if they had none? Was it not true that, in order to restrain them from vice, coercion was employed instead of the moral restraint which, if proper instruction had been given them, would have guarded them against evil? 'I wish,' exclaimed one, 'that you would never speak on the subject.' 'And why?' I asked. 'Because you speak in such a serious way,' she replied. 'Truth cuts deep into the heart,' I said, and this is no doubt the reason why no one likes to hear me express my sentiments, but I did feel it my duty to bear a decided testimony against an institution which I believe altogether contrary to the spirit of the Gospel; for it was a system which nourished the worst passions of the human heart, a system which sanctioned the daily trampling under foot of the feelings of our fellow creatures. 'But,' said one, 'it is exceedingly imprudent in you to speak as you do.' I replied I was not speaking before servants, I was speaking only to owners, whom I wished to know my sentiments; this wrong had long enough been covered up, and I was not afraid or ashamed to have any one know my sentiments--they were drawn from the Bible. I also took occasion to speak very plainly to sister Mary about the bad feeling she had towards negroes, and told her, though she wished to get rid of them, and would be glad to see them _shipped_, as she called it, that this wish did not spring from pure Christian benevolence. My heart was very heavy after this conversation." "3d Mo. 31st. Yesterday was a day of suffering. My soul was exceedingly sorrowful, and out of the depths of it, I cried unto the Lord that He would make a way for me to escape from this land of slavery. Is there any suffering so great as that of seeing the rights and feelings of our fellow creatures trodden under foot, without being able to rescue them from bondage? How clear it is to my mind that slaves can be controlled only by one of two principles,--fear or love. As to moral restraint, they know nothing of it, for they are not taught to act from principle. I feel as though I had nothing to do in this thing, but by my manner to bear a decided testimony against such an abuse of power. The suffering of mind through which I have passed has necessarily rendered me silent and solemn. The language seems to be, 'It behooves thee to suffer these things,' and this morning I think I saw very plainly that this was a part of the preparation for the awful work of the ministry." "4th Mo. 4th. Does not this no less positive than comprehensive law under the Gospel dispensation entirely exclude slavery: 'Do unto others as you would he done by?' After arguing for some time, one evening, with an individual, I proposed the question: 'Would'st thou be willing to be a slave thyself?' He eagerly answered 'No!' 'Then,' said I, 'thou hast no right to enslave the negro, for the Master expressly says: "Do unto others as thou wouldst they should do unto thee."' Again I put the query: 'Suppose thou wast obliged to free thy slaves, or take their place, which wouldst thou do?' Of course he said he would free them. 'But why,' I asked, 'if thou really believest what thou contendest for, namely, that their situation is as good as thine?' But these questions were too close, and he did not know what to say." "4th Mo. 23d. Friend K. drank tea here last night. It seems to me that whenever mother can get anyone to argue with her on the subject of slavery, she always introduces it; but last night she was mistaken, for, to my surprise, Friend K. acknowledged that notwithstanding all that could be said for it, there was something in her heart which told her it was wrong, and she admitted all I said. Since my last argument on this subject, it has appeared to me in another light. I remarked that a Carolina mistress was literally a slave-driver, and that I thought it degrading to the female character. The mistress is as great a slave to her servants, in some respects, as they are to her. One thing which annoys me very much is the constant orders that are given. Really, when I go into mother's room to read to her, I am continually interrupted by a variety of orders which might easily be avoided, were it not for the domineering spirit which is, it seems to me, inherent in a Carolinian; and they are such fine ladies that if a shutter is to be hooked, or a chair moved, or their work handed to them, a servant must be summoned to do it for them. Oh! I do very much desire to cultivate feelings of forbearance, but I feel at the same time that it is my duty to bear an open and decided testimony against such a violation of the divine command." "28th. It seems this morning as if the language was spoken with regard to dear mother: _Thy_ work is done. My mind has been mostly released from exercises, and it seems as though I had nothing to do now but to bear and forbear with her. I can truly say I have not shunned to 'declare unto her the whole counsel of God, but she would none of my reproofs.' I stretched out my hands to her, speaking the truth in _love_, but she has not regarded. Perhaps He has seen fit not to work by me lest I should be exalted above measure." "5th Mo. 6th. Today has been one of much trial of mind, and my soul has groaned under the burden of slavery. Is it too harsh to say that a person must be destitute of Christian feelings to be willing to be served by slaves, who are actuated by no sentiment but that of fear? Are not these unfortunate creatures expected to act on principles directly opposite to our natural feelings and daily experience? They are required to do more for others than for themselves, and all without thanks or reward." "12th. It appears to me that there is a real want of natural affection among many families in Carolina, and I have thought that one great cause of it is the independence which members of families feel here. Instead of being taught to do for themselves and each other, they are brought up to be waited on by slaves, and become unamiable, proud, and selfish. I have many times felt exceedingly tried, when, in the flowings of love towards mother, I have offered to do little things for her, and she has refused to allow me, saying it was Stephen's or William's duty, and she preferred one of them should do it. The other night, being refused in this way, I said:-- "'Mother, it seems to me thou would'st at any time rather have a servant do little things for thee, than me.' She replied it was their business. 'Well,' said I, 'mother, I do not think it ever was designed that parents and children should be independent of each other. Our Heavenly Father intended that we should be dependent on each other, not on servants.' From time to time ability is granted me to labor against slavery. I may be mistaken, but I do not think it is any longer without sin in mother, for I think she feels very sensibly that it is not right, though she never will acknowledge it." _Night._ Left the parlor on account of some unpleasant occurrence, and retired to weep in solitude over the evils of slavery. The language was forcibly revived: 'Woe unto you, for you bind heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, on men's shoulders, and will not move them yourselves with one of your fingers.' I do not think I pass a single day without apprehension as to something painful about the servants." "15th. Had a long conversation with Selina last evening about servants, and expressed very freely my opinion of Henry's feelings towards them, and his treatment of John. She admitted all I said, and seemed to feel for slaves, until I said I thought they had as much right to freedom as I had. Of course she would not admit this, but I was glad an opportunity was offered for me to tell her that my life was one of such continual and painful exercise on account of the manner in which our servants were treated, that, were it not for mother, I would not stay a day longer in Carolina, and were it not for the belief that Henry would treat his servants worse if we were not here, that both Eliza and I would leave the house. Dear girl; she seemed to feel a good deal at these strictures on her husband, but bore with me very patiently." "18th. Oh, Lord! grant that my going forth out of this land may be in such a time and such a way, let what may happen after I leave my mother's house, I may never have to reproach myself for doing so. Of late my mind has been much engrossed with the subject of slavery. I have felt not only the necessity of feeling that it is sinful, but of being able to prove from Scripture that it is not warranted by God." "30th. Slavery is a system of abject selfishness, and yet I believe I have seen some of the best of it. In its worst form, tyranny is added to it, and power cruelly treads under foot the rights of man, and trammels not only the body, but the mind of the poor negro. Experience has convinced me that a person may own a slave, with a single eye to the glory of God. But as the eye is kept single, it will soon become full of light on this momentous subject; the arm of power will be broken; the voice of authority will tremble, and strength will be granted to obey the command: 'Touch not the unclean thing.'" "_Night._ Sometimes I think that the children of Israel could not have looked towards the land of Canaan with keener longing than I do to the North. I do not expect to go there and be exempt from trial, far from it; and yet it looks like a promised land, a pleasant land, because it is a land of freedom; and it seems to me that I would rather bear much deeper spiritual exercises than, day after day, and month after month, to endure the conutless evils which incessantly flow from slavery. 'Oh, to grace how great a debtor for my sentiments on this subject. Surely I may measurably adopt the language of Paul, when with holy triumph he exclaimed: 'By the grace of God I am what I am.'" A few weeks later, we read: "If I could believe that I contributed to dear mother's happiness, surely duty, yea, inclination, would lead me to continue here; but I do not. Yesterday morning I read her some papers on slavery, which had just come by the L.C. (vessel). It was greatly against her will, but it seemed to me I must do it, and that this was the last effort which would be required of me. She was really angry, but I did not feel condemned." "_Night._ Have sought a season of retirement, in order to ponder all these things in my heart, for I feel greatly burdened, and think I must open this subject to dear mother to-morrow, perhaps. I earnestly desire to do the Lord's will." "12th. This morning I read parts of dear sister's letters to mother, on the subject of my going to the North. She did not oppose, though she regretted it. My mind is in a calm, almost an indifferent, state about it, simply acquiescing in what I believe to be the divine will concerning me." Had we all of Sarah's letters written to Angelina, we should doubtless see that she fully sympathized with her in her anti-slavery sentiments; but Sarah's diary shows her thoughts to have been almost wholly absorbed by her disappointed hopes, and her trials in the ministry. As positive evidences of her continued interest in slavery, we have only the fact that, in 1829, Angelina mentions, in her diary, receiving anti-slavery documents from her sister, and the statements of friends that she retained her interest in the subject which had, in her earlier years, caused her so much sorrow. It is astonishing how ignorant of passing events, even of importance, a person may remain who is shut up as Sarah Grimké was, in an organization hedged in by restrictions which would prevent her from gaining such knowledge. She mingled in no society outside of her church; her time was so fully occupied with her various charitable and religious duties, that she frequently laments the necessity of neglecting reading and writing, which, she says, "I love so well." When a few friends met together, their conversation was chiefly of religious or benevolent matters, and it is probable that Sarah even read no newspaper but the _Friends' Journal_. That this narrow and busy life was led even after Angelina joined her we judge from what Angelina writes to her brother Thomas, thanking him for sending them his literary correspondence to read. She says: "It is very kind in thee to send us thy private correspondence. We enjoy it so much that I am sure thou would'st feel compensated for the trouble if thou could'st see us. We mingle almost entirely with a Society which appears to know but little of what is going on outside of its own immediate precincts. It is therefore a great treat when we have access to information more diffuse, or that which introduces our minds in some measure into the general interest which seems to be exciting the religious world." The fact, however, remains, that in 1829 Sarah sent to Angelina various anti-slavery publications, from which the latter drew strength and encouragement for her own arguments. Angelina also mentions reading carefully Woolman's works, which she found very helpful. But it is evident that neither she nor Sarah looked forward at all to any identification of themselves with the active opponents of slavery. For them, at that time, there seemed to be nothing more to do than to express their opinions on the subject in private, and to get as far away from the sight of its evils as possible. As Sarah had done this, so now Angelina felt that the time had come when she too must go. She had done what she could, and had failed in making the impression she had hoped to make. Why should she linger longer where her feelings were daily tortured, and where there was not one to sympathize with her or aid her, where she could neither give nor receive any good? Still there was a great struggle in her mind about leaving her mother. She thus writes of it: "Though I am favored to feel this is the right time for me to go, yet I cannot but be pained at the thought of leaving mother, for I am sure I shall leave her to suffer. It has appeared very plain to me that I never would have been taken from her again if she had been willing to listen to my remonstrances, and to yield to the requisitions of duty, as shown her by the light within. And I do not think dear sister or I will ever see her again until she is willing to give up slavery." "10th Mo. 4th. Last night E.T. took tea here. As soon as she began to extol the North and speak against slavery, mother left the room. She cannot bear these two subjects. My mind continues distressingly exercised and anxious that mother's eyes should be open to all the iniquities of the system she upholds. Much hope has lately been experienced, and it seems as though the language to me was: 'Thou hast done what was given thee to do; now go and leave the rest to _me_." Two weeks later, she writes as follows: "_Night._ This morning I had a very satisfactory conversation with dear mother, and feel considerably relieved from painful exercise. I found her views far more correct than I had supposed, and I do believe that, through suffering, the great work will yet be accomplished. She remarked that, though she had found it very hard to bear many things which sister and I had from time to time said to her, yet she believed that the Lord had raised us up to teach her, and that her fervent prayer was that, if we were right and she was wrong, she might see it. I remarked that if she was _willing_, she would, I was sure, see still more than she now did; and I drew a contrast between what she once approved and now believed right. 'Yes,' she said, 'I see very differently; for when I look back and remember what I used to do, and think nothing of it, I shrink back with horror. Much more passed, and we parted in love." Two weeks later Angelina left Charleston, never to return. The description of the parting with her mother is very affecting, but we have not room for it here. It shows, however, that Mrs. Grimké had the true heart of a mother, and loved her daughter most tenderly. She shed bitter tears as she folded her to her bosom for the last time, murmuring amid her sobs: "Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away also!" The mother and daughter never saw each other again. CHAPTER VIII. Angelina arrived in Philadelphia in the latter part of October, 1829, and made her home with Sarah in the family of Catherine Morris. Over the next four or five years I must pass very briefly, although they were marked by many interesting incidents and some deep sorrows, and much that the sisters wrote during that time I would like to notice, if space permitted. We see Sarah still regarding herself as the vilest of sinners, against whom it seemed at times as if every door of mercy was closed, and still haunted by her horror of horrors, the ministry. Her preparation continued, but brought her apparently no nearer the long-expected and dreaded end. She was still unrecognized by the Church. First-day meetings were looked forward to without pleasure, while the Quarterly and Yearly meetings were seasons of actual suffering. Of one of the latter she says,-- "I think no criminal under sentence of death can look more fearfully to the day of execution than I do towards our Yearly Meeting." Still she would nerve herself from time to time to arise when the Spirit moved her, and say a few words, but deriving no satisfaction from the exercise, except that of obedience to the divine will. Doubtless she would have grown out of all this timidity, and would have acquitted herself more acceptably in meeting, if she had met with consideration and kindness from the elders and influential members of the Society. But, for reasons not clearly explained, her efforts do not seem to have been generally regarded with favor; and so sensibly did she feel this that she trembled in every limb when obliged even to offer a prayer in the presence of one of the dignitaries. It is probable that her ultra views on various needed reforms in the society, and declining--as she and Angelina both did--to conform to all its peculiar usages, gave offence. For instance, the sisters never could bring themselves to use certain ungrammatical forms of speech, such as _thee_ for _thou_, and would wear bonnets of a shape and material better adapted to protect them from the cold than those prescribed by Quaker style. It was also discovered that they indulged in vocal prayer in their private devotions, which was directly contrary to established usage. These things were regarded as quiet protests against customs which all members of the Society were expected to respect. As to the _principles_ of Quakerism, the sisters were more scrupulous in obeying, them than many of the elders themselves. Sarah frequently mentions the coldness and indifference with which she was treated by those from whom she had a right to look for tender sympathy and friendly counsel, and feelingly records the kindness and encouragement offered to her by many of the less conspicuous brothers and sisters. It is no doubt that to this treatment by those in authority was due the gradual waning of her interest in Quakerism, although she is far from acknowledging it. One obstacle in the way of her success as a preacher was her manner of speaking. Though a clear, forcible thinker and writer, she lacked the gift of eloquence which so distinguished Angelina, and being, besides, exceedingly self-conscious, it was difficult for her to express herself satisfactorily in words. Her speech was sometimes slow and hesitating; at others, when feeling very deeply, or at all embarrassed, rapid and a little confused, as though she was in a hurry to get through. This irregularity laid her open to the charge which was frequently brought against her, that she prepared and committed her offerings to memory before coming to meeting, an almost unpardonable offence according to the views of those making the accusation. That her earnest denial of this should be treated lightly was an additional wrong which Sarah never entirely succeeded in forgiving. In reference to this she says:-- "The suffering passed through in meeting, on account of the ministry, feeling as if I were condemned already whenever I arise; the severe reproofs administered by an elder to whom I did a little look for kindness; the cutting charge of preparing what I had to say out of meeting, and going there to preach, instead of to worship, like poor Mary Cox, was almost too much for me. It cost me hours of anguish; but Jesus allayed the storm and gave me peace; for in looking at my poor services I can truly say it is not so, although my mind is often brought under exercise on account of this work, and many are the sleepless hours I pass in prayer for preservation in it, feeling it indeed an awful thing to be a channel of communication between God and His people." Referring to the charge again, some time later, she says:-- "There are times when I greatly fear my best life will perish in this conflict. I have felt lately as if I were ready to give up all, and to question all I have known and done." As contrasting with the very different opinions she held a few years later, the following lines from her diary, about the beginning of 1830, are interesting:-- "There are seasons when my heart is so filled with apostolic love that I feel as if I could freely part with all I hold most dear, to be instrumental to the salvation of souls, especially those of the members of my own religious society; and the language often prevails, 'I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' Yet woman's preaching mocks at all my reasoning. I cannot see it to be right, and I am moving on in faith alone, feeling that 'Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel.' To see is no part of my business, but I marvel not at the unbelief of others; every natural feeling is against it." About this time, Angelina was admitted as a member of Friends' Society, and began her preparation for the ministry. But her active spirit needed stronger food to satisfy its cravings. It was not enough for her to accept the few duties assigned to her; she must make others for herself. Her restless energy, which was only her ambition to be practically useful, refused to let her sit with folded hands waiting for the Lord's work. She was too strong to be idle, too conscious of the value of the talents committed to her charge, to be willing to lay them away for safe keeping in a Quaker napkin, spotless as it might be. She never loved the Society of Friends as Sarah did. She chafed under its restrictions, questioned its authority, and rebelled against the constant admonition to "be still." On one page of her diary, dated a short time before her admission to Friends' Society, she says:-- "I have passed through some trying feelings of late about becoming a member of Friends' Society. Perhaps it is Satan who has been doing all he could to prevent my joining, by showing me the inconsistencies of the people, and persuading me that _I_ am too good to be one of them. I have been led to doubt if it was right for me ever to have worn the dress of a Quaker, for I despised the very form in my heart, and have felt it a disgrace to have adopted it, so empty have the people seemed to me, and sometimes it has seemed impossible that I should ever be willing to join them. My heart has been full of rebellion, and I have even dared to think it hard that I should have to bear the burdens of a people I did not, could not, love." Angelina's devotion to Sarah led her to resent the treatment of the latter by the elders, and came near producing a breach between Catherine Morris and the sisters. Nevertheless, she did join the Society, impelled thereto, we are forced to believe, more by love and consideration for Sarah than by religious conviction. But she constantly complains of her "leanness and barrenness of spirit," of "doubts and distressing fears" as to the Lord's remembrance of her for good, and grieves that she is such a useless member of the Church, the "activity of nature," she says, "finding it very hard to stand and wait." Her restlessness, no doubt, gave Sarah some trouble, for there are several entries in her diary like the following:-- "O Lord, be pleased, I beseech Thee, to preserve my precious sister from moving in her own will, or under the deceitful reasonings of Satan. Strengthen her, I beseech Thee, to be _still_." But though Angelina tried for a time to submit passively to the slow training marked out for her, she found no satisfaction in it. She looked to the ministry as her ultimate field of labor, but she must be doing something in the meanwhile, something outside of the missionary work which satisfied Sarah's conscience. But what should that be? The same difficulties which had humiliated and frightened Sarah into a life of quiet routine now faced Angelina. But she looked at them bravely, measured herself with them, and resolved to conquer them. The field of education was the only one which seemed to promise the active usefulness she craved; and she at once set about fitting herself to be a teacher. She was now twenty-six years old, but no ambitious girl of fifteen ever entered upon school duties with more zest than she exhibited in preparing a course of study for herself. History, arithmetic, algebra, and geometry were begun, with her sister Anna as a fellow-student, and much time was devoted to reading biography and travels. All this, however, was evening work. Her days were almost wholly given up to charities and the appointed meetings assigned to her by the society, into all of which she infused so much energy that Catherine and Sarah both began to fear that she was in danger of losing some of her spirituality. She says herself that she was so much interested in some of her work that the days were not long enough for her. There is no allusion in the diary or letters of either of the sisters, in 1829 or 1830, to the many stirring events of the anti-slavery movement which occurred after the final abolition of slavery in New York, in 1827, and which foreshadowed the earnest struggle for political supremacy between the slave power and the free spirit of the nation. The daily records of their lives and thoughts exhibit them in the enjoyment of their quiet home with Catherine Morris, visiting prisons, hospitals, and alms-houses, and mourning over no sorrow or sins but their own. Angelina was leading a life of benevolent effort, too busy to admit of the pleasures of society, and her Quaker associations did not favor contact with the world's people, or promote knowledge of the active movements in the larger reforms of the day. As to Sarah, she was still suffering keenly under the great sorrow of her life. At this time, Angelina was a most attractive young woman. Tall and graceful, with a shapely head covered with chestnut ringlets, a delicate complexion and features, and clear blue eyes, which could dance with merriment or flash with indignation, and withal a dignified, yet gentle and courteous bearing, it is not surprising that she should have had many admirers of the opposite sex, even in the limited society to which she was confined. Nor can we wonder that, with a heart so susceptible to all the finer emotions, she should have preferred the companionship of one to that of all others. But though for more than two years this friendship--for it never became an engagement--absorbed all her thoughts, to the exclusion even of her studies, I must conclude from the plain evidence in the case that it was only a warm _friendship_, at least on her side, not the strong, enduring love, based upon entire sympathy, which afterwards blessed her life. It owed its origin to her admiration for intellectuality in men, and its continuance to her womanly pity; for the object of her preference suffered much from ill-health, which at last gave way altogether in the latter part of 1832, when he died. To the various emotions naturally aroused during this long experience, and to the depression of spirits which followed the final issue, we may perhaps partially ascribe Angelina's indifference to the excited state of feeling throughout the country on the subject of that institution which "owned no law but human will." In November, 1831, Sarah Grimké once more, and for the last time, visited Charleston. In December, the slave insurrection in Jamaica--tenfold more destructive to life and property than the insurrection of Nat Turner, in Virginia, of the preceding August--startled the world; but even this is scarcely referred to in the correspondence between the two sisters. But that Angelina, at least, was interested in matters outside of her religion, we gather from a postscript to one of her letters. "Tell me," she says, "something about politics." This refers to nullification, that ill-judged and premature attempt at secession made by the Calhoun wing of the slave power, which was then the most exciting topic in South Carolina. Thomas Grimké was one of the few eminent lawyers in the State who, from the first, denounced and resisted the treasonable doctrine,--he so termed it in an open letter of remonstrance addressed to Calhoun, McDuffie, Governor Hayne, and Barnwell Rhett, his cousin and legal pupil, who was afterwards attorney-general of the State.[1] Mr. Grimké represented at that time the city of Charleston in the State Senate; and in a two days' argument he so triumphantly exposed the sophistries and false pretences of the nullifiers, that his constituents, enraged by it, gathered a mob, and with threats of personal violence attacked his house. But this descendant of the Huguenots had been seasonably warned; and, sending his family to the country, he illuminated his front windows, threw open his doors, and seated himself quietly on the porch to await his visitors. The howling horde came on, but when the man they sought boldly advanced to meet them, and announced himself ready to be mobbed for the cause he had denounced, their courage faltered; they tried to hoot, balked, broke ranks, and straggled away. [1] Mr. Grimké told Carolina that, if she persisted in her disloyalty, she would stand as a blasted tree in the midst of her sister States. A few words just here about this "beloved brother Thomas," who was always held in reverence by every member of his family, will not be out of place. As before stated, he was a graduate of Yale College, and rose to eminence at the bar and in the politics of his State. But he was a man of peculiar views on many subjects, and while his intellectual ability was everywhere acknowledged, his judgment was often impugned and his opinions severely criticised. He gained a wide reputation on account of his brilliant addresses, especially those of Peace, Temperance, and Education. He was a prominent member of the American Peace Society, and did not believe that even defensive warfare was justifiable. He was a fine classical scholar, but held that both the classics and the higher mathematics should not be made obligatory studies in a collegiate education, as being comparatively useless to the great majority of American young men. A High Church Episcopalian, and very religious, he strongly urged the necessity of establishing a Bible class for religious instruction in every school. He also attempted to make a reform in orthography by dropping out all superfluous letters, but abandoned this after publishing a small volume of essays, in which he used his amended words, which, as he gave no prefatory explanation, were misunderstood and ridiculed. In all these subjects he was much interested, and succeeded in interesting his sisters, delegating to them the supervision and correction of his addresses and essays published in Philadelphia. Strange, indeed, is it, that this very religious, liberal-minded, and conscientious man was a large slaveowner, and yet the oppressed and persecuted Cherokees of Georgia and Alabama had no more earnest advocate than he! And to this "Indian question" both Sarah and Angelina gave their cordial sympathy. The correspondence between them and Thomas was a remarkable one. It embraced the following subjects: Peace, Temperance, the Classics, the Priesthood, the Jewish Dispensation, Was the Eagle the Babylonian and Persian Standard? Catholicism, and the universality of human sacrifice, with short discussions on minor controversial topics. Into all of these Angelina especially entered with great and evident relish, and her long letters, covering page after page of foolscap, would certainly have wearied the patience of any one less interested than Thomas was in the subjects of which they treated. That which claimed Sarah's particular interest was Peace, and she held to her brother's views to the end of her life. She especially indorsed the sentiment expressed in his written reply to the question, what he would do if he were mayor of Charleston and a pirate ship should attack the city? "I would," he answered, "call together the Sunday-school children and lead them in procession to meet the pirates, who would be at once subdued by the sight." In answer to a letter written by Sarah soon after her arrival in Charleston, Angelina says:-- "I am not at all surprised at the account thou hast given of Carolina, and yet am not alarmed, as I believe the time of retribution has not yet fully come, and I cannot but hope that those most dear to us will have fled from her borders before the day of judgment arrives." This refers to nullification, which was threatening to end in bloodshed; but there is in the sentence also an evident allusion to slavery. In her next letter she describes the interest she feels in the infant school, of which she had become a teacher, and does not know which is the most absorbing,--that, or the Arch Street prison. Before closing, she says:-- "No doubt thou art suffering a double portion now, for in a land of slavery there is very much daily--yea, almost hourly,--to try the better feelings, besides that suffering which thou art so constantly enduring." Catherine Morris must have acted the part of a good mother to both Sarah and Angelina, for they frequently refer to their peaceful home with her. In one of her letters Angelina says,-- "I never valued the advantages I enjoy so much as I do now; no, nor my home, either, dear sister. Many a time of late has my heart been filled with gratitude in looking at the peaceful shelter provided for me in a strange land. It is just such a home as I would desire were I to have a choice, and I often ask why my restless heart is not quite happy in the land of ease which has been assigned me, for I do believe I shall, in after life, look back upon this winter as one of peculiar favor, a time granted for the improvement of my mind and my heart." Again: "Very often do I contrast the sweet, unbroken quiet of the home I now enjoy with the uncongenial one I was taken from." In one of her letters she asks: "Dearest, does our precious mother seem to have any idea of leaving Carolina? Such seems to be the distressing excitement there from various causes, that I think it cannot be quite safe to remain there. What does brother Thomas think will be the issue of the political contest? I find the fate of the poor Indians is now inevitable." Towards the close of the winter there are two paragraphs in her letters which show that she did at least read the daily papers. In one she asks: "Didst thou know that great efforts are making in the House of Delegates in Virginia to abolish slavery?" The other one is as follows:-- "Read the enclosed, and give it to brother Thomas from me. Do you know how this subject has been agitated in the Virginia legislature?" The question naturally arises: if a little, why not more? If she could refer to the subject of the Virginia debates, why should she not in some of her letters give expression to her own views, or answer some expressions from Sarah? The _Quaker Society_, is the only answer we can find; the Society whose rules and customs at that time tended to repress individuality in its members, and independence of thought or action; which forbade its young men and maidens to look admiringly on any fair face or manly form not framed in a long-eared cap, or surmounted by the regulation broad-brim; which did not accord to a member the right even to publish a newspaper article, without having first submitted it to a committee of its Solons. From the beginning, the Quaker Church bore its testimony against the abolition excitement. Most Friends were in favor of the Colonization Society; the rest were gradualists. Their commercial interests were as closely interwoven with those of the South as were the interests of any other class of the Northern people, and it took them years to admit, if not to discover, that there was any new light on the subject of human rights. "The mills of the gods grind slowly;" and perhaps it was all the better in the end, for the cause their advocated so grandly, that Sarah and Angelina Grimké should have gone through this long period of silence and repression, during which their moral and intellectual forces gathered power for the conflict--the great work which both had so singularly and for so many years seen was before them, though its nature was for a long time hidden. Angelina's experience in the infant school, interesting as it was to her, was discouraging so far as her success as a teacher went; and she soon gave it up and made inquiries concerning some school in which she could prepare herself to teach. Catherine Beecher's then famous seminary at Hartford was recommended, and a correspondence was opened. Several letters passed between Catherine and her would-be pupil, which so aroused Catherine's interest, that she went on to Philadelphia chiefly to make a personal acquaintance with the very mature young woman who at the age of twenty-seven declared she knew nothing and wanted to go to school again. In one of her letters to Sarah, early in the spring of 1832, Angelina says,-- "Catherine Beecher has actually paid her promised visit. She regretted not seeing thee, and seemed much pleased with me. The day after she arrived she went to meeting with me, and I think was more tired of it than any person I ever saw. It was a long, silent meeting, except a few words from J.L." When Catherine Beecher took her leave of Angelina, she cordially invited her to visit Hartford, and examine for herself the system of education there pursued. Sarah returned to Philadelphia in March, 1832, cutting short her visit at the earnest entreaty of Angelina, who was then looking forward to her first Yearly Meeting, and desired her sister's encouraging presence with her. Writing to Sarah, she says: "I have much desired that we might at that time mingle in sympathy and love. Truly we have known, might I not say, the agony of separation." Soon after Sarah's return, Angelina went to live with Mrs. Frost, in order to give that sister the benefit of her board. This separation was a great trial to both sisters, and only consented to from a sense of duty. CHAPTER IX. In July, 1832, Angelina, accompanied by a friend, set out to make her promised visit to Hartford. Her journal, kept day by day, shows her to have been at this time in a most cheerful frame of mind, which fitted her to enjoy not only the beautiful scenery on her journey, but the society of the various people she met. At times she is almost like a young girl just out of school; and we can hardly wonder that she felt so, after the monotonous life she had led so long, and the uniform character of the people with whom she had associated. She visited New Haven, with its great college, and then went to Hartford, where a week was pleasantly spent in attendance on Catherine Beecher's classes, and in visiting Lydia Sigourney, and others, to whom she had brought letters. After examining Angelina, Catherine gave her the gratifying opinion that she could be prepared to teach in six months, and she at once began to try her hand at drawing maps., and to take part in many of the exercises of the school. She could, however, make no definite arrangement until her return to Philadelphia; but she was full of enthusiasm, and utilized to the very utmost the advantages of conversation with Catherine and Harriet Beecher. She was evidently quite charmed with Harriet's bright intellect and pleasant manner, and refers particularly to a very satisfactory conversation held with her about Quakers. The people of this Society were so little known in New England at that period, that Angelina and her friend, in their peculiar dress, were objects of great curiosity where-ever they went. Catherine Beecher accompanied them back to New Tork, and saw them safely on their way to Philadelphia. But when Angelina mentioned to Friends her desire to return to Hartford and become a teacher, she was answered with the most decided disapprobation. Several unsatisfactory reasons were given--"going among strangers"--"leaving her sisters,"--"abandoning her charities," &c., the real one probably being the fear to trust their impressionable young member to Presbyterian influence. And so she must content herself to sink down in the old ruts, and plod on in work which was daily becoming more insufficient to her intellectual and spiritual needs. Her chief pleasure was her correspondence with her brother Thomas, with whom she discussed controversial Bible questions, and various moral reforms, including prison discipline; but only once does she seem to have touched the question of slavery, which absorbed the public mind to such a degree that there was scarcely a household throughout the length and breadth of the land, that did not feel its influence in some way. In 1832 the most intense excitement prevailed throughout the South, especially in South Carolina, where Mr. Calhoun had just thrown down the gauntlet to the Federal government. In this Angelina expresses some interest, though chiefly from a religious point of view, as she regards all the important events then taking place as "signs of the times," and congratulates herself and her brother that they live in "such an important and interesting era, when the laws of Christianity are interwoven with the system, of education, and with even the discipline of prisons and houses of refuge." In one of her letters we find the following:-- "I may be deceived, but the cloud which has arisen in the South will, I fear, spread over all our heavens, though it looks now so small. It will come down upon us in a storm which will beat our government to pieces; for, beautiful as it may appear, it is, nevertheless, not built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. We may boast of this temple of liberty, but oh, my brother, it is not of God." In this letter she speaks of being much interested in "Ramsey's Civil and Ecclesiastical Polity of the Jews," and mentions that they were studying together, in the family, "Townsend's Old Testament, chronologically arranged, with notes, a work in twenty-eight volumes." She adds:-- "Will not the study of the Bible produce a thirst for the purest and most valuable literature, as, to understand it, we must study the history of nations, natural history, philosophy, and geography." In another letter she says:-- "I am glad of thy opinions, but I cannot see that Carolina will escape. Slavery is too great a sin for justice always to sleep over, and this is, I believe, the true cause of the declining state of Carolina; this the root of bitterness which is to trouble our republic. I am not moved by fear to these reflections, but by a calm and deliberate consideration of the state of the Church, and while I believe convulsions and distress are coming upon this country, I am comforted in believing that _my_ kingdom is not of this world, nor thine either, I trust, beloved brother." To this letter Sarah adds a postscript, and says: "My fears respecting you are often prevalent, but I endeavor not to be too anxious. The Lord is omnipotent, and although I fear His sword is unsheathed against America, I believe He will remember His own elect, and shield them.... Do the planters approve or aid the Colonization Society? There have been some severe pieces published in our papers about it." At this time--that is, during the summer of 1832--Sarah lived a more than usually retired life, and her diary only records her increased depression of spirits, and her continued painful experiences in meeting. She would gladly have turned her back upon it all, and sought a home elsewhere at the North, or have returned to Charleston, but she dared not move without divine approbation, and this never seemed sufficiently clear to satisfy her. "Surely," she says, "though I cannot understand why it is so, there must be wisdom in the decree which forbids my seeking another home. Most gladly would I have remained in Charleston, but my Father's will was not so." And again she says,-- "But while the desire to escape present conflict has turned my mind there [to Charleston] with longing towards my precious mother, all the answer I can hear from the sanctuary is, 'Stay here;' and Satan adds, 'to suffer.'" According to Sarah's own views, she had thus far made little or no progress towards the great end and aim of her labors and sacrifices,--the securing of her eternal salvation; and the amount of misery she managed to manufacture for herself out of this thought, and her many fancied transgressions, is sad in the extreme. Years afterwards, in a letter to a young friend, she says,-- "I have suffered the very torments of the fabled hell, because my conscience was sore to the touch all over. I would fain have you spared such long, dark years of anguish." And to another friend, concerning this portion of her life, she writes,-- "Much of my suffering arose from a morbid conscience,--a conscience which magnified infirmities into crimes, and transformed our blessed Father in heaven into a stern judge, who punishes to the uttermost every real or imaginary departure from what we apprehend to be his requirements. Deceived by the false theological views in which I was educated, I was continually lashed by the scorpion whip of a perverted conscience." During the winter of 1832-33, the time of both sisters was much taken up in nursing a sick woman, whose friendless position stirred Angelina's sense of duty, and she had her removed to Mrs. Frost's house. She and Sarah took upon themselves all the offices of nurse, even the most menial. They read to her, and tried to cheer her during the day, sat up with her at night, and in every way devoted themselves to the poor consumptive, until death came to her relief. Such a sacrifice to a sense of duty was all the more admirable, as the invalid was unusually exacting and unreasonable, and felt apparently little appreciation of the trouble she gave. Angelina, being in the same house, was more with her than Sarah, and she could scarcely have shown her greater attention if the tenderest ties had existed between her and her charge. This was only one among the many similar acts of self-abnegation which were dotted all along Angelina's path through life; she never went out of her way to avoid them, but would travel any distance to take them up, if duty pointed her to them; and in accepting them she never seemed to think she was doing more than just what she ought to do, although they were generally of the kind which bring no honor or reward, except that sense of duty fulfilled which spreads over hearts like hers such sweet content. From many passages in the diaries, it is evident that, as the agitating questions of the time were forced upon the notice of Sarah and Angelina, their thoughts were diverted from the narrow channel to which they had so long been confined; and, in proportion as their interest in these matters increased, the cords which bound them to their religious society loosened. Angelina, as we have before remarked, never stood in the same attitude as Sarah towards the Society. To the latter, it was as the oracle of her fate, whose decrees she dared not question, much less disobey. It represented to her mind the divine will and purposes, which were wisdom entirely, and could only fail through the pride or disobedience of sinners like herself. Angelina, on the contrary, regarded it as made up of human beings with human intellects, full of weakness, and liable to err in the interpretation of the Lord's will, and, while praying for guidance and strength, believed it wise to follow her own judgment to a great extent. She could not be restrained from reasoning for herself, and would often have acted more independently, but for her affection for Sarah. The scales, however, were slowly falling from Sarah's eyes, though it was long before she saw the new light as anything but a snare of Satan, who she felt sure was bound to have her, in spite of all her struggles. Against the growing coolness towards her Society she did struggle and pray in deepest contrition. At one time she writes,-- "Satan is tempting me strongly with increased dissatisfaction with Friends; but I know if I am to be of any use it is in my own Society." And again: "I beseech thee, O God, to fill my heart with love for the Society of Friends. I shall be ruined if I listen to Satan." But all this was of no avail. Angelina was growing in knowledge, and was imparting to Sarah what she learned. The evidence is meagre, but there is enough to show that the ruling topics claimed much of their attention during that summer, and that Angelina, especially, drew upon herself more than one reproof from Catherine Morris for the interest she manifested in "matters entirely outside of the Society." In the spring, she writes in a letter to Thomas:-- "The following proposition was made at a Colonization meeting in this city: is it strictly true? 'No two nations, brought together under similar circumstances with those under which the Africans have been brought into this country, have amalgamated.' Are not the people in the West Indies principally mulatto? And how is it in South America? Did they not amalgamate there? Did not the Helots, a great many of whom were Persians, etc., taken in battle, amalgamate with the Grecians, and rise to equal privileges in the State? I ask for information. Please tell me, also, whether slavery is not an infringement of the Constitution of the United States. You Southerners have no idea of the excitement existing at the North on the subjects of abolition and colonization." This shows only the dawning of interest in the mighty subject. The evidence is full and conclusive that at this time neither Sarah nor Angelina had formed any decided opinions concerning either of the societies mentioned above, or contemplated taking any active part whatever in the cause of freedom. In February, 1834, occurred the famous debate at Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, presided over by Dr. Lyman Beecher, which, for earnestness, ability, and eloquence, has probably never been surpassed in this country. A colonization society, composed in great part of Southern students, had been formed in 1832 in the seminary, but went to pieces during the debate, which lasted eighteen evenings, and produced a profound sensation throughout the Presbyterian Church, and even outside of it. President Beecher took no part in it, standing too much in awe of the trustees of the institution to countenance it even by his presence, although he had promised to do so. The speakers were all students, young men remarkable for their sincerity and their energy, and several of them excelling as orators. Among the latter were Henry B. Stanton and Theodore D. Weld, both possessing great powers of reasoning and natural gifts of eloquence. Of Theodore D. Weld it was said, that when he lectured on temperance, so powerfully did he affect his audiences, that many a liquor dealer went home and emptied out the contents of his barrels. Those who remember him in his best days can well believe this, while others who have had the privilege of hearing him only in his "parlor talks" can have no difficulty in understanding the impression he must have made on mixed audiences in those times when his great heart, filled from boyhood with sorrow for the oppressed, found such food for its sympathies.[2] [2] An incident of the childhood of this zealous champion of human rights, related in a letter I have, shows how early he took his stand by the side of the weak and defenceless. When he was about six years old, and going to school in Connecticut, a little colored boy was admitted as a pupil. Weld had never seen a black person before, and was grieved to find that the color of his skin caused him to be despised by the other boys, and put off on a seat by himself. The teacher heard him his lessons separately, and generally sent him back to his lonely seat with a cuff or a jeer. After witnessing this injustice for a day or two, little Weld went to the teacher and asked to have his own seat changed. "Why, where do you want to sit?" asked the teacher. "By Jerry," replied Weld. The master burst out laughing, and exclaimed: "Why, are you a nigger too?" and, "Theodore Weld is a nigger!" resounded through the school. "I never shall forget," says Mr. Weld, "the tumult in my little bosom that day. I went, however, and sat with Jerry, and played with Jerry, and we were great friends; and in a week I had permission to say my lessons with Jerry, and I have been an abolitionist ever since, and never had any prejudices to overcome." It is no disparagement to the many able and eloquent advocates of the anti-slavery cause, between 1833 and 1836, to say that public opinion placed Weld at the head of them all. In him were combined reason and imagination, wide and accurate knowledge, manly courage, a tender and sympathetic nature, a remarkable faculty of expression, and a fervent enthusiasm which made him the best platform orator of his time. As a lecturer on education, temperance, and abolition, he drew crowded houses and made many converts. The late Secretary Stanton was one of these, and often mentioned Mr. Weld as the most eloquent speaker he had ever heard; and Wendell Phillips, in a recent letter, says of him: "In the first years of the anti-slavery cause, he was our foremost advocate." Of Henry B. Stanton, a newspaper reporter once said in excuse for not reporting one of his great anti-slavery speeches, that he could not attempt to report a whirlwind or a thunderstorm. With such leaders, and with followers no less earnest if less brilliant, it is not surprising that the Lane Seminary debate arrested such general attention, and afterwards assumed so much importance in the anti-slavery struggle. The trustees, fearing its effect upon their Southern patrons, ordered that both societies should be dissolved, and no more meetings held. The anti-slavery students replied to this order by withdrawing in a body from the institution. Some went over to Oberlin; others,--and among them the two I have named--entered the field as lecturers and workers in the cause they had so ardently espoused. In September, 1834, Sarah and Angelina were gratified by a visit from their brother Thomas, who was on his way to Cincinnati, to deliver an address on Education before the College of Professional Teachers, and also to visit his brother Frederic, residing in Columbus, whom he had not seen for sixteen years. As Angelina had not seen him since her departure from Charleston in 1829, the few days of his society she now enjoyed were very precious, and made peculiarly so by after-events. The cholera was then for the second time epidemic in the West, but those who knew enough about it to be prudent felt no fear, and the sisters bade farewell to their brother, cheered by his promise to see them again on his way home. He delivered his address in Cincinnati, started for Columbus, arrived within twelve miles of it, when, at a wayside tavern, he was seized with cholera. His brother, then holding a term of the Supreme Court, was sent for. He at once adjourned court and hastened to Thomas with a physician. He was already speechless, but was able to turn upon Frederic a look of recognition, then pressed his hand, and died. Angelina, writing of her brother's death, says: "The world has lost an eminent reformer in the cause of Christian education, an eloquent advocate of peace, and one who was remarkably ready for every good work. I never saw a man who combined such brilliant talents, such diversity and profundity of knowledge, with such humility of heart and such simplicity and gentleness of manner. He was a great and good man, a pillar of the church and state, and his memory is blessed." In a letter written in 1837, referring to her brother's visit to Philadelphia, Sarah says: "We often conversed on the subject of slavery, and never did I hear from his lips an approval of it. He had never examined the subject; he regarded it as a duty to do it, and he intended devoting the powers of his mind to it the next year of his life, and asked us to get ready for him all the abolition works worth studying. But God took him away. My own views were dark and confused. Had I had my present light, I might have helped him." Angelina bore her testimony to the same effect. Referring to Thomas in a letter to a member of her family many years after his death, she says: "He was deeply interested in _every_ reform, and saw very clearly that the anti-slavery agitation which began in 1832 would shake our country to its foundation. He told me in Philadelphia that he knew slavery would be the all-absorbing subject here, and that he intended to devote a whole year to its investigation; and, in order that he might do so impartially, he requested me to subscribe for every periodical and paper, and to buy and forward to him any books, that might be published by the Anti-Slavery and Colonization societies. I asked whether he believed colonization could abolish slavery. He said: 'No, never!' but observed; 'I help that only on account of its reflex influence upon slavery here. If we can build up an intelligent, industrious community of colored people in Africa, it will do a great deal towards destroying slavery in the United States.'" The loss of her brother almost crushed Sarah, although she expresses only submission to the Lord's will. It had the effect of closing her heart and mind once more to everything but religion, and again she gave herself fully and entirely to her evangelical preparation. She expresses herself as longing to preach the everlasting Gospel, and prays that she may soon be called to be a minister, and be instrumental in turning her fellow sinners away from the wrath to come. Later, in the early part of 1835, after having re-perused her brother's works, she solemnly dedicated herself to the cause of peace, persuading herself that Thomas had left it as a legacy to her and Angelina. She resolved to use all her best endeavors to promote its advancement, and daily prayed for a blessing on her exertions and for the success of the cause. This at least served to divert her thoughts from herself, and no doubt helped her to the belief which now came to her, that at last Satan was conquered, and she was accepted of God. If she could only have been comforted also with the knowledge that her labors in the ministry were recognized, her satisfaction would have been complete, but more than ever was she tormented by the slights and sneers of the elders, and by her own conviction that she was a useless vessel. There is scarcely a page of her diary that does not tell of some humiliation, some disappointment connected with her services in meeting. CHAPTER X. Although the Quakers were the first, as a religious society, to recognize the iniquity of slavery, and to wash their hands of it, so far as to free all the slaves they owned; few of them saw the further duty of discouraging it by ceasing all commercial intercourse with slave-holders. They nearly all continued to trade with the South, and to use the products of slave-labor. After the appearance in this country of Elizabeth Heyrick's pamphlet, in which she so strongly urged upon abolitionists the duty of abstinence from all slave products, the number was increased of those who declined any and every participation in the guilt of the slave-holder, and exerted themselves to convert others to the same views; but the majority of selfish and inconsiderate people is always large, and it refused to see the good results which could be reasonably expected from such a system of self-denial. As the older members, also, of Friends' Society were opposed to all exciting discussions, and to popular movements generally, while the younger ones could not smother a natural interest in the great reforms of the day; it followed that, although all were opposed to slavery in the abstract, there was no fixed principle of action among them. In their ranks were all sorts: gradualists and immediatists, advocates of unconditional emancipation, and colonizationists, thus making it impossible to discuss the main question without excitement. Therefore all discussion was discouraged and even forbidden. The Society never counted among its members many colored persons. There were, however, a few in Philadelphia, all educated, and belonging to the best of their class. Among them was a most excellent woman, Sarah Douglass, to whom Sarah and Angelina Grimké became much attached, and with whom Sarah kept up a correspondence for nearly thirty years. The first letter of this correspondence which we have, was written in March, 1885, and shows that Sarah had known very little about her colored brethren in Philadelphia, and it also shows her inclination towards colonization. She mentions having been cheered by an account of several literary and benevolent societies among the colored residents, expresses warm sympathy with them, and gives them some good, practical advice about helping themselves. She then says:-- "I went about three weeks ago to an anti-slavery meeting, and heard with much interest an address from Robert Gordon. It was feeling, temperate, and judicious; but _one_ word struck my ear unpleasantly. He said, 'And yet it is _audaciously_ asked: What has the North to do with slavery?' The word 'audaciously,' while I am ready to admit its justice, seemed to me inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel; although we may abhor the system of slavery, I want us to remember that the guilt of the oppressor demands Christian pity and Christian prayer. "My sister went last evening to hear George Thompson. She is deeply interested in this subject, and was much pleased with his discourse. Do not the colored people believe that the Colonization Society may prove a blessing to Africa, that it may be the means of liberating some slaves, and that, by sending a portion of them there, they may introduce civilization and Christianity into this benighted region? That the Colonization Society can ever be the means of breaking the yoke in America appears to me utterly impossible, but when I look at poor heathen Africa, I cannot but believe its efforts will be a blessing to her." In the next letter, written in April, she descants on the universal prejudice against color,--"a prejudice," she says, "which will in days to come excite as much astonishment as the facts now do that Christians--some of them I verily believe, sincere lovers of God--put to death nineteen persons and one dog for the crime of witchcraft." And yet, singularly enough, she does not, at this time, notice the inconsistency of a separate seat for colored people in all the churches. In the Quaker meeting this was especially humiliating, as it was placed either directly under the stairs, or off in a corner, was called the "negro seat," and was regularly guarded to prevent either colored people from passing beyond it, or white people from making a mistake and occupying it. Two years later, Sarah and Angelina both denounced it; but before that, though they may have privately deplored it, they seem to have accepted it as a necessary conformity to the existing feeling against the blacks. The decision of Friends' Society concerning discussion Sarah Grimké seems to have accepted, for, as we have said, there is no expression of her views on emancipation in letters or diary. But Angelina felt that her obligations to humanity were greater than her obligations to the Society of Friends; and as she listened to the eloquent speeches of George Thompson and others, her life-long interest in the slave was stimulated, and it aroused in her a desire to work for him in some way, to do something that would practically help his cause. On one of several loose leaves of a diary which Angelina kept at this time, we find the following under date, "5th Mo. 12th, 1835: Five months have elapsed since I wrote in this diary, since which time I have become deeply interested in the subject of abolition. I had long regarded this cause as utterly hopeless, but since I have examined anti-slavery principles, I find them so full of the power of truth, that I am confident not many years will roll by before the horrible traffic in human beings will be destroyed in this land of Gospel privileges. My soul has measurably stood in the stead of the poor slave, and my earnest prayers have been poured out that the Lord would be pleased to permit me to be instrumental of good to these degraded, oppressed, and suffering fellow-creatures. Truly, I often feel ready to go to prison or to death in this cause of justice, mercy, and love; and I do fully believe if I am called to return to Carolina, it will not be long before I shall suffer persecution of some kind or other." Her fast-increasing enthusiasm alarmed her cautious sister, and drew from her frequent and serious remonstrances. But that she also travelled rapidly towards the final rending of the bonds which had hitherto held her, we find from a letter to Sarah Douglass, written in the spring of 1835. Speaking of Jay's book of Colonization, which had just appeared, she says:-- "The work is written for the most part in a spirit of Christian candor and benevolence. There is here and there a touch of satire or sarcasm I would rather should have been spared. The subject is one of solemn importance to our country, and while I do desire that every righteous means may be employed to give to America a clear and convincing view of the fearful load of guilt that rests upon her for trading in the souls of men, yet I do want the friends of emancipation to take no unhallowed weapons to sever the manacles of the slave. I rejoice in the hope that all the prominent friends of abolition are peace men. My sister sends her love to thee. Her mind is deeply engaged in the cause of immediate, unconditional emancipation. I believe she does often pray for it." In July, 1835, Angelina went to visit a friend in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. In this quiet retreat she had ample time for reflection, and for the study of abolition. She could, she says, think of nothing else; and the question continually before her was, "What can I do? What can I do?" But the more she thought, the more perplexed she became. The certainty that any independent action, whatever, would not only offend her Society, but grieve her sister, stood in the way of reaching any conclusion, and kept her in a state of unrest which plainly showed itself in her letters to Sarah. Doubtless she did consider Sarah's advice, for she still looked up to her with filial regard, but before she could do more than consider it, an event occurred which made the turning point in her career, and emancipated her forever from the restrictions to which she had so unwillingly assented. The difficulty which abolitionists found in holding meetings in Boston, to be addressed by George Thompson, of England, brought out in July an Appeal to the citizens of Boston from Mr. Garrison. This reached Angelina's hands, and so touched her feelings, so aroused all her anti-slavery enthusiasm, that she could no longer keep quiet. She must give expression to her sympathy with the great cause. She wrote to the author--a brave thing for her to do--but we doubt if she could have refrained even if she could have fully realized the storm of reproach which the act brought down upon her. On account of its length, I cannot copy this letter entire, but a few extracts will give an idea of its general tone and spirit. It is dated Philadelphia, 8th Month 30th, 1835, and begins thus:-- "Respected Friend: It seems as if I was compelled at this time to address thee, notwithstanding all my reasonings against intruding on thy valuable time, and the uselessness of so insignificant a person as myself offering thee the sentiments of sympathy at this alarming crisis. "I can hardly express to thee the deep and solemn interest with which I have viewed the violent proceedings of the last few weeks. Although I expected opposition, I was not prepared for it so soon--it took me by surprise--and I greatly feared abolitionists would be driven back in the first outset, and thrown into confusion.... Under these feelings I was urged to read thy Appeal to the citizens of Boston. Judge, then, what were my feelings on finding that my fears were utterly groundless, and that thou stoodest firm in the midst of the storm, determined to suffer and to die, rather than yield one inch ... The ground upon which you stand is holy ground; never, never surrender it." She then goes on to encourage him to persevere in his work, reminding him of the persecutions of reformers in past times, and that religious persecution always began with mobs. "If," she says, "persecution is the means which God has ordained for the accomplishment of this great end, Emancipation; then, in dependence upon Him for strength to bear it, I feel as if I could say, Let It Come! for it is my deep, solemn, deliberate conviction that this is a cause worth dying for. I say so, from what I have seen, heard, and known in a land of slavery, where rests the darkness of Egypt, and where is found the sin of Sodom. Yes! Let it come--let us suffer, rather than insurrections should arise." This letter Mr. Garrison published in the Liberator, to the surprise of Angelina, and the great displeasure and grief of her Quaker friends. But she who had just counselled another to suffer and die rather than abate an inch of his principles was not likely to quail before the strongly expressed censure of her Society, which was at once communicated to her. Only over her sister's tender disapproval did she shed any tears. Her letter of explanation to Sarah shows the sweetness and the firmness of her character so conspicuously, that I offer no apology for copying a portion of it. It is dated Shrewsbury, Sept. 27th, 1335, and enters at once upon the subject:-- "My Beloved Sister: I feel constrained in all the tenderness of a sister's love to address thee, though I hardly know what to say, seeing that I stand utterly condemned by the standard which thou hast set up to judge me by--the opinion of my friends. This thou seemest to feel an infallible criterion. If it is, I have not so learned Christ, for He says, 'he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,' etc. I do most fully believe that had I done what I have done in a church capacity, I should justly incur their censure, because they disapprove of any intermeddling with the question, but what I did was done in a private capacity, on my own responsibility. Now, my precious sister, I feel willing to be condemned by all but thyself, _without_ a hearing; but to thee I owe the sacred duty of vindication, though hardly one ray of hope dawns on my mind that I shall be acquitted even by _thee_. If I know mine own heart, I desire _not_ to be acquitted; if I have erred, or if this trial of my faith is needful for me by Him who knoweth with what food to feed His poor dependent ones, thou hast been with me in heights and in depths, in joy and in sorrow, therefore to thee I speak. Thou knowest what I have passed through on the subject of slavery; thou knowest I am an exile from the home of my birth because of slavery--therefore, to thee I speak. "Previous to my writing that letter, I believe four weeks elapsed, during which time, though I passed through close and constant exercise, I did not read anything on the subject of abolition, except the pieces in the Friends' paper and the _Pennsylvanian_ relative to the insurrections and the bonfires in Charleston. I was afraid to read. After this, I perused the Appeal. I confess I could not read it without tears, so much did its spirit harmonize with my own feelings. This introduced my mind into deep sympathy with Wm. Lloyd Garrison. I found in that piece the spirit of my Master; my heart was drawn out in prayer for him, and I felt as if I would like to write to him, but forebore until this day four weeks ago, when it seemed to me I _must_ write to him. I put it by and sat down to read, but I could not read. I then thought that perhaps writing would relieve _my own mind_, without it being required of me to send what I wrote. I wrote the letter and laid it aside, desiring to be preserved from sending it if it was wrong to do so. On Second Day night, on my bended knees, I implored Divine direction, and next morning, after again praying over it, I felt easy to send it, and, after committing it to the office, felt anxiety removed, and as though I had nothing more to do with it. Thou knowest what has followed. I think on Fifth Day I was brought as low as I ever was. After that my Heavenly Father was pleased in great mercy to open the windows of heaven, and pour out upon my grief-bound, sin-sick soul, the showers of His grace, and in prayer at the footstool of mercy I found that relief which human hearts denied me. A little light seemed to arise. I remembered how often, in deep and solemn prayer, I had told my Heavenly Father I was willing to suffer anything if I could only aid the great cause of emancipation, and the query arose whether this suffering was not the peculiar kind required of me. Since then I have been permitted to enjoy a portion of that peace which human hands cannot rob me of, though great sadness covers my mind; for I feel as though my character had sustained a deep injury in the opinion of those I love and value most--how justly, they will best know at a future day. Silent submission is my portion, and in the everlasting strength of my Master, I humbly trust I shall be enabled to bear whatever is put upon me. "I have now said all I have to say, and I leave this text with thee: 'Judge not by appearance, but judge righteous judgment;' and again, 'Judge nothing before the time.' Farewell. In the love of the blessed Gospel of God's Son, I remain, thy afflicted sister. "A.E.G." The entry in Sarah's diary respecting this incident is as follows. The date is two days before that of Angelina's letter to her. "The suffering which my precious sister has brought upon herself by her connection with the anti-slavery cause, which has been a sorrow of heart to me, is another proof how dangerous it is to slight the clear convictions of truth. But, like myself, she listened to the voice of the tempter. Oh! that she may learn obedience by the things that she suffers. Of myself I can say, the Lord brought me up out of the horrible pit, and my prayer for her is that she may be willing to bear the present chastisement patiently." In Angelina's diary, she describes very touchingly some of her trials in this matter. Writing in September, 1835, after recording in similar language to that used in her letter to Sarah the state of feelings under which she wrote and sent the letter to Garrison, she says:-- "I had some idea it might be published, but did not feel at liberty to say it must not be, for I had no idea that, if it was, my name would be attached to it. As three weeks passed and I heard nothing of it, I concluded it had been broken open in the office and destroyed. To my great surprise, last Fourth Day, Friend B. came to tell me a letter of mine had been published in the Liberator. He was most exceeding tried at my having written it, and also at its publication. He wished me to re-examine the letter, and write to Wm. Lloyd Garrison, expressing disapproval of its publication, and altering some portions of it. His visit was, I believe, prompted by the affection he bears me, but he appeared utterly incapable of understanding the depth of feeling under which that letter was written. The editor's remarks were deeply trying to him. Friend B. seemed to think they were the ravings of a fanatic, and that the bare mention of my precious brother's name was a disgrace to his character, when coupled with mine in such a cause and such a paper, or rather in a cause advocated in such a way. I was so astonished and tried that I hardly knew what to say. I declined, however, to write to W.L.G., and said I felt willing to bear any suffering, if it was only made instrumental of good. I felt my great unworthiness of being used in such a work, but remembered that God hath chosen the weak things of this world to confound the wise. But I was truly miserable, believing my character was altogether gone among my dearest, most valued friends. I was indeed brought to the brink of despair, as the vilest of sinners. A little light dawned at last, as I remembered how often I had told the Lord if He would only prepare me to be, and make me, instrumental in the great work of emancipation, I would be willing to bear any suffering, and the question arose, whether this was not the peculiar kind allotted to me. Oh, the extreme pain of extravagant praise! to be held up as a saint in a public newspaper, before thousands of people, when I felt I was the chief of sinners. Blushing, and confusion of face were mine, and I thought the walls of a prison would have been preferable to such an exposure. Then, again, to have my name, not so much my name as the name of Grimké, associated with that of the despised Garrison, seemed like bringing disgrace upon my family, not myself alone. I felt as though the name had been tarnished in the eyes of thousands who had before loved and revered it. I cannot describe the anguish of my soul Nevertheless, I could not blame the publication of the letter, nor would I have recalled it if I could. "My greatest trial is the continued opposition of my precious sister Sarah. She thinks I have been given over to blindness of mind, and that I do not know light from darkness, right from wrong. Her grief is that I cannot see it was wrong in me ever to have written the letter at all, and she seems to think I deserve all the suffering I have brought upon myself." We approach now the most interesting period in the lives of the two sisters. A new era was about to dawn upon them; their quiet, peaceful routine was to be disturbed; a path was opening for them, very different from the one which had hitherto been indicated, and for which their long and painful probation had eminently prepared them. Angelina was the first to see it, the first to venture upon it, and for a time she travelled it alone, unsustained by her beloved sister, and feeling herself condemned by all her nearest friends. CHAPTER XI. All through the winter of 1835-36, demonstrations of violence continued to be made against the friends of emancipation throughout the country. The reign of terror inaugurated in 1832 threatened to crush out the grandest principles of our Constitution. Freedom of press and speech became by-words, and personal liberty was in constant danger. A man or woman needed only to be pointed out as an abolitionist to be insulted and assaulted. No anti-slavery meetings could be held uninterrupted by the worst elements of rowdyism, instigated by men in high position. In vain the authorities were appealed to for protection; they declared their inability to afford it. The few newspapers that dared to express disapproval of such disregard of the doctrine of equal rights were punished by the withdrawal of subscriptions and advertisements, while the majority of the public press teemed with the vilest slanders against the noble men and women who, in spite of mobs and social ostracism, continued to sow anti-slavery truths so diligently that new converts were made every day, and the very means taken to impose upon public opinion enlightened it more and more.[3] [3] Apropos of sowing anti-slavery truths, I remember seeing at the first anti-slavery fair I attended,--in 1853, I think,--a sampler made in 1836 by a little girl, a pupil in a school where evidently great pains were taken to propagate anti-slavery principles. On the sampler was neatly worked the words: "May the points of our needles prick the slave-holders' consciences." During this winter we find nothing especial to narrate concerning Sarah and Angelina. Sarah's diary continues to record her trials in meeting, and her religious sufferings, notwithstanding her recently expressed belief that her eternal salvation was secured. Angelina kept no diary at this time, and wrote few letters, but we see from an occasional allusion in these that her mind was busy, and that her warmest interest was enlisted in the cause of abolition. She read everything she could get on the subject, wrote some effective articles for the anti-slavery papers, and pondered night and day over the question of what more she could do. One practical thing she did was to write to the widow of her brother Thomas, proposing to purchase from her the woman whom she (Angelina) in her girlhood had refused to own, and who afterwards became the property of her brother. This woman was now the mother of several children, and Angelina, jointly with Mrs. Frost, proposed to purchase them all, bring them to Philadelphia, and emancipate them. But no notice was taken of the application, either by their sister-in-law or their sister Eliza, to whom Angelina repeatedly wrote on the subject. Learning from their mother that she was about to make her will, Angelina and Sarah wrote to her, asking that her slaves be included in their portions. To this she assented, but managed to dispose of all but four before she died. These were left to her two anti-slavery daughters, who at once freed them, at the same time purchasing the husband of one of them and freeing him. As she continued to study anti-slavery doctrines, one thing became very plain to Angelina--that the friends of emancipation, in order to clear their skirts of all participation in the slave-owner's sin, must cease to use the products of slave labor. To this view she tried to bring all with whom she discussed the main subject, and so important did it appear to her, that she thought of writing to some of the anti-slavery friends in New York about it, but her courage failed. After what she had gone through because of the publication of her letter to Mr. Garrison, she shrank from the risk of having another communication made public. But her mind was deeply exercised on this point, and when--in the spring--she and Sarah went to attend Yearly Meeting in Providence, R.I., an opportunity offered for her to express her views to a prominent member of the New York Society, whom she met on the boat. She begged this lady to talk to Gerrit Smith, recently converted from colonization, and others, about it, and to offer them, in her name, one hundred dollars towards setting up a free cotton factory. This was the beginning of a society formed by those willing to pledge themselves to the use of free-labor products only. In 1826 Benjamin Lundy had procured the establishment, in Baltimore, of a free-labor produce store; and subsequently he had formed several societies on the same principle. Evan Lewis had established one in Philadelphia about 1826, and it was still in existence. The sisters had been so long and so closely tied to Philadelphia and their duties there, that the relief of the visit to Providence was very great. Sarah mentions it in this characteristic way:-- "The Friend of sinners opened a door of escape for me out of that city of bonds and afflictions." In Providence she records how much more freedom she felt in the exercise of her ministerial gift than she did at home. Angelina sympathized with these sentiments, feeling, as she expresses it, that her release from Philadelphia was signed when she left for Providence. She found it delightful to be able to read what she pleased without being criticised, and to talk about slavery freely. While in Providence she was refreshed by calls upon her of several abolitionists, among them a cotton manufacturer and his son, Quakers, with whom she had a long talk, not knowing their business. She discussed the use of slave-labor, and descanted on the impossibility of any man being clean-handed enough to work in the anti-slavery cause so long as he was making his fortune by dealing in slave-labor products. These two gentlemen afterwards became her warm friends. An Anti-slavery Society meeting was held in Providence while Angelina was there, but she did not feel at liberty to attend it, though she mentions seeing Garrison, Henry B. Stanton, Osborne, "and others," but does not say that she made their acquaintance; probably not, as she was visiting orthodox Quakers who all disapproved of these men, and Angelina's modesty would never have allowed her to seek their notice. Leaving Providence, the sisters attended two Quarterly Meetings in adjacent towns, where, Angelina states, the subject of slavery was brought up, "and," she says, "gospel liberty prevailed to such an extent, that even poor I was enabled to open my lips in a few words." She neglected to say that these few words introduced the subject to the meetings, and produced such deep feeling that many hitherto wavering ones went away strengthened and encouraged. They also attended Yearly Meeting at Newport, where many friends were made; and where Angelina's conversations on the subject which absorbed all her thoughts produced such an impression that she was strongly urged to remain in New England, and become an anti-slavery missionary in the Society of Friends. But she did not feel that she could stay, as, she says, it was shown her very clearly that Shrewsbury was her right place for the summer, though why, she knew not. The reason was plainly revealed a little later. She returned to Shrewsbury refreshed and strengthened, and feeling that her various experiences had helped her to see more clearly where her duty and her work lay. But she was saddened by the conviction that if she gave herself up, as she felt she must, to the anti-slavery cause, she would be cast loose from her peaceful home, and from very many dear friends, to whom she was bound by the strongest ties of gratitude and affection. She thus writes to a friend:-- "Didst thou ever feel as if thou hadst no home on earth, except in the bosom of Jesus? I feel so now." For several weeks after her return to Shrewsbury, Angelina tried to withdraw her mind from the subject which her sister thought was taking too strong hold on it, and interfering with her spiritual needs and exercises. Out of deference to these views, she resumed her studies, and tried to become interested in a "History of the United States on Peace Principles," which she had thought some time before of writing. Then she began the composition of a little book on the "Beauty and Duty of Forgiveness, as Illustrated by the Story of Joseph," but gave that up to commence a sacred history. In this she did become much interested for a time, but her mind was too heavily burdened to permit her to remain tranquil long. Still the question was ever before her: "Is there nothing that I can do?" She tried to be cheerful, but felt at all times much more like shedding tears. And her suffering was greater that it was borne alone. The friend, Mrs. Parker, whom she was visiting, was a comparative stranger, whose views she had not yet ascertained, and whom she feared to trouble with her perplexities. Of Sarah, so closely associated with Catherine Morris, she could not make an entire confidant, and no other friend was near. Catherine, and some others in Philadelphia, anxious about her evident and growing indifference to her Society duties, tried to persuade her to open a school with one who had long been a highly-prized friend, but Angelina very decidedly refused to listen to the project. "As to S.W.'s proposal," she writes, "I cannot think of acceding to it, because I have seen so clearly that my pen, at least, must be employed in the great reformations of the day, and if I engaged in a school, my time would not be my own. No money that could be given could induce me to bind my body and mind and soul so completely in Philadelphia. There is no lack of light as to the right decision about this." For this reply she received a letter of remonstrance from Sarah, to which she thus answered:-- "I think I am as afraid as thou canst be of my doing anything to hurt my usefulness in our Society, if that is the field designed for me to labor in. But, Is it? is often a query of deep interest and solemnity to my mind. I feel no openness among Friends. My spirit is oppressed and heavy laden, and shut up in prison. What am I to do? The only relief I experience is in writing letters and pieces for the peace and anti-slavery causes, and this makes me think that my influence is to reach beyond our own limits. My mind is fully made up not to spend next winter in Philadelphia, if I can help it. I feel strangely released, and am sure I know not what is to become of me. I am perfectly blind as to the future." But light was coming, and her sorrowful questionings were soon to be answered. It was not long before Mrs. Parker saw that her guest's cheerfulness was assumed, and only thinly veiled some great trouble. As they became more intimate, she questioned her affectionately, and soon drew from her the whole story of her sorrows and her perplexities, and her great need of a friend to feel for her and advise her. Mrs. Parker became this friend, and, though differing from her on some essential points, did much to help and strengthen her. For many days slavery was the only topic discussed between them, and then one morning Angelina entered the breakfast-room with a beaming countenance, and said:-- "It has all come to me; God has shown me what I can do; I can write an appeal to Southern women, one which, thus inspired, will touch their hearts, and lead them to use their influence with their husbands and brothers. I will speak to them in such tones that they must hear me, and, through me, the voice of justice and humanity." This appeal was begun that very day, but before she had written many pages, she was interrupted in her task by a letter which threw her into a state of great agitation, and added to her perplexity. This letter was from Elizur Wright, then secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the office of which was in New York. He invited her, in the name of the Executive Committee of the Society, to come to New York, and meet with Christian women in sewing circles and private parlors, and talk to them, as she so well knew how to do, on slavery. The door of usefulness she had been looking for so long was opened at last, but it was so unexpected, so different from anything she had yet thought of, that she was cast into a sea of trouble. Naturally retiring and unobtrusive, she shrank from so public an engagement, and this proposal frightened her so much that she could not sleep the first night after receiving it. She had never spoken to the smallest assembly of Friends, and even in meeting, where all were free to speak as the spirit moved them, she had never uttered a word; and yet, how could she refuse? She delayed her answer until she could make it the subject of prayer and consult with Sarah. Desiring to leave her sister entirely free to express her opinion, she merely wrote to her that she had received the proposition. Sarah was beginning to feel that Angelina was growing beyond her, and, may be, above her. She did not offer a word of advice, but most tenderly expressed her entire willingness to give up her "precious child," to go anywhere, and do anything she felt was right. And in a letter to a friend, alluding to this, she says:-- "My beloved sister does indeed need the prayers of all who love her. Oh! may He who laid down his life for us guide her footsteps and keep her in the hollow of His holy hand. Perhaps the Lord may be pleased to cast our lot somewhere together. If so, I feel as if I could ask no more in this world." Sarah's willingness to surrender her to whatever work she felt called to do was a great relief to Angelina. In writing to thank her and to speak more fully of Mr. Wright's letter, she says:-- "The bare idea that such a thing may be required of me is truly alarming, and that thy mind should be at all resigned to it increases the fear that possibly I may have to do it. It does not appear by the letter that it is expected I should extend my work outside of our Society. One thing, however, I do see clearly, that I am not to do it now, for I have begun to write an 'Appeal to the Christian Women of the South,' which I feel must be finished first." She then proceeds to give an account of the part of this Appeal already written, and of what she intended the rest to be, and shows that she shared the feelings common among Southerners, the anticipation of a servile insurrection sooner or later. She says:-- "In conclusion I intend to take up the subject of abolitionism, and endeavor to undeceive the South as to the supposed objects of anti-slavery societies, and bear my full testimony to their pacific principles; and then to close with as feeling an appeal as possible to them as women, as Christian women, setting before them the awful responsibility resting on them at this crisis; for if the women of the South do not rise in the strength of the Lord to plead with their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, that country must witness the most dreadful scenes of murder and blood. "It will be a pamphlet of a dozen pages, I suppose. My wish is to submit it to the publishing committee of the A.A.S.S., of New York, for revision, to be published by them with my name attached, for I well know my _name_ is worth more than _myself_, and will add weight to it.[4] Now, dearest, what dost thou think of it? A pretty bold step, I know, and one of which my friends will highly disapprove, but this is a day in which I feel I must act independently of consequences to myself, for of how little consequence will my trials be, if the cause of truth is helped forward ever so little. The South must be reached. An address to men will not reach women, but an address to women will reach the whole community, if it can be reached at all. "I mean to write to Elizur Wright by to-morrow's mail, informing him that I am writing such a pamphlet, and that I feel as if the proposition of the committee is one of too much importance, either to accept or refuse, without more reflection than I have yet been able to give to it. The trial would indeed be great, to have to leave this sweet, quiet retreat, but if duty calls, I must go.... Many, many thanks for thy dear, long letters." [4] In a letter written some time after, she says: "I would have liked thee to join thy name to mine in my Appeal, but thought it would probably bring out so much opposition and violence, that I preferred bearing it all myself." While Angelina was thus busily employed, and buoyed up by the hope of benefiting those whose wrongs she had all her life felt so deeply, Sarah was reaching towards her, and in trying to be indulgent to her and just to her Society at the same time, she was awakening to her own false position and to some of the awful mistakes of her religious life. Through the summer, such passages as the following appear in her diary: -- "The approach of our Yearly Meeting was almost overwhelming. I felt as if I could be thankful even for sickness, for almost anything so I might have escaped attending it. But my dear Saviour opened no door, and after a season of unusual conflict I was favored with resignation. "Oh! the cruel treatment I have undergone from those in authority. I could not have believed it had I not been called to endure it. But the Lord permits it. My part is not to judge how far they have been moving under divine direction, but to receive humbly and thankfully through them the lessons of meekness, lowliness, faith, patience, and love, and I trust I may be thankful for the opportunity thus afforded to love my enemies and to pray for them, and perhaps it is to prepare me to feel for others, that I have been thus tried and afflicted." That she was thus prepared was evidenced through all the varied experiences of her after-life, for certainly no more sympathetic soul ever dwelt in a mortal frame, and more generously diffused its warmth and tenderness upon all who came within its radius. After the next First Day meeting, she writes:-- "The suffering in my own meeting is so intense that I think nothing short of a settled conviction that obedience and eternal life are closely connected could enable me to open my lips there." Two weeks later, an almost prophetic sentence is written. "Truly discouragement does so prevail that it would be no surprise to me if Friends requested me to be silent. Hitherto, I have been spared this trial, but if it comes, O Holy Father, may my own will be so slain that I may bow in reverent adoring submission." Notwithstanding all this distress, however, Sarah might still have lingered on some time longer, stifling in the dry dust of the Quaker Church, and refusing to partake of the living water Angelina proffered to her, but for an incident which occurred about this time, scarcely a fortnight after the last sentence quoted,--an incident which proved to be the last straw added to the heavy burden she had borne so submissively, if not patiently. It is best given in her own words, and I may add, it is the last entry in her most remarkable diary. "8th Mo. 3d. Went this morning to Orange Street meeting after a season of conflict and prayer. I believed the Lord required this sacrifice, but I went with a heart bowed down, praying to Jesus that I might not speak my own words, that he would be pleased to make a way for me, or, if what I had to deliver brought upon me opposition, to strengthen me to endure it. The meeting had been gathered some time when I arose, and after repeating our Lord's thrice-repeated query to Peter, 'Lovest thou me?' I remarked that it was addressed to one who had been forgiven much, and who could appeal to the Searcher of hearts that he did indeed love Him. Few of us had had the temptation to endure which overcame Peter when he denied his Lord and Master. But although few of us might openly deny the Lord who bought us, yet there is, I apprehend, in many of us an evil heart of unbelief, which alienates us from God and disqualifies from answering the query as Peter did. I had proceeded so far when Jonathan Evans rose and said: 'I hope the Friend will now be satisfied.' I immediately sat down and was favored to feel perfectly calm. The language, 'Ye can have no power at all against me unless it be given you,' sustained me, and although I am branded in the public eye with the disapprobation of a poor fellow worm, and it was entirely a breach of discipline in him to publicly silence a minister who has been allowed to exercise her gifts in her own meeting without ever having been requested to be silent, yet I feel no anger towards him. Surely the feelings that could prompt to so cruel an act cannot be the feelings of Christian love. But it seems to be one more evidence that my dear Saviour designs to bring me out of this place. How much has his injunction rested on my mind of latter time. 'When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another.' I pray unto Thee, O Lord Jesus, to direct the wanderer's footsteps and to plant me where thou seest I can best promote thy glory. Expect to go to Burlington to-morrow." To those unacquainted with the Society of Friends fifty years ago, and its discipline at that period, so different from what it is now, this incident may seem of little consequence; but it was, on the contrary, extremely serious. Jonathan Evans was the presiding elder of the Yearly Meetings, a most important personage, whose authority was undisputed. He was sometimes alluded to as "Pope Jonathan." He had disliked Sarah from the time of her connection with the Society, and had habitually treated her and her offerings with a silent indifference most significant, and which, of course, had its effect on many who pinned their prejudices as well as their faith to the coats of the elders. It was owing entirely to this secretly-exercised but well-understood opposition, that Sarah had for nine long years used her ministerial gift only through intense suffering. She believed, against much rebellion in her own breast, that it had been given her to use in God's service, and that she had no right to withhold it; but she had been made so often to feel the condemnation under which she labored, that she was really not much surprised when the final blow came. But with all her religious humility her pride was great, and her sensitiveness to any discourtesy very keen. She may not have felt anger against Elder Evans. We can imagine, on the contrary, that her heart was filled with pity for him, but a pity largely mixed with contempt; and it is certain that the Society was made, in her view, responsible for his conduct. Every slight she had ever received in it came back to her exaggerated; all her dissatisfaction with its principles of action doubled; the grief she had always felt at its indifference to the doctrine of the atonement, and its neglect to preach "Jesus Christ and him crucified," of which she had often complained, was intensified, and her first impulse was to quit the Society, as she determined to quit Philadelphia, for ever. Angelina was greatly shocked when she learned of the treatment her sister had received, but the words, "I will break your bonds and set you free," came immediately to her mind, and so comforted her that her grief and indignation were turned to joy. She had long felt that, kind as Catherine Morris had always been, her strict orthodox principles, which she severely enforced in her household, circumscribed Sarah's liberty of thought and action, and operated powerfully in preventing her from rising out of her depressed and discouraged state. But though the question had often revolved itself in her mind, and even been discussed between her and her sister, neither had been able to see how Sarah could ever leave Catherine, bound to her as she was by such strong ties of gratitude, and feeling herself so necessary to Catherine's comfort. But now the way was made clear, and certainly no true friend of Sarah could expect her to remain longer in Philadelphia. It is surprising that Sarah had not discovered many years earlier that the attempt must be futile to engraft a scion of the Charleston aristocracy upon the rugged stock of Quaker orthodoxy. She went to Burlington, to the house of a dear friend who knew of all her trials, and there she remained for several weeks. Angelina had finished her "Appeal," and, only two days before she heard of the Evans incident, wrote to Sarah to inform her of the fact. This letter is dated "Aug. 1st, 1836." After a few affectionate inquiries, she says: "I have just finished my 'Appeal to Southern Women.' It has furnished work for two weeks. How much I wish I could have thee here, if it were only for three or four hours, that we might read it over together before I send it to Elizur Wright. I read it to Margaret, and she says it carries its own evidence with it; still, I should value thy judgment very much if I could have it, but a private opportunity offers to-morrow, and I think I had better send it. It must go just as I sent my letter to W.L.G., with fervent prayers that the Lord would do just as he pleased with it. I believe He directed and helped me to write it, and now I feel as if I had nothing to do but to send it to the Anti-Slavery Society, submitting it entirely to their judgment.... I cannot be too thankful for the change thou expressest in thy feelings with regard to the Anti-Slavery Society, and feel no desire at all to blame thee for former opposition, believing, as I do, that it was permitted in order to drive me closer to my Saviour, and into a deeper examination of the ground upon which I was standing. I am indeed thankful for it; how could I be otherwise, when it was so evident thou hadst my good at heart and really did for the best? And it did not hurt me at all. It did not alienate me from the blessed cause, for I think the same suffering that would drive us back from a bad cause makes us cling to and love a good one more ardently. O sister, I feel as if I could give up not only friends, but life itself, for the slave, if it is called for. I feel as if I could go anywhere to save him, even down to the South if I am called there. The conviction deepens and strengthens, as retirement affords fuller opportunity for calm reflection, that the cause of emancipation is a cause worth suffering for, yea, dying for, if need be. With regard to the proposed mission in New York, I can see nothing about it, and never did any poor creature feel more unfit to do anything than I do to undertake it. But what duty presses me into, I cannot press myself out of.... I sometimes feel frightened to think of how long I was standing idle in the market-place, and cannot help attributing it in a great measure to the doctrine of nothingness so constantly preached up in our Society. It is the most paralyzing, zeal-quenching doctrine that ever was preached in the Church, and I believe has produced its legitimate fruit of nothingness in reducing us to nothing, when we ought to have been a light in the Christian Church.... Farewell, dearest, perhaps we shall soon meet." The Appeal was sent to New York, and this was what Mr. Wright wrote to the author in acknowledging its receipt:-- "I have just finished reading your Appeal, and not with a dry eye. I do not feel the slightest doubt that the committee will publish it. Oh that it could be rained down into every parlor in our land. I know it will carry the Christian women of the South if it can be read, and my soul blesses that dear and glorious Saviour who has helped you to write it." When it was read some days after to the gentlemen of the committee, they found in it such an intimate knowledge of the workings of the whole slave system, such righteous denunciation of it, and such a warm interest in the cause of emancipation, that they decided to publish it at once and scatter it through the country, especially through the South. It made a pamphlet of thirty-six pages. The Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine for October, 1836, thus mentions it:-- "This eloquent pamphlet is from the pen of a sister of the late Thomas S. Grimké, of Charleston, S.C. We need hardly say more of it than that it is written with that peculiar felicity and unction which characterized the works of her lamented brother. Among anti-slavery writings there are two classes--one especially adapted to make new converts, the other to strengthen the old. We cannot exclude Miss Grimké's Appeal from either class. It belongs pre-eminently to the former. The converts that will be made by it, we have no doubt, will be not only numerous, but thorough-going." Mr. Wright spoke of it as a patch of blue sky breaking through the storm-cloud of public indignation which had gathered so black over the handful of anti-slavery workers. This praise was not exaggerated. The pamphlet produced the most profound sensation wherever it was read, but, as Angelina predicted, she was made to suffer for having written it. Friends upbraided and denounced her, Catherine Morris even predicting that she would be disowned, and intimating pretty plainly that she would not dissent from such punishment; and Angelina even began to doubt her own judgment, and to question if she ought not to have continued to live a useless life in Philadelphia, rather than to have so displeased her best friends. But her convictions of duty were too strong to allow her to remain long in this depressed, semi-repentant state. In a letter to a friend she expresses herself as almost wondering at her own weakness; and of Catherine Morris she says: "Her disapproval, more than anything else, shook my resolution. Nevertheless, I told her, with many tears, that I felt it a religious duty to labor in this cause, and that I must do it even against the advice and wishes of my friends. I think if I ever had a clear, calm view of the path of duty in all my life, I have had it since I came here, in reference to slavery. But I assure thee that I expect nothing less than that my labors in this blessed cause will result in my being disowned by Friends, but none of these things will move me. I must confess I value my right very little in a Society which is frowning on all the moral reformations of the day, and almost enslaving its members by unchristian and unreasonable restrictions, with regard to uniting with others in these works of faith and labors of love. I do not believe it would cost me one pang to be disowned for doing my duty to the slave." But her condemnation reached beyond the Quaker Society--even to her native city, where her Appeal produced a sensation she had little expected. Mr. Weld's account of its reception there is thus given:-- "When it (the Appeal) came out, a large number of copies were sent by mail to South Carolina. Most of them were publicly burned by postmasters. Not long after this, the city authorities of Charleston learned that Miss Grimké was intending to visit her mother and sisters, and pass the winter with them. Thereupon the mayor called upon Mrs. Grimké and desired her to inform her daughter that the police had been instructed to prevent her landing while the steamer remained in port, and to see to it that she should not communicate, by letter or otherwise, with any persons in the city; and, further, that if she should elude their vigilance and go on shore, she would be arrested and imprisoned until the return of the vessel. Her Charleston friends at once conveyed to her the message of the mayor, and added that the people of Charleston were so incensed against her, that if she should go there despite the mayor's threat of pains and penalties, she could not escape personal violence at the hands of the mob. She replied to the letter that her going would probably compromise her family; not only distress them, but put them in peril, which she had neither heart nor right to do; but for that fact, she would certainly exercise her constitutional right as an American citizen, and go to Charleston to visit her relatives, and if for that, the authorities should inflict upon her pains and penalties, she would willingly bear them, assured that such an outrage would help to reveal to the free States the fact that slavery defies and tramples alike upon constitutions and laws, and thus outlaws itself." These brave words said no more than they meant, for Angelina Grimké's moral heroism would have borne her to the front of the fiercest battle ever fought for human rights; and she would have counted it little to lay down her life if that could help on the victory. She touched as yet only the surf of the breakers into which she was soon to be swept, but her clear eye would not have quailed, or her cheek have blanched, if even then all their cruelty could have been revealed to her. CHAPTER XII. We have seen, a few pages back, that Angelina expressed her thankfulness at Sarah's change of views with respect to the anti-slavery cause. Again we must regret the destruction of Sarah's letters, which would have shown us by what chains of reasoning her mind at last reached entire sympathy with Angelina's. We can only infer that her progress was rapid after the public rebuke which caused her to turn her back on Philadelphia, and that her sister's brave and isolated position, appealing strongly to her affection, urged her to make a closer examination of the subject of abolitionism than she had yet done. The result we know; her entire conversion in a few weeks to Angelina's views. And from that time she travelled close by her sister's side in this as well as in other questions of reform, drawing her inspiration from Angelina's clearer intuitions and calmer judgment, and frankly and affectionately acknowledging her right of leadership. The last of August, 1836, the sisters were once more together, Sarah having accepted Mrs. Parker's invitation to come to Shrewsbury. The question of future arrangements was now discussed. Angelina felt a strong inclination to go to New England, and undertake there the same work which the committee in New York wished her to perform, and she even wrote to Mr. Wright that she expected to do so. Feeling also that Friends had the first right to her time and labors, and that, if permitted, she would prefer to work within the Society, she wrote to her old acquaintances, E. and L. Capron, the cotton manufacturers of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, to consult them on the subject. She mentions this in a letter to her friend, Jane Smith, saying:-- "My present feelings lead me to labor with Friends on the manufacture and use of the products of slave-labor. They excuse themselves from doing anything, because they say they cannot mingle in the general excitement, and so on. Now, here is a field of labor in which they need have nothing to do with other societies, and yet will be striking a heavy blow at slavery. These topics the Anti-Slavery Society has never acted upon as a body, and therefore no agent of theirs could consistently labor on them. I stated to E. and L. Capron just how I felt, and asked whether I could be of any use among them, whether they were prepared to have the morality of these things discussed on Christian principles. I have no doubt my Philadelphia friends will oppose my going there, but, Jane, I have realized very sensibly of late that I belong not to them, but to Christ Jesus, and that I must follow the Lamb whithersoever He leadeth.... I feel as if I was about to sacrifice every friend I thought I had, but I still believe with T.D. Weld, that this is 'a cause worth dying for.'" This is the first mention we find of her future husband, whom she had not yet seen, but whose eloquent addresses she had read, and whose ill-treatment by Western mobs had more than once called forth the expression of her indignation. The senior member of the firm to which she had written answered her letter in person, and, she says, utterly discouraged her. He said that if she should go into New England with the avowed intention of laboring among Friends on the subject of slavery in _any_ way, her path would be completely closed, and she would find herself entirely helpless. He even went so far as to say that he believed there were Friends who would destroy her character if she attempted anything of the kind. He proposed that she should go to his house for the winter, and employ her time in writing for the Anti-Slavery Society, and doing anything else she could incidentally. But this plan did not suit her. She felt it right to offer her services to Friends first, and was glad she had done so; but if they would not accept them she must take them elsewhere. Besides, when she communicated her plan to Catherine Morris, Catherine objected to it very decidedly, and said she _could not_ go without a certificate and a companion, and these she knew Friends would not grant her. "Under all these circumstances," Angelina writes, "I felt a little like the apostle Paul, who having first offered the Jews the gospel, and finding they would not receive it, believed it right for him to turn to the Gentiles. Didst thou ever hear anything so absurd as what Catherine says about the certificate and a companion? I cannot feel bound by such unreasonable restrictions if my Heavenly Father opens a door for me, and I do not mean to submit to them. She knows very well that Arch Street Meeting would grant me neither, but as the servant of Jesus Christ I have no right to bow down thus to the authority of man, and I do not expect ever again to suffer myself to be trammelled as I have been. It is sinful in any human being to resign his or her conscience and free agency to any society or individual, if such usurpation can be resisted by moral power. The course our Society is now determined upon, of crushing everything which opposes the peculiar views of Friends, seems to me just like the powerful effort of the Jews to close the lips of Jesus. They are afraid that the Society will be completely broken up if they allow any difference of opinion to pass unrebuked, and they are resolved to put down all who question in any way the doctrines of Barclay, the soundness of Fox, or the practices which are built on them. But the time is fast approaching when we shall see who is for Christ, and who for Fox and Barclay, the Paul and Apollos of our Society." Her plan of going to New England frustrated, Angelina hesitated no longer about accepting the invitation from New York. But first there was a long discussion of the subject with Sarah, who found it hard to resign her sister to a work she as yet did not cordially approve. She begged her not to decide suddenly, and pointed out all sorts of difficulties--the great responsibility she would assume, her retiring disposition, and almost morbid shrinking from whatever might make her conspicuous; the trial of going among strangers, made greater by her Quaker costume and speech, and lastly, of the almost universal prejudice against a woman's speaking to any audience; and she asked her if, under all these embarrassing circumstances, added to her inexperience of the world, she did not feel that she would ultimately be forced to give up what now seemed to her so practicable. To all this Angelina only answered that the responsibility seemed thrust upon her, that the call was God's call, and she could not refuse to answer it. Sarah then told her that if she should go upon this mission without the sanction of the "Meeting for Sufferings," it would be regarded as a violation of the established usages of the Society, and it would feel obliged to disown her. Angelina's answer to this ended the discussion. She declared that as her mind was made up to go, she could not ask leave of her Society--that it would grieve her to have to leave it, and it would be unpleasant to be disowned, but she had no alternative. Then Sarah, whose loving heart had, during the long talk, been moving nearer and nearer to that of her clear child, surprised her by speaking in the beautiful, tender language of Ruth: "If thou indeed feelest thus, and I cannot doubt it, then my mind too is made up. Where thou goest, I will go; thy God shall be my God, thy people my people. What thou doest, I will, to my utmost, aid thee in doing. We have wept and prayed together, we will go and work together." And thus fully united, heart and soul and mind, they departed for New York, Angelina first writing to inform the committee of her decision, and while thanking them for the salary offered, refusing to receive any. She also told them that her sister would accompany her and co-operate with her, and they would both bear their own expense. After this time, the sisters found themselves in frequent and intimate association with the men who, as officers of the American Anti-Slavery Society, had the direction of the movement. The marked superiority of their new friends in education, experience, culture, piety, liberality of view, statesmanship, decision of character, and energy in action, to the Philadelphia Quakers and Charleston slave-holders, must have been to them a surprise and a revelation. Working with a common purpose, these men were of varied accomplishments and qualities. William Jay and James G. Birney were cultured men of the world, trained in legal practice and public life; Arthur Tappan, Lewis Tappan, John Rankin, and Duncan Dunbar, were successful merchants; Abraham L. Cox, a physician in large practice; Theodore D. Weld, Henry B. Stanton, Alvan Stewart, and Gerrit Smith were popular orators; Joshua Leavitt, Elizur Wright, and William Goodell were ready writers and able editors; Beriah Green and Amos A. Phelps were pulpit speakers and authors, and John G. Whittier was a poet. Some of them had national reputations. Those who in December, 1835, protested against the false charges of publishing incendiary documents calculated to excite servile war, made against the Society by President Jackson, had signed names almost as well known as his, and had written better English than his message. Several of them had been officers of the American Anti-Slavery Society from its formation. Their energy had been phenomenal: they had raised funds, sent lecturers into nearly every county in the free States, and circulated in a single year more than a million copies of newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, and books. Their moderation, good judgment, and piety had been seen and known of all men. Faithful in the exposure of unfaithfulness to freedom on the part of politicians and clergymen, they denounced neither the Constitution nor the Bible. Their devotion to the cause of abolition was pure; for its sake they suppressed the vanity of personal notoriety and of oratorical display. Among them, not one can be found who sought to make a name as a leader, speaker, or writer; not one who was jealous of the reputation of co-adjutors; not one who rewarded adherents with flattery and hurled invectives at dissentients; not one to whom personal flattery was acceptable or personal prominence desirable; not one whose writings betrayed egotism, self-inflation or bombast. Such was their honest aversion to personal publicity, it is now almost impossible to trace the work each did. Some of their noblest arguments for Freedom were published anonymously. They made no vainglorious claims to the original authorship of ideas. But never in the history of reform was work better done than the old American Anti-Slavery Society did from its formation in 1833 to its disruption in 1840. In less than seven years it regained for Freedom most of the vantage-ground lost under the open assaults and secret plottings, beginning in 1829, of the Jackson administration, and in the panic caused by the Southampton insurrection; blew into flame the embers of the national anti-slavery sentiment; painted slavery as it was; vindicated the anti-slavery character of the Constitution and the Bible; defended the right of petition; laid bare the causes of the Seminole war: exposed the Texas conspiracy and the designs of the slave power for supremacy; and freed the legitimate abolition cause from "no human government," secession, and anti-constitution heresies. In short, it planted the seed which flowered and fruited in a political party, around which the nation was to gather for defence against the aggressions of the slave power. At the anti-slavery office in New York, Angelina and Sarah learned, much to their satisfaction, that the work that would probably be required of Angelina could be done in a private capacity; that it was proposed to organize, the next month (November), a National Female Anti-Slavery Society, for which women agents would be needed, and they could make themselves exceedingly useful travelling about, distributing tracts, and talking to women in their own homes. There the matter rested for a time. Writing to her friend Jane Smith in Philadelphia after their return to Shrewsbury, Angelina says:-- "I am certain of the disapproval of nearly all my friends. As to dear Catherine, I am afraid she will hardly want to see me again. I wrote to her all about it, for I wanted her to know what my prospects were. I expect nothing less than the loss of her friendship and of my membership in the Society. The latter will be a far less trial than the former.... I cannot describe to thee how my dear sister has comforted and strengthened me. I cannot regard the change in her feelings as any other than as a strong evidence that my Heavenly Father has called me into the anti-slavery field, and after having tried my faith by her opposition, is now pleased to strengthen and confirm it by her approbation." In a postscript to this letter, Sarah says:-- "God does not willingly grieve or afflict the children of men, and if my suffering or even my beloved sister's, which is harder to bear than my own, can help forward the cause of Truth and Righteousness, I may rejoice in that we are found worthy not only to believe on, but also to suffer for, the name of Jesus." Angelina adds that she shall be obliged to go to Philadelphia for a week or so, to dispose of her personal effects, and asks Jane to receive her as a boarder, as she did not think it would be right to impose herself upon either her sister, Mrs. Frost, or Catherine, on account of their disapproval of anti-slavery measures. "I never felt before," she says, "as if I had _no_ home. It seems as if the Lord had completely broken up my rest and driven me out to labor for the poor slave. It is _His_ work--I blame no one." A few weeks later, the sisters were again in New York, the guests of that staunch abolitionist, Dr. Cox, and his good wife, Abby, as earnest a worker in the cause as her husband. An anti-slavery convention had been called for the first week in the month of November, and met soon after their arrival. It was at this convention that Angelina first saw and listened to Theodore D. Weld. Writing to her friend Jane, she says:-- "The meetings are increasingly interesting, and to-day (11th) we enjoyed a moral and intellectual feast in a most noble speech from T.D. Weld, of more than two hours, on the question, 'What is slavery?' I never heard so grand and beautiful an exposition of the dignity and nobility of man in my life." She goes on to give a synopsis of the entire speech, and by her frequent enthusiastic comments reveals how much it and the speaker impressed her. She continues:-- "After the meeting was over, W.L. Garrison introduced Weld to us. He greeted me with the appellation of 'my dear sister,' and I felt as though he was a brother indeed in the holy cause of suffering humanity; a man raised up by God and wonderfully qualified to plead the cause of the oppressed. Perhaps now thou wilt want to know how this lion of the tribe of abolition _looks_. Well, at first sight, there was nothing remarkable to me in his appearance, and I wondered whether he was really as great as I had heard. But as soon as his countenance became animated by speaking, I found it was one which portrayed the noblest qualities of the heart and head beaming with intelligence, benevolence, and frankness." On the last page of her letter she says: "It is truly comforting to me to find that sister is so much pleased with the Convention, that she acknowledges the spirit of brotherly love and condescension manifest there, and that earnest desire after truth which characterizes the addresses. We have been introduced to a number of abolitionists, Thurston, Phelps, Green, the Burleighs, Wright, Pritchard, Thome, etc., and Amos Dresser, as lovely a specimen of the meekness and lowliness of the great Master as I ever saw. His countenance betrayeth that he has been with Jesus, and it was truly affecting to hear him on Sixth Day give an account of the Nashville outrage to a very large colored school.[5] "The F.A.S. Society is to have its first public meeting this week, at which we hope to hear Weld, but fear he will not have time, as he is not even able to go home to meals, and told me he had sat up until two o'clock every night since he came to New York. As to myself, I feel I have nothing to do but to attend the Convention at present. I am very comfortable, feeling in my right place, and sister seems to feel so too, though neither of us sees much ahead." [5] Amos Dresser was one of the Lane Seminary students. After leaving that institution, in order to raise funds to continue his studies, he accepted an agency for the sale of the "Cottage Bible." While peacefully prosecuting his business in Nashville, in 1834, it became known that he was an abolitionist. This was enough. He was arrested, his trunk broken open, and its contents searched and scattered. He was then taken before a vigilance committee, and without a single charge, except that of his anti-slavery principles, being brought against him, was condemned to receive twenty lashes, "well laid on," on the bare back, and then to be driven from the town. The sentence was carried out by the votes and in the presence of thousands of people, and was presided over by the mayor and the elders of the Presbyterian Church from whose hands Mr. Dresser had, the Sunday before, received the Holy Communion. In her next letter she describes the deepening interest of the Convention, and Sarah's increasing unity with its members. "We sit," she says, "from 9 to 1, 3 to 5, and 7 to 9, and never feel weary at all. It is better, _far_ better than any Yearly Meeting I ever attended. It is still uncertain when we shall adjourn, and it is so good to be here that I don't know how to look forward to the end of such a feast.... T.D. Weld is to begin his Bible argument to-morrow. It will occupy, he says, four days." The Convention adjourned the latter part of November, 1836, and we may judge how profitable its meetings had proved to Sarah Grimké, from the fact that she at once began the preparation of an "Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States," which, printed in pamphlet form, was issued some time in December, and was as strong an argument against the stand on the subject of slavery taken by the majority of the clergy as had yet appeared. Reading it, one would little suspect how recent had been the author's opposition to just such protests as this, calculated to stir up bitter feelings and create discussion and excitement in the churches. It is written in a spirit of gentleness and persuasion, but also of firm admonition, and evidently under a deep sense of individual responsibility. It shows, too, that Sarah had reached full accord with Angelina in her views of immediate emancipation. By the time the Convention was over, the sisters, and portions of their history, had become so well known to abolitionists, that the leaders felt they had secured invaluable champions in these two Quaker women, one so logical, brilliant, and persuasive; the other so intelligent, earnest, and conscientious; and both distinguished by their ability to testify as eye-witnesses against the monstrous evils of slavery. It was proposed that they should begin to hold a series of parlor meetings, for women only, of course. But it was soon found that they had, in private conversations, made such an impression, that no parlors would be large enough to accommodate all who desired to hear them speak more at length. Upon learning this, the Rev. Mr. Dunbar, a Baptist clergyman, offered them the use of his Session room, and the Female Anti-Slavery Society embraced the opportunity to make this the beginning of regular quarterly meetings. On the Sunday previous to the meeting, notice of it was given out in four churches, without however, naming the proposed speakers. But it became known in some way that the Misses Grimké were to address the meeting, and a shock went through the whole community. Not a word would have been said if they had restricted themselves to a private parlor meeting, but that it should be transferred to such a public place as the parlor of a church made quite a different affair of it. Friends were of course as loud as Friends could properly be in their expressions of disapproval, while other denominations, not so restrained, gave Mr. Dunbar, the abolitionists, and the "two bold Southern women" an unmistakable piece of their mind. Even Gerrit Smith, always the grandest champion of woman, advised against the meeting, fearing it would be pronounced a Fanny Wright affair, and do more harm than good. Sarah and Angelina were appalled, the latter especially, feeling almost as if she was the bold creature she was represented to be. She declared her utter inability, in the face of such antagonism, to go on with the work she had undertaken, and the more she looked at it, the more unnatural and unwise it seemed to her; and when printed hand-bills were scattered about, calling attention in a slighting manner to their names, both felt as if it were humanly impossible for them to proceed any further. But the meeting had been called, and as there was no business to come before it, they did not know what to do. "In this emergency," Angelina writes, "I called upon Him who has ever hearkened unto my cry. My strength and confidence were renewed, my burden slipped off, and from that time I felt sure of God's help in the hour of need, and that He would be mouth and wisdom, tongue and utterance to us both." "Yesterday," she continues, "T.D. Weld came up, like a brother, to sympathize with us and encourage our hearts. He is a precious Christian, and bade us not to fear, but to trust in God. In a previous conversation on our holding meetings, he had expressed his full unity with our doing so, and grieved over that factitious state of society which bound up the energies of woman, instead of allowing her to exercise them to the glory of God and the good of her fellow creatures. His visit was really a strength to us, and I felt no more fear. We went to the meeting at three o'clock, and found about three hundred women there. It was opened with prayer by Henry Ludlow; we were warmly welcomed by brother Dunbar, and then these two left us. After a moment, I arose and spoke about forty minutes, feeling, I think, entirely unembarrassed. Then dear sister did her part better than I did. We then read some extracts from papers and letters, and answered a few questions, when at five the meeting closed; after the question had been put whether our sisters wished another meeting to be held. A good many rose, and Henry Ludlow says he is sure he can get his session room for us." This account of the first assembly of women, not Quakers, in a public place in America, addressed by American women, is deeply interesting, and touching from its very simplicity. We who are so accustomed to hear women speak to promiscuous audiences on any and every subject, and to hear them applauded too, can scarcely realize the prejudice which, half a century back, sought to close the lips of two refined Christian ladies, desirous only of adding their testimony against the greatest evil of any age or country. But those who denounced and ridiculed them builded better than they knew, for then and there was laid the corner-stone of that temple of equal rights for women, which has been built upon by so many brave hearts and willing hands since, and has brought to the front such staunch supporters and brilliant advocates as now adorn every convention of the Woman's Rights Associations. After mentioning some who came up and spoke to them after the meeting was over, Angelina adds:-- "We went home to tea with Julia Tappan, and Brother Weld was all anxiety to hear about the meeting. Julia undertook to give some account, and among other things mentioned that a warm-hearted abolitionist had found his way into the back part of the meeting, and was escorted out by Henry Ludlow. Weld's noble countenance instantly lighted up, and he exclaimed: 'How supremely ridiculous to think of a man's being shouldered out of a meeting, for fear he should hear a woman speak!'... "In the evening a colonizationist of this city came to introduce an abolitionist to Lewis Tappan. We women soon hedged in our expatriation brother, and held a long and interesting argument with him until near ten o'clock. He gave up so much that I could not see what he had to stand on when we left him." Another meeting, similar to the first, was held the next week, when so much interest was manifested that it was decided to continue the meetings every week until further notice. By the middle of January they had become so crowded, and were attended by such an influential class of women, that Mr. Ludlow concluded to offer his church to them. He always opened the meetings with prayer, and then retired. The addresses made by the sisters were called "lectures," but they were rather familiar talks, occasionally a discussion, while many questions were asked and answered. Angelina's confidence in herself increased rapidly, until she no longer felt the least embarrassment in speaking; though she alludes to the exhausting effect of the meetings on her physical system. Of Sarah, she says, writing to Jane Smith:-- "It is really delightful to see dear sister so happy in this work.... Some Friends come to hear us, but I do not know what they think of the meetings--or of us. How little, how very little I supposed, when I used so often to say 'I wish I were a man,' that I could go forth and lecture, that I ever would do such a thing. The idea never crossed my mind that as a woman such work could possibly be assigned to me." To this letter there is a postscript from Sarah, in which she says:-- "I would not give up my abolition feelings for anything I know. They are intertwined with my Christianity. They have given a new spring to my existence, and shed over my whole being sweet and hallowed enjoyments." Angelina's next letter to her friend is dated, "2d Mo. 4th, 1837," and continues the account of the meetings. She mentions that, at the last one, they had one male auditor, who refused to go out when told he must, so he was allowed to stay, and she says: "Somehow, I did not feel, his presence embarrassing at all, and went on just as though he had not been there. Some one said he took notes, and I think he was a Southern spy, and shall not be at all surprised if he publishes us in some Southern paper." Truly it was a risky thing for a lord of creation to intrude himself into a woman's meeting in those days! Angelina goes on to remark that more Friends are attending their meetings, and that if they were not opened with prayer, still more would come. Also, that Friends had been very kind and attentive to them in every way, and never said a discouraging word to them. She then discourses a little on phrenology, at that time quite a new thing in this country, and relates an anecdote of "Brother "Weld," as follows:-- "When he went to Fowler in this city, he disguised himself as an omnibus driver. The phrenologist was so struck with the supposed fact that an omnibus driver should have such an extraordinary head, that he preserved an account of it, and did not know until some time after that it was Weld's. He says that when he first had his head examined at Utica, he was told he was deficient in the organ of color, his eyebrow showing it. He immediately remembered that his mother often told him: 'Theodore, it is of no use to send you to match a skein of silk, for you never bring the right color.' When relating this, he observed a general titter in the room, and on inquiring the reason a candle was put near him, and, to his amazement, all agreed that the legs of his pantaloons were of different shades of green. Instead of a ridge all around his eyebrow, he has a little hollow in one spot." A society for the encouragement of abstinence from the use of slave products had just been formed in Philadelphia, and Angelina desired her friend to put her name to the pledge, but not Sarah's. In a postscript Sarah explains this, saying:-- "I do abstain from slave produce as much as I can, just because I feel most easy to do so, but I cannot say my judgment is convinced; therefore, I would rather not put my name to the pledge." Her judgment was convinced, however, very shortly afterwards, by a discussion of the subject with Weld and some others, and she then wrote to Jane Smith to set her name down, as she found her testimony in the great cause was greatly strengthened by keeping clean hands. There is much told of their meetings, and their other experiences in New York, which is very interesting, and for which I regret I have not room. Angelina describes in particular one visit they made to a poor family, that of one of her Sunday-school pupils, where they stayed to tea, being afterwards joined by Mr. Weld, who came to escort them home. She says of him:-- "I have seen him shine in the Convention and in refined circles, but never did I admire him so much. His perfect ease at this fireside of poverty showed that he was accustomed to be the friend and companion of the poor of this world." The family here mentioned was doubtless a colored one, as it was in the colored Sunday school that both sisters taught. They had already proved, by their friendship for Sarah Douglass, the Fortens, and other colored families of Philadelphia, how slight was their prejudice against color, but the above incident proves the entire sincerity of their convictions and their desire to avail themselves of every opportunity to testify to it. Still, there is no doubt that to the influence of Theodore Weld's conversations they owed much of their enlightenment on this as well as on some other points of radical abolitionism. It was after a talk with him that Angelina describes the Female Anti-Slavery Society of New York as utterly inefficient, "doing literally nothing," and ascribes its inefficiency to the sinful prejudice existing there, which shut out colored women from any share in its management, and gave little encouragement to them even to become members. She adds: "I believe it is our duty to visit the poor, white and colored, just in this way, and to receive them at our houses. I think that the artificial distinctions in society, the separation between the higher and the lower orders, the aristocracy of wealth and education, are the very rock of pauperism, and that the only way to eradicate this plague from our land will be to associate with the poor, and the wicked too, just as our Redeemer did. To visit them as our inferiors, the recipients of our bounty, is quite a different thing from going among them as our equals." In her next letter to Jane Smith, Angelina gives an interesting account of H.B. Stanton's great speech before the Committee of the Massachusetts legislature on the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; a speech which still ranks as one of the ablest and most brilliant ever delivered in this country. There is no date to this letter, but it must have been written the last of February or first of March, 1837. She begins thus:-- "I was wondering, my dear Jane, what could be the reason I had not heard from thee, when brother Weld came in with thine and Mira's letters hanging from the paper on which they had been tied. 'I bring you,' he said, 'a good emblem of the fate of abolitionists,--so take warning;' and held them up to our view.... "Brother Garrison was here last Sixth Day and spent two hours with us. He gave us a most delightful account of recent things in Boston, which I will try to tell thee of. "When the abolitionists found how their petitions were treated in Congress, they sent in, from all parts of Massachusetts, petitions to the legislature, requesting it to issue a protest against such contempt of the people's wishes and rights. The legislature was amazed at the number and respectability of these petitions, and appointed a committee to take them under consideration. Abolitionists then asked for a hearing before that committee, not in the lobby, but in the Hall of Representatives. The request was granted, and though the day was exceedingly stormy, a good number were out. A young lawyer of Boston first spoke an hour and a half; H.B. Stanton followed, and completely astonished the audience, but could not get through by dark, and asked for another meeting. The next afternoon an overflowing audience greeted him; he spoke three hours, and did not yet finish. Another meeting was appointed for the next evening, and he says he thinks hundreds went away because they could not get in. Stanton spoke one hour and a quarter, and then broke down from the greatness of the effort, added to the unceasing labors of the winter. A profound silence reigned through the crowded hall. Not one moved to depart. At last a member of the committee arose, and asked if there was any other abolitionist present who wished to speak. Stanton said he believed not, as they now had the views of the Anti-Slavery Society. The committee were not satisfied; and one of them said if there was any abolitionist who wished to follow Mr. Stanton, they would gladly hear all he had to say, but all declined. Brother Garrison said such was the desire to hear more on this subject, that he came directly to New York to get Weld to go and speak before them, but his throat is still so much affected that it will be impossible for him to do so. Isn't this cheering news? Here are seven hundred men in the Massachusetts legislature, who, if they can be moved to protest against the unconstitutional proceedings of Congress, will shake this nation to its centre, and rock it in a revolutionary storm that must either sink it or save it." After closing their meetings in New York, the sisters held similar ones in Newark, Bloomfield, and other places in New Jersey, in all of which Sarah was as active and enthusiastic as Angelina, and from this time we hear no more of the gloom and despondency which had saddened so many of the best years of her life. But, identified completely with her sister's work, she was busy, contented and satisfied of the Lord's goodness and mercy. These meetings had all been quiet and undisturbed in every way, owing of course, to the fact that only women attended, but the newspapers had not spared them. Ridicule, sarcasm, and pity were liberally bestowed upon the "deluded ladies" by the press generally, and the Richmond Whig published several editorials about "those fanatical women, the Misses Grimké." But writing against them was the extent of the opposition at that time, and this affected them very little. From New Jersey they went up the North River with Gerrit Smith, holding interesting meetings at Hudson and Poughkeepsie. At the latter place they spoke to an assembly of colored people of both sexes, and this was the first time Angelina ever addressed a mixed audience, and it was perhaps in accordance with the fitness of things that it should have been a colored one. She often spoke of this in after years, looking back to it with pleasure. Here, also, they attended a meeting of the Anti-slavery Society of the Protestant Episcopal Methodist Church, and spoke against the sin of prejudice. In a letter to Sarah Douglass, Sarah says:-- "My feelings were so overcome at this meeting that I sat down and wept. I feel as if I had taken my stand by the side of the colored American, willing to share with him the odium of a darker skin, and I trust if I am permitted again to take my seat in Arch Street Meeting House, it will be beside thee and thy dear mother." These Hudson River meetings ended the labors of the sisters in New York for the time. They returned to the city to take a little needed rest, and to prepare for the Female Anti-Slavery Convention, which was to meet there early in May. The Society which had sent them forth had reason to be well satisfied with its experiment. Not only had they awakened enthusiasm and sincere interest in abolition, but had demonstrated the ability of women to publicly advocate a great cause, and the entire propriety of their doing so. One of the members, of the committee asserted that it would be as impossible to calculate the number of converts they had made, as to estimate the encouragement and strength their zeal and eloquence had given to abolitionists all over the country. Men were slow to believe the reports of their wives and sisters respecting Angelina's wonderful oratory, and this incredulity produced the itching ears which soon drew to the meetings where the Grimké sisters were to speak more men than women, and gave them the applause and hearty support of some of the ablest minds of New England. The Female Anti-slavery Convention opened with seventy-one delegates; the Misses Grimké, at their own request, representing South Carolina. During this convention they met many congenial souls, among whom they particularize Lydia M. Child, Mary T. Parker, and Anna Weston, as sympathizing so entirely with their own views respecting prejudice and the province of woman. The latter question had long been Sarah's pet problem, to the solution of which she had given much thought and study, ever since the time when she was denied participation in her brother's education because of her sex. It is scarcely too much to say that to her mind this question was second in importance to none, and though the word enfranchisement, as applied to woman, had not yet been uttered, the whole theory of it was in Sarah's heart, and she eagerly awaited the proper time and place to develop it. Angelina, while holding the same views, would probably have kept them in the background longer, but for Sarah's arguments, supported by the objection so frequently urged against the encouragement of their meetings,--that slavery was a political subject with which women had nothing to do. This objection she answered in a masterly paper, an "Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States," which was printed in pamphlet form and sent out by the Female Anti-Slavery Convention, and attracted wide attention. The chief point she took was this: "The denial of our duty to act in this cause is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed 'the white slaves of the North,' for, like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair." The whole argument, covering nearly seventy pages, is remarkable in its calm reasoning, sound logic, and fervid eloquence, and will well repay perusal, even at this day. About the same time a beautiful and most feeling "Address to Free Colored Americans" was written by Sarah, and likewise circulated by the Convention. These two pamphlets made the sisters so widely known, and so increased the desire in other places to hear them speak, that invitations poured in upon them from different parts of the North and West, as well as from the New England States. It was finally decided that they should go to Boston first, to aid the brave, good women there, who, while willing to do all that women could do for the cause in a private capacity, had not yet been persuaded to open their lips for it in any kind of a public meeting. It was not contemplated, however, that the sisters should address any but assemblies of women. Even Boston was not yet prepared for a greater infringement of the social proprieties. CHAPTER XIII. The Woman's Rights agitation, while entirely separate from Abolitionism, owes its origin to the interest this subject excited in the hearts and minds of American women; and to Sarah and Angelina Grimké must be accorded the credit of first making the woman question one of reform. Their broad views, freely expressed in their New York meetings, opened up the subject of woman's duties under the existing state of public sentiment, and, in connection with the revelations made concerning the condition of her white and colored sisters at the South, and the frantic efforts used to prevent her from receiving these revelations, she soon began to see that she had some moral obligations outside of her home sphere and her private circle. At first her only idea of aid in the great cause was that of prayer, which men universally granted was her especial privilege, even encouraging her to pray for them; but it must be private prayer--prayer in her own closet--with no auditor but the God to whom she appealed. As soon as it became public, and took the form of petitions to legislatures and to Congress, the reprobation began. The enemies of freedom, fully realizing woman's influence, opposed her interference at every point; and when a Southern representative declared from his seat that women had no right to send up petitions to Congress he was sustained by the sycophantic response which came from the North, that slavery was a political question, with which women had nothing to do. Angelina Grimké answered this so fully and so eloquently in her "Appeal to Northern Women," that no doubt could have been left in the minds of those who read it, not only of woman's right, but of her duty to interfere in this matter. The appeal is made chiefly to woman's tenderest and holiest feelings, but enough is said of her rights to show whither Angelina's own reflections were leading her, and it must have turned the thoughts of many other women in the same direction. A passage or two may be quoted as examples. "Every citizen should feel an intense interest in the political concerns of the country, because the honor, happiness and well-being of every class are bound up in its politics, government, and laws. Are we aliens because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the mothers, wives, and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country--no interests staked on the public weal--no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame? Has woman no home nor household altars, nor endearing ties of kindred, nor sway with man, nor power at the mercy-seat, nor voice to cheer, nor hand to raise the drooping, or to bind the broken?... The Lord has raised up men whom he has endowed with 'wisdom and understanding, and knowledge,' to lay deep and broad the foundations of the temple of liberty. This is a great moral work in which they are engaged. No war-trumpet summons to the field of battle; but Wisdom crieth without, 'Whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring an offering.' Shall woman refuse her response to the call? Was she created to be a helpmeet for man--his sorrows to divide, his joys to share, and all his toils to lighten by her willing aid, and shall she refuse to aid him with her prayers, her labors, and her counsels too, at such a time, in such a cause as this?" There had been, from the beginning of the anti-slavery agitation, no lack of women sympathizers with it. Some of the best and brightest of the land had poured forth their words of grief, of courage, and of hope through magazines and newspapers, in prose and in verse, and had proved their willingness to suffer for the slave, by enduring unshrinkingly ridicule and wrath, pecuniary loss and social ostracism. All over the country, in almost every town and village, women labored untiringly to raise funds for the printing of pamphlets, sending forth lecturers and for the pay of special agents. They were regular attendants also on the anti-slavery meetings and conventions, often outnumbering the men, and privately made some of the best suggestions that were offered. But so strong and general was the feeling against women speaking in any public place, that, up to the time when Sarah and Angelina Grimké began their crusade, it was an almost unheard of thing for a woman to raise her voice in any but a church prayer-meeting. During the sittings of the Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia, in 1833, which was attended by a number of women, chiefly Friends, Lucretia Mott, though she had had experience in speaking in Quaker meetings, timidly arose one day, and, in fear lest she might offend, ventured to propose an amendment to a certain resolution. With rare indulgence and good sense, Beriah Green, the president of the convention, encouraged her to proceed; and May, in his "Recollections," says: "She made a more impressive and effective speech than any other that was made in the convention, excepting only the closing address of our president." Two other ladies, Esther Moore and Lydia White, emboldened by Mrs. Mott's example, afterwards said a few words on one or two occasions, but these were the only infringements, during all those early years of agitation, of St. Paul's oft-quoted injunction. When Sarah and Angelina Grimké accepted the invitation of the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Boston, to come and labor there, they found friends on every hand--women of the highest culture and purest religion, eager to hear them, not only concerning what their eyes had witnessed in that land of worse than Egyptian bondage, but ready to be enlightened upon their own duties and rights in the matter of moral reform, and as willing as resolute to perform them. Without experience, as the sisters were, we can hardly be surprised that they should have been carried beyond their original moorings, and have made what many of their best friends felt was a serious mistake, in uniting the two causes, thus laying upon abolitionists a double burden, and a responsibility to which the great majority of them were as much opposed as were their bitterest enemies. But no movement in this direction was made for some time. Indeed, it seems to have grown quite naturally out of, or been forced forward by, the alarm among men, and the means they took to frighten and warn women away from the dangerous topic. The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Convention met early in June, 1837. In writing about it to Jane Smith, Angelina first touches upon the dawning feeling on this woman question. She says:-- "We had Stanton and Burleigh, Colver and Birney, Garrison and Goodell, etc. Their eloquence was no less delightful to the ear than the soundness of their doctrine was comforting to the heart.... A peace resolution was brought up, but this occasioned some difficulty on account of non-resistance here meaning a repudiation of civil government, and of course we cannot expect many to be willing to do this.... At Friend Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment prevailing that it is time our fetters were broken. L. Child and Maria Chapman strongly supported this view; indeed, very many seem to think a new order of things is very desirable in this respect.... And now, my dear friend, in view of these things, I feel that it is not the cause of the slave only that we plead, but the cause of woman as a moral, responsible being, and I am ready to exclaim, 'Who is sufficient for these things?' These holy causes must be injured if they are not helped by us. I see not to what point all these things are leading us. But one thing comforts me: I do feel as though the Lord had sent us, and as if I was leaning on his arm." And in this reliance, in a meek and lowly spirit, impelled not by inclination, but by an overpowering sense of duty, these gentle women, fully realizing the singularity of their position, prepared to enter upon entirely new scenes of labor, encompassed by difficulties peculiarly trying to their delicate natures. A series of public meetings was arranged for them as soon as the Convention adjourned, and the first was held in Dorchester, in the town hall, to which they repaired upon finding the number of those who wished to hear them too great to be accommodated in a private house. Their next was in Boston on the following afternoon. Angelina's heart here almost failed her as she glanced over the assemblage of women of all classes, and thought of the responsibility resting upon her. It was at this meeting that a reverend gentleman set the example, which was followed by two or three other men, of slyly sliding into a back seat to hear for himself what manner of thing this woman's speaking was. Satisfied of its superior quality, and alarmed at its effects upon the audience, he shortly afterwards took great pains to prove that it was unscriptural for a woman to speak in public. As the meetings were held at first only in the daylight, there was little show of opposition for some time. The sisters went from one town to another, arousing enthusiasm everywhere, and vindicating, by their power and success, their right to speak. Angelina's letters to Jane Smith contain memoranda of all the meetings she and Sarah held during that summer and fall. It is surprising that they were able to endure such an amount of mental and physical labor, and maintain the constantly increasing eagerness to hear them. Before the end of the first week, she records:--"Nearly thirty men present, pretty easy to speak." A few days later the number of men had increased to fifty, with "great openness on their part to hear." After having held meetings every day, their audience numbering from one hundred and fifty to one thousand, Angelina records on the 21st July, at Lynn:-- "In the evening of the same day addressed our first mixed audience. Over one thousand present, great openness to hear, and ease in speaking." This, so briefly mentioned, was the beginning of the revolution in sentiment respecting woman's sphere, which, though it was met at the outset with much the same spirit which opposed abolitionism, soon spread and became a principle of reform as conscientiously and as ably advocated as any other, moral or political. Neither Sarah nor Angelina had any idea of starting such a revolution, but when they found it fairly inaugurated, and that many women had long privately held the same views as they did and were ready to follow in their lead, they bravely accepted, and to the end of their lives as bravely sustained all the responsibilities their opinions involved. They were the pioneers in the great cause of political freedom for women, and opened the way in the true pioneer spirit. The clear sense of justice and the broad humanity which inspired their trenchant rebukes and fervid appeals not only enlightened and encouraged other women, but led to inquiry into various wrongs practised towards the sex which had up to that time been suffered in silence and in ignorance, or in despair of any possibility of relief. The peculiar tenderness of Sarah Grimké's nature, and her overflowing sympathy with any form of suffering, led her, earlier than Angelina, to the consideration of the necessity of some organized system of protection of helpless women and children; and, from the investigation of the impositions and abuses to which they were subjected, was evolved, without much difficulty, the doctrine of woman's equality before the law, and her right to a voice on every subject of public interest, social or political. Sarah's published letters during the summer of 1837 show her to have been as deeply interested in this reform as in abolitionism, and to her influence was certainly due the introduction of the "Woman Question" into the anti-slavery discussions. That this question was as yet a secondary one in Angelina's mind is evident from what she writes to Jane Smith about this time. She says: "With regard to speaking on the rights of woman, it has really been wonderful to me that though, everywhere I go, I meet prejudice against our speaking, yet, in addressing an audience, I never think of referring to it. I was particularly struck with this two days ago. Riding with Dr. Miller to a meeting at Franklin, I found, from conversation with him, that I had a great amount of prejudice to meet at that town, and very much in his own mind. I gave him my views on women's preaching, and verily believe I converted him, for he said he had no idea so much could be adduced from the Bible to sustain the ground I had taken, and remarked: 'This will be quite new to the people, and I believe they will gladly hear these things,' and pressed me so much to speak on the subject at the close of my lecture that I was obliged to promise I would if I could remember to do so. After speaking two hours, we returned to his house to tea, and he asked: 'Why did you not tell the people why you believed you had a right to speak?' I had entirely forgotten all about it until his question revived the conversation we had on the road. Now I believe the Lord orders these things so, driving out of my mind what I ought not to speak on. If the time ever comes when this shall be a part of my public work, then I shall not be able to forget it." But to return to the meeting at Lynn. We are told that the men present listened in amazement. They were spell-bound, and impatient of the slightest noise which might cause the loss of a word from the speakers. Another meeting was called for, and held the next evening. This was crowded to excess, many going away unable to get even standing-room. "At least one hundred," Angelina writes, "stood around the doors, and, on the outside of each window, men stood with their heads above the lowered sash. Very easy speaking indeed." But now the opposers of abolitionism, and especially the clergy, began to be alarmed. It amounted to very little that (to borrow the language of one of the newspapers of the day) "two fanatical women, forgetful of the obligations of a respected name, and indifferent to the feelings of their most worthy kinsmen, the Barnwells and the Rhetts, should, by the novelty of their course, draw to their meetings idle and curious women." But it became a different matter when men, the intelligent, respectable and cultivated citizens of every town, began to crowd to hear them, even following them from one place to another, and giving them loud and honest applause. Then they were adjudged immodest, and their conduct denounced as unwomanly and demoralizing. Their devotion to principle, the purity of their lives, the justice of the cause they pleaded, the religious stand-point from which they spoke, all were overlooked, and the pitiless scorn of Christian men and women of every sect was poured down upon them. Nor should we wonder when we remember that, at that time, the Puritan bounds of propriety still hedged in the education and the training of New England women, and limited the views of New England men. Even many of the abolitionists had first to hear Sarah and Angelina Grimké to be convinced that there was nothing unwomanly in a woman's raising her voice to plead for those helpless to plead for themselves. So good a man and so faithful an anti-slavery worker as Samuel J. May confesses that his sense of propriety was a little disturbed at first. Letters of reproval, admonition, and persuasion, some anonymous, some signed by good conscientious people, came to the sisters frequently. Clergymen denounced them from their pulpits, especially warning their women members against them. Municipal corporations refused the use of halls for their meetings, and threats of personal violence came from various quarters. Friends especially felt outraged. The New England Yearly Meeting went so far as to advise the closing of meeting-house doors to all anti-slavery lecturers and the disownment the sisters had long expected now became imminent. We can well imagine how terrible all this must have been to their shrinking, sensitive, and proud spirits. But their courage never failed, nor was their mighty work for humanity stayed one instant by this storm of indignation and wrath. Angelina, writing to her dear Jane an account of some of the opposition to them, says: "And now, thou wilt want to know how we feel about all these things. Well, dear, poor enough in ourselves, and defenceless; but rich and strong in the help which our Master is pleased to give from time to time, making perfect his strength in our weakness. This is a truly humbling dispensation, but when I am speaking I am favored to forget little _I_ entirely, and to feel altogether hidden behind the great cause I am pleading. Were it not for this, I do not know how I could face such audiences and such opposition. O Jane, how good it is that we can cast all our burdens upon the Lord." And Sarah, writing to Sarah Douglass, says: "They think to frighten us from the field of duty; but they do not move us. God is our shield, and we do not fear what man can do unto us," A little further on she says: "It is really amusing to see how the clergy are arrayed against two women who are telling the story of the slave's wrongs." This was before the celebrated "Pastoral Letter" appeared. Sarah's answer to that in her letters to the N.E. Spectator shows how far the clergy had gone beyond amusing her. There were, of course, many church members of every denomination, and many ministers, in the abolition ranks. Indeed, at some of the Anti-Slavery Conventions, it was a most edifying sight to see clergymen of different churches sitting together and working together in harmony, putting behind them, for the time being, all creeds and dogmas, or, rather, sinking them all in the one creed taught by the blessed command to do unto others as they would be done by. Some of the more conservative of the clergy objected, it is true, to the great freedom of thought and speech allowed generally in the Conventions, but this was slight compared to the feeling excited by the encouragement given to women to take prominent and public part in the work, even to speaking from the platform and the pulpit. The general prejudice against this was naturally increased by the earnest eloquence with which Angelina Grimké pointed out the inconsistent attitude of ministers and church members towards slavery; by Sarah's strongly expressed views concerning a paid clergy; and the indignant protests of both sisters against the sin of prejudice, then as general in the church as out of it. The feeling grew very strong against them. They were setting public sentiment at defiance, it was said; they were seeking to destroy veneration for the ministers of the Gospel; they were casting contempt upon the consecrated forms of the Church; and much more of the same kind. Nowhere, however, did the feeling find decided public expression until the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts saw proper to pass a resolution of censure against Sarah and Angelina Grimké, and issued a pastoral letter, which, in the light and freedom of the present day, must be regarded as a most extraordinary document, to say the least of it. The opening sentences show the degree of authority felt and exercised by the clergy at that time. It maintained that, as ministers were ordained by God, it was their place and duty to judge what food was best to feed to the flock over which they had been made overseers by the Holy Ghost; and that, if they did not preach on certain topics, as the flock desired, the flock had no right to put strangers in their place to do it; that deference and subordination were necessary to the happiness of every society, and peculiarly so to the relation of a people to their pastor; and that the sacred rights of ministers had been violated by having their pulpits opened without their consent to lecturers on various subjects of reform. All this might pass without much criticism: but it was followed by a tirade against woman-preachers, aimed at the Grimké sisters especially, which was as narrow as it was shallow. The dangers which threatened the female character and the permanent injury likely to result to society, if the example of these women should be followed, were vigorously portrayed. Women were reminded that their power was in their dependence; that God had given them their weakness for their protection; and that when they assumed the tone and place of man, as public reformers, they made the care and protection of man seem unnecessary. "If the vine," this letter fancifully said, "whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis-work, and half conceal its clusters, thinks to assume the independence and the overshadowing nature of the elm, it will not only cease to bear fruit, but will fall in shame and dishonor into the dust." Sarah Grimké had just begun a series of letters on the "Province of Woman" for the _N.E. Spectator_, when this pastoral effusion came out. Her third letter was devoted to it. She showed in the clearest manner the unsoundness of its assertions, and the unscriptural and unchristian spirit in which they were made. The delicate irony with which she also exposed the ignorance and the shallowness of its author must have caused him to blush for very shame. Whittier's muse, too, found the Pastoral Letter a fitting theme for its vigorous, sympathetic utterances. The poem thus inspired is perhaps one of the very best among his many songs of freedom. It will be remembered as beginning thus:-- "So this is all! the utmost reach Of priestly power the mind to fetter, When laymen _think_, when women _preach_, A war of words, a 'Pastoral Letter!'" Up to this time nothing had been said by either of the sisters in their lectures concerning their views about women. They had carefully confined themselves to the subject of slavery, and the attendant topics of immediate emancipation, abstinence from the use of slave products, the errors of the Colonization Society, and the sin of prejudice on account of color. But now that they found their own rights invaded, they began to feel it was time to look out for the rights of their whole sex. The Rev. Amos Phelps, a staunch abolitionist, wrote a private letter to the sisters, remonstrating earnestly but kindly against their lecturing to men and women, and requesting permission to publish the fact of his having done so, with a declaration on their part that they preferred having female audiences only. Angelina says to Jane Smith:-- "I wish you could see sister's admirable reply to this. We told him we were entirely willing he should publish anything he felt it right to, but that we could not consent to his saying in our name that we preferred female audiences only, because in so saying we should surrender a fundamental principle, believing, as we did, that as moral beings it was our duty to appeal to all moral beings on this subject, without any distinction of sex. He thinks we are throwing a responsibility on the Anti-Slavery Society which will greatly injure it. To this we replied that we would write to Elizur Wright, and give the Executive Committee an opportunity to throw off all such responsibility by publishing the facts that we had no commission from them, and were not either responsible to or dependent on them. I wrote this letter. H.B. Stanton happened to be here at the time; after reading all the letters, he wrote to Elizur Wright, warning him by no means to publish anything which would in the least appear to disapprove of what we were doing. I do not know what the result will be. My only fear is that some of our anti-slavery brethren will commit themselves, in this excitement, against _women's rights and duties_ before they examine the subject, and will, in a few years, regret the steps they may now take. This will soon be an absorbing topic. It must be discussed whether women are moral and responsible beings, and whether there is such a thing as male and female virtues, male and female duties, etc. My opinion is that there is no difference, and that this false idea has run the ploughshare of ruin over the whole field of morality. My idea is that whatever is morally right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights. I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights; for in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.... I am persuaded that woman is not to be as she has been, a mere second-hand agent in the regeneration of a fallen world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with man in this glorious work.... Hubbard Winslow of Boston has just preached a sermon to set forth the proper sphere of our sex. I am truly glad that men are not ashamed to come out boldly and tell us just what is in their hearts." In another letter she mentions that a clergyman gave out a notice of one of their meetings, at the request, he said, of his deacons, but under protest; and he earnestly advised his members, particularly the women, not to go and hear them. At a meeting, also, at Pepperell, where they had to speak in a barn, on account of the feeling against them, she mentions that an Orthodox clergyman opened the meeting with prayer, but went out immediately after finishing, declaring that he would as soon rob a hen-roost as remain there and hear a woman speak in public. This, however, did not prevent the crowding of the barn "almost to suffocation," and deep attention on the part of those assembled. In the face of all this censure and ridicule, the two sisters continued in the discharge of a duty to which they increasingly felt they were called from on high. The difficulties, inconveniences, and discomforts to which they were constantly subjected, and of which the women reformers of the present day know so little, were borne cheerfully, and accepted as means of greater refinement and purification for the Lord's work. They were often obliged to ride six or eight or ten miles through the sun or rain, in stages or wagons over rough roads to a meeting, speak two hours, and return the same distance to their temporary abiding-place. For many weeks they held five and six meetings a week, in a different place every time, were often poorly lodged and poorly fed, especially the latter, as they ate nothing which they did not know to be the product of free labor; taking cold frequently, and speaking when ill enough to be in bed, but sustained through all by faith in the justice of their cause, and by their simple reliance upon the love and guidance of an Almighty Father. The record of their journeyings, as copied by Angelina from her day-book for the benefit of Jane Smith, is very interesting, as showing how, in spite of continued opposition to them, anti-slavery sentiment grew under their eloquent preaching. Wendell Phillips says: "I can never forget the impulse our cause received when those two sisters doubled our hold on New England in 1837 and 1838, and made a name, already illustrious in South Carolina by great services, equally historical in Massachusetts, in the two grandest movements of our day." Angelina's eloquence must have been something marvellous. The sweet, persuasive voice, the fluent speech, and occasionally a flash of the old energy, were all we who knew her in later years were granted, to show us what had been; but it was enough to confirm the accounts given by those who had felt the power of her oratory in those early times. Says Wendell Phillips: "I well remember evening after evening listening to eloquence such as never then had been heard from a woman. She swept the chords of the human heart with a power that has never been surpassed and rarely equalled." Mr. Lincoln, in whose pulpit she lectured in Gardiner, says: "Never before or since have I seen an audience so held and so moved by any public speaker, man or woman; and never before or since have I seen a Christian pulpit so well filled, nor in the pews seen such absorbed hearers." Robert F. Walcutt testifies in the same manner. "Angelina," he says, "possessed a rare gift of eloquence, a calm power of persuasion, a magnetic influence over those who listened to her, which carried conviction to hearts that nothing before had reached. I shall never forget the wonderful manifestation of this power during six successive evenings, in what was then called the Odeon. It was the old Boston Theatre, which had been converted into a music hall; the four galleries rising above the auditorium all crowded with a silent audience carried away with the calm, simple eloquence which narrated what she and her sister had seen from their earliest days. And yet this Odeon scene, the audience so quiet and intensely absorbed, occurred at the most enflamed period of the anti-slavery contest. The effective agent in this phenomenon was Angelina's serene, commanding eloquence, a wonderful gift, which enchained attention, disarmed prejudice, and carried her hearers with her." Another, who often heard her, speaks of the gentle, firm, and impressive voice which could ring out in clarion tones when speaking in the name of the Lord to let the oppressed go free. Many travelled long distances to hear her. Mechanics left their shops, and laborers came in out of the field, and sat almost motionless throughout her meetings, showing impatience only when the lecture was over and they could hear no more. Sarah's speaking, though fully as earnest, was not nearly so effective as Angelina's. She was never very fluent, and cared little for the flowers of rhetoric. She could state a truth in clear and forcible terms, but the language was unvarnished, sometimes harsh, while the manner of speaking was often embarrassed. She understood and felt her deficiencies, and preferred to serve the cause through her pen rather than through her voice. Writing to Sarah Douglass, in September, 1837, she says:-- "That the work in which we are engaged is in a peculiar manner dear Angelina's, I have no doubt. God called and qualified her for it by deep travail of spirit. I do not think my mind ever passed through the preparation hers did, and I regard my being with her more as an evidence of our dear Saviour's care for us, than a design that I should perform a conspicuous part in this labor of love. Hence, although at first I was permitted to assist her, as her strength increased and her ability to do the work assigned her was perfected, I was more and more withdrawn from the service. Nor do I think anyone ought to regret it. My precious sister has a gift in lecturing, in reasoning and elucidating, so far superior to mine, that I know the cause is better pleaded if left entirely in her hands. My spirit has not bowed to this dispensation without prayer for resignation to being thus laid aside, but since I have been enabled to take the above view, I have been contented to be silent, believing that so is the will of God." Sarah's religious anxieties seem all to have vanished before the absorbing interest of her new work. She had no longer time to think of herself, or to stand and question the Lord on every going-out and coming-in. She relied upon Him as much as ever, but she understood Him better, and had more faith in His loving-kindness. In a letter to T. D. Weld, she says:-- "For many years I have been inquiring the way to Zion, and now I know not but I shall have to surrender all or many long-cherished points of religion, and come back to the one simple direction: 'Follow after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.'" All her letters show how much happier she was under her new experiences. Angelina thus writes of her:-- "Sister Sarah enjoys more real comfort of mind than I ever saw her enjoy before, and it is delightful to be thus yoked with her in this work." But with Sarah's wider, fuller sympathies came bitter regrets over the spiritual bondage which had kept her idle and useless so long. And yet, in spite of all, her heart still clung to the Society of Friends, and the struggle to give them up, to resign the long-cherished hope of being permitted to preach among them the unsearchable riches of Christ, was very great. But conscientious and true to her convictions even here, as her own eyes had been mercifully opened to the faults of this system of religion, she must do what she could to help others. Under a solemn sense of responsibility, she wrote and printed a pamphlet exposing the errors of the Quaker Church, and showing the withering influence it exerted over all moral and religious progress. For this, she doubted not, she would be at once disowned; but Friends seem to have been very loth to part with the two rebellious subjects, who had certainly given them much trouble, but in whom they could not help feeling a certain pride of ownership. They showed their willingness to be patient yet a little while longer. All through the summer and early fall, the meetings were continued with slightly decreasing opposition, and continued abuse from press and pulpit and "good society." Sarah still bore her share of the labors, frequently speaking an hour at a time, and taking charge chiefly of the legal side of the question of slavery, while the moral and religious sides were left for Angelina. At Amesbury, Angelina writes:-- "We met the mother, aunt, and sister of brother Whittier. They received us at their sweet little cottage with sincere pleasure, I believe, they being as thoroughgoing as their dear J.G.W., whom they seem to know how to value. He was absent, serving the good cause in New York." At an evening meeting they held at Amesbury, a letter was handed Angelina, which stated that some gentlemen were present, who had just returned from the South, and had formed very different opinions from those of the lecturers, and would like to state them to the meeting. Sarah read the letter aloud, and requested the gentlemen to proceed with their remarks. Two arose, and soon showed how little they really knew, and how close an affinity they felt with slave-holders. A discussion ensued, which lasted an hour, when Angelina went on with her lecture on the "Dangers of Slavery." When it was over, the two gentlemen of Southern sympathies requested that another opportunity be granted for a free discussion of the subject. This was agreed to, and the 19th of the month, August, settled upon. This was another and a great step forward, and when known gave rise to renewed denunciations, the press being particularly severe against such an unheard-of thing, which, it was declared, would not be tolerated if the Misses Grimké were not members of the Society of Friends. The abolitionists, however, rallied to their support, H.B. Stanton even proposing to arrange some meeting where he and they could speak together. But even Angelina shrank from such an irretrievable committal on his part as this would be, and did not think the time had yet come for such an anomaly. On the 19th they returned to Amesbury, and Angelina writes that great excitement prevailed, and that many had come from neighboring towns to hear two _Massachusetts men defend_ slavery against the accusations of two _Southern women_. "May the blessed Master," she adds, "stand at our right hand in this trying and uncommon predicament." Two evenings were given to the discussion, the hall being packed both evenings, many, even ladies, standing the whole time. Angelina gives no details about it, as, she says, she sends a paper with a full account to Jane Smith; but we may judge of the interest it excited from the fact that the people urged a continuance of the discussion for two more evenings, which, however, the sisters were obliged to decline. Angelina adds:-- "Everyone is talking about it; but we have given great offence on account of our womanhood, which seems to be as objectionable as our abolitionism. The whole land seems aroused to discussion on the province of woman, and I am glad of it. We are willing to bear the brunt of the storm, if we can only be the means of making a breach in the wall of public opinion, which lies right in the way of woman's true dignity, honor, and usefulness. Sister Sarah does preach up woman's rights most nobly and fearlessly, and we find that many of our New England sisters are prepared to receive these strange doctrines, feeling, as they do, that our whole sex needs emancipation from the thraldom of public opinion. What dost thou think of some of _them walking_ two, four, six, and eight miles to attend our meetings?" This preaching of the much-vexed doctrine was, however, done chiefly in private, indeed altogether so by Angelina. Sarah's nature was so impulsive that she could not always refrain from putting in a stroke for her cherished views when it seemed to fit well into the argument of a lecture. What prominent abolitionists thought of the subject in its relation to the anti-slavery cause, and especially what T.D. Weld and John G. Whittier thought, must be told in another chapter. CHAPTER XIV. Among the most prominent opposers of immediate emancipation were Dr. Lyman Beecher and the members of his remarkable family; and though they ultimately became converts to it, even so far as to allow a branch of the "underground railway" to run through their barn, their conversion was gradual, and only arrived at after various controversies and discussions, and much bitter feeling between them and the advocates of the unpopular cause. Opposed to slavery in the abstract, that is, believing it to be a sin to hold a fellow creature in bondage for the "_mere purposes of gain_," they utterly condemned all agitation of the question. The Church and the Gospel were, with them, as with so many evangelical Christians, the true means through which evils should be reached and reforms effected. All efforts outside were unwise and useless, not to say sinful. And further, as Catherine Beecher expressed it, they considered the matter of Southern slavery as one with which the North was no more called to interfere than in the abolition of the press-gang system in England, or the tithe system in Ireland. Some chapters back, the short but pleasant friendship of Catherine Beecher and Angelina Grimké was mentioned. Very soon after that little episode, the Beechers removed to Cincinnati, where the doctor was called to the Presidency of the Lane Theological Seminary. We can well understand that the withdrawal of nearly all its students after the great discussion was a sore trial to the Beechers, and intensified their already adverse feelings towards abolitionists. The only result of this with which we have to do is the volume published by Catherine Beecher during the summer of 1837, entitled "Miss Beecher on the Slave Question," and addressed to Angelina Grimké. Catherine was the true counterpart of her father, and the most intellectual of his children, but she lacked the gentle, feminine graces, and was so wanting in tenderness and sympathy that Angelina charitably implies that her heart was sunk forever with her lover, Professor Fisher of Yale, who perished in a storm at sea. With independence, striking individuality, and entire freedom from timidity of any sort, it would appear perfectly natural that Catherine should espouse the Woman's Rights reform, even though opposing that of abolitionism. But she presented the singular anomaly of a strong-minded woman, already successful in taking care of herself, advocating woman's subordination to man, and prescribing for her efforts at self-help limits so narrow that only the few favored as she was could venture within them. Her book was received with much favor by slave-holders and their apologists, though it was harshly criticised by a few of the more sensible of the former. These declared that they had more respect for abolitionists who openly denounced the system of slavery, than for those people who, in order to please the South, cloaked their real sentiments under a garb like that of Miss Beecher's book. It was also severely handled by abolitionists, and Lucretia Mott wrote a very able review of it, which Angelina, however, pronounced entirely too mild. She writes to Jane Smith: "Catherine's arguments are the most insidious things I ever read, and I feel it my duty to answer them; only, I know not how to find language strong enough to express my indignation at the view she takes of woman's character and duty." The answer was given in a number of sharp, terse, letters, sent to the _Liberator_ from various places where the sisters stopped while lecturing. A few passages will convey some idea of the spirit and style of these letters, thirteen in number. In the latter part of the second letter she says:-- "Dost thou ask what I mean by emancipation? I will explain myself in a few words. "1st. It is to reject with indignation the wild and guilty phantasy that man can hold _property_ in man. "2d. To pay the laborer his hire, for he is worthy of it. "3d. No longer to deny him the right of marriage, but to let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband, as saith the apostle. "4th. To let parents have their own children, for they are the gift of the Lord to them, and no one else has any right to them. "5th. No longer to withhold the advantages of education, and the privilege of reading the Bible. "6th. To put the slave under the protection of equitable laws. "Now why should not _all_ this be done immediately? Which of these things is to be done next year, and which the year after? and so on. _Our_ immediate emancipation means doing justice and loving mercy _to-day_, and this is what we call upon every slave-holder to do.... "I have seen too much of slavery to be a gradualist. I dare not, in view of such a system, tell the slave-holder that he is 'physically unable to emancipate his slaves.'[6] I say _he is able_ to let the oppressed go free, and that such heaven-daring atrocities ought to cease _now_, henceforth, and forever. Oh, my very soul is grieved to find a Northern woman 'thus sewing pillows under all arm-holes,' framing and fitting soft excuses for the slave-holder's conscience, whilst with the same pen she is _professing_ to regard slavery as a sin. 'An open enemy is better than such a secret friend.' "Hoping that thou mayst soon be emancipated from such inconsistency, I remain until then, "Thine _out_ of the bonds of Christian abolitionism. "A.E. GRIMKÉ." [6] The plea made by many of the apologists was that, as the laws of some of the States forbade emancipation, the masters were physically unable to free their slaves. The last letter, which Angelina says she wrote in sadness and read to her sister in tears, ends thus:-- "After endeavoring to show that woman has no moral right to exercise the right of petition for the dumb and stricken slave; no business to join, in any way, in the excitement which anti-slavery principles are producing in our country; no business to join abolition societies, etc., thou professest to tell our sisters what they are to do in order to bring the system of slavery to an end. And now, my dear friend, what does all thou hast said in many pages amount to? Why, that women are to exert their influence in private life to allay the excitement which exists on this subject, and to quench the flame of sympathy in the hearts of their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Fatal delusion! Will Christian women heed such advice? "Hast thou ever asked thyself what the slave would think of thy book if he could read it? Dost thou know that, from the beginning to the end, not a word of compassion for _him_ has fallen from thy pen? Recall, I pray, the memory of hours which thou spent in writing it. Was the paper once moistened by the tear of pity? Did thy heart once swell with sympathy for thy sister in _bonds_? Did it once ascend to God in broken accents for the deliverance of the captive? Didst thou even ask thyself what the free man of color would think of it? Is it such an exhibition of slavery and prejudice as will call down _his_ blessing on thy head? Hast thou thought of _these_ things? or carest thou not for the blessings and prayers of these our suffering brethren? Consider, I entreat, the reception given to thy book by the apologists of slavery. What meaneth that loud acclaim with which they hail it? Oh, listen and weep, and let thy repentings be kindled together, and speedily bring forth, I beseech thee, fruits meet for repentance, and henceforth show thyself faithful to Christ and His bleeding representative, the slave. "I greatly fear that thy book might have been written just as well, hadst thou not had the heart of a woman. It bespeaks a superior intellect, but paralyzed and spellbound by the sorcery of a worldly-minded expediency. Where, oh, where in its pages are the outpourings of a soul overwhelmed with a sense of the heinous crimes of our nation, and the necessity of immediate repentance? ... Farewell! Perhaps on a dying bed thou mayst vainly wish that '_Miss Beecher on the Slave Question_' might perish with the mouldering hand which penned its cold and heartless pages. But I forbear, and in deep sadness of heart, but in tender love though I thus speak, I bid thee again, farewell. Forgive me if I have wronged thee, and pray for her who still feels like "Thy sister in the bonds of a common sisterhood. "A.E. GRIMKÉ." While Angelina was writing these letters, Sarah was publishing her letters on the "Province of Woman" in the _Spectator_. This was a heavier dose than Boston could stand at one time; harsh and bitter things were said about the sisters, notices of their meetings were torn down or effaced, and abolitionism came to be so mixed up in the public mind with Woman's Rights, that anti-slavery leaders generally began to feel anxious lest their cause should suffer by being identified with one to which the large majority of abolitionists was decidedly opposed. Even among them, however, there was a difference of opinion, Garrison, H.C. Wright and others, non-resistants, encouraging the agitation of Woman's Rights. A few lines from one of Angelina's letters will best define the position taken by herself and Sarah. "Sister and I," she writes, "feel quite ready for the discussion about women, but brothers Whittier and Weld entreat us to let it alone for the present, because it will involve topics of such vast importance,--a paid ministry, clerical domination, etc.,--and will, they fear, divert our attention and that of the community from the anti-slavery cause; and that the wrongs of the slave are so much greater than the wrongs of woman, they ought not to be confounded. In their letters, received last week, they regret exceedingly that the letters in the _Spectator_ had been written. They think just as we do, but believe that, for the time being, a persevering, practical assertion of woman's right to speak to mixed audiences is the best one we can make, and that we had better keep out of controversies, as our hands are full. On the other hand, we fear that the leaven of the Pharisees will be so assiduously worked into the minds of the people, that if they come to hear us, they will be constantly thinking it is a _shame_ for us to speak in the churches, and that we shall lose that influence which we should otherwise have. We know that _our_ views on this subject are quite new to the _mass_ of the people of this State, and I think it best to throw them open for their consideration, just letting them have both sides of the argument to look at, at the same time. Indeed some wanted to have a meeting in Boston for us to speak on this subject now, and we went into town on purpose to hold a conference about it at Maria Chapman's. She, Mary Parker, and sister were against it for the present, fearing lest it would bring down such a storm upon our heads, that we could not work in the country, and so Henrietta Sargent and I yielded, and I suppose this is the wisest plan, though, as brother Stanton says, I am ready for the battle _now_. I am still glad of sister's letters, and believe they are doing great good. Some noble-minded women cheer her on, and she feels encouraged to persevere, the brethren notwithstanding. I tell them that this is _a part_ of the great doctrine of Human Rights, and can no more be separated from emancipation than the light from the heat of the sun; the rights of the slave and of woman blend like the colors of the rainbow. However, I rarely introduce this topic into my addresses, except to urge my sisters up to duty. Our _brethren_ are dreadfully afraid of this kind of amalgamation. I am very glad to hear that Lucretia Mott addressed the Moral Reform Society, and am earnest in the hope that _we_ are only pioneers, going before a host of worthy women who will come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty." The letters of Whittier and Weld, alluded to by Angelina, are so good and so important that I feel no reluctance in giving them here almost entire. The first is Whittier's, and is dated: "Office of Am. A.S. Soc., 14th of 8th Mo., 1837,"--and is as follows: "MY DEAR SISTERS,--I have been waiting for an opportunity to answer the letter which has been so kindly sent me. I am anxious, too, to hold a long conversation with you on the subject of _war_, human government, and church and family government. The more I reflect on this subject, the more difficulty I find, and the more decidedly am I of opinion that we ought to hold all these matters far aloof from the cause of abolition. Our good friend, H.C. Wright, with the best intentions in the world, is doing great injury by a different course. He is making the anti-slavery party responsible in a great degree, for his, to say the least, startling opinions. I do not censure him for them, although I cannot subscribe to them in all their length and breadth. But let him keep them distinct from the cause of emancipation. This is his duty. Those who subscribe money to the Anti-Slavery Society do it in the belief that it will be spent in the propagation, not of Quakerism or Presbyterianism, but of the doctrines of Immediate Emancipation. To employ an agent who devotes half his time and talents to the propagation of 'no human or no family government' doctrines in connection--_intimate connection_--with the doctrines of abolition, is a fraud upon the patrons of the cause. Just so with papers. Brother Garrison errs, I think, in this respect. He takes the 'no church, and no human government' ground, as, for instance, in his Providence speech. Now, in his prospectus, he engaged to give his subscribers an anti-slavery paper, and his subscribers made their contract with him on that ground. If he fills his paper with Grahamism and no governmentism, he defrauds his subscribers. However, I know that brother Garrison does not look at it in this light. "In regard to another subject, '_the rights of woman_,' you are now doing much and nobly to vindicate and assert the rights of woman. Your lectures to crowded and promiscuous audiences on a subject manifestly, in many of its aspects, _political_, interwoven with the framework of the government, are practical and powerful assertions of the right and the duty of woman to labor side by side with her brother for the welfare and redemption of the world. Why, then, let me ask, is it necessary for you to enter the lists as controversial writers on this question? Does it not _look_, dear sisters, like abandoning in some degree the cause of the poor and miserable slave, sighing from the cotton plantations of the Mississippi, and whose cries and groans are forever sounding in our ears, for the purpose of arguing and disputing about some trifling oppression, political or social, which we may ourselves suffer? Is it not forgetting the great and dreadful wrongs of the slave in a selfish crusade against some paltry grievance of our own? Forgive me if I have stated the case too strongly. I would not for the world interfere with you in matters of conscientious duty, but I wish you would weigh candidly the whole subject, and see if it does not _seem_ an abandonment of your first love. Oh, let us try to forget everything but our duty to God and our fellow beings; to dethrone the selfish principle, and to strive to win over the hard heart of the oppressor by truth kindly spoken. The Massachusetts Congregational Association can do you no harm if you do not allow its splenetic and idle manifesto to divert your attention from the great and holy purpose of your souls. "Finally, dear sisters, rest assured that you have my deepest and warmest sympathy; that my heart rejoices to know that you are mighty instruments in the hands of Him who hath come down to deliver. May the canopy of His love be over you, and His peace be with you! "Your friend and brother, "JNO. G. WHITTIER." Weld's first letter, written the day after Whittier's, begins by defining his own position on the disturbing question. He says: "As to the rights and wrongs of woman, it is an old theme with me. It was the first subject I ever discussed. In a little debating society, when a boy, I took the ground that sex neither qualified nor disqualified for the discharge of any functions, mental, moral, or spiritual: that there is no reason why woman should not make laws, administer justice, sit in the chair of State, plead at the Bar, or in the pulpit, if she has the qualifications, just as much as man. What I advocated in boyhood, I advocate now--that woman, in every particular, shares, equally with man, rights and responsibilities. Now that I have made this statement of my creed on this point, to show you that we fully agree, except that I probably go much further than you do, I must say I do most deeply regret that you have begun a series of articles in the papers on the rights of woman. Why, my dear sisters, the best possible advocacy which you can make is just what you are making day by day. Thousands hear you every week who have all their lives held that women must not speak in public. Such a practical refutation of the dogma which your speaking furnishes has already converted multitudes." He then goes on to urge two strong points:-- 1st. That as Southerners, and having been brought up among slaveholders, they could do more to convince the North than twenty Northern women, though they could speak as well, and that they would lose this peculiar advantage the moment they took up another subject. 2d. That almost any other women of their capacity and station could produce a greater effect on the public mind on that subject than they, because they were Quakers, and woman's right to speak and minister was a Quaker doctrine. Therefore, for these and other reasons, he urged them to leave the lesser work to others who could do it better than they, and devote, consecrate their whole souls, bodies, and spirits to the greater work which they could do far better than anybody else. He continues: "Let us all first wake up the nation to lift millions of slaves from the dust and turn them into men, and then, when we all have our hand in, it will be an easy matter to take millions of women from their knees and set them on their feet; or, in other words, transform them from _babies_ into _women_." A spirited, almost dogmatic, controversy was the result of these letters. In a letter to Jane Smith, Angelina says: "I cannot understand why they (the abolitionists) so exceedingly regret sister's having begun those letters. Brother Weld was not satisfied with writing us _one_ letter about them, but we have received two more setting forth various reasons why we should not moot the subject of woman's rights _at all_, but our judgment is not convinced, and we hardly know what to do about it, for we have just as high an opinion of Brother Garrison's views, and _he_ says, '_go on_.' ... The great effort of abolitionists now seems to be to keep every topic but slavery out of view, and hence their opposition to Henry O. Wright and his preaching anti-government doctrines, and our even writing on woman's rights. Oh, if I _only_ saw they were _right_ and _we_ were _wrong_, I would yield immediately." One of the two other letters from T.D. Weld, referred to by Angelina, is a very long one, covering over ten pages of the old-fashioned foolscap paper, and is in reply to letters received from the sisters, and which were afterwards returned to them and probably destroyed. I have concluded to make some extracts from this long letter from Mr. Weld, not only on account of the arguments used, but to show the frank, fearless spirit with which he met the reasoning of his two "sisters." When we consider that he was even then courting Angelina, his hardihood is a little surprising. After observing that he had carefully read their letters, and made an abstract on half a sheet of paper of the "positions and conclusions found therein," he continues:-- "This abstract I have been steadily looking at with great marvelling, "1st. That you should argue at length the doctrine of Woman's Rights, as though I was a _dissentient_; "2d. That you should so magnify the power of the New England clergy; "3d. That you should so misconceive the actual convictions of ministers and Christians, and almost all, as to the public speaking of women; "4th. That you should take the ground that the clergy, and the whole church government, must come down _before_ slavery can be abolished (a proposition which to my mind is absurd). "5th. That you should so utterly overlook the very _threshold_ principle upon which alone any moral reformation can be effectually promoted. Oh, dear! There are a dozen other things--marvellables--in your letters; but I must stop short, or I can say nothing on other points. "... Now, before we commence action, let us clear the decks; for if they are clogged we shall have foul play. _Overboard_ with everything that don't _belong on board_. Now, first, _what is the precise point at issue between us?_ I answer first _negatively_, that we may understand each other on all points kindred to the main one. 1st. It is _not_ whether _woman's_ rights are inferior to _man's_ rights." He then proceeded to state the doctrine of Woman's Rights very forcibly. Of _sex_, he says:-- "Its _only_ design is not to give nor to take away, nor in any respect to modify, or even touch, rights or responsibilities in any sense, except so far as the peculiar offices of each sex may afford less or more opportunity and ability for the exercise of rights, and the discharge of responsibilities, but merely to continue and enlarge the human department of God's government." For an entire page he continues in this manner of "_negatives_" to "_clear the decks_," until he has shown through seven negative specifications what do _not_ constitute the point at issue, and then goes on:-- "Well, waving further negatives, the question at issue between us _is_, whether _you_, S.M.G. and A.E.G., should engage in the public discussion of the rights of women as a distinct topic. Here you affirm, and I deny. Your reasons for doing it, as contained in your two letters, are the following:-- "1st. The _New England Spectator_ was _opened_; you were invited to write on the subject, and some of the Boston abolitionists _urged_ you to do so, and you say, 'We viewed this unexpected opportunity of throwing our views before the public, as _providential_.' "_Answer_. When the devil is hard pushed, and likely to be run down in the chase, it is an old trick of his to start some smaller game, and thus cause his pursuers to strike off from his own track on to that of one of his imps. It was certainly a very _providential_ opportunity for Nehemiah to 'throw his views before the public,' when Geshem, Sanballat, and Tobiah invited and urged him to stop building the wall and hold a public discussion as to the _right_ to build. And doubtless a great many Jews said to him, 'Unless we _establish_ the right in the first place, it will surely be taken from us utterly. This is a providential opportunity to preach truth in the very camp of the enemy.' But who got it up, God or the devil?... Look over the history of the world, and in nine cases out of ten we shall find that Satan, after being foiled in his arts to stop a great moral enterprise, has finally succeeded by diverting the reformers from the _main_ point to a _collateral_, and that too just at the _moment_ when such diversion brought ruin. Now, even if this opportunity made it the duty of _somebody_ to take up the subject (which is not proved by the fact of the opportunity), why should _you_ give _your_ views, and with _your name_? Others as able might be found, and as familiar with the subject. But you say, others 'are driven off the field, and cannot answer the objections.' I answer, your _names_ do not answer the objections.... How very easy to have helped a third person to the argument. By publicly making an onset in your own names, in a widely-circulated periodical, upon a doctrine cherished as the apple of their eye (I don't say really _believed_) by nine tenths of the church and the world; what was it but a formal challenge to the whole community for a regular set-to?" He proceeds to speak of such a "set to" and debate as "producing alienation wide-spread in our own ranks, and introducing confusion and every evil work." He urges the necessity of vindicating a right "by exercising it," instead of simply arguing for it. Of ministers he says: "True, there is a pretty large class of ministers who are fierce about it, and will fight, but a still larger class that will come over _if_ they first witness the successful practice rather than meet it in the shape of a doctrine to be swallowed. Now, if instead of blowing a blast through the newspapers, sounding the onset, and summoning the ministers and churches to surrender, you had without any introductory flourish just gone right among them and lectured, _when_ and _where_ and _as_ you could find opportunity, and paid no attention to criticism, but pushed right on, without making any ado about 'attacks,' and 'invasions,' and 'opposition,' and have let the barkers bark their bark out,--within one year you might have practically brought over five hundred thousand persons, of the very moral _élite_ of New England. You may rely upon it.... No moral enterprise, when prosecuted with ability and any sort of energy, _ever_ failed under heaven so long as its conductors pushed the _main_ principle, and did not strike off until they reached the summit level. On the other hand, every reform that ever foundered in mid-sea, was capsized by one of these gusty side-winds. Nothing more utterly amazes me than the fact that the _conduct_ of a great, a _pre-eminently_ great moral enterprise, should exhibit so little of a wise, far-sighted, comprehensive _plan_. Surely it is about plain enough to be called _self-evident_, that the only common-sense method of conducting a great moral enterprise is to _start_ with a _fundamental, plain principle, so_ fundamental as not to involve side-relations, and _so_ plain, that it cannot be denied." The main obvious principle he urges is to be pushed until the community surrenders to it. He adds:-- "Then, when you have drawn them up to the top of the general principle, you can slide them down upon all the derivative principles _all at once_. But if you attempt to start off on a derivative principle, from any other point than the summit level of the main principle, you must beat up stream--yes, up a cataract. It reverses the order of nature, and the laws of mind.... "You put the cart before the horse; you drag the tree by the top, in attempting to push your woman's rights until human rights have gone ahead and broken _the path_. * * * * * "You are both liable, it seems to me, from your structure of mind, to form your opinions upon _too slight_ data, and too narrow a range of induction, and to lay your plans and adopt your measures, rather _dazzled_ by the glare of false _analogies_ than _led on_ by the relations of cause and effect. Both of you, but especially Angelina, unless I greatly mistake, are constitutionally tempted to push for _present_ effect, and upon the suddenness and impulsiveness of the onset rely mainly for victory. Besides from _her_ strong _resistiveness_ and constitutional obstinacy, she is liable every moment to turn short from the main point and spend her whole force upon some little one-side annoyance that might temporarily nettle her. In doing this she might win a _single battle_, but _lose a whole campaign_. Add to this, great pride of character, so closely curtained as to be almost searchless to herself, with a passion for adventure and novel achievements, and she has in all an amount of temptation to poor human nature that can be overmastered only by strong conflicts and strong faith. Under this, a sense of justice so keen that violation of justice would be likely to lash up such a tide of indignation as would drive her from all anchorage. I say this to her _not_ in raillery. I _believe_ it, and therefore utter it. It is either fiction or fact. If _fiction_ it can do no hurt; if _fact_, it may not be in vain in the Lord, and then my heart's desire and prayer will be fulfilled. May the Lord have you in his keeping, my own dear sisters. "Most affectionately, your brother ever, "T.D. WELD." "One point I designed to make _more_ prominent. It is this: What is done for the _slave_ and _human rights_ in this country _must be done note, now, now_. Delay is madness, ruin, whereas woman's rights are not a life and death business, _now or never_. Why can't you have eyes to see this? The wayfaring man, though a _fool_, need not err _here_, it is so plain. What will you run a tilt at next?" And he names several things,--the tariff, the banks, English tithe system, burning widows, etc., and adds:-- "If you adopt the views of H.C. Wright, as you are reported to have done, in his official bulletin of a 'domestic scene' (where you are made to figure conspicuously among the conquests of the victor as rare spoils gracing the triumphal car), why then we are in one point of doctrine just as wide asunder as extremes can be." This letter was answered by Sarah, and with the most admirable patience and moderation. She begins by saying:-- "Angelina is so wrathy that I think it will be unsafe to trust the pen in her hands to reply to thy two last _good_ long letters. As I feel nothing but gratitude for the kindness which I am sure dictated them, I shall endeavor to answer them, and, as far as possible, allay thy uneasiness as to the course we are pursuing." She then proceeds to calmly discuss his objections, and to defend their views on the woman question, which, she says, she regards as second in importance to none, but that she does not feel bound to take up every _caviller_ who presents himself, and therefore will not notice some others who had criticised her letters in the _Spectator_. About H.C. Wright, she says: "I must say a few words concerning Brother Wright, towards whom I do not feel certain that the law of love predominated when thou wrote that part of thy letter relative to him.... We feel prepared to avow the principles set forth in the 'domestic scene.' I wonder thou canst not perceive the simplicity and beauty and consistency of the doctrine that all government, whether civil or ecclesiastical, conflicts with the government of Jehovah, and that by the Christian no other can be acknowledged, without leaning more or less on an arm of flesh. Would to God that all abolitionists put their trust where I believe H.C. Wright has placed his, in God alone.... I have given my opinions (in the _Spectator_). Those who read them may receive or reject or find fault. I have nothing to do with that. I shall let thee enjoy thy opinion, but I must wait and see the issue before I conclude it was one of Satan's providences.... I know the opposition to our views arises in part from the fact that women are habitually regarded as inferior beings, but chiefly I believe from a desire to keep them in unholy subjection to man, and one way of doing this is to deprive us of the means of becoming their equals by forbidding us the privileges of education which would fit us for the performance of duty. I am greatly mistaken if most men have not a desire that women should be silly.... I have not said half I wanted, but this must suffice for the present, as Angelina has concluded to try her hand at scolding. Farewell, dear brother. May the Lord reward thee tenfold for thy kindness, and keep thee in the hollow of His holy hand. "Thy sister in Jesus, "S.M.G." Angelina's part of the letter is not written in the sweet, Quaker spirit which prevails through Sarah's, but shows a very interesting consciousness of her power over the man she addressed. "Sister," she writes, "seems very much afraid that my pen will be transformed into a venomous serpent when I employ it to address thee, my dear brother, and no wonder, for I like to pay my debts, and, as I received ten dollars' worth of scolding,[7] I should be guilty of injustice did I not return the favor. Well! such a lecture I never before had from anyone. What is the matter with thee? One would really suppose that we had actually abandoned the anti-slavery cause, and were roving the country, preaching _nothing_ but woman's rights, when, in fact, I can truly say that whenever I lecture, I forget _everything but the slave_. He is all in all for the time being. And what is the reason _I_ am to be scolded because _sister_ writes letters in the _Spectator_? Please let every woman bear _her own burdens_. Indeed, I should like to know what I have done yet? And dost thou really think in my answer to C.E. Beecher's absurd views of woman that I had better suppress my own? If so, I will do it, as thou makest such a monster out of the molehill, but my judgment is _not_ convinced that in this incidental way it is wrong to throw light on the subject." [7] Angelina and Sarah had sent Mr. Weld ten dollars for some supposed debts. He returned it, and said if any trifling sums fell due, he would take them out in scolding, and pay himself thus. She speaks very gratefully of "Brother Lincoln, of Gardner," who rejoiced to have them speak in his pulpit, and says:-- "My _keen sense of justice_ compels me to admire such nobility. He hoped sister would give her views on this branch of the subject in the _Spectator_. He thought they were needed, and _we_ are well convinced they are, T.D.W. notwithstanding. So much for my bump of obstinacy which even thy sledge-hammer cannot beat down." The subsequent correspondence, which I regret I have not room to insert, shows that the remonstrances of Whittier and Weld were effective in restraining, for the time being, the impatience of the sisters to urge in their public meetings what, however, they faithfully preached in private--their conviction that the wrongs of woman were the root of _all_ oppression. Sarah meekly writes to "brother Weld." "After a struggle with my feelings, so severe that I was almost tempted to turn back from the anti-slavery cause, I have given up to what seemed the inevitable, and have thought little of it since. Perhaps I have done wrong, and if so, I trust I shall see it and repent it. I do not intend to make any promises, because I may have reason to regret them, but I do not know that I shall scribble any more on the objectionable topic of woman." This interesting controversy did not end until several more letters had passed back and forth, and various other topics had been brought in; but it was carried through with the same spirit of candor and love on all sides which marked the beginning. There was one subject introduced, a sort of side-question which I must notice, as it reveals in a very pleasant manner the religious principle and manly moral courage of Theodore D. Weld. At the close of one of her letters, Sarah says:-- "Now just as it has come into my head, please tell me whether thy clothing costs one hundred dollars per annum? I ask because it was insisted upon that Mr. Weld must spend that amount on his wardrobe, and I as strenuously insisted he did not. It was thought impossible a gentleman could spend less, but I think anti-slavery agents know better." To this, he answered thus, at the end of one of _his_ letters. "Oh! I forgot the wardrobe! I suppose you are going to take me to task about my shag-overcoat, linsey-woolsey coat, and cowhide shoes; for you Quakers are as notional about _quality_ as you are precise about _cut_. Well, now to the question. While I was travelling and lecturing, I think that _one_ year my clothing must have cost me nearly one hundred dollars. It was the first year of my lecturing in the West, when one entire suit and part of another were destroyed or nearly so by mobs. Since I resigned my commission as agent, which is now nearly a year, my clothing has not cost me one third that amount. I don't think it _even_ cost me fifty dollars a year, except the year I spoke of, when it was ruined by mobs, and the year 1832, when, in travelling, I lost it all with my other baggage in the Alum River. There, I believe I have answered your question as well as I can. However, I have always had to encounter the criticism and chidings of my acquaintances about my coarse dress. They will have it that I have always curtailed my influence and usefulness by such a John the Baptist attire as I have always been habited in. But I have remarked that those persons who have beset me on that score have shown in some way that they had their hearts set more or less on showing off their persons to advantage by their dress. Now I think of it, I believe you are in great danger of making a little god out of your caps and your drab color, and '_thee_' and '_thou_.' Besides, the tendency is quite questionable. The moment certain shades of color, or a certain combination of letters, or modulation of sounds, or arrangement of seams and angles, are made the _sine qua non_ of religion and principle, that moment religion and principle are hurled from their vantage-ground and become _slaves_ instead of _rulers_. I cannot get it out of my mind that these must be a fetter on the spirit that clings to such stereotyped forms and ceremonies that rustle and clatter the more because life and spirit and power do not inhabit them. Think about it, dear sisters." In Sarah's next letter to him she says:-- "Now first about the wardrobe. Thou art greatly mistaken in supposing that I meant to quiz thee; no, not I, indeed. I wish from my heart more of us who take the profession of Jesus on our lips were willing to wear shag cloaks and linsey-woolsey garments. Now I may inform thee that, notwithstanding my prim caps, etc., I am as economical as thou art. I do many things in the way of dress to please my friends, but perhaps their watchfulness is needful." Dear Aunt Sarah! these last words will make many smile who remember how scrupulously careful she was about spending more on her dress than was absolutely necessary to cleanliness and health. Every dollar beyond this she felt was taken from the poor or from some benevolent enterprise. The watchfulness of her friends was indeed needful! It appears from the above correspondence that both Sarah and Angelina had become tinctured with the doctrines of "non-resistance," which, within a few years, had gained some credit with a few "perfectionists" and active reformers in and about Boston. They had been presented by Lydia Maria Child, a genial writer, under the guise of the Scriptural doctrine of love. This sentiment was held to be adequate to the regulation of social and political life: by it, ruffians were to be made to stand in awe of virtue; thieves, burglars, and murderers were to be made ashamed of themselves, and turned into honest and amiable citizens; children were to be governed without punishment; and the world was to be made a paradise. Rev. Henry C. Wright, a man of some ability, but tossed by every wind of doctrine, embraced the new gospel. He applied its principles to public matters. From the essential sinfulness of all forms of force, if used towards human beings, he inferred that penal laws, prisons, sheriffs, and criminal courts should be dispensed with; that governments, which, of necessity, execute their decrees by force, should be abolished; that Christians should not take part in politics, either by voting or holding office; that they should not employ force, even to resist encroachment or in the defence of their wives and children; and that although slavery, being a form of force, was wrong, no one should vote against it. The slave-holder was to be converted by love. The free States should show their grief and disapprobation by seceding from the slave States, and by nullifying within their limits any unjust laws passed by the nation. All governments, civil, ecclesiastical, and family, were to disappear, so that the divine law, interpreted by each one for himself, might have free course. To this fanciful, transcendental, and anarchical theory, Mr. Wright made sundry converts, more or less thorough, including Parker Pillsbury, Wm. L. Garrison, and Stephen S. Foster. That he took a good deal of pains to capture the subjects of our biography is evident. He attended their lectures, cultivated their acquaintance, extended to them his sympathy, and made them his guests. There are certain affinities of the non-resistance doctrines with Quakerism, which made them attractive to these two women who had little worldly knowledge, and who had been trained for years in the peace doctrines of the Philadelphia Friends. It was fortunate for the anti-slavery cause that Sarah and Angelina were warned in time by their New York friends of the fatally dangerous character of the heresies they were inclined to accept. They went no further in that direction. In all their subsequent letters, journals, and papers there is not a word to show that either of them ever entertained no-government notions, or identified herself with persons who did. During the remaining months of their stay in Massachusetts, they devoted themselves to their true mission of anti-slavery work, accepting the co-operation and friendship of all friends of the slave, but avoiding compromising relations with those known as "no human government" non-resistants. This course was continued in after years, and drew upon them the disapprobation and strictures of the non-voting, non-fighting faction. In a letter from Sarah to Augustus Wattles, dated May 11, 1854, about the time of the Kansas war, she says:-- "We were fully aware of the severe criticisms passed upon us by many of those who showed their unfitness to be in the judgment seat, by the unmerciful censure they have pronounced against us when we were doing what to us seemed positive duty. They wanted us to live out Wm. Lloyd Garrison, not the convictions of our own souls, entirely unaware that they were exhibiting, in the high places of moral reform, the genuine spirit of slave-holding by wishing to curtail the sacred privilege of conscience. But we have not allowed their unreasonableness to sever us from them; they have many noble traits, have acted grandly for humanity, and it was perhaps a part of their business to abuse us. I do not think I love Garrison any the less for what he has said. His spirit of intolerance towards those who did not draw in his traces, and his adulation of those who surrendered themselves to his guidance, have always been exceedingly repulsive to me, weaknesses which marred the beauty and symmetry of his character, and prevented its symmetrical development, but nevertheless I know the stern principle which is the basis of his action. He is Garrison and nobody else, and all I ask is that he would let others be themselves." The feeling thus expressed was probably never changed until after the sisters had taken up their residence in the neighborhood of Boston, when visits were interchanged with Mr. Garrison, and friendly relations established, which ended only with death. It is certain, however, that Sarah and Angelina sympathized with the stalwart freemen who used Sharp's rifles in the defence of free Kansas, who voted the Liberty, Free Soil, and Republican ticket, who elected Abraham Lincoln President, and who shouldered muskets against the rebels. CHAPTER XV. The anti-slavery cause, and intimate association with so many of its enthusiastic advocates, had indeed done much for Sarah Grimké. Her mind was rapidly becoming purified from the dross that had clogged it so long; religious doubts and difficulties were fading away one by one, and the wide, warm sympathies of her nature now freed, expanded gladly to a new world of light and love and labor. As she expressed it, she was like one coming into a clear brisk atmosphere, after having been long shut up in a close room. Her drowsy faculties were all stirred and invigorated, and though her disappointments had left wounds whose pain must always remind her of them, she had no longer time to sit down and bemoan them. There was so much to do in the broad, fresh fields which stretched around her, and she had been idle so long! Is it any wonder that she tried to grasp too much at first? The affection between her and Angelina was growing daily more tender--perhaps a little more maternal on her part. Drawn closer together by the now complete separation from every member of their own family, and by the disapproval and coldness of their Philadelphia friends, they were an inexpressible solace and help to each other. Identified in all their trials, as now in their labors, they worked together in a sweet unity of spirit, which lessened every difficulty and lightened every burden. They continued to lecture almost uninterruptedly for five months, and though the prejudice against them as women appeared but slightly diminished, people were becoming familiarized to the idea of women speaking in public, and the way was gradually being cleared for the advance-guard of that noble army which has brought about so many changes favorable to the weak and downtrodden of its own sex. Invitations to speak came to the sisters from all parts of the State, and not even by dividing their labors among the smaller towns could they begin to respond to all who wished to hear them. Sometimes the crowds around the place of meeting were so great that a second hall or church would have to be provided, and Sarah speak in one, while Angelina spoke in the other. At one place, where over a thousand people crowded into a church, one of the joists gave way; it was propped up, but soon others began to crack, and, although the people were warned to leave that part of the building, only a few obeyed, and it was found impossible to persuade them to go, or to consent to have the speaking stopped. At another place ladders were put up at all the windows, and men crowded upon them, and tenaciously held their uncomfortable positions through the whole meeting. In one or two places they were refused a meeting-house, on account of strong sectarian feeling against them as Quakers. At Worcester they had to adjourn from a large Congregational church to a small Methodist one, because the clergyman of the former suddenly returned from an absence, and declared that if they spoke in his church he would never enter it again. At Bolton, notices of their meetings were torn down, but the town hall was packed notwithstanding, many going away, unable to get in. The church here had also been refused them. Angelina, in the course of her lecture, seized an opportunity to refer to their treatment, saying that if the people of her native city could see her lecturing in that hall because every church had been closed against the cause of God's down-trodden creatures, they would clap their hands for joy, and say, "See what slavery is doing for us in the town of Bolton!" She describes very graphically going two miles to a meeting on a dark and rainy night, when Sarah was obliged to remain at home on account of a cold, and Abby Kelly drove her in a chaise, and how nearly they came to being upset, and how they met men in flocks along the road, all going to the meeting. She says:-- "It seemed as if I could not realize they were going to hear me," and adds:-- "This was the first large meeting I ever attended without dear sister, and I wonder I did not feel desolate, for I knew not a creature there. Nevertheless, the Lord strengthened me, and I spoke with ease for an hour and a quarter." But the incessant strain upon her nervous system, together with the fatigue and exposure of almost constant travelling, began to tell seriously on her health. In October she frequently speaks of being "so tired," of being "so glad to rest a day," etc., until, all these warnings being unheeded, nature peremptorily called a halt. In the beginning of November, after a week of unusual fatigue, having lectured six times in as many different places, they reached Hingham quite worn out. Sarah, though still suffering with a cold, begged to lecture in her sister's place, but Angelina had been announced, and she knew the people would be disappointed if she failed to appear. When they entered the crowded hall, a lady seeing how unwell Angelina looked, seized both her hands and exclaimed:-- "Oh, if you will only hold out to-night, I will nurse you for a week!" She did hold out for an hour and a half, and then sank back exhausted, and was obliged to leave the lecture unfinished. This was the beginning of an illness which lasted, with its subsequent convalescence, through the remainder of the year. Their good friends, Samuel and Eliza Philbrick, brought the sisters to their beautiful home in Brookline, and surrounded them with every care and comfort kind hearts could suggest. Sarah then found how very weary she was also, and how opportune was this enforced rest. "Thus," wrote Angelina some weeks afterwards to Jane Smith, "thus ended our summer campaign. Oh, how delightful it was to stretch my weary limbs on a bed of ease, and roll off from my mind all the heavy responsibilities which had so long pressed upon it, and, above all, to feel in my soul the language, 'Well done.' It was luxury indeed, well worth the toil of months." Sarah, too, speaks of looking back upon the labors of the summer with feelings of unmixed satisfaction. That the leaven prepared in Sarah Grimké's letters on the "Province of Woman" was beginning to work was evidenced by a public discussion on woman's rights which took place at the Boston Lyceum on the evening of Dec. 4, 1837. The amount of interest this first public debate on the subject excited was shown by the fact that an audience of fifteen hundred of the most intelligent and respectable people of Boston crowded the hall and listened attentively to the end. Sarah and Angelina, the latter now almost entirely recovered, were present, accompanied by Mr. Philbrick. "A very noble view throughout," says Angelina, and adds: "The discussion has raised my hopes of the woman question. It was conducted with respect, delicacy, and dignity, and many minds no doubt were roused to reflection, though I must not forget to say it was decided against us by acclamation, our enemies themselves being judges. It was like a meeting of slave-holders deciding that the slaves are happier in their present condition than they would be freed." Soon after this, Angelina writes that some Boston women, including Maria Chapman and Lydia M. Child, were about to start a woman's rights paper, and she adds: "We greatly hope dear Maria Chapman will soon commence lecturing, and that the spark we have been permitted to kindle on the woman question will never die out." The annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was held the latter part of January, 1838, and was notable in several respects. On the second day, the "great Texas meeting," as it was called, was held in Faneuil Hall, and the fact that this Cradle of Liberty was loaned to the abolitionists was bitterly commented upon by their opponents, while abolitionists themselves regarded it as strong evidence of the progress their cause had made. Angelina writes Jane Smith a graphic account of the speakers and speeches at this meeting, but especially mentions Henry B. Stanton, who made the most powerful speech of the whole session, and was so severe on Congress, that a representative who was present arose to object to the "hot thunderbolts and burning lava" that had been let loose on the heads of "the powers that be, of those whom we were commanded to honor and obey." These remarks were so ridiculous as to excite laughter, and the manner in which Stanton demolished the speaker by his own arguments called forth such repeated rounds of applause that the great orator was obliged to _insist_ upon silence. At this meeting, said to have been the largest ever held in Boston, several hundred women were present, a most encouraging sign to Sarah Grimké of the progress of _her_ ideas. After some parleying, the hall of the House of Representatives was granted the Society for their remaining meetings, and here Quincy, Colver, Phelps, and Wendell Phillips spoke and made a deep impression, so deep that a committee was appointed to take into consideration the petitions on the subject of slavery. Stanton, half in jest, asked Angelina if she would not like to speak before that committee, as the names of some thousands of women were before it as signers of petitions. She had never thought of such a thing, but, after reflecting upon it a day, sent Stanton word that if the friends of the cause thought well of it, she _would_ speak as he had proposed. He was surprised and troubled, for, though he was all right in the abstract on the woman question, he feared the consequences of such a manifest assertion of equality. "It seems," Angelina writes, "even the stout-hearted tremble when the woman question is to be acted out in full. Jackson, Fuller, Phelps, and Quincy were consulted. The first is sound to the core, and went right up to the State House to inquire of the chairman of the committee whether I could be heard. Wonderful to tell, he said Yes, without the least hesitation, and actually helped to remove the scruples of some of the timid-hearted abolitionists. Perhaps it is best I should bear the responsibility _wholly_ myself. I feel willing to do it, and think I shall say nothing more about it, but just let Birney and Stanton make the speeches they expect to before the committee this week, and when they have done, make an independent application to the chairman as a woman, as a Southerner, as a moral being.... I feel that this is the most important step I have ever been called to take: important to woman, to the slave, to my country, and to the world." This plan was carried out, thanks to James C. Alvord, the chairman of the committee; and the halls of the Massachusetts Legislature were opened for the first time to a woman. Wendell Phillips says of that meeting:--"It gave Miss Grimké the opportunity to speak to the best culture and character of Massachusetts; and the profound impression then made on a class not often found in our meetings was never wholly lost. It was not only the testimony of one most competent to speak, but it was the profound religious experience of one who had broken out of the charmed circle, and whose intense earnestness melted all opposition. The converts she made needed no after-training. It was when you saw she was opening some secret record of her own experience that the painful silence and breathless interest told the deep effect and lasting impression her words were making." We have not Angelina's account of this meeting, but referring to it in a letter to Sarah Douglass, she says: "My heart never quailed before, but it almost died within me at that tremendous hour." But one hearing did not satisfy her, and the committee needed no urging to grant her another. At the second meeting, the hall was literally packed, and hundreds went away unable to obtain seats. When she arose to speak, there was some hissing from the doorways, but the most profound silence reigned through the crowd within. Angelina first stood in front of the Speaker's desk, then she was requested to occupy the Secretary's desk on one side, and soon after, that she might be seen as well as heard, she was invited to stand in the Speaker's place. And from that conspicuous position she spoke over two hours without the least interruption. She says to Sarah Douglass:-- "What the effect of these meetings is to be, I know not, nor do I feel that _I_ have anything to do with it. This I know, that the chairman was in tears almost the whole time I was speaking," and she adds: "We abolition women are turning the world upside down, for during the whole meeting there was sister seated up in the Speaker's chair of state." These meetings were followed by the six evening lectures at the Odeon, to which reference has already been made. Sarah delivered the first lecture, taking for her subject the history of the country in reference to slavery. She spoke for two hours, fearlessly, as she always did, and though she says Garrison told her he trembled with apprehension, the audience of fifteen hundred people listened respectfully and attentively, frequently applauding the utterance of some strongly expressed truth, and showing no excitement even under the rebukes she administered to Edward Everett, then Governor of Massachusetts, for his speech in Congress in 1826, and to ex-Governor Lincoln for his in 1831. Both these worthies had declared their willingness to go down South to suppress servile insurrection. This was the last time Sarah spoke in public. Her throat, which had long troubled her, was now seriously affected, and entire rest was prescribed. She did not murmur, for she had increasingly felt that Angelina's speaking was more effective than hers, and now she believed the Lord was showing her that this part of the work must be left to her more gifted sister, and she gladly yielded to her the task of delivering the five succeeding lectures. In relation to these lectures, the son of Samuel Philbrick has kindly sent me the following extract from a diary kept by his father. Under date of April 23, 1838, he says:-- "In February Angelina addressed the committee of our legislature on the subject of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia and Florida, and the inter-state slave trade, during three sittings of two hours each, in the Representatives' Hall in Boston, before a crowded audience, stowed as close as they could stand in every aisle and corner. Her addresses were listened to with profound attention and respect, without interruption to the last. More than five hundred people could not get seats, but stood quietly during two full hours, in profound silence. "During the last few weeks she has delivered five lectures, and Sarah one at the Odeon, before an assembly of men and women from all parts of the city. Every part of the building was crowded, every aisle filled. Estimated number, two thousand to three thousand at each meeting. There was great attention and silence, and the addresses were intensely interesting." These over, the sisters bade farewell to their most excellent Brookline friends, in whose family they had so peacefully rested for six months, and returned to Philadelphia, Sarah accepting a temporary home with Jane Smith, while Angelina went to stay with Mrs. Frost, at whose house two weeks later, that is on the 14th of May, she was united in marriage to Theodore D. Weld. No marriage could have been more true, more fitting in every respect. The solemn relation was never entered upon in more holiness of purpose or in higher resolve to hold themselves strictly to the best they were capable of. It was a rededication of lives long consecrated to God and humanity; of souls knowing no selfish ambition, seeking before all things the glory of their Creator in the elevation of His creatures everywhere. The entire unity of spirit in which they afterwards lived and labored, the tender affection which, through a companionship of more than forty years, knew no diminution, made a family life so perfect and beautiful that it brightened and inspired all who were favored to witness it. No one could be with them under the most ordinary circumstances without feeling the force and influence of their characters. Invitations were sent to about eighty persons, mostly abolitionists, of all colors, some jet black. Nearly all came; representing Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Among them were H.B. Stanton, C.C. Burleigh, William Lloyd Garrison, Amos Dresser, H.C. Wright, Maria and Mary Chapman, Abby Kelly, Samuel Philbrick, Jane Smith, and Sarah Douglass of course, and Mr. Weld's older brother, the president of the asylum for deaf mutes. Sarah Grimké's account of the wedding, written to a friend in England, is most interesting; and one cannot but wonder if another like it ever took place. The letter was written while the then and ever after inseparable trio was at Manlius, New York, visiting Mr. Weld's family. After a slight mention of other matters, she says:-- "I must now give thee some account of my dear sister's marriage, which probably thou hast already heard of. Her precious husband is emphatically a man of God, a member of the Presbyterian Church. Of course Angelina will be disowned for forming this connection, and I shall be for attending the marriage. We feel no regret at this circumstance, believing that the discipline which cuts us off from membership for an act so strictly in conformity with the will of God, and so sanctioned by His word as is the marriage of the righteous, must be anti-Christian, and I am thankful for an opportunity to testify against it. The marriage was solemnized at the house of our sister, Anna R. Frost, in Philadelphia, on the 14th instant. By the law of Pennsylvania, a marriage is legal if witnessed by twelve persons. Neither clergyman nor magistrate is required to be present. Angelina could not conscientiously consent to be married by a clergyman, and Theodore D. Weld cheerfully consented to have the marriage solemnized in such manner as comported with her views. We all felt that the presence of a magistrate, a stranger, would be unpleasant to us at such a time, and we therefore concluded to invite such of our friends as we desired, and have the marriage solemnized as a religious act, in a religious and social meeting. Neither Theodore nor Angelina felt as if they could bind themselves to any preconceived form of words, and accordingly uttered such as the Lord gave them at the moment. Theodore addressed Angelina in a solemn and tender manner. He alluded to the unrighteous power vested in a husband by the laws of the United States over the person and property of his wife, and he abjured all authority, all government, save the influence which love would give to them over each other as moral and immortal beings. I would give much could I recall his words, but I cannot. Angelina's address to him was brief but comprehensive, containing a promise to honor him, to prefer him above herself, to love him with a pure heart fervently. Immediately after this we knelt, and dear Theodore poured out his soul in solemn supplication for the blessing of God on their union, that it might be productive of enlarged usefulness, and increased sympathy for the slave. Angelina followed in a melting appeal to our Heavenly Father, for a blessing on them, and that their union might glorify Him, and then asked His guidance and over-shadowing love through the rest of their pilgrimage. A colored Presbyterian minister then prayed, and was followed by a white one, and then I felt as if I could not restrain the language of praise and thanksgiving to Him who had condescended to be in the midst of this marriage feast, and to pour forth abundantly the oil and wine of consolation and rejoicing. The Lord Jesus was the first guest invited to be present, and He condescended to bless us with His presence, and to sanction and sanctify the union which was thus consummated. The certificate was then read by William Lloyd Garrison, and was signed by the company. The evening was spent in pleasant social intercourse. Several colored persons were present, among them two liberated slaves, who formerly belonged to our father, had come by inheritance to sister Anna, and had been freed by her. They were our invited guests, and we thus had an opportunity to bear our testimony against the horrible prejudice which prevails against colored persons, and the equally awful prejudice against the poor." This unconventional but truly religious marriage ceremony was in perfect harmony with the loyal, noble natures of Theodore Weld and Angelina Grimké, exemplifying the simplicity of their lives and the strength of their principles. No grand preparations preceded the event; no wedding bells were rung on the occasion; no rare gifts were displayed: but the blessing of the lowly and the despised, and the heart-felt wishes of co-workers and co-sufferers were the offerings which lent to the occasion its purest joy and brightest light. But though so quietly and peacefully solemnized, this marriage was to have its celebration,--one little anticipated, but according well with the experiences which had preceded it, and serving to make it all the more impressive and its promises more sacred. Refused the use of churches and lecture-rooms, and denied the privilege of hiring halls for their meetings, the abolitionists of Philadelphia, with other friends of free discussion, formed an association, and built, at an expense of forty thousand dollars, a beautiful hall, to be used for free speech on any and every subject not of an immoral character. Daniel Neall was the president of this association, and William Dorsey the secretary. The hall, one of the finest buildings in the city, was situated at the southwest corner of Delaware, Sixth, and Harris streets, between Cherry and Sassafras streets. It was opened for the first time on Angelina Grimké's wedding-day, and was filled with one of the largest audiences ever assembled in Philadelphia. As soon as the president of the association had taken his seat, the secretary arose and explained the uses and purposes the hall was expected to serve. He said:-- "A number of individuals of all sects, and those of no sect, of all parties, and those of no party, being desirous that the citizens of Philadelphia should possess a room wherein the principles of _liberty_ and _equality of civil rights_ could be freely discussed, and the evils of slavery fearlessly portrayed, have erected this building, which we are now about to dedicate to liberty and the rights of man.... A majority of the stockholders are mechanics or working-men, and (as is the case in almost every other good work) a number are women." The secretary then proceeded to read letters from John Quincy Adams, Thaddeus Stevens, Gerrit Smith, Theodore Weld, and others, who had been invited to deliver addresses, but who, from various causes, were obliged to decline. That from Weld was characteristic of the earnestness of the man. After stating that for a year and a half he had been prevented from speaking in public on account of an affection of the throat, and must therefore decline the invitation of the committee, he adds:-- "I exult in the erection of your 'temple of freedom,' and the more, as it is the first and only one, in a republic of fifteen millions, consecrated to free discussion and equal rights." "For years they have been banished from our halls of legislation and of justice, from our churches and our pulpits. It is befitting that the city of Benezet and of Franklin should be the first to open an asylum where the hunted exiles may find a home. God grant that your Pennsylvania Hall may be _free, indeed!_" "The empty name is everywhere,--_free_ government, _free_ men, _free_ speech, _free_ people, _free_ schools, and _free_ churches. Hollow counterfeits all! _Free!_ It is the climax of irony, and its million echoes are hisses and jeers, even from the earth's ends. _Free! Blot it out_. Words are the signs of _things_. The substance has gone! Let fools and madmen clutch at shadows. The husk must rustle the more when the kernel and the ear are gone. Rome's loudest shout for liberty was when she murdered it, and drowned its death shrieks in her hoarse huzzas. She never raised her hands so high to swear allegiance to freedom as when she gave the death-stab, and madly leaped upon its corpse; and her most delirious dance was among the clods her hands had cast upon its coffin. _Free!_ The word and sound are omnipresent masks and mockers. An impious lie, unless they stand for free _lynch law_ and free _murder_, for they _are_ free. "But I'll hold. The times demand brief speech, but mighty deeds. On, my brethren! uprear your temple. "Your brother in the sacred strife for all, "THEODORE D. WELD." David Paul Brown, of Philadelphia, was invited to deliver the dedicatory address, which, with other exercises, occupied the mornings and evening of three days, and included addresses by Garrison, Thomas P. Hunt, Arnold Buffum, Alanson St. Clair, and others, on slavery, temperance, the Indians, right of free discussion, and kindred topics. On the second day, an appropriate and soul-stirring poem by John G. Whittier was read by C.C. Burleigh. The first lines will give an idea of the spirit of the whole poem, one of the finest efforts Whittier ever made:-- "Not with the splendors of the days of old, The spoil of nations and barbaric gold, No weapons wrested from the fields of blood, Where dark and stern the unyielding Roman stood, And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw A world war-wasted, crouching to his law; Nor blazoned car, nor banners floating gay, Like those which swept along the Appian Way, When, to the welcome of imperial Rome, The victor warrior came in triumph home, And trumpet peal, and shoutings wild and high, Stirred the blue quiet of th' Italian sky, But calm and grateful, prayerful, and sincere, As Christian freemen only, gathering here, We dedicate our fair and lofty hall, Pillar and arch, entablature and wall, As Virtue's shrine, as Liberty's abode, Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom's God." The Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women was then holding a session in the city, and among the members present were some of the brightest and noblest women of the day, women with courage as calm and high to dare, as with hearts tender to feel for human woe. The Convention occupied the lecture-room of Pennsylvania Hall, under the main saloon. A strong desire having been expressed by many citizens to hear some of these able pleaders for the slave, notice was given that there would be a meeting in the main saloon on the evening of the 16th, at which Angelina, E.G. Weld, Maria Chapman, and others would speak. Up to the time of this announcement, no apprehension of any disturbance had been felt by the managers of the hall. So far all the meetings had been conducted without interruption; nor could anyone have supposed it possible that in a city renowned for its order and law, and possessing a large and efficient police force, a public outrage upon an assemblage of respectable citizens, many of them women, could be perpetrated. But it was soon to be shown how deeply the spirit of slavery had infused itself into the minds of the people of the free States, leading them to disregard the rights of individuals and to wantonly violate the sacred principles guaranteed by the Constitution of the country. During the day some threats of violence were thrown out, and _written_ placards were posted about the city inviting interference with the proposed meeting, _forcibly if necessary_. But this was regarded only as the expression of malice on the part of a few, or perhaps of an individual, and occasioned no alarm. Still, the precaution was taken to request the mayor to hold his police force in readiness to protect the meeting in case of need. The day passed quietly. Long before the time announced for the meeting, the hall, capable of containing three thousand people, was thronged, and, by the time the speakers arrived, every seat was filled, every inch of standing room was occupied, and thousands went away from the doors unable to obtain admittance. The audience was for the most part a highly respectable and intelligent one, and, notwithstanding the great crowd, was exceedingly quiet. William Lloyd Garrison opened the meeting with a short but characteristic speech, during which he was frequently interrupted by hisses and groans; and when he ended, some efforts were made to break up the meeting. In the midst of the confusion, Maria W. Chapman arose, calm, dignified, and, with a wave of her hand, as though to still the noise, began to speak, but, before she had gone far, yells from the outside proclaimed the arrival there of a disorderly rabble, and at once the confusion inside became so great, that, although the brave woman continued her speech, she was not heard except by those immediately around her. Sarah Grimké thus wrote of Mrs. Chapman's appearance on that occasion: "She is the most beautiful woman I ever saw; the perfection of sweetness and intelligence being blended in her speaking countenance. She arose amid the yells and shouts of the infuriated mob, the crash of windows and the hurling of stones. She looked to me like an angelic being descended amid that tempest of passion in all the dignity of conscious superiority." Then Angelina Weld, the bride of three days, came forward, and so great was the effect of her pure, beautiful presence and quiet, graceful manner, that in a few moments the confusion within the hall had subsided. With deep solemnity, and in words of burning eloquence, she gave her testimony against the awful wickedness of an institution which had no secrets from her. She was frequently interrupted by the mob, but their yells and shouts only furnished her with metaphors which she used with unshrinking power. More stones were thrown at the windows, more glass crashed, but she only paused to ask:-- "What is a mob? What would the breaking of every window be? Any evidence that we are wrong, or that slavery is a good and wholesome institution? What if that mob should now burst in upon us, break up our meeting, and commit violence upon our persons--would this be anything compared with what the slaves endure? No, no: and we do not remember them 'as bound with them,' if we shrink in the time of peril, or feel unwilling to sacrifice ourselves, if need be, for their sake. I thank the Lord that there is yet life enough left to feel the truth, even though it rages at it--that conscience is not so completely seared as to be unmoved by the truth of the living God." Here a shower of stones was thrown through the windows, and there was some disturbance in the audience, but quiet was again restored, and Angelina proceeded, and spoke for over an hour, making no further reference to the noise without, and only showing that she noticed it by raising her own voice so that it could be heard throughout the hall. Not once was a tremor or a change of color perceptible, and though the missiles continued to fly through the broken sashes, and the hootings and yellings increased outside, so powerfully did her words and tones hold that vast audience, that, imminent as seemed their peril, scarcely a man or woman moved to depart. She sat down amid applause that drowned all the noise outside. Abby Kelly, then quite a young woman, next arose and said a few words, her first public utterances. She was followed by gentle Lucretia Mott in a short but most earnest speech, and then this memorable meeting, the first of the kind where men and women acted together as moral beings, closed. There was a dense crowd in the streets around the hall as the immense audience streamed out, but though screams and all sorts of appalling noises were made, no violence was offered, and all reached their homes in safety. But the mob remained, many of its wretched members staying all night, assaulting every belated colored man who came along. The next morning the dregs of the populace, and some respectable _looking_ men again assembled around the doomed hall, but the usual meetings were held, and even the convention of women assembled in the lecture room to finish up their business. The evening was to have been occupied by a public meeting of the Wesleyan Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, but as the day waned to its close, the indications of approaching disturbance became more and more alarming. The crowd around the building increased, and the secret agents of slavery were busy inflaming the passions of the rabble against the abolitionists, and inciting it to outrage. Seeing this, and realizing the danger which threatened, the managers of the hall gave the building over to the protection of the mayor of the city, _at his request_. Of course the proposed meeting was postponed. All the mayor did was to appear in front of the hall, and, in a friendly tone, express to the mob the hope that it would not do anything disorderly, saying that he relied upon the men he saw before him, as his _policemen_, and he wished them "good evening!" The mob gave "three cheers for the mayor," and, as soon as he was out of sight, extinguished the gas lights in front of the building. The rest is soon told. Doors and windows were broken through, and with wild yells the reckless horde dashed in, plundered the Repository, scattering the books in every direction, and, mounting the stairways and entering the beautiful hall, piled combustibles on the Speaker's forum, and applied the torch to them, shrieking like demons,--as they were, for the time. A moment more, and the flames roared and crackled through the building, and though it was estimated that fifteen thousand persons were present, and though the fire companies were early on the scene, not one effort was made to save the structure so recently erected, at such great cost, and consecrated to such Christian uses. In a few hours the smouldering walls alone were left. Angelina Weld never again appeared in public. An accident soon after her marriage caused an injury of such a nature that her nervous system was permanently impaired, and she was ever after obliged to avoid all excitement or over-exertion. The period of her public labors was short, but how fruitful, how full of blessings to the cause of the slave and to the many who espoused it through her powerful appeals! Great was her grief; for, knowing now her capabilities, she had looked forward to renewed and still more successful work; but she accepted with sweet submission the cross laid upon her. Not a murmur arose to her lips. She was content to leave all to the Lord. He could find some new work for her to do. She would trust Him, and patiently wait. The loss of the services of one so richly endowed, so devoted, and so successful, was deeply felt by the friends of emancipation, and especially as at this important epoch efficient speakers were sorely needed, and two of the most efficient, Weld and Burleigh, were already, from overwork, taken from the platform. But though denied the privilege of again raising her voice in behalf of the oppressed, Angelina continued to plead for them through her pen. She could never forget the cause that could never forget her, and to her writings was transferred much of the force and eloquence of her speaking. Immediately after the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall, Mr. and Mrs. Weld, accompanied by Sarah Grimké, paid a visit to Mr. Weld's parents in Manlius, from which place, Sarah, writing to Jane Smith, says:-- "O Jane, it looks like almost too great a blessing for us three to be together in some quiet, humble habitation, living to the glory of God, and promoting the happiness of those around us; to be spiritually united, and to be pursuing with increasing zeal the great work of the abolition of slavery." The "quiet, humble habitation" was found at Fort Lee, on the Hudson, and there the happy trio settled down for their first housekeeping. CHAPTER XVI. They were scarcely settled amid their new surroundings before the sisters received a formal notice of their disownment by the Society of Friends because of Angelina's marriage. The notification, signed by two prominent women elders of the Society, expressed regret that Sarah and Angelina had not more highly prized their right of membership, and added an earnest desire that they might come to a sense of their real state, and manifest a disposition to condemn their deviations from the path of duty. Angelina replied without delay that they wished the discipline of the Society to have free course with regard to them. "It is our joy," she wrote, "that we have committed no offence for which Christ Jesus will disown us as members of the household of faith. If you regret that we have valued our right of membership so little, we equally regret that our Society should have adopted a discipline which has no foundation in the Bible or in reason; and we earnestly hope the time may come when the simple Gospel rule with regard to marriage, 'Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,' will be as conscientiously enforced as that sectarian one which prohibits the union of the Lord's own people if their shibboleth be not exactly the same. "We are very respectfully, in that love which knows no distinction in color, clime, or creed, your friends, "A.E.G. WELD. "SARAH M. GRIMKÉ." It will be noticed that in this reply Angelina avoids the Quaker phraseology, and neither she nor Sarah ever after used it, except occasionally in correspondence with a Quaker friend. Thus ended their connection with the Society of Friends. From that time they never attached themselves to any religious organization, but rested contentedly in the simple religion of Christ, illustrating by every act of their daily lives how near they were to the heart of all true religion. As I am approaching the limits prescribed for this volume, I can, in the space remaining to me, only note with any detail the chief incidents of the years which followed Angelina's marriage. I would like to describe at length the beautiful family life the trio created, and which disproved so clearly the current assertion that interest in public matters disqualifies woman for home duties or make these distasteful to her. In the case of Sarah and Angelina those duties were entered upon with joy and gratitude, and with the same conscientious zeal that had characterized their public labors. The simplicity and frugality, too, which marked all their domestic arrangements, and which neither thought it necessary to apologize for at any time, recall to one's mind the sweet pictures of Arcadian life over which goodness, purity, and innocence presided, creating an atmosphere of perfect inward and outward peace. Sarah's letters detail their every-day occupations, their division of labor, their culinary experiments, often failures,--for of practical domestic economy they had little knowledge, though they enjoyed the new experience like happy children. She tells of rambles and picnics along the Hudson, climbing rocks to get a fine view, halting under the trees to read together for a while, taking their simple dinner in some shady nook, and returning weary but happy to their "dear little No. 3," as she designates their house. "Oh, Jane," she writes, "words cannot tell the goodness of the Lord to us since we have sat down under the shadow of our own roof, and gathered around our humble board. Peace has flowed sweetly through our souls. The Lord has been in the midst, and blessed us with his presence, and the daily aspiration of our souls is: Lord, show us thy will concerning us." And in another letter she says, "We are delighted with our arrangement to do without a girl. Angelina boils potatoes to admiration, and says she finds cooking much easier than she expected." During the summer they were gratified by a visit from their good friend Jane, who, it appears, gave them some useful and much-needed lessons in the art of cookery. But about this time Sarah became converted to the Graham system of diet, which Mr. "Weld had adopted three, and Mrs. Weld two years before. Sarah thus writes of it:-- "We have heard Graham lectures, and read Alcott's 'Young Housekeeper,' and are truly thankful that the Lord has converted us to this mode of living, and that we are all of one heart and one mind. We believe it is the most conducive to health, and, besides, it is such an emancipation of woman from the toils of the kitchen, and saves so much precious time for purposes of more importance than eating and drinking. We have a great variety of dishes, and, to our taste, very savory. We can make good bread, and this with milk is an excellent meal. This week I am cook, and am writing this while my beans are boiling and pears stewing for dinner. We use no tea or coffee, and take our food cool." She then tells of the arrival one day of two friends from the city, just as they had sat down to their simple meal of rice and molasses. "But," she says, "we were very glad to see them, and with bread and milk, and pie without shortening, and hominy, we contrived to give them enough, and as they were pretty hungry they partook of it with tolerable appetite." Answering some inquiries from Jane Smith, Angelina writes:-- "As to how I have made out with cooking, it so happens that labor (planting a garden) gives Theodore such an appetite that everything is sweet to him, so that my rice and asparagus, potatoes, mush, and Indian bread all taste well, though some might think them not fit to eat." They had but one cooking day, when enough was generally prepared to last a week, so that very little time and mind was given to creature comforts; in fact, no more than was necessary to the preservation of health. Their motto literally was "to eat to live," and this they felt to be a part of that non-conformity to the world of which the apostle speaks, and after which Sarah, at least, felt she must still strive. Their furniture corresponded with the simplicity of their table. Angelina writes shortly after her marriage:-- "We ordered our furniture to be made of cherry, and quite enjoy the cheapness of our outfit as well as our manner of life; for the less we spend, the less the Anti-Slavery Society will have to pay my Theodore for his labors as editor of all the extra publications of the Society." Thus some high or unselfish motive inspired all their conduct and influenced every arrangement. Nothing superfluous or merely ornamental found a place with these true and zealous followers of Him whose precepts guided their lives. Everything in doors and out served a special purpose of utility, or suggested some duty or great moral aim. Angelina was exceedingly fond of flowers, but refrained from cultivating them, because of the time required, which she thought could be better employed. She felt she had no right to use one moment for her own selfish gratification which could be given to some more necessary work. Therefore, though both sisters were peculiarly gifted with a love of the beautiful, as their frequent descriptions of natural scenery show, they contented themselves, from principle, with the enjoyment of "glorious sunsets," and with the flowers of the field and wayside. Later they learned a different appreciation of all the innocent pleasures of life; but at the time I am describing, they had just emerged from Quaker asceticism, and in the flush of their new religion, and looking upon their past years as almost wasted, they were eager only to make amends for them. In one of her letters to her English friend, Angelina acknowledges the present from her of a large picture of a _Kneeling Slave_, and adds:-- "We purpose pasting it on binder's boards, binding it with colored paper, and fixing it over our mantelpiece. It is just such a speaking monument of suffering as we want in our parlor, and suits my fireboard most admirably. I first covered this with plain paper, and then arranged as well as I could about forty anti-slavery pictures upon it. I never saw one like it, but we hope other abolitionists will make them when they see what an ornamental and impressive article of furniture can thus be manufactured. We want those who come into our house to see at a glance that we are on the side of the oppressed and the poor." Sarah Douglass spent a day with them in September, and as I can have no more fitting place to show how conscientious were these rare spirits in their practical testimony against the color prejudice, I will quote a few passages from a letter written to Sarah Douglass after her departure from the circle where she had been treated as a most honored guest. Sarah Grimké begins as follows:-- "Thy letter, my beloved Sarah, was truly acceptable as an evidence of thy love for us, and because it told us one of our Lord's dear children had been comforted in being with us. It would have been truly grateful to have had thee a longer time with us, and we hope thy next visit may be less brief. By the way, dear, as I love frankness, I am going to tell thee what I have thought in reading thy note. It seemed to me thy proposal 'to spend a day' with us was made under a little feeling something like this: 'Well, after all, I am not quite certain I shall be an acceptable visitor.' I can only say that it is no surprise to me that thou shouldst be beset with such a temptation, but set a strong guard against this entrance to thy heart, lest the adversary poison all the springs of comfort. I want thee to rise above the suspicions which are so naturally aroused. They are among the subtle devices of Satan, by which he alienates us from Jesus, and makes us go mourning on our way with the language in our hearts: 'Is there not a cause?'" Angelina adds:-- "MY DEAR SARAH,--I can fully unite with my precious sister in all she has said relative to thy late visit to us. Theodore and I both felt surprised and disappointed that thou proposedst spending but one day with us when we had expected a visit of a week. It was indeed a comfort to receive such a letter from thee, dear, and yet there was much of pain mingled in the feeling. Thou thankest us for our 'Christian conduct.' In what did it consist? In receiving and treating thee as an equal, a sister beloved in the Lord? Oh, how humbling to receive such thanks! What a crowd of reflections throng the mind as we inquire, _Why_ does her full heart thus overflow with gratitude? Yes, how irresistibly are we led to contemplate the woes which iron-hearted prejudice inflicts on the oppressed of our land, the hidden sorrows they endure--the full cup of bitterness which is wrung out to them by the hands of professed followers of Him who is no respecter of persons. And oh, how these reflections ought to lead us to labor and to pray that the time may soon come when thou canst no longer write _such_ a letter! The Lord in his mercy has made our little household _one_ in sentiment on this subject, and we know we have been blessed in the exercise of those Christian feelings which He hath taught us to cherish, not only towards the outraged people of color, but towards that large class of individuals who serve in families, and are, at the same time, almost completely separated from human society and sympathy so far as their employers are concerned. "Let me tell thee, dear Sarah, how much good it did me to find that thy visit had made thee love my precious husband as a brother, and afforded thee an opportunity to _feel_ what manner of spirit is his. Now I greatly want thy dear mother to know him too, and cannot but believe she will come and visit us next summer." The gratitude of Sarah Douglass for the reception given her at Fort Lee was not surprising, considering how different such kindness was from the treatment she and her excellent mother had always received from the Society of Friends, of which they were members. Scarcely anything more damaging to the Christian spirit of the Society can be found than the testimony of this mother and daughter, which Sarah Grimké obtained and wrote out, but, I believe, never published. Before his marriage, Mr. Weld lodged, on principle, in a colored family in New York, even submitting to the inconvenience of having no heat in his room in winter, and bearing with singular charity and patience what Sarah calls the sanctimonious pride and Pharisaical aristocracy of his hosts. He, also, and the sisters when they were in the city, attended a colored church, which, however, became to Sarah, at least, a place of such "spiritual famine" that she gave up going. In the winter of 1839-40, when it became necessary to have more help in the household, a colored woman, Betsy Dawson by name, was sent for. She had been a slave in Colonel Grimké's family, and, falling to the share of Mrs. Frost when the estate was settled up, was by her emancipated. She was received into the family at Fort Lee as a friend, and so treated in every respect. Sarah expresses the pleasure it was to have one as a helper who knew and loved them all, and adds: "Besides I cannot tell thee how thankful we are that our heavenly Father has put it in our power to have one who was once a slave in our family to sit at our table and be with us as a sister cherished, to place her on an entire equality with, us in social intercourse, and do all we can to show her we feel for her as we, under like circumstances, would desire her to feel for us. I don't know what M.C. [a friend from New York] thought of our having her at table and in our parlor just like one of ourselves." Some time later, Angelina writes of another of the family slaves, Stephen, to whom they gave a home, putting him to do the cooking, lest, being unaccustomed to a Northern climate, he should suffer by exposure to outdoor work. He proved an eyesore in every way, but they retained him as long as it was possible to do so, and bore with him patiently, as no one else would have him. Mrs. Weld frequently allowed him to hire out for four or five hours a day to husk corn, etc., and was glad to give him this opportunity to earn something extra while she did his work at home. In short, wherever and whenever they could testify to their convictions of duty on this point, it was done unhesitatingly and zealously, without fear or favor of any man. We might consider the incidents I have related, and a dozen similar ones I could give, as evidence only of a desire to perform a religious duty, to manifest obedience to the command to do as they would be done by, while beneath still lay the bias of early training sustained by the almost universal feeling concerning the inferiority of the negro race. With people of such pure religious dedication, and such exalted views, it was perhaps not difficult to treat their ex-slaves as human beings, and the fact that they did so may not excite much wonder. But there came a time, then far in their future, when the sincerity of their convictions upon this matter of prejudice was most triumphantly vindicated. Such a vindication even they, with all their knowledge of the hidden evils of slavery, never dreamed could ever be required of _them_, but the manner in which they met the tremendous test was the crowning glory of their lives. In all the biographies I have read, such a manifestation of the spirit of Jesus Christ does not appear. This will be narrated in its proper place. Happy as the sisters were in their home, it must not be supposed that they had settled down to a life of ease and contented privacy, abandoning altogether the great work of their lives. Far from it. The time economized from household duties was devoted chiefly to private labor for the cause, from the public advocacy of which they felt they had only stepped aside for a time. Neither had any idea that this public work was over. Angelina writes to her friend in England soon after her marriage:-- "I cannot tell thee how I love this private life--how I have thanked my heavenly Father for this respite from public labor, or how earnestly I have prayed that whilst I am thus dwelling at ease I may not forget the captives of my land, or be unwilling to go forth again on the high places of the field, to combat the giant sin of Slavery with the smooth stones of the river of Truth, if called to do so by Him who put me forth and went before me in days that are past. My dear Theodore entertains the noblest views of the rights and responsibilities of woman, and will never lay a straw in the way of my lecturing. He has many times strengthened my hands in the work, and often tenderly admonished me to keep my eye upon my great Leader, and my heart in a state of readiness to go forth whenever I am called out. I humbly trust I may, but as earnestly desire to be preserved from going before I hear a voice saying unto me, 'This is the way, walk in it, and I will be thy shield and thy buckler.' This was the promise which was given me before, and how faithfully it was fulfilled, my soul knoweth right well." Sarah too, writes to Sarah Douglass-- "I have thought much of my present situation, laid aside from active service, but I see no pointing of the divine finger to go forth, and I believe the present dispensation of rest has been granted to us not only as a reward for past faithfulness, but as a means of personal advancement in holiness, a time of deep searching of heart, when the soul may contemplate itself, and seek nearer and fuller and higher communion with its God." And again she says:-- "It is true my nature shrinks from public work, but whenever the mandate goes forth to declare on the housetops that which I have heard in the ear, I shall not dare to hold back. I conclude that whenever my Father needs my services, He will prepare me to obey the call by exercise of mind." In the meanwhile Sarah finished and published a most important contribution to the arguments on the woman's rights subject. This was a small volume of letters on the "Equality of the Sexes," commenced during her lecturing tour, and addressed to Mary S. Parker, president of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Written in a gentle, reverent spirit, but clothed in Sarah's usual forcible language, they not only greatly aided the cause which lay so near her heart, but relieved and strengthened many tender consciences by their strong arguments. An extract or two from a letter written to Sarah by Angelina and Theodore early in the autumn of 1838 will show the tender relations existing between these three, and which continued undisturbed by all the changes and trials of succeeding years. In September, Sarah went to Philadelphia to attend the Annual Anti-Slavery Convention. Angelina writes to her a few days after her departure:-- "We have just come up from our evening meal, my beloved sister, and are sitting in our little study for a while before taking our moonlight ramble on the river bank. After thou left us, I cleared up the dishes, and then swept the house; got down to the kitchen just in time for dinner, which, though eaten alone, was, I must confess, very much relished, for exercise gives a good appetite, thou knowest. I then set my beans to boil whilst I dusted, and was upstairs waiting, ready dressed, for the sound of the 'Echo's' piston. Soon I heard it, and blew my whistle, which was _not_ responded to, and I began to fear my Theodore was not on board. But I blew again, and the glad response came merrily over the water, and I thought I saw him. In a little while he came, and gave me all your parting messages. On Second Day the weather was almost cold, and we were glad to take a run at noon up the Palisades and sun ourselves on the rock at the first opening. Returning, we gathered some field beans, and some apples for stewing, as our fruit was nearly out. In the evening it was so cool that we thought a fire would be more comfortable, so we sat in the kitchen, paring apples, shelling beans, and talking over the Bible argument;[8] and, as we had a fire, I thought we had better stew the apples at once. This was done to save time the next day, but I burnt them sadly. However, thou knowest they were just as nice to our Theodore, who _never_ complains of anything. Third Day evening we took a walk up the Palisades. The moon shone most beautifully, throwing her mantle of light all abroad over the blue arch of heaven, the gently flowing river, and the woods and vales around us. I could not help thinking, if earth was so lovely and bright, what must be the glories of that upper Temple which needeth not the light of the sun or of the moon. O sister, shall we ever wash our robes so white in the blood of the Lamb as to be clean enough to enter that pure and holy Temple of the Most High? We returned to our dear little home, and went to bed by the lamp of heaven; for we needed no other, so brightly did she shine through our windows. We remembered thee, dear sister, in our little seasons of prayer at the opening and closing of each day. We pray the Lord to bring thee back to us in the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of peace, and to make our house a _home_ to thy weary, tossed, afflicted spirit. We feel it a great blessing to have thee under our roof. Thy room looks very desolate; for, though the sun shines brightly in it, I find, after all, _thou_ art the light of it." [8] This was the argument which Angelina heard Mr. Weld make before the A.S. Convention in New York two years before, and which was afterwards published by the A.A.S. Society. He was now revising it for a new edition. It made many converts to emancipation. Among them was the Rev. Dr. Brisbane of South Carolina, a slave-owner, who, after reading it, sat down to answer and refute it; but, before proceeding half way, he became convinced that he was wrong, and Weld right. Acting upon this conviction, he freed his slaves, went to Cincinnati, joined the abolition ranks, and became one of their most eloquent advocates. Theodore adds a postscript, addresses Sarah as "My dearly loved sister," and says, "As dear Angy remarks, your room does look so chill and desolate, and your place at table, and your chair in our little morning and evening circle, that we talk about it a dozen times a day. But we rejoice that the Master put it into your heart to go and give your testimony for our poor, suffering brothers and sisters, wailing under bonds, and we pray without ceasing that He who sent will teach, strengthen, and help you greatly to do for Him and the bleeding slave." Debarred from lecturing by the condition of his throat, Mr. Weld was a most untiring worker in the Anti-Slavery office in New York, from which he received a small salary. His time out of office hours was employed in writing for the different anti-slavery papers, and in various editorial duties. Soon after his marriage he began the preparation of a book, which, when issued, produced perhaps a greater sensation throughout the country than anything that had yet been written or spoken. This was, "American Slavery as it is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses," a book of two hundred and ten pages, and consisting of a collection of facts relating to the actual condition and treatment of slaves; facts drawn from slaveholders themselves, and from Southern publications. The design was to make the South condemn herself, and never was success more complete. Of all the lists of crimes, all the records of abominations, of moral depravity, of marvellous inhumanity, of utter insensibility to the commonest instincts of nature, the civilized world has never read anything equal to it. Placed by the side of Fox's "Book of Martyrs," it outrivals it in all its revolting characters, and calls up the burning blush of shame for our country and its boasted Christian civilization. Notwithstanding all that had been written on the subject, the public was still comparatively ignorant of the sufferings of the slaves, and the barbarities inflicted upon them. Mr. Weld thought the state of the abolition cause demanded a work which would not only prove by argument that slavery and cruelty were inseparable, but which would contain a mass of incontrovertible facts, that would exhibit the horrid brutality of the system. Nearly all the papers, most of them of recent date, from which the extracts were taken, were deposited at the office of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, and all who thought the atrocities described in Weld's book were incredible, were invited to call and examine for themselves. This book was the most effective answer ever given to the appeal made against free discussion, based on the Southampton massacre. It was, in fact, an offset of the horrors of that bloody affair, giving, as it did, a picture of the deeper horrors of slavery. It was the first adequate disclosure of this "bloodiest picture in the book of time," which had yet been made, and all who read it felt that, fearful as was the Virginia tragedy, the system which provoked it included many things far worse, and demanded investigation and discussion. Issued in pamphlet form, the "Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses," was extensively circulated over the country, and most advantageously used by anti-slavery lecturers and advocates; and it is not too much to say that by awakening the humanity and pride of the people to end this national disgrace, it made much easier the formation of the anti-slavery political party. In the preparation of this work, Mr. Weld received invaluable assistance from his wife and sister. Not only was the testimony of their personal observation and experience given over their own names, but many files of Southern papers were industriously examined for such facts as were needed, and which Mr. Weld arranged. Early in January, 1839, Sarah writes:-- "I do not think we ever labored more assiduously for the slave than we have done this fall and winter, and, although our work is of the kind that may be privately performed, yet we find the same holy peace in doing it which we found in the public advocacy of the cause." Referring a little later to this work, she says: "We have been almost too busy to look out on the beautiful winter landscape, and have been wrought up by our daily researches almost to a frenzy of justice, intolerance, and enthusiasm to crush the viper that is eating out the vitals of the nation. Oh, what a blessed privilege to be engaged in labor for the oppressed! We often think, if the slaves are never emancipated, we are richly rewarded by the hallowed influence of abolition principles on our own hearts." In a recent letter to me, Mr. Weld makes some interesting statements respecting this work. I will give them in his own words:-- "The fact is, those dear souls spent six months, averaging more than six hours a day, in searching through thousands upon thousands of Southern newspapers, marking and cutting out facts of slave-holding disclosures for the book. I engaged of the Superintendent of the New York Commercial Reading-Room all his papers published in our Southern States and Territories. These, after remaining upon the files one month, were taken off and sold. Thus was gathered the raw material for the manufacture of 'Slavery As It Is.' After the work was finished, we were curious to know how many newspapers had been examined. So we went up to our attic and took an inventory of bundles, as they were packed heap upon heap. When our count had reached _twenty thousand_ newspapers, we said: 'There, let that suffice.' Though the book had in it many thousand facts thus authenticated by the slave-holders themselves, yet it contained but a tiny fraction of the nameless atrocities gathered from the papers examined." Besides this absorbing occupation, the sisters busied themselves that winter getting up a petition to Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and walked many miles, day after day, to obtain signatures, meeting with patience, humility, and sweetness the frequent rebuffs of the rude and the ignorant, feeling only pity for them, and gratitude to God who had touched and softened their own hearts and enlightened their minds. They received repeated invitations from the different anti-slavery organizations to again enter the lecture field, and great disappointment was felt by all who had once listened to them that they should have retired from public work. Sarah speaks of attending "meeting," as, from habit, she called it, and doubtless they all went regularly, as Mr. Weld was a communicant of the Presbyterian Church, and Mrs. Weld and Sarah were still sound on all the fundamental points of Christian doctrine. During some portion of every Sunday, Mrs. Weld was in the habit of visiting among the very poor, white and colored, and preaching to them the Gospel of peace and good will. In her peculiarly tender and persuasive way, she opened to those unhappy and benighted souls the promises and hopes which supported her, and lavished upon them the treasures of an eloquence that thousands had and would still have crowded to listen to. There were none to applaud in those sorrowful abodes, but her words of courage and consolation lifted many a despondent heart from the depths, while her own faith in the love and mercy of her heavenly Father brought confidence and comfort to many a benumbed and wavering soul. In December, 1839, the happiness of the little household was increased by the birth of a son, who received the name of Charles Stuart, in loving remembrance of the eminent English philanthropist, with whom Mr. Weld had been as a brother, and whom he regarded as living as near the angels as mortal man could live. The advent of this child was not only an inexpressible blessing to the affectionate hearts of the father and mother, but to Sarah it seemed truly a mark of divine love to her, compensating her for the home ties and affections once so nearly within her grasp, and still often mourned for. She describes her feelings as she pressed the infant in her arms and folded him to her breast as a rhapsody of wild delight. "Oh, the ecstacy and the gratitude!" she exclaimed: "How I opened the little blanket and peeped in to gaze, with swimming eyes, at my treasure, and looked upon that face forever so dear!" For months before the birth of her child, Mrs. Weld had read carefully different authors on the treatment of children, and felt herself prepared at every point with the best theories derived from Combes' "Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy," and kindred works. It is rather amusing to read how systematically this baby was trained, and how little he appreciated all the wise theories; how he protested against going to sleep by rule; how he wouldn't be bathed in cold water; how he was fed, a tablespoonful at a time, five times during the twenty-four hours,--at 8, 12, 4, 8, and 3 in the morning; how his fretting at last induced his Aunt Sarah to take the responsibility of giving him a little license with his bottle, when, horrified at his gluttony, she was, at the same time, convinced that the child had been slowly starving ever since his birth. Allowed more indulgence in food, he soon stopped fretting, and became a healthy, lively baby. Angelina, writing to a friend, speaks of the blessed influence the child was exerting over them all. "The idea," she says, "of a baby exercising moral influence never came into my mind until I felt its power on my own heart. I used to think all a parent's reward for early care and anxiety was reaped in after-life, save the enjoyment of an infant as a pretty plaything. But the Lord has taught me differently, and woe be unto me if I do not profit by the instructions of this little teacher sent from God." It was about this time that the injury referred to in the last chapter was received, which frustrated all Angelina's hopes and plans for continued public service for the slave, and condemned her, with all her rare intellectual gifts, to a quiet life. The sweet submission with which she bore this trial proved how great was the peace which possessed her soul, and kept her ready for whatever it seemed good for the Father to send her. Henceforth, shut out from the praises and plaudits of men, in her own home, among her neighbors and among the poor and afflicted, quietly and unobtrusively she fulfilled every law of love and duty. And though during the remainder of her life she was subject to frequent weakness and intense pain, all was borne with such fortitude and patience that only her husband and sister knew that she suffered. In the latter part of February, 1840, Mr. Weld, having purchased a farm of fifty acres at Belleville, New Jersey, removed his family there. Angelina, announcing the change to Jane Smith, says:-- "Yes, we have left the sweet little village of Fort Lee, a spot never to be forgotten by me as the place where my Theodore and I first lived together, and the birthplace of my darling babe, the scene of my happiest days. There, too, my precious sister ministered with untiring faithfulness to my wants when sick, and there, too, I welcomed _thee_ for the first time under my roof." To their new home they brought the simplicity of living to which they had adhered in their old one, a simplicity which, with their more commodious house, enabled them to exercise the broad hospitality which they had been obliged to deny themselves in a measure at Fort Lee. All the good deeds done under this sacred name of hospitality during their fourteen years' residence at Belleville can never be known. Few ever so diligently sought, or so cheerfully accepted, opportunities for the exercise of every good word and work. Scarcely a day passed that they did not feel called upon to make some sacrifice of comfort or convenience for the comfort or convenience of others; and more than once the sacrifice involved the risk of health and life. But in true humility and with an unwavering trust in God, they looked away from themselves and beyond ordinary considerations. One of their first acts, after their removal, was to take back to their service the incompetent Stephen whom they had been forced to discharge from Fort Lee, and who had lived a precarious life afterwards. They gave him work on the farm, paid him the usual wages, and patiently endeavored to correct his faults. A young nephew in delicate health was also added to their household; and, a few months later, Angelina having heard that an old friend and her daughter in Charleston were in pecuniary distress and feeble health, wrote and offered them a home with her for a year. "They have no means of support, and are anxious to leave Carolina," wrote Angelina to Jane Smith; "we will keep them until their health is recruited, their minds rested, and some situation found for them where they can earn their own living. We know not," she adds, "whom else the Lord may send us, and only pray Him to help us to fulfil His will towards all whose lot may be cast among us." The visitors to the Belleville farm--chiefly old and new anti-slavery friends--were numerous, and were always received with a cordiality which left no room to doubt its sincerity. At one time they received into their family a poor young man from Jamaica, personally a stranger, but of whose labors as a self-appointed missionary among the recently emancipated slaves of the West Indies they had heard. He had labored for three years, supporting himself as he could, until he was utterly broken down in health, when he came back to die. His friendless situation appealed to the warmest sympathy of the Welds, and he was brought to their hospitable home. The pleasantest room in the house was given to him, and every attention bestowed upon him, until death came to his relief. The people of their neighborhood soon learned to know where they could confidently turn for help in any kind of distress. It would be difficult to tell the number of times that one or the other of the great-hearted trio responded to the summons from a sick or dying bed, and gave without stint of their sympathy, their time, and their labor. Once, following only her own conviction of duty, Angelina left her home to go and nurse a wretched colored man and his wife, ill with small-pox and abandoned by everyone. She stayed with them night and day until they were so far recovered as to be able to help themselves. What a picture is this! That humble cabin with its miserable occupants--and they negroes--ill with a loathsome disease, suffering, praying for help, but deserted by neighbors and friends. Suddenly a fair, delicate face bends over them; a sweet, low voice bids them be comforted, and gentle hands lift the cooling draught to their parched lips, bathe their fevered brows, make comfortable their poor bed, and then, angel as she appears to them, stations herself beside them, to minister to them like the true sister of mercy she was. In this action, we may well suppose, Angelina was not encouraged by her husband or sister, but it was a sacred principle with them never to oppose anything which she conscientiously saw it was her duty to do. When this appeared to her so plain that she felt she could not hold back from it, they committed her to the Lord, and left their doubts and anxieties with Him. She never shrank from the meanest offices to the sick and suffering, though their performance might be followed, as was often the case, by faintness and nausea. She would return home exhausted, but cheerful, and grateful that she had been able to help "one of God's suffering children." In other ways the members of this united household were diligent in good works. If a neighbor required a few hundred dollars to save the foreclosure of a mortgage, the combined resources of the family were taxed to aid him; if a poor student needed a helping hand in his preparation for college, or for teaching, it was gladly extended to him--perhaps his board and lodging given him for six months or a year--with much valuable instruction thrown in. The instances of charity of this kind were many, and were performed with such a cheerful spirit that Sarah only incidentally alludes to the increase of their cares and work at such times. In fact, their roof was ever a shelter for the homeless, a home for the friendless; and it is pleasant to record that the return of ingratitude, so often made for benevolence of this kind, was never their portion. They always seem to have had the sweet satisfaction of knowing, sooner or later, that their kindness was not thrown away or under-estimated. Besides the work of the farm, Mr. Weld interested himself in all the local affairs of his neighborhood. His energy, common sense, and enthusiasm pushed forward many a lagging improvement, while the influence of his moral and intellectual views was felt in every household. He taught the young men temperance, and the dignity of honest labor; to the young women he preached self-reliance, contempt for the frivolities of fashion, and the duty of making themselves independent. He became superintendent of the public schools of the township, and gave to them his warmest and most active services. Sarah, although always ready to second Angelina in every charity, found her chief employment at home. She relieved her sister almost entirely of the care of the children, for in the course of years two more little ones were given to them, and she lessened the expenses by attending to household work, which would otherwise have called for another servant. After a short time, Mr. Weld's father, mother, sister, and brother, all invalids, came to live near them, claiming much of their sympathy and their care. Their niece also, the daughter of Mrs. Frost, now married, and the mother of children, took up her residence in the neighborhood, and Aunt Sai, as the children called her, and as almost every one else came, in time, to call her, found even fuller occupation for heart and hands. Her love for children was intense, and she had the rare faculty of being able to bring her intelligence down to theirs. Angelina's children were literally as her own, on whom she ever bestowed the tenderest care, and with whose welfare her holiest affections were intertwined. She often speaks of loving them with "all but a mother's love," of having them "enshrined in her heart of hearts," of "receiving through them the only cordial that could have raised a heart bowed by sorrow and crushing memories." In one of her letters she says: "I live for Theodore and Angelina and the children, those blessed comforters to my poor, sad heart," and, during an absence from home, she writes to Angelina:-- "I have enjoyed being with my friends: still there is a longing, a yearning after my children. I miss the sight of those dear faces, the sound of those voices that comes like music to my ears." In a letter to Sarah Douglass, written towards the close of their residence in Belleville, she says:--- "In our precious children my desolate heart found a sweet response to its love. They have saved me from I know not what of horrible despair, or rushing into some new and untried and unsanctified effort to let off the fire that consumed me. Crushed, mutilated, torn, they comforted and cheered me, and furnished me with objects of interest which drew me from myself. I feel that they were the gift of a pitying Father, and that to love and cherish them is my highest manifestation of love to the Giver." As the children grew, the parents began to feel the difficulty of educating them properly without other companions, and it was at last decided to take a few children into the family to be instructed with their own. This was the beginning of another important chapter in their lives. As educators Mr. and Mrs. Weld very soon developed such rare ability, that although they had thought of limiting the number of pupils to two or three, so many were pressed upon them, with such good reasons for their acceptance, that the two or three became a dozen, and were with difficulty kept at that figure. In this new life their trials were many, their labor great, and the pecuniary compensation exceedingly moderate; but it is inspiring to read from Sarah the accounts of Theodore's courage--"always ready to take the heaviest end of every burden," and of Angelina's cheerfulness; and from Angelina the frequent testimony to Sarah's patience and fidelity. It took this dear Aunt Sai many years to learn to like teaching, especially as she never had any talent for governing, save by love, and this method was not always appreciated. With their new and exacting work, the farm, of course, had to be given up, and was finally sold. In 1852 the Raritan Bay Association, consisting of thirty or forty educated and cultured families of congenial tastes, was formed at Eagleswood, near Perth Amboy, New Jersey; and a year later Mr. and Mrs. Weld were invited to join the Association, and take charge of its educational department. They accepted in the hope of finding in the change greater social advantages for themselves and their children, with less responsibility and less labor; for of these last the husband, wife, and sister, in their Belleville school, had had more than they were physically able to endure longer. Their desire and plan was to establish, with the children of the residents at Eagleswood, a school also for others, and to charge such a moderate compensation only as would enable the middle classes to profit by it. In this project, as with every other, no selfish ambition found a place. They removed to Eagleswood in the autumn of 1854. And now, as I am nearing the end of my narrative, this seems to be the place to say a few words relative to the religious views into which the two sisters finally settled. We have followed them through their various conflicts from early youth to mature age, and have seen in their several changes of belief that there was no fickleness, no real inconsistency. They sought the truth, and at different times thought they had found it. But it was the truth as taught in Christ Jesus, the simple doctrine of the Cross they wanted, the preaching and practice of love for God, and for the meanest, the weakest, the lowest of His children. The spiritual conflicts through which they passed, prepared them to see the nothingness of all outward forms, and they came at last to reject the so-called orthodox creed, and to look only to God for help and comfort. During the entire period of Sarah's connection with religious organizations, and even from her very first religious impressions, she found it difficult to accept the doctrine of the Atonement; and yet she professed and tried to think she believed it, but only because the Bible, which she accepted as a revelation from God, taught it. That her reason rebelled against it is shown in her frequent prayers to be delivered from this great temptation of the arch enemy, and her deep repentance whenever she lapsed into a state of doubt. The fear that she might come to reject this fundamental dogma was--at least up to the time when she was driven from the Quaker Church--one of her most terrible trials, causing her at intervals more agony than all else put together. But the worshipful element was so strong in Sarah that she could not, even after her reason had satisfied her conscience on this point, give up this Christ at whose feet she had learned her most precious lessons of faith and meekness and gentleness and long-suffering, and whom she had accepted and adored as her intermediary before an awful Jehovah. In her whole life there appears to me nothing more beautiful than this full, tender, abiding love of Jesus, and I believe it to have been the inspiration always of all that was loveliest and grandest in her character. In one of her letters, written while at Belleville, she says:-- "I cannot grasp the idea of an Infinite Being; but, without perplexing myself with questions which I cannot solve, everything around me proclaims the presence and the government of an intelligent, law-abiding Law-giver, and I believe implicitly in his power and his love. But I must have the Friend of sinners to rest in." And again: "In one sense, as Creator and Benefactor, I feel this Infinite Being to be my Father, but I want a Jesus whom I can approach as a fellow creature, yet who is so nearly allied to God that I can look up to Him with reverence, and love Him and lie in His bosom." And later, in a letter to Gerrit Smith, she says:-- "God is love, and whoso dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him. O friends, but for this faith, this anchor to the soul both sure and steadfast, I know not what would have become of us in the sweep which there has been of what we called the doctrines of Christianity from our minds. They have passed away like the shadows of night, but the glorious truth remains that the Lord of love and mercy reigns, and great peace have they who do His will." Their increasingly liberal views, and their growing indifference to most of the established forms in religion, drew upon them the severe censure of their Charleston relatives, and finally, when, about 1847, it came to be known that they no longer considered the Sabbath in a sacred light, their sister Eliza wrote to them that all personal intercourse must end between them and her, and that her doors would be forever closed against them. Angelina's answer, covering four full pages of foolscap, was most affectionate; but, while she expressed her sorrow at the feeling excited against them, she could not regret that they had been brought from error to truth. She argued the point fully, patiently giving all the best authorities concerning the substitution of the Christian for the Jewish Sabbath, and against their sister's assertion that the former was a divine institution. "When I began to understand," she says, "what the gift of the Holy Spirit really was, then all outwardisms fell off. I did not throw them off through force of argument or example of others, but all reverence for them died in my heart. I could not help it; it was unexpected to me, and I wondered to find even the Sabbath gone. And now, to give to God alone the ceaseless worship of my life is all my creed, all my desire. Oh, for this pure, exalted state, how my soul pants after it! In my nursery and kitchen and parlor, when ministering to the common little wants of my family, and encountering the fretfulness and waywardness of my children, oh, for the pure worship of the soul which can enable me to meet and bear all the _little_ trials of life in quietness and love and patience. This is the religion of Christ, and I feel that no other can satisfy me or meet the wants of human nature. I cannot sanction any other, and I dare not teach any other to my precious children." Thus it came to pass with them and with Theodore also, that to love Jesus more, and to follow more and more after him, became the sum of their religion. With increasing years and wider experiences, their views broadened into the most comprehensive liberality, but the high worship of an infinite God, and the sweet reverence for his purest disciple never left them. CHAPTER XVII. In a letter to Dr. Harriot Hunt, Sarah Grimké thus describes Eagleswood:-- "It was a most enchanting spot. Situated on the Raritan Bay and River, just twenty-five miles from New York, and sixty miles from Philadelphia, in sight of the beautiful lower bay and of the dark Neversink Hills, all its surroundings appeal to my sense of the beautiful. In rambles through the woods or along the shore, new charms are constantly presented. The ever-varying face of the bay alone is a source of ceaseless enjoyment, and with the sound of its waves, sometimes dashing impetuously, sometimes murmuring softly, the eye, the ear, and the soul are filled with wonder and delight." In this beautiful spot a commodious stone building was erected, suitable for association purposes. One end was divided into flats for a limited number of families; the other into school-rooms, dormitories, and parlors for social uses, while the centre contained the refectory for pupils and teachers, of whom there was an efficient corps, and dining-rooms for the other residents and their visitors. Several families of intelligence and culture resided in the immediate neighborhood, adding much to the social life of the place. All who were so fortunate as to be members of the Eagleswood family during Mr. Weld's administration must often look back with the keenest pleasure to the days passed there. It seems to me there can never be such a centre to such a circle as the Welds drew around them. Here gathered, at different times, many of the best, the brightest, the broadest minds of the day. Here came James G. Birney, Wm. H. Channing, Henry W. Bellows, O.B. Frothingham, Dr. Chapin, Wm. H. Furness, Wm. Cullen Bryant, the Collyers, Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith, Moncure D. Conway, James Freeman Clarke, Joshua R. Giddings, Youmans, and a host of others whose names were known throughout the land. Here, too, came artists and poets for a few days' inspiration, and weary men of business for a little rest and intellectual refreshment, and leaders of reform movements, attracted by the liberal atmosphere of the place. Nearly all of these, invited by Mr. Weld, gave to the pupils and their families and friends, assembled in the parlors, something of themselves,--some personal experience, perhaps, or a lecture or short essay, or an insight into their own especial work and how it was done. The amount of pleasant and profitable instruction thus imparted was incalculable; while the after discussions and conversation were as enjoyable as might be expected from the friction of such minds. Seldom, if ever, in the famous _salons_ of Europe were better things said or higher topics treated than in the Eagleswood parlors. All the rights and wrongs of humanity received here earnest consideration; while questions of general interest, politics, religion, the arts and sciences, even the last new novel or poem, had each its turn. Thoreau, also, spent many days at Eagleswood, and spoke often to the pupils; and A. Bronson Alcott gave them a series of his familiar lectures. Here, on Sundays, Theodore D. Weld delivered lay sermons, so full of divine light and love, of precious lessons of contempt for all littleness, of patience with the weaknesses of our fellow-men, that few could listen without being inspired with higher and holier purposes in life. Here James G. Birney died, in 1857, and was buried in the beautiful little cemetery on the crest of the hill. Here were brought and interred the bodies of Stevens and Hazlitt, two of John Brown's mistaken but faithful apostles. Here stirring lessons of patriotism were learned in 1860-61, and from this place went forth, at the first call, some of the truest defenders of the liberties of the nation. At Eagleswood, Mr. Weld and his faithful wife and sister passed some of their most laborious as well as some of their most pleasant and satisfactory years. They did not find the association all or even the half of what they had expected. "We had indulged the delightful hope," writes Sarah, "that Theodore would have no cares outside of the schoolroom, and Angelina would have leisure to pursue her studies and aid in the cause of woman. Her heart is in it, and her talents qualify her for enlarged usefulness. She was no more designed to serve tables than Theodore to dig potatoes. But verily, to use a homely phrase, we have jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire in point of leisure, for there are innumerable sponges here to suck up every spare moment; but dear Nina is a miracle of hope, faith, and endurance." In the new school Angelina taught history, for which she was admirably qualified, while Sarah taught French, and was also book-keeper, both of which offices were distasteful to her because of her conscious incompetency. She did herself great injustice, as the results of her work showed, but it required a great mental struggle to reconcile herself to it in the beginning. "I am driven to it," she says, "by a stern sense of duty. I feel its responsibilities and my own insufficiency so deeply, that I never hear the school bell with pleasure, and seldom enter the schoolroom without a sinking of the heart, a dread as of some approaching catastrophe. Oh, if I had only been developed into usefulness in early life, how much happier I should have been and would be now. From want of training, I am all slip-shod, and all I do, whether learning or teaching, is done slip-shod fashion. However, I must try and use the fag-end of me that is left, to the most advantage." In order to do this, although sixty-one years old, she set earnestly to work to brush up her intellectual powers and qualify herself as far as possible for her position. She took French lessons daily, that she might improve her accent and learn the modern methods of teaching, and for months after she entered the Eagleswood school her reading was confined to such books as could enlighten her most on her especial work. She was rewarded by finding her interest in it constantly increasing, and she would doubtless have learned to love it, if, as she expressed it, her heart, soul, and mind had not been so nearly absorbed by the woman movement. Age and reflection had not only modified her views somewhat on this subject, but had given her a more just appreciation of the real obstacles in the way of the enfranchisement of her sex. Speaking of Horace Mann, she says:-- "He will not help the cause of woman greatly, but his efforts to educate her will do a greater work than he anticipates. Prepare woman for duty and usefulness, and she will laugh at any boundaries man may set for her. She will as naturally fall into her right position as the feather floats in the air, or the pebble sinks in the water." And at another time she writes: "I feel more and more that woman's work is inside, that the great battle must first be fought within, and the conquest obtained over her love of admiration, her vanity, her want of moral courage, her littleness, ere she is prepared to use her rights without abusing them. Women must come into the arena with men, not to increase the number of potsherds, but to elevate the standard of right." Her ideal of womanhood was very high, and comprehended an education so different from the usual one, that she seldom ventured to unfold it. But she longed to do something towards it, and there is no doubt that but for home duties, which she felt were paramount, she would have undertaken a true missionary work of regeneration among women, especially of the lower classes. Many sleepless nights were passed pondering upon the subject. At one time she thought of editing a paper, then of studying law, that she might sometimes be able to advise and protect the weak and defenceless of her sex. She went so far in this as to consult an eminent lawyer in Philadelphia, but was discouraged by him. Then she considered the medical profession as opening to her a door of influence and usefulness among poor women. Sarah Douglass, who was a successful medical lecturer among the colored women of Philadelphia and New York, encouraged her friend in this idea, and urged her to take a course of lectures. "I would dearly like to do as you say," Sarah Grimké answered, "but it must not be in Philadelphia. I cannot draw a long breath there, intellectual or moral. Freedom to live as my conscience dictates, to give free utterance to my thoughts, to have contact with those who are pressing after progress and whose watchword is onward, is needful to me. In Philadelphia there is an atmosphere of repression that would destroy me. Ground to powder as I was, in the mill of bigotry and superstition, I shudder at the thought of encountering again the same suffering I went through there. Indeed, I wonder I was not altogether stultified and dried up beyond the power of revivification, when the spring came to my darkened soul after that long, long winter.... There must be something in this wide, progressive world for me to do, but I must wait patiently to see what the future has in store for me." All this, from a woman in her sixty-second year, shows how fresh was still her interest in humanity, and how little her desires for usefulness and improvement were dampened by age. But Angelina's continued delicate health kept her from carrying out any of her plans. She could see no way of escape consistent with duty and her devotion to the children, and she cheerfully submitted to the inevitable. But she could never bring herself to be satisfied with the Association life. She had had no ideal about it, no golden dreams, but joined it because she could not be separated from those she loved, and, with singular reasoning, she put one thousand dollars into it, because, if there was to be a failure and loss, she wished to share it with her sister and brother. But she had no affinity for living together in a great hotel, and it fretted her much, also, to see Mr. and Mrs. Weld taking constantly increasing burdens upon themselves as the school increased. Her longings, for their sake, for a little quiet home, are very pathetic. But she never allowed her anxieties to affect her intercourse in the household; on the contrary, no one was more full of life and good humor than she. Her favorite maxim was: "Bravely to meet our trials is true heroism; to bear them cheerfully, an exhibition of strength and fortitude infinitely beyond trying to get rid of them." But it is doubtful, after all, if everything else had been favorable to it, that Sarah could have brought herself to leave Angelina and the children. She says herself:-- "A separation from the darling children who have brightened a few years of my lonely and sorrowful life overwhelms me when I think of it as the probable result of any change. They seem to be the links that bind me to life, the stars that shed light on my path, the beings in whom past, present, and future enjoyments are centred, without whom existence would have no charms." All through her letters we see that, though generally cheerful, and often even merry, there were bitter moments in this devoted woman's life, moments when all the affection with which she was surrounded failed to fill the measure of her content. The old wounds would still sometimes bleed and the heart ache for home joys all her own. Writing to Jane Smith in 1852, she says: "I chide myself that I am not happier than I am, surrounded by so many blessings, but there are times when I feel as though the sun of earthly bliss had set for me. I know not what would have become of me but for Angelina's children. They have strewed my solitary path with flowers, and gemmed my sky with stars. My heart has brooded o'er sorrows untold, until life has seemed an awful blank, humanity a cheat, and myself an outcast. Then have come the soft accents of my children's voices, and they have spoken to me so lovingly, that I have turned from my bitter thoughts and have said: 'Forgive thy poor, weak servant, Lord.'" All through Sarah's life, children had a great attraction for her. Even amid her cares and doubts at Eagleswood she writes: "Surrounded by all these dear young people, and drinking in from their exuberance, and scarcely living my own life, I cannot but be cheerful." And describing an evening in the school parlor, when she joined in the Virginia reel, she says: "The children make one feel young if we will only be children with them. I owe them so much that I shall try to be cheerful to the end of my days." And in this school, where boys and girls of all ages and all temperaments mingled, "Aunt Sai" was the great comforter and counsellor. Her inexhaustible tenderness and mother-love blessed all who came near her and soothed all who had a heartache. The weak and erring found in her a frank but pitying rebuker; the earnest and good, a kind friend and wise helper, and a child never feared to go to her either to ask a favor or to confess a fault. At Eagleswood the Welds kept up as far as practicable their frugal habits, though, soon after their establishment, they all modified their Graham diet so far as to take meat once a day. Sarah's economy, especially in trifles, was remarkable, almost as much so as the untiring, almost painful industry of herself and Mrs. Weld. A penny was never knowingly wasted, a minute never willingly lost. Among other thrifty devices, she generally wrote to her friends on the backs of circulars, on blank pages of notes she received, on almost any clean scrap, in fact. Angelina often remonstrated with her, but to no avail. "It gives me a few more pennies for my love purse, and my friends won't mind," she would say. This "love purse" was well named. Into it were cast all her small economies: a car-fare when she walked instead of riding; a few pennies saved by taking a simpler lunch than she had planned, when in New York on business; the ten cents difference in the quality of a cap, ribbon, or a handkerchief,--all these savings were dropped into the love purse, to be drawn out again to buy a new book for some friend too poor to get it herself; to subscribe to a paper for another; to purchase some little gift for a sick child, or a young girl trying to keep up a neat appearance. It was a pair of cuffs to one, mittens or slippers of her own knitting to another, a collar or a ribbon to a third. All through the letters written during the last twenty years of her life, the references to such little gifts are innumerable, and show that her generosity was only equalled by her thoughtfulness, and only limited by her means. Nothing was spent unnecessarily, in the strictest sense of the word, on herself; not a dollar of her narrow income laid by. All went for kindly or charitable objects, and was gladly given without a single selfish twinge. It is scarcely necessary to say that few schools have ever been established upon such a basis of conscientiousness and love, and with such adaptability in its conductors as that at Eagleswood; few have ever held before the pupils so high a moral standard, or urged them on to such noble purposes in life. Children entered there spoiled by indulgence, selfish, uncontrolled, sometimes vicious. Their teachers studied them carefully; confidence was gained, weaknesses sounded, elevation measured. Very slowly often, and with infinite patience and perseverance, but successfully in nearly every case, these children were redeemed. The idle became industrious, the selfish considerate, the disobedient and wayward repentant and gentle. Sometimes the fruits of all this labor and forbearance did not show themselves immediately, and in a few instances the seed sown did not ripen until the boy or girl had left school and mingled with the world. Then the contrast between the common, every-day aims they encountered, and the teachings of their Eagleswood mentors, was forced upon them. Forgotten lessons of truth and honesty and purity were remembered, and the wavering resolve was stayed and strengthened; worldly expediency gave way before the magnanimous purpose, cringing subserviency before independent manliness. The letters of affection, gratitude, and appreciation of what had been done to make true men and women of them, which were received by the Welds, in many cases, years after they had parted from the writers, were treasured as their most precious souvenirs, and quite reconciled them to the trials through which such results were reached. A short time before leaving Belleville, Mrs. Weld and Sarah adopted the Bloomer costume on account of its convenience, and the greater freedom it permitted in taking long rambles, but neither of them ever admired it or urged its adoption on others. Mrs. Weld, it is true, wrote a long and eloquent letter to the Dress Reform Convention which met in Syracuse in the summer of 1857, but it was not to advocate the Bloomer, but to show the need of some dress more suitable than the fashionable one, for work and exercise. She also urged that as woman was no longer in her minority, no longer "man's pretty idol before whom he bowed in chivalric gallantry," or "his petted slave whom he coaxed and gulled with sugar-plum privileges, whilst robbing her of intrinsic rights," but was emerging into her majority and claiming her rights as a human being, and waking up to a higher destiny: as she was beginning to answer the call to a life of useful exertion and honorable independence, it was time that she dressed herself in accordance with the change. "I regard the Bloomer costume," she says, "as only an approach to that true womanly attire which will in due time be inaugurated. We must experiment before we find a dress altogether suitable.... Man has long enough borne the burden of supporting the women of the civilized world. When woman's temple of liberty is finished--when freedom for the world is achieved--when she has educated herself into useful and lucrative occupations, then may she fitly expend upon her person _her own earnings_, not man's. Such women will have an indefeasible right to dress elegantly if they wish, but they will discard cumbersomeness and a useless and absurd circumference and length." Sarah says, in a letter to a friend, that the Bloomer dress violated her taste, and was so opposed to her sense of modesty that she could hardly endure it. During the residence at Eagleswood, both sisters discarded it altogether. The John Brown tragedy was of course deeply felt by Sarah and Angelina, and the bitter and desperate feelings which inspired it fully sympathized with. Angelina was made quite ill by it, while Sarah felt her soul bowed with reverence for the deluded but grand old man. "O Sarah!" she writes to Sarah Douglass, "what a glorious spectacle is now before us. The Jerome of Prague of our country, the John Huss of the United States, now stands ready, as they were, to seal his testimony with his life's blood. Last night I went in spirit to the martyr. It was my privilege to enter into sympathy with him; to go down, according to my measure, into the depths where he has travailed, and feel his past exercises, his present sublime position." As mentioned a few pages back, two of John Brown's men, who died with him at Harper's Ferry, were brought to Eagleswood and there quietly interred. The pro-slavery people of Perth Amboy threatened to dig up the bodies, but the men and boys of Eagleswood showed such a brave front, and guarded the graves so faithfully, that the threat could not be accomplished. The breaking out of the war found the Welds in deep family sorrow, watching anxiously by the sick bed of a dear son, with scarcely a hope of his recovery. Of Sarah's absolute devotion, of her ceaseless care by day, and her tireless watching by night, during the many long and weary months through which that precious life flickered, it is needless to speak. She took the delicate mother's place beside that bed of suffering, and, strong in her faith and hope, gave strength and hope to the heart-stricken parents, sustaining them when they were ready to sink beneath the avalanche of their woe. And when at last, though life was spared, it was evident that the invalid must remain an invalid for a long time, perhaps forever, Sarah's sublime courage stood steadfast. There was no sign of faltering. With a resignation almost cheerful, she took up her fresh burden, and, intent only on cheering her dear patient and comforting the sorrow of her sister and brother, she forgot her seventy-one years and every grief of the past. "I try," she writes, "to accept this, the most grinding and bitter dispensation of my checkered life, as what it must be, educational and disciplinary, working towards a better preparation for a higher life." Chiefly on account of this son and the quiet which was necessary for him, Mr. and Mrs. Weld gave up their position at Eagleswood, to the deep regret of all who knew them and had children to educate. They settled themselves temporarily in a pleasant house in Perth Amboy. Here, between nursing their sick, and working for the soldiers, they watched the progress of events which they had long foreseen were inevitable. Sarah speaks of the war as a retribution. "Hitherto," she says, "we have never been a republic, but one of the blackest tyrannies that ever disgraced the earth." She calls attention to the fact that the South, by starting out with a definite and declared purpose, added much to its strength. "In great revolutions," she says, "confusion in popular ideas is fatal. The South avoided this. She set up one idea as paramount; she seized a great principle and uttered it. She shouted the talismanic words, 'Oppression and Liberty,' and said, 'Let us achieve our purpose or die!' The masses, blinded by falsehood, caught the spirit of the leaders, and verily believe they are struggling for freedom. We have never enunciated any great truth as the cause of our uprising. We have no great idea to rally around, and know not what we are fighting for." Later she expresses herself very strongly concerning the selfishness of the politicians, North and South. "It is true there are some," she writes, "who are waging this war to make our Declaration of Independence a fact; there is a glorious band who are fighting for human rights, but the government, with Lincoln at its head, has not a heart-throb for the slave. I want the South to do her own work of emancipation. She would do it only from dire necessity, but the North will do it from no higher motive, and the South will feel less exasperation if she does it herself." In another letter in 1862, she writes:-- "The negro has generously come forward, in spite of his multiplied wrongs, and offered to help to defend the country against those who are trying to fasten the chains on the white as well as the black. We have impiously denied him the right of citizenship, and have virtually said, 'Stand back; I am holier than thou.' I pray that victory may not crown our arms until the negro stands in his acknowledged manhood side by side in this conflict with the white man, until we have the nobility to say that this war is a war of abolition, and that no concession on the part of the South shall save slavery from destruction. Whatever Lincoln and his Cabinet are carrying on the war to accomplish, God's design is to deliver from bondage his innocent people." About this time Mrs. Weld published one of the most powerful things she ever wrote, "A Declaration of War on Slavery." She and Sarah also drew up a petition to the government for the entire abolition of slavery, and took it around themselves for signatures. Very few refused to sign it; and they were proposing to canvass, by means of agents, the entire North, when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. With their Charleston relatives, Mrs. Weld and Sarah had always kept up a rather irregular, but, on one side, at least, an affectionate correspondence. Their mother died in 1839, retaining, to the never-ceasing grief of her Northern daughters, her slave-holding principles to the last. The few remaining members of the family were settled in and around Charleston, and were, with one exception, in comfortable circumstances at the beginning of the war. This exception was their brother John, who was infirm, and had outlived his resources and the ability to make a living. For years before the war, Sarah and Angelina sent him from their slender incomes a small annuity, sufficient to keep him from want, and it was continued, at much inconvenience during the war, until his death, which occurred in the latter part of 1863. Their sisters, Mary and Eliza, wrote very proud and defiant letters during the first two years of hostilities, and declared they were secure and happy in their dear old city. But gradually their tone changed, and they did not refuse to receive, through blockade-runners, a variety of necessary articles from their abolition sisters. As their slaves deserted them, and one piece of property after another lost its value or was destroyed, they saw poverty staring them in the face; but their pride sustained them, and it was not until they had lived for nearly a year on little else but hominy and water that they allowed their sisters to know of their condition. But in informing them of it, they still declared their willingness to die "for slavery and the Confederacy." "Blind to the truth," writes Sarah, "they religiously believe that slavery is a divine institution, and say they hope never to be guilty of disbelieving the Bible, and thus rendering themselves amenable to the wrath of God. I am glad," she adds, "to have this lesson of honest blindness. It shows me that thousands like themselves are worshipping a false god of their own creation." Of course relief was sent to these unhappy women as soon as possible; and when hostilities ceased, more than two hundred dollars' worth of necessaries of every kind was despatched to them, with an urgent invitation to come and accept a home at the North. Some time before this, however, the Welds had moved to Hyde Park, near Boston, and were delightfully located, owning their house, and surrounded by kind and congenial neighbors. But much as they all needed entire rest, and well as they had earned it, they could not afford to be idle. Sarah became housekeeper and general manager, while Mr. and Mrs. Weld accepted positions, in Dr. Dio Lewis's famous school at Lexington. They were obliged to leave home every Monday and return on Friday. The Charleston sisters refused for some time to accept the invitation given them; but so delicately and affectionately was it urged, that, goaded by necessity, they finally consented. They made their preparations to leave Charleston; but in the midst of them, the older sister, Mary, who had been very feeble for some time, was taken suddenly ill, and died. Eliza, then, a most sad and desolate woman, as we may well suppose, made the voyage to New York alone. There Sarah met her, and accompanied her to Hyde Park, where she was received with every consideration affection could devise. She seems to have soon made up her mind to make the best of her altered circumstances, and thus show her gratitude to those who had so readily overlooked her past abuse of them. Sarah writes of her in 1866:-- "My sister Eliza is well and so cheerful. She is a sunbeam in the family, but the failure of the Confederacy and the triumph of the 'Yankees' is hard to bear,--the wrong having crushed the right." This sister was tenderly cared for until arrangements were made for her return to Charleston with Mrs. Frost. There she died in 1867. This was only one of the many minor cases of retribution brought about by the Nemesis of the civil war. Sarah mentions another. The sale of lands for government taxes at Beaufort, S.C., was made from the verandah of the Edmond Rhett House, where, more than ten years before, the rebellion was concocted by the very men whose estates then (1866) were passing under the hammer. And the chairman of the tax committee was Dr. Wm. H. Brisbane, who, twenty-five years before, was driven from the State because he would liberate his slaves. Quietly settled in what she felt was a permanent home, and with, no cares outside of her family, Sarah found time not only to read, but to indulge her taste for scribbling, as she called it. She sent, from time to time, articles to the New York _Tribune_, the _Independent_, the _Woman's Journal_, and other papers, all marked by remarkable freshness as well as vigor. She also translated from the French several stories illustrative of various social reforms, and in 1867, being then seventy-five years old, she made a somewhat abridged translation of Lamartine's poetical biography of Joan of Arc. This was Sarah's most finished literary work, and aroused in her great enthusiasm. "Sometimes," she writes, "it seems to infuse into my soul a mite of that divinity which filled hers. Joan of Arc stands pre-eminent in my mind above all other mortals save the Christ." When the book was finished, Sarah was most anxious to get it published, "in order," she writes, "to revive the memory in this country of the extraordinary woman who was an embodiment of faith, courage, fortitude, and love rarely equalled and never excelled." But she had many more pressing demands on her income at that time, and had nearly given up the project, when a gentleman from Lynn called to see her, to whom she read a few pages of the narrative. He was so much pleased with it that he undertook to have it published. It was brought out in a few weeks by Adams & Co., of Boston, in a prettily bound volume of one hundred and six pages, and had, I believe, a large sale. Several long and many short notices of it appeared in papers all over the country, all highly complimentary to the venerable translator. These notices surprised Sarah as much as they delighted her, and she expressed herself as deeply thankful that she had translated the work. A letter from Sarah Grimké to Jane Smith, written in 1850, contains the following paragraph: "We have just heard of the death of our brother Henry, a planter and a kind master. His slaves will feel his loss deeply. They haunt me day and night. Sleeplessness is my portion, thinking what will become of them. Oh, the horrors of slavery!" When she penned those lines, Sarah little imagined how great a mockery was the title, "kind master," she gave her brother. She little suspected that three of those slaves whose uncertain destiny haunted her pillow were that brother's own children, and that he died leaving the shackles on them--slaves to his heir, their white brother, though he _did_ stipulate that they and their mother should never be sold. Well might Sarah exclaim: "Oh, the horrors of slavery!" but in deepest humiliation and anguish of spirit would the words have been uttered had she known the truth. Montague Grimké inherited his brothers with the rest of the human chattels. He knew they were his brothers, and he never thought of freeing them. They were his to use and to abuse,--to treat them kindly if it suited his mood; to whip them if he fancied; to sell them if he should happen to need money,--and they could not raise voice or hand to prevent it. There was no law to which they could appeal, no refuge they could seek from the very worst with which their brother might threaten them. Was ever any creature--brute or human--in the wide world so defenceless as the plantation slave! The forlorn case of these Grimké boys was that of thousands of others born as they were, and inheriting the intelligence and spirit of independence of their white parent. I have little space to give to their pitiful story. Many have doubtless heard it. The younger brother, John, was, at least as a child, more fortunate. When Charleston was at last occupied by the Union army, the two oldest, Francis and Archibald, attracted the attention of some members of the Sanitary Commission by their intelligence and good behavior, and were by them sent to Massachusetts, where some temporary work was found for them. Two vacancies happening to occur in Lincoln University, Oxford, Pennsylvania, they were recommended to fill them. Thither they went in 1866, and, eager and determined to profit by their advantages, they studied so well during the winter months, and worked so diligently to help themselves in the summer, that, in spite of the drawbacks of their past life, they rose to honorable positions in the University, and won the regard of all connected with it. Some time in February, 1868, Mrs. Weld read in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ a notice of a meeting of a literary society at Lincoln University, at which an address was delivered by one of the students, named Francis Grimké. She was surprised, and as she had never before heard of the university, she made some inquiries about it, and was much interested in what she learned of its object and character. She knew that the name of Grimké was confined to the Charleston family, and naturally came to the conclusion, at first, that this student who had attracted her attention was an ex-slave of one of her brothers, and had, as was frequently done, adopted his master's name. But the circumstance worried her. She could not drive it from her mind. She knew so well that blackest page of slavery on which was written the wrongs of its women, that, dreadful as was the suspicion, it slowly grew upon her that the blood of the Grimkés, the proud descendants of the Huguenots, flowed in the veins of this poor colored student. The agitation into which further reflection on the subject threw her came very near making her ill and finally decided her to learn the truth if possible. She addressed a note to Mr. Francis Grimké. The answer she received confirmed her worst fears. He and his brothers were her nephews. Her nerves already unstrung by the dread of this cruel blow, Angelina fainted when it came, and was completely prostrated for several days. Her husband and sister refrained from disturbing her by a question or a suggestion. Physically stronger than she, they felt the superiority of her spiritual strength, and uncertain, on this most momentous occasion, of their own convictions of duty, they looked to her for the initiative. The silent conflict in the soul of this tender, conscientious woman during those days of prostration was known only to her God. The question of prejudice had no place in it,--that had long and long ago been cast to the winds. It was the fair name of a loved brother that was at stake, and which must be sustained or blighted by her action. "Ask me not," she once wrote to a young person, "if it is expedient to do what you propose: ask yourself if it is _right_." This question now came to her in a shape it had never assumed before, and it was hard to answer. But it was no surprise to her family when she came forth from that chamber of suffering and announced her decision. She would acknowledge those nephews. She would not deepen the brand of shame that had been set upon their brows: hers, rather, the privilege to efface it. Her brother had wronged these, his children; his sisters must right them. No doubt of the duty lingered in her mind. Those youths were her own flesh and blood, and, though the whole world should scoff, she would not deny them. Her decision was accepted by her husband and sister without a murmur of dissent. If either had any doubts of its wisdom, they were never uttered; and, as was always the case with them, having once decided in their own minds a question of duty, they acted upon it in no half-way spirit, and with no stinted measures. In the long letter which Angelina wrote to Francis and Archibald Grimké, and which Theodore Weld and Sarah Grimké fully indorsed, there appeared no trace of doubt or indecision. The general tone was just such in which she might have addressed newly-found legitimate nephews. After telling them that if she had not suspected their relationship to herself, she should probably not have written them, she questions them on various points, showing her desire to be useful to them, and adds, "I want to talk to you face to face, and am thinking seriously of going on to your Commencement in June." A few lines further on she says:-- "I will not dwell on the past: let all that go. It cannot be altered. Our work is in the present, and duty calls upon us now so to use the past as to convert its curse into a blessing. I am glad you have taken the name of Grimké. It was once one of the noblest names of Carolina. You, my young friends, now bear this _once_ honored name. I charge you most solemnly, by your upright conduct and your life-long devotion to the eternal principles of justice and humanity and religion, to lift this name out of the dust where it now lies, and set it once more among the princes of our land." Other letters passed between them until the youths had told all their history, so painful in its details that Angelina, after glancing at it, put it aside, and for months had not the courage to read it. When June came, though far from well, she summoned up strength and resolution to do as she had proposed in the spring. Accompanied by her oldest son, she attended the Lincoln University Commencement, and made the personal acquaintance of Francis and Archibald Grimké. She found them good-looking, intelligent, and gentlemanly young men; and she took them by the hand, and, to president and professors, acknowledged their claim upon her. She also invited them to visit her at her home, assuring them of a kind reception from every member of her family. She remained a week at Lincoln University, going over with these young men all the details of their treatment by their brother Montague, and of the treatment of the slaves in all the Grimké families. These details brought back freshly to her mind the horrors which had haunted her life in Charleston, and she lived them all over again, even in her dreams. She had been miserably weak and worn for some time before going to Lincoln; and the mental distress she now went through affected her nervous system to such an extent that there is no doubt her life was shortened by it. The hearty concurrence of every member of the family in the course resolved on towards the nephews shows how united they were in moral sentiment as well as in affection. There was not the slightest hesitancy exhibited. The point touching her brother's shame thrust in the background by the conviction of a higher duty, Mrs. Weld allowed it to trouble her no more, but, with her husband and sister, expressed a feeling of exultation in acknowledging the relationship of the youths, as a testimony and protest against the wickedness of that hate which had always trampled down the people of color because they were as God made them. On Angelina's return journey, Sarah, ever anxious about her, met her at Newark and accompanied her home. A few weeks later, writing to Sarah Douglass an account of the Grimké boys, she says:-- "They are very promising young men. We all feel deeply interested in them, and I hope to be able to get together money enough to pay the college expenses of the younger. I would rejoice to meet these entirely myself, but, not having the means, I intend to try and collect it somehow. Angelina has not yet recovered from the effects of her journey and the excitement of seeing and talking to those boys, the president, etc. When I met her she was so exhausted and excited that I felt very anxious, and when I found her brain and sight were so disordered that she could not see distinctly, even striking her head several times severely, and that she could not read, I was indeed alarmed. But, notwithstanding all she had suffered, she has not for a moment regretted that she went. She feels that a sacred duty has been performed, and rejoices that she had strength for it." A few weeks later, she writes: "Nina is about and always busy, often working when she seems ready to drop, sustained by her nervous energy and irresistible will. She has kept up wonderfully under our last painful trial, and has borne it so beautifully that I am afraid she is getting too good to live." I have no right to say that Angelina Weld suffered martyrdom in every fibre of her proud, sensitive nature during all the first months at least of this trial; but I cannot but believe it. She never spoke of her own feelings to any one but her husband; but Sarah writes to Sarah Douglass in August, 1869:-- "My cheerful spirit has been sorely tested for some months. Nina has been sick all summer, is a mere skeleton and looks ten or fifteen years older than she did before that fatal visit to Lincoln University. I do not think that she will ever be the same woman she was before and sometimes I feel sure her toilsome journey on this earth must be near its close. The tears will come whenever I think of it." But not so! the sisters were to work hand in hand a few years longer; the younger, in her patient suffering, leaning with filial love on the stronger arm of the older, both now gray-haired and beginning to feel the infirmities of age, but still devoted to each other and united in sympathy with every good and progressive movement. The duty, as they conceived it, to their colored nephews was as generously as conscientiously performed. They received them into the family, treated them in every respect as relatives, and exerted themselves to aid them in finishing their education. Francis studied for the ministry, and is now pastor of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church of Washington city. Archibald, through Sarah's exertions and self-denial, took the law course at Harvard, graduated, and has since practised law successfully in Boston. Both are respected by the communities in which they reside. John, the younger brother, remained in the South with his mother. Mrs. Weld and Sarah still took a warm, and, as far as it was possible, an active interest in the woman suffrage movement; and when, in February, 1870, after an eloquent lecture from Lucy Stone, a number of the most intelligent and respectable women of Hyde Park determined to try the experiment of voting at the approaching town election, Mrs. Weld and Sarah Grimké united cordially with them. A few days before the election, a large caucus was held, made up of about equal numbers of men and women, among them many of the best and leading people of the place. A ticket for the different offices was made up, voted for, and elected. At this caucus Theodore Weld made one of his old-time stirring speeches, encouraging the women to assert themselves, and persist in demanding their political rights. The 7th of March, the day of the election, a terrific snowstorm prevailed, but did not prevent the women from assembling in the hotel near the place of voting, where each one was presented, on the part of their gentlemen friends, with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. At the proper time, a number of these gentlemen came over to the hotel and escorted the ladies to the polls, where a convenient place for them to vote had been arranged. There was a great crowd inside the hall, eager to see the joke of women voting, and many were ready to jeer and hiss. But when, through the door, the women filed, led by Sarah Grimké and Angelina Weld, the laugh was checked, the intended jeer unuttered, and deafening applause was given instead. The crowd fell back respectfully, nearly every man removing his hat and remaining uncovered while the women passed freely down the hall, deposited their votes, and departed. Of course these votes were not counted. There was no expectation that they would be (though the ticket was elected), but the women had given a practical proof of their earnestness, and though one man said, in consequence of this movement, he would sell his house two thousand dollars cheaper than he would have done before, and another declared he would give his away if the thing was done again, and still another wished he might _die_ if the women were going to vote, the women themselves were satisfied with their first step, and more than ever determined to march courageously on until the citadel of man's prejudices was conquered. The following summer, Sarah Grimké, believing that much good might be accomplished by the circulation of John Stuart Mill's "Subjection of Women," made herself an agent for the sale of the book, and traversed hill and dale, walking miles daily to accomplish her purpose. She thus succeeded in placing more than one hundred and fifty copies in the hands of the women of Hyde Park and the vicinity, in spite of the ignorance, narrowness, heartlessness, and slavery which, she says, she had ample opportunity to deplore. The profits of her sales were given to the _Woman's Journal_. Under date of May 25, 1871, she writes:-- "I have been travelling all through our town and vicinity on foot, to get signers to a petition to Congress for woman suffrage. It is not a pleasant work, often subjecting me to rudeness and coldness; but we are so frequently taunted with: 'Women don't want the ballot,' that we are trying to get one hundred thousand names of women who do want it, to reply to this taunt." But the work which enlisted this indefatigable woman's warmest sympathies, and which was the last active charity in which she engaged, was that of begging cast-off clothing for the destitute freedmen of Charleston and Florida. Accounts reaching her of their wretched condition through successive failures of crops, she set to work with her old-time energy to do what she could for their relief. She literally went from house to house, and from store to store, presenting her plea so touchingly that few could refuse her. Many barrels of clothing were in this way gathered, and she often returned home staggering beneath the weight of bundles she had carried perhaps for a mile. She also wrote to friends at a distance, on whose generosity she felt she could depend, and collected from them a considerable sum of money, which, went far to keep the suffering from starvation until new crops could be gathered. Writing to Sarah Douglass, she says:-- "I have been so happy this winter, going about to beg old clothing for the unfortunate freedmen in Florida. I have sent off several barrels of clothes already. Alas! there is no Christ to multiply the garments, and what are those I send among so many? I think of these destitute ones night and day, and feel so glad to help them even a little." This happiness in helping others was the secret of Sarah Grimké's unvarying contentment, and there was always some one needing the help she was so ready to give, some one whose trials made her feel, she says, ashamed to think of her own. But the infirmities of old age were creeping upon her, and though her mental faculties remained as bright as ever, she began to complain of her eyes and her hearing. In August, 1872, she writes to a friend:-- "My strength is failing. I cannot do a tithe of the walking I used to do, and am really almost good for nothing. But I don't know but I may learn to enjoy doing nothing; and if it is needful, I shall be thankful, as that has always appeared to me a great trial." Notwithstanding this representation, however, she was seldom idle a moment. She was an untiring knitter, and made quite a traffic of the tidies, cushion-covers, and other fancy articles she knitted and netted. These were purchased by her friends, and the proceeds given to the poor. Soon after she had penned the above quoted paragraph, too, she copied for the Rev. Henry Giles, the once successful Unitarian preacher, a lecture of sixty-five pages, from which he hoped to make some money. His eyesight had failed, and his means were too narrow to permit of his paying a copyist. She also managed to keep up more or less, as her strength permitted, her usual visits to the poor and afflicted; and during the hot summer of 1872 she and Angelina went daily to read to an old, bed-ridden lady, who was dying of cancer, and living almost alone. During the following winter Sarah's strength continued to fail, and she had several fainting spells, of which, however, she was kept in ignorance. But as life's pulse beat less vigorously, her heart seemed to grow warmer, and her interest in all that concerned her friends rather to increase than to lessen. She still wrote occasional short letters, and enjoyed nothing so much as those she received, especially from young correspondents. In January, 1873, she writes to an old friend:-- "Yes, dear.... I esteem it a very choice blessing that, as the outer man decays, the heart seems enlarged in charity, and more and more drawn towards those I love. Oh, this love! it is as subtle as the fragrance of the flower, an indefinable essence pervading the soul. My eyesight and my hearing are both in a weakly condition; but I trust, as the material senses fail, the interior perception of the divine may be opened to a clearer knowledge of God, and that I may read the glorious book of nature with a more heavenly light, and apprehend with clearer insight the majesty and divinity and capabilities of my own being." A few months later, she writes: "My days of active usefulness are over; but there is a passive work to be done, far harder than actual work,--namely, to exercise patience and study humble resignation to the will of God, whatever that may be. Thanks be to Him, I have not yet felt like complaining; nay, verily, the song of my heart is, Who so blest as I? In years gone by, I used to rejoice as every year sped its course and brought me nearer to the grave. But now, though the grave has no terrors for me, and death looks like a pleasant transition to another and a better condition, I am content to wait the Father's own time for my removal. I rejoice that my ideal is still in advance of my actual, though I can only look for realization in another life. I know of a truth that my immortal spirit must progress; not into a state of perfect happiness,--that would have no attractions for me; there must be deficiencies in my heaven, to leave room for progression. A realm of unqualified rest were a stagnant pool of being, and the circle of absolute perfection a waveless calm, the abstract cipher of indolence. But I believe I shall be gifted with higher faculties, greater powers, and therefore be capable of higher aspirations, better achievements, and a nobler appreciation of God and His works." The sweet tranquillity expressed in this letter, and which was the greatest blessing that could have been given to Sarah Grimké's last years, grew day by day, and shed its benign influence on all about her. She had long ceased to look back, and had long been satisfied that though she had had an ample share of sorrows and perplexities, her life had passed, after all, with more of good than evil in it, more of enjoyment than sorrow. Her experience had been rich and varied; and, while she could see, in the past, sins committed, errors of judgment, idiosyncracies to which she had too readily yielded, she felt that all had been blest to her in enlarging her knowledge of herself, in widening her sphere of usefulness, and uniting her more closely to Him who had always been her guide, and whose promises sustained and blessed her, and crowned her latter days with joy supreme. CHAPTER XVIII. Sarah Grimké had always enjoyed such good health, and was so unaccustomed to even small ailments, that when a slight attack came in the beginning of August, 1873, in the shape of a fainting-fit in the night, she did not understand what it meant. For two or three years she had had an occasional attack of the same kind, but was never before conscious of it, and as she had frequently expressed a desire to be alone when she died, to have no human presence between her and her God, she thought, as the faintness came over her, that this desire was about to be gratified. But not so: she returned to consciousness, somewhat to her disappointment, and seemed to quite recover her health in a few days. The weather, however, was extremely warm, and she felt its prostrating effects. On the 27th of August another fainting-spell came over her, also in the night, and she felt so unwell on coming out of it that she was obliged to call assistance. For several weeks she was very ill, and scarcely a hope of her recovery was entertained; but again she rallied and tried to mingle with the family as usual, though feeling very weak. Writing to Sarah Douglass of this illness, she says:-- "The first two weeks are nearly a blank. I only remember a sense of intense suffering, and that the second day I thought I was dying, and felt calm with that sweet peace which our heavenly Father gives to those who lay their heads on His bosom and breathe out their souls to Him. Death is so beautiful a transition to another and a higher sphere of usefulness and happiness, that it no longer looks to me like passing through a dark valley, but rather like merging into sunlight and joy. When consciousness returned to me, I was floating in an ocean of divine love. Oh, dear Sarah, the unspeakable peace that I enjoyed! Of course I was to come down from the mount, but not into the valley of despondency. My mind has been calm, my faith steadfast, my continual prayer that I may fulfil the design of my Father in thus restoring me to life and finish the work he must have for me to do, either active or passive. I am lost in wonder, love, and praise at the vast outlay of affection and means used for my restoration. Stuart was like a tender daughter, and all have been so loving, so patient." She continued very feeble, but insisted upon joining the family at meals, though she frequently had to be carried back to her room. Still her lively interest in every one about her showed no diminution, and she still wrote, as strength permitted, short letters to old friends. A few passages may be quoted from these letters to show how clear her intellect remained, and with what a holy calm her soul was clothed. To one nearly her own age, she says:-- "You and I and all who are on the passage to redemption know that Gethsemane has done more for us than the Mount of Transfiguration. I am sure I have advanced more in the right way through my sins than through my righteousness, and for nothing am I more fervently grateful than for the lessons of humility I have learned in this way." To another who was mourning the death of a dear child, she writes: "My whole heart goes out in unspeakable yearnings for you; not, dearest, that you may be delivered from your present trials; not only that you may be blessed with returning health, but that you may find something better, holier, stronger than philosophy to sustain you. Philosophy may enable us to _endure_; this is its highest mission; it cannot give the peace of God which passeth all understanding. This is what I covet for you. And how can you doubt of immortality when you look on your beloved's face? Can you believe that the soul which looked out of those eyes can be quenched in endless night? No; never! As soon doubt existence itself. It is this--these central truths, the existence and the love of God, and the immortality of the soul, which rob death of its terrors and shed upon it the blessed light of a hope which triumphs over death itself. Oh that you could make Christ your friend! He is so near and dear to me that more than ever does he seem to be my link to the Father and to the life everlasting." As she complained only of weakness, Sarah's friends hoped that, when the cool weather came on, she would regain her strength and be as well as usual. But though she continued to move about the house, trying to make herself useful, there was very little perceptible change in her condition as the autumn passed and winter came on. Thus she continued until the 12th of December, when she took a violent cold. She was in the habit of airing her bed every night just before retiring, turning back the cover, and opening wide her window. On that day it had rained, and the air was very damp, but she had her bed and window opened as usual, insisting that Florence Nightingale asserted that damp air never hurt anyone. That night she coughed a great deal, but in answer to Angelina's expressions of anxiety, said she felt no worse than usual. But though she still went down to her meals, it was evident that she was weaker than she had been. On Sunday, the 14th, company coming to tea, she preferred to remain in her room. She never went down again. Her breathing was much oppressed on Monday and her cough worse, but it was not until Tuesday evening, after having passed a distressing day, that she would consent to have a physician called. Everything was done for her that could be thought of, and, as she grew worse, two other physicians were sent for. But all in vain: it was evident that the summons to "come up higher" had reached her yearning soul, and that a bright New Year was dawning for her in that unseen world which she was so well prepared to enter. She lingered, suffering at times great agony from suffocation, until the afternoon of the 23d, when she was seized with the most severe paroxysm she had yet had. Her family gathered about her bed, relieved her as far as it was possible, and saw her sink exhausted into an unconscious state, from which, two hours later, she crossed the threshold of Eternity. Her "precious Nina" bent over her, caught the last breath, and exclaimed: "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!" The gates of heaven swung wide to admit that great soul, and the form of clay that was left lying there seemed touched with the glory that streamed forth. All traces of suffering vanished, and the placid face wore-- "The look of one who bore away Glad tidings from the hills of day." Every sorrow brings a peace with it, and Angelina's sorrow was swallowed up in joy that the beloved sister had escaped from pain and infirmity, and entered into fuller and closer communion with her heavenly Father. She and Sarah had promised each other that no stranger hands should perform the last offices to their mortal remains. How lovingly this promise was now kept by Angelina, we must all understand. The weather was very cold, and in order to give her friends at a distance opportunity to attend the funeral it did not take place until the 27th. One of the last requests of this woman, whose life had been an embodiment of the most tender chanty and the truest humility, was that she might be laid in a plain pine coffin, and the difference in price between it and the usual costly one be given as her last gift to the poor. She knew--divine soul!--that her cold form would sleep just as quietly, be guarded by the angels just as faithfully, and as certainly go to its resurrection glory from a pine box as from the richest rosewood casket. And it was like the sweet simplicity of her whole life,--nothing for show, all for God and his poor. Her request was complied with, but loving hands covered every inch of that plain stained coffin with fragrant flowers, making it rich and beautiful with those sincere tributes of affection and gratitude to one whose memory was a benediction. The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Francis Williams, pastor of the Unitarian Church of Hyde Park, and eloquent remarks were made by him and by Wm. Lloyd Garrison. Mr. Williams could only testify to Sarah's life as he had known it since she came to live in the village. "To the last," he said, "while her mind could plan, her pen could move, and her heart could prompt, she was busy in the service of humanity,--with her might and beyond her strength, in constant nameless deeds of kindness to those in need in our own neighborhood, and far to the south, deeds which were wise and beautiful,--help to the poor, sympathy with the suffering, consolation to the dying. She has fought the good fight of right and love; she has finished her course of duty; she has kept the faith of friendship and sacrifice. "We will more truly live because she has lived among us. May her hope and peace be ours." Mr. Garrison gave a brief summary of her life, and ended by saying: "In view of such a life as hers, consecrated to suffering humanity in its manifold needs, embracing all goodness, animated by the broadest catholicity of spirit, and adorned with every excellent attribute, any attempt at panegyric here seems as needless as it must be inadequate. Here there is nothing to depress or deplore, nothing premature or startling, nothing to be supplemented or finished. It is the consummation of a long life, well rounded with charitable deeds, active sympathies, toils, loving ministrations, grand testimonies, and nobly self-sacrificing endeavors. She lived only to do good, neither seeking nor desiring to be known, ever unselfish, unobtrusive, compassionate, and loving, dwelling in God and God in her." The last look was then taken, the last kiss given, and the coffin, lifted by those who loved and honored the form it enclosed, was borne to its resting-place in Mount Hope Cemetery. "Dear friend," wrote Angelina to me, before yet the last rites had been performed, "you know what I have lost, not _a sister only_, but a mother, friend, counsellor,--everything I could lose in a woman." The longer our loved ones are spared to us, the closer becomes the tie by which we are bound to them, and the deeper the pain of separation. It was thus with Angelina. She could rejoice at her sister's blessed translation, but she keenly felt the bereavement notwithstanding. Their lives had been so bound together; they had walked so many years side by side; they had so shared each other's burdens, cares, and sorrows, that she who was left scarcely knew how to live the daily life without that dear twin-soul. And so tender, so true and sacred was the communion which had grown between them, that they could not be separated long. Angelina continued, as her feeble health permitted, to do alone the work Sarah had shared with her. The sick, the poor, the sorrowing, were looked after and cared for as usual; but as she was already weighed down by declining years, the burdens she tried to bear were too heavy. Sarah used to say: "Angelina's creed is, for herself, work till you drop; for others, spare yourself." Now, with no anxiously watchful sister to restrain her, she overtaxed every power, and brought on the result which had been long feared,--the paralysis which finally ended her life. Those who have read Mr. Weld's beautiful memorial of his wife, with the touching account of her last days, will find no fault, I am sure, if I reproduce a portion of it here, while to those who have not been so fortunate, it will show her sweet Christian spirit, mighty in its gentleness, as no words of mine could do. In vain may we look back through the centuries for a higher example of divine love and patience and heroic fortitude; and, as a friend observed, her expressions of gratitude for the long and perfect use of her faculties at the very moment when she felt the fatal touch which was to deprive her of them, was the sublimity of sweet and grateful trust. The early shattering of Angelina's nervous system rendered her always exceedingly sensitive to outward impressions. She could not look upon any form of suffering without, in a measure, feeling it herself; nor could she read or listen to an account of great physical agony without a sensation of faintness which frequently obliged her, at such times, to leave the room and seek relief in the open air. The first stroke of paralysis occurred the summer after Sarah's death, and was brought on in a singular manner. Mr. Weld's account of the incident and its consequences is thus given:-- "For weeks she had visited almost daily a distant neighbor, far gone in consumption, whose wife was her dear friend. One day, over-heated and tired out by work and a long walk in the sun, she passed their house in returning home, too much overdone to call, as she thought to do, and had gone a quarter of a mile toward home, when it occurred to her, Mr. W. may be dying now! She turned back, and, as she feared, found him dying. As she sat by his bedside, holding his hand, a sensation never felt before seized her so strongly that she at once attempted to withdraw her hand, but saw that she could not without disturbing the dying man's last moments. She sat thus, in exceeding discomfort, half an hour, with that strange feeling creeping up her arm and down her side. "At last his grasp relaxed, and she left, only able to totter, and upon getting home, she hardly knew how, declined supper, and went at once to bed, saying only, 'Tired, tired.' In the morning, when her husband rose, she said, 'I've something to tell you.' Her tone alarmed him. 'Don't be alarmed,' she said. To his anxious question, 'Pray, what is it?' she said again, 'Now you mustn't be troubled, I'm not; it's all for the best. Something ails my right side, I can't move hand or foot. It must be paralysis. Well, how thankful I should be that I have had the perfect use of all my faculties, limbs, and senses for sixty-eight years! And now, if they are to be taken from me, I shall have it always to be grateful for that I have had them so long. Why, I do think I am grateful for _this_, too. Come, let us be grateful together.' Her half-palsied husband could respond only in weakest words to the appeal of his unpalsied wife. While exulting in the sublime triumph of her spirit over the stroke that felled her, well might he feel abashed, as he did, to find that, in such a strait, he was so poor a help to her who, in all his straits, had been such a help to him. After a pause she added: 'Oh, possibly it is only the effect of my being so tired out last night. Why, it seems to me I was never half so tired. I wonder if a hard rubbing of your strong hands mightn't throw it off.' Long and strongly he plied with friction the parts affected, but no muscle responded. All seemed dead to volition and motion. Though thus crippled in a moment, she insisted upon rising, that she might be ready for breakfast at the usual hour. As the process of dressing went on, she playfully enlivened it thus: 'Well, here I am a baby again; have to be dressed and fed, perhaps lugged round in arms or trundled in a wheel-chair, taught to walk on one foot, and sew and darn stockings with my left hand. Plenty of new lessons to learn that will keep me busy. See what a chance I have to learn patience! The dear Father knew just what I needed,' etc. "Soon after breakfast she gave herself a lesson in writing with her left hand, stopping often, as she slowly scrawled on, to laugh at her 'quail tracks.' After three months of tireless persistence, she partially recovered the use of her paralyzed muscles, so that she could write, sew, knit, wipe dishes, and sweep, and do 'very shabbily,' as she insisted, almost everything that she had done before. "During the six years that remained of her life here, she had what seemed to be two other slight shocks of paralysis,--one about three years after the first, and the other only three weeks before her death. This last was manifest in the sudden sinking of her bodily powers, preeminently those of speech. During all those years she looked upon herself as 'a soldier hourly awaiting orders,' often saying with her good-night kiss, 'May be this will be the last _here_,' or, 'Perhaps I shall send back my next from the other shore;' or, 'The dear Father may call me from you before morning;' or, 'Perhaps when I wake, it may be in a morning that has no night; then I can help you more than I can now.' "Many letters received asked for her latest views and feelings about death and the life beyond,--as one expressed it, when she was entering the dark valley.' The 'valley' she saw, but no darkness, neither night nor shadow; all was light and peace. On the future life she had pondered much, but ever with a trust absolute and an abounding cheer. Fear, doubt, anxiety, suspense, she knew nothing of; none of them had power to mar her peace or jostle her conviction. While she could speak, she expressed the utmost gratitude that the dear Father was loosening the cords of life so gently that she had no pain. "When her speech failed, after a sinking in which she seemed dying, she strove to let us know that _she knew it_ by trying to speak the word 'death.' Divining her thought, I said, 'Is it death?' Then in a kind of convulsive outburst came, 'Death, death!' Thinking that she was right, that it was indeed to her death _begun_, of what _could_ die, thus _dating_ her life immortal, I said, 'No, oh no! not death, but life immortal.' She instantly caught my meaning, and cried out, 'Life eternal! E--ter--nal life.' She soon sank into a gentle sleep for hours. When she awoke, what seemed that fatal sinking had passed. "One night, while watching with her, after she had been a long time quietly sleeping, she seemed to be in pain, and began to toss excitedly. It was soon plain that what seemed bodily pain was mental anguish. She began to talk earnestly in mingled tones of pathos and strong remonstrance. She was back again among the scenes of childhood, talking upon slavery. At first, only words could be caught here and there, but enough to show that she was living over again the old horrors, and remonstrating with slave-holders upon the wrongs of slavery. Then came passages of Scripture, their most telling words given with strong emphasis, the others indistinctly; some in tones of solemn rebuke, others in those of heart-broken pathos, but most distinctly audible in detached fragments. There was one exception,--a few words uttered brokenly, with a half-explosive force, from James 5: 4: 'The--hire--of--the--laborers,--kept--back--by--fraud, --crieth:--and--the--cries--are--in--the--ears--of--the--Lord.'... "As we stood around her, straining to catch again some fragmentary word, she would turn her eyes upon our faces, one by one, as though lovingly piercing our inmost; but though all speech failed, the intense longing of that look outspoke all words.... "Then there was again a vain struggle to speak, but no words came! Only abortive sounds painfully shattered! How precious those unborn words! Oh, that we knew them!" Thus quietly, peacefully, almost joyfully, the life forces of the worn and weary toiler weakened day by day, until, on the 26th of October, 1879, the great Husbandman called her from her labors at last. She lived the life and died the death of a saint. Who shall dare to say when and where the echoes of her soul died away? Not in vain such lives as hers and her beloved sister's. They take their place with those of the heroes of the world, great among the greatest. One last thing I must mention, as strongly illustrative of Angelina's modesty, and that shrinking from any praise of man which was such a marked trait in her character. She never voluntarily alluded to any act of hers which would be likely to draw upon her commendatory notice, even from the members of her own family, and in her charities she followed out as far as possible the Bible injunction: "When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." Her husband relates the following:-- "In November, 1839, in making provision for the _then_ to her not improbable contingency of sudden death, Angelina prepared a communication to her husband, filled with details concerning themselves alone. This was enclosed in a sealed envelope, with directions that it should be opened only after her death. When, a few days after her decease, he broke the seal, he found, among many details, this item: 'I also leave to thee the _liability_ of being called upon eventually to support in part four emancipated slaves in Charleston, S.C., whose freedom I have been instrumental in obtaining.'" It is plain from the wording of the letter that she had never stated the fact to him. She lived forty years after writing it and putting it under seal; and yet, during all those years, she never gave him the least intimation of her having freed those four slaves and contributed to their support, as she had done. Even Sarah could not have known anything of it. Her brother Henry, to whom the bill of sale was made out, as they could not be legally emancipated, was probably the only person who was aware of her generous act. He became technically their owner, responsible for them to the State, but left them free to live and work for themselves as they pleased. Angelina's funeral took place on the 29th of October, and to it came many old friends and veteran co-workers in the anti-slavery cause. The services were in keeping with the record of the life they commemorated. They were opened by that beautiful chant, "Thy will be done," followed by a touching prayer from the Rev. Mr. Morrison, who then briefly sketched the life of her who lay so still and beautiful before them. He was followed by Elizur Wright, who, overcome by the memories with which she was identified, memories of struggles, trials, perils, and triumphs, that he stood for a moment unable to speak. Then, only partially conquering his emotion, he told of what she did and what she was in those times which tried the souls of the stoutest. "There is," said he, "the courage of the mariner who buffets the angry waves. There is the courage of the warrior who marches up to the cannon's mouth, coolly pressing forward amid engines of destruction on every side. But hers was a courage greater than theirs. She not only faced death at the hands of stealthy assassins and howling mobs, in her loyalty to truth, duty, and humanity, but she encountered unflinchingly the awful frowns of the mighty consecrated leaders of society, the scoffs and sneers of the multitude, the outstretched finger of scorn, and the whispered mockery of pity, standing up for the lowest of the low. Nurtured in the very bosom of slavery, by her own observation and thought, of one thing she became certain,--that it was a false, cruel, accursed relation between human beings. And to this conviction, from the very budding of her womanhood, she was true; not the fear of poverty, obloquy, or death could induce her to smother it. Neither wealth, nor fame, nor tyrant fashion, nor all that the high position of her birth had to offer, could bribe her to abate one syllable of her testimony against the seductive system.... Let us hope that South Carolina will yet count this noble, brave, excellent woman above all her past heroes. She it was, more than all the rest of us put together, who called out what was good and humane in the Christian church to take the part of the slave, and deliver the proud State of her birth from the monster that had preyed on its vitals for a century. I have no fitting words for a life like hers. With a mind high and deep and broad enough to grasp the relations of justice and mercy, and a heart warm enough to sympathize with and cherish all that live, what a home she made! Words cannot paint it. I saw it in that old stone house, surrounded with its beautiful garden, at Belleville, on the banks of the Passaic. I saw it in that busy, bright, and cheery palace of true education at Eagleswood, New Jersey. I have seen it here, in this Mecca of the wise. Well done! Oh, well done!" Mr. Wright was followed by Robert F. Walcutt, Lucy Stone, and Wendell Phillips. "The women of to-day," said Lucy Stone, "owe more than they will ever know to the high courage, the rare insight, and fidelity to principle of this woman, by whose suffering easy paths have been made for them. Her example was a bugle-call to all other women. Who can tell how many have been quickened in a great life purpose by the heroism and self-forgetting devotion of her whose voice we shall never hear again, but who, 'being dead, yet speaketh.'" The remarks of Wendell Phillips were peculiarly affecting, and were spoken with a tenderness which, for once at least, disproved the assertion that his eloquence was wanting in pathos. "Friends," he said, "this life carries us back to the first chapter of that great movement with which her name is associated,--to 1835, '36, '37, '38, when our cities roared with riot, when William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets, when Dresser was mobbed in Nashville, and Macintosh burned in St. Louis. At that time, the hatred toward abolitionists was so bitter and merciless that the friends of Lovejoy left his grave long time unmarked; and at last ventured to put, with his name, on his tombstone, only this piteous entreaty: _Jam Parce Sepulto_, 'Spare him now in his grave.' "As Friend Wright has said, we were but a handful, and our words beat against the stony public as powerless as if against the north wind. We got no sympathy from most northern men: their consciences were seared as with a hot iron. At this time a young woman came from the proudest State in the slave-holding section. She came to lay on the altar of this despised cause, this seemingly hopeless crusade, both family and friends, the best social position, a high place in the church, genius, and many gifts. No man at this day can know the gratitude we felt for this help from such an unexpected source. After this[9] came James G. Birney from the South, and many able and influential men and women joined us. At last John Brown laid his life, the crowning sacrifice, on the altar of the cause. But no man who remembers 1837 and its lowering clouds will deny that there was hardly any contribution to the anti-slavery movement greater or more impressive than the crusade of these Grimké sisters through the New England States. "When I think of Angelina, there comes to me the picture of the spotless dove in the tempest, as she battles with the storm, seeking for some place to rest her foot. She reminds me of innocence personified in Spenser's poem. In her girlhood, alone, heart-led, she comforts the slave in his quarters, mentally struggling with the problems his position wakes her to. Alone, not confused, but seeking something to lean on, she grasps the Church, which proves a broken reed. No whit disheartened, she turns from one sect to another, trying each by the infallible touchstone of that clear, child-like conscience. The two old, lonely Quakers rest her foot awhile. But the eager soul must work, not rest in testimony. Coming North at last, she makes her own religion one of sacrifice and toil. Breaking away from, rising above, all forms, the dove floats at last in the blue sky where no clouds reach.... This is no place for tears. Graciously, in loving kindness and tenderly, God broke the shackles and freed her soul. It was not the dust which surrounded her that we loved. It was not the form which encompassed her that we revere; but it was the soul. We linger a very little while, her old comrades. The hour comes, it is even now at the door, that God will open our eyes to see her as she is: the white-souled child of twelve years old ministering to want and sorrow; the ripe life, full of great influences; the serene old age, example and inspiration whose light will not soon go out. Farewell for a very little while. God keep us fit to join thee in that broader service on which thou hast entered." [9] A mistake. James G. Birney was one of the most widely known and influential leaders in the abolition cause at the time Angelina came into it. At the close of Mr. Phillips' remarks a hymn was read and sung, followed by a fervent prayer from Mr. Morrison, when the services closed with the reading and singing of "Nearer, my God to Thee." Then, after the last look had been taken, the coffin-lid was softly closed over the placidly sleeping presence beneath, and the precious form was borne to Mount Hope, and tenderly lowered to its final resting-place. There the sisters, inseparable in life, lie side by side next the "Evergreen Path," in that "dreamless realm of silence." A friend, describing the funeral, says:-- "The funeral services throughout wore no air of gloom. That sombre crape shrouded no one with its dismal tokens. The light of a glorious autumn day streamed in through uncurtained windows. It was not a house of mourning,--no sad word said, no look of sorrow worn. The tears that freely fell were not of grief, but tears of yearning love, of sympathy, of solemn joy and gratitude to God for such a life in its rounded completeness, such an example and testimony, such fidelity to conscience, such recoil from all self-seeking, such unswerving devotion to duty, come what might of peril or loss, even unto death." Florence Nightingale, writing of a woman whose life, like the lives of Sarah and Angelina Grimké, had been devoted to the service of the poor, the weak, the oppressed, says at the close:-- "This is not an _in memoriam_, it is a war-cry such as she would have bid me write,--a cry for others to fill her place, to fill up the ranks, and fight the good fight against sin and vice and misery and wretchedness as she did,--the call to arms such as she was ever ready to obey." 
13106	----	MEMOIRS OF MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. VOL. II. * * * * * Only a learned and a manly soul I purposed her, that should with even powers The rock, the spindle, and the shears control Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours. BEN JONSON Però che ogni diletto nostro e doglia Sta in sì e nò saper, voler, potere; Adunque quel sol può, che col dovere Ne trae la ragion fuor di sua soglia. Adunque tu, lettor di queste note, S'a tè vuoi esser buono, e agli altri caro, Vogli sempre poter quel che tu debbi. LEONARDO DA VINCI. BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY. MDCCCLVII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, BY R.F. FULLER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts Stereotyped by HOBART & ROBBINS; NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY; BOSTON. TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR VOLUME SECOND. VI. JAMAICA PLAIN, _By W.H. Channing_ FIRST IMPRESSIONS A CLUE TRANSCENDENTALISM GENIUS THE DIAL THE WOMAN THE FRIEND SOCIALISM CREDO SELF-SOVEREIGNTY VII. NEW YORK. JOURNALS, LETTERS, &c. LEAVING HOME THE HIGHLANDS WOMAN THE TRIBUNE AND HORACE GREELEY SOCIETY VIII. EUROPE. LETTERS LONDON EDINBURGH.--DE QUINCEY CHALMERS A NIGHT ON BEN LOMOND JOANNA BAILLIE.--HOWITTS.--SMITH CARLYLE PARIS RACHEL FOURIER,--ROUSSEAU ROME AMERICANS IN ITALY THE WIFE AND MOTHER THE PRIVATE MARRIAGE AQUILA AND RIETI CALM AFTER STORM MARGARET AND HER PEERS FLORENCE IX. HOMEWARD _By W.H. Channing_ SPRING-TIME OMENS THE VOYAGE THE WRECK JAMAICA PLAIN BY W.H. CHANNING. * * * * * "Quando Lo raggio della grazia, onde s'accende Verace amore, e che poi cresce amando, Multiplicato in tè tanto risplende, Che ti conduce su per quella scala, U' senza risalir nessun discende, Qual ti negasse 'l vin della sua fiàla Por la tua sete, in libertà non fôra, Se non com' acqua oh' al mar non si cala." DANTE. "Weite Welt und breites Leben, Langer Jahre redlich Streben, Stets geforscht und stets gegründet, Nie geschlossen, oft geründet, Aeltestes bewahrt mit Treue, Freundlich aufgefasstes Neue, Heitern Sinn und reine Zwecke: Nun! man kommt wohl eine Strecke." GOETHE. "My purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles." TENNYSON. "Remember how august the heart is. It contains the temple not only of Love but of Conscience; and a whisper is heard from the extremity of one to the extremity of the other." LANDOR "If all the gentlest-hearted friends I knew Concentred in one heart their gentleness, That still grew gentler till its pulse was less For life than pity,--I should yet be slow To bring my own heart nakedly below The palm of such a friend, that he should press My false, ideal joy and fickle woe Out to full light and knowledge." ELIZABETH BARRETT. VI. JAMAICA PLAIN * * * * * I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. It was while Margaret was residing at Jamaica Plain, in the summer of 1839, that we first really met as friends, though for several years previous we had been upon terms of kindest mutual regard. And, as the best way of showing how her wonderful character opened upon me, the growth of our acquaintance shall be briefly traced. The earliest recollection of Margaret is as a schoolmate of my sisters, in Boston. At that period she was considered a prodigy of talent and accomplishment; but a sad feeling prevailed, that she had been overtasked by her father, who wished to train her like a boy, and that she was paying the penalty for undue application, in nearsightedness, awkward manners, extravagant tendencies of thought, and a pedantic style of talk, that made her a butt for the ridicule of frivolous companions. Some seasons later, I call to mind seeing, at the "Commencements" and "Exhibitions" of Harvard University, a girl, plain in appearance, but of dashing air, who was invariably the centre of a listening group, and kept their merry interest alive by sparkles of wit and incessant small-talk. The bystanders called her familiarly, "Margaret," "Margaret Fuller;" for, though young, she was already noted for conversational gifts, and had the rare skill of attracting to her society, not spirited collegians only, but men mature in culture and of established reputation. It was impossible not to admire her fluency and fun; yet, though curiosity was piqued as to this entertaining personage, I never sought an introduction, but, on the contrary, rather shunned encounter with one so armed from head to foot in saucy sprightliness. About 1830, however, we often met in the social circles of Cambridge, and I began to observe her more nearly. At first, her vivacity, decisive tone, downrightness, and contempt of conventional standards, continued to repel. She appeared too _intense_ in expression, action, emphasis, to be pleasing, and wanting in that _retenue_ which we associate with delicate dignity. Occasionally, also, words flashed from her of such scathing satire, that prudence counselled the keeping at safe distance from a body so surcharged with electricity. Then, again, there was an imperial--shall it be said imperious?--air, exacting deference to her judgments and loyalty to her behests, that prompted pride to retaliatory measures. She paid slight heed, moreover, to the trim palings of etiquette, but swept through the garden-beds and into the doorway of one's confidence so cavalierly, that a reserved person felt inclined to lock himself up in his sanctum. Finally, to the coolly-scanning eye, her friendships wore a look of such romantic exaggeration, that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism. In brief, it must candidly be confessed, that I then suspected her of affecting the part of a Yankee Corinna. But soon I was charmed, unaware, with the sagacity of her sallies, the profound thoughts carelessly dropped by her on transient topics, the breadth and richness of culture manifested in her allusions or quotations, her easy comprehension of new views, her just discrimination, and, above all, her _truthfulness_. "Truth at all cost," was plainly her ruling maxim. This it was that made her criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern, her speech so naked in frankness, her gaze so searching, her whole attitude so alert. Her estimates of men, books, manners, events, art, duty, destiny, were moulded after a grand ideal; and she was a severe judge from the very loftiness of her standard. Her stately deportment, border though it might on arrogance, but expressed high-heartedness. Her independence, even if haughty and rash, was the natural action of a self-centred will, that waited only fit occasion to prove itself heroic. Her earnestness to read the hidden history of others was the gauge of her own emotion. The enthusiasm that made her speech so affluent, when measured by the average scale, was the unconscious overflow of a poetic temperament. And the ardor of her friends' affection proved the faithfulness of her love. Thus gradually the mist melted away, till I caught a glimpse of her real self. We were one evening talking of American literature,--she contrasting its boyish crudity, half boastful, half timid, with the tempered, manly equipoise of thorough-bred European writers, and I asserting that in its mingled practicality and aspiration might be read bright auguries; when, betrayed by sympathy, she laid bare her secret hope of what Woman might be and do, as an author, in our Republic. The sketch was an outline only, and dashed off with a few swift strokes, but therein appeared her own portrait, and we were strangers no more. It was through the medium of others, however, that at this time I best learned to appreciate Margaret's nobleness of nature and principle. My most intimate friend in the Theological School, James Freeman Clarke, was her constant companion in exploring the rich gardens of German literature; and from his descriptions I formed a vivid image of her industry, comprehensiveness, buoyancy, patience, and came to honor her intelligent interest in high problems of science, her aspirations after spiritual greatness, her fine æsthetic taste, her religiousness. By power to quicken other minds, she showed how living was her own. Yet more near were we brought by common attraction toward a youthful visitor in our circle, the untouched freshness of whose beauty was but the transparent garb of a serene, confiding, and harmonious soul, and whose polished grace, at once modest and naïve, sportive and sweet, fulfilled the charm of innate goodness of heart. Susceptible in temperament, anticipating with ardent fancy the lot of a lovely and refined woman, and morbidly exaggerating her own slight personal defects, Margaret seemed to long, as it were, to transfuse with her force this nymph-like form, and to fill her to glowing with her own lyric fire. No drop of envy tainted the sisterly love, with which she sought by genial sympathy thus to live in another's experience, to be her guardian-angel, to shield her from contact with the unworthy, to rouse each generous impulse, to invigorate thought by truth incarnate in beauty, and with unfelt ministry to weave bright threads in her web of fate. Thus more and more Margaret became an object of respectful interest, in whose honor, magnanimity and strength I learned implicitly to trust. Separation, however, hindered our growing acquaintance, as we both left Cambridge, and, with the exception of a few chance meetings in Boston and a ramble or two in the glens and on the beaches of Rhode Island, held no further intercourse till the summer of 1839, when, as has been already said, the friendship, long before rooted, grew up and leafed and bloomed. II. A CLUE. * * * * * I have no hope of conveying to readers my sense of the beauty of our relation, as it lies in the past with brightness falling on it from Margaret's risen spirit. It would be like printing a chapter of autobiography, to describe what is so grateful in memory, its influence upon one's self. And much of her inner life, as confidentially disclosed, could not be represented without betraying a sacred trust. All that can be done is to open the outer courts, and give a clue for loving hearts to follow. To such these few sentences may serve as a guide. 'When I feel, as I do this morning, the poem of existence, I am repaid for all trial. The bitterness of wounded affection, the disgust at unworthy care, the aching sense of how far deeds are transcended by our lowest aspirations, pass away as I lean on the bosom of Nature, and inhale new life from her breath. Could but love, like knowledge, be its own reward!' 'Oftentimes I have found in those of my own sex more gentleness, grace, and purity, than in myself; but seldom the heroism which I feel within my own breast. I blame not those who think the heart cannot bleed because it is so strong; but little they dream of what lies concealed beneath the determined courage. Yet mine has been the Spartan sternness, smiling while it hides the wound. I long rather for the Christian spirit, which even on the cross prays, "Father, forgive them," and rises above fortitude to heavenly satisfaction.' * * * * * 'Remember that only through aspirations, which sometimes make me what is called unreasonable, have I been enabled to vanquish unpropitious circumstances, and save my soul alive.' * * * * * 'All the good I have ever done has been by calling on every nature for its highest. I will admit that sometimes I have been wanting in gentleness, but never in tenderness, nor in noble faith.' * * * * * 'The heart which hopes and dares is also accessible to terror, and this falls upon it like a thunderbolt. It can never defend itself at the moment, it is so surprised. There is no defence but to strive for an equable temper of courageous submission, of obedient energy, that shall make assault less easy to the foe. '_This_ is the dart within the heart, as well as I can tell it:--At moments, the music of the universe, which daily I am upheld by hearing, seems to stop. I fall like a bird when the sun is eclipsed, not looking for such darkness. The sense of my individual law--that lamp of life--flickers. I am repelled in what is most natural to me. I feel as, when a suffering child, I would go and lie with my face to the ground, to sob away my little life.' * * * * * 'In early years, when, though so frank as to the thoughts of the mind, I put no heart confidence in any human being, my refuge was in my journal. I have burned those records of my youth, with its bitter tears, and struggles, and aspirations. Those aspirations were high, and have gained only broader foundations and wider reach. But the leaves had done their work. For years to write there, instead of speaking, had enabled me to soothe myself; and the Spirit was often my friend, when I sought no other. Once again I am willing to take up the cross of loneliness. Resolves are idle, but the anguish of my soul has been, deep. It will not be easy to profane life by rhetoric.' * * * * * 'I woke thinking of the monks of La Trappe;--how could they bear their silence? When the game of life was lost for me, in youthful anguish I knew well the desire for that vow; but if I had taken it, my heart would have burned out my physical existence long ago.' * * * * * 'Save me from plunging into the depths to learn the worst, or from being led astray by the winged joys of childish feeling. I pray for truth in proportion as there is strength to receive.' * * * * * 'My law is incapable of a charter. I pass all bounds, and cannot do otherwise. Those whom it seems to me I am to meet again in the Ages, I meet, soul to soul, now. I have no knowledge of any circumstances except the degree of affinity.' * * * * * 'I feel that my impatient nature needs the dark days. I would learn the art of limitation, without compromise, and act out my faith with a delicate fidelity. When loneliness becomes too oppressive, I feel Him drawing me nearer, to be soothed by the smile of an All-Intelligent Love. He will not permit the freedom essential to growth to be checked. If I can give myself up to Him, I shall not be too proud, too impetuous, neither too timid, and fearful of a wound or cloud.' III. TRANSCENDENTALISM. * * * * * The summer of 1839 saw the full dawn of the Transcendental movement in New England. The rise of this enthusiasm was as mysterious as that of any form of revival; and only they who were of the faith could comprehend how bright was this morning-time of a new hope. Transcendentalism was an assertion of the inalienable integrity of man, of the immanence of Divinity in instinct. In part, it was a reaction against Puritan Orthodoxy; in part, an effect of renewed study of the ancients, of Oriental Pantheists, of Plato and the Alexandrians, of Plutarch's Morals, Seneca and Epictetus; in part, the natural product of the culture of the place and time. On the somewhat stunted stock of Unitarianism,--whose characteristic dogma was trust in individual reason as correlative to Supreme Wisdom,--had been grafted German Idealism, as taught by masters of most various schools,--by Kant and Jacobi, Fichte and Novalis, Schelling and Hegel, Schleiermacher and De Wette, by Madame de Stael, Cousin, Coleridge, and Carlyle; and the result was a vague yet exalting conception of the godlike nature of the human spirit. Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the temple of the Living God in the soul. It was a putting to silence of tradition and formulas, that the Sacred Oracle might be heard through intuitions of the single-eyed and pure-hearted. Amidst materialists, zealots, and sceptics, the Transcendentalist believed in perpetual inspiration, the miraculous power of will, and a birthright to universal good. He sought to hold communion face to face with the unnameable Spirit of his spirit, and gave himself up to the embrace of nature's beautiful joy, as a babe seeks the breast of a mother. To him the curse seemed past; and love was without fear. "All mine is thine" sounded forth to him in ceaseless benediction, from flowers and stars, through the poetry, art, heroism of all ages, in the aspirations of his own genius, and the budding promise of the time. His work was to be faithful, as all saints, sages, and lovers of man had been, to Truth, as the very Word of God. His maxims were,--"Trust, dare and be; infinite good is ready for your asking; seek and find. All that your fellows can claim or need is that you should become, in fact, your highest self; fulfil, then, your ideal." Hence, among the strong, withdrawal to private study and contemplation, that they might be "alone with the Alone;" solemn yet glad devotedness to the Divine leadings in the inmost will; calm concentration of thought to wait for and receive wisdom; dignified independence, stern yet sweet, of fashion and public opinion; honest originality of speech and conduct, exempt alike from apology or dictation, from servility or scorn. Hence, too, among the weak, whimsies, affectation, rude disregard of proprieties, slothful neglect of common duties, surrender to the claims of natural appetite, self-indulgence, self-absorption, and self-idolatry. By their very posture of mind, as seekers of the new, the Transcendentalists were critics and "come-outers" from the old. Neither the church, the state, the college, society, nor even reform associations, had a hold upon their hearts. The past might be well enough for those who, without make-belief, could yet put faith in common dogmas and usages; but for them the matin-bells of a new day were chiming, and the herald-trump of freedom was heard upon the mountains. Hence, leaving ecclesiastical organizations, political parties, and familiar circles, which to them were brown with drought, they sought in covert nooks of friendship for running waters, and fruit from the tree of life. The journal, the letter, became of greater worth than the printed page; for they felt that systematic results were not yet to be looked for, and that in sallies of conjecture, glimpses and flights of ecstasy, the "Newness" lifted her veil to her votaries. Thus, by mere attraction of affinity, grew together the brotherhood of the "Like-minded," as they were pleasantly nicknamed by outsiders, and by themselves, on the ground that no two were of the same opinion. The only password of membership to this association, which had no compact, records, or officers, was a hopeful and liberal spirit; and its chance conventions were determined merely by the desire of the caller for a "talk," or by the arrival of some guest from a distance with a budget of presumptive novelties. Its "symposium" was a pic-nic, whereto each brought of his gains, as he felt prompted, a bunch of wild grapes from the woods, or bread-corn from his threshing-floor. The tone of the assemblies was cordial welcome for every one's peculiarity; and scholars, farmers, mechanics, merchants, married women, and maidens, met there on a level of courteous respect. The only guest not tolerated was intolerance; though strict justice might add, that these "Illuminati" were as unconscious of their special cant as smokers are of the perfume of their weed, and that a professed declaration of universal independence turned out in practice to be rather oligarchic. Of the class of persons most frequently found at these meetings Margaret has left the following sketch:-- '"I am not mad, most noble Festus," was Paul's rejoinder, as he turned upon his vulgar censor with the grace of a courtier, the dignity of a prophet, and the mildness of a saint. But many there are, who, adhering to the faith of the soul with that unusual earnestness which the world calls "mad," can answer their critics only by the eloquence of their characters and lives. Now, the other day, while visiting a person whose highest merit, so far as I know, is to save his pennies, I was astounded by hearing him allude to some of most approved worth among us, thus: "You know _we_ consider _those men_ insane." 'What this meant, I could not at first well guess, so completely was my scale of character turned topsy-turvy. But revolving the subject afterward, I perceived that WE was the multiple of Festus, and THOSE MEN of Paul. All the circumstances seemed the same as in that Syrian hall; for the persons in question were they who cared more for doing good than for fortune and success,--more for the one risen from the dead than for fleshly life,--more for the Being in whom we live and move than for King Agrippa. 'Among this band of candidates for the mad-house, I found the young poet who valued insight of nature's beauty, and the power of chanting to his fellow-men a heavenly music, above the prospect of fortune, political power, or a standing in fashionable society. At the division of the goods of this earth, he was wandering like Schiller's poet. But the difference between American and German regulations would seem to be, that in Germany the poet, when not "with Jove," is left at peace on earth; while here he is, by a self-constituted police, declared "mad." 'Another of this band was the young girl who, early taking a solemn view of the duties of life, found it difficult to serve an apprenticeship to its follies. She could not turn her sweetness into "manner," nor cultivate love of approbation at the expense of virginity of heart. In so called society she found no outlet for her truest, fairest self, and so preferred to live with external nature, a few friends, her pencil, instrument, and books. She, they say, is "mad." 'And he, the enthusiast for reform, who gives away fortune, standing in the world, peace, and only not life, because bigotry is now afraid to exact the pound of flesh as well as the ducats,--he, whose heart beats high with hopes for the welfare of his race, is "mad." 'And he, the philosopher, who does not tie down his speculation to the banner of the day, but lets the wings of his thought upbear him where they will, as if they were stronger and surer than the balloon let off for the amusement of the populace,--he must be "mad." Off with him to the moon! that paradise of noble fools, who had visions of possibilities too grand and lovely for this sober earth. 'And ye, friends, and lovers, who see, through all the films of human nature, in those you love, a divine energy, worthy of creatures who have their being in very God, ye, too, are "mad" to think they can walk in the dust, and yet shake it from their feet when they come upon the green. These are no winged Mercuries, no silver-sandalled Madonnas. Listen to "the world's" truth and soberness, and we will show you that your heart would be as well placed in a hospital, as in these air-born palaces. 'And thou, priest, seek thy God among the people, and not in the shrine. The light need not penetrate thine own soul. Thou canst catch the true inspiration from the eyes of thy auditors. Not the Soul of the World, not the ever-flowing voice of nature, but the articulate accents of practical utility, should find thy ear ever ready. Keep always among men, and consider what they like; for in the silence of thine own breast will be heard the voices that make men "mad." Why shouldst thou judge of the consciousness of others by thine own? May not thine own soul have been made morbid, by retiring too much within? If Jesus of Nazareth had not fasted and prayed so much alone, the devil could never have tempted him; if he had observed the public mind more patiently and carefully, he would have waited till the time was ripe, and the minds of men prepared for what he had to say. He would thus have escaped the ignominious death, which so prematurely cut short his "usefulness." Jewry would thus, gently, soberly, and without disturbance, have been led to a better course. '"Children of this generation!"--ye Festuses and Agrippas!--ye are wiser, we grant, than "the children of light;" yet we advise you to commend to a higher tribunal those whom much learning, or much love, has made "mad." For if they stay here, almost will they persuade even you!' Amidst these meetings of the Transcendentalists it was, that, after years of separation, I again found Margaret. Of this body she was member by grace of nature. Her romantic freshness of heart, her craving for the truth, her self-trust, had prepared her from childhood to be a pioneer in prairie-land; and her discipline in German schools had given definite form and tendency to her idealism. Her critical yet aspiring intellect filled her with longing for germs of positive affirmation in place of the chaff of thrice-sifted negation; while her æsthetic instinct responded in accord to the praise of Beauty as the beloved heir of Good and Truth, whose right it is to reign. On the other hand, strong common-sense saved her from becoming visionary, while she was too well-read as a scholar to be caught by conceits, and had been too sternly tried by sorrow to fall into fanciful effeminacy. It was a pleasing surprise to see how this friend of earlier days was acknowledged as a peer of the realm, in this new world of thought. Men,--her superiors in years, fame and social position,--treated her more with the frankness due from equal to equal, than the half-condescending deference with which scholars are wont to adapt themselves to women. They did not talk down to her standard, nor translate their dialect into popular phrase, but trusted to her power of interpretation. It was evident that they prized her verdict, respected her criticism, feared her rebuke, and looked to her as an umpire. Very observable was it, also, how, in side-talks with her, they became confidential, seemed to glow and brighten into their best mood, and poured out in full measure what they but scantily hinted in the circle at large. IV. GENIUS. * * * * * It was quite a study to watch the phases through which Margaret passed, in one of these assemblies. There was something in the air and step with which she chose her place in the company, betokening an instinctive sense, that, in intellect, she was of blood royal and needed to ask no favors. And then she slowly gathered her attention to take in the significance of the scene. Near-sighted and habitually using an eye-glass, she rapidly scanned the forms and faces, pausing intently where the expression of particular heads or groups suggested thought, and ending her survey with some apt home-thrust to her next neighbors, as if to establish full _rapport_, and so to become a medium for the circulating life. Only when thus in magnetic relations with all present, by a clear impress of their state and place, did she seem prepared to rise to a higher stage of communion. Then she listened, with ear finely vibrating to every tone, with all capacities responsive in sympathy, with a swift and ductile power of appreciation, that made her feel to the quick the varying moods of different speakers, and yet the while with coolest self-possession. Now and then a slight smile, flickering over her countenance, as lightning plays on the surface of a cloud, marked the inward process whereby she was harmonizing in equilibrium opposing thoughts. And, as occasion offered, a felicitous quotation, pungent apothegm, or symbolic epithet, dropped unawares in undertone, showed how swiftly scattered rays were brought in her mind to a focus. When her turn came, by a graceful transition she resumed the subject where preceding speakers had left it, and, briefly summing up their results, proceeded to unfold her own view. Her opening was deliberate, like the progress of some massive force gaining its momentum; but as she felt her way, and moving in a congenial element, the sweep of her speech became grand. The style of her eloquence was sententious, free from prettiness, direct, vigorous, charged with vitality. Articulateness, just emphasis and varied accent, brought out most delicate shades and brilliant points of meaning, while a rhythmical collocation of words gave a finished form to every thought. She was affluent in historic illustration and literary allusion, as well as in novel hints. She knew how to concentrate into racy phrases the essential truth gathered from wide research, and distilled with patient toil; and by skilful treatment she could make green again the wastes of common-place. Her statements, however rapid, showed breadth of comprehension, ready memory, impartial judgment, nice analysis of differences, power of penetrating through surfaces to realities, fixed regard to central laws and habitual communion with the Life of life. Critics, indeed, might have been tempted to sneer at a certain oracular grandiloquence, that bore away her soberness in moments of elation; though even the most captious must presently have smiled at the humor of her descriptive touches, her dexterous exposure of folly and pretension, the swift stroke of her bright wit, her shrewd discernment, promptitude, and presence of mind. The reverential, too, might have been pained at the sternness wherewith popular men, measures, and established customs, were tried and found guilty, at her tribunal; but even while blaming her aspirations as rash, revolutionary and impractical, no honest conservative could fail to recognize the sincerity of her aim. And every deep observer of character would have found the explanation of what seemed vehement or too high-strung, in the longing of a spirited woman to break every trammel that checked her growth or fettered her movement. In conversations like these, one saw that the richness of Margaret's genius resulted from a rare combination of opposite qualities. To her might have been well applied the words first used as describing George Sand: "Thou large-brained Woman, and large-hearted Man." She blended in closest union and swift interplay feminine receptiveness with masculine energy. She was at once impressible and creative, impulsive and deliberate, pliant in sympathy yet firmly self-centred, confidingly responsive while commanding in originality. By the vivid intensity of her conceptions, she brought out in those around their own consciousness, and, by the glowing vigor of her intellect, roused into action their torpid powers. On the other hand, she reproduced a truth, whose germ had just been imbibed from others, moulded after her own image and quickened by her own life, with marvellous rapidity. And the presence of congenial minds so stimulated the prolific power of her imagination, that she was herself astonished at the fresh beauty of her new-born thoughts. 'There is a mortifying sense,' she writes, 'of having played the Mirabeau after a talk with a circle of intelligent persons. They come with a store of acquired knowledge and reflection, on the subject in debate, about which I may know little, and have reflected less; yet, by mere apprehensiveness and prompt intuition, I may appear their superior. Spontaneously I appropriate all their material, and turn it to my own ends, as if it was my inheritance from a long train of ancestors. Rays of truth flash out at the moment, and they are startled by the light thrown over their familiar domain. Still they are gainers, for I give them new impulse, and they go on their way rejoicing in the bright glimpses they have caught. I should despise myself, if I purposely appeared thus brilliant, but I am inspired as by a power higher than my own.' All friends will bear witness to the strict fidelity of this sketch. There were seasons when she seemed borne irresistibly on to the verge of prophecy, and fully embodied one's notion of a sibyl. Admirable as Margaret appeared in public, I was yet more affected by this peculiar mingling of impressibility and power to influence, when brought within her private sphere. I know not how otherwise to describe her subtle charm, than by saying that she was at once a clairvoyante and a magnetizer. She read another's bosom-secret, and she imparted of her own force. She interpreted the cipher in the talisman of one's destiny, that he had tried in vain to spell alone; by sympathy she brought out the invisible characters traced by experience on his heart; and in the mirror of her conscience he might see the image of his very self, as dwarfed in actual appearance, or developed after the divine ideal. Her sincerity was terrible. In her frank exposure no foible was spared, though by her very reproof she roused dormant courage and self-confidence. And so unerring seemed her insight, that her companion felt as if standing bare before a disembodied spirit, and communicated without reserve thoughts and emotions, which, even to himself, he had scarcely named. This penetration it was that caused Margaret to be so dreaded, in general society, by superficial observers. They, who came nigh enough to test the quality of her spirit, could not but perceive how impersonal was her justice; but, contrasted with the dead flat of conventional tolerance, her candor certainly looked rugged and sharp. The frivolous were annoyed at her contempt of their childishness, the ostentatious piqued at her insensibility to their show, and the decent scared lest they should be stripped of their shams; partisans were vexed by her spurning their leaders; and professional sneerers,--civil in public to those whom in private they slandered,--could not pardon the severe truth whereby she drew the sting from their spite. Indeed, how could so undisguised a censor but shock the prejudices of the moderate, and wound the sensibilities of the diffident; how but enrage the worshippers of new demi-gods in literature, art and fashion, whose pet shrines she demolished; how but cut to the quick, alike by silence or by speech, the self-love of the vain, whose claims she ignored? So gratuitous, indeed, appeared her hypercriticism, that I could not refrain from remonstrance, and to one of my appeals she thus replied: 'If a horror for the mania of little great men, so prevalent in this country,--if aversion to the sentimental exaggerations to which so many minds are prone,--if finding that most men praise, as well as blame, too readily, and that overpraise desecrates the lips and makes the breath unworthy to blow the coal of devotion,--if rejection of the ----s and ----s, from a sense that the priestess must reserve her pæans for Apollo,--if untiring effort to form my mind to justice and revere only the superlatively good, that my praise might be praise; if this be to offend, then have I offended.' V. THE DIAL. * * * * * Several talks among the Transcendentalists, during the autumn of 1839, turned upon the propriety of establishing an organ for the expression of freer views than the conservative journals were ready to welcome. The result was the publication of the "Dial," the first number of which appeared early in the summer of 1840, under the editorship of Margaret, aided by R.W. Emerson and George Ripley. How moderate were her own hopes, in regard to this enterprise, is clearly enough shown by passages from her correspondence. '_Jamaica Plain, 22d March, 1840._ * * * I have a great deal written, but, as I read it over, scarce a word seems pertinent to the place or time. When I meet people, it is easy to adapt myself to them; but when I write, it is into another world,--not a better one, perhaps, but one with very dissimilar habits of thought to this wherein I am domesticated. How much those of us, who have been formed by the European mind, have to unlearn, and lay aside, if we would act here! I would fain do something worthily that belonged to the country where I was born, but most times I fear it may not be. 'What others can do,--whether all that has been said is the mere restlessness of discontent, or there are thoughts really struggling for utterance,--will be tested now. A perfectly free organ is to be offered for the expression of individual thought and character. There are no party measures to be carried, no particular standard to be set up. A fair, calm tone, a recognition of universal principles, will, I hope, pervade the essays in every form. I trust there will be a spirit neither of dogmatism nor of compromise, and that this journal will aim, not at leading public opinion, but at stimulating each man to judge for himself, and to think more deeply and more nobly, by letting him see how some minds are kept alive by a wise self-trust. We must not be sanguine as to the amount of talent which will be brought to bear on this publication. All concerned are rather indifferent, and there is no great promise for the present. We cannot show high culture, and I doubt about vigorous thought. But we shall manifest free action as far as it goes, and a high aim. It were much if a periodical could be kept open, not to accomplish any outward object, but merely to afford an avenue for what of liberal and calm thought might be originated among us, by the wants of individual minds.' * * * * * * * '_April 19, 1840._--Things go on pretty well, but doubtless people will be disappointed, for they seem to be looking for the Gospel of Transcendentalism. It may prove as Jouffroy says it was with the successive French ministries: "The public wants something positive, and, seeing that such and such persons are excellent at fault-finding, it raises them to be rulers, when, lo! they have no noble and full Yea, to match their shrill and bold Nay, and so are pulled down again." Mr. Emerson knows best what he wants; but he has already said it in various ways. Yet, this experiment is well worth trying; hearts beat so high, they must be full of something, and here is a way to breathe it out quite freely. It is for dear New England that I want this review. For myself, if I had wished to write a few pages now and then, there were ways and means enough of disposing of them. But in truth I have not much to say; for since I have had leisure to look at myself, I find that, so far from being an original genius, I have not yet learned to think to any depth, and that the utmost I have done in life has been to form my character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the truth with a little better grace than I did at first. For this the world will not care much, so I shall hazard a few critical remarks only, or an unpretending chalk sketch now and then, till I have learned to do something. There will be beautiful poesies; about prose we know not yet so well. We shall be the means of publishing the little Charles Emerson left as a mark of his noble course, and, though it lies in fragments, all who read will be gainers.' * * * * * '1840.--Since the Revolution, there has been little, in the circumstances of this country, to call out the higher sentiments. The effect of continued prosperity is the same on nations as on individuals,--it leaves the nobler faculties undeveloped. The need of bringing out the physical resources of a vast extent of country, the commercial and political fever incident to our institutions, tend to fix the eyes of men on what is local and temporary, on the external advantages of their condition. The superficial diffusion of knowledge, unless attended by a correspondent deepening of its sources, is likely to vulgarize rather than to raise the thought of a nation, depriving them of another sort of education through sentiments of reverence, and leading the multitude to believe themselves capable of judging what they but dimly discern. They see a wide surface, and forget the difference between seeing and knowing. In this hasty way of thinking and living they traverse so much ground that they forget that not the sleeping railroad passenger, but the botanist, the geologist, the poet, really see the country, and that, to the former, "a miss is as good as a mile." In a word, the tendency of circumstances has been to make our people superficial, irreverent, and more anxious to get a living than to live mentally and morally. This tendency is no way balanced by the slight literary culture common here, which is mostly English, and consists in a careless reading of publications of the day, having the same utilitarian tendency with our own proceedings. The infrequency of acquaintance with any of the great fathers of English lore marks this state of things. 'New England is now old enough,--some there have leisure enough,--to look at all this; and the consequence is a violent reaction, in a small minority, against a mode of culture that rears such fruits. They see that political freedom does not necessarily produce liberality of mind, nor freedom in church institutions--vital religion; and, seeing that these changes cannot be wrought from without inwards, they are trying to quicken the soul, that they may work from within outwards. Disgusted with the vulgarity of a commercial aristocracy, they become radicals; disgusted with the materialistic working of "rational" religion, they become mystics. They quarrel with all that is, because it is not spiritual enough. They would, perhaps, be patient if they thought this the mere sensuality of childhood in our nation, which it might outgrow; but they think that they see the evil widening, deepening,--not only debasing the life, but corrupting the thought, of our people, and they feel that if they know not well what should be done, yet that the duty of every good man is to utter a protest against what is done amiss. 'Is this protest undiscriminating? are these opinions crude? do these proceedings threaten to sap the bulwarks on which men at present depend? I confess it all, yet I see in these men promise of a better wisdom than in their opponents. Their hope for man is grounded on his destiny as an immortal soul, and not as a mere comfort-loving inhabitant of earth, or as a subscriber to the social contract. It was not meant that the soul should cultivate the earth, but that the earth should educate and maintain the soul. Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual. In these principles I have confidence so profound, that I am not afraid to trust those who hold them, despite their partial views, imperfectly developed characters, and frequent want of practical sagacity. I believe, if they have opportunity to state and discuss their opinions, they will gradually sift them, ascertain their grounds and aims with clearness, and do the work this country needs. I hope for them as for "the leaven that is hidden in the bushel of meal, till all be leavened." The leaven is not good by itself, neither is the meal; let them combine, and we shall yet have bread. 'Utopia it is impossible to build up. At least, my hopes for our race on this one planet are more limited than those of most of my friends. I accept the limitations of human nature, and believe a wise acknowledgment of them one of the best conditions of progress. Yet every noble scheme, every poetic manifestation, prophesies to man his eventual destiny. And were not man ever more sanguine than facts at the moment justify, he would remain torpid, or be sunk in sensuality. It is on this ground that I sympathize with what is called the "Transcendental party," and that I feel their aim to be the true one. They acknowledge in the nature of man an arbiter for his deeds,--a standard transcending sense and time,--and are, in my view, the true utilitarians. They are but at the beginning of their course, and will, I hope, learn how to make use of the past, as well as to aspire for the future, and to be true in the present moment. 'My position as a woman, and the many private duties which have filled my life, have prevented my thinking deeply on several of the great subjects which these friends have at heart. I suppose, if ever I become capable of judging, I shall differ from most of them on important points. But I am not afraid to trust any who 'are true, and in intent noble, with their own course, nor to aid in enabling them to express their thoughts, whether I coincide with them or not. 'On the subject of Christianity, my mind is clear. If Divine, it will stand the test of any comparison. I believe the reason it has so imperfectly answered to the aspirations of its Founder is, that men have received it on external grounds. I believe that a religion, thus received, may give the life an external decorum, but will never open the fountains of holiness in the soul. 'One often thinks of Hamlet as the true representative of idealism in its excess. Yet if, in his short life, man be liable to some excess, should we not rather prefer to have the will palsied like Hamlet, by a deep-searching tendency and desire for poetic perfection, than to have it enlightened by worldly sagacity, as in the case of Julius Cæsar, or made intense by pride alone, as in that of Coriolanus? 'After all, I believe it is absurd to attempt to speak on these subjects within the limits of a letter. I will try to say what I mean in print some day. Yet one word as to "the material," in man. Is it not the object of all philosophy, as well as of religion and poetry, to prevent its prevalence? Must not those who see most truly be ever making statements of the truth to combat this sluggishness, or worldliness? What else are sages, poets, preachers, born to do? Men go an undulating course,--sometimes on the hill, sometimes in the valley. But he only is in the right who in the valley forgets not the hill-prospect, and knows in darkness that the sun will rise again. That is the real life which is subordinated to, not merged in, the ideal; he is only wise who can bring the lowest act of his life into sympathy with its highest thought. And this I take to be the one only aim of our pilgrimage here. I agree with those who think that no true philosophy will try to ignore or annihilate the material part of man, but will rather seek to put it in its place, as servant and minister to the soul.' VI. THE WOMAN. * * * * * In 1839 I had met Margaret upon the plane of intellect. In the summer of 1840, on my return from the West, she was to be revealed in a new aspect. It was a radiant and refreshing morning, when I entered the parlor of her pleasant house, standing upon a slope beyond Jamaica Plain to the south. She was absent at the moment, and there was opportunity to look from the windows on a cheerful prospect, over orchards and meadows, to the wooded hills and the western sky. Presently Margaret appeared, bearing in her hand a vase of flowers, which she had been gathering in the garden. After exchange of greetings, her first words were of the flowers, each of which was symbolic to her of emotion, and associated with the memory of some friend. I remember her references only to the Daphne Odora, the Provence Rose, the sweet-scented Verbena, and the Heliotrope; the latter being her chosen emblem, true bride of the sun that it is. From flowers she passed to engravings hanging round the room. 'Here,' said she, 'are Dante and Beatrice. "Approach, and know that I am Beatrice. The power of ancient love was strong within me." 'She is beautiful enough, is not she, for that higher moment? But Dante! Yet who could paint a Dante,--and Dante in heaven? They give but his shadow, as he walked in the forest-maze of earth. Then here is the Madonna del Pesce; not divine, like the Foligno, not deeply maternal, like the Seggiola, not the beätified "Mother of God" of the Dresden gallery, but graceful, and "not too bright and good for human nature's daily food." And here is Raphael himself, the young seer of beauty, with eyes softly contemplative, yet lit with central fires,' &c. There were gems, too, and medallions and seals, to be examined, each enigmatical, and each blended by remembrances with some fair hour of her past life. Talk on art led the way to Greece and the Greeks, whose mythology Margaret was studying afresh. She had been culling the blooms of that poetic land, and could not but offer me leaves from her garland. She spoke of the statue of Minerva-Polias, cut roughly from an olive-tree, yet cherished as the heaven-descended image of the most sacred shrine, to which was due the Panathenaic festival. 'The less ideal perfection in the figure, the greater the reverence of the adorer. Was not this because spiritual imagination makes light of results, and needs only a germ whence to unfold Olympic splendors?' She spoke of the wooden column, left standing from the ruins of the first temple to Juno, amidst the marble walls of the magnificent fane erected in its place:-- 'This is a most beautiful type, is not it, of the manner in which life's earliest experiences become glorified by our perfecting destiny?' 'In the temple of Love and the Graces, one Grace bore a rose, a second a branch of myrtle, a third dice;--who can read that riddle? '"Better is it," said Appollonius, "on entering a small shrine to find there a statue of gold and ivory, than in a large temple to behold only a coarse figure of terra cotta." How often, after leaving with disgust the so-called great affairs of men, do we find traces of angels' visits in quiet scenes of home. 'The Hours and the Graces appear as ornaments on all thrones and shrines, except those of Vulcan and Pluto. Alas for us, when we become so sunk in utilitarian toil as to be blind to the beauty with which even common cares are daily wreathed!' And so on and on, with myth and allusion. Next, Margaret spoke of the friends whose generosity had provided the decorations on her walls, and the illustrated books for her table,--friends who were fellow-students in art, history, or science,--friends whose very life she shared. Her heart seemed full to overflow with sympathy for their joys and sorrows, their special trials and struggles, their peculiar tendencies of character and respective relations. The existence of each was to her a sacred process, whose developments she watched with awe, and whose leadings she reverently sought to aid. She had scores of pretty anecdotes to tell, sweet bowers of sentiment to open, significant lessons of experience to interpret, and scraps of journals or letters to read aloud, as the speediest means of introducing me to her chosen circle. There was a fascinating spell in her piquant descriptions, and a genial glow of sympathy animated to characteristic movement the figures, who in varying pantomime replaced one another on the theatre of her fancy. Frost-bound New England melted into a dreamland of romance beneath the spice-breeze of her Eastern narrative. Sticklers for propriety might have found fault at the freedom with which she confided her friends' histories to one who was a comparative stranger to them; but I could not but note how conscientiousness reined in her sensibilities and curbed their career, as they reached the due bounds of privacy. She did but realize one's conception of the transparent truthfulness that will pervade advanced societies of the future, where the very atmosphere shall be honorable faith. Nearer and nearer Margaret was approaching a secret throned in her heart that day; and the preceding transitions were but a prelude of her orchestra before the entrance of the festal group. Unconsciously she made these preparations for paying worthy honors to a high sentiment. She had lately heard of the betrothal of two of her best-loved friends; and she wished to communicate the graceful story in a way that should do justice to the facts and to her own feelings. It was by a spontaneous impulse of her genius, and with no voluntary foreshaping, that she had grouped the previous tales; but no drama could have been more artistically constructed than the steps whereby she led me onward to the denouement; and the look, tone, words, with which she told it, were fluent with melody as the song of an improvisatrice. Scarcely had she finished, when, offering some light refreshment,--as it was now past noon,--she proposed a walk in the open air. She led the way to Bussey's wood, her favorite retreat during the past year, where she had thought and read, or talked with intimate friends. We climbed the rocky path, resting a moment or two at every pretty point, till, reaching a moss-cushioned ledge near the summit, she seated herself. For a time she was silent, entranced in delighted communion with the exquisite hue of the sky, seen through interlacing boughs and trembling leaves, and the play of shine and shadow over the wide landscape. But soon, arousing from her reverie, she took up the thread of the morning's talk. My part was to listen; for I was absorbed in contemplating this, to me, quite novel form of character. It has been seen how my early distaste for Margaret's society was gradually changed to admiration. Like all her friends, I had passed through an avenue of sphinxes before reaching the temple. But now it appeared that thus far I had never been admitted to the adytum. As, leaning on one arm, she poured out her stream of thought, turning now and then her eyes full upon me, to see whether I caught her meaning, there was leisure to study her thoroughly. Her temperament was predominantly what the physiologists would call nervous-sanguine; and the gray eye, rich brown hair and light complexion, with the muscular and well-developed frame, bespoke delicacy balanced by vigor. Here was a sensitive yet powerful being, fit at once for rapture or sustained effort, intensely active, prompt for adventure, firm for trial. She certainly had not beauty; yet the high arched dome of the head, the changeful expressiveness of every feature, and her whole air of mingled dignity and impulse, gave her a commanding charm. Especially characteristic were two physical traits. The first was a contraction of the eyelids almost to a point,--a trick caught from near-sightedness,--and then a sudden dilation, till the iris seemed to emit flashes;--an effect, no doubt, dependent on her highly-magnetized condition. The second was a singular pliancy of the vertebræ and muscles of the neck, enabling her by a mere movement to denote each varying emotion; in moments of tenderness, or pensive feeling, its curves were swan-like in grace, but when she was scornful or indignant it contracted, and made swift turns like that of a bird of prey. Finally, in the animation, yet _abandon_ of Margaret's attitude and look, were rarely blended the fiery force of northern, and the soft languor of southern races. Meantime, as I was thus, through her physiognomy, tracing the outlines of her spiritual form, she was narrating chapters from the book of experience. How superficially, heretofore, had I known her! We had met chiefly as scholars. But now I saw before me one whose whole life had been a poem,--of boundless aspiration and hope almost wild in its daring,--of indomitable effort amidst poignant disappointment,--of widest range, yet persistent unity. Yes! here was a poet in deed, a true worshipper of Apollo, who had steadfastly striven to brighten and make glad existence, to harmonize all jarring and discordant strings, to fuse most hard conditions and cast them in a symmetric mould, to piece fragmentary fortunes into a mosaic symbol of heavenly order. Here was one, fond as a child of joy, eager as a native of the tropics for swift transition from luxurious rest to passionate excitement, prodigal to pour her mingled force of will, thought, sentiment, into the life of the moment, all radiant with imagination, longing for communion with artists of every age in their inspired hours, fitted by genius and culture to mingle as an equal in the most refined circles of Europe, and yet her youth and early womanhood had passed away amid the very decent, yet drudging, descendants of the prim Puritans. Trained among those who could have discerned her peculiar power, and early fed with the fruits of beauty for which her spirit pined, she would have developed into one of the finest lyrists, romancers and critics, that the modern literary world has seen. This she knew; and this tantalization of her fate she keenly felt. But the tragedy of Margaret's history was deeper yet. Behind the poet was the woman,--the fond and relying, the heroic and disinterested woman. The very glow of her poetic enthusiasm was but an outflush of trustful affection; the very restlessness of her intellect was the confession that her heart had found no home. A "book-worm," "a dilettante," "a pedant," I had heard her sneeringly called; but now it was evident that her seeming insensibility was virgin pride, and her absorption in study the natural vent of emotions, which had met no object worthy of life-long attachment. At once, many of her peculiarities became intelligible. Fitfulness, unlooked-for changes of mood, misconceptions of words and actions, substitution of fancy for fact,--which had annoyed me during the previous season, as inconsistent in a person of such capacious judgment and sustained self-government,--were now referred to the morbid influence of affections pent up to prey upon themselves. And, what was still more interesting, the clue was given to a singular credulousness, by which, in spite of her unusual penetration, Margaret might be led away blindfold. As this revelation of her ardent nature burst upon me, and as, rapidly recalling the past, I saw how faithful she had kept to her high purposes,--how patient, gentle, and thoughtful for others, how active in self-improvement and usefulness, how wisely dignified she had been,--I could not but bow to her in reverence. We walked back to the house amid a rosy sunset, and it was with no surprise that I heard her complain of an agonizing nervous headache, which compelled her at once to retire, and call for assistance. As for myself, while going homeward, I reflected with astonishment on the unflagging spiritual energy with which, for hour after hour, she had swept over lands and seas of thought, and, as my own excitement cooled, I became conscious of exhaustion, as if a week's life had been concentrated in a day. The interview, thus hastily sketched, may serve as a fair type of our usual intercourse. Always I found her open-eyed to beauty, fresh for wonder, with wings poised for flight, and fanning the coming breeze of inspiration. Always she seemed to see before her, "A shape all light, which with one hand did fling Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn, And the invisible rain did ever sing A silver music on the mossy lawn." Yet more and more distinctly did I catch a plaintive tone of sorrow in her thought and speech, like the wail of an Æolian harp heard at intervals from some upper window. She had never met one who could love her as she could love; and in the orange-grove of her affections the white, perfumed blossoms and golden fruit wasted away unclaimed. Through the mask of slight personal defects and ungraceful manners, of superficial hauteur and egotism, and occasional extravagance of sentiment, no equal had recognized the rare beauty of her spirit. She was yet alone. Among her papers remains this pathetic petition:-- 'I am weary of thinking. I suffer great fatigue from living. Oh God, take me! take me wholly! Thou knowest that I love none but Thee. All this beautiful poesy of my being lies in Thee. Deeply I feel it. I ask nothing. Each desire, each passionate feeling, is on the surface only; inmostly Thou keepest me strong and pure. Yet always to be thus going out into moments, into nature, and love, and thought! Father, I am weary! Reassume me for a while, I pray Thee. Oh let me rest awhile in Thee, Thou only Love! In the depth of my prayer I suffer much. Take me only awhile. No fellow-being will receive me. I cannot pause; they will not detain me by their love. Take me awhile, and again I will go forth on a renewed service. It is not that I repine, my Father, but I sink from want of rest, and none will shelter me. Thou knowest it all. Bathe me in the living waters of Thy Love.' VII. THE FRIEND. * * * * * Yet, conscious as she was of an unfulfilled destiny, and of an undeveloped being, Margaret was no pining sentimentalist. The gums oozing from wounded boughs she burned as incense in her oratory; but in outward relations she was munificent with sympathy. 'Let me be, Theodora, a bearer of heavenly gifts to my fellows,' is written in her journals, and her life fulfilled the aspiration. The more one observed her, the more surprising appeared the variety, earnestness, and constancy of her friendships. Far and wide reached her wires of communication, and incessant was the interchange of messages of good-will. She was never so preoccupied and absorbed as to deny a claimant for her affectionate interest; she never turned her visitors back upon themselves, mortified and vexed at being misunderstood. With delicate justice she appreciated the special form, force, tendency of utterly dissimilar characters and her heart responded to every appeal alike of humblest suffering or loftiest endeavor. In the plain, yet eloquent phrase of the backwoodsman, "the string of her door-latch was always out," and every wayfarer was free to share the shelter of her roof, or a seat beside her hearth-stone. Or, rather, it might be said, in symbol of her wealth of spirit, her palace, with its galleries of art, its libraries and festal-halls, welcomed all guests who could enjoy and use them. She was, indeed, The Friend. This was her vocation. She bore at her girdle a golden key to unlock all caskets of confidence. Into whatever home she entered she brought a benediction of truth, justice, tolerance, and honor; and to every one who sought her to confess, or seek counsel, she spoke the needed word of stern yet benignant wisdom. To how many was the forming of her acquaintance an era of renovation, of awakening from sloth, indulgence or despair, to heroic mastery of fate, of inward serenity and strength, of new-birth to real self-hood, of catholic sympathies, of energy consecrated to the Supreme Good. Thus writes to her one who stands among the foremost in his own department: "What I am I owe, in large measure, to the stimulus you imparted. You roused my heart with high hopes; you raised my aims from paltry and vain pursuits to those which tasked and fed the soul; you inspired me with a great ambition, and made me see the worth and meaning of life; you awakened in me confidence in my own powers, showed me my special and distinct ability, and quickened my individual consciousness by intelligent sympathy with tendencies and feelings which I but half understood; you gave me to myself. This is a most benign influence to exercise, and for it, above all other benefits, gratitude is due. Therefore have you an inexhaustible bank of gratitude to draw from. Bless God that he has allotted to you such a ministry." The following extracts from her letters will show how profusely Margaret poured out her treasures upon her friends; but they reveal, too, the painful processes of alchemy whereby she transmuted her lead into gold. 'Your idea of friendship apparently does not include intellectual intimacy, as mine does, but consists of mutual esteem and spiritual encouragement. This is the thought represented, on antique gems and bas-reliefs, of the meeting between God and Goddess, I find; for they rather offer one another the full flower of being, than grow together. As in the figures before me, Jupiter, king of Gods and men, meets Juno, the sister and queen, not as a chivalric suppliant, but as a stately claimant; and she, crowned, pure, majestic, holds the veil aside to reveal herself to her august spouse.' * * * * * 'How variously friendship is represented in literature! Sometimes the two friends kindle beacons from afar to apprize one another that they are constant, vigilant, and each content in his several home. Sometimes, two pilgrims, they go different routes in service of the same saint, and remember one another as they give alms, learn wisdom, or pray in shrines along the road. Sometimes, two knights, they bid farewell with mailed hand of truth and honor all unstained, as they ride forth on their chosen path to test the spirit of high emprise, and free the world from wrong,--to meet again for unexpected succor in the hour of peril, or in joyful surprise to share a frugal banquet on the plat of greensward opening from forest glades. Sometimes, proprietors of two neighboring estates, they have interviews in the evening to communicate their experiments and plans, or to study together the stars from an observatory; if either is engaged he simply declares it; they share enjoyments cordially; they exchange praise or blame frankly; in citizen-like good-fellowship they impart their gains. 'All these views of friendship are noble and beautiful, yet they are not enough for our manifold nature. Friends should be our incentives to Right, yet not only our guiding, but our prophetic stars. To love by sight is much, to love by faith is more; together they make up the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. Friends should love not merely for the absolute worth of each to the other, but on account of a mutual fitness of character. They are not merely one another's priests or gods, but ministering angels, exercising in their part the same function as the Great Soul does in the whole,--of seeing the perfect through the imperfect, nay, creating it there. Why am I to love my friend the less for any obstruction in his life? Is not that the very time for me to love most tenderly, when I must see his life in despite of seeming? When he shows it to me I can only admire; I do not give myself, I am taken captive. 'But how shall I express my meaning? Perhaps I can do so from the tales of chivalry, where I find what corresponds far more thoroughly with my nature, than in these stoical statements. The friend of Amadis expects to hear prodigies of valor of the absent Preux, but if he be mutilated in one of his first battles, shall he be mistrusted by the brother of his soul, more than if he had been tested in a hundred? If Britomart finds Artegall bound in the enchanter's spell, can she doubt therefore him whom she has seen in the magic glass? A Britomart does battle in his cause, and frees him from the evil power, while a dame of less nobleness might sit and watch the enchanted sleep, weeping night and day, or spur on her white palfrey to find some one more helpful than herself. These friends in chivalry are always faithful through the dark hours to the bright. The Douglas motto, "tender and true," seems to me most worthy of the strongest breast. To borrow again from Spencer, I am entirely satisfied with the fate of the three brothers. I could not die while there was yet life in my brother's breast. I would return from the shades and nerve him with twofold life for the fight. I could do it, for our hearts beat with one blood. Do you not see the truth and happiness of this waiting tenderness? The verse-- "Have I a lover Who is noble and free, I would he were nobler Than to love me,"-- does not come home to my heart, though _this_ does:-- "I could not love thee, sweet, so much, Loved I not honor more." * * * '_October 10th, 1840._--I felt singular pleasure in seeing you quote Hood's lines on "Melancholy." I thought nobody knew and loved his serious poems except myself, and two or three others, to whom I imparted them.[A] Do you like, also, the ode to Autumn, and-- "Sigh on, sad heart, for love's eclipse"? It was a beautiful time when I first read these poems. I was staying in Hallowell, Maine, and could find no books that I liked, except Hood's poems. You know how the town is built, like a terraced garden on the river's bank; I used to go every afternoon to the granite quarry which crowns these terraces, and read till the sunset came casting its last glory on the opposite bank. They were such afternoons as those in September and October, clear, soft, and radiant. Nature held nothing back. 'Tis many years since, and I have never again seen the Kennebec, but remember it as a stream of noble character. It was the first river I ever sailed up, realizing all which that emblem discloses of life. Greater still would the charm have been to sail downward along an unknown stream, seeking not a home, but a ship upon the ocean.' * * * * * '_Newbury, Oct. 18, 1840._--It rained, and the day was pale and sorrowful, the thick-fallen leaves even shrouded the river. We went out in the boat, and sat under the bridge. The pallid silence, the constant fall of the rain and leaves, were most soothing, life had been for many weeks so crowded with thought and feeling, pain and pleasure, rapture and care. Nature seemed gently to fold us in her matron's mantle. On such days the fall of the leaf does not bring sadness, only meditation. Earth seemed to loose the record of past summer hours from her permanent life, as lightly, and spontaneously, as the great genius casts behind him a literature,--the Odyssey he has outgrown. In the evening the rain ceased, the west wind came, and we went out in the boat again for some hours; indeed, we staid till the last clouds passed from the moon. Then we climbed the hill to see the full light in solemn sweetness over fields, and trees, and river. 'I never enjoyed anything more in its way than the three days alone with ---- in her boat, upon the little river. Not without reason was it that Goethe limits the days of intercourse to _three_, in the Wanderjahre. If you have lived so long in uninterrupted communion with any noble being, and with nature, a remembrance of man's limitations seems to call on Polycrates to cast forth his ring. She seemed the very genius of the scene, so calm, so lofty, and so secluded. I never saw any place that seemed to me so much like home. The beauty, though so great, is so unobtrusive. 'As we glided along the river, I could frame my community far more naturally and rationally than ----. A few friends should settle upon the banks of a stream like this, planting their homesteads. Some should be farmers, some woodmen, others bakers, millers, &c. By land, they should carry to one another the commodities; on the river they should meet for society. At sunset many, of course, would be out in their boats, but they would love the hour too much ever to disturb one another. I saw the spot where we should discuss the high mysteries that Milton speaks of. Also, I saw the spot where I would invite select friends to live through the noon of night, in silent communion. When we wished to have merely playful chat, or talk on politics or social reform, we would gather in the mill, and arrange those affairs while grinding the corn. What a happy place for children to grow up in! Would it not suit little ---- to go to school to the cardinal flowers in her boat, beneath the great oak-tree? I think she would learn more than in a phalanx of juvenile florists. But, truly, why has such a thing never been? One of these valleys so immediately suggests an image of the fair company that might fill it, and live so easily, so naturally, so wisely. Can we not people the banks of some such affectionate little stream? I distrust ambitious plans, such as Phalansterian organizations! '---- is quite bent on trying his experiment. I hope he may succeed; but as they were talking the other evening, I thought of the river, and all the pretty symbols the tide-mill presents, and felt if I could at all adjust the economics to the more simple procedure, I would far rather be the miller, hoping to attract by natural affinity some congenial baker, "und so weiter." However, one thing seems sure, that many persons will soon, somehow, somewhere, throw off a part, at least, of these terrible weights of the social contract, and see if they cannot lie more at ease in the lap of Nature. I do not feel the same interest in these plans, as if I had a firmer hold on life, but I listen with much pleasure to the good suggestions.' * * * * * '_Oct. 19th, 1840._ ---- was here. Generally I go out of the room when he comes, for his great excitability makes me nervous, and his fondness for detail is wearisome. But to-night I was too much fatigued to do anything else, and did not like to leave mother; so I lay on the sofa while she talked with him. 'My mind often wandered, yet ever and anon, as I listened again to him, I was struck with admiration at the compensations of Nature. Here is a man, isolated from his kind beyond any I know, of an ambitious temper and without an object of tender affections and without a love or a friend. I don't suppose any mortal, unless it be his aged mother, cares more for him than we do,--scarce any value him so much. The disease, which has left him, in the eyes of men, a scathed and blighted tree, has driven him back to Nature, and she has not refused him sympathy. I was surprised by the refinement of his observations on the animals, his pets. He has carried his intercourse with them to a degree of perfection we rarely attain with our human friends. There is no misunderstanding between him and his dogs and birds; and how rich has been the acquaintance in suggestion! Then the flowers! I liked to hear him, for he recorded all their pretty ways,--not like a botanist, but a lover. His interview with the Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain was most romantic. And what he said of the Yuca seems to me so pretty, that I will write it down, though somewhat more concisely than he told it:-- '"I had kept these plants of the Yuca Filamentosa six or seven years, though they had never bloomed. I knew nothing of them, and had no notion of what feelings they would excite. Last June I found in bud the one which had the most favorable exposure. A week or two after, another, which was more in the shade, put out flower-buds, and I thought I should be able to watch them, one after the other; but, no! the one which was most favored waited for the other, and both flowered together at the full of the moon. This struck me as very singular, but as soon as I saw the flower by moonlight I understood it. This flower is made for the moon, as the Heliotrope is for the sun, and refuses other influences or to display her beauty in any other light. '"The first night I saw it in flower, I was conscious of a peculiar delight, I may even say rapture. Many white flowers are far more beautiful by day; the lily, for instance, with its firm, thick leaf, needs the broadest light to manifest its purity. But these transparent leaves of greenish white, which look dull in the day, are melted by the moon to glistening silver. And not only does the plant not appear in its destined hue by day, but the flower, though, as bell-shaped, it cannot quite close again after having once expanded, yet presses its petals together as closely as it can, hangs down its little blossoms, and its tall stalk seems at noon to have reared itself only to betray a shabby insignificance. Thus, too, with the leaves, which have burst asunder suddenly like the fan-palm to make way for the stalk,--their edges in the day time look ragged and unfinished, as if nature had left them in a hurry for some more pleasing task. On the day after the evening when I had thought it so beautiful, I could not conceive how I had made such a mistake. '"But the second evening I went out into the garden again. In clearest moonlight stood my flower, more beautiful than ever. The stalk pierced the air like a spear, all the little bells had erected themselves around it in most graceful array, with petals more transparent than silver, and of softer light than the diamond. Their edges were clearly, but not sharply defined. They seemed to have been made by the moon's rays. The leaves, which had looked ragged by day, now seemed fringed by most delicate gossamer, and the plant might claim with pride its distinctive epithet of Filamentosa. I looked at it till my feelings became so strong that I longed to share it. The thought which filled my mind was that here we saw the type of pure feminine beauty in the moon's own flower. I have since had further opportunity of watching the Yuca, and verified these observations, that she will not flower till the full moon, and chooses to hide her beauty from the eye of day." 'Might not this be made into a true poem, if written out merely as history of the plant, and no observer introduced? How finely it harmonizes with all legends of Isis, Diana, &c.! It is what I tried to say in the sonnet,-- Woman's heaven, Where palest lights a silvery sheen diffuse. 'In tracing these correspondences, one really does take hold of a Truth, of a Divine Thought.' * * * * * * * '_October 25th, 1840._--This week I have not read any book, nor once walked in the woods and fields. I meant to give its days to setting outward things in order, and its evenings to writing. But, I know not how it is, I can never simplify my life; always so many ties, so many claims! However, soon the winter winds will chant matins and vespers, which may make my house a cell, and in a snowy veil enfold me for my prayer. If I cannot dedicate myself this time, I will not expect it again. Surely it should be! These Carnival masks have crowded on me long enough, and Lent must be at hand. * * '---- and ---- have been writing me letters, to answer which required all the time and thought I could give for a day or two. ----'s were of joyful recognition, and so beautiful I would give much to show them to you. ----'s have singularly affected me. They are noble, wise, of most unfriendly friendliness. I don't know why it is, I always seem to myself to have gone so much further with a friend than I really have. Just as at Newport I thought ---- met me, when he did not, and sang a joyful song which found no echo, so here ---- asks me questions which I thought had been answered in the first days of our acquaintance, and coldly enumerates all the charming qualities which make it impossible for him to part with me! He scolds me, though in the sweetest and solemnest way. I will not quote his words, though their beauty tempts me, for they do not apply, they do not touch ME. 'Why is it that the religion of my nature is so much hidden from my peers? why do they question me, who never question them? why persist to regard as a meteor an orb of assured hope? Can no soul know me wholly? shall I never know the deep delight of gratitude to any but the All-Knowing? I shall wait for ---- very peaceably, in reverent love as ever; but I cannot see why he should not have the pleasure of knowing now a friend, who has been "so tender and true."' * * * * * '---- was here, and spent twenty-four hours in telling me a tale of deepest tragedy. Its sad changes should be written out in Godwin's best manner: such are the themes he loved, as did also Rousseau. Through all the dark shadows shone a pure white ray, one high, spiritual character, a man, too, and of advanced age. I begin to respect men more,--I mean actual men. What men may be, I know; but the men of to-day have seemed to me of such coarse fibre, or else such poor wan shadows! '---- had scarcely gone, when ---- came and wished to spend a few hours with me. I was totally exhausted, but I lay down, and she sat beside me, and poured out all her noble feelings and bright fancies. There was little light in the room, and she gleamed like a cloud --"of pearl and opal," and reminded me more than ever of --"the light-haired Lombardess Singing a song of her own native land," to the dying Correggio, beside the fountain. 'I am astonished to see how much Bettine's book is to all these people. This shows how little courage they have had to live out themselves. She really brings them a revelation. The men wish they had been loved by Bettine; the girls wish to write down the thoughts that come, and see if just such a book does not grow up. ----, however, was one of the few who do not over-estimate her; she truly thought Bettine only publishes what many burn. Would not genius be common as light, if men trusted their higher selves?' * * * * * 'I heard in town that ---- is a father, and has gone to see his child. This news made me more grave even than such news usually does; I suppose because I have known the growth of his character so intimately. I called to mind a letter he had written me of what we had expected of our fathers. The ideal father, the profoundly wise, provident, divinely tender and benign, he is indeed the God of the human heart. How solemn this moment of being called to prepare the way, to _make way_ for another generation! What fulfilment does it claim in the character of a man, that he should be worthy to be a father!--what purity of motive, what dignity, what knowledge! When I recollect how deep the anguish, how deeper still the want, with which I walked alone in hours of childish passion, and called for a Father, often saying the word a hundred times, till stifled by sobs, how great seems the duty that name imposes! Were but the harmony preserved throughout! Could the child keep learning his earthly, as he does his heavenly Father, from all best experience of life, till at last it were the climax: "I am the Father. Have ye seen me?--ye have seen the Father." But how many sons have we to make one father? Surely, to spirits, not only purified but perfected, this must appear the climax of earthly being,--a wise and worthy parentage. Here I always sympathize with Mr. Alcott. He views the relation truly.' * * * * * '_Dec. 3, 1840._ ---- bids me regard her "as a sick child;" and the words recall some of the sweetest hours of existence. My brother Edward was born on my birth-day, and they said he should be my child. But he sickened and died just as the bud of his existence showed its first bright hues. He was some weeks wasting away, and I took care of him always half the night. He was a beautiful child, and became very dear to me then. Still in lonely woods the upturned violets show me the pleading softness of his large blue eyes, in those hours when I would have given worlds to prevent his suffering, and could not. I used to carry him about in my arms for hours; it soothed him, and I loved to feel his gentle weight of helpless purity upon my heart, while night listened around. At last, when death came, and the soul took wing like an overtasked bird from his sweet form, I felt what I feel now. Might I free ----, as that angel freed him! 'In daily life I could never hope to be an unfailing fountain of energy and bounteous love. My health is frail; my earthly life is shrunk to a scanty rill; I am little better than an aspiration, which the ages will reward, by empowering me to incessant acts of vigorous beauty. But now it is well with me to be with those who do not suffer overmuch to have me suffer. It is best for me to serve where I can better bear to fall short. I could visit ---- more nobly than in daily life, through the soul of our souls. When she named me her Priestess, that name made me perfectly happy. Long has been my consecration; may I not meet those I hold dear at the altar? How would I pile up the votive offerings, and crowd the fires with incense? Life might be full and fair; for, in my own way, I could live for my friends.' * * * * * * * '_Dec. 8th, 1840._--My book of amusement has been the Evenings of St. Petersburg. I do not find the praises bestowed on it at all exaggerated. Yet De Maistre is too logical for me. I only catch a thought here and there along the page. There is a grandeur even in the subtlety of his mind. He walks with a step so still, that, but for his dignity, it would be stealthy, yet with brow erect and wide, eye grave and deep. He is a man such as I have never known before.' * * 'I went to see Mrs. Wood in the Somnambula. Nothing could spoil this opera, which expresses an ecstasy, a trance of feeling, better than anything I ever heard. I have loved every melody in it for years, and it was happiness to listen to the exquisite modulations as they flowed out of one another, endless ripples on a river deep, wide and strewed with blossoms. I never have known any one more to be loved than Bellini. No wonder the Italians make pilgrimages to his grave. In him thought and feeling flow always in one tide; he never divides himself. He is as melancholy as he is sweet; yet his melancholy is not impassioned, but purely tender.' * * * * * '_Dec. 15, 1840._--I have not time to write out as I should this sweet story of Melissa, but here is the outline:-- 'More than four years ago she received an injury, which caused her great pain in the spine, and went to the next country town to get medical advice. She stopped at the house of a poor blacksmith, an acquaintance only, and has never since been able to be moved. Her mother and sister come by turns to take care of her. She cannot help herself in any way, but is as completely dependent as an infant. The blacksmith and his wife gave her the best room in their house, have ever since ministered to her as to a child of their own, and, when people pity them for having to bear such a burthen, they say, "It is none, but a blessing." 'Melissa suffers all the time, and great pain. She cannot amuse or employ herself in any way, and all these years has been as dependent on others for new thoughts, as for daily cares. Yet her mind has deepened, and her character refined, under those stern teachers, Pain and Gratitude, till she has become the patron saint of the village, and the muse of the village school-mistress. She has a peculiar aversion to egotism, and could not bear to have her mother enlarge upon her sufferings. '"Perhaps it will pain the lady to hear that," said the mild, religious sufferer, who had borne all without a complaint. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." The poor are the generous: the injured, the patient and loving. All that ---- said of this girl was in perfect harmony with what De Maistre says of the saint of St. Petersburg, who, almost devoured by cancer, when, asked, "Quelle est la premiere grace que vous demanderez a Dieu, ma chére enfant, lorsque vous serez devant lui?" she replied, "Je lui demanderai pour mes bienfaiteurs la grace de Paimer autant que je l'aime." 'When they were lamenting for her, "Je ne suis pas, dit elle, aussi malheureuse que vous le croyez; Dieu me fait la grace de ne peuser, qu'a lui."' * * 'Next of Edith. Tall, gaunt, hard-favored was this candidate for the American calendar; but Bonilacia might be her name. From her earliest years she had valued all she knew, only as she was to teach it again. Her highest ambition was to be the school-mistress; her recreation to dress the little ragged things, and take care of them out of school hours. She had some taste for nursing the grown-up, but this was quite subordinate to her care of the buds of the forest. Pure, perfectly beneficent, lived Edith, and never thought of any thing or person, but for its own sake. When she had attained midway the hill of life, she happened to be boarding in the house with a young farmer, who was lost in admiration of her lore. How he wished he, too, could read! "What, can't you read? O, let me teach you!"--"You never can; I was too thick-skulled to learn even at school. I am sure I never could now." But Edith was not to be daunted by any fancies of incapacity, and set to work with utmost zeal to teach this great grown man the primer. She succeeded, and won his heart thereby. He wished to requite the raising him from the night of ignorance, as Howard and Nicholas Poussin did the kind ones who raised them from the night of the tomb, by the gift of his hand. Edith consented, on condition that she might still keep school. So he had his sister come to "keep things straight." Edith and he go out in the morning,--he to his field, she to her school, and meet again at eventide, to talk, and plan and, I hope, to read also. 'The first use Edith made of her accession of property through her wedded estate, was to give away all she thought superfluous to a poor family she had long pitied, and to invite a poor sick woman to her "spare chamber." Notwithstanding a course like this, her husband has grown rich, and proves that the pattern of the widow's cruse was not lost in Jewry. 'Edith has become the Natalia of the village, as is Melissa its "Schöne Seele."' * * * * * '_Dec., 22, 1840._--"Community" seems dwindling to a point, and I fancy the best use of the plan, as projected thus far, will prove the good talks it has caused here, upon principles. I feel and find great want of wisdom in myself and the others. We are not ripe to reconstruct society yet. O Christopher Columbus! how art thou to be admired, when we see how other men go to work with their lesser enterprises! ---- knows deepest what he wants, but not well how to get it. ---- has a better perception of means, and less insight as to principles; but this movement has done him a world of good. All should say, however, that they consider this plan as a mere experiment, and are willing to fail. I tell them that they are not ready till they can say that. ---- says he can bear to be treated unjustly by all concerned,--which is much. He is too sanguine, as it appears to me, but his aim is worthy, and, with his courage and clear intellect, his experiment will not, at least to him, be a failure.' * * * * * '_Feb. 19, 1841._--Have I never yet seen so much as _one_ of my spiritual family? The other night they sat round me, so many who have thought they loved, or who begin to love me. I felt myself kindling the same fire in all their souls. I looked on each, and no eye repelled me. Yet there was no warmth for me on all those altars. Their natures seemed deep, yet there was 'not one from which I could draw the living fountain. I could only cheat the hour with them, prize, admire, and pity. It was sad; yet who would have seen sadness in me? * * 'Once I was almost all intellect; now I am almost all feeling. Nature vindicates her rights, and I feel all Italy glowing beneath the Saxon crust. This cannot last long; I shall burn to ashes if all this smoulders here much longer. I must die if I do not burst forth in genius or heroism. 'I meant to have translated the best passages of "Die Gunderode,"--which I prefer to Bettine's correspondence with Goethe. The two girls are equal natures, and both in earnest. Goethe made a puppet-show, for his private entertainment, of Bettine's life, and we wonder she did not feel he was not worthy of her homage. Gunderode is to me dear and admirable, Bettine only interesting. Gunderode is of religious grace, Bettine the fulness of instinctive impulse; Gunderode is the ideal, Bettine nature; Gunderode throws herself into the river because the world is all too narrow, Bettine lives and follows out every freakish fancy, till the enchanting child degenerates into an eccentric and undignified old woman. There is a medium somewhere. Philip Sidney found it; others had it found for them by fate.' * * * * * '_March_ 29. 1841.--* * Others have looked at society with far deeper consideration than I. I have felt so unrelated to this sphere, that it has not been hard for me to be true. Also, I do not believe in Society. I feel that every man must struggle with these enormous ills, in some way, in every age; in that of Moses, or Plato, or Angelo, as in our own. So it has not moved me much to see my time so corrupt, but it would if I were in a false position. '---- went out to his farm yesterday, full of cheer, as one who doeth a deed with sincere good will. He has shown a steadfastness and earnestness of purpose most grateful to behold. I do not know what their scheme will ripen to; at present it does not deeply engage my hopes. It is thus far only a little better way than others. I doubt if they will get free from all they deprecate in society.' * * * * * '_Paradise Farm, Newport, July, 1841._--Here are no deep forests, no stern mountains, nor narrow, sacred valleys; but the little white farm-house looks down from its gentle slope on the boundless sea, and beneath the moon, beyond the glistening corn-fields, is heard the endless surge. All around the house is most gentle and friendly, with many common flowers, that seem to have planted themselves, and the domestic honey-suckle carefully trained over the little window. Around are all the common farm-house sounds,--the poultry making a pleasant recitative between the carols of singing birds; even geese and turkeys are not inharmonious when modulated by the diapasons of the beach. The orchard of very old apple-trees, whose twisted forms tell of the glorious winds that have here held revelry, protects a little homely garden, such as gives to me an indescribable refreshment, where the undivided vegetable plots and flourishing young fruit-trees, mingling carelessly, seem as if man had dropt the seeds just where he wanted the plants, and they had sprung up at once. The family, too, look, at first glance, well-suited to the place,--homely, kindly, unoppressed, of honest pride and mutual love, not unworthy to look out upon the far-shining sea. 'Many, many sweet little things would I tell you, only they are so very little. I feel just now as if I could live and die here. I am out in the open air all the time, except about two hours in the early morning. And now the moon is fairly gone late in the evening. While she was here, we staid out, too. Everything seems sweet here, so homely, so kindly; the old people chatting so contentedly, the young men and girls laughing together in the fields,--not vulgarly, but in the true kinsfolk way,--little children singing in the house and beneath the berry-bushes. The never-ceasing break of the surf is a continual symphony, calming the spirits which this delicious air might else exalt too much. Everything on the beach becomes a picture; the casting the seine, the ploughing the deep for seaweed. This, when they do it with horses, is prettiest of all; but when you see the oxen in the surf, you lose all faith in the story of Europa, as the gay waves tumble in on their lazy sides. The bull would be a fine object on the shore, but not, not in the water. Nothing short of a dolphin will do! Late to-night, from the highest Paradise rocks, seeing ---- wandering, and the horsemen careering on the beach, so spectrally passing into nature, amid the pale, brooding twilight, I almost thought myself in the land of souls! 'But in the morning it is life, all cordial and common. This half-fisherman, half-farmer life seems very favorable to manliness. I like to talk with the fishermen; they are not boorish, not limited, but keen-eyed, and of a certain rude gentleness. Two or three days ago I saw the sweetest picture. There is a very tall rock, one of the natural pulpits, at one end of the beach. As I approached, I beheld a young fisherman with his little girl; he had nestled her into a hollow of the rock, and was standing before her, with his arms round her, and looking up in her face. Never was anything so pretty. I stood and stared, country fashion; and presently he scrambled up to the very top with her in his arms. She screamed a little as they went, but when they were fairly up on the crest of the rock, she chuckled, and stretched her tiny hand over his neck, to go still further. Yet, when she found he did not wish it, she leaned against his shoulder, and he sat, feeling himself in the child like that exquisite Madonna, and looking out over the great sea. Surely, the "kindred points of heaven and home" were known in his breast, whatever guise they might assume. 'The sea is not always lovely and bounteous, though generally, since we have been here, she has beamed her bluest. The night of the full moon we staid out on the far rocks. The afternoon was fair: the sun set nobly, wrapped in a violet mantle, which he left to the moon, in parting. She not only rose red, lowering, and of impatient attitude, but kept hiding her head all the evening with an angry, struggling movement. ---- said, "This is not Dian;" and I replied, "No; now we see the Hecate." But the damp, cold wind came sobbing, and the waves began wailing, too, till I was seized with a feeling of terror, such as I never had before, even in the darkest, and most treacherous, rustling wood. The moon seemed sternly to give me up to the dæmons of the rock, and the waves to mourn a tragic chorus, till I felt their cold grasp. I suffered so much, that I feared we should never get home without some fatal catastrophe. Never was I more relieved than when, as we came up the hill, the moon suddenly shone forth. It was ten o'clock, and here every human sound is hushed, and lamp put out at that hour. How tenderly the grapes and tall corn-ears glistened and nodded! and the trees stretched out their friendly arms, and the scent of every humblest herb was like a word of love. The waves, also, at that moment put on a silvery gleam, and looked most soft and regretful. That was a real voice from nature.' * * * * * '_February_, 1842.--I am deeply sad at the loss of little Waldo, from whom I hoped more than from almost any living being. I cannot yet reconcile myself to the thought that the sun shines upon the grave of the beautiful blue-eyed boy, and I shall see him no more. 'Five years he was an angel to us, and I know not that any person was ever more the theme of thought to me. As I walk the streets they swarm with apparently worthless lives, and the question will rise, why he, why just he, who "bore within himself the golden future," must be torn away? His father will meet him again; but to me he seems lost, and yet that is weakness. I _must_ meet that which he represented, since I so truly loved it. He was the only child I ever saw, that I sometimes wished I could have called mine. 'I loved him more than any child I ever knew, as he was of nature more fair and noble. You would be surprised to know how dear he was to my imagination. I saw him but little, and it was well; for it is unwise to bind the heart where there is no claim. But it is all gone, and is another of the lessons brought by each year, that we are to expect suggestions only, and not fulfilments, from each form of beauty, and to regard them merely as Angels of The Beauty.' * * * * * '_June, 1842._--Why must children be with perfect people, any more than people wait to be perfect to be friends? The secret is,--is it not?--for parents to feel and be willing their children should know that they are but little older than themselves: only a class above, and able to give them some help in learning their lesson. Then parent and child keep growing together, in the same house. Let them blunder as we blundered. God is patient for us; why should not we be for them? Aspiration teaches always, and God leads, by inches. A perfect being would hurt a child no less than an imperfect.' * * * * * 'It always makes my annoyances seem light, to be riding about to visit these fine houses. Not that I am intolerant towards the rich, but I cannot help feeling at such times how much characters require the discipline of difficult circumstances. To say nothing of the need the soul has of a peace and courage that cannot be disturbed, even as to the intellect, how can one be sure of not sitting down in the midst of indulgence to pamper tastes alone, and how easy to cheat one's self with the fancy that a little easy reading or writing is quite work. I am safer; I do not sleep on roses. I smile to myself, when with these friends, at their care of me. I let them do as they will, for I know it will not last long enough to spoil me.' * * * * * 'I take great pleasure in talking with Aunt Mary.[B] Her strong and simple nature checks not, falters not. Her experience is entirely unlike mine, as, indeed, is that of most others whom I know. No rapture, no subtle process, no slow fermentation in the unknown depths, but a rill struck out from the rock, clear and cool in all its course, the still, small voice. She says the guide of her life has shown itself rather as a restraining, than an impelling principle. I like her life, too, as far as I see it; it is dignified and true.' * * * * * '_Cambridge, July_, 1842.--A letter at Providence would have been like manna in the wilderness. I came into the very midst of the fuss,[C] and, tedious as it was at the time, I am glad to have seen it. I shall in future be able to believe real, what I have read with a dim disbelief of such times and tendencies. There is, indeed, little good, little cheer, in what I have seen: a city full of grown-up people as wild, as mischief-seeking, as full of prejudice, careless slander, and exaggeration, as a herd of boys in the play-ground of the worst boarding-school. Women whom I have seen, as the domestic cat, gentle, graceful, cajoling, suddenly showing the disposition, if not the force, of the tigress. I thought I appreciated the monstrous growths of rumor before, but I never did. The Latin poet, though used to a court, has faintly described what I saw and heard often, in going the length of a street. It is astonishing what force, purity and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods. These absurdities, of course, are linked with good qualities, with energy of feeling, and with a love of morality, though narrowed and vulgarized by the absence of the intelligence which should enlighten. I had the good discipline of trying to make allowance for those making none, to be charitable to their want of charity, and cool without being cold. But I don't know when I have felt such an aversion to my environment, and prayed so earnestly day by day,--"O, Eternal! purge from my inmost heart this hot haste about ephemeral trifles," and "keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me." 'What a change from the almost vestal quiet of "Aunt Mary's" life, to all this open-windowed, open-eyed screaming of "poltroon," "nefarious plan," "entire depravity," &c. &c.' * * * * * _'July, 1842. Boston_.--I have been entertaining the girls here with my old experiences at Groton. They have been very fresh in my mind this week. Had I but been as wise in such matters then as now, how easy and fair I might have made the whole! Too late, too late to live, but not too late to think! And as that maxim of the wise Oriental teaches, "the Acts of this life shall be the Fate of the next."' * * * 'I would have my friends tender of me, not because I am frail, but because I am capable of strength;--patient, because they see in me a principle that must, at last, harmonize all the exuberance of my character. I did not well understand what you felt, but I am willing to admit that what you said of my "over-great impetuosity" is just. You will, perhaps, feel it more and more. It may at times hide my better self. When it does, speak, I entreat, as harshly as you feel. Let me be always sure I know the worst I believe you will be thus just, thus true, for we are both servants of Truth.' * * * * * '_August, 1842. Cambridge._--Few have eyes for the pretty little features of a scene. In this, men are not so good as boys. Artists are always thus young; poets are; but the pilgrim does not lay aside his belt of steel, nor the merchant his pack, to worship the flowers on the fountain's brink. I feel, like Herbert, the weight of "business to be done," but the bird-like particle would skim and sing at these sweet places. It seems strange to leave them; and that we do so, while so fitted to live deeply in them, shows that beauty is the end but not the means. 'I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson. Much has he thought, much suffered, since the first ecstasy of so fine an organization clothed all the world with rosy light. He has not suffered himself to become a mere intellectual voluptuary, nor the songster of fancy and passion, but has earnestly revolved the problems of life, and his conclusions are calmly noble. In these later verses is a still, deep sweetness; how different from the intoxicating, sensuous melody of his earlier cadence! I have loved him much this time, and taken him to heart as a brother. One of his themes has long been my favorite,--the last expedition of Ulysses,--and his, like mine, is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the worldling of the Iliad. How finely marked his slight description of himself and of Telemachus. In Dora, Locksley Hall, the Two Voices, Morte D'Arthur, I find my own life, much of it, written truly out.' * * * * * _Concord, August 25. 1842._--Beneath this roof of peace, beneficence, and intellectual activity, I find just the alternation of repose and satisfying pleasure that I need. * * * 'Do not find fault with the hermits and scholars. The true text is:-- "Mine own Telemachus He does his work--I mine." 'All do the work, whether they will or no; but he is "mine own Telemachus" who does it in the spirit of religion, never believing that the last results can be arrested in any one measure or set of measures, listening always to the voice of the Spirit,--and who does this more than ----? 'After the first excitement of intimacy with him,--when I was made so happy by his high tendency, absolute purity, the freedom and infinite graces of an intellect cultivated much beyond any I had known,--came with me the questioning season. I was greatly disappointed in my relation to him. I was, indeed, always called on to be worthy,--this benefit was sure in our friendship. But I found no intelligence of my best self; far less was it revealed to me in new modes; for not only did he seem to want the living faith which enables one to discharge this holiest office of a friend, but he absolutely distrusted me in every region of my life with which he was unacquainted. The same trait I detected in his relations with others. He had faith in the Universal, but not in the Individual Man: he met men, not as a brother, but as a critic. Philosophy appeared to chill instead of exalting the poet. 'But now I am better acquainted with him. His "accept" is true; the "I shall learn," with which he answers every accusation, is no less true. No one can feel his limitations, in fact, more than he, though he always speaks confidently from his present knowledge as all he has yet, and never qualifies or explains. He feels himself "shut up in a crystal cell," from which only "a great love or a great task could release me," and hardly expects either from what remains in this life. But I already see so well how these limitations have fitted him for his peculiar work, that I can no longer quarrel with them; while from his eyes looks out the angel that must sooner or later break every chain. Leave him in his cell affirming absolute truth; protesting against humanity, if so he appears to do; the calm observer of the courses of things. Surely, "he keeps true to his thought, which is the great matter." He has already paid his debt to his time; how much more he will give we cannot know; but already I feel how invaluable is a cool mind, like his, amid the warring elements around us. As I look at him more by his own law, I understand him better; and as I understand him better, differences melt away. My inmost heart blesses the fate that gave me birth in the same clime and time, and that has drawn me into such a close bond with him as, it is my hopeful faith, will never be broken, but from sphere to sphere ever more hallowed. * * * 'What did you mean by saying I had imbibed much of his way of thought? I do indeed feel his life stealing gradually into mine; and I sometimes think that my work would have been more simple, and my unfolding to a temporal activity more rapid and easy, if we had never met. But when I look forward to eternal growth, I am always aware that I am far larger and deeper for him. His influence has been to me that of lofty assurance and sweet serenity. He says, I come to him as the European to the Hindoo, or the gay Trouvére to the Puritan in his steeple hat. Of course this implies that our meeting is partial. I present to him the many forms of nature and solicit with music; he melts them all into spirit and reproves performance with prayer. When I am with God alone, I adore in silence. With nature I am filled and grow only. With most men I bring words of now past life, and do actions suggested by the wants of their natures rather than my own. But he stops me from doing anything, and makes me think.' * * * * * _October_, 1842 * * To me, individually, Dr. Channing's kindness was great; his trust and esteem were steady, though limited, and I owe him a large debt of gratitude. 'His private character was gentle, simple, and perfectly harmonious, though somewhat rigid and restricted in its operations. It was easy to love, and a happiness to know him, though never, I think, a source of the highest social pleasure to be with him. His department was ethics; and as a literary companion, he did not throw himself heartily into the works of creative genius, but looked, wherever he read, for a moral. In criticism he was deficient in "individuality," if by that the phrenologists mean the power of seizing on the peculiar meanings of special forms. I have heard it said, that, under changed conditions, he might have been a poet. He had, indeed, the poetic sense of a creative spirit working everywhere. Man and nature were living to him; and though he did not yield to sentiment in particulars he did in universals. But his mind was not recreative, or even representative. 'He was deeply interesting to me as having so true a respect for woman. This feeling in him was not chivalrous; it was not the sentiment of an artist; it was not the affectionateness of the common son of Adam, who knows that only her presence can mitigate his loneliness; but it was a religious reverence. To him she was a soul with an immortal destiny. Nor was there at the bottom of his heart one grain of masculine assumption. He did not wish that Man should protect her, but that God should protect her and teach her the meaning of her lot. 'In his public relations he is to be regarded not only as a check upon the evil tendencies of his era, but yet more as a prophet of a better age already dawning as he leaves us. In his later days he filled yet another office of taking the middle ground between parties. Here he was a fairer figure than ever before. His morning prayer was, "Give me more light; keep my soul open to the light;" and it was answered. He steered his middle course with sails spotless and untorn. He was preserved in a wonderful degree from the prejudices of his own past, the passions of the present, and the exaggerations of those who look forward to the future. In the writings where, after long and patient survey, he sums up the evidence on both sides, and stands umpire, with the judicial authority of a pure intent, a steadfast patience, and a long experience, the mild wisdom of age is beautifully tempered by the ingenuous sweetness of youth. These pieces resemble charges to a jury; they have always been heard with affectionate deference, if not with assent, and have, exerted a purifying influence.' * * * * * * * '_November, 1842._--When souls meet direct and all secret thoughts are laid open, we shall need no forbearance, no prevention, no care-taking of any kind. Love will be pure light, and each action simple,--too simple to be noble. But there will not be always so much to pardon in ourselves and others. Yesterday we had at my class a conversation on Faith. Deeply true things were said and felt. But to-day the virtue has gone out of me; I have accepted all, and yet there will come these hours of weariness,--weariness of human nature in myself and others. "Could ye not watch one hour?" Not one faithfully through! * * To speak with open heart and "tongue affectionate and true,"--to enjoy real repose and the consciousness of a thorough mutual understanding in the presence of friends when we do meet, is what is needed. That being granted, I do believe I should not wish any surrender of time or thought from a human being. But I have always a sense that I cannot meet or be met _in haste_; as ---- said he could not look at the works of art in a chance half-hour, so cannot I thus rudely and hastily turn over the leaves of any mind. In peace, in stillness that permits the soul to flow, beneath the open sky, I would see those I love.' [Footnote A: This was some years before their reprint in this country, it should be noticed.] [Footnote B: Miss Rotch, of New Bedford.] [Footnote C: The Dorr rebellion.] VIII. SOCIALISM. * * * * * In the preceding extracts will have been noticed frequent reference to the Association Movement, which, during the winter of 1840-41, was beginning to appear simultaneously at several points in New England. In Boston and its vicinity several friends, for whose characters Margaret felt the highest honor, and with many of whose views, theoretic and practical, she accorded, were earnestly considering the possibility of making such industrial, social, and educational arrangements, as would simplify economies, combine leisure for study with healthful and honest toil, avert unjust collisions of caste, equalize refinements, awaken generous affections, diffuse courtesy, and sweeten and sanctify life as a whole. Chief among these was the Rev. George Ripley, who, convinced by his experience in a faithful ministry, that the need was urgent for a thorough application of the professed principles of Fraternity to actual relations, was about staking his all of fortune, reputation, position, and influence, in an attempt to organize a joint-stock community at Brook Farm. How Margaret was inclined to regard this movement has been already indicated. While at heart sympathizing with the heroism that prompted it, in judgment she considered it premature. But true to her noble self, though regretting the seemingly gratuitous sacrifice of her friends, she gave them without stint the cheer of her encouragement and the light of her counsel. She visited them often; entering genially into their trials and pleasures, and missing no chance to drop good seed in every furrow upturned by the ploughshare or softened by the rain. In the secluded yet intensely animated circle of these co-workers I frequently met her during several succeeding years, and rejoice to bear testimony to the justice, magnanimity, wisdom, patience, and many-sided good-will, that governed her every thought and deed. The feelings with which she watched the progress of this experiment are thus exhibited in her journals:-- 'My hopes might lead to Association, too,--an association, if not of efforts, yet of destinies. In such an one I live with several already, feeling that each one, by acting out his own, casts light upon a mutual destiny, and illustrates the thought of a mastermind. It is a constellation, not a phalanx, to which I would belong.' * * * * * 'Why bind oneself to a central or any doctrine? How much nobler stands a man entirely unpledged, unbound! Association may be the great experiment of the age, still it is only an experiment. It is not worth while to lay such stress on it; let us try it, induce others to try it,--that is enough.' * * * * * 'It is amusing to see how the solitary characters tend to outwardness,--to association,--while the social and sympathetic ones emphasize the value of solitude,--of concentration,--so that we hear from each the word which, from his structure, we least expect.' * * * * * 'On Friday I came to Brook Farm. The first day or two here is desolate. You seem to belong to nobody--to have a right to speak to nobody; but very soon you learn to take care of yourself, and then the freedom of the place is delightful. 'It is fine to see how thoroughly Mr. and Mrs. R. act out, in their own persons, what they intend. 'All Saturday I was off in the woods. In the evening we had a general conversation, opened by me, upon Education, in its largest sense, and on what we can do for ourselves and others. I took my usual ground: The aim is perfection; patience the road. The present object is to give ourselves and others a tolerable chance. Let us not be too ambitious in our hopes as to immediate results. Our lives should be considered as a tendency, an approximation only. Parents and teachers expect to do too much. They are not legislators, but only interpreters to the next generation. Soon, very soon, does the parent become merely the elder brother of his child;--a little wiser, it is to be hoped. ---- differed from me as to some things I said about the gradations of experience,--that "to be brought prematurely near perfect beings would chill and discourage." He thought it would cheer and console. He spoke well,--with a youthful nobleness. ---- said "that the most perfect person would be the most impersonal"--philosophical bull that, I trow--"and, consequently, would impede us least from God." Mr. R. spoke admirably on the nature of loyalty. The people showed a good deal of the _sans-culotte_ tendency in their manners,--throwing themselves on the floor, yawning, and going out when they had heard enough. Yet, as the majority differ from me, to begin with,--that being the reason this subject was chosen,--they showed, on the whole, more respect and interest than I had expected. As I am accustomed to deference, however, and need it for the boldness and animation which my part requires, I did not speak with as much force as usual. Still, I should like to have to face all this; it would have the same good effects that the Athenian assemblies had on the minds obliged to encounter them. 'Sunday. A glorious day;--the woods full of perfume. I was out all the morning. In the afternoon, Mrs. R. and I had a talk. I said my position would be too uncertain here, as I could not work. ---- said:--"They would all like to work for a person of genius. They would not like to have this service claimed from them, but would like to render it of their own accord." "Yes," I told her; "but where would be my repose, when they were always to be judging whether I was worth it or not. It would be the same position the clergyman is in, or the wandering beggar with his harp. Each day you must prove yourself anew. You are not in immediate relations with material things." 'We talked of the principles of the community. I said I had not a right to come, because all the confidence in it I had was as an _experiment_ worth trying, and that it was a part of the great wave of inspired thought. ---- declared they none of them had confidence beyond this; but they seem to me to have. Then I said, "that though I entirely agreed about the dignity of labor, and had always wished for the present change, yet I did not agree with the principle of paying for services by time;[A] neither did I believe in the hope of excluding evil, for that was a growth of nature, and one condition of the development of good." We had valuable discussion on these points. 'All Monday morning in the woods again. Afternoon, out with the drawing party; I felt the evils of want of conventional refinement, in the impudence with which one of the girls treated me. She has since thought of it with regret, I notice; and, by every day's observation of me, will see that she ought not to have done it.' * * * * * 'In the evening, a husking in the barn. Men, women, and children, all engaged. It was a most picturesque scene, only not quite light enough to bring it out fully. I staid and helped about half an hour, then took a long walk beneath the stars.' * * * * * 'Wednesday. I have been too much absorbed to-day by others, and it has made me almost sick. Mrs. ---- came to see me, and we had an excellent talk, which occupied nearly all the morning. Then Mrs. ---- wanted to see me, but after a few minutes I found I could not bear it, and lay down to rest. Then ---- came. Poor man;--his feelings and work are wearing on him. He looks really ill now. Then ---- and I went to walk in the woods. I was deeply interested in all she told me. If I were to write down all she and four other married women have confided to me, these three days past, it would make a cento, on one subject, in five parts. Certainly there should be some great design in my life; its attractions are so invariable.' * * * * * 'In the evening, a conversation on Impulse. The reason for choosing this subject is the great tendency here to advocate spontaneousness, at the expense of reflection. It was a much better conversation than the one before. None yawned, for none came, this time, from mere curiosity. There were about thirty-five present, which is a large enough circle. Many engaged in the talk. I defended nature, as I always do;--the spirit ascending through, not superseding, nature. But in the scale of Sense, Intellect, Spirit, I advocated to-night the claims of Intellect, because those present were rather disposed to postpone them. On the nature of Beauty we had good talk. ---- spoke well. She seemed in a much more reverent humor than the other night, and enjoyed the large plans of the universe which were unrolled. ----, seated on the floor, with the light falling from behind on his long gold locks, made, with sweet, serene aspect, and composed tones, a good exposé of his way of viewing things.' * * * * * 'Saturday. Well, good-by, Brook Farm. I know more about this place than I did when I came; but the only way to be qualified for a judge of such an experiment would be to become an active, though unimpassioned, associate in trying it. Some good things are proven, and as for individuals, they are gainers. Has not ---- vied, in her deeds of love, with "my Cid," and the holy Ottilia? That girl who was so rude to me stood waiting, with a timid air, to bid me good-by. Truly, the soft answer turneth away wrath. 'I have found myself here in the amusing position of a conservative. Even so is it with Mr. R. There are too many young people in proportion to the others. I heard myself saying, with a grave air, "Play out the play, gentles." Thus, from generation to generation, rises and falls the wave.' Again, a year afterward, she writes:-- 'Here I have passed a very pleasant week. The tone of the society is much sweeter than when I was here a year ago. There is a pervading spirit of mutual tolerance and gentleness, with great sincerity. There is no longer a passion for grotesque freaks of liberty, but a disposition, rather, to study and enjoy the liberty of law. The great development of mind and character observable in several instances, persuades me that this state of things affords a fine studio for the soul-sculptor. To a casual observer it may seem as if there was not enough of character here to interest, because there are no figures sufficiently distinguished to be worth painting for the crowd; but there is enough of individuality in free play to yield instruction; and one might have, from a few months' residence here, enough of the human drama to feed thought for a long time.' Thus much for Margaret's impressions of Brook Farm and its inmates. What influence she in turn exerted on those she met there, may be seen from the following affectionate tribute, offered by one of the young girls alluded to in the journal:-- "Would that I might aid even slightly, in doing justice to the noble-hearted woman whose departure we must all mourn. But I feel myself wholly powerless to do so; and after I explain what my relation to her was, you will understand how this can be, without holding me indolent or unsympathetic. "When I first met Miss Fuller, I had already cut from my moorings, and was sailing on the broad sea of experience, conscious that I possessed unusual powers of endurance, and that I should meet with sufficient to test their strength. She made no offer of guidance, and once or twice, in the succeeding year, alluded to the fact that she 'had never helped me.' This was in a particular sense, of course, for she helped all who knew her. She was interested in my rough history, but could not be intimate, in any just sense, with a soul so unbalanced, so inharmonious as mine then was. For my part, I reverenced her. She was to me the embodiment of wisdom and tenderness. I heard her converse, and, in the rich and varied intonations of her voice, I recognized a being to whom every shade of sentiment was familiar. She knew, if not by experience then by no questionable intuition, how to interpret the inner life of every man and woman; and, by interpreting, she could soothe and strengthen. To her, psychology was an open book. When she came to Brook Farm, it was my delight to wait on one so worthy of all service,--to arrange her late breakfast in some remnants of ancient China, and to save her, if it might be, some little fatigue or annoyance, during each day. After a while she seemed to lose sight of my more prominent and disagreeable peculiarities, and treated me with affectionate regard." Being a confirmed Socialist, I often had occasion to discuss with Margaret the problems involved in the "Combined Order" of life; and though unmoved by her scepticism, I could not but admire the sagacity, foresight, comprehensiveness, and catholic sympathy with which she surveyed this complicated subject. Her objections, to be sure, were of the usual kind, and turned mainly upon two points,--the difficulty of so allying labor and capital as to secure the hoped-for coöperation, and the danger of merging the individual in the mass to such degree as to paralyze energy, heroism, and genius; but these objections were urged in a way that brought out her originality and generous hopes. There was nothing abject, timid, or conventional in her doubts. The end sought she prized; but the means she questioned. Though pleased in listening to sanguine visions of the future, she was slow to credit that an organization by "Groups and Series" would yield due incentive for personal development, while ensuring equilibrium through exact and universal justice. She felt, too, that Society was not a machine to be put together and set in motion, but a living body, whose breath must be Divine inspiration, and whose healthful growth is only hindered by forcing. Finally, while longing as earnestly as any Socialist for "Liberty and Law made one in living union," and assured in faith that an era was coming of "Attractive Industry" and "Harmony," she was still for herself inclined to seek sovereign independence in comparative isolation. Indeed, at this period, Margaret was in spirit and in thought preëminently a Transcendentalist. [Footnote A: This was a transitional arrangement only.] IX. CREDO. * * * * * In regard to Transcendentalism again, there was reason to rejoice in having found a friend, so firm to keep her own ground, while so liberal to comprehend another's stand-point, as was Margaret. She knew, not only theoretically, but practically, how endless are the diversities of human character and of Divine discipline, and she reverenced fellow-spirits too sincerely ever to wish to warp them to her will, or to repress their normal development. She was stern but in one claim, that each should be faithful to apparent leadings of the Truth; and could avow widest differences of conviction without feeling that love was thereby chilled, or the hand withheld from cordial aid. Especially did she render service by enabling one,--through her blended insight, candor, and clearness of understanding,--to see in bright reflection his own mental state. It would be doing injustice to a person like Margaret, always more enthusiastic than philosophical, to attribute to her anything like a system of theology; for, hopeful, reverent, aspiring, and free from scepticism, she felt too profoundly the vastness of the universe and of destiny ever to presume that with her span rule she could measure the Infinite. Yet the tendency of her thoughts can readily be traced in the following passages from note-books and letters:-- 'When others say to me, and not without apparent ground, that "the Outward Church is a folly which keeps men from enjoying the communion of the Church Invisible, and that in the desire to be helped by, and to help others, men lose sight of the only sufficient help, which they might find by faithful solitary intentness of spirit," I answer it is true, and the present deadness and emptiness summon us to turn our thoughts in that direction. Being now without any positive form of religion, any unattractive symbols, or mysterious rites, we are in the less danger of stopping at surfaces, of accepting a mediator instead of the Father, a sacrament instead of the Holy Ghost. And when I see how little there is to impede and bewilder us, I cannot but accept,--should it be for many years,--the forlornness, the want of fit expression, the darkness as to what is to be expressed, even that characterize our time. 'But I do not, therefore, as some of our friends do, believe that it will always be so, and that the church is tottering to its grave, never to rise again. The church was the growth of human nature, and it is so still. It is but one result of the impulse which makes two friends clasp one another's hands, look into one another's eyes at sight of beauty, or the utterance of a feeling of piety. So soon as the Spirit has mourned and sought, and waited long enough to open new depths, and has found something to express, there will again be a Cultus, a Church. The very people, who say that none is needed, make one at once. They talk with, they write to one another. They listen to music, they sustain themselves with the poets; they like that one voice should tell the thoughts of several minds, one gesture proclaim that the same life is at the same moment in many breasts. 'I am myself most happy in my lonely Sundays, and do not feel the need of any social worship, as I have not for several years, which I have passed in the same way. Sunday is to me priceless as a day of peace and solitary reflection. To all who will, it may be true, that, as Herbert says:-- "Sundays the pillars are On which Heaven's palace arched lies; The other days fill up the space And hollow room with vanities;" and yet in no wise "vanities," when filtered by the Sunday crucible. After much troubling of the waters of my life, a radiant thought of the meaning and beauty of earthly existence will descend like a healing angel. The stillness permits me to hear a pure tone from the One in All. But often I am not alone. The many now, whose hearts, panting for truth and love, have been made known to me, whose lives flow in the same direction as mine, and are enlightened by the same star, are with me. I am in church, the church invisible, undefiled by inadequate expression. Our communion is perfect; it is that of a common aspiration; and where two or three are gathered together in one region, whether in the flesh or the spirit, He will grant their request. Other communion would be a happiness,--to break together the bread of mutual thought, to drink the wine of loving life,--but it is not necessary. 'Yet I cannot but feel that the crowd of men whose pursuits are not intellectual, who are not brought by their daily walk into converse with sages and poets, who win their bread from an earth whose mysteries are not open to them, whose worldly intercourse is more likely to stifle than to encourage the sparks of love and faith in their breasts, need on that day quickening more than repose. The church is now rather a lecture-room than a place of worship; it should be a school for mutual instruction. I must rejoice when any one, who lays spiritual things to heart, feels the call rather to mingle with men, than to retire and seek by himself. 'You speak of men going up to worship by "households," &c. Were the actual family the intellectual family, this might be; but as social life now is, how can it? Do we not constantly see the child, born in the flesh to one father, choose in the spirit another? No doubt this is wrong, since the sign does not stand for the thing signified, but it is one feature of the time. How will it end? Can families worship together till it does end? * * * * * 'I have let myself be cheated out of my Sunday, by going to hear Mr. ----. As he began by reading the first chapter of Isaiah, and the fourth of John's Epistle, I made mental comments with pure delight. "Bring no more vain oblations." "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." "We know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because he hath given us of the Spirit." Then pealed the organ, full of solemn assurance. But straightway uprose the preacher to deny mysteries, to deny the second birth, to deny influx, and to renounce the sovereign gift of insight, for the sake of what he deemed a "_rational_" exercise of will. As he spoke I could not choose but deny him all through, and could scarce refrain from rising to expound, in the light of my own faith, the words of those wiser Jews which had been read. Was it not a sin to exchange friendly greeting as we parted, and yet tell him no word of what was in my mind? 'Still I saw why he looked at things as he did. The old religionists did talk about "grace, conversion," and the like, technically, without striving to enter into the idea, till they quite lost sight of it. Undervaluing the intellect, they became slaves of a sect, instead of organs of the Spirit. This Unitarianism has had its place. There was a time for asserting "the dignity of human nature," and for explaining total depravity into temporary inadequacy,--a time to say that the truths of _essence_, if simplified at all in statement from their infinite variety of existence, should be spoken of as One, rather than Three, though that number, if they would only let it reproduce itself simply, is of highest significance. Yet the time seems now to have come for reinterpreting the old dogmas. For one I would now preach the Holy Ghost as zealously as they have been preaching Man, and faith instead of the understanding, and mysticism instead &c. But why go on? It certainly is by no means useless to preach. In my experience of the divine gifts of solitude, I had forgotten what might be done in this other way. That crowd of upturned faces, with their look of unintelligent complacency! Give tears and groans, rather, if there be a mixture of physical excitement and bigotry. Mr. ---- is heard because, though he has not entered into the secret of piety, he wishes to be heard, and with a good purpose,--can make a forcible statement, and kindle himself with his own thoughts. How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone, since they are content with so little! Can none wake the spark that will melt them, till they take beautiful forms? Were one to come now, who could purge us with fire, how would these masses glow and be clarified! 'Mr. ---- made a good suggestion:--"Such things could not be said in the open air." Let men preach for the open air, and speak now thunder and lightning, now dew and rustling leaves. Yet must the preacher have the thought of his day before he can be its voice. None have it yet; but some of our friends, perhaps, are nearer than the religious world at large, because neither ready to dogmatize, as if they had got it, nor content to stop short with mere impressions and presumptuous hopes. I feel that a great truth is coming. Sometimes it seems as if we should have it among us in a day. Many steps of the Temple have been ascended, steps of purest alabaster, and of shining jasper, also of rough-brick, and slippery moss-grown stone. We shall reach what we long for, since we trust and do not fear, for our God knows not fear, only reverence, and his plan is All in All.' * * * * * 'Who can expect to utter an absolutely pure and clear tone on these high subjects? Our earthly atmosphere is too gross to permit it. Yet, a severe statement has rather an undue charm for me, as I have a nature of great emotion, which loves free abandonment. I am ready to welcome a descending Moses, come to turn all men from idolatries. For my priests have been very generally of the Pagan greatness, revering nature and seeking excellence, but in the path of progress, not of renunciation. The lyric inspirations of the poet come very differently on the ear from the "still, small voice." They are, in fact, all one revelation; but one must be at the centre to interpret it. To that centre I have again and again been drawn, but my large natural life has been, as yet, but partially transfused with spiritual consciousness. I shun a premature narrowness, and bide my time. But I am drawn to look at natures who take a different way, because they seem to complete my being for me. They, too, tolerate me in my many phases for the same reason, probably. It pleased me to see, in one of the figures by which the Gnostics illustrated the progress of man, that Severity corresponded to Magnificence.' * * * * * 'In my quiet retreat, I read Xenophon, and became more acquainted with his Socrates. I had before known only the Socrates of Plato, one much more to my mind. Socrates conformed to the Greek Church, and it is evident with a sincere reverence, because it was the growth of the _national_ mind. He thought best to stand on its platform, and to illustrate, though with keen truth, by received forms. This was his right way, as his influence was naturally private, for individuals who could in some degree respond to the teachings of his dæmon; he knew the multitude would not understand him. But it was the other way that Jesus took, preaching in the fields, and plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath.' * * * * * 'Is it my defect of spiritual experience, that while that weight of sagacity, which is the iron to the dart of genius, is needful to satisfy me, the undertone of another and a deeper knowledge does not please, does not command me? Even in Handel's Messiah, I am half incredulous, half impatient, when the sadness of the second part comes to check, before it interprets, the promise of the first; and the strain, "Was ever sorrow like to his sorrow," is not for me, as I have been, as I am. Yet Handel was worthy to speak of Christ. The great chorus, "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive," if understood in the large sense of every man his own Saviour, and Jesus only representative of the way all must walk to accomplish our destiny, is indeed a worthy gospel.' * * * * * 'Ever since ---- told me how his feelings had changed towards Jesus, I have wished much to write some sort of a Credo, out of my present state, but have had no time till last night. I have not satisfied myself in the least, and have written very hastily, yet, though not full enough to be true, this statement is nowhere false to me. * * * 'Whatever has been permitted by the law of being, must be for good, and only in time not good. We trust, and are led forward by experience. Light gives experience of outward life, faith of inward life, and then we discern, however faintly, the necessary harmony of the two. The moment we have broken through an obstruction, not accidentally, but by the aid of faith, we begin to interpret the Universe, and to apprehend why evil is permitted. Evil is obstruction; Good is accomplishment. 'It would seem that the Divine Being designs through man to express distinctly what the other forms of nature only intimate, and that wherever man remains imbedded in nature, whether from sensuality, or because he is not yet awakened to consciousness, the purpose of the whole remains unfulfilled. Hence our displeasure when Man is not in a sense above Nature. Yet, when he is not so closely bound with all other manifestations, as duly to express their Spirit, we are also displeased. He must be at once the highest form of Nature, and conscious of the meaning she has been striving successively to unfold through those below him. Centuries pass; whole races of men are expended in the effort to produce one that shall realize this Ideal, and publish Spirit in the human form. Here and there is a degree of success. Life enough is lived through a man, to justify the great difficulties attendant on the existence of mankind. And then throughout all realms of thought vibrates the affirmation, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 'I do not mean to lay an undue stress upon the position and office of man merely because I am of his race, and understand best the scope of his destiny. The history of the earth, the motions of the heavenly bodies, suggest already modes of being higher than ours, and which fulfil more deeply the office of interpretation. But I do suppose man's life to be the rivet in one series of the great chain, and that all higher existences are analogous to his. Music suggests their mode of being, and, when carried up on its strong wings, we foresee how the next step in the soul's ascension shall interpret man to the universe, as he now interprets those forms beneath himself. * * 'The law of Spirit is identical, whether displaying itself as genius, or as piety, but its modes of expression are distinct dialects. All souls desire to become the fathers of souls, as citizens, legislators, poets, artists, sages, saints; and, so far as they are true to the law of their incorruptible essence, they are all Anointed, all Emanuel, all Messiah; but they are all brutes and devils so far as subjected to the law of corruptible existence. 'As wherever there is a tendency a form is gradually evolved, as its Type,--so is it the law of each class and order of human thoughts to produce a form which shall be the visible representation of its aim and strivings, and stand before it as its King. This effort to produce a kingly type it was, that clothed itself with power as Brahma or Osiris, that gave laws as Confucius or Moses, that embodied music and eloquence in the Apollo. This it was that incarnated itself, at one time as Plato, at another as Michel Angelo, at another as Luther, &c. Ever seeking, it has produced Ideal after Ideal of the beauty, into which mankind is capable of being developed; and one of the highest, in some respects the very highest, of these kingly types, was the life of Jesus of Nazareth. 'Few believe more in his history than myself, and it is very dear to me. I believe, in my own way, in the long preparation of ages for his coming, and the truth of prophecy that announced him. I see a necessity, in the character of Jesus, why Abraham should have been the founder of his nation, Moses its lawgiver, and David its king and poet. I believe in the genesis of the patriarchs, as given in the Old Testament. I believe in the prophets,--that they foreknew not only what their nation longed for, but what the development of universal Man requires,--a Redeemer, an Atoner, a Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world. I believe that Jesus came when the time was ripe, and that he was peculiarly a messenger and Son of God. I have nothing to say in denial of the story of his birth; whatever the actual circumstances were, he was born of a Virgin, and the tale expresses a truth of the soul. I have no objection to the miracles, except where they do not happen to please one's feelings. Why should not a spirit, so consecrate and intent, develop new laws, and make matter plastic? I can imagine him walking the waves, without any violation of my usual habits of thought. He could not remain in the tomb, they say; certainly not,--death is impossible to such a being. He remained upon earth; most true, and all who have met him since on the way, have felt their hearts burn within them. He ascended to heaven; surely, how could it be otherwise? 'Would I could express with some depth what I feel as to religion in my very soul; it would be a clear note of calm assurance. But for the present this must suffice with regard to Christ. I am grateful here, as everywhere, when Spirit bears fruit in fulness; it attests the justice of aspiration, it kindles faith, it rebukes sloth, it enlightens resolve. But so does a beautiful infant. Christ's life is only one modification of the universal harmony. I will not loathe sects, persuasions, systems, though I cannot abide in them one moment, for I see that by most men they are still needed. To them their banners, their tents; let them be Fire-worshippers, Platonists, Christians; let them live in the shadow of past revelations. But, oh, Father of our souls, the One, let me seek Thee! I would seek Thee in these forms, and in proportion as they reveal Thee, they teach me to go beyond themselves. I would learn from them all, looking only to Thee! But let me set no limits from the past, to my own soul, or to any soul. 'Ages may not produce one worthy to loose the shoes of the Prophet of Nazareth; yet there will surely be another manifestation of that Word which was in the beginning. And all future manifestations will come, like Christianity, "not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil." The very greatness of this manifestation demands a greater. As an Abraham called for a Moses, and a Moses for a David, so does Christ for another Ideal. We want a life more complete and various than that of Christ. We have had a Messiah to teach and reconcile; let us now have a Man to live out all the symbolical forms of human life, with the calm beauty of a Greek God, with the deep consciousness of a Moses, with the holy love and purity of Jesus.' X. SELF-SOVEREIGNTY. * * * * * To one studying the signs of the times, it was quite instructive to watch the moods of a mind so sensitive as Margaret's; for her delicate meter indicated in advance each coming change in the air-currents of thought. But I was chiefly interested in the processes whereby she was gaining harmony and unity. The more one studied her, the more plainly he saw that her peculiar power was the result of fresh, fervent, exhaustless, and indomitable affections. The emotive force in her, indeed, was immense in volume, and most various in tendency; and it was wonderful to observe the outward equability of one inwardly so impassioned. This was, in fact, the first problem to be solved in gaining real knowledge of her commanding character: "How did a person, by constitution so impetuous, become so habitually serene?" In temperament Margaret seemed a Bacchante,[A] prompt for wild excitement, and fearless to tread by night the mountain forest, with song and dance of delirious mirth; yet constantly she wore the laurel in token of purification, and, with water from fresh fountains, cleansed the statue of Minerva. Stagnancy and torpor were intolerable to her free and elastic impulses; a brilliant fancy threw over each place and incident Arcadian splendor; and eager desire, with energetic purposes, filled her with the consciousness of large latent life: and yet the lower instincts were duly subordinated to the higher, and dignified self-control ordered her deportment. Somehow, according to the doctrine of the wise Jacob Boehme, the fierce, hungry fire had met in embrace the meek, cool water, and was bringing to birth the pleasant light-flame of love. The transformation, though not perfected, was fairly begun. Partly I could see how this change had been wrought. Ill health, pain, disappointment, care, had tamed her spirits. A wide range through the romantic literature of ancient and modern times had exalted while expending her passions. In the world of imagination, she had discharged the stormful energy which would have been destructive in actual life. And in thought she had bound herself to the mast while sailing past the Sirens. Through sympathy, also, from childhood, with the tragi-comedy of many lives around her, she had gained experience of the laws and limitations of providential order. Gradually, too, she had risen to higher planes of hope, whence opened wider prospects of destiny and duty. More than all, by that attraction of opposites which a strong will is most apt to feel, she had sought, as chosen companions, persons of scrupulous reserve, of modest coolness, and severe elevation of view. Finally, she had been taught, by a discipline specially fitted to her dispositions, to trust the leadings of the Divine Spirit. The result was, that at this period Margaret had become a Mystic. Her prisoned emotions found the freedom they pined for in contemplation of nature's exquisite harmonies,--in poetic regards of the glory that enspheres human existence, when seen as a whole from beyond the clouds,--and above all in exultant consciousness of life ever influent from the All-Living. A few passages from, her papers will best illustrate this proneness to rapture. 'My tendency is, I presume, rather to a great natural than to a deep religious life. But though others may be more conscientious and delicate, few have so steady a faith in Divine Love. I may be arrogant and impetuous, but I am never harsh and morbid. May there not be a mediation, rather than a conflict, between piety and genius? Greek and Jew, Italian and Saxon, are surely but leaves on one stern, at last.' * * * * * 'I am in danger of giving myself up to experiences till they so steep me in ideal passion that the desired goal is forgotten in the rich present. Yet I think I am learning how to use life more wisely.' * * * * * 'Forgive me, beautiful ones, who earlier learned the harmony of your beings,--with whom eye, voice, and hand are already true to the soul! Forgive me still some "lispings and stammerings of the passionate age." Teach me,--me, also,--to utter my paean in its full sweetness. These long lines are radii from one centre; aid me to fill the circumference. Then each moment, each act, shall be true. The pupil has found the carbuncle,[B] but knows not yet how to use it day by day. But "though his companions wondered at the pupil, the master loved him." He loves me, my friends. Do ye trust me. Wash the tears and black stains from the records of my life by the benignity of a true glance; make each discord harmony, by striking again the key-note; forget the imperfect interviews, burn the imperfect letters, till at last the full song bursts forth, the key-stone is given from heaven to the arch, the past is all pardoned and atoned for, and we live forever in the Now.' * * * * * * * 'Henceforth I hope I shall not write letters thus full of childish feeling; for in feeling I am indeed a child, and the least of children. Soon I must return into the Intellect, for _there_ in sight, at least, I am a man, and could write the words very calmly and in steadfast flow. But, lately, the intellect has been so subordinated to the soul, that I am not free to enter the Basilikon, and plead and hear till I am called. But let me not stay too long in this Sicilian valley, gathering my flowers, for "night cometh."' * * * * * 'The other evening, while hearing the Creation, in the music of "There shoots the healing plant," I felt what I would ever feel for suffering souls. Somewhere in nature is the Moly, the Nepenthe, desired from the earliest ages of mankind. No wonder the music dwelt so exultingly on the passage:-- "In native worth and honor clad." Yes; even so would I ever see man. I will wait, and never despair, through all the dull years.' * * * * * 'I am "too fiery." Even so. Ceres put her foster child in the fire because she loved him. If they thought so before, will they not far more now? Yet I wish to be seen as I am, and would lose all rather than soften away anything. Let my friends be patient and gentle, and teach me to be so. I never promised any one patience or gentleness, for those beautiful traits are not natural to me; but I would learn them. Can I not?' * * * * * 'Of all the books, and men, and women, that have touched me these weeks past, what has most entered my soul is the music I have heard,--the masterly expression from that violin; the triumph of the orchestra, after the exploits on the piano; Braham, in his best efforts, when he kept true to the dignity of art; the Messiah, which has been given on two successive Sundays, and the last time in a way that deeply expressed its divine life; but above all, Beethoven's seventh symphony. What majesty! what depth! what tearful sweetness! what victory! This was truly a fire upon an altar. There are a succession of soaring passages, near the end of the third movement, which touch me most deeply. Though soaring, they hold on with a stress which almost breaks the chains of matter to the hearer. O, how refreshing, after polemics and philosophy, to soar thus on strong wings! Yes, Father, I will wander in dark ways with the crowd, since thou seest best for me to be tied down. But only in thy free ether do I know myself. When I read Beethoven's life, I said, "I will never repine." When I heard this symphony, I said, "I will triumph." * * * * * 'To-day I have finished the life of Raphael, by Quatremere de Quincy, which has so long engaged me. It scarce goes deeper than a _catalogue raisonnée_, but is very complete in its way. I could make all that splendid era alive to me, and inhale the full flower of the Sanzio. Easily one soars to worship these angels of Genius. To venerate the Saints you must well nigh be one. 'I went out upon the lonely rock which commands so delicious a panoramic view. A very mild breeze had sprung up after the extreme heat. A sunset of the melting kind was succeeded by a perfectly clear moon-rise. Here I sat, and thought of Raphael. I was drawn high up in the heaven of beauty, and the mists were dried from the white plumes of contemplation.'#/ 'Only by emotion do we know thee, Nature. To lean upon thy heart, and feel its pulses vibrate to our own;--that is knowledge, for that is love, the love of infinite beauty, of infinite love. Thought will never make us be born again. 'My fault is that I think I feel _too much_. O that my friends would teach me that "simple art of not too much!" How can I expect them to bear the ceaseless eloquence of my nature?' * * * * * 'Often it has seemed that I have come near enough to the limits to see what they are. But suddenly arises afar the Fata Morgana, and tells of new Sicilies, of their flowery valleys and fields of golden grain. Then, as I would draw near, my little bark is shattered on the rock, and I am left on the cold wave. Yet with my island in sight I do not sink.' * * * * * 'I look not fairly to myself, at the present moment. If noble growths are always slow, others may ripen far worthier fruit than is permitted to my tropical heats and tornadoes. Let me clasp the cross on my breast, as I have done a thousand times before.' 'Let me but gather from the earth one full-grown fragrant flower; Within my bosom let it bloom through, its one blooming hour; Within my bosom let it die, and to its latest breath My own shall answer, "Having lived, I shrink not now from death." It is this niggard halfness that turns my heart to stone; 'T is the cup seen, not tasted, that makes the infant moan. For once let me press firm my lips upon the moment's brow, For once let me distinctly feel I am all happy now, And bliss shall seal a blessing upon that moment's brow.' 'I was in a state of celestial happiness, which lasted a great while. For months I was all radiant with faith, and love, and life. I began to be myself. Night and day were equally beautiful, and the lowest and highest equally holy. Before, it had seemed as if the Divine only gleamed upon me; but then it poured into and through me a tide of light. I have passed down from the rosy mountain, now; but I do not forget its pure air, nor how the storms looked as they rolled beneath my feet. I have received my assurance, and if the shadows should lie upon me for a century, they could never make me forgetful of the true hour. Patiently I bide my time.' The last passage describes a peculiar illumination, to which Margaret often referred as the period when her earthly being culminated, and when, in the noon-tide of loving enthusiasm, she felt wholly at one with God, with Man, and the Universe. It was ever after, to her, an earnest that she was of the Elect. In a letter to one of her confidential female friends, she thus fondly looks back to this experience on the mount of transfiguration:-- 'You know how, when the leadings of my life found their interpretation, I longed to share my joy with those I prized most; for I felt that if they could but understand the past we should meet entirely. They received me, some more, some less, according to the degree of intimacy between our natures. But now I have done with the past, and again move forward. The path looks more difficult, but I am better able to bear its trials. We shall have much communion, even if not in the deepest places. I feel no need of isolation, but only of temperance in thought and speech, that the essence may not evaporate in words, but grow plenteous within. The Life will give me to my own. I am not yet so worthy to love as some others are, because my manifold nature is not yet harmonized enough to be faithful, and I begin, to see how much it was the want of a pure music in me that has made the good doubt me. Yet have I been true to the best light I had, and if I am so now much will be given. 'During my last weeks of solitude I was very happy, and all that had troubled me became clearer. The angel was not weary of waiting for Gunhilde, till she had unravelled her mesh of thought, and seeds of mercy, of purification, were planted in the breast. Whatever the past has been, I feel that I have always been reading on and on, and that the Soul of all souls has been patient in love to mine. New assurances were given me, that if I would be faithful and humble, there was no experience that would not tell its heavenly errand. If shadows have fallen, already they give way to a fairer if more tempered light; and for the present I am so happy that the spirit kneels. 'Life, is richly worth living, with its continual revelations of mighty woe, yet infinite hope: and I take it to my breast. Amid these scenes of beauty, all that is little, foreign, unworthy, vanishes like a dream. So shall it be some time amidst the Everlasting Beauty, when true joy shall begin and never cease.' Filled thus as Margaret was with ecstasy, she was yet more than willing,--even glad,--to bear her share in the universal sorrow. Well she knew that pain must be proportioned to the fineness and fervor of her organization; that the very keenness of her sensibility exposed her to constant disappointment or disgust; that no friend, however faithful, could meet the demands of desires so eager, of sympathies so absorbing. Contrasted with her radiant visions, how dreary looked actual existence; how galling was the friction of petty hindrances; how heavy the yoke of drudging care! Even success seemed failure, when measured by her conscious aim; and experience had brought out to consciousness excesses and defects, which humbled pride while shaming self-confidence. But suffering as she did with all the intensity of so passionate a nature, Margaret still welcomed the searching discipline. 'It is only when Persephone returns from lower earth that she weds Dyonysos, and passes from central sadness into glowing joy,' she writes. And again: 'I have no belief in beautiful lives; we are born to be mutilated; and the blood must flow till in every vein its place is supplied by the Divine ichor.' And she reiterates: 'The method of Providence with me is evidently that of "cross-biassing," as Herbert hath it. In a word, to her own conscience and to intimate friends she avowed, without reserve, that there was in her 'much rude matter that needed to be spiritualized.' Comment would but weaken the pathos of the following passages, in which so plainly appears a once wilful temper striving, with child-like faith, to obey:-- 'I have been a chosen one; the lesson of renunciation was early, fully taught, and the heart of stone quite broken through. The Great Spirit wished to leave me no refuge but itself. Convictions have been given, enough to guide me many years if I am steadfast. How deeply, how gratefully I feel this blessing, as the fabric of others' hopes are shivering round me. Peace will not always flow thus softly in my life; but, O, our Father! how many hours has He consecrated to Himself. How often has the Spirit chosen the time, when no ray came from without, to descend upon the orphan life!' * * * * * 'A humbler, tenderer spirit! Yes, I long for it. But how to gain it? I see no way but prayerfully to bend myself to meet the hour. Let friends be patient with me, and pardon some faint-heartedness. The buds will shiver in the cold air when the sheaths drop. It will not be so long. The word "Patience" has been spoken; it shall be my talisman. A nobler courage will be given, with gentleness and humility. My conviction is clear that all my troubles are needed, and that one who has had so much light thrown upon the path, has no excuse for faltering steps.' * * * * * 'Could we command enthusiasm; had we an interest with the gods which would light up those sacred fires at will, we should be even seraphic in our influences. But life, if not a complete waste of wearisome hours, must be checkered with them; and I find that just those very times, when I feel all glowing and radiant in the happiness of receiving and giving out again the divine fluid, are preludes to hours of languor, weariness, and paltry doubt, born of--- "The secret soul's mistrust To find her fair ethereal wings Weighed down by vile, degraded dust." 'To this, all who have chosen or been chosen to a life of thought must submit. Yet I rejoice in my heritage. Should I venture to complain? Perhaps, if I were to reckon up the hours of bodily pain, those passed in society with which I could not coalesce, those of ineffectual endeavor to penetrate the secrets of nature and of art, or, worse still, to reproduce the beautiful in some way for myself, I should find they far outnumbered those of delightful sensation, of full and soothing thought, of gratified tastes and affections, and of proud hope. Yet these last, if few, how lovely, how rich in presage! None, who have known them, can in their worst estate fail to hope that they may be again upborne to higher, purer blue.' * * * * * 'As I was steeped in the divine tenth book of the Republic, came ----'s letter, in which he so insultingly retracts his engagements. I finished the book obstinately, but could get little good of it; then went to ask comfort of the descending sun in the woods and fields. What a comment it was on the disparity between my pursuits and my situation to receive such a letter while reading that book! However, I will not let life's mean perplexities blur from my eye the page of Plato; nor, if natural tears must be dropt, murmur at a lot, which, with all its bitterness, has given time and opportunity to cherish an even passionate love for Truth and Beauty.' * * * * * 'Black Friday it has been, and my heart is well nigh wearied out. Shall I never be able to act and live with persons of views high as my own? or, at least, with some steadiness of feeling for me to calculate upon? Ah, me! what woes within and without; what assaults of folly; what mean distresses; and, oh, what wounds from cherished hands! Were ye the persons who should stab thus? Had I, too, the Roman right to fold my robe about me decently, and breathe the last sigh! The last! Horrible, indeed, should sobs, deep as these, be drawn to all eternity. But no; life could not hold out for more than one lease of sorrow. This anguish, however, will be wearied out, as I know by experience, alas! of how many such hours.' * * * * * 'I am reminded to-day of the autumn hours at Jamaica Plain, where, after arranging everything for others that they wanted of me, I found myself, at last, alone in my still home, where everything, for once, reflected my feelings. It was so still, the air seemed full of spirits. How happy I was! with what sweet and solemn happiness! All things had tended to a crisis in me, and I was in a higher state, mentally and spiritually, than I ever was before or shall be again, till death shall introduce me to a new sphere. I purposed to spend the winter in study and self-collection, and to write constantly. I thought I should thus be induced to embody in beautiful forms all that lay in my mind, and that life would ripen into genius. But a very little while these fair hopes bloomed; and, since I was checked then, I do never expect to blossom forth on earth, and all postponements come naturally. At that time it seemed as if angels left me. Yet, now, I think they still are near. Renunciation appears to be entire, and I quite content; yet, probably, 't is no such thing, and that work is to be done over and over again.' * * * * * 'Do you believe our prayers avail for one another? and that happiness is good for the soul? Pray, then, for me, that I may have a little peace,--some green and flowery spot, 'mid which my thoughts may rest; yet not upon fallacy, but only upon something genuine. I am deeply homesick, yet where is that home? If not on earth, why should we look to heaven? I would fain truly live wherever I must abide, and bear with full energy on my lot, whatever it is. He, who alone knoweth, will affirm that. I have tried to work whole-hearted from an earnest faith. Yet my hand is often languid, and my heart is slow. I would be gone; but whither? I know not; if I cannot make this spot of ground yield the corn and roses, famine must be my lot forever and ever, surely.' * * * * * 'I remember how at a similar time of perplexity, when there were none to counsel, hardly one to sympathize, and when the conflicting wishes of so many whom I loved pressed the aching heart on every side, after months of groping and fruitless thought, the merest trifle precipitated the whole mass; all became clear as crystal, and I saw of what use the tedious preparation had been, by the deep content I felt in the result.' * * * * * 'Beethoven! Tasso! It is well to think of you! What sufferings from baseness, from coldness! How rare and momentary were the flashes of joy, of confidence and tenderness, in these noblest lives! Yet could not their genius be repressed. The Eternal Justice lives. O, Father, teach the spirit the meaning of sorrow, and light up the generous fires of love and hope and faith, without which I cannot live!' * * * * * 'What signifies it that Thou dost always give me to drink more deeply of the inner fountains? And why do I seek a reason for these repulsions and strange arrangements of my mortal lot, when I always gain from them a deeper love for all men, and a deeper trust in Thee? Wonderful are thy ways! But lead me the darkest and the coldest as Thou wilt.' * * * * * 'Please, good Genius of my life, to make me very patient, resolute, gentle, while no less ardent; and after having tried me well, please present, at the end of some thousand years or so, a sphere of congenial and consecutive labors; of heart-felt, heart-filling wishes carried out into life on the instant; of aims obviously, inevitably proportioned to my highest nature. Sometime, in God's good time, let me live as swift and earnest as a flash of the eye. Meanwhile, let me gather force slowly, and drift along lazily, like yonder cloud, and be content to end in a few tears at last.' * * * * * 'To-night I lay on the sofa, and saw how the flame shot up from beneath, through the mass of coal that had been piled above. It shot up in wild beautiful jets, and then unexpectedly sank again, and all was black, unsightly and forlorn. And thus, I thought, is it with my life at present. Yet if the fire beneath persists and conquers, that black dead mass will become all radiant, life-giving, fit for the altar or the domestic hearth. Yes, and it shall be so.' * * * * * 'My tendency at present is to the deepest privacy. Where can I hide till I am given to myself? Yet I love the others more and more. When they are with me I must give them the best from my scrip. I see their infirmities, and would fain heal them, forgetful of my own! But am I left one moment alone, then, a poor wandering pilgrim, but no saint, I would seek the shrine, and would therein die to the world. Then if from the poor relics some miracles might be wrought, that should be for my fellows. Yet some of the saints were able to work in their generation, for they had renounced all!' * * * * * 'Forget, if you can, all of petulant or overstrained that may have displeased you in me, and commend me in your prayers to my best self. When, in the solitude of the spirit, comes upon you some air from the distance, a breath of aspiration, of faith, of pure tenderness, then believe that the Power which has guided me so faithfully, emboldens my thoughts to frame a prayer for you.' * * * * * 'Beneath all pain inflicted by Nature, be not only serene, but more; let it avail thee in prayer. Put up, at the moment of greatest suffering, a prayer; not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the Sovereign Spirit will accept thy ransom.' * * * * * 'Strive, strive, my soul, to be innocent; yes! beneficent. Does any man wound thee? not only forgive, but Work into thy thought intelligence of the kind of pain, that thou mayest never inflict it on another spirit. Then its work is done; it will never search thy whole nature again. O, love much, and be forgiven!' * * * * * 'No! we cannot leave society while one clod remains unpervaded by divine life. We cannot live and grow in consecrated earth, alone. Let us rather learn to stand up like the Holy Father, and with extended arms bless the whole world.' * * * * * 'It will be happiness indeed, if, on passing this first stage, we are permitted, in some degree, to alleviate the ills of those we love,--to lead them on a little way; to aid them when they call. Often it seems to me, it would be sweet to feel that I had certainly conferred one benefit. All my poor little schemes for others are apparently blighted, and now, as ever, I am referred to the Secular year for the interpretation of my moments.' In one of Margaret's manuscripts is found this beautiful symbol:--'There is a species of Cactus, from whose outer bark, if torn by an ignorant person, there exudes a poisonous liquid; but the natives, who know the plant, strike to the core, and there find a sweet, refreshing juice, that renews their strength.' Surely the preceding extracts prove that she was learning how to draw life-giving virtue from the very heart of evil. No superficial experience of sorrow embittered her with angry despair; but through profound acceptance, she sought to imbibe, from every ill, peace, purity and gentleness. * * * * * The two fiery trials through which she had been made to pass, and through which she was yet to pass again and again,--obstruction to the development of her genius, and loneliness of heart,--were the very furnace needed to burn the dross from her gold, till it could fitly image the Heavenly Refiner. By inherited traits, and indiscreet treatment, self-love had early become so excessive that only severest discipline could transmute it to disinterestedness. Pity for her own misfortunes had, indeed, taught her to curb her youthful scorn for mediocrity, and filled her with considerateness and delicate sensibility. Constant experience, too, of the wonderful modes whereby her fate was shaped by overruling mercy, had chastened her love of personal sway, and her passion for a commanding career; and Margaret could humble herself,--did often humble herself,--with an all-resigning contrition, that was most touching to witness in one naturally so haughty. Of this the following letter to a valued friend gives illustration:-- 'I ought, I know, to have laid aside my own cares and griefs, been on the alert for intelligence that would gratify you, and written letters such as would have been of use and given pleasure to my wise, tender, ever faithful friend. But no; I first intruded on your happiness with my sorrowful epistles, and then, because you did not seem to understand my position, with sullen petulance I resolved to write no more. Nay, worse; I tried to harden my heart against you, and felt, "If you cannot be all, you shall be nothing." 'It was a bad omen that I lost the locket you gave me, which I had constantly worn. Had that been daily before my eyes, to remind me of all your worth,--of the generosity with which you, a ripe and wise character, received me to the privileges of equal friendship; of the sincerity with which you reproved and the love with which you pardoned my faults; of how much you taught me, and bore with from me,--it would have softened the flint of my heart, and I should have relaxed from my isolation. 'How shall I apologize for feelings which I now recognize as having been so cold, so bitter and unjust? I can only say I have suffered greatly, till the tone of my spirits seems destroyed. Since I have been at leisure to realize how very ill I have been, under what constant pain and many annoyances I have kept myself upright, and how, if I have not done my work, I have learned my lesson to the end, I should be inclined to excuse myself for every fault, except this neglect and ingratitude against friends. Yet, if you can forgive, I will try to forgive myself, and I do think I shall never so deeply sin again.' Yet, though thus frank to own to herself and to her peers her errors, Margaret cherished a trust in her powers, a confidence in her destiny, and an ideal of her being, place and influence, so lofty as to be extravagant. In the morning-hour and mountain-air of aspiration, her shadow moved before her, of gigantic size, upon the snow-white vapor. In accordance with her earnest charge, 'Be true as Truth to me,' I could not but expose this propensity to self-delusion; and her answer is her best explanation and defence:-- 'I protest against your applying to me, even in your most transient thought, such an epithet as "determined exaggeration." Exaggeration, if you will; but not determined. No; I would have all open to the light, and would let my boughs be pruned, when they grow rank and unfruitful, even if I felt the knife to the quick of my being. Very fain would I have a rational modesty, without self-distrust; and may the knowledge of my failures leaven my soul, and check its intemperance. If you saw me wholly, you would not, I think, feel as you do; for you would recognize the force, that regulates my life and tempers the ardor with an eventual calmness. You would see, too, that the more I take my flight in poetical enthusiasm, the stronger materials I bring back for my nest. Certainly I am nowise yet an angel; but neither am I an utterly weak woman, and far less a cold intellect. God is rarely afar off. Exquisite nature is all around. Life affords vicissitudes enough to try the energies of the human will. I can pray, I can act, I can learn, I can constantly immerse myself in the Divine Beauty. But I also need to love my fellow-men, and to meet the responsive glance of my spiritual kindred.' Again, she says:-- 'I like to hear you express your sense of my defects. The word "arrogance" does not, indeed, appear to me to be just; probably because I do not understand what you mean. But in due time I doubtless shall; for so repeatedly have you used it, that it must stand for something real in my large and rich, yet irregular and unclarified nature. But though I like to hear you, as I say, and think somehow your reproof does me good, by myself, I return to my native bias, and feel as if there was plenty of room in the universe for my faults, and as if I could not spend time in thinking of them, when so many things interest me more. I have no defiance or coldness, however, as to these spiritual facts which I do not know; but I must follow my own law, and bide my time, even if, like Oedipus, I should return a criminal, blind and outcast, to ask aid from the gods. Such possibilities, I confess, give me great awe; for I have more sense than most, of the tragic depths that may open suddenly in the life. Yet, believing in God, anguish cannot be despair, nor guilt perdition. I feel sure that I have never wilfully chosen, and that my life has been docile to such truth as was shown it. In an environment like mine, what may have seemed too lofty or ambitious in my character was absolutely needed to keep the heart from breaking and enthusiasm from extinction.' Such Egoism as this, though lacking the angel grace of unconsciousness, has a stoical grandeur that commands respect. Indeed, in all that Margaret spoke, wrote, or did, no cynic could detect the taint of meanness. Her elation came not from opium fumes of vanity, inhaled in close chambers of conceit, but from the stimulus of sunshine, fresh breezes, and swift movement upon the winged steed of poesy. Her existence was bright with romantic interest to herself. There was an amplitude and elevation in her aim, which were worthy, as she felt, of human honor and of heavenly aid; and she was buoyed up by a courageous good-will, amidst all evils, that she knew would have been recognized as heroic in the chivalric times, when "every morning brought a noble chance." Neither was her self-regard of an engrossing temper. On the contrary, the sense of personal dignity taught her the worth of the lowliest human being, and her intense desire for harmonious conditions quickened a boundless compassion for the squalid, downcast, and drudging multitude. She aspired to live in majestic fulness of benignant and joyful activity, leaving a track of light with every footstep; and, like the radiant Iduna, bearing to man the golden apples of immortality, she would have made each meeting with her fellows rich with some boon that should never fade, but brighten in bloom forever. This characteristic self-esteem determined the quality of Margaret's influence, which was singularly penetrating, and most beneficent where most deeply and continuously felt. Chance acquaintance with her, like a breath from the tropics, might have prematurely burst the buds of feeling in sensitive hearts, leaving after blight and barrenness. Natures, small in compass and of fragile substance, might have been distorted and shattered by attempts to mould themselves on her grand model. And in her seeming unchartered impulses,--whose latent law was honorable integrity,--eccentric spirits might have found encouragement for capricious license. Her morbid subjectivity, too, might, by contagion, have affected others with undue self-consciousness. And, finally, even intimate friends might have been tempted, by her flattering love, to exaggerate their own importance, until they recognized that her regard for them was but one niche in a Pantheon at whose every shrine she offered incense. But these ill effects were superficial accidents. The peculiarity of her power was to make all who were in concert with her feel the miracle of existence. She lived herself with such concentrated force in the moments, that she was always effulgent with thought and affection,--with conscience, courage, resource, decision, a penetrating and forecasting wisdom. Hence, to associates, her presence seemed to touch even common scenes and drudging cares with splendor, as when, through the scud of a rain-storm, sunbeams break from serene blue openings, crowning familiar things with sudden glory. By manifold sympathies, yet central unity, she seemed in herself to be a goodly company, and her words and deeds imparted the virtue of a collective life. So tender was her affection, that, like a guardian genius, she made her friends' souls her own, and identified herself with their fortunes; and yet, so pure and high withal was her justice, that, in her recognition of their past success and present claims, there came a summons for fresh endeavor after the perfect. The very thought of her roused manliness to emulate the vigorous freedom, with which one was assured, that wherever placed she was that instant acting; and the mere mention of her name was an inspiration of magnanimity, and faithfulness, and truth. '"Sincere has been their striving; great their love," 'is a sufficient apology for any life,' wrote Margaret; and how preëminently were these words descriptive of herself. Hers was indeed "The equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." This indomitable aspiration found utterance in the following verses, on 'SUB ROSA CRUX. 'In times of old, as we are told, When men more childlike at the feet Of Jesus sat than now, A chivalry was known, more bold Than ours, and yet of stricter vow, And worship more complete. 'Knights of the Rosy Cross! they bore Its weight within the breast, but wore Without the sign, in glistening ruby bright. The gall and vinegar they drank alone, But to the world at large would only own The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light. 'They knew the secret of the sacred oil, Which, poured upon the prophet's head, Could keep him wise and pure for aye, Apart from all that might distract or soil; With this their lamps they fed, Which burn in their sepulchral shrines, Unfading night and day. 'The pass-word now is lost To that initiation full and free; Daily we pay the cost Of our slow schooling for divine degree. We know no means to feed an undying lamp, Our lights go out in every wind and damp. 'We wear the cross of Ebony and Gold, Upon a dark back-ground a form of light, A heavenly hope within a bosom cold, A starry promise in a frequent night; And oft the dying lamp must trim again, For we are conscious, thoughtful, striving men. 'Yet be we faithful to this present trust, Clasp to a heart resigned this faithful Must; Though deepest dark our efforts should enfold, Unwearied mine to find the vein of gold; Forget not oft to waft the prayer on high;-- The rosy dawn again shall fill the sky. 'And by that lovely light all truth revealed,-- The cherished forms, which sad distrust concealed, Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand, The kindred angels of a faithful band; Ruby and ebon cross then cast aside, No lamp more needed, for the night has died. '"Be to the best thou knowest ever true," Is all the creed. Then be thy talisman of rosy hue, Or fenced with thorns, that wearing, thou must bleed, Or, gentle pledge of love's prophetic view, The faithful steps it will securely lead. 'Happy are all who reach that distant shore, And bathe in heavenly day; Happiest are those who high the banner bore, To marshal others on the way, Or waited for them, fainting and way-worn, By burthens overborne.' [Footnote A: This sentence was written before I was aware that Margaret, as will be seen hereafter, had used the same symbol to describe Madame Sand. The first impulse, of course, when I discovered this coincidence, was to strike out the above passage; yet, on second thought, I have retained it, as indicating an actual resemblance between these two grand women. In Margaret, however, the benediction of their noble-hearted sister, Elizabeth Barrett, had already been fulfilled; for she to "woman's claim" had ever joined "the angel-grace Of a pure genius sanctified from blame."] [Footnote B: Novalis.] NEW YORK. JOURNALS, LETTERS, &c. * * * * * "How much, preventing God, how much. I owe To the defences thou hast round me set! Example, Custom, Fear, Occasion slow,-- These scorned bondsmen were my parapet. I dare not peep over this parapet, To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, The depths of sin to which I had descended, Had not these me against myself defended." "Di tè, finor, chiesto non hai severa Ragione a tè; di sua virtù non cade Sospetto in cor conscio a se stesso." ALFIERI. "He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend; Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them. Where sorrow's held intrusive, and turned out, There wisdom, will not enter, nor true power, Nor aught that dignifies humanity." TAYLOR. "That time of year thou may'st in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away,-- Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie; As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by." SHAKSPEARE. [Sonnet lxxiii.] "Aber zufrieden mit stillerem Ruhme, Brechen die Frauen des Augenblick's Blume, Nähren sie sorgsam mit liebendem Fleiss, Freier in ihrem gebundenen Wirken, Reicher als er in des Wissens Bezirken Und in der Dichtung unendlichem Kreiz." SCHILLER. "Not like to like, but like in difference; Yet in the long years liker must they grow,-- The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care; More as the double-natured poet each; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto noble words." TENNYSON. VII. NEW YORK * * * * * LEAVING HOME. Incessant exertion in teaching and writing, added to pecuniary anxieties and domestic cares, had so exhausted Margaret's energy, in 1844, that she felt a craving for fresh interests, and resolved to seek an entire change of scene amid freer fields of action. 'The tax on my mind is such,' she writes, 'and I am so unwell, that I can scarcely keep up the spring of my spirits, and sometimes fear that I cannot go through with the engagements of the winter. But I have never stopped yet in fulfilling what I have undertaken, and hope I shall not be compelled to now. How farcical seems the preparation needed to gain a few moments' life; yet just so the plant works all the year round for a few days' flower.' But in brighter mood she says, again:-- 'I congratulate myself that I persisted, against every persuasion, in doing all I could last winter; for now I am and shall be free from debt, and I look on the position of debtor with a dread worthy of some respectable Dutch burgomaster. My little plans for others, too, have succeeded; our small household is well arranged, and all goes smoothly as a wheel turns round. Mother, moreover, has learned not to be over-anxious when I suffer, so that I am not obliged to suppress my feelings when it is best to yield to them. Thus, having more calmness, I feel often that a sweet serenity is breathed through every trifling duty. I am truly grateful for being enabled to fulfil obligations which to some might seem humble, but which to me are sacred.' And in mid-summer comes this pleasant picture:-- 'Every day, I rose and attended to the many little calls which are always on me, and which have been more of late. Then, about eleven, I would sit down to write, at my window, close to which is the apple-tree, lately full of blossoms, and now of yellow birds. Opposite me was Del Sarto's Madonna; behind me Silenus, holding in his arms the infant Pan. I felt very content with my pen, my daily bouquet, and my yellow birds. About five I would go out and walk till dark; then would arrive my proofs, like crabbed old guardians, coming to tea every night. So passed each day. The 23d of May, my birth-day, about one o'clock, I wrote the last line of my little book;[A] then I went to Mount Auburn, and walked gently among the graves.' As the brothers had now left college, and had entered or were entering upon professional and commercial life, while the sister was married, and the mother felt calls to visit in turn her scattered children, it was determined to break up the "Home." 'As a family,' Margaret writes, 'we are henceforth to be parted. But though for months I had been preparing for this separation, the last moments were very sad. Such tears are childish tears, I know, and belie a deeper wisdom. It is foolish in me to be so anxious about my family. As I went along, it seemed as if all I did was for God's sake; but if it had been, could I now thus fear? My relations to them are altogether fair, so far as they go. As to their being no more to me than others of my kind, there is surely a mystic thrill betwixt children of one mother, which can never cease to be felt till the soul is quite born anew. The earthly family is the scaffold whereby we build the spiritual one. The glimpses we here obtain of what such relations should be are to me an earnest that the family is of Divine Order, and not a mere school of preparation. And in the state of perfect being which we call Heaven, I am assured that family ties will attain to that glorified beauty of harmonious adaptation, which stellar groups in the pure blue typify.' Margaret's admirable fidelity, as daughter and sister,--amidst her incessant literary pursuits, and her far-reaching friendships,--can be justly appreciated by those only who were in her confidence; but from the following slight sketches generous hearts can readily infer what was the quality of her home-affections. 'Mother writes from Canton that my dear old grandmother is dead. I regret that you never saw her. She was a picture of primitive piety, as she sat holding the "Saint's Rest" in her hand, with her bowed, trembling figure, and her emphatic nods, and her sweet blue eyes. They were bright to the last, though she was ninety. It is a great loss to mother, who felt a large place warmed in her heart by the fond and grateful love of this aged parent.' 'We cannot be sufficiently grateful for our mother,--so so fair a blossom of the white amaranth; truly to us a mother in this, that we can venerate her piety. Our relations to her have known no jar. Nothing vulgar has sullied them; and in this respect life has been truly domesticated. Indeed, when I compare my lot with others, it seems to have had a more than usual likeness to home; for relations have been as noble as sincerity could make them, and there has been a frequent breath of refined affection, with its sweet courtesies. Mother thanks God in her prayers for "all the acts of mutual love which have been permitted;" and looking back, I see that these have really been many. I do not recognize this, as the days pass, for to my desires life would be such a flower-chain of symbols, that what is done seems very scanty, and the thread shows too much. 'She has just brought me a little bouquet. Her flowers have suffered greatly by my neglect, when I would be engrossed by other things in her absences. But, not to be disgusted or deterred, whenever she can glean one pretty enough, she brings it to me. Here is the bouquet,--a very delicate rose, with its half-blown bud, heliotrope, geranium, lady-pea, heart's-ease; all sweet-scented flowers! Moved by their beauty, I wrote a short note, to which this is the reply. Just like herself![B] '"I should not love my flowers if they did not put forth all the strength they have, in gratitude for your preserving care, last winter, and your wasted feelings over the unavoidable effects of the frost, that came so unexpectedly to nip their budding beauties. I appreciate all you have done, knowing at what cost any plant must be nourished by one who sows in fields more precious than those opened, in early life, to my culture. One must have grown up with flowers, and found joy and sweetness in them, amidst disagreeable occupations, to take delight in their whole existence as I do. They have long had power to bring me into harmony with the Creator, and to soothe almost any irritation. Therefore I understand your love for these beautiful things, and it gives me real pleasure to procure them for you. '"You have done everything that the most affectionate and loving daughter could, under all circumstances. My faith in your generous desire to increase my happiness is founded on the knowledge I have gained of your disposition, through your whole life. I should ask your sympathy and aid, whenever it could be available, knowing that you would give it first to me. Waste no thought on neglected duties. I know of none. Let us pursue our appointed paths, aiding each other in rough places; and if I live to need the being led by the hand, I always feel that you will perform this office wisely and tenderly. We shall ever have perfect peace between us. Yours, in all love."' Margaret adds:-- 'It has been, and still is, hard for me to give up the thought of serenity, and freedom from toil and care, for mother, in the evening of a day which has been all one work of disinterested love. But I am now confident that she will learn from every trial its lesson; and if I cannot be her protector, I can be at least her counsellor and soother.' From the less private parts of Margaret's correspondence with the younger members of the family, some passages may be selected, as attesting her quick and penetrating sympathy, her strict truth, and influential wisdom. They may be fitly prefaced by these few but emphatic words from a letter of one of her brothers:-- "I was much impressed, during my childhood, at Groton, with an incident that first disclosed to me the tenderness of Margaret's character. I had always viewed her as a being of different nature from myself, to whose altitudes of intellectual life I had no thought of ascending. She had been absent during the winter, and on her return asked me for some account of my experiences. Supposing that she could not enter into such insignificant details, I was not frank or warm in my confidence, though I gave no reason for my reserve; and the matter had passed from my mind, when our mother told me that Margaret had shed tears, because I seemed to heed so little her sisterly sympathy. 'Tears from one so learned,' thought I, 'for the sake of one so inferior!' Afterwards, my heart opened to her, as to no earthly friend. "The characteristic trait of Margaret, to which all her talents and acquirements were subordinate, was sympathy,--universal sympathy. She had that large intelligence and magnanimity which enabled her to comprehend the struggles and triumphs of every form of character. Loving all about her, whether rich or poor, rude or cultivated, as equally formed after a Divine Original, with an equal birth-right of immortal growth, she regarded rather their aspirations than their accomplishments. And this was the source of her marvellous influence. Those who had never thought of their own destiny, nor put faith in their own faculties, found in her society not so much a display of her gifts, as surprising discoveries of their own. She revealed to them the truth, that all can be noble by fidelity to the highest self. She appreciated, with delicate tenderness, each one's peculiar trials, and, while never attempting to make the unhappy feel that their miseries were unreal, she pointed out the compensations of their lot, and taught them how to live above misfortune. She had consolation and advice for every one in trouble, and wrote long letters to many friends, at the expense not only of precious time, but of physical pain. "When now, with the experience of a man, I look back upon her wise guardianship over our childhood, her indefatigable labors for our education, her constant supervision in our family affairs, her minute instructions as to the management of multifarious details, her painful conscientiousness in every duty; and then reflect on her native inaptitude and even disgust for practical affairs, on her sacrifice,--in the very flower of her genius,--of her favorite pursuits, on her incessant drudgery and waste of health, on her patient bearing of burdens, and courageous conflict with difficult circumstances, her character stands before me as heroic." It was to this brother that Margaret wrote as follows:-- 'It is a great pleasure to me to give you this book; both that I have a brother whom I think worthy to value it, and that I can give him something worthy to be valued more and more through all his life. Whatever height we may attain in knowledge, whatever facility in the expression of thoughts, will only enable us to do more justice to what is drawn from so deep a source of faith and intellect, and arrayed, oftentimes, in the fairest hues of nature. Yet it may not be well for a young mind to dwell too near one tuned to so high a pitch as this writer, lest, by trying to come into concord with him, the natural tones be overstrained, and the strings weakened by untimely pressure. Do not attempt, therefore, to read this book through, but keep it with you, and when the spirit is fresh and earnest turn to it. It is full of the tide-marks of great thoughts, but these can be understood by one only who has gained, by experience, some knowledge of these tides. The ancient sages knew how to greet a brother who had consecrated his life to thought, and was never disturbed from his purpose by a lower aim. But it is only to those perfected in purity that Pythagoras can show a golden thigh. 'One word as to your late readings. They came in a timely way to admonish you, amidst mere disciplines, as to the future uses of such disciplines. But systems of philosophy are mere pictures to him, who has not yet learned how to systematize. From an inward opening of your nature these knowledges must begin to be evolved, ere you can apprehend aught beyond their beauty, as revealed in the mind of another. Study in a reverent and patient spirit, blessing the day that leads you the least step onward. Do not ride hobbies. Do not hasten to conclusions. Be not coldly sceptical towards any thinker, neither credulous of his views. A man, whose mind is full of error, may give us the genial sense of truth, as a tropical sun, while it rears crocodiles, yet ripens the wine of the palm-tree. 'To turn again to my Ancients: while they believed in self-reliance with a force little known in our day, they dreaded no pains of initiation, but fitted themselves for intelligent recognition of the truths on which our being is based, by slow gradations of travel, study, speech, silence, bravery, and patience. That so it may be with you, dear ----, hopes your sister and friend.' A few extracts from family letters written at different times, and under various conditions, may be added. 'I read with great interest the papers you left with me. The picture and the emotions suggested are genuine. The youthful figure, no doubt, stands portress at the gate of Infinite Beauty; yet I would say to one I loved as I do you, do not waste these emotions, nor the occasions which excite them. There is danger of prodigality,--of lavishing the best treasures of the breast on objects that cannot be the permanent ones. It is true, that whatever thought is awakened in the mind becomes truly ours; but it is a great happiness to owe these influences to a cause so proportioned to our strength as to grow with it. I say this merely because I fear that the virginity of heart which I believe essential to feeling a real love, in all its force and purity, may be endangered by too careless excursions into the realms of fancy.' * * * * * 'It is told us, we should pray, "lead us not into temptation;" and I agree. Yet I think it cannot be, that, with a good disposition, and the means you have had to form your mind and discern a higher standard, your conduct or happiness can be so dependent on circumstances, as you seem to think. I never advised your taking a course which would blunt your finer powers and I do not believe that winning the means of pecuniary independence need do so. I have not found that it does, in my own case, placed at much greater disadvantage than you are. I have never considered, either, that there was any misfortune in your lot. Health, good abilities, and a well-placed youth, form a union of advantages possessed by few, and which leaves you little excuse for fault or failure. And so to your better genius and the instruction of the One Wise, I commend you.' * * * * * 'It gave me great pleasure to get your last letter, for these little impromptu effusions are the genuine letters. I rejoice that man and nature seem harmonious to you, and that the heart beats in unison with the voices of Spring. May all that is manly, sincere, and pure, in your wishes, be realized! Obliged to live myself without the sanctuary of the central relations, yet feeling I must still not despair, nor fail to profit by the precious gifts of life, while "leaning upon our Father's hand," I still rejoice, if any one can, in the true temper, and with well-founded hopes, secure a greater completeness of earthly existence. This fortune is as likely to be yours, as any one's I know. It seems to me dangerous, however, to meddle with the future. I never lay my hand on it to grasp it with impunity.' * * * * * 'Of late I have often thought of you with strong yearnings of affection and desire to see you. It would seem to me, also, that I had not devoted myself to you enough, if I were not conscious that by any more attention to the absent than I have paid, I should have missed the needed instructions from the present. And I feel that any bond of true value will endure necessary neglect.' * * * * * 'There is almost too much of bitter mixed in the cup of life. You say religion is a mere sentiment with you, and that if you are disappointed in your first, your very first hopes and plans, you do not know whether you shall be able to act well. I do not myself see how a reflecting soul can endure the passage through life, except by confidence in a Power that must at last order all things right, and the resolution that it shall not be our own fault if we are not happy,--that we will resolutely deserve to be happy. There are many bright glimpses in life, many still hours; much worthy toil, some deep and noble joys; but, then, there are so many, and such long, intervals, when we are kept from all we want, and must perish but for such thoughts.' * * * * * 'You need not fear, dear ----, my doing anything to chill you. I am only too glad of the pure happiness you so sweetly describe. I well understand what you say of its invigorating you for every enterprise. I was always sure it would be so with me,--that resigned, I could do well, but happy I could do excellently. Happiness must, with the well-born, expand the generous affections towards all men, and invigorate one to deserve what the gods have given.' Margaret's charities and courtesies were not limited to her kindred. She fell, at once, into agreeable relations with her domestics, became their confidant, teacher, and helper, studied their characters, consulted their convenience, warned them of their dangers or weaknesses, and rejoiced to gratify their worthy tastes; and, in return, no lady could receive, from servants, more punctual or hearty attendance. She knew how to command and how to persuade, and her sympathy was perfect. They felt the power of her mind, her hardy directness, prompt judgment, decision and fertility of resource, and liked to aid one who knew so well her own wants. 'Around my path,' she writes, 'how much humble love continually flows. These every-day and lowly friends never forget my wishes, never censure my whims, make no demands on me, and load me with gifts and uncomplaining service. Though sometimes forgetful of their claims, I try to make it up when we do meet, and I trust give little pain as I pass along this world.' Even in extreme cases of debasement she found more to admire than to contemn, and won the confidence of the fallen by manifesting her real respect. "There was in my family," writes a friend, "a very handsome young girl, who had been vicious in her habits, and so enamored of one of her lovers, that when he deserted her, she attempted to drown herself. She was rescued, and some good people were eager to reform her life. While she was engaged in housework for us, Margaret saw her, and one day asked ---- if she could not help her. ---- replied: 'No! for should I begin to talk with her, I should show my consciousness of her history so much as to be painful.' Margaret was very indignant at this weakness. Said she, 'This girl is taken away, you know, from all her objects of interest, and must feel her life vacant and dreary. Her mind should be employed; she should be made to feel her powers.' It was plain that if Margaret had been near her, she would have devoted herself at once to her education and reestablishment." About the time of breaking up their home, Margaret thus expressed, to one of her brothers, her hopes and plans. 'You wish, dear ----, that I was not obliged to toil and spin, but could live, for a while, like the lilies. I wish so, too, for life has fatigued me, my strength is little, and the present state of my mind demands repose and refreshment, that it may ripen some fruit worthy of the long and deep experiences through which I have passed. I do not regret that I have shared the labors and cares of the suffering million, and have acquired a feeling sense of the conditions under which the Divine has appointed the development of the human. Yet, if our family affairs could now be so arranged, that I might be tolerably tranquil for the next six or eight years, I should go out of life better satisfied with the page I have turned in it, than I shall if I must still toil on. A noble career is yet before me, if I can be unimpeded by cares. I have given almost all my young energies to personal relations; but, at present, I feel inclined to impel the general stream of thought. Let my nearest friends also wish that I should now take share in more public life.' [Footnote A: Summer on the Lakes.] [Footnote B: The editor must offer as excuse for printing, without permission asked, this note, found carefully preserved among Margaret's papers, that he knew no other way of so truly indicating the relation between mother and daughter. This lily is eloquent of the valley where it grew. W.H.C.] THE HIGHLANDS. Seeking thus, at once, expansion and rest in new employments, Margaret determined, in the autumn of 1844, to accept a liberal offer of Messrs. Greeley and McElrath, to become a constant contributor to the New York Tribune. But before entering upon her new duties, she found relaxation, for a few weeks, amid the grand scenery of the Hudson. In October, she writes from Fishkill Landing:-- 'Can I find words to tell you how I enjoy being here, encircled by the majestic beauty of these mountains? I felt regret, indeed, in bidding farewell to Boston, so many marks of affection were shown me at the last, and so many friendships, true if imperfect, were left behind. But now I am glad to feel enfranchized in the society of Nature. I have a well-ordered, quiet house to dwell in, with nobody's humors to consult but my own. From my windows I see over the tops of variegated trees the river, with its purple heights beyond, and a few moments' walk brings me to the lovely shore, where sails are gliding continually by, and the huge steamers sweep past with echoing tread, and a train of waves, whose rush relieves the monotone of the ripples. In the country behind us are mountain-paths, and lonely glens, with gurgling streams, and many-voiced water-falls. And over all are spread the gorgeous hues of autumn.' And again:-- '"From the brain of the purple mountain" flows forth cheer to my somewhat weary mind. I feel refreshed amid these bolder shapes of nature. Mere gentle and winning landscapes are not enough. How I wish my birth had been cast among the sources of the streams, where the voice of hidden torrents is heard by night, and the eagle soars, and the thunder resounds in prolonged peals, and wide blue shadows fall like brooding wings across the valleys! Amid such scenes, I expand and feel at home. All the fine days I spend among the mountain passes, along the mountain brooks, or beside the stately river. I enjoy just the tranquil happiness I need in communion with this fair grandeur.' And, again:-- 'The boldness, sweetness, and variety here, are just what I like. I could pass the autumn in watching the exquisite changes of light and shade on the heights across the river. How idle to pretend that one could live and write as well amid fallow flat fields! This majesty, this calm splendor, could not but exhilarate the mind, and make it nobly free and plastic.' These few weeks among the Highlands,--spent mostly in the open air, under October's golden sunshine, the slumberous softness of the Indian summer, or the brilliant, breezy skies of November,--were an important era for Margaret. She had-- "lost the dream of Doing And the other dream of Done; The first spring in the pursuing, The first pride in the Begun, First recoil from incompleteness in the face of what is won." But she was striving, also, to use her own words, 'to be patient to the very depths of the heart, to expect no hasty realizations, not to make her own plan her law of life, but to learn the law and plan of God.' She adds, however:-- 'What heaven it must be to have the happy sense of accomplishing something, and to feel the glow of action without exhausted weariness! Surely the race would have worn itself out by corrosion, if men in all ages had suffered, as we now do, from the consciousness of an unattained Ideal.' Extracts from journals will best reveal her state of mind. 'I have a dim consciousness of what the terrible experiences must be by which the free poetic element is harmonized with the spirit of religion. In their essence and their end these are one, but rarely in actual existence. I would keep what was pure and noble in my old native freedom, with that consciousness of falling below the best convictions which now binds me to the basest of mankind, and find some new truth that shall reconcile and unite them. Once it seemed to me, that my heart was so capable of goodness, my mind of clearness, that all should acknowledge and claim me as a friend. But now I see that these impulses were prophetic of a yet distant period. The "intensity" of passion, which so often unfits me for life, or, rather, for _life here_, is to be moderated, not into dulness or languor, but a gentler, steadier energy.' 'The stateliest, strongest vessel must sometimes be brought into port to rent. If she will not submit to be fastened to the dock, stripped of her rigging, and scrutinized by unwashed artificers, she may spring a leak when riding most proudly on the subject wave. Norway fir nor English oak can resist forever the insidious assaults of the seemingly conquered ocean. The man who clears the barnacles from the keel is more essential than he who hoists the pennant on the lofty mast.' * * * * * 'A week of more suffering than I have had for a long time,--from Sunday to Sunday,--headache night and day! And not only there has been no respite, but it has been fixed in one spot--between the eyebrows!--what does that promise?--till it grew real torture. Then it has been depressing to be able to do so little, when there was so much I had at heart to do. It seems that the black and white guardians, depicted on the Etrurian monuments, and in many a legend, are always fighting for my life. Whenever I have any cherished purpose, either outward obstacles swarm around, which the hand that would be drawing beautiful lines must be always busy in brushing away, or comes this great vulture, and fastens his iron talons on the brain. 'But at such times the soul rises up, like some fair child in whom sleep has been mistaken for death, a living flower in the dark tomb. He casts aside his shrouds and bands, rosy and fresh from the long trance, undismayed, not seeing how to get out, yet sure there is a way. 'I think the black jailer laughs now, hoping that while I want to show that Woman can have the free, full action of intellect, he will prove in my own self that she has not physical force to bear it. Indeed, I am too poor an example, and do wish I was bodily strong and fair. Yet, I will not be turned from the deeper convictions.' 'Driven from home to home, as a Renouncer, I gain the poetry of each. Keys of gold, silver, iron, lead, are in my casket. Though no one loves me as I would be loved, I yet love many well enough to see into their eventual beauty. Meanwhile, I have no fetters, and when one perceives how others are bound in false relations, this surely should be regarded as a privilege. And so varied have been my sympathies, that this isolation will not, I trust, make me cold, ignorant, nor partial. My history presents much superficial, temporary tragedy. The Woman in me kneels and weeps in tender rapture; the Man in me rushes forth, but only to be baffled. Yet the time will come, when, from the union of this tragic king and queen, shall be born a radiant sovereign self.' * * * * * 'I have quite a desire to try my powers in a narrative poem; but my head teems with plans, of which there will be time for very few only to take form. Milton, it is said, made for himself a list of a hundred subjects for dramas, and the recorder of the fact seems to think this many. I think it very few, so filled is life with innumerable themes.' * * * * * '_Sunday Evening._--I have employed some hours of the day, with great satisfaction, in copying the Poet's Dreams from the Pentameron of Landor. I do not often have time for such slow, pleasing labor. I have thus imprinted the words in my mind, so that they will often recur in their original beauty. 'I have added three sonnets of Petrarca, all written after the death of Laura. They are among his noblest, all pertinent to the subject, and giving three aspects of that one mood. The last lines of the last sonnet are a fit motto for Boccaccio's dream. 'In copying both together, I find the prose of the Englishman worthy of the verse of the Italian. It is a happiness to see such marble beauty in the halls of a contemporary. 'How fine it is to see the terms "onesto," "gentile," used in their original sense and force. 'Soft, solemn day! Where earth and heaven together seem to meet, I have been blest to greet From human thought a kindred sway; In thought these stood So near the simple Good, That what we nobleness and honor call, They viewed as honesty, the common dower of all.' Margaret was reading, in these weeks, the Four Books of Confucius, the Desatir, some of Taylor's translations from the Greek, a work on Scandinavian Mythology, Moehler's Symbolism, Fourier's Noveau Monde Industriel, and Landor's Pentameron,--but she says, in her journal, 'No book is good enough to read in the open air, among these mountains; even the best seem partial, civic, limiting, instead of being, as man's voice should be, a tone higher than nature's.' And again:-- 'This morning came ----'s letter, announcing Sterling's death:-- '"Weep for Dedalus all that is fairest." 'The news was very sad: Sterling did so earnestly wish to do a man's work, and had done so small a portion of his own. This made me feel how fast my years are flitting by, and nothing done. Yet these few beautiful days of leisure I cannot resolve to give at all to work. I want absolute rest, to let the mind lie fallow, to keep my whole nature open to the influx of truth.' At this very time, however, she was longing to write with full freedom and power. 'Formerly,' she says, 'the pen did not seem to me an instrument capable of expressing the spirit of a life like mine. An enchanter's mirror, on which, with a word, could be made to rise all apparitions of the universe, grouped in new relations; a magic ring, that could transport the wearer, himself invisible, into each region of grandeur or beauty; a divining-rod, to tell where lie the secret fountains of refreshment; a wand, to invoke elemental spirits;--only such as these seemed fit to embody one's thought with sufficient swiftness and force. In earlier years I aspired to wield the sceptre or the lyre; for I loved with wise design and irresistible command to mould many to one purpose, and it seemed all that man could desire to breathe in music and speak in words, the harmonies of the universe. But the golden lyre was not given to my hand, and I am but the prophecy of a poet. Let me use, then, the slow pen. I will make no formal vow to the long-scorned Muse; I assume no garland; I dare not even dedicate myself as a novice; I can promise neither patience nor energy:--but I will court excellence, so far as an humble heart and open eye can merit it, and, if I may gradually grow to some degree of worthiness in this mode of expression, I shall be grateful.' WOMAN. It was on "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" that Margaret was now testing her power as a writer. 'I have finished the pamphlet,' she writes, 'though the last day it kept spinning out beneath my hand. After taking a long walk, early one most exhilarating morning, I sat down to work, and did not give it the last stroke till near nine in the evening. Then I felt a delightful glow, as if I had put a good deal of my true life in it, and as if, should I go away now, the measure of my foot-print would be left on the earth.' A few extracts from her manuscripts upon this subject may be of interest, as indicating the spirit and aim with which she wrote:-- 'To those of us who hate emphasis and exaggeration, who believe that whatever is good of its kind is good, who shrink from love of excitement and love of sway, who, while ready for duties of many kinds, dislike pledges and bonds to any,--this talk about "Woman's Sphere," "Woman's Mission," and all such phrases as mark the present consciousness of an impending transition from old conventions to greater freedom, are most repulsive. And it demands some valor to lift one's head amidst the shower of public squibs, private sneers, anger, scorn, derision, called out by the demand that women should be put on a par with their brethren, legally and politically; that they should hold property not by permission but by right, and that they should take an active part in all great movements. But though, with Mignon, we are prompted to characterize heaven as the place where "Sie fragen nicht nach Mann nie Weib," yet it is plain that we must face this agitation; and beyond the dull clouds overhead hangs in the horizon Venus, as morning-star, no less fair, though of more melting beauty, than the glorious Jupiter, who shares with her the watch. * * * * * 'The full, free expression of feeling must be rare, for this book of Bettina Brentano's to produce such an effect. Men who have lived in the society of women all their days, seem never before to have dreamed of their nature; they are filled with wonderment and delight at these revelations, and because they see the woman, fancy her a genius. But in truth her inspiration is nowise extraordinary; and I have letters from various friends, lying unnoticed in my portfolio, which are quite as beautiful. For one, I think that these veins of gold should pass in secret through the earth, inaccessible to all who will not take the trouble to mine for them. I do not like Bettina for publishing her heart, and am ready to repeat to her Serlo's reproof to Aurelia.' * * * * * 'How terrible must be the tragedy of a woman who awakes to find that she has given herself wholly to a person for whom she is not eternally fitted! I cannot look on marriage as on the other experiments of life: it is the one grand type that should be kept forever sacred. There are two kinds of love experienced by high and rich souls. The first seeks, according to Plato's myth, another half, as being not entire in itself, but needing a kindred nature to unlock its secret chambers of emotion, and to act with quickening influence on all its powers, by full harmony of senses, affections, intellect, will; the second is purely ideal, beholding in its object divine perfection, and delighting in it only in degree as it symbolizes the essential good. But why is not this love steadily directed to the Central Spirit, since in no form, however suggestive in beauty, can God be fully revealed? Love's delusion is owing to one of man's most godlike qualities,--the earnestness with which he would concentrate his whole being, and thus experience the Now of the I Am. Yet the noblest are not long deluded; they love really the Infinite Beauty, though they may still keep before them a human form, as the Isis, who promises hereafter a seat at the golden tables. How high is Michel Angelo's love, for instance, compared with Petrarch's! Petrarch longs, languishes; and it is only after the death of Laura that his muse puts on celestial plumage. But Michel always soars; his love is a stairway to the heavens. * * * * * 'Might not we women do something in regard to this Texas Annexation project? I have never felt that I had any call to take part in public affairs before; but this is a great moral question, and we have an obvious right to express our convictions. I should like to convene meetings of the women everywhere, and take our stand. * * * * * 'Had Christendom but been true to its standard, while accommodating its modes of operation to the calls of successive times, woman would now have not only equal _power_ with man,--for of that omnipotent nature will never permit her to be defrauded,--but a _chartered_ power, too fully recognized to be abused. Indeed, all that is wanting is, that man should prove his own freedom by making her free. Let him abandon conventional restriction, as a vestige of that Oriental barbarity which confined woman to a seraglio. Let him trust her entirely, and give her every privilege already acquired for himself,--elective franchise, tenure of property, liberty to speak in public assemblies, &c. 'Nature has pointed out her ordinary sphere by the circumstances of her physical existence. She cannot wander far. If here and there the gods send their missives through women, as through men, let them speak without remonstrance. In no age have men been able wholly to hinder them. A Deborah must always be a spiritual mother in Israel; a Corinna may be excluded from the Olympic games, yet all men will hear her song, and a Pindar sit at her feet. It is man's fault that there ever were Aspasias and Ninons. These exquisite forms were intended for the shrines of virtue. 'Neither need men fear to lose their domestic deities. Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it. Men should deserve her love as an inheritance, rather than seize and guard it like a prey. Were they noble, they would strive rather not to be loved too much, and to turn her from idolatry to the true, the only Love. Then, children of one Father, they could not err, nor misconceive one another. 'Society is now so complex, that it is no longer possible to educate woman merely as woman; the tasks which come to her hand are so various, and so large a proportion of women are thrown entirely upon their own resources. I admit that this is not their state of perfect development; but it seems as if heaven, having so long issued its edict in poetry and religion, without securing intelligent obedience, now commanded the world in prose, to take a high and rational view. The lesson reads to me thus:-- 'Sex, like rank, wealth, beauty, or talent, is but an accident of birth. As you would not educate a soul to be an aristocrat, so do not to be a woman. A general regard to her usual sphere is dictated in the economy of nature. You need never enforce these provisions rigorously. Achilles had long plied the distaff as a princess, yet, at first sight of a sword, he seized it. So with woman, one hour of love would teach her more of her proper relations, than all your formulas and conventions. Express your views, men, of what you _seek_ in woman: thus best do you give them laws. Learn, women, what you should _demand_ of men: thus only can they become themselves. Turn both from the contemplation of what is merely phenomenal in your existence, to your permanent life as souls. Man, do not prescribe how the Divine shall display itself in woman. Woman, do not expect to see all of God in man. Fellow-pilgrims and helpmeets are ye, Apollo and Diana, twins of one heavenly birth, both beneficent, and both armed. Man, fear not to yield to woman's hand both the quiver and the lyre; for if her urn be filled with light, she will use both to the glory of God. There is but one doctrine for ye both, and that is the doctrine of the SOUL. Thus, in communion with the serene loveliness of mother-earth, and inspired with memories of Isis and Ceres, of Minerva and Freia, and all the commanding forms beneath which earlier ages symbolized their sense of the Divine Spirit in woman, Margaret cherished visions of the future, and responded with full heart to the poet's prophecy:-- "Then comes the statelier Eden back to men; Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm; Then springs the crowning race of human-kind." It was but after the usual order of our discordant life,--where Purgatory lies so nigh to Paradise,--that she should thence be summoned to pass a Sunday with the prisoners at Sing-Sing. This was the period when, in fulfilment of the sagacious and humane counsels of Judge Edmonds, a system of kind discipline, combined with education, was in practice at that penitentiary, and when the female department was under the matronly charge of Mrs. E.W. Farnum, aided by Mrs. Johnson, Miss Bruce, and other ladies, who all united sisterly sympathy with energetic firmness. Margaret thus describes her impressions:-- 'We arrived on Saturday evening, in such resplendent moonlight, that we might have mistaken the prison for a palace, had we not known but too well what those massive walls contained. 'Sunday morning we attended service in the chapel of the male convicts. They listened with earnest attention, and many were moved to tears. I never felt such sympathy with an audience as when, at the words "Men and brethren," that sea of faces, marked with the scars of every ill, were upturned, and the shell of brutality burst apart at the touch of love. I knew that at least heavenly truth would not be kept out by self-complacence and dependence on good appearances. 'After twelve at noon, all are confined in their cells, that the keepers may have rest from their weekly fatigue. But I was allowed to have some of the women out to talk with, and the interview was very pleasant. They showed the natural aptitude of the sex for refinement. These women were among the so-called worst, and all from the lowest haunts of vice. Yet nothing could have been more decorous than their conduct, while it was also frank; and they showed a sensibility and sense of propriety, which would not have disgraced any society. All passed, indeed, much as in one of my Boston classes. I told them I was writing about Woman; and, as my path had been a favored one, I wanted to gain information from those who had been tempted and afflicted. They seemed to reply in the same spirit in which I asked. Several, however, expressed a wish to see me alone, as they could then say _all_, which they could not bear to before one another. I shall go there again, and take time for this. It is very gratifying to see the influence these few months of gentle and intelligent treatment have had upon these women; indeed, it is wonderful.' So much were her sympathies awakened by this visit, that she rejoiced in the opportunity, soon after offered, of passing Christmas with these outcasts, and gladly consented to address the women in their chapel. "There was," says one present, "a most touching tenderness, blended with dignity, in her air and tone, as, seated in the desk, she looked round upon her fallen sisters, and begun: 'To me the pleasant office has been given, of 'wishing you a happy Christmas.' A simultaneous movement of obeisance rippled over the audience, with a murmured 'Thank you;' and a smile was spread upon those sad countenances, like sunrise sparkling on a pool." A few words from this discourse,--which was extemporaneous, but of which she afterward made an imperfect record,--will show the temper in which she spoke:-- 'I have passed other Christmas days happily, but never felt as now, how fitting it is that this festival should come among the snows and chills of winter; for, to many of you, I trust, it is the birth-day of a higher life, when the sun of good-will is beginning to return, and the evergreen of hope gives promise of the eternal year. * * * 'Some months ago, we were told of the riot, the license, and defying spirit which made this place so wretched, and the conduct of some now here was such that the world said:--"Women once lost are far worse than abandoned men, and cannot be restored." But, no! It is not so! I know my sex better. It is because women have so much feeling, and such a rooted respect for purity, that they seem so shameless and insolent, when they feel that they have erred and that others think ill of them. They know that even the worst of men would like to see women pure as angels, and when they meet man's look of scorn, the desperate passion that rises is a perverted pride, which might have been their guardian angel. Might have been! Rather let me say, which may be; for the great improvement so rapidly wrought here gives us all warm hopes. * * * 'Be not in haste to leave these walls. Yesterday, one of you, who was praised, replied, that "if she did well she hoped that efforts would be made to have her pardoned." I can feel the monotony and dreariness of your confinement, but I entreat you to believe that for many of you it would be the greatest misfortune to be taken from here too soon. You know, better than I can, the temptations that await you in the world; and you must now perceive how dark is the gulf of sin and sorrow, towards which they would hurry you. Here, you have friends indeed; friends to your better selves; able and ready to help you. Born of unfortunate marriages, inheriting dangerous inclinations, neglected in childhood, with bad habits and bad associates, as certainly must be the case with some of you, how terrible will be the struggle when you leave this shelter! O, be sure that you are fitted to triumph over evil, before you again expose yourselves to it! And, instead of wasting your time and strength in vain wishes, use this opportunity to prepare yourselves for a better course of life, when you are set free. * * * 'When I was here before, I was grieved by hearing several of you say, "I will tell you what you wish to know, if I can be alone with you; but not before the other prisoners; for, if they know my past faults, they will taunt me with them." O, never do that! To taunt the fallen is the part of a fiend. And you! you were meant by Heaven to become angels of sympathy and love. It says in the Scripture: "Their angels do always behold in heaven the face of my Father." So was it with you in your childhood; so is it now. Your angels stand forever there to intercede for you; and to you they call to be gentle and good. Nothing can so grieve and discourage those heavenly friends as when you mock the suffering. It was one of the highest praises of Jesus, "The bruised reed he will not break." Remember that, and never insult, where you cannot aid, a companion. * * * 'Let me warn you earnestly against acting insincerely, and appearing to wish to do right for the sake of approbation I know you must prize the good opinion of your friendly protectors; but do not buy it at the cost of truth. Try to be, not to seem. Only so far as you earnestly wish to do right for the sake of right, can you gain a principle that will sustain you hereafter; and that is what we wish, not fair appearances now. A career can never be happy that begins with falsehood. Be inwardly, outwardly true; then you will never be weakened or hardened by the consciousness of playing a part; and if, hereafter, the unfeeling or thoughtless give you pain, or take the dreadful risk of pushing back a soul emerging from darkness, you will feel the strong support of a good conscience. * * * 'And never be discouraged; never despond; never say, "It is too late." Fear not, even if you relapse again and again. Many of you have much to contend with. Some may be so faulty, by temperament or habit, that they can never on this earth lead a wholly fair and harmonious life, however much they strive. Yet do what you can. If in one act,--for one day,--you can do right, let that live like a point of light in your memory; for if you have done well once you can again. If you fall, do not lie grovelling; but rise upon your feet once more, and struggle bravely on. And if aroused conscience makes you suffer keenly, have patience to bear it. God will not let you suffer more than you need to fit you for his grace. At the very moment of your utmost pain, persist to seek his aid, and it will be given abundantly. Cultivate this spirit of prayer. I do not mean agitation and excitement, but a deep desire for truth, purity, and goodness, and you will daily learn how near He is to every one of 'us.'' These fragments, from a hasty report transcribed when the impressions of the hour had grown faint, give but a shadow of the broad good sense, hearty fellow-feeling, and pathetic hopefulness, which made so effective her truly womanly appeal. This intercourse with the most unfortunate of her sex, and a desire to learn more of the causes of their degradation, and of the means of restoring them, led Margaret, immediately on reaching New York, to visit the various benevolent institutions, and especially the prisons on Blackwell's Island. And it was while walking among the beds of the lazar-house,--mis-called "hospital,"--which then, to the disgrace of the city, was the cess-pool of its social filth, that an incident occurred, as touching as it was surprising to herself. A woman was pointed out who bore a very bad character, as hardened, sulky, and impenetrable. She was in bad health and rapidly failing. Margaret requested to be left alone with her; and to her question, 'Are you 'willing to die?' the woman answered, "Yes;" adding, with her usual bitterness, "not on religious grounds, though." 'That is well,--to understand yourself,' was Margaret's rejoinder. She then began to talk with her about her health, and her few comforts, until the conversation deepened in interest. At length, as Margaret rose to go, she said: 'Is there not anything I can do 'for you?' The woman replied: "I should be glad if you will pray with me." The condition of these wretched beings was brought the more home to her heart, as the buildings were directly in sight from Mr. Greeley's house, at Turtle Bay, where Margaret, on her arrival, went to reside. 'Seven hundred females,' she writes, 'are now confined in the Penitentiary opposite this point. We can pass over in a boat in a few minutes. I mean to visit, talk, and read with them. I have always felt great interest in those women who are trampled in the mud to gratify the brute appetites of men, and wished that I might be brought naturally into contact with them. Now I am.' THE TRIBUNE AND HORACE GREELEY. It was early in December of 1844 that Margaret took up her abode with Mr. and Mrs. Greeley, in a spacious old wooden mansion, somewhat ruinous, but delightfully situated on the East River, which she thus describes:-- 'This place is, to me, entirely charming; it is so completely in the country, and all around is so bold and free. It is two miles or more from the thickly settled parts of New York, but omnibuses and cars give me constant access to the city, and, while I can readily see what and whom I will, I can command time and retirement. Stopping on the Haarlem road, you enter a lane nearly a quarter of a mile long, and going by a small brook and pond that locks in the place, and ascending a slightly rising ground, get sight of the house, which, old-fashioned and of mellow tint, fronts on a flower-garden filled with shrubs, large vines, and trim box borders. On both sides of the house are beautiful trees, standing fair, full-grown, and clear. Passing through a wide hall, you come out upon a piazza, stretching the whole length of the house, where one can walk in all weathers; and thence by a step or two, on a lawn, with picturesque masses of rocks, shrubs and trees, overlooking the East River. Gravel paths lead, by several turns, down the steep bank to the water's edge, where round the rocky point a small bay curves, in which boats are lying. And, owing to the currents, and the set of the tide, the sails glide sidelong, seeming to greet the house as they sweep by. The beauty here, seen by moonlight, is truly transporting. I enjoy it greatly, and the _genius loci_ receives me as to a home.' Here Margaret remained for a year and more, writing regularly for the Tribune. And how high an estimate this prolonged and near acquaintance led her to form for its Editor, will appear from a few passages in her letters:-- 'Mr. Greeley is a man of genuine excellence, honorable, benevolent, and of an uncorrupted disposition. He is sagacious, and, in his way, of even great abilities. In modes of life and manner he is a man of the people, and of the American people.' And again:--Mr. Greeley is in many ways very interesting for me to know. He teaches me things, which my own influence on those, who have hitherto approached me, has prevented me from learning. In our business and friendly relations, we are on terms of solid good-will and mutual respect. With the exception of my own mother, I think him the most disinterestedly generous person I have ever known.' And later she writes:-- 'You have heard that the Tribune Office was burned to the ground. For a day I thought it must make a difference, but it has served only to increase my admiration for Mr. Greeley's smiling courage. He has really a strong character.' On the other side, Mr. Greeley thus records his recollections of his friend:-- "My first acquaintance with Margaret Fuller was made through the pages of 'The Dial.' The lofty range and rare ability of that work, and its un-American richness of culture and ripeness of thought, naturally filled the 'fit audience, though few,' with a high estimate of those who were known as its conductors and principal writers. Yet I do not now remember that any article, which strongly impressed me, was recognized as from the pen of its female editor, prior to the appearance of 'The Great Lawsuit,' afterwards matured into the volume more distinctively, yet not quite accurately, entitled 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century.' I think this can hardly have failed to make a deep impression on the mind of every thoughtful reader, as the production of an original, vigorous, and earnest mind. 'Summer on the Lakes,' which appeared some time after that essay, though before its expansion into a book, struck me as less ambitious in its aim, but more graceful and delicate in its execution; and as one of the clearest and most graphic delineations, ever given, of the Great Lakes, of the Prairies, and of the receding barbarism, and the rapidly advancing, but rude, repulsive semi-civilization, which were contending with most unequal forces for the possession of those rich lands. I still consider 'Summer on the Lakes' unequalled, especially in its pictures of the Prairies and of the sunnier aspects of Pioneer life. "Yet, it was the suggestion of Mrs. Greeley,--who had spent some weeks of successive seasons in or near Boston, and who had there made the personal acquaintance of Miss Fuller, and formed a very high estimate and warm attachment for her,--that induced me, in the autumn of 1844, to offer her terms, which were accepted, for her assistance in the literary department of the Tribune. A home in my family was included in the stipulation. I was myself barely acquainted with her, when she thus came to reside with us, and I did not fully appreciate her nobler qualities for some months afterward. Though we were members of the same household, we scarcely met save at breakfast; and my time and thoughts were absorbed in duties and cares, which left me little leisure or inclination for the amenities of social intercourse. Fortune seemed to delight in placing us two in relations of friendly antagonism,--or rather, to develop all possible contrasts in our ideas and social habits. She was naturally inclined to luxury and a good appearance before the world. My pride, if I had any, delighted in bare walls and rugged fare. She was addicted to strong tea and coffee, both which I rejected and contemned, even in the most homoeopathic dilutions: while, my general health being sound, and hers sadly impaired, I could not fail to find in her dietetic habits the causes of her almost habitual illness; and once, while we were still barely acquainted, when she came to the breakfast-table with a very severe headache, I was tempted to attribute it to her strong potations of the Chinese leaf the night before. She told me quite frankly that she 'declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take;' which was but reasonable in one who had arrived at her maturity of intellect and fixedness of habits. So the subject was thenceforth tacitly avoided between us; but, though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not so well be; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created a perceptible distance between us. "Her earlier contributions to the Tribune were not her best, and I did not at first prize her aid so highly as I afterwards learned to do. She wrote always freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly; for her full and intimate acquaintance with continental literature, especially German, seemed to have marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue. While I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular embarrassment and hesitation. She could write only when in the vein; and this needed often to be waited for through several days, while the occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance. The new book must be reviewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it, else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader; but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, on any subject, and with a rapidity limited only by the physical ability to form the requisite pen-strokes, the notion of waiting for a brighter day, or a happier frame of mind, appears fantastic and absurd. He would as soon think of waiting for a change in the moon. Hence, while I realized that her contributions evinced rare intellectual wealth and force, I did not value them as I should have done had they been written more fluently and promptly. They often seemed to make their appearance 'a day after the fair.' "One other point of tacit antagonism between us may as well be noted. Margaret was always a most earnest, devoted champion of the Emancipation of Women, from their past and present condition of inferiority, to an independence on Men. She demanded for them the fullest recognition of Social and Political Equality with the rougher sex; the freest access to all stations, professions, employments, which are open to any. To this demand I heartily acceded. It seemed to me, however, that her clear perceptions of abstract right were often overborne, in practice, by the influence of education and habit; that while she demanded absolute equality for Woman, she exacted a deference and courtesy from men to women, _as_ women, which was entirely inconsistent with that requirement. In my view, the equalizing theory can be enforced only by ignoring the habitual discrimination of men and women, as forming separate _classes_, and regarding all alike as simply _persons_,--as human beings. So long as a lady shall deem herself in need of some gentleman's arm to conduct her properly out of a dining or ball-room,--so long as she shall consider it dangerous or unbecoming to walk half a mile alone by night,--I cannot see how the 'Woman's Rights' theory is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction. In this view Margaret did not at all concur, and the diversity was the incitement to much perfectly good-natured, but nevertheless sharpish sparring between us. Whenever she said or did anything implying the usual demand of Woman on the courtesy and protection of Manhood, I was apt, before complying, to look her in the face and exclaim with marked emphasis,--quoting from her 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century,'--'LET THEM BE SEA-CAPTAINS IF THEY WILL!' Of course, this was given and received as raillery, but it did not tend to ripen our intimacy or quicken my esteem into admiration. Though no unkind word ever passed between us, nor any approach to one, yet we two dwelt for months under the same roof, as scarcely more than acquaintances, meeting once a day at a common board, and having certain business relations with each other. Personally, I regarded her rather as my wife's cherished friend than as my own, possessing many lofty qualities and some prominent weaknesses, and a good deal spoiled by the unmeasured flattery of her little circle of inordinate admirers. For myself, burning no incense on any human shrine, I half-consciously resolved to 'keep my eye beam clear,' and escape the fascination which she seemed to exert over the eminent and cultivated persons, mainly women, who came to our out-of-the-way dwelling to visit her, and who seemed generally to regard her with a strangely Oriental adoration. "But as time wore on, and I became inevitably better and better acquainted with her, I found myself drawn, almost irresistibly, into the general current. I found that her faults and weaknesses were all superficial and obvious to the most casual, if undazzled, observer. They rather dwindled than expanded upon a fuller knowledge; or rather, took on new and brighter aspects in the light of her radiant and lofty soul. I learned to know her as a most fearless and unselfish champion of Truth and Human Good at all hazards, ready to be their standard-bearer through danger and obloquy, and, if need be, their martyr. I think few have more keenly appreciated the material goods of life,--Rank, Riches, Power, Luxury, Enjoyment; but I know none who would have more cheerfully surrendered them all, if the well-being of our Race could thereby have been promoted. I have never met another in whom the inspiring hope of Immortality was so strengthened into profoundest conviction. She did not _believe_ in our future and unending existence,--she _knew_ it, and lived ever in the broad glare of its morning twilight. With a limited income and liberal wants, she was yet generous beyond the bounds of reason. Had the gold of California been all her own, she would have disbursed nine tenths of it in eager and well-directed efforts to stay, or at least diminish, the flood of human misery. And it is but fair to state, that the liberality she evinced was fully paralleled by the liberality she experienced at the hands of others. Had she needed thousands, and made her wants known, she had friends who would have cheerfully supplied her. I think few persons, in their pecuniary dealings, have experienced and evinced more of the better qualities of human nature than Margaret Fuller. She seemed to inspire those who approached her with that generosity which was a part of her nature. "Of her writings I do not purpose to speak critically. I think most of her contributions to the Tribune, while she remained with us, were characterized by a directness, terseness, and practicality, which are wanting in some of her earlier productions. Good judges have confirmed my own opinion, that, while her essays in the Dial are more elaborate and ambitious, her reviews in the Tribune are far better adapted to win the favor and sway the judgment of the great majority of readers. But, one characteristic of her writings I feel bound to commend,--their absolute truthfulness. She never asked how this would sound, nor whether that would do, nor what would be the effect of saying anything; but simply, 'Is it the truth? Is it such as the public should know?' And if her judgment answered, 'Yes,' she uttered it; no matter what turmoil it might excite, nor what odium it might draw down on her own head. Perfect conscientiousness was an unfailing characteristic of her literary efforts. Even the severest of her critiques,--that on Longfellow's Poems,--for which an impulse in personal pique has been alleged, I happen with certainty to know had no such origin. When I first handed her the book to review, she excused herself, assigning the wide divergence of her views of Poetry from those of the author and his school, as her reason. She thus induced me to attempt the task of reviewing it myself. But day after day sped by, and I could find no hour that was not absolutely required for the performance of some duty that _would not_ be put off, nor turned over to another. At length I carried the book back to her in utter despair of ever finding an hour in which even to look through it; and, at my renewed and earnest request, she reluctantly undertook its discussion. The statement of these facts is but an act of justice to her memory. "Profoundly religious,--though her creed was, at once, very broad and very short, with a genuine love for inferiors in social position, whom she was habitually studying, by her counsel and teachings, to elevate and improve,--she won the confidence and affection of those who attracted her, by unbounded sympathy and trust. She probably knew the cherished secrets of more hearts than any one else, because she freely imparted her own. With a full share both of intellectual and of family pride, she preëminently recognized and responded to the essential brotherhood of all human kind, and needed but to know that a fellow-being required her counsel or assistance, to render her, riot merely willing, but eager to impart it. Loving ease, luxury, and the world's good opinion, she stood ready to renounce them all, at the call of pity or of duty. I think no one, not radically averse to the whole system of domestic servitude, would have treated servants, of whatever class, with such uniform and thoughtful consideration,--a regard which wholly merged their factitious condition in their antecedent and permanent humanity. I think few servants ever lived weeks with her, who were not dignified and lastingly benefited by her influence and her counsels. They might be at first repelled, by what seemed her too stately manner and exacting disposition, but they soon learned to esteem and love her. "I have known few women, and scarcely another maiden, who had the heart and the courage to speak with such frank compassion, in mixed circles, of the most degraded and outcast portion of the sex. The contemplation of their treatment, especially by the guilty authors of their ruin, moved her to a calm and mournful indignation, which she did not attempt to suppress nor control. Others were willing to pity and deplore; Margaret was more inclined to vindicate and to redeem. She did not hesitate to avow that on meeting some of these abused, unhappy sisters, she had been surprised to find them scarcely fallen morally below the ordinary standard of Womanhood,--realizing and loathing their debasement; anxious to escape it; and only repelled by the sad consciousness that for them sympathy and society remained only so long as they should persist in the ways of pollution. Those who have read her 'Woman,' may remember some daring comparisons therein suggested between these Pariahs of society and large classes of their respectable sisters; and that was no fitful expression,--no sudden outbreak,--but impelled by her most deliberate convictions. I think, if she had been born to large fortune, a house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to return to the ways of Virtue, would have been one of her most cherished and first realized conceptions. "Her love of children was one of her most prominent characteristics. The pleasure she enjoyed in their society was fully counterpoised by that she imparted. To them she was never lofty, nor reserved, nor mystical; for no one had ever a more perfect faculty for entering into their sports, their feelings, their enjoyments. She could narrate almost any story in language level to their capacities, and in a manner calculated to bring out their hearty and often boisterously expressed delight. She possessed marvellous powers of observation and imitation or mimicry; and, had she been attracted to the stage, would have been the first actress America has produced, whether in tragedy or comedy. Her faculty of mimicking was not needed to commend her to the hearts of children, but it had its effect in increasing the fascinations of her genial nature and heartfelt joy in their society. To amuse and instruct them was an achievement for which she would readily forego any personal object; and her intuitive perception of the toys, games, stories, rhymes, &c., best adapted to arrest and enchain their attention, was unsurpassed. Between her and my only child, then living, who was eight months old when she came to us, and something over two years when she sailed for Europe, tendrils of affection gradually intertwined themselves, which I trust Death has not severed, but rather multiplied and strengthened. She became his teacher, playmate, and monitor; and he requited her with a prodigality of love and admiration. "I shall not soon forget their meeting in my office, after some weeks' separation, just before she left us forever. His mother had brought him in from the country and left him asleep on my sofa, while she was absent making purchases, and he had rolled off and hurt himself in the fall, waking with the shock in a phrensy of anger, just before Margaret, hearing of his arrival, rushed into the office to find him. I was vainly attempting to soothe him as she entered; but he was running from one end to the other of the office, crying passionately, and refusing to be pacified. She hastened to him, in perfect confidence that her endearments would calm the current of his feelings,--that the sound of her well-remembered voice would banish all thought of his pain,--and that another moment would see him restored to gentleness; but, half-wakened, he did not heed her, and probably did not even realize who it was that caught him repeatedly in her arms and tenderly insisted that he should restrain himself. At last she desisted in despair; and, with the bitter tears streaming down her face, observed:--'Pickie, many friends have treated me unkindly, but no one had ever the power to cut me to the heart, as you have!' Being thus let alone, he soon came to himself, and their mutual delight in the meeting was rather heightened by the momentary estrangement. "They had one more meeting; their last on earth! 'Aunty Margaret' was to embark for Europe on a certain day, and 'Pickie' was brought into the city to bid her farewell. They met this time also at my office, and together we thence repaired to the ferry-boat, on which she was returning to her residence in Brooklyn to complete her preparations for the voyage. There they took a tender and affecting leave of each other. But soon his mother called at the office, on her way to the departing ship, and we were easily persuaded to accompany her thither, and say farewell once more, to the manifest satisfaction of both Margaret and the youngest of her devoted friends. Thus they parted, never to meet again in time. She sent him messages and presents repeatedly from Europe; and he, when somewhat older, dictated a letter in return, which was joyfully received and acknowledged. When the mother of our great-souled friend spent some days with us nearly two years afterward, 'Pickie' talked to her often and lovingly of 'Aunty Margaret,' proposing that they two should 'take a boat and go over and see her,'--for, to his infantile conception, the low coast of Long Island, visible just across the East River, was that Europe to which she had sailed, and where she was unaccountably detained so long. Alas! a far longer and more adventurous journey was required to reunite those loving souls! The 12th of July, 1849, saw him stricken down, from health to death, by the relentless cholera; and my letter, announcing that calamity, drew from her a burst of passionate sorrow, such as hardly any bereavement but the loss of a very near relative could have impelled. Another year had just ended, when a calamity, equally sudden, bereft a wide circle of her likewise, with her husband and infant son. Little did I fear, when I bade her a confident Good-by, on the deck of her outward-bound ship, that the sea would close over her earthly remains, ere we should meet again; far less that the light of my eyes and the cynosure of my hopes, who then bade her a tenderer and sadder farewell, would precede her on the dim pathway to that 'Father's house,' whence is no returning! Ah, well! God is above all, and gracious alike in what he conceals and what he discloses;--benignant and bounteous, as well when he reclaims as when he bestows. In a few years, at farthest, our loved and lost ones will welcome us to their home." Favorably as Mr. Greeley speaks of Margaret's articles in the Tribune, it is yet true that she never brought her full power to bear upon them; partly because she was too much exhausted by previous over-work, partly because it hindered her free action to aim at popular effect. Her own estimate of them is thus expressed:-- 'I go on very moderately, for my strength is not great, and I am connected with one who is anxious that I should not overtask it. Body and mind, I have long required rest and mere amusement, and now obey Nature as much as I can. If she pleases to restore me to an energetic state, she will by-and-by; if not, I can only hope this world will not turn me out of doors too abruptly. I value my present position very much, as enabling me to speak effectually some right words to a large circle; and, while I can do so, am content.' Again she says,-- 'I am pleased with your sympathy about the Tribune, for I do not find much among my old friends. They think I ought to produce something excellent, while I am satisfied to aid in the great work of popular education. I never regarded literature merely as a collection of exquisite products, but rather as a means of mutual interpretation. Feeling that many are reached and in some degree helped, the thoughts of every day seem worth noting, though in a form that does not inspire me.' The most valuable of her contributions, according to her own judgment, were the Criticisms on Contemporary Authors in Europe and America. A few of these were revised in the spring of 1846, and, in connection with some of her best articles selected from the Dial, Western Messenger, American Monthly, &c., appeared in two volumes of Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books, under the title of PAPERS ON ART AND LITERATURE. SOCIETY. Heralded by her reputation, as a scholar, writer, and talker, and brought continually before the public by her articles in the Tribune, Margaret found a circle of acquaintance opening before her, as wide, various, and rich, as time and inclination permitted her to know. Persons sought her in her country retreat, attracted alike by idle curiosity, desire for aid, and respectful sympathy. She visited freely in several interesting families in New York and Brooklyn: occasionally accepted invitations to evening parties, and often met, at the somewhat celebrated _soirées_ of Miss Lynch, the assembled authors, artists, critics, wits, and _dilettanti_ of New York. As was inevitable, also, for one of such powerful magnetic influence, liberal soul and broad judgment, she once again became, as elsewhere she had been, a confidant and counsellor of the tempted and troubled; and her geniality, lively conversation, and ever fresh love, gave her a home in many hearts. But the subdued tone of her spirits at this period led her to prefer seclusion. Of her own social habits she writes:-- 'It is not well to keep entirely apart from the stream of common life; so, though I never go out when busy, nor keep late hours, I find it pleasanter and better to enter somewhat into society. I thus meet with many entertaining acquaintance, and some friends. I can never, indeed, expect, in America, or in this world, to form relations with nobler persons than I have already known; nor can I put my heart into these new ties as into the old ones, though probably it would still respond to commanding excellence. But my present circle satisfies my wants. As to what is called "good society," I am wholly indifferent. I know several women, whom I like very much, and yet more men. I hear good music, which answers my social desires better than any other intercourse can; and I love four or five interesting children, in whom I always find more genuine sympathy than in their elders.' Of the impression produced by Margaret on those who were but slightly acquainted with her, some notion may be formed from the following sketch:-- "In general society, she commanded respect rather than admiration All persons were curious to see her, and in full rooms her fine head and spiritual expression at once marked her out from the crowd; but the most were repelled by what seemed conceit, pedantry, and a harsh spirit of criticism, while, on her part, she appeared to regard those around her as frivolous, superficial, and conventional. Indeed, I must frankly confess, that we did not meet in pleasant relations, except now and then, when the lifting of a veil, as it were, revealed for a moment the true life of each. Yet I was fond of looking at her from a distance, and defending her when silly people were inclined to cavil at her want of feminine graces. Then I would say, 'I would like to be an artist now, that I might paint, not the care-worn countenance and the uneasy air of one seemingly out of harmony with the scene about her, but the soul that sometimes looks out from under those large lids. Michel Angelo would have made her a Sibyl.' I remember I was surprised to find her height no greater; for her writings had always given me an impression of magnitude. Thus I studied though I avoided her, admitting, the while, proudly and joyously, that she was a woman to reverence. A trifling incident, however, gave me the key to much in her character, of which, before, I had not dreamed. It was one evening, after a Valentine party, where Frances Osgood, Margaret Fuller, and other literary ladies, had attracted some attention, that, as we were in the dressing-room preparing to go home, I heard Margaret sigh deeply. Surprised and moved, I said, 'Why?'--'Alone, as usual,' was her pathetic answer, followed by a few sweet, womanly remarks, touching as they were beautiful. Often, after, I found myself recalling her look and tone, with tears in my eyes; for before I had regarded her as a being cold, and abstracted, if not scornful." Cold, abstracted, and scornful! About this very time it was that Margaret wrote in her journal:-- 'Father, let me not injure my fellows during this period of repression. I feel that when we meet my tones are not so sweet as I would have them. O, let me not wound! I, who know so well how wounds can burn and ache, should not inflict them. Let my touch be light and gentle. Let me keep myself uninvaded, but let me not fail to be kind and tender, when need is. Yet I would not assume an overstrained poetic magnanimity. Help me to do just right, and no more. O, make truth profound and simple in me!' Again:-- 'The heart bleeds,--faith almost gives way, to see man's seventy years of chrysalis. Is it not too long? Enthusiasm must struggle fiercely to burn clear amid these fogs. In what little, low, dark cells of care and prejudice, without one soaring thought or melodious fancy, do poor mortals--well-intentioned enough, and with religious aspiration too--forever creep. And yet the sun sets to-day as gloriously bright as ever it did on the temples of Athens, and the evening star rises as heavenly pure as it rose on the eye of Dante. O, Father! help me to free my fellows from the conventional bonds whereby their sight is holden. By purity and freedom let me teach them justice.' And yet again:-- 'There comes a consciousness that I have no real hold on life,--no real, permanent connection with any soul. I seem a wandering Intelligence, driven from spot to spot, that I may learn all secrets, and fulfil a circle of knowledge. This thought envelopes me as a cold atmosphere. I 'do not see how I shall go through this destiny. I can, if it is mine; but I do not feel that I can.' Casual observers mistook Margaret's lofty idealism for personal pride; but thus speaks one who really knew her:--"You come like one of the great powers of nature, harmonizing with all beauty of the soul or of the earth. You cannot be discordant with anything that is true and deep. I thank God for the noble privilege of being recognized by so large, tender, and radiant a soul as thine." EUROPE. LETTERS "I go to prove my soul. I see my way, as birds their trackless way. In some time, God's good time, I shall arrive He guides me and the bird. In his good time!" BROWNING. "One, who, if He be called upon to face Some awful moment, to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a lover, and attired With sudden brightness, like a man inspired; And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw." WORDSWORTH. "Italia! Italia! O tu cui feo la sorte Dono infelice di bellezza, ond' hai Funesta dote d' infiniti guai, Che in fronte scritti per gran doglia porte. Deh, fossi tu men bella, ò almen píù forte!" FILICAJA. "Oh, not to guess it at the first. But I did guess it,--that is, I divined, Felt by an instinct how it was;--why else Should I pronounce you free from all that heap Of sins, which had been irredeemable? I felt they were not yours." BROWNING. "Nests there are many of this very year, Many the nests are, which the winds shall shake, The rains run through and other birds beat down Yours, O Aspasia! rests against the temple Of heavenly love, and, thence inviolate, It shall not fall this winter, nor the next." LANDOR. "Lift up your heart upon the knees of God, Losing yourself, your smallness and your darkness In His great light, who fills and moves the world, Who hath alone the quiet of perfect motion." STERLING. VIII. EUROPE * * * * * [It has been judged best to let Margaret herself tell the story of her travels. In the spring of 1846, her valued friends, Marcus Spring and lady, of New York, had decided to make a tour in Europe, with their son, and they invited Miss Fuller to accompany them. An arrangement was soon made on such terms as she could accept, and the party sailed from Boston in the "Cambria," on the first of August. The following narrative is made up of letters addressed by her to various correspondents. Some extracts, describing distinguished persons whom she saw, have been borrowed from her letters to the New York Tribune.] TO MRS. MARGARET FULLER. _Liverpool, Aug_. 16, 1846. My dear Mother:-- The last two days at sea passed well enough, as a number of agreeable persons were introduced to me, and there were several whom I knew before. I enjoyed nothing on the sea; the excessively bracing air so affected me that I could not bear to look at it. The sight of land delighted me. The tall crags, with their breakers and circling sea-birds; then the green fields, how glad! We had a very fine day to come ashore, and made the shortest passage ever known. The stewardess said, "Any one who complained this time tempted the Almighty." I did not complain, but I could hardly have borne another day. I had no appetite; but am now making up for all deficiencies, and feel already a renovation beginning from the voyage; and, still more, from freedom and entire change of scene. We came here Wednesday, at noon; next day we went to Manchester; the following day to Chester; returning here Saturday evening. On Sunday we went to hear James Martineau; were introduced to him, and other leading persons. The next day and evening I passed in the society of very pleasant people, who have made every exertion to give me the means of seeing and learning; but they have used up all my strength. LONDON. TO C.S. As soon as I reached England, I found how right we were in supposing there was elsewhere a greater range of interesting character among the men, than with us. I do not find, indeed, any so valuable as three or four among the most marked we have known; but many that are strongly individual, and have a fund of hidden life. In Westmoreland, I knew, and have since been seeing in London, a man, such as would interest you a good deal; Mr. Atkinson. He is sometimes called the "prince of the English mesmerisers;" and he has the fine instinctive nature you may suppose from that. He is a man of about thirty; in the fulness of his powers; tall, and finely formed, with a head for Leonardo to paint; mild and composed, but powerful and sagacious; he does not think, but perceives and acts. He is intimate with artists, having studied architecture himself as a profession; but has some fortune on which he lives. Sometimes stationary and acting in the affairs of other men; sometimes wandering about the world and learning; he seems bound by no tie, yet looks as if he had relatives in every place. I saw, also, a man,--an artist,--severe and antique in his spirit; he seemed burdened by the sorrows of aspiration; yet very calm, as secure in the justice of fate. What he does is bad, but full of a great desire. His name is David Scott. I saw another,--a pupil of De la Roche,--very handsome, and full of a voluptuous enjoyment of nature: him I liked a little in a different way. By far the most beauteous person I have seen is Joseph Mazzini. If you ever see Saunders' "People's Journal," you can read articles by him that will give you some notion of his mind, especially one on his friends, headed "Italian Martyrs." He is one in whom holiness has purified, but somewhat dwarfed the man. * * * * * Our visit to Mr. Wordsworth was fortunate. He is seventy-six; but his is a florid, fair old age. He walked with us to all his haunts about the house. Its situation is beautiful, and the "Rydalian Laurels" are magnificent. Still, I saw abodes among the hills that I should have preferred for Wordsworth; more wild and still more romantic. The fresh and lovely Rydal Mount seems merely the retirement of a gentleman, rather than the haunt of a poet. He showed his benignity of disposition in several little things, especially in his attentions to a young boy we had with us. This boy had left the circus, exhibiting its feats of horsemanship, in Ambleside, "for that day only," at his own desire to see Wordsworth; and I feared he would be dissatisfied, as I know I should have been at his age, if, when called to see a poet, I had found no Apollo flaming with youthful glory, laurel-crowned, and lyre in hand; but, instead, a reverend old man clothed in black, and walking with cautious step along the level garden-path. However, he was not disappointed; and Wordsworth, in his turn, seemed to feel and prize a congenial nature in this child. Taking us into the house, he showed us the picture of his sister, repeating with much expression some lines of hers, and those so famous of his about her, beginning "Five years," &c.; also, his own picture, by Inman, of whom he spoke with esteem. I had asked to see a picture in that room, which has been described in one of the finest of his later poems. A hundred times had I wished to see this picture, yet when seen was not disappointed by it. The light was unfavorable, but it had a light of its own,-- "whose mild gleam Of beauty never ceases to enrich The common light." Mr. Wordsworth is fond of the hollyhock; a partiality scarcely deserved by the flower, but which marks the simplicity of his tastes. He had made a long avenue of them, of all colors, from the crimson brown to rose, straw-color, and white, and pleased himself with having made proselytes to a liking for them, among his neighbors. I never have seen such magnificent fuchsias as at Ambleside, and there was one to be seen in every cottage-yard. They are no longer here under the shelter of the green-house, as with us, and as they used to be in England. The plant, from its grace and finished elegance, being a great favorite of mine, I should like to see it as frequently and of as luxuriant growth at home, and asked their mode of culture, which I here mark down for the benefit of all who may be interested. Make a bed of bog-earth and sand; put down slips of the fuchsia, and give them a great deal of water; this is all they need. People leave them out here in winter, but perhaps they would not bear the cold of our Januaries. Mr. Wordsworth spoke with more liberality than we expected of the recent measures about the Corn-laws, saying that "the principle was certainly right, though whether existing interests had been as carefully attended to as was right, he was not prepared to say," &c. His neighbors were pleased to hear of his speaking thus mildly, and hailed it as a sign that he was opening his mind to more light on these subjects. They lament that his habits of seclusion keep him ignorant of the real wants of England and the world. Living in this region, which is cultivated by small proprietors, where there is little poverty, vice, or misery, he hears not the voice which cries so loudly from other parts of England, and will not be stilled by sweet, poetic suasion, or philosophy, for it is the cry of men in the jaws of destruction. It was pleasant to find the reverence inspired by this great and pure mind warmest near home. Our landlady, in heaping praises upon him, added, constantly, "and Mrs. Wordsworth, too." "Do the people here," said I, "value Mr. Wordsworth most because he is a celebrated writer?" "Truly, madam," said she, "I think it is because he is so kind a neighbor." "True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." EDINBURGH.----DE QUINCEY. At Edinburgh we were in the wrong season, and many persons we most wished to see were absent. We had, however, the good fortune to find Dr. Andrew Combe, who received us with great kindness. I was impressed with great and affectionate respect, by the benign and even temper of his mind, his extensive and accurate knowledge, accompanied by a large and intelligent liberality. Of our country he spoke very wisely and hopefully. * * * * * I had the satisfaction, not easily attainable now, of seeing De Quincey for some hours, and in the mood of conversation. As one belonging to the Wordsworth and Coleridge constellation (he, too, is now seventy years of age), the thoughts and knowledge of Mr. De Quincey lie in the past, and oftentimes he spoke of matters now become trite to one of a later culture. But to all that fell from his lips, his eloquence, subtle and forcible as the wind, full and gently falling as the evening dew, lent a peculiar charm. He is an admirable narrator; not rapid, but gliding along like a rivulet through a green meadow, giving and taking a thousand little beauties not absolutely required to give his story due relief, but each, in itself, a separate boon. I admired, too, his urbanity; so opposite to the rapid, slang, Vivian-Greyish style, current in the literary conversation of the day. "Sixty years since," men had time to do things better and more gracefully. CHALMERS. With Dr. Chalmers we passed a couple of hours. He is old now, but still full of vigor and fire. We had an opportunity of hearing a fine burst of indignant eloquence from him. "I shall blush to my very bones," said he, "if the _Chaarrch_" (sound these two _rrs_ with as much burr as possible, and you will get an idea of his mode of pronouncing that unweariable word,) "if the Chaarrch yield to the storm." He alluded to the outcry now raised by the Abolitionists against the Free Church, whose motto is, "Send back the money;" i.e., the money taken from the American slaveholders. Dr. C. felt, that if they did not yield from conviction, they must not to assault. His manner in speaking of this gave me a hint of the nature of his eloquence. He seldom preaches now. * * * * * A Scottish gentleman told me the following story:--Burns, still only in the dawn of his celebrity, was invited to dine with one of the neighboring so-called gentry, unhappily quite void of true gentle blood. On arriving, he found his plate set in the servants' room. After dinner, he was invited into a room where guests were assembled, and, a chair being placed for him at the lower end of the board, a glass of wine was offered, and he was requested to sing one of his songs for the entertainment, of the company. He drank off the wine, and thundered forth in reply his grand song "For a' that and a' that," and having finished his prophecy and prayer, nature's nobleman left his churlish entertainers to hide their heads in the home they had disgraced. A NIGHT ON BEN LOMOND. At Inversnaid, we took a boat to go down Loch Lomond, to the little inn of Rowardennan, from which the ascent is made of Ben Lomond. We found a day of ten thousand, for our purpose; but, unhappily, a large party had come with the sun, and engaged all the horses, so that if we went, it must be on foot. This was something of an enterprise for me, as the ascent is four miles, and toward the summit quite fatiguing. However, in the pride of newly-gained health and strength, I was ready, and set forth with Mr. S. alone. We took no guide, and the people of the house did not advise us to take one, as they ought. On reaching the peak, the sight was one of beauty and grandeur such as imagination never painted. You see around you no plain ground, but on every side constellations, or groups of hills, exquisitely dressed in the soft purple of the heather, amid which gleam the lakes, like eyes that tell the secrets of the earth, and drink in those of the heavens. Peak beyond peak caught from the shifting light all the colors of the prism, and, on the furthest, angel companies seemed hovering in glorious white robes. About four o'clock we began our descent. Near the summit, the traces of the path are not distinct, and I said to Mr. S., after a while, that we had lost it. He said he thought that was of no consequence; we could find our way down. I said I thought it was, as the ground was full of springs that were bridged over in the pathway. He accordingly went to look for it, and I stood still, because I was so tired I did not like to waste any labor. Soon he called to me that he had found it, and I followed in the direction where he seemed to be. But I mistook, overshot it, and saw him no more. In about ten minutes I became alarmed, and called him many times. It seems, he on his side shouted also, but the brow of some hill was between us, and we neither saw nor heard one another. I then thought I would make the best of my way down, and I should find him when I arrived. But, in doing so, I found the justice of my apprehension about the springs, so soon as I got to the foot of the hills; for I would sink up to my knees in bog, and must go up the hills again, seeking better crossing places. Thus I lost much time. Nevertheless, in the twilight, I saw, at last, the lake, and the inn of Rowardennan on its shore. Between me and it, lay, direct, a high heathery hill, which I afterwards found is called "The Tongue," because hemmed in on three sides by a water-course. It looked as if, could I only get to the bottom of that, I should be on comparatively level ground. I then attempted to descend in the water-course, but, finding that impracticable, climbed on the hill again, and let myself down by the heather, for it was very steep, and full of deep holes. With great fatigue, I got to the bottom, but when I was about to cross the water-course there, I felt afraid, it looked so deep in the dim twilight. I got down as far as I could by the root of a tree, and threw down a stone. It sounded very hollow, and I was afraid to jump. The shepherds told me afterwards, if I had, I should probably have killed myself, it was so deep, and the bed of the torrent full of sharp stones. I then tried to ascend the hill again, for there was no other way to get off it; but soon sank down utterly exhausted. When able to get up again, and look about me, it was completely dark. I saw, far below me, a light, that looked about as big as a pin's head, that I knew to be from the inn at Rowardennan, but heard no sound except the rush of the waterfall, and the sighing of the night wind. For the first few minutes after I perceived I had come to my night's lodging, such as it was, the circumstance looked appalling. I was very lightly clad, my feet and dress were very wet, I had only a little shawl to throw round me, and the cold autumn wind had already come, and the night mist was to fall on me, all fevered and exhausted as I was. I thought I should not live through the night, or, if I did, I must be an invalid henceforward. I could not even keep myself warm by walking, for, now it was dark, it would be too dangerous to stir. My only chance, however, lay in motion, and my only help in myself; and so convinced was I of this, that I did keep in motion the whole of that long night, imprisoned as I was on such a little perch of that great mountain. For about two hours, I saw the stars, and very cheery and companionable they looked; but then the mist fell, and I saw nothing more, except such apparitions as visited Ossian, on the hill-side, when he went out by night, and struck the bosky shield, and called to him the spirits of the heroes, and the white-armed maids, with their blue eyes of grief. To me, too, came those visionary shapes. Floating slowly and gracefully, their white robes would unfurl from the great body of mist in which they had been engaged, and come upon me with a kiss pervasively cold as that of death. Then the moon rose. I could not see her, but her silver light filled the mist. Now I knew it was two o'clock, and that, having weathered out so much of the night, I might the rest; and the hours hardly seemed long to me more. It may give an idea of the extent of the mountain, that, though I called, every now and then, with all my force, in case by chance some aid might be near, and though no less than twenty men, with their dogs, were looking for me, I never heard a sound, except the rush of the waterfall and the sighing of the night wind, and once or twice the startling of the grouse in the heather. It was sublime indeed,--a never-to-be-forgotten presentation of stern, serene realities. At last came the signs of day,--the gradual clearing and breaking up; some faint sounds from I know not what; the little flies, too, arose from their bed amid the purple heather, and bit me. Truly they were very welcome to do so. But what was my disappointment to find the mist so thick, that I could see neither lake nor inn, nor anything to guide me. I had to go by guess, and, as it happened, my Yankee method served me well. I ascended the hill, crossed the torrent, in the waterfall, first drinking some of the water, which was as good at that time as ambrosia. I crossed in that place, because the waterfall made steps, as it were, to the next hill. To be sure, they were covered with water, but I was already entirely wet with the mist, so that it did not matter. I kept on scrambling, as it happened, in the right direction, till, about seven, some of the shepherds found me. The moment they came, all my feverish strength departed, and they carried me home, where my arrival relieved my friends of distress far greater than I had undergone; for I had my grand solitude, my Ossianic visions, and the pleasure of sustaining myself; while they had only doubt, amounting to anguish, and a fruitless search through the night. Entirely contrary to my forebodings, I only suffered for this a few days, and was able to take a parting look at my prison, as I went down the lake, with feelings of complacency. It was a majestic-looking hill, that Tongue, with the deep ravines on either side, and the richest robe of heather I have anywhere seen. Mr. S. gave all the men who were looking for me a dinner in the barn, and he and Mrs. S. ministered to them; and they talked of Burns,--really the national writer, and known by them, apparently, as none other is,--and of hair-breadth 'scapes by flood and fell. Afterwards they were all brought up to see me, and it was gratifying to note the good breeding and good feeling with which they deported themselves. Indeed, this adventure created quite an intimate feeling between us and the people there. I had been much pleased before, in attending one of their dances, at the genuine independence and politeness of their conduct. They were willing to dance their Highland flings and strathspeys, for our amusement, and did it as naturally and as freely as they would have offered the stranger the best chair. JOANNA BAILLIE.--HOWITTS.--SMITH. I have mentioned with satisfaction seeing some persons who illustrated the past dynasty in the progress of thought here: Wordsworth, Dr. Chalmers, De Quincey, Andrew Combe. With a still higher pleasure, because to one of my own sex, whom I have honored almost above any, I went to pay my court to Joanna Baillie. I found on her brow, not, indeed, a coronal of gold; but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation which her thoughts have received. We found her in her little calm retreat, at Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character and their mutual relations she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline. * * * * * Mary and William Howitt are the main support of the People's Journal. I saw them several times at their cheerful and elegant home. In Mary Howitt, I found the same engaging traits of character we are led to expect from her books for children. At their house, I became acquainted with Dr. Southwood Smith, the well-known philanthropist. He is at present engaged in the construction of good tenements, calculated to improve the condition of the working people. TO R.W.E. _Paris, Nov. 16, 1846._--I meant to write on my arrival in London, six weeks ago; but as it was not what is technically called "the season," I thought I had best send all my letters of introduction at once, that I might glean what few good people I could. But more than I expected were in town. These introduced others, and in three days I was engaged in such a crowd of acquaintance, that I had hardly time to dress, and none to sleep, during all the weeks I was in London. I enjoyed the time extremely. I find myself much in my element in European society. It does not, indeed, come up to my ideal, but so many of the encumbrances are cleared away that used to weary me in America, that I can enjoy a freer play of faculty, and feel, if not like a bird in the air, at least as easy as a fish in water. In Edinburgh, I met Dr. Brown. He is still quite a young man, but with a high ambition, and, I should think, commensurate powers. But all is yet in the bud with him. He has a friend, David Scott, a painter, full of imagination, and very earnest in his views of art. I had some pleasant hours with them, and the last night which they and I passed with De Quincey, a real grand _conversazione_, quite in the Landor style, which lasted, in full harmony, some hours. CARLYLE. Of the people I saw in London, you will wish me to speak first of the Carlyles. Mr. C. came to see me at once, and appointed an evening to be passed at their house. That first time, I was delighted with him. He was in a very sweet humor,--full of wit and pathos, without being overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich flow of his discourse; and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his great full sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of a narrative ballad. He let me talk, now and then, enough to free my lungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired. That evening, he talked of the present state of things in England, giving light, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and some sweet, homely stories he told of things he had known of the Scotch peasantry. Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told, with beautiful feeling, a story of some poor farmer, or artisan, in the country, who on Sunday lays aside the cark and care of that dirty English world, and sits reading the Essays, and looking upon the sea. I left him that night, intending to go out very often to their house. I assure you there never was anything so witty as Carlyle's description of ---- ----. It was enough to kill one with laughing. I, on my side, contributed a story to his fund of anecdote on this subject, and it was fully appreciated. Carlyle is worth a thousand of you for that;--he is not ashamed to laugh, when he is amused, but goes on in a cordial human fashion. The second time, Mr. C. had a dinner-party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of Philosophy, and now writing a Life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little, of which one was glad, for, that night, he was in his more acrid mood; and, though much more brilliant than on the former evening, grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everything he said. For a couple of hours, he was talking about poetry, and the whole harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects in his own mind. Tennyson wrote in verse because the schoolmasters had taught him that it was great to do so, and had thus, unfortunately, been turned from the true path for a man. Burns had, in like manner, been turned from his vocation. Shakspeare had not had the good sense to see that it would have been better to write straight on in prose;--and such nonsense, which, though amusing enough at first, he ran to death after a while. The most amusing part is always when he comes back to some refrain, as in the French Revolution of the _sea-green_. In this instance, it was Petrarch and _Laura_, the last word pronounced with his ineffable sarcasm of drawl. Although he said this over fifty times, I could not ever help laughing when _Laura_ would come,--Carlyle running his chin out, when he spoke it, and his eyes glancing till they looked like the eyes and beak of a bird of prey. Poor Laura! Lucky for her that her poet had already got her safely canonized beyond the reach of this Teufelsdrockh vulture. The worst of hearing Carlyle is that you cannot interrupt him. I understand the habit and power of haranguing have increased very much upon him, so that you are a perfect prisoner when he has once got hold of you. To interrupt him is a physical impossibility. If you get a chance to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you down. True, he does you no injustice, and, with his admirable penetration, sees the disclaimer in your mind, so that you are not morally delinquent; but it is not pleasant to be unable to utter it. The latter part of the evening, however, he paid us for this, by a series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, of modern French literature, not one of them, perhaps, perfectly just, but all drawn with the finest, boldest strokes, and, from his point of view, masterly. All were depreciating, except that of Béranger. Of him he spoke with perfect justice, because with hearty sympathy. I had, afterward, some talk with Mrs. C., whom hitherto I had only _seen_, for who can speak while her husband is there? I like her very much;--she is full of grace, sweetness, and talent. Her eyes are sad and charming. * * * After this, they went to stay at Lord Ashburton's, and I only saw them once more, when they came to pass an evening with us. Unluckily, Mazzini was with us, whose society, when he was there alone, I enjoyed more than any. He is a beauteous and pure music; also, he is a dear friend of Mrs. C.; but his being there gave the conversation a turn to "progress" and ideal subjects, and C. was fluent in invectives on all our "rose-water imbecilities." We all felt distant from him, and Mazzini, after some vain efforts to remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs. C. said to me, "These are but opinions to Carlyle; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped bring his friends to the scaffold, in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter of life and death." All Carlyle's talk, that evening, was a defence of mere force,--success the test of right;--if people would not behave well, put collars round their necks;--find a hero, and let them be his slaves, &c. It was very Titanic, and anti-celestial. I wish the last evening had been more melodious. However, I bid Carlyle farewell with feelings of the warmest friendship and admiration. We cannot feel otherwise to a great and noble nature, whether it harmonize with our own or not. I never appreciated the work he has done for his age till I saw England. I could not. You must stand in the shadow of that mountain of shams, to know how hard it is to cast light across it. Honor to Carlyle! _Hoch!_ Although in the wine with which we drink this health, I, for one, must mingle the despised "rose-water." And now, having to your eye shown the defects of my own mind, in the sketch of another, I will pass on more lowly,--more willing to be imperfect,--since Fate permits such noble creatures, after all, to be only this or that. It is much if one is not only a crow or magpie;--Carlyle is only a lion. Some time we may, all in full, be intelligent and humanly fair. CARLYLE, AGAIN. _Paris, Dec, 1846._--Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse;--only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked men,--happily not one invariable or inevitable,--that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe, and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority,--raising his voice, and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not in the least from unwillingness to allow freedom to others. On the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought. But it is the habit of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse, as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there is no littleness,--no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror;--it is his nature, and the untamable energy that has given him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor revere; and perhaps, also, he would only laugh at you if you did; but you like him heartily, and like to see him the powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his furnace till it glows to a sunset red, and burns you, if you senselessly go too near. He seems, to me, quite isolated,--lonely as the desert,--yet never was a man more fitted to prize a man, could he find one to match his mood. He finds them, but only in the past. He sings, rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally, near the beginning, hits upon some singular epithet, which serves as a _refrain_ when his song is full, or with which, as with a knitting needle, he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced, now and then, to let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as Fata Morgana, ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. His talk, like his books, is full of pictures; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I cannot speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it;--his works are true, to blame and praise him,--the Siegfried of England,--great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil, than legislate for good. Of Dr. Wilkinson I saw a good deal, and found him a substantial person,--a sane, strong, and well-exercised mind,--but in the last degree unpoetical in its structure. He is very simple, natural, and good; excellent to see, though one cannot go far with him; and he would be worth more in writing, if he could get time to write, than in personal intercourse. He may yet find time;--he is scarcely more than thirty. Dr. W. wished to introduce me to Mr. Clissold, but I had not time; shall find it, if in London again. Tennyson was not in town. Browning has just married Miss Barrett, and gone to Italy. I may meet them there. Bailey is helping his father with a newspaper! His wife and child (Philip Festus by name) came to see me. I am to make them a visit on my return. Marston I saw several times, and found him full of talent. That is all I want to say at present;--he is a delicate nature, that can only be known in its own way and time. I went to see his "Patrician's Daughter." It is an admirable play for the stage. At the house of W.J. Fox, I saw first himself, an eloquent man, of great practical ability, then Cooper, (of the "Purgatory of Suicides,") and others. My poor selection of miscellanies has been courteously greeted in the London journals. Openings were made for me to write, had I but leisure; it is for that I look to a second stay in London, since several topics came before me on which I wished to write and publish _there_. * * * * * I became acquainted with a gentleman who is intimate with all the English artists, especially Stanfield and Turner, but was only able to go to his house once, at this time. Pictures I found but little time for, yet enough to feel what they are now to be to me. I was only at the Dulwich and National Galleries and Hampton Court. Also, have seen the Vandykes, at Warwick; but all the precious private collections I was obliged to leave untouched, except one of Turner's, to which I gave a day. For the British Museum, I had only one day, which I spent in the Greek and Egyptian Rooms, unable even to look at the vast collections of drawings, &c. But if I live there a few months, I shall go often. O, were life but longer, and my strength greater! Ever I am bewildered by the riches of existence, had I but more time to open the oysters, and get out the pearls. Yet some are mine, if only for a necklace or rosary. PARIS. TO HER MOTHER. _Paris, Dec. 26, 1846._--In Paris I have been obliged to give a great deal of time to French, in order to gain the power of speaking, without which I might as usefully be in a well as here. That has prevented my doing nearly as much as I would. Could I remain six months in this great focus of civilized life, the time would be all too short for my desires and needs. My Essay on American Literature has been translated into French, and published in "La Revue Indépendante," one of the leading journals of Paris; only, with that delight at manufacturing names for which the French are proverbial, they put, instead of _Margaret_, _Elizabeth_. Write to ----, that aunt Elizabeth has appeared unexpectedly before the French public! She will not enjoy her honors long, as a future number, which is to contain a notice of "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," will rectify the mistake. I have been asked, also, to remain in correspondence with La Revue Indépendante, after my return to the United States, which will be very pleasant and advantageous to me. I have some French acquaintance, and begin to take pleasure in them, now that we can hold intercourse more easily. Among others, a Madame Pauline Roland I find an interesting woman. She is an intimate friend of Béranger and of Pierre Leroux. We occupy a charming suite of apartments, Hotel Rougement, Boulevard Poissonière. It is a new hotel, and has not the arched gateways and gloomy court-yard of the old mansions. My room, though small, is very pretty, with the thick, flowered carpet and marble slabs; the French clock, with Cupid, of course, over the fireplace, in which burns a bright little wood fire; the canopy bedstead, and inevitable large mirror; the curtains, too, are thick and rich, the closet, &c., excellent, the attendance good. But for all this, one pays dear. We do not find that one can live _pleasantly_ at Paris for little money; and we prefer to economize by a briefer stay, if at all. TO E.H. _Paris, Jan. 18, 1847,_ and _Naples, March 17, 1847._--You wished to hear of George Sand, or, as they say in Paris, "Madame Sand." I find that all we had heard of her was true in the outline; I had supposed it might be exaggerated. She had every reason to leave her husband,--a stupid, brutal man, who insulted and neglected her. He afterwards gave up their child to her for a sum of money. But the love for which she left him lasted not well, and she has had a series of lovers, and I am told has one now, with whom she lives on the footing of combined means, independent friendship! But she takes rank in society like a man, for the weight of her thoughts, and has just given her daughter in marriage. Her son is a grown-up young man, an artist. Many women visit her, and esteem it an honor. Even an American here, and with the feelings of our country on such subjects, Mrs. ----, thinks of her with high esteem. She has broken with La Mennais, of whom she was once a disciple. I observed to Dr. François, who is an intimate of hers, and loves and admires her, that it did not seem a good sign that she breaks with her friends. He said it was not so with her early friends; that she has chosen to buy a chateau in the region where she passed her childhood, and that the people there love and have always loved her dearly. She is now at the chateau, and, I begin to fear, will not come to town before I go. Since I came, I have read two charming stories recently written by her. Another longer one she has just sold to _La Presse_ for fifteen thousand francs. She does not receive nearly as much for her writings as Balzac, Dumas, or Sue. She has a much greater influence than they, but a less circulation. She stays at the chateau, because the poor people there were suffering so much, and she could help them. She has subscribed _twenty thousand francs_ for their relief, in the scarcity of the winter. It is a great deal to earn by one's pen: a novel of several volumes sold for only fifteen thousand francs, as I mentioned before. * * * At last, however, she came; and I went to see her at her house, Place d'Orleans. I found it a handsome modern residence. She had not answered my letter, written about a week before, and I felt a little anxious lest she should not receive me; for she is too much the mark of impertinent curiosity, as well as too busy, to be easily accessible to strangers. I am by no means timid, but I have suffered, for the first time in France, some of the torments of _mauvaise honte_, enough to see what they must be to many. It is the custom to go and call on those to whom you bring letters, and push yourself upon their notice; thus you must go quite ignorant whether they are disposed to be cordial. My name is always murdered by the foreign servants who announce me. I speak very bad French; only lately have I had sufficient command of it to infuse some of my natural spirit in my discourse. This has been a great trial to me, who am eloquent and free in my own tongue, to be forced to feel my thoughts struggling in vain for utterance. The servant who admitted me was in the picturesque costume of a peasant, and, as Madame Sand afterward told me, her god-daughter, whom she had brought from her province. She announced me as "_Madame Salere,_" and returned into the ante-room to tell me. "_Madame says she does not know you_" I began to think I was doomed to a rebuff, among the crowd who deserve it. However, to make assurance sure, I said, "Ask if she has not received a letter from me." As I spoke, Madame S. opened the door, and stood looking at me an instant. Our eyes met. I never shall forget her look at that moment. The doorway made a frame for her figure; she is large, but well-formed. She was dressed in a robe of dark violet silk, with a black mantle on her shoulders, her beautiful hair dressed with the greatest taste, her whole appearance and attitude, in its simple and lady-like dignity, presenting an almost ludicrous contrast to the vulgar caricature idea of George Sand. Her face is a very little like the portraits, but much finer; the upper part of the forehead and eyes are beautiful, the lower, strong and masculine, expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions, but not in the least coarse; the complexion olive, and the air of the whole head Spanish, (as, indeed, she was born at Madrid, and is only on one side of French blood.) All these details I saw at a glance; but what fixed my attention was the expression of _goodness_, nobleness, and power, that pervaded the whole,--the truly human heart and nature that shone in the eyes. As our eyes met, she said, "_C'est vous_" and held out her hand. I took it, and went into her little study; we sat down a moment, then I said, "_Il me fait de bien de vous voir_" and I am sure I said it with my whole heart, for it made me very happy to see such a woman, so large and so developed a character, and everything that _is_ good in it so _really_ good. I loved, shall always love her. She looked away, and said, "_Ah! vous m'avez écrit une lettre charmante_" This was all the preliminary of our talk, which then went on as if we had always known one another. She told me, before I went away, that she was going that very day to write to me; that when the servant announced me she did not recognize the name, but after a minute it struck her that it might be _La dame Americaine,_ as the foreigners very commonly call me, for they find my name hard to remember. She was very much pressed for time, as she was then preparing copy for the printer, and, having just returned, there were many applications to see her, but she wanted me to stay then, saying, "It is better to throw things aside, and seize the present moment." I staid a good part of the day, and was very glad afterwards, for I did not see her again uninterrupted. Another day I was there, and saw her in her circle. Her daughter and another lady were present, and a number of gentlemen. Her position there was of an intellectual woman and good friend,--the same as my own in the circle of my acquaintance as distinguished from my intimates. Her daughter is just about to be married. It is said, there is no congeniality between her and her mother; but for her son she seems to have much love, and he loves and admires her extremely. I understand he has a good and free character, without conspicuous talent. Her way of talking is just like her writing,--lively, picturesque, with an undertone of deep feeling, and the same skill in striking the nail on the head every now and then with a blow. We did not talk at all of personal or private matters. I saw, as one sees in her writings, the want of an independent, interior life, but I did not feel it as a fault, there is so much in her of her kind. I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ardent a genius. I liked the woman in her, too, very much; I never liked a woman better. For the rest I do not care to write about it much, for I cannot, in the room and time I have to spend, express my thoughts as I would; but as near as I can express the sum total, it is this. S---- and others who admire her, are anxious to make a fancy picture of her, and represent her as a Helena (in the Seven Chords of the Lyre); all whose mistakes are the fault of the present state of society. But to me the truth seems to be this. She has that purity in her soul, for she knows well how to love and prize its beauty; but she herself is quite another sort of person. She needs no defence, but only to be understood, for she has bravely acted out her nature, and always with good intentions. She might have loved one man permanently, if she could have found one contemporary with her who could interest and command her throughout her range; but there was hardly a possibility of that, for such a person. Thus she has naturally changed the objects of her affection, and several times. Also, there may have been something of the Bacchante in her life, and of the love of night and storm, and the free raptures amid which roamed on the mountain-tops the followers of Cybele, the great goddess, the great mother. But she was never coarse, never gross, and I am sure her generous heart has not failed to draw some rich drops from every kind of wine-press. When she has done with an intimacy, she likes to break it off suddenly, and this has happened often, both with men and women. Many calumnies upon her are traceable to this cause. I forgot to mention, that, while talking, she _does_ smoke all the time her little cigarette. This is now a common practice among ladies abroad, but I believe originated with her. For the rest, she holds her place in the literary and social world of France like a man, and seems full of energy and courage in it. I suppose she has suffered much, but she has also enjoyed and done much, and her expression is one of calmness and happiness. I was sorry to see her _exploitant_ her talent so carelessly. She does too much, and this cannot last forever; but "Teverino" and the "Mare au Diable," which she has lately published, are as original, as masterly in truth, and as free in invention, as anything she has done. Afterwards I saw Chopin, not with her, although he lives with her, and has for the last twelve years. I went to see him in his room with one of his friends. He is always ill, and as frail as a snow-drop, but an exquisite genius. He played to me, and I liked his talking scarcely less. Madame S. loved Liszt before him; she has thus been intimate with the two opposite sides of the musical world. Mickiewicz says, "Chopin talks with spirit, and gives us the Ariel view of the universe. Liszt is the eloquent _tribune_ to the world of men, a little vulgar and showy certainly, but I like the tribune best." It is said here, that Madame S. has long had only a friendship for Chopin, who, perhaps, on his side prefers to be a lover, and a jealous lover; but she does not leave him, because he needs her care so much, when sick and suffering. About all this, I do not know; you cannot know much about anything in France, except what you see with your two eyes. Lying is ingrained in "_la grande nation_" as they so plainly show no less in literature than life. RACHEL. In France the theatre is living; you see something really good, and good throughout. Not one touch of that stage-strut and vulgar bombast of tone, which the English actor fancies indispensable to scenic illusion, is tolerated here. For the first time in my life, I saw something represented in a style uniformly good, and should have found sufficient proof, if I had needed any, that all men will prefer what is good to what is bad, if only a fair opportunity for choice be allowed. When I came here, my first thought was to go and see Mademoiselle Rachel. I was sure that in her I should find a true genius. I went to see her seven or eight times, always in parts that required great force of soul, and purity of taste, even to conceive them, and only once had reason to find fault with her. On one single occasion, I saw her violate the harmony of the character, to produce effect at a particular moment; but, almost invariably, I found her a true artist, worthy Greece, and worthy at many moments to have her conceptions immortalized in marble. Her range even in high tragedy is limited. She can only express the darker passions, and grief in its most desolate aspects. Nature has not gifted her with those softer and more flowery attributes, that lend to pathos its utmost tenderness. She does not melt to tears, or calm or elevate the heart by the presence of that tragic beauty that needs all the assaults of fate to make it show its immortal sweetness. Her noblest aspect is when sometimes she expresses truth in some severe shape, and rises, simple and austere, above the mixed elements around her. On the dark side, she is very great in hatred and revenge. I admired her more in Phèdre than in any other part in which I saw her; the guilty love inspired by the hatred of a goddess was expressed, in all its symptoms, with a force and terrible naturalness, that almost suffocated the beholder. After she had taken the poison, the exhaustion and paralysis of the system,--the sad, cold, calm submission to Fate,--were still more grand. I had heard so much about the power of her eye in one fixed look, and the expression she could concentrate in a single word, that the utmost results could only satisfy my expectations. It is, indeed, something magnificent to see the dark cloud give out such sparks, each one fit to deal a separate death; but it was not that I admired most in her. It was the grandeur, truth, and depth of her conception of each part, and the sustained purity with which she represented it. The French language from her lips is a divine dialect; it is stripped of its national and personal peculiarities, and becomes what any language must, moulded by such a genius, the pure music of the heart and soul. I never could remember her tone in speaking any word; it was too perfect; you had received the thought quite direct. Yet, had I never heard her speak a word, my mind would be filled by her attitudes. Nothing more graceful can be conceived, nor could the genius of sculpture surpass her management of the antique drapery. She has no beauty, except in the intellectual severity of her outline, and she bears marks of race, that will grow stronger every year, and make her ugly at last. Still it will be a _grandiose_, gypsy, or rather Sibylline ugliness, well adapted to the expression of some tragic parts. Only it seems as if she could not live long; she expends force enough upon a part to furnish out a dozen common lives. TO R.W.E. _Paris, Jan_. 18, 1847.--I can hardly tell you what a fever consumes me, from sense of the brevity of my time and opportunity. Here I cannot sleep at night, because I have been able to do so little in the day. Constantly I try to calm my mind into content with small achievements, but it is difficult. You will say, it is not so mightily worth knowing, after all, this picture and natural history of Europe. Very true; but I am so constituted that it pains me to come away, having touched only the glass over the picture. I am assiduous daily at the Academy lectures, picture galleries, Chamber of Deputies,--last week, at the court and court ball. So far as my previous preparation enabled me, I get something from all these brilliant shows,--thoughts, images, fresh impulse. But I need, to initiate me into various little secrets of the place and time,--necessary for me to look at things to my satisfaction,--some friend, such as I do not find here. My steps have not been fortunate in Paris, as they were in England. No doubt, the person exists here, whose aid I want; indeed, I feel that it is so; but we do not meet, and the time draws near for me to depart. French people I find slippery, as they do not know exactly what to make of me, the rather as I have not the command of their language. _I_ see _them_, their brilliancy, grace, and variety, the thousand slight refinements of their speech and manner, but cannot meet them in their way. My French teacher says, I speak and act like an Italian, and I hope, in Italy, I shall find myself more at home. I had, the other day, the luck to be introduced to Béranger, who is the only person beside George Sand I cared very particularly to see here. I went to call on La Mennais, to whom I had a letter. I found him in a little study; his secretary was writing in a large room through which I passed. With him was a somewhat citizen-looking, but vivacious elderly man, whom I was, at first, sorry to see, having wished for half an hour's undisturbed visit to the Apostle of Democracy. But those feelings were quickly displaced by joy, when he named to me the great national lyrist of France, the great Béranger. I had not expected to see him at all, for he is not to be seen in any show place; he lives in the hearts of the people, and needs no homage from their eyes. I was very happy, in that little study, in the presence of these two men, whose influence has been so real and so great. Béranger has been much to me,--his wit, his pathos, and exquisite lyric grace. I have not received influence from La Mennais, but I see well what he has been, and is, to Europe. TO LA MENNAIS. Monsieur:-- As my visit to you was cut short before I was quite satisfied, it was my intention to seek you again immediately; although I felt some scruples at occupying your valuable time, when I express myself so imperfectly in your language. But I have been almost constantly ill since, and now am not sure of finding time to pay you my respects before leaving Paris for Italy. In case this should be impossible, I take the liberty to write, and to present you two little volumes of mine. It is only as a tribute of respect. I regret that they do not contain some pieces of mine which might be more interesting to you, as illustrative of the state of affairs in our country. Some such will find their place in subsequent numbers. These, I hope, you will, if you do not read them, accept kindly as a salutation from our hemisphere. Many there delight to know you as a great apostle of the ideas which are to be our life, if Heaven intends us a great and permanent life. I count myself happy in having seen you, and in finding with you Béranger, the genuine poet, the genuine man of France. I have felt all the enchantment of the lyre of Béranger; have paid my warmest homage to the truth and wisdom adorned with such charms, such wit and pathos. It was a great pleasure to see himself. If your leisure permits, Monsieur, I will ask a few lines in reply. I should like to keep some words from your hand, in case I should not look upon you more here below; and am always, with gratitude for the light you have shed on so many darkened spirits, Yours, most respectfully, MARGARET FULLER. * * * * * _Paris, Jan_., 1847.--I missed hearing M. Guizot, (I am sorry for it,) in his speech on the Montpensier marriage. I saw the little Duchess, the innocent or ignorant topic of all this disturbance, when presented at court. She went round the circle on the arm of the queen. Though only fourteen, she looks twenty, but has something fresh, engaging, and girlish about her. I attended not only at the presentation, but at the ball given at the Tuileries directly after. These are fine shows, as the suite of apartments is very handsome, brilliantly lighted,--the French ladies surpassing all others in the art of dress; indeed, it gave me much pleasure to see them. Certainly there are many ugly ones; but they are so well dressed, and have such an air of graceful vivacity, that the general effect was of a flower-garden. As often happens, several American women were among the most distinguished for positive beauty; one from Philadelphia, who is by many persons considered the prettiest ornament of the dress circle at the Italian opera, was especially marked by the attention of the king. However, these ladies, even if here a long time, do not attain the air and manner of French women. The magnetic fluid that envelops them is less brilliant and exhilarating in its attractions. Among the crowd wandered Leverrier, in the costume of Academician, looking as if he had lost, not found, his planet. French _savants_ are more generally men of the world, and even men of fashion, than those of other climates; but, in his case, he seemed not to find it easy to exchange the music of the spheres for the music of fiddles. Speaking of Leverrier leads to another of my disappointments. I went to the Sorbonne to hear him lecture, not dreaming that the old pedantic and theological character of those halls was strictly kept up in these days of light. An old guardian of the inner temple seeing me approach, had his speech all ready, and, manning the entrance, said, with a disdainful air, before we had time to utter a word, "Monsieur may enter if he pleases, but madame must remain here" (_i.e._, in the court-yard). After some exclamations of surprise, I found an alternative in the Hotel de Clugny, where I passed an hour very delightfully, while waiting for my companion. I was more fortunate in hearing Arago, and he justified all my expectations. Clear, rapid, full, and equal, his discourse is worthy its celebrity, and I felt repaid for the four hours one is obliged to spend in going, in waiting, and in hearing, for the lecture begins at half past one, and you must be there before twelve to get a seat, so constant and animated is his popularity. I was present on one good occasion, at the Academy,--the day that M. Rémusat was received there, in the place of Royer Collard. I looked down, from one of the tribunes, upon the flower of the celebrities of France; that is to say, of the celebrities which are authentic, _comme il faut_. Among them were many marked faces, many fine heads; but, in reading the works of poets, we always fancy them about the age of Apollo himself, and I found with pain some of my favorites quite old, and very unlike the company on Parnassus, as represented by Raphael. Some, however, were venerable, even noble to behold. The poorer classes have suffered from hunger this winter. All signs of this are kept out of sight in Paris. A pamphlet called "The Voice of Famine," stating facts, though in a tone of vulgar and exaggerated declamation, was suppressed as soon as published. While Louis Philippe lives, the gases may not burst up to flame, but the need of radical measures of reform is strongly felt in France; and the time will come, before long, when such will be imperatively demanded. FOURIER. The doctrines of Fourier are making progress, and wherever they spread, the necessity of some practical application of the precepts of Christ, in lieu of the mummeries of a worn-out ritual, cannot fail to be felt. The more I see of the terrible ills which infest the body politic of Europe, the more indignation I feel at the selfishness or stupidity of those in my own country who oppose an examination of these subjects,--such as is animated by the hope of prevention. Educated in an age of gross materialism, Fourier is tainted by its faults; in attempts to reorganize society, he commits the error of making soul the result of health of body, instead of body the clothing of soul; but his heart was that of a genuine lover of his kind, of a philanthropist in the sense of Jesus; his views are large and noble; his life was one of devout study on these subjects, and I should pity the person who, after the briefest sojourn in Manchester and Lyons, the most superficial acquaintance with the population of London and Paris, could seek to hinder a study of his thoughts, or be wanting in reverence for his purposes. ROUSSEAU. To the actually so-called Chamber of Deputies, I was indebted for a sight of the manuscripts of Rousseau treasured in their library. I saw them and touched them,--those manuscripts just as he has celebrated them, written on the fine white paper, tied with ribbon. Yellow and faded age has made them, yet at their touch I seemed to feel the fire of youth, immortally glowing, more and more expansive, with which his soul has pervaded this century. He was the precursor of all we most prize. True, his blood was mixed with madness, and the course of his actual life made some _detours_ through villanous places; but his spirit was intimate with the fundamental truths of human nature, and fraught with prophecy. There is none who has given birth to more life for this age; his gifts are yet untold; they are too present with us; but he who thinks really must often think with Rousseau, and learn him ever more and more. Such is the method of genius,--to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain. TO R.W.E. _Naples, March_ 15, 1847.--Mickiewicz, the Polish poet, first introduced the Essays to acquaintance in Paris. I did not meet him anywhere, and, as I heard a great deal of him which charmed me, I sent him your poems, and asked him to come and see me. He came, and I found in him the man I had long wished to see, with the intellect and passions in due proportion for a full and healthy human being, with a soul constantly inspiring. Unhappily, it was a very short time before I came away. How much time had I wasted on others which I might have given to this real and important relation. After hearing music from Chopin and Neukomm, I quitted Paris on the 25th February, and came, _via_ Chalons, Lyons, Avignon, (where I waded through melting snow to Laura's tomb,) Arles, to Marseilles; thence, by steamer, to Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa. Seen through a cutting wind, the marble palaces, the gardens, the magnificent water-view of Genoa, failed to charm. Only at Naples have I found _my_ Italy. Between Leghorn and Naples, our boat was run into by another, and we only just escaped being drowned. ROME. _Rome, May_, 1847.--Of the fragments of the great time, I have now seen nearly all that are treasured up here. I have as yet nothing of consequence to say of them. Others have often given good hints as to how they _look_. As to what they _are_, it can only be known by approximating to the state of soul out of which they grew. They are many and precious; yet is there not so much of high excellence as I looked for. They will not float the heart on a boundless sea of feeling, like the starry night on our Western Prairies. Yet I love much to see the galleries of marbles, even where there are not many separately admirable, amid the cypresses and ilexes of Roman villas; and a picture that is good at all, looks best in one of these old palaces. I have heard owls hoot in the Colosseum by moonlight, and they spoke more to the purpose than I ever heard any other voice on that subject. I have seen all the pomps of Holy Week in St. Peter's, and found them less imposing than an habitual acquaintance with the church itself, with processions of monks and nuns stealing in, now and then, or the swell of vespers from some side chapel. The ceremonies of the church have been numerous and splendid, during our stay, and they borrow unusual interest from the love and expectation inspired by the present pontiff. He is a man of noble and good aspect, who has set his heart on doing something solid for the benefit of man. A week or two ago, the Cardinal Secretary published a circular, inviting the departments to measures which would give the people a sort of representative council. Nothing could seem more limited than this improvement, but it was a great measure for Rome. At night, the Corso was illuminated, and many thousands passed through it in a torch-bearing procession, on their way to the Quirinal, to thank the Pope, upbearing a banner on which the edict was printed. TO W.H.C. _Rome, May_ 7, 1847.--I write not to you about these countries, of the famous people I see, of magnificent shows and places. All these things are only to me an illuminated margin on the text of my inward life. Earlier, they would have been more. Art is not important to me now. I like only what little I find that is transcendently good, and even with that feel very familiar and calm. I take interest in the state of the people, their manners, the state of the race in them. I see the future dawning; it is in important aspects Fourier's future. But I like no Fourierites; they are terribly wearisome here in Europe; the tide of things does not wash through them as violently as with us, and they have time to run in the tread-mill of system. Still, they serve this great future which I shall not live to see. I must be born again. TO R.W.E. _Florence, June_ 20, 1847.--I have just come hither from Rome. Every minute, day and night, there is something to be seen or done at Rome, which we cannot bear to lose. We lived on the Corso, and all night long, after the weather became fine, there was conversation or music before my window. I never seemed really to sleep while there, and now, at Florence, where there is less to excite, and I live in a more quiet quarter, I feel as if I needed to sleep all the time, and cannot rest as I ought, there is so much to do. I now speak French fluently, though not correctly, yet well enough to make my thoughts avail in the cultivated society here, where it is much spoken. But to know the common people, and to feel truly in Italy, I ought to speak and understand the spoken Italian well, and I am now cultivating this sedulously. If I remain, I shall have, for many reasons, advantages for observation and enjoyment, such as are seldom permitted to a foreigner. I forgot to mention one little thing rather interesting. At the _Miserere_ of the Sistine chapel, I sat beside Goethe's favorite daughter-in-law, Ottilia, to whom I was introduced by Mrs. Jameson. TO R.F.F. _Florence, July_ 1, 1847.--I do not wish to go through Germany in a hurried way, and am equally unsatisfied to fly through Italy; and shall, therefore, leaving my companions in Switzerland, take a servant to accompany me, and return hither, and hence to Rome for the autumn, perhaps the winter. I should always suffer the pain of Tantalus thinking of Rome, if I could not see it more thoroughly than I have as yet even begun to; for it was all _outside_ the two months, just finding out where objects were. I had only just begun to know them, when I was obliged to leave. The prospect of returning presents many charms, but it leaves me alone in the midst of a strange land. I find myself happily situated here, in many respects. The Marchioness Arconati Visconti, to whom I brought a letter from a friend of hers in France, has been good to me as a sister, and introduced me to many interesting acquaintance. The sculptors, Powers and Greenough, I have seen much and well. Other acquaintance I possess, less known to fame, but not less attractive. Florence is not like Rome. At first, I could not bear the change; yet, for the study of the fine arts, it is a still richer place. Worlds of thought have risen in my mind; some time you will have light from all. * * * * * _Milan, Aug_. 9, 1847.--Passing from Florence, I came to Bologna. A woman should love Bologna, for there has the intellect of woman been cherished. In their Certosa, they proudly show the monument to Matilda Tambreni, late Greek professor there. In their anatomical hall, is the bust of a woman, professor of anatomy. In art, they have had Properzia di Rossi, Elisabetta Sirani, Lavinia Fontana, and delight to give their works a conspicuous place. In other cities, the men alone have their Casino dei Nobili, where they give balls and conversazioni. Here, women have one, and are the soul of society. In Milan, also, I see, in the Ambrosian Library, the bust of a female mathematician. TO HER MOTHER. _Lago di Garda, Aug_. 1, 1847.--Do not let what I have written disturb you as to my health. I have rested now, and am as well as usual. This advantage I derive from being alone, that, if I feel the need of it, I can stop. I left Venice four days ago; have seen well Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, and am reposing, for two nights and a day, in this tranquil room which overlooks the beautiful Lake of Garda. The air is sweet and pure, and I hear no noise except the waves breaking on the shore. I think of you a great deal, especially when there are flowers. Florence was all flowers. I have many magnolias and jasmines. I always wish you could see them. The other day, on the island of San Lazaro, at the Armenian Convent, where Lord Byron used to go, I thought of you, seeing the garden full of immense oleanders in full bloom. One sees them everywhere at Venice. TO HER TRAVELLING COMPANIONS AFTER PARTING. _Milan, Aug_. 9, 1847.--I remained at Venice near a week after your departure, to get strong and tranquil again. Saw all the pictures, if not enough, yet pretty well. My journey here was very profitable. Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, I saw really well, and much there is to see. Certainly I had learned more than ever in any previous ten days of my existence, and have formed an idea of what is needed for the study of art in these regions. But, at Brescia, I was taken ill with fever. I cannot tell you how much I was alarmed when it seemed to me it was affecting my head. I had no medicine; nothing could I do except abstain entirely from food, and drink cold water. The second day, I had a bed made in a carriage, and came on here. I am now pretty well, only very weak. TO R.W.E. _Milan, Aug. 10, 1847._--Since writing you from Florence, I have passed the mountains; two full, rich days at Bologna; one at Ravenna; more than a fortnight at Venice, intoxicated with the place, and with Venetian art, only to be really felt and known in its birth-place. I have passed some hours at Vicenza, seeing mainly the Palladian structures; a day at Verona,--a week had been better; seen Mantua, with great delight; several days in Lago di Garda,--truly happy days there; then, to Brescia, where I saw the Titians, the exquisite Raphael, the Scavi, and the Brescian Hills. I could charm you by pictures, had I time. To-day, for the first time, I have seen Manzoni. Manzoni has spiritual efficacy in his looks; his eyes glow still with delicate tenderness, as when he first saw Lucia, or felt them fill at the image of Father Cristoforo. His manners are very engaging, frank, expansive; every word betokens the habitual elevation of his thoughts; and (what you care for so much) he says distinct, good things; but you must not expect me to note them down. He lives in the house of his fathers, in the simplest manner. He has taken the liberty to marry a new wife for his own pleasure and companionship, and the people around him do not like it, because she does not, to their fancy, make a good pendant to him. But I liked her very well, and saw why he married her. They asked me to return often, if I pleased, and I mean to go once or twice, for Manzoni seems to like to talk with me. * * * * * _Rome, Oct., 1847._--Leaving Milan, I went on the Lago Maggiore, and afterward into Switzerland. Of this tour I shall not speak here; it was a little romance by itself. Returning from Switzerland, I passed a fortnight on the Lake of Como, and afterward visited Lugano. There is no exaggeration in the enthusiastic feeling with which artists and poets have viewed these Italian lakes. The _"Titan"_ of Richter, the _"Wanderjahre"_ of Goethe, the Elena of Taylor, the pictures of Turner, had not prepared me for the visions of beauty that daily entranced the eyes and heart in those regions. To our country, Nature has been most bounteous, but we have nothing in the same class that can compare with these lakes, as seen under the Italian heaven. As to those persons who have pretended to discover that the effects of light and atmosphere were no finer than they found in our own lake scenery, I can only say that they must be exceedingly obtuse in organization,--a defect not uncommon among Americans. Nature seems to have labored to express her full heart in as many ways as possible, when she made these lakes, moulded and planted their shores. Lago Maggiore is grandiose, resplendent in its beauty; the view of the Alps gives a sort of lyric exaltation to the scene. Lago di Garda is so soft and fair on one side,--the ruins of ancient palaces rise softly with the beauties of that shore; but at the other end, amid the Tyrol, it is so sublime, so calm, so concentrated in its meaning! Como cannot be better described in generals than in the words of Taylor:-- "Softly sublime, profusely fair" Lugano is more savage, more free in its beauty. I was on it in a high gale; there was little danger, just enough to exhilarate; its waters wild, and clouds blowing across its peaks. I like the boatmen on these lakes; they have strong and prompt character; of simple features, they are more honest and manly than Italian men are found in the thoroughfares; their talk is not so witty as that of the Venetian gondoliers, but picturesque, and what the French call _incisive._ Very touching were some of their histories, as they told them to me, while pausing sometimes on the lake. Grossi gives a true picture of such a man in his family relations; the story may be found in "Marco Visconti." On this lake, I met Lady Franklin, wife of the celebrated navigator. She has been in the United States, and showed equal penetration and candor in remarks on what she had seen there. She gave me interesting particulars as to the state of things in Van Diemen's Land, where she passed seven years, when her husband was in authority there. TO C.S. _Lake of Como, Aug_. 22, 1847.--Rome was much poisoned to me. But, after a time, its genius triumphed, and I became absorbed in its proper life. Again I suffered from parting, and have since resolved to return, and pass at least a part of the winter there. People may write and prate as they please of Rome, they cannot convey thus a portion of its spirit. The whole heart must be yielded up to it. It is something really transcendent, both spirit and body. Those last glorious nights, in which I wandered about amid the old walls and columns, or sat by the fountains in the Piazza del Popolo, or by the river, were worth an age of pain,--only one hates pain in Italy. Tuscany I did not like as well. It is a great place to study the history of character and art. Indeed, there I did really begin to study, as well as gaze and feel. But I did not like it. Florence is more in its spirit like Boston, than like an Italian city. I knew a good many Italians, but they were busy and intellectual, not like those I had known before. But Florence is full of really good, great pictures. There first I saw some of the great masters. Andrea del Sarto, in particular, one sees only there, and he is worth much. His wife, whom he always paints, and for whom he was so infatuated, has some bad qualities, and in what is good a certain wild nature or _diablerie_. Bologna is truly an Italian city, one in which I should like to live; full of hidden things, and its wonders of art are very grand. The Caracci and their friends had vast force; not much depth, but enough force to occupy one a good while,--and Domenichino, when good at all, is very great. Venice was a dream of enchantment; _there_ was no disappointment. Art and life are one. There is one glow of joy, one deep shade of passionate melancholy; Giorgione, as a man, I care more for now than any of the artists, though he had no ideas. In the first week, floating about in a gondola, I seemed to find myself again. I was not always alone in Venice, but have come through the fertile plains of Lombardy, seen the lakes Garda and Maggiore, and a part of Switzerland, alone, except for occasional episodes of companionship, sometimes romantic enough. In Milan I stayed a while, and knew some radicals, young, and interested in ideas. Here, on the lake, I have fallen into contact with some of the higher society,--duchesses, marquises, and the like. My friend here is Madame Arconati, Marchioness Visconti. I have formed connection with a fair and brilliant Polish lady, born Princess Radzivill. It is rather pleasant to come a little on the traces of these famous histories; also, both these ladies take pleasure in telling me of spheres so unlike mine, and do it well. The life here on the lake is precisely what we once imagined as being so pleasant. These people have charming villas and gardens on the lake, adorned with fine works of art. They go to see one another in boats. You can be all the time in a boat, if you like; if you want more excitement, or wild flowers, you climb the mountains. I have been here for some time, and shall stay a week longer. I have found soft repose here. Now, I am to return to Rome, seeing many things by the way. TO R.F.F. _Florence, Sept_. 25, 1847.--I hope not to want a further remittance for a long time. I shall not, if I can settle myself at Rome so as to avoid spoliation. That is very difficult in this country. I have suffered from it already. The haste, the fatigue, the frequent illness in travelling, have tormented me. At Rome I shall settle myself for five months, and make arrangements to the best of my judgment, and with counsel of experienced friends, and have some hope of economy while there; but am not sure, as much more vigilance than I can promise is needed against the treachery of servants and the cunning of landlords. You are disappointed by my letter from Rome. But I did not feel equal then to speaking of the things of Rome, and shall not, till better acquaintance has steadied my mind. It is a matter of conscience with me not to make use of crude impressions, and what they call here "coffee-house intelligence," as travellers generally do. I prefer skimming over the surface of things, till I feel solidly ready to write. Milan I left with great regret, and hope to return. I knew there a circle of the aspiring youth, such as I have not in any other city. I formed many friendships, and learned a great deal. One of the young men, Guerrieri by name, (and of the famous Gonzaga family,) I really love. He has a noble soul, the quietest sensibility, and a brilliant and ardent, though not a great, mind. He is eight-and-twenty. After studying medicine for the culture, he has taken law as his profession. His mind and that of Hicks, an artist of our country now here, a little younger, are two that would interest you greatly. Guerrieri speaks no English; I speak French now as fluently as English, but incorrectly. To make use of it, I ought to have learned it earlier. Arriving here, Mr. Mozier, an American, who from a prosperous merchant has turned sculptor, come hither to live, and promises much excellence in his profession, urged me so much to his house, that I came. At first, I was ill from fatigue, and staid several days in bed; but his wife took tender care of me, and the quiet of their house and regular simple diet have restored me. As soon as I have seen a few things here, I shall go to Rome. On my way, I stopped at Parma,--saw the works of Correggio and Parmegiano. I have now seen what Italy contains most important of the great past; I begin to hope for her also a great future,--the signs have improved so much since I came. I am most fortunate to be here at this time. Interrupted, as always. How happy I should be if my abode at Rome would allow some chance for tranquil and continuous effort. But I dare not hope much, from the difficulty of making any domestic arrangements that can be relied on. The fruit of the moment is so precious, that I must not complain. I learn much; but to do anything with what I learn is, under such circumstances, impossible. Besides, I am in great need of repose; I am almost inert from fatigue of body and spirit. TO E.H. _Florence, Sept.,_ 1847.--I cannot even begin to speak of the magnificent scenes of nature, nor the works of art, that have raised and filled my mind since I wrote from Naples. Now I begin to be in Italy! but I wish to drink deep of this cup before I speak my enamored words. Enough to say, Italy receives me as a long-lost child, and I feel myself at home here, and if I ever tell anything about it, you will hear something real and domestic. Among strangers I wish most to speak to you of my friend the Marchioness A. Visconti, a Milanese. She is a specimen of the really high-bred lady, such as I have not known. Without any physical beauty, the grace and harmony of her manners produce all the impression of beauty. She has also a mind strong, clear, precise, and much cultivated. She has a modest nobleness that you would dearly love. She is intimate with many of the first men. She seems to love me much, and to wish I should have whatever is hers. I take great pleasure in her friendship. TO R.W.E. _Rome, Oct_. 28, 1847.--I am happily settled for the winter, quite by myself, in a neat, tranquil apartment in the Corso, where I see all the motions of Rome,--in a house of loving Italians, who treat me well, and do not interrupt me, except for service. I live alone, eat alone, walk alone, and enjoy unspeakably the stillness, after all the rush and excitement of the past year. I shall make no acquaintance from whom I do not hope a good deal, as my time will be like pure gold to me this winter; and, just for happiness, Rome itself is sufficient. To-day is the last of the October feasts of the Trasteverini. I have been, this afternoon, to see them dancing. This morning I was out, with half Rome, to see the Civic Guard manoeuvring in that great field near the tomb of Cecilia Metella, which is full of ruins. The effect was noble, as the band played the Bolognese march, and six thousand Romans passed in battle array amid these fragments of the great time. TO R.F.F. _Rome, Oct_. 29, 1847.--I am trying to economize,--anxious to keep the Roman expenses for six months within the limits of four hundred dollars. Rome is not as cheap a place as Florence, but then I would not give a pin to live in Florence. We have just had glorious times with the October feasts, when all the Roman people were out. I am now truly happy here, quiet and familiar; no longer a staring, sight-seeing stranger, riding about finely dressed in a coach to see muses and sibyls. I see these forms now in the natural manner, and am contented. Keep free from false ties; they are the curse of life. I find myself so happy here, alone and free. TO M.S. _Rome, Oct_. 1847.--I arrived in Rome again nearly a fortnight ago, and all mean things were forgotten in the joy that rushed over me like a flood. Now I saw the true Rome. I came with no false expectations, and I came to live in tranquil companionship, not in the restless impertinence of sight-seeing, so much more painful here than anywhere else. I had made a good visit to Vicenza; a truly Italian town, with much to see and study. But all other places faded away, now that I again saw St. Peter's, and heard the music of the fountains. The Italian autumn is not as beautiful as I expected, neither in the vintage of Tuscany nor here. The country is really sere and brown; but the weather is fine, and these October feasts are charming. Two days I have been at the Villa Borghese. There are races, balloons, and, above all, the private gardens open, and good music on the little lake. TO ----. _Rome, morning of the 17th Nov_., 1847.--It seems great folly to send the enclosed letter. I have written it in my nightly fever. All day I dissipate my thoughts on outward beauty. I have many thoughts, happiest moments, but as yet I do not have even this part in a congenial way. I go about in a coach with several people; but English and Americans are not at home here. Since I have experienced the different atmosphere of the European mind, and been allied with it, nay, mingled in the bonds of love, I suffer more than ever from that which is peculiarly American or English. I should like to cease from hearing the language for a time. Perhaps I should return to it; but at present I am in a state of unnatural divorce from what I was most allied to. There is a Polish countess here, who likes me much. She has been very handsome, still is, in the style of the full-blown rose. She is a widow, very rich, one of the emancipated women, naturally vivacious, and with talent. This woman _envies me_; she says, "How happy you are; so free, so serene, so attractive, so self-possessed!" I say not a word, but I do not look on myself as particularly enviable. A little money would have made me much more so; a little money would have enabled me to come here long ago, and find those that belong to me, or at least try my experiments; then my health would never have sunk, nor the best years of my life been wasted in useless friction. Had I money now,--could I only remain, take a faithful servant, and live alone, and still see those I love when it is best, that would suit me. It seems to me, very soon I shall be calmed, and begin to enjoy. TO HER MOTHER. _Rome, Dec_. 16, 1847.--My life at Rome is thus far all I hoped. I have not been so well since I was a child, nor so happy ever, as during the last six weeks. I wrote you about my home; it continues good, perfectly clean, food wholesome, service exact. For all this I pay, but not immoderately. I think the sum total of my expenses here, for six months, will not exceed four hundred and fifty dollars. My _marchesa_, of whom I rent my rooms, is the greatest liar I ever knew, and the most interested, heartless creature. But she thinks it for her interest to please me, as she sees I have a good many persons who value me; and I have been able, without offending her, to make it understood that I do not wish her society. Thus I remain undisturbed. Every Monday evening, I receive my acquaintance. I give no refreshment, but only light the saloon, and decorate it with fresh flowers, of which I have plenty still. How I wish _you_ could see them! Among the frequent guests are known to you Mr. and Mrs. Cranch, Mr. and Mrs. Story. Mr. S. has finally given up law, for the artist's life. His plans are not matured, but he passes the winter at Rome. On other evenings, I do not receive company, unless by appointment. I spend them chiefly in writing or study. I have now around me the books I need to know Italy and Rome. I study with delight, now that I can verify everything. The days are invariably fine, and each day I am out from eleven till five, exploring some new object of interest, often at a great distance. TO R.W.E. _Rome, Dec_. 20, 1847.--Nothing less than two or three years, free from care and forced labor, would heal all my hurts, and renew my life-blood at its source. Since Destiny will not grant me that, I hope she will not leave me long in the world, for I am tired of keeping myself up in the water without corks, and without strength to swim. I should like to go to sleep, and be born again into a state where my young life should not be prematurely taxed. Italy has been glorious to me, and there have been hours in which I received the full benefit of the vision. In Rome, I have known some blessed, quiet days, when I could yield myself to be soothed and instructed by the great thoughts and memories of the place. But those days are swiftly passing. Soon I must begin to exert myself, for there is this incubus of the future, and none to help me, if I am not prudent to face it. So ridiculous, too, this mortal coil,--such small things! I find how true was the lure that always drew me towards Europe. It was no false instinct that said I might here find an atmosphere to develop me in ways I need. Had I only come ten years earlier! Now my life must be a failure, so much strength has been wasted on abstractions, which only came because I grew not in the right soil. However, it is a less failure than with most others, and not worth thinking twice about. Heaven has room enough, and good chances in store, and I can live a great deal in the years that remain. TO R.W.E. _Rome, Dec_. 20, 1847.--I don't know whether you take an interest in the present state of things in Italy, but you would if you were here. It is a fine time to see the people. As to the Pope, it is as difficult here as elsewhere to put new wine into old bottles, and there is something false as well as ludicrous in the spectacle of the people first driving their princes to do a little justice, and then _evviva-ing_ them at such a rate. This does not apply to the Pope; he is a real great heart, a generous man. The love for him is genuine, and I like to be within its influence. It was his heart that gave the impulse, and this people has shown, to the shame of English and other prejudice, how unspoiled they were at the core, how open, nay, how wondrous swift to answer a generous appeal! They are also gaining some education by the present freedom of the press and of discussion. I should like to write a letter for England, giving my view of the present position of things here. * * * * * _Rome, October_ 18, 1847.--In the spring, when I came to Rome, the people were in the intoxication of joy at the first serious measures of reform taken by the Pope. I saw with pleasure their childlike joy and trust. Still doubts were always present whether this joy was not premature. From the people themselves the help must come, and not from the princes. Rome, to resume her glory, must cease to be an ecclesiastical capital. Whilst I sympathized with the warm love of the people, the adulation of leading writers, who were willing to take all from the prince of the Church as a gift and a bounty, instead of steadily implying that it was the right of the people, was very repulsive to me. Passing into Tuscany, I found the liberty of the press just established. The Grand Duke, a well-intentioned, though dull, man, had dared to declare himself an Italian prince. I arrived in Florence too late for the great fête of the 12th September, in honor of the grant of the National Guard, but the day was made memorable by the most generous feeling on all sides. Some days before were passed by reconciling all strifes, composing all differences between cities, districts, and individuals. On that day they all embraced in sign of this; exchanged banners as a token that they would fight for one another. AMERICANS IN ITALY. The Americans took their share in this occasion, and Greenough,--one of the few Americans who, living in Italy, takes the pains to know whether it is alive or dead, who penetrates beyond the cheats of tradesmen, and the cunning of a mob corrupted by centuries of slavery, to know the real mind, the vital blood of Italy,--took a leading part. I am sorry to say that a large portion of my countrymen here take the same slothful and prejudiced view as the English, and, after many years' sojourn, betray entire ignorance of Italian literature and Italian life beyond what is attainable in a month's passage through the thoroughfares. However, they did show, this time, a becoming spirit, and erected the American Eagle where its cry ought to be heard from afar. Crawford, here in Rome, has had the just feeling to join the Guard, and it is a real sacrifice for an artist to spend time on the exercises; but it well becomes the sculptor of Orpheus. In reference to what I have said of many Americans in Italy, I will only add that they talk about the corrupt and degenerate state of Italy as they do about that of our slaves at home. They come ready trained to that mode of reasoning which affirms, that, because men are degraded by bad institutions, they are not fit for better. I will only add some words upon the happy augury I draw from the wise docility of the people. With what readiness they listened to wise counsel and the hopes of the Pope that they would give no advantage to his enemies at a time when they were so fevered by the knowledge that conspiracy was at work in their midst! That was a time of trial. On all these occasions of popular excitement their conduct is like music, in such order, and with such union of the melody of feeling with discretion where to stop; but what is wonderful is that they acted in the same manner on that difficult occasion. The influence of the Pope here is without bounds; he can always calm the crowd at once. But in Tuscany, where they have no such one idol, they listened in the same way on a very trying occasion. The first announcement of the regulation for the Tuscan National Guard terribly disappointed the people. They felt that the Grand Duke, after suffering them to demonstrate such trust and joy on this feast of the 12th, did not really trust, on his side; that he meant to limit them all he could; they felt baffled, cheated; hence young men in anger tore down at once the symbols of satisfaction and respect; but the leading men went among the people, begged them to be calm, and wait till a deputation had seen the Grand Duke. The people listened at once to men who, they were sure, had at heart their best good--waited; the Grand Duke became convinced, and all ended without disturbance. If the people continue to act thus, their hopes cannot be baffled. The American in Europe would fain encourage the hearts of these long-oppressed nations, now daring to hope for a new era, by reciting triumphant testimony from the experience of his own country. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I may really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances naturally evolve from it, which suffice to its government. I may say, that the minds of our people are alert, and that talent has a free chance to rise. It is much. But dare I say, that political ambition is not as darkly sullied as in other countries? Dare I say, that men of most influence in political life are those who represent most virtue, or even intellectual power? Can I say, our social laws are generally better, or show a nobler insight into the wants of man and woman? I do indeed say what I believe, that voluntary association for improvement in these particulars will be the grand means for my nation to grow, and give a nobler harmony to the coming age. Then there is this cancer of slavery, and this wicked war that has grown out of it. How dare I speak of these things here? I listen to the same arguments against the emancipation of Italy, that are used against the emancipation of our blacks; the same arguments in favor of the spoliation of Poland, as for the conquest of Mexico. How it pleases me here to think of the Abolitionists! I could never endure to be with them at home; they were so tedious, often so narrow, always so rabid and exaggerated in their tone. But, after all, they had a high motive, something eternal in their desire and life; and, if it was not the only thing worth thinking of, it was really something worth living and dying for, to free a great nation from such a blot, such a plague. God strengthen them, and make them wise to achieve their purpose! I please myself, too, with remembering some ardent souls among the American youth, who, I trust, will yet expand and help to give soul to the huge, over-fed, too-hastily-grown-up body. May they be constant! "Were man but constant, he were perfect." It is to the youth that Hope addresses itself. But I dare not expect too much of them. I am not very old; yet of those who, in life's morning, I saw touched by the light of a high hope, many have seceded. Some have become voluptuaries; some mere family men, who think it is quite life enough to win bread for half a dozen people, and treat them decently; others are lost through indolence and vacillation. Yet some remain constant. "I have witnessed many a shipwreck, yet still beat noble hearts." * * * * * _Rome, January, 1848_.--As one becomes domesticated here, ancient and modern Rome, at first so jumbled together, begin to separate. You see where objects and limits anciently were. When this happens, one feels first truly at ease in Rome. Then the old kings, the consuls, the tribunes, the emperors, the warriors of eagle sight and remorseless beak, return for us, and the toga-clad procession finds room to sweep across the scene; the seven hills tower, the innumerable temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once more. * * * * * _Rome, Jan. 12, 1848._--In Rome, here, the new Council is inaugurated, and the elections have given tolerable satisfaction. Twenty-four carriages had been lent by the princes and nobles, at the request of the city, to convey the councillors. Each deputy was followed by his target and banner. In the evening, there was a ball given at the Argentine. Lord Minto was there, Prince Corsini, now senator, the Torlonias, in uniform of the Civic Guard, Princess Torlonia, in a sash of their colors given her by the Civic Guard, which she waved in answer to their greetings. But the beautiful show of the evening was the _Trasteverini_ dancing the _Saltarello_ in their most beautiful costume. I saw them thus to much greater advantage than ever before. Several were nobly handsome, and danced admirably. The _saltarello_ enchants me; in this is really the Italian wine, the Italian sun. The Pope, in receiving the councillors, made a speech, intimating that he meant only to improve, not to _reform_ and should keep things safe locked with the keys of St. Peter. I was happy the first two months of my stay here, seeing all the great things at my leisure. But now, after a month of continuous rain, Rome is no more Rome. The atmosphere is far worse than that of Paris. It is impossible to walk in the thick mud. The ruins, and other great objects, always solemn, appear terribly gloomy, steeped in black rain and cloud; and my apartment, in a street of high houses, is dark all day. The bad weather may continue all this month and all next. If I could use the time for work, I should not care; but this climate makes me so ill, I can do but little. TO C.S. _Rome, Jan_. 12, 1848.--My time in Lombardy and Switzerland was a series of beautiful pictures, dramatic episodes, not without some original life in myself. When I wrote to you from Como, I had a peaceful season. I floated on the lake with my graceful Polish countess, hearing her stories of heroic sorrow; or I walked in the delicious gardens of the villas, with many another summer friend. Red banners floated, children sang and shouted, the lakes of Venus and Diana glittered in the sun. The pretty girls of Bellaggio, with their coral necklaces, brought flowers to the "American countess," and "hoped she would be as happy as she deserved." Whether this cautious wish is fulfilled, I know not, but certainly I left all the glitter of life behind at Como. My days at Milan were not unmarked. I have known some happy hours, but they all lead to sorrow; and not only the cups of wine, but of milk, seem drugged with poison for me. It does not _seem_ to be my fault, this Destiny; I do not court these things,--they come. I am a poor magnet, with power to be wounded by the bodies I attract. Leaving Milan, I had a brilliant day in Parma. I had not known Correggio before; he deserves all his fame. I stood in the parlor of the Abbess, the person for whom all was done, and Paradise seemed opened by the nymph, upon her car of light, and the divine children peeping through the vines. Sweet soul of love! I should weary of you, too; but it was glorious that day. I had another good day, too, crossing the Apennines. The young crescent moon rose in orange twilight, just as I reached the highest peak. I was alone on foot; I heard no sound; I prayed. At Florence, I was very ill. For three weeks, my life hung upon a thread. The effect of the Italian climate on my health is not favorable. I feel as if I had received a great injury. I am tired and woe-worn; often, in the bed, I wish I could weep my life away. However, they brought me gruel, I took it, and after a while rose up again. In the time of the vintage, I went alone to Sienna. This is a real untouched Italian place. This excursion, and the grapes, restored me at that time. When I arrived in Rome, I was at first intoxicated to be here. The weather was beautiful, and many circumstances combined to place me in a kind of passive, childlike well-being. That is all over now, and, with this year, I enter upon a sphere of my destiny so difficult, that I, at present, see no way out, except through the gate of death. It is useless to write of it; you are at a distance and cannot help me;--whether accident or angel will, I have no intimation. I have no reason to hope I shall not reap what I have sown, and do not. Yet how I shall endure it I cannot guess; it is all a dark, sad enigma. The beautiful forms of art charm no more, and a love, in which there is all fondness, but no help, flatters in vain. I am all alone; nobody around me sees any of this. My numerous friendly acquaintances are troubled if they see me ill, and who so affectionate and kind as Mr. and Mrs. S.? TO MADAME ARCONATI. _Rome, Jan_. 14, 1848.--What black and foolish calumnies are these on Mazzini! It is as much for his interest as his honor to let things take their course, at present. To expect anything else, is to suppose him base. And on what act of his life dares any one found such an insinuation? I do not wonder that you were annoyed at his manner of addressing the Pope; but to me it seems that he speaks as he should,--near God and beyond the tomb; not from power to power, but from soul to soul, without regard to temporal dignities. It must be admitted that the etiquette, Most Holy Father, &c., jars with this. TO R.W.E. _Rome, March_ 14, 1848.--Mickiewicz is with me here, and will remain some time; it was he I wanted to see, more than any other person, in going back to Paris, and I have him much better here. France itself I should like to see, but remain undecided, on account of my health, which has suffered so much, this winter, that I must make it the first object in moving for the summer. One physician thinks it will of itself revive, when once the rains have passed, which have now lasted from 16th December to this day. At present, I am not able to leave the fire, or exert myself at all. * * * * * In all the descriptions of the Roman Carnival, the fact has been omitted of daily rain. I felt, indeed, ashamed to perceive it, when no one else seemed to, whilst the open windows caused me convulsive cough and headache. The carriages, with their cargoes of happy women dressed in their ball dresses and costumes, drove up and down, even in the pouring rain. The two handsome _contadine_, who serve me, took off their woollen gowns, and sat five hours at a time, in the street, in white cambric dresses, and straw hats turned up with roses. I never saw anything like the merry good-humor of these people. I should always be ashamed to complain of anything here. But I had always looked forward to the Roman Carnival as a time when I could play too; and it even surpassed my expectations, with its exuberant gayety and innocent frolic, but I was unable to take much part. The others threw flowers all day, and went to masked balls all night; but I went out only once, in a carriage, and was more exhausted with the storm of flowers and sweet looks than I could be by a storm of hail. I went to the German Artists' ball, where were some pretty costumes, and beautiful music; and to the Italian masked ball, where interest lies in intrigue. I have scarcely gone to the galleries, damp and cold as tombs; or to the mouldy old splendor of churches, where, by the way, they are just wailing over the theft of St. Andrew's head, for the sake of the jewels. It is quite a new era for this population to plunder the churches; but they are suffering terribly, and Pio's municipality does, as yet, nothing. TO W.H.C. _Rome, March 29, 1848._--I have been engrossed, stunned almost, by the public events that have succeeded one another with such rapidity and grandeur. It is a time such as I always dreamed of, and for long secretly hoped to see. I rejoice to be in Europe at this time, and shall return possessed of a great history. Perhaps I shall be called to act. At present, I know not where to go, what to do. War is everywhere. I cannot leave Rome, and the men of Rome are marching out every day into Lombardy. The citadel of Milan is in the hands of my friends, Guerriere, &c., but there may be need to spill much blood yet in Italy. France and Germany are riot in such a state that I can go there now. A glorious flame burns higher and higher in the heart of the nations. * * * * * The rain was constant through the Roman winter, falling in torrents from 16th December to 19th March. Now the Italian heavens wear again their deep blue, the sun is glorious, the melancholy lustres are stealing again over the Campagna, and hundreds of larks sing unwearied above its ruins. Nature seems in sympathy with the great events that are transpiring. How much has happened since I wrote!--the resistance of Sicily, and the revolution of Naples; now the fall of Louis Philippe; and Metternich is crushed in Austria. I saw the Austrian arms dragged through the streets here, and burned in the Piazza del Popolo. The Italians embraced one another, and cried, _miracolo, Providenza!_ the Tribune Ciccronachio fed the flame with fagots; Adam Mickiewicz, the great poet of Poland, long exiled from his country, looked on; while Polish women brought little pieces that had been scattered in the street, and threw into the flames. When the double-headed eagle was pulled down from the lofty portal of the Palazzo di Venezia, the people placed there, in its stead, one of white and gold, inscribed with the name, ALTA ITALIA; and instantly the news followed, that Milan, Venice, Modena, and Parma, were driving out their tyrants. These news were received in Rome with indescribable rapture. Men danced, and women wept with joy along the street. The youths rushed to enrol themselves in regiments to go to the frontier. In the Colosseum, their names were received. * * * * * _Rome, April 1, 1848._-Yesterday, on returning from Ostia, I find the official news, that the Viceroy Ranieri has capitulated at Verona; that Italy is free, independent, and one. I trust this will prove no April foolery. It seems too good, too speedy a realization of hope. * * * * * _Rome, April 30, 1848._--It is a time such as I always dreamed of; and that fire burns in the hearts of men around me which can keep me warm. Have I something to do here? or am I only to cheer on the warriors, and after write the history of their deeds? The first is all I have done yet, but many have blessed me for my sympathy, and blest me by the action it impelled. My private fortunes are dark and tangled; my strength to govern them (perhaps that I am enervated by this climate) much diminished. I have thrown myself on God, and perhaps he will make my temporal state very tragical. I am more of a child than ever, and hate suffering more than ever, but suppose I shall live with it, if it must come. I did not get your letter, about having the rosary blessed for ----, before I left Rome, and now, I suppose, she would not wish it, as none can now attach any value to the blessing of Pius IX. Those who loved him can no longer defend him. It has become obvious, that those first acts of his in the papacy were merely the result of a kindly, good-natured temperament; that he had not thought to understand their bearing, nor force to abide by it. He seems quite destitute of moral courage. He is not resolute either on the wrong or right side. First, he abandoned the liberal party; then, yielding to the will of the people, and uniting, in appearance, with a liberal ministry, he let the cardinals betray it, and defeat the hopes of Italy. He cried peace, peace! but had not a word of blame for the sanguinary acts of the King of Naples, a word of sympathy for the victims of Lombardy. Seizing the moment of dejection in the nation, he put in this retrograde ministry; sanctioned their acts, daily more impudent: let them neutralize the constitution he himself had given; and when the people slew his minister, and assaulted him in his own palace, he yielded anew; he dared not die, or even run the slight risk,--for only by accident could he have perished. His person as a Pope is still respected, though his character as a man is despised. All the people compare him with Pius VII. saying to the French, "Slay me if you will; I _cannot_ yield," and feel the difference. I was on Monte Cavallo yesterday. The common people were staring at the broken windows and burnt door of the palace where they have so often gone to receive a blessing, the children playing, "_Sedia Papale. Morte ai Cardinali, e morte al Papa!_" The men of straw are going down in Italy everywhere; the real men rising into power. Montanelli, Guerazzi, Mazzini, are real men; their influence is of character. Had we only been born a little later! Mazzini has returned from his seventeen years' exile, "to see what he foresaw." He has a mind far in advance of his times, and yet Mazzini sees not all. * * * * * _Rome, May_ 7, 1848.--Good and loving hearts will be unprepared, and for a time must suffer much from the final dereliction of Pius IX. to the cause of freedom. After the revolution opened in Lombardy, the troops of the line were sent thither; the volunteers rushed to accompany them, the priests preached the war as a crusade, the Pope blessed the banners. The report that the Austrians had taken and hung as a brigand one of the Roman Civic Guard,--a well-known artist engaged in the war of Lombardy,--roused the people; and they went to the Pope, to demand that he should declare war against the Austrians. The Pope summoned a consistory, and then declared in his speech that he had only intended local reforms; that he regretted the misuse that had been made of his name; and wound up by lamenting the war as offensive to the spirit of religion. A momentary stupefaction, followed by a passion of indignation, in which the words _traitor_ and _imbecile_ were heard, received this astounding speech. The Pope was besieged with deputations, and, after two days' struggle, was obliged to place the power in the hands of persons most opposed to him, and nominally acquiesce in their proceedings. TO R.W.E. (_in London_). _Rome, May 19, 1848._--I should like to return with you, but I have much to do and learn in Europe yet. I am deeply interested in this public drama, and wish to see it _played out_. Methinks I have _my part_ therein, either as actor or historian. I cannot marvel at your readiness to close the book of European society. The shifting scenes entertain poorly. The flux of thought and feeling leaves some fertilizing soil; but for me, few indeed are the persons I should wish to see again; nor do I care to push the inquiry further. The simplest and most retired life would now please me, only I would not like to be confined to it, in case I grew weary, and now and then craved variety, for exhilaration. I want some scenes of natural beauty, and, imperfect as love is, I want human beings to love, as I suffocate without. For intellectual stimulus, books would mainly supply it, when wanted. Why did you not try to be in Paris at the opening of the Assembly? There were elements worth scanning. TO R.F.F. _Rome, May 20, 1848._--My health is much revived by the spring here, as gloriously beautiful as the winter was dreary. We know nothing of spring in our country. Here the soft and brilliant weather is unbroken, except now and then by a copious shower, which keeps everything fresh. The trees, the flowers, the bird-songs are in perfection. I have enjoyed greatly my walks in the villas, where the grounds are of three or four miles in extent, and like free nature in the wood-glades and still paths; while they have an added charm in the music of their many fountains, and the soft gleam, here and there, of sarcophagus or pillar. I have been a few days at Albano, and explored its beautiful environs alone, to much greater advantage than I could last year, in the carriage with my friends. I went, also, to Frascati and Ostia, with an English family, who had a good carriage, and were kindly, intelligent people, who could not disturb the Roman landscape. Now I am going into the country, where I can live very cheaply, even keeping a servant of my own, without which guard I should not venture alone into the unknown and wilder regions. I have been so disconcerted by my Roman winter, that I dare not plan decisively again. The enervating breath of Rome paralyzes my body, but I know and love her. The expression, "City of the Soul," designates her, and her alone. TO MADAME ARCONATI. _Rome, May 27, 1848._--This is my last day at Rome. I have been passing several days at Subiaco and Tivoli, and return again to the country to-morrow. These scenes of natural beauty have filled my heart, and increased, if possible, my desire that the people who have this rich inheritance may no longer be deprived of its benefits by bad institutions. The people of Subiaco are poor, though very industrious, and cultivating every inch of ground, with even English care and neatness;--so ignorant and uncultivated, while so finely and strongly made by Nature. May God grant now, to this people, what they need! An illumination took place last night, in honor of the "Illustrious Gioberti." He is received here with great triumph, his carriage followed with shouts of "_Viva Gioberti, morte ai Jesuiti!_" which must be pain to the many Jesuits, who, it is said, still linger here in disguise. His triumphs are shared by Mamiani and Orioli, self-trumpeted celebrities, self-constituted rulers of the Roman states,--men of straw, to my mind, whom the fire already kindled will burn into a handful of ashes. I sit in my obscure corner, and watch the progress of events. It is the position that pleases me best, and, I believe, the most favorable one. Everything confirms me in my radicalism; and, without any desire to hasten matters, indeed with surprise to see them rush so like a torrent, I seem to see them all tending to realize my own hopes. My health and spirits now much restored, I am beginning to set down some of my impressions. I am going into the mountains, hoping there to find pure, strengthening air, and tranquillity for so many days as to allow me to do something. TO R.F. F----. _Rieti, July 1, 1848._--Italy is as beautiful as even I hoped, and I should wish to stay here several years, if I had a moderate fixed income. One wants but little money here, and can have with it many of the noblest enjoyments. I should have been very glad if fate would allow me a few years of congenial life, at the end of not a few of struggle and suffering. But I do not hope it; my fate will be the same to the close,--beautiful gifts shown, and then withdrawn, or offered on conditions that make acceptance impossible. TO MADAME ARCONATI. _Corpus Domini, June_ 22, 1848.--I write such a great number of letters, having not less than a hundred correspondents, that it seems, every day, as if I had just written to each. There is no one, surely, this side of the salt sea, with whom I wish more to keep up the interchange of thought than with you. I believe, if you could know my heart as God knows it, and see the causes that regulate my conduct, you would always love me. But already, in absence, I have lost, for the present, some of those who were dear to me, by failure of letters, or false report. After sorrowing much about a falsehood told me of a dearest friend, I found his letter at Torlonia's, which had been there ten months, and, duly received, would have made all right. There is something fatal in my destiny about correspondence. But I will say no more of this; only the loss of that letter to you, at such an unfortunate time,--just when I most wished to seem the loving and grateful friend I was,--made me fear it might be my destiny to lose you too. But if any cross event shall do me this ill turn on earth, we shall meet again in that clear state of intelligence which men call heaven. I see by the journals that you have not lost Montanelli. That noble mind is still spared to Italy. The Pope's heart is incapable of treason; but he has fallen short of the office fate assigned him. I am no bigoted Republican, yet I think that form of government will eventually pervade the civilized world. Italy may not be ripe for it yet, but I doubt if she finds peace earlier; and this hasty annexation of Lombardy to the crown of Sardinia seems, to me, as well as I can judge, an act unworthy and unwise. Base, indeed, the monarch, if it was needed, and weak no less than base; for he was already too far engaged in the Italian cause to retire with honor or wisdom. I am here, in a lonely mountain home, writing the narrative of my European experience. To this I devote great part of the day. Three or four hours I pass in the open air, on donkey or on foot. When I have exhausted this spot, perhaps I shall try another. Apply as I may, it will take three months, at least, to finish my book. It grows upon me. TO R.W.E. _Rieti, July_ 11, 1848.--Once I had resolution to face my difficulties myself, and try to give only what was pleasant to others; but now that my courage has fairly given way, and the fatigue of life is beyond my strength, I do not prize myself, or expect others to prize me. Some years ago, I thought you very unjust, because you did not lend full faith to my spiritual experiences; but I see you were quite right. I thought I had tasted of the true elixir, and that the want of daily bread, or the pangs of imprisonment, would never make me a complaining beggar. A widow, I expected still to have the cruse full for others. Those were glorious hours, and angels certainly visited me; but there must have been too much earth,--too much taint of weakness and folly, so that baptism did not suffice. I know now those same things, but at present they are words, not living spells. I hear, at this moment, the clock of the Church del Purgatorio telling noon in this mountain solitude. Snow yet lingers on these mountain-tops, after forty days of hottest sunshine, last night broken by a few clouds, prefatory to a thunder storm this morning. It has been so hot here, that even the peasant in the field says, "_Non porro píù resistere_," and slumbers in the shade, rather than the sun. I love to see their patriarchal ways of guarding the sheep and tilling the fields. They are a simple race. Remote from the corruptions of foreign travel, they do not ask for money, but smile upon and bless me as I pass,--for the Italians love me; they say I am so "_simpatica._" I never see any English or Americans, and now think wholly in Italian: only the surgeon who bled me, the other day, was proud to speak a little French, which he had learned at Tunis! The ignorance of this people is amusing. I am to them a divine visitant,--an instructive Ceres,--telling them wonderful tales of foreign customs, and even legends of the lives of their own saints. They are people whom I could love and live with. Bread and grapes among them would suffice me. TO HER MOTHER. _Rome, Nov_. 16, 1848.--* * * Of other circumstances which complicate my position I cannot write. Were you here, I would confide in you fully, and have more than once, in the silence of the night, recited to you those most strange and romantic chapters in the story of my sad life. At one time when I thought I might die, I empowered a person, who has given me, as far as possible to him, the aid and sympathy of a brother, to communicate them to you, on his return to the United States. But now I think we shall meet again, and I am sure you will always love your daughter, and will know gladly that in all events she has tried to aid and striven never to injure her fellows. In earlier days, I dreamed of doing and being much, but now am content with the Magdalen to rest my plea hereon, "_She has loved much_." You, loved mother, keep me informed, as you have, of important facts, _especially_ the _worst_. The thought of you, the knowledge of your angelic nature, is always one of my greatest supports. Happy those who have such a mother! Myriad instances of selfishness and corruption of heart cannot destroy the confidence in human nature. I am again in Rome, situated for the first time entirely to my mind. I have but one room, but large; and everything about the bed so gracefully and adroitly disposed that it makes a beautiful parlor, and of course I pay much less. I have the sun all day, and an excellent chimney. It is very high and has pure air, and the most beautiful view all around imaginable. Add, that I am with the dearest, delightful old couple one can imagine, quick, prompt, and kind, sensible and contented. Having no children, they like to regard me and the Prussian sculptor, my neighbor, as such; yet are too delicate and too busy ever to intrude. In the attic, dwells a priest, who insists on making my fire when Antonia is away. To be sure, he pays himself for his trouble, by asking a great many questions. The stories below are occupied by a frightful Russian princess with moustaches, and a footman who ties her bonnet for her; and a fat English lady, with a fine carriage, who gives all her money to the church, and has made for the house a terrace of flowers that would delight you. Antonia has her flowers in a humble balcony, her birds, and an immense black cat; always addressed by both husband and wife as "Amoretto," (little love!) The house looks out on the Piazza Barberini, and I see both that palace and the Pope's. The scene to-day has been one of terrible interest. The poor, weak Pope has fallen more and more under the dominion of the cardinals, till at last all truth was hidden from his eyes. He had suffered the minister, Rossi, to go on, tightening the reins, and, because the people preserved a sullen silence, he thought they would bear it. Yesterday, the Chamber of Deputies, illegally prorogued, was opened anew. Rossi, after two or three most unpopular measures, had the imprudence to call the troops of the line to defend him, instead of the National Guard. On the 14th, the Pope had invested him with the privileges of a Roman citizen: (he had renounced his country when an exile, and returned to it as ambassador of Louis Philippe.) This position he enjoyed but one day. Yesterday, as he descended from his carriage, to enter the Chamber, the crowd howled and hissed; then pushed him, and, as he turned his head in consequence, a sure hand stabbed him in the back. He said no word, but died almost instantly in the arms of a cardinal. The act was undoubtedly the result of the combination of many, from the dexterity with which it was accomplished, and the silence which ensued. Those who had not abetted beforehand seemed entirely to approve when done. The troops of the line, on whom he had relied, remained at their posts, and looked coolly on. In the evening, they walked the streets with the people, singing, "Happy the hand which rids the world of a tyrant!" Had Rossi lived to enter the Chamber, he would have seen the most terrible and imposing mark of denunciation known in the history of nations,--the whole house, without a single exception, seated on the benches of opposition. The news of his death was received by the deputies with the same cold silence as by the people. For me, I never thought to have heard of a violent death with satisfaction, but this act affected me as one of terrible justice. To-day, all the troops and the people united and went to the Quirinal to demand a change of measures. They found the Swiss Guard drawn out, and the Pope dared not show himself. They attempted to force the door of his palace, to enter his presence, and the guard fired. I saw a man borne by wounded. The drum beat to call out the National Guard. The carriage of Prince Barberini has returned with its frightened inmates and liveried retinue, and they have suddenly barred up the court-yard gate. Antonia, seeing it, observes, "Thank Heaven, we are poor, we have nothing to fear!" This is the echo of a sentiment which will soon be universal in Europe. Never feel any apprehensions for my safety from such causes. There are those who will protect me, if necessary, and, besides, I am on the conquering side. These events have, to me, the deepest interest. These days are what I always longed for,--were I only free from private care! But, when the best and noblest want bread to give to the cause of liberty, I can just not demand _that_ of them; their blood they would give me. You cannot conceive the enchantment of this place. So much I suffered here last January and February, I thought myself a little weaned; but, returning, my heart swelled even to tears with the cry of the poet:-- "O, Rome, _my_ country, city of the soul!" Those have not lived who have not seen Rome. Warned, however, by the last winter, I dared not rent my lodgings for the year. I hope I am acclimated. I have been through what is called the grape-cure, much more charming, certainly, than the water-cure. At present I am very well; but, alas! because I have gone to bed early, and done very little. I do not know if I can maintain any labor. As to my life, I think that it is not the will of Heaven it should terminate very soon. I have had another strange escape. I had taken passage in the diligence to come to Rome; two rivers were to be passed,--the Turano and the Tiber,--but passed by good bridges, and a road excellent when not broken unexpectedly by torrents from the mountains. The diligence sets out between three and four in the morning, long before light. The director sent me word that the Marchioness Crispoldi had taken for herself and family a coach extraordinary, which would start two hours later, and that I could have a place in that, if I liked; so I accepted. The weather had been beautiful, but, on the eve of the day fixed for my departure, the wind rose, and the rain fell in torrents. I observed that the river which passed my window was much swollen, and rushed with great violence. In the night, I heard its voice still stronger, and felt glad I had not to set out in the dark. I rose with twilight, and was expecting my carriage, and wondering at its delay, when I heard, that the great diligence, several miles below, had been seized by a torrent; the horses were up to their necks in water, before any one dreamed of the danger. The postilion called on all the saints, and threw himself into the water. The door of the diligence could not be opened, and the passengers forced themselves, one after another, into the cold water,--dark too. Had I been there I had fared ill; a pair of strong men were ill after it, though all escaped with life. For several days, there was no going to Rome; but, at last, we set forth in two great diligences, with all the horses of the route. For many miles, the mountains and ravines were covered with snow; I seemed to have returned to my own country and climate. Few miles passed, before the conductor injured his leg under the wheel, and I had the pain of seeing him suffer all the way, while "Blood of Jesus," "Souls of Purgatory," was the mildest beginning of an answer to the jeers of the postilions upon his paleness. We stopped at a miserable osteria, in whose cellar we found a magnificent remain of Cyclopean architecture,--as indeed in Italy one is paid at every step, for discomfort or danger, by some precious subject of thought. We proceeded very slowly, and reached just at night a solitary little inn, which marks the site of the ancient home of the Sabine virgins, snatched away to become the mothers of Rome. We were there saluted with the news that the Tiber, also, had overflowed its banks, and it was very doubtful if we could pass. But what else to do? There were no accommodations in the house for thirty people, or even for three, and to sleep in the carriages, in that wet air of the marshes, was a more certain danger than to attempt the passage. So we set forth; the moon, almost at the full, smiling sadly on the ancient grandeurs, then half draped in mist, then drawing over her face a thin white veil. As we approached the Tiber, the towers and domes of Rome could be seen, like a cloud lying low on the horizon. The road and the meadows, alike under water, lay between us and it, one sheet of silver. The horses entered; they behaved nobly; we proceeded, every moment uncertain if the water would not become deep; but the scene was beautiful, and I enjoyed it highly. I have never yet felt afraid when really in the presence of danger, though sometimes in its apprehension. At last we entered the gate; the diligence stopping to be examined, I walked to the gate of Villa Ludovisi, and saw its rich shrubberies of myrtle, and its statues so pale and eloquent in the moonlight. Is it not cruel that I cannot earn six hundred dollars a year, living here? I could live on that well, now I know Italy. Where I have been, this summer, a great basket of grapes sells for one cent!--delicious salad, enough for three or four persons, one cent,--a pair of chickens, fifteen cents. Foreigners cannot live so, but I could, now that I speak the language fluently, and know the price of everything. Everybody loves, and wants to serve me, and I cannot earn this pitiful sum to learn and do what I want. Of course, I wish to see America again; but in my own time, when I am ready, and not to weep over hopes destroyed and projects unfulfilled. My dear friend, Madame Arconati, has shown me generous love;--a _contadina_, whom I have known this summer, hardly less. Every Sunday, she came in her holiday dress,--beautiful corset of red silk richly embroidered, rich petticoat, nice shoes and stockings, and handsome coral necklace, on one arm an immense basket of grapes, in the other a pair of live chickens, to be eaten by me for her sake, ("_per amore mio_,") and wanted no present, no reward; it was, as she said, "for the honor and pleasure of her acquaintance." The old father of the family never met me but he took off his hat and said, "Madame, it is to me a _consolation_ to see you." Are there not sweet flowers of affection in life, glorious moments, great thoughts?--why must they be so dearly paid for? Many Americans have shown me great and thoughtful kindness, and none more so than W. S---- and his wife. They are now in Florence, but may return. I do not know whether I shall stay here or not; shall be guided much by the state of my health. All is quieted now in Rome. Late at night the Pope had to yield, but not till the door of his palace was half burnt, and his confessor killed. This man, Parma, provoked his fate by firing on the people from a window. It seems the Pope never gave order to fire; his guard acted from a sudden impulse of their own. The new ministry chosen are little inclined to accept. It is almost impossible for any one to act, unless the Pope is stripped of his temporal power, and the hour for that is not yet quite ripe; though they talk more and more of proclaiming the Republic, and even of calling my friend Mazzini. If I came home at this moment, I should feel as if forced to leave my own house, my own people, and the hour which I had always longed for. If I do come in this way, all I can promise is to plague other people as little as possible. My own plans and desires will be postponed to another world. Do not feel anxious about me. Some higher power leads me through strange, dark, thorny paths, broken at times by glades opening down into prospects of sunny beauty, into which I am not permitted to enter. If God disposes for us, it is not for nothing. This I can say, my heart is in some respects better, it is kinder and more humble. Also, my mental acquisitions have certainly been great, however inadequate to my desires. TO M.S. _Rome, Nov._ 23, 1848.--Mazzini has stood alone in Italy, on a sunny height, far above the stature of other men. He has fought a great fight against folly, compromise, and treason; steadfast in his convictions, and of almost miraculous energy to sustain them, is he. He has foes; and at this moment, while he heads the insurrection in the Valtellina, the Roman people murmur his name, and long to call him here. How often rings in my ear the consolatory word of Körner, after many struggles, many undeceptions, "Though the million suffer shipwreck, yet noble hearts survive!" I grieve to say, the good-natured Pio has shown himself utterly derelict, alike without resolution to abide by the good or the ill. He is now abandoned and despised by both parties. The people do not trust his word, for they know he shrinks from the danger, and shuts the door to pray quietly in his closet, whilst he knows the cardinals are misusing his name to violate his pledges. The cardinals, chased from Rome, talk of electing an anti-Pope; because, when there was danger, he has always yielded to the people, and they say he has overstepped his prerogative, and broken his papal oath. No one abuses him, for it is felt that in a more private station he would have acted a kindly part; but he has failed of so high a vocation, and balked so noble a hope, that no one respects him either. Who would have believed, a year ago, that the people would assail his palace? I was on Monte Cavallo yesterday, and saw the broken windows, the burnt doors, the walls marked by shot, just beneath the loggia, on which we have seen him giving the benediction. But this would never have happened, if his guard had not fired first on the people. It is true it was without his order, but, under a different man, the Swiss would never have dared to incur such a responsibility. Our old acquaintance, Sterbini, has risen to the ministry. He has a certain influence, from his consistency and independence, but has little talent. Of me you wish to know; but there is little I can tell you at this distance. I have had happy hours, learned much, suffered much, and outward things have not gone fortunately with me. I have had glorious hopes, but they are overclouded now, and the future looks darker than ever, indeed, quite impossible to my steps. I have no hope, unless that God will show me some way I do not know of now; but I do not wish to trouble you with more of this. TO W.S. _Rome, Dec_. 9, 1848.--As to Florence itself, I do not like it, with the exception of the galleries and churches, and Michel Angelo's marbles. I do not like it, for the reason you _do_, because it seems like home. It seems a kind of Boston to me,--the same good and the same ill; I have had enough of both. But I have so many dear friends in Boston, that I must always wish to go there sometimes; and there are so many precious objects of study in Florence, that a stay of several months could not fail to be full of interest. Still, the spring must be the time to be in Florence; there are so many charming spots to visit in the environs, much nearer than those you go to in Rome, within scope of an afternoon's drive. I saw them only when parched with sun and covered with dust. In the spring they must be very beautiful. * * * * * _December_, 1848.--I felt much what you wrote, "_if it were well with my heart_." How seldom it is that a mortal is permitted to enjoy a paradisaical scene, unhaunted by some painful vision from the past or the future! With me, too, dark clouds of care and sorrow have sometimes blotted out the sunshine. I have not lost from my side an only sister, but have been severed from some visions still so dear, they looked almost like hopes. The future seems too difficult for me. I have been as happy as I could, and I feel that this summer, as last, had I been with my country folks, the picture of Italy would not have been so lively to me. Now I have been quite off the beaten track of travel, have seen, thought, spoken, dreamed only what is Italian. I have learned much, received many strong and clear impressions. While among the mountains, I was for a good while quite alone, except for occasional chat with the contadine, who wanted to know if Pius IX. was not _un gran carbonaro!_--a reputation which he surely ought to have forfeited by this time. About me they were disturbed: "_E sempre sola soletta_," they said, "_eh perche?_" Later, I made one of those accidental acquaintances, such as I have spoken of to you in my life of Lombardy, which may be called romantic: two brothers, elderly men, the last of a very noble family, formerly lords of many castles, still of more than one; both unmarried, men of great polish and culture. None of the consequences ensued that would in romances: they did not any way adopt me, nor give me a casket of diamonds, nor any of their pictures, among which were originals by several of the greatest masters, nor their rich cabinets, nor miniatures on agate, nor carving in wood and ivory. They only showed me their things, and their family archives of more than a hundred volumes, (containing most interesting documents about Poland, where four of their ancestors were nuncios,) manuscript letters from Tasso, and the like. With comments on these, and legendary lore enough to furnish Cooper or Walter Scott with a thousand romances, they enriched me; unhappily, I shall never have the strength or talent to make due use of it. I was sorry to leave them, for now I have recrossed the frontier into the Roman States. I will not tell you where,--I know not that I shall ever tell where,--these months have been passed. The great Goethe hid thus in Italy; "Then," said he, "I did indeed feel alone,--when no former friend could form an _idea_ where I was." Why should not ---- and I enjoy this fantastic luxury of _incognito_ also, when we can so much more easily? I will not name the place, but I will describe it. The rooms are spacious and airy; the loggia of the sleeping room is rude, but it overhangs a lovely little river, with its hedge of willows. Opposite is a large and rich vineyard; on one side a ruined tower, on the other an old casino, with its avenues of cypress, give human interest to the scene. A cleft amid the mountains full of light leads on the eye to a soft blue peak, very distant. At night the young moon trembles in the river, and its soft murmur soothes me to sleep; it needs, for I have had lately a bad attack upon the nerves, and been obliged to stop writing for the present. I think I shall stay here some time, though I suppose there are such sweet places all over Italy, if one only looks for one's self. Poor, beautiful Italy! how she has been injured of late! It is dreadful to see the incapacity and meanness of those to whom she had confided the care of her redemption. I have thus far passed this past month of fine weather most delightfully in revisiting my haunts of the autumn before. Then, too, I was uncommonly well and strong; it was the golden period of my Roman life. The experience what long confinement may be expected after, from the winter rains, has decided me _never_ to make my hay when the sun shines: _i.e._, to give no fine day to books and pens. The places of interest I am nearest now are villas Albani and Ludovisi, and Santa Agnese, St. Lorenzo, and the vineyards near Porta Maggiore. I have passed one day in a visit to Torre dei Schiavi and the neighborhood, and another on Monte Mario, both Rome and the Campagna-day golden in the mellowest lustre of the Italian sun. * * * But to you I may tell, that I always go with Ossoli, the most congenial companion I ever had for jaunts of this kind. We go out in the morning, carrying the roast chestnuts from Rome; the bread and wine are found in some lonely little osteria; and so we dine; and reach Rome again, just in time to see it, from a little distance, gilded by the sunset. This moon having been so clear, and the air so warm, we have visited, on successive evenings, all the places we fancied: Monte Cavallo, now so lonely and abandoned,--no lights there but moon and stars,--Trinità de' Monti, Santa Maria Maggiore, and the Forum. So now, if the rain must come, or I be driven from Rome, I have all the images fair and fresh in my mind. About public events, why remain ignorant? Take a daily paper in the house. The Italian press has recovered from the effervescence of childish spirits;--you can now approximate to the truth from its reports. There are many good papers now in Italy. Whatever represents the Montanelli ministry is best for you. That gives the lead now. I see good articles copied from the "Alba." TO MADAME ARCONATI. _Rome, Feb. 5_, 1849.--I am so delighted to get your letter, that I must answer on the instant. I try with all my force to march straight onwards,--to answer the claims of the day; to act out my feeling as seems right at the time, and not heed the consequences;--but in my affections I am tender and weak; where I have really loved, a barrier, a break, causes me great suffering. I read in your letter that I am still dear to you as you to me. I always felt, that if we had passed more time together,--if the intimacy, for which there was ground in the inner nature, had become consolidated,--no after differences of opinion or conduct could have destroyed, though they might interrupt its pleasure. But it was of few days' standing,--our interviews much interrupted. I felt as if I knew you much better than you could me, because I had occasion to see you amid your various and habitual relations. I was afraid you might change, or become indifferent; now I hope not. True, I have written, shall write, about the affairs of Italy, what you will much dislike, if ever you see it. I have done, may do, many things that would be very unpleasing to you; yet there _is_ a congeniality, I dare to say, pure, and strong, and good, at the bottom of the heart, far, far deeper than these differences, that would always, on a real meeting, keep us friends. For me, I could never have but one feeling towards you. Now, for the first time, I enjoy a full communion with the spirit of Rome. Last winter, I had here many friends; now all are dispersed, and sometimes I long to exchange thoughts with a friendly circle; but generally I am better content to live thus:--the impression made by all the records of genius around is more unbroken; I begin to be very familiar with them. The sun shines always, when last winter it never shone. I feel strong; I can go everywhere on foot. I pass whole days abroad; sometimes I take a book, but seldom read it:--why should I, when every stone talks? In spring, I shall go often out of town. I have read "La Rome Souterraine" of Didier, and it makes me wish to see Ardea and Nettuno. Ostia is the only one of those desolate sites that I know yet. I study sometimes Niebuhr, and other books about Rome, but not to any great profit. In the circle of my friends, two have fallen. One a person of great wisdom, strength, and calmness. She was ever to me a most tender friend, and one whose sympathy I highly valued. Like you by nature and education conservative, she was through thought liberal. With no exuberance or passionate impulsiveness herself, she knew how to allow for these in others. The other was a woman of my years, of the most precious gifts in heart and genius. She had also beauty and fortune. She died at last of weariness and intellectual inanition. She never, to any of us, her friends, hinted her sufferings. But they were obvious in her poems, which, with great dignity, expressed a resolute but most mournful resignation. TO R.F.F. _Rome, Feb_. 23, 1849.--It is something if one can get free foot-hold on the earth, so as not to be jostled out of hearing the music, if there should be any spirits in the air to make such. For my part, I have led rather too lonely a life of late. Before, it seemed as if too many voices of men startled away the inspirations; but having now lived eight months much alone, I doubt that good has come of it, and think to return, and go with others for a little. I have realized in these last days the thought of Goethe,--"He who would in loneliness live, ah! he is soon alone. Each one loves, each one lives, and leaves him to his pain." I went away and hid, all summer. Not content with that, I said, on returning to Rome, I must be busy and receive people little. They have taken me at my word, and hardly one comes to see me. Now, if I want play and prattle, I shall have to run after them. It is fair enough that we all, in turn, should be made to feel our need of one another. Never was such a winter as this. Ten weeks now of unbroken sunshine and the mildest breezes. Of course, its price is to be paid. The spring, usually divine here, with luxuriant foliage and multitudinous roses, will be all scorched and dusty. There is fear, too, of want of food for the poor Roman state. I pass my days in writing, walking, occasional visits to the galleries. I read little, except the newspapers; these take up an hour or two of the day. I own, my thoughts are quite fixed on the daily bulletin of men and things. I expect to write the history, but because it is so much in my heart. If you were here, I rather think you would be impassive, like the two most esteemed Americans I see. They do not believe in the sentimental nations. Hungarians, Poles, Italians, are too demonstrative for them, too fiery, too impressible. They like better the loyal, slow-moving Germans: even the Russian, with his dog's nose and gentlemanly servility, pleases them better than _my_ people. There is an antagonism of race. TO E.S. _Rome, June_ 6, 1849.--The help I needed was external, practical. I knew myself all the difficulties and pains of my position; they were beyond present relief; from sympathy I could struggle with them, but had not life enough left, afterwards, to be a companion of any worth. To be with persons generous and refined, who would not pain; who would sometimes lend a helping hand across the ditches of this strange insidious marsh, was all I could have now, and this you gave. On Sunday, from our loggia, I witnessed a terrible, a real battle. It began at four in the morning: it lasted to the last gleam of light. The musket-fire was almost unintermitted; the roll of the cannon, especially from St. Angelo, most majestic. As all passed at Porta San Pancrazio and Villa Pamfili, I saw the smoke of every discharge, the flash of the bayonets; with a glass could see the men. Both French and Italians fought with the most obstinate valor. The French could not use their heavy cannon, being always driven away by the legions Garibaldi and ----, when trying to find positions for them. The loss on our side is about three hundred killed and wounded; theirs must be much greater. In one casino have been found seventy dead bodies of theirs. I find the wounded men at the hospital in a transport of indignation. The French soldiers fought so furiously, that they think them false as their general, and cannot endure the remembrance of their visits, during the armistice, and talk of brotherhood. You will have heard how all went:--how Lesseps, after appearing here fifteen days as _plenipotentiary_, signed a treaty not dishonorable to Rome; then Oudinot refused to ratify it, saying, _the plenipotentiary had surpassed his powers_: Lesseps runs back to Paris, and Oudinot attacks:--an affair alike infamous for the French from beginning to end. The cannonade on one side has continued day and night, (being full moon,) till this morning; they seeking to advance or take other positions, the Romans firing on them. The French throw rockets into the town: one burst in the court-yard of the hospital, just as I arrived there yesterday, agitating the poor sufferers very much; they said they did not want to die like mice in a trap. TO M.S. _Rome, March_ 9, 1849.--Last night, Mazzini came to see me. You will have heard how he was called to Italy, and received at Leghorn like a prince, as he is; unhappily, in fact, the only one, the only great Italian. It is expected, that, if the republic lasts, he will be President. He has been made a Roman citizen, and elected to the Assembly; the labels bearing, in giant letters, "_Giuseppe Mazzini, cittadino Romano_," are yet up all over Rome. He entered by night, on foot, to avoid demonstrations, no doubt, and enjoy the quiet of his own thoughts, at so great a moment. The people went under his windows the next night, and called him out to speak; but I did not know about it. Last night, I heard a ring; then somebody speak my name; the voice struck upon me at once. He looks more divine than ever, after all his new, strange sufferings. He asked after all of you. He stayed two hours, and we talked, though rapidly, of everything. He hopes to come often, but the crisis is tremendous, and all will come on him; since, if any one can save Italy from her foes, inward and outward, it will be he. But he is very doubtful whether this be possible; the foes are too many, too strong, too subtle. Yet Heaven helps sometimes. I only grieve I cannot aid him; freely would I give my life to aid him, only bargaining for a quick death. I don't like slow torture. I fear that it is in reserve for him, to survive defeat. True, he can never be utterly defeated; but to see Italy bleeding, prostrate once more, will be very dreadful for him. He has sent me tickets, twice, to hear him speak in the Assembly. It was a fine, commanding voice. But, when he finished, he looked very exhausted and melancholy. He looks as if the great battle he had fought had been too much for his strength, and that he was only sustained by the fire of the soul. All this I write to you, because you said, when I was suffering at leaving Mazzini,--"You will meet him in heaven." This I believe will be, despite all my faults. [In April, 1849, Margaret was appointed, by the "Roman Commission for the succor of the wounded," to the charge of the hospital of the _Fate-Bene Fratetti_; the Princess Belgioioso having charge of the one already opened. The following is a copy of the original letter from the Princess, which is written in English, announcing the appointment.] _Comitato di Soccorso Pei Feriti_, } April 30, 1849. } Dear Miss Fuller:-- You are named Regolatrice of the Hospital of the _Fate-Rene Fratelli_. Go there at twelve, if the alarm bell has not rung before. When you arrive there, you will receive all the women coming for the wounded, and give them your directions, so that you are sure to have a certain number of them night and day. May God help us. CHRISTINE TRIVULZE, of Belgioioso. Miss Fuller, Piazza Barberini, No. 60. TO R.W.E. _Rome, June_ 10, 1849.--I received your letter amid the round of cannonade and musketry. It was a terrible battle fought here from the first till the last light of day. I could see all its progress from my balcony. The Italians fought like lions. It is a truly heroic spirit that animates them. They make a stand here for honor and their rights, with little ground for hope that they can resist, now they are betrayed by France. Since the 30th April, I go almost daily to the hospitals, and, though I have suffered,--for I had no idea before, how terrible gunshot-wounds and wound-fever are,--yet I have taken pleasure, and great pleasure, in being with the men; there is scarcely one who is not moved by a noble spirit. Many, especially among the Lombards, are the flower of the Italian youth. When they begin to get better, I carry them books and flowers; they read, and we talk. The palace of the Pope, on the Quirinal, is now used for convalescents. In those beautiful gardens, I walk with them,--one with his sling, another with his crutch. The gardener plays off all his water-works for the defenders of the country, and gathers flowers for me, their friend. A day or two since, we sat in the Pope's little pavilion, where he used to give private audience. The sun was going gloriously down over Monte Mario, where gleamed the white tents of the French light-horse among the trees. The cannonade was heard at intervals. Two bright-eyed boys sat at our feet, and gathered up eagerly every word said by the heroes of the day. It was a beautiful hour, stolen from the midst of ruin and sorrow; and tales were told as full of grace and pathos as in the gardens of Boccaccio, only in a very different spirit,--with noble hope for man, with reverence for woman. The young ladies of the family, very young girls, were filled with enthusiasm for the suffering, wounded patriots, and they wished to go to the hospital to give their services. Excepting the three superintendents, none but married ladies were permitted to serve there, but their services were accepted. Their governess then wished to go too, and, as she could speak several languages, she was admitted to the rooms of the wounded soldiers, to interpret for them, as the nurses knew nothing but Italian, and many of these poor men were suffering, because they could not make their wishes known. Some are French, some German, and many Poles. Indeed, I am afraid it is too true that there were comparatively but few Romans among them. This young lady passed several nights there. Should I never return,--and sometimes I despair of doing so, it seems so far off, so difficult, I am caught in such a net of ties here,--if ever you know of my life here, I think you will only wonder at the constancy with which I have sustained myself; the degree of profit to which, amid great difficulties, I have put the time, at least in the way of observation. Meanwhile, love me all you can; let me feel, that, amid the fearful agitations of the world, there are pure hands, with healthful, even pulse, stretched out toward me, if I claim their grasp. I feel profoundly for Mazzini; at moments I am tempted to say, "Cursed with every granted prayer,"--so cunning is the dæmon. He is become the inspiring soul of his people. He saw Rome, to which all his hopes through life tended, for the first time as a Roman citizen, and to become in a few days its ruler. He has animated, he sustains her to a glorious effort, which, if it fails, this time, will not in the age. His country will be free. Yet to me it would be so dreadful to cause all this bloodshed, to dig the graves of such martyrs. Then Rome is being destroyed; her glorious oaks; her villas, haunts of sacred beauty, that seemed the possession of the world forever,--the villa of Raphael, the villa of Albani, home of Winkelmann, and the best expression of the ideal of modern Rome, and so many other sanctuaries of beauty,--all must perish, lest a foe should level his musket from their shelter. _I_ could not, could not! I know not, dear friend, whether I ever shall get home across that great ocean, but here in Rome I shall no longer wish to live. O, Rome, _my_ country! could I imagine that the triumph of what I held dear was to heap such desolation on thy head! Speaking of the republic, you say, do not I wish Italy had a great man? Mazzini is a great man. In mind, a great poetic statesman; in heart, a lover; in action, decisive and full of resource as Cæsar. Dearly I love Mazzini. He came in, just as I had finished the first letter to you. His soft, radiant look makes melancholy music in my soul; it consecrates my present life, that, like the Magdalen, I may, at the important hour, shed all the consecrated ointment on his head. There is one, Mazzini, who understands thee well; who knew thee no less when an object of popular fear, than now of idolatry; and who, if the pen be not held too feebly, will help posterity to know thee too. TO W.H.C. _Rome, July_ 8, 1849.--I do not yet find myself tranquil and recruited from the painful excitements of these last days. But, amid the ruined hopes of Rome, the shameful oppressions she is beginning to suffer, amid these noble, bleeding martyrs, my brothers, I cannot fix my thoughts on anything else. I write that you may assure mother of my safety, which in the last days began to be seriously imperilled. Say, that as soon as I can find means of conveyance, without an expense too enormous, I shall go again into the mountains. There I shall find pure, bracing air, and I hope stillness, for a time. Say, she need feel no anxiety, if she do not hear from me for some time. I may feel indisposed to write, as I do now; my heart is too full. Private hopes of mine are fallen with the hopes of Italy. I have played for a new stake, and lost it. Life looks too difficult. But for the present I shall try to wave all thought of self and renew my strength. After the attempt at revolution in France failed, could I have influenced Mazzini, I should have prayed him to capitulate, and yet I feel that no honorable terms can be made with such a foe, and that the only way is _never_ to yield; but the sound of the musketry, the sense that men were perishing in a hopeless contest, had become too terrible for my nerves. I did not see Mazzini, the last two weeks of the republic. When the French entered, he walked about the streets, to see how the people bore themselves, and then went to the house of a friend. In the upper chamber of a poor house, with his life-long friends,--the Modenas,--I found him. Modena, who abandoned not only what other men hold dear,--home, fortune, peace,--but also endured, without the power of using the prime of his great artist-talent, a ten years' exile in a foreign land; his wife every way worthy of him,--such a woman as I am not. Mazzini had suffered millions more than I could; he had borne his fearful responsibility; he had let his dearest friends perish; he had passed all these nights without sleep; in two short months, he had grown old; all the vital juices seemed exhausted; his eyes were all blood-shot; his skin orange; flesh he had none; his hair was mixed with white: his hand was painful to the touch; but he had never flinched, never quailed; had protested in the last hour against surrender; sweet and calm, but full of a more fiery purpose than ever; in him I revered the hero, and owned myself not of that mould. You say truly, I shall come home humbler. God grant it may be entirely humble! In future, while more than ever deeply penetrated with principles, and the need of the martyr spirit to sustain them, I will ever own that there are few worthy, and that I am one of the least. A silken glove might be as good a gauntlet as one of steel, but I, infirm of mood, turn sick even now as I think of the past. * * * * * _July_, 1849.--I cannot tell you what I endured in leaving Rome; abandoning the wounded soldiers; knowing that there is no provision made for them, when they rise from the beds where they have been thrown by a noble courage, where they have suffered with a noble patience. Some of the poorer men, who rise bereft even of the right arm,--one having lost both the right arm and the right leg,--I could have provided for with a small sum. Could I have sold my hair, or blood from my arm, I would have done it. Had any of the rich Americans remained in Rome, they would have given it to me; they helped nobly at first, in the service of the hospitals, when there was far less need; but they had all gone. What would I have given that I could have spoken to one of the Lawrences, or the Phillipses; they could and would have saved the misery. These poor men are left helpless in the power of a mean and vindictive foe. You felt so oppressed in the slave-states; imagine what I felt at seeing all the noblest youth, all the genius of this dear land, again enslaved. TO W.H.C. _Rieti, Aug_. 28, 1849.--You say, you are glad I have had this great opportunity for carrying out my principles. Would it were so! I found myself inferior in courage and fortitude to the occasion. I knew not how to bear the havoc and anguish incident to the struggle for these principles. I rejoiced that it lay not with me to cut down the trees, to destroy the Elysian gardens, for the defence of Rome; I do not know that I could have done it. And the sight of these far nobler growths, the beautiful young men, mown down in their stately prime, became too much for me. I forget the great ideas, to sympathize with the poor mothers, who had nursed their precious forms, only to see them all lopped and gashed. You say, I sustained them; often have they sustained my courage: one, kissing the pieces of bone that were so painfully extracted from his arm, hanging them round his neck to be worn as the true relics of to-day; mementoes that he also had done and borne something for his country and the hopes of humanity. One fair young man, who is made a cripple for life, clasped my hand as he saw me crying over the spasms I could not relieve, and faintly cried, "Viva l'Italia." "Think only, _cara bona donna_" said a poor wounded soldier, "that I can always wear my uniform on _festas_, just as it is now, with the holes where the balls went through, for a memory." "God is good; God knows," they often said to me, when I had not a word to cheer them. THE WIFE AND MOTHER.[A] Beneath the ruins of the Roman Republic, how many private fortunes were buried! and among these victims was Margaret. In that catastrophe, were swallowed up hopes sacredly cherished by her through weary months, at the risk of all she most prized. Soon after the entrance of the French, she wrote thus, to the resident Envoy of the United States: My dear Mr. Cass,--I beg you to come and see me, and give me your counsel, and, if need be, your aid, to get away from Rome. From what I hear this morning, I fear we may be once more shut up here; and I shall die, to be again separated from what I hold most dear. There are, as yet, no horses on the way we want to go, or we should post immediately. You may feel, like me, sad, in these last moments, to leave this injured Rome. So many noble hearts I abandon here, whose woes I have known! I feel, if I could not aid, I might soothe. But for my child, I would not go, till some men, now sick, know whether they shall live or die. * * * * * Her child! Where was he? In RIETI,--at the foot of the Umbrian Apennines,--a day's journey to the north-east of Rome. Thither Margaret escaped with her husband, and thence she wrote the following letter: Dearest Mother,--I received your letter a few hours before leaving Rome. Like all of yours, it refreshed me, and gave me as much satisfaction as anything could, at that sad time. Its spirit is of eternity, and befits an epoch when wickedness and perfidy so impudently triumph, and the best blood of the generous and honorable is poured out like water, seemingly in vain. I cannot tell you what I suffered to abandon the wounded to the care of their mean foes; to see the young men, that were faithful to their vows, hunted from their homes,--hunted like wild beasts; denied a refuge in every civilized land. Many of those I loved are sunk to the bottom of the sea, by Austrian cannon, or will be shot. Others are in penury, grief, and exile. May God give due recompense for all that has been endured! My mind still agitated, and my spirits worn out, I have not felt like writing to any one. Yet the magnificent summer does not smile quite in vain for me. Much exercise in the open air, living much on milk and fruit, have recruited my health, and I am regaining the habit of sleep, which a month of nightly cannonade in Rome had destroyed. * * * * * Receiving, a few days since, a packet of letters from America, I opened them with more feeling of hope and good cheer, than for a long time past. The first words that met my eye were these, in the hand of Mr. Greeley:--"Ah, Margaret, the world grows dark with us! You grieve, for Rome is fallen;--I mourn, for Pickie is dead." I have shed rivers of tears over the inexpressibly affecting letter thus begun. One would think I might have become familiar enough with images of death and destruction; yet somehow the image of Pickie's little dancing figure, lying, stiff and stark, between his parents, has made me weep more than all else. There was little hope he could do justice to himself, or lead a happy life in so perplexed a world; but never was a character of richer capacity,--never a more charming child. To me he was most dear, and would always have been so. Had he become stained with earthly faults, I could never have forgotten what he was when fresh from the soul's home, and what he was to me when my soul pined for sympathy, pure and unalloyed. The three children I have seen who were fairest in my eyes, and gave most promise of the future, were Waldo, Pickie, Hermann Clarke;--all nipped in the bud. Endless thoughts has this given me, and a resolve to seek the realization of all hopes and plans elsewhere, which resolve will weigh with me as much as it can weigh before the silver cord is finally loosed. Till then, Earth, our mother, always finds strange, unexpected ways to draw us back to her bosom,--to make us seek anew a nutriment which has never failed to cause us frequent sickness. * * * * * This brings me to the main object of my present letter,--a piece of intelligence about myself, which I had hoped I might be able to communicate in such a way as to give you _pleasure_. That I cannot,--after suffering much in silence with that hope,--is like the rest of my earthly destiny. The first moment, it may cause you a pang to know that your eldest child might long ago have been addressed by another name than yours, and has a little son a year old. But, beloved mother, do not feel this long. I do assure you, that it was only great love for you that kept me silent. I have abstained a hundred times, when your sympathy, your counsel, would have been most precious, from a wish not to harass you with anxiety. Even now I would abstain, but it has become necessary, on account of the child, for us to live publicly and permanently together; and we have no hope, in the present state of Italian affairs, that we can do it at any better advantage, for several years, than now. My husband is a Roman, of a noble but now impoverished house. His mother died when he was an infant, his father is dead since we met, leaving some property, but encumbered with debts, and in the present state of Rome hardly available, except by living there. He has three older brothers, all provided for in the Papal service,--one as Secretary of the Privy Chamber, the other two as members of the Guard Noble. A similar career would have been opened to him, but he embraced liberal principles, and, with the fall of the Republic, has lost all, as well as the favor of his family, who all sided with the Pope. Meanwhile, having been an officer in the Republican service, it was best for him to leave Rome. He has taken what little money he had, and we plan to live in Florence for the winter. If he or I can get the means, we shall come together to the United States, in the summer;--earlier we could not, on account of the child. He is not in any respect such a person as people in general would expect to find with me. He had no instructor except an old priest, who entirely neglected his education; and of all that is contained in books he is absolutely ignorant, and he has no enthusiasm of character. On the other hand, he has excellent practical sense; has been a judicious observer of all that passed before his eyes; has a nice sense of duty, which, in its unfailing, minute activity, may put most enthusiasts to shame; a very sweet temper, and great native refinement. His love for me has been unswerving and most tender. I have never suffered a pain that he could relieve. His devotion, when I am ill, is to be compared only with yours. His delicacy in trifles, his sweet domestic graces, remind me of E----. In him I have found a home, and one that interferes with no tie. Amid many ills and cares, we have had much joy together, in the sympathy with natural beauty,--with our child,--with all that is innocent and sweet. I do not know whether he will always love me so well, for I am the elder, and the difference will become, in a few years, more perceptible than now. But life is so uncertain, and it is so necessary to take good things with their limitations, that I have not thought it worth while to calculate too curiously. However my other friends may feel, I am sure that _you_ will love him very much, and that he will love you no less. Could we all live together, on a moderate income, you would find peace with us. Heaven grant, that, on returning, I may gain means to effect this object. He, of course, can do nothing, while we are in the United States, but perhaps I can; and now that my health is better, I shall be able to exert myself, if sure that my child is watched by those who love him, and who are good and pure. * * * * * What shall I say of my child? All might seem hyperbole, even to my dearest mother. In him I find satisfaction, for the first time, to the deep wants of my heart. Yet, thinking of those other sweet ones fled, I must look upon him as a treasure only lent. He is a fair child, with blue eyes and light hair; very affectionate, graceful, and sportive. He was baptized, in the Roman Catholic Church, by the name of Angelo Eugene Philip, for his father, grandfather, and my brother. He inherits the title of marquis. Write the name of my child in your Bible, ANGELO OSSOLI, _born September_ 5, 1848. God grant he may live to see you, and may prove worthy of your love! More I do not feel strength to say. You can hardly guess how all attempt to express something about the great struggles and experiences of my European life enfeebles me. When I get home,--if ever I do,--it will be told without this fatigue and excitement. I trust there will be a little repose, before entering anew on this wearisome conflict. I had addressed you twice,--once under the impression that I should not survive the birth of my child; again during the siege of Rome, the father and I being both in danger. I took Mrs. Story, and, when she left Rome, Mr. Cass, into my confidence. Both were kind as sister and brother. Amid much pain and struggle, sweet, is the memory of the generous love I received from William and Emelyn Story, and their uncle. They helped me gently through a most difficult period. Mr. Cass, also, who did not know me at all, has done everything possible for me. * * * * * A letter to her sister fills out these portraits of her husband and child. * * * * * About Ossoli[B] I do not like to say much, as he is an exceedingly delicate person. He is not precisely reserved, but it is not natural to him to talk about the objects of strong affection. I am sure he would not try to describe me to his sister, but would rather she would take her own impression of me; and, as much as possible, I wish to do the same by him. I presume that, to many of my friends, he will be nothing, and they will not understand that I should have life in common with him. But I do not think he will care;--he has not the slightest tinge of self-love. He has, throughout our intercourse, been used to my having many such ties. He has no wish to be anything to persons with whom he does not feel spontaneously bound, and when I am occupied, is happy in himself. But some of my friends and my family, who will see him in the details of practical life, cannot fail to prize the purity and simple strength of his character; and, should he continue to love me as he has done, his companionship will be an inestimable blessing to me. I say _if_, because all human affections are frail, and I have experienced too great revulsions in my own, not to know it. Yet I feel great confidence in the permanence of his love. It has been unblemished so far, under many trials; especially as I have been more desponding and unreasonable, in many ways, than I ever was before, and more so, I hope, than I ever shall be again. But at all such times, he never had a thought except to sustain and cheer me. He is capable of the sacred love,--the love passing that of woman. He showed it to his father, to Rome, to me. Now he loves his child in the same way. I think he will be an excellent father, though he could not speculate about it, nor, indeed, about anything. Our meeting was singular,--fateful, I may say. Very soon he offered me his hand through life, but I never dreamed I should take it. I loved him, and felt very unhappy to leave him; but the connection seemed so every way unfit, I did not hesitate a moment. He, however, thought I should return to him, as I did. I acted upon a strong impulse, and could not analyze at all what passed in my mind. I neither rejoice nor grieve;--for bad or for good, I acted out my character Had I never connected myself with any one, my path was clear; now it is all hid; but, in that case, my development must have been partial. As to marriage, I think the intercourse of heart and mind may be fully enjoyed without entering into this partnership of daily life. Still, I do not find it burdensome. The friction that I have seen mar so much the domestic happiness of others does not occur with us, or, at least, has not occurred. Then, there is the pleasure of always being at hand to help one another. Still, the great novelty, the immense gain, to me, is my relation with my child. I thought the mother's heart lived in me before, but it did not;--I knew nothing about it. Yet, before his birth, I dreaded it. I thought I should not survive: but if I did, and my child did, was I not cruel to bring another into this terrible world? I could not, at that time, get any other view. When he was born, that deep melancholy changed at once into rapture: but it did not last long. Then came the prudential motherhood. I grew a coward, a care-taker, not only for the morrow, but, impiously faithless, for twenty or thirty years ahead. It seemed very wicked to have brought the little tender thing into the midst of cares and perplexities we had not feared in the least for ourselves. I imagined everything;--he was to be in danger of every enormity the Croats were then committing upon the infants of Lombardy;--the house would be burned over his head; but, if he escaped, how were we to get money to buy his bibs and primers? Then his father was to be killed in the fighting, and I to die of my cough, &c. &c. During the siege of Rome, I could not see my little boy. What I endured at that time, in various ways, not many would survive. In the burning sun, I went, every day, to wait, in the crowd, for letters about him. Often they did not come. I saw blood that had streamed on the wall where Ossoli was. I have a piece of a bomb that burst close to him. I sought solace in tending the suffering men; but when I beheld the beautiful fair young men bleeding to death, or mutilated for life, I felt the woe of all the mothers who had nursed each to that full flower, to see them thus cut down. I felt the _consolation_, too,--for those youths died worthily. I was a Mater Dolorosa, and I remembered that she who helped Angelino into the world came from the sign of the Mater Dolorosa. I thought, even if he lives, if he comes into the world at this great troubled time, terrible with perplexed duties, it may be to die thus at twenty years, one of a glorious hecatomb, indeed, but still a sacrifice! It seemed then I was willing he should die. * * * * * Angelino's birth-place is thus sketched: My baby saw mountains when he first looked forward into the world. RIETI,--not only an old classic town of Italy, but one founded by what are now called the Aborigines,--is a hive of very ancient dwellings with red brown roofs, a citadel and several towers. It is in a plain, twelve miles in diameter one way, not much less the other, and entirely encircled with mountains of the noblest form. Casinos and hermitages gleam here and there on their lower slopes. This plain is almost the richest in Italy, and full of vineyards. Rieti is near the foot of the hills on one side, and the rapid Velino makes almost the circuit of its walls, on its way to Terni. I had my apartment shut out from the family, on the bank of this river, and saw the mountains, as I lay on my restless couch. There was a piazza, too, or, as they call it here, a loggia, which hung over the river, where I walked most of the night, for I could not sleep at all in those months. In the wild autumn storms, the stream became a roaring torrent, constantly lit up by lightning flashes, and the sound of its rush was very sublime. I see it yet, as it swept away on its dark green current the heaps of burning straw which the children let down from the bridge. Opposite my window was a vineyard, whose white and purple clusters were my food for three months. It was pretty to watch the vintage,--the asses and wagons loaded with this wealth of amber and rubies,--the naked boys, singing in the trees on which the vines are trained, as they cut the grapes,--the nut-brown maids and matrons, in their red corsets and white head-clothes, receiving them below, while the babies and little children were frolicking in the grass. In Rieti, the ancient Umbrians were married thus. In presence of friends, the man and maid received together the gifts of fire and water; the bridegroom then conducted to his house the bride. At the door, he gave her the keys, and, entering, threw behind him nuts, as a sign that he renounced all the frivolities of boyhood. I intend to write all that relates to the birth of Angelino, in a little book, which I shall, I hope, show you sometime. I have begun it, and then stopped;--it seemed to me he would die. If he lives, I shall finish it, before the details are at all faded in my mind. Rieti is a place where I should have liked to have him born, and where I should like to have him now,--but that the people are so wicked. They are the most ferocious and mercenary population of Italy. I did not know this, when I went there, and merely expected to be solitary and quiet among poor people. But they looked on the "Marchioness" as an ignorant _Inglese_, and they fancy all _Inglesi_ have wealth untold. Me they were bent on plundering in every way. They made me suffer terribly in the first days. [Footnote A: The first part of this chapter is edited by R.W.E.; the remainder by W.H.C.] [Footnote B: Giovanni Angelo Ossoli.] THE PRIVATE MARRIAGE. The high-minded friend, spoken of with such grateful affection by Margaret, in her letter to her mother, thus gracefully narrates the romance of her marriage; and the narrative is a noble proof of the heroic disinterestedness with which, amidst her own engrossing trials, Margaret devoted herself to others. Mrs. Story writes as follows:-- "During the month of November, 1847, we arrived in Rome, purposing to spend the winter there. At that time, Margaret was living in the house of the Marchesa ----, in the Corso, _Ultimo Piano_. Her rooms were pleasant and cheerful, with a certain air of elegance and refinement, but they had not a sunny exposure, that all-essential requisite for health, during the damp Roman winter. Margaret suffered from ill health this winter, and she afterwards attributed it mainly to the fact, that she had not the sun. As soon as she heard of our arrival, she stretched forth a friendly, cordial hand, and greeted us most warmly. She gave us great assistance in our search for convenient lodgings, and we were soon happily established near her. Our intercourse was henceforth most frequent and intimate, and knew no cloud nor coldness. Daily we were much with her, and daily we felt more sensible of the worth and value of our friend. To me she seemed so unlike what I had thought her to be in America, that I continually said, 'How have I misjudged you,--you are not at all such a person as I took you to be.' To this she replied, 'I am not the same person, but in many respects another;--my life has new channels now, and how thankful I am that I have been able to come out into larger interests,--but, partly, you did not know me at home in the true light.' It was true, that I had not known her much personally, when in Boston; but through her friends, who were mine also, I had learned to think of her as a person on intellectual stilts, with a large share of arrogance, and little sweetness of temper. How unlike to this was she now!--so delicate, so simple, confiding, and affectionate; with a true womanly heart and soul, sensitive and generous, and, what was to me a still greater surprise, possessed of so broad a charity, that she could cover with its mantle the faults and defects of all about her. "We soon became acquainted with the young Marquis Ossoli, and met him frequently at Margaret's rooms. He appeared to be of a reserved and gentle nature, with quiet, gentleman-like manners, and there was something melancholy in the expression of his face, which made one desire to know more of him. In figure, he was tall, and of slender frame, with dark hair and eyes; we judged that he was about thirty years of age, possibly younger. Margaret spoke of him most frankly, and soon told us the history of her first acquaintance with him, which, as nearly as I can recall, was as follows:-- "She went to hear vespers, the evening of 'Holy Thursday,' soon after her first coming to Rome, in the spring of 1847, at St. Peter's. She proposed to her companions that some place in the church should be designated, where, after the services, they should meet,--she being inclined, as was her custom always in St. Peter's, to wander alone among the different chapels. When, at length, she saw that the crowd was dispersing, she returned to the place assigned, but could not find her party. In some perplexity, she walked about, with her glass carefully examining each group. Presently, a young man of gentlemanly address came up to her, and begged, if she were seeking any one, that he might be permitted to assist her; and together they continued the search through all parts of the church. At last, it became evident, beyond a doubt, that her party could no longer be there, and, as it was then quite late, the crowd all gone, they went out into the piazza to find a carriage, in which she might go home. In the piazza, in front of St. Peter's, generally may be found many carriages; but, owing to the delay they had made, there were then none, and Margaret was compelled to walk, with her stranger friend, the long distance between the Vatican and the Corso. At this time, she had little command of the language for conversational purposes, and their words were few, though enough to create in each a desire for further knowledge and acquaintance. At her door, they parted, and Margaret, finding her friends already at home, related the adventure." This chance meeting at vesper service in St. Peter's prepared the way for many interviews; and it was before Margaret's departure for Venice, Milan, and Como, that Ossoli first offered her his hand, and was refused. Mrs. Story continues:-- "After her return to Rome, they met again, and he became her constant visitor; and as, in those days, Margaret watched with intense interest the tide of political events, his mind was also turned in the direction of liberty and better government. Whether Ossoli, unassisted, would have been able to emancipate himself from the influence of his family and early education, both eminently conservative and narrow, may be a question; but that he did throw off the shackles, and espouse the cause of Roman liberty with warm zeal, is most certain. Margaret had known Mazzini in London, had partaken of his schemes for the future of his country, and was taking every pains to inform herself in regard to the action of all parties, with a view to write a history of the period. Ossoli brought her every intelligence that might be of interest to her, and busied himself in learning the views of both parties, that she might be able to judge the matter impartially. "Here I may say, that, in the estimation of most of those who were in Italy at this time, the loss of Margaret's history and notes is a great and irreparable one. No one could have possessed so many avenues of direct information from both sides. While she was the friend and correspondent of Mazzini, and knew the springs of action of his party; through her husband's family and connections, she knew the other view; so that, whatever might be the value of her deductions, her facts could not have been other than of highest worth. Together, Margaret and Ossoli went to the meetings of either side; and to her he carried all the flying reports of the day, such as he had heard in the café, or through his friends. "In a short time, we went to Naples, and Margaret, in the course of a few months, to Aquila and Rieti. Meanwhile, we heard from her often by letter, and wrote to urge her to join us in our villa at Sorrento. During this summer, she wrote constantly upon her history of the Italian movement, for which she had collected materials through the past winter. We did not again meet, until the following spring, March, 1849, when we went from Florence back to Rome. Once more we were with her, then, in most familiar every-day intercourse, and as at this time a change of government had taken place,--the Pope having gone to Molo di Gaeta.--we watched with her the great movements of the day. Ossoli was now actively interested on the liberal side; he was holding the office of captain in the _Guardia Civica_, and enthusiastically looking forward to the success of the new measures. "During the spring of 1849, Mazzini came to Rome. He went at once to see Margaret, and at her rooms met Ossoli. After this interview with Mazzini, it was quite evident that they had lost something of the faith and hopeful certainty with which they had regarded the issue, for Mazzini had discovered the want of singleness of purpose in the leaders of the Provisional Government. Still zealously Margaret and Ossoli aided in everything the progress of events; and when it was certain that the French had landed forces at Civita Vecchia, and would attack Rome, Ossoli took station with his men on the walls of the Vatican gardens, where he remained faithfully to the end of the attack. Margaret had, at the same time, the entire charge of one of the hospitals, and was the assistant of the Princess Belgioioso, in charge of '_dei Pellegrini_,' where, during the first day, they received seventy wounded men, French and Romans. "Night and day, Margaret was occupied, and, with the princess, so ordered and disposed the hospitals, that their conduct was truly admirable. All the work was skilfully divided, so that there was no confusion or hurry and, from the chaotic condition in which these places had been left by the priests,--who previously had charge of them,--they brought them to a state of perfect regularity and discipline. Of money they had very little, and they were obliged to give their time and thoughts, in its place. From the Americans in Rome, they raised a subscription for the aid of the wounded of either party; but, besides this, they had scarcely any means to use. I have walked through the wards with Margaret, and seen how comforting was her presence to the poor suffering men. 'How long will the Signora stay?' 'When will the Signora come again?' they eagerly asked. For each one's peculiar tastes she had a care: to one she carried books; to another she told the news of the day; and listened to another's oft-repeated tale of wrongs, as the best sympathy she could give. They raised themselves up on their elbows, to get the last glimpse of her as she was going away. There were some of the sturdy fellows of Garibaldi's Legion there, and to them she listened, as they spoke with delight of their chief, of his courage and skill; for he seemed to have won the hearts of his men in a remarkable manner. "One incident I may as well narrate in this connection. It happened, that, some time before the coming of the French, while Margaret was travelling quite by herself, on her return from a visit to her child, who was out at nurse in the country, she rested for an hour or two at a little wayside _osteria_. While there, she was startled by the _padrone_, who, with great alarm, rushed into the room, and said, 'We are quite lost! here is the Legion Garibaldi! These men always pillage, and, if we do not give all up to them without pay, they will kill us.' Margaret looked out upon the road, and saw that it was quite true, that the legion was coming thither with all speed. For a moment, she said, she felt uncomfortably; for such was the exaggerated account of the conduct of the men, that she thought it quite possible that they would take her horses, and so leave her without the means of proceeding on her journey. On they came, and she determined to offer them a lunch at her own expense; having faith that gentleness and courtesy was the best protection from injury. Accordingly, as soon as they arrived, and rushed boisterously into the _osteria_, she rose, and said to the _padrone_, 'Give these good men wine and bread on my account; for, after their ride, they must need refreshment.' Immediately, the noise and confusion subsided; with respectful bows to her, they seated themselves and partook of the lunch, giving her an account of their journey. When she was ready to go, and her _vettura_ was at the door, they waited upon her, took down the steps, and assisted her with much gentleness and respectfulness of manner, and she drove off, wondering how men with such natures could have the reputation they had. And, so far as we could gather, except in this instance, their conduct was of a most disorderly kind. "Again, on another occasion, she showed how great was her power over rude men. This was when two _contadini_ at Rieti, being in a violent quarrel, had rushed upon each other with knives. Margaret was called by the women bystanders, as the Signora who could most influence them to peace. She went directly up to the men, whose rage was truly awful to behold, and, stepping between them, commanded them to separate. They parted, but with such a look of deadly revenge, that Margaret felt her work was but half accomplished. She therefore sought them out separately, and talked with each, urging forgiveness; it was long, however, before she could see any change of purpose, and only by repeated conversations was it, that she brought about her desire, and saw them meet as friends. After this, her reputation as peace-maker was great, and the women in the neighborhood came to her with long tales of trouble, urging her intervention. I have never known anything more extraordinary than this influence of hers over the passion and violence of the Italian character. Repeated instances come to my mind, when a look from her has had more power to quiet excitement, than any arguments and reasonings that could be brought to bear upon the subject. Something quite superior and apart from them, the people thought her, and yet knew her as the gentle and considerate judge of their vices. "I may also mention here, that Margaret's charities, according to her means, were larger than those of any other whom I ever knew. At one time, in Rome, while she lived upon the simplest, slenderest fare, spending only some ten or twelve cents a day for her dinner, she lent, unsolicited, her last fifty dollars to an artist, who was then in need. That it would ever be returned to her, she did not know; but the doubt did not restrain the hand from giving. In this instance, it was soon repaid her; but her charities were not always towards the most deserving. Repeated instances of the false pretences, under which demands for charity are made, were known to her after she had given to unworthy objects; but no experience of this sort ever checked her kindly impulse to give, and being once deceived taught her no lesson of distrust. She ever listened with ready ear to all who came to her in any form of distress. Indeed, to use the language of another friend, 'the prevalent impression at Rome, among all who knew her, was, that she was a mild saint and a ministering angel.' "I have, in order to bring in these instances of her influence on those about her, deviated from my track. We return to the life she led in Rome during the attack of the French, and her charge of the hospitals, where she spent daily some seven or eight hours, and, often, the entire night. Her feeble frame was a good deal shaken by so uncommon a demand upon her strength, while, at the same time, the anxiety of her mind was intense. I well remember how exhausted and weary she was; how pale and agitated she returned to us after her day's and night's watching; how eagerly she asked for news of Ossoli, and how seldom we had any to give her, for he was unable to send her a word for two or three days at a time. Letters from the country there were few or none, as the communication between Rieti and Rome was cut off. "After one such day, she called me to her bedside, and said that I must consent, for her sake, to keep the SECRET she was about to confide. Then she told me of her marriage; where her child was, and where he was born; and gave me certain papers and parchment documents which I was to keep; and, in the event of her and her husband's death, I was to take the boy to her mother in America, and confide him to her care, and that of her friend, Mrs. ----. "The papers thus given me, I had perfect liberty to read; but after she had told me her story, I desired no confirmation of this fact, beyond what her words had given. One or two of the papers she opened, and we together read them. One was written on parchment, in Latin, and was a certificate, given by the priest who married them, saying that Angelo Eugene Ossoli was the legal heir of whatever title and fortune should come to his father. To this was affixed his seal, with those of the other witnesses, and the Ossoli crest was drawn in full upon the paper. There was also a book, in which Margaret had written the history of her acquaintance and marriage with Ossoli, and of the birth of her child. In giving that to me, she said, 'If I do not survive to tell this myself to my family, this book will be to them invaluable. Therefore keep it for them. If I live, it will be of no use, for my word will be all that they will ask.' I took the papers, and locked them up. Never feeling any desire to look into them, I never did; and as she gave them to me, I returned them to her, when I left Rome for Switzerland. "After this, she often spoke to me of the necessity there had been, and still existed, for her keeping her marriage a secret. At the time, I argued in favor of her making it public, but subsequent events have shown me the wisdom of her decision. The _explanation_ she gave me of the secret marriage was this: "They were married in December, soon after,--as I think, though I am not positive,--the death of the old Marquis Ossoli. The estate he had left was undivided, and the two brothers, attached to the Papal household, were to be the executors. This patrimony was not large, but, when fairly divided, would bring to each a little property,--an income sufficient, with economy, for life in Rome. Everyone knows, that law is subject to ecclesiastical influence in Rome, and that marriage with a Protestant would be destructive to all prospects of favorable administration. And beside being of another religious faith, there was, in this case, the additional crime of having married a liberal,--one who had publicly interested herself in radical views. Taking the two facts together, there was good reason to suppose, that, if the marriage were known, Ossoli must be a beggar, and a banished man, under the then existing government; while, by waiting a little, there was a chance,--a fair one, too,--of an honorable post under the new government, whose formation every one was anticipating. Leaving Rome, too, at that time, was deserting the field wherein they might hope to work much good, and where they felt that they were needed. Ossoli's brothers had long before begun to look jealously upon him. Knowing his acquaintance with Margaret, they feared the influence she might exert over his mind in favor of liberal sentiments, and had not hesitated to threaten him with the Papal displeasure. Ossoli's education had been such, that it certainly argues an uncommon elevation of character, that he remained so firm and single in his political views, and was so indifferent to the pecuniary advantages which his former position offered, since, during many years, the Ossoli family had been high in favor and in office, in Rome, and the same vista opened for his own future, had he chosen to follow their lead. The Pope left for Molo di Gaeta, and then came a suspension of all legal procedure, so that the estate was never divided, before we left Italy, and I do not know that it has ever been. "Ossoli had the feeling, that, while his own sister and family could not be informed of his marriage, no others should know of it; and from day to day they hoped on for the favorable change which should enable them to declare it. Their child was born; and, for his sake, in order to defend him, as Margaret said, from the stings of poverty, they were patient waiters for the restored law of the land. Margaret felt that she would, at any cost to herself, gladly secure for her child a condition above want; and, although it was a severe trial,--as her letters to us attest,--she resolved to wait, and hope, and keep her secret. At the time when she took me into her confidence, she was so full of anxiety and dread of some shock, from which she might not recover, that it was absolutely necessary to make it known to some friend. She was living with us at the time, and she gave it to me. Most sacredly, but timidly, did I keep her secret; for, all the while, I was tormented with a desire to be of active service to her, and I was incapacitated from any action by the position in which I was placed. "Ossoli's post was one of considerable danger, he being in one of the most exposed places; and, as Margaret saw his wounded and dying comrades, she felt that another shot might take him from her, or bring him to her care in the hospital. Eagerly she watched the carts, as they came up with their suffering loads, dreading that her worst fears might be confirmed. No argument of ours could persuade Ossoli to leave his post to take food or rest. Sometimes we went to him, and carried a concealed basket of provisions, but he shared it with so many of his fellows, that his own portion must have been almost nothing. Haggard, worn, and pale, he walked over the Vatican grounds with us, pointing out, now here, now there, where some poor fellow's blood sprinkled the wall; Margaret was with us, and for a few moments they could have an anxious talk about their child. "To get to the child, or to send to him, was quite impossible, and for days they were in complete ignorance about him. At length, a letter came; and in it the nurse declared that unless they should immediately send her, in advance-payment, a certain sum of money, she would altogether abandon Angelo. It seemed, at first, impossible to forward the money, the road was so insecure, and the bearer of any parcel was so likely to be seized by one party or the other, and to be treated as a spy. But finally, after much consideration, the sum was sent to the address of a physician, who had been charged with the care of the child. I think it did reach its destination, and for a while answered the purpose of keeping the wretched woman faithful to her charge." AQUILA AND RIETI. Extracts from Margaret's and Ossoli's letters will guide us more into the heart of this home-tragedy, so sanctified with holy hope, sweet love, and patient heroism. They shall be introduced by a passage from a journal written many years before. "My Child! O, Father, give me a bud on my tree of life, so scathed by the lightning and bound by the frost! Surely a being born wholly of my being, would not let me lie so still and cold in lonely sadness. This is a new sorrow; for always, before, I have wanted a superior or equal, but now it seems that only the feeling of a parent for a child could exhaust the richness of one's soul. All powerful Nature, how dost thou lead me into thy heart and rebuke every factitious feeling, every thought of pride, which has severed me from the Universe! How did I aspire to be a pure flame, ever pointing upward on the altar! But these thoughts of consecration, though true to the time, are false to the whole. There needs no consecration to the wise heart for all is pervaded by One Spirit, and the Soul of all existence is the Holy of Holies. I thought ages would pass, before I had this parent feeling, and then, that the desire would rise from my fulness of being. But now it springs up in my poverty and sadness. I am well aware that I ought not to be so happy. I do not deserve to be well beloved in any way, far less as the mother by her child. I am too rough and blurred an image of the Creator, to become a bestower of life. Yet, if I refuse to be anything else than my highest self, the true beauty will finally glow out in fulness." At what cost, were bought the blessings so long pined for! Early in the summer of 1848, Margaret left Rome for Aquila, a small, old town, once a baronial residence, perched among the mountains of Abruzzi. She thus sketches her retreat:-- "I am in the midst of a theatre of glorious, snow-crowned mountains, whose pedestals are garlanded with the olive and mulberry, and along whose sides run bridle-paths, fringed with almond groves and vineyards. The valleys are yellow with saffron flowers; the grain fields enamelled with the brilliant blue corn-flower and red poppy. They are of intoxicating beauty, and like nothing in America. The old genius of Europe has so mellowed even the marbles here, that one cannot have the feeling of holy virgin loneliness, as in the New World. The spirits of the dead crowd me in most solitary places. Here and there, gleam churches or shrines. The little town, much ruined, lies on the slope of a hill, with the houses of the barons gone to decay, and unused churches, over whose arched portals are faded frescoes, with the open belfry, and stone wheel-windows, always so beautiful. Sweet little paths lead away through the fields to convents,--one of Passionists, another of Capuchins; and the draped figures of the monks, pacing up and down the hills, look very peaceful. In the churches still open, are pictures, not by great masters, but of quiet, domestic style, which please me much, especially one of the Virgin offering her breast to the child Jesus. There is often sweet music in these churches; they are dressed with fresh flowers, and the incense is not oppressive, so freely sweeps through them the mountain breeze." Here Margaret remained but a month, while Ossoli was kept fast by his guard duties in Rome. "_Addio, tutto caro_," she writes; "I shall receive you with the greatest joy, when you can come. If it were only possible to be nearer to you! for, except the good air and the security, this place does not please me." And again:--"How much I long to be near you! You write nothing of yourself, and this makes me anxious and sad. Dear and good! I pray for thee often, now that it is all I can do for thee. We must hope that Destiny will at last grow weary of persecuting. Ever thy affectionate." Meantime Ossoli writes:--"Why do you not send me tidings of yourself, every post-day? since the post leaves Aquila three times a week. I send you journals or letters every time the post leaves Rome. You should do the same. Take courage, and thus you will make me happier also; and you can think how sad I must feel in not being near you, dearest, to care for all your wants." By the middle of July, Margaret could bear her loneliness no longer, and, passing the mountains, advanced to Rieti, within the frontier of the Papal States. Here Ossoli could sometimes visit her on a Sunday, by travelling in the night from Rome. "Do not fail to come," writes Margaret. "I shall have your coffee warm. You will arrive early, and I can see the diligence pass the bridge from my window." But now threatened a new trial, terrible under the circumstances, yet met with the loving heroism that characterized all her conduct. The civic guard was ordered to prepare for marching to Bologna. Under date of August 17th, Ossoli writes:--"_Mia Cara!_ How deplorable is my state! I have suffered a most severe struggle. If your condition were other than it is, I could resolve more easily; but, in the present moment, I cannot leave you! Ah, how cruel is Destiny! I understand well how much you would sacrifice yourself for me, and am deeply grateful; but I cannot yet decide." Margaret is alone, without a single friend, and not only among strangers, but surrounded by people so avaricious, cunning, and unscrupulous, that she has to be constantly on the watch to avoid being fleeced; she is very poor, and has no confidant, even in Rome, to consult with; she is ill, and fears death in the near crisis; yet thus, with true Roman greatness, she counsels her husband:--"It seems, indeed, a marvel how all things go contrary to us! That, just at this moment, you should be called upon to go away. But do what is for your honor. If honor requires it, go. I will try to sustain myself. I leave it to your judgment when to come,--if, indeed, you can ever come again! At least, we have had some hours of peace together, if now it is all over. Adieu, love; I embrace thee always, and pray for thy welfare. Most affectionately, adieu." * * * * * From this trial, however, she was spared. Pio Nono hesitated to send the civic guard to the north of Italy. Then Margaret writes:--"On our own account, love, I shall be most grateful, if you are not obliged to go. But how unworthy, in the Pope! He seems now a man without a heart. And that traitor, Charles Albert! He will bear the curse of all future ages. Can you learn particulars from Milan? I feel sad for our poor friends there; how much they must suffer! * * * I shall be much more tranquil to have you at my side, for it would be sad to die alone, without the touch of one dear hand. Still, I repeat what I said in my last; if duty prevents you from coming, I will endeavor to take care of myself." Again, two days later, she says:--"I feel, love, a profound sympathy with you, but am not able to give perfectly wise counsel. It seems to me, indeed, the worst possible moment to take up arms, except in the cause of duty, of honor; for, with the Pope so cold, and his ministers so undecided, nothing can be well or successfully done. If it is possible for you to wait for two or three weeks, the public state will be determined,--as will also mine,--and you can judge more calmly. Otherwise, it seems to me that I ought to say nothing. Only, if you go, come here first. I must see you once more. Adieu, dear. Our misfortunes are many and unlooked for. Not often does destiny demand a greater price for some happy moments. Yet never do I repent of our affection; and for thee, if not for me, I hope that life has still some good in store. Once again, adieu! May God give thee counsel and help, since they are not in the power of thy affectionate Margherita." On the 5th of September, Ossoli was "at her side," and together, with glad and grateful hearts, they welcomed their boy; though the father was compelled to return the next day to Rome. Even then, however, a new chapter of sorrows was opening. By indiscreet treatment, Margaret was thrown into violent fever, and became unable to nurse her child. Her waiting maid, also, proved so treacherous, that she was forced to dismiss her, and wished "never to set eyes on her more;" and the family, with whom she was living, displayed most detestable meanness. Thus helpless, ill, and solitary, she could not even now enjoy the mother's privilege. Yet she writes cheerfully:--"My present nurse is a very good one, and I feel relieved. We must have courage but it is a great care, alone and ignorant, to guard an infant in its first days of life. He is very pretty for his age; and, without knowing what name I intended giving him, the people in the house call him _Angiolino_, because he is so lovely." Again:--"He is so dear! It seems to me, among all disasters and difficulties, that if he lives and is well, he will become a treasure for us two, that will compensate us for everything." And yet again:--"This ---- is faithless, like the rest. Spite of all his promises, he will not bring the matter to inoculate Nino, though, all about us, persons are dying with small-pox. I cannot sleep by night, and I weep by day, I am so disgusted; but you are too far off to help me. The baby is more beautiful every hour. He is worth all the trouble he causes me,--poor child that I am,--alone here, and abused by everybody." Yet new struggles; new sorrows! Ossoli writes:-- "Our affairs must be managed with the utmost caution imaginable, since my thought would be to keep the baby out of Rome for the sake of greater secrecy, if only we can find a good nurse who will take care of him like a mother." To which Margaret replies:--"He is always so charming, how can I ever, ever leave him! I wake in the night,--I look at him. I think: Ah, it is impossible! He is so beautiful and good, I could die for him!" Once more:--"In seeking rooms, do not pledge me to remain in Rome, for it seems to me, often, I cannot stay long without seeing the boy. He is so dear, and life seems so uncertain. It is necessary that I should be in Rome a month, at least, to write, and also to be near you. But I must be free to return here, if I feel too anxious and suffering for him. O, love! how difficult is life! But thou art good! If it were only possible to make thee happy!" And, finally, "Signora speaks very highly of ----, the nurse of Angelo, and says that her aunt is an excellent woman, and that the brothers are all good. Her conduct pleases me well. This consoles me a little, in the prospect of leaving my child, if that is necessary." So, early in November, Ossoli came for her, and they returned together. In December, however, Margaret passed a week more with her darling, making two fatiguing and perilous journeys, as snows had fallen on the mountains, and the streams were much swollen by the rains. And then, from the combined motives of being near her husband, watching and taking part in the impending struggle of liberalism, earning support by her pen, preparing her book, and avoiding suspicion, she remained for three months in Rome. "How many nights I have passed," she writes, "entirely in contriving possible means, by which, through resolution and effort on my part, that one sacrifice could be avoided. But it was impossible. I could not take the nurse from her family; I could not remove Angelo, without immense difficulty and risk. It is singular, how everything has worked to give me more and more sorrow. Could I but have remained in peace, cherishing the messenger dove, I should have asked no more, but should have felt overpaid for all the pains and bafflings of my sad and broken life." In March, she flies back to Rieti, and finds "our treasure in the best of health, and plump, though small. When first I took him in my arms, he made no sound, but leaned his head against my bosom, and kept it there, as if he would say, How could you leave me? They told me, that all the day of my departure he would not be comforted, always looking toward the door. He has been a strangely precocious infant, I think, through sympathy with me, for I worked very hard before his birth, with the hope that all my spirit might be incarnated in him. In that regard, it may have been good for him to be with these more instinctively joyous natures. I see that he is more serene, is less sensitive, than when with me, and sleeps better. The most solid happiness I have known has been when he has gone to sleep in my arms. What cruel sacrifices have I made to guard my secret for the present, and to have the mode of disclosure at my own option! It will, indeed, be just like all the rest, if these sacrifices are made in vain." * * * * * At Rieti, Margaret rested till the middle of April, when, returning once more to Rome, she was, as we have seen, shut up within the beleagured city. The siege ended, the anxious mother was free to seek her child once more, in his nest among the mountains. Her fears had been but too prophetic. "Though the physician sent me reassuring letters," she writes, "I yet often seemed to hear Angelino calling to me amid the roar of the cannon, and always his tone was of crying. And when I came, I found mine own fast waning to the tomb! His nurse, lovely and innocent as she appeared, had betrayed him, for lack of a few _scudi_! He was worn to a skeleton; his sweet, childish grace all gone! Everything I had endured seemed light to what I felt when I saw him too weak to smile, or lift his wasted little hand. Now, by incessant care, we have brought him back,--who knows if that be a deed of love?--into this hard world once more. But I could not let him go, unless I went with him; and I do hope that the cruel law of my life will, at least, not oblige us to be separated. When I saw his first returning smile,--that poor, wan, feeble smile!--and more than four weeks we watched him night and day, before we saw it,--new resolution dawned in my heart. I resolved to live, day by day, hour by hour, for his dear sake. So, if he is only treasure lent,--if he too must go, as sweet Waldo, Pickie, Hermann, did,--as all _my_ children do!--I shall at least have these days and hours with him." How intolerable was this last blow to one stretched so long on the rack, is plain from Margaret's letters. "I shall never again," she writes, "be perfectly, be religiously generous, so terribly do I need for myself the love I have given to other sufferers. When you read this, I hope your heart will be happy; for I still like to know that others are happy,--it consoles me." Again her agony wrung from her these bitter words,--the bitterest she ever uttered,--words of transient madness, yet most characteristic:--"Oh God! help me, is all my cry. Yet I have little faith in the Paternal love I need, so ruthless or so negligent seems the government of this earth. I feel calm, yet sternly, towards Fate. This last plot against me has been so cruelly, cunningly wrought, that I shall never acquiesce. I submit, because useless resistance is degrading, but I demand an explanation. I see that it is probable I shall never receive one, while I live here, and suppose I can bear the rest of the suspense, since I have comprehended all its difficulties in the first moments. Meanwhile, I live day by day, though not on manna." But now comes a sweeter, gentler strain:--"I have been the object of great love from the noble and the humble; I have felt it towards both. Yet I am _tired out_,--tired of thinking and hoping,--tired of seeing men err and bleed. I take interest in some plans,--Socialism for instance,--but the interest is shallow as the plans. These are needed, are even good; but man will still blunder and weep, as he has done for so many thousand years. Coward and footsore, gladly would I creep into some green recess, where I might see a few not unfriendly faces, and where not more wretches should come than I could relieve. Yes! I am weary, and faith soars and sings no more. Nothing good of me is left except at the bottom of the heart, a melting tenderness:--'She loves much.'" CALM AFTER STORM. Morning rainbows usher in tempests, and certainly youth's romantic visions had prefigured a stormy day of life for Margaret. But there was yet to be a serene and glowing hour before the sun went down. Angelo grew strong and lively once more; rest and peace restored her elasticity of spirit, and extracts from various letters will show in what tranquil blessedness, the autumn and winter glided by. After a few weeks' residence at Rieti, the happy three journeyed on, by way of Perugia, to Florence, where they arrived at the end of September. Thence, Margaret writes:-- It was so pleasant at Perugia! The pure mountain air is such perfect elixir, the walks are so beautiful on every side, and there is so much to excite generous and consoling feelings! I think the works of the Umbrian school are never well seen except in their home;--they suffer by comparison with works more rich in coloring, more genial, more full of common life. The depth and tenderness of their expression is lost on an observer stimulated to a point out of their range. Now, I can prize them. We went every morning to some church rich in pictures, returning at noon for breakfast. After breakfast, we went into the country, or to sit and read under the trees near San Pietro. Thus I read Nicolo di' Lapi, a book unenlivened by a spark of genius, but interesting, to me, as illustrative of Florence. Our little boy gained strength rapidly there;--every day he was able to go out with us more. He is now full of life and gayety. We hope he will live, and grow into a stout man yet. Our journey here was delightful;--it is the first time I have seen Tuscany when the purple grape hangs garlanded from tree to tree. We were in the early days of the vintage: the fields were animated by men and women, some of the latter with such pretty little bare feet, and shy, soft eyes, under the round straw hat. They were beginning to cut the vines, but had not done enough to spoil any of the beauty. Here, too, I feel better pleased than ever before. Florence seems so cheerful and busy, after ruined Rome, I feel as if I could forget the disasters of the day, for a while, in looking on the treasures she inherits. * * * * * To-day we have been out in the country, and found a little chapel, full of _contadine,_ their lovers waiting outside the door. They looked charming in their black veils,--the straw hat hanging on the arm,--with shy, glancing eyes, and cheeks pinched rosy by the cold; for it is cold here as in New England. On foot, we have explored a great part of the environs; and till now I had no conception of their beauty. When here before, I took only the regular drives, as prescribed for all lady and gentlemen travellers. This evening we returned by a path that led to the banks of the Arno. The Duomo, with the snowy mountains, were glorious in the rosy tint and haze, just before sunset. What a difference it makes to come home to a child!--how it fills up all the gaps of life, just in the way that is most consoling, most refreshing! Formerly, I used to feel sad at that hour; the day had not been nobly spent, I had not done my duty to myself and others, and I felt so lonely! Now I never feel lonely; for, even if my little boy dies, our souls will remain eternally united. And I feel _infinite_ hope for him,--hope that he will serve God and man more loyally than I have done; and, seeing how full he is of life,--how much he can afford to throw away,--I feel the inexhaustibleness of nature, and console myself for my own incapacities. * * * * * _Florence, Oct. 14, 1849._--Weary in spirit, with the deep disappointments of the last year, I wish to dwell little on these things for the moment, but seek some consolation in the affections. My little boy is quite well now, and I often am happy in seeing how joyous and full of activity he seems. Ossoli, too, feels happier here. The future is full of difficulties for us, but, having settled our plans for the present, we shall set it aside while we may. "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof;" and if the good be not always sufficient, in our case it is; so let us say grace to our dinner of herbs. * * * * * _Florence, Nov. 7._--Dearest Mother,--Of all your endless acts and words of love, never was any so dear to me as your last letter;--so generous, so sweet, so holy! What on earth is so precious as a mother's love; and who has a mother like mine! I was thinking of you and my father, all that first day of October, wishing to write, only there was much to disturb me that day, as the police were threatening to send us away. It is only since I have had my own child that I have known how much I always failed to do what I might have done for the happiness of you both; only since I have seen so much of men and their trials, that I have learned to prize my father as he deserved; only since I have had a heart daily and hourly testifying to me its love, that I have understood, too late, what it was for you to be deprived of it. It seems to me as if I had never sympathized with you as I ought, or tried to embellish and sustain your life, as far as is possible, after such an irreparable wound. It will be sad for me to leave Italy, uncertain of return. Yet when I think of you, beloved mother; of brothers and sisters, and many friends, I wish to come. Ossoli is perfectly willing. He leaves in Rome a sister, whom he dearly loves. His aunt is dying now. He will go among strangers; but to him, as to all the young Italians, America seems the land of liberty. He hopes, too, that a new revolution will favor return, after a number of years, and that then he may find really a home in Italy. All this is dark;--we can judge only for the present moment. The decision will rest with me, and I shall wait till the last moment, as I always do, that I may have all the reasons before me. I thought, to-day, ah, if she could only be with us now! But who knows how long this interval of peace will last? I have learned to prize such, as the halcyon prelude to the storm. It is now about a fortnight, since the police gave us leave to stay, and we feel safe in our little apartment. We have no servant except the nurse, with occasional aid from the porter's wife, and now live comfortably so, tormented by no one, helping ourselves. In the evenings, we have a little fire now;--the baby sits on his stool between us. He makes me think how I sat on mine, in the chaise, between you and father. He is exceedingly fond of flowers;--he has been enchanted, this evening, by this splendid Gardenia, and these many crimson flowers that were given me at Villa Correggi, where a friend took us in his carriage. It was a luxury, this ride, as we have entirely renounced the use of a carriage for ourselves. How enchanted you would have been with that villa! It seems now as if, with the certainty of a very limited income, we could be so happy! But I suppose, if we had it, one of us would die, or the baby. Do not you die, my beloved mother;--let us together have some halcyon moments, again, with God, with nature, with sweet childhood, with the remembrance of pure trust and good intent; away from perfidy and care, and the blight of noble designs. Ossoli wishes you were here, almost as much as I. When there is anything really lovely and tranquil, he often says, "Would not '_La Madre_' like that?" He wept when he heard your letter. I never saw him weep at any other time, except when his father died, and when the French entered Rome. He has, I think, even a more holy feeling about a mother, from having lost his own, when very small. It has been a life-long want with him. He often shows me a little scar on his face, made by a jealous dog, when his mother was caressing him as an infant. He prizes that blemish much. * * * * * _Florence, December_ 1, 1849.--I do not know what to write about the baby, he changes so much,--has so many characters. He is like me in that, for his father's character is simple and uniform, though not monotonous, any more than are the flowers of spring flowers of the valley. Angelino is now in the most perfect rosy health,--a very gay, impetuous, ardent, but sweet-tempered child. He seems to me to have nothing in common with his first babyhood, with its ecstatic smiles, its exquisite sensitiveness, and a distinction in the gesture and attitudes that struck everybody. His temperament is apparently changed by taking the milk of these robust women. He is now come to quite a knowing age,--fifteen months. In the morning, as soon as dressed, he signs to come into our room; then draws our curtain with his little dimpled hand, kisses me rather violently, pats my face, laughs, crows, shows his teeth, blows like the bellows, stretches himself, and says "_bravo_." Then, having shown off all his accomplishments, he expects, as a reward, to be tied in his chair, and have his playthings. These engage him busily, but still he calls to us to sing and drum, to enliven the scene. Sometimes he summons me to kiss his hand, and laughs very much at this. Enchanting is that baby-laugh, all dimples and glitter,--so strangely arch and innocent! Then I wash and dress him. That is his great time. He makes it last as long as he can, insisting to dress and wash me the while, kicking, throwing the water about, and full of all manner of tricks, such as, I think, girls never dream of. Then comes his walk;--we have beautiful walks here for him, protected by fine trees, always warm in mid-winter. The bands are playing in the distance, and children of all ages are moving about, and sitting with their nurses. His walk and sleep give me about three hours in the middle of the day. I feel so refreshed by his young life, and Ossoli diffuses such a power and sweetness over every day, that I cannot endure to think yet of our future. Too much have we suffered already, trying to command it. I do not feel force to make any effort yet. I suppose that very soon now I must do something, and hope I shall feel able when the time comes. My constitution seems making an effort to rally, by dint of much sleep. I had slept so little, for a year and a half, and, after the birth of the child, I had such anxiety and anguish when separated from him, that I was consumed as by nightly fever. The last two months at Rome would have destroyed almost any woman. Then, when I went to him, he was so ill, and I was constantly up with him at night, carrying him about. Now, for two months, we have been tranquil. We have resolved to enjoy being together as much as we can, in this brief interval,--perhaps all we shall ever know of peace. It is very sad we have no money, we could be so quietly happy a while. I rejoice in all Ossoli did; but the results, in this our earthly state, are disastrous, especially as my strength is now so impaired. This much I hope, in life or death, to be no more separated from Angelino. Last winter, I made the most vehement efforts at least to redeem the time, hoping thus good for the future. But, of at least two volumes written at that time, no line seems of any worth. I had suffered much constraint,--much that was uncongenial, harassing, even torturing, before; but this kind of pain found me unprepared;--the position of a mother separated from her only child is too frightfully unnatural. * * * * * The Christmas holidays interest me now, through my child, as they never did for myself. I like to go out to watch the young generation who will be his contemporaries. On Monday, we went to the _Caseine_. After we had taken the drive, we sat down on a stone seat in the sunny walk, to see the people pass;--the Grand Duke and his children; the elegant Austrian officers, who will be driven out of Italy when Angelino is a man; Princess Demidoff; Harry Lorrequer; an absurd brood of fops; many lovely children; many little frisking dogs, with their bells, &c. The sun shone brightly on the Arno; a barque moved gently by; all seemed good to the baby. He laid himself back in my arms, smiling, singing to himself, and dancing his feet. I hope he will retain some trace in his mind of the perpetual exhilarating picture of Italy. It cannot but be important in its influence while yet a child, to walk in these stately gardens, full of sculpture, and hear the untiring music of the fountains. Christmas-eve we went to the Annunziata, for midnight mass. Though the service is not splendid here as in Rome, we yet enjoyed it;--sitting in one of the side chapels, at the foot of a monument, watching the rich crowds steal gently by, every eye gleaming, every gesture softened by the influence of the pealing choir, and the hundred silver lamps swinging their full light, in honor of the abused Emanuel. But far finest was it to pass through the Duomo. No one was there. Only the altars were lit up, and the priests, who were singing, could not be seen by the faint light. The vast solemnity of the interior is thus really felt. The hour was worthy of Brunelleschi. I hope he walked there so. The Duomo is more divine than St. Peter's, and worthy of genius pure and unbroken. St. Peter's is, like Rome, a mixture of sublimest heaven with corruptest earth. I adore the Duomo, though no place can now be to me like St. Peter's, where has been passed the splendidest part of my life. My feeling was always perfectly regal, on entering the piazza of St. Peter's. No spot on earth is worthier the sunlight;--on none does it fall so fondly. * * * * * You ask me, how I employ myself here. I have been much engaged in writing out my impressions, which will be of worth so far as correct. I am anxious only to do historical justice to facts and persons; but there will not, so far as I am aware, be much thought, for I believe I have scarce expressed what lies deepest in my mind. I take no pains, but let the good genius guide my pen. I did long to lead a simple, natural life, _at home_, learning of my child, and writing only when imperatively urged by the need of utterance; but when we were forced to give up the hope of subsisting on a narrow independence, without tie to the public, we gave up the peculiar beauty of our lives, and I strive no more. I only hope to make good terms with the publishers. Then, I have been occupied somewhat in reading Louis Blanc's Ten Years, Lamartine's Girondists, and other books of that class, which throw light on recent transactions. I go into society, too, somewhat, and see several delightful persons, in an intimate way. The Americans meet twice a week, at the house of Messrs. Mozier and Chapman, and I am often present, on account of the friendly interest of those resident here. With our friends, the Greenoughs, I have twice gone to the opera. Then I see the Brownings often, and love and admire them both, more and more, as I know them better. Mr. Browning enriches every hour I pass with him, and is a most cordial, true, and noble man. One of my most highly prized Italian friends, also, Marchioness Arconati Visconti, of Milan, is passing the winter here, and I see her almost every day. * * * * * My love for Ossoli is most pure and tender, nor has any one, except my mother or little children, loved me so genuinely as he does. To some, I have been obliged to make myself known; others have loved me with a mixture of fancy and enthusiasm, excited by my talent at embellishing life. But Ossoli loves me from simple affinity;--he loves to be with me, and to serve and soothe me. Life will probably be a severe struggle, but I hope I shall be able to live through all that is before us, and not neglect my child or his father. He has suffered enough since we met;--it has ploughed furrows in his life. He has done all he could, and cannot blame himself. Our outward destiny looks dark, but we must brave it as we can. I trust we shall always feel mutual tenderness, and Ossoli has a simple, childlike piety, that will make it easier for him. MARGARET AND HER PEERS. Pure and peaceful as was the joy of Margaret's Florence winter, it was ensured and perfected by the fidelity of friends, who hedged around with honor the garden of her home. She had been called to pass through a most trying ordeal, and the verdict of her peers was heightened esteem and love. With what dignified gratitude she accepted this well-earned proof of confidence, will appear from the following extracts. TO MRS. E.S. Thus far, my friends have received news that must have been an unpleasant surprise to them, in a way that, _á moi_, does them great honor. None have shown littleness or displeasure, at being denied my confidence while they were giving their own. Many have expressed the warmest sympathy, and only one has shown a disposition to transgress the limit I myself had marked, and to ask questions. With her, I think, this was because she was annoyed by what people said, and wished to be able to answer them. I replied to her, that I had communicated already all I intended, and should not go into detail;--that when unkind things were said about me, she should let them pass. Will you, dear E----, do the same? I am sure your affection for me will prompt you to add, that you feel confident whatever I have done has been in a good spirit, and not contrary to _my_ ideas of right. For the rest, you will not admit for me,--as I do not for myself,--the rights of the social inquisition of the United States to know all the details of my affairs. If my mother is content; if Ossoli and I are content; if our child, when grown up, shall be content; that is enough. You and I know enough of the United States to be sure that many persons there will blame whatever is peculiar. The lower-minded persons, everywhere, are sure to think that whatever is mysterious must be bad. But I think there will remain for me a sufficient number of friends to keep my heart warm, and to help me earn my bread;--that is all that is of any consequence. Ossoli seems to me more lovely and good every day; our darling child is well now, and every day more gay and playful. For his sake I shall have courage; and hope some good angel will show us the way out of our external difficulties. TO W.W.S. It was like you to receive with such kindness the news of my marriage. A less generous person would have been displeased, that, when we had been drawn so together,--when we had talked so freely, and you had shown towards me such sweet friendship,--I had not told you. Often did I long to do so, but I had, for reasons that seemed important, made a law to myself to keep this secret as rigidly as possible, up to a certain moment. That moment came. Its decisions were not such as I had hoped; but it left me, at least, without that painful burden, which I trust never to bear again. Nature keeps so many secrets, that I had supposed the moral writers exaggerated the dangers and plagues of keeping them; but they cannot exaggerate. All that can be said about mine is, that I at least acted out, with, to me, tragic thoroughness, "The wonder, a woman keeps a secret." As to my not telling _you_, I can merely say, that I was keeping the information from my family and dearest friends at home; and, had you remained near me a very little later, you would have been the very first person to whom I should have spoken, as you would have been the first, on this side of the water, to whom I should have written, had I known where to address you. Yet I hardly hoped for your sympathy, dear W----. I am very glad if I have it. May brotherly love ever be returned unto you in like measure. Ossoli desires his love and respect to be testified to you both. TO THE MARCHIONESS VISCONTI ARCONATI. Reading a book called "The Last Days of the Republic in Rome," I see that my letter, giving my impressions of that period, may well have seemed to you strangely partial. If we can meet as once we did, and compare notes in the same spirit of candor, while making mutual allowance for our different points of view, your testimony and opinions would be invaluable to me. But will you have patience with my democracy,--my revolutionary spirit? Believe that in thought I am more radical than ever. The heart of Margaret you know,--it is always the same. Mazzini is immortally dear to me--a thousand times deafer for all the trial I saw made of him in Rome;--dearer for all he suffered. Many of his brave friends perished there. We who, less worthy, survive, would fain make up for the loss, by our increased devotion to him, the purest, the most disinterested of patriots, the most affectionate of brothers. You will not love me less that I am true to him. Then, again, how will it affect you to know that I have united my destiny with that of an obscure young man,--younger than myself; a person of no intellectual culture, and in whom, in short, you will see no reason for my choosing; yet more, that this union is of long standing; that we have with us our child, of a year old, and that it is only lately I acquainted my family with the fact? If you decide to meet with me as before, and wish to say something about the matter to your friends, it will be true to declare that there have been pecuniary reasons for this concealment. But _to you_, in confidence, I add, this is only half the truth; and I cannot explain, or satisfy my dear friend further. I should wish to meet her independent of all relations, but, as we live in the midst of "society," she would have to inquire for me now as Margaret Ossoli. That being done, I should like to say nothing more on the subject. However you may feel about all this, dear Madame Arconati, you will always be the same in my eyes. I earnestly wish you may not feel estranged; but, if you do, I would prefer that you should act upon it. Let us meet as friends, or not at all. In all events, I remain ever yours, MARGARET. TO THE MARCHIONESS VISCONTI ARCONATI. My loved friend,--I read your letter with greatest content. I did not know but that there might seem something offensively strange in the circumstances I mentioned to you. Goethe says, "There is nothing men pardon so little as singular conduct, for which no reason is given;" and, remembering this, I have been a little surprised at the even increased warmth of interest with which the little American society of Florence has received me, with the unexpected accessories of husband and child,--asking no questions, and seemingly satisfied to find me thus accompanied. With you, indeed, I thought it would be so, because you are above the world; only, as you have always walked in the beaten path, though with noble port, and feet undefiled, I thought you might not like your friends to be running about in these blind alleys. It glads my heart, indeed, that you do not care for this, and that we may meet in love. You speak of our children. Ah! dear friend, I do, indeed, feel we shall have deep sympathy there. I do not believe mine will be a brilliant child, and, indeed, I see nothing peculiar about him. Yet he is to me a source of ineffable joys,--far purer, deeper, than anything I ever felt before,--like what Nature had sometimes given, but more intimate, more sweet. He loves me very much; his little heart clings to mine. I trust, if he lives, to sow there no seeds which are not good, to be always growing better for his sake. Ossoli, too, will be a good father. He has very little of what is called intellectual development, but unspoiled instincts, affections pure and constant, and a quiet sense of duty, which, to me,--who have seen much of the great faults in characters of enthusiasm and genius,--seems of highest value. When you write by post, please direct "Marchesa Ossoli," as all the letters come to that address. I did not explain myself on that point. The fact is, it looks to me silly for a radical like me to be carrying a title; and yet, while Ossoli is in his native land, it seems disjoining myself from him, not to bear it. It is a sort of thing that does not naturally belong to me, and, unsustained by fortune, is but a _souvenir_ even for Ossoli. Yet it has appeared to me, that for him to drop an inherited title would be, in some sort, to acquiesce in his brothers' disclaiming him, and to abandon a right he may passively wish to maintain for his child. How does it seem to you? I am not very clear about it. If Ossoli should drop the title, it would be a suitable moment to do so on becoming an inhabitant of Republican America. TO MRS. C.T. What you say of the meddling curiosity of people repels me, it is so different here. When I made my appearance with a husband and a child of a year old, nobody did the least act to annoy me. All were most cordial; none asked or implied questions. Yet there were not a few who might justly have complained, that, when they were confiding to me all their affairs, and doing much to serve me, I had observed absolute silence to them. Others might, for more than one reason, be displeased at the choice I made. All have acted in the kindliest and most refined manner. An Italian lady, with whom I was intimate,--who might be qualified in the Court Journal, as one of the highest rank, sustained by the most scrupulous decorum,--when I wrote, "Dear friend, I am married; I have a child. There are particulars, as to my reasons for keeping this secret, I do not wish to tell. This is rather an odd affair; will it make any difference in our relations?"--answered, "What difference can it make, except that I shall love you more, now that we can sympathize as mothers?" Her first visit here was to me: she adopted at once Ossoli and the child to her love. ---- wrote me that ---- was a little hurt, at first, that I did not tell him, even in the trying days of Rome, but left him to hear it, as he unluckily did, at the _table d'hôte_ in Venice; but his second and prevailing thought was regret that he had not known it, so as to soothe and aid me,--to visit Ossoli at his post,--to go to the child in the country. Wholly in that spirit was the fine letter he wrote me, one of my treasures. The little American society have been most cordial and attentive; one lady, who has been most intimate with me, dropped a tear over the difficulties before me, but she said, "Since you have seen fit to take the step, all your friends have to do, now, is to make it as easy for you as they can." TO MRS. E.S. I am glad to have people favorably impressed, because I feel lazy and weak, unequal to the trouble of friction, or the pain of conquest. Still, I feel a good deal of contempt for those so easily disconcerted or reässured. I was not a child; I had lived in the midst of that New England society, in a way that entitled me to esteem, and a favorable interpretation, where there was doubt about my motives or actions. I pity those who are inclined to think ill, when they might as well have inclined the other way. However, let them go; there are many in the world who stand the test, enough to keep us from shivering to death. I am, on the whole, fortunate in friends whom I can truly esteem, and in whom I know the kernel and substance of their being too well to be misled by seemings. TO MRS. C.T. I had a letter from my mother, last summer, speaking of the fact, that she had never been present at the marriage of one of her children. A pang of remorse came as I read it, and I thought, if Angelino dies,[A] I will not give her the pain of knowing that I have kept this secret from her;--she shall hear of this connection, as if it were something new. When I found he would live, I wrote to her and others. It half killed me to write those few letters, and yet, I know, many are wondering that I did not write more, and more particularly. My mother received my communication in the highest spirit. She said, she was sure a first object with me had been, now and always, to save her pain. She blessed us. She rejoiced that she should not die feeling there was no one left to love me with the devotion she thought I needed. She expressed no regret at our poverty, but offered her feeble means. Her letter was a noble crown to her life of disinterested, purifying love. [Footnote A: This was when Margaret found Nino so ill at Rieti.] FLORENCE. The following notes respecting Margaret's residence in Florence were furnished to the editors by Mr. W.H. Hurlbut. I passed about six weeks in the city of Florence, during the months of March and April, 1850. During the whole of that time Madame Ossoli was residing in a house at the corner of the Via della Misericordia and the Piazza Santa Maria Novella. This house is one of those large, well built modern houses that show strangely in the streets of the stately Tuscan city. But if her rooms were less characteristically Italian, they were the more comfortable, and, though small, had a quiet, home-like air. Her windows opened upon a fine view of the beautiful Piazza; for such was their position, that while the card-board façade of the church of Sta. Maria Novella could only be seen at an angle, the exquisite Campanile rose fair and full against the sky. She enjoyed this most graceful tower very much, and, I think, preferred it even to Giotto's noble work. Its quiet religious grace was grateful to her spirit, which seemed to be yearning for peace from the cares that had so vexed and heated the world about her for a year past. I saw her frequently at these rooms, where, surrounded by her books and papers, she used to devote her mornings to her literary labors. Once or twice I called in the morning, and found her quite immersed in manuscripts and journals. Her evenings were passed usually in the society of her friends, at her own rooms, or at theirs. With the pleasant circle of Americans, then living in Florence, she was on the best terms, and though she seemed always to bring with her her own most intimate society, and never to be quite free from the company of busy thoughts, and the cares to which her life had introduced her, she was always cheerful, and her remarkable powers of conversation subserved on all occasions the kindliest, purposes of good-will in social intercourse. The friends with whom she seemed to be on the terms of most sympathy, were an Italian lady, the Marchesa Arconati Visconti,[A]--the exquisite sweetness of whose voice interpreted, even to those who knew her only as a transient acquaintance, the harmony of her nature,--and some English residents in Florence, among whom I need only name Mr. and Mrs. Browning, to satisfy the most anxious friends of Madame Ossoli that the last months of her Italian life were cheered by all the light that communion with gifted and noble natures could afford. The Marchesa Arconati used to persuade Madame Ossoli to occasional excursions with her into the environs of Florence, and she passed some days of the beautiful spring weather at the villa of that lady. Her delight in nature seemed to be a source of great comfort and strength to her. I shall not easily forget the account she gave me, on the evening of one delicious Sunday in April, of a walk which she had taken with her husband in the afternoon of that day, to the hill of San Miniato. The amethystine beauty of the Apennines,--the cypress trees that sentinel the way up to the ancient and deserted church,--the church itself, standing high and lonely on its hill, begirt with the vine-clad, crumbling walls of Michel Angelo,--the repose of the dome-crowned city in the vale below,--seemed to have wrought their impression with peculiar force upon her mind that afternoon. On their way home, they had entered the conventual church that stands half way up the hill, just as the vesper service was beginning, and she spoke of the simple spirit of devotion that filled the place, and of the gentle wonder with which, to use her own words, the "peasant women turned their glances, the soft dark glances of the Tuscan peasant's eyes," upon the strangers, with a singular enthusiasm. She was in the habit of taking such walks with her husband, and she never returned from one of them, I believe, without some new impression of beauty and of lasting truth. While her judgment, intense in its sincerity, tested, like an _aqua regia_, the value of all facts that came within her notice, her sympathies seemed, by an instinctive and unerring action, to transmute all her experiences instantly into permanent treasures. The economy of the house in which she lived afforded me occasions for observing the decisive power, both of control and of consolation, which she could exert over others. Her maid,--an impetuous girl of Rieti, a town which rivals Tivoli as a hot-bed of homicide,--was constantly involved in disputes with a young Jewess, who occupied the floor above Madame Ossoli. On one occasion, this Jewess offered the maid a deliberate and unprovoked insult. The girl of Rieti, snatching up a knife, ran up stairs to revenge herself after her national fashion. The porter's little daughter followed her and, running into Madame Ossoli's rooms, besought her interference. Madame Ossoli reached the apartment of the Jewess, just in time to interpose between that beetle-browed lady and her infuriated assailant. Those who know the insane license of spirit which distinguishes the Roman mountaineers, will understand that this was a position of no slight hazard. The Jewess aggravated the danger of the offence by the obstinate maliciousness of her aspect and words. Such, however, was Madame Ossoli's entire self-possession and forbearance, that she was able to hold her ground, and to remonstrate with this difficult pair of antagonists so effectually, as to bring the maid to penitent tears, and the Jewess to a confession of her injustice, and a promise of future good behavior. The porter of the house, who lived in a dark cavernous hole on the first floor, was slowly dying of a consumption, the sufferings of which were imbittered by the chill dampness of his abode. His hollow voice and hacking cough, however, could not veil the grateful accent with which he uttered any allusion to Madame Ossoli. He was so close a prisoner to his narrow, windowless chamber, that when I inquired for Madame Ossoli he was often obliged to call his little daughter, before he could tell me whether Madame was at home, or not; and he always tempered the official uniformity of the question with some word of tenderness. Indeed, he rarely pronounced her name; sufficiently indicating to the child whom it was that I was seeking, by the affectionate epithet he used, "_Lita! e la cara Signora in casa_?" The composure and force of Madame Ossoli's character would, indeed, have given her a strong influence for good over any person with whom she was brought into contact; but this influence must have been even extraordinary over the impulsive and ill-disciplined children of passion and of sorrow, among whom she was thrown in Italy. Her husband related to me once, with a most reverent enthusiasm, some stories of the good she had done in Rieti, during her residence there. The Spanish troops were quartered in that town, and the dissipated habits of the officers, as well as the excesses of the soldiery, kept the place in a constant irritation. Though overwhelmed with cares and anxieties, Madame Ossoli found time and collectedness of mind enough to interest herself in the distresses of the towns-people, and to pour the soothing oil of a wise sympathy upon their wounded and indignant feelings. On one occasion, as the Marchese told me, she undoubtedly saved the lives of a family in Rieti, by inducing them to pass over in silence an insult offered to one of them by an intoxicated Spanish soldier,--and, on another, she interfered between two brothers, maddened by passion, and threatening to stain the family hearth with the guilt of fratricide.[B] Such incidents, and the calm tenor of Madame Ossoli's confident hopes.--the assured faith and unshaken bravery, with which she met and turned aside the complicated troubles, rising sometimes into absolute perils, of their last year in Italy,--seemed to have inspired her husband with a feeling of respect for her, amounting to reverence. This feeling, modifying the manifest tenderness with which he hung upon her every word and look, and sought to anticipate her simplest wishes, was luminously visible in the air and manner of his affectionate devotion to her. The frank and simple recognition of his wife's singular nobleness, which he always displayed, was the best evidence that his own nature was of a fine and noble strain. And those who knew him best, are, I believe, unanimous in testifying that his character did in no respect belie the evidence borne by his manly and truthful countenance, to its warmth and its sincerity. He seemed quite absorbed in his wife and child. I cannot remember ever to have found Madame Ossoli alone, on those evenings when she remained at home. Her husband was always with her. The picture of their room rises clearly on my memory. A small square room, sparingly, yet sufficiently furnished, with polished floor and frescoed ceiling,--and, drawn up closely before the cheerful fire, an oval table, on which stood a monkish lamp of brass, with depending chains that support quaint classic cups for the olive oil. There, seated beside his wife, I was sure to find the Marchese, reading from some patriotic book, and dressed in the dark brown, red-corded coat of the Guardia Civica, which it was his melancholy pleasure to wear at home. So long as the conversation could be carried on in Italian, he used to remain, though he rarely joined in it to any considerable degree; but if a number of English and American visitors came in, he used to take his leave and go to the Café d'Italia, being very unwilling, as Madame Ossoli told me, to impose any seeming restraint, by his presence, upon her friends, with whom he was unable to converse. For the same reason, he rarely remained with her at the houses of her English or American friends, though he always accompanied her thither, and returned to escort her home. I conversed with him so little that I can hardly venture to make any remarks on the impression which I received from his conversation, with regard to the character of his mind. Notwithstanding his general reserve and curtness of speech, on two or three occasions he showed himself to possess quite a quick and vivid fancy, and even a certain share of humor. I have heard him tell stories remarkably well. One tale, especially, which related to a dream he had in early life, about a treasure concealed in his father's house, which was thrice repeated, and made so strong an impression on his mind as to induce him to batter a certain panel in the library almost to pieces, in vain, but which received something like a confirmation from the fact, that a Roman attorney, who rented that and other rooms from the family, after his father's death, grew suddenly and unaccountably rich,--I remember as being told with great felicity and vivacity of expression. His recollections of the trouble and the dangers through which he had passed with his wife seemed to be overpoweringly painful. On one occasion, he began to tell me a story of their stay in the mountains: He had gone out to walk, and had unconsciously crossed the Neapolitan frontier. Suddenly meeting with a party of the Neapolitan _gendarmerie_, he was called to account for his trespass, and being unable to produce any papers testifying to his loyalty, or the legality of his existence, he was carried off, despite his protestations, and lodged for the night in a miserable guard-house, whence he-was taken, next morning, to the head-quarters of the officer commanding in the neighborhood. Here, matters might have gone badly with him, but for the accident that he had upon his person a business letter directed to himself as the Marchese Ossoli. A certain abbé, the regimental chaplain, having once spent some time in Rome, recognized the name as that of an officer in the Pope's Guardia Nobile,[C] whereupon, the Neapolitan officers not only ordered him to be released, but sent him back, with many apologies, in a carriage, and under an armed escort, to the Roman territory. When he reached this part of his story, and came to his meeting with Madame Ossoli, the remembrance of her terrible distress during the period of his detention so overcame him, that he was quite unable to go on. Towards their child he manifested an overflowing tenderness, and most affectionate care. Notwithstanding the intense contempt and hatred which Signore Ossoli, in common with all the Italian liberals, cherished towards the ecclesiastical body, he seemed to be a very devout Catholic. He used to attend regularly the vesper service, in some of the older and quieter churches of Florence; and, though I presume Madame Ossoli never accepted in any degree the Roman Catholic forms of faith, she frequently accompanied him on these occasions. And I know that she enjoyed the devotional influences of the church ritual, as performed in the cathedral, and at Santa Croce, especially during the Easter-week. Though condemned by her somewhat uncertain position at Florence,[D] as well as by the state of things in Tuscany at that time, to a comparative inaction, Madame Ossoli never seemed to lose in the least the warmth of her interest in the affairs of Italy, nor did she bate one jot of heart or hope for the future of that country. She was much depressed, however, I think, by the apparent apathy and prostration of the Liberals in Tuscany; and the presence of the Austrian troops in Florence was as painful and annoying to her, as it could have been to any Florentine patriot. When it was understood that Prince Lichtenstein had requested the Grand Duke to order a general illumination in honor of the anniversary of the battle of Novara, Madame Ossoli, I recollect, was more moved, than I remember on any other occasion to have seen her. And she used to speak very regretfully of the change which had come over the spirit of Florence, since her former residence there. Then all was gayety and hope. Bodies of artisans, gathering recruits as they passed along, used to form themselves into choral bands, as they returned from their work at the close of the day, and filled the air with the chants of liberty. Now, all was a sombre and desolate silence. Her own various cares so occupied Madame Ossoli that she seemed to be very much withdrawn from the world of art. During the whole time of my stay in Florence, I do not think she once visited either of the Grand Ducal Galleries, and the only studio in which she seemed to feel any very strong interest, was that of Mademoiselle Favand, a lady whose independence of character, self-reliance, and courageous genius, could hardly have failed to attract her congenial sympathies. But among all my remembrances of Madame Ossoli, there are none more beautiful or more enduring than those which recall to me another person, a young stranger, alone and in feeble health, who found, in her society, her sympathy, and her counsels, a constant atmosphere of comfort and of peace. Every morning, wild-flowers, freshly gathered, were laid upon her table by the grateful hands of this young man; every evening, beside her seat in her little room, his mild, pure face was to be seen, bright with a quiet happiness, that must have bound his heart by no weak ties to her with whose fate his own was so closely to be linked. And the recollection of such benign and holy influences breathed upon the human hearts of those who came within her sphere, will not, I trust, be valueless to those friends, in whose love her memory is enshrined with more immortal honors than the world can give or take away. [Footnote A: Just before I left Florence, Madame Ossoli showed me a small marble figure of a child, playing among flowers or vine leaves, which, she said, was a portrait of the child of Madame Arconati, presented to her by that lady. I mention this circumstance, because I have understood that a figure answering this description was recovered from the wreck of the Elizabeth.] [Footnote B: The circumstances of this story, perhaps, deserve to be recorded. The brothers were two young men, the sons and the chief supports of Madame Ossoli's landlord at Rieti. They were both married,--the younger one to a beautiful girl, who had brought him no dowry, and who, in the opinion of her husband's family, had not shown a proper disposition to bear her share of the domestic burdens and duties. The bickerings and disputes which resulted from this state of affairs, on one unlucky day, took the form of an open and violent quarrel. The younger son, who was absent from home when the conflict began, returned to find it at its height, and was received by his wife with passionate tears, and by his relations with sharp recriminations. His brother, especially, took it upon himself to upbraid him, in the name of all his family, for bringing into their home-circle such a firebrand of discord. Charges and counter charges followed in rapid succession, and hasty words soon led to blows. From blows the appeal to the knife was swiftly made, and when Madame Ossoli, attracted by the unusual clamor, entered upon the scene of action, she found that blood had been already drawn, and that the younger brother was only restrained from following up the first assault by the united force of all the females, who hung about him, while the older brother, grasping a heavy billet of wood, and pale with rage, stood awaiting his antagonist. Passing through the group of weeping and terrified women, Madame Ossoli made her way up to the younger brother and, laying her hand upon his shoulder, asked him to put down his weapon and listen to her. It was in vain that he attempted to ignore her presence. Before the spell of her calm, firm, well-known voice, his fury melted away. She spoke to him again, and besought him to show himself a man, and to master his foolish and wicked rage. With a sudden impulse, he flung his knife upon the ground, turned to Madame Ossoli, clasped and kissed her hand, and then running towards his brother, the two met in a fraternal embrace, which brought the threatened tragedy to a joyful termination.] [Footnote C: It will be understood, that this officer was the Marchese's older brother, who still adheres to the Papal cause.] [Footnote D: She believed herself to be, and I suppose really was, under the surveillance of the police during her residence in Florence.] HOMEWARD. BY W.H. CHANNING * * * * * Last, having thus revealed all I could love And having received all love bestowed on it, I would die: so preserving through my course God full on me, as I was full on men: And He would grant my prayer--"I have gone through All loveliness of life; make more for me, If not for men,--or take me to Thyself, Eternal, Infinite Love!" BROWNING. Till another open for me In God's Eden-land unknown, With an angel at the doorway, White with gazing at His Throne; And a saint's voice in the palm-trees, singing,--"ALL IS LOST, and _won_." ELIZABETH BARRETT. La ne venimmo: e lo scaglión primaio Bianco marmo éra si pulito e terso, Ch'io mi specchiava in esso, qual io paio. Era 'l secondo tinto, píù che pérso, D'una petrina ruvida ed arsiccia, Crepata per lo lungo e per traverso. Lo terzo, che di sopra s'ammassiccia, Pôrfido mi parea si fiammegiante, Come sangue che fuor di vena spiccia. Sopra questa teneva ambo le piante L' angel di Dio, sedendo in su la soglia, Che mi sembiava pietra di diamante. Per li tre gradi su di buona voglia Mi trasse 'l daca mio, dicendo, chiodi Umilmente che 'l serráme scioglia. DANTE. Che luce è questa, e qual nuova beltate? Dicean tra lor; perch' abito si adorno Dal mondo errante a quest 'alto soggiorno Non sail mai in tutta questa etàte. Ella contenta aver cangiato albergo, Si paragona pur coi più perfetti. PETRARCA. IX. HOMEWARD SPRING-TIME. Spring, bright prophet of God's eternal youth, herald forever eloquent of heaven's undying joy, has once more wrought its miracle of resurrection on the vineyards and olive-groves of Tuscany, and touched with gently-wakening fingers the myrtle and the orange in the gardens of Florence. The Apennines have put aside their snowy winding-sheet, and their untroubled faces salute with rosy gleams of promise the new day, while flowers smile upward to the serene sky amid the grass and grain fields, and fruit is swelling beneath the blossoms along the plains of Arno. "The Italian spring," writes Margaret, "is as good as Paradise. Days come of glorious sunshine and gently-flowing airs, that expand the heart and uplift the whole nature. The birds are twittering their first notes of love; the ground is enamelled with anemones, cowslips, and crocuses; every old wall and ruin puts on its festoon and garland; and the heavens stoop daily nearer, till the earth is folded in an embrace of light, and her every pulse beats music." "This world is indeed a sad place, despite its sunshine, birds, and crocuses. But I never felt as happy as now, when I always find the glad eyes of my little boy to welcome me. I feel the tie between him and me so real and deep-rooted, that even death shall not part us. So sweet is this unimpassioned love, it knows no dark reactions, it does not idealize, and cannot be daunted by the faults of its object. Nothing but a child can take the worst bitterness out of life, and break the spell of loneliness. I shall not be alone in other worlds, whenever Eternity may call me." And now her face is turned homeward. "I am homesick," she had written years before, "but where is that HOME?" OMENS. "My heart is very tired,--my strength is low,-- My hands are full of blossoms plucked before, Held dead within them till myself shall die." ELIZABETH BARRETT. Many motives drew Margaret to her native land: heart-weariness at the reaction in Europe; desire of publishing to best advantage the book whereby she hoped at once to do justice to great principles and brave men, and to earn bread for her dear ones and herself; and, above all, yearning to be again among her family and earliest associates. "I go back," she writes, "prepared for difficulties; but it will be a consolation to be with my mother, brothers, sister, and old friends, and I find it imperatively necessary to be in the United States, for a while at least, to make such arrangements with the printers as may free me from immediate care. I did think, at one time, of coming alone with Angelino, and then writing for Ossoli to come later, or returning to Italy; knowing that it will be painful for him to go, and that there he must have many lonely hours. But he is separated from his old employments and natural companions, while no career is open for him at present. Then, I would not take his child away for several months; for his heart is fixed upon him as fervently as mine. And, again, it would not only be very strange and sad to be so long without his love and care, but I should be continually solicitous about his welfare. Ossoli, indeed, cannot but feel solitary at first, and I am much more anxious about his happiness than my own. Still, he will have our boy, and the love of my family, especially of my mother, to cheer him, and quiet communings with nature give him pleasure so simple and profound, that I hope he will make a new life for himself, in our unknown country, till changes favor our return to his own. I trust, that we shall find the means to come together, and to remain together." Considerations of economy determined them, spite of many misgivings, to take passage in a merchantman from Leghorn. "I am suffering," she writes, "as never before, from the horrors of indecision. Happy the fowls of the air, who do not have to think so much about their arrangements! The barque _Elizabeth_ will take us, and is said to be an uncommonly good vessel, nearly new, and well kept. We may be two months at sea, but to go by way of France would more than double the expense. Yet, now that I am on the point of deciding to come in her, people daily dissuade me, saying that I have no conception of what a voyage of sixty or seventy days will be in point of fatigue and suffering; that the insecurity, compared with packet-ships or steamers, is great; that the cabin, being on deck, will be terribly exposed, in case of a gale, &c., &c. I am well aware of the proneness of volunteer counsellors to frighten and excite one, and have generally disregarded them. But this time I feel a trembling solicitude on account of my child, and am doubtful, harassed, almost ill." And again, under date of April 21, she says: "I had intended, if I went by way of France, to take the packet-ship _'Argo_,' from Havre; and I had requested Mrs. ---- to procure and forward to me some of my effects left at Paris, in charge of Miss F----, when, taking up _Galignani_, my eye fell on these words: 'Died, 4th of April, Miss F----; 'and, turning the page, I read, 'The wreck of the _Argo_,'--a somewhat singular combination! There were notices, also, of the loss of the fine English steamer _Adelaide_, and of the American packet _John Skiddy._ Safety is not to be secured, then, by the wisest foresight. I shall embark more composedly in our merchant-ship, praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief." Their state-rooms were taken, their trunks packed, their preparations finished, they were just leaving Florence, when letters came, which, had they reached her a week earlier, would probably have induced them to remain in Italy. But Margaret had already by letter appointed a rendezvous for the scattered members of her family in July; and she would not break her engagements with the commander of the barque. It was destined that they were to sail,--to sail in the _Elizabeth_, to sail then. And, even in the hour of parting, clouds, whose tops were golden in the sunshine, whose base was gloomy on the waters, beckoned them onward. "Beware of the sea," had been a singular prophecy, given to Ossoli when a boy, by a fortune-teller, and this was the first ship he had ever set his foot on. More than ordinary apprehensions of risk, too, hovered before Margaret. "I am absurdly fearful," she writes, "and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. I am become indeed a miserable coward, for the sake of Angelino. I fear heat and cold, fear the voyage, fear biting poverty. I hope I shall not be forced to be as brave for him, as I have been for myself, and that, if I succeed to rear him, he will be neither a weak nor a bad man. But I love him too much! In case of mishap, however, I shall perish with my husband and my child, and we may be transferred to some happier state." And again: "I feel perfectly willing to stay my threescore years and ten, if it be thought I need so much tuition from this planet; but it seems to me that my future upon earth will soon close. It may be terribly trying, but it will not be so very long, now. God will transplant the root, if he wills to rear it into fruit-bearing." And, finally: "I have a vague expectation of some crisis,--I know not what. But it has long seemed, that, in the year 1850, I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, where I should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before. Yet my life proceeds as regularly as the fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they turn." * * * * * * * These were her parting words:-- "_Florence, May 14, 1850._--I will believe, I shall be welcome with my treasures,--my husband and child. For me, I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence. "Give dear love, too, to my brothers; and first to my eldest, faithful friend! Eugene; a sister's love to Ellen; love to my kind and good aunts, and to my dear cousin. E.,--God bless them! "I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees otherwise,--here and HEREAFTER,--my dearest mother, "Your loving child, MARGARET." THE VOYAGE.[A] The seventeenth of May, the day of sailing, came, and the _Elizabeth_ lay waiting for her company. Yet, even then, dark presentiments so overshadowed Margaret, that she passed one anxious hour more in hesitation, before she could resolve to go on board. But Captain Hasty was so fine a model of the New England seaman, strong-minded, prompt, calm, decided, courteous; Mrs. Hasty was so refined, gentle, and hospitable; both had already formed so warm an attachment for the little family, in their few interviews at Florence and Leghorn; Celeste Paolini, a young Italian girl, who had engaged to render kindly services to Angelino, was so lady-like and pleasing; their only other fellow-passenger, Mr. Horace Sumner, of Boston, was so obliging and agreeable a friend; and the good ship herself looked so trim, substantial, and cheery, that it seemed weak and wrong to turn back. They embarked; and, for the first few days, all went prosperously, till fear was forgotten. Soft breezes sweep them tranquilly over the smooth bosom of the Mediterranean; Angelino sits among his heaps of toys, or listens to the seraphine, or leans his head with fondling hands upon the white goat, who is now to be his foster-parent, or in the captain's arms moves to and fro, gazing curiously at spars and rigging, or watches with delight the swelling canvass; while, under the constant stars, above the unresting sea, Margaret and Ossoli pace the deck of their small ocean-home, and think of storms left behind,--perhaps of coming tempests. But now Captain Hasty fell ill with fever, could hardly drag himself from his state-room to give necessary orders, and lay upon the bed or sofa, in fast-increased distress, though glad to bid Nino good-day, to kiss his cheek, and pat his hand. Still, the strong man grew weaker, till he could no longer draw from beneath the pillow his daily friend, the Bible, though his mind was yet clear to follow his wife's voice, as she read aloud the morning and evening chapter. But alas for the brave, stout seaman! alas for the young wife, on almost her first voyage! alas for crew! alas for company! alas for the friends of Margaret! The fever proved to be confluent small-pox, in the most malignant form. The good commander had received his release from earthly duty. The _Elizabeth_ must lose her guardian. With calm con-[Transcriber's note: A word appears to be missing here.] authorities refused permission for any one to land, and directed that the burial should be made at sea. As the news spread through the port, the ships dropped their flags half-mast, and at sunset, towed by the boat of a neighboring frigate, the crew of the _Elizabeth_ bore the body of their late chief, wrapped in the flag of his nation, to its rest in deep water. Golden twilight flooded the western sky, and shadows of high-piled clouds lay purple on the broad Atlantic. In that calm, summer sunset funeral, what eye foresaw the morning of horror, of which it was the sad forerunner? At Gibraltar, they were detained a week by adverse winds, but, on the 9th of June, set sail again. The second day after, Angelino sickened with the dreadful malady, and soon became so ill, that his life was despaired of. His eyes were closed, his head and face swollen out of shape, his body covered with eruption. Though inexperienced in the disease, the parents wisely treated their boy with cooling drinks, and wet applications to the skin; under their incessant care, the fever abated, and, to their unspeakable joy, he rapidly recovered. Sobered and saddened, they could again hope, and enjoy the beauty of the calm sky and sea. Once more Nino laughs, as he splashes in his morning bath, and playfully prolongs the meal, which the careful father has prepared with his own hand, or, if he has been angered, rests his head upon his mother's breast, while his palm is pressed against her cheek, as, bending down, she sings to him; once more, he sits among his toys, or fondles and plays with the white-haired goat, or walks up and down in the arms of the steward, who has a boy of just his age, at home, now waiting to embrace him; or among the sailors, with whom he is a universal favorite, prattles in baby dialect as he tries to imitate their cry, to work the pumps, and pull the ropes. Ossoli and Sumner, meanwhile, exchange alternate lessons in Italian and English. And Margaret, among her papers, gives the last touches to her book on Italy, or with words of hope and love comforts like a mother the heart-broken widow. Slowly, yet peacefully, pass the long summer days, the mellow moonlit nights; slowly, and with even flight, the good Elizabeth, under gentle airs from the tropics, bears them safely onward. Four thousand miles of ocean lie behind; they are nearly home. THE WRECK. "There are blind ways provided, the foredone Heart-weary player in this pageant world Drops out by, letting the main masque defile By the conspicuous portal:--I am through, Just through." BROWNING. On Thursday, July 18th, at noon, the Elizabeth was off the Jersey coast, somewhere between Cape May and Barnegat; and, as the weather was thick, with a fresh breeze blowing from the east of south, the officer in command, desirous to secure a good offing, stood east-north-east. His purpose was, when daylight showed the highlands of Neversink, to take a pilot, and run before the wind past Sandy Hook. So confident, indeed, was he of safety, that he promised his passengers to land them early in the morning at New York. With this hope, their trunks were packed, the preparations made to greet their friends, the last good-night was spoken, and with grateful hearts Margaret and Ossoli put Nino to rest, for the last time, as they thought, on ship-board,--for the last time, as it was to be, on earth! By nine o'clock, the breeze rose to a gale, which every hour increased in violence, till at midnight it became a hurricane. Yet, as the Elizabeth was new and strong, and as the commander, trusting to an occasional cast of the lead, assured them that they were not nearing the Jersey coast,--which alone he dreaded,--the passengers remained in their state-rooms, and caught such uneasy sleep as the howling storm and tossing ship permitted. Utterly unconscious, they were, even then, amidst perils, whence only by promptest energy was it possible to escape. Though under close-reefed sails, their vessel was making way far more swiftly than any one on board had dreamed of; and for hours, with the combined force of currents and the tempest, had been driving headlong towards the sand-bars of Long Island. About four o'clock, on Friday morning, July 19th, she struck,--first draggingly, then hard and harder,--on Fire Island beach. The main and mizzen masts were at once cut away; but the heavy marble in her hold had broken through her bottom, and she bilged. Her bow held fast, her stern swung round, she careened inland, her broadside was bared to the shock of the billows, and the waves made a clear breach over her with every swell. The doom of the poor Elizabeth was sealed now, and no human power could save her. She lay at the mercy of the maddened ocean. At the first jar, the passengers, knowing but too well its fatal import, sprang from their berths. Then came the cry of "Cut away," followed by the crash of falling timbers, and the thunder of the seas, as they broke across the deck. In a moment more, the cabin skylight was dashed in pieces by the breakers, and the spray, pouring down like a cataract, put out the lights, while the cabin door was wrenched from its fastenings, and the waves swept in and out. One scream, one only, was heard from Margaret's state-room; and Sumner and Mrs. Hasty, meeting in the cabin, clasped hands, with these few but touching words: "We must die." "Let us die calmly, then." "I hope so, Mrs. Hasty." It was in the gray dusk, and amid the awful tumult, that the companions in misfortune met. The side of the cabin to the leeward had already settled under water; and furniture, trunks, and fragments of the skylight were floating to and fro; while the inclined position of the floor made it difficult to stand; and every sea, as it broke over the bulwarks, splashed in through the open roof. The windward cabin-walls, however, still yielded partial shelter, and against it, seated side by side, half leaning backwards, with feet braced upon the long table, they awaited what next should come. At first. Nino, alarmed at the uproar, the darkness, and the rushing water, while shivering with the wet, cried passionately; but soon his mother, wrapping him in such garments as were at hand and folding him to her bosom, sang him to sleep. Celeste too was in an agony of terror, till Ossoli, with soothing words and a long and fervent prayer, restored her to self-control and trust. Then calmly they rested, side by side, exchanging kindly partings and sending messages to friends, if any should survive to be their bearer. Meanwhile, the boats having been swamped or carried away, and the carpenter's tools washed overboard, the crew had retreated to the top-gallant forecastle; but, as the passengers saw and heard nothing of them, they supposed that the officers and crew had deserted the ship, and that they were left alone. Thus passed three hours. At length, about seven, as there were signs that the cabin would soon break up, and any death seemed preferable to that of being crushed among the ruins, Mrs. Hasty made her way to the door, and, looking out at intervals between the seas as they swept across the vessel amidships, saw some one standing by the foremast. His face was toward the shore. She screamed and beckoned, but her voice was lost amid the roar of the wind and breakers, and her gestures were unnoticed. Soon, however, Davis, the mate, through the door of the forecastle caught sight of her, and, at once comprehending the danger, summoned the men to go to the rescue. At first none dared to risk with him the perilous attempt; but, cool and resolute, he set forth by himself, and now holding to the bulwarks, now stooping as the waves combed over, he succeeded in reaching the cabin. Two sailors, emboldened by his example, followed. Preparations were instantly made to conduct the passengers to the forecastle, which, as being more strongly built and lying further up the sands, was the least exposed part of the ship. Mrs. Hasty volunteered to go the first. With one hand clasped by Davis, while with the other each grasped the rail, they started, a sailor moving close behind. But hardly had they taken three steps, when a sea broke loose her hold, and swept her into the hatch-way. "Let me go," she cried, "your life is important to all on board." But cheerily, and with a smile,[B] he answered, "Not quite yet;" and, seizing in his teeth her long hair, as it floated past him, he caught with both hands at some near support, and, aided by the seaman, set her once again upon her feet. A few moments more of struggle brought them safely through. In turn, each of the passengers was helped thus laboriously across the deck, though, as the broken rail and cordage had at one place fallen in the way, the passage was dangerous and difficult in the extreme. Angelino was borne in a canvas bag, slung round the neck of a sailor. Within the forecastle, which was comparatively dry and sheltered, they now seated themselves, and, wrapped in the loose overcoats of the seamen, regained some warmth. Three times more, however, the mate made his way to the cabin; once, to save her late husband's watch, for Mrs. Hasty; again for some doubloons, money-drafts, and rings in Margaret's desk; and, finally, to procure a bottle of wine and a drum of figs for their refreshment. It was after his last return, that Margaret said to Mrs. Hasty, "There still remains what, if I live, will be of more value to me than anything," referring, probably, to her manuscript on Italy; but it seemed too selfish to ask their brave preserver to run the risk again. There was opportunity now to learn their situation, and to discuss the chances of escape. At the distance of only a few hundred yards, appeared the shore,--a lonely waste of sand-hills, so far as could be seen through the spray and driving rain. But men had been early observed, gazing at the wreck, and, later, a wagon had been drawn upon the beach. There was no sign of a life-boat, however, or of any attempt at rescue; and, about nine o'clock, it was determined that some one should try to land by swimming, and, if possible, get help. Though it seemed almost sure death to trust one's self to the surf, a sailor, with a life-preserver, jumped overboard, and, notwithstanding a current drifting him to leeward, was seen to reach the shore. A second, with the aid of a spar, followed in safety; and Sumner, encouraged by their success, sprang over also; but, either struck by some piece of the wreck, or unable to combat with the waves, he sank. Another hour or more passed by; but though persons were busy gathering into carts whatever spoil was stranded, no life-boat yet appeared; and, after much deliberation, the plan was proposed,--and, as it was then understood, agreed to,--that the passengers should attempt to land, each seated upon a plank, and grasping handles of rope, while a sailor swam behind. Here, too, Mrs. Hasty was the first to venture, under the guard of Davis. Once and again, during their passage, the plank was rolled wholly over, and once and again was righted, with its bearer, by the dauntless steersman; and when, at length, tossed by the surf upon the sands, the half-drowned woman still holding, as in a death-struggle, to the ropes, was about to be swept back by the undertow, he caught her in his arms, and, with the assistance of a bystander, placed her high upon the beach. Thus twice in one day had he perilled his own life to save that of the widow of his captain, and even over that dismal tragedy his devotedness casts one gleam of light. Now came Margaret's turn. But she steadily refused to be separated from Ossoli and Angelo. On a raft with them, she would have boldly encountered the surf, but alone she would not go. Probably, she had appeared to assent to the plan for escaping upon planks, with the view of inducing Mrs. Hasty to trust herself to the care of the best man on board; very possibly, also, she had never learned the result of their attempt, as, seated within the forecastle, she could not see the beach. She knew, too, that if a life-boat could be sent, Davis was one who would neglect no effort to expedite its coming. While she was yet declining all persuasions, word was given from the deck, that the life-boat had finally appeared. For a moment, the news lighted up again the flickering fire of hope. They might yet be saved,--be saved together! Alas! to the experienced eyes of the sailors it too soon became evident that there was no attempt to launch or man her. The last chance of aid from shore, then, was gone utterly. They must rely on their own strength, or perish. And if ever they were to escape, the time had come; for, at noon, the storm had somewhat lulled; but already the tide had turned, and it was plain that the wreck could not hold together through another flood. In this emergency, the commanding officer, who until now had remained at his post, once more appealed to Margaret to try to escape,--urging that the ship would inevitably break up soon; that it was mere suicide to remain longer; that he did not feel free to sacrifice the lives of the crew, or to throw away his own; finally, that he would himself take Angelo, and that sailors should go with Celeste, Ossoli, and herself. But, as before, Margaret decisively declared that she would not be parted from her husband or her child. The order was then given to "save themselves," and all but four of the crew jumped over, several of whom, together with the commander, reached shore alive, though severely bruised and wounded by the drifting fragments. There is a sad consolation in believing that, if Margaret judged it to be impossible that the _three_ should escape, she in all probability was right. It required a most rare, combination of courage, promptness and persistency, to do what Davis had done for Mrs. Hasty. We may not conjecture the crowd of thoughts which influenced the lovers, the parents, in this awful crisis; but doubtless one wish was ever uppermost,--that, God willing, the last hour might come for ALL, if it must come for _one_. It was now past three o'clock, and as, with the rising tide, the gale swelled once more to its former violence, the remnants of the barque fast yielded to the resistless waves. The cabin went by the board, the after-parts broke up, and the stem settled out of sight. Soon, too, the forecastle was filled with water, and the helpless little band were driven to the deck, where they clustered round the foremast. Presently, even this frail support was loosened from the hull, and rose and fell with every billow. It was plain to all that the final moment drew swiftly nigh. Of the four seamen who still stood by the passengers, three were as efficient as any among the crew of the Elizabeth. These were the steward, carpenter, and cook. The fourth was an old sailor, who, broken down by hardships and sickness, was going home to die. These men were once again persuading Margaret, Ossoli and Celeste to try the planks, which they held ready in the lee of the ship, and the steward, by whom Nino was so much beloved, had just taken the little fellow in his arms, with the pledge that he would save him or die, when a sea struck the forecastle, and the foremast fell, carrying with it the deck, and all upon it. The steward and Angelino were washed upon the beach, both dead, though warm, some twenty minutes after. The cook and carpenter were thrown far upon the foremast, and saved themselves by swimming. Celeste and Ossoli caught for a moment by the rigging, but the next wave swallowed them up. Margaret sank at once. When last seen, she had been seated at the foot of the foremast, still clad in her white night-dress, with her hair fallen loose upon her shoulders. It was over,--that twelve hours' communion, face to face, with Death! It was over! and the prayer was granted, "that Ossoli, Angelo, and I, may go together, and that the anguish may be brief!" * * * * * A passage from the journal of a friend of Margaret, whom the news of the wreck drew at once to the scene, shall close this mournful story:-- "The hull of the Elizabeth, with the foremast still bound to it by cordage, lies so near the shore, that it seems as if a dozen oar-strokes would carry a boat alongside. And as one looks at it glittering in the sunshine, and rocking gently in the swell, it is hard to feel reconciled to our loss. Seven resolute men might have saved every soul on board. I know how different was the prospect on that awful morning, when the most violent gale that had visited our coast for years, drove the billows up to the very foot of the sand-hills, and when the sea in foaming torrents swept across the beach into the bay behind. Yet I cannot but reluctantly declare my judgment, that this terrible tragedy is to be attributed, so far as human agency is looked at, to our wretched system, or _no-system_, of life-boats. The life-boat at Fire Island light-house, three miles distant only, was not brought to the beach till between twelve and one o'clock, more than eight hours after the Elizabeth was stranded, and more than six hours after the wreck could easily have been seen. When the life-boat did finally come, the beachmen could not be persuaded to launch or man her. And even the mortar, by which a rope could and should have been thrown on board, was not once fired. A single lesson like this might certainly suffice to teach the government, insurance companies, and humane societies, the urgent need, that to every life-boat should be attached ORGANIZED CREWS, stimulated to do their work faithfully, by ample pay for actual service, generous salvage-fees for cargoes and persons, and a pension to surviving friends where life is lost. * * * "No trace has yet been found of Margaret's manuscript on Italy, though the denials of the wreckers as to having seen it, are not in the least to be depended on. For, greedy after richer spoil, they might well have overlooked a mass of written paper; and, even had they kept it, they would be slow to give up what would so clearly prove their participation in the heartless robbery, that is now exciting such universal horror and indignation. Possibly it was washed away before reaching the shore, as several of the trunks, it is said, were open and empty, when thrown upon the beach. But it is sad to think, that very possibly the brutal hands of pirates may have tossed to the winds, or scattered on the sands, pages so rich with experience and life. The only papers of value saved, were the love-letters of Margaret and Ossoli.[C] "It is a touching coincidence, that the only one of Margaret's treasures which reached the shore, was the lifeless form of Angelino. When the body, stripped of every rag by the waves, was rescued from the surf, a sailor took it reverently in his arms, and, wrapping it in his neckcloth, bore it to the nearest house. There, when washed, and dressed in a child's frock, found in Margaret's trunk, it was laid upon a bed; and as the rescued seamen gathered round their late playfellow and pet, there were few dry eyes in the circle. Several of them mourned for Nino, as if he had been their own; and even the callous wreckers were softened, for the moment, by a sight so full of pathetic beauty. The next day, borne upon their shoulders in a chest, which one of the sailors gave for a coffin, it was buried in a hollow among the sand heaps. As I stood beside the lonely little mound, it seemed that never was seen a more affecting type of orphanage. Around, wiry and stiff, were scanty spires of beach-grass; near by, dwarf-cedars, blown flat by wintry winds, stood like grim guardians; only at the grave-head a stunted wild-rose, wilted and scraggy, was struggling for existence. Thoughts came of the desolate childhood of many a little one in this hard world; and there was joy in the assurance, that Angelo was neither motherless nor fatherless, and that Margaret and her husband were not childless in that New World, which so suddenly they had entered together. "To-morrow, Margaret's mother, sister, and brothers will remove Nino's body to New England." * * * * * Was this, then, thy welcome home? A howling hurricane, the pitiless sea, wreck on a sand-bar, an idle life-boat, beach-pirates, and not one friend! In those twelve hours of agony, did the last scene appear but as the fitting close for a life of storms, where no safe haven was ever in reach; where thy richest treasures were so often stranded; where even the dearest and nearest seemed always too far off, or just too late, to help. Ah, no! not so. The clouds were gloomy on the waters, truly; but their tops were golden in the sun. It was in the Father's House that welcome awaited thee. "Glory to God! to God! he saith, Knowledge by suffering entereth, And Life is perfected by Death." [Footnote A: The following account is as accurate, even in minute details, as conversation with several of the survivors enabled me to make it.--W.H.C.] [Footnote B: Mrs. Hasty's own words while describing the incident.] [Footnote C: The letters from which extracts were quoted in the previous chapter.] 
23233	----	http://www.eBookForge.net POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. VOL. I. POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF THE AUTHOR OF A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. IN FOUR VOLUMES. * * * * * VOL. I. * * * * * _LONDON:_ PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD; AND G. G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1798. THE WRONGS OF WOMAN: OR, MARIA. A FRAGMENT. IN TWO VOLUMES. * * * * * VOL. I. PREFACE. THE public are here presented with the last literary attempt of an author, whose fame has been uncommonly extensive, and whose talents have probably been most admired, by the persons by whom talents are estimated with the greatest accuracy and discrimination. There are few, to whom her writings could in any case have given pleasure, that would have wished that this fragment should have been suppressed, because it is a fragment. There is a sentiment, very dear to minds of taste and imagination, that finds a melancholy delight in contemplating these unfinished productions of genius, these sketches of what, if they had been filled up in a manner adequate to the writer's conception, would perhaps have given a new impulse to the manners of a world. The purpose and structure of the following work, had long formed a favourite subject of meditation with its author, and she judged them capable of producing an important effect. The composition had been in progress for a period of twelve months. She was anxious to do justice to her conception, and recommenced and revised the manuscript several different times. So much of it as is here given to the public, she was far from considering as finished, and, in a letter to a friend directly written on this subject, she says, "I am perfectly aware that some of the incidents ought to be transposed, and heightened by more harmonious shading; and I wished in some degree to avail myself of criticism, before I began to adjust my events into a story, the outline of which I had sketched in my mind[x-A]." The only friends to whom the author communicated her manuscript, were Mr. Dyson, the translator of the Sorcerer, and the present editor; and it was impossible for the most inexperienced author to display a stronger desire of profiting by the censures and sentiments that might be suggested[x-B]. In revising these sheets for the press, it was necessary for the editor, in some places, to connect the more finished parts with the pages of an older copy, and a line or two in addition sometimes appeared requisite for that purpose. Wherever such a liberty has been taken, the additional phrases will be found inclosed in brackets; it being the editor's most earnest desire, to intrude nothing of himself into the work, but to give to the public the words, as well as ideas, of the real author. What follows in the ensuing pages, is not a preface regularly drawn out by the author, but merely hints for a preface, which, though never filled up in the manner the writer intended, appeared to be worth preserving. W. GODWIN. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. THE Wrongs of Woman, like the wrongs of the oppressed part of mankind, may be deemed necessary by their oppressors: but surely there are a few, who will dare to advance before the improvement of the age, and grant that my sketches are not the abortion of a distempered fancy, or the strong delineations of a wounded heart. In writing this novel, I have rather endeavoured to pourtray passions than manners. In many instances I could have made the incidents more dramatic, would I have sacrificed my main object, the desire of exhibiting the misery and oppression, peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society. In the invention of the story, this view restrained my fancy; and the history ought rather to be considered, as of woman, than of an individual. The sentiments I have embodied. In many works of this species, the hero is allowed to be mortal, and to become wise and virtuous as well as happy, by a train of events and circumstances. The heroines, on the contrary, are to be born immaculate; and to act like goddesses of wisdom, just come forth highly finished Minervas from the head of Jove. * * * * * [The following is an extract of a letter from the author to a friend, to whom she communicated her manuscript.] * * * * * For my part, I cannot suppose any situation more distressing, than for a woman of sensibility, with an improving mind, to be bound to such a man as I have described for life; obliged to renounce all the humanizing affections, and to avoid cultivating her taste, lest her perception of grace and refinement of sentiment, should sharpen to agony the pangs of disappointment. Love, in which the imagination mingles its bewitching colouring, must be fostered by delicacy. I should despise, or rather call her an ordinary woman, who could endure such a husband as I have sketched. These appear to me (matrimonial despotism of heart and conduct) to be the peculiar Wrongs of Woman, because they degrade the mind. What are termed great misfortunes, may more forcibly impress the mind of common readers; they have more of what may justly be termed _stage-effect_; but it is the delineation of finer sensations, which, in my opinion, constitutes the merit of our best novels. This is what I have in view; and to show the wrongs of different classes of women, equally oppressive, though, from the difference of education, necessarily various. FOOTNOTES: [x-A] A more copious extract of this letter is subjoined to the author's preface. [x-B] The part communicated consisted of the first fourteen chapters. ERRATA. Page 3, line 2, _dele_ half. P. 81 and 118, _for_ brackets [--], _read_ inverted commas " thus " CONTENTS. VOL. I. AND II. The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria; a Fragment: to which is added, the First Book of a Series of Lessons for Children. VOL. III. AND IV. Letters and Miscellaneous Pieces. _WRONGS_ OF WOMAN. CHAP. I. ABODES of horror have frequently been described, and castles, filled with spectres and chimeras, conjured up by the magic spell of genius to harrow the soul, and absorb the wondering mind. But, formed of such stuff as dreams are made of, what were they to the mansion of despair, in one corner of which Maria sat, endeavouring to recal her scattered thoughts! Surprise, astonishment, that bordered on distraction, seemed to have suspended her faculties, till, waking by degrees to a keen sense of anguish, a whirlwind of rage and indignation roused her torpid pulse. One recollection with frightful velocity following another, threatened to fire her brain, and make her a fit companion for the terrific inhabitants, whose groans and shrieks were no unsubstantial sounds of whistling winds, or startled birds, modulated by a romantic fancy, which amuse while they affright; but such tones of misery as carry a dreadful certainty directly to the heart. What effect must they then have produced on one, true to the touch of sympathy, and tortured by maternal apprehension! Her infant's image was continually floating on Maria's sight, and the first smile of intelligence remembered, as none but a mother, an unhappy mother, can conceive. She heard her half speaking cooing, and felt the little twinkling fingers on her burning bosom--a bosom bursting with the nutriment for which this cherished child might now be pining in vain. From a stranger she could indeed receive the maternal aliment, Maria was grieved at the thought--but who would watch her with a mother's tenderness, a mother's self-denial? The retreating shadows of former sorrows rushed back in a gloomy train, and seemed to be pictured on the walls of her prison, magnified by the state of mind in which they were viewed--Still she mourned for her child, lamented she was a daughter, and anticipated the aggravated ills of life that her sex rendered almost inevitable, even while dreading she was no more. To think that she was blotted out of existence was agony, when the imagination had been long employed to expand her faculties; yet to suppose her turned adrift on an unknown sea, was scarcely less afflicting. After being two days the prey of impetuous, varying emotions, Maria began to reflect more calmly on her present situation, for she had actually been rendered incapable of sober reflection, by the discovery of the act of atrocity of which she was the victim. She could not have imagined, that, in all the fermentation of civilized depravity, a similar plot could have entered a human mind. She had been stunned by an unexpected blow; yet life, however joyless, was not to be indolently resigned, or misery endured without exertion, and proudly termed patience. She had hitherto meditated only to point the dart of anguish, and suppressed the heart heavings of indignant nature merely by the force of contempt. Now she endeavoured to brace her mind to fortitude, and to ask herself what was to be her employment in her dreary cell? Was it not to effect her escape, to fly to the succour of her child, and to baffle the selfish schemes of her tyrant--her husband? These thoughts roused her sleeping spirit, and the self-possession returned, that seemed to have abandoned her in the infernal solitude into which she had been precipitated. The first emotions of overwhelming impatience began to subside, and resentment gave place to tenderness, and more tranquil meditation; though anger once more stopt the calm current of reflection, when she attempted to move her manacled arms. But this was an outrage that could only excite momentary feelings of scorn, which evaporated in a faint smile; for Maria was far from thinking a personal insult the most difficult to endure with magnanimous indifference. She approached the small grated window of her chamber, and for a considerable time only regarded the blue expanse; though it commanded a view of a desolate garden, and of part of a huge pile of buildings, that, after having been suffered, for half a century, to fall to decay, had undergone some clumsy repairs, merely to render it habitable. The ivy had been torn off the turrets, and the stones not wanted to patch up the breaches of time, and exclude the warring elements, left in heaps in the disordered court. Maria contemplated this scene she knew not how long; or rather gazed on the walls, and pondered on her situation. To the master of this most horrid of prisons, she had, soon after her entrance, raved of injustice, in accents that would have justified his treatment, had not a malignant smile, when she appealed to his judgment, with a dreadful conviction stifled her remonstrating complaints. By force, or openly, what could be done? But surely some expedient might occur to an active mind, without any other employment, and possessed of sufficient resolution to put the risk of life into the balance with the chance of freedom. A woman entered in the midst of these reflections, with a firm, deliberate step, strongly marked features, and large black eyes, which she fixed steadily on Maria's, as if she designed to intimidate her, saying at the same time--"You had better sit down and eat your dinner, than look at the clouds." "I have no appetite," replied Maria, who had previously determined to speak mildly, "why then should I eat?" "But, in spite of that, you must and shall eat something. I have had many ladies under my care, who have resolved to starve themselves; but, soon or late, they gave up their intent, as they recovered their senses." "Do you really think me mad?" asked Maria, meeting the searching glance of her eye. "Not just now. But what does that prove?--only that you must be the more carefully watched, for appearing at times so reasonable. You have not touched a morsel since you entered the house."--Maria sighed intelligibly.--"Could any thing but madness produce such a disgust for food?" "Yes, grief; you would not ask the question if you knew what it was." The attendant shook her head; and a ghastly smile of desperate fortitude served as a forcible reply, and made Maria pause, before she added--"Yet I will take some refreshment: I mean not to die.--No; I will preserve my senses; and convince even you, sooner than you are aware of, that my intellects have never been disturbed, though the exertion of them may have been suspended by some infernal drug." Doubt gathered still thicker on the brow of her guard, as she attempted to convict her of mistake. "Have patience!" exclaimed Maria, with a solemnity that inspired awe. "My God! how have I been schooled into the practice!" A suffocation of voice betrayed the agonizing emotions she was labouring to keep down; and conquering a qualm of disgust, she calmly endeavoured to eat enough to prove her docility, perpetually turning to the suspicious female, whose observation she courted, while she was making the bed and adjusting the room. "Come to me often," said Maria, with a tone of persuasion, in consequence of a vague plan that she had hastily adopted, when, after surveying this woman's form and features, she felt convinced that she had an understanding above the common standard; "and believe me mad, till you are obliged to acknowledge the contrary." The woman was no fool, that is, she was superior to her class; nor had misery quite petrified the life's-blood of humanity, to which reflections on our own misfortunes only give a more orderly course. The manner, rather than the expostulations, of Maria made a slight suspicion dart into her mind with corresponding sympathy, which various other avocations, and the habit of banishing compunction, prevented her, for the present, from examining more minutely. But when she was told that no person, excepting the physician appointed by her family, was to be permitted to see the lady at the end of the gallery, she opened her keen eyes still wider, and uttered a--"hem!" before she enquired--"Why?" She was briefly told, in reply, that the malady was hereditary, and the fits not occurring but at very long and irregular intervals, she must be carefully watched; for the length of these lucid periods only rendered her more mischievous, when any vexation or caprice brought on the paroxysm of phrensy. Had her master trusted her, it is probable that neither pity nor curiosity would have made her swerve from the straight line of her interest; for she had suffered too much in her intercourse with mankind, not to determine to look for support, rather to humouring their passions, than courting their approbation by the integrity of her conduct. A deadly blight had met her at the very threshold of existence; and the wretchedness of her mother seemed a heavy weight fastened on her innocent neck, to drag her down to perdition. She could not heroically determine to succour an unfortunate; but, offended at the bare supposition that she could be deceived with the same ease as a common servant, she no longer curbed her curiosity; and, though she never seriously fathomed her own intentions, she would sit, every moment she could steal from observation, listening to the tale, which Maria was eager to relate with all the persuasive eloquence of grief. It is so cheering to see a human face, even if little of the divinity of virtue beam in it, that Maria anxiously expected the return of the attendant, as of a gleam of light to break the gloom of idleness. Indulged sorrow; she perceived, must blunt or sharpen the faculties to the two opposite extremes; producing stupidity, the moping melancholy of indolence; or the restless activity of a disturbed imagination. She sunk into one state, after being fatigued by the other: till the want of occupation became even more painful than the actual pressure or apprehension of sorrow; and the confinement that froze her into a nook of existence, with an unvaried prospect before her, the most insupportable of evils. The lamp of life seemed to be spending itself to chase the vapours of a dungeon which no art could dissipate.--And to what purpose did she rally all her energy?--Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves? Though she failed immediately to rouse a lively sense of injustice in the mind of her guard, because it had been sophisticated into misanthropy, she touched her heart. Jemima (she had only a claim to a Christian name, which had not procured her any Christian privileges) could patiently hear of Maria's confinement on false pretences; she had felt the crushing hand of power, hardened by the exercise of injustice, and ceased to wonder at the perversions of the understanding, which systematize oppression; but, when told that her child, only four months old, had been torn from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy. A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason, and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the master-sense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and ignoble pleasures of life? The preserving her situation was, indeed, an important object to Jemima, who had been hunted from hole to hole, as if she had been a beast of prey, or infected with a moral plague. The wages she received, the greater part of which she hoarded, as her only chance for independence, were much more considerable than she could reckon on obtaining any where else, were it possible that she, an outcast from society, could be permitted to earn a subsistence in a reputable family. Hearing Maria perpetually complain of listlessness, and the not being able to beguile grief by resuming her customary pursuits, she was easily prevailed on, by compassion, and that involuntary respect for abilities, which those who possess them can never eradicate, to bring her some books and implements for writing. Maria's conversation had amused and interested her, and the natural consequence was a desire, scarcely observed by herself, of obtaining the esteem of a person she admired. The remembrance of better days was rendered more lively; and the sentiments then acquired appearing less romantic than they had for a long period, a spark of hope roused her mind to new activity. How grateful was her attention to Maria! Oppressed by a dead weight of existence, or preyed on by the gnawing worm of discontent, with what eagerness did she endeavour to shorten the long days, which left no traces behind! She seemed to be sailing on the vast ocean of life, without seeing any land-mark to indicate the progress of time; to find employment was then to find variety, the animating principle of nature. CHAP. II. EARNESTLY as Maria endeavoured to soothe, by reading, the anguish of her wounded mind, her thoughts would often wander from the subject she was led to discuss, and tears of maternal tenderness obscured the reasoning page. She descanted on "the ills which flesh is heir to," with bitterness, when the recollection of her babe was revived by a tale of fictitious woe, that bore any resemblance to her own; and her imagination was continually employed, to conjure up and embody the various phantoms of misery, which folly and vice had let loose on the world. The loss of her babe was the tender string; against other cruel remembrances she laboured to steel her bosom; and even a ray of hope, in the midst of her gloomy reveries, would sometimes gleam on the dark horizon of futurity, while persuading herself that she ought to cease to hope, since happiness was no where to be found.--But of her child, debilitated by the grief with which its mother had been assailed before it saw the light, she could not think without an impatient struggle. "I, alone, by my active tenderness, could have saved," she would exclaim, "from an early blight, this sweet blossom; and, cherishing it, I should have had something still to love." In proportion as other expectations were torn from her, this tender one had been fondly clung to, and knit into her heart. The books she had obtained, were soon devoured, by one who had no other resource to escape from sorrow, and the feverish dreams of ideal wretchedness or felicity, which equally weaken the intoxicated sensibility. Writing was then the only alternative, and she wrote some rhapsodies descriptive of the state of her mind; but the events of her past life pressing on her, she resolved circumstantially to relate them, with the sentiments that experience, and more matured reason, would naturally suggest. They might perhaps instruct her daughter, and shield her from the misery, the tyranny, her mother knew not how to avoid. This thought gave life to her diction, her soul flowed into it, and she soon found the task of recollecting almost obliterated impressions very interesting. She lived again in the revived emotions of youth, and forgot her present in the retrospect of sorrows that had assumed an unalterable character. Though this employment lightened the weight of time, yet, never losing sight of her main object, Maria did not allow any opportunity to slip of winning on the affections of Jemima; for she discovered in her a strength of mind, that excited her esteem, clouded as it was by the misanthropy of despair. An insulated being, from the misfortune of her birth, she despised and preyed on the society by which she had been oppressed, and loved not her fellow-creatures, because she had never been beloved. No mother had ever fondled her, no father or brother had protected her from outrage; and the man who had plunged her into infamy, and deserted her when she stood in greatest need of support, deigned not to smooth with kindness the road to ruin. Thus degraded, was she let loose on the world; and virtue, never nurtured by affection, assumed the stern aspect of selfish independence. This general view of her life, Maria gathered from her exclamations and dry remarks. Jemima indeed displayed a strange mixture of interest and suspicion; for she would listen to her with earnestness, and then suddenly interrupt the conversation, as if afraid of resigning, by giving way to her sympathy, her dear-bought knowledge of the world. Maria alluded to the possibility of an escape, and mentioned a compensation, or reward; but the style in which she was repulsed made her cautious, and determine not to renew the subject, till she knew more of the character she had to work on. Jemima's countenance, and dark hints, seemed to say, "You are an extraordinary woman; but let me consider, this may only be one of your lucid intervals." Nay, the very energy of Maria's character, made her suspect that the extraordinary animation she perceived might be the effect of madness. "Should her husband then substantiate his charge, and get possession of her estate, from whence would come the promised annuity, or more desired protection? Besides, might not a woman, anxious to escape, conceal some of the circumstances which made against her? Was truth to be expected from one who had been entrapped, kidnapped, in the most fraudulent manner?" In this train Jemima continued to argue, the moment after compassion and respect seemed to make her swerve; and she still resolved not to be wrought on to do more than soften the rigour of confinement, till she could advance on surer ground. Maria was not permitted to walk in the garden; but sometimes, from her window, she turned her eyes from the gloomy walls, in which she pined life away, on the poor wretches who strayed along the walks, and contemplated the most terrific of ruins--that of a human soul. What is the view of the fallen column, the mouldering arch, of the most exquisite workmanship, when compared with this living memento of the fragility, the instability, of reason, and the wild luxuriancy of noxious passions? Enthusiasm turned adrift, like some rich stream overflowing its banks, rushes forward with destructive velocity, inspiring a sublime concentration of thought. Thus thought Maria--These are the ravages over which humanity must ever mournfully ponder, with a degree of anguish not excited by crumbling marble, or cankering brass, unfaithful to the trust of monumental fame. It is not over the decaying productions of the mind, embodied with the happiest art, we grieve most bitterly. The view of what has been done by man, produces a melancholy, yet aggrandizing, sense of what remains to be achieved by human intellect; but a mental convulsion, which, like the devastation of an earthquake, throws all the elements of thought and imagination into confusion, makes contemplation giddy, and we fearfully ask on what ground we ourselves stand. Melancholy and imbecility marked the features of the wretches allowed to breathe at large; for the frantic, those who in a strong imagination had lost a sense of woe, were closely confined. The playful tricks and mischievous devices of their disturbed fancy, that suddenly broke out, could not be guarded against, when they were permitted to enjoy any portion of freedom; for, so active was their imagination, that every new object which accidentally struck their senses, awoke to phrenzy their restless passions; as Maria learned from the burden of their incessant ravings. Sometimes, with a strict injunction of silence, Jemima would allow Maria, at the close of evening, to stray along the narrow avenues that separated the dungeon-like apartments, leaning on her arm. What a change of scene! Maria wished to pass the threshold of her prison, yet, when by chance she met the eye of rage glaring on her, yet unfaithful to its office, she shrunk back with more horror and affright, than if she had stumbled over a mangled corpse. Her busy fancy pictured the misery of a fond heart, watching over a friend thus estranged, absent, though present--over a poor wretch lost to reason and the social joys of existence; and losing all consciousness of misery in its excess. What a task, to watch the light of reason quivering in the eye, or with agonizing expectation to catch the beam of recollection; tantalized by hope, only to feel despair more keenly, at finding a much loved face or voice, suddenly remembered, or pathetically implored, only to be immediately forgotten, or viewed with indifference or abhorrence! The heart-rending sigh of melancholy sunk into her soul; and when she retired to rest, the petrified figures she had encountered, the only human forms she was doomed to observe, haunting her dreams with tales of mysterious wrongs, made her wish to sleep to dream no more. Day after day rolled away, and tedious as the present moment appeared, they passed in such an unvaried tenor, Maria was surprised to find that she had already been six weeks buried alive, and yet had such faint hopes of effecting her enlargement. She was, earnestly as she had sought for employment, now angry with herself for having been amused by writing her narrative; and grieved to think that she had for an instant thought of any thing, but contriving to escape. Jemima had evidently pleasure in her society: still, though she often left her with a glow of kindness, she returned with the same chilling air; and, when her heart appeared for a moment to open, some suggestion of reason forcibly closed it, before she could give utterance to the confidence Maria's conversation inspired. Discouraged by these changes, Maria relapsed into despondency, when she was cheered by the alacrity with which Jemima brought her a fresh parcel of books; assuring her, that she had taken some pains to obtain them from one of the keepers, who attended a gentleman confined in the opposite corner of the gallery. Maria took up the books with emotion. "They come," said she, "perhaps, from a wretch condemned, like me, to reason on the nature of madness, by having wrecked minds continually under his eye; and almost to wish himself--as I do--mad, to escape from the contemplation of it." Her heart throbbed with sympathetic alarm; and she turned over the leaves with awe, as if they had become sacred from passing through the hands of an unfortunate being, oppressed by a similar fate. Dryden's Fables, Milton's Paradise Lost, with several modern productions, composed the collection. It was a mine of treasure. Some marginal notes, in Dryden's Fables, caught her attention: they were written with force and taste; and, in one of the modern pamphlets, there was a fragment left, containing various observations on the present state of society and government, with a comparative view of the politics of Europe and America. These remarks were written with a degree of generous warmth, when alluding to the enslaved state of the labouring majority, perfectly in unison with Maria's mode of thinking. She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy, began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these shadowy outlines.--"Was he mad?" She re-perused the marginal notes, and they seemed the production of an animated, but not of a disturbed imagination. Confined to this speculation, every time she re-read them, some fresh refinement of sentiment, or acuteness of thought impressed her, which she was astonished at herself for not having before observed. What a creative power has an affectionate heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it awakens sentiment or grace. Maria had often thought, when disciplining her wayward heart, "that to charm, was to be virtuous." "They who make me wish to appear the most amiable and good in their eyes, must possess in a degree," she would exclaim, "the graces and virtues they call into action." She took up a book on the powers of the human mind; but, her attention strayed from cold arguments on the nature of what she felt, while she was feeling, and she snapt the chain of the theory to read Dryden's Guiscard and Sigismunda. Maria, in the course of the ensuing day, returned some of the books, with the hope of getting others--and more marginal notes. Thus shut out from human intercourse, and compelled to view nothing but the prison of vexed spirits, to meet a wretch in the same situation, was more surely to find a friend, than to imagine a countryman one, in a strange land, where the human voice conveys no information to the eager ear. "Did you ever see the unfortunate being to whom these books belong?" asked Maria, when Jemima brought her supper. "Yes. He sometimes walks out, between five and six, before the family is stirring, in the morning, with two keepers; but even then his hands are confined." "What! is he so unruly?" enquired Maria, with an accent of disappointment. "No, not that I perceive," replied Jemima; "but he has an untamed look, a vehemence of eye, that excites apprehension. Were his hands free, he looks as if he could soon manage both his guards: yet he appears tranquil." "If he be so strong, he must be young," observed Maria. "Three or four and thirty, I suppose; but there is no judging of a person in his situation." "Are you sure that he is mad?" interrupted Maria with eagerness. Jemima quitted the room, without replying. "No, no, he certainly is not!" exclaimed Maria, answering herself; "the man who could write those observations was not disordered in his intellects." She sat musing, gazing at the moon, and watching its motion as it seemed to glide under the clouds. Then, preparing for bed, she thought, "Of what use could I be to him, or he to me, if it be true that he is unjustly confined?--Could he aid me to escape, who is himself more closely watched?--Still I should like to see him." She went to bed, dreamed of her child, yet woke exactly at half after five o'clock, and starting up, only wrapped a gown around her, and ran to the window. The morning was chill, it was the latter end of September; yet she did not retire to warm herself and think in bed, till the sound of the servants, moving about the house, convinced her that the unknown would not walk in the garden that morning. She was ashamed at feeling disappointed; and began to reflect, as an excuse to herself, on the little objects which attract attention when there is nothing to divert the mind; and how difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who have no active duties or pursuits. At breakfast, Jemima enquired whether she understood French? for, unless she did, the stranger's stock of books was exhausted. Maria replied in the affirmative; but forbore to ask any more questions respecting the person to whom they belonged. And Jemima gave her a new subject for contemplation, by describing the person of a lovely maniac, just brought into an adjoining chamber. She was singing the pathetic ballad of old Rob with the most heart-melting falls and pauses. Jemima had half-opened the door, when she distinguished her voice, and Maria stood close to it, scarcely daring to respire, lest a modulation should escape her, so exquisitely sweet, so passionately wild. She began with sympathy to pourtray to herself another victim, when the lovely warbler flew, as it were, from the spray, and a torrent of unconnected exclamations and questions burst from her, interrupted by fits of laughter, so horrid, that Maria shut the door, and, turning her eyes up to heaven, exclaimed--"Gracious God!" Several minutes elapsed before Maria could enquire respecting the rumour of the house (for this poor wretch was obviously not confined without a cause); and then Jemima could only tell her, that it was said, "she had been married, against her inclination, to a rich old man, extremely jealous (no wonder, for she was a charming creature); and that, in consequence of his treatment, or something which hung on her mind, she had, during her first lying-in, lost her senses." What a subject of meditation--even to the very confines of madness. "Woman, fragile flower! why were you suffered to adorn a world exposed to the inroad of such stormy elements?" thought Maria, while the poor maniac's strain was still breathing on her ear, and sinking into her very soul. Towards the evening, Jemima brought her Rousseau's _Heloïse_; and she sat reading with eyes and heart, till the return of her guard to extinguish the light. One instance of her kindness was, the permitting Maria to have one, till her own hour of retiring to rest. She had read this work long since; but now it seemed to open a new world to her--the only one worth inhabiting. Sleep was not to be wooed; yet, far from being fatigued by the restless rotation of thought, she rose and opened her window, just as the thin watery clouds of twilight made the long silent shadows visible. The air swept across her face with a voluptuous freshness that thrilled to her heart, awakening indefinable emotions; and the sound of a waving branch, or the twittering of a startled bird, alone broke the stillness of reposing nature. Absorbed by the sublime sensibility which renders the consciousness of existence felicity, Maria was happy, till an autumnal scent, wafted by the breeze of morn from the fallen leaves of the adjacent wood, made her recollect that the season had changed since her confinement; yet life afforded no variety to solace an afflicted heart. She returned dispirited to her couch, and thought of her child till the broad glare of day again invited her to the window. She looked not for the unknown, still how great was her vexation at perceiving the back of a man, certainly he, with his two attendants, as he turned into a side-path which led to the house! A confused recollection of having seen somebody who resembled him, immediately occurred, to puzzle and torment her with endless conjectures. Five minutes sooner, and she should have seen his face, and been out of suspense--was ever any thing so unlucky! His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize. Feeling the disappointment more severely than she was willing to believe, she flew to Rousseau, as her only refuge from the idea of him, who might prove a friend, could she but find a way to interest him in her fate; still the personification of Saint Preux, or of an ideal lover far superior, was after this imperfect model, of which merely a glance had been caught, even to the minutiæ of the coat and hat of the stranger. But if she lent St. Preux, or the demi-god of her fancy, his form, she richly repaid him by the donation of all St. Preux's sentiments and feelings, culled to gratify her own, to which he seemed to have an undoubted right, when she read on the margin of an impassioned letter, written in the well-known hand--"Rousseau alone, the true Prometheus of sentiment, possessed the fire of genius necessary to pourtray the passion, the truth of which goes so directly to the heart." Maria was again true to the hour, yet had finished Rousseau, and begun to transcribe some selected passages; unable to quit either the author or the window, before she had a glimpse of the countenance she daily longed to see; and, when seen, it conveyed no distinct idea to her mind where she had seen it before. He must have been a transient acquaintance; but to discover an acquaintance was fortunate, could she contrive to attract his attention, and excite his sympathy. Every glance afforded colouring for the picture she was delineating on her heart; and once, when the window was half open, the sound of his voice reached her. Conviction flashed on her; she had certainly, in a moment of distress, heard the same accents. They were manly, and characteristic of a noble mind; nay, even sweet--or sweet they seemed to her attentive ear. She started back, trembling, alarmed at the emotion a strange coincidence of circumstances inspired, and wondering why she thought so much of a stranger, obliged as she had been by his timely interference; [for she recollected, by degrees, all the circumstances of their former meeting.] She found however that she could think of nothing else; or, if she thought of her daughter, it was to wish that she had a father whom her mother could respect and love. CHAP. III. WHEN perusing the first parcel of books, Maria had, with her pencil, written in one of them a few exclamations, expressive of compassion and sympathy, which she scarcely remembered, till turning over the leaves of one of the volumes, lately brought to her, a slip of paper dropped out, which Jemima hastily snatched up. "Let me see it," demanded Maria impatiently, "You surely are not afraid of trusting me with the effusions of a madman?" "I must consider," replied Jemima; and withdrew, with the paper in her hand. In a life of such seclusion, the passions gain undue force; Maria therefore felt a great degree of resentment and vexation, which she had not time to subdue, before Jemima, returning, delivered the paper. "Whoever you are, who partake of my fate, accept my sincere commiseration--I would have said protection; but the privilege of man is denied me. "My own situation forces a dreadful suspicion on my mind--I may not always languish in vain for freedom--say are you--I cannot ask the question; yet I will remember you when my remembrance can be of any use. I will enquire, _why_ you are so mysteriously detained--and I _will_ have an answer. "HENRY DARNFORD." By the most pressing intreaties, Maria prevailed on Jemima to permit her to write a reply to this note. Another and another succeeded, in which explanations were not allowed relative to their present situation; but Maria, with sufficient explicitness, alluded to a former obligation; and they insensibly entered on an interchange of sentiments on the most important subjects. To write these letters was the business of the day, and to receive them the moment of sunshine. By some means, Darnford having discovered Maria's window, when she next appeared at it, he made her, behind his keepers, a profound bow of respect and recognition. Two or three weeks glided away in this kind of intercourse, during which period Jemima, to whom Maria had given the necessary information respecting her family, had evidently gained some intelligence, which increased her desire of pleasing her charge, though she could not yet determine to liberate her. Maria took advantage of this favourable charge, without too minutely enquiring into the cause; and such was her eagerness to hold human converse, and to see her former protector, still a stranger to her, that she incessantly requested her guard to gratify her more than curiosity. Writing to Darnford, she was led from the sad objects before her, and frequently rendered insensible to the horrid noises around her, which previously had continually employed her feverish fancy. Thinking it selfish to dwell on her own sufferings, when in the midst of wretches, who had not only lost all that endears life, but their very selves, her imagination was occupied with melancholy earnestness to trace the mazes of misery, through which so many wretches must have passed to this gloomy receptacle of disjointed souls, to the grand source of human corruption. Often at midnight was she waked by the dismal shrieks of demoniac rage, or of excruciating despair, uttered in such wild tones of indescribable anguish as proved the total absence of reason, and roused phantoms of horror in her mind, far more terrific than all that dreaming superstition ever drew. Besides, there was frequently something so inconceivably picturesque in the varying gestures of unrestrained passion, so irresistibly comic in their sallies, or so heart-piercingly pathetic in the little airs they would sing, frequently bursting out after an awful silence, as to fascinate the attention, and amuse the fancy, while torturing the soul. It was the uproar of the passions which she was compelled to observe; and to mark the lucid beam of reason, like a light trembling in a socket, or like the flash which divides the threatening clouds of angry heaven only to display the horrors which darkness shrouded. Jemima would labour to beguile the tedious evenings, by describing the persons and manners of the unfortunate beings, whose figures or voices awoke sympathetic sorrow in Maria's bosom; and the stories she told were the more interesting, for perpetually leaving room to conjecture something extraordinary. Still Maria, accustomed to generalize her observations, was led to conclude from all she heard, that it was a vulgar error to suppose that people of abilities were the most apt to lose the command of reason. On the contrary, from most of the instances she could investigate, she thought it resulted, that the passions only appeared strong and disproportioned, because the judgment was weak and unexercised; and that they gained strength by the decay of reason, as the shadows lengthen during the sun's decline. Maria impatiently wished to see her fellow-sufferer; but Darnford was still more earnest to obtain an interview. Accustomed to submit to every impulse of passion, and never taught, like women, to restrain the most natural, and acquire, instead of the bewitching frankness of nature, a factitious propriety of behaviour, every desire became a torrent that bore down all opposition. His travelling trunk, which contained the books lent to Maria, had been sent to him, and with a part of its contents he bribed his principal keeper; who, after receiving the most solemn promise that he would return to his apartment without attempting to explore any part of the house, conducted him, in the dusk of the evening, to Maria's room. Jemima had apprized her charge of the visit, and she expected with trembling impatience, inspired by a vague hope that he might again prove her deliverer, to see a man who had before rescued her from oppression. He entered with an animation of countenance, formed to captivate an enthusiast; and, hastily turned his eyes from her to the apartment, which he surveyed with apparent emotions of compassionate indignation. Sympathy illuminated his eye, and, taking her hand, he respectfully bowed on it, exclaiming--"This is extraordinary!--again to meet you, and in such circumstances!" Still, impressive as was the coincidence of events which brought them once more together, their full hearts did not overflow.--[54-A] * * * * * [And though, after this first visit, they were permitted frequently to repeat their interviews, they were for some time employed in] a reserved conversation, to which all the world might have listened; excepting, when discussing some literary subject, flashes of sentiment, inforced by each relaxing feature, seemed to remind them that their minds were already acquainted. [By degrees, Darnford entered into the particulars of his story.] In a few words, he informed her that he had been a thoughtless, extravagant young man; yet, as he described his faults, they appeared to be the generous luxuriancy of a noble mind. Nothing like meanness tarnished the lustre of his youth, nor had the worm of selfishness lurked in the unfolding bud, even while he had been the dupe of others. Yet he tardily acquired the experience necessary to guard him against future imposition. "I shall weary you," continued he, "by my egotism; and did not powerful emotions draw me to you,"--his eyes glistened as he spoke, and a trembling seemed to run through his manly frame,--"I would not waste these precious moments in talking of myself. "My father and mother were people of fashion; married by their parents. He was fond of the turf, she of the card-table. I, and two or three other children since dead, were kept at home till we became intolerable. My father and mother had a visible dislike to each other, continually displayed; the servants were of the depraved kind usually found in the houses of people of fortune. My brothers and parents all dying, I was left to the care of guardians, and sent to Eton. I never knew the sweets of domestic affection, but I felt the want of indulgence and frivolous respect at school. I will not disgust you with a recital of the vices of my youth, which can scarcely be comprehended by female delicacy. I was taught to love by a creature I am ashamed to mention; and the other women with whom I afterwards became intimate, were of a class of which you can have no knowledge. I formed my acquaintance with them at the theatres; and, when vivacity danced in their eyes, I was not easily disgusted by the vulgarity which flowed from their lips. Having spent, a few years after I was of age, [the whole of] a considerable patrimony, excepting a few hundreds, I had no recourse but to purchase a commission in a new-raised regiment, destined to subjugate America. The regret I felt to renounce a life of pleasure, was counter-balanced by the curiosity I had to see America, or rather to travel; [nor had any of those circumstances occurred to my youth, which might have been calculated] to bind my country to my heart. I shall not trouble you with the details of a military life. My blood was still kept in motion; till, towards the close of the contest, I was wounded and taken prisoner. "Confined to my bed, or chair, by a lingering cure, my only refuge from the preying activity of my mind, was books, which I read with great avidity, profiting by the conversation of my host, a man of sound understanding. My political sentiments now underwent a total change; and, dazzled by the hospitality of the Americans, I determined to take up my abode with freedom. I, therefore, with my usual impetuosity, sold my commission, and travelled into the interior parts of the country, to lay out my money to advantage. Added to this, I did not much like the puritanical manners of the large towns. Inequality of condition was there most disgustingly galling. The only pleasure wealth afforded, was to make an ostentatious display of it; for the cultivation of the fine arts, or literature, had not introduced into the first circles that polish of manners which renders the rich so essentially superior to the poor in Europe. Added to this, an influx of vices had been let in by the Revolution, and the most rigid principles of religion shaken to the centre, before the understanding could be gradually emancipated from the prejudices which led their ancestors undauntedly to seek an inhospitable clime and unbroken soil. The resolution, that led them, in pursuit of independence, to embark on rivers like seas, to search for unknown shores, and to sleep under the hovering mists of endless forests, whose baleful damps agued their limbs, was now turned into commercial speculations, till the national character exhibited a phenomenon in the history of the human mind--a head enthusiastically enterprising, with cold selfishness of heart. And woman, lovely woman!--they charm every where--still there is a degree of prudery, and a want of taste and ease in the manners of the American women, that renders them, in spite of their roses and lilies, far inferior to our European charmers. In the country, they have often a bewitching simplicity of character; but, in the cities, they have all the airs and ignorance of the ladies who give the tone to the circles of the large trading towns in England. They are fond of their ornaments, merely because they are good, and not because they embellish their persons; and are more gratified to inspire the women with jealousy of these exterior advantages, than the men with love. All the frivolity which often (excuse me, Madam) renders the society of modest women so stupid in England, here seemed to throw still more leaden fetters on their charms. Not being an adept in gallantry, I found that I could only keep myself awake in their company by making downright love to them. "But, not to intrude on your patience, I retired to the track of land which I had purchased in the country, and my time passed pleasantly enough while I cut down the trees, built my house, and planted my different crops. But winter and idleness came, and I longed for more elegant society, to hear what was passing in the world, and to do something better than vegetate with the animals that made a very considerable part of my household. Consequently, I determined to travel. Motion was a substitute for variety of objects; and, passing over immense tracks of country, I exhausted my exuberant spirits, without obtaining much experience. I every where saw industry the fore-runner and not the consequence, of luxury; but this country, every thing being on an ample scale, did not afford those picturesque views, which a certain degree of cultivation is necessary gradually to produce. The eye wandered without an object to fix upon over immeasureable plains, and lakes that seemed replenished by the ocean, whilst eternal forests of small clustering trees, obstructed the circulation of air, and embarrassed the path, without gratifying the eye of taste. No cottage smiling in the waste, no travellers hailed us, to give life to silent nature; or, if perchance we saw the print of a footstep in our path, it was a dreadful warning to turn aside; and the head ached as if assailed by the scalping knife. The Indians who hovered on the skirts of the European settlements had only learned of their neighbours to plunder, and they stole their guns from them to do it with more safety. "From the woods and back settlements, I returned to the towns, and learned to eat and drink most valiantly; but without entering into commerce (and I detested commerce) I found I could not live there; and, growing heartily weary of the land of liberty and vulgar aristocracy, seated on her bags of dollars, I resolved once more to visit Europe. I wrote to a distant relation in England, with whom I had been educated, mentioning the vessel in which I intended to sail. Arriving in London, my senses were intoxicated. I ran from street to street, from theatre to theatre, and the women of the town (again I must beg pardon for my habitual frankness) appeared to me like angels. "A week was spent in this thoughtless manner, when, returning very late to the hotel in which I had lodged ever since my arrival, I was knocked down in a private street, and hurried, in a state of insensibility, into a coach, which brought me hither, and I only recovered my senses to be treated like one who had lost them. My keepers are deaf to my remonstrances and enquiries, yet assure me that my confinement shall not last long. Still I cannot guess, though I weary myself with conjectures, why I am confined, or in what part of England this house is situated. I imagine sometimes that I hear the sea roar, and wished myself again on the Atlantic, till I had a glimpse of you[65-A]." A few moments were only allowed to Maria to comment on this narrative, when Darnford left her to her own thoughts, to the "never ending, still beginning," task of weighing his words, recollecting his tones of voice, and feeling them reverberate on her heart. FOOTNOTES: [54-A] The copy which had received the author's last corrections, breaks off in this place, and the pages which follow, to the end of Chap. IV, are printed from a copy in a less finished state. [65-A] The introduction of Darnford as the deliverer of Maria in a former instance, appears to have been an after-thought of the author. This has occasioned the omission of any allusion to that circumstance in the preceding narration. EDITOR. CHAP. IV. PITY, and the forlorn seriousness of adversity, have both been considered as dispositions favourable to love, while satirical writers have attributed the propensity to the relaxing effect of idleness, what chance then had Maria of escaping, when pity, sorrow, and solitude all conspired to soften her mind, and nourish romantic wishes, and, from a natural progress, romantic expectations? Maria was six-and-twenty. But, such was the native soundness of her constitution, that time had only given to her countenance the character of her mind. Revolving thought, and exercised affections had banished some of the playful graces of innocence, producing insensibly that irregularity of features which the struggles of the understanding to trace or govern the strong emotions of the heart, are wont to imprint on the yielding mass. Grief and care had mellowed, without obscuring, the bright tints of youth, and the thoughtfulness which resided on her brow did not take from the feminine softness of her features; nay, such was the sensibility which often mantled over it, that she frequently appeared, like a large proportion of her sex, only born to feel; and the activity of her well-proportioned, and even almost voluptuous figure, inspired the idea of strength of mind, rather than of body. There was a simplicity sometimes indeed in her manner, which bordered on infantine ingenuousness, that led people of common discernment to underrate her talents, and smile at the flights of her imagination. But those who could not comprehend the delicacy of her sentiments, were attached by her unfailing sympathy, so that she was very generally beloved by characters of very different descriptions; still, she was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination to adhere to common rules. There are mistakes of conduct which at five-and-twenty prove the strength of the mind, that, ten or fifteen years after, would demonstrate its weakness, its incapacity to acquire a sane judgment. The youths who are satisfied with the ordinary pleasures of life, and do not sigh after ideal phantoms of love and friendship, will never arrive at great maturity of understanding; but if these reveries are cherished, as is too frequently the case with women, when experience ought to have taught them in what human happiness consists, they become as useless as they are wretched. Besides, their pains and pleasures are so dependent on outward circumstances, on the objects of their affections, that they seldom act from the impulse of a nerved mind, able to choose its own pursuit. Having had to struggle incessantly with the vices of mankind, Maria's imagination found repose in pourtraying the possible virtues the world might contain. Pygmalion formed an ivory maid, and longed for an informing soul. She, on the contrary, combined all the qualities of a hero's mind, and fate presented a statue in which she might enshrine them. We mean not to trace the progress of this passion, or recount how often Darnford and Maria were obliged to part in the midst of an interesting conversation. Jemima ever watched on the tip-toe of fear, and frequently separated them on a false alarm, when they would have given worlds to remain a little longer together. A magic lamp now seemed to be suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.--She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous. To Darnford she had not shown a decided affection; the fear of outrunning his, a sure proof of love, made her often assume a coldness and indifference foreign from her character; and, even when giving way to the playful emotions of a heart just loosened from the frozen bond of grief, there was a delicacy in her manner of expressing her sensibility, which made him doubt whether it was the effect of love. One evening, when Jemima left them, to listen to the sound of a distant footstep, which seemed cautiously to approach, he seized Maria's hand--it was not withdrawn. They conversed with earnestness of their situation; and, during the conversation, he once or twice gently drew her towards him. He felt the fragrance of her breath, and longed, yet feared, to touch the lips from which it issued; spirits of purity seemed to guard them, while all the enchanting graces of love sported on her cheeks, and languished in her eyes. Jemima entering, he reflected on his diffidence with poignant regret, and, she once more taking alarm, he ventured, as Maria stood near his chair, to approach her lips with a declaration of love. She drew back with solemnity, he hung down his head abashed; but lifting his eyes timidly, they met her's; she had determined, during that instant, and suffered their rays to mingle. He took, with more ardour, reassured, a half-consenting, half-reluctant kiss, reluctant only from modesty; and there was a sacredness in her dignified manner of reclining her glowing face on his shoulder, that powerfully impressed him. Desire was lost in more ineffable emotions, and to protect her from insult and sorrow--to make her happy, seemed not only the first wish of his heart, but the most noble duty of his life. Such angelic confidence demanded the fidelity of honour; but could he, feeling her in every pulsation, could he ever change, could he be a villain? The emotion with which she, for a moment, allowed herself to be pressed to his bosom, the tear of rapturous sympathy, mingled with a soft melancholy sentiment of recollected disappointment, said--more of truth and faithfulness, than the tongue could have given utterance to in hours! They were silent--yet discoursed, how eloquently? till, after a moment's reflection, Maria drew her chair by the side of his, and, with a composed sweetness of voice, and supernatural benignity of countenance, said, "I must open my whole heart to you; you must be told who I am, why I am here, and why, telling you I am a wife, I blush not to"--the blush spoke the rest. Jemima was again at her elbow, and the restraint of her presence did not prevent an animated conversation, in which love, sly urchin, was ever at bo-peep. So much of heaven did they enjoy, that paradise bloomed around them; or they, by a powerful spell, had been transported into Armida's garden. Love, the grand enchanter, "lapt them in Elysium," and every sense was harmonized to joy and social extacy. So animated, indeed, were their accents of tenderness, in discussing what, in other circumstances, would have been common-place subjects, that Jemima felt, with surprise, a tear of pleasure trickling down her rugged cheeks. She wiped it away, half ashamed; and when Maria kindly enquired the cause, with all the eager solicitude of a happy being wishing to impart to all nature its overflowing felicity, Jemima owned that it was the first tear that social enjoyment had ever drawn from her. She seemed indeed to breathe more freely; the cloud of suspicion cleared away from her brow; she felt herself, for once in her life, treated like a fellow-creature. Imagination! who can paint thy power; or reflect the evanescent tints of hope fostered by thee? A despondent gloom had long obscured Maria's horizon--now the sun broke forth, the rainbow appeared, and every prospect was fair. Horror still reigned in the darkened cells, suspicion lurked in the passages, and whispered along the walls. The yells of men possessed, sometimes made them pause, and wonder that they felt so happy, in a tomb of living death. They even chid themselves for such apparent insensibility; still the world contained not three happier beings. And Jemima, after again patrolling the passage, was so softened by the air of confidence which breathed around her, that she voluntarily began an account of herself. CHAP. V. "MY father," said Jemima, "seduced my mother, a pretty girl, with whom he lived fellow-servant; and she no sooner perceived the natural, the dreaded consequence, than the terrible conviction flashed on her--that she was ruined. Honesty, and a regard for her reputation, had been the only principles inculcated by her mother; and they had been so forcibly impressed, that she feared shame, more than the poverty to which it would lead. Her incessant importunities to prevail upon my father to screen her from reproach by marrying her, as he had promised in the fervour of seduction, estranged him from her so completely, that her very person became distasteful to him; and he began to hate, as well as despise me, before I was born. "My mother, grieved to the soul by his neglect, and unkind treatment, actually resolved to famish herself; and injured her health by the attempt; though she had not sufficient resolution to adhere to her project, or renounce it entirely. Death came not at her call; yet sorrow, and the methods she adopted to conceal her condition, still doing the work of a house-maid, had such an effect on her constitution, that she died in the wretched garret, where her virtuous mistress had forced her to take refuge in the very pangs of labour, though my father, after a slight reproof, was allowed to remain in his place--allowed by the mother of six children, who, scarcely permitting a footstep to be heard, during her month's indulgence, felt no sympathy for the poor wretch, denied every comfort required by her situation. "The day my mother died, the ninth after my birth, I was consigned to the care of the cheapest nurse my father could find; who suckled her own child at the same time, and lodged as many more as she could get, in two cellar-like apartments. "Poverty, and the habit of seeing children die off her hands, had so hardened her heart, that the office of a mother did not awaken the tenderness of a woman; nor were the feminine caresses which seem a part of the rearing of a child, ever bestowed on me. The chicken has a wing to shelter under; but I had no bosom to nestle in, no kindred warmth to foster me. Left in dirt, to cry with cold and hunger till I was weary, and sleep without ever being prepared by exercise, or lulled by kindness to rest; could I be expected to become any thing but a weak and rickety babe? Still, in spite of neglect, I continued to exist, to learn to curse existence," her countenance grew ferocious as she spoke, "and the treatment that rendered me miserable, seemed to sharpen my wits. Confined then in a damp hovel, to rock the cradle of the succeeding tribe, I looked like a little old woman, or a hag shrivelling into nothing. The furrows of reflection and care contracted the youthful cheek, and gave a sort of supernatural wildness to the ever watchful eye. During this period, my father had married another fellow-servant, who loved him less, and knew better how to manage his passion, than my mother. She likewise proving with child, they agreed to keep a shop: my step-mother, if, being an illegitimate offspring, I may venture thus to characterize her, having obtained a sum of a rich relation, for that purpose. "Soon after her lying-in, she prevailed on my father to take me home, to save the expence of maintaining me, and of hiring a girl to assist her in the care of the child. I was young, it was true, but appeared a knowing little thing, and might be made handy. Accordingly I was brought to her house; but not to a home--for a home I never knew. Of this child, a daughter, she was extravagantly fond; and it was a part of my employment, to assist to spoil her, by humouring all her whims, and bearing all her caprices. Feeling her own consequence, before she could speak, she had learned the art of tormenting me, and if I ever dared to resist, I received blows, laid on with no compunctious hand, or was sent to bed dinnerless, as well as supperless. I said that it was a part of my daily labour to attend this child, with the servility of a slave; still it was but a part. I was sent out in all seasons, and from place to place, to carry burdens far above my strength, without being allowed to draw near the fire, or ever being cheered by encouragement or kindness. No wonder then, treated like a creature of another species, that I began to envy, and at length to hate, the darling of the house. Yet, I perfectly remember, that it was the caresses, and kind expressions of my step-mother, which first excited my jealous discontent. Once, I cannot forget it, when she was calling in vain her wayward child to kiss her, I ran to her, saying, 'I will kiss you, ma'am!' and how did my heart, which was in my mouth, sink, what was my debasement of soul, when pushed away with--'I do not want you, pert thing!' Another day, when a new gown had excited the highest good humour, and she uttered the appropriate _dear_, addressed unexpectedly to me, I thought I could never do enough to please her; I was all alacrity, and rose proportionably in my own estimation. "As her daughter grew up, she was pampered with cakes and fruit, while I was, literally speaking, fed with the refuse of the table, with her leavings. A liquorish tooth is, I believe, common to children, and I used to steal any thing sweet, that I could catch up with a chance of concealment. When detected, she was not content to chastize me herself at the moment, but, on my father's return in the evening (he was a shopman), the principal discourse was to recount my faults, and attribute them to the wicked disposition which I had brought into the world with me, inherited from my mother. He did not fail to leave the marks of his resentment on my body, and then solaced himself by playing with my sister.--I could have murdered her at those moments. To save myself from these unmerciful corrections, I resorted to falshood, and the untruths which I sturdily maintained, were brought in judgment against me, to support my tyrant's inhuman charge of my natural propensity to vice. Seeing me treated with contempt, and always being fed and dressed better, my sister conceived a contemptuous opinion of me, that proved an obstacle to all affection; and my father, hearing continually of my faults, began to consider me as a curse entailed on him for his sins: he was therefore easily prevailed on to bind me apprentice to one of my step-mother's friends, who kept a slop-shop in Wapping. I was represented (as it was said) in my true colours; but she, 'warranted,' snapping her fingers, 'that she should break my spirit or heart.' "My mother replied, with a whine, 'that if any body could make me better, it was such a clever woman as herself; though, for her own part, she had tried in vain; but good-nature was her fault.' "I shudder with horror, when I recollect the treatment I had now to endure. Not only under the lash of my task-mistress, but the drudge of the maid, apprentices and children, I never had a taste of human kindness to soften the rigour of perpetual labour. I had been introduced as an object of abhorrence into the family; as a creature of whom my step-mother, though she had been kind enough to let me live in the house with her own child, could make nothing. I was described as a wretch, whose nose must be kept to the grinding stone--and it was held there with an iron grasp. It seemed indeed the privilege of their superior nature to kick me about, like the dog or cat. If I were attentive, I was called fawning, if refractory, an obstinate mule, and like a mule I received their censure on my loaded back. Often has my mistress, for some instance of forgetfulness, thrown me from one side of the kitchen to the other, knocked my head against the wall, spit in my face, with various refinements on barbarity that I forbear to enumerate, though they were all acted over again by the servant, with additional insults, to which the appellation of _bastard_, was commonly added, with taunts or sneers. But I will not attempt to give you an adequate idea of my situation, lest you, who probably have never been drenched with the dregs of human misery, should think I exaggerate. "I stole now, from absolute necessity,--bread; yet whatever else was taken, which I had it not in my power to take, was ascribed to me. I was the filching cat, the ravenous dog, the dumb brute, who must bear all; for if I endeavoured to exculpate myself, I was silenced, without any enquiries being made, with 'Hold your tongue, you never tell truth.' Even the very air I breathed was tainted with scorn; for I was sent to the neighbouring shops with Glutton, Liar, or Thief, written on my forehead. This was, at first, the most bitter punishment; but sullen pride, or a kind of stupid desperation, made me, at length, almost regardless of the contempt, which had wrung from me so many solitary tears at the only moments when I was allowed to rest. "Thus was I the mark of cruelty till my sixteenth year; and then I have only to point out a change of misery; for a period I never knew. Allow me first to make one observation. Now I look back, I cannot help attributing the greater part of my misery, to the misfortune of having been thrown into the world without the grand support of life--a mother's affection. I had no one to love me; or to make me respected, to enable me to acquire respect. I was an egg dropped on the sand; a pauper by nature, shunted from family to family, who belonged to nobody--and nobody cared for me. I was despised from my birth, and denied the chance of obtaining a footing for myself in society. Yes; I had not even the chance of being considered as a fellow-creature--yet all the people with whom I lived, brutalized as they were by the low cunning of trade, and the despicable shifts of poverty, were not without bowels, though they never yearned for me. I was, in fact, born a slave, and chained by infamy to slavery during the whole of existence, without having any companions to alleviate it by sympathy, or teach me how to rise above it by their example. But, to resume the thread of my tale-- "At sixteen, I suddenly grew tall, and something like comeliness appeared on a Sunday, when I had time to wash my face, and put on clean clothes. My master had once or twice caught hold of me in the passage; but I instinctively avoided his disgusting caresses. One day however, when the family were at a methodist meeting, he contrived to be alone in the house with me, and by blows--yes; blows and menaces, compelled me to submit to his ferocious desire; and, to avoid my mistress's fury, I was obliged in future to comply, and skulk to my loft at his command, in spite of increasing loathing. "The anguish which was now pent up in my bosom, seemed to open a new world to me: I began to extend my thoughts beyond myself, and grieve for human misery, till I discovered, with horror--ah! what horror!--that I was with child. I know not why I felt a mixed sensation of despair and tenderness, excepting that, ever called a bastard, a bastard appeared to me an object of the greatest compassion in creation. "I communicated this dreadful circumstance to my master, who was almost equally alarmed at the intelligence; for he feared his wife, and public censure at the meeting. After some weeks of deliberation had elapsed, I in continual fear that my altered shape would be noticed, my master gave me a medicine in a phial, which he desired me to take, telling me, without any circumlocution, for what purpose it was designed. I burst into tears, I thought it was killing myself--yet was such a self as I worth preserving? He cursed me for a fool, and left me to my own reflections. I could not resolve to take this infernal potion; but I wrapped it up in an old gown, and hid it in a corner of my box. "Nobody yet suspected me, because they had been accustomed to view me as a creature of another species. But the threatening storm at last broke over my devoted head--never shall I forget it! One Sunday evening when I was left, as usual, to take care of the house, my master came home intoxicated, and I became the prey of his brutal appetite. His extreme intoxication made him forget his customary caution, and my mistress entered and found us in a situation that could not have been more hateful to her than me. Her husband was 'pot-valiant,' he feared her not at the moment, nor had he then much reason, for she instantly turned the whole force of her anger another way. She tore off my cap, scratched, kicked, and buffetted me, till she had exhausted her strength, declaring, as she rested her arm, 'that I had wheedled her husband from her.--But, could any thing better be expected from a wretch, whom she had taken into her house out of pure charity?' What a torrent of abuse rushed out? till, almost breathless, she concluded with saying, 'that I was born a strumpet; it ran in my blood, and nothing good could come to those who harboured me.' "My situation was, of course, discovered, and she declared that I should not stay another night under the same roof with an honest family. I was therefore pushed out of doors, and my trumpery thrown after me, when it had been contemptuously examined in the passage, lest I should have stolen any thing. "Behold me then in the street, utterly destitute! Whither could I creep for shelter? To my father's roof I had no claim, when not pursued by shame--now I shrunk back as from death, from my mother's cruel reproaches, my father's execrations. I could not endure to hear him curse the day I was born, though life had been a curse to me. Of death I thought, but with a confused emotion of terror, as I stood leaning my head on a post, and starting at every footstep, lest it should be my mistress coming to tear my heart out. One of the boys of the shop passing by, heard my tale, and immediately repaired to his master, to give him a description of my situation; and he touched the right key--the scandal it would give rise to, if I were left to repeat my tale to every enquirer. This plea came home to his reason, who had been sobered by his wife's rage, the fury of which fell on him when I was out of her reach, and he sent the boy to me with half-a-guinea, desiring him to conduct me to a house, where beggars, and other wretches, the refuse of society, nightly lodged. "This night was spent in a state of stupefaction, or desperation. I detested mankind, and abhorred myself. "In the morning I ventured out, to throw myself in my master's way, at his usual hour of going abroad. I approached him, he 'damned me for a b----, declared I had disturbed the peace of the family, and that he had sworn to his wife, never to take any more notice of me.' He left me; but, instantly returning, he told me that he should speak to his friend, a parish-officer, to get a nurse for the brat I laid to him; and advised me, if I wished to keep out of the house of correction, not to make free with his name. "I hurried back to my hole, and, rage giving place to despair, sought for the potion that was to procure abortion, and swallowed it, with a wish that it might destroy me, at the same time that it stopped the sensations of new-born life, which I felt with indescribable emotion. My head turned round, my heart grew sick, and in the horrors of approaching dissolution, mental anguish was swallowed up. The effect of the medicine was violent, and I was confined to my bed several days; but, youth and a strong constitution prevailing, I once more crawled out, to ask myself the cruel question, 'Whither I should go?' I had but two shillings left in my pocket, the rest had been expended, by a poor woman who slept in the same room, to pay for my lodging, and purchase the necessaries of which she partook. "With this wretch I went into the neighbouring streets to beg, and my disconsolate appearance drew a few pence from the idle, enabling me still to command a bed; till, recovering from my illness, and taught to put on my rags to the best advantage, I was accosted from different motives, and yielded to the desire of the brutes I met, with the same detestation that I had felt for my still more brutal master. I have since read in novels of the blandishments of seduction, but I had not even the pleasure of being enticed into vice. "I shall not," interrupted Jemima, "lead your imagination into all the scenes of wretchedness and depravity, which I was condemned to view; or mark the different stages of my debasing misery. Fate dragged me through the very kennels of society; I was still a slave, a bastard, a common property. Become familiar with vice, for I wish to conceal nothing from you, I picked the pockets of the drunkards who abused me; and proved by my conduct, that I deserved the epithets, with which they loaded me at moments when distrust ought to cease. "Detesting my nightly occupation, though valuing, if I may so use the word, my independence, which only consisted in choosing the street in which I should wander, or the roof, when I had money, in which I should hide my head, I was some time before I could prevail on myself to accept of a place in a house of ill fame, to which a girl, with whom I had accidentally conversed in the street, had recommended me. I had been hunted almost into a a fever, by the watchmen of the quarter of the town I frequented; one, whom I had unwittingly offended, giving the word to the whole pack. You can scarcely conceive the tyranny exercised by these wretches: considering themselves as the instruments of the very laws they violate, the pretext which steels their conscience, hardens their heart. Not content with receiving from us, outlaws of society (let other women talk of favours) a brutal gratification gratuitously as a privilege of office, they extort a tithe of prostitution, and harrass with threats the poor creatures whose occupation affords not the means to silence the growl of avarice. To escape from this persecution, I once more entered into servitude. "A life of comparative regularity restored my health; and--do not start--my manners were improved, in a situation where vice sought to render itself alluring, and taste was cultivated to fashion the person, if not to refine the mind. Besides, the common civility of speech, contrasted with the gross vulgarity to which I had been accustomed, was something like the polish of civilization. I was not shut out from all intercourse of humanity. Still I was galled by the yoke of service, and my mistress often flying into violent fits of passion, made me dread a sudden dismission, which I understood was always the case. I was therefore prevailed on, though I felt a horror of men, to accept the offer of a gentleman, rather in the decline of years, to keep his house, pleasantly situated in a little village near Hampstead. "He was a man of great talents, and of brilliant wit; but, a worn-out votary of voluptuousness, his desires became fastidious in proportion as they grew weak, and the native tenderness of his heart was undermined by a vitiated imagination. A thoughtless career of libertinism and social enjoyment, had injured his health to such a degree, that, whatever pleasure his conversation afforded me (and my esteem was ensured by proofs of the generous humanity of his disposition), the being his mistress was purchasing it at a very dear rate. With such a keen perception of the delicacies of sentiment, with an imagination invigorated by the exercise of genius, how could he sink into the grossness of sensuality! "But, to pass over a subject which I recollect with pain, I must remark to you, as an answer to your often-repeated question, 'Why my sentiments and language were superior to my station?' that I now began to read, to beguile the tediousness of solitude, and to gratify an inquisitive, active mind. I had often, in my childhood, followed a ballad-singer, to hear the sequel of a dismal story, though sure of being severely punished for delaying to return with whatever I was sent to purchase. I could just spell and put a sentence together, and I listened to the various arguments, though often mingled with obscenity, which occurred at the table where I was allowed to preside: for a literary friend or two frequently came home with my master, to dine and pass the night. Having lost the privileged respect of my sex, my presence, instead of restraining, perhaps gave the reins to their tongues; still I had the advantage of hearing discussions, from which, in the common course of life, women are excluded. "You may easily imagine, that it was only by degrees that I could comprehend some of the subjects they investigated, or acquire from their reasoning what might be termed a moral sense. But my fondness of reading increasing, and my master occasionally shutting himself up in this retreat, for weeks together, to write, I had many opportunities of improvement. At first, considering money I was right!" (exclaimed Jemima, altering her tone of voice) "as the only means, after my loss of reputation, of obtaining respect, or even the toleration of humanity, I had not the least scruple to secrete a part of the sums intrusted to me, and to screen myself from detection by a system of falshood. But, acquiring new principles, I began to have the ambition of returning to the respectable part of society, and was weak enough to suppose it possible. The attention of my unassuming instructor, who, without being ignorant of his own powers, possessed great simplicity of manners, strengthened the illusion. Having sometimes caught up hints for thought, from my untutored remarks, he often led me to discuss the subjects he was treating, and would read to me his productions, previous to their publication, wishing to profit by the criticism of unsophisticated feeling. The aim of his writings was to touch the simple springs of the heart; for he despised the would-be oracles, the self-elected philosophers, who fright away fancy, while sifting each grain of thought to prove that slowness of comprehension is wisdom. "I should have distinguished this as a moment of sunshine, a happy period in my life, had not the repugnance the disgusting libertinism of my protector inspired, daily become more painful.--And, indeed, I soon did recollect it as such with agony, when his sudden death (for he had recourse to the most exhilarating cordials to keep up the convivial tone of his spirits) again threw me into the desert of human society. Had he had any time for reflection, I am certain he would have left the little property in his power to me: but, attacked by the fatal apoplexy in town, his heir, a man of rigid morals, brought his wife with him to take possession of the house and effects, before I was even informed of his death,--'to prevent,' as she took care indirectly to tell me, 'such a creature as she supposed me to be, from purloining any of them, had I been apprized of the event in time.' "The grief I felt at the sudden shock the information gave me, which at first had nothing selfish in it, was treated with contempt, and I was ordered to pack up my clothes; and a few trinkets and books, given me by the generous deceased, were contested, while they piously hoped, with a reprobating shake of the head, 'that God would have mercy on his sinful soul!' With some difficulty, I obtained my arrears of wages; but asking--such is the spirit-grinding consequence of poverty and infamy--for a character for honesty and economy, which God knows I merited, I was told by this--why must I call her woman?--'that it would go against her conscience to recommend a kept mistress.' Tears started in my eyes, burning tears; for there are situations in which a wretch is humbled by the contempt they are conscious they do not deserve. "I returned to the metropolis; but the solitude of a poor lodging was inconceivably dreary, after the society I had enjoyed. To be cut off from human converse, now I had been taught to relish it, was to wander a ghost among the living. Besides, I foresaw, to aggravate the severity of my fate, that my little pittance would soon melt away. I endeavoured to obtain needlework; but, not having been taught early, and my hands being rendered clumsy by hard work, I did not sufficiently excel to be employed by the ready-made linen shops, when so many women, better qualified, were suing for it. The want of a character prevented my getting a place; for, irksome as servitude would have been to me, I should have made another trial, had it been feasible. Not that I disliked employment, but the inequality of condition to which I must have submitted. I had acquired a taste for literature, during the five years I had lived with a literary man, occasionally conversing with men of the first abilities of the age; and now to descend to the lowest vulgarity, was a degree of wretchedness not to be imagined unfelt. I had not, it is true, tasted the charms of affection, but I had been familiar with the graces of humanity. "One of the gentlemen, whom I had frequently dined in company with, while I was treated like a companion, met me in the street, and enquired after my health. I seized the occasion, and began to describe my situation; but he was in haste to join, at dinner, a select party of choice spirits; therefore, without waiting to hear me, he impatiently put a guinea into my hand, saying, 'It was a pity such a sensible woman should be in distress--he wished me well from his soul.' "To another I wrote, stating my case, and requesting advice. He was an advocate for unequivocal sincerity; and had often, in my presence, descanted on the evils which arise in society from the despotism of rank and riches. "In reply, I received a long essay on the energy of the human mind, with continual allusions to his own force of character. He added, 'That the woman who could write such a letter as I had sent him, could never be in want of resources, were she to look into herself, and exert her powers; misery was the consequence of indolence, and, as to my being shut out from society, it was the lot of man to submit to certain privations.' "How often have I heard," said Jemima, interrupting her narrative, "in conversation, and read in books, that every person willing to work may find employment? It is the vague assertion, I believe, of insensible indolence, when it relates to men; but, with respect to women, I am sure of its fallacy, unless they will submit to the most menial bodily labour; and even to be employed at hard labour is out of the reach of many, whose reputation misfortune or folly has tainted. "How writers, professing to be friends to freedom, and the improvement of morals, can assert that poverty is no evil, I cannot imagine." "No more can I," interrupted Maria, "yet they even expatiate on the peculiar happiness of indigence, though in what it can consist, excepting in brutal rest, when a man can barely earn a subsistence, I cannot imagine. The mind is necessarily imprisoned in its own little tenement; and, fully occupied by keeping it in repair, has not time to rove abroad for improvement. The book of knowledge is closely clasped, against those who must fulfil their daily task of severe manual labour or die; and curiosity, rarely excited by thought or information, seldom moves on the stagnate lake of ignorance." "As far as I have been able to observe," replied Jemima, "prejudices, caught up by chance, are obstinately maintained by the poor, to the exclusion of improvement; they have not time to reason or reflect to any extent, or minds sufficiently exercised to adopt the principles of action, which form perhaps the only basis of contentment in every station[114-A]." * * * * * "And independence," said Darnford, "they are necessarily strangers to, even the independence of despising their persecutors. If the poor are happy, or can be happy, _things are very well as they are_. And I cannot conceive on what principle those writers contend for a change of system, who support this opinion. The authors on the other side of the question are much more consistent, who grant the fact; yet, insisting that it is the lot of the majority to be oppressed in this life, kindly turn them over to another, to rectify the false weights and measures of this, as the only way to justify the dispensations of Providence. I have not," continued Darnford, "an opinion more firmly fixed by observation in my mind, than that, though riches may fail to produce proportionate happiness, poverty most commonly excludes it, by shutting up all the avenues to improvement." "And as for the affections," added Maria, with a sigh, "how gross, and even tormenting do they become, unless regulated by an improving mind! The culture of the heart ever, I believe, keeps pace with that of the mind. But pray go on," addressing Jemima, "though your narrative gives rise to the most painful reflections on the present state of society." "Not to trouble you," continued she, "with a detailed description of all the painful feelings of unavailing exertion, I have only to tell you, that at last I got recommended to wash in a few families, who did me the favour to admit me into their houses, without the most strict enquiry, to wash from one in the morning till eight at night, for eighteen or twenty-pence a day. On the happiness to be enjoyed over a washing-tub I need not comment; yet you will allow me to observe, that this was a wretchedness of situation peculiar to my sex. A man with half my industry, and, I may say, abilities, could have procured a decent livelihood, and discharged some of the duties which knit mankind together; whilst I, who had acquired a taste for the rational, nay, in honest pride let me assert it, the virtuous enjoyments of life, was cast aside as the filth of society. Condemned to labour, like a machine, only to earn bread, and scarcely that, I became melancholy and desperate. "I have now to mention a circumstance which fills me with remorse, and fear it will entirely deprive me of your esteem. A tradesman became attached to me, and visited me frequently,--and I at last obtained such a power over him, that he offered to take me home to his house.--Consider, dear madam, I was famishing: wonder not that I became a wolf!--The only reason for not taking me home immediately, was the having a girl in the house, with child by him--and this girl--I advised him--yes, I did! would I could forget it!--to turn out of doors: and one night he determined to follow my advice, Poor wretch! she fell upon her knees, reminded him that he had promised to marry her, that her parents were honest!--What did it avail?--She was turned out. "She approached her father's door, in the skirts of London,--listened at the shutters,--but could not knock. A watchman had observed her go and return several times--Poor wretch!--"The remorse Jemima spoke of, seemed to be stinging her to the soul, as she proceeded." "She left it, and, approaching a tub where horses were watered, she sat down in it, and, with desperate resolution, remained in that attitude--till resolution was no longer necessary! "I happened that morning to be going out to wash, anticipating the moment when I should escape from such hard labour. I passed by, just as some men, going to work, drew out the stiff, cold corpse--Let me not recal the horrid moment!--I recognized her pale visage; I listened to the tale told by the spectators, and my heart did not burst. I thought of my own state, and wondered how I could be such a monster!--I worked hard; and, returning home, I was attacked by a fever. I suffered both in body and mind. I determined not to live with the wretch. But he did not try me; he left the neighbourhood. I once more returned to the wash-tub. "Still this state, miserable as it was, admitted of aggravation. Lifting one day a heavy load, a tub fell against my shin, and gave me great pain. I did not pay much attention to the hurt, till it became a serious wound; being obliged to work as usual, or starve. But, finding myself at length unable to stand for any time, I thought of getting into an hospital. Hospitals, it should seem (for they are comfortless abodes for the sick) were expressly endowed for the reception of the friendless; yet I, who had on that plea a right to assistance, wanted the recommendation of the rich and respectable, and was several weeks languishing for admittance; fees were demanded on entering; and, what was still more unreasonable, security for burying me, that expence not coming into the letter of the charity. A guinea was the stipulated sum--I could as soon have raised a million; and I was afraid to apply to the parish for an order, lest they should have passed me, I knew not whither. The poor woman at whose house I lodged, compassionating my state, got me into the hospital; and the family where I received the hurt, sent me five shillings, three and six-pence of which I gave at my admittance--I know not for what. "My leg grew quickly better; but I was dismissed before my cure was completed, because I could not afford to have my linen washed to appear decently, as the virago of a nurse said, when the gentlemen (the surgeons) came. I cannot give you an adequate idea of the wretchedness of an hospital; every thing is left to the care of people intent on gain. The attendants seem to have lost all feeling of compassion in the bustling discharge of their offices; death is so familiar to them, that they are not anxious to ward it off. Every thing appeared to be conducted for the accommodation of the medical men and their pupils, who came to make experiments on the poor, for the benefit of the rich. One of the physicians, I must not forget to mention, gave me half-a-crown, and ordered me some wine, when I was at the lowest ebb. I thought of making my case known to the lady-like matron; but her forbidding countenance prevented me. She condescended to look on the patients, and make general enquiries, two or three times a week; but the nurses knew the hour when the visit of ceremony would commence, and every thing was as it should be. "After my dismission, I was more at a loss than ever for a subsistence, and, not to weary you with a repetition of the same unavailing attempts, unable to stand at the washing-tub, I began to consider the rich and poor as natural enemies, and became a thief from principle. I could not now cease to reason, but I hated mankind. I despised myself, yet I justified my conduct. I was taken, tried, and condemned to six months' imprisonment in a house of correction. My soul recoils with horror from the remembrance of the insults I had to endure, till, branded with shame, I was turned loose in the street, pennyless. I wandered from street to street, till, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, I sunk down senseless at a door, where I had vainly demanded a morsel of bread. I was sent by the inhabitant to the work-house, to which he had surlily bid me go, saying, he 'paid enough in conscience to the poor,' when, with parched tongue, I implored his charity. If those well-meaning people who exclaim against beggars, were acquainted with the treatment the poor receive in many of these wretched asylums, they would not stifle so easily involuntary sympathy, by saying that they have all parishes to go to, or wonder that the poor dread to enter the gloomy walls. What are the common run of work-houses, but prisons, in which many respectable old people, worn out by immoderate labour, sink into the grave in sorrow, to which they are carried like dogs!" Alarmed by some indistinct noise, Jemima rose hastily to listen, and Maria, turning to Darnford, said, "I have indeed been shocked beyond expression when I have met a pauper's funeral. A coffin carried on the shoulders of three or four ill-looking wretches, whom the imagination might easily convert into a band of assassins, hastening to conceal the corpse, and quarrelling about the prey on their way. I know it is of little consequence how we are consigned to the earth; but I am led by this brutal insensibility, to what even the animal creation appears forcibly to feel, to advert to the wretched, deserted manner in which they died." "True," rejoined Darnford, "and, till the rich will give more than a part of their wealth, till they will give time and attention to the wants of the distressed, never let them boast of charity. Let them open their hearts, and not their purses, and employ their minds in the service, if they are really actuated by humanity; or charitable institutions will always be the prey of the lowest order of knaves." Jemima returning, seemed in haste to finish her tale. "The overseer farmed the poor of different parishes, and out of the bowels of poverty was wrung the money with which he purchased this dwelling, as a private receptacle for madness. He had been a keeper at a house of the same description, and conceived that he could make money much more readily in his old occupation. He is a shrewd--shall I say it?--villain. He observed something resolute in my manner, and offered to take me with him, and instruct me how to treat the disturbed minds he meant to intrust to my care. The offer of forty pounds a year, and to quit a workhouse, was not to be despised, though the condition of shutting my eyes and hardening my heart was annexed to it. "I agreed to accompany him; and four years have I been attendant on many wretches, and"--she lowered her voice,--"the witness of many enormities. In solitude my mind seemed to recover its force, and many of the sentiments which I imbibed in the only tolerable period of my life, returned with their full force. Still what should induce me to be the champion for suffering humanity?--Who ever risked any thing for me?--Who ever acknowledged me to be a fellow-creature?"-- Maria took her hand, and Jemima, more overcome by kindness than she had ever been by cruelty, hastened out of the room to conceal her emotions. Darnford soon after heard his summons, and, taking leave of him, Maria promised to gratify his curiosity, with respect to herself, the first opportunity. FOOTNOTES: [114-A] The copy which appears to have received the author's last corrections, ends at this place. CHAP. VI. ACTIVE as love was in the heart of Maria, the story she had just heard made her thoughts take a wider range. The opening buds of hope closed, as if they had put forth too early, and the the happiest day of her life was overcast by the most melancholy reflections. Thinking of Jemima's peculiar fate and her own, she was led to consider the oppressed state of women, and to lament that she had given birth to a daughter. Sleep fled from her eyelids, while she dwelt on the wretchedness of unprotected infancy, till sympathy with Jemima changed to agony, when it seemed probable that her own babe might even now be in the very state she so forcibly described. Maria thought, and thought again. Jemima's humanity had rather been benumbed than killed, by the keen frost she had to brave at her entrance into life; an appeal then to her feelings, on this tender point, surely would not be fruitless; and Maria began to anticipate the delight it would afford her to gain intelligence of her child. This project was now the only subject of reflection; and she watched impatiently for the dawn of day, with that determinate purpose which generally insures success. At the usual hour, Jemima brought her breakfast, and a tender note from Darnford. She ran her eye hastily over it, and her heart calmly hoarded up the rapture a fresh assurance of affection, affection such as she wished to inspire, gave her, without diverting her mind a moment from its design. While Jemima waited to take away the breakfast, Maria alluded to the reflections, that had haunted her during the night to the exclusion of sleep. She spoke with energy of Jemima's unmerited sufferings, and of the fate of a number of deserted females, placed within the sweep of a whirlwind, from which it was next to impossible to escape. Perceiving the effect her conversation produced on the countenance of her guard, she grasped the arm of Jemima with that irresistible warmth which defies repulse, exclaiming--"With your heart, and such dreadful experience, can you lend your aid to deprive my babe of a mother's tenderness, a mother's care? In the name of God, assist me to snatch her from destruction! Let me but give her an education--let me but prepare her body and mind to encounter the ills which await her sex, and I will teach her to consider you as her second mother, and herself as the prop of your age. Yes, Jemima, look at me--observe me closely, and read my very soul; you merit a better fate;" she held out her hand with a firm gesture of assurance; "and I will procure it for you, as a testimony of my esteem, as well as of my gratitude." Jemima had not power to resist this persuasive torrent; and, owning that the house in which she was confined, was situated on the banks of the Thames, only a few miles from London, and not on the sea-coast, as Darnford had supposed, she promised to invent some excuse for her absence, and go herself to trace the situation, and enquire concerning the health, of this abandoned daughter. Her manner implied an intention to do something more, but she seemed unwilling to impart her design; and Maria, glad to have obtained the main point, thought it best to leave her to the workings of her own mind; convinced that she had the power of interesting her still more in favour of herself and child, by a simple recital of facts. In the evening, Jemima informed the impatient mother, that on the morrow she should hasten to town before the family hour of rising, and received all the information necessary, as a clue to her search. The "Good night!" Maria uttered was peculiarly solemn and affectionate. Glad expectation sparkled in her eye; and, for the first time since her detention, she pronounced the name of her child with pleasureable fondness; and, with all the garrulity of a nurse, described her first smile when she recognized her mother. Recollecting herself, a still kinder "Adieu!" with a "God bless you!"--that seemed to include a maternal benediction, dismissed Jemima. The dreary solitude of the ensuing day, lengthened by impatiently dwelling on the same idea, was intolerably wearisome. She listened for the sound of a particular clock, which some directions of the wind allowed her to hear distinctly. She marked the shadow gaining on the wall; and, twilight thickening into darkness, her breath seemed oppressed while she anxiously counted nine.--The last sound was a stroke of despair on her heart; for she expected every moment, without seeing Jemima, to have her light extinguished by the savage female who supplied her place. She was even obliged to prepare for bed, restless as she was, not to disoblige her new attendant. She had been cautioned not to speak too freely to her; but the caution was needless, her countenance would still more emphatically have made her shrink back. Such was the ferocity of manner, conspicuous in every word and gesture of this hag, that Maria was afraid to enquire, why Jemima, who had faithfully promised to see her before her door was shut for the night, came not?--and, when the key turned in the lock, to consign her to a night of suspence, she felt a degree of anguish which the circumstances scarcely justified. Continually on the watch, the shutting of a door, or the sound of a footstep, made her start and tremble with apprehension, something like what she felt, when, at her entrance, dragged along the gallery, she began to doubt whether she were not surrounded by demons? Fatigued by an endless rotation of thought and wild alarms, she looked like a spectre, when Jemima entered in the morning; especially as her eyes darted out of her head, to read in Jemima's countenance, almost as pallid, the intelligence she dared not trust her tongue to demand. Jemima put down the tea-things, and appeared very busy in arranging the table. Maria took up a cup with trembling hand, then forcibly recovering her fortitude, and restraining the convulsive movement which agitated the muscles of her mouth, she said, "Spare yourself the pain of preparing me for your information, I adjure you!--My child is dead!" Jemima solemnly answered, "Yes;" with a look expressive of compassion and angry emotions. "Leave me," added Maria, making a fresh effort to govern her feelings, and hiding her face in her handkerchief, to conceal her anguish--"It is enough--I know that my babe is no more--I will hear the particulars when I am"--_calmer_, she could not utter; and Jemima, without importuning her by idle attempts to console her, left the room. Plunged in the deepest melancholy, she would not admit Darnford's visits; and such is the force of early associations even on strong minds, that, for a while, she indulged the superstitious notion that she was justly punished by the death of her child, for having for an instant ceased to regret her loss. Two or three letters from Darnford, full of soothing, manly tenderness, only added poignancy to these accusing emotions; yet the passionate style in which he expressed, what he termed the first and fondest wish of his heart, "that his affection might make her some amends for the cruelty and injustice she had endured," inspired a sentiment of gratitude to heaven; and her eyes filled with delicious tears, when, at the conclusion of his letter, wishing to supply the place of her unworthy relations, whose want of principle he execrated, he assured her, calling her his dearest girl, "that it should henceforth be the business of his life to make her happy." He begged, in a note sent the following morning, to be permitted to see her, when his presence would be no intrusion on her grief; and so earnestly intreated to be allowed, according to promise, to beguile the tedious moments of absence, by dwelling on the events of her past life, that she sent him the memoirs which had been written for her daughter, promising Jemima the perusal as soon as he returned them. CHAP. VII. "ADDRESSING these memoirs to you, my child, uncertain whether I shall ever have an opportunity of instructing you, many observations will probably flow from my heart, which only a mother--a mother schooled in misery, could make. "The tenderness of a father who knew the world, might be great; but could it equal that of a mother--of a mother, labouring under a portion of the misery, which the constitution of society seems to have entailed on all her kind? It is, my child, my dearest daughter, only such a mother, who will dare to break through all restraint to provide for your happiness--who will voluntarily brave censure herself, to ward off sorrow from your bosom. From my narrative, my dear girl, you may gather the instruction, the counsel, which is meant rather to exercise than influence your mind.--Death may snatch me from you, before you can weigh my advice, or enter into my reasoning: I would then, with fond anxiety, lead you very early in life to form your grand principle of action, to save you from the vain regret of having, through irresolution, let the spring-tide of existence pass away, unimproved, unenjoyed.--Gain experience--ah! gain it--while experience is worth having, and acquire sufficient fortitude to pursue your own happiness; it includes your utility, by a direct path. What is wisdom too often, but the owl of the goddess, who sits moping in a desolated heart; around me she shrieks, but I would invite all the gay warblers of spring to nestle in your blooming bosom.--Had I not wasted years in deliberating, after I ceased to doubt, how I ought to have acted--I might now be useful and happy.--For my sake, warned by my example, always appear what you are, and you will not pass through existence without enjoying its genuine blessings, love and respect. "Born in one of the most romantic parts of England, an enthusiastic fondness for the varying charms of nature is the first sentiment I recollect; or rather it was the first consciousness of pleasure that employed and formed my imagination. "My father had been a captain of a man of war; but, disgusted with the service, on account of the preferment of men whose chief merit was their family connections or borough interest, he retired into the country; and, not knowing what to do with himself--married. In his family, to regain his lost consequence, he determined to keep up the same passive obedience, as in the vessels in which he had commanded. His orders were not to be disputed; and the whole house was expected to fly, at the word of command, as if to man the shrouds, or mount aloft in an elemental strife, big with life or death. He was to be instantaneously obeyed, especially by my mother, whom he very benevolently married for love; but took care to remind her of the obligation, when she dared, in the slightest instance, to question his absolute authority. My eldest brother, it is true, as he grew up, was treated with more respect by my father; and became in due form the deputy-tyrant of the house. The representative of my father, a being privileged by nature--a boy, and the darling of my mother, he did not fail to act like an heir apparent. Such indeed was my mother's extravagant partiality, that, in comparison with her affection for him, she might be said not to love the rest of her children. Yet none of the children seemed to have so little affection for her. Extreme indulgence had rendered him so selfish, that he only thought of himself; and from tormenting insects and animals, he became the despot of his brothers, and still more of his sisters. "It is perhaps difficult to give you an idea of the petty cares which obscured the morning of my life; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional submission to orders, which, as a mere child, I soon discovered to be unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory. Thus are we destined to experience a mixture of bitterness, with the recollection of our most innocent enjoyments. "The circumstances which, during my childhood, occurred to fashion my mind, were various; yet, as it would probably afford me more pleasure to revive the fading remembrance of new-born delight, than you, my child, could feel in the perusal, I will not entice you to stray with me into the verdant meadow, to search for the flowers that youthful hopes scatter in every path; though, as I write, I almost scent the fresh green of spring--of that spring which never returns! "I had two sisters, and one brother, younger than myself; my brother Robert was two years older, and might truly be termed the idol of his parents, and the torment of the rest of the family. Such indeed is the force of prejudice, that what was called spirit and wit in him, was cruelly repressed as forwardness in me. "My mother had an indolence of character, which prevented her from paying much attention to our education. But the healthy breeze of a neighbouring heath, on which we bounded at pleasure, volatilized the humours that improper food might have generated. And to enjoy open air and freedom, was paradise, after the unnatural restraint of our fire-side, where we were often obliged to sit three or four hours together, without daring to utter a word, when my father was out of humour, from want of employment, or of a variety of boisterous amusement. I had however one advantage, an instructor, the brother of my father, who, intended for the church, had of course received a liberal education. But, becoming attached to a young lady of great beauty and large fortune, and acquiring in the world some opinions not consonant with the profession for which he was designed, he accepted, with the most sanguine expectations of success, the offer of a nobleman to accompany him to India, as his confidential secretary. "A correspondence was regularly kept up with the object of his affection; and the intricacies of business, peculiarly wearisome to a man of a romantic turn of mind, contributed, with a forced absence, to increase his attachment. Every other passion was lost in this master-one, and only served to swell the torrent. Her relations, such were his waking dreams, who had despised him, would court in their turn his alliance, and all the blandishments of taste would grace the triumph of love.--While he basked in the warm sunshine of love, friendship also promised to shed its dewy freshness; for a friend, whom he loved next to his mistress, was the confident, who forwarded the letters from one to the other, to elude the observation of prying relations. A friend false in similar circumstances, is, my dearest girl, an old tale; yet, let not this example, or the frigid caution of cold-blooded moralists, make you endeavour to stifle hopes, which are the buds that naturally unfold themselves during the spring of life! Whilst your own heart is sincere, always expect to meet one glowing with the same sentiments; for to fly from pleasure, is not to avoid pain! "My uncle realized, by good luck, rather than management, a handsome fortune; and returning on the wings of love, lost in the most enchanting reveries, to England, to share it with his mistress and his friend, he found them--united. "There were some circumstances, not necessary for me to recite, which aggravated the guilt of the friend beyond measure, and the deception, that had been carried on to the last moment, was so base, it produced the most violent effect on my uncle's health and spirits. His native country, the world! lately a garden of blooming sweets, blasted by treachery, seemed changed into a parched desert, the abode of hissing serpents. Disappointment rankled in his heart; and, brooding over his wrongs, he was attacked by a raging fever, followed by a derangement of mind, which only gave place to habitual melancholy, as he recovered more strength of body. "Declaring an intention never to marry, his relations were ever clustering about him, paying the grossest adulation to a man, who, disgusted with mankind, received them with scorn, or bitter sarcasms. Something in my countenance pleased him, when I began to prattle. Since his return, he appeared dead to affection; but I soon, by showing him innocent fondness, became a favourite; and endeavouring to enlarge and strengthen my mind, I grew dear to him in proportion as I imbibed his sentiments. He had a forcible manner of speaking, rendered more so by a certain impressive wildness of look and gesture, calculated to engage the attention of a young and ardent mind. It is not then surprising that I quickly adopted his opinions in preference, and reverenced him as one of a superior order of beings. He inculcated, with great warmth, self-respect, and a lofty consciousness of acting right, independent of the censure or applause of the world; nay, he almost taught me to brave, and even despise its censure, when convinced of the rectitude of my own intentions. "Endeavouring to prove to me that nothing which deserved the name of love or friendship, existed in the world, he drew such animated pictures of his own feelings, rendered permanent by disappointment, as imprinted the sentiments strongly on my heart, and animated my imagination. These remarks are necessary to elucidate some peculiarities in my character, which by the world are indefinitely termed romantic. "My uncle's increasing affection led him to visit me often. Still, unable to rest in any place, he did not remain long in the country to soften domestic tyranny; but he brought me books, for which I had a passion, and they conspired with his conversation, to make me form an ideal picture of life. I shall pass over the tyranny of my father, much as I suffered from it; but it is necessary to notice, that it undermined my mother's health; and that her temper, continually irritated by domestic bickering, became intolerably peevish. "My eldest brother was articled to a neighbouring attorney, the shrewdest, and, I may add, the most unprincipled man in that part of the country. As my brother generally came home every Saturday, to astonish my mother by exhibiting his attainments, he gradually assumed a right of directing the whole family, not excepting my father. He seemed to take a peculiar pleasure in tormenting and humbling me; and if I ever ventured to complain of this treatment to either my father or mother, I was rudely rebuffed for presuming to judge of the conduct of my eldest brother. "About this period a merchant's family came to settle in our neighbourhood. A mansion-house in the village, lately purchased, had been preparing the whole spring, and the sight of the costly furniture, sent from London, had excited my mother's envy, and roused my father's pride. My sensations were very different, and all of a pleasurable kind. I longed to see new characters, to break the tedious monotony of my life; and to find a friend, such as fancy had pourtrayed. I cannot then describe the emotion I felt, the Sunday they made their appearance at church. My eyes were rivetted on the pillar round which I expected first to catch a glimpse of them, and darted forth to meet a servant who hastily preceded a group of ladies, whose white robes and waving plumes, seemed to stream along the gloomy aisle, diffusing the light, by which I contemplated their figures. "We visited them in form; and I quickly selected the eldest daughter for my friend. The second son, George, paid me particular attention, and finding his attainments and manners superior to those of the young men of the village, I began to imagine him superior to the rest of mankind. Had my home been more comfortable, or my previous acquaintance more numerous, I should not probably have been so eager to open my heart to new affections. "Mr. Venables, the merchant, had acquired a large fortune by unremitting attention to business; but his health declining rapidly, he was obliged to retire, before his son, George, had acquired sufficient experience, to enable him to conduct their affairs on the same prudential plan, his father had invariably pursued. Indeed, he had laboured to throw off his authority, having despised his narrow plans and cautious speculation. The eldest son could not be prevailed on to enter the firm; and, to oblige his wife, and have peace in the house, Mr. Venables had purchased a commission for him in the guards. "I am now alluding to circumstances which came to my knowledge long after; but it is necessary, my dearest child, that you should know the character of your father, to prevent your despising your mother; the only parent inclined to discharge a parent's duty. In London, George had acquired habits of libertinism, which he carefully concealed from his father and his commercial connections. The mask he wore, was so complete a covering of his real visage, that the praise his father lavished on his conduct, and, poor mistaken man! on his principles, contrasted with his brother's, rendered the notice he took of me peculiarly flattering. Without any fixed design, as I am now convinced, he continued to single me out at the dance, press my hand at parting, and utter expressions of unmeaning passion, to which I gave a meaning naturally suggested by the romantic turn of my thoughts. His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture became more vivid--Whither did not my imagination lead me? In short, I fancied myself in love--in love with the disinterestedness, fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had invested the hero I dubbed. A circumstance which soon after occurred, rendered all these virtues palpable. [The incident is perhaps worth relating on other accounts, and therefore I shall describe it distinctly.] "I had a great affection for my nurse, old Mary, for whom I used often to work, to spare her eyes. Mary had a younger sister, married to a sailor, while she was suckling me; for my mother only suckled my eldest brother, which might be the cause of her extraordinary partiality. Peggy, Mary's sister, lived with her, till her husband, becoming a mate in a West-India trader, got a little before-hand in the world. He wrote to his wife from the first port in the Channel, after his most successful voyage, to request her to come to London to meet him; he even wished her to determine on living there for the future, to save him the trouble of coming to her the moment he came on shore; and to turn a penny by keeping a green-stall. It was too much to set out on a journey the moment he had finished a voyage, and fifty miles by land, was worse than a thousand leagues by sea. "She packed up her alls, and came to London--but did not meet honest Daniel. A common misfortune prevented her, and the poor are bound to suffer for the good of their country--he was pressed in the river--and never came on shore. "Peggy was miserable in London, not knowing, as she said, 'the face of any living soul.' Besides, her imagination had been employed, anticipating a month or six weeks' happiness with her husband. Daniel was to have gone with her to Sadler's Wells, and Westminster Abbey, and to many sights, which he knew she never heard of in the country. Peggy too was thrifty, and how could she manage to put his plan in execution alone? He had acquaintance; but she did not know the very name of their places of abode. His letters were made up of--How do you does, and God bless yous,--information was reserved for the hour of meeting. "She too had her portion of information, near at heart. Molly and Jacky were grown such little darlings, she was almost angry that daddy did not see their tricks. She had not half the pleasure she should have had from their prattle, could she have recounted to him each night the pretty speeches of the day. Some stories, however, were stored up--and Jacky could say papa with such a sweet voice, it must delight his heart. Yet when she came, and found no Daniel to greet her, when Jacky called papa, she wept, bidding 'God bless his innocent soul, that did not know what sorrow was.'--But more sorrow was in store for Peggy, innocent as she was.--Daniel was killed in the first engagement, and then the _papa_ was agony, sounding to the heart. "She had lived sparingly on his wages, while there was any hope of his return; but, that gone, she returned with a breaking heart to the country, to a little market town, nearly three miles from our village. She did not like to go to service, to be snubbed about, after being her own mistress. To put her children out to nurse was impossible: how far would her wages go? and to send them to her husband's parish, a distant one, was to lose her husband twice over. "I had heard all from Mary, and made my uncle furnish a little cottage for her, to enable her to sell--so sacred was poor Daniel's advice, now he was dead and gone--a little fruit, toys and cakes. The minding of the shop did not require her whole time, nor even the keeping her children clean, and she loved to see them clean; so she took in washing, and altogether made a shift to earn bread for her children, still weeping for Daniel, when Jacky's arch looks made her think of his father.--It was pleasant to work for her children.--'Yes; from morning till night, could she have had a kiss from their father, God rest his soul! Yes; had it pleased Providence to have let him come back without a leg or an arm, it would have been the same thing to her--for she did not love him because he maintained them--no; she had hands of her own.' "The country people were honest, and Peggy left her linen out to dry very late. A recruiting party, as she supposed, passing through, made free with a large wash; for it was all swept away, including her own and her children's little stock. "This was a dreadful blow; two dozen of shirts, stocks and handkerchiefs. She gave the money which she had laid by for half a year's rent, and promised to pay two shillings a week till all was cleared; so she did not lose her employment. This two shillings a week, and the buying a few necessaries for the children, drove her so hard, that she had not a penny to pay her rent with, when a twelvemonth's became due. "She was now with Mary, and had just told her tale, which Mary instantly repeated--it was intended for my ear. Many houses in this town, producing a borough-interest, were included in the estate purchased by Mr. Venables, and the attorney with whom my brother lived, was appointed his agent, to collect and raise the rents. "He demanded Peggy's, and, in spite of her intreaties, her poor goods had been seized and sold. So that she had not, and what was worse her children, 'for she had known sorrow enough,' a bed to lie on. She knew that I was good-natured--right charitable, yet not liking to ask for more than needs must, she scorned to petition while people could any how be made to wait. But now, should she be turned out of doors, she must expect nothing less than to lose all her customers, and then she must beg or starve--and what would become of her children?--'had Daniel not been pressed--but God knows best--all this could not have happened.' "I had two mattrasses on my bed; what did I want with two, when such a worthy creature must lie on the ground? My mother would be angry, but I could conceal it till my uncle came down; and then I would tell him all the whole truth, and if he absolved me, heaven would. "I begged the house-maid to come up stairs with me (servants always feel for the distresses of poverty, and so would the rich if they knew what it was). She assisted me to tie up the mattrass; I discovering, at the same time, that one blanket would serve me till winter, could I persuade my sister, who slept with me, to keep my secret. She entering in the midst of the package, I gave her some new feathers, to silence her. We got the mattrass down the back stairs, unperceived, and I helped to carry it, taking with me all the money I had, and what I could borrow from my sister. "When I got to the cottage, Peggy declared that she would not take what I had brought secretly; but, when, with all the eager eloquence inspired by a decided purpose, I grasped her hand with weeping eyes, assuring her that my uncle would screen me from blame, when he was once more in the country, describing, at the same time, what she would suffer in parting with her children, after keeping them so long from being thrown on the parish, she reluctantly consented. "My project of usefulness ended not here; I determined to speak to the attorney; he frequently paid me compliments. His character did not intimidate me; but, imagining that Peggy must be mistaken, and that no man could turn a deaf ear to such a tale of complicated distress, I determined to walk to the town with Mary the next morning, and request him to wait for the rent, and keep my secret, till my uncle's return. "My repose was sweet; and, waking with the first dawn of day, I bounded to Mary's cottage. What charms do not a light heart spread over nature! Every bird that twittered in a bush, every flower that enlivened the hedge, seemed placed there to awaken me to rapture--yes; to rapture. The present moment was full fraught with happiness; and on futurity I bestowed not a thought, excepting to anticipate my success with the attorney. "This man of the world, with rosy face and simpering features, received me politely, nay kindly; listened with complacency to my remonstrances, though he scarcely heeded Mary's tears. I did not then suspect, that my eloquence was in my complexion, the blush of seventeen, or that, in a world where humanity to women is the characteristic of advancing civilization, the beauty of a young girl was so much more interesting than the distress of an old one. Pressing my hand, he promised to let Peggy remain in the house as long as I wished.--I more than returned the pressure--I was so grateful and so happy. Emboldened by my innocent warmth, he then kissed me--and I did not draw back--I took it for a kiss of charity. "Gay as a lark, I went to dine at Mr. Venables'. I had previously obtained five shillings from my father, towards re-clothing the poor children of my care, and prevailed on my mother to take one of the girls into the house, whom I determined to teach to work and read. "After dinner, when the younger part of the circle retired to the music room, I recounted with energy my tale; that is, I mentioned Peggy's distress, without hinting at the steps I had taken to relieve her. Miss Venables gave me half-a-crown; the heir five shillings; but George sat unmoved. I was cruelly distressed by the disappointment--I scarcely could remain on my chair; and, could I have got out of the room unperceived, I should have flown home, as if to run away from myself. After several vain attempts to rise, I leaned my head against the marble chimney-piece, and gazing on the evergreens that filled the fire-place, moralized on the vanity of human expectations; regardless of the company. I was roused by a gentle tap on my shoulder from behind Charlotte's chair. I turned my head, and George slid a guinea into my hand, putting his finger to his mouth, to enjoin me silence. "What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but feelings! I trembled with emotion--now, indeed, I was in love. Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous impulse. The bitter experience was yet to come, that has taught me how very distinct are the principles of virtue, from the casual feelings from which they germinate. CHAP. VIII. "I HAVE perhaps dwelt too long on a circumstance, which is only of importance as it marks the progress of a deception that has been so fatal to my peace; and introduces to your notice a poor girl, whom, intending to serve, I led to ruin. Still it is probable that I was not entirely the victim of mistake; and that your father, gradually fashioned by the world, did not quickly become what I hesitate to call him--out of respect to my daughter. "But, to hasten to the more busy scenes of my life. Mr. Venables and my mother died the same summer; and, wholly engrossed by my attention to her, I thought of little else. The neglect of her darling, my brother Robert, had a violent effect on her weakened mind; for, though boys may be reckoned the pillars of the house without doors, girls are often the only comfort within. They but too frequently waste their health and spirits attending a dying parent, who leaves them in comparative poverty. After closing, with filial piety, a father's eyes, they are chased from the paternal roof, to make room for the first-born, the son, who is to carry the empty family-name down to posterity; though, occupied with his own pleasures, he scarcely thought of discharging, in the decline of his parent's life, the debt contracted in his childhood. My mother's conduct led me to make these reflections. Great as was the fatigue I endured, and the affection my unceasing solicitude evinced, of which my mother seemed perfectly sensible, still, when my brother, whom I could hardly persuade to remain a quarter of an hour in her chamber, was with her alone, a short time before her death, she gave him a little hoard, which she had been some years accumulating. "During my mother's illness, I was obliged to manage my father's temper, who, from the lingering nature of her malady, began to imagine that it was merely fancy. At this period, an artful kind of upper servant attracted my father's attention, and the neighbours made many remarks on the finery, not honestly got, exhibited at evening service. But I was too much occupied with my mother to observe any change in her dress or behaviour, or to listen to the whisper of scandal. "I shall not dwell on the death-bed scene, lively as is the remembrance, or on the emotion produced by the last grasp of my mother's cold hand; when blessing me, she added, 'A little patience, and all will be over!' Ah! my child, how often have those words rung mournfully in my ears--and I have exclaimed--'A little more patience, and I too shall be at rest!' "My father was violently affected by her death, recollected instances of his unkindness, and wept like a child. "My mother had solemnly recommended my sisters to my care, and bid me be a mother to them. They, indeed, became more dear to me as they became more forlorn; for, during my mother's illness, I discovered the ruined state of my father's circumstances, and that he had only been able to keep up appearances, by the sums which he borrowed of my uncle. "My father's grief, and consequent tenderness to his children, quickly abated, the house grew still more gloomy or riotous; and my refuge from care was again at Mr. Venables'; the young 'squire having taken his father's place, and allowing, for the present, his sister to preside at his table. George, though dissatisfied with his portion of the fortune, which had till lately been all in trade, visited the family as usual. He was now full of speculations in trade, and his brow became clouded by care. He seemed to relax in his attention to me, when the presence of my uncle gave a new turn to his behaviour. I was too unsuspecting, too disinterested, to trace these changes to their source. My home every day became more and more disagreeable to me; my liberty was unnecessarily abridged, and my books, on the pretext that they made me idle, taken from me. My father's mistress was with child, and he, doating on her, allowed or overlooked her vulgar manner of tyrannizing over us. I was indignant, especially when I saw her endeavouring to attract, shall I say seduce? my younger brother. By allowing women but one way of rising in the world, the fostering the libertinism of men, society makes monsters of them, and then their ignoble vices are brought forward as a proof of inferiority of intellect. The wearisomeness of my situation can scarcely be described. Though my life had not passed in the most even tenour with my mother, it was paradise to that I was destined to endure with my father's mistress, jealous of her illegitimate authority. My father's former occasional tenderness, in spite of his violence of temper, had been soothing to me; but now he only met me with reproofs or portentous frowns. The house-keeper, as she was now termed, was the vulgar despot of the family; and assuming the new character of a fine lady, she could never forgive the contempt which was sometimes visible in my countenance, when she uttered with pomposity her bad English, or affected to be well bred. To my uncle I ventured to open my heart; and he, with his wonted benevolence, began to consider in what manner he could extricate me out of my present irksome situation. In spite of his own disappointment, or, most probably, actuated by the feelings that had been petrified, not cooled, in all their sanguine fervour, like a boiling torrent of lava suddenly dashing into the sea, he thought a marriage of mutual inclination (would envious stars permit it) the only chance for happiness in this disastrous world. George Venables had the reputation of being attentive to business, and my father's example gave great weight to this circumstance; for habits of order in business would, he conceived, extend to the regulation of the affections in domestic life. George seldom spoke in my uncle's company, except to utter a short, judicious question, or to make a pertinent remark, with all due deference to his superior judgment; so that my uncle seldom left his company without observing, that the young man had more in him than people supposed. In this opinion he was not singular; yet, believe me, and I am not swayed by resentment, these speeches so justly poized, this silent deference, when the animal spirits of other young people were throwing off youthful ebullitions, were not the effect of thought or humility, but sheer barrenness of mind, and want of imagination. A colt of mettle will curvet and shew his paces. Yes; my dear girl, these prudent young men want all the fire necessary to ferment their faculties, and are characterized as wise, only because they are not foolish. It is true, that George was by no means so great a favourite of mine as during the first year of our acquaintance; still, as he often coincided in opinion with me, and echoed my sentiments; and having myself no other attachment, I heard with pleasure my uncle's proposal; but thought more of obtaining my freedom, than of my lover. But, when George, seemingly anxious for my happiness, pressed me to quit my present painful situation, my heart swelled with gratitude--I knew not that my uncle had promised him five thousand pounds. Had this truly generous man mentioned his intention to me, I should have insisted on a thousand pounds being settled on each of my sisters; George would have contested; I should have seen his selfish soul; and--gracious God! have been spared the misery of discovering, when too late, that I was united to a heartless, unprincipled wretch. All my schemes of usefulness would not then have been blasted. The tenderness of my heart would not have heated my imagination with visions of the ineffable delight of happy love; nor would the sweet duty of a mother have been so cruelly interrupted. But I must not suffer the fortitude I have so hardly acquired, to be undermined by unavailing regret. Let me hasten forward to describe the turbid stream in which I had to wade--but let me exultingly declare that it is passed--my soul holds fellowship with him no more. He cut the Gordian knot, which my principles, mistaken ones, respected; he dissolved the tie, the fetters rather, that ate into my very vitals--and I should rejoice, conscious that my mind is freed, though confined in hell itself; the only place that even fancy can imagine more dreadful than my present abode. These varying emotions will not allow me to proceed. I heave sigh after sigh; yet my heart is still oppressed. For what am I reserved? Why was I not born a man, or why was I born at all? END OF VOL. I. POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. VOL. II. POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF THE AUTHOR OF A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. IN FOUR VOLUMES. * * * * * VOL. II. * * * * * _LONDON:_ PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD; AND G. G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1798. THE WRONGS OF WOMAN: OR, MARIA. A FRAGMENT. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. _WRONGS_ OF WOMAN. CHAP. IX. "I RESUME my pen to fly from thought. I was married; and we hastened to London. I had purposed taking one of my sisters with me; for a strong motive for marrying, was the desire of having a home at which I could receive them, now their own grew so uncomfortable, as not to deserve the cheering appellation. An objection was made to her accompanying me, that appeared plausible; and I reluctantly acquiesced. I was however willingly allowed to take with me Molly, poor Peggy's daughter. London and preferment, are ideas commonly associated in the country; and, as blooming as May, she bade adieu to Peggy with weeping eyes. I did not even feel hurt at the refusal in relation to my sister, till hearing what my uncle had done for me, I had the simplicity to request, speaking with warmth of their situation, that he would give them a thousand pounds a-piece, which seemed to me but justice. He asked me, giving me a kiss, 'If I had lost my senses?' I started back, as if I had found a wasp in a rose-bush. I expostulated. He sneered; and the demon of discord entered our paradise, to poison with his pestiferous breath every opening joy. "I had sometimes observed defects in my husband's understanding; but, led astray by a prevailing opinion, that goodness of disposition is of the first importance in the relative situations of life, in proportion as I perceived the narrowness of his understanding, fancy enlarged the boundary of his heart. Fatal error! How quickly is the so much vaunted milkiness of nature turned into gall, by an intercourse with the world, if more generous juices do not sustain the vital source of virtue! "One trait in my character was extreme credulity; but, when my eyes were once opened, I saw but too clearly all I had before overlooked. My husband was sunk in my esteem; still there are youthful emotions, which, for a while, fill up the chasm of love and friendship. Besides, it required some time to enable me to see his whole character in a just light, or rather to allow it to become fixed. While circumstances were ripening my faculties, and cultivating my taste, commerce and gross relaxations were shutting his against any possibility of improvement, till, by stifling every spark of virtue in himself, he began to imagine that it no where existed. "Do not let me lead you astray, my child, I do not mean to assert, that any human being is entirely incapable of feeling the generous emotions, which are the foundation of every true principle of virtue; but they are frequently, I fear, so feeble, that, like the inflammable quality which more or less lurks in all bodies, they often lie for ever dormant; the circumstances never occurring, necessary to call them into action. "I discovered however by chance, that, in consequence of some losses in trade, the natural effect of his gambling desire to start suddenly into riches, the five thousand pounds given me by my uncle, had been paid very opportunely. This discovery, strange as you may think the assertion, gave me pleasure; my husband's embarrassments endeared him to me. I was glad to find an excuse for his conduct to my sisters, and my mind became calmer. "My uncle introduced me to some literary society; and the theatres were a never-failing source of amusement to me. My delighted eye followed Mrs. Siddons, when, with dignified delicacy, she played Calista; and I involuntarily repeated after her, in the same tone, and with a long-drawn sigh, 'Hearts like our's were pair'd--not match'd.' "These were, at first, spontaneous emotions, though, becoming acquainted with men of wit and polished manners, I could not sometimes help regretting my early marriage; and that, in my haste to escape from a temporary dependence, and expand my newly fledged wings, in an unknown sky, I had been caught in a trap, and caged for life. Still the novelty of London, and the attentive fondness of my husband, for he had some personal regard for me, made several months glide away. Yet, not forgetting the situation of my sisters, who were still very young, I prevailed on my uncle to settle a thousand pounds on each; and to place them in a school near town, where I could frequently visit, as well as have them at home with me. "I now tried to improve my husband's taste, but we had few subjects in common; indeed he soon appeared to have little relish for my society, unless he was hinting to me the use he could make of my uncle's wealth. When we had company, I was disgusted by an ostentatious display of riches, and I have often quitted the room, to avoid listening to exaggerated tales of money obtained by lucky hits. "With all my attention and affectionate interest, I perceived that I could not become the friend or confident of my husband. Every thing I learned relative to his affairs I gathered up by accident; and I vainly endeavoured to establish, at our fire-side, that social converse, which often renders people of different characters dear to each other. Returning from the theatre, or any amusing party, I frequently began to relate what I had seen and highly relished; but with sullen taciturnity he soon silenced me. I seemed therefore gradually to lose, in his society, the soul, the energies of which had just been in action. To such a degree, in fact, did his cold, reserved manner affect me, that, after spending some days with him alone, I have imagined myself the most stupid creature in the world, till the abilities of some casual visitor convinced me that I had some dormant animation, and sentiments above the dust in which I had been groveling. The very countenance of my husband changed; his complexion became sallow, and all the charms of youth were vanishing with its vivacity. "I give you one view of the subject; but these experiments and alterations took up the space of five years; during which period, I had most reluctantly extorted several sums from my uncle, to save my husband, to use his own words, from destruction. At first it was to prevent bills being noted, to the injury of his credit; then to bail him; and afterwards to prevent an execution from entering the house. I began at last to conclude, that he would have made more exertions of his own to extricate himself, had he not relied on mine, cruel as was the task he imposed on me; and I firmly determined that I would make use of no more pretexts. "From the moment I pronounced this determination, indifference on his part was changed into rudeness, or something worse. "He now seldom dined at home, and continually returned at a late hour, drunk, to bed. I retired to another apartment; I was glad, I own, to escape from his; for personal intimacy without affection, seemed, to me the most degrading, as well as the most painful state in which a woman of any taste, not to speak of the peculiar delicacy of fostered sensibility, could be placed. But my husband's fondness for women was of the grossest kind, and imagination was so wholly out of the question, as to render his indulgences of this sort entirely promiscuous, and of the most brutal nature. My health suffered, before my heart was entirely estranged by the loathsome information; could I then have returned to his sullied arms, but as a victim to the prejudices of mankind, who have made women the property of their husbands? I discovered even, by his conversation, when intoxicated, that his favourites were wantons of the lowest class, who could by their vulgar, indecent mirth, which he called nature, rouse his sluggish spirits. Meretricious ornaments and manners were necessary to attract his attention. He seldom looked twice at a modest woman, and sat silent in their company; and the charms of youth and beauty had not the slightest effect on his senses, unless the possessors were initiated in vice. His intimacy with profligate women, and his habits of thinking, gave him a contempt for female endowments; and he would repeat, when wine had loosed his tongue, most of the common-place sarcasms levelled at them, by men who do not allow them to have minds, because mind would be an impediment to gross enjoyment. Men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women. But where are these reflections leading me? "Women who have lost their husband's affection, are justly reproved for neglecting their persons, and not taking the same pains to keep, as to gain a heart; but who thinks of giving the same advice to men, though women are continually stigmatized for being attached to fops; and from the nature of their education, are more susceptible of disgust? Yet why a woman should be expected to endure a sloven, with more patience than a man, and magnanimously to govern herself, I cannot conceive; unless it be supposed arrogant in her to look for respect as well as a maintenance. It is not easy to be pleased, because, after promising to love, in different circumstances, we are told that it is our duty. I cannot, I am sure (though, when attending the sick, I never felt disgust) forget my own sensations, when rising with health and spirit, and after scenting the sweet morning, I have met my husband at the breakfast table. The active attention I had been giving to domestic regulations, which were generally settled before he rose, or a walk, gave a glow to my countenance, that contrasted with his squallid appearance. The squeamishness of stomach alone, produced by the last night's intemperance, which he took no pains to conceal, destroyed my appetite. I think I now see him lolling in an arm-chair, in a dirty powdering gown, soiled linen, ungartered stockings, and tangled hair, yawning and stretching himself. The newspaper was immediately called for, if not brought in on the tea-board, from which he would scarcely lift his eyes while I poured out the tea, excepting to ask for some brandy to put into it, or to declare that he could not eat. In answer to any question, in his best humour, it was a drawling 'What do you say, child?' But if I demanded money for the house expences, which I put off till the last moment, his customary reply, often prefaced with an oath, was, 'Do you think me, madam, made of money?'--The butcher, the baker, must wait; and, what was worse, I was often obliged to witness his surly dismission of tradesmen, who were in want of their money, and whom I sometimes paid with the presents my uncle gave me for my own use. "At this juncture my father's mistress, by terrifying his conscience, prevailed on him to marry her; he was already become a methodist; and my brother, who now practised for himself, had discovered a flaw in the settlement made on my mother's children, which set it aside, and he allowed my father, whose distress made him submit to any thing, a tithe of his own, or rather our fortune. "My sisters had left school, but were unable to endure home, which my father's wife rendered as disagreeable as possible, to get rid of girls whom she regarded as spies on her conduct. They were accomplished, yet you can (may you never be reduced to the same destitute state!) scarcely conceive the trouble I had to place them in the situation of governesses, the only one in which even a well-educated woman, with more than ordinary talents, can struggle for a subsistence; and even this is a dependence next to menial. Is it then surprising, that so many forlorn women, with human passions and feelings, take refuge in infamy? Alone in large mansions, I say alone, because they had no companions with whom they could converse on equal terms, or from whom they could expect the endearments of affection, they grew melancholy, and the sound of joy made them sad; and the youngest, having a more delicate frame, fell into a decline. It was with great difficulty that I, who now almost supported the house by loans from my uncle, could prevail on the _master_ of it, to allow her a room to die in. I watched her sick bed for some months, and then closed her eyes, gentle spirit! for ever. She was pretty, with very engaging manners; yet had never an opportunity to marry, excepting to a very old man. She had abilities sufficient to have shone in any profession, had there been any professions for women, though she shrunk at the name of milliner or mantua-maker as degrading to a gentlewoman. I would not term this feeling false pride to any one but you, my child, whom I fondly hope to see (yes; I will indulge the hope for a moment!) possessed of that energy of character which gives dignity to any station; and with that clear, firm spirit that will enable you to choose a situation for yourself, or submit to be classed in the lowest, if it be the only one in which you can be the mistress of your own actions. "Soon after the death of my sister, an incident occurred, to prove to me that the heart of a libertine is dead to natural affection; and to convince me, that the being who has appeared all tenderness, to gratify a selfish passion, is as regardless of the innocent fruit of it, as of the object, when the fit is over. I had casually observed an old, mean-looking woman, who called on my husband every two or three months to receive some money. One day entering the passage of his little counting-house, as she was going out, I heard her say, 'The child is very weak; she cannot live long, she will soon die out of your way, so you need not grudge her a little physic.' "'So much the better,' he replied, 'and pray mind your own business, good woman.' "I was struck by his unfeeling, inhuman tone of voice, and drew back, determined when the woman came again, to try to speak to her, not out of curiosity, I had heard enough, but with the hope of being useful to a poor, outcast girl. "A month or two elapsed before I saw this woman again; and then she had a child in her hand that tottered along, scarcely able to sustain her own weight. They were going away, to return at the hour Mr. Venables was expected; he was now from home. I desired the woman to walk into the parlour. She hesitated, yet obeyed. I assured her that I should not mention to my husband (the word seemed to weigh on my respiration), that I had seen her, or his child. The woman stared at me with astonishment; and I turned my eyes on the squalid object [that accompanied her.] She could hardly support herself, her complexion was sallow, and her eyes inflamed, with an indescribable look of cunning, mixed with the wrinkles produced by the peevishness of pain. "'Poor child!' I exclaimed. 'Ah! you may well say poor child,' replied the woman. 'I brought her here to see whether he would have the heart to look at her, and not get some advice. I do not know what they deserve who nursed her. Why, her legs bent under her like a bow when she came to me, and she has never been well since; but, if they were no better paid than I am, it is not to be wondered at, sure enough.' "On further enquiry I was informed, that this miserable spectacle was the daughter of a servant, a country girl, who caught Mr. Venables' eye, and whom he seduced. On his marriage he sent her away, her situation being too visible. After her delivery, she was thrown on the town; and died in an hospital within the year. The babe was sent to a parish-nurse, and afterwards to this woman, who did not seem much better; but what was to be expected from such a close bargain? She was only paid three shillings a week for board and washing. "The woman begged me to give her some old clothes for the child, assuring me, that she was almost afraid to ask master for money to buy even a pair of shoes. "I grew sick at heart. And, fearing Mr. Venables might enter, and oblige me to express my abhorrence, I hastily enquired where she lived, promised to pay her two shillings a week more, and to call on her in a day or two; putting a trifle into her hand as a proof of my good intention. "If the state of this child affected me, what were my feelings at a discovery I made respecting Peggy----?[22-A] FOOTNOTES: [22-A] The manuscript is imperfect here. An episode seems to have been intended, which was never committed to paper. EDITOR. CHAP. X. "MY father's situation was now so distressing, that I prevailed on my uncle to accompany me to visit him; and to lend me his assistance, to prevent the whole property of the family from becoming the prey of my brother's rapacity; for, to extricate himself out of present difficulties, my father was totally regardless of futurity. I took down with me some presents for my step-mother; it did not require an effort for me to treat her with civility, or to forget the past. "This was the first time I had visited my native village, since my marriage. But with what different emotions did I return from the busy world, with a heavy weight of experience benumbing my imagination, to scenes, that whispered recollections of joy and hope most eloquently to my heart! The first scent of the wild flowers from the heath, thrilled through my veins, awakening every sense to pleasure. The icy hand of despair seemed to be removed from my bosom; and--forgetting my husband--the nurtured visions of a romantic mind, bursting on me with all their original wildness and gay exuberance, were again hailed as sweet realities. I forgot, with equal facility, that I ever felt sorrow, or knew care in the country; while a transient rainbow stole athwart the cloudy sky of despondency. The picturesque form of several favourite trees, and the porches of rude cottages, with their smiling hedges, were recognized with the gladsome playfulness of childish vivacity. I could have kissed the chickens that pecked on the common; and longed to pat the cows, and frolic with the dogs that sported on it. I gazed with delight on the windmill, and thought it lucky that it should be in motion, at the moment I passed by; and entering the dear green lane, which led directly to the village, the sound of the well-known rookery gave that sentimental tinge to the varying sensations of my active soul, which only served to heighten the lustre of the luxuriant scenery. But, spying, as I advanced, the spire, peeping over the withered tops of the aged elms that composed the rookery, my thoughts flew immediately to the church-yard, and tears of affection, such was the effect of my imagination, bedewed my mother's grave! Sorrow gave place to devotional feelings. I wandered through the church in fancy, as I used sometimes to do on a Saturday evening. I recollected with what fervour I addressed the God of my youth: and once more with rapturous love looked above my sorrows to the Father of nature. I pause--feeling forcibly all the emotions I am describing; and (reminded, as I register my sorrows, of the sublime calm I have felt, when in some tremendous solitude, my soul rested on itself, and seemed to fill the universe) I insensibly breathe soft, hushing every wayward emotion, as if fearing to sully with a sigh, a contentment so extatic. "Having settled my father's affairs, and, by my exertions in his favour, made my brother my sworn foe, I returned to London. My husband's conduct was now changed; I had during my absence, received several affectionate, penitential letters from him; and he seemed on my arrival, to wish by his behaviour to prove his sincerity. I could not then conceive why he acted thus; and, when the suspicion darted into my head, that it might arise from observing my increasing influence with my uncle, I almost despised myself for imagining that such a degree of debasing selfishness could exist. "He became, unaccountable as was the change, tender and attentive; and, attacking my weak side, made a confession of his follies, and lamented the embarrassments in which I, who merited a far different fate, might be involved. He besought me to aid him with my counsel, praised my understanding, and appealed to the tenderness of my heart. "This conduct only inspired me with compassion. I wished to be his friend; but love had spread his rosy pinions, and fled far, far away; and had not (like some exquisite perfumes, the fine spirit of which is continually mingling with the air) left a fragrance behind, to mark where he had shook his wings. My husband's renewed caresses then became hateful to me; his brutality was tolerable, compared to his distasteful fondness. Still, compassion, and the fear of insulting his supposed feelings, by a want of sympathy, made me dissemble, and do violence to my delicacy. What a task! "Those who support a system of what I term false refinement, and will not allow great part of love in the female, as well as male breast, to spring in some respects involuntarily, may not admit that charms are as necessary to feed the passion, as virtues to convert the mellowing spirit into friendship. To such observers I have nothing to say, any more than to the moralists, who insist that women ought to, and can love their husbands, because it is their duty. To you, my child, I may add, with a heart tremblingly alive to your future conduct, some observations, dictated by my present feelings, on calmly reviewing this period of my life. When novelists or moralists praise as a virtue, a woman's coldness of constitution, and want of passion; and make her yield to the ardour of her lover out of sheer compassion, or to promote a frigid plan of future comfort, I am disgusted. They may be good women, in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase, and do no harm; but they appear to me not to have those 'finely fashioned nerves,' which render the senses exquisite. They may possess tenderness; but they want that fire of the imagination, which produces _active_ sensibility, and _positive_ virtue. How does the woman deserve to be characterized, who marries one man, with a heart and imagination devoted to another? Is she not an object of pity or contempt, when thus sacrilegiously violating the purity of her own feelings? Nay, it is as indelicate, when she is indifferent, unless she be constitutionally insensible; then indeed it is a mere affair of barter; and I have nothing to do with the secrets of trade. Yes; eagerly as I wish you to possess true rectitude of mind, and purity of affection, I must insist that a heartless conduct is the contrary of virtuous. Truth is the only basis of virtue; and we cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us. Men, more effectually to enslave us, may inculcate this partial morality, and lose sight of virtue in subdividing it into the duties of particular stations; but let us not blush for nature without a cause! "After these remarks, I am ashamed to own, that I was pregnant. The greatest sacrifice of my principles in my whole life, was the allowing my husband again to be familiar with my person, though to this cruel act of self-denial, when I wished the earth to open and swallow me, you owe your birth; and I the unutterable pleasure of being a mother. There was something of delicacy in my husband's bridal attentions; but now his tainted breath, pimpled face, and blood-shot eyes, were not more repugnant to my senses, than his gross manners, and loveless familiarity to my taste. "A man would only be expected to maintain; yes, barely grant a subsistence, to a woman rendered odious by habitual intoxication; but who would expect him, or think it possible to love her? And unless 'youth, and genial years were flown,' it would be thought equally unreasonable to insist, [under penalty of] forfeiting almost every thing reckoned valuable in life, that he should not love another: whilst woman, weak in reason, impotent in will, is required to moralize, sentimentalize herself to stone, and pine her life away, labouring to reform her embruted mate. He may even spend in dissipation, and intemperance, the very intemperance which renders him so hateful, her property, and by stinting her expences, not permit her to beguile in society, a wearisome, joyless life; for over their mutual fortune she has no power, it must all pass through his hand. And if she be a mother, and in the present state of women, it is a great misfortune to be prevented from discharging the duties, and cultivating the affections of one, what has she not to endure?--But I have suffered the tenderness of one to lead me into reflections that I did not think of making, to interrupt my narrative--yet the full heart will overflow. "Mr. Venables' embarrassments did not now endear him to me; still, anxious to befriend him, I endeavoured to prevail on him to retrench his expences; but he had always some plausible excuse to give, to justify his not following my advice. Humanity, compassion, and the interest produced by a habit of living together, made me try to relieve, and sympathize with him; but, when I recollected that I was bound to live with such a being for ever--my heart died within me; my desire of improvement became languid, and baleful, corroding melancholy took possession of my soul. Marriage had bastilled me for life. I discovered in myself a capacity for the enjoyment of the various pleasures existence affords; yet, fettered by the partial laws of society, this fair globe was to me an universal blank. "When I exhorted my husband to economy, I referred to himself. I was obliged to practise the most rigid, or contract debts, which I had too much reason to fear would never be paid. I despised this paltry privilege of a wife, which can only be of use to the vicious or inconsiderate, and determined not to increase the torrent that was bearing him down. I was then ignorant of the extent of his fraudulent speculations, whom I was bound to honour and obey. "A woman neglected by her husband, or whose manners form a striking contrast with his, will always have men on the watch to soothe and flatter her. Besides, the forlorn state of a neglected woman, not destitute of personal charms, is particularly interesting, and rouses that species of pity, which is so near akin, it easily slides into love. A man of feeling thinks not of seducing, he is himself seduced by all the noblest emotions of his soul. He figures to himself all the sacrifices a woman of sensibility must make, and every situation in which his imagination places her, touches his heart, and fires his passions. Longing to take to his bosom the shorn lamb, and bid the drooping buds of hope revive, benevolence changes into passion: and should he then discover that he is beloved, honour binds him fast, though foreseeing that he may afterwards be obliged to pay severe damages to the man, who never appeared to value his wife's society, till he found that there was a chance of his being indemnified for the loss of it. "Such are the partial laws enacted by men; for, only to lay a stress on the dependent state of a woman in the grand question of the comforts arising from the possession of property, she is [even in this article] much more injured by the loss of the husband's affection, than he by that of his wife; yet where is she, condemned to the solitude of a deserted home, to look for a compensation from the woman, who seduces him from her? She cannot drive an unfaithful husband from his house, nor separate, or tear, his children from him, however culpable he may be; and he, still the master of his own fate, enjoys the smiles of a world, that would brand her with infamy, did she, seeking consolation, venture to retaliate. "These remarks are not dictated by experience; but merely by the compassion I feel for many amiable women, the _out-laws_ of the world. For myself, never encouraging any of the advances that were made to me, my lovers dropped off like the untimely shoots of spring. I did not even coquet with them; because I found, on examining myself, I could not coquet with a man without loving him a little; and I perceived that I should not be able to stop at the line of what are termed _innocent freedoms_, did I suffer any. My reserve was then the consequence of delicacy. Freedom of conduct has emancipated many women's minds; but my conduct has most rigidly been governed by my principles, till the improvement of my understanding has enabled me to discern the fallacy of prejudices at war with nature and reason. "Shortly after the change I have mentioned in my husband's conduct, my uncle was compelled by his declining health, to seek the succour of a milder climate, and embark for Lisbon. He left his will in the hands of a friend, an eminent solicitor; he had previously questioned me relative to my situation and state of mind, and declared very freely, that he could place no reliance on the stability of my husband's professions. He had been deceived in the unfolding of his character; he now thought it fixed in a train of actions that would inevitably lead to ruin and disgrace. "The evening before his departure, which we spent alone together, he folded me to his heart, uttering the endearing appellation of 'child.'--My more than father! why was I not permitted to perform the last duties of one, and smooth the pillow of death? He seemed by his manner to be convinced that he should never see me more; yet requested me, most earnestly, to come to him, should I be obliged to leave my husband. He had before expressed his sorrow at hearing of my pregnancy, having determined to prevail on me to accompany him, till I informed him of that circumstance. He expressed himself unfeignedly sorry that any new tie should bind me to a man whom he thought so incapable of estimating my value; such was the kind language of affection. "I must repeat his own words; they made an indelible impression on my mind: "'The marriage state is certainly that in which women, generally speaking, can be most useful; but I am far from thinking that a woman, once married, ought to consider the engagement as indissoluble (especially if there be no children to reward her for sacrificing her feelings) in case her husband merits neither her love, nor esteem. Esteem will often supply the place of love; and prevent a woman from being wretched, though it may not make her happy. The magnitude of a sacrifice ought always to bear some proportion to the utility in view; and for a woman to live with a man, for whom she can cherish neither affection nor esteem, or even be of any use to him, excepting in the light of a house-keeper, is an abjectness of condition, the enduring of which no concurrence of circumstances can ever make a duty in the sight of God or just men. If indeed she submits to it merely to be maintained in idleness, she has no right to complain bitterly of her fate; or to act, as a person of independent character might, as if she had a title to disregard general rules. "'But the misfortune is, that many women only submit in appearance, and forfeit their own respect to secure their reputation in the world. The situation of a woman separated from her husband, is undoubtedly very different from that of a man who has left his wife. He, with lordly dignity, has shaken of a clog; and the allowing her food and raiment, is thought sufficient to secure his reputation from taint. And, should she have been inconsiderate, he will be celebrated for his generosity and forbearance. Such is the respect paid to the master-key of property! A woman, on the contrary, resigning what is termed her natural protector (though he never was so, but in name) is despised and shunned, for asserting the independence of mind distinctive of a rational being, and spurning at slavery.' "During the remainder of the evening, my uncle's tenderness led him frequently to revert to the subject, and utter, with increasing warmth, sentiments to the same purport. At length it was necessary to say 'Farewell!'--and we parted--gracious God! to meet no more. CHAP. XI. "A GENTLEMAN of large fortune and of polished manners, had lately visited very frequently at our house, and treated me, if possible, with more respect than Mr. Venables paid him; my pregnancy was not yet visible, his society was a great relief to me, as I had for some time past, to avoid expence, confined myself very much at home. I ever disdained unnecessary, perhaps even prudent concealments; and my husband, with great ease, discovered the amount of my uncle's parting present. A copy of a writ was the stale pretext to extort it from me; and I had soon reason to believe that it was fabricated for the purpose. I acknowledge my folly in thus suffering myself to be continually imposed on. I had adhered to my resolution not to apply to my uncle, on the part of my husband, any more; yet, when I had received a sum sufficient to supply my own wants, and to enable me to pursue a plan I had in view, to settle my younger brother in a respectable employment, I allowed myself to be duped by Mr. Venables' shallow pretences, and hypocritical professions. "Thus did he pillage me and my family, thus frustrate all my plans of usefulness. Yet this was the man I was bound to respect and esteem: as if respect and esteem depended on an arbitrary will of our own! But a wife being as much a man's property as his horse, or his ass, she has nothing she can call her own. He may use any means to get at what the law considers as his, the moment his wife is in possession of it, even to the forcing of a lock, as Mr. Venables did, to search for notes in my writing-desk--and all this is done with a show of equity, because, forsooth, he is responsible for her maintenance. "The tender mother cannot _lawfully_ snatch from the gripe of the gambling spendthrift, or beastly drunkard, unmindful of his offspring, the fortune which falls to her by chance; or (so flagrant is the injustice) what she earns by her own exertions. No; he can rob her with impunity, even to waste publicly on a courtezan; and the laws of her country--if women have a country--afford her no protection or redress from the oppressor, unless she have the plea of bodily fear; yet how many ways are there of goading the soul almost to madness, equally unmanly, though not so mean? When such laws were framed, should not impartial lawgivers have first decreed, in the style of a great assembly, who recognized the existence of an _être suprême_, to fix the national belief, that the husband should always be wiser and more virtuous than his wife, in order to entitle him, with a show of justice, to keep this idiot, or perpetual minor, for ever in bondage. But I must have done--on this subject, my indignation continually runs away with me. "The company of the gentleman I have already mentioned, who had a general acquaintance with literature and subjects of taste, was grateful to me; my countenance brightened up as he approached, and I unaffectedly expressed the pleasure I felt. The amusement his conversation afforded me, made it easy to comply with my husband's request, to endeavour to render our house agreeable to him. "His attentions became more pointed; but, as I was not of the number of women, whose virtue, as it is termed, immediately takes alarm, I endeavoured, rather by raillery than serious expostulation, to give a different turn to his conversation. He assumed a new mode of attack, and I was, for a while, the dupe of his pretended friendship. "I had, merely in the style of _badinage_, boasted of my conquest, and repeated his lover-like compliments to my husband. But he begged me, for God's sake, not to affront his friend, or I should destroy all his projects, and be his ruin. Had I had more affection for my husband, I should have expressed my contempt of this time-serving politeness: now I imagined that I only felt pity; yet it would have puzzled a casuist to point out in what the exact difference consisted. "This friend began now, in confidence, to discover to me the real state of my husband's affairs. 'Necessity,' said Mr. S----; why should I reveal his name? for he affected to palliate the conduct he could not excuse, 'had led him to take such steps, by accommodation bills, buying goods on credit, to sell them for ready money, and similar transactions, that his character in the commercial world was gone. He was considered,' he added, lowering his voice, 'on 'Change as a swindler.' "I felt at that moment the first maternal pang. Aware of the evils my sex have to struggle with, I still wished, for my own consolation, to be the mother of a daughter; and I could not bear to think, that the _sins_ of her father's entailed disgrace, should be added to the ills to which woman is heir. "So completely was I deceived by these shows of friendship (nay, I believe, according to his interpretation, Mr. S--really was my friend) that I began to consult him respecting the best mode of retrieving my husband's character: it is the good name of a woman only that sets to rise no more. I knew not that he had been drawn into a whirlpool, out of which he had not the energy to attempt to escape. He seemed indeed destitute of the power of employing his faculties in any regular pursuit. His principles of action were so loose, and his mind so uncultivated, that every thing like order appeared to him in the shape of restraint; and, like men in the savage state, he required the strong stimulus of hope or fear, produced by wild speculations, in which the interests of others went for nothing, to keep his spirits awake. He one time possessed patriotism, but he knew not what it was to feel honest indignation; and pretended to be an advocate for liberty, when, with as little affection for the human race as for individuals, he thought of nothing but his own gratification. He was just such a citizen, as a father. The sums he adroitly obtained by a violation of the laws of his country, as well as those of humanity, he would allow a mistress to squander; though she was, with the same _sang froid_, consigned, as were his children, to poverty, when another proved more attractive. "On various pretences, his friend continued to visit me; and, observing my want of money, he tried to induce me to accept of pecuniary aid; but this offer I absolutely rejected, though it was made with such delicacy, I could not be displeased. "One day he came, as I thought accidentally, to dinner. My husband was very much engaged in business, and quitted the room soon after the cloth was removed. We conversed as usual, till confidential advice led again to love. I was extremely mortified. I had a sincere regard for him, and hoped that he had an equal friendship for me. I therefore began mildly to expostulate with him. This gentleness he mistook for coy encouragement; and he would not be diverted from the subject. Perceiving his mistake, I seriously asked him how, using such language to me, he could profess to be my husband's friend? A significant sneer excited my curiosity, and he, supposing this to be my only scruple, took a letter deliberately out of his pocket, saying, 'Your husband's honour is not inflexible. How could you, with your discernment, think it so? Why, he left the room this very day on purpose to give me an opportunity to explain myself; _he_ thought me too timid--too tardy.' "I snatched the letter with indescribable emotion. The purport of it was to invite him to dinner, and to ridicule his chivalrous respect for me. He assured him, 'that every woman had her price, and, with gross indecency, hinted, that he should be glad to have the duty of a husband taken off his hands. These he termed _liberal sentiments_. He advised him not to shock my romantic notions, but to attack my credulous generosity, and weak pity; and concluded with requesting him to lend him five hundred pounds for a month or six weeks.' I read this letter twice over; and the firm purpose it inspired, calmed the rising tumult of my soul. I rose deliberately, requested Mr. S---- to wait a moment, and instantly going into the counting-house, desired Mr. Venables to return with me to the dining-parlour. "He laid down his pen, and entered with me, without observing any change in my countenance. I shut the door, and, giving him the letter, simply asked, 'whether he wrote it, or was it a forgery?' "Nothing could equal his confusion. His friend's eye met his, and he muttered something about a joke--But I interrupted him--'It is sufficient--We part for ever.' "I continued, with solemnity, 'I have borne with your tyranny and infidelities. I disdain to utter what I have borne with. I thought you unprincipled, but not so decidedly vicious. I formed a tie, in the sight of heaven--I have held it sacred; even when men, more conformable to my taste, have made me feel--I despise all subterfuge!--that I was not dead to love. Neglected by you, I have resolutely stifled the enticing emotions, and respected the plighted faith you outraged. And you dare now to insult me, by selling me to prostitution!--Yes--equally lost to delicacy and principle--you dared sacrilegiously to barter the honour of the mother of your child.' "Then, turning to Mr. S----, I added, 'I call on you, Sir, to witness,' and I lifted my hands and eyes to heaven, 'that, as solemnly as I took his name, I now abjure it,' I pulled off my ring, and put it on the table; 'and that I mean immediately to quit his house, never to enter it more. I will provide for myself and child. I leave him as free as I am determined to be myself--he shall be answerable for no debts of mine.' "Astonishment closed their lips, till Mr. Venables, gently pushing his friend, with a forced smile, out of the room, nature for a moment prevailed, and, appearing like himself, he turned round, burning with rage, to me: but there was no terror in the frown, excepting when contrasted with the malignant smile which preceded it. He bade me 'leave the house at my peril; told me he despised my threats; I had no resource; I could not swear the peace against him!--I was not afraid of my life!--he had never struck me!' "He threw the letter in the fire, which I had incautiously left in his hands; and, quitting the room, locked the door on me. "When left alone, I was a moment or two before I could recollect myself. One scene had succeeded another with such rapidity, I almost doubted whether I was reflecting on a real event. 'Was it possible? Was I, indeed, free?'--Yes; free I termed myself, when I decidedly perceived the conduct I ought to adopt. How had I panted for liberty--liberty, that I would have purchased at any price, but that of my own esteem! I rose, and shook myself; opened the window, and methought the air never smelled so sweet. The face of heaven grew fairer as I viewed it, and the clouds seemed to flit away obedient to my wishes, to give my soul room to expand. I was all soul, and (wild as it may appear) felt as if I could have dissolved in the soft balmy gale that kissed my cheek, or have glided below the horizon on the glowing, descending beams. A seraphic satisfaction animated, without agitating my spirits; and my imagination collected, in visions sublimely terrible, or soothingly beautiful, an immense variety of the endless images, which nature affords, and fancy combines, of the grand and fair. The lustre of these bright picturesque sketches faded with the setting sun; but I was still alive to the calm delight they had diffused through my heart. "There may be advocates for matrimonial obedience, who, making a distinction between the duty of a wife and of a human being, may blame my conduct.--To them I write not--my feelings are not for them to analyze; and may you, my child, never be able to ascertain, by heart-rending experience, what your mother felt before the present emancipation of her mind! "I began to write a letter to my father, after closing one to my uncle; not to ask advice, but to signify my determination; when I was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Venables. His manner was changed. His views on my uncle's fortune made him averse to my quitting his house, or he would, I am convinced, have been glad to have shaken off even the slight restraint my presence imposed on him; the restraint of showing me some respect. So far from having an affection for me, he really hated me, because he was convinced that I must despise him. "He told me, that, 'As I now had had time to cool and reflect, he did not doubt but that my prudence, and nice sense of propriety, would lead me to overlook what was passed.' "'Reflection,' I replied, 'had only confirmed my purpose, and no power on earth could divert me from it.' "Endeavouring to assume a soothing voice and look, when he would willingly have tortured me, to force me to feel his power, his countenance had an infernal expression, when he desired me, 'Not to expose myself to the servants, by obliging him to confine me in my apartment; if then I would give my promise not to quit the house precipitately, I should be free--and--.' I declared, interrupting him, 'that I would promise nothing. I had no measures to keep with him--I was resolved, and would not condescend to subterfuge.' "He muttered, 'that I should soon repent of these preposterous airs;' and, ordering tea to be carried into my little study, which had a communication with my bed-chamber, he once more locked the door upon me, and left me to my own meditations. I had passively followed him up stairs, not wishing to fatigue myself with unavailing exertion. "Nothing calms the mind like a fixed purpose. I felt as if I had heaved a thousand weight from my heart; the atmosphere seemed lightened; and, if I execrated the institutions of society, which thus enable men to tyrannize over women, it was almost a disinterested sentiment. I disregarded present inconveniences, when my mind had done struggling with itself,--when reason and inclination had shaken hands and were at peace. I had no longer the cruel task before me, in endless perspective, aye, during the tedious for ever of life, of labouring to overcome my repugnance--of labouring to extinguish the hopes, the maybes of a lively imagination. Death I had hailed as my only chance for deliverance; but, while existence had still so many charms, and life promised happiness, I shrunk from the icy arms of an unknown tyrant, though far more inviting than those of the man, to whom I supposed myself bound without any other alternative; and was content to linger a little longer, waiting for I knew not what, rather than leave 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and all the unenjoyed affection of my nature. "My present situation gave a new turn to my reflection; and I wondered (now the film seemed to be withdrawn, that obscured the piercing sight of reason) how I could, previously to the deciding outrage, have considered myself as everlastingly united to vice and folly? 'Had an evil genius cast a spell at my birth; or a demon stalked out of chaos, to perplex my understanding, and enchain my will, with delusive prejudices?' "I pursued this train of thinking; it led me out of myself, to expatiate on the misery peculiar to my sex. 'Are not,' I thought, 'the despots for ever stigmatized, who, in the wantonness of power, commanded even the most atrocious criminals to be chained to dead bodies? though surely those laws are much more inhuman, which forge adamantine fetters to bind minds together, that never can mingle in social communion! What indeed can equal the wretchedness of that state, in which there is no alternative, but to extinguish the affections, or encounter infamy?' CHAP. XII. "TOWARDS midnight Mr. Venables entered my chamber; and, with calm audacity preparing to go to bed, he bade me make haste, 'for that was the best place for husbands and wives to end their differences. He had been drinking plentifully to aid his courage. "I did not at first deign to reply. But perceiving that he affected to take my silence for consent, I told him that, 'If he would not go to another bed, or allow me, I should sit up in my study all night.' He attempted to pull me into the chamber, half joking. But I resisted; and, as he had determined not to give me any reason for saying that he used violence, after a few more efforts, he retired, cursing my obstinacy, to bed. "I sat musing some time longer; then, throwing my cloak around me, prepared for sleep on a sopha. And, so fortunate seemed my deliverance, so sacred the pleasure of being thus wrapped up in myself, that I slept profoundly, and woke with a mind composed to encounter the struggles of the day. Mr. Venables did not wake till some hours after; and then he came to me half-dressed, yawning and stretching, with haggard eyes, as if he scarcely recollected what had passed the preceding evening. He fixed his eyes on me for a moment, then, calling me a fool, asked 'How long I intended to continue this pretty farce? For his part, he was devilish sick of it; but this was the plague of marrying women who pretended to know something.' "I made no other reply to this harangue, than to say, 'That he ought to be glad to get rid of a woman so unfit to be his companion--and that any change in my conduct would be mean dissimulation; for maturer reflection only gave the sacred seal of reason to my first resolution.' "He looked as if he could have stamped with impatience, at being obliged to stifle his rage; but, conquering his anger (for weak people, whose passions seem the most ungovernable, restrain them with the greatest ease, when they have a sufficient motive), he exclaimed, 'Very pretty, upon my soul! very pretty, theatrical flourishes! Pray, fair Roxana, stoop from your altitudes, and remember that you are acting a part in real life.' "He uttered this speech with a self-satisfied air, and went down stairs to dress. "In about an hour he came to me again; and in the same tone said, 'That he came as my gentleman-usher to hand me down to breakfast. "'Of the black rod?' asked I. "This question, and the tone in which I asked it, a little disconcerted him. To say the truth, I now felt no resentment; my firm resolution to free myself from my ignoble thraldom, had absorbed the various emotions which, during six years, had racked my soul. The duty pointed out by my principles seemed clear; and not one tender feeling intruded to make me swerve: The dislike which my husband had inspired was strong; but it only led me to wish to avoid, to wish to let him drop out of my memory; there was no misery, no torture that I would not deliberately have chosen, rather than renew my lease of servitude. "During the breakfast, he attempted to reason with me on the folly of romantic sentiments; for this was the indiscriminate epithet he gave to every mode of conduct or thinking superior to his own. He asserted, 'that all the world were governed by their own interest; those who pretended to be actuated by different motives, were only deeper knaves, or fools crazed by books, who took for gospel all the rodomantade nonsense written by men who knew nothing of the world. For his part, he thanked God, he was no hypocrite; and, if he stretched a point sometimes, it was always with an intention of paying every man his own.' "He then artfully insinuated, 'that he daily expected a vessel to arrive, a successful speculation, that would make him easy for the present, and that he had several other schemes actually depending, that could not fail. He had no doubt of becoming rich in a few years, though he had been thrown back by some unlucky adventures at the setting out.' "I mildly replied, 'That I wished he might not involve himself still deeper.' "He had no notion that I was governed by a decision of judgment, not to be compared with a mere spurt of resentment. He knew not what it was to feel indignation against vice, and often boasted of his placable temper, and readiness to forgive injuries. True; for he only considered the being deceived, as an effort of skill he had not guarded against; and then, with a cant of candour, would observe, 'that he did not know how he might himself have been tempted to act in the same circumstances.' And, as his heart never opened to friendship, it never was wounded by disappointment. Every new acquaintance he protested, it is true, was 'the cleverest fellow in the world;' and he really thought so; till the novelty of his conversation or manners ceased to have any effect on his sluggish spirits. His respect for rank or fortune was more permanent, though he chanced to have no design of availing himself of the influence of either to promote his own views. "After a prefatory conversation,--my blood (I thought it had been cooler) flushed over my whole countenance as he spoke--he alluded to my situation. He desired me to reflect--'and act like a prudent woman, as the best proof of my superior understanding; for he must own I had sense, did I know how to use it. I was not,' he laid a stress on his words, 'without my passions; and a husband was a convenient cloke.--He was liberal in his way of thinking; and why might not we, like many other married people, who were above vulgar prejudices, tacitly consent to let each other follow their own inclination?--He meant nothing more, in the letter I made the ground of complaint; and the pleasure which I seemed to take in Mr. S.'s company, led him to conclude, that he was not disagreeable to me.' "A clerk brought in the letters of the day, and I, as I often did, while he was discussing subjects of business, went to the _piano forte_, and began to play a favourite air to restore myself, as it were, to nature, and drive the sophisticated sentiments I had just been obliged to listen to, out of my soul. "They had excited sensations similar to those I have felt, in viewing the squalid inhabitants of some of the lanes and back streets of the metropolis, mortified at being compelled to consider them as my fellow-creatures, as if an ape had claimed kindred with me. Or, as when surrounded by a mephitical fog, I have wished to have a volley of cannon fired, to clear the incumbered atmosphere, and give me room to breathe and move. "My spirits were all in arms, and I played a kind of extemporary prelude. The cadence was probably wild and impassioned, while, lost in thought, I made the sounds a kind of echo to my train of thinking. "Pausing for a moment, I met Mr. Venables' eyes. He was observing me with an air of conceited satisfaction, as much as to say--'My last insinuation has done the business--she begins to know her own interest.' Then gathering up his letters, he said, 'That he hoped he should hear no more romantic stuff, well enough in a miss just come from boarding school;' and went, as was his custom, to the counting-house. I still continued playing; and, turning to a sprightly lesson, I executed it with uncommon vivacity. I heard footsteps approach the door, and was soon convinced that Mr. Venables was listening; the consciousness only gave more animation to my fingers. He went down into the kitchen, and the cook, probably by his desire, came to me, to know what I would please to order for dinner. Mr. Venables came into the parlour again, with apparent carelessness. I perceived that the cunning man was over-reaching himself; and I gave my directions as usual, and left the room. "While I was making some alteration in my dress, Mr. Venables peeped in, and, begging my pardon for interrupting me, disappeared. I took up some work (I could not read), and two or three messages were sent to me, probably for no other purpose, but to enable Mr. Venables to ascertain what I was about. "I listened whenever I heard the street-door open; at last I imagined I could distinguish Mr. Venables' step, going out. I laid aside my work; my heart palpitated; still I was afraid hastily to enquire; and I waited a long half hour, before I ventured to ask the boy whether his master was in the counting-house? "Being answered in the negative, I bade him call me a coach, and collecting a few necessaries hastily together, with a little parcel of letters and papers which I had collected the preceding evening, I hurried into it, desiring the coachman to drive to a distant part of the town. "I almost feared that the coach would break down before I got out of the street; and, when I turned the corner, I seemed to breathe a freer air. I was ready to imagine that I was rising above the thick atmosphere of earth; or I felt, as wearied souls might be supposed to feel on entering another state of existence. "I stopped at one or two stands of coaches to elude pursuit, and then drove round the skirts of the town to seek for an obscure lodging, where I wished to remain concealed, till I could avail myself of my uncle's protection. I had resolved to assume my own name immediately, and openly to avow my determination, without any formal vindication, the moment I had found a home, in which I could rest free from the daily alarm of expecting to see Mr. Venables enter. "I looked at several lodgings; but finding that I could not, without a reference to some acquaintance, who might inform my tyrant, get admittance into a decent apartment--men have not all this trouble--I thought of a woman whom I had assisted to furnish a little haberdasher's shop, and who I knew had a first floor to let. "I went to her, and though I could not persuade her, that the quarrel between me and Mr. Venables would never be made up, still she agreed to conceal me for the present; yet assuring me at the same time, shaking her head, that, when a woman was once married, she must bear every thing. Her pale face, on which appeared a thousand haggard lines and delving wrinkles, produced by what is emphatically termed fretting, inforced her remark; and I had afterwards an opportunity of observing the treatment she had to endure, which grizzled her into patience. She toiled from morning till night; yet her husband would rob the till, and take away the money reserved for paying bills; and, returning home drunk, he would beat her if she chanced to offend him, though she had a child at the breast. "These scenes awoke me at night; and, in the morning, I heard her, as usual, talk to her dear Johnny--he, forsooth, was her master; no slave in the West Indies had one more despotic; but fortunately she was of the true Russian breed of wives. "My mind, during the few past days, seemed, as it were, disengaged from my body; but, now the struggle was over, I felt very forcibly the effect which perturbation of spirits produces on a woman in my situation. "The apprehension of a miscarriage, obliged me to confine myself to my apartment near a fortnight; but I wrote to my uncle's friend for money, promising 'to call on him, and explain my situation, when I was well enough to go out; mean time I earnestly intreated him, not to mention my place of abode to any one, lest my husband--such the law considered him--should disturb the mind he could not conquer. I mentioned my intention of setting out for Lisbon, to claim my uncle's protection, the moment my health would permit.' "The tranquillity however, which I was recovering, was soon interrupted. My landlady came up to me one day, with eyes swollen with weeping, unable to utter what she was commanded to say. She declared, 'That she was never so miserable in her life; that she must appear an ungrateful monster; and that she would readily go down on her knees to me, to intreat me to forgive her, as she had done to her husband to spare her the cruel task.' Sobs prevented her from proceeding, or answering my impatient enquiries, to know what she meant. "When she became a little more composed, she took a newspaper out of her pocket, declaring, 'that her heart smote her, but what could she do?--she must obey her husband.' I snatched the paper from her. An advertisement quickly met my eye, purporting, that 'Maria Venables had, without any assignable cause, absconded from her husband; and any person harbouring her, was menaced with the utmost severity of the law.' "Perfectly acquainted with Mr. Venables' meanness of soul, this step did not excite my surprise, and scarcely my contempt. Resentment in my breast, never survived love. I bade the poor woman, in a kind tone, wipe her eyes, and request her husband to come up, and speak to me himself. "My manner awed him. He respected a lady, though not a woman; and began to mutter out an apology. "'Mr. Venables was a rich gentleman; he wished to oblige me, but he had suffered enough by the law already, to tremble at the thought; besides, for certain, we should come together again, and then even I should not thank him for being accessary to keeping us asunder.--A husband and wife were, God knows, just as one,--and all would come round at last.' He uttered a drawling 'Hem!' and then with an arch look, added--'Master might have had his little frolics--but--Lord bless your heart!--men would be men while the world stands.' "To argue with this privileged first-born of reason, I perceived, would be vain. I therefore only requested him to let me remain another day at his house, while I sought for a lodging; and not to inform Mr. Venables that I had ever been sheltered there. "He consented, because he had not the courage to refuse a person for whom he had an habitual respect; but I heard the pent-up choler burst forth in curses, when he met his wife, who was waiting impatiently at the foot of the stairs, to know what effect my expostulations would have on him. "Without wasting any time in the fruitless indulgence of vexation, I once more set out in search of an abode in which I could hide myself for a few weeks. "Agreeing to pay an exorbitant price, I hired an apartment, without any reference being required relative to my character: indeed, a glance at my shape seemed to say, that my motive for concealment was sufficiently obvious. Thus was I obliged to shroud my head in infamy. "To avoid all danger of detection--I use the appropriate word, my child, for I was hunted out like a felon--I determined to take possession of my new lodgings that very evening. "I did not inform my landlady where I was going. I knew that she had a sincere affection for me, and would willingly have run any risk to show her gratitude; yet I was fully convinced, that a few kind words from Johnny would have found the woman in her, and her dear benefactress, as she termed me in an agony of tears, would have been sacrificed, to recompense her tyrant for condescending to treat her like an equal. He could be kind-hearted, as she expressed it, when he pleased. And this thawed sternness, contrasted with his habitual brutality, was the more acceptable, and could not be purchased at too dear a rate. "The sight of the advertisement made me desirous of taking refuge with my uncle, let what would be the consequence; and I repaired in a hackney coach (afraid of meeting some person who might chance to know me, had I walked) to the chambers of my uncle's friend. "He received me with great politeness (my uncle had already prepossessed him in my favour), and listened, with interest, to my explanation of the motives which had induced me to fly from home, and skulk in obscurity, with all the timidity of fear that ought only to be the companion of guilt. He lamented, with rather more gallantry than, in my situation, I thought delicate, that such a woman should be thrown away on a man insensible to the charms of beauty or grace. He seemed at a loss what to advise me to do, to evade my husband's search, without hastening to my uncle, whom, he hesitating said, I might not find alive. He uttered this intelligence with visible regret; requested me, at least, to wait for the arrival of the next packet; offered me what money I wanted, and promised to visit me. "He kept his word; still no letter arrived to put an end to my painful state of suspense. I procured some books and music, to beguile the tedious solitary days. 'Come, ever smiling Liberty, 'And with thee bring thy jocund train:' I sung--and sung till, saddened by the strain of joy, I bitterly lamented the fate that deprived me of all social pleasure. Comparative liberty indeed I had possessed myself of; but the jocund train lagged far behind! CHAP. XIII. "BY watching my only visitor, my uncle's friend, or by some other means, Mr. Venables discovered my residence, and came to enquire for me. The maid-servant assured him there was no such person in the house. A bustle ensued--I caught the alarm--listened--distinguished his voice, and immediately locked the door. They suddenly grew still; and I waited near a quarter of an hour, before I heard him open the parlour door, and mount the stairs with the mistress of the house, who obsequiously declared that she knew nothing of me. "Finding my door locked, she requested me to 'open it, and prepare to go home with my husband, poor gentleman! to whom I had already occasioned sufficient vexation.' I made no reply. Mr. Venables then, in an assumed tone of softness, intreated me, 'to consider what he suffered, and my own reputation, and get the better of childish resentment.' He ran on in the same strain, pretending to address me, but evidently adapting his discourse to the capacity of the landlady; who, at every pause, uttered an exclamation of pity; or 'Yes, to be sure--Very true, sir.' "Sick of the farce, and perceiving that I could not avoid the hated interview, I opened the door, and he entered. Advancing with easy assurance to take my hand, I shrunk from his touch, with an involuntary start, as I should have done from a noisome reptile, with more disgust than terror. His conductress was retiring, to give us, as she said, an opportunity to accommodate matters. But I bade her come in, or I would go out; and curiosity impelled her to obey me. "Mr. Venables began to expostulate; and this woman, proud of his confidence, to second him. But I calmly silenced her, in the midst of a vulgar harangue, and turning to him, asked, 'Why he vainly tormented me? declaring that no power on earth should force me back to his house.' "After a long altercation, the particulars of which, it would be to no purpose to repeat, he left the room. Some time was spent in loud conversation in the parlour below, and I discovered that he had brought his friend, an attorney, with him. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The tumult on the landing place, brought out a gentleman, who had recently taken apartments in the house; he enquired why I was thus assailed[91-A]? The voluble attorney instantly repeated the trite tale. The stranger turned to me, observing, with the most soothing politeness and manly interest, that 'my countenance told a very different story.' He added, 'that I should not be insulted, or forced out of the house, by any body.' "'Not by her husband?' asked the attorney. "'No, sir, not by her husband.' Mr. Venables advanced towards him--But there was a decision in his attitude, that so well seconded that of his voice, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * They left the house: at the same time protesting, that any one that should dare to protect me, should be prosecuted with the utmost rigour. "They were scarcely out of the house, when my landlady came up to me again, and begged my pardon, in a very different tone. For, though Mr. Venables had bid her, at her peril, harbour me, he had not attended, I found, to her broad hints, to discharge the lodging. I instantly promised to pay her, and make her a present to compensate for my abrupt departure, if she would procure me another lodging, at a sufficient distance; and she, in return, repeating Mr. Venables' plausible tale, I raised her indignation, and excited her sympathy, by telling her briefly the truth. "She expressed her commiseration with such honest warmth, that I felt soothed; for I have none of that fastidious sensitiveness, which a vulgar accent or gesture can alarm to the disregard of real kindness. I was ever glad to perceive in others the humane feelings I delighted to exercise; and the recollection of some ridiculous characteristic circumstances, which have occurred in a moment of emotion, has convulsed me with laughter, though at the instant I should have thought it sacrilegious to have smiled. Your improvement, my dearest girl, being ever present to me while I write, I note these feelings, because women, more accustomed to observe manners than actions, are too much alive to ridicule. So much so, that their boasted sensibility is often stifled by false delicacy. True sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations. With what reverence have I looked up at my uncle, the dear parent of my mind! when I have seen the sense of his own sufferings, of mind and body, absorbed in a desire to comfort those, whose misfortunes were comparatively trivial. He would have been ashamed of being as indulgent to himself, as he was to others. 'Genuine fortitude,' he would assert, 'consisted in governing our own emotions, and making allowance for the weaknesses in our friends, that we would not tolerate in ourselves.' But where is my fond regret leading me! "'Women must be submissive,' said my landlady. 'Indeed what could most women do? Who had they to maintain them, but their husbands? Every woman, and especially a lady, could not go through rough and smooth, as she had done, to earn a little bread.' "She was in a talking mood, and proceeded to inform me how she had been used in the world. 'She knew what it was to have a bad husband, or she did not know who should.' I perceived that she would be very much mortified, were I not to attend to her tale, and I did not attempt to interrupt her, though I wished her, as soon as possible, to go out in search of a new abode for me, where I could once more hide my head. "She began by telling me, 'That she had saved a little money in service; and was over-persuaded (we must all be in love once in our lives) to marry a likely man, a footman in the family, not worth a groat. My plan,' she continued, 'was to take a house, and let out lodgings; and all went on well, till my husband got acquainted with an impudent slut, who chose to live on other people's means--and then all went to rack and ruin. He ran in debt to buy her fine clothes, such clothes as I never thought of wearing myself, and--would you believe it?--he signed an execution on my very goods, bought with the money I worked so hard to get; and they came and took my bed from under me, before I heard a word of the matter. Aye, madam, these are misfortunes that you gentlefolks know nothing of,--but sorrow is sorrow, let it come which way it will. "'I sought for a service again--very hard, after having a house of my own!--but he used to follow me, and kick up such a riot when he was drunk, that I could not keep a place; nay, he even stole my clothes, and pawned them; and when I went to the pawnbroker's, and offered to take my oath that they were not bought with a farthing of his money, they said, 'It was all as one, my husband had a right to whatever I had.' "'At last he listed for a soldier, and I took a house, making an agreement to pay for the furniture by degrees; and I almost starved myself, till I once more got before-hand in the world. "'After an absence of six years (God forgive me! I thought he was dead) my husband returned; found me out, and came with such a penitent face, I forgave him, and clothed him from head to foot. But he had not been a week in the house, before some of his creditors arrested him; and, he selling my goods, I found myself once more reduced to beggary; for I was not as well able to work, go to bed late, and rise early, as when I quitted service; and then I thought it hard enough. He was soon tired of me, when there was nothing more to be had, and left me again. "'I will not tell you how I was buffeted about, till, hearing for certain that he had died in an hospital abroad, I once more returned to my old occupation; but have not yet been able to get my head above water: so, madam, you must not be angry if I am afraid to run any risk, when I know so well, that women have always the worst of it, when law is to decide.' "After uttering a few more complaints, I prevailed on my landlady to go out in quest of a lodging; and, to be more secure, I condescended to the mean shift of changing my name. "But why should I dwell on similar incidents!--I was hunted, like an infected beast, from three different apartments, and should not have been allowed to rest in any, had not Mr. Venables, informed of my uncle's dangerous state of health, been inspired with the fear of hurrying me out of the world as I advanced in my pregnancy, by thus tormenting and obliging me to take sudden journeys to avoid him; and then his speculations on my uncle's fortune must prove abortive. "One day, when he had pursued me to an inn, I fainted, hurrying from him; and, falling down, the sight of my blood alarmed him, and obtained a respite for me. It is strange that he should have retained any hope, after observing my unwavering determination; but, from the mildness of my behaviour, when I found all my endeavours to change his disposition unavailing, he formed an erroneous opinion of my character, imagining that, were we once more together, I should part with the money he could not legally force from me, with the same facility as formerly. My forbearance and occasional sympathy he had mistaken for weakness of character; and, because he perceived that I disliked resistance, he thought my indulgence and compassion mere selfishness, and never discovered that the fear of being unjust, or of unnecessarily wounding the feelings of another, was much more painful to me, than any thing I could have to endure myself. Perhaps it was pride which made me imagine, that I could bear what I dreaded to inflict; and that it was often easier to suffer, than to see the sufferings of others. "I forgot to mention that, during this persecution, I received a letter from my uncle, informing me, 'that he only found relief from continual change of air; and that he intended to return when the spring was a little more advanced (it was now the middle of February), and then we would plan a journey to Italy, leaving the fogs and cares of England far behind.' He approved of my conduct, promised to adopt my child, and seemed to have no doubt of obliging Mr. Venables to hear reason. He wrote to his friend, by the same post, desiring him to call on Mr. Venables in his name; and, in consequence of the remonstrances he dictated, I was permitted to lie-in tranquilly. "The two or three weeks previous, I had been allowed to rest in peace; but, so accustomed was I to pursuit and alarm, that I seldom closed my eyes without being haunted by Mr. Venables' image, who seemed to assume terrific or hateful forms to torment me, wherever I turned.--Sometimes a wild cat, a roaring bull, or hideous assassin, whom I vainly attempted to fly; at others he was a demon, hurrying me to the brink of a precipice, plunging me into dark waves, or horrid gulfs; and I woke, in violent fits of trembling anxiety, to assure myself that it was all a dream, and to endeavour to lure my waking thoughts to wander to the delightful Italian vales, I hoped soon to visit; or to picture some august ruins, where I reclined in fancy on a mouldering column, and escaped, in the contemplation of the heart-enlarging virtues of antiquity, from the turmoil of cares that had depressed all the daring purposes of my soul. But I was not long allowed to calm my mind by the exercise of my imagination; for the third day after your birth, my child, I was surprised by a visit from my elder brother; who came in the most abrupt manner, to inform me of the death of my uncle. He had left the greater part of his fortune to my child, appointing me its guardian; in short, every step was taken to enable me to be mistress of his fortune, without putting any part of it in Mr. Venables' power. My brother came to vent his rage on me, for having, as he expressed himself, 'deprived him, my uncle's eldest nephew, of his inheritance;' though my uncle's property, the fruit of his own exertion, being all in the funds, or on landed securities, there was not a shadow of justice in the charge. "As I sincerely loved my uncle, this intelligence brought on a fever, which I struggled to conquer with all the energy of my mind; for, in my desolate state, I had it very much at heart to suckle you, my poor babe. You seemed my only tie to life, a cherub, to whom I wished to be a father, as well as a mother; and the double duty appeared to me to produce a proportionate increase of affection. But the pleasure I felt, while sustaining you, snatched from the wreck of hope, was cruelly damped by melancholy reflections on my widowed state--widowed by the death of my uncle. Of Mr. Venables I thought not, even when I thought of the felicity of loving your father, and how a mother's pleasure might be exalted, and her care softened by a husband's tenderness.--'Ought to be!' I exclaimed; and I endeavoured to drive away the tenderness that suffocated me; but my spirits were weak, and the unbidden tears would flow. 'Why was I,' I would ask thee, but thou didst not heed me,--'cut off from the participation of the sweetest pleasure of life?' I imagined with what extacy, after the pains of child-bed, I should have presented my little stranger, whom I had so long wished to view, to a respectable father, and with what maternal fondness I should have pressed them both to my heart!--Now I kissed her with less delight, though with the most endearing compassion, poor helpless one! when I perceived a slight resemblance of him, to whom she owed her existence; or, if any gesture reminded me of him, even in his best days, my heart heaved, and I pressed the innocent to my bosom, as if to purify it--yes, I blushed to think that its purity had been sullied, by allowing such a man to be its father. "After my recovery, I began to think of taking a house in the country, or of making an excursion on the continent, to avoid Mr. Venables; and to open my heart to new pleasures and affection. The spring was melting into summer, and you, my little companion, began to smile--that smile made hope bud out afresh, assuring me the world was not a desert. Your gestures were ever present to my fancy; and I dwelt on the joy I should feel when you would begin to walk and lisp. Watching your wakening mind, and shielding from every rude blast my tender blossom, I recovered my spirits--I dreamed not of the frost--'the killing frost,' to which you were destined to be exposed.--But I lose all patience--and execrate the injustice of the world--folly! ignorance!--I should rather call it; but, shut up from a free circulation of thought, and always pondering on the same griefs, I writhe under the torturing apprehensions, which ought to excite only honest indignation, or active compassion; and would, could I view them as the natural consequence of things. But, born a woman--and born to suffer, in endeavouring to repress my own emotions, I feel more acutely the various ills my sex are fated to bear--I feel that the evils they are subject to endure, degrade them so far below their oppressors, as almost to justify their tyranny; leading at the same time superficial reasoners to term that weakness the cause, which is only the consequence of short-sighted despotism. FOOTNOTES: [91-A] The introduction of Darnford as the deliverer of Maria, in an early stage of the history, is already stated (Chap. III.) to have been an after-thought of the author. This has probably caused the imperfectness of the manuscript in the above passage; though, at the same time, it must be acknowledged to be somewhat uncertain, whether Darnford is the stranger intended in this place. It appears from Chap. XVII. that an interference of a more decisive nature was designed to be attributed to him. EDITOR. CHAP. XIV. "AS my mind grew calmer, the visions of Italy again returned with their former glow of colouring; and I resolved on quitting the kingdom for a time, in search of the cheerfulness, that naturally results from a change of scene, unless we carry the barbed arrow with us, and only see what we feel. "During the period necessary to prepare for a long absence, I sent a supply to pay my father's debts, and settled my brothers in eligible situations; but my attention was not wholly engrossed by my family, though I do not think it necessary to enumerate the common exertions of humanity. The manner in which my uncle's property was settled, prevented me from making the addition to the fortune of my surviving sister, that I could have wished; but I had prevailed on him to bequeath her two thousand pounds, and she determined to marry a lover, to whom she had been some time attached. Had it not been for this engagement, I should have invited her to accompany me in my tour; and I might have escaped the pit, so artfully dug in my path, when I was the least aware of danger. "I had thought of remaining in England, till I weaned my child; but this state of freedom was too peaceful to last, and I had soon reason to wish to hasten my departure. A friend of Mr. Venables, the same attorney who had accompanied him in several excursions to hunt me from my hiding places, waited on me to propose a reconciliation. On my refusal, he indirectly advised me to make over to my husband--for husband he would term him--the greater part of the property I had at command, menacing me with continual persecution unless I complied, and that, as a last resort, he would claim the child. I did not, though intimidated by the last insinuation, scruple to declare, that I would not allow him to squander the money left to me for far different purposes, but offered him five hundred pounds, if he would sign a bond not to torment me any more. My maternal anxiety made me thus appear to waver from my first determination, and probably suggested to him, or his diabolical agent, the infernal plot, which has succeeded but too well. "The bond was executed; still I was impatient to leave England. Mischief hung in the air when we breathed the same; I wanted seas to divide us, and waters to roll between, till he had forgotten that I had the means of helping him through a new scheme. Disturbed by the late occurrences, I instantly prepared for my departure. My only delay was waiting for a maid-servant, who spoke French fluently, and had been warmly recommended to me. A valet I was advised to hire, when I fixed on my place of residence for any time. "My God, with what a light heart did I set out for Dover!--It was not my country, but my cares, that I was leaving behind. My heart seemed to bound with the wheels, or rather appeared the centre on which they twirled. I clasped you to my bosom, exclaiming 'And you will be safe--quite safe--when--we are once on board the packet.--Would we were there!' I smiled at my idle fears, as the natural effect of continual alarm; and I scarcely owned to myself that I dreaded Mr. Venables's cunning, or was conscious of the horrid delight he would feel, at forming stratagem after stratagem to circumvent me. I was already in the snare--I never reached the packet--I never saw thee more.--I grow breathless. I have scarcely patience to write down the details. The maid--the plausible woman I had hired--put, doubtless, some stupifying potion in what I ate or drank, the morning I left town. All I know is, that she must have quitted the chaise, shameless wretch! and taken (from my breast) my babe with her. How could a creature in a female form see me caress thee, and steal thee from my arms! I must stop, stop to repress a mother's anguish; left, in bitterness of soul, I imprecate the wrath of heaven on this tiger, who tore my only comfort from me. "How long I slept I know not; certainly many hours, for I woke at the close of day, in a strange confusion of thought. I was probably roused to recollection by some one thundering at a huge, unwieldy gate. Attempting to ask where I was, my voice died away, and I tried to raise it in vain, as I have done in a dream. I looked for my babe with affright; feared that it had fallen out of my lap, while I had so strangely forgotten her; and, such was the vague intoxication, I can give it no other name, in which I was plunged, I could not recollect when or where I last saw you; but I sighed, as if my heart wanted room to clear my head. "The gates opened heavily, and the sullen sound of many locks and bolts drawn back, grated on my very soul, before I was appalled by the creeking of the dismal hinges, as they closed after me. The gloomy pile was before me, half in ruins; some of the aged trees of the avenue were cut down, and left to rot where they fell; and as we approached some mouldering steps, a monstrous dog darted forwards to the length of his chain, and barked and growled infernally. "The door was opened slowly, and a murderous visage peeped out, with a lantern. 'Hush!' he uttered, in a threatning tone, and the affrighted animal stole back to his kennel. The door of the chaise flew back, the stranger put down the lantern, and clasped his dreadful arms around me. It was certainly the effect of the soporific draught, for, instead of exerting my strength, I sunk without motion, though not without sense, on his shoulder, my limbs refusing to obey my will. I was carried up the steps into a close-shut hall. A candle flaring in the socket, scarcely dispersed the darkness, though it displayed to me the ferocious countenance of the wretch who held me. "He mounted a wide staircase. Large figures painted on the walls seemed to start on me, and glaring eyes to meet me at every turn. Entering a long gallery, a dismal shriek made me spring out of my conductor's arms, with I know not what mysterious emotion of terror; but I fell on the floor, unable to sustain myself. "A strange-looking female started out of one of the recesses, and observed me with more curiosity than interest; till, sternly bid retire, she flitted back like a shadow. Other faces, strongly marked, or distorted, peeped through the half-opened doors, and I heard some incoherent sounds. I had no distinct idea where I could be--I looked on all sides, and almost doubted whether I was alive or dead. "Thrown on a bed, I immediately sunk into insensibility again; and next day, gradually recovering the use of reason, I began, starting affrighted from the conviction, to discover where I was confined--I insisted on seeing the master of the mansion--I saw him--and perceived that I was buried alive.-- "Such, my child, are the events of thy mother's life to this dreadful moment--Should she ever escape from the fangs of her enemies, she will add the secrets of her prison-house--and--" Some lines were here crossed out, and the memoirs broke off abruptly with the names of Jemima and Darnford. APPENDIX. [ADVERTISEMENT. THE performance, with a fragment of which the reader has now been presented, was designed to consist of three parts. The preceding sheets were considered as constituting one of those parts. Those persons who in the perusal of the chapters, already written and in some degree finished by the author, have felt their hearts awakened, and their curiosity excited as to the sequel of the story, will, of course, gladly accept even of the broken paragraphs and half-finished sentences, which have been found committed to paper, as materials for the remainder. The fastidious and cold-hearted critic may perhaps feel himself repelled by the incoherent form in which they are presented. But an inquisitive temper willingly accepts the most imperfect and mutilated information, where better is not to be had: and readers, who in any degree resemble the author in her quick apprehension of sentiment, and of the pleasures and pains of imagination, will, I believe, find gratification, in contemplating sketches, which were designed in a short time to have received the finishing touches of her genius; but which must now for ever remain a mark to record the triumphs of mortality, over schemes of usefulness, and projects of public interest.] CHAP. XV. DARNFORD returned the memoirs to Maria, with a most affectionate letter, in which he reasoned on "the absurdity of the laws respecting matrimony, which, till divorces could be more easily obtained, was," he declared, "the most insufferable bondage. Ties of this nature could not bind minds governed by superior principles; and such beings were privileged to act above the dictates of laws they had no voice in framing, if they had sufficient strength of mind to endure the natural consequence. In her case, to talk of duty, was a farce, excepting what was due to herself. Delicacy, as well as reason, forbade her ever to think of returning to her husband: was she then to restrain her charming sensibility through mere prejudice? These arguments were not absolutely impartial, for he disdained to conceal, that, when he appealed to her reason, he felt that he had some interest in her heart.--The conviction was not more transporting, than sacred--a thousand times a day, he asked himself how he had merited such happiness?--and as often he determined to purify the heart she deigned to inhabit--He intreated to be again admitted to her presence." He was; and the tear which glistened in his eye, when he respectfully pressed her to his bosom, rendered him peculiarly dear to the unfortunate mother. Grief had stilled the transports of love, only to render their mutual tenderness more touching. In former interviews, Darnford had contrived, by a hundred little pretexts, to sit near her, to take her hand, or to meet her eyes--now it was all soothing affection, and esteem seemed to have rivalled love. He adverted to her narrative, and spoke with warmth of the oppression she had endured.--His eyes, glowing with a lambent flame, told her how much he wished to restore her to liberty and love; but he kissed her hand, as if it had been that of a saint; and spoke of the loss of her child, as if it had been his own.--What could have been more flattering to Maria?--Every instance of self-denial was registered in her heart, and she loved him, for loving her too well to give way to the transports of passion. They met again and again; and Darnford declared, while passion suffused his cheeks, that he never before knew what it was to love.-- One morning Jemima informed Maria, that her master intended to wait on her, and speak to her without witnesses. He came, and brought a letter with him, pretending that he was ignorant of its contents, though he insisted on having it returned to him. It was from the attorney already mentioned, who informed her of the death of her child, and hinted, "that she could not now have a legitimate heir, and that, would she make over the half of her fortune during life, she should be conveyed to Dover, and permitted to pursue her plan of travelling." Maria answered with warmth, "That she had no terms to make with the murderer of her babe, nor would she purchase liberty at the price of her own respect." She began to expostulate with her jailor; but he sternly bade her "Be silent--he had not gone so far, not to go further." Darnford came in the evening. Jemima was obliged to be absent, and she, as usual, locked the door on them, to prevent interruption or discovery.--The lovers were, at first, embarrassed; but fell insensibly into confidential discourse. Darnford represented, "that they might soon be parted," and wished her "to put it out of the power of fate to separate them." As her husband she now received him, and he solemnly pledged himself as her protector--and eternal friend.-- There was one peculiarity in Maria's mind: she was more anxious not to deceive, than to guard against deception; and had rather trust without sufficient reason, than be for ever the prey of doubt. Besides, what are we, when the mind has, from reflection, a certain kind of elevation, which exalts the contemplation above the little concerns of prudence! We see what we wish, and make a world of our own--and, though reality may sometimes open a door to misery, yet the moments of happiness procured by the imagination, may, without a paradox, be reckoned among the solid comforts of life. Maria now, imagining that she had found a being of celestial mould--was happy,--nor was she deceived.--He was then plastic in her impassioned hand--and reflected all the sentiments which animated and warmed her. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- CHAP. XVI. ONE morning confusion seemed to reign in the house, and Jemima came in terror, to inform Maria, "that her master had left it, with a determination, she was assured (and too many circumstances corroborated the opinion, to leave a doubt of its truth) of never returning. I am prepared then," said Jemima, "to accompany you in your flight." Maria started up, her eyes darting towards the door, as if afraid that some one should fasten it on her for ever. Jemima continued, "I have perhaps no right now to expect the performance of your promise; but on you it depends to reconcile me with the human race." "But Darnford!"--exclaimed Maria, mournfully--sitting down again, and crossing her arms--"I have no child to go to, and liberty has lost its sweets." "I am much mistaken, if Darnford is not the cause of my master's flight--his keepers assure me, that they have promised to confine him two days longer, and then he will be free--you cannot see him; but they will give a letter to him the moment he is free.--In that inform him where he may find you in London; fix on some hotel. Give me your clothes; I will send them out of the house with mine, and we will slip out at the garden-gate. Write your letter while I make these arrangements, but lose no time!" In an agitation of spirit, not to be calmed, Maria began to write to Darnford. She called him by the sacred name of "husband," and bade him "hasten to her, to share her fortune, or she would return to him."--An hotel in the Adelphi was the place of rendezvous. The letter was sealed and given in charge; and with light footsteps, yet terrified at the sound of them, she descended, scarcely breathing, and with an indistinct fear that she should never get out at the garden gate. Jemima went first. A being, with a visage that would have suited one possessed by a devil, crossed the path, and seized Maria by the arm. Maria had no fear but of being detained--"Who are you? what are you?" for the form was scarcely human. "If you are made of flesh and blood," his ghastly eyes glared on her, "do not stop me!" "Woman," interrupted a sepulchral voice, "what have I to do with thee?"--Still he grasped her hand, muttering a curse. "No, no; you have nothing to do with me," she exclaimed, "this is a moment of life and death!"-- With supernatural force she broke from him, and, throwing her arms round Jemima, cried, "Save me!" The being, from whose grasp she had loosed herself, took up a stone as they opened the door, and with a kind of hellish sport threw it after them. They were out of his reach. When Maria arrived in town, she drove to the hotel already fixed on. But she could not sit still--her child was ever before her; and all that had passed during her confinement, appeared to be a dream. She went to the house in the suburbs, where, as she now discovered, her babe had been sent. The moment she entered, her heart grew sick; but she wondered not that it had proved its grave. She made the necessary enquiries, and the church-yard was pointed out, in which it rested under a turf. A little frock which the nurse's child wore (Maria had made it herself) caught her eye. The nurse was glad to sell it for half-a-guinea, and Maria hastened away with the relic, and, re-entering the hackney-coach which waited for her, gazed on it, till she reached her hotel. She then waited on the attorney who had made her uncle's will, and explained to him her situation. He readily advanced her some of the money which still remained in his hands, and promised to take the whole of the case into consideration. Maria only wished to be permitted to remain in quiet--She found that several bills, apparently with her signature, had been presented to her agent, nor was she for a moment at a loss to guess by whom they had been forged; yet, equally averse to threaten or intreat, she requested her friend [the solicitor] to call on Mr. Venables. He was not to be found at home; but at length his agent, the attorney, offered a conditional promise to Maria, to leave her in peace, as long as she behaved with propriety, if she would give up the notes. Maria inconsiderately consented--Darnford was arrived, and she wished to be only alive to love; she wished to forget the anguish she felt whenever she thought of her child. They took a ready furnished lodging together, for she was above disguise; Jemima insisting on being considered as her house-keeper, and to receive the customary stipend. On no other terms would she remain with her friend. Darnford was indefatigable in tracing the mysterious circumstances of his confinement. The cause was simply, that a relation, a very distant one, to whom he was heir, had died intestate, leaving a considerable fortune. On the news of Darnford's arrival [in England, a person, intrusted with the management of the property, and who had the writings in his possession, determining, by one bold stroke, to strip Darnford of the succession,] had planned his confinement; and [as soon as he had taken the measures he judged most conducive to his object, this ruffian, together with his instrument,] the keeper of the private mad-house, left the kingdom. Darnford, who still pursued his enquiries, at last discovered that they had fixed their place of refuge at Paris. Maria and he determined therefore, with the faithful Jemima, to visit that metropolis, and accordingly were preparing for the journey, when they were informed that Mr. Venables had commenced an action against Darnford for seduction and adultery. The indignation Maria felt cannot be explained; she repented of the forbearance she had exercised in giving up the notes. Darnford could not put off his journey, without risking the loss of his property: Maria therefore furnished him with money for his expedition; and determined to remain in London till the termination of this affair. She visited some ladies with whom she had formerly been intimate, but was refused admittance; and at the opera, or Ranelagh, they could not recollect her. Among these ladies there were some, not her most intimate acquaintance, who were generally supposed to avail themselves of the cloke of marriage, to conceal a mode of conduct, that would for ever have damned their fame, had they been innocent, seduced girls. These particularly stood aloof.--Had she remained with her husband, practising insincerity, and neglecting her child to manage an intrigue, she would still have been visited and respected. If, instead of openly living with her lover, she could have condescended to call into play a thousand arts, which, degrading her own mind, might have allowed the people who were not deceived, to pretend to be so, she would have been caressed and treated like an honourable woman. "And Brutus[138-A] is an honourable man!" said Mark-Antony with equal sincerity. With Darnford she did not taste uninterrupted felicity; there was a volatility in his manner which often distressed her; but love gladdened the scene; besides, he was the most tender, sympathizing creature in the world. A fondness for the sex often gives an appearance of humanity to the behaviour of men, who have small pretensions to the reality; and they seem to love others, when they are only pursuing their own gratification. Darnford appeared ever willing to avail himself of her taste and acquirements, while she endeavoured to profit by his decision of character, and to eradicate some of the romantic notions, which had taken root in her mind, while in adversity she had brooded over visions of unattainable bliss. The real affections of life, when they are allowed to burst forth, are buds pregnant with joy and all the sweet emotions of the soul; yet they branch out with wild ease, unlike the artificial forms of felicity, sketched by an imagination painful alive. The substantial happiness, which enlarges and civilizes the mind, may be compared to the pleasure experienced in roving through nature at large, inhaling the sweet gale natural to the clime; while the reveries of a feverish imagination continually sport themselves in gardens full of aromatic shrubs, which cloy while they delight, and weaken the sense of pleasure they gratify. The heaven of fancy, below or beyond the stars, in this life, or in those ever-smiling regions surrounded by the unmarked ocean of futurity, have an insipid uniformity which palls. Poets have imagined scenes of bliss; but, fencing out sorrow, all the extatic emotions of the soul, and even its grandeur, seem to be equally excluded. We dose over the unruffled lake, and long to scale the rocks which fence the happy valley of contentment, though serpents hiss in the pathless desert, and danger lurks in the unexplored wiles. Maria found herself more indulgent as she was happier, and discovered virtues, in characters she had before disregarded, while chasing the phantoms of elegance and excellence, which sported in the meteors that exhale in the marshes of misfortune. The heart is often shut by romance against social pleasure; and, fostering a sickly sensibility, grows callous to the soft touches of humanity. To part with Darnford was indeed cruel.--It was to feel most painfully alone; but she rejoiced to think, that she should spare him the care and perplexity of the suit, and meet him again, all his own. Marriage, as at present constituted, she considered as leading to immorality--yet, as the odium of society impedes usefulness, she wished to avow her affection to Darnford, by becoming his wife according to established rules; not to be confounded with women who act from very different motives, though her conduct would be just the same without the ceremony as with it, and her expectations from him not less firm. The being summoned to defend herself from a charge which she was determined to plead guilty to, was still galling, as it roused bitter reflections on the situation of women in society. FOOTNOTES: [138-A] The name in the manuscript is by mistake written Cæsar. EDITOR. CHAP. XVII. SUCH was her state of mind when the dogs of law were let loose on her. Maria took the task of conducting Darnford's defence upon herself. She instructed his counsel to plead guilty to the charge of adultery; but to deny that of seduction. The counsel for the plaintiff opened the cause, by observing, "that his client had ever been an indulgent husband, and had borne with several defects of temper, while he had nothing criminal to lay to the charge of his wife. But that she left his house without assigning any cause. He could not assert that she was then acquainted with the defendant; yet, when he was once endeavouring to bring her back to her home, this man put the peace-officers to flight, and took her he knew not whither. After the birth of her child, her conduct was so strange, and a melancholy malady having afflicted one of the family, which delicacy forbade the dwelling on, it was necessary to confine her. By some means the defendant enabled her to make her escape, and they had lived together, in despite of all sense of order and decorum. The adultery was allowed, it was not necessary to bring any witnesses to prove it; but the seduction, though highly probable from the circumstances which he had the honour to state, could not be so clearly proved.--It was of the most atrocious kind, as decency was set at defiance, and respect for reputation, which shows internal compunction, utterly disregarded." A strong sense of injustice had silenced every emotion, which a mixture of true and false delicacy might otherwise have excited in Maria's bosom. She only felt in earnest to insist on the privilege of her nature. The sarcasms of society, and the condemnation of a mistaken world, were nothing to her, compared with acting contrary to those feelings which were the foundation of her principles. [She therefore eagerly put herself forward, instead of desiring to be absent, on this memorable occasion.] Convinced that the subterfuges of the law were disgraceful, she wrote a paper, which she expressly desired might be read in court: "Married when scarcely able to distinguish the nature of the engagement, I yet submitted to the rigid laws which enslave women, and obeyed the man whom I could no longer love. Whether the duties of the state are reciprocal, I mean not to discuss; but I can prove repeated infidelities which I overlooked or pardoned. Witnesses are not wanting to establish these facts. I at present maintain the child of a maid servant, sworn to him, and born after our marriage. I am ready to allow, that education and circumstances lead men to think and act with less delicacy, than the preservation of order in society demands from women; but surely I may without assumption declare, that, though I could excuse the birth, I could not the desertion of this unfortunate babe:--and, while I despised the man, it was not easy to venerate the husband. With proper restrictions however, I revere the institution which fraternizes the world. I exclaim against the laws which throw the whole weight of the yoke on the weaker shoulders, and force women, when they claim protectorship as mothers, to sign a contract, which renders them dependent on the caprice of the tyrant, whom choice or necessity has appointed to reign over them. Various are the cases, in which a woman ought to separate herself from her husband; and mine, I may be allowed emphatically to insist, comes under the description of the most aggravated. "I will not enlarge on those provocations which only the individual can estimate; but will bring forward such charges only, the truth of which is an insult upon humanity. In order to promote certain destructive speculations, Mr. Venables prevailed on me to borrow certain sums of a wealthy relation; and, when I refused further compliance, he thought of bartering my person; and not only allowed opportunities to, but urged, a friend from whom he borrowed money, to seduce me. On the discovery of this act of atrocity, I determined to leave him, and in the most decided manner, for ever. I consider all obligation as made void by his conduct; and hold, that schisms which proceed from want of principles, can never be healed. "He received a fortune with me to the amount of five thousand pounds. On the death of my uncle, convinced that I could provide for my child, I destroyed the settlement of that fortune. I required none of my property to be returned to me, nor shall enumerate the sums extorted from me during six years that we lived together. "After leaving, what the law considers as my home, I was hunted like a criminal from place to place, though I contracted no debts, and demanded no maintenance--yet, as the laws sanction such proceeding, and make women the property of their husbands, I forbear to animadvert. After the birth of my daughter, and the death of my uncle, who left a very considerable property to myself and child, I was exposed to new persecution; and, because I had, before arriving at what is termed years of discretion, pledged my faith, I was treated by the world, as bound for ever to a man whose vices were notorious. Yet what are the vices generally known, to the various miseries that a woman may be subject to, which, though deeply felt, eating into the soul, elude description, and may be glossed over! A false morality is even established, which makes all the virtue of women consist in chastity, submission, and the forgiveness of injuries. "I pardon my oppressor--bitterly as I lament the loss of my child, torn from me in the most violent manner. But nature revolts, and my soul sickens at the bare supposition, that it could ever be a duty to pretend affection, when a separation is necessary to prevent my feeling hourly aversion. "To force me to give my fortune, I was imprisoned--yes; in a private mad-house.--There, in the heart of misery, I met the man charged with seducing me. We became attached--I deemed, and ever shall deem, myself free. The death of my babe dissolved the only tie which subsisted between me and my, what is termed, lawful husband. "To this person, thus encountered, I voluntarily gave myself, never considering myself as any more bound to transgress the laws of moral purity, because the will of my husband might be pleaded in my excuse, than to transgress those laws to which [the policy of artificial society has] annexed [positive] punishments.----While no command of a husband can prevent a woman from suffering for certain crimes, she must be allowed to consult her conscience, and regulate her conduct, in some degree, by her own sense of right. The respect I owe to myself, demanded my strict adherence to my determination of never viewing Mr. Venables in the light of a husband, nor could it forbid me from encouraging another. If I am unfortunately united to an unprincipled man, am I for ever to be shut out from fulfilling the duties of a wife and mother?--I wish my country to approve of my conduct; but, if laws exist, made by the strong to oppress the weak, I appeal to my own sense of justice, and declare that I will not live with the individual, who has violated every moral obligation which binds man to man. "I protest equally against any charge being brought to criminate the man, whom I consider as my husband. I was six-and-twenty when I left Mr. Venables' roof; if ever I am to be supposed to arrive at an age to direct my own actions, I must by that time have arrived at it.--I acted with deliberation.--Mr. Darnford found me a forlorn and oppressed woman, and promised the protection women in the present state of society want.--But the man who now claims me--was he deprived of my society by this conduct? The question is an insult to common sense, considering where Mr. Darnford met me.--Mr. Venables' door was indeed open to me--nay, threats and intreaties were used to induce me to return; but why? Was affection or honour the motive?--I cannot, it is true, dive into the recesses of the human heart--yet I presume to assert, [borne out as I am by a variety of circumstances,] that he was merely influenced by the most rapacious avarice. "I claim then a divorce, and the liberty of enjoying, free from molestation, the fortune left to me by a relation, who was well aware of the character of the man with whom I had to contend.--I appeal to the justice and humanity of the jury--a body of men, whose private judgment must be allowed to modify laws, that must be unjust, because definite rules can never apply to indefinite circumstances--and I deprecate punishment upon the man of my choice, freeing him, as I solemnly do, from the charge of seduction.] "I did not put myself into a situation to justify a charge of adultery, till I had, from conviction, shaken off the fetters which bound me to Mr. Venables.--While I lived with him, I defy the voice of calumny to sully what is termed the fair fame of woman.--Neglected by my husband, I never encouraged a lover; and preserved with scrupulous care, what is termed my honour, at the expence of my peace, till he, who should have been its guardian, laid traps to ensnare me. From that moment I believed myself, in the sight of heaven, free--and no power on earth shall force me to renounce my resolution." The judge, in summing up the evidence, alluded to "the fallacy of letting women plead their feelings, as an excuse for the violation of the marriage-vow. For his part, he had always determined to oppose all innovation, and the new-fangled notions which incroached on the good old rules of conduct. We did not want French principles in public or private life--and, if women were allowed to plead their feelings, as an excuse or palliation of infidelity, it was opening a flood-gate for immorality. What virtuous woman thought of her feelings?--It was her duty to love and obey the man chosen by her parents and relations, who were qualified by their experience to judge better for her, than she could for herself. As to the charges brought against the husband, they were vague, supported by no witnesses, excepting that of imprisonment in a private mad-house. The proofs of an insanity in the family, might render that however a prudent measure; and indeed the conduct of the lady did not appear that of a person of sane mind. Still such a mode of proceeding could not be justified, and might perhaps entitle the lady [in another court] to a sentence of separation from bed and board, during the joint lives of the parties; but he hoped that no Englishman would legalize adultery, by enabling the adulteress to enrich her seducer. Too many restrictions could not be thrown in the way of divorces, if we wished to maintain the sanctity of marriage; and, though they might bear a little hard on a few, very few individuals, it was evidently for the good of the whole." CONCLUSION, BY THE EDITOR. VERY few hints exist respecting the plan of the remainder of the work. I find only two detached sentences, and some scattered heads for the continuation of the story. I transcribe the whole. I. "Darnford's letters were affectionate; but circumstances occasioned delays, and the miscarriage of some letters rendered the reception of wished-for answers doubtful: his return was necessary to calm Maria's mind." II. "As Darnford had informed her that his business was settled, his delaying to return seemed extraordinary; but love to excess, excludes fear or suspicion." * * * * * The scattered heads for the continuation of the story, are as follow[159-A]. I. "Trial for adultery--Maria defends herself--A separation from bed and board is the consequence--Her fortune is thrown into chancery--Darnford obtains a part of his property--Maria goes into the country." II. "A prosecution for adultery commenced--Trial--Darnford sets out for France--Letters--Once more pregnant--He returns--Mysterious behaviour--Visit--Expectation--Discovery--Interview--Consequence." III. "Sued by her husband--Damages awarded to him--Separation from bed and board--Darnford goes abroad--Maria into the country--Provides for her father--Is shunned--Returns to London--Expects to see her lover--The rack of expectation--Finds herself again with child--Delighted--A discovery--A visit--A miscarriage--Conclusion." IV. "Divorced by her husband--Her lover unfaithful--Pregnancy--Miscarriage--Suicide." * * * * * [The following passage appears in some respects to deviate from the preceding hints. It is superscribed] "THE END. "She swallowed the laudanum; her soul was calm--the tempest had subsided--and nothing remained but an eager longing to forget herself--to fly from the anguish she endured to escape from thought--from this hell of disappointment. "Still her eyes closed not--one remembrance with frightful velocity followed another--All the incidents of her life were in arms, embodied to assail her, and prevent her sinking into the sleep of death.--Her murdered child again appeared to her, mourning for the babe of which she was the tomb.--'And could it have a nobler?--Surely it is better to die with me, than to enter on life without a mother's care!--I cannot live!--but could I have deserted my child the moment it was born?--thrown it on the troubled wave of life, without a hand to support it?'--She looked up: 'What have I not suffered!--may I find a father where I am going!'--Her head turned; a stupor ensued; a faintness--'Have a little patience,' said Maria, holding her swimming head (she thought of her mother), 'this cannot last long; and what is a little bodily pain to the pangs I have endured?' "A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter--leading a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her--she tried to listen, to speak, to look! "'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed, and fainted.--Violent vomiting followed. "When she was restored to life, Jemima addressed her with great solemnity: '------ led me to suspect, that your husband and brother had deceived you, and secreted the child. I would not torment you with doubtful hopes, and I left you (at a fatal moment) to search for the child!--I snatched her from misery--and (now she is alive again) would you leave her alone in the world, to endure what I have endured?' "Maria gazed wildly at her, her whole frame was convulsed with emotion; when the child, whom Jemima had been tutoring all the journey, uttered the word 'Mamma!' She caught her to her bosom, and burst into a passion of tears--then, resting the child gently on the bed, as if afraid of killing it,--she put her hand to her eyes, to conceal as it were the agonizing struggle of her soul. She remained silent for five minutes, crossing her arms over her bosom, and reclining her head,--then exclaimed: 'The conflict is over!--I will live for my child!'" * * * * * A few readers perhaps, in looking over these hints, will wonder how it could have been practicable, without tediousness, or remitting in any degree the interest of the story, to have filled, from these slight sketches, a number of pages, more considerable than those which have been already presented. But, in reality, these hints, simple as they are, are pregnant with passion and distress. It is the refuge of barren authors only, to crowd their fictions with so great a number of events, as to suffer no one of them to sink into the reader's mind. It is the province of true genius to develop events, to discover their capabilities, to ascertain the different passions and sentiments with which they are fraught, and to diversify them with incidents, that give reality to the picture, and take a hold upon the mind of a reader of taste, from which they can never be loosened. It was particularly the design of the author, in the present instance, to make her story subordinate to a great moral purpose, that "of exhibiting the misery and oppression, peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society.--This view restrained her fancy[166-A]." It was necessary for her, to place in a striking point of view, evils that are too frequently overlooked, and to drag into light those details of oppression, of which the grosser and more insensible part of mankind make little account. THE END. FOOTNOTES: [159-A] To understand these minutes, it is necessary the reader should consider each of them as setting out from the same point in the story, _viz._ the point to which it is brought down in the preceding chapter. [166-A] See author's preface. LESSONS. ADVERTISEMENT, BY THE EDITOR. THE following pages will, I believe, be judged by every reader of taste to have been worth preserving, among the other testimonies the author left behind her, of her genius and the soundness of her understanding. To such readers I leave the task of comparing these lessons, with other works of the same nature previously published. It is obvious that the author has struck out a path of her own, and by no means intrenched upon the plans of her predecessors. It may however excite surprise in some persons to find these papers annexed to the conclusion of a novel. All I have to offer on this subject, consists in the following considerations: First, something is to be allowed for the difficulty of arranging the miscellaneous papers upon very different subjects, which will frequently constitute an author's posthumous works. * * * * * Secondly, the small portion they occupy in the present volume, will perhaps be accepted as an apology, by such good-natured readers (if any such there are), to whom the perusal of them shall be a matter of perfect indifference. * * * * * Thirdly, the circumstance which determined me in annexing them to the present work, was the slight association (in default of a strong one) between the affectionate and pathetic manner in which Maria Venables addresses her infant, in the Wrongs of Woman; and the agonising and painful sentiment with which the author originally bequeathed these papers, as a legacy for the benefit of her child. LESSONS. _The first book of a series which I intended to have written for my unfortunate girl[175-A]._ LESSON I. CAT. Dog. Cow. Horse. Sheep. Pig. Bird. Fly. Man. Boy. Girl. Child. Head. Hair. Face. Nose. Mouth. Chin. Neck. Arms. Hand. Leg. Foot. Back. Breast. House. Wall. Field. Street. Stone. Grass. Bed. Chair. Door. Pot. Spoon. Knife. Fork. Plate. Cup. Box. Boy. Bell. Tree. Leaf. Stick. Whip. Cart. Coach. Frock. Hat. Coat. Shoes. Shift. Cap. Bread. Milk. Tea. Meat. Drink. Cake. LESSON II. Come. Walk. Run. Go. Jump. Dance. Ride. Sit. Stand. Play. Hold. Shake. Speak. Sing. Cry. Laugh. Call. Fall. Day. Night. Sun. Moon. Light. Dark. Sleep. Wake. Wash. Dress. Kiss. Comb. Fire. Hot. Burn. Wind. Rain. Cold. Hurt. Tear. Break. Spill. Book. See. Look. Sweet. Good. Clean. Gone. Lost. Hide. Keep. Give. Take. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. White. Black. Red. Blue. Green. Brown. LESSON III. STROKE the cat. Play with the Dog. Eat the bread. Drink the milk. Hold the cup. Lay down the knife. Look at the fly. See the horse. Shut the door. Bring the chair. Ring the bell. Get your book. Hide your face. Wipe your nose. Wash your hands. Dirty hands. Why do you cry? A clean mouth. Shake hands. I love you. Kiss me now. Good girl. The bird sings. The fire burns. The cat jumps. The dog runs. The bird flies. The cow lies down. The man laughs. The child cries. LESSON IV. LET me comb your head. Ask Betty to wash your face. Go and see for some bread. Drink milk, if you are dry. Play on the floor with the ball. Do not touch the ink; you will black your hands. What do you want to say to me? Speak slow, not so fast. Did you fall? You will not cry, not you; the baby cries. Will you walk in the fields? LESSON V. COME to me, my little girl. Are you tired of playing? Yes. Sit down and rest yourself, while I talk to you. Have you seen the baby? Poor little thing. O here it comes. Look at him. How helpless he is. Four years ago you were as feeble as this very little boy. See, he cannot hold up his head. He is forced to lie on his back, if his mamma do not turn him to the right or left side, he will soon begin to cry. He cries to tell her, that he is tired with lying on his back. LESSON VI. PERHAPS he is hungry. What shall we give him to eat? Poor fellow, he cannot eat. Look in his mouth, he has no teeth. How did you do when you were a baby like him? You cannot tell. Do you want to know? Look then at the dog, with her pretty puppy. You could not help yourself as well as the puppy. You could only open your mouth, when you were lying, like William, on my knee. So I put you to my breast, and you sucked, as the puppy sucks now, for there was milk enough for you. LESSON VII. WHEN you were hungry, you began to cry, because you could not speak. You were seven months without teeth, always sucking. But after you got one, you began to gnaw a crust of bread. It was not long before another came pop. At ten months you had four pretty white teeth, and you used to bite me. Poor mamma! Still I did not cry, because I am not a child, but you hurt me very much. So I said to papa, it is time the little girl should eat. She is not naughty, yet she hurts me. I have given her a crust of bread, and I must look for some other milk. The cow has got plenty, and her jumping calf eats grass very well. He has got more teeth than my little girl. Yes, says papa, and he tapped you on the cheek, you are old enough to learn to eat? Come to me, and I will teach you, my little dear, for you must not hurt poor mamma, who has given you her milk, when you could not take any thing else. LESSON VIII. YOU were then on the carpet, for you could not walk well. So when you were in a hurry, you used to run quick, quick, quick, on your hands and feet, like the dog. Away you ran to papa, and putting both your arms round his leg, for your hands were not big enough, you looked up at him, and laughed. What did this laugh say, when you could not speak? Cannot you guess by what you now say to papa?--Ah! it was, Play with me, papa!--play with me! Papa began to smile, and you knew that the smile was always--Yes. So you got a ball, and papa threw it along the floor--Roll--roll--roll; and you ran after it again--and again. How pleased you were. Look at William, he smiles; but you could laugh loud--Ha! ha! ha!--Papa laughed louder than the little girl, and rolled the ball still faster. Then he put the ball on a chair, and you were forced to take hold of the back, and stand up to reach it. At last you reached too far, and down you fell: not indeed on your face, because you put out your hands. You were not much hurt; but the palms of your hands smarted with the pain, and you began to cry, like a little child. It is only very little children who cry when they are hurt; and it is to tell their mamma, that something is the matter with them. Now you can come to me, and say, Mamma, I have hurt myself. Pray rub my hand: it smarts. Put something on it, to make it well. A piece of rag, to stop the blood. You are not afraid of a little blood--not you. You scratched your arm with a pin: it bled a little; but it did you no harm. See, the skin is grown over it again. LESSON IX. TAKE care not to put pins in your mouth, because they will stick in your throat, and give you pain. Oh! you cannot think what pain a pin would give you in your throat, should it remain there: but, if you by chance swallow it, I should be obliged to give you, every morning, something bitter to drink. You never tasted any thing so bitter! and you would grow very sick. I never put pins in my mouth; but I am older than you, and know how to take care of myself. My mamma took care of me, when I was a little girl, like you. She bade me never put any thing in my mouth, without asking her what it was. When you were a baby, with no more sense than William, you put every thing in your mouth to gnaw, to help your teeth to cut through the skin. Look at the puppy, how he bites that piece of wood. William presses his gums against my finger. Poor boy! he is so young, he does not know what he is doing. When you bite any thing, it is because you are hungry. LESSON X. SEE how much taller you are than William. In four years you have learned to eat, to walk, to talk. Why do you smile? You can do much more, you think: you can wash your hands and face. Very well. I should never kiss a dirty face. And you can comb your head with the pretty comb you always put by in your own drawer. To be sure, you do all this to be ready to take a walk with me. You would be obliged to stay at home, if you could not comb your own hair. Betty is busy getting the dinner ready, and only brushes William's hair, because he cannot do it for himself. Betty is making an apple-pye. You love an apple-pye; but I do not bid you make one. Your hands are not strong enough to mix the butter and flour together; and you must not try to pare the apples, because you cannot manage a great knife. Never touch the large knives: they are very sharp, and you might cut your finger to the bone. You are a little girl, and ought to have a little knife. When you are as tall as I am, you shall have a knife as large as mine; and when you are as strong as I am, and have learned to manage it, you will not hurt yourself. You can trundle a hoop, you say; and jump over a stick. O, I forgot!--and march like the men in the red coats, when papa plays a pretty tune on the fiddle. LESSON XI. WHAT, you think that you shall soon be able to dress yourself entirely? I am glad of it: I have something else to do. You may go, and look for your frock in the drawer; but I will tie it, till you are stronger. Betty will tie it, when I am busy. I button my gown myself: I do not want a maid to assist me, when I am dressing. But you have not yet got sense enough to do it properly, and must beg somebody to help you, till you are older. Children grow older and wiser at the same time. William is not able to take a piece of meat, because he has not got the sense which would make him think that, without teeth, meat would do him harm. He cannot tell what is good for him. The sense of children grows with them. You know much more than William, now you walk alone, and talk; but you do not know as much as the boys and girls you see playing yonder, who are half as tall again as you; and they do not know half as much as their fathers and mothers, who are men and women grown. Papa and I were children, like you; and men and women took care of us. I carry William, because he is too weak to walk. I lift you over a stile, and over the gutter, when you cannot jump over it. You know already, that potatoes will not do you any harm: but I must pluck the fruit for you, till you are wise enough to know the ripe apples and pears. The hard ones would make you sick, and then you must take physic. You do not love physic: I do not love it any more than you. But I have more sense than you; therefore I take care not to eat unripe fruit, or any thing else that would make my stomach ache, or bring out ugly red spots on my face. When I was a child, my mamma chose the fruit for me, to prevent my making myself sick. I was just like you; I used to ask for what I saw, without knowing whether it was good or bad. Now I have lived a long time, I know what is good; I do not want any body to tell me. LESSON XII. LOOK at those two dogs. The old one brings the ball to me in a moment; the young one does not know how. He must be taught. I can cut your shift in a proper shape. You would not know how to begin. You would spoil it; but you will learn. John digs in the garden, and knows when to put the seed in the ground. You cannot tell whether it should be in the winter or summer. Try to find it out. When do the trees put out their leaves? In the spring, you say, after the cold weather. Fruit would not grow ripe without very warm weather. Now I am sure you can guess why the summer is the season for fruit. Papa knows that peas and beans are good for us to eat with our meat. You are glad when you see them; but if he did not think for you, and have the seed put in the ground, we should have no peas or beans. LESSON XIII. POOR child, she cannot do much for herself. When I let her do any thing for me, it is to please her: for I could do it better myself. Oh! the poor puppy has tumbled off the stool. Run and stroak him. Put a little milk in a saucer to comfort him. You have more sense than he. You can pour the milk into the saucer without spilling it. He would cry for a day with hunger, without being able to get it. You are wiser than the dog, you must help him. The dog will love you for it, and run after you. I feed you and take care of you: you love me and follow me for it. When the book fell down on your foot, it gave you great pain. The poor dog felt the same pain just now. Take care not to hurt him when you play with him. And every morning leave a little milk in your bason for him. Do not forget to put the bason in a corner, lest somebody should fall over it. When the snow covers the ground, save the crumbs of bread for the birds. In the summer they find feed enough, and do not want you to think about them. I make broth for the poor man who is sick. A sick man is like a child, he cannot help himself. LESSON X. WHEN I caught cold some time ago, I had such a pain in my head, I could scarcely hold it up. Papa opened the door very softly, because he loves me. You love me, yet you made a noise. You had not the sense to know that it made my head worse, till papa told you. Papa had a pain in the stomach, and he would not eat the fine cherries or grapes on the table. When I brought him a cup of camomile tea, he drank it without saying a word, or making an ugly face. He knows that I love him, and that I would not give him any thing to drink that has a bad taste, if it were not to do him good. You asked me for some apples when your stomach ached; but I was not angry with you. If you had been as wise as papa, you would have said, I will not eat the apples to-day, I must take some camomile tea. You say that you do not know how to think. Yes; you do a little. The other day papa was tired; he had been walking about all the morning. After dinner he fell asleep on the sopha. I did not bid you be quiet; but you thought of what papa said to you, when my head ached. This made you think that you ought not to make a noise, when papa was resting himself. So you came to me, and said to me, very softly, Pray reach me my ball, and I will go and play in the garden, till papa wakes. You were going out; but thinking again, you came back to me on your tip-toes. Whisper----whisper. Pray mama, call me, when papa wakes; for I shall be afraid to open the door to see, lest I should disturb him. Away you went.--Creep--creep--and shut the door as softly as I could have done myself. That was thinking. When a child does wrong at first, she does not know any better. But, after she has been told that she must not disturb mama, when poor mama is unwell, she thinks herself, that she must not wake papa when he is tired. Another day we will see if you can think about any thing else. THE END. FOOTNOTES: [175-A] This title which is indorsed on the back of the manuscript, I conclude to have been written in a period of desperation, in the month of October, 1795. EDITOR. POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF THE AUTHOR OF A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. IN FOUR VOLUMES. * * * * * VOL. III. * * * * * _LONDON:_ PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD; AND G. G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1798. LETTERS AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. PREFACE. THE following Letters may possibly be found to contain the finest examples of the language of sentiment and passion ever presented to the world. They bear a striking resemblance to the celebrated romance of Werter, though the incidents to which they relate are of a very different cast. Probably the readers to whom Werter is incapable of affording pleasure, will receive no delight from the present publication. The editor apprehends that, in the judgment of those best qualified to decide upon the comparison, these Letters will be admitted to have the superiority over the fiction of Goethe. They are the offspring of a glowing imagination, and a heart penetrated with the passion it essays to describe. To the series of letters constituting the principal article in these two volumes, are added various pieces, none of which, it is hoped, will be found discreditable to the talents of the author. The slight fragment of Letters on the Management of Infants, may be thought a trifle; but it seems to have some value, as presenting to us with vividness the intention of the writer on this important subject. The publication of a few select Letters to Mr. Johnson, appeared to be at once a just monument to the sincerity of his friendship, and a valuable and interesting specimen of the mind of the writer. The Letter on the Present Character of the French Nation, the Extract of the Cave of Fancy, a Tale, and the Hints for the Second Part of the Rights of Woman, may, I believe, safely be left to speak for themselves. The Essay on Poetry and our Relish for the Beauties of Nature, appeared in the Monthly Magazine for April last, and is the only piece in this collection which has previously found its way to the press. LETTERS. LETTER I. Two o'Clock. MY dear love, after making my arrangements for our snug dinner to-day, I have been taken by storm, and obliged to promise to dine, at an early hour, with the Miss ----s, the _only_ day they intend to pass here. I shall however leave the key in the door, and hope to find you at my fire-side when I return, about eight o'clock. Will you not wait for poor Joan?--whom you will find better, and till then think very affectionately of her. Yours, truly, * * * * I am sitting down to dinner; so do not send an answer. * * * * * LETTER II. Past Twelve o'Clock, Monday night. [August.] I OBEY an emotion of my heart, which made me think of wishing thee, my love, good-night! before I go to rest, with more tenderness than I can to-morrow, when writing a hasty line or two under Colonel ----'s eye. You can scarcely imagine with what pleasure I anticipate the day, when we are to begin almost to live together; and you would smile to hear how many plans of employment I have in my head, now that I am confident my heart has found peace in your bosom.--Cherish me with that dignified tenderness, which I have only found in you; and your own dear girl will try to keep under a quickness of feeling, that has sometimes given you pain--Yes, I will be _good_, that I may deserve to be happy; and whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into the miserable state, which rendered life a burthen almost too heavy to be borne. But, good-night!--God bless you! Sterne says, that is equal to a kiss--yet I would rather give you the kiss into the bargain, glowing with gratitude to Heaven, and affection to you. I like the word affection, because it signifies something habitual; and we are soon to meet, to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm. * * * * I will be at the barrier a little after ten o'clock to-morrow[4-A].--Yours-- * * * * * LETTER III. Wednesday Morning. YOU have often called me, dear girl, but you would now say good, did you know how very attentive I have been to the ---- ever since I came to Paris. I am not however going to trouble you with the account, because I like to see your eyes praise me; and, Milton insinuates, that, during such recitals, there are interruptions, not ungrateful to the heart, when the honey that drops from the lips is not merely words. Yet, I shall not (let me tell you before these people enter, to force me to huddle away my letter) be content with only a kiss of DUTY--you _must_ be glad to see me--because you are glad--or I will make love to the _shade_ of Mirabeau, to whom my heart continually turned, whilst I was talking with Madame ----, forcibly telling me, that it will ever have sufficient warmth to love, whether I will or not, sentiment, though I so highly respect principle.---- Not that I think Mirabeau utterly devoid of principles--Far from it--and, if I had not begun to form a new theory respecting men, I should, in the vanity of my heart, have _imagined_ that _I_ could have made something of his----it was composed of such materials--Hush! here they come--and love flies away in the twinkling of an eye, leaving a little brush of his wing on my pale cheeks. I hope to see Dr. ---- this morning; I am going to Mr. ----'s to meet him. ----, and some others, are invited to dine with us to-day; and to-morrow I am to spend the day with ----. I shall probably not be able to return to ---- to-morrow; but it is no matter, because I must take a carriage, I have so many books, that I immediately want, to take with me.--On Friday then I shall expect you to dine with me--and, if you come a little before dinner, it is so long since I have seen you, you will not be scolded by yours affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER IV[7-A]. Friday Morning [September.] A MAN, whom a letter from Mr. ----previously announced, called here yesterday for the payment of a draft; and, as he seemed disappointed at not finding you at home, I sent him to Mr. ----. I have since seen him, and he tells me that he has settled the business. So much for business!--May I venture to talk a little longer about less weighty affairs?--How are you?--I have been following you all along the road this comfortless weather; for, when I am absent from those I love, my imagination is as lively, as if my senses had never been gratified by their presence--I was going to say caresses--and why should I not? I have found out that I have more mind than you, in one respect; because I can, without any violent effort of reason, find food for love in the same object, much longer than you can.--The way to my senses is through my heart; but, forgive me! I think there is sometimes a shorter cut to yours. With ninety-nine men out of a hundred, a very sufficient dash of folly is necessary to render a woman _piquante_, a soft word for desirable; and, beyond these casual ebullitions of sympathy, few look for enjoyment by fostering a passion in their hearts. One reason, in short, why I wish my whole sex to become wiser, is, that the foolish ones may not, by their pretty folly, rob those whose sensibility keeps down their vanity, of the few roses that afford them some solace in the thorny road of life. I do not know how I fell into these reflections, excepting one thought produced it--that these continual separations were necessary to warm your affection.--Of late, we are always separating.--Crack!--crack!--and away you go.--This joke wears the sallow cast of thought; for, though I began to write cheerfully, some melancholy tears have found their way into my eyes, that linger there, whilst a glow of tenderness at my heart whispers that you are one of the best creatures in the world.--Pardon then the vagaries of a mind, that has been almost "crazed by care," as well as "crossed in hapless love," and bear with me a _little_ longer!--When we are settled in the country together, more duties will open before me, and my heart, which now, trembling into peace, is agitated by every emotion that awakens the remembrance of old griefs, will learn to rest on yours, with that dignity your character, not to talk of my own, demands. Take care of yourself--and write soon to your own girl (you may add dear, if you please) who sincerely loves you, and will try to convince you of it, by becoming happier. * * * * * * * * * LETTER V. Sunday Night. I HAVE just received your letter, and feel as if I could not go to bed tranquilly without saying a few words in reply--merely to tell you, that my mind is serene, and my heart affectionate. Ever since you last saw me inclined to faint, I have felt some gentle twitches, which make me begin to think, that I am nourishing a creature who will soon be sensible of my care.--This thought has not only produced an overflowing of tenderness to you, but made me very attentive to calm my mind and take exercise, lest I should destroy an object, in whom we are to have a mutual interest, you know. Yesterday--do not smile!--finding that I had hurt myself by lifting precipitately a large log of wood, I sat down in an agony, till I felt those said twitches again. Are you very busy? -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- So you may reckon on its being finished soon, though not before you come home, unless you are detained longer than I now allow myself to believe you will.-- Be that as it may, write to me, my best love, and bid me be patient--kindly--and the expressions of kindness will again beguile the time, as sweetly as they have done to-night.--Tell me also over and over again, that your happiness (and you deserve to be happy!) is closely connected with mine, and I will try to dissipate, as they rise, the fumes of former discontent, that have too often clouded the sunshine, which you have endeavoured to diffuse through my mind. God bless you! Take care of yourself, and remember with tenderness your affectionate * * * * I am going to rest very happy, and you have made me so.--This is the kindest good-night I can utter. * * * * * LETTER VI. Friday Morning. I AM glad to find that other people can be unreasonable, as well as myself--for be it known to thee, that I answered thy _first_ letter, the very night it reached me (Sunday), though thou couldst not receive it before Wednesday, because it was not sent off till the next day.--There is a full, true, and particular account.-- Yet I am not angry with thee, my love, for I think that it is a proof of stupidity, and likewise of a milk-and-water affection, which comes to the same thing, when the temper is governed by a square and compass.--There is nothing picturesque in this straight-lined equality, and the passions always give grace to the actions. Recollection now makes my heart bound to thee; but, it is not to thy money-getting face, though I cannot be seriously displeased with the exertion which increases my esteem, or rather is what I should have expected from thy character.--No; I have thy honest countenance before me--Pop--relaxed by tenderness; a little--little wounded by my whims; and thy eyes glistening with sympathy.--Thy lips then feel softer than soft--and I rest my cheek on thine, forgetting all the world.--I have not left the hue of love out of the picture--the rosy glow; and fancy has spread it over my own cheeks, I believe, for I feel them burning, whilst a delicious tear trembles in my eye, that would be all your own, if a grateful emotion directed to the Father of nature, who has made me thus alive to happiness, did not give more warmth to the sentiment it divides--I must pause a moment. Need I tell you that I am tranquil after writing thus?--I do not know why, but I have more confidence in your affection, when absent, than present; nay, I think that you must love me, for, in the sincerity of my heart let me say it, I believe I deserve your tenderness, because I am true, and have a degree of sensibility that you can see and relish. Yours sincerely * * * * * * * * * LETTER VII. Sunday Morning [December 29.] YOU seem to have taken up your abode at H----. Pray sir! when do you think of coming home? or, to write very considerately, when will business permit you? I shall expect (as the country people say in England) that you will make a _power_ of money to indemnify me for your absence. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Well! but, my love, to the old story--am I to see you this week, or this month?--I do not know what you are about--for, as you did not tell me, I would not ask Mr. ----, who is generally pretty communicative. I long to see Mrs. ------; not to hear from you, so do not give yourself airs, but to get a letter from Mr. ----. And I am half angry with you for not informing me whether she had brought one with her or not.--On this score I will cork up some of the kind things that were ready to drop from my pen, which has never been dipt in gall when addressing you; or, will only suffer an exclamation--"The creature!" or a kind look, to escape me, when I pass the slippers--which I could not remove from my _salle_ door, though they are not the handsomest of their kind. Be not too anxious to get money!--for nothing worth having is to be purchased. God bless you. Yours affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER VIII. Monday Night [December 30.] MY best love, your letter to-night was particularly grateful to my heart, depressed by the letters I received by ----, for he brought me several, and the parcel of books directed to Mr. ------ was for me. Mr. ------'s letter was long and very affectionate; but the account he gives me of his own affairs, though he obviously makes the best of them, has vexed me. A melancholy letter from my sister ------ has also harrassed my mind--that from my brother would have given me sincere pleasure; but for -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- There is a spirit of independence in his letter, that will please you; and you shall see it, when we are once more over the fire together.--I think that you would hail him as a brother, with one of your tender looks, when your heart not only gives a lustre to your eye, but a dance of playfulness, that he would meet with a glow half made up of bashfulness, and a desire to please the----where shall I find a word to express the relationship which subsists between us?--Shall I ask the little twitcher?--But I have dropt half the sentence that was to tell you how much he would be inclined to love the man loved by his sister. I have been fancying myself sitting between you, ever since I began to write, and my heart has leaped at the thought!--You see how I chat to you. I did not receive your letter till I came home; and I did not expect it, for the post came in much later than usual. It was a cordial to me--and I wanted one. Mr. ---- tells me that he has written again and again.--Love him a little!--It would be a kind of separation, if you did not love those I love. There was so much considerate tenderness in your epistle to-night, that, if it has not made you dearer to me, it has made me forcibly feel how very dear you are to me, by charming away half my cares. Yours affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER IX. Tuesday Morning [December 31.] THOUGH I have just sent a letter off, yet, as captain ---- offers to take one, I am not willing to let him go without a kind greeting, because trifles of this sort, without having any effect on my mind, damp my spirits:--and you, with all your struggles to be manly, have some of this same sensibility.--Do not bid it begone, for I love to see it striving to master your features; besides, these kind of sympathies are the life of affection: and why, in cultivating our understandings, should we try to dry up these springs of pleasure, which gush out to give a freshness to days browned by care! The books sent to me are such as we may read together; so I shall not look into them till you return; when you shall read, whilst I mend my stockings. Yours truly * * * * * * * * * LETTER X. Wednesday Night [January 1.] AS I have been, you tell me, three days without writing, I ought not to complain of two: yet, as I expected to receive a letter this afternoon, I am hurt; and why should I, by concealing it, affect the heroism I do not feel? I hate commerce. How differently must ------'s head and heart be organized from mine! You will tell me, that exertions are necessary: I am weary of them! The face of things, public and private, vexes me. The "peace" and clemency which seemed to be dawning a few days ago, disappear again. "I am fallen," as Milton said, "on evil days;" for I really believe that Europe will be in a state of convulsion, during half a century at least. Life is but a labour of patience: it is always rolling a great stone up a hill; for, before a person can find a resting-place, imagining it is lodged, down it comes again, and all the work is to be done over anew! Should I attempt to write any more, I could not change the strain. My head aches, and my heart is heavy. The world appears an "unweeded garden," where "things rank and vile" flourish best. If you do not return soon--or, which is no such mighty matter, talk of it--I will throw your slippers out at window, and be off--nobody knows where. * * * * Finding that I was observed, I told the good women, the two Mrs. ----s, simply that I was with child: and let them stare! and ------, and ------, nay, all the world, may know it for aught I care!--Yet I wish to avoid ------'s coarse jokes. Considering the care and anxiety a woman must have about a child before it comes into the world, it seems to me, by a _natural right_, to belong to her. When men get immersed in the world, they seem to lose all sensations, excepting those necessary to continue or produce life!--Are these the privileges of reason? Amongst the feathered race, whilst the hen keeps the young warm, her mate stays by to cheer her; but it is sufficient for man to condescend to get a child, in order to claim it.--A man is a tyrant! You may now tell me, that, if it were not for me, you would be laughing away with some honest fellows in L--n. The casual exercise of social sympathy would not be sufficient for me--I should not think such an heartless life worth preserving.--It is necessary to be in good-humour with you, to be pleased with the world. * * * * * Thursday Morning. I WAS very low-spirited last night, ready to quarrel with your cheerful temper, which makes absence easy to you.--And, why should I mince the the matter? I was offended at your not even mentioning it.--I do not want to be loved like a goddess; but I wish to be necessary to you. God bless you[27-A]! * * * * * LETTER XI. Monday Night. I HAVE just received your kind and rational letter, and would fain hide my face, glowing with shame for my folly.--I would hide it in your bosom, if you would again open it to me, and nestle closely till you bade my fluttering heart be still, by saying that you forgave me. With eyes overflowing with tears, and in the humblest attitude, I intreat you.--Do not turn from me, for indeed I love you fondly, and have been very wretched, since the night I was so cruelly hurt by thinking that you had no confidence in me---- It is time for me to grow more reasonable, a few more of these caprices of sensibility would destroy me. I have, in fact, been very much indisposed for a few days past, and the notion that I was tormenting, or perhaps killing, a poor little animal, about whom I am grown anxious and tender, now I feel it alive, made me worse. My bowels have been dreadfully disordered, and every thing I ate or drank disagreed with my stomach; still I feel intimations of its existence, though they have been fainter. Do you think that the creature goes regularly to sleep? I am ready to ask as many questions as Voltaire's Man of Forty Crowns. Ah! do not continue to be angry with me! You perceive that I am already smiling through my tears--You have lightened my heart, and my frozen spirits are melting into playfulness. Write the moment you receive this. I shall count the minutes. But drop not an angry word--I cannot now bear it. Yet, if you think I deserve a scolding (it does not admit of a question, I grant), wait till you come back--and then, if you are angry one day, I shall be sure of seeing you the next. ------ did not write to you, I suppose, because he talked of going to H----. Hearing that I was ill, he called very kindly on me, not dreaming that it was some words that he incautiously let fall, which rendered me so. God bless you, my love; do not shut your heart against a return of tenderness; and, as I now in fancy cling to you, be more than ever my support.--Feel but as affectionate when you read this letter, as I did writing it, and you will make happy, your * * * * * * * * * LETTER XII. Wednesday Morning. I WILL never, if I am not entirely cured of quarrelling, begin to encourage "quick-coming fancies," when we are separated. Yesterday, my love, I could not open your letter for some time; and, though it was not half as severe as I merited, it threw me into such a fit of trembling, as seriously alarmed me. I did not, as you may suppose, care for a little pain on my own account; but all the fears which I have had for a few days past, returned with fresh force. This morning I am better; will you not be glad to hear it? You perceive that sorrow has almost made a child of me, and that I want to be soothed to peace. One thing you mistake in my character, and imagine that to be coldness which is just the contrary. For, when I am hurt by the person most dear to me, I must let out a whole torrent of emotions, in which tenderness would be uppermost, or stifle them altogether; and it appears to me almost a duty to stifle them, when I imagine _that I am treated with coldness_. I am afraid that I have vexed you, my own ----. I know the quickness of your feelings--and let me, in the sincerity of my heart, assure you, there is nothing I would not suffer to make you happy. My own happiness wholly depends on you--and, knowing you, when my reason is not clouded, I look forward to a rational prospect of as much felicity as the earth affords--with a little dash of rapture into the bargain, if you will look at me, when we meet again, as you have sometimes greeted, your humbled, yet most affectionate * * * * * * * * * LETTER XIII. Thursday Night. I HAVE been wishing the time away, my kind love, unable to rest till I knew that my penitential letter had reached your hand--and this afternoon, when your tender epistle of Tuesday gave such exquisite pleasure to your poor sick girl, her heart smote her to think that you were still to receive another cold one.--Burn it also, my ----; yet do not forget that even those letters were full of love; and I shall ever recollect, that you did not wait to be mollified by my penitence, before you took me again to your heart. I have been unwell, and would not, now I am recovering, take a journey, because I have been seriously alarmed and angry with myself, dreading continually the fatal consequence of my folly.--But, should you think it right to remain at H--, I shall find some opportunity, in the course of a fortnight, or less perhaps, to come to you, and before then I shall be strong again.--Yet do not be uneasy! I am really better, and never took such care of myself, as I have done since you restored my peace of mind. The girl is come to warm my bed--so I will tenderly say, good night! and write a line or two in the morning. Morning. I WISH you were here to walk with me this fine morning! yet your absence shall not prevent me. I have stayed at home too much; though, when I was so dreadfully out of spirits, I was careless of every thing. I will now sally forth (you will go with me in my heart) and try whether this fine bracing air will not give the vigour to the poor babe, it had, before I so inconsiderately gave way to the grief that deranged my bowels, and gave a turn to my whole system. Yours truly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * LETTER XIV. Saturday Morning. THE two or three letters, which I have written to you lately, my love, will serve as an answer to your explanatory one. I cannot but respect your motives and conduct. I always respected them; and was only hurt, by what seemed to me a want of confidence, and consequently affection.--I thought also, that if you were obliged to stay three months at H--, I might as well have been with you.--Well! well, what signifies what I brooded over--Let us now be friends! I shall probably receive a letter from you to-day, sealing my pardon--and I will be careful not to torment you with my querulous humours, at least, till I see you again. Act as circumstances direct, and I will not enquire when they will permit you to return, convinced that you will hasten to your * * * *, when you have attained (or lost sight of) the object of your journey. What a picture have you sketched of our fire-side! Yes, my love, my fancy was instantly at work, and I found my head on your shoulder, whilst my eyes were fixed on the little creatures that were clinging about your knees. I did not absolutely determine that there should be six--if you have not set your heart on this round number. I am going to dine with Mrs. ----. I have not been to visit her since the first day she came to Paris. I wish indeed to be out in the air as much as I can; for the exercise I have taken these two or three days past, has been of such service to me, that I hope shortly to tell you, that I am quite well. I have scarcely slept before last night, and then not much.--The two Mrs. ------s have been very anxious and tender. Yours truly * * * * I need not desire you to give the colonel a good bottle of wine. * * * * * LETTER XV. Sunday Morning. I WROTE to you yesterday, my ----; but, finding that the colonel is still detained (for his passport was forgotten at the office yesterday) I am not willing to let so many days elapse without your hearing from me, after having talked of illness and apprehensions. I cannot boast of being quite recovered, yet I am (I must use my Yorkshire phrase; for, when my heart is warm, pop come the expressions of childhood into my head) so _lightsome_, that I think it will not _go badly with me_.--And nothing shall be wanting on my part, I assure you; for I am urged on, not only by an enlivened affection for you, but by a new-born tenderness that plays cheerly round my dilating heart. I was therefore, in defiance of cold and dirt, out in the air the greater part of yesterday; and, if I get over this evening without a return of the fever that has tormented me, I shall talk no more of illness. I have promised the little creature, that its mother, who ought to cherish it, will not again plague it, and begged it to pardon me; and, since I could not hug either it or you to my breast, I have to my heart.--I am afraid to read over this prattle--but it is only for your eye. I have been seriously vexed, to find that, whilst you were harrassed by impediments in your undertakings, I was giving you additional uneasiness.--If you can make any of your plans answer--it is well, I do not think a _little_ money inconvenient; but, should they fail, we will struggle cheerfully together--drawn closer by the pinching blasts of poverty. Adieu, my love! Write often to your poor girl, and write long letters; for I not only like them for being longer, but because more heart steals into them; and I am happy to catch your heart whenever I can. Yours sincerely * * * * * * * * * LETTER XVI. Tuesday Morning. I SEIZE this opportunity to inform you, that I am to set out on Thursday with Mr. ------, and hope to tell you soon (on your lips) how glad I shall be to see you. I have just got my passport, so I do not foresee any impediment to my reaching H----, to bid you good-night next Friday in my new apartment--where I am to meet you and love, in spite of care, to smile me to sleep--for I have not caught much rest since we parted. You have, by your tenderness and worth, twisted yourself more artfully round my heart, than I supposed possible.--Let me indulge the thought, that I have thrown out some tendrils to cling to the elm by which I wish to be supported.--This is talking a new language for me!--But, knowing that I am not a parasite-plant, I am willing to receive the proofs of affection, that every pulse replies to, when I think of being once more in the same house with you.--God bless you! Yours truly * * * * * * * * * LETTER XVII. Wednesday Morning. I ONLY send this as an _avant-coureur_, without jack-boots, to tell you, that I am again on the wing, and hope to be with you a few hours after you receive it. I shall find you well, and composed, I am sure; or, more properly speaking, cheerful.--What is the reason that my spirits are not as manageable as yours? Yet, now I think of it, I will not allow that your temper is even, though I have promised myself, in order to obtain my own forgiveness, that I will not ruffle it for a long, long time--I am afraid to say never. Farewell for a moment!--Do not forget that I am driving towards you in person! My mind, unfettered, has flown to you long since, or rather has never left you. I am well, and have no apprehension that I shall find the journey too fatiguing, when I follow the lead of my heart.--With my face turned to H--my spirits will not sink--and my mind has always hitherto enabled my body to do whatever I wished. Yours affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER XVIII. H--, Thursday Morning, March 12. WE are such creatures of habit, my love, that, though I cannot say I was sorry, childishly so, for your going, when I knew that you were to stay such a short time, and I had a plan of employment; yet I could not sleep.--I turned to your side of the bed, and tried to make the most of the comfort of the pillow, which you used to tell me I was churlish about; but all would not do.--I took nevertheless my walk before breakfast, though the weather was not very inviting--and here I am, wishing you a finer day, and seeing you peep over my shoulder, as I write, with one of your kindest looks--when your eyes glisten, and a suffusion creeps over your relaxing features. But I do not mean to dally with you this morning--So God bless you! Take care of yourself--and sometimes fold to your heart your affectionate * * * * * * * * * LETTER XIX. DO not call me stupid, for leaving on the table the little bit of paper I was to inclose.--This comes of being in love at the fag-end of a letter of business.--You know, you say, they will not chime together.--I had got you by the fire-side, with the _gigot_ smoking on the board, to lard your poor bare ribs--and behold, I closed my letter without taking the paper up, that was directly under my eyes!--What had I got in them to render me so blind?--I give you leave to answer the question, if you will not scold; for I am Yours most affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER XX. Sunday, August 17. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- I have promised ------ to go with him to his country-house, where he is now permitted to dine--I, and the little darling, to be sure[47-A]--whom I cannot help kissing with more fondness, since you left us. I think I shall enjoy the fine prospect, and that it will rather enliven, than satiate my imagination. I have called on Mrs. ------. She has the manners of a gentlewoman, with a dash of the easy French coquetry, which renders her _piquante_.--But _Monsieur_ her husband, whom nature never dreamed of casting in either the mould of a gentleman or lover, makes but an aukward figure in the foreground of the picture. The H----s are very ugly, without doubt--and the house smelt of commerce from top to toe--so that his abortive attempt to display taste, only proved it to be one of the things not to be bought with gold. I was in a room a moment alone, and my attention was attracted by the _pendule_--A nymph was offering up her vows before a smoking altar, to a fat-bottomed Cupid (saving your presence), who was kicking his heels in the air.--Ah! kick on, thought I; for the demon of traffic will ever fright away the loves and graces, that streak with the rosy beams of infant fancy the _sombre_ day of life--whilst the imagination, not allowing us to see things as they are, enables us to catch a hasty draught of the running stream of delight, the thirst for which seems to be given only to tantalize us. But I am philosophizing; nay, perhaps you will call me severe, and bid me let the square-headed money-getters alone.--Peace to them! though none of the social sprites (and there are not a few of different descriptions, who sport about the various inlets to my heart) gave me a twitch to restrain my pen. I have been writing on, expecting poor ------ to come; for, when I began, I merely thought of business; and, as this is the idea that most naturally associates with your image, I wonder I stumbled on any other. Yet, as common life, in my opinion, is scarcely worth having, even with a _gigot_ every day, and a pudding added thereunto, I will allow you to cultivate my judgment, if you will permit me to keep alive the sentiments in your heart, which may be termed romantic, because, the offspring of the senses and the imagination, they resemble the mother more than the father[50-A], when they produce the suffusion I admire.--In spite of icy age, I hope still to see it, if you have not determined only to eat and drink, and be stupidly useful to the stupid-- Yours * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXI. H--, August 19, Tuesday. I RECEIVED both your letters to-day--I had reckoned on hearing from you yesterday, therefore was disappointed, though I imputed your silence to the right cause. I intended answering your kind letter immediately, that you might have felt the pleasure it gave me; but ------ came in, and some other things interrupted me; so that the fine vapour has evaporated--yet, leaving a sweet scent behind, I have only to tell you, what is sufficiently obvious, that the earnest desire I have shown to keep my place, or gain more ground in your heart, is a sure proof how necessary your affection is to my happiness.--Still I do not think it false delicacy, or foolish pride, to wish that your attention to my happiness should arise _as much_ from love, which is always rather a selfish passion, as reason--that is, I want you to promote my felicity, by seeking your own.--For, whatever pleasure it may give me to discover your generosity of soul, I would not be dependent for your affection on the very quality I most admire. No; there are qualities in your heart, which demand my affection; but, unless the attachment appears to me clearly mutual, I shall labour only to esteem your character, instead of cherishing a tenderness for your person. I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment--This for our little girl was at first very reasonable--more the effect of reason, a sense of duty, than feeling--now, she has got into my heart and imagination, and when I walk out without her, her little figure is ever dancing before me. You too have somehow clung round my heart--I found I could not eat my dinner in the great room--and, when I took up the large knife to carve for myself, tears rushed into my eyes.--Do not however suppose that I am melancholy--for, when you are from me, I not only wonder how I can find fault with you--but how I can doubt your affection. I will not mix any comments on the inclosed (it roused my indignation) with the effusion of tenderness, with which I assure you, that you are the friend of my bosom, and the prop of my heart. * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXII. H--, August 20. I WANT to know what steps you have taken respecting ----. Knavery always rouses my indignation--I should be gratified to hear that the law had chastised ------ severely; but I do not wish you to see him, because the business does not now admit of peaceful discussion, and I do not exactly know how you would express your contempt. Pray ask some questions about Tallien--I am still pleased with the dignity of his conduct.--The other day, in the cause of humanity, he made use of a degree of address, which I admire--and mean to point out to you, as one of the few instances of address which do credit to the abilities of the man, without taking away from that confidence in his openness of heart, which is the true basis of both public and private friendship. Do not suppose that I mean to allude to a little reserve of temper in you, of which I have sometimes complained! You have been used to a cunning woman, and you almost look for cunning--Nay, in _managing_ my happiness, you now and then wounded my sensibility, concealing yourself, till honest sympathy, giving you to me without disguise, lets me look into a heart, which my half-broken one wishes to creep into, to be revived and cherished.----You have frankness of heart, but not often exactly that overflowing (_épanchement de coeur_), which becoming almost childish, appears a weakness only to the weak. But I have left poor Tallien. I wanted you to enquire likewise whether, as a member declared in the convention, Robespierre really maintained a _number_ of mistresses.--Should it prove so, I suspect that they rather flattered his vanity than his senses. Here is a chatting, desultory epistle! But do not suppose that I mean to close it without mentioning the little damsel--who has been almost springing out of my arm--she certainly looks very like you--but I do not love her the less for that, whether I am angry or pleased with you.-- Yours affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXIII[58-A]. September 22. I HAVE just written two letters, that are going by other conveyances, and which I reckon on your receiving long before this. I therefore merely write, because I know I should be disappointed at seeing any one who had left you, if you did not send a letter, were it ever so short, to tell me why you did not write a longer--and you will want to be told, over and over again, that our little Hercules is quite recovered. Besides looking at me, there are three other things, which delight her--to ride in a coach, to look at a scarlet waistcoat, and hear loud music--yesterday, at the _fête_, she enjoyed the two latter; but, to honour J. J. Rousseau, I intend to give her a sash, the first she has ever had round her--and why not?--for I have always been half in love with him. Well, this you will say is trifling--shall I talk about alum or soap? There is nothing picturesque in your present pursuits; my imagination then rather chuses to ramble back to the barrier with you, or to see you coming to meet me, and my basket of grapes.--With what pleasure do I recollect your looks and words, when I have been sitting on the window, regarding the waving corn! Believe me, sage sir, you have not sufficient respect for the imagination--I could prove to you in a trice that it is the mother of sentiment, the great distinction of our nature, the only purifier of the passions--animals have a portion of reason, and equal, if not more exquisite, senses; but no trace of imagination, or her offspring taste, appears in any of their actions. The impulse of the senses, passions, if you will, and the conclusions of reason, draw men together; but the imagination is the true fire, stolen from heaven, to animate this cold creature of clay, producing all those fine sympathies that lead to rapture, rendering men social by expanding their hearts, instead of leaving them leisure to calculate how many comforts society affords. If you call these observations romantic, a phrase in this place which would be tantamount to nonsensical, I shall be apt to retort, that you are embruted by trade, and the vulgar enjoyments of life--Bring me then back your barrier-face, or you shall have nothing to say to my barrier-girl; and I shall fly from you, to cherish the remembrances that will ever be dear to me; for I am yours truly * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXIV. Evening, Sept. 23. I HAVE been playing and laughing with the little girl so long, that I cannot take up my pen to address you without emotion. Pressing her to my bosom, she looked so like you (_entre nous_, your best looks, for I do not admire your commercial face) every nerve seemed to vibrate to the touch, and I began to think that there was something in the assertion of man and wife being one--for you seemed to pervade my whole frame, quickening the beat of my heart, and lending me the sympathetic tears you excited. Have I any thing more to say to you? No; not for the present--the rest is all flown away; and, indulging tenderness for you, I cannot now complain of some people here, who have ruffled my temper for two or three days past. * * * * * Morning. YESTERDAY B---- sent to me for my packet of letters. He called on me before; and I like him better than I did--that is, I have the same opinion of his understanding, but I think with you, he has more tenderness and real delicacy of feeling with respect to women, than are commonly to be met with. His manner too of speaking of his little girl, about the age of mine, interested me. I gave him a letter for my sister, and requested him to see her. I have been interrupted. Mr. ----I suppose will write about business. Public affairs I do not descant on, except to tell you that they write now with great freedom and truth, and this liberty of the press will overthrow the Jacobins, I plainly perceive. I hope you take care of your health. I have got a habit of restlessness at night, which arises, I believe, from activity of mind; for, when I am alone, that is, not near one to whom I can open my heart, I sink into reveries and trains of thinking, which agitate and fatigue me. This is my third letter; when am I to hear from you? I need not tell you, I suppose, that I am now writing with somebody in the room with me, and ---- is waiting to carry this to Mr. ----'s. I will then kiss the girl for you, and bid you adieu. I desired you, in one of my other letters, to bring back to me your barrier-face--or that you should not be loved by my barrier-girl. I know that you will love her more and more, for she is a little affectionate, intelligent creature, with as much vivacity, I should think, as you could wish for. I was going to tell you of two or three things which displease me here; but they are not of sufficient consequence to interrupt pleasing sensations. I have received a letter from Mr. ----. I want you to bring ----with you. Madame S---- is by me, reading a German translation of your letters--she desires me to give her love to you, on account of what you say of the negroes. Yours most affectionately, * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXV. Paris, Sept. 28. I HAVE written to you three or four letters; but different causes have prevented my sending them by the persons who promised to take or forward them. The inclosed is one I wrote to go by B----; yet, finding that he will not arrive, before I hope, and believe, you will have set out on your return, I inclose it to you, and shall give it in charge to ----, as Mr. ---- is detained, to whom I also gave a letter. I cannot help being anxious to hear from you; but I shall not harrass you with accounts of inquietudes, or of cares that arise from peculiar circumstances.--I have had so many little plagues here, that I have almost lamented that I left H----. ----, who is at best a most helpless creature, is now, on account of her pregnancy, more trouble than use to me, so that I still continue to be almost a slave to the child.--She indeed rewards me, for she is a sweet little creature; for, setting aside a mother's fondness (which, by the bye, is growing on me, her little intelligent smiles sinking into my heart), she has an astonishing degree of sensibility and observation. The other day by B----'s child, a fine one, she looked like a little sprite.--She is all life and motion, and her eyes are not the eyes of a fool--I will swear. I slept at St. Germain's, in the very room (if you have not forgot) in which you pressed me very tenderly to your heart.--I did not forget to fold my darling to mine, with sensations that are almost too sacred to be alluded to. Adieu, my love! Take care of yourself, if you wish to be the protector of your child, and the comfort of her mother. I have received, for you, letters from --------. I want to hear how that affair finishes, though I do not know whether I have most contempt for his folly or knavery. Your own * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXVI. October 1. IT is a heartless task to write letters, without knowing whether they will ever reach you.--I have given two to ----, who has been a-going, a-going, every day, for a week past; and three others, which were written in a low-spirited strain, a little querulous or so, I have not been able to forward by the opportunities that were mentioned to me. _Tant mieux!_ you will say, and I will not say nay; for I should be sorry that the contents of a letter, when you are so far away, should damp the pleasure that the sight of it would afford--judging of your feelings by my own. I just now stumbled on one of the kind letters, which you wrote during your last absence. You are then a dear affectionate creature, and I will not plague you. The letter which you chance to receive, when the absence is so long, ought to bring only tears of tenderness, without any bitter alloy, into your eyes. After your return I hope indeed, that you will not be so immersed in business, as during the last three or four months past--for even money, taking into the account all the future comforts it is to procure, may be gained at too dear a rate, if painful impressions are left on the mind.--These impressions were much more lively, soon after you went away, than at present--for a thousand tender recollections efface the melancholy traces they left on my mind--and every emotion is on the same side as my reason, which always was on yours.--Separated, it would be almost impious to dwell on real or imaginary imperfections of character.--I feel that I love you; and, if I cannot be happy with you, I will seek it no where else. My little darling grows every day more dear to me--and she often has a kiss, when we are alone together, which I give her for you, with all my heart. I have been interrupted--and must send off my letter. The liberty of the press will produce a great effect here--the _cry of blood will not be vain_!--Some more monsters will perish--and the Jacobins are conquered.--Yet I almost fear the last slap of the tail of the beast. I have had several trifling teazing inconveniencies here, which I shall not now trouble you with a detail of.--I am sending ---- back; her pregnancy rendered her useless. The girl I have got has more vivacity, which is better for the child. I long to hear from you.--Bring a copy of ---- and ---- with you. ---- is still here: he is a lost man.--He really loves his wife, and is anxious about his children; but his indiscriminate hospitality and social feelings have given him an inveterate habit of drinking, that destroys his health, as well as renders his person disgusting.--If his wife had more sense, or delicacy, she might restrain him: as it is, nothing will save him. Yours most truly and affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXVII. October 26. MY dear love, I began to wish so earnestly to hear from you, that the sight of your letters occasioned such pleasurable emotions, I was obliged to throw them aside till the little girl and I were alone together; and this said little girl, our darling, is become a most intelligent little creature, and as gay as a lark, and that in the morning too, which I do not find quite so convenient. I once told you, that the sensations before she was born, and when she is sucking, were pleasant; but they do not deserve to be compared to the emotions I feel, when she stops to smile upon me, or laughs outright on meeting me unexpectedly in the street, or after a short absence. She has now the advantage of having two good nurses, and I am at present able to discharge my duty to her, without being the slave of it. I have therefore employed and amused myself since I got rid of ----, and am making a progress in the language amongst other things. I have also made some new acquaintance. I have almost _charmed_ a judge of the tribunal, R----, who, though I should not have thought it possible, has humanity, if not _beaucoup d'esprit_. But let me tell you, if you do not make haste back, I shall be half in love with the author of the _Marseillaise_, who is a handsome man, a little too broad-faced or so, and plays sweetly on the violin. What do you say to this threat?--why, _entre nous_, I like to give way to a sprightly vein, when writing to you, that is, when I am pleased with you. "The devil," you know, is proverbially said to be "in a good humour, when he is pleased." Will you not then be a good boy, and come back quickly to play with your girls? but I shall not allow you to love the new-comer best. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- My heart longs for your return, my love, and only looks for, and seeks happiness with you; yet do not imagine that I childishly wish you to come back, before you have arranged things in such a manner, that it will not be necessary for you to leave us soon again; or to make exertions which injure your constitution. Yours most truly and tenderly * * * * P.S. "You would oblige me by delivering the inclosed to Mr. ----, and pray call for an answer.--It is for a person uncomfortably situated. * * * * * LETTER XXVIII. Dec. 26. I HAVE been, my love, for some days tormented by fears, that I would not allow to assume a form--I had been expecting you daily--and I heard that many vessels had been driven on shore during the late gale.--Well, I now see your letter--and find that you are safe; I will not regret then that your exertions have hitherto been so unavailing. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Be that as it may, return to me when you have arranged the other matters, which ---- has been crowding on you. I want to be sure that you are safe--and not separated from me by a sea that must be passed. For, feeling that I am happier than I ever was, do you wonder at my sometimes dreading that fate has not done persecuting me? Come to me, my dearest friend, husband, father of my child!--All these fond ties glow at my heart at this moment, and dim my eyes.--With you an independence is desirable; and it is always within our reach, if affluence escapes us--without you the world again appears empty to me. But I am recurring to some of the melancholy thoughts that have flitted across my mind for some days past, and haunted my dreams. My little darling is indeed a sweet child; and I am sorry that you are not here, to see her little mind unfold itself. You talk of "dalliance;" but certainly no lover was ever more attached to his mistress, than she is to me. Her eyes follow me every where, and by affection I have the most despotic power over her. She is all vivacity or softness--yes; I love her more than I thought I should. When I have been hurt at your stay, I have embraced her as my only comfort--when pleased with you, for looking and laughing like you; nay, I cannot, I find, long be angry with you, whilst I am kissing her for resembling you. But there would be no end to these details. Fold us both to your heart; for I am truly and affectionately Yours * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXIX. December 28. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- I do, my love, indeed sincerely sympathize with you in all your disappointments.--Yet, knowing that you are well, and think of me with affection, I only lament other disappointments, because I am sorry that you should thus exert yourself in vain, and that you are kept from me. ------, I know, urges you to stay, and is continually branching out into new projects, because he has the idle desire to amass a large fortune, rather an immense one, merely to have the credit of having made it. But we who are governed by other motives, ought not to be led on by him. When we meet, we will discuss this subject--You will listen to reason, and it has probably occurred to you, that it will be better, in future, to pursue some sober plan, which may demand more time, and still enable you to arrive at the same end. It appears to me absurd to waste life in preparing to live. Would it not now be possible to arrange your business in such a manner as to avoid the inquietudes, of which I have had my share since your departure? Is it not possible to enter into business, as an employment necessary to keep the faculties awake, and (to sink a little in the expressions) the pot boiling, without suffering what must ever be considered as a secondary object, to engross the mind, and drive sentiment and affection out of the heart? I am in a hurry to give this letter to the person who has promised to forward it with ------'s. I wish then to counteract, in some measure, what he has doubtless recommended most warmly. Stay, my friend, whilst it is _absolutely_ necessary.--I will give you no tenderer name, though it glows at my heart, unless you come the moment the settling the _present_ objects permit.--_I do not consent_ to your taking any other journey--or the little woman and I will be off, the Lord knows where. But, as I had rather owe every thing to your affection, and, I may add, to your reason, (for this immoderate desire of wealth, which makes ------ so eager to have you remain, is contrary to your principles of action), I will not importune you.--I will only tell you, that I long to see you--and, being at peace with you, I shall be hurt, rather than made angry, by delays.--Having suffered so much in life, do not be surprised if I sometimes, when left to myself, grow gloomy, and suppose that it was all a dream, and that my happiness is not to last. I say happiness, because remembrance retrenches all the dark shades of the picture. My little one begins to show her teeth, and use her legs--She wants you to bear your part in the nursing business, for I am fatigued with dancing her, and yet she is not satisfied--she wants you to thank her mother for taking such care of her, as you only can. Yours truly * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXX. December 29. THOUGH I suppose you have later intelligence, yet, as ------ has just informed me that he has an opportunity of sending immediately to you, I take advantage of it to inclose you -- -- -- -- -- -- -- How I hate this crooked business! This intercourse with the world, which obliges one to see the worst side of human nature! Why cannot you be content with the object you had first in view, when you entered into this wearisome labyrinth?--I know very well that you have imperceptibly been drawn on; yet why does one project, successful or abortive, only give place to two others? Is it not sufficient to avoid poverty?--I am contented to do my part; and, even here, sufficient to escape from wretchedness is not difficult to obtain. And, let me tell you, I have my project also--and, if you do not soon return, the little girl and I will take care of ourselves; we will not accept any of your cold kindness--your distant civilities--no; not we. This is but half jesting, for I am really tormented by the desire which ------ manifests to have you remain where you are.--Yet why do I talk to you?--If he can persuade you--let him!--for, if you are not happier with me, and your own wishes do not make you throw aside these eternal projects, I am above using any arguments, though reason as well as affection seems to offer them--if our affection be mutual, they will occur to you--and you will act accordingly. Since my arrival here, I have found the German lady, of whom you have heard me speak. Her first child died in the month; but she has another, about the age of my ------, a fine little creature. They are still but contriving to live----earning their daily bread--yet, though they are but just above poverty, I envy them.--She is a tender, affectionate mother--fatigued even by her attention.--However she has an affectionate husband in her turn, to render her care light, and to share her pleasure. I will own to you that, feeling extreme tenderness for my little girl, I grow sad very often when I am playing with her, that you are not here, to observe with me how her mind unfolds, and her little heart becomes attached!--These appear to me to be true pleasures--and still you suffer them to escape you, in search of what we may never enjoy.--It is your own maxim to "live in the present moment."--_If you do_--stay, for God's sake; but tell me the truth--if not, tell me when I may expect to see you, and let me not be always vainly looking for you, till I grow sick at heart. Adieu! I am a little hurt.--I must take my darling to my bosom to comfort me. * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXXI. December 30. SHOULD you receive three or four of the letters at once which I have written lately, do not think of Sir John Brute, for I do not mean to wife you. I only take advantage of every occasion, that one out of three of my epistles may reach your hands, and inform you that I am not of ------'s opinion, who talks till he makes me angry, of the necessity of your staying two or three months longer. I do not like this life of continual inquietude--and, _entre nous_, I am determined to try to earn some money here myself, in order to convince you that, if you chuse to run about the world to get a fortune, it is for yourself--for the little girl and I will live without your assistance, unless you are with us. I may be termed proud--Be it so--but I will never abandon certain principles of action. The common run of men have such an ignoble way of thinking, that, if they debauch their hearts, and prostitute their persons, following perhaps a gust of inebriation, they suppose the wife, slave rather, whom they maintain, has no right to complain, and ought to receive the sultan, whenever he deigns to return, with open arms, though his have been polluted by half an hundred promiscuous amours during his absence. I consider fidelity and constancy as two distinct things; yet the former is necessary, to give life to the other--and such a degree of respect do I think due to myself, that, if only probity, which is a good thing in its place, brings you back, never return!--for, if a wandering of the heart, or even a caprice of the imagination detains you--there is an end of all my hopes of happiness--I could not forgive it, if I would. I have gotten into a melancholy mood, you perceive. You know my opinion of men in general; you know that I think them systematic tyrants, and that it is the rarest thing in the world, to meet with a man with sufficient delicacy of feeling to govern desire. When I am thus sad, I lament that my little darling, fondly as I doat on her, is a girl.--I am sorry to have a tie to a world that for me is ever sown with thorns. You will call this an ill-humoured letter, when, in fact, it is the strongest proof of affection I can give, to dread to lose you. ------ has taken such pains to convince me that you must and ought to stay, that it has inconceivably depressed my spirits--You have always known my opinion--I have ever declared, that two people, who mean to live together, ought not to be long separated.--If certain things are more necessary to you than me--search for them--Say but one word, and you shall never hear of me more.--If not--for God's sake, let us struggle with poverty--with any evil, but these continual inquietudes of business, which I have been told were to last but a few months, though every day the end appears more distant! This is the first letter in this strain that I have determined to forward to you; the rest lie by, because I was unwilling to give you pain, and I should not now write, if I did not think that there would be no conclusion to the schemes, which demand, as I am told, your presence. * * * *[91-A] * * * * * LETTER XXXII. January 9. I JUST now received one of your hasty _notes_; for business so entirely occupies you, that you have not time, or sufficient command of thought, to write letters. Beware! you seem to be got into a whirl of projects and schemes, which are drawing you into a gulph, that, if it do not absorb your happiness, will infallibly destroy mine. Fatigued during my youth by the most arduous struggles, not only to obtain independence, but to render myself useful, not merely pleasure, for which I had the most lively taste, I mean the simple pleasures that flow from passion and affection, escaped me, but the most melancholy views of life were impressed by a disappointed heart on my mind. Since I knew you, I have been endeavouring to go back to my former nature, and have allowed some time to glide away, winged with the delight which only spontaneous enjoyment can give.--Why have you so soon dissolved the charm? I am really unable to bear the continual inquietude which your and ------'s never-ending plans produce. This you may term want of firmness--but you are mistaken--I have still sufficient firmness to pursue my principle of action. The present misery, I cannot find a softer word to do justice to my feelings, appears to me unnecessary--and therefore I have not firmness to support it as you may think I ought. I should have been content, and still wish, to retire with you to a farm--My God! any thing, but these continual anxieties--any thing but commerce, which debases the mind, and roots out affection from the heart. I do not mean to complain of subordinate inconveniences----yet I will simply observe, that, led to expect you every week, I did not make the arrangements required by the present circumstances, to procure the necessaries of life. In order to have them, a servant, for that purpose only, is indispensible--The want of wood, has made me catch the most violent cold I ever had; and my head is so disturbed by continual coughing, that I am unable to write without stopping frequently to recollect myself.--This however is one of the common evils which must be borne with----bodily pain does not touch the heart, though it fatigues the spirits. Still as you talk of your return, even in February, doubtingly, I have determined, the moment the weather changes, to wean my child.--It is too soon for her to begin to divide sorrow!--And as one has well said, "despair is a freeman," we will go and seek our fortune together. This is not a caprice of the moment--for your absence has given new weight to some conclusions, that I was very reluctantly forming before you left me.--I do not chuse to be a secondary object.--If your feelings were in unison with mine, you would not sacrifice so much to visionary prospects of future advantage. * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXXIII. Jan. 15. I WAS just going to begin my letter with the fag end of a song, which would only have told you, what I may as well say simply, that it is pleasant to forgive those we love. I have received your two letters, dated the 26th and 28th of December, and my anger died away. You can scarcely conceive the effect some of your letters have produced on me. After longing to hear from you during a tedious interval of suspense, I have seen a superscription written by you.--Promising myself pleasure, and feeling emotion, I have laid it by me, till the person who brought it, left the room--when, behold! on opening it, I have found only half a dozen hasty lines, that have damped all the rising affection of my soul. Well, now for business-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- My animal is well; I have not yet taught her to eat, but nature is doing the business. I gave her a crust to assist the cutting of her teeth; and now she has two, she makes good use of them to gnaw a crust, biscuit, &c. You would laugh to see her; she is just like a little squirrel; she will guard a crust for two hours; and, after fixing her eye on an object for some time, dart on it with an aim as sure as a bird of prey--nothing can equal her life and spirits. I suffer from a cold; but it does not affect her. Adieu! do not forget to love us--and come soon to tell us that you do. * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXXIV. Jan. 30. FROM the purport of your last letters, I would suppose that this will scarcely reach you; and I have already written so many letters, that you have either not received, or neglected to acknowledge, I do not find it pleasant, or rather I have no inclination, to go over the same ground again. If you have received them, and are still detained by new projects, it is useless for me to say any more on the subject. I have done with it for ever--yet I ought to remind you that your pecuniary interest suffers by your absence. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- For my part, my head is turned giddy, by only hearing of plans to make money, and my contemptuous feelings have sometimes burst out. I therefore was glad that a violent cold gave me a pretext to stay at home, lest I should have uttered unseasonable truths. My child is well, and the spring will perhaps restore me to myself.--I have endured many inconveniences this winter, which should I be ashamed to mention, if they had been unavoidable. "The secondary pleasures of life," you say, "are very necessary to my comfort:" it may be so; but I have ever considered them as secondary. If therefore you accuse me of wanting the resolution necessary to bear the _common_[100-A] evils of life; I should answer, that I have not fashioned my mind to sustain them, because I would avoid them, cost what it would---- Adieu! * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXXV. February 9. THE melancholy presentiment has for some time hung on my spirits, that we were parted for ever; and the letters I received this day, by Mr. ----, convince me that it was not without foundation. You allude to some other letters, which I suppose have miscarried; for most of those I have got, were only a few hasty lines, calculated to wound the tenderness the sight of the superscriptions excited. I mean not however to complain; yet so many feelings are struggling for utterance, and agitating a heart almost bursting with anguish, that I find it very difficult to write with any degree of coherence. You left me indisposed, though you have taken no notice of it; and the most fatiguing journey I ever had, contributed to continue it. However, I recovered my health; but a neglected cold, and continual inquietude during the last two months, have reduced me to a state of weakness I never before experienced. Those who did not know that the canker-worm was at work at the core, cautioned me about suckling my child too long.--God preserve this poor child, and render her happier than her mother! But I am wandering from my subject: indeed my head turns giddy, when I think that all the confidence I have had in the affection of others is come to this. I did not expect this blow from you. I have done my duty to you and my child; and if I am not to have any return of affection to reward me, I have the sad consolation of knowing that I deserved a better fate. My soul is weary--I am sick at heart; and, but for this little darling, I would cease to care about a life, which is now stripped of every charm. You see how stupid I am, uttering declamation, when I meant simply to tell you, that I consider your requesting me to come to you, as merely dictated by honour.--Indeed, I scarcely understand you.--You request me to come, and then tell me, that you have not given up all thoughts of returning to this place. When I determined to live with you, I was only governed by affection.--I would share poverty with you, but I turn with affright from the sea of trouble on which you are entering.--I have certain principles of action: I know what I look for to found my happiness on.--It is not money.--With you I wished for sufficient to procure the comforts of life--as it is, less will do.--I can still exert myself to obtain the necessaries of life for my child, and she does not want more at present.--I have two or three plans in my head to earn our subsistence; for do not suppose that, neglected by you, I will lie under obligations of a pecuniary kind to you!--No; I would sooner submit to menial service.--I wanted the support of your affection--that gone, all is over!--I did not think, when I complained of ----'s contemptible avidity to accumulate money, that he would have dragged you into his schemes. I cannot write.--I inclose a fragment of a letter, written soon after your departure, and another which tenderness made me keep back when it was written.--You will see then the sentiments of a calmer, though not a more determined, moment.--Do not insult me by saying, that "our being together is paramount to every other consideration!" Were it, you would not be running after a bubble, at the expence of my peace of mind. Perhaps this is the last letter you will ever receive from me. * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXXVI. Feb. 10. YOU talk of "permanent views and future comfort"--not for me, for I am dead to hope. The inquietudes of the last winter have finished the business, and my heart is not only broken, but my constitution destroyed. I conceive myself in a galloping consumption, and the continual anxiety I feel at the thought of leaving my child, feeds the fever that nightly devours me. It is on her account that I again write to you, to conjure you, by all that you hold sacred, to leave her here with the German lady you may have heard me mention! She has a child of the same age, and they may be brought up together, as I wish her to be brought up. I shall write more fully on the subject. To facilitate this, I shall give up my present lodgings, and go into the same house. I can live much cheaper there, which is now become an object. I have had 3000 livres from ----, and I shall take one more, to pay my servant's wages, &c. and then I shall endeavour to procure what I want by my own exertions. I shall entirely give up the acquaintance of the Americans. ---- and I have not been on good terms a long time. Yesterday he very unmanlily exulted over me, on account of your determination to stay. I had provoked it, it is true, by some asperities against commerce, which have dropped from me, when we have argued about the propriety of your remaining where you are; and it is no matter, I have drunk too deep of the bitter cup to care about trifles. When you first entered into these plans, you bounded your views to the gaining of a thousand pounds. It was sufficient to have procured a farm in America, which would have been an independence. You find now that you did not know yourself, and that a certain situation in life is more necessary to you than you imagined--more necessary than an uncorrupted heart--For a year or two, you may procure yourself what you call pleasure; eating, drinking, and women; but, in the solitude of declining life, I shall be remembered with regret--I was going to say with remorse, but checked my pen. As I have never concealed the nature of my connection with you, your reputation will not suffer. I shall never have a confident: I am content with the approbation of my own mind; and, if there be a searcher of hearts, mine will not be despised. Reading what you have written relative to the desertion of women, I have often wondered how theory and practice could be so different, till I recollected, that the sentiments of passion, and the resolves of reason, are very distinct. As to my sisters, as you are so continually hurried with business, you need not write to them--I shall, when my mind is calmer. God bless you! Adieu! * * * * This has been such a period of barbarity and misery, I ought not to complain of having my share. I wish one moment that I had never heard of the cruelties that have been practised here, and the next envy the mothers who have been killed with their children. Surely I had suffered enough in life, not to be cursed with a fondness, that burns up the vital stream I am imparting. You will think me mad: I would I were so, that I could forget my misery--so that my head or heart would be still.---- * * * * * LETTER XXXVII. Feb. 19. WHEN I first received your letter, putting off your return to an indefinite time, I felt so hurt, that I know not what I wrote. I am now calmer, though it was not the kind of wound over which time has the quickest effect; on the contrary, the more I think, the sadder I grow. Society fatigues me inexpressibly--So much so, that finding fault with every one, I have only reason enough, to discover that the fault is in myself. My child alone interests me, and, but for her, I should not take any pains to recover my health. As it is, I shall wean her, and try if by that step (to which I feel a repugnance, for it is my only solace) I can get rid of my cough. Physicians talk much of the danger attending any complaint on the lungs, after a woman has suckled for some months. They lay a stress also on the necessity of keeping the mind tranquil--and, my God! how has mine been harrassed! But whilst the caprices of other women are gratified, "the wind of heaven not suffered to visit them too rudely," I have not found a guardian angel, in heaven or on earth, to ward off sorrow or care from my bosom. What sacrifices have you not made for a woman you did not respect!--But I will not go over this ground--I want to tell you that I do not understand you. You say that you have not given up all thoughts of returning here--and I know that it will be necessary--nay, is. I cannot explain myself; but if you have not lost your memory, you will easily divine my meaning. What! is our life then only to be made up of separations? and am I only to return to a country, that has not merely lost all charms for me, but for which I feel a repugnance that almost amounts to horror, only to be left there a prey to it! Why is it so necessary that I should return?--brought up here, my girl would be freer. Indeed, expecting you to join us, I had formed some plans of usefulness that have now vanished with my hopes of happiness. In the bitterness of my heart, I could complain with reason, that I am left here dependent on a man, whose avidity to acquire a fortune has rendered him callous to every sentiment connected with social or affectionate emotions.--With a brutal insensibility, he cannot help displaying the pleasure your determination to stay gives him, in spite of the effect it is visible it has had on me. Till I can earn money, I shall endeavour to borrow some, for I want to avoid asking him continually for the sum necessary to maintain me.--Do not mistake me, I have never been refused.--Yet I have gone half a dozen times to the house to ask for it, and come away without speaking----you must guess why--Besides, I wish to avoid hearing of the eternal projects to which you have sacrificed my peace--not remembering--but I will be silent for ever.---- * * * * * LETTER XXXVIII. April 7. HERE I am at H----, on the wing towards you, and I write now, only to tell you, that you may expect me in the course of three or four days; for I shall not attempt to give vent to the different emotions which agitate my heart--You may term a feeling, which appears to me to be a degree of delicacy that naturally arises from sensibility, pride--Still I cannot indulge the very affectionate tenderness which glows in my bosom, without trembling, till I see, by your eyes, that it is mutual. I sit, lost in thought, looking at the sea--and tears rush into my eyes, when I find that I am cherishing any fond expectations.--I have indeed been so unhappy this winter, I find it as difficult to acquire fresh hopes, as to regain tranquillity.--Enough of this--lie still, foolish heart!--But for the little girl, I could almost wish that it should cease to beat, to be no more alive to the anguish of disappointment. Sweet little creature! I deprived myself of my only pleasure, when I weaned her, about ten days ago.--I am however glad I conquered my repugnance.--It was necessary it should be done soon, and I did not wish to embitter the renewal of your acquaintance with her, by putting it off till we met.--It was a painful exertion to me, and I thought it best to throw this inquietude with the rest, into the sack that I would fain throw over my shoulder.--I wished to endure it alone, in short--Yet, after sending her to sleep in the next room for three or four nights, you cannot think with what joy I took her back again to sleep in my bosom! I suppose I shall find you, when I arrive, for I do not see any necessity for your coming to me.--Pray inform Mr. ------, that I have his little friend with me.--My wishing to oblige him, made me put myself to some inconvenience----and delay my departure; which was irksome to me, who have not quite as much philosophy, I would not for the world say indifference, as you. God bless you! Yours truly, * * * * * * * * * LETTER XXXIX. Brighthelmstone, Saturday, April 11. HERE we are, my love, and mean to set out early in the morning; and, if I can find you, I hope to dine with you to-morrow.--I shall drive to ------'s hotel, where ------ tells me you have been--and, if you have left it, I hope you will take care to be there to receive us. I have brought with me Mr. ----'s little friend, and a girl whom I like to take care of our little darling--not on the way, for that fell to my share.--But why do I write about trifles?--or any thing?--Are we not to meet soon?--What does your heart say! Yours truly * * * * I have weaned my ------, and she is now eating away at the white bread. * * * * * LETTER XL. London, Friday, May 22. I HAVE just received your affectionate letter, and am distressed to think that I have added to your embarrassments at this troublesome juncture, when the exertion of all the faculties of your mind appears to be necessary, to extricate you out of your pecuniary difficulties. I suppose it was something relative to the circumstance you have mentioned, which made ------ request to see me to-day, to _converse about a matter of great importance_. Be that as it may, his letter (such is the state of my spirits) inconceivably alarmed me, and rendered the last night as distressing, as the two former had been. I have laboured to calm my mind since you left me--Still I find that tranquillity is not to be obtained by exertion; it is a feeling so different from the resignation of despair!--I am however no longer angry with you--nor will I ever utter another complaint--there are arguments which convince the reason, whilst they carry death to the heart.--We have had too many cruel explanations, that not only cloud every future prospect; but embitter the remembrances which alone give life to affection.--Let the subject never be revived! It seems to me that I have not only lost the hope, but the power of being happy.--Every emotion is now sharpened by anguish.--My soul has been shook, and my tone of feelings destroyed.--I have gone out--and sought for dissipation, if not amusement, merely to fatigue still more, I find, my irritable nerves---- My friend--my dear friend--examine yourself well--I am out of the question; for, alas! I am nothing--and discover what you wish to do--what will render you most comfortable--or, to be more explicit--whether you desire to live with me, or part for ever? When you can once ascertain it, tell me frankly, I conjure you!--for, believe me, I have very involuntarily interrupted your peace. I shall expect you to dinner on Monday, and will endeavour to assume a cheerful face to greet you--at any rate I will avoid conversations, which only tend to harrass your feelings, because I am most affectionately yours, * * * * * * * * * LETTER XLI. Wednesday. I INCLOSE you the letter, which you desired me to forward, and I am tempted very laconically to wish you a good morning--not because I am angry, or have nothing to say; but to keep down a wounded spirit.--I shall make every effort to calm my mind--yet a strong conviction seems to whirl round in the very centre of my brain, which, like the fiat of fate, emphatically assures me, that grief has a firm hold of my heart. God bless you! Yours sincerely * * * * * * * * * LETTER XLII. --, Wednesday, Two o'Clock. WE arrived here about an hour ago. I am extremely fatigued with the child, who would not rest quiet with any body but me, during the night--and now we are here in a comfortless, damp room, in a sort of a tomb-like house. This however I shall quickly remedy, for, when I have finished this letter, (which I must do immediately, because the post goes out early), I shall sally forth, and enquire about a vessel and an inn. I will not distress you by talking of the depression of my spirits, or the struggle I had to keep alive my dying heart.--It is even now too full to allow me to write with composure.--*****,--dear *****, --am I always to be tossed about thus?--shall I never find an asylum to rest _contented_ in? How can you love to fly about continually--dropping down, as it were, in a new world--cold and strange!--every other day? Why do you not attach those tender emotions round the idea of home, which even now dim my eyes?--This alone is affection--every thing else is only humanity, electrified by sympathy. I will write to you again to-morrow, when I know how long I am to be detained--and hope to get a letter quickly from you, to cheer yours sincerely and affectionately * * * * ------ is playing near me in high spirits. She was so pleased with the noise of the mail-horn, she has been continually imitating it.----Adieu! * * * * * LETTER XLIII. Thursday. A LADY has just sent to offer to take me to ------. I have then only a moment to exclaim against the vague manner in which people give information -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- But why talk of inconveniences, which are in fact trifling, when compared with the sinking of the heart I have felt! I did not intend to touch this painful string--God bless you! Yours truly, * * * * * * * * * LETTER XLIV. Friday, June 12. I HAVE just received yours dated the 9th, which I suppose was a mistake, for it could scarcely have loitered so long on the road. The general observations which apply to the state of your own mind, appear to me just, as far as they go; and I shall always consider it as one of the most serious misfortunes of my life, that I did not meet you, before satiety had rendered your senses so fastidious, as almost to close up every tender avenue of sentiment and affection that leads to your sympathetic heart. You have a heart, my friend, yet, hurried away by the impetuosity of inferior feelings, you have sought in vulgar excesses, for that gratification which only the heart can bestow. The common run of men, I know, with strong health and gross appetites, must have variety to banish _ennui_, because the imagination never lends its magic wand, to convert appetite into love, cemented by according reason.--Ah! my friend, you know not the ineffable delight, the exquisite pleasure, which arises from a unison of affection and desire, when the whole soul and senses are abandoned to a lively imagination, that renders every emotion delicate and rapturous. Yes; these are emotions, over which satiety has no power, and the recollection of which, even disappointment cannot disenchant; but they do not exist without self-denial. These emotions, more or less strong, appear to me to be the distinctive characteristic of genius, the foundation of taste, and of that exquisite relish for the beauties of nature, of which the common herd of eaters and drinkers and _child-begeters_, certainly have no idea. You will smile at an observation that has just occurred to me:--I consider those minds as the most strong and original, whose imagination acts as the stimulus to their senses. Well! you will ask, what is the result of all this reasoning? Why I cannot help thinking that it is possible for you, having great strength of mind, to return to nature, and regain a sanity of constitution, and purity of feeling--which would open your heart to me.--I would fain rest there! Yet, convinced more than ever of the sincerity and tenderness of my attachment to you, the involuntary hopes, which a determination to live has revived, are not sufficiently strong to dissipate the cloud, that despair has spread over futurity. I have looked at the sea, and at my child, hardly daring to own to myself the secret wish, that it might become our tomb; and that the heart, still so alive to anguish, might there be quieted by death. At this moment ten thousand complicated sentiments press for utterance, weigh on my heart, and obscure my sight. Are we ever to meet again? and will you endeavour to render that meeting happier than the last? Will you endeavour to restrain your caprices, in order to give vigour to affection, and to give play to the checked sentiments that nature intended should expand your heart? I cannot indeed, without agony, think of your bosom's being continually contaminated; and bitter are the tears which exhaust my eyes, when I recollect why my child and I are forced to stray from the asylum, in which, after so many storms, I had hoped to rest, smiling at angry fate.--These are not common sorrows; nor can you perhaps conceive, how much active fortitude it requires to labour perpetually to blunt the shafts of disappointment. Examine now yourself, and ascertain whether you can live in something-like a settled stile. Let our confidence in future be unbounded; consider whether you find it necessary to sacrifice me to what you term "the zest of life;" and, when you have once a clear view of your own motives, of your own incentive to action, do not deceive me! The train of thoughts which the writing of this epistle awoke, makes me so wretched, that I must take a walk, to rouse and calm my mind. But first, let me tell you, that, if you really wish to promote my happiness, you will endeavour to give me as much as you can of yourself. You have great mental energy; and your judgment seems to me so just, that it is only the dupe of your inclination in discussing one subject. The post does not go out to-day. To-morrow I may write more tranquilly. I cannot yet say when the vessel will sail in which I have determined to depart. * * * * * Saturday Morning. Your second letter reached me about an hour ago. You were certainly wrong, in supposing that I did not mention you with respect; though, without my being conscious of it, some sparks of resentment may have animated the gloom of despair--Yes; with less affection, I should have been more respectful. However the regard which I have for you, is so unequivocal to myself, I imagine that it must be sufficiently obvious to every body else. Besides, the only letter I intended for the public eye was to ----, and that I destroyed from delicacy before you saw them, because it was only written (of course warmly in your praise) to prevent any odium being thrown on you[133-A]. I am harrassed by your embarrassments, and shall certainly use all my efforts, to make the business terminate to your satisfaction in which I am engaged. My friend--my dearest friend--I feel my fate united to yours by the most sacred principles of my soul, and the yearns of--yes, I will say it--a true, unsophisticated heart. Yours most truly * * * * If the wind be fair, the captain talks of sailing on Monday; but I am afraid I shall be detained some days longer. At any rate, continue to write, (I want this support) till you are sure I am where I cannot expect a letter; and, if any should arrive after my departure, a gentleman (not Mr. ----'s friend, I promise you) from whom I have received great civilities, will send them after me. Do write by every occasion! I am anxious to hear how your affairs go on; and, still more, to be convinced that you are not separating yourself from us. For my little darling is calling papa, and adding her parrot word--Come, Come! And will you not come, and let us exert ourselves?--I shall recover all my energy, when I am convinced that my exertions will draw us more closely together. One more adieu! * * * * * LETTER XLV. Sunday, June 14. I RATHER expected to hear from you to-day--I wish you would not fail to write to me for a little time, because I am not quite well--Whether I have any good sleep or not, I wake in the morning in violent fits of trembling--and, in spite of all my efforts, the child--every thing--fatigues me, in which I seek for solace or amusement. Mr. ---- forced on me a letter to a physician of this place; it was fortunate, for I should otherwise have had some difficulty to obtain the necessary information. His wife is a pretty woman (I can admire, you know, a pretty woman, when I am alone) and he an intelligent and rather interesting man.--They have behaved to me with great hospitality; and poor ------ was never so happy in her life, as amongst their young brood. They took me in their carriage to ------, and I ran over my favourite walks, with a vivacity that would have astonished you.--The town did not please me quite so well as formerly--It appeared so diminutive; and, when I found that many of the inhabitants had lived in the same houses ever since I left it, I could not help wondering how they could thus have vegetated, whilst I was running over a world of sorrow, snatching at pleasure, and throwing off prejudices. The place where I at present am, is much improved; but it is astonishing what strides aristocracy and fanaticism have made, since I resided in this country. The wind does not appear inclined to change, so I am still forced to linger--When do you think that you shall be able to set out for France? I do not entirely like the aspect of your affairs, and still less your connections on either side of the water. Often do I sigh, when I think of your entanglements in business, and your extreme restlessness of mind.--Even now I am almost afraid to ask you, whether the pleasure of being free, does not over-balance the pain you felt at parting with me? Sometimes I indulge the hope that you will feel me necessary to you--or why should we meet again?--but, the moment after, despair damps my rising spirits, aggravated by the emotions of tenderness, which ought to soften the cares of life.----God bless you! Yours sincerely and affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER XLVI. June 15. I WANT to know how you have settled with respect to ------. In short, be very particular in your account of all your affairs--let our confidence, my dear, be unbounded.--The last time we were separated, was a separation indeed on your part--Now you have acted more ingenuously, let the most affectionate interchange of sentiments fill up the aching void of disappointment. I almost dread that your plans will prove abortive--yet should the most unlucky turn send you home to us, convinced that a true friend is a treasure, I should not much mind having to struggle with the world again. Accuse me not of pride--yet sometimes, when nature has opened my heart to its author, I have wondered that you did not set a higher value on my heart. Receive a kiss from ------, I was going to add, if you will not take one from me, and believe me yours Sincerely * * * * The wind still continues in the same quarter. * * * * * LETTER XLVII. Tuesday Morning. THE captain has just sent to inform me, that I must be on board in the course of a few hours.--I wished to have stayed till to-morrow. It would have been a comfort to me to have received another letter from you--Should one arrive, it will be sent after me. My spirits are agitated, I scarcely know why----The quitting England seems to be a fresh parting.--Surely you will not forget me.--A thousand weak forebodings assault my soul, and the state of my health renders me sensible to every thing. It is surprising that in London, in a continual conflict of mind, I was still growing better--whilst here, bowed down by the despotic hand of fate, forced into resignation by despair, I seem to be fading away--perishing beneath a cruel blight, that withers up all my faculties. The child is perfectly well. My hand seems unwilling to add adieu! I know not why this inexpressible sadness has taken possession of me.--It is not a presentiment of ill. Yet, having been so perpetually the sport of disappointment,--having a heart that has been as it were a mark for misery, I dread to meet wretchedness in some new shape.--Well, let it come--I care not!--what have I to dread, who have so little to hope for! God bless you--I am most affectionately and sincerely yours * * * * * * * * * LETTER XLVIII. Wednesday Morning. I WAS hurried on board yesterday about three o'clock, the wind having changed. But before evening it veered round to the old point; and here we are, in the midst of mists and water, only taking advantage of the tide to advance a few miles. You will scarcely suppose that I left the town with reluctance--yet it was even so--for I wished to receive another letter from you, and I felt pain at parting, for ever perhaps, from the amiable family, who had treated me with so much hospitality and kindness. They will probably send me your letter, if it arrives this morning; for here we are likely to remain, I am afraid to think how long. The vessel is very commodious, and the captain a civil, open-hearted kind of man. There being no other passengers, I have the cabin to myself, which is pleasant; and I have brought a few books with me to beguile weariness; but I seem inclined, rather to employ the dead moments of suspence in writing some effusions, than in reading. What are you about? How are your affairs going on? It may be a long time before you answer these questions. My dear friend, my heart sinks within me!--Why am I forced thus to struggle continually with my affections and feelings?--Ah! why are those affections and feelings the source of so much misery, when they seem to have been given to vivify my heart, and extend my usefulness! But I must not dwell on this subject.--Will you not endeavour to cherish all the affection you can for me? What am I saying?--Rather forget me, if you can--if other gratifications are dearer to you.--How is every remembrance of mine embittered by disappointment? What a world is this!--They only seem happy, who never look beyond sensual or artificial enjoyments.--Adieu! ------ begins to play with the cabin-boy, and is as gay as a lark.--I will labour to be tranquil; and am in every mood, Yours sincerely * * * * * * * * * LETTER XLIX. Thursday. HERE I am still--and I have just received your letter of Monday by the pilot, who promised to bring it to me, if we were detained, as he expected, by the wind.--It is indeed wearisome to be thus tossed about without going forward.--I have a violent head-ache--yet I am obliged to take care of the child, who is a little tormented by her teeth, because ------ is unable to do any thing, she is rendered so sick by the motion of the ship, as we ride at anchor. These are however trifling inconveniences, compared with anguish of mind--compared with the sinking of a broken heart.--To tell you the truth, I never suffered in my life so much from depression of spirits--from despair.--I do not sleep--or, if I close my eyes, it is to have the most terrifying dreams, in which I often meet you with different casts of countenance. I will not, my dear ------, torment you by dwelling on my sufferings--and will use all my efforts to calm my mind, instead of deadening it--at present it is most painfully active. I find I am not equal to these continual struggles--yet your letter this morning has afforded me some comfort--and I will try to revive hope. One thing let me tell you--when we meet again--surely we are to meet!--it must be to part no more. I mean not to have seas between us--it is more than I can support. The pilot is hurrying me--God bless you. In spite of the commodiousness of the vessel, every thing here would disgust my senses, had I nothing else to think of--"When the mind's free, the body's delicate;"--mine has been too much hurt to regard trifles. Yours most truly * * * * * * * * * LETTER L. Saturday. THIS is the fifth dreary day I have been imprisoned by the wind, with every outward object to disgust the senses, and unable to banish the remembrances that sadden my heart. How am I altered by disappointment!--When going to ----, ten years ago, the elasticity of my mind was sufficient to ward off weariness--and the imagination still could dip her brush in the rainbow of fancy, and sketch futurity in smiling colours. Now I am going towards the North in search of sunbeams!--Will any ever warm this desolated heart? All nature seems to frown--or rather mourn with me.--Every thing is cold--cold as my expectations! Before I left the shore, tormented, as I now am, by these North east _chillers_, I could not help exclaiming--Give me, gracious Heaven! at least, genial weather, if I am never to meet the genial affection that still warms this agitated bosom--compelling life to linger there. I am now going on shore with the captain, though the weather be rough, to seek for milk, &c. at a little village, and to take a walk--after which I hope to sleep--for, confined here, surrounded by disagreeable smells, I have lost the little appetite I had; and I lie awake, till thinking almost drives me to the brink of madness--only to the brink, for I never forget, even in the feverish slumbers I sometimes fall into, the misery I am labouring to blunt the the sense of, by every exertion in my power. Poor ------ still continues sick, and ------ grows weary when the weather will not allow her to remain on deck. I hope this will be the last letter I shall write from England to you--are you not tired of this lingering adieu? Yours truly * * * * * * * * * LETTER LI. Sunday Morning. THE captain last night, after I had written my letter to you intended to be left at a little village, offered to go to ---- to pass to-day. We had a troublesome sail--and now I must hurry on board again, for the wind has changed. I half expected to find a letter from you here. Had you written one haphazard, it would have been kind and considerate--you might have known, had you thought, that the wind would not permit me to depart. These are attentions, more grateful to the heart than offers of service--But why do I foolishly continue to look for them? Adieu! adieu! My friend--your friendship is very cold--you see I am hurt.--God bless you! I may perhaps be, some time or other, independent in every sense of the word--Ah! there is but one sense of it of consequence. I will break or bend this weak heart--yet even now it is full. Yours sincerely * * * * The child is well; I did not leave her on board. * * * * * LETTER LII. June 27, Saturday. I ARRIVED in ------ this afternoon, after vainly attempting to land at ----. I have now but a moment, before the post goes out, to inform you we have got here; though not without considerable difficulty, for we were set ashore in a boat above twenty miles below. What I suffered in the vessel I will not now descant upon--nor mention the pleasure I received from the sight of the rocky coast.--This morning however, walking to join the carriage that was to transport us to this place, I fell, without any previous warning, senseless on the rocks--and how I escaped with life I can scarcely guess. I was in a stupour for a quarter of an hour; the suffusion of blood at last restored me to my senses--the contusion is great, and my brain confused. The child is well. Twenty miles ride in the rain, after my accident, has sufficiently deranged me--and here I could not get a fire to warm me, or any thing warm to eat; the inns are mere stables--I must nevertheless go to bed. For God's sake, let me hear from you immediately, my friend! I am not well and yet you see I cannot die. Yours sincerely * * * * * * * * * LETTER LIII. June 29. I WROTE to you by the last post, to inform you of my arrival; and I believe I alluded to the extreme fatigue I endured on ship-board, owing to ------'s illness, and the roughness of the weather--I likewise mentioned to you my fall, the effects of which I still feel, though I do not think it will have any serious consequences. ------ will go with me, if I find it necessary to go to ------. The inns here are so bad, I was forced to accept of an apartment in his house. I am overwhelmed with civilities on all sides, and fatigued with the endeavours to amuse me, from which I cannot escape. My friend--my friend, I am not well--a deadly weight of sorrow lies heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life; and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the hopes that alone render them bearable. "How flat, dull, and unprofitable," appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my pillow; but there is a canker-worm in my bosom that never sleeps. * * * * * * * * * LETTER LIV. July 1. I LABOUR in vain to calm my mind--my soul has been overwhelmed by sorrow and disappointment. Every thing fatigues me--this is a life that cannot last long. It is you who must determine with respect to futurity--and, when you have, I will act accordingly--I mean, we must either resolve to live together, or part for ever, I cannot bear these continual struggles--But I wish you to examine carefully your own heart and mind; and, if you perceive the least chance of being happier without me than with me, or if your inclination leans capriciously to that side, do not dissemble; but tell me frankly that you will never see me more. I will then adopt the plan I mentioned to you--for we must either live together, or I will be entirely independent. My heart is so oppressed, I cannot write with precision--You know however that what I so imperfectly express, are not the crude sentiments of the moment--You can only contribute to my comfort (it is the consolation I am in need of) by being with me--and, if the tenderest friendship is of any value, why will you not look to me for a degree of satisfaction that heartless affections cannot bestow? Tell me then, will you determine to meet me at Basle?--I shall, I should imagine, be at ------ before the close of August; and, after you settle your affairs at Paris, could we not meet there? God bless you! Yours truly * * * * Poor ------ has suffered during the journey with her teeth. * * * * * LETTER LV. July 3. THERE was a gloominess diffused through your last letter, the impression of which still rests on my mind--though, recollecting how quickly you throw off the forcible feelings of the moment, I flatter myself it has long since given place to your usual cheerfulness. Believe me (and my eyes fill with tears of tenderness as I assure you) there is nothing I would not endure in the way of privation, rather than disturb your tranquillity.--If I am fated to be unhappy, I will labour to hide my sorrows in my own bosom; and you shall always find me a faithful, affectionate friend. I grow more and more attached to my little girl--and I cherish this affection without fear, because it must be a long time before it can become bitterness of soul.--She is an interesting creature.--On ship-board, how often as I gazed at the sea, have I longed to bury my troubled bosom in the less troubled deep; asserting with Brutus, "that the virtue I had followed too far, was merely an empty name!" and nothing but the sight of her--her playful smiles, which seemed to cling and twine round my heart--could have stopped me. What peculiar misery has fallen to my share! To act up to my principles, I have laid the strictest restraint on my very thoughts--yes; not to sully the delicacy of my feelings, I have reined in my imagination; and started with affright from every sensation, (I allude to ----) that stealing with balmy sweetness into my soul, led me to scent from afar the fragrance of reviving nature. My friend, I have dearly paid for one conviction.--Love, in some minds, is an affair of sentiment, arising from the same delicacy of perception (or taste) as renders them alive to the beauties of nature, poetry, &c, alive to the charms of those evanescent graces that are, as it were, impalpable--they must be felt, they cannot be described. Love is a want of my heart. I have examined myself lately with more care than formerly, and find, that to deaden is not to calm the mind--Aiming at tranquillity, I have almost destroyed all the energy of my soul--almost rooted out what renders it estimable--Yes, I have damped that enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into a fuel, that imperceptibly feeds hopes, which aspire above common enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me stupid--soul and body seemed to be fading away before the withering touch of disappointment. I am now endeavouring to recover myself--and such is the elasticity of my constitution, and the purity of the atmosphere here, that health unsought for, begins to reanimate my countenance. I have the sincerest esteem and affection for you--but the desire of regaining peace, (do you understand me?) has made me forget the respect due to my own emotions--sacred emotions, that are the sure harbingers of the delights I was formed to enjoy--and shall enjoy, for nothing can extinguish the heavenly spark. Still, when we meet again, I will not torment you, I promise you. I blush when I recollect my former conduct--and will not in future confound myself with the beings whom I feel to be my inferiors.--I will listen to delicacy, or pride. * * * * * LETTER LVI. July 4. I HOPE to hear from you by to-morrow's mail. My dearest friend! I cannot tear my affections from you--and, though every remembrance stings me to the soul, I think of you, till I make allowance for the very defects of character, that have given such a cruel stab to my peace. Still however I am more alive, than you have seen me for a long, long time. I have a degree of vivacity, even in my grief, which is preferable to the benumbing stupour that, for the last year, has frozen up all my faculties.--Perhaps this change is more owing to returning health, than to the vigour of my reason--for, in spite of sadness (and surely I have had my share), the purity of this air, and the being continually out in it, for I sleep in the country every night, has made an alteration in my appearance that really surprises me.--The rosy fingers of health already streak my cheeks--and I have seen a _physical_ life in my eyes, after I have been climbing the rocks, that resembled the fond, credulous hopes of youth. With what a cruel sigh have I recollected that I had forgotten to hope!--Reason, or rather experience, does not thus cruelly damp poor ------'s pleasures; she plays all day in the garden with ------'s children, and makes friends for herself. Do not tell me, that you are happier without us--Will you not come to us in Switzerland? Ah, why do not you love us with more sentiment?--why are you a creature of such sympathy, that the warmth of your feelings, or rather quickness of your senses, hardens your heart? It is my misfortune, that my imagination is perpetually shading your defects, and lending you charms, whilst the grossness of your senses makes you (call me not vain) overlook graces in me, that only dignity of mind, and the sensibility of an expanded heart can give.--God bless you! Adieu. * * * * * LETTER LVII. July 7. I COULD not help feeling extremely mortified last post, at not receiving a letter from you. My being at ------was but a chance, and you might have hazarded it; and would a year ago. I shall not however complain--There are misfortunes so great, as to silence the usual expressions of sorrow--Believe me, there is such a thing as a broken heart! There are characters whose very energy preys upon them; and who, ever inclined to cherish by reflection some passion, cannot rest satisfied with the common comforts of life. I have endeavoured to fly from myself, and launched into all the dissipation possible here, only to feel keener anguish, when alone with my child. Still, could any thing please me--had not disappointment cut me off from life, this romantic country, these fine evenings, would interest me.--My God! can any thing? and am I ever to feel alive only to painful sensations?--But it cannot--it shall not last long. The post is again arrived; I have sent to seek for letters, only to be wounded to the soul by a negative.--My brain seems on fire, I must go into the air. * * * * * * * * * LETTER LVIII. July 14. I AM now on my journey to ------. I felt more at leaving my child, than I thought I should--and, whilst at night I imagined every instant that I heard the half-formed sounds of her voice,--I asked myself how I could think of parting with her for ever, of leaving her thus helpless? Poor lamb! It may run very well in a tale, that "God will temper the winds to the shorn lamb!" but how can I expect that she will be shielded, when my naked bosom has had to brave continually the pitiless storm? Yes; I could add, with poor Lear--What is the war of elements to the pangs of disappointed affection, and the horror arising from a discovery of a breach of confidence, that snaps every social tie! All is not right somewhere!--When you first knew me, I was not thus lost. I could still confide--for I opened my heart to you--of this only comfort you have deprived me, whilst my happiness, you tell me, was your first object. Strange want of judgment! I will not complain; but, from the soundness of your understanding, I am convinced, if you give yourself leave to reflect, you will also feel, that your conduct to me, so far from being generous, has not been just.--I mean not to allude to factitious principles of morality; but to the simple basis of all rectitude.--However I did not intend to argue--Your not writing is cruel--and my reason is perhaps disturbed by constant wretchedness. Poor ------ would fain have accompanied me, out of tenderness; for my fainting, or rather convulsion, when I landed, and my sudden changes of countenance since, have alarmed her so much, that she is perpetually afraid of some accident--But it would have injured the child this warm season, as she is cutting her teeth. I hear not of your having written to me at ----. Very well! Act as you please--there is nothing I fear or care for! When I see whether I can, or cannot obtain the money I am come here about, I will not trouble you with letters to which you do not reply. * * * * * LETTER LIX. July 18. I AM here in ----, separated from my child--and here I must remain a month at least, or I might as well never have come. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- I have begun -------- which will, I hope, discharge all my obligations of a pecuniary kind.--I am lowered in my own eyes, on account of my not having done it sooner. I shall make no further comments on your silence. God bless you! * * * * * * * * * LETTER LX. July 30. I HAVE just received two of your letters, dated the 26th and 30th of June; and you must have received several from me, informing you of my detention, and how much I was hurt by your silence. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Write to me then, my friend, and write explicitly. I have suffered, God knows, since I left you. Ah! you have never felt this kind of sickness of heart!--My mind however is at present painfully active, and the sympathy I feel almost rises to agony. But this is not a subject of complaint, it has afforded me pleasure,--and reflected pleasure is all I have to hope for--if a spark of hope be yet alive in my forlorn bosom. I will try to write with a degree of composure. I wish for us to live together, because I want you to acquire an habitual tenderness for my poor girl. I cannot bear to think of leaving her alone in the world, or that she should only be protected by your sense of duty. Next to preserving her, my most earnest wish is not to disturb your peace. I have nothing to expect, and little to fear, in life--There are wounds that can never be healed--but they may be allowed to fester in silence without wincing. When we meet again, you shall be convinced that I have more resolution than you give me credit for. I will not torment you. If I am destined always to be disappointed and unhappy, I will conceal the anguish I cannot dissipate; and the tightened cord of life or reason will at last snap, and set me free. Yes; I shall be happy--This heart is worthy of the bliss its feelings anticipate--and I cannot even persuade myself, wretched as they have made me, that my principles and sentiments are not founded in nature and truth. But to have done with these subjects. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- I have been seriously employed in this way since I came to ----; yet I never was so much in the air.--I walk, I ride on horseback--row, bathe, and even sleep in the fields; my health is consequently improved. The child, ------informs me, is well. I long to be with her. Write to me immediately--were I only to think of myself, I could wish you to return to me, poor, with the simplicity of character, part of which you seem lately to have lost, that first attached to you. Yours most affectionately * * * * * * * * * I have been subscribing other letters--so I mechanically did the same to yours. * * * * * LETTER LXI. August 5. EMPLOYMENT and exercise have been of great service to me; and I have entirely recovered the strength and activity I lost during the time of my nursing. I have seldom been in better health; and my mind, though trembling to the touch of anguish, is calmer--yet still the same.--I have, it is true, enjoyed some tranquillity, and more happiness here, than for a long--long time past.--(I say happiness, for I can give no other appellation to the exquisite delight this wild country and fine summer have afforded me.)--Still, on examining my heart, I find that it is so constituted, I cannot live without some particular affection--I am afraid not without a passion--and I feel the want of it more in society, than in solitude-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Writing to you, whenever an affectionate epithet occurs--my eyes fill with tears, and my trembling hand stops--you may then depend on my resolution, when with you. If I am doomed to be unhappy, I will confine my anguish in my own bosom--tenderness, rather than passion, has made me sometimes overlook delicacy--the same tenderness will in future restrain me. God bless you! * * * * * LETTER LXII. August 7. AIR, exercise, and bathing, have restored me to health, braced my muscles, and covered my ribs, even whilst I have recovered my former activity.--I cannot tell you that my mind is calm, though I have snatched some moments of exquisite delight, wandering through the woods, and resting on the rocks. This state of suspense, my friend, is intolerable; we must determine on something--and soon;--we must meet shortly, or part for ever. I am sensible that I acted foolishly--but I was wretched--when we were together--Expecting too much, I let the pleasure I might have caught, slip from me. I cannot live with you--I ought not--if you form another attachment. But I promise you, mine shall not be intruded on you. Little reason have I to expect a shadow of happiness, after the cruel disappointments that have rent my heart; but that of my child seems to depend on our being together. Still I do not wish you to sacrifice a chance of enjoyment for an uncertain good. I feel a conviction, that I can provide for her, and it shall be my object--if we are indeed to part to meet no more. Her affection must not be divided. She must be a comfort to me--if I am to have no other--and only know me as her support.--I feel that I cannot endure the anguish of corresponding with you--if we are only to correspond.--No; if you seek for happiness elsewhere, my letters shall not interrupt your repose. I will be dead to you. I cannot express to you what pain it gives me to write about an eternal separation.--You must determine--examine yourself--But, for God's sake! spare me the anxiety of uncertainty!--I may sink under the trial; but I will not complain. Adieu! If I had any thing more to say to you, it is all flown, and absorbed by the most tormenting apprehensions, yet I scarcely know what new form of misery I have to dread. I ought to beg your pardon for having sometimes written peevishly; but you will impute it to affection, if you understand any thing of the heart of Yours truly * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXIII. August 9. FIVE of your letters have been sent after me from ----. One, dated the 14th of July, was written in a style which I may have merited, but did not expect from you. However this is not a time to reply to it, except to assure you that you shall not be tormented with any more complaints. I am disgusted with myself for having so long importuned you with my affection.---- My child is very well. We shall soon meet, to part no more, I hope--I mean, I and my girl.--I shall wait with some degree of anxiety till I am informed how your affairs terminate. Yours sincerely * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXIV. August 26. I ARRIVED here last night, and with the most exquisite delight, once more pressed my babe to my heart. We shall part no more. You perhaps cannot conceive the pleasure it gave me, to see her run about, and play alone. Her increasing intelligence attaches me more and more to her. I have promised her that I will fulfil my duty to her; and nothing in future shall make me forget it. I will also exert myself to obtain an independence for her; but I will not be too anxious on this head. I have already told you, that I have recovered my health. Vigour, and even vivacity of mind, have returned with a renovated constitution. As for peace, we will not talk of it. I was not made, perhaps, to enjoy the calm contentment so termed.-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- You tell me that my letters torture you; I will not describe the effect yours have on me. I received three this morning, the last dated the 7th of this month. I mean not to give vent to the emotions they produced.--Certainly you are right; our minds are not congenial. I have lived in an ideal world, and fostered sentiments that you do not comprehend--or you would not treat me thus. I am not, I will not be, merely an object of compassion--a clog, however light, to teize you. Forget that I exist: I will never remind you. Something emphatical whispers me to put an end to these struggles. Be free--I will not torment, when I cannot please. I can take care of my child; you need not continually tell me that our fortune is inseparable, _that you will try to cherish tenderness_ for me. Do no violence to yourself! When we are separated, our interest, since you give so much weight to pecuniary considerations, will be entirely divided. I want not protection without affection; and support I need not, whilst my faculties are undisturbed. I had a dislike to living in England; but painful feelings must give way to superior considerations. I may not be able to acquire the sum necessary to maintain my child and self elsewhere. It is too late to go to Switzerland. I shall not remain at ----, living expensively. But be not alarmed! I shall not force myself on you any more. Adieu! I am agitated--my whole frame is convulsed--my lips tremble, as if shook by cold, though fire seems to be circulating in my veins. God bless you. * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXV. September 6. I RECEIVED just now your letter of the 20th. I had written you a letter last night, into which imperceptibly slipt some of my bitterness of soul. I will copy the part relative to business. I am not sufficiently vain to imagine that I can, for more than a moment, cloud your enjoyment of life--to prevent even that, you had better never hear from me--and repose on the idea that I am happy. Gracious God! It is impossible for me to stifle something like resentment, when I receive fresh proofs of your indifference. What I have suffered this last year, is not to be forgotten! I have not that happy substitute for wisdom, insensibility--and the lively sympathies which bind me to my fellow-creatures, are all of a painful kind.--They are the agonies of a broken heart--pleasure and I have shaken hands. I see here nothing but heaps of ruins, and only converse with people immersed in trade and sensuality. I am weary of travelling--yet seem to have no home--no resting place to look to.--I am strangely cast off.--How often, passing through the rocks, I have thought, "But for this child, I would lay my head on one of them, and never open my eyes again!" With a heart feelingly alive to all the affections of my nature--I have never met with one, softer than the stone that I would fain take for my last pillow. I once thought I had, but it was all a delusion. I meet with families continually, who are bound together by affection or principle--and, when I am conscious that I have fulfilled the duties of my station, almost to a forgetfulness of myself, I am ready to demand, in a murmuring tone, of Heaven, "Why am I thus abandoned?" You say now -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- I do not understand you. It is necessary for you to write more explicitly--and determine on some mode of conduct.--I cannot endure this suspense--Decide--Do you fear to strike another blow? We live together, or eternally part!--I shall not write to you again, till I receive an answer to this. I must compose my tortured soul, before I write on indifferent subjects. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- I do not know whether I write intelligibly, for my head is disturbed.--But this you ought to pardon--for it is with difficulty frequently that I make out what you mean to say--You write, I suppose, at Mr. ----'s after dinner, when your head is not the clearest--and as for your heart, if you have one, I see nothing like the dictates of affection, unless a glimpse when you mention, the child.--Adieu! * * * * * LETTER LXVI. September 25. I HAVE just finished a letter, to be given in charge to captain ------. In that I complained of your silence, and expressed my surprise that three mails should have arrived without bringing a line for me. Since I closed it, I hear of another, and still no letter.--I am labouring to write calmly--this silence is a refinement on cruelty. Had captain ------ remained a few days longer, I would have returned with him to England. What have I to do here? I have repeatedly written to you fully. Do you do the same--and quickly. Do not leave me in suspense. I have not deserved this of you. I cannot write, my mind is so distressed. Adieu! * * * * END VOL. III. FOOTNOTES: [4-A] The child is in a subsequent letter called the "barrier girl," probably from a supposition that she owed her existence to this interview. EDITOR. [7-A] This and the thirteen following letters appear to have been written during a separation of several months; the date, Paris. [27-A] Some further letters, written during the remainder of the week, in a similar strain to the preceding, appear to have been destroyed by the person to whom they were addressed. [47-A] The child spoken of in some preceding letters, had now been born a considerable time. [50-A] She means, "the latter more than the former." EDITOR. [58-A] This is the first of a series of letters written during a separation of many months, to which no cordial meeting ever succeeded. They were sent from Paris, and bear the address of London. [91-A] The person to whom the letters are addressed, was about this time at Ramsgate, on his return, as he professed, to Paris, when he was recalled, as it should seem, to London, by the further pressure of business now accumulated upon him. [100-A] This probably alludes to some expression of the person to whom the letters are addressed, in which he treated as common evils, things upon which the letter writer was disposed to bestow a different appellation. EDITOR. [133-A] This passage refers to letters written under a purpose of suicide, and not intended to be opened till after the catastrophe. POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF THE AUTHOR OF A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. IN FOUR VOLUMES. * * * * * VOL. IV. * * * * * _LONDON:_ PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD; AND G. G. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1798. LETTERS AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. IN TWO VOLUMES. * * * * * VOL. II. CONTENTS. Page Letters 1 Letter on the Present Character of the French Nation 39 Fragment of Letters on the Management of Infants 55 Letters to Mr. Johnson 61 Extract of the Cave of Fancy, a Tale 99 On Poetry and our Relish for the Beauties of Nature 159 Hints 179 ERRATA. Page 10, line 8, _for_ I write you, _read_ I write to you. ---- 20, -- 9, _read_ bring them to ----. ---- 146, -- 2 from the bottom, after over, insert a comma. LETTERS. * * * * * LETTER LXVII. September 27. WHEN you receive this, I shall either have landed, or be hovering on the British coast--your letter of the 18th decided me. By what criterion of principle or affection, you term my questions extraordinary and unnecessary, I cannot determine.--You desire me to decide--I had decided. You must have had long ago two letters of mine, from ------, to the same purport, to consider.--In these, God knows! there was but too much affection, and the agonies of a distracted mind were but too faithfully pourtrayed!--What more then had I to say?--The negative was to come from you.--You had perpetually recurred to your promise of meeting me in the autumn--Was it extraordinary that I should demand a yes, or no?--Your letter is written with extreme harshness, coldness I am accustomed to, in it I find not a trace of the tenderness of humanity, much less of friendship.--I only see a desire to heave a load off your shoulders. I am above disputing about words.--It matters not in what terms you decide. The tremendous power who formed this heart, must have foreseen that, in a world in which self-interest, in various shapes, is the principal mobile, I had little chance of escaping misery.--To the fiat of fate I submit.--I am content to be wretched; but I will not be contemptible.--Of me you have no cause to complain, but for having had too much regard for you--for having expected a degree of permanent happiness, when you only sought for a momentary gratification. I am strangely deficient in sagacity.--Uniting myself to you, your tenderness seemed to make me amends for all my former misfortunes.--On this tenderness and affection with what confidence did I rest!--but I leaned on a spear, that has pierced me to the heart.--You have thrown off a faithful friend, to pursue the caprices of the moment.--We certainly are differently organized; for even now, when conviction has been stamped on my soul by sorrow, I can scarcely believe it possible. It depends at present on you, whether you will see me or not.--I shall take no step, till I see or hear from you. Preparing myself for the worst--I have determined, if your next letter be like the last, to write to Mr. ------to procure me an obscure lodging, and not to inform any body of my arrival.--There I will endeavour in a few months to obtain the sum necessary to take me to France--from you I will not receive any more.--I am not yet sufficiently humbled to depend on your beneficence. Some people, whom my unhappiness has interested, though they know not the extent of it, will assist me to attain the object I have in view, the independence of my child. Should a peace take place, ready money will go a great way in France--and I will borrow a sum, which my industry _shall_ enable me to pay at my leisure, to purchase a small estate for my girl.--The assistance I shall find necessary to complete her education, I can get at an easy rate at Paris--I can introduce her to such society as she will like--and thus, securing for her all the chance for happiness, which depends on me, I shall die in peace, persuaded that the felicity which has hitherto cheated my expectation, will not always elude my grasp. No poor tempest-tossed mariner ever more earnestly longed to arrive at his port. * * * * I shall not come up in the vessel all the way, because I have no place to go to. Captain ------ will inform you where I am. It is needless to add, that I am not in a state of mind to bear suspense--and that I wish to see you, though it be for the last time. * * * * * LETTER LXVIII. Sunday, October 4. I WROTE to you by the packet, to inform you, that your letter of the 18th of last month, had determined me to set out with captain ------; but, as we sailed very quick, I take it for granted, that you have not yet received it. You say, I must decide for myself.--I had decided, that it was most for the interest of my little girl, and for my own comfort, little as I expect, for us to live together; and I even thought that you would be glad, some years hence, when the tumult of business was over, to repose in the society of an affectionate friend, and mark the progress of our interesting child, whilst endeavouring to be of use in the circle you at last resolved to rest in; for you cannot run about for ever. From the tenour of your last letter however, I am led to imagine, that you have formed some new attachment.--If it be so, let me earnestly request you to see me once more, and immediately. This is the only proof I require of the friendship you profess for me. I will then decide, since you boggle about a mere form. I am labouring to write with calmness--but the extreme anguish I feel, at landing without having any friend to receive me, and even to be conscious that the friend whom I most wish to see, will feel a disagreeable sensation at being informed of my arrival, does not come under the description of common misery. Every emotion yields to an overwhelming flood of sorrow--and the playfulness of my child distresses me.--On her account, I wished to remain a few days here, comfortless as is my situation.--Besides, I did not wish to surprise you. You have told me, that you would make any sacrifice to promote my happiness--and, even in your last unkind letter, you talk of the ties which bind you to me and my child.--Tell me, that you wish it, and I will cut this Gordian knot. I now most earnestly intreat you to write to me, without fail, by the return of the post. Direct your letter to be left at the post-office, and tell me whether you will come to me here, or where you will meet me. I can receive your letter on Wednesday morning. Do not keep me in suspense.--I expect nothing from you, or any human being: my die is cast!--I have fortitude enough to determine to do my duty; yet I cannot raise my depressed spirits, or calm my trembling heart.--That being who moulded it thus, knows that I am unable to tear up by the roots the propensity to affection which has been the torment of my life--but life will have an end! Should you come here (a few months ago I could not have doubted it) you will find me at ------. If you prefer meeting me on the road, tell me where. Yours affectionately * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXIX. I WRITE you now on my knees; imploring you to send my child and the maid with ----, to Paris, to be consigned to the care of Madame ----, rue ----, section de ----. Should they be removed, ---- can give their direction. Let the maid have all my clothes, without distinction. Pray pay the cook her wages, and do not mention the confession which I forced from her--a little sooner or later is of no consequence. Nothing but my extreme stupidity could have rendered me blind so long. Yet, whilst you assured me that you had no attachment, I thought we might still have lived together. I shall make no comments on your conduct; or any appeal to the world. Let my wrongs sleep with me! Soon, very soon shall I be at peace. When you receive this, my burning head will be cold. I would encounter a thousand deaths, rather than a night like the last. Your treatment has thrown my mind into a state of chaos; yet I am serene. I go to find comfort, and my only fear is, that my poor body will be insulted by an endeavour to recal my hated existence. But I shall plunge into the Thames where there is the least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek. God bless you! May you never know by experience what you have made me endure. Should your sensibility ever awake, remorse will find its way to your heart; and, in the midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall appear before you, the victim of your deviation from rectitude. * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXX. Sunday Morning. I HAVE only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery. But a fixed determination is not to be baffled by disappointment; nor will I allow that to be a frantic attempt, which was one of the calmest acts of reason. In this respect, I am only accountable to myself. Did I care for what is termed reputation, it is by other circumstances that I should be dishonoured. You say, "that you know not how to extricate ourselves out of the wretchedness into which we have been plunged." You are extricated long since.--But I forbear to comment.----If I am condemned to live longer, it is a living death. It appears to me, that you lay much more stress on delicacy, than on principle; for I am unable to discover what sentiment of delicacy would have been violated, by your visiting a wretched friend--if indeed you have any friendship for me.--But since your new attachment is the only thing sacred in your eyes, I am silent--Be happy! My complaints shall never more damp your enjoyment--perhaps I am mistaken in supposing that even my death could, for more than a moment.--This is what you call magnanimity--It is happy for yourself, that you possess this quality in the highest degree. Your continually asserting, that you will do all in your power to contribute to my comfort (when you only allude to pecuniary assistance), appears to me a flagrant breach of delicacy.--I want not such vulgar comfort, nor will I accept it. I never wanted but your heart--That gone, you have nothing more to give. Had I only poverty to fear, I should not shrink from life.--Forgive me then, if I say, that I shall consider any direct or indirect attempt to supply my necessities, as an insult which I have not merited--and as rather done out of tenderness for your own reputation, than for me. Do not mistake me; I do not think that you value money (therefore I will not accept what you do not care for) though I do much less, because certain privations are not painful to me. When I am dead, respect for yourself will make you take care of the child. I write with difficulty--probably I shall never write to you again.--Adieu! God bless you! * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXXI. Monday Morning. I AM compelled at last to say that you treat me ungenerously. I agree with you, that-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- But let the obliquity now fall on me.--I fear neither poverty nor infamy. I am unequal to the task of writing--and explanations are not necessary.-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- My child may have to blush for her mother's want of prudence--and may lament that the rectitude of my heart made me above vulgar precautions; but she shall not despise me for meanness.--You are now perfectly free.--God bless you. * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXXIII. Saturday Night. I HAVE been hurt by indirect enquiries, which appear to me not to be dictated by any tenderness to me.--You ask "If I am well or tranquil?"--They who think me so, must want a heart to estimate my feelings by.--I chuse then to be the organ of my own sentiments. I must tell you, that I am very much mortified by your continually offering me pecuniary assistance--and, considering your going to the new house, as an open avowal that you abandon me, let me tell you that I will sooner perish than receive any thing from you--and I say this at the moment when I am disappointed in my first attempt to obtain a temporary supply. But this even pleases me; an accumulation of disappointments and misfortunes seems to suit the habit of my mind.-- Have but a little patience, and I will remove myself where it will not be necessary for you to talk--of course, not to think of me. But let me see, written by yourself--for I will not receive it through any other medium--that the affair is finished.--It is an insult to me to suppose, that I can be reconciled, or recover my spirits; but, if you hear nothing of me, it will be the same thing to you. * * * * Even your seeing me, has been to oblige other people, and not to sooth my distracted mind. * * * * * LETTER LXXIV. Thursday Afternoon. MR. ------ having forgot to desire you to send the things of mine which were left at the house, I have to request you to let ------ bring them onto ------. I shall go this evening to the lodging; so you need not be restrained from coming here to transact your business.--And, whatever I may think, and feel--you need not fear that I shall publicly complain--No! If I have any criterion to judge of right and wrong, I have been most ungenerously treated: but, wishing now only to hide myself, I shall be silent as the grave in which I long to forget myself. I shall protect and provide for my child.--I only mean by this to say, that you having nothing to fear from my desperation. Farewel. * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXXV. London, November 27. THE letter, without an address, which you put up with the letters you returned, did not meet my eyes till just now.--I had thrown the letters aside--I did not wish to look over a register of sorrow. My not having seen it, will account for my having written to you with anger--under the impression your departure, without even a line left for me, made on me, even after your late conduct, which could not lead me to expect much attention to my sufferings. In fact, "the decided conduct, which appeared to me so unfeeling," has almost overturned my reason; my mind is injured--I scarcely know where I am, or what I do.--The grief I cannot conquer (for some cruel recollections never quit me, banishing almost every other) I labour to conceal in total solitude.--My life therefore is but an exercise of fortitude, continually on the stretch--and hope never gleams in this tomb, where I am buried alive. But I meant to reason with you, and not to complain.--You tell me, "that I shall judge more coolly of your mode of acting, some time hence." But is it not possible that _passion_ clouds your reason, as much as it does mine?--and ought you not to doubt, whether those principles are so "exalted," as you term them, which only lead to your own gratification? In other words, whether it be just to have no principle of action, but that of following your inclination, trampling on the affection you have fostered, and the expectations you have excited? My affection for you is rooted in my heart.--I know you are not what you now seem--nor will you always act, or feel, as you now do, though I may never be comforted by the change.--Even at Paris, my image will haunt you.--You will see my pale face--and sometimes the tears of anguish will drop on your heart, which you have forced from mine. I cannot write. I thought I could quickly have refuted all your _ingenious_ arguments; but my head is confused.--Right or wrong, I am miserable! It seems to me, that my conduct has always been governed by the strictest principles of justice and truth.--Yet, how wretched have my social feelings, and delicacy of sentiment rendered me!--I have loved with my whole soul, only to discover that I had no chance of a return--and that existence is a burthen without it. I do not perfectly understand you.--If, by the offer of your friendship, you still only mean pecuniary support--I must again reject it.--Trifling are the ills of poverty in the scale of my misfortunes.--God bless you! * * * * I have been treated ungenerously--if I understand what is generosity.----You seem to me only to have been anxious to shake me off--regardless whether you dashed me to atoms by the fall.--In truth I have been rudely handled. _Do you judge coolly_, and I trust you will not continue to call those capricious feelings "the most refined," which would undermine not only the most sacred principles, but the affections which unite mankind.----You would render mothers unnatural--and there would be no such thing as a father!--If your theory of morals is the most "exalted," it is certainly the most easy.--It does not require much magnanimity, to determine to please ourselves for the moment, let others suffer what they will! Excuse me for again tormenting you, my heart thirsts for justice from you--and whilst I recollect that you approved Miss ------'s conduct--I am convinced you will not always justify your own. Beware of the deceptions of passion! It will not always banish from your mind, that you have acted ignobly--and condescended to subterfuge to gloss over the conduct you could not excuse.--Do truth and principle require such sacrifices? * * * * * LETTER LXXVI. London, December 8. HAVING just been informed that ------ is to return immediately to Paris, I would not miss a sure opportunity of writing, because I am not certain that my last, by Dover has reached you. Resentment, and even anger, are momentary emotions with me--and I wished to tell you so, that if you ever think of me, it may not be in the light of an enemy. That I have not been used _well_ I must ever feel; perhaps, not always with the keen anguish I do at present--for I began even now to write calmly, and I cannot restrain my tears. I am stunned!--Your late conduct still appears to me a frightful dream.--Ah! ask yourself if you have not condescended to employ a little address, I could almost say cunning, unworthy of you?--Principles are sacred things--and we never play with truth, with impunity. The expectation (I have too fondly nourished it) of regaining your affection, every day grows fainter and fainter.--Indeed, it seems to me, when I am more sad than usual, that I shall never see you more.--Yet you will not always forget me.--You will feel something like remorse, for having lived only for yourself--and sacrificed my peace to inferior gratifications. In a comfortless old age, you will remember that you had one disinterested friend, whose heart you wounded to the quick. The hour of recollection will come--and you will not be satisfied to act the part of a boy, till you fall into that of a dotard. I know that your mind, your heart, and your principles of action, are all superior to your present conduct. You do, you must, respect me--and you will be sorry to forfeit my esteem. You know best whether I am still preserving the remembrance of an imaginary being.--I once thought that I knew you thoroughly--but now I am obliged to leave some doubts that involuntarily press on me, to be cleared up by time. You may render me unhappy; but cannot make me contemptible in my own eyes.--I shall still be able to support my child, though I am disappointed in some other plans of usefulness, which I once believed would have afforded you equal pleasure. Whilst I was with you, I restrained my natural generosity, because I thought your property in jeopardy.--When I went to --------, I requested you, _if you could conveniently_, not to forget my father, sisters, and some other people, whom I was interested about.--Money was lavished away, yet not only my requests were neglected, but some trifling debts were not discharged, that now come on me.--Was this friendship--or generosity? Will you not grant you have forgotten yourself? Still I have an affection for you.--God bless you. * * * * * * * * * LETTER LXXVII. AS the parting from you for ever is the most serious event of my life, I will once expostulate with you, and call not the language of truth and feeling ingenuity! I know the soundness of your understanding--and know that it is impossible for you always to confound the caprices of every wayward inclination with the manly dictates of principle. You tell me "that I torment you."--Why do I?----Because you cannot estrange your heart entirely from me--and you feel that justice is on my side. You urge, "that your conduct was unequivocal."--It was not.--When your coolness has hurt me, with what tenderness have you endeavoured to remove the impression!--and even before I returned to England, you took great pains to convince me, that all my uneasiness was occasioned by the effect of a worn-out constitution--and you concluded your letter with these words, "Business alone has kept me from you.--Come to any port, and I will fly down to my two dear girls with a heart all their own." With these assurances, is it extraordinary that I should believe what I wished? I might--and did think that you had a struggle with old propensities; but I still thought that I and virtue should at last prevail. I still thought that you had a magnanimity of character, which would enable you to conquer yourself. --------, believe me, it is not romance, you have acknowledged to me feelings of this kind.--You could restore me to life and hope, and the satisfaction you would feel, would amply repay you. In tearing myself from you, it is my own heart I pierce--and the time will come, when you will lament that you have thrown away a heart, that, even in the moment of passion, you cannot despise.--I would owe every thing to your generosity--but, for God's sake, keep me no longer in suspense!--Let me see you once more!-- * * * * * LETTER LXXVIII. YOU must do as you please with respect to the child.--I could wish that it might be done soon, that my name may be no more mentioned to you. It is now finished.--Convinced that you have neither regard nor friendship, I disdain to utter a reproach, though I have had reason to think, that the "forbearance" talked of, has not been very delicate.--It is however of no consequence.--I am glad you are satisfied with your own conduct. I now solemnly assure you, that this is an eternal farewel.--Yet I flinch not from the duties which tie me to life. That there is "sophistry" on one side or other, is certain; but now it matters not on which. On my part it has not been a question of words. Yet your understanding or mine must be strangely warped--for what you term "delicacy," appears to me to be exactly the contrary. I have no criterion for morality, and have thought in vain, if the sensations which lead you to follow an ancle or step, be the sacred foundation of principle and affection. Mine has been of a very different nature, or it would not have stood the brunt of your sarcasms. The sentiment in me is still sacred. If there be any part of me that will survive the sense of my misfortunes, it is the purity of my affections. The impetuosity of your senses, may have led you to term mere animal desire, the source of principle; and it may give zest to some years to come.--Whether you will always think so, I shall never know. It is strange that, in spite of all you do, something like conviction forces me to believe, that you are not what you appear to be. I part with you in peace. * * * * * LETTER ON THE PRESENT CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH NATION. LETTER _Introductory to a Series of Letters on the Present Character of the French Nation._ Paris, February 15, 1793. My dear friend, IT is necessary perhaps for an observer of mankind, to guard as carefully the remembrance of the first impression made by a nation, as by a countenance; because we imperceptibly lose sight of the national character, when we become more intimate with individuals. It is not then useless or presumptuous to note, that, when I first entered Paris, the striking contrast of riches and poverty, elegance and slovenliness, urbanity and deceit, every where caught my eye, and saddened my soul; and these impressions are still the foundation of my remarks on the manners, which flatter the senses, more than they interest the heart, and yet excite more interest than esteem. The whole mode of life here tends indeed to render the people frivolous, and, to borrow their favourite epithet, amiable. Ever on the wing, they are always sipping the sparkling joy on the brim of the cup, leaving satiety in the bottom for those who venture to drink deep. On all sides they trip along, buoyed up by animal spirits, and seemingly so void of care, that often, when I am walking on the _Boulevards_, it occurs to me, that they alone understand the full import of the term leisure; and they trifle their time away with such an air of contentment, I know not how to wish them wiser at the expence of their gaiety. They play before me like motes in a sunbeam, enjoying the passing ray; whilst an English head, searching for more solid happiness, loses, in the analysis of pleasure, the volatile sweets of the moment. Their chief enjoyment, it is true, rises from vanity: but it is not the vanity that engenders vexation of spirit; on the contrary, it lightens the heavy burthen of life, which reason too often weighs, merely to shift from one shoulder to the other. Investigating the modification of the passion, as I would analyze the elements that give a form to dead matter, I shall attempt to trace to their source the causes which have combined to render this nation the most polished, in a physical sense, and probably the most superficial in the world; and I mean to follow the windings of the various streams that disembogue into a terrific gulf, in which all the dignity of our nature is absorbed. For every thing has conspired to make the French the most sensual people in the world; and what can render the heart so hard, or so effectually stifle every moral emotion, as the refinements of sensuality? The frequent repetition of the word French, appears invidious; let me then make a previous observation, which I beg you not to lose sight of, when I speak rather harshly of a land flowing with milk and honey. Remember that it is not the morals of a particular people that I would decry; for are we not all of the same stock? But I wish calmly to consider the stage of civilization in which I find the French, and, giving a sketch of their character, and unfolding the circumstances which have produced its identity, I shall endeavour to throw some light on the history of man, and on the present important subjects of discussion. I would I could first inform you that, out of the chaos of vices and follies, prejudices and virtues, rudely jumbled together, I saw the fair form of Liberty slowly rising, and Virtue expanding her wings to shelter all her children! I should then hear the account of the barbarities that have rent the bosom of France patiently, and bless the firm hand that lopt off the rotten limbs. But, if the aristocracy of birth is levelled with the ground, only to make room for that of riches, I am afraid that the morals of the people will not be much improved by the change, or the government rendered less venal. Still it is not just to dwell on the misery produced by the present struggle, without adverting to the standing evils of the old system. I am grieved--sorely grieved--when I think of the blood that has stained the cause of freedom at Paris; but I also hear the same live stream cry aloud from the highways, through which the retreating armies passed with famine and death in their rear, and I hide my face with awe before the inscrutable ways of providence, sweeping in such various directions the besom of destruction over the sons of men. Before I came to France, I cherished, you know, an opinion, that strong virtues might exist with the polished manners produced by the progress of civilization; and I even anticipated the epoch, when, in the course of improvement, men would labour to become virtuous, without being goaded on by misery. But now, the perspective of the golden age, fading before the attentive eye of observation, almost eludes my sight; and, losing thus in part my theory of a more perfect state, start not, my friend, if I bring forward an opinion, which at the first glance seems to be levelled against the existence of God! I am not become an Atheist, I assure you, by residing at Paris: yet I begin to fear that vice, or, if you will, evil, is the grand mobile of action, and that, when the passions are justly poized, we become harmless, and in the same proportion useless. The wants of reason are very few; and, were we to consider dispassionately the real value of most things, we should probably rest satisfied with the simple gratification of our physical necessities, and be content with negative goodness: for it is frequently, only that wanton, the Imagination, with her artful coquetry, who lures us forward, and makes us run over a rough road, pushing aside every obstacle merely to catch a disappointment. The desire also of being useful to others, is continually damped by experience; and, if the exertions of humanity were not in some measure their own reward, who would endure misery, or struggle with care, to make some people ungrateful, and others idle? You will call these melancholy effusions, and guess that, fatigued by the vivacity, which has all the bustling folly of childhood, without the innocence which renders ignorance charming, I am too severe in my strictures. It may be so; and I am aware that the good effects of the revolution will be last felt at Paris; where surely the soul of Epicurus has long been at work to root out the simple emotions of the heart, which, being natural, are always moral. Rendered cold and artificial by the selfish enjoyments of the senses, which the government fostered, is it surprising that simplicity of manners, and singleness of heart, rarely appear, to recreate me with the wild odour of nature, so passing sweet? Seeing how deep the fibres of mischief have shot, I sometimes ask, with a doubting accent, Whether a nation can go back to the purity of manners which has hitherto been maintained unsullied only by the keen air of poverty, when, emasculated by pleasure, the luxuries of prosperity are become the wants of nature? I cannot yet give up the hope, that a fairer day is dawning on Europe, though I must hesitatingly observe, that little is to be expected from the narrow principle of commerce which seems every where to be shoving aside _the point of honour_ of the _noblesse_. I can look beyond the evils of the moment, and do not expect muddied water to become clear before it has had time to stand; yet, even for the moment, it is the most terrific of all sights, to see men vicious without warmth--to see the order that should be the superscription of virtue, cultivated to give security to crimes which only thoughtlessness could palliate. Disorder is, in fact, the very essence of vice, though with the wild wishes of a corrupt fancy humane emotions often kindly mix to soften their atrocity. Thus humanity, generosity, and even self-denial, sometimes render a character grand, and even useful, when hurried away by lawless passions; but what can equal the turpitude of a cold calculator who lives for himself alone, and considering his fellow-creatures merely as machines of pleasure, never forgets that honesty is the best policy? Keeping ever within the pale of the law, he crushes his thousands with impunity; but it is with that degree of management, which makes him, to borrow a significant vulgarism, a villain _in grain_. The very excess of his depravation preserves him, whilst the more respectable beast of prey, who prowls about like the lion, and roars to announce his approach, falls into a snare. You may think it too soon to form an opinion of the future government, yet it is impossible to avoid hazarding some conjectures, when every thing whispers me, that names, not principles, are changed, and when I see that the turn of the tide has left the dregs of the old system to corrupt the new. For the same pride of office, the same desire of power are still visible; with this aggravation, that, fearing to return to obscurity after having but just acquired a relish for distinction, each hero, or philosopher, for all are dubbed with these new titles, endeavours to make hay while the sun shines; and every petty municipal officer, become the idol, or rather the tyrant of the day, stalks like a cock on a dunghil. I shall now conclude this desultory letter; which however will enable you to foresee that I shall treat more of morals than manners. Yours ------ * * * * * FRAGMENT OF LETTERS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF INFANTS. CONTENTS. Introductory Letter. LETTER II. Management of the Mother during pregnancy: bathing. LETTER III. Lying-in. LETTER IV. The first month: diet: clothing. LETTER V. The three following months. LETTER VI. The remainder of the first year. LETTER VII. The second year, &c: conclusion. LETTERS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF INFANTS. * * * * * LETTER I. I OUGHT to apologize for not having written to you on the subject you mentioned; but, to tell you the truth, it grew upon me: and, instead of an answer, I have begun a series of letters on the management of children in their infancy. Replying then to your question, I have the public in my thoughts, and shall endeavour to show what modes appear to me necessary, to render the infancy of children more healthy and happy. I have long thought, that the cause which renders children as hard to rear as the most fragile plant, is our deviation from simplicity. I know that some able physicians have recommended the method I have pursued, and I mean to point out the good effects I have observed in practice. I am aware that many matrons will exclaim against me, and dwell on the number of children they have brought up, as their mothers did before them, without troubling themselves with new-fangled notions; yet, though, in my uncle Toby's words, they should attempt to silence me, by "wishing I had seen their large" families, I must suppose, while a third part of the human species, according to the most accurate calculation, die during their infancy, just at the threshold of life, that there is some error in the modes adopted by mothers and nurses, which counteracts their own endeavours. I may be mistaken in some particulars; for general rules, founded on the soundest reason, demand individual modification; but, if I can persuade any of the rising generation to exercise their reason on this head, I am content. My advice will probably be found most useful to mothers in the middle class; and it is from them that the lower imperceptibly gains improvement. Custom, produced by reason in one, may safely be the effect of imitation in the other.-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- LETTERS TO Mr. JOHNSON, _BOOKSELLER_, IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. LETTERS TO Mr. JOHNSON. * * * * * LETTER I. Dublin, April 14, [1787.] Dear sir, I AM still an invalid--and begin to believe that I ought never to expect to enjoy health. My mind preys on my body--and, when I endeavour to be useful, I grow too much interested for my own peace. Confined almost entirely to the society of children, I am anxiously solicitous for their future welfare, and mortified beyond measure, when counteracted in my endeavours to improve them.--I feel all a mother's fears for the swarm of little ones which surround me, and observe disorders, without having power to apply the proper remedies. How can I be reconciled to life, when it is always a painful warfare, and when I am deprived of all the pleasures I relish?--I allude to rational conversations, and domestic affections. Here, alone, a poor solitary individual in a strange land, tied to one spot, and subject to the caprice of another, can I be contented? I am desirous to convince you that I have _some_ cause for sorrow--and am not without reason detached from life. I shall hope to hear that you are well, and am yours sincerely MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. * * * * * LETTER II. Henley, Thursday, Sept 13. My dear sir, SINCE I saw you, I have, literally speaking, _enjoyed_ solitude. My sister could not accompany me in my rambles; I therefore wandered alone, by the side of the Thames, and in the neighbouring beautiful fields and pleasure grounds: the prospects were of such a placid kind, I _caught_ tranquillity while I surveyed them--my mind was _still_, though active. Were I to give you an account how I have spent my time, you would smile.--I found an old French bible here, and amused myself with comparing it with our English translation; then I would listen to the falling leaves, or observe the various tints the autumn gave to them--At other times, the singing of a robin, or the noise of a water-mill, engaged my attention--partial attention--, for I was, at the same time perhaps discussing some knotty point, or straying from this _tiny_ world to new systems. After these excursions, I returned to the family meals, told the children stories (they think me _vastly_ agreeable), and my sister was amused.--Well, will you allow me to call this way of passing my days pleasant? I was just going to mend my pen; but I believe it will enable me to say all I have to add to this epistle. Have you yet heard of an habitation for me? I often think of my new plan of life; and, lest my sister should try to prevail on me to alter it, I have avoided mentioning it to her. I am determined!--Your sex generally laugh at female determinations; but let me tell you, I never yet resolved to do, any thing of consequence, that I did not adhere resolutely to it, till I had accomplished my purpose, improbable as it might have appeared to a more timid mind. In the course of near nine-and-twenty years, I have gathered some experience, and felt many _severe_ disappointments--and what is the amount? I long for a little peace and _independence_! Every obligation we receive from our fellow-creatures is a new shackle, takes from our native freedom, and debases the mind, makes us mere earthworms--I am not fond of grovelling! I am, sir, yours, &c. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. * * * * * LETTER III. Market Harborough, Sept. 20. My dear sir, YOU left me with three opulent tradesmen; their conversation was not calculated to beguile the way, when the sable curtain concealed the beauties of nature. I listened to the tricks of trade--and shrunk away, without wishing to grow rich; even the novelty of the subjects did not render them pleasing; fond as I am of tracing the passions in all their different forms--I was not surprised by any glimpse of the sublime, or beautiful--though one of them imagined I would be a useful partner in a good _firm_. I was very much fatigued, and have scarcely recovered myself. I do not expect to enjoy the same tranquil pleasures Henley afforded: I meet with new objects to employ my mind; but many painful emotions are complicated with the reflections they give rise to. I do not intend to enter on the _old_ topic, yet hope to hear from you--and am yours, &c. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. * * * * * LETTER IV. Friday Night. My dear sir, THOUGH your remarks are generally judicious--I cannot _now_ concur with you, I mean with respect to the preface[67-A], and have not altered it. I hate the usual smooth way of exhibiting proud humility. A general rule _only_ extends to the majority--and, believe me, the few judicious parents who may peruse my book, will not feel themselves hurt--and the weak are too vain to mind what is said in a book intended for children. I return you the Italian MS.--but do not hastily imagine that I am indolent. I would not spare any labour to do my duty--and, after the most laborious day, that single thought would solace me more than any pleasures the senses could enjoy. I find I could not translate the MS. well. If it was not a MS, I should not be so easily intimidated; but the hand, and errors in orthography, or abbreviations, are a stumbling-block at the first setting out.--I cannot bear to do any thing I cannot do well--and I should lose time in the vain attempt. I had, the other day, the satisfaction of again receiving a letter from my poor, dear Margaret[69-A].--With all a mother's fondness I could transcribe a part of it--She says, every day her affection to me, and dependence on heaven increase, &c.--I miss her innocent caresses--and sometimes indulge a pleasing hope, that she may be allowed to cheer my childless age--if I am to live to be old.--At any rate, I may hear of the virtues I may not contemplate--and my reason may permit me to love a female.--I now allude to ------. I have received another letter from her, and her childish complaints vex me--indeed they do--As usual, good-night. MARY. If parents attended to their children, I would not have written the stories; for, what are books--compared to conversations which affection inforces!-- * * * * * LETTER V. My dear sir, REMEMBER you are to settle _my account_, as I want to know how much I am in your debt--but do not suppose that I feel any uneasiness on that score. The generality of people in trade would not be much obliged to me for a like civility, _but you were a man_ before you were a bookseller--so I am your sincere friend, MARY. * * * * * LETTER VI. Friday Morning. I AM sick with vexation--and wish I could knock my foolish head against the wall, that bodily pain might make me feel less anguish from self-reproach! To say the truth, I was never more displeased with myself, and I will tell you the cause.--You may recollect that I did not mention to you the circumstance of ------ having a fortune left to him; nor did a hint of it drop from me when I conversed with my sister; because I knew he had a sufficient motive for concealing it. Last Sunday, when his character was aspersed, as I thought, unjustly, in the heat of vindication I informed ****** that he was now independent; but, at the same time, desired him not to repeat my information to B----; yet, last Tuesday, he told him all--and the boy at B----'s gave Mrs. ------ an account of it. As Mr. ------ knew he had only made a confident of me (I blush to think of it!) he guessed the channel of intelligence, and this morning came (not to reproach me, I wish he had!) but to point out the injury I have done him.--Let what will be the consequence, I will reimburse him, if I deny myself the necessaries of life--and even then my folly will sting me.--Perhaps you can scarcely conceive the misery I at this moment endure--that I, whose power of doing good is so limited, should do harm, galls my very soul. ****** may laugh at these qualms--but, supposing Mr. ------ to be unworthy, I am not the less to blame. Surely it is hell to despise one's self!--I did not want this additional vexation--at this time I have many that hang heavily on my spirits. I shall not call on you this month--nor stir out.--My stomach has been so suddenly and violently affected, I am unable to lean over the desk. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. * * * * * LETTER VII. AS I am become a reviewer, I think it right, in the way of business, to consider the subject. You have alarmed the editor of the Critical, as the advertisement prefixed to the Appendix plainly shows. The Critical appears to me to be a timid, mean production, and its success is a reflection on the taste and judgment of the public; but, as a body, who ever gave it credit for much? The voice of the people is only the voice of truth, when some man of abilities has had time to get fast hold of the GREAT NOSE of the monster. Of course, local fame is generally a clamour, and dies away. The Appendix to the Monthly afforded me more amusement, though every article almost wants energy and a _cant_ of virtue and liberality is strewed over it; always tame, and eager to pay court to established fame. The account of Necker is one unvaried tone of admiration. Surely men were born only to provide for the sustenance of the body by enfeebling the mind! MARY. * * * * * LETTER VIII. YOU made me very low-spirited last night, by your manner of talking.--You are my only friend--the only person I am _intimate_ with.--I never had a father, or a brother--you have been both to me, ever since I knew you--yet I have sometimes been very petulant.--I have been thinking of those instances of ill-humour and quickness, and they appeared like crimes. Yours sincerely MARY. * * * * * LETTER IX. Saturday Night. I AM a mere animal, and instinctive emotions too often silence the suggestions of reason. Your note--I can scarcely tell why, hurt me--and produced a kind of winterly smile, which diffuses a beam of despondent tranquillity over the features. I have been very ill--Heaven knows it was more than fancy--After some sleepless, wearisome nights, towards the morning I have grown delirious.--Last Thursday, in particular, I imagined ------ was thrown into great distress by his folly; and I, unable to assist him, was in an agony. My nerves were in such a painful state of irritation--I suffered more than I can express--Society was necessary--and might have diverted me till I gained more strength; but I blushed when I recollected how often I had teazed you with childish complaints, and the reveries of a disordered imagination. I even _imagined_ that I intruded on you, because you never called on me--though you perceived that I was not well.--I have nourished a sickly kind of delicacy, which gives me many unnecessary pangs.--I acknowledge that life is but a jest--and often a frightful dream--yet catch myself every day searching for something serious--and feel real misery from the disappointment. I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind--my wayward heart creates its own misery--Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child--long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it. We must each of us wear a fool's cap; but mine, alas! has lost its bells, and is grown so heavy, I find it intolerably troublesome.----Good-night! I have been pursuing a number of strange thoughts since I began to write, and have actually both wept and laughed immoderately--Surely I am a fool-- MARY W. * * * * * LETTER X. Monday Morning. I REALLY want a German grammar, as I intend to attempt to learn that language--and I will tell you the reason why.--While I live, I am persuaded, I must exert my understanding to procure an independence, and render myself useful. To make the task easier, I ought to store my mind with knowledge--The seed time is passing away. I see the necessity of labouring now--and of that necessity I do not complain; on the contrary, I am thankful that I have more than common incentives to pursue knowledge, and draw my pleasures from the employments that are within my reach. You perceive this is not a gloomy day--I feel at this moment particularly grateful to you--without your humane and _delicate_ assistance, how many obstacles should I not have had to encounter--too often should I have been out of patience with my fellow-creatures, whom I wish to love!--Allow me to love you, my dear sir, and call friend a being I respect.--Adieu! MARY W. * * * * * LETTER XI. I THOUGHT you _very_ unkind, nay, very unfeeling, last night. My cares and vexations--I will say what I allow myself to think--do me honour, as they arise from my disinterestedness and _unbending_ principles; nor can that mode of conduct be a reflection on my understanding, which enables me to bear misery, rather than selfishly live for myself alone. I am not the only character deserving of respect, that has had to struggle with various sorrows--while inferior minds have enjoyed local fame and present comfort.--Dr. Johnson's cares almost drove him mad--but, I suppose, you would quietly have told him, he was a fool for not being calm, and that wise men striving against the stream, can yet be in good humour. I have done with insensible human wisdom,--"indifference cold in wisdom's guise,"--and turn to the source of perfection--who perhaps never disregarded an almost broken heart, especially when a respect, a practical respect, for virtue, sharpened the wounds of adversity. I am ill--I stayed in bed this morning till eleven o'clock, only thinking of getting money to extricate myself out of some of my difficulties--The struggle is now over. I will condescend to try to obtain some in a disagreeable way. Mr. ------ called on me just now--pray did you know his motive for calling[82-A]?--I think him impertinently officious.--He had left the house before it occurred to me in the strong light it does now, or I should have told him so--My poverty makes me proud--I will not be insulted by a superficial puppy.--His intimacy with Miss ------ gave him a privilege, which he should not have assumed with me--a proposal might be made to his cousin, a milliner's girl, which should not have been mentioned to me. Pray tell him that I am offended--and do not wish to see him again!--When I meet him at your house, I shall leave the room, since I cannot pull him by the nose. I can force my spirit to leave my body--but it shall never bend to support that body--God of heaven, save thy child from this living death!--I scarcely know what I write. My hand trembles--I am very sick--sick at heart.---- MARY. * * * * * LETTER XII. Tuesday Evening. Sir, WHEN you left me this morning, and I reflected a moment--your _officious_ message, which at first appeared to me a joke--looked so very like an insult--I cannot forget it--To prevent then the necessity of forcing a smile--when I chance to meet you--I take the earliest opportunity of informing you of my real sentiments. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. * * * * * LETTER XIII. Wednesday, 3 o'clock. Sir, IT is inexpressibly disagreeable to me to be obliged to enter again on a subject, that has already raised a tumult of _indignant_ emotions in my bosom, which I was labouring to suppress when I received your letter. I shall now _condescend_ to answer your epistle; but let me first tell you, that, in my _unprotected_ situation, I make a point of never forgiving a _deliberate insult_--and in that light I consider your late officious conduct. It is not according to my nature to mince matters--I will then tell you in plain terms, what I think. I have ever considered you in the light of a _civil_ acquaintance--on the word friend I lay a peculiar emphasis--and, as a mere acquaintance, you were rude and _cruel_, to step forward to insult a woman, whose conduct and misfortunes demand respect. If my friend, Mr. Johnson, had made the proposal--I should have been severely hurt--have thought him unkind and unfeeling, but not _impertinent_.--The privilege of intimacy you had no claim to--and should have referred the man to myself--if you had not sufficient discernment to quash it at once. I am, sir, poor and destitute.--Yet I have a spirit that will never bend, or take indirect methods, to obtain the consequence I despise; nay, if to support life it was necessary to act contrary to my principles, the struggle would soon be over. I can bear any thing but my own contempt. In a few words, what I call an insult, is the bare supposition that I could for a moment think of _prostituting_ my person for a maintenance; for in that point of view does such a marriage appear to me, who consider right and wrong in the abstract, and never by words and local opinions shield myself from the reproaches of my own heart and understanding. It is needless to say more--Only you must excuse me when I add, that I wish never to see, but as a perfect stranger, a person who could so grossly mistake my character. An apology is not necessary--if you were inclined to make one--nor any further expostulations.--I again repeat, I cannot overlook an affront; few indeed have sufficient delicacy to respect poverty, even where it gives lustre to a character--and I tell you sir, I am POOR--yet can live without your benevolent exertions. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. * * * * * LETTER XIV. I SEND you _all_ the books I had to review except Dr. J--'s Sermons, which I have begun. If you wish me to look over any more trash this month--you must send it directly. I have been so low-spirited since I saw you--I was quite glad, last night, to feel myself affected by some passages in Dr. J--'s sermon on the death of his wife--I seemed (suddenly) to _find_ my _soul_ again--It has been for some time I cannot tell where. Send me the Speaker--and _Mary_, I want one--and I shall soon want some paper--you may as well send it at the same time--for I am trying to brace my nerves that I may be industrious.--I am afraid reason is not a good bracer--for I have been reasoning a long time with my untoward spirits--and yet my hand trembles.--I could finish a period very _prettily_ now, by saying that it ought to be steady when I add that I am yours sincerely, MARY. If you do not like the manner in which I reviewed Dr. J--'s s---- on his wife, be it known unto you--I _will_ not do it any other way--I felt some pleasure in paying a just tribute of respect to the memory of a man--who, spite of his faults, I have an affection for--I say _have_, for I believe he is somewhere--_where_ my soul has been gadding perhaps;--but _you_ do not live on conjectures. * * * * * LETTER XV. MY dear sir, I send you a chapter which I am pleased with, now I see it in one point of view--and, as I have made free with the author, I hope you will not have often to say--what does this mean? You forgot you were to make out my account--I am, of course, over head and ears in debt; but I have not that kind of pride, which makes some dislike to be obliged to those they respect.--On the contrary, when I involuntarily lament that I have not a father or brother, I thankfully recollect that I have received unexpected kindness from you and a few others.--So reason allows, what nature impels me to--for I cannot live without loving my fellow-creatures--nor can I love them, without discovering some virtue. MARY. * * * * * LETTER XVI. Paris, December 26, 1792. I SHOULD immediately on the receipt of your letter, my dear friend, have thanked you for your punctuality, for it highly gratified me, had I not wished to wait till I could tell you that this day was not stained with blood. Indeed the prudent precautions taken by the National Convention to prevent a tumult, made me suppose that the dogs of faction would not dare to bark, much less to bite, however true to their scent; and I was not mistaken; for the citizens, who were all called out, are returning home with composed countenances, shouldering their arms. About nine o'clock this morning, the king passed by my window, moving silently along (excepting now and then a few strokes on the drum, which rendered the stillness more awful) through empty streets, surrounded by the national guards, who, clustering round the carriage, seemed to deserve their name. The inhabitants flocked to their windows, but the casements were all shut, not a voice was heard, nor did I see any thing like an insulting gesture.--For the first time since I entered France, I bowed to the majesty of the people, and respected the propriety of behaviour so perfectly in unison with my own feelings. I can scarcely tell you why, but an association of ideas made the tears flow insensibly from my eyes, when I saw Louis sitting, with more dignity than I expected from his character, in a hackney coach, going to meet death, where so many of his race have triumphed. My fancy instantly brought Louis XIV before me, entering the capital with all his pomp, after one of the victories most flattering to his pride, only to see the sunshine of prosperity overshadowed by the sublime gloom of misery. I have been alone ever since; and, though my mind is calm, I cannot dismiss the lively images that have filled my imagination all the day.--Nay, do not smile, but pity me; for, once or twice, lifting my eyes from the paper, I have seen eyes glare through a glass-door opposite my chair and bloody hands shook at me. Not the distant sound of a footstep can I hear.--My apartments are remote from those of the servants, the only persons who sleep with me in an immense hotel, one folding door opening after another.--I wish I had even kept the cat with me!--I want to see something alive; death in so many frightful shapes has taken hold of my fancy.--I am going to bed--and, for the first time in my life, I cannot put out the candle. M. W. FOOTNOTES: [67-A] To Original Stories. [69-A] Countess Mount Cashel. [82-A] This alludes to a foolish proposal of marriage for mercenary considerations, which the gentleman here mentioned thought proper to recommend to her. The two letters which immediately follow, are addressed to the gentleman himself. EXTRACT OF THE CAVE OF FANCY. A TALE. * * * * * [_Begun to be written in the year 1787, but never completed_] CAVE OF FANCY. CHAP. I. YE who expect constancy where every thing is changing, and peace in the midst of tumult, attend to the voice of experience, and mark in time the footsteps of disappointment, or life will be lost in desultory wishes, and death arrive before the dawn of wisdom. In a sequestered valley, surrounded by rocky mountains that intercepted many of the passing clouds, though sunbeams variegated their ample sides, lived a sage, to whom nature had unlocked her most hidden secrets. His hollow eyes, sunk in their orbits, retired from the view of vulgar objects, and turned inwards, overleaped the boundary prescribed to human knowledge. Intense thinking during fourscore and ten years, had whitened the scattered locks on his head, which, like the summit of the distant mountain, appeared to be bound by an eternal frost. On the sandy waste behind the mountains, the track of ferocious beasts might be traced, and sometimes the mangled limbs which they left, attracted a hovering flight of birds of prey. An extensive wood the sage had forced to rear its head in a soil by no means congenial, and the firm trunks of the trees seemed to frown with defiance on time; though the spoils of innumerable summers covered the roots, which resembled fangs; so closely did they cling to the unfriendly sand, where serpents hissed, and snakes, rolling out their vast folds, inhaled the noxious vapours. The ravens and owls who inhabited the solitude, gave also a thicker gloom to the everlasting twilight, and the croaking of the former a monotony, in unison with the gloom; whilst lions and tygers, shunning even this faint semblance of day, sought the dark caverns, and at night, when they shook off sleep, their roaring would make the whole valley resound, confounded with the screechings of the bird of night. One mountain rose sublime, towering above all, on the craggy sides of which a few sea-weeds grew, washed by the ocean, that with tumultuous roar rushed to assault, and even undermine, the huge barrier that stopped its progress; and ever and anon a ponderous mass, loosened from the cliff, to which it scarcely seemed to adhere, always threatening to fall, fell into the flood, rebounding as it fell, and the sound was re-echoed from rock to rock. Look where you would, all was without form, as if nature, suddenly stopping her hand, had left chaos a retreat. Close to the most remote side of it was the sage's abode. It was a rude hut, formed of stumps of trees and matted twigs, to secure him from the inclemency of the weather; only through small apertures crossed with rushes, the wind entered in wild murmurs, modulated by these obstructions. A clear spring broke out of the middle of the adjacent rock, which, dropping slowly into a cavity it had hollowed, soon overflowed, and then ran, struggling to free itself from the cumbrous fragments, till, become a deep, silent stream, it escaped through reeds, and roots of trees, whose blasted tops overhung and darkened the current. One side of the hut was supported by the rock, and at midnight, when the sage struck the inclosed part, it yawned wide, and admitted him into a cavern in the very bowels of the earth, where never human foot before had trod; and the various spirits, which inhabit the different regions of nature, were here obedient to his potent word. The cavern had been formed by the great inundation of waters, when the approach of a comet forced them from their source; then, when the fountains of the great deep were broken up, a stream rushed out of the centre of the earth, where the spirits, who have lived on it, are confined to purify themselves from the dross contracted in their first stage of existence; and it flowed in black waves, for ever bubbling along the cave, the extent of which had never been explored. From the sides and top, water distilled, and, petrifying as it fell, took fantastic shapes, that soon divided it into apartments, if so they might be called. In the foam, a wearied spirit would sometimes rise, to catch the most distant glimpse of light, or taste the vagrant breeze, which the yawning of the rock admitted, when Sagestus, for that was the name of the hoary sage, entered. Some, who were refined and almost cleared from vicious spots, he would allow to leave, for a limited time, their dark prison-house; and, flying on the winds across the bleak northern ocean, or rising in an exhalation till they reached a sun-beam, they thus re-visited the haunts of men. These were the guardian angels, who in soft whispers restrain the vicious, and animate the wavering wretch who stands suspended between virtue and vice. Sagestus had spent a night in the cavern, as he often did, and he left the silent vestibule of the grave, just as the sun, emerging from the ocean, dispersed the clouds, which were not half so dense as those he had left. All that was human in him rejoiced at the sight of reviving life, and he viewed with pleasure the mounting sap rising to expand the herbs, which grew spontaneously in this wild--when, turning his eyes towards the sea, he found that death had been at work during his absence, and terrific marks of a furious storm still spread horror around. Though the day was serene, and threw bright rays on eyes for ever shut, it dawned not for the wretches who hung pendent on the craggy rocks, or were stretched lifeless on the sand. Some, struggling, had dug themselves a grave; others had resigned their breath before the impetuous surge whirled them on shore. A few, in whom the vital spark was not so soon dislodged, had clung to loose fragments; it was the grasp of death; embracing the stone, they stiffened; and the head, no longer erect, rested on the mass which the arms encircled. It felt not the agonizing gripe, nor heard the sigh that broke the heart in twain. Resting his chin on an oaken club, the sage looked on every side, to see if he could discern any who yet breathed. He drew nearer, and thought he saw, at the first glance, the unclosed eyes glare; but soon perceived that they were a mere glassy substance, mute as the tongue; the jaws were fallen, and, in some of the tangled locks, hands were clinched; nay, even the nails had entered sharpened by despair. The blood flew rapidly to his heart; it was flesh; he felt he was still a man, and the big tear paced down his iron cheeks, whose muscles had not for a long time been relaxed by such humane emotions. A moment he breathed quick, then heaved a sigh, and his wonted calm returned with an unaccustomed glow of tenderness; for the ways of heaven were not hid from him; he lifted up his eyes to the common Father of nature, and all was as still in his bosom, as the smooth deep, after having closed over the huge vessel from which the wretches had fled. Turning round a part of the rock that jutted out, meditating on the ways of Providence, a weak infantine voice reached his ears; it was lisping out the name of mother. He looked, and beheld a blooming child leaning over, and kissing with eager fondness, lips that were insensible to the warm pressure. Starting at the sight of the sage, she fixed her eyes on him, "Wake her, ah! wake her," she cried, "or the sea will catch us." Again he felt compassion, for he saw that the mother slept the sleep of death. He stretched out his hand, and, smoothing his brow, invited her to approach; but she still intreated him to wake her mother, whom she continued to call, with an impatient tremulous voice. To detach her from the body by persuasion would not have been very easy. Sagestus had a quicker method to effect his purpose; he took out a box which contained a soporific powder, and as soon as the fumes reached her brain, the powers of life were suspended. He carried her directly to his hut, and left her sleeping profoundly on his rushy couch. CHAP. II. AGAIN Sagestus approached the dead, to view them with a more scrutinizing eye. He was perfectly acquainted with the construction of the human body, knew the traces that virtue or vice leaves on the whole frame; they were now indelibly fixed by death; nay more, he knew by the shape of the solid structure, how far the spirit could range, and saw the barrier beyond which it could not pass: the mazes of fancy he explored, measured the stretch of thought, and, weighing all in an even balance, could tell whom nature had stamped an hero, a poet, or philosopher. By their appearance, at a transient glance, he knew that the vessel must have contained many passengers, and that some of them were above the vulgar, with respect to fortune and education; he then walked leisurely among the dead, and narrowly observed their pallid features. His eye first rested on a form in which proportion reigned, and, stroking back the hair, a spacious forehead met his view; warm fancy had revelled there, and her airy dance had left vestiges, scarcely visible to a mortal eye. Some perpendicular lines pointed out that melancholy had predominated in his constitution; yet the straggling hairs of his eye-brows showed that anger had often shook his frame; indeed, the four temperatures, like the four elements, had resided in this little world, and produced harmony. The whole visage was bony, and an energetic frown had knit the flexible skin of his brow; the kingdom within had been extensive; and the wild creations of fancy had there "a local habitation and a name." So exquisite was his sensibility, so quick his comprehension, that he perceived various combinations in an instant; he caught truth as she darted towards him, saw all her fair proportion at a glance, and the flash of his eye spoke the quick senses which conveyed intelligence to his mind; the sensorium indeed was capacious, and the sage imagined he saw the lucid beam, sparkling with love or ambition, in characters of fire, which a graceful curve of the upper eyelid shaded. The lips were a little deranged by contempt; and a mixture of vanity and self-complacency formed a few irregular lines round them. The chin had suffered from sensuality, yet there were still great marks of vigour in it, as if advanced with stern dignity. The hand accustomed to command, and even tyrannize, was unnerved; but its appearance convinced Sagestus, that he had oftener wielded a thought than a weapon; and that he had silenced, by irresistible conviction, the superficial disputant, and the being, who doubted because he had not strength to believe, who, wavering between different borrowed opinions, first caught at one straw, then at another, unable to settle into any consistency of character. After gazing a few moments, Sagestus turned away exclaiming, How are the stately oaks torn up by a tempest, and the bow unstrung, that could force the arrow beyond the ken of the eye! What a different face next met his view! The forehead was short, yet well set together; the nose small, but a little turned up at the end; and a draw-down at the sides of his mouth, proved that he had been a humourist, who minded the main chance, and could joke with his acquaintance, while he eagerly devoured a dainty which he was not to pay for. His lips shut like a box whose hinges had often been mended; and the muscles, which display the soft emotion of the heart on the cheeks, were grown quite rigid, so that, the vessels that should have moistened them not having much communication with the grand source of passions, the fine volatile fluid had evaporated, and they became mere dry fibres, which might be pulled by any misfortune that threatened himself, but were not sufficiently elastic to be moved by the miseries of others. His joints were inserted compactly, and with celerity they had performed all the animal functions, without any of the grace which results from the imagination mixing with the senses. A huge form was stretched near him, that exhibited marks of overgrown infancy; every part was relaxed; all appeared imperfect. Yet, some undulating lines on the puffed-out cheeks, displayed signs of timid, servile good nature; and the skin of the forehead had been so often drawn up by wonder, that the few hairs of the eyebrows were fixed in a sharp arch, whilst an ample chin rested in lobes of flesh on his protuberant breast. By his side was a body that had scarcely ever much life in it--sympathy seemed to have drawn them together--every feature and limb was round and fleshy, and, if a kind of brutal cunning had not marked the face, it might have been mistaken for an automaton, so unmixed was the phlegmatic fluid. The vital spark was buried deep in a soft mass of matter, resembling the pith in young elder, which, when found, is so equivocal, that it only appears a moister part of the same body. Another part of the beach was covered with sailors, whose bodies exhibited marks of strength and brutal courage.--Their characters were all different, though of the same class; Sagestus did not stay to discriminate them, satisfied with a rough sketch. He saw indolence roused by a love of humour, or rather bodily fun; sensuality and prodigality with a vein of generosity running through it; a contempt of danger with gross superstition; supine senses, only to be kept alive by noisy, tumultuous pleasures, or that kind of novelty which borders on absurdity: this formed the common outline, and the rest were rather dabs than shades. Sagestus paused, and remembered it had been said by an earthly wit, that "many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desart air." How little, he exclaimed, did that poet know of the ways of heaven! And yet, in this respect, they are direct; the hands before me, were designed to pull a rope, knock down a sheep, or perform the servile offices of life; no "mute, inglorious poet" rests amongst them, and he who is superior to his fellow, does not rise above mediocrity. The genius that sprouts from a dunghil soon shakes off the heterogenous mass; those only grovel, who have not power to fly. He turned his step towards the mother of the orphan: another female was at some distance; and a man who, by his garb, might have been the husband, or brother, of the former, was not far off. Him the sage surveyed with an attentive eye, and bowed with respect to the inanimate clay, that lately had been the dwelling of a most benevolent spirit. The head was square, though the features were not very prominent; but there was a great harmony in every part, and the turn of the nostrils and lips evinced, that the soul must have had taste, to which they had served as organs. Penetration and judgment were seated on the brows that overhung the eye. Fixed as it was, Sagestus quickly discerned the expression it must have had; dark and pensive, rather from slowness of comprehension than melancholy, it seemed to absorb the light of knowledge, to drink it in ray by ray; nay, a new one was not allowed to enter his head till the last was arranged: an opinion was thus cautiously received, and maturely weighed, before it was added to the general stock. As nature led him to mount from a part to the whole, he was most conversant with the beautiful, and rarely comprehended the sublime; yet, said Sagestus, with a softened tone, he was all heart, full of forbearance, and desirous to please every fellow-creature; but from a nobler motive than a love of admiration; the fumes of vanity never mounted to cloud his brain, or tarnish his beneficence. The fluid in which those placid eyes swam, is now congealed; how often has tenderness given them the finest water! Some torn parts of the child's dress hung round his arm, which led the sage to conclude, that he had saved the child; every line in his face confirmed the conjecture; benevolence indeed strung the nerves that naturally were not very firm; it was the great knot that tied together the scattered qualities, and gave the distinct stamp to the character. The female whom he next approached, and supposed to be an attendant on the other, was below the middle size, and her legs were so disproportionably short, that, when she moved, she must have waddled along; her elbows were drawn in to touch her long taper, waist, and the air of her whole body was an affectation of gentility. Death could not alter the rigid hang of her limbs, or efface the simper that had stretched her mouth; the lips were thin, as if nature intended she should mince her words; her nose was small, and sharp at the end; and the forehead, unmarked by eyebrows, was wrinkled by the discontent that had sunk her cheeks, on which Sagestus still discerned faint traces of tenderness; and fierce good-nature, he perceived had sometimes animated the little spark of an eye that anger had oftener lighted. The same thought occurred to him that the sight of the sailors had suggested, Men and women are all in their proper places--this female was intended to fold up linen and nurse the sick. Anxious to observe the mother of his charge, he turned to the lily that had been so rudely snapped, and, carefully observing it, traced every fine line to its source. There was a delicacy in her form, so truly feminine, that an involuntary desire to cherish such a being, made the sage again feel the almost forgotten sensations of his nature. On observing her more closely, he discovered that her natural delicacy had been increased by an improper education, to a degree that took away all vigour from her faculties. And its baneful influence had had such an effect on her mind, that few traces of the exertions of it appeared on her face, though the fine finish of her features, and particularly the form of the forehead, convinced the sage that her understanding might have risen considerably above mediocrity, had the wheels ever been put in motion; but, clogged by prejudices, they never turned quite round, and, whenever she considered a subject, she stopped before she came to a conclusion. Assuming a mask of propriety, she had banished nature; yet its tendency was only to be diverted, not stifled. Some lines, which took from the symmetry of the mouth, not very obvious to a superficial observer, struck Sagestus, and they appeared to him characters of indolent obstinacy. Not having courage to form an opinion of her own, she adhered, with blind partiality, to those she adopted, which she received in the lump, and, as they always remained unopened, of course she only saw the even gloss on the outside. Vestiges of anger were visible on her brow, and the sage concluded, that she had often been offended with, and indeed would scarcely make any allowance for, those who did not coincide with her in opinion, as things always appear self-evident that have never been examined; yet her very weakness gave a charming timidity to her countenance; goodness and tenderness pervaded every lineament, and melted in her dark blue eyes. The compassion that wanted activity, was sincere, though it only embellished her face, or produced casual acts of charity when a moderate alms could relieve present distress. Unacquainted with life, fictitious, unnatural distress drew the tears that were not shed for real misery. In its own shape, human wretchedness excites a little disgust in the mind that has indulged sickly refinement. Perhaps the sage gave way to a little conjecture in drawing the last conclusion; but his conjectures generally arose from distinct ideas, and a dawn of light allowed him to see a great way farther than common mortals. He was now convinced that the orphan was not very unfortunate in having lost such a mother. The parent that inspires fond affection without respect, is seldom an useful one; and they only are respectable, who consider right and wrong abstracted from local forms and accidental modifications. Determined to adopt the child, he named it after himself, Sagesta, and retired to the hut where the innocent slept, to think of the best method of educating this child, whom the angry deep had spared. [The last branch of the education of Sagesta, consisted of a variety of characters and stories presented to her in the Cave of Fancy, of which the following is a specimen.] CHAP. A FORM now approached that particularly struck and interested Sagesta. The sage, observing what passed in her mind, bade her ever trust to the first impression. In life, he continued, try to remember the effect the first appearance of a stranger has on your mind; and, in proportion to your sensibility, you may decide on the character. Intelligence glances from eyes that have the same pursuits, and a benevolent heart soon traces the marks of benevolence on the countenance of an unknown fellow-creature; and not only the countenance, but the gestures, the voice, loudly speak truth to the unprejudiced mind. Whenever a stranger advances towards you with a tripping step, receives you with broad smiles, and a profusion of compliments, and yet you find yourself embarrassed and unable to return the salutation with equal cordiality, be assured that such a person is affected, and endeavours to maintain a very good character in the eyes of the world, without really practising the social virtues which dress the face in looks of unfeigned complacency. Kindred minds are drawn to each other by expressions which elude description; and, like the calm breeze that plays on a smooth lake, they are rather felt than seen. Beware of a man who always appears in good humour; a selfish design too frequently lurks in the smiles the heart never curved; or there is an affectation of candour that destroys all strength of character, by blending truth and falshood into an unmeaning mass. The mouth, in fact, seems to be the feature where you may trace every kind of dissimulation, from the simper of vanity, to the fixed smile of the designing villain. Perhaps, the modulations of the voice will still more quickly give a key to the character than even the turns of the mouth, or the words that issue from it; often do the tones of unpractised dissemblers give the lie to their assertions. Many people never speak in an unnatural voice, but when they are insincere: the phrases not corresponding with the dictates of the heart, have nothing to keep them in tune. In the course of an argument however, you may easily discover whether vanity or conviction stimulates the disputant, though his inflated countenance may be turned from you, and you may not see the gestures which mark self-sufficiency. He stopped, and the spirit began. I have wandered through the cave; and, as soon as I have taught you a useful lesson, I shall take my flight where my tears will cease to flow, and where mine eyes will no more be shocked with the sight of guilt and sorrow. Before many moons have changed, thou wilt enter, O mortal! into that world I have lately left. Listen to my warning voice, and trust not too much to the goodness which I perceive resides in thy breast. Let it be reined in by principles, lest thy very virtue sharpen the sting of remorse, which as naturally follows disorder in the moral world, as pain attends on intemperance in the physical. But my history will afford you more instruction than mere advice. Sagestus concurred in opinion with her, observing that the senses of children should be the first object of improvement; then their passions worked on; and judgment the fruit, must be the acquirement of the being itself, when out of leading-strings. The spirit bowed assent, and, without any further prelude, entered on her history. My mother was a most respectable character, but she was yoked to a man whose follies and vices made her ever feel the weight of her chains. The first sensation I recollect, was pity; for I have seen her weep over me and the rest of her babes, lamenting that the extravagance of a father would throw us destitute on the world. But, though my father was extravagant, and seldom thought of any thing but his own pleasures, our education was not neglected. In solitude, this employment was my mother's only solace; and my father's pride made him procure us masters; nay, sometimes he was so gratified by our improvement, that he would embrace us with tenderness, and intreat my mother to forgive him, with marks of real contrition. But the affection his penitence gave rise to, only served to expose her to continual disappointments, and keep hope alive merely to torment her. After a violent debauch he would let his beard grow, and the sadness that reigned in the house I shall never forget; he was ashamed to meet even the eyes of his children. This is so contrary to the nature of things, it gave me exquisite pain; I used, at those times, to show him extreme respect. I could not bear to see my parent humble himself before me. However neither his constitution, nor fortune could long bear the constant waste. He had, I have observed, a childish affection for his children, which was displayed in caresses that gratified him for the moment, yet never restrained the headlong fury of his appetites; his momentary repentance wrung his heart, without influencing his conduct; and he died, leaving an encumbered wreck of a good estate. As we had always lived in splendid poverty, rather than in affluence, the shock was not so great; and my mother repressed her anguish, and concealed some circumstances, that she might not shed a destructive mildew over the gaiety of youth. So fondly did I doat on this dear parent, that she engrossed all my tenderness; her sorrows had knit me firmly to her, and my chief care was to give her proofs of affection. The gallantry that afforded my companions, the few young people my mother forced me to mix with, so much pleasure, I despised; I wished more to be loved than admired, for I could love. I adored virtue; and my imagination, chasing a chimerical object, overlooked the common pleasures of life; they were not sufficient for my happiness. A latent fire made me burn to rise superior to my contemporaries in wisdom and virtue; and tears of joy and emulation filled my eyes when I read an account of a great action--I felt admiration, not astonishment. My mother had two particular friends, who endeavoured to settle her affairs; one was a middle-aged man, a merchant; the human breast never enshrined a more benevolent heart. His manners were rather rough, and he bluntly spoke his thoughts without observing the pain it gave; yet he possessed extreme tenderness, as far as his discernment went. Men do not make sufficient distinction, said she, digressing from her story to address Sagestus, between tenderness and sensibility. To give the shortest definition of sensibility, replied the sage, I should say that it is the result of acute senses, finely fashioned nerves, which vibrate at the slightest touch, and convey such clear intelligence to the brain, that it does not require to be arranged by the judgment. Such persons instantly enter into the characters of others, and instinctively discern what will give pain to every human being; their own feelings are so varied that they seem to contain in themselves, not only all the passions of the species, but their various modifications. Exquisite pain and pleasure is their portion; nature wears for them a different aspect than is displayed to common mortals. One moment it is a paradise; all is beautiful: a cloud arises, an emotion receives a sudden damp; darkness invades the sky, and the world is an unweeded garden;--but go on with your narrative, said Sagestus, recollecting himself. She proceeded. The man I am describing was humanity itself; but frequently he did not understand me; many of my feelings were not to be analyzed by his common sense. His friendships, for he had many friends, gave him pleasure unmixed with pain; his religion was coldly reasonable, because he wanted fancy, and he did not feel the necessity of finding, or creating, a perfect object, to answer the one engraved on his heart: the sketch there was faint. He went with the stream, and rather caught a character from the society he lived in, than spread one around him. In my mind many opinions were graven with a pen of brass, which he thought chimerical: but time could not erase them, and I now recognize them as the seeds of eternal happiness: they will soon expand in those realms where I shall enjoy the bliss adapted to my nature; this is all we need ask of the Supreme Being; happiness must follow the completion of his designs. He however could live quietly, without giving a preponderancy to many important opinions that continually obtruded on my mind; not having an enthusiastic affection for his fellow creatures, he did them good, without suffering from their follies. He was particularly attached to me, and I felt for him all the affection of a daughter; often, when he had been interesting himself to promote my welfare, have I lamented that he was not my father; lamented that the vices of mine had dried up one source of pure affection. The other friend I have already alluded to, was of a very different character; greatness of mind, and those combinations of feeling which are so difficult to describe, raised him above the throng, that bustle their hour out, lie down to sleep, and are forgotten. But I shall soon see him, she exclaimed, as much superior to his former self, as he then rose in my eyes above his fellow creatures! As she spoke, a glow of delight animated each feature; her countenance appeared transparent; and she silently anticipated the happiness she should enjoy, when she entered those mansions, where death-divided friends should meet, to part no more; where human weakness could not damp their bliss, or poison the cup of joy that, on earth, drops from the lips as soon as tasted, or, if some daring mortal snatches a hasty draught, what was sweet to the taste becomes a root of bitterness. He was unfortunate, had many cares to struggle with, and I marked on his cheeks traces of the same sorrows that sunk my own. He was unhappy I say, and perhaps pity might first have awoke my tenderness; for, early in life, an artful woman worked on his compassionate soul, and he united his fate to a being made up of such jarring elements, that he was still alone. The discovery did not extinguish that propensity to love, a high sense of virtue fed. I saw him sick and unhappy, without a friend to sooth the hours languor made heavy; often did I sit a long winter's evening by his side, railing at the swift wings of time, and terming my love, humanity. Two years passed in this manner, silently rooting my affection; and it might have continued calm, if a fever had not brought him to the very verge of the grave. Though still deceived, I was miserable that the customs of the world did not allow me to watch by him; when sleep forsook his pillow, my wearied eyes were not closed, and my anxious spirit hovered round his bed. I saw him, before he had recovered his strength; and, when his hand touched mine, life almost retired, or flew to meet the touch. The first look found a ready way to my heart, and thrilled through every vein. We were left alone, and insensibly began to talk of the immortality of the soul; I declared that I could not live without this conviction. In the ardour of conversation he pressed my hand to his heart; it rested there a moment, and my emotions gave weight to my opinion, for the affection we felt was not of a perishable nature.--A silence ensued, I know not how long; he then threw my hand from him, as if it had been a serpent; formally complained of the weather, and adverted to twenty other uninteresting subjects. Vain efforts! Our hearts had already spoken to each other. Feebly did I afterwards combat an affection, which seemed twisted in every fibre of my heart. The world stood still when I thought of him; it moved heavily at best, with one whose very constitution seemed to mark her out for misery. But I will not dwell on the passion I too fondly nursed. One only refuge had I on earth; I could not resolutely desolate the scene my fancy flew to, when worldly cares, when a knowledge of mankind, which my circumstances forced on me, rendered every other insipid. I was afraid of the unmarked vacuity of common life; yet, though I supinely indulged myself in fairy-land, when I ought to have been more actively employed, virtue was still the first mover of my actions; she dressed my love in such enchanting colours, and spread the net I could never break. Our corresponding feelings confounded our very souls; and in many conversations we almost intuitively discerned each other's sentiments; the heart opened itself, not chilled by reserve, nor afraid of misconstruction. But, if virtue inspired love, love gave new energy to virtue, and absorbed every selfish passion. Never did even a wish escape me, that my lover should not fulfil the hard duties which fate had imposed on him. I only dissembled with him in one particular; I endeavoured to soften his wife's too conspicuous follies, and extenuated her failings in an indirect manner. To this I was prompted by a loftiness of spirit; I should have broken the band of life, had I ceased to respect myself. But I will hasten to an important change in my circumstances. My mother, who had concealed the real state of her affairs from me, was now impelled to make me her confident, that I might assist to discharge her mighty debt of gratitude. The merchant, my more than father, had privately assisted her: but a fatal civil-war reduced his large property to a bare competency; and an inflammation in his eyes, that arose from a cold he had caught at a wreck, which he watched during a stormy night to keep off the lawless colliers, almost deprived him of sight. His life had been spent in society, and he scarcely knew how to fill the void; for his spirit would not allow him to mix with his former equals as an humble companion; he who had been treated with uncommon respect, could not brook their insulting pity. From the resource of solitude, reading, the complaint in his eyes cut him off, and he became our constant visitor. Actuated by the sincerest affection, I used to read to him, and he mistook my tenderness for love. How could I undeceive him, when every circumstance frowned on him! Too soon I found that I was his only comfort; I, who rejected his hand when fortune smiled, could not now second her blow; and, in a moment of enthusiastic gratitude and tender compassion, I offered him my hand.--It was received with pleasure; transport was not made for his soul; nor did he discover that nature had separated us, by making me alive to such different sensations. My mother was to live with us, and I dwelt on this circumstance to banish cruel recollections, when the bent bow returned to its former state. With a bursting heart and a firm voice, I named the day when I was to seal my promise. It came, in spite of my regret; I had been previously preparing myself for the awful ceremony, and answered the solemn question with a resolute tone, that would silence the dictates of my heart; it was a forced, unvaried one; had nature modulated it, my secret would have escaped. My active spirit was painfully on the watch to repress every tender emotion. The joy in my venerable parent's countenance, the tenderness of my husband, as he conducted me home, for I really had a sincere affection for him, the gratulations of my mind, when I thought that this sacrifice was heroic, all tended to deceive me; but the joy of victory over the resigned, pallid look of my lover, haunted my imagination, and fixed itself in the centre of my brain.--Still I imagined, that his spirit was near me, that he only felt sorrow for my loss, and without complaint resigned me to my duty. I was left alone a moment; my two elbows rested on a table to support my chin. Ten thousand thoughts darted with astonishing velocity through my mind. My eyes were dry; I was on the brink of madness. At this moment a strange association was made by my imagination; I thought of Gallileo, who when he left the inquisition, looked upwards, and cried out, "Yet it moves." A shower of tears, like the refreshing drops of heaven, relieved my parched sockets; they fell disregarded on the table; and, stamping with my foot, in an agony I exclaimed, "Yet I love." My husband entered before I had calmed these tumultuous emotions, and tenderly took my hand. I snatched it from him; grief and surprise were marked on his countenance; I hastily stretched it out again. My heart smote me, and I removed the transient mist by an unfeigned endeavour to please him. A few months after, my mind grew calmer; and, if a treacherous imagination, if feelings many accidents revived, sometimes plunged me into melancholy, I often repeated with steady conviction, that virtue was not an empty name, and that, in following the dictates of duty, I had not bidden adieu to content. In the course of a few years, the dear object of my fondest affection, said farewel, in dying accents. Thus left alone, my grief became dear; and I did not feel solitary, because I thought I might, without a crime, indulge a passion, that grew more ardent than ever when my imagination only presented him to my view, and restored my former activity of soul which the late calm had rendered torpid. I seemed to find myself again, to find the eccentric warmth that gave me identity of character. Reason had governed my conduct, but could not change my nature; this voluptuous sorrow was superior to every gratification of sense, and death more firmly united our hearts. Alive to every human affection, I smoothed my mothers passage to eternity, and so often gave my husband sincere proofs of affection, he never supposed that I was actuated by a more fervent attachment. My melancholy, my uneven spirits, he attributed to my extreme sensibility, and loved me the better for possessing qualities he could not comprehend. At the close of a summer's day, some years after, I wandered with careless steps over a pathless common; various anxieties had rendered the hours which the sun had enlightened heavy; sober evening came on; I wished to still "my mind, and woo lone quiet in her silent walk." The scene accorded with my feelings; it was wild and grand; and the spreading twilight had almost confounded the distant sea with the barren, blue hills that melted from my sight. I sat down on a rising ground; the rays of the departing sun illumined the horizon, but so indistinctly, that I anticipated their total extinction. The death of Nature led me to a still more interesting subject, that came home to my bosom, the death of him I loved. A village-bell was tolling; I listened, and thought of the moment when I heard his interrupted breath, and felt the agonizing fear, that the same sound would never more reach my ears, and that the intelligence glanced from my eyes, would no more be felt. The spoiler had seized his prey; the sun was fled, what was this world to me! I wandered to another, where death and darkness could not enter; I pursued the sun beyond the mountains, and the soul escaped from this vale of tears. My reflections were tinged with melancholy, but they were sublime.--I grasped a mighty whole, and smiled on the king of terrors; the tie which bound me to my friends he could not break; the same mysterious knot united me to the source of all goodness and happiness. I had seen the divinity reflected in a face I loved; I had read immortal characters displayed on a human countenance, and forgot myself whilst I gazed. I could not think of immortality, without recollecting the ecstacy I felt, when my heart first whispered to me that I was beloved; and again did I feel the sacred tie of mutual affection; fervently I prayed to the father of mercies; and rejoiced that he could see every turn of a heart, whose movements I could not perfectly understand. My passion seemed a pledge of immortality; I did not wish to hide it from the all-searching eye of heaven. Where indeed could I go from his presence? and, whilst it was dear to me, though darkness might reign during the night of life, joy would come when I awoke to life everlasting. I now turned my step towards home, when the appearance of a girl, who stood weeping on the common, attracted my attention. I accosted her, and soon heard her simple tale; that her father was gone to sea, and her mother sick in bed. I followed her to their little dwelling, and relieved the sick wretch. I then again sought my own abode; but death did not now haunt my fancy. Contriving to give the poor creature I had left more effectual relief, I reached my own garden-gate very weary, and rested on it.--Recollecting the turns of my mind during the walk, I exclaimed, Surely life may thus be enlivened by active benevolence, and the sleep of death, like that I am now disposed to fall into, may be sweet! My life was now unmarked by any extraordinary change, and a few days ago I entered this cavern; for through it every mortal must pass; and here I have discovered, that I neglected many opportunities of being useful, whilst I fostered a devouring flame. Remorse has not reached me, because I firmly adhered to my principles, and I have also discovered that I saw through a false medium. Worthy as the mortal was I adored, I should not long have loved him with the ardour I did, had fate united us, and broken the delusion the imagination so artfully wove. His virtues, as they now do, would have extorted my esteem; but he who formed the human soul, only can fill it, and the chief happiness of an immortal being must arise from the same source as its existence. Earthly love leads to heavenly, and prepares us for a more exalted state; if it does not change its nature, and destroy itself, by trampling on the virtue, that constitutes its essence, and allies us to the Deity. ON POETRY, AND OUR RELISH FOR THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE. ON POETRY, &c. A TASTE for rural scenes, in the present state of society, appears to be very often an artificial sentiment, rather inspired by poetry and romances, than a real perception of the beauties of nature. But, as it is reckoned a proof of refined taste to praise the calm pleasures which the country affords, the theme is never exhausted. Yet it may be made a question, whether this romantic kind of declamation, has much effect on the conduct of those, who leave, for a season, the crowded cities in which they were bred. I have been led to these reflections, by observing, when I have resided for any length of time in the country, how few people seem to contemplate nature with their own eyes. I have "brushed the dew away" in the morning; but, pacing over the printless grass, I have wondered that, in such delightful situations, the sun was allowed to rise in solitary majesty, whilst my eyes alone hailed its beautifying beams. The webs of the evening have still been spread across the hedged path, unless some labouring man, trudging to work, disturbed the fairy structure; yet, in spite of this supineness, when I joined the social circle, every tongue rang changes on the pleasures of the country. Having frequently had occasion to make the same observation, I was led to endeavour, in one of my solitary rambles, to trace the cause, and likewise to enquire why the poetry written in the infancy of society, is most natural: which, strictly speaking (for _natural_ is a very indefinite expression) is merely to say, that it is the transcript of immediate sensations, in all their native wildness and simplicity, when fancy, awakened by the sight of interesting objects, was most actively at work. At such moments, sensibility quickly furnishes similes, and the sublimated spirits combine images, which rising spontaneously, it is not necessary coldly to ransack the understanding or memory, till the laborious efforts of judgment exclude present sensations, and damp the fire of enthusiasm. The effusions of a vigorous mind, will ever tell us how far the understanding has been enlarged by thought, and stored with knowledge. The richness of the soil even appears on the surface; and the result of profound thinking, often mixing, with playful grace, in the reveries of the poet, smoothly incorporates with the ebullitions of animal spirits, when the finely fashioned nerve vibrates acutely with rapture, or when, relaxed by soft melancholy, a pleasing languor prompts the long-drawn sigh, and feeds the slowly falling tear. The poet, the man of strong feelings, gives us only an image of his mind, when he was actually alone, conversing with himself, and marking the impression which nature had made on his own heart.--If, at this sacred moment, the idea of some departed friend, some tender recollection when the soul was most alive to tenderness, intruded unawares into his thoughts, the sorrow which it produced is artlessly, yet poetically expressed--and who can avoid sympathizing? Love to man leads to devotion--grand and sublime images strike the imagination--God is seen in every floating cloud, and comes from the misty mountain to receive the noblest homage of an intelligent creature--praise. How solemn is the moment, when all affections and remembrances fade before the sublime admiration which the wisdom and goodness of God inspires, when he is worshipped in a _temple not made with hands_, and the world seems to contain only the mind that formed, and the mind that contemplates it! These are not the weak responses of ceremonial devotion; nor, to express them, would the poet need another poet's aid: his heart burns within him, and he speaks the language of truth and nature with resistless energy. Inequalities, of course, are observable in his effusions; and a less vigorous fancy, with more taste, would have produced more elegance and uniformity; but, as passages are softened or expunged during the cooler moments of reflection, the understanding is gratified at the expence of those involuntary sensations, which, like the beauteous tints of an evening sky, are so evanescent, that they melt into new forms before they can be analyzed. For however eloquently we may boast of our reason, man must often be delighted he cannot tell why, or his blunt feelings are not made to relish the beauties which nature, poetry, or any of the imitative arts, afford. The imagery of the ancients seems naturally to have been borrowed from surrounding objects and their mythology. When a hero is to be transported from one place to another, across pathless wastes, is any vehicle so natural, as one of the fleecy clouds on which the poet has often gazed, scarcely conscious that he wished to make it his chariot? Again, when nature seems to present obstacles to his progress at almost every step, when the tangled forest and steep mountain stand as barriers, to pass over which the mind longs for supernatural aid; an interposing deity, who walks on the waves, and rules the storm, severely felt in the first attempts to cultivate a country, will receive from the impassioned fancy "a local habitation and a name." It would be a philosophical enquiry, and throw some light on the history of the human mind, to trace, as far as our information will allow us to trace, the spontaneous feelings and ideas which have produced the images that now frequently appear unnatural, because they are remote; and disgusting, because they have been servilely copied by poets, whose habits of thinking, and views of nature must have been different; for, though the understanding seldom disturbs the current of our present feelings, without dissipating the gay clouds which fancy has been embracing, yet it silently gives the colour to the whole tenour of them, and the dream is over, when truth is grossly violated, or images introduced, selected from books, and not from local manners or popular prejudices. In a more advanced state of civilization, a poet is rather the creature of art, than of nature. The books that he reads in his youth, become a hot-bed in which artificial fruits are produced, beautiful to the common eye, though they want the true hue and flavour. His images do not arise from sensations; they are copies; and, like the works of the painters who copy ancient statues when they draw men and women of their own times, we acknowledge that the features are fine, and the proportions just; yet they are men of stone; insipid figures, that never convey to the mind the idea of a portrait taken from life, where the soul gives spirit and homogeneity to the whole. The silken wings of fancy are shrivelled by rules; and a desire of attaining elegance of diction, occasions an attention to words, incompatible with sublime, impassioned thoughts. A boy of abilities, who has been taught the structure of verse at school, and been roused by emulation to compose rhymes whilst he was reading works of genius, may, by practice, produce pretty verses, and even become what is often termed an elegant poet: yet his readers, without knowing what to find fault with, do not find themselves warmly interested. In the works of the poets who fasten on their affections, they see grosser faults, and the very images which shock their taste in the modern; still they do not appear as puerile or extrinsic in one as the other.--Why?--because they did not appear so to the author. It may sound paradoxical, after observing that those productions want vigour, that are merely the work of imitation, in which the understanding has violently directed, if not extinguished, the blaze of fancy, to assert, that, though genius be only another word for exquisite sensibility, the first observers of nature, the true poets, exercised their understanding much more than their imitators. But they exercised it to discriminate things, whilst their followers were busy to borrow sentiments and arrange words. Boys who have received a classical education, load their memory with words, and the correspondent ideas are perhaps never distinctly comprehended. As a proof of this assertion, I must observe, that I have known many young people who could write tolerably smooth verses, and string epithets prettily together, when their prose themes showed the barrenness of their minds, and how superficial the cultivation must have been, which their understanding had received. Dr. Johnson, I know, has given a definition of genius, which would overturn my reasoning, if I were to admit it.--He imagines, that _a strong mind, accidentally led to some particular study_ in which it excels, is a genius.--Not to stop to investigate the causes which produced this happy _strength_ of mind, experience seems to prove, that those minds have appeared most vigorous, that have pursued a study, after nature had discovered a bent; for it would be absurd to suppose, that a slight impression made on the weak faculties of a boy, is the fiat of fate, and not to be effaced by any succeeding impression, or unexpected difficulty. Dr. Johnson in fact, appears sometimes to be of the same opinion (how consistently I shall not now enquire), especially when he observes, "that Thomson looked on nature with the eye which she only gives to a poet." But, though it should be allowed that books may produce some poets, I fear they will never be the poets who charm our cares to sleep, or extort admiration. They may diffuse taste, and polish the language; but I am inclined to conclude that they will seldom rouse the passions, or amend the heart. And, to return to the first subject of discussion, the reason why most people are more interested by a scene described by a poet, than by a view of nature, probably arises from the want of a lively imagination. The poet contracts the prospect, and, selecting the most picturesque part in his _camera_, the judgment is directed, and the whole force of the languid faculty turned towards the objects which excited the most forcible emotions in the poet's heart; the reader consequently feels the enlivened description, though he was not able to receive a first impression from the operations of his own mind. Besides, it may be further observed, that gross minds are only to be moved by forcible representations. To rouse the thoughtless, objects must be presented, calculated to produce tumultuous emotions; the unsubstantial, picturesque forms which a contemplative man gazes on, and often follows with ardour till he is mocked by a glimpse of unattainable excellence, appear to them the light vapours of a dreaming enthusiast, who gives up the substance for the shadow. It is not within that they seek amusement; their eyes are seldom turned on themselves; consequently their emotions, though sometimes fervid, are always transient, and the nicer perceptions which distinguish the man of genuine taste, are not felt, or make such a slight impression as scarcely to excite any pleasurable sensations. Is it surprising then that they are often overlooked, even by those who are delighted by the same images concentrated by the poet? But even this numerous class is exceeded, by witlings, who, anxious to appear to have wit and taste, do not allow their understandings or feelings any liberty; for, instead of cultivating their faculties and reflecting on their operations, they are busy collecting prejudices; and are predetermined to admire what the suffrage of time announces as excellent, not to store up a fund of amusement for themselves, but to enable them to talk. These hints will assist the reader to trace some of the causes why the beauties of nature are not forcibly felt, when civilization, or rather luxury, has made considerable advances--those calm sensations are not sufficiently lively to serve as a relaxation to the voluptuary, or even to the moderate pursuer of artificial pleasures. In the present state of society, the understanding must bring back the feelings to nature, or the sensibility must have such native strength, as rather to be whetted than destroyed by the strong exercises of passion. That the most valuable things are liable to the greatest perversion, is however as trite as true:--for the same sensibility, or quickness of senses, which makes a man relish the tranquil scenes of nature, when sensation, rather than reason, imparts delight, frequently makes a libertine of him, by leading him to prefer the sensual tumult of love a little refined by sentiment, to the calm pleasures of affectionate friendship, in whose sober satisfactions, reason, mixing her tranquillizing convictions, whispers, that content, not happiness, is the reward of virtue in this world. HINTS. [_Chiefly designed to have been incorporated in the Second Part of the_ Vindication of the Rights of Woman.] HINTS. 1. INDOLENCE is the source of nervous complaints, and a whole host of cares. This devil might say that his name was legion. 2. It should be one of the employments of women of fortune, to visit hospitals, and superintend the conduct of inferiors. 3. It is generally supposed, that the imagination of women is particularly active, and leads them astray. Why then do we seek by education only to exercise their imagination and feeling, till the understanding, grown rigid by disuse, is unable to exercise itself--and the superfluous nourishment the imagination and feeling have received, renders the former romantic, and the latter weak? 4. Few men have risen to any great eminence in learning, who have not received something like a regular education. Why are women expected to surmount difficulties that men are not equal to? 5. Nothing can be more absurd than the ridicule of the critic, that the heroine of his mock-tragedy was in love with the very man whom she ought least to have loved; he could not have given a better reason. How can passion gain strength any other way? In Otaheite, love cannot be known, where the obstacles to irritate an indiscriminate appetite, and sublimate the simple sensations of desire till they mount to passion, are never known. There a man or woman cannot love the very person they ought not to have loved--nor does jealousy ever fan the flame. 6. It has frequently been observed, that, when women have an object in view, they pursue it with more steadiness than men, particularly love. This is not a compliment. Passion pursues with more heat than reason, and with most ardour during the absence of reason. 7. Men are more subject to the physical love than women. The confined education of women makes them more subject to jealousy. 8. Simplicity seems, in general, the consequence of ignorance, as I have observed in the characters of women and sailors--the being confined to one track of impressions. 9. I know of no other way of preserving the chastity of mankind, than that of rendering women rather objects of love than desire. The difference is great. Yet, while women are encouraged to ornament their persons at the expence of their minds, while indolence renders them helpless and lascivious (for what other name can be given to the common intercourse between the sexes?) they will be, generally speaking, only objects of desire; and, to such women, men cannot be constant. Men, accustomed only to have their senses moved, merely seek for a selfish gratification in the society of women, and their sexual instinct, being neither supported by the understanding nor the heart, must be excited by variety. 10. We ought to respect old opinions; though prejudices, blindly adopted, lead to error, and preclude all exercise of the reason. The emulation which often makes a boy mischievous, is a generous spur; and the old remark, that unlucky, turbulent boys, make the wisest and best men, is true, spite of Mr. Knox's arguments. It has been observed, that the most adventurous horses, when tamed or domesticated, are the most mild and tractable. 11. The children who start up suddenly at twelve or fourteen, and fall into decays, in consequence, as it is termed, of outgrowing their strength, are in general, I believe, those children, who have been bred up with mistaken tenderness, and not allowed to sport and take exercise in the open air. This is analogous to plants: for it is found that they run up sickly, long stalks, when confined. 12. Children should be taught to feel deference, not to practise submission. 13. It is always a proof of false refinement, when a fastidious taste overpowers sympathy. 14. Lust appears to be the most natural companion of wild ambition; and love of human praise, of that dominion erected by cunning. 15. "Genius decays as judgment increases." Of course, those who have the least genius, have the earliest appearance of wisdom. 16. A knowledge of the fine arts, is seldom subservient to the promotion of either religion or virtue. Elegance is often indecency; witness our prints. 17. There does not appear to be any evil in the world, but what is necessary. The doctrine of rewards and punishments, not considered as a means of reformation, appears to me an infamous libel on divine goodness. 18. Whether virtue is founded on reason or revelation, virtue is wisdom, and vice is folly. Why are positive punishments? 19. Few can walk alone. The staff of Christianity is the necessary support of human weakness. But an acquaintance with the nature of man and virtue, with just sentiments on the attributes, would be sufficient, without a voice from heaven, to lead some to virtue, but not the mob. 20. I only expect the natural reward of virtue, whatever it may be. I rely not on a positive reward. The justice of God can be vindicated by a belief in a future state--but a continuation of being vindicates it as clearly, as the positive system of rewards and punishments--by evil educing good for the individual, and not for an imaginary whole. The happiness of the whole must arise from the happiness of the constituent parts, or this world is not a state of trial, but a school. 21. The vices acquired by Augustus to retain his power, must have tainted his soul, and prevented that increase of happiness a good man expects in the next stage of existence. This was a natural punishment. 22. The lover is ever most deeply enamoured, when it is with he knows not what--and the devotion of a mystic has a rude Gothic grandeur in it, which the respectful adoration of a philosopher will never reach. I may be thought fanciful; but it has continually occurred to me, that, though, I allow, reason in this world is the mother of wisdom--yet some flights of the imagination seem to reach what wisdom cannot teach--and, while they delude us here, afford a glorious hope, if not a foretaste, of what we may expect hereafter. He that created us, did not mean to mark us with ideal images of grandeur, the _baseless fabric of a vision_--No--that perfection we follow with hopeless ardour when the whisperings of reason are heard, may be found, when not incompatible with our state, in the round of eternity. Perfection indeed must, even then, be a comparative idea--but the wisdom, the happiness of a superior state, has been supposed to be intuitive, and the happiest effusions of human genius have seemed like inspiration--the deductions of reason destroy sublimity. 23. I am more and more convinced, that poetry is the first effervescence of the imagination, and the forerunner of civilization. 24. When the Arabs had no trace of literature or science, they composed beautiful verses on the subjects of love and war. The flights of the imagination, and the laboured deductions of reason, appear almost incompatible. 25. Poetry certainly flourishes most in the first rude state of society. The passions speak most eloquently, when they are not shackled by reason. The sublime expression, which has been so often quoted, [Genesis, ch. 1, ver. 3.] is perhaps a barbarous flight; or rather the grand conception of an uncultivated mind; for it is contrary to nature and experience, to suppose that this account is founded on facts--It is doubtless a sublime allegory. But a cultivated mind would not thus have described the creation--for, arguing from analogy, it appears that creation must have been a comprehensive plan, and that the Supreme Being always uses second causes, slowly and silently to fulfil his purpose. This is, in reality, a more sublime view of that power which wisdom supports: but it is not the sublimity that would strike the impassioned mind, in which the imagination took place of intellect. Tell a being, whose affections and passions have been more exercised than his reason, that God said, _Let there be light! and there was light_; and he would prostrate himself before the Being who could thus call things out of nothing, as if they were: but a man in whom reason had taken place of passion, would not adore, till wisdom was conspicuous as well as power, for his admiration must be founded on principle. 26. Individuality is ever conspicuous in those enthusiastic flights of fancy, in which reason is left behind, without being lost sight of. 27. The mind has been too often brought to the test of enquiries which only reach to matter--put into the crucible, though the magnetic and electric fluid escapes from the experimental philosopher. 28. Mr. Kant has observed, that the understanding is sublime, the imagination beautiful--yet it is evident, that poets, and men who undoubtedly possess the liveliest imagination, are most touched by the sublime, while men who have cold, enquiring minds, have not this exquisite feeling in any great degree, and indeed seem to lose it as they cultivate their reason. 29. The Grecian buildings are graceful--they fill the mind with all those pleasing emotions, which elegance and beauty never fail to excite in a cultivated mind--utility and grace strike us in unison--the mind is satisfied--things appear just what they ought to be: a calm satisfaction is felt, but the imagination has nothing to do--no obscurity darkens the gloom--like reasonable content, we can say why we are pleased--and this kind of pleasure may be lasting, but it is never great. 30. When we say that a person is an original, it is only to say in other words that he thinks. "The less a man has cultivated his rational faculties, the more powerful is the principle of imitation, over his actions, and his habits of thinking. Most women, of course, are more influenced by the behaviour, the fashions, and the opinions of those with whom they associate, than men." (Smellie.) When we read a book which supports our favourite opinions, how eagerly do we suck in the doctrines, and suffer our minds placidly to reflect the images which illustrate the tenets we have embraced? We indolently or quietly acquiesce in the conclusion, and our spirit animates and connects the various subjects. But, on the contrary, when we peruse a skilful writer, who does not coincide in opinion with us, how is the mind on the watch to detect fallacy? And this coolness often prevents our being carried away by a stream of eloquence, which the prejudiced mind terms declamation--a pomp of words.--We never allow ourselves to be warmed; and, after contending with the writer, are more confirmed in our own opinion, as much perhaps from a spirit of contradiction as from reason.--Such is the strength of man! 31. It is the individual manner of seeing and feeling, pourtrayed by a strong imagination in bold images that have struck the senses, which creates all the charms of poetry. A great reader is always quoting the description of another's emotions; a strong imagination delights to paint its own. A writer of genius makes us feel; an inferior author reason. 32. Some principle prior to self-love must have existed: the feeling which produced the pleasure, must have existed before the experience. THE END. Transcriber's Notes: 1. Obvious punctuation errors repaired. 2. This text contains blank space and lines of "--" and "*" characters. These are replicated from the printed pages, presumably they indicate censored text from the original source. 3. The listed errata at the beginning of Volume 1 and Volume 4 have been applied to the text. 4. The text as printed used incipits and 'long s' font. The incipits have not been replicated in this version, but can be viewed on 'long s' HTML version of the text or the page images linked from the HTML versions. 5. Corrections: Volume 1, Page 33, "accuteness" changed to "acuteness" Volume 1, Page 51, "unfortutunate" changed to "unfortunate" Volume 1, Page 57, "resource" changed to "recourse" Volume 1, Page 90, "hunted" changed to "shunted" Volume 1, Page 103, "carreer" changed to "career" Volume 1, Page 161, "plased" changed to "pleased" Volume 2, Page 116, "and and" changed to "and" Volume 3, Page 35, "a r" changed to "air" Volume 3, Page 81, "he he" changed to "he" Volume 3, Page 120, "explananations" changed to "explanations" 
43502	----	Transcriber's note. Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently repaired. A list of other changes made, can be found at the end of the book. Mark up: _italics_ VOTES FOR WOMEN A PLAY IN THREE ACTS BY ELIZABETH ROBINS MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 49 WHITCOMB STREET LONDON W. C. 1909 COURT THEATRE PLAYBILL VOTES FOR WOMEN! A Dramatic Tract in Three Acts By ELIZABETH ROBINS Lord John Wynnstay Mr. ATHOL FORDE The Hon. Geoffrey Stonor Mr. AUBREY SMITH Mr. St. John Greatorex Mr. E. HOLMAN CLARK Mr. Richard Farnborough Mr. P. CLAYTON GREENE Mr. Freddy Tunbridge Mr. PERCY MARMONT Mr. Allen Trent Mr. LEWIS CASSON [1]Mr. Walker Mr. EDMUND GWENN Lady John Wynnstay Miss MAUD MILTON Mrs. Heriot Miss FRANCES IVOR Miss Vida Levering Miss WYNNE-MATTHISON [1]Miss Beatrice Dunbarton Miss JEAN MACKINLAY Mrs. Freddy Tunbridge Miss GERTRUDE BURNETT Miss Ernestine Blunt Miss DOROTHY MINTO A Working Woman Miss AGNES THOMAS ACT I. Wynnstay House in Hertfordshire. ACT II. Trafalgar Square, London. ACT III. Eaton Square, London. The Entire Action of the Play takes place between Sunday noon and six o'clock in the evening of the same day. [1] In the text these characters have been altered to Mr. PILCHER and Miss JEAN Dunbarton. CAST LORD JOHN WYNNSTAY LADY JOHN WYNNSTAY _His wife_ MRS. HERIOT _Sister of Lady John_ MISS JEAN DUNBARTON _Niece to Lady John and Mrs. Heriot_ THE HON. GEOFFREY STONOR _Unionist M.P. affianced to Jean Dunbarton_ MR. ST. JOHN GREATOREX _Liberal M.P._ THE HON. RICHARD FARNBOROUGH MR. FREDDY TUNBRIDGE MRS. FREDDY TUNBRIDGE MR. ALLEN TRENT MISS ERNESTINE BLUNT _A Suffragette_ MR. PILCHER _A working man_ A WORKING WOMAN _and_ MISS VIDA LEVERING PERSONS IN THE CROWD: SERVANTS IN THE TWO HOUSES. ACT I WYNNSTAY HOUSE IN HERTFORDSHIRE ACT II TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON ACT III EATON SQUARE (_Entire Action of Play takes place between Sunday noon and six o'clock in the evening of the same day._) ACT I. THE HALL OF WYNNSTAY HOUSE. [Illustration: Stage setting.] _Twelve o'clock Sunday morning at end of June._ _Action takes place between twelve and six same day._ VOTES FOR WOMEN ACT I HALL OF WYNNSTAY HOUSE. _Twelve o'clock, Sunday morning, end of June. With the rising of the Curtain, enter the_ BUTLER. _As he is going, with majestic port, to answer the door_ L., _enter briskly from the garden, by lower French window_, LADY JOHN WYNNSTAY, _flushed, and flapping a garden hat to fan herself. She is a pink-cheeked woman of fifty-four, who has plainly been a beauty, keeps her complexion, but is "gone to fat."_ LADY JOHN. Has Miss Levering come down yet? BUTLER (_pausing_ C.). I haven't seen her, m'lady. LADY JOHN (_almost sharply as_ BUTLER _turns_ L.). I won't have her disturbed if she's resting. (_To herself as she goes to writing-table._) She certainly needs it. BUTLER. Yes, m'lady. LADY JOHN (_sitting at writing-table, her back to front door_). But I want her to know the moment she comes down that the new plans arrived by the morning post. BUTLER (_pausing nearly at the door_). Plans, m'la---- LADY JOHN. She'll understand. There they are. (_Glancing at the clock._) It's very important she should have them in time to look over before she goes---- (BUTLER _opens the door_ L.) (_Over her shoulder._) Is that Miss Levering? BUTLER. No, m'lady. Mr. Farnborough. [_Exit_ BUTLER. (_Enter the_ HON. R. FARNBOROUGH. _He is twenty-six; reddish hair, high-coloured, sanguine, self-important._) FARNBOROUGH. I'm afraid I'm scandalously early. It didn't take me nearly as long to motor over as Lord John said. LADY JOHN (_shaking hands_). I'm afraid my husband is no authority on motoring--and he's not home yet from church. FARN. It's the greatest luck finding _you_. I thought Miss Levering was the only person under this roof who was ever allowed to observe Sunday as a real Day of Rest. LADY JOHN. If you've come to see Miss Levering---- FARN. Is she here? I give you my word I didn't know it. LADY JOHN (_unconvinced_). Oh? FARN. Does she come every week-end? LADY JOHN. Whenever we can get her to. But we've only known her a couple of months. FARN. And I have only known her three weeks! Lady John, I've come to ask you to help me. LADY JOHN (_quickly_). With Miss Levering? I can't do it! FARN. No, no--all that's no good. She only laughs. LADY JOHN (_relieved_). Ah!--she looks upon you as a boy. FARN (_firing up_). Such rot! What do you think she said to me in London the other day? LADY JOHN. That she was four years older than you? FARN. Oh, I knew that. No. She said she knew she was all the charming things I'd been saying, but there was only one way to prove it--and that was to marry some one young enough to be her son. She'd noticed that was what the _most_ attractive women did--and she named names. LADY JOHN (_laughing_). _You_ were too old! FARN. (_nods_). Her future husband, she said, was probably just entering Eton. LADY JOHN. Just like her! FARN. (_waving the subject away_). No. I wanted to see you about the Secretaryship. LADY JOHN. You didn't get it, then? FARN. No. It's the grief of my life. LADY JOHN. Oh, if you don't get one you'll get another. FARN. But there _is_ only one. LADY JOHN. Only one vacancy? FARN. Only one man I'd give my ears to work for. LADY JOHN (_smiling_). I remember. FARN. (_quickly_). Do I always talk about Stonor? Well, it's a habit people have got into. LADY JOHN. I forget, do you know Mr. Stonor personally, or (_smiling_) are you just dazzled from afar? FARN. Oh, I know him. The trouble is he doesn't know me. If he did he'd realise he can't be sure of winning his election without my valuable services. LADY JOHN. Geoffrey Stonor's re-election is always a foregone conclusion. FARN. That the great man shares that opinion is precisely his weak point. (_Smiling._) His only one. LADY JOHN. You think because the Liberals swept the country the last time---- FARN. How can we be sure any Conservative seat is safe after---- (_As_ LADY JOHN _smiles and turns to her papers._) Forgive me, I know you're not interested in politics _qua_ politics. But this concerns Geoffrey Stonor. LADY JOHN. And you count on my being interested in him like all the rest of my sex. FARN. (_leans forward_). Lady John, I've heard the news. LADY JOHN. What news? FARN. That your little niece--the Scotch heiress--is going to become Mrs. Geoffrey Stonor. LADY JOHN. Who told you that? FARN. Please don't mind my knowing. LADY JOHN (_visibly perturbed_). She had set her heart upon having a few days with just her family in the secret, before the flood of congratulations breaks loose. FARN. Oh, that's all right. I always hear things before other people. LADY JOHN. Well, I must ask you to be good enough to be very circumspect. I wouldn't have my niece think that I---- FARN. Oh, of course not. LADY JOHN. She will be here in an hour. FARN. (_jumping up delighted_). What? To-day? The future Mrs. Stonor! LADY JOHN (_harassed_). Yes. Unfortunately we had one or two people already asked for the week-end---- FARN. And I go and invite myself to luncheon! Lady John, you can buy me off. I'll promise to remove myself in five minutes if you'll---- LADY JOHN. No, the penalty is you shall stay and keep the others amused between church and luncheon, and so leave me free. (_Takes up the plan._) Only _remember_---- FARN. Wild horses won't get a hint out of me! I only mentioned it to you because--since we've come back to live in this part of the world you've been so awfully kind--I thought, I hoped maybe you--you'd put in a word for me. LADY JOHN. With----? FARN. With your nephew that is to be. Though I'm _not_ the slavish satellite people make out, you can't doubt---- LADY JOHN. Oh, I don't doubt. But you know Mr. Stonor inspires a similar enthusiasm in a good many young---- FARN. They haven't studied the situation as I have. They don't know what's at stake. They don't go to that hole Dutfield as I did just to hear his Friday speech. LADY JOHN. Ah! But you were rewarded. Jean--my niece--wrote me it was "glorious." FARN. (_judicially_). Well, you know, _I_ was disappointed. He's too content just to criticise, just to make his delicate pungent fun of the men who are grappling--very inadequately, of course--still _grappling_ with the big questions. There's a carrying power (_gets up and faces an imaginary audience_)--some of Stonor's friends ought to point it out--there's a driving power in the poorest constructive policy that makes the most brilliant criticism look barren. LADY JOHN (_with good-humoured malice_). Who told you that? FARN. You think there's nothing in it because _I_ say it. But now that he's coming into the family, Lord John or somebody really ought to point out--Stonor's overdoing his rôle of magnificent security! LADY JOHN. I don't see even Lord John offering to instruct Mr. Stonor. FARN. Believe me, that's just Stonor's danger! Nobody saying a word, everybody hoping he's on the point of adopting some definite line, something strong and original that's going to fire the public imagination and bring the Tories back into power. LADY JOHN. So he will. FARN. (_hotly_). Not if he disappoints meetings--goes calmly up to town--and leaves the field to the Liberals. LADY JOHN. When did he do anything like that? FARN. Yesterday! (_With a harassed air._) And now that he's got this other preoccupation---- LADY JOHN. You mean---- FARN. Yes, your niece--that spoilt child of Fortune. Of course! (_Stopping suddenly._) She kept him from the meeting last night. Well! (_sits down_) if that's the effect she's going to have it's pretty serious! LADY JOHN (_smiling_). _You_ are! FARN. I can assure you the election agent's more so. He's simply tearing his hair. LADY JOHN (_more gravely and coming nearer_). How do you know? FARN. He told me so himself--yesterday. I scraped acquaintance with the agent just to see if--if---- LADY JOHN. It's not only here that you manoeuvre for that Secretaryship! FARN. (_confidentially_). You can never tell when your chance might come! That election chap's promised to keep me posted. (_The door flies open and_ JEAN DUNBARTON _rushes in._) JEAN. Aunt Ellen--here I---- LADY JOHN (_astonished_). My dear child! (_They embrace. Enter_ LORD JOHN _from the garden--a benevolent, silver-haired despot of sixty-two._) LORD JOHN. I thought that was you running up the avenue. (JEAN _greets her uncle warmly, but all the time she and her aunt talk together. "How did you get here so early?" "I knew you'd be surprised--wasn't it clever of me to manage it? I don't deserve all the credit." "But there isn't any train between----" "Yes, wait till I tell you." "You walked in the broiling sun----" "No, no." "You must be dead. Why didn't you telegraph? I ordered the carriage to meet the 1.10. Didn't you say the 1.10? Yes, I'm sure you did--here's your letter."_) LORD J. (_has shaken hands with_ FARNBOROUGH _and speaks through the torrent_). Now they'll tell each other for ten minutes that she's an hour earlier than we expected. (LORD JOHN _leads_ FARNBOROUGH _towards the garden._) FARN. The Freddy Tunbridges said _they_ were coming to you this week. LORD J. Yes, they're dawdling through the park with the Church Brigade. FARN. Oh! (_With a glance back at_ JEAN.) I'll go and meet them. [_Exit_ FARNBOROUGH. LORD J. (_as he turns back_). That discreet young man will get on. LADY JOHN (_to_ JEAN). But _how_ did you get here? JEAN (_breathless_). "He" motored me down. LADY JOHN. Geoffrey Stonor? (JEAN _nods_.) Why, where is he, then? JEAN. He dropped me at the end of the avenue and went on to see a supporter about something. LORD J. You let him go off like that without---- LADY JOHN (_taking_ JEAN'S _two hands_). Just tell me, my child, is it all right? JEAN. My engagement? (_Radiantly._) Yes, absolutely. LADY JOHN. Geoffrey Stonor isn't going to be--a little too old for you? JEAN (_laughing_). Bless me, am I such a chicken? LADY JOHN. Twenty-four used not to be so young--but it's become so. JEAN. Yes, we don't grow up so quick. (_Gaily._) But on the other hand we _stay_ up longer. LORD J. You've got what's vulgarly called "looks," my dear, and that will help to _keep_ you up! JEAN (_smiling_). I know what Uncle John's thinking. But I'm not the only girl who's been left "what's vulgarly called" money. LORD J. You're the only one of our immediate circle who's been left so beautifully much. JEAN. Ah, but remember Geoffrey could--everybody _knows_ he could have married any one in England. LADY JOHN (_faintly ironic_). I'm afraid everybody does know it--not excepting Mr. Stonor. LORD J. Well, how spoilt is the great man? JEAN. Not the least little bit in the world. You'll see! He so wants to know my best-beloved relations better. (_Another embrace._) An orphan has so few belongings, she has to make the most of them. LORD J. (_smiling_). Let us hope he'll approve of us on more intimate acquaintance. JEAN (_firmly_). He will. He's an angel. Why, he gets on with my grandfather! LADY JOHN. _Does_ he? (_Teasing._) You mean to say Mr. Geoffrey Stonor isn't just a tiny bit--"superior" about Dissenters. JEAN (_stoutly_). Not half as much as Uncle John and all the rest of you! My grandfather's been ill again, you know, and rather difficult--bless him! (_Radiantly._) But Geoffrey---- (_Clasps her hands._) LADY JOHN. He must have powers of persuasion!--to get that old Covenanter to let you come in an abhorred motor-car--on Sunday, too! JEAN (_half whispering_). Grandfather didn't know! LADY JOHN. Didn't know? JEAN. I honestly meant to come by train. Geoffrey met me on my way to the station. We had the most glorious run. Oh, Aunt Ellen, we're so happy! (_Embracing her._) I've so looked forward to having you to myself the whole day just to talk to you about---- LORD J. (_turning away with affected displeasure_). Oh, very well---- JEAN (_catches him affectionately by the arm_). _You'd_ find it dreffly dull to hear me talk about Geoffrey the whole blessed day! LADY JOHN. Well, till luncheon, my dear, you mustn't mind if I---- (_To_ LORD JOHN, _as she goes to writing-table._) Miss Levering wasn't only tired last night, she was ill. LORD J. I thought she looked very white. JEAN. Who is Miss---- You don't mean to say there are other people? LADY JOHN. One or two. Your uncle's responsible for asking that old cynic, St. John Greatorex, and I---- JEAN (_gravely_). Mr. Greatorex--he's a Radical, isn't he? LORD J. (_laughing_). _Jean!_ Beginning to "think in parties"! LADY JOHN. It's very natural now that she should---- JEAN. I only meant it was odd he should be here. Naturally at my grandfather's---- LORD J. It's all right, my child. Of course we expect now that you'll begin to think like Geoffrey Stonor, and to feel like Geoffrey Stonor, and to talk like Geoffrey Stonor. And quite proper too. JEAN (_smiling_). Well, if I do think with my husband and feel with him--as, of course, I shall--it will surprise me if I ever find myself talking a tenth as well---- (_Following her uncle to the French window._) You should have heard him at Dutfield----(_Stopping short, delighted._) Oh! The Freddy Tunbridges. What? Not Aunt Lydia! Oh-h! (_Looking back reproachfully at_ LADY JOHN, _who makes a discreet motion "I couldn't help it."_) (_Enter the_ TUNBRIDGES. MR. FREDDY, _of no profession and of independent means. Well-groomed, pleasant-looking; of few words. A "nice man" who likes "nice women" and has married one of them._ MRS. FREDDY _is thirty. An attractive figure, delicate face, intelligent grey eyes, over-sensitive mouth, and naturally curling dust-coloured hair._) MRS. FREDDY. What a delightful surprise! JEAN (_shaking hands warmly_). I'm so glad. How d'ye do, Mr. Freddy? (_Enter_ LADY JOHN'S _sister_, MRS. HERIOT--_smart, pompous, fifty--followed by_ FARNBOROUGH.) MRS. HERIOT. My dear Jean! My darling child! JEAN. How do you do, aunt? MRS. H. (_sotto voce_). _I_ wasn't surprised. I always prophesied---- JEAN. Sh! _Please!_ FARN. We haven't met since you were in short skirts. I'm Dick Farnborough. JEAN. Oh, I remember. (_They shake hands._) MRS. F. (_looking round_). Not down yet--the Elusive One? JEAN. Who is the Elusive One? MRS. F. Lady John's new friend. LORD J. (_to_ JEAN). Oh, I forgot you hadn't seen Miss Levering; such a nice creature! (_To_ MRS. FREDDY.)--don't you think? MRS. F. Of course I do. You're lucky to get her to come so often. She won't go to other people. LADY JOHN. She knows she can rest here. FREDDY (_who has joined_ LADY JOHN _near the writing-table_). What does she do to tire her? LADY JOHN. She's been helping my sister and me with a scheme of ours. MRS. H. She certainly knows how to inveigle money out of the men. LADY JOHN. It would sound less equivocal, Lydia, if you added that the money is to build baths in our Shelter for Homeless Women. MRS. F. Homeless women? LADY JOHN. Yes, in the most insanitary part of Soho. FREDDY. Oh--a--really. FARN. It doesn't sound quite in Miss Levering's line! LADY JOHN. My dear boy, you know as little about what's in a woman's line as most men. FREDDY (_laughing_). Oh, I say! LORD J. (_indulgently to_ MR. FREDDY _and_ FARNBOROUGH). Philanthropy in a woman like Miss Levering is a form of restlessness. But she's a _nice_ creature; all she needs is to get some "nice" fella to marry her. MRS. F. (_laughing as she hangs on her husband's arm_). Yes, a woman needs a balance wheel--if only to keep her from flying back to town on a hot day like this. LORD J. Who's proposing anything so---- MRS. F. The Elusive One. LORD J. Not Miss---- MRS. F. Yes, before luncheon! [_Exit_ FARNBOROUGH _to garden._ LADY JOHN. She must be in London by this afternoon, she says. LORD J. What for in the name of---- LADY JOHN. Well, _that_ I didn't ask her. But (_consults watch_) I think I'll just go up and see if she's changed her plans. [_Exit_ LADY JOHN. LORD J. Oh, she must be _made_ to. Such a nice creature! All she needs---- (_Voices outside. Enter fussily, talking and gesticulating_, ST. JOHN GREATOREX, _followed by_ MISS LEVERING _and_ FARNBOROUGH. GREATOREX _is sixty, wealthy, a county magnate, and Liberal M.P. He is square, thick-set, square-bearded. His shining bald pate has two strands of coal-black hair trained across his crown from left ear to right and securely pasted there. He has small, twinkling eyes and a reputation for telling good stories after dinner when ladies have left the room. He is carrying a little book for_ MISS LEVERING. _She (parasol over shoulder), an attractive, essentially feminine, and rather "smart" woman of thirty-two, with a somewhat foreign grace; the kind of whom men and women alike say, "What's her story? Why doesn't she marry?"_) GREATOREX. I protest! Good Lord! what are the women of this country coming to? I _protest_ against Miss Levering being carried off to discuss anything so revolting. Bless my soul! what can a woman like you _know_ about it? MISS LEVERING (_smiling_). Little enough. Good morning. GREAT. (_relieved_). I should think so indeed! LORD J. (_aside_). You aren't serious about going---- GREAT. (_waggishly breaking in_). We were so happy out there in the summer-house, weren't we? MISS L. Ideally. GREAT. And to be haled out to talk about Public _Sanitation_ forsooth! (_Hurries after_ MISS LEVERING _as she advances to speak to the_ FREDDYS, _&c._) Why, God bless my soul, do you realise that's _drains_? MISS L. I'm dreadfully afraid it is! (_Holds out her hand for the small book_ GREATOREX _is carrying._) (GREATOREX _returns_ MISS LEVERING'S _book open; he has been keeping the place with his finger. She opens it and shuts her handkerchief in._) GREAT. And we in the act of discussing Italian literature! Perhaps you'll tell me that isn't a more savoury topic for a lady. MISS L. But for the tramp population less conducive to savouriness, don't you think, than--baths? GREAT. No, I can't understand this morbid interest in vagrants. _You're_ much too--leave it to the others. JEAN. What others? GREAT. (_with smiling impertinence_). Oh, the sort of woman who smells of indiarubber. The typical English spinster. (_To_ MISS LEVERING.) _You_ know--Italy's full of her. She never goes anywhere without a mackintosh and a collapsible bath--rubber. When you look at her, it's borne in upon you that she doesn't only smell of rubber. _She's_ rubber too. LORD J. (_laughing_). This is my niece, Miss Jean Dunbarton, Miss Levering. JEAN. How do you do? (_They shake hands._) GREAT. (_to_ JEAN). I'm sure _you_ agree with me. JEAN. About Miss Levering being too---- GREAT. For that sort of thing--_much_ too---- MISS L. What a pity you've exhausted the more eloquent adjectives. GREAT. But I haven't! MISS L. Well, you can't say to me as you did to Mrs. Freddy: "You're too young and too happily married--and too----" (_Glances round smiling at_ MRS. FREDDY, _who, oblivious, is laughing and talking to her husband and_ MRS. HERIOT.) JEAN. For what was Mrs. Freddy too happily married and all the rest? MISS L. (_lightly_). Mr. Greatorex was repudiating the horrid rumour that Mrs. Freddy had been speaking in public; about Women's Trade Unions--wasn't that what you said, Mrs. Heriot? LORD J. (_chuckling_). Yes, it isn't made up as carefully as your aunt's parties usually are. Here we've got Greatorex (_takes his arm_) who hates political women, and we've got in that mild and inoffensive-looking little lady---- (_Motion over his shoulder towards_ MRS. FREDDY.) GREAT. (_shrinking down stage in comic terror_). You don't mean she's _really_---- JEAN (_simultaneously and gaily rising_). Oh, and you've got me! LORD J. (_with genial affection_). My dear child, he doesn't hate the charming wives and sweethearts who help to win seats. (JEAN _makes her uncle a discreet little signal of warning._) MISS L. Mr. Greatorex objects only to the unsexed creatures who--a---- LORD J. (_hastily to cover up his slip_). Yes, yes, who want to act independently of men. MISS L. Vote, and do silly things of that sort. LORD J. (_with enthusiasm_). Exactly. MRS. H. It will be a long time before we hear any more of _that_ nonsense. JEAN. You mean that rowdy scene in the House of Commons? MRS. H. Yes. No decent woman will be able to say "Suffrage" without blushing for another generation, thank Heaven! MISS L. (_smiling_). Oh? I understood that so little I almost imagined people were more stirred up about it than they'd ever been before. GREAT. (_with a quizzical affectation of gallantry_). Not people like you. MISS L. (_teasingly_). How do you know? GREAT. (_with a start_). God bless my soul! LORD J. She's saying that only to get a rise out of you. GREAT. Ah, yes, your frocks aren't serious enough. MISS L. I'm told it's an exploded notion that the Suffrage women are all dowdy and dull. GREAT. Don't you believe it! MISS L. Well, of course we know you've been an authority on the subject for--let's see, how many years is it you've kept the House in roars whenever Woman's Rights are mentioned? GREAT. (_flattered but not entirely comfortable_). Oh, as long as I've known anything about politics there have been a few discontented old maids and hungry widows---- MISS L. "A few!" That's really rather forbearing of you, Mr. Greatorex. I'm afraid the number of the discontented and the hungry was 96,000--among the mill operatives alone. (_Hastily._) At least the papers said so, didn't they? GREAT. Oh, don't ask me; that kind of woman doesn't interest me, I'm afraid. Only I am able to point out to the people who lose their heads and seem inclined to treat the phenomenon seriously that there's absolutely nothing new in it. There have been women for the last forty years who haven't had anything more pressing to do than petition Parliament. MISS L. (_reflectively_). And that's as far as they've got. LORD J. (_turning on his heel_). It's as far as they'll ever get. (_Meets the group up_ R. _coming down._) MISS L. (_chaffing_ GREATOREX). Let me see, wasn't a deputation sent to you not long ago? (_Sits_ C.) GREAT. H'm! (_Irritably._) Yes, yes. MISS L. (_as though she has just recalled the circumstances_). Oh, yes, I remember. I thought at the time, in my modest way, it was nothing short of heroic of them to go asking audience of their arch opponent. GREAT. (_stoutly_). It didn't come off. MISS L. (_innocently_). Oh! I thought they insisted on bearding the lion in his den. GREAT. Of course I wasn't going to be bothered with a lot of---- MISS L. You don't mean you refused to go out and face them! GREAT. (_with a comic look of terror_). I wouldn't have done it for worlds. But a friend of mine went and had a look at 'em. MISS L. (_smiling_). Well, did he get back alive? GREAT. Yes, but he advised me not to go. "You're quite right," he said. "Don't you think of bothering," he said. "I've looked over the lot," he said, "and there isn't a week-ender among 'em." JEAN (_gaily precipitates herself into the conversation_). You remember Mrs. Freddy's friend who came to tea here in the winter? (_To_ GREATOREX.) He was a member of Parliament too--quite a little young one--he said women would never be respected till they had the vote! (GREATOREX _snorts, the other men smile and all the women except_ MRS. HERIOT.) MRS. H. (_sniffing_). I remember telling him that he was too young to know what he was talking about. LORD J. Yes, I'm afraid you all sat on the poor gentleman. LADY JOHN (_entering_). Oh, _there_ you are! (_Greets_ MISS LEVERING.) JEAN. It was such fun. He was flat as a pancake when we'd done with him. Aunt Ellen told him with her most distinguished air she didn't want to be "respected." MRS. F. (_with a little laugh of remonstrance_). My _dear_ Lady John! FARN. Quite right! Awful idea to think you're _respected_! MISS L. (_smiling_). Simply revolting. LADY JOHN (_at writing-table_). Now, you frivolous people, go away. We've only got a few minutes to talk over the terms of the late Mr. Soper's munificence before the carriage comes for Miss Levering---- MRS. F. (_to_ FARNBOROUGH). Did you know she'd got that old horror to give Lady John £8,000 for her charity before he died? MRS. F. Who got him to? LADY JOHN. Miss Levering. He wouldn't do it for me, but she brought him round. FREDDY. Yes. Bah-ee Jove! I expect so. MRS. F. (_turning enthusiastically to her husband_). Isn't she wonderful? LORD J. (_aside_). Nice creature. All she needs is---- (MR. _and_ MRS. FREDDY _and_ FARNBOROUGH _stroll off to the garden._ LADY JOHN _on far side of the writing-table._ MRS. HERIOT _at the top._ JEAN _and_ LORD JOHN, L.) GREAT. (_on divan_ C., _aside to_ MISS LEVERING). Too "wonderful" to waste your time on the wrong people. MISS L. I shall waste less of my time after this. GREAT. I'm relieved to hear it. I can't see you wheedling money for shelters and rot of that sort out of retired grocers. MISS L. You see, you call it rot. We couldn't have got £8,000 out of _you_. GREAT. (_very low_). I'm not sure. (MISS LEVERING _looks at him._) GREAT. If I gave you that much--for your little projects--what would you give me? MISS L. (_speaking quietly_). Soper didn't ask that. GREAT. (_horrified_). Soper! I should think not! LORD J. (_turning to_ MISS LEVERING). Soper? You two still talking Soper? How flattered the old beggar'd be! LORD J. (_lower_). Did you hear what Mrs. Heriot said about him? "So kind; so munificent--so _vulgar_, poor soul, we couldn't know him in London--_but we shall meet him in heaven_." (GREATOREX _and_ LORD JOHN _go off laughing._) LADY JOHN (_to Miss Levering_). Sit over there, my dear. (_Indicating chair in front of writing-table._) You needn't stay, Jean. This won't interest you. MISS L. (_in the tone of one agreeing_). It's only an effort to meet the greatest evil in the world? JEAN (_pausing as she's following the others_). What do you call the greatest evil in the world? (_Looks pass between_ MRS. HERIOT _and_ LADY JOHN.) MISS L. (_without emphasis_). The helplessness of women. (JEAN _stands still._) LADY JOHN (_rising and putting her arm about the girl's shoulder_). Jean, darling, I know you can think of nothing but (_aside_) _him_--so just go and---- JEAN (_brightly_). Indeed, indeed, I can think of everything better than I ever did before. He has lit up everything for me--made everything vivider, more--more significant. MISS L. (_turning round_). Who has? JEAN. Oh, yes, I don't care about other things less but a thousand times more. LADY JOHN. You _are_ in love. MISS L. Oh, that's it! (_Smiling at_ JEAN.) I congratulate you. LADY JOHN (_returning to the outspread plan_). Well--_this_, you see, obviates the difficulty you raised. MISS L. Yes, quite. MRS. H. But it's going to cost a great deal more. MISS L. It's worth it. MRS. H. We'll have nothing left for the organ at St. Pilgrim's. LADY JOHN. My dear Lydia, we're putting the organ aside. MRS. H. (_with asperity_). We can't afford to "put aside" the elevating effect of music. LADY JOHN. What we must make for, first, is the cheap and humanely conducted lodging-house. MRS. H. There are several of those already, but poor St. Pilgrim's---- MISS L. There are none for the poorest women. LADY JOHN. No, even the excellent Soper was for multiplying Rowton Houses. You can never get men to realise--you can't always get women---- MISS L. It's the work least able to wait. MRS. H. I don't agree with you, and I happen to have spent a great deal of my life in works of charity. MISS L. Ah, then you'll be interested in the girl I saw dying in a Tramp Ward a little while ago. _Glad_ her cough was worse--only she mustn't die before her father. Two reasons. Nobody but her to keep the old man out of the workhouse--and "father is so proud." If she died first, he would starve; worst of all he might hear what had happened up in London to his girl. MRS. H. She didn't say, I suppose, how she happened to fall so low. MISS L. Yes, she had been in service. She lost the train back one Sunday night and was too terrified of her employer to dare ring him up after hours. The wrong person found her crying on the platform. MRS. H. She should have gone to one of the Friendly Societies. MISS L. At eleven at night? MRS. H. And there are the Rescue Leagues. I myself have been connected with one for twenty years---- MISS L. (_reflectively_). "Twenty years!" Always arriving "after the train's gone"--after the girl and the Wrong Person have got to the journey's end. (MRS. HERIOT's _eyes flash._) JEAN. Where is she now? LADY JOHN. Never mind. MISS L. Two nights ago she was waiting at a street corner in the rain. MRS. H. Near a public-house, I suppose. MISS L. Yes, a sort of "public-house." She was plainly dying--she was told she shouldn't be out in the rain. "I mustn't go in yet," she said. "_This_ is what he gave me," and she began to cry. In her hand were two pennies silvered over to look like half-crowns. MRS. H. I don't believe that story. It's just the sort of thing some sensation-monger trumps up--now, who tells you such---- MISS L. Several credible people. I didn't believe them till---- JEAN. Till----? MISS L. Till last week I saw for myself. LADY JOHN. _Saw?_ Where? MISS L. In a low lodging-house not a hundred yards from the church you want a new organ for. MRS. H. How did _you_ happen to be there? MISS L. I was on a pilgrimage. JEAN. A pilgrimage? MISS L. Into the Underworld. LADY JOHN. _You_ went? JEAN. How _could_ you? MISS L. I put on an old gown and a tawdry hat---- (_Turns to_ LADY JOHN.) You'll never know how many things are hidden from a woman in good clothes. The bold, free look of a man at a woman he believes to be destitute--you must _feel_ that look on you before you can understand--a good half of history. MRS. H. (_rises_). Jean!---- JEAN. But where did you go--dressed like that? MISS L. Down among the homeless women--on a wet night looking for shelter. LADY JOHN (_hastily_). No wonder you've been ill. JEAN (_under breath_). And it's like that? MISS L. No. JEAN. No? MISS L. It's so much worse I dare not tell about it--even if you weren't here I couldn't. MRS. H. (_to_ JEAN). You needn't suppose, darling, that those wretched creatures feel it as we would. MISS L. The girls who need shelter and work aren't all serving-maids. MRS. H. (_with an involuntary flash_). We know that all the women who--_make mistakes_ aren't. MISS L. (_steadily_). That is why every woman ought to take an interest in this--every girl too. JEAN Yes--oh, yes! (_simultaneously_) LADY JOHN No. This is a matter for us older---- MRS. H. (_with an air of sly challenge_). Or for a person who has some special knowledge. (_Significantly._) _We_ can't pretend to have access to such sources of information as Miss Levering. MISS L. (_meeting_ MRS. HERIOT'S _eye steadily_). Yes, for I can give you access. As you seem to think, I have some first-hand knowledge about homeless girls. LADY JOHN (_cheerfully turning it aside_). Well, my dear, it will all come in convenient. (_Tapping the plan._) MISS L. It once happened to me to take offence at an ugly thing that was going on under my father's roof. Oh, _years_ ago! I was an impulsive girl. I turned my back on my father's house---- LADY JOHN (_for_ JEAN'S _benefit_). That was ill-advised. MRS. H. Of course, if a girl does _that_---- MISS L. That was what all my relations said (_with a glance at_ JEAN), and I couldn't explain. JEAN. Not to your mother? MISS L. She was dead. I went to London to a small hotel and tried to find employment. I wandered about all day and every day from agency to agency. I was supposed to be educated. I'd been brought up partly in Paris; I could play several instruments, and sing little songs in four different tongues. (_Slight pause._) JEAN. Did nobody want you to teach French or sing the little songs? MISS L. The heads of schools thought me too young. There were people ready to listen to my singing, but the terms--they were too hard. Soon my money was gone. I began to pawn my trinkets. _They_ went. JEAN. And still no work? MISS L. No; but by that time I had some real education--an unpaid hotel bill, and not a shilling in the world. (_Slight pause._) Some girls think it hardship to have to earn their living. The horror is not to be allowed to---- JEAN. (_bending forward_). What happened? LADY JOHN (_rises_). My dear (_to_ MISS LEVERING), have your things been sent down? Are you quite ready? MISS L. Yes, all but my hat. JEAN. Well? MISS L. Well, by chance I met a friend of my family. JEAN. That was lucky. MISS L. I thought so. He was nearly ten years older than I. He said he wanted to help me. (_Pause._) JEAN. And didn't he? (LADY JOHN _lays her hand on_ MISS LEVERING'S _shoulder._) MISS L. Perhaps after all he did. (_With sudden change of tone._) Why do I waste time over myself? I belonged to the little class of armed women. My body wasn't born weak, and my spirit wasn't broken by the _habit_ of slavery. But, as Mrs. Heriot was kind enough to hint, I do know something about the possible fate of homeless girls. I found there were pleasant parks, museums, free libraries in our great rich London--and not one single place where destitute women can be sure of work that isn't killing or food that isn't worse than prison fare. That's why women ought not to sleep o' nights till this Shelter stands spreading out wide arms. JEAN. No, no---- MRS. H. (_gathering up her gloves, fan, prayer-book, &c._). Even when it's built--you'll see! Many of those creatures will prefer the life they lead. They _like_ it. MISS L. A woman told me--one of the sort that knows--told me many of them "like it" so much that they are indifferent to the risk of being sent to prison. "_It gives them a rest_," she said. LADY JOHN. A rest! (MISS LEVERING _glances at the clock as she rises to go upstairs._) (LADY JOHN _and_ MRS. HERIOT _bend their heads over the plan, covertly talking._) JEAN (_intercepting_ MISS LEVERING). I want to begin to understand something of--I'm horribly ignorant. MISS L. (_Looks at her searchingly_). I'm a rather busy person---- JEAN. (_interrupting_). I have a quite special reason for wanting _not_ to be ignorant. (_Impulsively_). I'll go to town to-morrow, if you'll come and lunch with me. MISS L. Thank you--I (_catches_ MRS. HERIOT'S _eye_)--I must go and put my hat on. [_Exit upstairs._ MRS. H. (_aside_). How little she minds all these horrors! LADY JOHN. They turn me cold. Ugh! (_Rising, harassed._) I wonder if she's signed the visitors' book! MRS. H. For all her Shelter schemes, she's a hard woman. JEAN. Miss Levering is? MRS. H. Oh, of course _you_ won't think so. She has angled very adroitly for your sympathy. JEAN. She doesn't look hard. LADY JOHN (_glancing at_ JEAN _and taking alarm_). I'm not sure but what she does. Her mouth--always like this ... as if she were holding back something by main force! MRS. H. (_half under her breath_). Well, so she is. [_Exit_ LADY JOHN _into the lobby to look at the visitors' book._ JEAN. Why haven't I seen her before? MRS. H. Oh, she's lived abroad. (_Debating with herself._) You don't know about her, I suppose? JEAN. I don't know how Aunt Ellen came to know her. MRS. H. That was my doing. But I didn't bargain for her being introduced to you. JEAN. She seems to go everywhere. And why shouldn't she? MRS. H. (_quickly_). You mustn't ask her to Eaton Square. JEAN. I have. MRS. H. Then you'll have to get out of it. JEAN (_with a stubborn look_). I must have a reason. And a very good reason. MRS. H. Well, it's not a thing I should have preferred to tell you, but I know how difficult you are to guide ... so I suppose you'll have to know. (_Lowering her voice._) It was ten or twelve years ago. I found her horribly ill in a lonely Welsh farmhouse. We had taken the Manor for that August. The farmer's wife was frightened, and begged me to go and see what I thought. I soon saw how it was--I thought she was dying. JEAN. _Dying!_ What was the---- MRS. H. I got no more out of her than the farmer's wife did. She had had no letters. There had been no one to see her except a man down from London, a shady-looking doctor--nameless, of course. And then this result. The farmer and his wife, highly respectable people, were incensed. They were for turning the girl out. JEAN. _Oh!_ but---- MRS. H. Yes. Pitiless some of these people are! I insisted they should treat the girl humanely, and we became friends ... that is, "sort of." In spite of all I did for her---- JEAN. What did you do? MRS. H. I--I've told you, and I lent her money. No small sum either. JEAN. Has she never paid it back? MRS. H. Oh, yes, after a time. But I _always_ kept her secret--as much as I knew of it. JEAN. But you've been telling me! MRS. H. That was my duty--and I _never_ had her full confidence. JEAN. Wasn't it natural she---- MRS. H. Well, all things considered, she might have wanted to tell me who was responsible. JEAN. Oh! Aunt Lydia! MRS. H. All she ever said was that she was ashamed--(_losing her temper and her fine feeling for the innocence of her auditor_)--ashamed that she "hadn't had the courage to resist"--not the original temptation but the pressure brought to bear on her "not to go through with it," as she said. JEAN (_wrinkling her brows_). You are being so delicate--I'm not sure I understand. MRS. H. (_irritably_). The only thing you need understand is that she's not a desirable companion for a young girl. (_Pause._) JEAN. When did you see her after--after---- MRS. H. (_with a slight grimace_). I met her last winter at the Bishop's. (_Hurriedly._) She's a connection of his wife's. They'd got her to help with some of their work. Then she took hold of ours. Your aunt and uncle are quite foolish about her, and I'm debarred from taking any steps, at least till the Shelter is out of hand. JEAN. I do rather wonder she can bring herself to talk about--the unfortunate women of the world. MRS. H. The effrontery of it! JEAN. Or ... the courage! (_Puts her hand up to her throat as if the sentence had caught there._) MRS. H. Even presumes to set _me_ right! Of course I don't _mind_ in the least, poor soul ... but I feel I owe it to your dead mother to tell you about her, especially as you're old enough now to know something about life---- JEAN (_slowly_).--and since a girl needn't be very old to suffer for her ignorance. (_Moves a little away._) I _felt_ she was rather wonderful. MRS. H. _Wonderful!_ JEAN (_pausing_). ... To have lived through _that_ when she was ... how old? MRS. H. (_rising_). Oh, nineteen or thereabouts. JEAN. Five years younger than I. To be abandoned and to come out of it like this! MRS. H. (_laying her hand on the girl's shoulder_). It was too bad to have to tell you such a sordid story to-day of all days. JEAN. It is a very terrible story, but this wasn't a bad time. I feel very sorry to-day for women who aren't happy. (_Motor horn heard faintly._) (_Jumping up._) That's Geoffrey! MRS. H. Mr. Stonor! What makes you think...? JEAN. Yes, yes. I'm sure, I'm sure---- (_Checks herself as she is flying off. Turns and sees_ LORD JOHN _entering from the garden._) (_Motor horn louder._) LORD J. Who do you think is motoring up the drive? JEAN (_catching hold of him_). Oh, dear! how am I ever going to be able to behave like a girl who isn't engaged to the only man in the world worth marrying? MRS. H. You were expecting Mr. Stonor all the time! JEAN. He promised he'd come to luncheon if it was humanly possible; but I was afraid to tell you for fear he'd be prevented. LORD J. (_laughing as he crosses to the lobby_). You felt we couldn't have borne the disappointment. JEAN. I felt I couldn't. (_The lobby door opens._ LADY JOHN _appears radiant, followed by a tall figure in a dust-coat, &c., no goggles. He has straight, firm features, a little blunt; fair skin, high-coloured; fine, straight hair, very fair; grey eyes, set somewhat prominently and heavy when not interested; lips full, but firmly moulded._ GEOFFREY STONOR _is heavier than a man of forty should be, but otherwise in the pink of physical condition. The_ FOOTMAN _stands waiting to help him off with his motor coat._) LADY JOHN. Here's an agreeable surprise! (JEAN _has gone forward only a step, and stands smiling at the approaching figure._) LORD J. How do you do? (_As he comes between them and briskly shakes hands with_ STONOR.) (FARNBOROUGH _appears at the French window_.) FARN. Yes, by Jove! (_Turning to the others clustered round the window._) What gigantic luck! (_Those outside crane and glance, and then elaborately turn their backs and pretend to be talking among themselves, but betray as far as manners permit the enormous sensation the arrival has created._) STONOR. How do you do? (_Shakes hands with_ MRS. HERIOT, _who has rushed up to him with both hers outstretched. He crosses to_ JEAN, _who meets him half way; they shake hands, smiling into each other's eyes._) JEAN. Such a long time since we met! LORD J. (_to_ STONOR). You're growing very enterprising. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard you'd motored all the way from town to see a supporter on Sunday. STONOR. I don't know how we covered the ground in the old days. (_To_ LADY JOHN.) It's no use to stand for your borough any more. The American, you know, he "runs" for Congress. By and by we shall all be flying after the thing we want. (_Smiles at_ JEAN.) JEAN. Sh! (_Smiles and then glances over her shoulder and speaks low._) All sorts of irrelevant people here. FARN. (_unable to resist the temptation, comes forward_). How do you do, Mr. Stonor? STONOR. Oh--how d'you do. FARN. Some of them were arguing in the smoking-room last night whether it didn't hurt a man's chances going about in a motor. LORD J. Yes, we've been hearing a lot of stories about the unpopularity of motor-cars--among the class that hasn't got 'em, of course. What do you say? LADY JOHN. I'm sure you gain more votes by being able to reach so many more of your constituency than we used---- STONOR. Well, I don't know--I've sometimes wondered whether the charm of our presence wasn't counterbalanced by the way we tear about smothering our fellow-beings in dust and running down their pigs and chickens, not to speak of their children. LORD J. (_anxiously_). What on the whole are the prospects? (FARNBOROUGH _cranes forward_.) STONOR (_gravely_). We shall have to work harder than we realised. FARN. Ah! (_Retires towards group._) JEAN (_in a half-aside as she slips her arm in her uncle's and smiles at_ GEOFFREY). He says he believes I'll be able to make a real difference to his chances. Isn't it angelic of him? STONOR (_in a jocular tone_). Angelic? Macchiavelian. I pin all my hopes on your being able to counteract the pernicious influence of my opponent's glib wife. JEAN. You want me to have a _real_ share in it all, don't you, Geoffrey? STONOR (_smiling into her eyes_). Of course I do. (FARNBOROUGH _drops down again on pretence of talking to_ MRS. HERIOT.) LORD J. I don't gather you're altogether sanguine. Any complication? (JEAN _and_ LADY JOHN _stand close together_ (C.), _the girl radiant, following_ STONOR _with her eyes and whispering to the sympathetic elder woman._) STONOR. Well (_taking Sunday paper out of pocket_), there's this agitation about the Woman Question. Oddly enough, it seems likely to affect the issue. LORD J. Why should it? Can't you do what the other four hundred have done? STONOR (_laughs_). Easily. But, you see, the mere fact that four hundred and twenty members have been worried into promising support--and then once in the House have let the matter severely alone---- LORD J. (_to_ STONOR). Let it alone! Bless my soul, I should think so indeed. STONOR. Of course. Only it's a device that's somewhat worn. (_Enter_ MISS LEVERING, _with hat on; gloves and veil in her hand._) LORD J. Still if they think they're getting a future Cabinet Minister on their side---- STONOR. ... it will be sufficiently embarrassing for the Cabinet Minister. (STONOR _turns to speak to_ JEAN. _Stops dead seeing_ MISS LEVERING.) JEAN (_smiling_). You know one another? MISS L. (_looking at_ STONOR _with intentness but quite calmly_). Everybody in this part of the world knows Mr. Stonor, but he doesn't know me. LORD J. Miss Levering. (_They bow._) (_Enter_ GREATOREX, _sidling in with an air of giving_ MRS. FREDDY _a wide berth._) JEAN (_to_ MISS LEVERING _with artless enthusiasm_). Oh, have you been hearing him speak? MISS L. Yes, I was visiting some relations near Dutfield. They took me to hear you. STONOR. Oh--the night the Suffragettes made their customary row. MISS L. The night they asked you---- STONOR (_flying at the first chance of distraction, shakes hands with_ MRS. FREDDY). Well, Mrs. Freddy, what do you think of your friends now? MRS. F. My friends? STONOR (_offering her the Sunday paper_). Yes, the disorderly women. MRS. F. (_with dignity_). They are not my friends, but I don't think you must call them---- STONOR. Why not? (_Laughs._) I can forgive them for worrying the late Government. But they _are_ disorderly. MISS L. (_quietly_). Isn't the phrase consecrated to a different class? GREAT. (_who has got hold of the Sunday paper_). He's perfectly right. How do you do? Disorderly women! That's what they are! FARN. (_reading over his shoulder_). Ought to be locked up! every one of 'em. GREAT. (_assenting angrily_). Public nuisances! Going about with dog whips and spitting in policemen's faces. MRS. F. (_with a harassed air_). I wonder if they did spit? GREAT. (_exulting_). Of _course_ they did. MRS. F. (_turns on him_). You're no authority on what they do. _You_ run away. GREAT. (_trying to turn the laugh_). Run away? Yes. (_Backing a few paces._) And if ever I muster up courage to come back, it will be to vote for better manners in public life, not worse than we have already. MRS. F. (_meekly_). So should I. Don't think that _I_ defend the Suffragette methods. JEAN. (_with cheerful curiosity_). Still, you _are_ an advocate of the Suffrage, aren't you? MRS. F. _Here?_ (_Shrugs._) I don't beat the air. GREAT. (_mocking_). Only policemen. MRS. F. (_plaintively_). If you cared to know the attitude of the real workers in the reform, you might have noticed in any paper last week we lost no time in dissociating ourselves from the little group of hysterical---- (_Catches her husband's eye, and instantly checks her flow of words._) MRS. H. They have lowered the whole sex in the eyes of the entire world. JEAN (_joining_ GEOFFREY STONOR). I can't quite see what they want--those Suffragettes. GREAT. Notoriety. FARN. What they want? A good thrashin'--that's what I'd give 'em. MISS L. (_murmurs_). Spirited fellow! LORD J. Well, there's one sure thing--they've dished their goose. (GREATOREX _chuckles, still reading the account._) I believe these silly scenes are a pure joy to you. GREAT. Final death-blow to the whole silly business! JEAN (_mystified, looking from one to the other_). The Suffragettes don't seem to _know_ they're dead. GREAT. They still keep up a sort of death-rattle. But they've done for themselves. JEAN (_clasping her hands with fervour_). Oh, I hope they'll last till the election's over. FARN. (_stares_). Why? JEAN. Oh, we want them to get the working man to--(_stumbling and a little confused_)--to vote for ... the Conservative candidate. Isn't that so? (_Looking round for help. General laughter._) LORD J. Fancy, Jean----! GREAT. The working man's a good deal of an ass, but even he won't listen to---- JEAN (_again appealing to the silent_ STONOR). But he _does_ listen like anything! I asked why there were so few at the Long Mitcham meeting, and I was told, "Oh, they've all gone to hear Miss----" STONOR. Just for a lark, that was. LORD J. It has no real effect on the vote. GREAT. Not the smallest. JEAN (_wide-eyed, to_ STONOR). Why, I thought you said---- STONOR (_hastily, rubbing his hand over the lower part of his face and speaking quickly_). I've a notion a little soap and water wouldn't do me any harm. LORD J. I'll take you up. You know Freddy Tunbridge. (STONOR _pauses to shake hands. Exeunt all three._) JEAN (_perplexed, as_ STONOR _turns away, says to_ GREATOREX). Well, if women are of no importance in politics, it isn't for the reason you gave. There is now and then a week-ender among them. GREAT. (_shuffles about uneasily_). Hm--Hm. (_Finds himself near_ MRS. FREDDY.) Lord! The perils that beset the feet of man! (_With an air of comic caution, moves away_, L.) JEAN (_to_ FARNBOROUGH, _aside, laughing_). Why does he behave like that? FARN. His moral sense is shocked. JEAN. Why, I saw him and Mrs. Freddy together at the French Play the other night--as thick as thieves. MISS L. Ah, that was before he knew her revolting views. JEAN. What revolting views? GREAT. Sh! Sunday. (_As_ GREATOREX _sidles cautiously further away._) JEAN (_laughing in spite of herself_). I can't believe women are so helpless when I see men so afraid of them. GREAT. The great mistake was in teaching them to read and write. JEAN (_over_ MISS LEVERING'S _shoulder, whispers_). _Say_ something. MISS L. (_to_ GREATOREX, _smiling_). Oh no, that wasn't the worst mistake. GREAT. Yes, it was. MISS L. No. Believe me. The mistake was in letting women learn to talk. GREAT. _Ah!_ (_Wheels about with sudden rapture._) I see now what's to be the next great reform. MISS L. (_holding up the little volume_). When women are all dumb, no more discussions of the "Paradiso." GREAT. (_with a gesture of mock rapture_). The thing itself! (_Aside._) That's a great deal better than talking about it, as I'm sure _you_ know. MISS L. Why do you think I know? GREAT. Only the plain women are in any doubt. (JEAN _joins_ MISS LEVERING.) GREAT. Wait for me, Farnborough. I cannot go about unprotected. [_Exeunt_ FARNBOROUGH _and_ GREATOREX. MRS. F. It's true what that old cynic says. The scene in the House has put back the reform a generation. JEAN. I wish 'd been there. MRS. F. I _was_. JEAN. Oh, was it like the papers said? MRS. F. Worse. I've never been so moved in public. No tragedy, no great opera ever gripped an audience as the situation in the House did that night. There we all sat breathless--with everything more favourable to us than it had been within the memory of women. Another five minutes and the Resolution would have passed. Then ... all in a moment---- LADY JOHN (_to_ MRS. HERIOT). Listen--they're talking about the female hooligans. MRS. H. No, thank you! (_Sits apart with the "Church Times."_) MRS. F. (_excitedly_). All in a moment a horrible dingy little flag was poked through the grille of the Woman's Gallery--cries--insults--scuffling--the police--the ignominious turning out of the women--_us_ as well as the---- Oh, I can't _think_ of it without---- (_Jumps up and walks to and fro._) (_Pauses._) Then the next morning! The people gloating. Our friends antagonised--people who were wavering--nearly won over--all thrown back--heart breaking! Even my husband! Freddy's been an angel about letting me take my share when I felt I must--but of course I've always known he doesn't really like it. It makes him shy. I'm sure it gives him a horrid twist inside when he sees my name among the speakers on the placards. But he's always been an angel about it before this. After the disgraceful scene he said, "It just shows how unfit women are for any sort of coherent thinking or concerted action." JEAN. To think that it should be women who've given the Cause the worst blow it ever had! MRS. F. The work of forty years destroyed in five minutes! JEAN. They must have felt pretty sick when they woke up the next morning--the Suffragettes. MRS. F. I don't waste any sympathy on _them_. I'm thinking of the penalty _all_ women have to pay because a handful of hysterical---- JEAN. Still I think I'm sorry for them. It must be dreadful to find you've done such a lot of harm to the thing you care most about in the world. MISS L. Do you picture the Suffragettes sitting in sackcloth? MRS. F. Well, they can't help realising _now_ what they've done. MISS L. (_quietly_). Isn't it just possible they realise they've waked up interest in the Woman Question so that it's advertised in every paper and discussed in every house from Land's End to John o'Groats? Don't you think _they_ know there's been more said and written about it in these ten days since the scene, than in the ten years before it? MRS. F. You aren't saying you think it was a good way to get what they wanted? MISS L. (_shrugs_). I'm only pointing out that it seems not such a bad way to get it known they _do_ want something--and (_smiling_) "want it bad." JEAN (_getting up_). Didn't Mr. Greatorex say women had been politely petitioning Parliament for forty years? MISS L. And men have only laughed. JEAN. But they'd come round. (_She looks from one to the other._) Mrs. Tunbridge says, before that horrid scene, everything was favourable at last. MISS L. At last? Hadn't it been just as "favourable" before? MRS. F. No. We'd never had so many members pledged to our side. MISS L. I thought I'd heard somebody say the Bill had got as far as that, time and time again. JEAN. Oh no. Surely not---- MRS. F. (_reluctantly_). Y-yes. This was only a Resolution. The Bill passed a second reading thirty-seven years ago. JEAN (_with wide eyes_). And what difference did it make? MISS L. The men laughed rather louder. MRS. F. Oh, it's got as far as a second reading several times--but we never had so many friends in the House before---- MISS L. (_with a faint smile_). "Friends!" JEAN. Why do you say it like that? MISS L. Perhaps because I was thinking of a funny story--he said it was funny--a Liberal Whip told me the other day. A Radical Member went out of the House after his speech in favour of the Woman's Bill, and as he came back half an hour later, he heard some Members talking in the Lobby about the astonishing number who were going to vote for the measure. And the Friend of Woman dropped his jaw and clutched the man next him: "My God!" he said, "you don't mean to say they're going to give it to them!" JEAN. Oh! MRS. F. You don't think all men in Parliament are like that! MISS L. I don't think all men are burglars, but I lock my doors. JEAN (_below her breath_). You think that night of the scene--you think the men didn't _mean_ to play fair? MISS L. (_her coolness in contrast to the excitement of the others_). Didn't the women sit quiet till ten minutes to closing time? JEAN. Ten minutes to settle a question like that! MISS L. (_quietly to_ MRS. FREDDY). Couldn't you see the men were at their old game? LADY JOHN (_coming forward_). You think they were just putting off the issue till it was too late? MISS L. (_in a detached tone_). _I_ wasn't there, but I haven't heard anybody deny that the women waited till ten minutes to eleven. Then they discovered the policeman who'd been sent up at the psychological moment to the back of the gallery. Then, I'm told, when the women saw they were betrayed once more, they utilised the few minutes left, to impress on the country at large the fact of their demands--did it in the only way left them. (_Sits leaning forward reflectively smiling, chin in hand._) It does rather look to the outsider as if the well-behaved women had worked for forty years and made less impression on the world then those fiery young women made in five minutes. MRS. F. Oh, come, be fair! MISS L. Well, you must admit that, next day, every newspaper reader in Europe and America knew there were women in England in such dead earnest about the Suffrage that the men had stopped laughing at last, and turned them out of the House. Men even advertised how little they appreciated the fun by sending the women to gaol in pretty sober earnest. And all the world was talking about it. (MRS. HERIOT _lays down the "Church Times" and joins the others._) LADY JOHN. I have noticed, whenever the men aren't there, the women sit and discuss that scene. JEAN (_cheerfully_). _I_ shan't have to wait till the men are gone. (_Leans over_ LADY JOHN'S _shoulder and says half aside_) He's in sympathy. LADY JOHN. How do you know? JEAN. He told the interrupting women so. (MRS. FREDDY _looks mystified. The others smile._) LADY JOHN. Oh! (MR. FREDDY _and_ LORD JOHN _appear by the door they went out of. They stop to talk._) MRS. F. Here's Freddy! (_Lower, hastily to_ MISS LEVERING.) You're judging from the outside. Those of us who have been working for years ... we all realise it was a perfectly lunatic proceeding. Why, _think_! The only chance of our getting what we want is by _winning over_ the men. (_Her watchful eye, leaving her husband for a moment, catches_ MISS LEVERING'S _little involuntary gesture._) What's the matter? MISS L. "Winning over the men" has been the woman's way for centuries. Do you think the result should make us proud of our policy? Yes? Then go and walk in Piccadilly at midnight. (_The older women glance at_ JEAN.) No, I forgot---- MRS. H. (_with majesty_). Yes, it's not the first time you've forgotten. MISS L. I forgot the magistrate's ruling. He said no decent woman had any business to be in London's main thoroughfare at night unless she has _a man with her_. I heard that in Nine Elms, too. "You're obliged to take up with a chap!" was what the woman said. MRS. H. (_rising_). JEAN! Come! (_She takes_ JEAN _by her arm and draws her to the window, where she signals_ GREATOREX _and_ FARNBOROUGH. MRS. FREDDY _joins her husband and_ LORD JOHN.) LADY JOHN (_kindly, aside to_ MISS LEVERING). My dear, I think Lydia Heriot's right. We oughtn't to do anything or _say_ anything to encourage this ferment of feminism, and I'll tell you why: it's likely to bring a very terrible thing in its train. MISS L. What terrible thing? LADY JOHN. Sex antagonism. MISS L. (_rising_). It's here. LADY JOHN (_very gravely_). Don't say that. (JEAN _has quietly disengaged herself from_ MRS. HERIOT, _and the group at the window returns and stands behind_ LADY JOHN, _looking up into_ MISS LEVERINGS'S _face._) MISS L. (_to_ LADY JOHN). You're so conscious it's here, you're afraid to have it mentioned. LADY JOHN (_turning and seeing_ JEAN. _Rising hastily_). If it's here, it is the fault of those women agitators. MISS L. (_gently_). No woman _begins_ that way. (_Leans forward with clasped hands looking into vacancy._) Every woman's in a state of natural subjection (_smiles at_ JEAN)--no, I'd rather say allegiance to her idea of romance and her hope of motherhood. They're embodied for her in man. They're the strongest things in life--till man kills them. (_Rousing herself and looking into_ LADY JOHN'S _face._) Let's be fair. Each woman knows why that allegiance died. (LADY JOHN _turns hastily, sees_ LORD JOHN _coming down with_ MR. FREDDY _and meets them at the foot of the stairs._ MISS LEVERING _has turned to the table looking for her gloves, &c., among the papers; unconsciously drops the handkerchief she had in her little book._) JEAN (_in a low voice to_ MISS LEVERING). All this talk against the wicked Suffragettes--it makes me want to go and hear what they've got to say for themselves. MISS L. (_smiling with a non-committal air as she finds the veil she's been searching for_). Well, they're holding a meeting in Trafalgar Square at three o'clock. JEAN. This afternoon? But that's no use to people out of town---- Unless I could invent some excuse.... LORD J. (_benevolently_). Still talking over the Shelter plans? MISS L. No. We left the Shelter some time ago. LORD J. (_to_ JEAN). Then what's all the chatterment about? (JEAN, _a little confused, looks at_ MISS LEVERING.) MISS L. The latest thing in veils. (_Ties hers round her hat._) GREAT. The invincible frivolity of woman! LORD J. (_genially_). Don't scold them. It's a very proper topic. MISS L. (_whimsically_). Oh, I was afraid you'd despise us for it. BOTH MEN (_with condescension_). Not at all--not at all. JEAN (_to_ MISS LEVERING _as_ FOOTMAN _appears_). Oh, they're coming for you. Don't forget your book. (FOOTMAN _holds out a salver with a telegram on it for_ JEAN.) Why, it's for me! MISS L. But it's time I was---- (_Crosses to table._) JEAN (_opening the telegram_). May I? (_Reads, and glances over the paper at_ MISS LEVERING.) I've got your book. (_Crosses to_ MISS LEVERING, _and, looking at the back of the volume_) Dante! Whereabouts are you? (_Opening at the marker._) Oh, the "Inferno." MISS L. No; I'm in a worse place. JEAN. I didn't know there was a worse. MISS L. Yes; it's worse with the Vigliacchi. JEAN. I forget. Were they Guelf or Ghibelline? MISS L. (_smiling_). They weren't either, and that was why Dante couldn't stand them. (_More gravely._) He said there was no place in Heaven nor in Purgatory--not even a corner in Hell--for the souls who had stood aloof from strife. (_Looking steadily into the girl's eyes._) He called them "wretches who never lived," Dante did, because they'd never felt the pangs of partizanship. And so they wander homeless on the skirts of limbo among the abortions and off-scourings of Creation. JEAN (_a long breath after a long look. When_ MISS LEVERING _has turned away to make her leisurely adieux_ JEAN'S _eyes fall on the open telegram_). Aunt Ellen, I've got to go to London. (STONOR, _re-entering, hears this, but pretends to talk to_ MR. FREDDY, _&c._) LADY JOHN. My dear child! MRS. H. Nonsense! Is your grandfather worse? JEAN (_folding the telegram_). No-o. I don't think so. But it's necessary I should go, all the same. MRS. H. Go away when Mr. Stonor---- JEAN. He said he'd have to leave directly after luncheon. LADY JOHN. I'll just see Miss Levering off, and then I'll come back and talk about it. LORD J. (_to_ MISS LEVERING). Why are you saying goodbye as if you were never coming back? MISS L. (_smiling_). One never knows. Maybe I shan't come back. (_To_ STONOR.) Goodbye. (STONOR _bows ceremoniously. The others go up laughing._ STONOR _comes down_.) JEAN (_impulsively_). There mayn't be another train! Miss Levering---- STONOR (_standing in front of her_). What if there isn't? I'll take you back in the motor. JEAN (_rapturously_). _Will_ you? (_Inadvertently drops the telegram._) I must be there by three! STONOR (_picks up the telegram and a handkerchief lying near, glances at the message_). Why, it's only an invitation to dine--Wednesday! JEAN. Sh! (_Takes the telegram and puts it in her pocket._) STONOR. Oh, I see! (_Lower, smiling._) It's rather dear of you to arrange our going off like that. You _are_ a clever little girl! JEAN. It's not that I was arranging. I want to hear those women in Trafalgar Square--the Suffragettes. STONOR (_incredulous, but smiling_). How perfectly absurd! (_Looking after_ LADY JOHN.) Besides, I expect she wouldn't like my carrying you off like that. JEAN. Then she'll have to make an excuse and come too. STONOR. Ah, it wouldn't be quite the same---- JEAN (_rapidly thinking it out_). We could get back here in time for dinner. (GEOFFREY STONOR _glances down at the handkerchief still in his hand, and turns it half mechanically from corner to corner._) JEAN (_absent-mindedly_). Mine? STONOR (_hastily, without reflection_). No. (_Hands it to_ MISS LEVERING _as she passes._) Yours. (MISS LEVERING, _on her way to the lobby with_ LORD JOHN _seems not to notice._) JEAN (_takes the handkerchief to give to her, glancing down at the embroidered corner; stops_). But that's not an L! It's Vi----! (GEOFFREY STONOR _suddenly turns his back and takes up the newspaper._) LADY JOHN (_from the lobby_). Come, Vida, since you will go. MISS L. Yes; I'm coming. [_Exit_ MISS LEVERING. JEAN. _I_ didn't know her name was Vida; how did you? (STONOR _stares silently over the top of his paper_.) CURTAIN. ACT II SCENE: _The north side of the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square. The Curtain rises on an uproar. The crowd, which momentarily increases, is composed chiefly of weedy youths and wastrel old men. There are a few decent artisans; three or four "beery" out-o'-works; three or four young women of the domestic servant or Strand restaurant cashier class; one aged woman in rusty black peering with faded, wondering eyes, consulting the faces of the men and laughing nervously and apologetically from time to time; one or two quiet-looking, business-like women, thirty to forty; two middle-class men, who stare and whisper and smile. A quiet old man with a lot of unsold Sunday papers under one arm stands in an attitude of rapt attention, with the free hand round his deaf ear. A brisk-looking woman of forty-five or so, wearing pince-nez, goes round with a pile of propagandist literature on her arm. Many of the men smoking cigarettes--the old ones pipes. On the outskirts of this crowd, of several hundred, a couple of smart men in tall shining hats hover a few moments, single eyeglass up, and then saunter off. Against the middle of the Column, where it rises above the stone platform, is a great red banner, one supporting pole upheld by a grimy sandwichman, the other by a small, dirty boy of eight. If practicable only the lower portion of the banner need be seen, bearing the final words of the legend_-- "VOTES FOR WOMEN!" _in immense white letters. It will be well to get, to the full, the effect of the height above the crowd of the straggling group of speakers on the pedestal platform. These are, as the Curtain rises, a working-class woman who is waving her arms and talking very earnestly, her voice for the moment blurred in the uproar. She is dressed in brown serge and looks pinched and sallow. At her side is the_ CHAIRMAN _urging that she be given a fair hearing._ ALLEN TRENT _is a tall, slim, brown-haired man of twenty-eight, with a slight stoop, an agreeable aspect, well-bred voice, and the gleaming brown eye of the visionary. Behind these two, looking on or talking among themselves, are several other carelessly dressed women; one, better turned out than the rest, is quite young, very slight and gracefully built, with round, very pink cheeks, full, scarlet lips, naturally waving brown hair, and an air of childish gravity. She looks at the unruly mob with imperturbable calm. The_ CHAIRMAN'S _voice is drowned._ WORKING WOMAN (_with lean, brown finger out and voice raised shriller now above the tumult_). I've got boys o' me own and we laugh at all sorts o' things, but I should be ashymed and so would they if ever they was to be'yve as you're doin' to-d'y. (_In laughter the noise dies._) People 'ave been sayin' this is a middle-class woman's movement. It's a libel. I'm a workin' woman myself, the wife of a working man. (_Voice_: "Pore devil!") I'm a Poor Law Guardian and a---- NOISY YOUNG MAN. Think of that, now--gracious me! (_Laughter and interruption._) OLD NEWSVENDOR (_to the noisy young man near him_). Oh, shut up, cawn't yer? NOISY YOUNG MAN. Not fur _you_! VOICE. Go'ome and darn yer old man's stockens! VOICE. Just clean yer _own_ doorstep! WORKING WOMAN. It's a pore sort of 'ousekeeper that leaves 'er doorstep till Sunday afternoon. Maybe that's when you would do _your_ doorstep. I do mine in the mornin' before you men are awake. OLD NEWSVENDOR. It's true, wot she says!--every word. WORKING WOMAN. You say we women 'ave got no business servin' on boards and thinkin' about politics. Wot's _politics_? (_A derisive roar._) It's just 'ousekeepin' on a big scyle. 'Oo among you workin' men 'as the most comfortable 'omes? Those of you that gives yer wives yer wyges. (_Loud laughter and jeers._) { That's it! VOICES. { Wantin' our money. { Lord 'Igh 'Ousekeeper of England. WORKING WOMAN. If it wus only to use fur _our_ comfort, d'ye think many o' you workin' men would be found turnin' over their wyges to their wives? No! Wot's the reason thousands do--and the best and the soberest? Because the workin' man knows that wot's a pound to _'im_ is twenty shillin's to 'is wife. And she'll myke every penny in every one o' them shillin's _tell_. She gets more fur _'im_ out of 'is wyges than wot 'e can! Some o' you know wot the 'omes is like w'ere the men don't let the women manage. Well, the Poor Laws and the 'ole Government is just in the syme muddle because the men 'ave tried to do the national 'ousekeepin' without the women. (_Roars._) But, like I told you before, it's a libel to say it's only the well-off women wot's wantin' the vote. Wot about the 96,000 textile workers? Wot about the Yorkshire tailoresses? I can tell you wot plenty o' the poor women think about it. I'm one of them, and I can tell you we see there's reforms needed. _We ought to 'ave the vote_ (_jeers_), and we know 'ow to appreciate the other women 'oo go to prison fur tryin' to get it fur us! (_With a little final bob of emphasis and a glance over shoulder at the old woman and the young one behind her, she seems about to retire, but pauses as the murmur in the crowd grows into distinct phrases._ "They get their 'air cut free." "Naow they don't, that's only us!" "Silly Suffragettes!" "Stop at 'ome!" "'Inderin' policemen--mykin' rows in the streets!") VOICE (_louder than the others_). They sees yer ain't fit t'ave---- OTHER VOICES. "Ha, ha!" "Shut up!" "Keep quiet, cawn't yer?" (_General uproar._) CHAIRMAN. You evidently don't know what had to be done by _men_ before the extension of the Suffrage in '67. If it hadn't been for demonstrations of violence---- (_His voice is drowned._) WORKING WOMAN (_coming forward again, her shrill note rising clear_). You s'y woman's plyce is 'ome! Don't you know there's a third of the women o' this country can't afford the luxury of stayin' in their 'omes? They _got_ to go out and 'elp make money to p'y the rent and keep the 'ome from bein' sold up. Then there's all the women that 'aven't got even miseerable 'omes. They 'aven't got any 'omes _at all_. NOISY YOUNG MAN. You said _you_ got one. W'y don't you stop in it? WORKING WOMAN. Yes, that's like a man. If one o' you is all right, he thinks the rest don't matter. We women---- NOISY YOUNG MAN. The lydies! God bless 'em! (_Voices drown her and the_ CHAIRMAN.) OLD NEWSVENDOR (_to_ NOISY YOUNG MAN). Oh, take that extra 'alf pint 'ome and _sleep it off_! WORKING WOMAN. P'r'aps _your_ 'omes are all right. P'r'aps you aren't livin', old and young, married and single, in one room. I come from a plyce where many fam'lies 'ave to live like that if they're to go on livin' _at all_. If you don't believe me, come and let me show you! (_She spreads out her lean arms._) Come with me to Canning Town!--come with me to Bromley--come to Poplar and to Bow! No. You won't even _think_ about the overworked women and the underfed children and the 'ovels they live in. And you want that we shouldn't think neither---- A VAGRANT. We'll do the thinkin'. You go 'ome and nuss the byby. WORKING WOMAN. I do nurse my byby! I've nursed seven. What 'ave you done for yours? P'r'aps your children never goes 'ungry, and maybe you're satisfied--though I must say I wouldn't a' thought it from the _look_ o' you. VOICE. Oh, I s'y! WORKING WOMAN. But we women are not satisfied. We don't only want better things for our own children. We want better things for all. _Every_ child is our child. We know in our 'earts we oughtn't to rest till we've mothered 'em every one. VOICE. "Women"--"children"--wot about the _men_? Are _they_ all 'appy? (_Derisive laughter and_ "No! no!" "Not precisely." "'Appy? Lord!") WORKING WOMAN. No, there's lots o' you men I'm sorry for (_Shrill Voice_: "Thanks awfully!"), an' we'll 'elp you if you let us. VOICE. 'Elp us? You tyke the bread out of our mouths. You women are black-leggin' the men! WORKING WOMAN. _W'y_ does any woman tyke less wyges than a man for the same work? Only because we can't get anything better. That's part the reason w'y we're yere to-d'y. Do you reely think we tyke them there low wyges because we got a _lykin'_ for low wyges? No. We're just like you. We want as much as ever we can get. ("'Ear! 'Ear!" _and laughter_.) We got a gryte deal to do with our wyges, we women has. We got the children to think about. And w'en we get our rights, a woman's flesh and blood won't be so much cheaper than a man's that employers can get rich on keepin' you out o' work, and sweatin' us. If you men only could see it, we got the _syme_ cause, and if you 'elped us you'd be 'elpin yerselves. VOICES. "Rot!" "Drivel." OLD NEWSVENDOR. True as gospel! (_She retires against the banner with the others. There is some applause._) A MAN (_patronisingly_). Well, now, that wusn't so bad--fur a woman. ANOTHER. N-naw. _Not fur a woman._ CHAIRMAN (_speaking through this last_). Miss Ernestine Blunt will now address you. (_Applause, chiefly ironic, laughter, a general moving closer and knitting up of attention._ ERNESTINE BLUNT _is about twenty-four, but looks younger. She is very downright, not to say pugnacious--the something amusing and attractive about her is there, as it were, against her will, and the more fetching for that. She has no conventional gestures, and none of any sort at first. As she warms to her work she uses her slim hands to enforce her emphasis, but as though unconsciously. Her manner of speech is less monotonous than that of the average woman-speaker, but she, too, has a fashion of leaning all her weight on the end of the sentence. She brings out the final word or two with an effort of underscoring, and makes a forward motion of the slim body as if the better to drive the last nail in. She evidently means to be immensely practical--the kind who is pleased to think she hasn't a grain of sentimentality in her composition, and whose feeling, when it does all but master her, communicates itself magnetically to others._ ) MISS ERNESTINE BLUNT. Perhaps I'd better begin by explaining a little about our "tactics." (_Cries of_ "Tactics! We know!" "Mykin' trouble!" "Public scandal!") To make you understand what we've done, I must remind you of what others have done. Perhaps you don't know that women first petitioned Parliament for the Franchise as long ago as 1866. VOICE. How do _you_ know? (_She pauses a moment, taken off her guard by the suddenness of the attack._) VOICE. You wasn't there! VOICE. That was the trouble. Haw! haw! MISS E. B. And the petition was presented---- VOICE. Give 'er a 'earin' now she 'as got out of 'er crydle. MISS E. B.--presented to the House of Commons by that great Liberal, John Stuart Mill. (_Voice_: "Mill? Who is he when he's at home?") Bills or Resolutions have been before the House on and off for the last thirty-six years. That, roughly, is our history. We found ourselves, towards the close of the year 1905, with no assurance that if we went on in the same way any girl born into the world in this generation would live to exercise the rights of citizenship, though she lived to be a hundred. So we said all this has been in vain. We must try some other way. How did the working man get the Suffrage, we asked ourselves? Well, we turned up the records, and we _saw_---- VOICES. "Not by scratching people's faces!" ... "Disraeli give it 'em!" "Dizzy? Get out!" "Cahnty Cahncil scholarships!" "Oh, Lord, this education!" "Chartist riots, she's thinkin' of!" (_Noise in the crowd._) MISS E. B. But we don't _want_ to follow such a violent example. We would much rather _not_--but if that's the only way we can make the country see we're in earnest, we are prepared to show them. VOICE. An' they'll show you!--Give you another month 'ard. MISS E. B. Don't think that going to prison has any fears for us. We'd go _for life_ if by doing that we could get freedom for the rest of the women. VOICES. "Hear, hear!" "Rot!" "W'y don't the men 'elp ye to get your rights?" MISS E. B. Here's some one asking why the men don't help. It's partly they don't understand yet--they _will_ before we've done! (_Laughter._) Partly they don't understand yet what's at stake---- RESPECTABLE OLD MAN (_chuckling_). Lord, they're a 'educatin' of us! VOICE. Wot next? MISS E. B.--and partly that the bravest man is afraid of ridicule. Oh, yes; we've heard a great deal all our lives about the timidity and the sensitiveness of women. And it's true. We _are_ sensitive. But I tell you, ridicule crumples a man up. It steels a woman. We've come to know the value of ridicule. We've educated ourselves so that we welcome ridicule. We owe our sincerest thanks to the comic writers. The cartoonist is our unconscious friend. Who cartoons people who are of no importance? What advertisement is so sure of being remembered? POETIC YOUNG MAN. I admit that. MISS E. B. If we didn't know it by any other sign, the comic papers would tell us _we've arrived_! But our greatest debt of gratitude we owe, to the man who called us female hooligans. (_The crowd bursts into laughter._) We aren't hooligans, but we hope the fact will be overlooked. If everybody said we were nice, well-behaved women, who'd come to hear us? _Not the men._ (_Roars._) Men tell us it isn't womanly for us to care about politics. How do they know what's womanly? It's for women to decide that. Let the men attend to being manly. It will take them all their time. VOICE. Are we down-'earted? Oh no! MISS E. B. And they say it would be dreadful if we got the vote, because then we'd be pitted against men in the economic struggle. But that's come about already. Do you know that out of every hundred women in this country eighty-two are wage-earning women? It used to be thought unfeminine for women to be students and to aspire to the arts--that bring fame and fortune. But nobody has ever said it was unfeminine for women to do the heavy drudgery that's badly paid. That kind of work had to be done by _some_body--and the men didn't hanker after it. Oh, no. (_Laughter and interruption._) A MAN ON THE OUTER FRINGE. She can _talk_--the little one can. ANOTHER. Oh, they can all "talk." A BEERY, DIRTY FELLOW OF FIFTY. I wouldn't like to be 'er 'usban'. Think o' comin' 'ome to _that_! HIS PAL. I'd soon learn 'er! MISS E. B. (_speaking through the noise_). Oh, no! _Let_ the women scrub and cook and wash. That's all right! But if they want to try their hand at the better paid work of the liberal professions--oh, very unfeminine indeed! Then there's another thing. Now I want you to listen to this, because it's _very_ important. Men say if we persist in competing with them for the bigger prizes, they're dreadfully afraid we'd lose the beautiful protecting chivalry that---- Yes, I don't wonder you laugh. _We_ laugh. (_Bending forward with lit eyes._) But the women I found at the Ferry Tin Works working for five shillings a week--I didn't see them laughing. The beautiful chivalry of the employers of women doesn't prevent them from paying women tenpence a day for sorting coal and loading and unloading carts--doesn't prevent them from forcing women to earn bread in ways worse still. So we won't talk about chivalry. It's being over-sarcastic. We'll just let this poor ghost of chivalry go--in exchange for a little plain justice. VOICE. If the House of Commons won't give you justice, why don't you go to the House of Lords? MISS E. B. What? VOICE. Better 'urry up. Case of early closin'. (_Laughter. A man at the back asks the speaker something._) MISS E. B. (_unable to hear_). You'll be allowed to ask any question you like at the end of the meeting. NEW-COMER (_boy of eighteen_). Oh, is it question time? I s'y, Miss, 'oo killed cock robin? (_She is about to resume, but above the general noise the voice of a man at the back reaches her indistinct but insistent. She leans forward trying to catch what he says. While the indistinguishable murmur has been going on_ GEOFFREY STONOR _has appeared on the edge of the crowd, followed by_ JEAN _and_ LADY JOHN _in motor veils._) JEAN (_pressing forward eagerly and raising her veil_). Is she one of them? That little thing! STONOR (_doubtfully_). I--I suppose so. JEAN. Oh, ask some one, Geoffrey. I'm so disappointed. I did so hope we'd hear one of the--the worst. MISS E. B. (_to the interrupter--on the other side_). What? What do you say? (_She screws up her eyes with the effort to hear, and puts a hand up to her ear. A few indistinguishable words between her and the man._) LADY JOHN (_who has been studying the figures on the platform through her lorgnon, turns to a working man beside her_). Can you tell me, my man, which are the ones that--a--that make the disturbances? WORKING MAN. The one that's doing the talking--she's the disturbingest o' the lot. JEAN (_craning to listen_). Not that nice little---- WORKING MAN. Don't you be took in, Miss. MISS E. B. Oh, yes--I see. There's a man over here asking---- A YOUNG MAN. _I've_ got a question, too. Are--you--married? ANOTHER (_sniggering_). Quick! There's yer chawnce. 'E's a bachelor. (_Laughter._) MISS E. B. (_goes straight on as if she had not heard_)--man asking: if the women get full citizenship, and a war is declared, will the women fight? POETIC YOUNG MAN. No, really--no, really, now! (_The Crowd_: "Haw! Haw!" "Yes!" "Yes, how about _that?_") MISS E. B. (_smiling_). Well, you know, some people say the whole trouble about us is that we _do_ fight. But it is only hard necessity makes us do that. We don't _want_ to fight--as men seem to--just for fighting's sake. Women are for peace. VOICE. Hear, hear. MISS E. B. And when we have a share in public affairs there'll be less likelihood of war. But that's not to say women can't fight. The Boer women did. The Russian women face conflicts worse than any battlefield can show. (_Her voice shakes a little, and the eyes fill, but she controls her emotion gallantly, and dashes on._) But we women know all that is evil, and we're for peace. Our part--we're proud to remember it--our part has been to go about after you men in war-time, and--_pick up the pieces_! (_A great shout._) Yes--seems funny, doesn't it? You men blow them to bits, and then we come along and put them together again. If you know anything about military nursing, you know a good deal of our work has been done in the face of danger--_but it's always been done_. OLD NEWSVENDOR. That's so. That's so. MISS E. B. You complain that more and more we're taking away from you men the work that's always been yours. You can't any longer keep women out of the industries. The only question is upon what terms shall she continue to be in? As long as she's in on bad terms, she's not only hurting herself--she's hurting you. But if you're feeling discouraged about our competing with you, we're willing to leave you your trade in war. _Let_ the men take life! We _give_ life! (_Her voice is once more moved and proud._) No one will pretend ours isn't one of the dangerous trades either. I won't say any more to you now, because we've got others to speak to you, and a new woman-helper that I want you to hear. (_She retires to the sound of clapping. There's a hurried consultation between her and the_ CHAIRMAN. _Voices in the Crowd_: "The little 'un's all right" "Ernestine's a corker," &c.) JEAN (_looking at_ STONOR _to see how he's taken it_). Well? STONOR (_smiling down at her_). Well---- JEAN. Nothing reprehensible in what _she_ said, was there? STONOR (_shrugs_). Oh, reprehensible! JEAN. It makes me rather miserable all the same. STONOR (_draws her hand protectingly through his arm_). You mustn't take it as much to heart as all that. JEAN. I can't help it--I can't indeed, Geoffrey. I shall _never_ be able to make a speech like that! STONOR (_taken aback_). I hope not, indeed. JEAN. Why, I thought you said you wanted me----? STONOR (_smiling_). To make nice little speeches with composure--so I did! So I---- (_Seems to lose his thread as he looks at her._) JEAN (_with a little frown_). You _said_---- STONOR. That you have very pink cheeks? Well, I stick to that. JEAN (_smiling_). Sh! Don't tell everybody. STONOR. And you're the only female creature I ever saw who didn't look a fright in motor things. JEAN (_melted and smiling_). I'm glad you don't think me a fright. CHAIRMAN. I will now ask (_name indistinguishable_) to address the meeting. JEAN (_as she sees_ LADY JOHN _moving to one side_). Oh, don't go yet, Aunt Ellen! LADY JOHN. Go? Certainly not. I want to hear another. (_Craning her neck._) I can't believe, you know, she was really one of the worst. (_A big, sallow Cockney has come forward. His scanty hair grows in wisps on a great bony skull._) VOICE. That's Pilcher. ANOTHER. 'Oo's Pilcher? ANOTHER. If you can't afford a bottle of Tatcho, w'y don't you get yer 'air cut. MR. P. (_not in the least discomposed_). I've been addressin' a big meetin' at 'Ammersmith this morning, and w'en I told 'em I wus comin' 'ere this awfternoon to speak fur the women--well--then the usual thing began! (_An appreciative roar from the crowd._) In these times if you want peace and quiet at a public meetin'---- (_The crowd fills in the hiatus with laughter._) There was a man at 'Ammersmith, too, talkin' about women's sphere bein' 'ome. _'Ome_ do you call it? You've got a kennel w'ere you can munch your tommy. You've got a corner w'ere you can curl up fur a few hours till you go out to work again. No, my man, there's too many of you ain't able to _give_ the women 'omes--fit to live in, too many of you in that fix fur you to go on jawin' at those o' the women 'oo want to myke the 'omes a little decenter. VOICE. If the vote ain't done us any good, 'ow'll it do the women any good? MR. P. Look 'ere! Any men here belongin' to the Labour Party? (_Shouts and applause._) Well, I don't need to tell these men the vote 'as done us _some_ good. They know it. And it'll do us a lot more good w'en you know 'ow to use the power you got in your 'and. VOICE. Power! It's those fellers at the bottom o' the street that's got the power. MR. P. It's you, and men like you, that gave it to 'em. You carried the Liberals into Parliament Street on your own shoulders. (_Complacent applause._) You believed all their fine words. You never asked yourselves, "_Wot's a Liberal, anyw'y?_" A VOICE. He's a jolly good fellow. (_Cheers and booing._) MR. P. No, 'e ain't, or if 'e is jolly, it's only because 'e thinks you're such silly codfish you'll go swellin' his majority again. (_Laughter, in which_ STONOR _joins._) It's enough to make any Liberal jolly to see sheep like you lookin' on, proud and 'appy, while you see Liberal leaders desertin' Liberal principles. (_Voices in agreement and protest._) You show me a Liberal, and I'll show you a Mr. Fycing-both-W'ys. Yuss. (STONOR _moves closer with an amused look._) 'E sheds the light of 'is warm and 'andsome smile on the working man, and round on the other side 'e's tippin' a wink to the great land-owners. That's to let 'em know 'e's standin' between them and the Socialists. Huh! Socialists. Yuss, _Socialists_! (_General laughter, in which_ STONOR _joins._) The Liberal, e's the judicial sort o' chap that sits in the middle---- VOICE. On the fence! MR. P. Tories one side--Socialists the other. Well it ain't always so comfortable in the middle. You're like to get squeezed. Now, I s'y to the women, the Conservatives don't promise you much but what they promise they _do_! STONOR (_to_ JEAN). This fellow isn't half bad. MR. P. The Liberals--they'll promise you the earth, and give yer ... the whole o' nothing. (_Roars of approval._) JEAN. _Isn't_ it fun? Now, aren't you glad I brought you? STONOR (_laughing_). This chap's rather amusing! MR. P. We men 'ave seen it 'appen over and over. But the women can tyke a 'int quicker'n what we can. They won't stand the nonsense men do. Only they 'aven't got a fair chawnce even to agitate fur their rights. As I wus comin' up 'ere I 'eard a man sayin', "Look at this big crowd. W'y, we're all _men_! If the women want the vote w'y ain't they 'ere to s'y so?" Well, I'll tell you w'y. It's because they've 'ad to get the dinner fur you and me, and now they're washin' up the dishes. A VOICE. D'you think _we_ ought to st'y 'ome and wash the dishes? MR. P. (_laughs good-naturedly_). If they'd leave it to us once or twice per'aps we'd understand a little more about the Woman Question. I know w'y _my_ wife isn't here. It's because she _knows_ I ain't much use round the 'ouse, and she's 'opin' I can talk to some purpose. Maybe she's mistaken. Any'ow, here I am to vote for her and all the other women. ("_Hear! hear!_" "_Oh-h!_") And to tell you men what improvements you can expect to see when women 'as the share in public affairs they _ought_ to 'ave! VOICE. What do you know about it? You can't even talk grammar. MR. P. (_is dashed a fraction of a moment, for the first and only time_). I'm not 'ere to talk grammar but to talk Reform. I ain't defendin' my grammar--but I'll say in pawssing that if my mother 'ad 'ad 'er rights, maybe my grammar would have been better. (STONOR _and_ JEAN _exchange smiles. He takes her arm again and bends his head to whisper something in her ear. She listens with lowered eyes and happy face. The discreet love-making goes on during the next few sentences. Interruption. One voice insistent but not clear. The speaker waits only a second and then resumes. "Yes, if the women" but he cannot instantly make himself heard. The boyish_ CHAIRMAN _looks harassed and anxious._ MISS ERNESTINE BLUNT _alert, watchful._) MR. P. Wait a bit--'arf a minute, my man! VOICE. 'Oo yer talkin' to? I ain't your man. MR. P. Lucky for me! There seems to be a _gentleman_ 'ere who doesn't think women ought to 'ave the vote. VOICE. _One?_ Oh-h! (_Laughter._) MR. P. Per'aps 'e doesn't know much about women? (_Indistinguishable repartee._) Oh, the gentleman says 'e's married. Well, then, fur the syke of 'is wife we musn't be too sorry 'e's 'ere. No doubt she's s'ying: "'Eaven by prysed those women are mykin' a Demonstrytion in Trafalgar Square, and I'll 'ave a little peace and quiet at 'ome for one Sunday in my life." (_The crowd laughs and there are jeers for the interrupter--and at the speaker._) (_Pointing._) Why, _you're_ like the man at 'Ammersmith this morning. 'E was awskin' me: "'Ow would you like men to st'y at 'ome and do the fam'ly washin'?" (_Laughter._) I told 'im I wouldn't advise it. I 'ave too much respect fur--me clo'es. VAGRANT. It's their place--the women ought to do the washin'. MR. P. I'm not sure you ain't right. For a good many o' you fellas, from the look o' you--you cawn't even wash yerselves. (_Laughter._) VOICE (_threatening_). 'Oo are you talkin' to? (_Chairman more anxious than before--movement in the crowd._) THREATENING VOICE. Which of us d'you mean? MR. P. (_coolly looking down_). Well, it takes about ten of your sort to myke a man, so you may take it I mean the lot of you. (_Angry indistinguishable retorts and the crowd sways._ MISS ERNESTINE BLUNT, _who has been watching the fray with serious face, turns suddenly, catching sight of some one just arrived at the end of the platform._ MISS BLUNT _goes_ R. _with alacrity, saying audibly to_ PILCHER _as she passes, "Here she is," and proceeds to offer her hand helping some one to get up the improvised steps. Laughter and interruption in the crowd._) LADY JOHN. Now, there's another woman going to speak. JEAN. Oh, is she? Who? Which? I do hope she'll be one of the wild ones. MR. P. (_speaking through this last. Glancing at the new arrival whose hat appears above the platform_ R.). That's all right, then. (_Turns to the left._) When I've attended to this microbe that's vitiating the air on my right---- (_Laughter and interruptions from the crowd._) STONOR (_staring_ R., _one dazed instant, at the face of the new arrival, his own changes_). (JEAN _withdraws her arm from his and quite suddenly presses a shade nearer the platform._ STONOR _moves forward and takes her by the arm._) We're going now. JEAN. Not yet--oh, please not yet. (_Breathless, looking back._) Why I--I do believe---- STONOR (_to_ LADY JOHN, _with decision_). I'm going to take JEAN out of this mob. Will you come? LADY JOHN. What? Oh yes, if you think---- (_Another look through her glasses._) But isn't that--_surely_ its----!!! (VIDA LEVERING _comes forward_ R. _She wears a long, plain, dark green dust-cloak. Stands talking to_ ERNESTINE BLUNT _and glancing a little apprehensively at the crowd._) JEAN. Geoffrey! STONOR (_trying to draw_ JEAN _away_). Lady John's tired---- JEAN. But you don't see who it is, Geoffrey----! (_Looks into his face, and is arrested by the look she finds there._) (LADY JOHN _has pushed in front of them amazed, transfixed, with glass up._ GEOFFREY STONOR _restrains a gesture of annoyance, and withdraws behind two big policemen._ JEAN _from time to time turns to look at him with a face of perplexity._) MR. P. (_resuming through a fire of indistinct interruption_). I'll come down and attend to that microbe while a lady will say a few words to you (_raises his voice_)--if she can myke 'erself 'eard. (PILCHER _retires in the midst of booing and cheers._) CHAIRMAN (_harassed and trying to create a diversion_). Some one suggests--and it's such a good idea I'd like you to listen to it-- (_Noise dies down._) that a clause shall be inserted in the next Suffrage Bill that shall expressly reserve to each Cabinet Minister, and to any respectable man, the power to prevent the Franchise being given to the female members of his family on his public declaration of their lack of sufficient intelligence to entitle them to vote. VOICES. Oh! oh! CHAIRMAN. Now, I ask you to listen, as quietly as you can, to a lady who is not accustomed to speaking--a--in Trafalgar Square--or a ... as a matter of fact, at all. VOICES. "A dumb lady." "Hooray!" "Three cheers for the dumb lady!" CHAIRMAN. A lady who, as I've said, will tell you, if you'll behave yourselves, her impressions of the administration of police-court justice in this country. (JEAN _looks wondering at_ STONOR'S _sphinx-like face as_ VIDA LEVERING _comes to the edge of the platform._) MISS L. Mr. Chairman, men and women---- VOICES (_off_). Speak up. (_She flushes, comes quite to the edge of the platform and raises her voice a little._) MISS L. I just wanted to tell you that I was--I was--present in the police-court when the women were charged for creating a disturbance. VOICE. Y' oughtn't t' get mixed up in wot didn't concern you. MISS L. I--I---- (_Stumbles and stops._) (_Talking and laughing increases._ "Wot's 'er name?" "Mrs. or Miss?" "Ain't seen this one before.") CHAIRMAN (_anxiously_). Now, see here, men; don't interrupt---- A GIRL (_shrilly_). I like this one's _'at_. Ye can see she ain't one of 'em. MISS L. (_trying to recommence_). I---- VOICE. They're a disgrace--them women be'ind yer. A MAN WITH A FATHERLY AIR. It's the w'y they goes on as mykes the Government keep ye from gettin' yer rights. CHAIRMAN (_losing his temper_). It's the way _you_ go on that---- (_Noise increases._ CHAIRMAN _drowned, waves his arms and moves his lips._ MISS LEVERING _discouraged, turns and looks at_ ERNESTINE BLUNT _and pantomimes "It's no good. I can't go on."_ ERNESTINE BLUNT _comes forward, says a word to the_ CHAIRMAN, _who ceases gyrating, and nods._) MISS E. B. (_facing the crowd_). Look here. If the Government withhold the vote because they don't like the way some of us ask for it--_let them give it to the Quiet Ones_. Does the Government want to punish _all_ women because they don't like the manners of a handful? Perhaps that's you men's notion of justice. It isn't women's. VOICES. Haw! haw! MISS L. Yes. Th-this is the first time I've ever "gone on," as you call it, but they never gave me a vote. MISS E. B. (_with energy_). No! And there are one--two--three--four women on this platform. Now, we all want the vote, as you know. Well, we'd agree to be disfranchised all our lives, if they'd give the vote to all the other women. VOICE. Look here, you made one speech, give the lady a chawnce. MISS E. B. (_retires smiling_). That's _just_ what I wanted _you_ to do! MISS L. Perhaps you--you don't know--you don't know---- VOICE (_sarcastic_). 'Ow 're we goin' to know if you can't tell us? MISS L. (_flushing and smiling_). Thank you for that. We couldn't have a better motto. How _are_ you to know if we can't somehow manage to tell you? (_With a visible effort she goes on._) Well, I certainly didn't know before that the sergeants and policemen are instructed to deceive the people as to the time such cases are heard. You ask, and you're sent to Marlborough Police Court instead of to Marylebone. VOICE. They ought ter sent yer to 'Olloway--do y' good. OLD NEWSVENDOR. You go on, Miss, don't mind 'im. VOICE. Wot d'you expect from a pig but a grunt? MISS L. You're told the case will be at two o'clock, and it's really called for eleven. Well, I took a great deal of trouble, and I didn't believe what I was told-- (_Warming a little to her task._) Yes, that's almost the first thing we have to learn--to get over our touching faith that, because a man tells us something, it's true. I got to the right court, and I was so anxious not to be late, I was too early. The case before the Women's was just coming on. I heard a noise. At the door I saw the helmets of two policemen, and I said to myself: "What sort of crime shall I have to sit and hear about? Is this a burglar coming along between the two big policemen, or will it be a murderer? What sort of felon is to stand in the dock before the women whose crime is they ask for the vote?" But, try as I would, I couldn't see the prisoner. My heart misgave me. Is it a woman, I wondered? Then the policemen got nearer, and I saw--(_she waits an instant_)--a little, thin, half-starved boy. What do you think he was charged with? Stealing. What had he been stealing--that small criminal? _Milk._ It seemed to me as I sat there looking on, that the men who had the affairs of the world in their hands from the beginning, and who've made so poor a business of it---- VOICES. Oh! oh! Pore benighted man! Are we down-'earted? _Oh_, no! MISS L.--so poor a business of it as to have the poor and the unemployed in the condition they're in to-day--when your only remedy for a starving child is to hale him off to the police-court--because he had managed to get a little milk--well, I _did_ wonder that the men refuse to be helped with a problem they've so notoriously failed at. I began to say to myself: "Isn't it time the women lent a hand?" A VOICE. Would you have women magistrates? (_She is stumped by the suddenness of the demand._) VOICES. Haw! Haw! Magistrates! ANOTHER. Women! Let 'em prove first they deserve---- A SHABBY ART STUDENT (_his hair longish, soft hat, and flowing tie_). They study music by thousands; where's their Beethoven? Where's their Plato? Where's the woman Shakespeare? ANOTHER. Yes--what 'a' they ever _done_? (_The speaker clenches her hands, and is recovering her presence of mind, so that by the time the_ CHAIRMAN _can make himself heard with, "Now men, give this lady a fair hearing--don't interrupt"--she, with the slightest of gestures, waves him aside with a low "It's all right."_) MISS L. (_steadying and raising her voice_). These questions are quite proper! They are often asked elsewhere; and I would like to ask in return: Since when was human society held to exist for its handful of geniuses? How many Platos are there here in this crowd? A VOICE (_very loud and shrill_). Divil a wan! (_Laughter._) MISS L. Not one. Yet that doesn't keep you men off the register. How many Shakespeares are there in all England to-day? Not one. Yet the State doesn't tumble to pieces. Railroads and ships are built--homes are kept going, and babies are born. The world goes on! (_bending over the crowd_) It goes on _by virtue of its common people_. VOICES (_subdued_). Hear! hear! MISS L. I am not concerned that you should think we women can paint great pictures, or compose immortal music, or write good books. I am content that we should be classed with the common people--who keep the world going. But (_straightening up and taking a fresh start_), I'd like the world to go a great deal better. We were talking about justice. I have been inquiring into the kind of lodging the poorest class of homeless women can get in this town of London. I find that only the men of that class are provided for. Some measure to establish Rowton Houses for women has been before the London County Council. They looked into the question "very carefully," so their apologists say. And what did they decide? They decided that _they could do nothing_. LADY JOHN (_having forced her way to_ STONOR'S _side_). Is that true? STONOR (_speaking through_ MISS LEVERING'S _next words_). I don't know. MISS L. Why could that great, all-powerful body do nothing? Because, if these cheap and decent houses were opened, they said, the homeless women in the streets would make use of them! You'll think I'm not in earnest. But that was actually the decision and the reason given for it. Women that the bitter struggle for existence has forced into a life of horror---- STONOR (_sternly to_ LADY JOHN). You think this is the kind of thing---- (_A motion of the head towards_ JEAN.) MISS L.--the outcast women might take advantage of the shelter these decent, cheap places offered. But the _men_, I said! Are all who avail themselves of Lord Rowton's hostels, are _they_ all angels? Or does wrong-doing in a man not matter? Yet women are recommended to depend on the chivalry of men. (_The two policemen, who at first had been strolling about, have stood during this scene in front of_ GEOFFREY STONOR. _They turn now and walk away, leaving_ STONOR _exposed. He, embarrassed, moves uneasily, and_ VIDA LEVERING'S _eye falls upon his big figure. He still has the collar of his motor coat turned up to his ears. A change passes over her face, and her nerve fails her an instant._) MISS L. Justice and chivalry!! (_she steadies her voice and hurries on_)--they both remind me of what those of you who read the police-court news--(I have begun only lately to do that)--but you've seen the accounts of the girl who's been tried in Manchester lately for the murder of her child. Not pleasant reading. Even if we'd noticed it, we wouldn't speak of it in my world. A few months ago I should have turned away my eyes and forgotten even the headline as quickly as I could. But since that morning in the police-court, I read these things. This, as you'll remember, was about a little working girl--an orphan of eighteen--who crawled with the dead body of her new-born child to her master's back-door, and left the baby there. She dragged herself a little way off and fainted. A few days later she found herself in court, being tried for the murder of her child. Her master--a married man--had of course reported the "find" at his back-door to the police, and he had been summoned to give evidence. The girl cried out to him in the open court, "You are the father!" He couldn't deny it. The Coroner at the jury's request censured the man, and regretted that the law didn't make him responsible. But he went scot-free. And that girl is now serving her sentence in Strangeways Gaol. (_Murmuring and scraps of indistinguishable comment in the crowd, through which only_ JEAN'S _voice is clear._) JEAN (_who has wormed her way to_ STONOR'S _side_). Why do you dislike her so? STONOR. I? Why should you think---- JEAN (_with a vaguely frightened air_). I never saw you look as you did--as you do. CHAIRMAN. Order, please--give the lady a fair---- MISS L. (_signing to him "It's all right"_). Men make boast that an English citizen is tried by his peers. What woman is tried by hers? (_A sombre passion strengthens her voice and hurries her on._) A woman is arrested by a man, brought before a man judge, tried by a jury of men, condemned by men, taken to prison by a man, and by a man she's hanged! Where in all this were _her_ "peers"? Why did men so long ago insist on trial by "a jury of their peers"? So that justice shouldn't miscarry--wasn't it? A man's peers would best understand his circumstances, his temptation, the degree of his guilt. Yet there's no such unlikeness between different classes of men as exists between man and woman. What man has the knowledge that makes him a fit judge of woman's deeds at that time of anguish--that hour--(_lowers her voice and bends over the crowd_)--that hour that some woman struggled through to put each man here into the world. I noticed when a previous speaker quoted the Labour Party you applauded. Some of you here--I gather--call yourselves Labour men. Every woman who has borne a child is a Labour woman. No man among you can judge what she goes through in her hour of darkness---- JEAN (_with frightened eyes on her lover's set, white face, whispers_). Geoffrey---- MISS L. (_catching her fluttering breath, goes on very low_.)--in that great agony when, even under the best conditions that money and devotion can buy, many a woman falls into temporary mania, and not a few go down to death. In the case of this poor little abandoned working girl, what man can be the fit judge of her deeds in that awful moment of half-crazed temptation? Women know of these things as those know burning who have walked through fire. (STONOR _makes a motion towards_ JEAN _and she turns away fronting the audience. Her hands go up to her throat as though she suffered a choking sensation. It is in her face that she "knows."_ MISS LEVERING _leans over the platform and speaks with a low and thrilling earnestness._) I would say in conclusion to the women here, it's not enough to be sorry for these our unfortunate sisters. We must get the conditions of life made fairer. We women must organise. We must learn to work together. We have all (rich and poor, happy and unhappy) worked so long and so exclusively for _men_, we hardly know how to work for one another. But we must learn. Those who can, may give money---- VOICES (_grumbling_). Oh, yes--Money! Money! MISS L. Those who haven't pennies to give--even those people aren't so poor they can't give some part of their labour--some share of their sympathy and support. (_Turns to hear something the_ CHAIRMAN _is whispering to her._) JEAN (_low to_ LADY JOHN). Oh, I'm glad I've got power! LADY JOHN (_bewildered_). Power!--_you?_ JEAN. Yes, all that money---- (LADY JOHN _tries to make her way to_ STONOR.) MISS L. (_suddenly turning from the_ CHAIRMAN _to the crowd_). Oh, yes, I hope you'll all join the Union. Come up after the meeting and give your names. LOUD VOICE. You won't get many men. MISS L. (_with fire_). Then it's to the women I appeal! (_She is about to retire when, with a sudden gleam in her lit eyes, she turns for the last time to the crowd, silencing the general murmur and holding the people by the sudden concentration of passion in her face._) I don't mean to say it wouldn't be better if men and women did this work together--shoulder to shoulder. But the mass of men won't have it so. I only hope they'll realise in time the good they've renounced and the spirit they've aroused. For I know as well as any man could tell me, it would be a bad day for England if all women felt about all men _as I do_. (_She retires in a tumult. The others on the platform close about her. The_ CHAIRMAN _tries in vain to get a hearing from the excited crowd._) (JEAN _tries to make her way through the knot of people surging round her._) STONOR (_calls_). Here!--Follow me! JEAN. No--no--I---- STONOR. You're going the wrong way. JEAN. _This_ is the way I must go. STONOR. You can get out quicker on this side. JEAN. I don't _want_ to get out. STONOR. What! Where are you going? JEAN. To ask that woman to let me have the honour of working with her. (_She disappears in the crowd._) CURTAIN. ACT III SCENE: _The drawing-room at old_ MR. DUNBARTON'S _house in Eaton Square. Six o'clock the same evening. As the Curtain rises the door_ (L.) _opens and_ JEAN _appears on the threshold. She looks back into her own sitting-room, then crosses the drawing-room, treading softly on the parquet spaces between the rugs. She goes to the window and is in the act of parting the lace curtains when the folding doors_ (C.) _are opened by the_ BUTLER. JEAN (_to the Servant_). Sh! (_She goes softly back to the door she has left open and closes it carefully. When she turns, the_ BUTLER _has stepped aside to admit_ GEOFFREY STONOR, _and departed, shutting the folding doors._ STONOR _comes rapidly forward._) (_Before he gets a word out._) Speak low, please. STONOR (_angrily_). I waited about a whole hour for you to come back. (JEAN _turns away as though vaguely looking for the nearest chair._) If you didn't mind leaving _me_ like that, you might have considered Lady John. JEAN (_pausing_). Is she here with you? STONOR. No. My place was nearer than this, and she was very tired. I left her to get some tea. We couldn't tell whether you'd be here, or _what_ had become of you. JEAN. Mr. Trent got us a hansom. STONOR. Trent? JEAN. The Chairman of the meeting. STONOR. "Got us----"? JEAN. Miss Levering and me. STONOR (_incensed_). MISS L---- BUTLER (_opens the door and announces_). Mr. Farnborough. (_Enter_ MR. RICHARD FARNBOROUGH--_more flurried than ever._) FARN. (_seeing_ STONOR). At last! You'll forgive this incursion, Miss Dunbarton, when you hear---- (_Turns abruptly back to_ STONOR.) They've been telegraphing you all over London. In despair they set me on your track. STONOR. Who did? What's up? FARN. (_lays down his hat and fumbles agitatedly in his breast-pocket_). There was the devil to pay at Dutfield last night. The Liberal chap tore down from London and took over your meeting! STONOR. Oh?--Nothing about it in the Sunday paper _I_ saw. FARN. Wait till you see the Press to-morrow morning! There was a great rally and the beggar made a rousing speech. STONOR. What about? FARN. Abolition of the Upper House---- STONOR. They were at that when I was at Eton! FARN. Yes. But this new man has got a way of putting things!--the people went mad. (_Pompously._) The Liberal platform as defined at Dutfield is going to make a big difference. STONOR (_drily_). You think so. FARN. Well, your agent says as much. (_Opens telegram._) STONOR. My---- (_Taking telegram._) "Try find Stonor"--Hm! Hm! FARN. (_pointing_).--"tremendous effect of last night's Liberal manifesto ought to be counteracted in to-morrow's papers." (_Very earnestly._) You see, Mr. Stonor, it's a battle-cry we want. STONOR (_turns on his heel_). Claptrap! FARN. (_a little dashed_). Well, they've been saying we have nothing to offer but personal popularity. No practical reform. No---- STONOR. No truckling to the masses, I suppose. (_Walks impatiently away._) FARN. (_snubbed_). Well, in these democratic days---- (_Turns to_ JEAN _for countenance._) I hope you'll forgive my bursting in like this. (_Struck by her face._) But I can see you realise the gravity---- (_Lowering his voice with an air of speaking for her ear alone._) It isn't as if he were going to be a mere private member. Everybody knows he'll be in the Cabinet. STONOR (_drily_). It may be a Liberal Cabinet. FARN. Nobody thought so up to last night. Why, even your brother--but I am afraid I'm seeming officious. (_Takes up his hat._) STONOR (_coldly_). What about my brother? FARN. I met Lord Windlesham as I rushed out of the Carlton. STONOR. Did he say anything? FARN. I told him the Dutfield news. STONOR (_impatiently_). Well? FARN. He said it only confirmed his fears. STONOR (_half under his breath_). Said that, did he? FARN. Yes. Defeat is inevitable, he thinks, unless---- (_Pause._) (GEOFFREY STONOR, _who has been pacing the floor, stops but doesn't raise his eyes._) unless you can "manufacture some political dynamite within the next few hours." Those were his words. STONOR (_resumes his walking to and fro, raises his head and catches sight of_ JEAN'S _white, drawn face. Stops short_). You are very tired. JEAN. No. No. STONOR (_to_ FARNBOROUGH). I'm obliged to you for taking so much trouble. (_Shakes hands by way of dismissing Farnborough._) I'll see what can be done. FARN. (_offering the reply-paid form_). If you'd like to wire I'll take it. STONOR (_faintly amused_). You don't understand, my young friend. Moves of this kind are not rushed at by responsible politicians. I must have time for consideration. FARN. (_disappointed_). Oh, well, I only hope someone else won't jump into the breach before you--(_Watch in hand_) I tell you. (_To_ JEAN.) I'll find out what time the newspapers go to press on Sunday. Goodbye. (_To_ STONOR.) I'll be at the Club just _in case_ I can be of any use. STONOR (_firmly_). No, don't do that. If I should have anything new to say---- FARN. (_feverishly_). B-b-but with our party, as your brother said--"heading straight for a vast electoral disaster----" STONOR. If I decide on a counterblast I shall simply telegraph to headquarters. Goodbye. FARN. Oh--a--g-goodbye. (_A gesture of "The country's going to the dogs."_) (JEAN _rings the bell. Exit_ FARNBOROUGH.) STONOR (_studying the carpet_). "Political dynamite," eh? (_Pause._) After all ... women are much more conservative than men--aren't they? (JEAN _looks straight in front of her, making no attempt to reply._) Especially the women the property qualification would bring in. (_He glances at_ JEAN _as though for the first time conscious of her silence._) You see now (_he throws himself into the chair by the table_) one reason why I've encouraged you to take an interest in public affairs. Because people like us don't go screaming about it, is no sign we don't (some of us) see what's on the way. However little they want to, women of our class will have to come into line. All the best things in the world--everything that civilisation has won will be in danger if--when this change comes--the only women who have practical political training are the women of the lower classes. Women of the lower classes, and (_his brows knit heavily_)--women inoculated by the Socialist virus. JEAN. Geoffrey. STONOR (_draws the telegraph form towards him_). Let us see, how we shall put it--when the time comes--shall we? (_He detaches a pencil from his watch chain and bends over the paper, writing._) (JEAN _opens her lips to speak, moves a shade nearer the table and then falls back upon her silent, half-incredulous misery._) STONOR (_holds the paper off, smiling_). Enough dynamite in that! Rather too much, isn't there, little girl? JEAN. Geoffrey, I know her story. STONOR. Whose story? JEAN. Miss Levering's. STONOR. _Whose?_ JEAN. Vida Levering's. (STONOR _stares speechless. Slight pause._) (_The words escaping from her in a miserable cry_) Why did you desert her? STONOR (_staggered_). I? _I?_ JEAN. Oh, why did you do it? STONOR (_bewildered_). What in the name of---- What has she been saying to you? JEAN. Some one else told me part. Then the way you looked when you saw her at Aunt Ellen's--Miss Levering's saying you didn't know her--then your letting out that you knew even the curious name on the handkerchief---- Oh, I pieced it together---- STONOR (_with recovered self-possession_). Your ingenuity is undeniable! JEAN.--and then, when she said that at the meeting about "the dark hour" and I looked at your face--it flashed over me---- Oh, _why_ did you desert her? STONOR. I _didn't_ desert her. JEAN. Ah-h! (_Puts her hands before her eyes._) (STONOR _makes a passionate motion towards her, is checked by her muffled voice saying_) I'm glad--I'm glad! (_He stares bewildered._ JEAN _drops her hands in her lap and steadies her voice._) She went away from you, then? STONOR. You don't expect me to enter into---- JEAN. She went away from you? STONOR (_with a look of almost uncontrollable anger_). Yes! JEAN. Was that because you wouldn't marry her? STONOR. I couldn't marry her--and she knew it. JEAN. Did you want to? STONOR (_an instant's angry scrutiny and then turning away his eyes_). I thought I did--_then_. It's a long time ago. JEAN. And why "couldn't" you? STONOR (_a movement of strong irritation cut short_). Why are you catechising me? It's a matter that concerns another woman. JEAN. If you're saying that it doesn't concern me, you're saying--(_her lip trembles_)--that _you_ don't concern me. STONOR (_commanding his temper with difficulty_). In those days I--I was absolutely dependent on my father. JEAN. Why, you must have been thirty, Geoffrey. STONOR (_slight pause_). What? Oh--thereabouts. JEAN. And everybody says you're so clever. STONOR. Well, everybody's mistaken. JEAN (_drawing nearer_). It must have been terribly hard---- (STONOR _turns towards her._) for you both-- (_He arrests his movement and stands stonily._) that a man like you shouldn't have had the freedom that even the lowest seem to have. STONOR. Freedom? JEAN. To marry the woman they choose. STONOR. She didn't break off our relations because I couldn't marry her. JEAN. Why was it, then? STONOR. You're too young to discuss such a story. (_Half turns away._) JEAN. I'm not so young as she was when---- STONOR (_wheeling upon her_). Very well, then, if you will have it! The truth is, it didn't seem to weigh upon her, as it seems to on you, that I wasn't able to marry her. JEAN. Why are you so sure of that? STONOR. Because she didn't so much as hint such a thing when she wrote that she meant to break off the--the---- JEAN. What made her write like that? STONOR (_with suppressed rage_). Why _will_ you go on talking of what's so long over and ended? JEAN. What reason did she give? STONOR. If your curiosity has so got the upper hand--_ask her_. JEAN (_her eyes upon him_). You're afraid to tell me. STONOR (_putting pressure on himself to answer quietly_). I still hoped--at _that_ time--to win my father over. She blamed me because (_goes to window and looks blindly out and speaks in a low tone_) if the child had lived it wouldn't have been possible to get my father to--to overlook it. JEAN (_faintly_). You wanted it _overlooked_? I don't underst---- STONOR (_turning passionately back to her_). Of course you don't. (_He seizes her hand and tries to draw her to him._) If you did, you wouldn't be the beautiful, tender, innocent child you are---- JEAN (_has withdrawn her hand and shrunk from him with an impulse--slight as is its expression--so tragically eloquent, that fear for the first time catches hold of him_). I am glad you didn't mean to desert her, Geoffrey. It wasn't your fault after all--only some misunderstanding that can be cleared up. STONOR. _Cleared up?_ JEAN. Yes. Cleared up. STONOR (_aghast_). You aren't thinking that this miserable old affair I'd as good as forgotten---- JEAN (_in a horror-struck whisper, with a glance at the door which he doesn't see_). _Forgotten!_ STONOR. No, no. I don't mean exactly forgotten. But you're torturing me so I don't know what I'm saying. (_He goes closer._) You aren't--Jean! you--you aren't going to let it come between you and me! JEAN (_presses her handkerchief to her lips, and then, taking it away, answers steadily_). I can't make or unmake what's past. But I'm glad, at least, that you didn't _mean_ to desert her in her trouble. You'll remind her of that first of all, won't you? (_Moves to the door_, L.) STONOR. Where are you going? (_Raising his voice._) Why should I remind anybody of what I want only to forget? JEAN (_finger on lip_). Sh! STONOR (_with eyes on the door_). You don't mean that _she's_---- JEAN. Yes. I left her to get a little rest. (_He recoils in an access of uncontrollable rage. She follows him. Speechless, he goes down_ R. _to get his hat._) Geoffrey, don't go before you hear me. I don't know if what I think matters to you now--but I hope it does. (_With tears._) You can still make me think of you without shrinking--if you will. STONOR (_fixes her a moment with his eyes. Then sternly_). What is it you are asking of me? JEAN. To make amends, Geoffrey. STONOR (_with an outburst_). You poor little innocent! JEAN. I'm poor enough. But (_locking her hands together_) I'm not so innocent but what I know you must right that old wrong now, if you're ever to right it. STONOR. You aren't insane enough to think I would turn round in these few hours and go back to something that ten years ago was ended for ever! Why, it's stark, staring madness! JEAN. No. (_Catching on his arm._) What you did ten years ago--_that_ was mad. This is paying a debt. STONOR. Look here, Jean, you're dreadfully wrought up and excited--tired too---- JEAN. No, not tired--though I've travelled so far to-day. I know you smile at sudden conversions. You think they're hysterical--worse--vulgar. But people must get their revelation how they can. And, Geoffrey, if I can't make you see this one of mine--I shall know your love could never mean strength to me. Only weakness. And I shall be afraid. So afraid I'll never dare to give you the _chance_ of making me loathe myself. I shall never see you again. STONOR. How right _I_ was to be afraid of that vein of fanaticism in you. (_Moves towards the door._) JEAN. Certainly you couldn't make a greater mistake than to go away now and think it any good ever to come back. (_He turns._) Even if I came to feel different, I couldn't _do_ anything different. I should know all this couldn't be forgotten. I should know that it would poison my life in the end. Yours too. STONOR (_with suppressed fury_). She has made good use of her time! (_With a sudden thought._) What has changed her? Has _she_ been seeing visions too? JEAN. What do you mean? STONOR. Why is she intriguing to get hold of a man that, ten years ago, she flatly refused to see, or hold any communication with? JEAN. "Intriguing to get hold of?" She hasn't mentioned you! STONOR. _What!_ Then how in the name of Heaven do you know--that she wants--what you ask? JEAN (_firmly_). There can't be any doubt about that. STONOR (_with immense relief_). You absurd, ridiculous child! Then all this is just your own unaided invention. Well--I could thank God! (_Falls into the nearest chair and passes his handkerchief over his face._) JEAN (_perplexed, uneasy_). For what are you thanking God? STONOR (_trying to think out his plan of action_). Suppose--(I'm not going to risk it)--but suppose--(_He looks up and at the sight of_ JEAN'S _face a new tenderness comes into his own. He rises suddenly._) Whether I deserve to suffer or not--it's quite certain _you_ don't. Don't cry, dear one. It never was the real thing. I had to wait till I knew you before I understood. JEAN (_lifts her eyes brimming_). Oh, is that true? (_Checks her movement towards him._) Loving you has made things clear to me I didn't dream of before. If I could think that because of me you were able to do this---- STONOR (_seizes her by the shoulders and says hoarsely_). Look here! Do you seriously ask me to give up the girl I love--to go and offer to marry a woman that even to think of---- JEAN. You cared for her once. You'll care about her again. She is beautiful and brilliant--everything. I've heard she could win any man she set herself to---- STONOR (_pushing_ JEAN _from him_). She's bewitched you! JEAN. Geoffrey, Geoffrey, you aren't going away like that. This isn't _the end_! STONOR (_darkly--hesitating_). I suppose even if she refused me, you'd---- JEAN. She won't refuse you. STONOR. She did once. JEAN. She didn't refuse to _marry_ you---- (JEAN _is going to the door_ L.) STONOR (_catches her by the arm_). Wait!--a---- (_Hunting for some means of gaining time._) Lady John is waiting all this while for the car to go back with a message. JEAN. _That's_ not a matter of life and death---- STONOR. All the same--I'll go down and give the order. JEAN (_stopping quite still on a sudden_). Very well. (_Sits_ C.) You'll come back if you're the man I pray you are. (_Breaks into a flood of silent tears, her elbows on the table_ (C.) _her face in her hands._) STONOR (_returns, bends over her, about to take her in his arms_). Dearest of all the world---- (_Door_ L. _opens softly and_ VIDA LEVERING _appears. She is arrested at sight of_ STONOR, _and is in the act of drawing back when, upon the slight noise_, STONOR _looks round. His face darkens, he stands staring at her and then with a look of speechless anger goes silently out_ C. JEAN, _hearing him shut the door, drops her head on the table with a sob._ VIDA LEVERING _crosses slowly to her and stands a moment silent at the girl's side._) MISS L. What is the matter? JEAN (_lifting her head and drying her eyes_). I--I've been seeing Geoffrey. MISS L. (_with an attempt at lightness_). Is this the effect seeing Geoffrey has? JEAN. You see, I know now (_as_ MISS LEVERING _looks quite uncomprehending_)--how he (_drops her eyes_)--how he spoiled some one else's life. MISS L. (_quickly_). Who tells you that? JEAN. Several people have told me. MISS L. Well, you should be very careful how you believe what you hear. JEAN (_passionately_). You _know_ it's true. MISS L. I know that it's possible to be mistaken. JEAN. I see! You're trying to shield him---- MISS L. Why should I--what is it to me? JEAN (_with tears_). Oh--h, how you must love him! MISS L. Listen to me---- JEAN (_rising_). What's the use of your going on denying it? (MISS LEVERING, _about to break in, is silenced._) _Geoffrey doesn't._ (JEAN, _struggling to command her feelings, goes to window._ VIDA LEVERING _relinquishes an impulse to follow, and sits left centre._ JEAN _comes slowly back with her eyes bent on the floor, does not lift them till she is quite near_ VIDA. _Then the girl's self-absorbed face changes._) Oh, don't look like that! I shall bring him back to you! (_Drops on her knees beside the other's chair._) MISS L. You would be impertinent (_softening_) if you weren't a romantic child. You can't bring him back. JEAN. Yes, he---- MISS L. But there's something you _can_ do---- JEAN. What? MISS L. Bring him to the point where he recognises that he's in our debt. JEAN. In _our_ debt? MISS L. In debt to women. He can't repay the one he robbed---- JEAN (_wincing and rising from her knees_). Yes, yes. MISS L. (_sternly_). No, he can't repay the dead. But there are the living. There are the thousands with hope still in their hearts and youth in their blood. Let him help _them_. Let him be a Friend to Women. JEAN (_rising on a wave of enthusiasm_). Yes, yes--I understand. That too! (_The door opens. As_ STONOR _enters with_ LADY JOHN, _he makes a slight gesture towards the two as much as to say, "You see."_) JEAN (_catching sight of him_). Thank you! LADY JOHN (_in a clear, commonplace tone to_ JEAN). Well, you rather gave us the slip. Vida, I believe Mr. Stonor wants to see you for a few minutes (_glances at watch_)--but I'd like a word with you first, as I must get back. (_To_ STONOR.) Do you think the car--your man said something about re-charging. STONOR (_hastily_). Oh, did he?--I'll see about it. (_As_ STONOR _is going out he encounters the_ BUTLER. _Exit_ STONOR.) BUTLER. Mr. Trent has called, Miss, to take Miss Levering to the meeting. JEAN. Bring Mr. Trent into my sitting-room. I'll tell him--you can't go to-night. [_Exeunt_ BUTLER C., JEAN L. LADY JOHN (_hurriedly_). I know, my dear, _you're_ not aware of what that impulsive girl wants to insist on. MISS L. Yes, I am aware of it. LADY JOHN. But it isn't with your sanction, surely, that she goes on making this extraordinary demand. MISS L. (_slowly_). I didn't sanction it at first, but I've been thinking it over. LADY JOHN. Then all I can say is I am greatly disappointed in you. You threw this man over years ago for reasons--whatever they were--that seemed to you good and sufficient. And now you come between him and a younger woman--just to play Nemesis, so far as I can make out! MISS L. Is that what he says? LADY JOHN. He says nothing that isn't fair and considerate. MISS L. I can see he's changed. LADY JOHN. And you're unchanged--is that it? MISS L. I've changed even more than he. LADY JOHN. But (_pity and annoyance blended in her tone_)--you care about him still, Vida? MISS L. No. LADY JOHN. I see. It's just that you wish to marry somebody---- MISS L. Oh, Lady John, there are no men listening. LADY JOHN (_surprised_). No, I didn't suppose there were. MISS L. Then why keep up that old pretence? LADY JOHN. What pre---- MISS L. That to marry _at all costs_ is every woman's dearest ambition till the grave closes over her. You and I _know_ it isn't true. LADY JOHN. Well, but---- Oh! it was just the unexpected sight of him bringing it back---- _That_ was what fired you this afternoon! (_With an honest attempt at sympathetic understanding._) Of course. The memory of a thing like that can never die--can never even be dimmed--_for the woman_. MISS L. I mean her to think so. LADY JOHN (_bewildered_). Jean! (MISS LEVERING _nods._) LADY JOHN. And it _isn't_ so? MISS L. You don't seriously believe a woman with anything else to think about, comes to the end of ten years still _absorbed_ in a memory of that sort? LADY JOHN (_astonished_). You've got over it, then! MISS L. If the newspapers didn't remind me I shouldn't remember once a twelvemonth that there was ever such a person as Geoffrey Stonor in the world. LADY JOHN (_with unconscious rapture_). Oh, I'm _so_ glad! MISS L. (_smiles grimly_). Yes, I'm glad too. LADY JOHN. And if Geoffrey Stonor offered you--what's called "reparation"--you'd refuse it? MISS L. (_smiles a little contemptuously_). Geoffrey Stonor! For me he's simply one of the far-back links in a chain of evidence. It's certain I think a hundred times of other women's present unhappiness, to once that I remember that old unhappiness of mine that's past. I think of the nail and chain makers of Cradley Heath. The sweated girls of the slums. I think of the army of ill-used women whose very existence I mustn't mention---- LADY JOHN (_interrupting hurriedly_). Then why in Heaven's name do you let poor Jean imagine---- MISS L. (_bending forward_). Look--I'll trust you, Lady John. I don't suffer from that old wrong as Jean thinks I do, but I shall coin her sympathy into gold for a greater cause than mine. LADY JOHN. I don't understand you. MISS L. Jean isn't old enough to be able to care as much about a principle as about a person. But if my half-forgotten pain can turn her generosity into the common treasury---- LADY JOHN. What do you propose she shall do, poor child? MISS L. Use her hold over Geoffrey Stonor to make him help us! LADY JOHN. Help you? MISS L. The man who served one woman--God knows how many more--very ill, shall serve hundreds of thousands well. Geoffrey Stonor shall make it harder for his son, harder still for his grandson, to treat any woman as he treated me. LADY JOHN. How will he do that? MISS L. By putting an end to the helplessness of women. LADY JOHN (_ironically_). You must think he has a great deal of power---- MISS L. Power? Yes, men have too much over penniless and frightened women. LADY JOHN (_impatiently_). What nonsense! You talk as though the women hadn't their share of human nature. _We_ aren't made of ice any more than the men. MISS L. No, but all the same we have more self-control. LADY JOHN. Than men? MISS L. You know we have. LADY JOHN (_shrewdly_). I know we mustn't admit it. MISS L. For fear they'd call us fishes! LADY JOHN (_evasively_). They talk of our lack of self-control--but it's the last thing they _want_ women to have. MISS L. Oh, we know what they want us to have. So we make shift to have it. If we don't, we go without hope--sometimes we go without bread. LADY JOHN (_shocked_). Vida--do you mean to say that you---- MISS L. I mean to say that men's vanity won't let them see it, but the thing's largely a question of economics. LADY JOHN (_shocked_). You _never_ loved him, then! MISS L. Oh, yes, I loved him--_once_. It was my helplessness turned the best thing life can bring, into a curse for both of us. LADY JOHN. I don't understand you---- MISS L. Oh, being "understood!"--that's too much to expect. When people come to know I've joined the Union---- LADY JOHN. But you won't---- MISS L.--who is there who will resist the temptation to say, "Poor Vida Levering! What a pity she hasn't got a husband and a baby to keep her quiet"? The few who know about me, they'll be equally sure that it's not the larger view of life I've gained--my own poor little story is responsible for my new departure. (_Leans forward and looks into_ LADY JOHN'S _face._) My best friend, she will be surest of all, that it's a private sense of loss, or, lower yet, a grudge----! But I tell you the only difference between me and thousands of women with husbands and babies is that I'm free to say what I think. _They aren't._ LADY JOHN (_rising and looking at her watch_). I must get back--my poor ill-used guests. MISS L. (_rising_). I won't ring. I think you'll find Mr. Stonor downstairs waiting for you. LADY JOHN (_embarrassed_). Oh--a--he will have left word about the car in any case. (MISS LEVERING _has opened the door_ (C.). ALLEN TRENT _is in the act of saying goodbye to_ JEAN _in the hall._) MISS L. Well, Mr. Trent, I didn't expect to see you this evening. TRENT (_comes and stands in the doorway_). Why not? Have I ever failed? MISS L. Lady John, this is one of our allies. He is good enough to squire me through the rabble from time to time. LADY JOHN. Well, I think it's very handsome of you, after what she said to-day about men. (_Shakes hands._) TRENT. I've no great opinion of most men myself. I might add--or of most women. LADY JOHN. Oh! Well, at any rate I shall go away relieved to think that Miss Levering's plain speaking hasn't alienated _all_ masculine regard. TRENT. Why should it? LADY JOHN. That's right, Mr. Trent! Don't believe all she says in the heat of propaganda. TRENT. I do believe all she says. But I'm not cast down. LADY JOHN (_smiling_). Not when she says---- TRENT (_interrupting_). Was there never a mysogynist of my sex who ended by deciding to make an exception? LADY JOHN (_smiling significantly_). Oh, if _that's_ what you build on! TRENT. Well, why shouldn't a man-hater on your side prove equally open to reason? MISS L. That part of the question doesn't concern me. I've come to a place where I realise that the first battles of this new campaign must be fought by women alone. The only effective help men could give--amendment of the law--they refuse. The rest is nothing. LADY JOHN. Don't be ungrateful, Vida. Here's Mr. Trent ready to face criticism in publicly championing you. MISS L. It's an illusion that I as an individual need Mr. Trent. I am quite safe in the crowd. Please don't wait for me, and don't come for me again. TRENT (_flushes_). Of course if you'd rather---- MISS L. And that reminds me. I was asked to thank you and to tell you, too, that they--the women of the Union--they won't need your chairmanship any more--though that, I beg you to believe, has nothing to do with any feeling of mine. TRENT (_hurt_). Of course, I know there must be other men ready--better known men---- MISS L. It isn't that. It's simply that they find a man can't keep a rowdy meeting in order as well as a woman. (_He stares._) LADY JOHN. You aren't serious? MISS L. (_to_ TRENT). Haven't you noticed that all their worst disturbances come when men are in charge? TRENT. Well--a--(_laughs a little ruefully as he moves to the door_) I hadn't connected the two ideas. Goodbye. MISS L. Goodbye. (JEAN _takes him downstairs, right centre._) LADY JOHN (_as_ TRENT _disappears_). That nice boy's in love with you. (MISS LEVERING _simply looks at her._) LADY JOHN. Goodbye. (_They shake hands._) I wish you hadn't been so unkind to that nice boy! MISS L. Do you? LADY JOHN. Yes, for then I would be more certain of your telling Geoffrey Stonor that intelligent women don't nurse their wrongs and lie in wait to punish them. MISS L. You are _not_ certain? LADY JOHN (_goes close up to_ VIDA). Are you? (VIDA _stands with her eyes on the ground, silent, motionless._ LADY JOHN, _with a nervous glance at her watch and a gesture of extreme perturbation, goes hurriedly out._ VIDA _shuts the door. She comes slowly back, sits down and covers her face with her hands. She rises and begins to walk up and down, obviously trying to master her agitation. Enter_ GEOFFREY STONOR.) MISS L. Well, have they primed you? Have you got your lesson (_with a little broken laugh_) _by heart_ at last? STONOR (_looking at her from immeasurable distance_). I am not sure I understand you. (_Pause._) However unpropitious your mood may be--I shall discharge my errand. (_Pause. Her silence irritates him._) I have promised to offer you what I believe is called "amends." MISS L. (_quickly_). You've come to realise, then--after all these years--that you owed me something? STONOR (_on the brink of protest, checks himself_). I am not here to deny it. MISS L. (_fiercely_). Pay, then--_pay_. STONOR (_a moment's dread as he looks at her, his lips set. Then stonily_). I have promised that, if you exact it, I will. MISS L. Ah! If I insist you'll "make it all good"! (_Quite low._) Then don't you know you must pay me in kind? STONOR. What do you mean? MISS L. Give me back what you took from me: my old faith. Give me that. STONOR. Oh, if you mean to make phrases---- (_A gesture of scant patience._) MISS L. (_going closer_). Or give me back mere kindness--or even tolerance. Oh, I don't mean _your_ tolerance! Give me back the power to think fairly of my brothers--not as mockers--thieves. STONOR. I have not mocked you. And I have asked you---- MISS L. Something you knew I should refuse! Or (_her eyes blaze_) did you dare to be afraid I wouldn't? STONOR. I suppose, if we set our teeth, we could---- MISS L. I couldn't--not even if I set my teeth. And you wouldn't dream of asking me, if you thought there was the smallest chance. STONOR. I can do no more than make you an offer of such reparation as is in my power. If you don't accept it---- (_He turns with an air of "That's done."_) MISS L. Accept it? No!... Go away and live in debt! Pay and pay and pay--and find yourself still in debt!--for a thing you'll never be able to give me back. (_Lower._) And when you come to die, say to yourself, "I paid all creditors but one." STONOR. I'm rather tired, you know, of this talk of debt. If I hear that you persist in it I shall have to---- MISS L. What? (_She faces him._) STONOR. No. I'll keep to my resolution. (_Turning to the door._) MISS L. (_intercepting him_). What resolution? STONOR. I came here, under considerable pressure, to speak of the future--not to re-open the past. MISS L. The Future and the Past are one. STONOR. You talk as if that old madness was mine alone. It is the woman's way. MISS L. I know. And it's not fair. Men suffer as well as we by the woman's starting wrong. We are taught to think the man a sort of demigod. If he tells her: "go down into Hell"--down into Hell she goes. STONOR. Make no mistake. Not the woman alone. _They go down together._ MISS L. Yes, they go down together, but the man comes up alone. As a rule. It is more convenient so--for him. And for the Other Woman. (_The eyes of both go to_ JEAN'S _door._) STONOR (_angrily_). My conscience is clear. I know--and so do you--that most men in my position wouldn't have troubled themselves. I gave myself endless trouble. MISS L. (_with wondering eyes_). So you've gone about all these years feeling that you'd discharged every obligation. STONOR. Not only that. I stood by you with a fidelity that was nothing short of Quixotic. If, woman like, you _must_ recall the Past--I insist on your recalling it correctly. MISS L. (_very low_). You think I don't recall it correctly? STONOR. Not when you make--other people believe that I deserted you. (_With gathering wrath._) It's a curious enough charge when you stop to consider---- (_Checks himself, and with a gesture of impatience sweeps the whole thing out of his way._) MISS L. Well, when we _do_--just for five minutes out of ten years--when we do stop to consider---- STONOR. We remember it was _you_ who did the deserting! Since you had to rake the story up, you might have had the fairness to tell the facts. MISS L. You think "the facts" would have excused you! (_She sits._) STONOR. No doubt you've forgotten them, since Lady John tells me you wouldn't remember my existence once a year if the newspapers didn't---- MISS L. Ah, you minded that! STONOR (_with manly spirit_). I minded your giving false impressions. (_She is about to speak, he advances on her._) Do you deny that you returned my letters unopened? MISS L. (_quietly_). No. STONOR. Do you deny that you refused to see me--and that, when I persisted, you vanished? MISS L. I don't deny any of those things. STONOR. Why, I had no trace of you for years! MISS L. I suppose not. STONOR. Very well, then. What _could_ I do? MISS L. Nothing. It was too late to do anything. STONOR. It wasn't too late! You knew--since you "read the papers"--that my father died that same year. There was no longer any barrier between us. MISS L. Oh yes, there was a barrier. STONOR. Of your own making, then. MISS L. I had my guilty share in it--but the barrier (_her voice trembles_)--the barrier was your invention. STONOR. It was no "invention." If you had ever known my father---- MISS L. Oh, the echoes! The echoes! How often you used to say, if I "knew your father!" But you said, too (_lower_)--you called the greatest barrier by another name. STONOR. What name? MISS L. (_very low_). The child that was to come. STONOR (_hastily_). That was before my father died. While I still hoped to get his consent. MISS L. (_nods_). How the thought of that all-powerful personage used to terrorise me! What chance had a little unborn child against "the last of the great feudal lords," as you called him. STONOR. You _know_ the child would have stood between you and me! MISS L. I know the child _did_ stand between you and me! STONOR (_with vague uneasiness_). It _did_ stand---- MISS L. Happy mothers teach their children. Mine had to teach me. STONOR. You talk as if---- MISS L.--teach me that a woman may do a thing for love's sake that shall kill love. (_A silence._) STONOR (_fearing and putting from him fuller comprehension, rises with an air of finality_). You certainly made it plain you had no love left for me. MISS L. I had need of it all for the child. STONOR (_stares--comes closer, speaks hurriedly and very low_). Do you mean then that, after all--it lived? MISS L. No; I mean that it was sacrificed. But it showed me no barrier is so impassable as the one a little child can raise. STONOR (_a light dawning_). Was that why you ... was _that_ why? MISS L. (_nods, speechless a moment_). Day and night there it was!--between my thought of you and me. (_He sits again, staring at her._) When I was most unhappy I would wake, thinking I heard it cry. It was my own crying I heard, but I seemed to have it in my arms. I suppose I was mad. I used to lie there in that lonely farmhouse pretending to hush it. It was so I hushed myself. STONOR. I never knew---- MISS L. I didn't blame you. You couldn't risk being with me. STONOR. You agreed that for both our sakes---- MISS L. Yes, you had to be very circumspect. You were so well known. Your autocratic father--your brilliant political future---- STONOR. Be fair. _Our_ future--as I saw it then. MISS L. Yes, it all hung on concealment. It must have looked quite simple to you. You didn't know that the ghost of a child that had never seen the light, the frail thing you meant to sweep aside and forget--_have_ swept aside and forgotten--you didn't know it was strong enough to push you out of my life. (_Lower with an added intensity._) It can do more. (_Leans over him and whispers._) It can push that girl out. (STONOR'S _face changes._) It can do more still. STONOR. Are you threatening me? MISS L. No, I am preparing you. STONOR. For what? MISS L. For the work that must be done. Either with _your help_--or _that girl's_. (STONOR _lifts his eyes a moment._) MISS L. One of two things. Either her life, and all she has, given to this new service--or a Ransom, if I give her up to you. STONOR. I see. A price. Well----? MISS L. (_looks searchingly in his face, hesitates and shakes her head_). Even if I could trust you to pay--no, it would be a poor bargain to give her up for anything you could do. STONOR (_rising_). In spite of your assumption--she may not be your tool. MISS L. You are horribly afraid she is! But you are wrong. Don't think it's merely I that have got hold of Jean Dunbarton. STONOR (_angrily_). Who else? MISS L. The New Spirit that's abroad. (STONOR _turns away with an exclamation and begins to pace, sentinel-like, up and down before_ JEAN'S _door._) MISS L. How else should that inexperienced girl have felt the new loyalty and responded as she did? STONOR (_under his breath_). "New" indeed--however little loyal. MISS L. Loyal above all. But no newer than electricity was when it first lit up the world. It had been there since the world began--waiting to do away with the dark. _So has the thing you're fighting._ STONOR (_his voice held down to its lowest register_). The thing I'm fighting is nothing more than one person's hold on a highly sensitive imagination. I consented to this interview with the hope---- (_A gesture of impotence._) It only remains for me to show her your true motive is revenge. MISS L. Once say that to her and you are lost! (STONOR _motionless; his look is the look of a man who sees happiness slipping away._) MISS L. I know what it is that men fear. It even seems as if it must be through fear that your enlightenment will come. That is why I see a value in Jean Dunbarton far beyond her fortune. (STONOR _lifts his eyes dully and fixes them on_ VIDA'S _face._) MISS L. More than any girl I know--if I keep her from you--that gentle, inflexible creature could rouse in men the old half-superstitious fear---- STONOR. "Fear?" I believe you are mad. MISS L. "Mad." "Unsexed." These are the words to-day. In the Middle Ages men cried out "Witch!" and burnt her--the woman who served no man's bed or board. STONOR. You want to make that poor child believe---- MISS L. She sees for herself we've come to a place where we find there's a value in women apart from the value men see in them. You teach us not to look to you for some of the things we need most. If women must be freed by women, we have need of such as--(_her eyes go to_ JEAN'S _door_)--who knows? She may be the new Joan of Arc. STONOR (_aghast_). That _she_ should be the sacrifice! MISS L. You have taught us to look very calmly on the sacrifice of women. Men tell us in every tongue it's "a necessary evil." (STONOR _stands rooted, staring at the ground._) MISS L. One girl's happiness--against a thing nobler than happiness for thousands--who can hesitate?--_Not Jean._ STONOR. Good God! Can't you see that this crazed campaign you'd start her on--even if it's successful, it can only be so through the help of men? What excuse shall you make your own soul for not going straight to the goal? MISS L. You think we wouldn't be glad to go straight to the goal? STONOR. I do. I see you'd much rather punish me and see her revel in a morbid self-sacrifice. MISS L. You say I want to punish you only because, like most men, you won't take the trouble to understand what we do want--or how determined we are to have it. You can't kill this new spirit among women. (_Going nearer._) And you couldn't make a greater mistake than to think it finds a home only in the exceptional, or the unhappy. It's so strange, Geoffrey, to see a man like you as much deluded as the Hyde Park loafers who say to Ernestine Blunt, "Who's hurt _your_ feelings?" Why not realise (_going quite close to him_) this is a thing that goes deeper than personal experience? And yet (_lowering her voice and glancing at the door_), if you take only the narrowest personal view, a good deal depends on what you and I agree upon in the next five minutes. STONOR (_bringing her farther away from the door_). You recommend my realising the larger issues. But in your ambition to attach that girl to the chariot wheels of "Progress," you quite ignore the fact that people fitter for such work--the men you look to enlist in the end--are ready waiting to give the thing a chance. MISS L. Men are ready! What men? STONOR (_avoiding her eyes, picking his words_). Women have themselves to blame that the question has grown so delicate that responsible people shrink--for the moment--from being implicated in it. MISS L. We have seen the "shrinking." STONOR. Without quoting any one else, I might point out that the New Antagonism seems to have blinded you to the small fact that I, for one, am not an opponent. MISS L. The phrase _has_ a familiar ring. We have heard it from four hundred and twenty others. STONOR. I spoke, if I may say so, of some one who would count. Some one who can carry his party along with him--or risk a seat in the Cabinet. MISS L. (_quickly_). Did you mean you are ready to do that? STONOR. An hour ago I was. MISS L. Ah!... an hour ago. STONOR. Exactly. You don't understand men. They can be led. They can't be driven. Ten minutes before you came into the room I was ready to say I would throw in my political lot with this Reform. MISS L. And now...? STONOR. Now you block my way by an attempt at coercion. By forcing my hand you give my adherence an air of bargain-driving for a personal end. Exactly the mistake of the ignorant agitators of your "Union," as you call it. You have a great deal to learn. This movement will go forward, not because of the agitation, but in spite of it. There are men in Parliament who would have been actively serving the Reform to-day ... as actively as so vast a constitutional change---- MISS L. (_smiles faintly_). And they haven't done it because---- STONOR. Because it would have put a premium on breaches of decent behaviour. (_He takes a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket._) Look here! MISS L. (_flushes with excitement as she reads the telegram_). This is very good. I see only one objection. STONOR. Objection! MISS L. You haven't sent it. STONOR. _That_ is your fault. MISS L. When did you write this? STONOR. Just before you came in--when----(_He glances at the door._) MISS L. Ah! It must have pleased Jean--that message. (_Offers him back the paper._) (STONOR _astonished at her yielding it up so lightly, and remembering_ JEAN _had not so much as read it. He throws himself heavily into a chair and drops his head in his hands._) MISS L. I could drive a hard-and-fast bargain with you, but I think I won't. If _both_ love and ambition urge you on, perhaps----(_She gazes at the slack, hopeless figure with its sudden look of age--goes over silently and stands by his side._) After all, life hasn't been quite fair to you---- (_He raises his heavy eyes._) You fall out of one ardent woman's dreams into another's. STONOR. You may as well tell me--do you mean to----? MISS L. To keep you and her apart? No. STONOR (_for the first time tears come into his eyes. After a moment he holds out his hand_). What can I do for you? (MISS LEVERING _shakes her head--speechless._) STONOR. For the real you. Not the Reformer, or the would-be politician--for the woman I so unwillingly hurt. (_As she turns away, struggling with her feeling, he lays a detaining hand on her arm._) You may not believe it, but now that I understand, there is almost nothing I wouldn't do to right that old wrong. MISS L. There's nothing to be done. You can never give me back my child. STONOR (_at the anguish in_ VIDA'S _face his own has changed_). Will that ghost give you no rest? MISS L. Yes, oh, yes. I see life is nobler than I knew. There is work to do. STONOR (_stopping her as she goes towards the folding doors_). Why should you think that it's only you, these ten years have taught something to? Why not give even a man credit for a willingness to learn something of life, and for being sorry--profoundly sorry--for the pain his instruction has cost others? You seem to think I've taken it all quite lightly. That's not fair. All my life, ever since you disappeared, the thought of you has hurt. I would give anything I possess to know you--were happy again. MISS L. Oh, happiness! STONOR (_significantly_). Why shouldn't you find it still. MISS L. (_stares an instant_). I see! She couldn't help telling about Allen Trent--Lady John couldn't. STONOR. You're one of the people the years have not taken from, but given more to. You are more than ever.... You haven't lost your beauty. MISS L. The gods saw it was so little effectual, it wasn't worth taking away. (_She stands looking out into the void._) One woman's mishap?--what is that? A thing as trivial to the great world as it's sordid in most eyes. But the time has come when a woman may look about her, and say, "What general significance has my secret pain? Does it 'join on' to anything?" And I find it does. I'm no longer merely a woman who has stumbled on the way. I'm one (_she controls with difficulty the shake in her voice_) who has got up bruised and bleeding, wiped the dust from her hands and the tears from her face, and said to herself not merely, "Here's one luckless woman! but--here is a stone of stumbling to many. Let's see if it can't be moved out of other women's way." And she calls people to come and help. No mortal man, let alone a woman, _by herself_, can move that rock of offence. But (_with a sudden sombre flame of enthusiasm_) if many help, Geoffrey, the thing can be done. STONOR (_looks at her with wondering pity_). Lord! how you care! MISS L. (_touched by his moved face_). Don't be so sad. Shall I tell you a secret? Jean's ardent dreams needn't frighten you, if she has a child. _That_--from the beginning, it was not the strong arm--it was the weakest--the little, little arms that subdued the fiercest of us. (STONOR _puts out a pitying hand uncertainly towards her. She does not take it, but speaks with great gentleness._) You will have other children, Geoffrey--for me there was to be only one. Well, well--(_she brushes her tears away_)--since men alone have tried and failed to make a decent world for the little children to live in--it's as well some of us are childless. (_Quietly taking up her hat and cloak._) Yes, _we_ are the ones who have no excuse for standing aloof from the fight. STONOR. Vida! MISS L. What? STONOR. You've forgotten something. (_As she looks back he is signing the message._) _This._ (_She goes out silently with the "political dynamite" in her hand._) CURTAIN. The Gresham Press, UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, WOKING AND LONDON. Corrections. The first line indicates the original, the second the correction. p. 43: we all realise it was a perfectiy lunatic proceeding we all realise it was a perfectly lunatic proceeding p. 73: the unemployed in the condition they' e the unemployed in the condition they're p. 92: you aren't going away lik that. you aren't going away like that. 
3529	----	RESIDENCE IN SWEDEN, NORWAY, AND DENMARK*** Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY. LETTERS WRITTEN _DURING A SHORT RESIDENCE_ IN SWEDEN, NORWAY, AND DENMARK BY MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_. 1889. INTRODUCTION. Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April, 1759. Her father--a quick-tempered and unsettled man, capable of beating wife, or child, or dog--was the son of a manufacturer who made money in Spitalfields, when Spitalfields was prosperous. Her mother was a rigorous Irishwoman, of the Dixons of Ballyshannon. Edward John Wollstonecraft--of whose children, besides Mary, the second child, three sons and two daughters lived to be men and women--in course of the got rid of about ten thousand pounds, which had been left him by his father. He began to get rid of it by farming. Mary Wollstonecraft's first-remembered home was in a farm at Epping. When she was five years old the family moved to another farm, by the Chelmsford Road. When she was between six and seven years old they moved again, to the neighbourhood of Barking. There they remained three years before the next move, which was to a farm near Beverley, in Yorkshire. In Yorkshire they remained six years, and Mary Wollstonecraft had there what education fell to her lot between the ages of ten and sixteen. Edward John Wollstonecraft then gave up farming to venture upon a commercial speculation. This caused him to live for a year and a half at Queen's Row, Hoxton. His daughter Mary was then sixteen; and while at Hoxton she had her education advanced by the friendly care of a deformed clergyman--a Mr. Clare--who lived next door, and stayed so much at home that his one pair of shoes had lasted him for fourteen years. But Mary Wollstonecraft's chief friend at this time was an accomplished girl only two years older than herself, who maintained her father, mother, and family by skill in drawing. Her name was Frances Blood, and she especially, by her example and direct instruction, drew out her young friend's powers. In 1776, Mary Wollstonecraft's father, a rolling stone, rolled into Wales. Again he was a farmer. Next year again he was a Londoner; and Mary had influence enough to persuade him to choose a house at Walworth, where she would be near to her friend Fanny. Then, however, the conditions of her home life caused her to be often on the point of going away to earn a living for herself. In 1778, when she was nineteen, Mary Wollstonecraft did leave home, to take a situation as companion with a rich tradesman's widow at Bath, of whom it was said that none of her companions could stay with her. Mary Wollstonecraft, nevertheless, stayed two years with the difficult widow, and made herself respected. Her mother's failing health then caused Mary to return to her. The father was then living at Enfield, and trying to save the small remainder of his means by not venturing upon any business at all. The mother died after long suffering, wholly dependent on her daughter Mary's constant care. The mother's last words were often quoted by Mary Wollstonecraft in her own last years of distress--"A little patience, and all will be over." After the mother's death, Mary Wollstonecraft left home again, to live with her friend, Fanny Blood, who was at Walham Green. In 1782 she went to nurse a married sister through a dangerous illness. The father's need of support next pressed upon her. He had spent not only his own money, but also the little that had been specially reserved for his children. It is said to be the privilege of a passionate man that he always gets what he wants; he gets to be avoided, and they never find a convenient corner of their own who shut themselves out from the kindly fellowship of life. In 1783 Mary Wollstonecraft--aged twenty-four--with two of her sisters, joined Fanny Blood in setting up a day school at Islington, which was removed in a few months to Newington Green. Early in 1785 Fanny Blood, far gone in consumption, sailed for Lisbon to marry an Irish surgeon who was settled there. After her marriage it was evident that she had but a few months to live; Mary Wollstonecraft, deaf to all opposing counsel, then left her school, and, with help of money from a friendly woman, she went out to nurse her, and was by her when she died. Mary Wollstonecraft remembered her loss ten years afterwards in these "Letters from Sweden and Norway," when she wrote: "The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath." Mary Wollstonecraft left Lisbon for England late in December, 1785. When she came back she found Fanny's poor parents anxious to go back to Ireland; and as she had been often told that she could earn by writing, she wrote a pamphlet of 162 small pages--"Thoughts on the Education of Daughters"--and got ten pounds for it. This she gave to her friend's parents to enable them to go back to their kindred. In all she did there is clear evidence of an ardent, generous, impulsive nature. One day her friend Fanny Blood had repined at the unhappy surroundings in the home she was maintaining for her father and mother, and longed for a little home of her own to do her work in. Her friend quietly found rooms, got furniture together, and told her that her little home was ready; she had only to walk into it. Then it seemed strange to Mary Wollstonecraft that Fanny Blood was withheld by thoughts that had not been uppermost in the mood of complaint. She thought her friend irresolute, where she had herself been generously rash. Her end would have been happier had she been helped, as many are, by that calm influence of home in which some knowledge of the world passes from father and mother to son and daughter, without visible teaching and preaching, in easiest companionship of young and old from day to day. The little payment for her pamphlet on the "Education of Daughters" caused Mary Wollstonecraft to think more seriously of earning by her pen. The pamphlet seems also to have advanced her credit as a teacher. After giving up her day school, she spent some weeks at Eton with the Rev. Mr. Prior, one of the masters there, who recommended her as governess to the daughters of Lord Kingsborough, an Irish viscount, eldest son of the Earl of Kingston. Her way of teaching was by winning love, and she obtained the warm affection of the eldest of her pupils, who became afterwards Countess Mount-Cashel. In the summer of 1787, Lord Kingsborough's family, including Mary Wollstonecraft, was at Bristol Hot-wells, before going to the Continent. While there, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her little tale published as "Mary, a Fiction," wherein there was much based on the memory of her own friendship for Fanny Blood. The publisher of Mary Wollstonecraft's "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" was the same Joseph Johnson who in 1785 was the publisher of Cowper's "Task." With her little story written and a little money saved, the resolve to live by her pen could now be carried out. Mary Wollstonecraft, therefore, parted from her friends at Bristol, went to London, saw her publisher, and frankly told him her determination. He met her with fatherly kindness, and received her as a guest in his house while she was making her arrangements. At Michaelmas, 1787, she settled in a house in George Street, on the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge. There she produced a little book for children, of "Original Stories from Real Life," and earned by drudgery for Joseph Johnson. She translated, she abridged, she made a volume of Selections, and she wrote for an "Analytical Review," which Mr. Johnson founded in the middle of the year 1788. Among the books translated by her was Necker "On the Importance of Religious Opinions." Among the books abridged by her was Salzmann's "Elements of Morality." With all this hard work she lived as sparely as she could, that she might help her family. She supported her father. That she might enable her sisters to earn their living as teachers, she sent one of them to Paris, and maintained her there for two years; the other she placed in a school near London as parlour-boarder until she was admitted into it as a paid teacher. She placed one brother at Woolwich to qualify for the Navy, and he obtained a lieutenant's commission. For another brother, articled to an attorney whom he did not like, she obtained a transfer of indentures; and when it became clear that his quarrel was more with law than with the lawyers, she placed him with a farmer before fitting him out for emigration to America. She then sent him, so well prepared for his work there that he prospered well. She tried even to disentangle her father's affairs; but the confusion in them was beyond her powers of arrangement. Added to all this faithful work, she took upon herself the charge of an orphan child, seven years old, whose mother had been in the number of her friends. That was the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, thirty years old, in 1789, the year of the Fall of the Bastille; the noble life now to be touched in its enthusiasms by the spirit of the Revolution, to be caught in the great storm, shattered, and lost among its wrecks. To Burke's attack on the French Revolution Mary Wollstonecraft wrote an Answer--one of many answers provoked by it--that attracted much attention. This was followed by her "Vindication of the Rights of Woman," while the air was full of declamation on the "Rights of Man." The claims made in this little book were in advance of the opinion of that day, but they are claims that have in our day been conceded. They are certainly not revolutionary in the opinion of the world that has become a hundred years older since the book was written. At this the Mary Wollstonecraft had moved to rooms in Store Street, Bedford Square. She was fascinated by Fuseli the painter, and he was a married man. She felt herself to be too strongly drawn towards him, and she went to Paris at the close of the year 1792, to break the spell. She felt lonely and sad, and was not the happier for being in a mansion lent to her, from which the owner was away, and in which she lived surrounded by his servants. Strong womanly instincts were astir within her, and they were not all wise folk who had been drawn around her by her generous enthusiasm for the new hopes of the world, that made it then, as Wordsworth felt, a very heaven to the young. Four months after she had gone to Paris, Mary Wollstonecraft met at the house of a merchant, with whose wife she had become intimate, an American named Gilbert Imlay. He won her affections. That was in April, 1793. He had no means, and she had home embarrassments, for which she was unwilling that he should become in any way responsible. A part of the new dream in some minds then was of a love too pure to need or bear the bondage of authority. The mere forced union of marriage ties implied, it was said, a distrust of fidelity. When Gilbert Imlay would have married Mary Wollstonecraft, she herself refused to bind him; she would keep him legally exempt from her responsibilities towards the father, sisters, brothers, whom she was supporting. She took his name and called herself his wife, when the French Convention, indignant at the conduct of the British Government, issue a decree from the effects of which she would escape as the wife of a citizen of the United States. But she did not marry. She witnessed many of the horrors that came of the loosened passions of an untaught populace. A child was born to her--a girl whom she named after the dead friend of her own girlhood. And then she found that she had leant upon a reed. She was neglected; and was at last forsaken. Having sent her to London, Imlay there visited her, to explain himself away. She resolved on suicide, and in dissuading her from that he gave her hope again. He needed somebody who had good judgment, and who cared for his interests, to represent him in some business affairs in Norway. She undertook to act for him, and set out on the voyage only a week after she had determined to destroy herself. The interest of this book which describes her travel is quickened by a knowledge of the heart-sorrow that underlies it all. Gilbert Imlay had promised to meet her upon her return, and go with her to Switzerland. But the letters she had from him in Sweden and Norway were cold, and she came back to find that she was wholly forsaken for an actress from a strolling company of players. Then she went up the river to drown herself. She paced the road at Putney on an October night, in 1795, in heavy rain, until her clothes were drenched, that she might sink more surely, and then threw herself from the top of Putney Bridge. She was rescued, and lived on with deadened spirit. In 1796 these "Letters from Sweden and Norway" were published. Early in 1797 she was married to William Godwin. On the 10th of September in the same year, at the age of thirty-eight, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin died, after the birth of the daughter who lived to become the wife of Shelley. The mother also would have lived, if a womanly feeling, in itself to be respected, had not led her also to unwise departure from the customs of the world. Peace be to her memory. None but kind thoughts can dwell upon the life of this too faithful disciple of Rousseau. H. M. LETTER I. Eleven days of weariness on board a vessel not intended for the accommodation of passengers have so exhausted my spirits, to say nothing of the other causes, with which you are already sufficiently acquainted, that it is with some difficulty I adhere to my determination of giving you my observations, as I travel through new scenes, whilst warmed with the impression they have made on me. The captain, as I mentioned to you, promised to put me on shore at Arendall or Gothenburg in his way to Elsineur, but contrary winds obliged us to pass both places during the night. In the morning, however, after we had lost sight of the entrance of the latter bay, the vessel was becalmed; and the captain, to oblige me, hanging out a signal for a pilot, bore down towards the shore. My attention was particularly directed to the lighthouse, and you can scarcely imagine with what anxiety I watched two long hours for a boat to emancipate me; still no one appeared. Every cloud that flitted on the horizon was hailed as a liberator, till approaching nearer, like most of the prospects sketched by hope, it dissolved under the eye into disappointment. Weary of expectation, I then began to converse with the captain on the subject, and from the tenor of the information my questions drew forth I soon concluded that if I waited for a boat I had little chance of getting on shore at this place. Despotism, as is usually the case, I found had here cramped the industry of man. The pilots being paid by the king, and scantily, they will not run into any danger, or even quit their hovels, if they can possibly avoid it, only to fulfil what is termed their duty. How different is it on the English coast, where, in the most stormy weather, boats immediately hail you, brought out by the expectation of extraordinary profit. Disliking to sail for Elsineur, and still more to lie at anchor or cruise about the coast for several days, I exerted all my rhetoric to prevail on the captain to let me have the ship's boat, and though I added the most forcible of arguments, I for a long the addressed him in vain. It is a kind of rule at sea not to send out a boat. The captain was a good-natured man; but men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness, and they rarely go as far as they may in any undertaking who are determined not to go beyond it on any account. If, however, I had some trouble with the captain, I did not lose much time with the sailors, for they, all alacrity, hoisted out the boat the moment I obtained permission, and promised to row me to the lighthouse. I did not once allow myself to doubt of obtaining a conveyance from thence round the rocks--and then away for Gothenburg--confinement is so unpleasant. The day was fine, and I enjoyed the water till, approaching the little island, poor Marguerite, whose timidity always acts as a feeler before her adventuring spirit, began to wonder at our not seeing any inhabitants. I did not listen to her. But when, on landing, the same silence prevailed, I caught the alarm, which was not lessened by the sight of two old men whom we forced out of their wretched hut. Scarcely human in their appearance, we with difficulty obtained an intelligible reply to our questions, the result of which was that they had no boat, and were not allowed to quit their post on any pretence. But they informed us that there was at the other side, eight or ten miles over, a pilot's dwelling. Two guineas tempted the sailors to risk the captain's displeasure, and once more embark to row me over. The weather was pleasant, and the appearance of the shore so grand that I should have enjoyed the two hours it took to reach it, but for the fatigue which was too visible in the countenances of the sailors, who, instead of uttering a complaint, were, with the thoughtless hilarity peculiar to them, joking about the possibility of the captain's taking advantage of a slight westerly breeze, which was springing up, to sail without them. Yet, in spite of their good humour, I could not help growing uneasy when the shore, receding, as it were, as we advanced, seemed to promise no end to their toil. This anxiety increased when, turning into the most picturesque bay I ever saw, my eyes sought in vain for the vestige of a human habitation. Before I could determine what step to take in such a dilemma (for I could not bear to think of returning to the ship), the sight of a barge relieved me, and we hastened towards it for information. We were immediately directed to pass some jutting rocks, when we should see a pilot's hut. There was a solemn silence in this scene which made itself be felt. The sunbeams that played on the ocean, scarcely ruffled by the lightest breeze, contrasted with the huge dark rocks, that looked like the rude materials of creation forming the barrier of unwrought space, forcibly struck me, but I should not have been sorry if the cottage had not appeared equally tranquil. Approaching a retreat where strangers, especially women, so seldom appeared, I wondered that curiosity did not bring the beings who inhabited it to the windows or door. I did not immediately recollect that men who remain so near the brute creation, as only to exert themselves to find the food necessary to sustain life, have little or no imagination to call forth the curiosity necessary to fructify the faint glimmerings of mind which entitle them to rank as lords of the creation. Had they either they could not contentedly remain rooted in the clods they so indolently cultivate. Whilst the sailors went to seek for the sluggish inhabitants, these conclusions occurred to me; and, recollecting the extreme fondness which the Parisians ever testify for novelty, their very curiosity appeared to me a proof of the progress they had made in refinement. Yes, in the art of living--in the art of escaping from the cares which embarrass the first steps towards the attainment of the pleasures of social life. The pilots informed the sailors that they were under the direction of a lieutenant retired from the service, who spoke English; adding that they could do nothing without his orders, and even the offer of money could hardly conquer their laziness and prevail on them to accompany us to his dwelling. They would not go with me alone, which I wanted them to have done, because I wished to dismiss the sailors as soon as possible. Once more we rowed off, they following tardily, till, turning round another bold protuberance of the rocks, we saw a boat making towards us, and soon learnt that it was the lieutenant himself, coming with some earnestness to see who we were. To save the sailors any further toil, I had my baggage instantly removed into his boat; for, as he could speak English, a previous parley was not necessary, though Marguerite's respect for me could hardly keep her from expressing the fear, strongly marked on her countenance, which my putting ourselves into the power of a strange man excited. He pointed out his cottage; and, drawing near to it, I was not sorry to see a female figure, though I had not, like Marguerite, been thinking of robberies, murders, or the other evil which instantly, as the sailors would have said, runs foul of a woman's imagination. On entering I was still better pleased to find a clean house, with some degree of rural elegance. The beds were of muslin, coarse it is true, but dazzlingly white; and the floor was strewed over with little sprigs of juniper (the custom, as I afterwards found, of the country), which formed a contrast with the curtains, and produced an agreeable sensation of freshness, to soften the ardour of noon. Still nothing was so pleasing as the alacrity of hospitality--all that the house afforded was quickly spread on the whitest linen. Remember, I had just left the vessel, where, without being fastidious, I had continually been disgusted. Fish, milk, butter, and cheese, and, I am sorry to add, brandy, the bane of this country, were spread on the board. After we had dined hospitality made them, with some degree of mystery, bring us some excellent coffee. I did not then know that it was prohibited. The good man of the house apologised for coming in continually, but declared that he was so glad to speak English he could not stay out. He need not have apologised; I was equally glad of his company. With the wife I could only exchange smiles, and she was employed observing the make of our clothes. My hands, I found, had first led her to discover that I was the lady. I had, of course, my quantum of reverences; for the politeness of the north seems to partake of the coldness of the climate and the rigidity of its iron-sinewed rocks. Amongst the peasantry there is, however, so much of the simplicity of the golden age in this land of flint--so much overflowing of heart and fellow-feeling, that only benevolence and the honest sympathy of nature diffused smiles over my countenance when they kept me standing, regardless of my fatigue, whilst they dropped courtesy after courtesy. The situation of this house was beautiful, though chosen for convenience. The master being the officer who commanded all the pilots on the coast, and the person appointed to guard wrecks, it was necessary for him to fix on a spot that would overlook the whole bay. As he had seen some service, he wore, not without a pride I thought becoming, a badge to prove that he had merited well of his country. It was happy, I thought, that he had been paid in honour, for the stipend he received was little more than twelve pounds a year. I do not trouble myself or you with the calculation of Swedish ducats. Thus, my friend, you perceive the necessity of perquisites. This same narrow policy runs through everything. I shall have occasion further to animadvert on it. Though my host amused me with an account of himself, which gave me aim idea of the manners of the people I was about to visit, I was eager to climb the rocks to view the country, and see whether the honest tars had regained their ship. With the help of the lieutenant's telescope, I saw the vessel under way with a fair though gentle gale. The sea was calm, playful even as the most shallow stream, and on the vast basin I did not see a dark speck to indicate the boat. My conductors were consequently arrived. Straying further, my eye was attracted by the sight of some heartsease that peeped through the rocks. I caught at it as a good omen, and going to preserve it in a letter that had not conveyed balm to my heart, a cruel remembrance suffused my eyes; but it passed away like an April shower. If you are deep read in Shakespeare, you will recollect that this was the little western flower tinged by love's dart, which "maidens call love in idleness." The gaiety of my babe was unmixed; regardless of omens or sentiments, she found a few wild strawberries more grateful than flowers or fancies. The lieutenant informed me that this was a commodious bay. Of that I could not judge, though I felt its picturesque beauty. Rocks were piled on rocks, forming a suitable bulwark to the ocean. "Come no further," they emphatically said, turning their dark sides to the waves to augment the idle roar. The view was sterile; still little patches of earth of the most exquisite verdure, enamelled with the sweetest wild flowers, seemed to promise the goats and a few straggling cows luxurious herbage. How silent and peaceful was the scene! I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of happiness than I had for a long, long time before. I forgot the horrors I had witnessed in France, which had cast a gloom over all nature, and suffering the enthusiasm of my character--too often, gracious God! damped by the tears of disappointed affection--to be lighted up afresh, care took wing while simple fellow-feeling expanded my heart. To prolong this enjoyment, I readily assented to the proposal of our host to pay a visit to a family, the master of which spoke English, who was the drollest dog in the country, he added, repeating some of his stories with a hearty laugh. I walked on, still delighted with the rude beauties of the scene; for the sublime often gave place imperceptibly to the beautiful, dilating the emotions which were painfully concentrated. When we entered this abode, the largest I had yet seen, I was introduced to a numerous family; but the father, from whom I was led to expect so much entertainment, was absent. The lieutenant consequently was obliged to be the interpreter of our reciprocal compliments. The phrases were awkwardly transmitted, it is true; but looks and gestures were sufficient to make them intelligible and interesting. The girls were all vivacity, and respect for me could scarcely keep them from romping with my host, who, asking for a pinch of snuff, was presented with a box, out of which an artificial mouse, fastened to the bottom, sprang. Though this trick had doubtless been played the out of mind, yet the laughter it excited was not less genuine. They were overflowing with civility; but, to prevent their almost killing my babe with kindness, I was obliged to shorten my visit; and two or three of the girls accompanied us, bringing with them a part of whatever the house afforded to contribute towards rendering my supper more plentiful; and plentiful in fact it was, though I with difficulty did honour to some of the dishes, not relishing the quantity of sugar and spices put into everything. At supper my host told me bluntly that I was a woman of observation, for I asked him _men's questions_. The arrangements for my journey were quickly made. I could only have a car with post-horses, as I did not choose to wait till a carriage could be sent for to Gothenburg. The expense of my journey (about one or two and twenty English miles) I found would not amount to more than eleven or twelve shillings, paying, he assured me, generously. I gave him a guinea and a half. But it was with the greatest difficulty that I could make him take so much--indeed anything--for my lodging and fare. He declared that it was next to robbing me, explaining how much I ought to pay on the road. However, as I was positive, he took the guinea for himself; but, as a condition, insisted on accompanying me, to prevent my meeting with any trouble or imposition on the way. I then retired to my apartment with regret. The night was so fine that I would gladly have rambled about much longer, yet, recollecting that I must rise very early, I reluctantly went to bed; but my senses had been so awake, and my imagination still continued so busy, that I sought for rest in vain. Rising before six, I scented the sweet morning air; I had long before heard the birds twittering to hail the dawning day, though it could scarcely have been allowed to have departed. Nothing, in fact, can equal the beauty of the northern summer's evening and night, if night it may be called that only wants the glare of day, the full light which frequently seems so impertinent, for I could write at midnight very well without a candle. I contemplated all Nature at rest; the rocks, even grown darker in their appearance, looked as if they partook of the general repose, and reclined more heavily on their foundation. "What," I exclaimed, "is this active principle which keeps me still awake? Why fly my thoughts abroad, when everything around me appears at home?" My child was sleeping with equal calmness--innocent and sweet as the closing flowers. Some recollections, attached to the idea of home, mingled with reflections respecting the state of society I had been contemplating that evening, made a tear drop on the rosy cheek I had just kissed, and emotions that trembled on the brink of ecstasy and agony gave a poignancy to my sensations which made me feel more alive than usual. What are these imperious sympathies? How frequently has melancholy and even misanthropy taken possession of me, when the world has disgusted me, and friends have proved unkind. I have then considered myself as a particle broken off from the grand mass of mankind; I was alone, till some involuntary sympathetic emotion, like the attraction of adhesion, made me feel that I was still a part of a mighty whole, from which I could not sever myself--not, perhaps, for the reflection has been carried very far, by snapping the thread of an existence, which loses its charms in proportion as the cruel experience of life stops or poisons the current of the heart. Futurity, what hast thou not to give to those who know that there is such a thing as happiness! I speak not of philosophical contentment, though pain has afforded them the strongest conviction of it. After our coffee and milk--for the mistress of the house had been roused long before us by her hospitality--my baggage was taken forward in a boat by my host, because the car could not safely have been brought to the house. The road at first was very rocky and troublesome, but our driver was careful, and the horses accustomed to the frequent and sudden acclivities and descents; so that, not apprehending any danger, I played with my girl, whom I would not leave to Marguerite's care, on account of her timidity. Stopping at a little inn to bait the horses, I saw the first countenance in Sweden that displeased me, though the man was better dressed than any one who had as yet fallen in my way. An altercation took place between him and my host, the purport of which I could not guess, excepting that I was the occasion of it, be it what it would. The sequel was his leaving the house angrily; and I was immediately informed that he was the custom- house officer. The professional had indeed effaced the national character, for, living as he did within these frank hospitable people, still only the exciseman appeared, the counterpart of some I had met with in England and France. I was unprovided with a passport, not having entered any great town. At Gothenburg I knew I could immediately obtain one, and only the trouble made me object to the searching my trunks. He blustered for money; but the lieutenant was determined to guard me, according to promise, from imposition. To avoid being interrogated at the town-gate, and obliged to go in the rain to give an account of myself (merely a form) before we could get the refreshment we stood in need of, he requested us to descend--I might have said step--from our car, and walk into town. I expected to have found a tolerable inn, but was ushered into a most comfortless one; and, because it was about five o'clock, three or four hours after their dining hour, I could not prevail on them to give me anything warm to eat. The appearance of the accommodations obliged me to deliver one of my recommendatory letters, and the gentleman to whom it was addressed sent to look out for a lodging for me whilst I partook of his supper. As nothing passed at this supper to characterise the country, I shall here close my letter. Yours truly. LETTER II. Gothenburg is a clean airy town, and, having been built by the Dutch, has canals running through each street; and in some of them there are rows of trees that would render it very pleasant were it not for the pavement, which is intolerably bad. There are several rich commercial houses--Scotch, French, and Swedish; but the Scotch, I believe, have been the most successful. The commerce and commission business with France since the war has been very lucrative, and enriched the merchants I am afraid at the expense of the other inhabitants, by raising the price of the necessaries of life. As all the men of consequence--I mean men of the largest fortune--are merchants, their principal enjoyment is a relaxation from business at the table, which is spread at, I think, too early an hour (between one and two) for men who have letters to write and accounts to settle after paying due respect to the bottle. However, when numerous circles are to be brought together, and when neither literature nor public amusements furnish topics for conversation, a good dinner appears to be the only centre to rally round, especially as scandal, the zest of more select parties, can only be whispered. As for politics, I have seldom found it a subject of continual discussion in a country town in any part of the world. The politics of the place, being on a smaller scale, suits better with the size of their faculties; for, generally speaking, the sphere of observation determines the extent of the mind. The more I see of the world, the more I am convinced that civilisation is a blessing not sufficiently estimated by those who have not traced its progress; for it not only refines our enjoyments, but produces a variety which enables us to retain the primitive delicacy of our sensations. Without the aid of the imagination all the pleasures of the senses must sink into grossness, unless continual novelty serve as a substitute for the imagination, which, being impossible, it was to this weariness, I suppose, that Solomon alluded when he declared that there was nothing new under the sun!--nothing for the common sensations excited by the senses. Yet who will deny that the imagination and understanding have made many, very many discoveries since those days, which only seem harbingers of others still more noble and beneficial? I never met with much imagination amongst people who had not acquired a habit of reflection; and in that state of society in which the judgment and taste are not called forth, and formed by the cultivation of the arts and sciences, little of that delicacy of feeling and thinking is to be found characterised by the word sentiment. The want of scientific pursuits perhaps accounts for the hospitality, as well as for the cordial reception which strangers receive from the inhabitants of small towns. Hospitality has, I think, been too much praised by travellers as a proof of goodness of heart, when, in my opinion, indiscriminate hospitality is rather a criterion by which you may form a tolerable estimate of the indolence or vacancy of a head; or, in other words, a fondness for social pleasures in which the mind not having its proportion of exercise, the bottle must be pushed about. These remarks are equally applicable to Dublin, the most hospitable city I ever passed through. But I will try to confine my observations more particularly to Sweden. It is true I have only had a glance over a small part of it; yet of its present state of manners and acquirements I think I have formed a distinct idea, without having visited the capital--where, in fact, less of a national character is to be found than in the remote parts of the country. The Swedes pique themselves on their politeness; but far from being the polish of a cultivated mind, it consists merely of tiresome forms and ceremonies. So far, indeed, from entering immediately into your character, and making you feel instantly at your ease, like the well-bred French, their over-acted civility is a continual restraint on all your actions. The sort of superiority which a fortune gives when there is no superiority of education, excepting what consists in the observance of senseless forms, has a contrary effect than what is intended; so that I could not help reckoning the peasantry the politest people of Sweden, who, only aiming at pleasing you, never think of being admired for their behaviour. Their tables, like their compliments, seem equally a caricature of the French. The dishes are composed, as well as theirs, of a variety of mixtures to destroy the native taste of the food without being as relishing. Spices and sugar are put into everything, even into the bread; and the only way I can account for their partiality to high-seasoned dishes is the constant use of salted provisions. Necessity obliges them to lay up a store of dried fish and salted meat for the winter; and in summer, fresh meat and fish taste insipid after them. To which may be added the constant use of spirits. Every day, before dinner and supper, even whilst the dishes are cooling on the table, men and women repair to a side-table; and to obtain an appetite eat bread-and- butter, cheese, raw salmon, or anchovies, drinking a glass of brandy. Salt fish or meat then immediately follows, to give a further whet to the stomach. As the dinner advances, pardon me for taking up a few minutes to describe what, alas! has detained me two or three hours on the stretch observing, dish after dish is changed, in endless rotation, and handed round with solemn pace to each guest; but should you happen not to like the first dishes, which was often my case, it is a gross breach of politeness to ask for part of any other till its turn comes. But have patience, and there will be eating enough. Allow me to run over the acts of a visiting day, not overlooking the interludes. Prelude a luncheon--then a succession of fish, flesh, and fowl for two hours, during which time the dessert--I was sorry for the strawberries and cream--rests on the table to be impregnated by the fumes of the viands. Coffee immediately follows in the drawing-room, but does not preclude punch, ale, tea and cakes, raw salmon, &c. A supper brings up the rear, not forgetting the introductory luncheon, almost equalling in removes the dinner. A day of this kind you would imagine sufficient; but a to-morrow and a to-morrow--A never-ending, still-beginning feast may be bearable, perhaps, when stern winter frowns, shaking with chilling aspect his hoary locks; but during a summer, sweet as fleeting, let me, my kind strangers, escape sometimes into your fir groves, wander on the margin of your beautiful lakes, or climb your rocks, to view still others in endless perspective, which, piled by more than giant's hand, scale the heavens to intercept its rays, or to receive the parting tinge of lingering day--day that, scarcely softened unto twilight, allows the freshening breeze to wake, and the moon to burst forth in all her glory to glide with solemn elegance through the azure expanse. The cow's bell has ceased to tinkle the herd to rest; they have all paced across the heath. Is not this the witching time of night? The waters murmur, and fall with more than mortal music, and spirits of peace walk abroad to calm the agitated breast. Eternity is in these moments. Worldly cares melt into the airy stuff that dreams are made of, and reveries, mild and enchanting as the first hopes of love or the recollection of lost enjoyment, carry the hapless wight into futurity, who in bustling life has vainly strove to throw off the grief which lies heavy at the heart. Good night! A crescent hangs out in the vault before, which woos me to stray abroad. It is not a silvery reflection of the sun, but glows with all its golden splendour. Who fears the fallen dew? It only makes the mown grass smell more fragrant. Adieu! LETTER III. The population of Sweden has been estimated from two millions and a half to three millions; a small number for such an immense tract of country, of which only so much is cultivated--and that in the simplest manner--as is absolutely requisite to supply the necessaries of life; and near the seashore, whence herrings are easily procured, there scarcely appears a vestige of cultivation. The scattered huts that stand shivering on the naked rocks, braving the pitiless elements, are formed of logs of wood rudely hewn; and so little pains are taken with the craggy foundation that nothing hike a pathway points out the door. Gathered into himself by the cold, lowering his visage to avoid the cutting blast, is it surprising that the churlish pleasure of drinking drams takes place of social enjoyments amongst the poor, especially if we take into the account that they mostly live on high-seasoned provision and rye bread? Hard enough, you may imagine, as it is baked only once a year. The servants also, in most families, eat this kind of bread, and have a different kind of food from their masters, which, in spite of all the arguments I have heard to vindicate the custom, appears to me a remnant of barbarism. In fact, the situation of the servants in every respect, particularly that of the women, shows how far the Swedes are from having a just conception of rational equality. They are not termed slaves; yet a man may strike a man with impunity because he pays him wages, though these wages are so low that necessity must teach them to pilfer, whilst servility renders them false and boorish. Still the men stand up for the dignity of man by oppressing the women. The most menial, and even laborious offices, are therefore left to these poor drudges. Much of this I have seen. In the winter, I am told, they take the linen down to the river to wash it in the cold water, and though their hands, cut by the ice, are cracked and bleeding, the men, their fellow-servants, will not disgrace their manhood by carrying a tub to lighten their burden. You will not be surprised to hear that they do not wear shoes or stockings, when I inform you that their wages are seldom more than twenty or thirty shillings per annum. It is the custom, I know, to give them a new year's gift and a present at some other period, but can it all amount to a just indemnity for their labour? The treatment of servants in most countries, I grant, is very unjust, and in England, that boasted land of freedom, it is often extremely tyrannical. I have frequently, with indignation, heard gentlemen declare that they would never allow a servant to answer them; and ladies of the most exquisite sensibility, who were continually exclaiming against the cruelty of the vulgar to the brute creation, have in my presence forgot that their attendants had human feelings as well as forms. I do not know a more agreeable sight than to see servants part of a family. By taking an interest, generally speaking, in their concerns you inspire them with one for yours. We must love our servants, or we shall never be sufficiently attentive to their happiness; and how can those masters be attentive to their happiness who, living above their fortunes, are more anxious to outshine their neighbours than to allow their household the innocent enjoyments they earn? It is, in fact, much more difficult for servants, who are tantalised by seeing and preparing the dainties of which they are not to partake, to remain honest, than the poor, whose thoughts are not led from their homely fare; so that, though the servants here are commonly thieves, you seldom hear of housebreaking, or robbery on the highway. The country is, perhaps, too thinly inhabited to produce many of that description of thieves termed footpads, or highwaymen. They are usually the spawn of great cities--the effect of the spurious desires generated by wealth, rather than the desperate struggles of poverty to escape from misery. The enjoyment of the peasantry was drinking brandy and coffee, before the latter was prohibited, and the former not allowed to be privately distilled, the wars carried on by the late king rendering it necessary to increase the revenue, and retain the specie in the country by every possible means. The taxes before the reign of Charles XII. were inconsiderable. Since then the burden has continually been growing heavier, and the price of provisions has proportionately increased--nay, the advantage accruing from the exportation of corn to France and rye to Germany will probably produce a scarcity in both Sweden and Norway, should not a peace put a stop to it this autumn, for speculations of various kinds have already almost doubled the price. Such are the effects of war, that it saps the vitals even of the neutral countries, who, obtaining a sudden influx of wealth, appear to be rendered flourishing by the destruction which ravages the hapless nations who are sacrificed to the ambition of their governors. I shall not, however, dwell on the vices, though they be of the most contemptible and embruting cast, to which a sudden accession of fortune gives birth, because I believe it may be delivered as an axiom, that it is only in proportion to the industry necessary to acquire wealth that a nation is really benefited by it. The prohibition of drinking coffee under a penalty, and the encouragement given to public distilleries, tend to impoverish the poor, who are not affected by the sumptuary laws; for the regent has lately laid very severe restraints on the articles of dress, which the middling class of people found grievous, because it obliged them to throw aside finery that might have lasted them for their lives. These may be termed vexatious; still the death of the king, by saving them from the consequences his ambition would naturally have entailed on them, may be reckoned a blessing. Besides, the French Revolution has not only rendered all the crowned heads more cautious, but has so decreased everywhere (excepting amongst themselves) a respect for nobility, that the peasantry have not only lost their blind reverence for their seigniors, but complain in a manly style of oppressions which before they did not think of denominating such, because they were taught to consider themselves as a different order of beings. And, perhaps, the efforts which the aristocrats are making here, as well as in every other part of Europe, to secure their sway, will be the most effectual mode of undermining it, taking into the calculation that the King of Sweden, like most of the potentates of Europe, has continually been augmenting his power by encroaching on the privileges of the nobles. The well-bred Swedes of the capital are formed on the ancient French model, and they in general speak that language; for they have a knack at acquiring languages with tolerable fluency. This may be reckoned an advantage in some respects; but it prevents the cultivation of their own, and any considerable advance in literary pursuits. A sensible writer has lately observed (I have not his work by me, therefore cannot quote his exact words), "That the Americans very wisely let the Europeans make their books and fashions for them." But I cannot coincide with him in this opinion. The reflection necessary to produce a certain number even of tolerable productions augments more than he is aware of the mass of knowledge in the community. Desultory reading is commonly a mere pastime. But we must have an object to refer our reflections to, or they will seldom go below the surface. As in travelling, the keeping of a journal excites to many useful inquiries that would not have been thought of had the traveller only determined to see all he could see, without ever asking himself for what purpose. Besides, the very dabbling in literature furnishes harmless topics of conversation; for the not having such subjects at hand, though they are often insupportably fatiguing, renders the inhabitants of little towns prying and censorious. Idleness, rather than ill-nature, gives birth to scandal, and to the observation of little incidents which narrows the mind. It is frequently only the fear of being talked of which produces that puerile scrupulosity about trifles incompatible with an enlarged plan of usefulness, and with the basis of all moral principles--respect for the virtues which are not merely the virtues of convention. I am, my friend, more and more convinced that a metropolis, or an abode absolutely solitary, is the best calculated for the improvement of the heart, as well as the understanding; whether we desire to become acquainted with man, nature, or ourselves. Mixing with mankind, we are obliged to examine our prejudices, and often imperceptibly lose, as we analyse them. And in the country, growing intimate with nature, a thousand little circumstances, unseen by vulgar eyes, give birth to sentiments dear to the imagination, and inquiries which expand the soul, particularly when cultivation has not smoothed into insipidity all its originality of character. I love the country, yet whenever I see a picturesque situation chosen on which to erect a dwelling I am always afraid of the improvements. It requires uncommon taste to form a whole, and to introduce accommodations and ornaments analogous with the surrounding-scene. It visited, near Gothenburg, a house with improved land about it, with which I was particularly delighted. It was close to a lake embosomed in pine-clad rocks. In one part of the meadows your eye was directed to the broad expanse, in another you were led into a shade, to see a part of it, in the form of a river, rush amongst the fragments of rocks and roots of trees; nothing seemed forced. One recess, particularly grand and solemn amongst the towering cliffs, had a rude stone table and seat placed in it, that might have served for a Druid's haunt, whilst a placid stream below enlivened the flowers on its margin, where light-footed elves would gladly have danced their airy rounds. Here the hand of taste was conspicuous though not obtrusive, and formed a contrast with another abode in the same neighbourhood, on which much money had been lavished; where Italian colonnades were placed to excite the wonder of the rude crags, and a stone staircase, to threaten with destruction a wooden house. Venuses and Apollos condemned to lie hid in snow three parts of the year seemed equally displaced, and called the attention off from the surrounding sublimity, without inspiring any voluptuous sensations. Yet even these abortions of vanity have been useful. Numberless workmen have been employed, and the superintending artist has improved the labourers, whose unskilfulness tormented him, by obliging them to submit to the discipline of rules. Adieu! Yours affectionately. LETTER IV. The severity of the long Swedish winter tends to render the people sluggish, for though this season has its peculiar pleasures, too much time is employed to guard against its inclemency. Still as warm clothing is absolutely necessary, the women spin and the men weave, and by these exertions get a fence to keep out the cold. I have rarely passed a knot of cottages without seeing cloth laid out to bleach, and when I entered, always found the women spinning or knitting. A mistaken tenderness, however, for their children, makes them even in summer load them with flannels, and having a sort of natural antipathy to cold water, the squalid appearance of the poor babes, not to speak of the noxious smell which flannel and rugs retain, seems a reply to a question I had often asked--Why I did not see more children in the villages I passed through? Indeed the children appear to be nipt in the bud, having neither the graces nor charms of their age. And this, I am persuaded, is much more owing to the ignorance of the mothers than to the rudeness of the climate. Rendered feeble by the continual perspiration they are kept in, whilst every pore is absorbing unwholesome moisture, they give them, even at the breast, brandy, salt fish, and every other crude substance which air and exercise enables the parent to digest. The women of fortune here, as well as everywhere else, have nurses to suckle their children; and the total want of chastity in the lower class of women frequently renders them very unfit for the trust. You have sometimes remarked to me the difference of the manners of the country girls in England and in America; attributing the reserve of the former to the climate--to the absence of genial suns. But it must be their stars, not the zephyrs, gently stealing on their senses, which here lead frail women astray. Who can look at these rocks, and allow the voluptuousness of nature to be an excuse for gratifying the desires it inspires? We must therefore, find some other cause beside voluptuousness, I believe, to account for the conduct of the Swedish and American country girls; for I am led to conclude, from all the observations I have made, that there is always a mixture of sentiment and imagination in voluptuousness, to which neither of them have much pretension. The country girls of Ireland and Wales equally feel the first impulse of nature, which, restrained in England by fear or delicacy, proves that society is there in a more advanced state. Besides, as the mind is cultivated, and taste gains ground, the passions become stronger, and rest on something more stable than the casual sympathies of the moment. Health and idleness will always account for promiscuous amours; and in some degree I term every person idle, the exercise of whose mind does not bear some proportion to that of the body. The Swedish ladies exercise neither sufficiently; of course, grow very fat at an early age; and when they have not this downy appearance, a comfortable idea, you will say, in a cold climate, they are not remarkable for fine forms. They have, however, mostly fine complexions; but indolence makes the lily soon displace the rose. The quantity of coffee, spices, and other things of that kind, with want of care, almost universally spoil their teeth, which contrast but ill with their ruby lips. The manners of Stockholm are refined, I hear, by the introduction of gallantry; but in the country, romping and coarse freedoms, with coarser allusions, keep the spirits awake. In the article of cleanliness, the women of all descriptions seem very deficient; and their dress shows that vanity is more inherent in women than taste. The men appear to have paid still less court to the graces. They are a robust, healthy race, distinguished for their common sense and turn for humour, rather than for wit or sentiment. I include not, as you may suppose, in this general character, some of the nobility and officers, who having travelled, are polite and well informed. I must own to you that the lower class of people here amuse and interest me much more than the middling, with their apish good breeding and prejudices. The sympathy and frankness of heart conspicuous in the peasantry produces even a simple gracefulness of deportment which has frequently struck me as very picturesque; I have often also been touched by their extreme desire to oblige me, when I could not explain my wants, and by their earnest manner of expressing that desire. There is such a charm in tenderness! It is so delightful to love our fellow-creatures, and meet the honest affections as they break forth. Still, my good friend, I begin to think that I should not like to live continually in the country with people whose minds have such a narrow range. My heart would frequently be interested; but my mind would languish for more companionable society. The beauties of nature appear to me now even more alluring than in my youth, because my intercourse with the world has formed without vitiating my taste. But, with respect to the inhabitants of the country, my fancy has probably, when disgusted with artificial manners, solaced itself by joining the advantages of cultivation with the interesting sincerity of innocence, forgetting the lassitude that ignorance will naturally produce. I like to see animals sporting, and sympathise in their pains and pleasures. Still I love sometimes to view the human face divine, and trace the soul, as well as the heart, in its varying lineaments. A journey to the country, which I must shortly make, will enable me to extend my remarks.--Adieu! LETTER V. Had I determined to travel in Sweden merely for pleasure, I should probably have chosen the road to Stockholm, though convinced, by repeated observation, that the manners of a people are best discriminated in the country. The inhabitants of the capital are all of the same genus; for the varieties in the species we must, therefore, search where the habitations of men are so separated as to allow the difference of climate to have its natural effect. And with this difference we are, perhaps, most forcibly struck at the first view, just as we form an estimate of the leading traits of a character at the first glance, of which intimacy afterwards makes us almost lose sight. As my affairs called me to Stromstad (the frontier town of Sweden) in my way to Norway, I was to pass over, I heard, the most uncultivated part of the country. Still I believe that the grand features of Sweden are the same everywhere, and it is only the grand features that admit of description. There is an individuality in every prospect, which remains in the memory as forcibly depicted as the particular features that have arrested our attention; yet we cannot find words to discriminate that individuality so as to enable a stranger to say, this is the face, that the view. We may amuse by setting the imagination to work; but we cannot store the memory with a fact. As I wish to give you a general idea of this country, I shall continue in my desultory manner to make such observations and reflections as the circumstances draw forth, without losing time, by endeavouring to arrange them. Travelling in Sweden is very cheap, and even commodious, if you make but the proper arrangements. Here, as in other parts of the Continent, it is necessary to have your own carriage, and to have a servant who can speak the language, if you are unacquainted with it. Sometimes a servant who can drive would be found very useful, which was our case, for I travelled in company with two gentlemen, one of whom had a German servant who drove very well. This was all the party; for not intending to make a long stay, I left my little girl behind me. As the roads are not much frequented, to avoid waiting three or four hours for horses, we sent, as is the constant custom, an _avant courier_ the night before, to order them at every post, and we constantly found them ready. Our first set I jokingly termed requisition horses; but afterwards we had almost always little spirited animals that went on at a round pace. The roads, making allowance for the ups and downs, are uncommonly good and pleasant. The expense, including the postillions and other incidental things, does not amount to more than a shilling the Swedish mile. The inns are tolerable; but not liking the rye bread, I found it necessary to furnish myself with some wheaten before I set out. The beds, too, were particularly disagreeable to me. It seemed to me that I was sinking into a grave when I entered them; for, immersed in down placed in a sort of box, I expected to be suffocated before morning. The sleeping between two down beds--they do so even in summer--must be very unwholesome during any season; and I cannot conceive how the people can bear it, especially as the summers are very warm. But warmth they seem not to feel; and, I should think, were afraid of the air, by always keeping their windows shut. In the winter, I am persuaded, I could not exist in rooms thus closed up, with stoves heated in their manner, for they only put wood into them twice a day; and, when the stove is thoroughly heated, they shut the flue, not admitting any air to renew its elasticity, even when the rooms are crowded with company. These stoves are made of earthenware, and often in a form that ornaments an apartment, which is never the case with the heavy iron ones I have seen elsewhere. Stoves may be economical, but I like a fire, a wood one, in preference; and I am convinced that the current of air which it attracts renders this the best mode of warming rooms. We arrived early the second evening at a little village called Quistram, where we had determined to pass the night, having been informed that we should not afterwards find a tolerable inn until we reached Stromstad. Advancing towards Quistram, as the sun was beginning to decline, I was particularly impressed by the beauty of the situation. The road was on the declivity of a rocky mountain, slightly covered with a mossy herbage and vagrant firs. At the bottom, a river, straggling amongst the recesses of stone, was hastening forward to the ocean and its grey rocks, of which we had a prospect on the left; whilst on the right it stole peacefully forward into the meadows, losing itself in a thickly-wooded rising ground. As we drew near, the loveliest banks of wild flowers variegated the prospect, and promised to exhale odours to add to the sweetness of the air, the purity of which you could almost see, alas! not smell, for the putrefying herrings, which they use as manure, after the oil has been extracted, spread over the patches of earth, claimed by cultivation, destroyed every other. It was intolerable, and entered with us into the inn, which was in other respects a charming retreat. Whilst supper was preparing I crossed the bridge, and strolled by the river, listening to its murmurs. Approaching the bank, the beauty of which had attracted my attention in the carriage, I recognised many of my old acquaintance growing with great luxuriance. Seated on it, I could not avoid noting an obvious remark. Sweden appeared to me the country in the world most proper to form the botanist and natural historian; every object seemed to remind me of the creation of things, of the first efforts of sportive nature. When a country arrives at a certain state of perfection, it looks as if it were made so; and curiosity is not excited. Besides, in social life too many objects occur for any to be distinctly observed by the generality of mankind; yet a contemplative man, or poet, in the country--I do not mean the country adjacent to cities--feels and sees what would escape vulgar eyes, and draws suitable inferences. This train of reflections might have led me further, in every sense of the word; but I could not escape from the detestable evaporation of the herrings, which poisoned all my pleasure. After making a tolerable supper--for it is not easy to get fresh provisions on the road--I retired, to be lulled to sleep by the murmuring of a stream, of which I with great difficulty obtained sufficient to perform my daily ablutions. The last battle between the Danes and Swedes, which gave new life to their ancient enmity, was fought at this place 1788; only seventeen or eighteen were killed, for the great superiority of the Danes and Norwegians obliged the Swedes to submit; but sickness, and a scarcity of provision, proved very fatal to their opponents on their return. It would be very easy to search for the particulars of this engagement in the publications of the day; but as this manner of filling my pages does not come within my plan, I probably should not have remarked that the battle was fought here, were it not to relate an anecdote which I had from good authority. I noticed, when I first mentioned this place to you, that we descended a steep before we came to the inn; an immense ridge of rocks stretching out on one side. The inn was sheltered under them; and about a hundred yards from it was a bridge that crossed the river, the murmurs of which I have celebrated; it was not fordable. The Swedish general received orders to stop at the bridge and dispute the passage--a most advantageous post for an army so much inferior in force; but the influence of beauty is not confined to courts. The mistress of the inn was handsome; when I saw her there were still some remains of beauty; and, to preserve her house, the general gave up the only tenable station. He was afterwards broke for contempt of orders. Approaching the frontiers, consequently the sea, nature resumed an aspect ruder and ruder, or rather seemed the bones of the world waiting to be clothed with everything necessary to give life and beauty. Still it was sublime. The clouds caught their hue of the rocks that menaced them. The sun appeared afraid to shine, the birds ceased to sing, and the flowers to bloom; but the eagle fixed his nest high amongst the rocks, and the vulture hovered over this abode of desolation. The farm houses, in which only poverty resided, were formed of logs scarcely keeping off the cold and drifting snow: out of them the inhabitants seldom peeped, and the sports or prattling of children was neither seen or heard. The current of life seemed congealed at the source: all were not frozen, for it was summer, you remember; but everything appeared so dull that I waited to see ice, in order to reconcile me to the absence of gaiety. The day before, my attention had frequently been attracted by the wild beauties of the country we passed through. The rocks which tossed their fantastic heads so high were often covered with pines and firs, varied in the most picturesque manner. Little woods filled up the recesses when forests did not darken the scene, and valleys and glens, cleared of the trees, displayed a dazzling verdure which contrasted with the gloom of the shading pines. The eye stole into many a covert where tranquillity seemed to have taken up her abode, and the number of little lakes that continually presented themselves added to the peaceful composure of the scenery. The little cultivation which appeared did not break the enchantment, nor did castles rear their turrets aloft to crush the cottages, and prove that man is more savage than the natives of the woods. I heard of the bears but never saw them stalk forth, which I was sorry for; I wished to have seen one in its wild state. In the winter, I am told, they sometimes catch a stray cow, which is a heavy loss to the owner. The farms are small. Indeed most of the houses we saw on the road indicated poverty, or rather that the people could just live. Towards the frontiers they grew worse and worse in their appearance, as if not willing to put sterility itself out of countenance. No gardens smiled round the habitations, not a potato or cabbage to eat with the fish drying on a stick near the door. A little grain here and there appeared, the long stalks of which you might almost reckon. The day was gloomy when we passed over this rejected spot, the wind bleak, and winter seemed to be contending with nature, faintly struggling to change the season. Surely, thought I, if the sun ever shines here it cannot warm these stones; moss only cleaves to them, partaking of their hardness, and nothing like vegetable life appears to cheer with hope the heart. So far from thinking that the primitive inhabitants of the world lived in a southern climate where Paradise spontaneously arose, I am led to infer, from various circumstances, that the first dwelling of man happened to be a spot like this which led him to adore a sun so seldom seen; for this worship, which probably preceded that of demons or demigods, certainly never began in a southern climate, where the continual presence of the sun prevented its being considered as a good; or rather the want of it never being felt, this glorious luminary would carelessly have diffused its blessings without being hailed as a benefactor. Man must therefore have been placed in the north, to tempt him to run after the sun, in order that the different parts of the earth might be peopled. Nor do I wonder that hordes of barbarians always poured out of these regions to seek for milder climes, when nothing like cultivation attached them to the soil, especially when we take into the view that the adventuring spirit, common to man, is naturally stronger and more general during the infancy of society. The conduct of the followers of Mahomet, and the crusaders, will sufficiently corroborate my assertion. Approaching nearer to Stromstad, the appearance of the town proved to be quite in character with the country we had just passed through. I hesitated to use the word country, yet could not find another; still it would sound absurd to talk of fields of rocks. The town was built on and under them. Three or four weather-beaten trees were shrinking from the wind, and the grass grew so sparingly that I could not avoid thinking Dr. Johnson's hyperbolical assertion "that the man merited well of his country who made a few blades of grass grow where they never grew before," might here have been uttered with strict propriety. The steeple likewise towered aloft, for what is a church, even amongst the Lutherans, without a steeple? But to prevent mischief in such an exposed situation, it is wisely placed on a rock at some distance not to endanger the roof of the church. Rambling about, I saw the door open, and entered, when to my great surprise I found the clergyman reading prayers, with only the clerk attending. I instantly thought of Swift's "Dearly beloved Roger," but on inquiry I learnt that some one had died that morning, and in Sweden it is customary to pray for the dead. The sun, who I suspected never dared to shine, began now to convince me that he came forth only to torment; for though the wind was still cutting, the rocks became intolerably warm under my feet, whilst the herring effluvia, which I before found so very offensive, once more assailed me. I hastened back to the house of a merchant, the little sovereign of the place, because he was by far the richest, though not the mayor. Here we were most hospitably received, and introduced to a very fine and numerous family. I have before mentioned to you the lilies of the north, I might have added, water lilies, for the complexion of many, even of the young women, seem to be bleached on the bosom of snow. But in this youthful circle the roses bloomed with all their wonted freshness, and I wondered from whence the fire was stolen which sparkled in their fine blue eyes. Here we slept; and I rose early in the morning to prepare for my little voyage to Norway. I had determined to go by water, and was to leave my companions behind; but not getting a boat immediately, and the wind being high and unfavourable, I was told that it was not safe to go to sea during such boisterous weather; I was, therefore, obliged to wait for the morrow, and had the present day on my hands, which I feared would be irksome, because the family, who possessed about a dozen French words amongst them and not an English phrase, were anxious to amuse me, and would not let me remain alone in my room. The town we had already walked round and round, and if we advanced farther on the coast, it was still to view the same unvaried immensity of water surrounded by barrenness. The gentlemen, wishing to peep into Norway, proposed going to Fredericshall, the first town--the distance was only three Swedish miles. There and back again was but a day's journey, and would not, I thought, interfere with my voyage. I agreed, and invited the eldest and prettiest of the girls to accompany us. I invited her because I like to see a beautiful face animated by pleasure, and to have an opportunity of regarding the country, whilst the gentlemen were amusing themselves with her. I did not know, for I had not thought of it, that we were to scale some of the most mountainous cliffs of Sweden in our way to the ferry which separates the two countries. Entering amongst the cliffs, we were sheltered from the wind, warm sunbeams began to play, streams to flow, and groves of pines diversified the rocks. Sometimes they became suddenly bare and sublime. Once, in particular, after mounting the most terrific precipice, we had to pass through a tremendous defile, where the closing chasm seemed to threaten us with instant destruction, when, turning quickly, verdant meadows and a beautiful lake relieved and charmed my eyes. I had never travelled through Switzerland, but one of my companions assured me that I should not there find anything superior, if equal, to the wild grandeur of these views. As we had not taken this excursion into our plan, the horses had not been previously ordered, which obliged us to wait two hours at the first post. The day was wearing away. The road was so bad that walking up the precipices consumed the time insensibly; but as we desired horses at each post ready at a certain hour, we reckoned on returning more speedily. We stopped to dine at a tolerable farm; they brought us out ham, butter, cheese, and milk, and the charge was so moderate that I scattered a little money amongst the children who were peeping at us, in order to pay them for their trouble. Arrived at the ferry, we were still detained, for the people who attend at the ferries have a stupid kind of sluggishness in their manner, which is very provoking when you are in haste. At present I did not feel it, for, scrambling up the cliffs, my eye followed the river as it rolled between the grand rocky banks; and, to complete the scenery, they were covered with firs and pines, through which the wind rustled as if it were lulling itself to sleep with the declining sun. Behold us now in Norway; and I could not avoid feeling surprise at observing the difference in the manners of the inhabitants of the two sides of the river, for everything shows that the Norwegians are more industrious and more opulent. The Swedes (for neighbours are seldom the best friends) accuse the Norwegians of knavery, and they retaliate by bringing a charge of hypocrisy against the Swedes. Local circumstances probably render both unjust, speaking from their feelings rather than reason; and is this astonishing when we consider that most writers of travels have done the same, whose works have served as materials for the compilers of universal histories? All are eager to give a national character, which is rarely just, because they do not discriminate the natural from the acquired difference. The natural, I believe, on due consideration, will be found to consist merely in the degree of vivacity, or thoughtfulness, pleasures or pain, inspired by the climate, whilst the varieties which the forms of government, including religion, produce are much more numerous and unstable. A people have been characterised as stupid by nature; what a paradox! because they did not consider that slaves, having no object to stimulate industry; have not their faculties sharpened by the only thing that can exercise them, self-interest. Others have been brought forward as brutes, having no aptitude for the arts and sciences, only because the progress of improvement had not reached that stage which produces them. Those writers who have considered the history of man, or of the human mind, on a more enlarged scale have fallen into similar errors, not reflecting that the passions are weak where the necessaries of life are too hardly or too easily obtained. Travellers who require that every nation should resemble their native country, had better stay at home. It is, for example, absurd to blame a people for not having that degree of personal cleanliness and elegance of manners which only refinement of taste produces, and will produce everywhere in proportion as society attains a general polish. The most essential service, I presume, that authors could render to society, would be to promote inquiry and discussion, instead of making those dogmatical assertions which only appear calculated to gird the human mind round with imaginary circles, like the paper globe which represents the one he inhabits. This spirit of inquiry is the characteristic of the present century, from which the succeeding will, I am persuaded, receive a great accumulation of knowledge; and doubtless its diffusion will in a great measure destroy the factitious national characters which have been supposed permanent, though only rendered so by the permanency of ignorance. Arriving at Fredericshall, at the siege of which Charles XII. lost his life, we had only time to take a transient view of it whilst they were preparing us some refreshment. Poor Charles! I thought of him with respect. I have always felt the same for Alexander, with whom he has been classed as a madman by several writers, who have reasoned superficially, confounding the morals of the day with the few grand principles on which unchangeable morality rests. Making no allowance for the ignorance and prejudices of the period, they do not perceive how much they themselves are indebted to general improvement for the acquirements, and even the virtues, which they would not have had the force of mind to attain by their individual exertions in a less advanced state of society. The evening was fine, as is usual at this season, and the refreshing odour of the pine woods became more perceptible, for it was nine o'clock when we left Fredericshall. At the ferry we were detained by a dispute relative to our Swedish passport, which we did not think of getting countersigned in Norway. Midnight was coming on, yet it might with such propriety have been termed the noon of night that, had Young ever travelled towards the north, I should not have wondered at his becoming enamoured of the moon. But it is not the Queen of Night alone who reigns here in all her splendour, though the sun, loitering just below the horizon, decks her within a golden tinge from his car, illuminating the cliffs that hide him; the heavens also, of a clear softened blue, throw her forward, and the evening star appears a smaller moon to the naked eye. The huge shadows of the rocks, fringed with firs, concentrating the views without darkening them, excited that tender melancholy which, sublimating the imagination, exalts rather than depresses the mind. My companions fell asleep--fortunately they did not snore; and I contemplated, fearless of idle questions, a night such as I had never before seen or felt, to charm the senses, and calm the heart. The very air was balmy as it freshened into morn, producing the most voluptuous sensations. A vague pleasurable sentiment absorbed me, as I opened my bosom to the embraces of nature; and my soul rose to its Author, with the chirping of the solitary birds, which began to feel, rather than see, advancing day. I had leisure to mark its progress. The grey morn, streaked with silvery rays, ushered in the orient beams (how beautifully varying into purple!), yet I was sorry to lose the soft watery clouds which preceded them, exciting a kind of expectation that made me almost afraid to breathe, lest I should break the charm. I saw the sun--and sighed. One of my companions, now awake, perceiving that the postillion had mistaken the road, began to swear at him, and roused the other two, who reluctantly shook off sleep. We had immediately to measure back our steps, and did not reach Stromstad before five in the morning. The wind had changed in the night, and my boat was ready. A dish of coffee, and fresh linen, recruited my spirits, and I directly set out again for Norway, purposing to land much higher up the coast. Wrapping my great-coat round me, I lay down on some sails at the bottom of the boat, its motion rocking me to rest, till a discourteous wave interrupted my slumbers, and obliged me to rise and feel a solitariness which was not so soothing as that of the past night. Adieu! LETTER VI. The sea was boisterous, but, as I had an experienced pilot, I did not apprehend any danger. Sometimes, I was told, boats are driven far out and lost. However, I seldom calculate chances so nicely--sufficient for the day is the obvious evil! We had to steer amongst islands and huge rocks, rarely losing sight of the shore, though it now and then appeared only a mist that bordered the water's edge. The pilot assured me that the numerous harbours on the Norway coast were very safe, and the pilot-boats were always on the watch. The Swedish side is very dangerous, I am also informed; and the help of experience is not often at hand to enable strange vessels to steer clear of the rocks, which lurk below the water close to the shore. There are no tides here, nor in the Cattegate, and, what appeared to me a consequence, no sandy beach. Perhaps this observation has been made before; but it did not occur to me till I saw the waves continually beating against the bare rocks, without ever receding to leave a sediment to harden. The wind was fair, till we had to tack about in order to enter Laurvig, where we arrived towards three o'clock in the afternoon. It is a clean, pleasant town, with a considerable iron-work, which gives life to it. As the Norwegians do not frequently see travellers, they are very curious to know their business, and who they are--so curious, that I was half tempted to adopt Dr. Franklin's plan, when travelling in America, where they are equally prying, which was to write on a paper, for public inspection, my name, from whence I came, where I was going, and what was my business. But if I were importuned by their curiosity, their friendly gestures gratified me. A woman coming alone interested them. And I know not whether my weariness gave me a look of peculiar delicacy, but they approached to assist me, and inquire after my wants, as if they were afraid to hurt, and wished to protect me. The sympathy I inspired, thus dropping down from the clouds in a strange land, affected me more than it would have done had not my spirits been harassed by various causes--by much thinking--musing almost to madness--and even by a sort of weak melancholy that hung about my heart at parting with my daughter for the first time. You know that, as a female, I am particularly attached to her; I feel more than a mother's fondness and anxiety when I reflect on the dependent and oppressed state of her sex. I dread lest she should be forced to sacrifice her heart to her principles, or principles to her heart. With trembling hand I shall cultivate sensibility and cherish delicacy of sentiment, lest, whilst I lend fresh blushes to the rose, I sharpen the thorns that will wound the breast I would fain guard; I dread to unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the world she is to inhabit. Hapless woman! what a fate is thine! But whither am I wandering? I only meant to tell you that the impression the kindness of the simple people made visible on my countenance increased my sensibility to a painful degree. I wished to have had a room to myself, for their attention, and rather distressing observation, embarrassed me extremely. Yet, as they would bring me eggs, and make my coffee, I found I could not leave them without hurting their feelings of hospitality. It is customary here for the host and hostess to welcome their guests as master and mistress of the house. My clothes, in their turn, attracted the attention of the females, and I could not help thinking of the foolish vanity which makes many women so proud of the observation of strangers as to take wonder very gratuitously for admiration. This error they are very apt to fall into when, arrived in a foreign country, the populace stare at them as they pass. Yet the make of a cap or the singularity of a gown is often the cause of the flattering attention which afterwards supports a fantastic superstructure of self-conceit. Not having brought a carriage over with me, expecting to have met a person where I landed, who was immediately to have procured me one, I was detained whilst the good people of the inn sent round to all their acquaintance to search for a vehicle. A rude sort of cabriole was at last found, and a driver half drunk, who was not less eager to make a good bargain on that account. I had a Danish captain of a ship and his mate with me; the former was to ride on horseback, at which he was not very expert, and the latter to partake of my seat. The driver mounted behind to guide the horses and flourish the whip over our shoulders; he would not suffer the reins out of his own hands. There was something so grotesque in our appearance that I could not avoid shrinking into myself when I saw a gentleman-like man in the group which crowded round the door to observe us. I could have broken the driver's whip for cracking to call the women and children together, but seeing a significant smile on the face, I had before remarked, I burst into a laugh to allow him to do so too, and away we flew. This is not a flourish of the pen, for we actually went on full gallop a long time, the horses being very good; indeed, I have never met with better, if so good, post-horses as in Norway. They are of a stouter make than the English horses, appear to be well fed, and are not easily tired. I had to pass over, I was informed, the most fertile and best cultivated tract of country in Norway. The distance was three Norwegian miles, which are longer than the Swedish. The roads were very good; the farmers are obliged to repair them; and we scampered through a great extent of country in a more improved state than any I had viewed since I left England. Still there was sufficient of hills, dales, and rocks to prevent the idea of a plain from entering the head, or even of such scenery as England and France afford. The prospects were also embellished by water, rivers, and lakes before the sea proudly claimed my regard, and the road running frequently through lofty groves rendered the landscapes beautiful, though they were not so romantic as those I had lately seen with such delight. It was late when I reached Tonsberg, and I was glad to go to bed at a decent inn. The next morning the 17th of July, conversing with the gentleman with whom I had business to transact, I found that I should be detained at Tonsberg three weeks, and I lamented that I had not brought my child with me. The inn was quiet, and my room so pleasant, commanding a view of the sea, confined by an amphitheatre of hanging woods, that I wished to remain there, though no one in the house could speak English or French. The mayor, my friend, however, sent a young woman to me who spoke a little English, and she agreed to call on me twice a day to receive my orders and translate them to my hostess. My not understanding the language was an excellent pretext for dining alone, which I prevailed on them to let me do at a late hour, for the early dinners in Sweden had entirely deranged my day. I could not alter it there without disturbing the economy of a family where I was as a visitor, necessity having forced me to accept of an invitation from a private family, the lodgings were so incommodious. Amongst the Norwegians I had the arrangement of my own time, and I determined to regulate it in such a manner that I might enjoy as much of their sweet summer as I possibly could; short, it is true, but "passing sweet." I never endured a winter in this rude clime, consequently it was not the contrast, but the real beauty of the season which made the present summer appear to me the finest I had ever seen. Sheltered from the north and eastern winds, nothing can exceed the salubrity, the soft freshness of the western gales. In the evening they also die away; the aspen leaves tremble into stillness, and reposing nature seems to be warmed by the moon, which here assumes a genial aspect. And if a light shower has chanced to fall with the sun, the juniper, the underwood of the forest, exhales a wild perfume, mixed with a thousand nameless sweets that, soothing the heart, leave images in the memory which the imagination will ever hold dear. Nature is the nurse of sentiment, the true source of taste; yet what misery, as well as rapture, is produced by a quick perception of the beautiful and sublime when it is exercised in observing animated nature, when every beauteous feeling and emotion excites responsive sympathy, and the harmonised soul sinks into melancholy or rises to ecstasy, just as the chords are touched, like the AEolian harp agitated by the changing wind. But how dangerous is it to foster these sentiments in such an imperfect state of existence, and how difficult to eradicate them when an affection for mankind, a passion for an individual, is but the unfolding of that love which embraces all that is great and beautiful! When a warm heart has received strong impressions, they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments, and the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent by fondly retracing them. I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect views I have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth. Still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast; even when gazing on these tremendous cliffs sublime emotions absorb my soul. And, smile not, if I add that the rosy tint of morning reminds me of a suffusion which will never more charm my senses, unless it reappears on the cheeks of my child. Her sweet blushes I may yet hide in my bosom, and she is still too young to ask why starts the tear so near akin to pleasure and pain. I cannot write any more at present. To-morrow we will talk of Tonsberg. LETTER VII. Though the king of Denmark be an absolute monarch, yet the Norwegians appear to enjoy all the blessings of freedom. Norway may be termed a sister kingdom; but the people have no viceroy to lord it over them, and fatten his dependants with the fruit of their labour. There are only two counts in the whole country who have estates, and exact some feudal observances from their tenantry. All the rest of the country is divided into small farms, which belong to the cultivator. It is true some few, appertaining to the Church, are let, but always on a lease for life, generally renewed in favour of the eldest son, who has this advantage as well as a right to a double portion of the property. But the value of the farm is estimated, and after his portion is assigned to him he must be answerable for the residue to the remaining part of the family. Every farmer for ten years is obliged to attend annually about twelve days to learn the military exercise, but it is always at a small distance from his dwelling, and does not lead him into any new habits of life. There are about six thousand regulars also in garrison at Christiania and Fredericshall, who are equally reserved, with the militia, for the defence of their own country. So that when the Prince Royal passed into Sweden in 1788, he was obliged to request, not command, them to accompany him on this expedition. These corps are mostly composed of the sons of the cottagers, who being labourers on the farms, are allowed a few acres to cultivate for themselves. These men voluntarily enlist, but it is only for a limited period (six years), at the expiration of which they have the liberty of retiring. The pay is only twopence a day and bread; still, considering the cheapness of the country, it is more than sixpence in England. The distribution of landed property into small farms produces a degree of equality which I have seldom seen elsewhere; and the rich being all merchants, who are obliged to divide their personal fortune amongst their children, the boys always receiving twice as much as the girls, property has met a chance of accumulating till overgrowing wealth destroys the balance of liberty. You will be surprised to hear me talk of liberty; yet the Norwegians appear to me to be the most free community I have ever observed. The mayor of each town or district, and the judges in the country, exercise an authority almost patriarchal. They can do much good, but little harm,--as every individual can appeal from their judgment; and as they may always be forced to give a reason for their conduct, it is generally regulated by prudence. "They have not time to learn to be tyrants," said a gentleman to me, with whom I discussed the subject. The farmers not fearing to be turned out of their farms, should they displease a man in power, and having no vote to be commanded at an election for a mock representative, are a manly race; for not being obliged to submit to any debasing tenure in order to live, or advance themselves in the world, they act with an independent spirit. I never yet have heard of anything like domineering or oppression, excepting such as has arisen from natural causes. The freedom the people enjoy may, perhaps, render them a little litigious, and subject them to the impositions of cunning practitioners of the law; but the authority of office is bounded, and the emoluments of it do not destroy its utility. Last year a man who had abused his power was cashiered, on the representation of the people to the bailiff of the district. There are four in Norway who might with propriety be termed sheriffs; and from their sentence an appeal, by either party, may be made to Copenhagen. Near most of the towns are commons, on which the cows of all the inhabitants, indiscriminately, are allowed to graze. The poor, to whom a cow is necessary, are almost supported by it. Besides, to render living more easy, they all go out to fish in their own boats, and fish is their principal food. The lower class of people in the towns are in general sailors; and the industrious have usually little ventures of their own that serve to render the winter comfortable. With respect to the country at large, the importation is considerably in favour of Norway. They are forbidden, at present, to export corn or rye on account of the advanced price. The restriction which most resembles the painful subordination of Ireland, is that vessels, trading to the West Indies, are obliged to pass by their own ports, and unload their cargoes at Copenhagen, which they afterwards reship. The duty is indeed inconsiderable, but the navigation being dangerous, they run a double risk. There is an excise on all articles of consumption brought to the towns; but the officers are not strict, and it would be reckoned invidious to enter a house to search, as in England. The Norwegians appear to me a sensible, shrewd people, with little scientific knowledge, and still less taste for literature; but they are arriving at the epoch which precedes the introduction of the arts and sciences. Most of the towns are seaports, and seaports are not favourable to improvement. The captains acquire a little superficial knowledge by travelling, which their indefatigable attention to the making of money prevents their digesting; and the fortune that they thus laboriously acquire is spent, as it usually is in towns of this description, in show and good living. They love their country, but have not much public spirit. Their exertions are, generally speaking, only for their families, which, I conceive, will always be the case, till politics, becoming a subject of discussion, enlarges the heart by opening the understanding. The French Revolution will have this effect. They sing, at present, with great glee, many Republican songs, and seem earnestly to wish that the republic may stand; yet they appear very much attached to their Prince Royal, and, as far as rumour can give an idea of a character, he appears to merit their attachment. When I am at Copenhagen, I shall be able to ascertain on what foundation their good opinion is built; at present I am only the echo of it. In the year 1788 he travelled through Norway; and acts of mercy gave dignity to the parade, and interest to the joy his presence inspired. At this town he pardoned a girl condemned to die for murdering an illegitimate child, a crime seldom committed in this country. She is since married, and become the careful mother of a family. This might be given as an instance, that a desperate act is not always a proof of an incorrigible depravity of character, the only plausible excuse that has been brought forward to justify the infliction of capital punishments. I will relate two or three other anecdotes to you, for the truth of which I will not vouch because the facts were not of sufficient consequence for me to take much pains to ascertain them; and, true or false, they evince that the people like to make a kind of mistress of their prince. An officer, mortally wounded at the ill-advised battle of Quistram, desired to speak with the prince; and with his dying breath, earnestly recommended to his care a young woman of Christiania, to whom he was engaged. When the prince returned there, a ball was given by the chief inhabitants: he inquired whether this unfortunate girl was invited, and requested that she might, though of the second class. The girl came; she was pretty; and finding herself among her superiors, bashfully sat down as near the door as possible, nobody taking notice of her. Shortly after, the prince entering, immediately inquired for her, and asked her to dance, to the mortification of the rich dames. After it was over he handed her to the top of the room, and placing himself by her, spoke of the loss she had sustained, with tenderness, promising to provide for anyone she should marry, as the story goes. She is since married, and he has not forgotten his promise. A little girl, during the same expedition, in Sweden, who informed him that the logs of a bridge were out underneath, was taken by his orders to Christiania, and put to school at his expense. Before I retail other beneficial effects of his journey, it is necessary to inform you that the laws here are mild, and do not punish capitally for any crime but murder, which seldom occurs. Every other offence merely subjects the delinquent to imprisonment and labour in the castle, or rather arsenal at Christiania, and the fortress at Fredericshall. The first and second conviction produces a sentence for a limited number of years--two, three, five, or seven, proportioned to the atrocity of the crime. After the third he is whipped, branded in the forehead, and condemned to perpetual slavery. This is the ordinary course of justice. For some flagrant breaches of trust, or acts of wanton cruelty, criminals have been condemned to slavery for life time first the of conviction, but not frequently. The number of these slaves do not, I am informed, amount to more than a hundred, which is not considerable, compared with the population, upwards of eight hundred thousand. Should I pass through Christiania, on my return to Gothenburg, I shall probably have an opportunity of learning other particulars. There is also a House of Correction at Christiania for trifling misdemeanours, where the women are confined to labour and imprisonment even for life. The state of the prisoners was represented to the prince, in consequence of which he visited the arsenal and House of Correction. The slaves at the arsenal were loaded with irons of a great weight; he ordered them to be lightened as much as possible. The people in the House of Correction were commanded not to speak to him; but four women, condemned to remain there for life, got into the passage, and fell at his feet. He granted them a pardon; and inquiring respecting the treatment of the prisoners, he was informed that they were frequently whipped going in, and coming out, and for any fault, at the discretion of the inspectors. This custom he humanely abolished, though some of the principal inhabitants, whose situation in life had raised them above the temptation of stealing, were of opinion that these chastisements were necessary and wholesome. In short, everything seems to announce that the prince really cherishes the laudable ambition of fulfilling the duties of his station. This ambition is cherished and directed by the Count Bernstorff, the Prime Minister of Denmark, who is universally celebrated for his abilities and virtue. The happiness of the people is a substantial eulogium; and, from all I can gather, the inhabitants of Denmark and Norway are the least oppressed people of Europe. The press is free. They translate any of the French publications of the day, deliver their opinion on the subject, and discuss those it leads to with great freedom, and without fearing to displease the Government. On the subject of religion they are likewise becoming tolerant, at least, and perhaps have advanced a step further in free-thinking. One writer has ventured to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, and to question the necessity or utility of the Christian system, without being considered universally as a monster, which would have been the case a few years ago. They have translated many German works on education; and though they have not adopted any of their plans, it has become a subject of discussion. There are some grammar and free schools; but, from what I hear, not very good ones. All the children learn to read, write, and cast accounts, for the purposes of common life. They have no university; and nothing that deserves the name of science is taught; nor do individuals, by pursuing any branch of knowledge, excite a degree of curiosity which is the forerunner of improvement. Knowledge is not absolutely necessary to enable a considerable portion of the community to live; and, till it is, I fear it never becomes general. In this country, where minerals abound, there is not one collection; and, in all probability, I venture a conjecture, the want of mechanical and chemical knowledge renders the silver mines unproductive, for the quantity of silver obtained every year is not sufficient to defray the expenses. It has been urged that the employment of such a number of hands is very beneficial. But a positive loss is never to be done away; and the men, thus employed, would naturally find some other means of living, instead of being thus a dead weight on Government, or rather on the community from whom its revenue is drawn. About three English miles from Tonsberg there is a salt work, belonging, like all their establishments, to Government, in which they employ above a hundred and fifty men, and maintain nearly five hundred people, who earn their living. The clear profit, an increasing one, amounts to two thousand pounds sterling. And as the eldest son of the inspector, an ingenious young man, has been sent by the Government to travel, and acquire some mathematical and chemical knowledge in Germany, it has a chance of being improved. He is the only person I have met with here who appears to have a scientific turn of mind. I do not mean to assert that I have not met with others who have a spirit of inquiry. The salt-works at St. Ubes are basins in the sand, and the sun produces the evaporation, but here there is no beach. Besides, the heat of summer is so short-lived that it would be idle to contrive machines for such an inconsiderable portion of the year. They therefore always use fires; and the whole establishment appears to be regulated with judgment. The situation is well chosen and beautiful. I do not find, from the observation of a person who has resided here for forty years, that the sea advances or recedes on this coast. I have already remarked that little attention is paid to education, excepting reading, writing, and the rudiments of arithmetic; I ought to have added that a catechism is carefully taught, and the children obliged to read in the churches, before the congregation, to prove that they are not neglected. Degrees, to enable any one to practise any profession, must be taken at Copenhagen; and the people of this country, having the good sense to perceive that men who are to live in a community should at least acquire the elements of their knowledge, and form their youthful attachments there, are seriously endeavouring to establish a university in Norway. And Tonsberg, as a central place in the best part of the country, had the most suffrages, for, experiencing the bad effects of a metropolis, they have determined not to have it in or near Christiania. Should such an establishment take place, it will promote inquiry throughout the country, and give a new face to society. Premiums have been offered, and prize questions written, which I am told have merit. The building college-halls, and other appendages of the seat of science, might enable Tonsberg to recover its pristine consequence, for it is one of the most ancient towns of Norway, and once contained nine churches. At present there are only two. One is a very old structure, and has a Gothic respectability about it, which scarcely amounts to grandeur, because, to render a Gothic pile grand, it must have a huge unwieldiness of appearance. The chapel of Windsor may be an exception to this rule; I mean before it was in its present nice, clean state. When I first saw it, the pillars within had acquired, by time, a sombre hue, which accorded with the architecture; and the gloom increased its dimensions to the eye by hiding its parts; but now it all bursts on the view at once, and the sublimity has vanished before the brush and broom; for it has been white-washed and scraped till it has become as bright and neat as the pots and pans in a notable house-wife's kitchen--yes; the very spurs on the recumbent knights were deprived of their venerable rust, to give a striking proof that a love of order in trifles, and taste for proportion and arrangement, are very distinct. The glare of light thus introduced entirely destroys the sentiment these piles are calculated to inspire; so that, when I heard something like a jig from the organ-loft, I thought it an excellent hall for dancing or feasting. The measured pace of thought with which I had entered the cathedral changed into a trip; and I bounded on the terrace, to see the royal family, with a number of ridiculous images in my head that I shall not now recall. The Norwegians are fond of music, and every little church has an organ. In the church I have mentioned there is an inscription importing that a king James VI. of Scotland and I. of England, who came with more than princely gallantry to escort his bride home--stood there, and heard divine service. There is a little recess full of coffins, which contains bodies embalmed long since--so long, that there is not even a tradition to lead to a guess at their names. A desire of preserving the body seems to have prevailed in most countries of the world, futile as it is to term it a preservation, when the noblest parts are immediately sacrificed merely to save the muscles, skin, and bone from rottenness. When I was shown these human petrifactions, I shrank back with disgust and horror. "Ashes to ashes!" thought I--"Dust to dust!" If this be not dissolution, it is something worse than natural decay--it is treason against humanity, thus to lift up the awful veil which would fain hide its weakness. The grandeur of the active principle is never more strongly felt than at such a sight, for nothing is so ugly as the human form when deprived of life, and thus dried into stone, merely to preserve the most disgusting image of death. The contemplation of noble ruins produces a melancholy that exalts the mind. We take a retrospect of the exertions of man, the fate of empires and their rulers, and marking the grand destruction of ages, it seems the necessary change of the leading to improvement. Our very soul expands, and we forget our littleness--how painfully brought to our recollection by such vain attempts to snatch from decay what is destined so soon to perish. Life, what art thou? Where goes this breath?--this _I_, so much alive? In what element will it mix, giving or receiving fresh energy? What will break the enchantment of animation? For worlds I would not see a form I loved--embalmed in my heart--thus sacrilegiously handled? Pugh! my stomach turns. Is this all the distinction of the rich in the grave? They had better quietly allow the scythe of equality to mow them down with the common mass, than struggle to become a monument of the instability of human greatness. The teeth, nails, and skin were whole, without appearing black like the Egyptian mummies; and some silk, in which they had been wrapped, still preserved its colour--pink--with tolerable freshness. I could not learn how long the bodies had been in this state, in which they bid fair to remain till the Day of Judgment, if there is to be such a day; and before that time, it will require some trouble to make them fit to appear in company with angels without disgracing humanity. God bless you! I feel a conviction that we have some perfectible principle in our present vestment, which will not be destroyed just as we begin to be sensible of improvement; and I care not what habit it next puts on, sure that it will be wisely formed to suit a higher state of existence. Thinking of death makes us tenderly cling to our affections; with more than usual tenderness I therefore assure you that I am yours, wishing that the temporary death of absence may not endure longer than is absolutely necessary. LETTER VIII. Tonsberg was formerly the residence of one of the little sovereigns of Norway; and on an adjacent mountain the vestiges of a fort remain, which was battered down by the Swedes, the entrance of the bay lying close to it. Here I have frequently strayed, sovereign of the waste; I seldom met any human creature; and sometimes, reclining on the mossy down, under the shelter of a rock, the prattling of the sea amongst the pebbles has lulled me to sleep--no fear of any rude satyr's approaching to interrupt my repose. Balmy were the slumbers, and soft the gales, that refreshed me, when I awoke to follow, with an eye vaguely curious, the white sails, as they turned the cliffs, or seemed to take shelter under the pines which covered the little islands that so gracefully rose to render the terrific ocean beautiful. The fishermen were calmly casting their nets, whilst the sea-gulls hovered over the unruffled deep. Everything seemed to harmonise into tranquillity; even the mournful call of the bittern was in cadence with the tinkling bells on the necks of the cows, that, pacing slowly one after the other, along an inviting path in the vale below, were repairing to the cottages to be milked. With what ineffable pleasure have I not gazed--and gazed again, losing my breath through my eyes--my very soul diffused itself in the scene; and, seeming to become all senses, glided in the scarcely-agitated waves, melted in the freshening breeze, or, taking its flight with fairy wing, to the misty mountain which bounded the prospect, fancy tripped over new lawns, more beautiful even than the lovely slopes on the winding shore before me. I pause, again breathless, to trace, with renewed delight, sentiments which entranced me, when, turning my humid eyes from the expanse below to the vault above, my sight pierced the fleecy clouds that softened the azure brightness; and imperceptibly recalling the reveries of childhood, I bowed before the awful throne of my Creator, whilst I rested on its footstool. You have sometimes wondered, my dear friend, at the extreme affection of my nature. But such is the temperature of my soul. It is not the vivacity of youth, the heyday of existence. For years have I endeavoured to calm an impetuous tide, labouring to make my feelings take an orderly course. It was striving against the stream. I must love and admire with warmth, or I sink into sadness. Tokens of love which I have received have wrapped me in Elysium, purifying the heart they enchanted. My bosom still glows. Do not saucily ask, repeating Sterne's question, "Maria, is it still so warm?" Sufficiently, O my God! Has it been chilled by sorrow and unkindness; still nature will prevail; and if I blush at recollecting past enjoyment, it is the rosy hue of pleasure heightened by modesty, for the blush of modesty and shame are as distinct as the emotions by which they are produced. I need scarcely inform you, after telling you of my walks, that my constitution has been renovated here, and that I have recovered my activity even whilst attaining a little _embonpoint_. My imprudence last winter, and some untoward accidents just at the time I was weaning my child, had reduced me to a state of weakness which I never before experienced. A slow fever preyed on me every night during my residence in Sweden, and after I arrived at Tonsberg. By chance I found a fine rivulet filtered through the rocks, and confined in a basin for the cattle. It tasted to me like a chalybeate; at any rate, it was pure; and the good effect of the various waters which invalids are sent to drink depends, I believe, more on the air, exercise, and change of scene, than on their medicinal qualities. I therefore determined to turn my morning walks towards it, and seek for health from the nymph of the fountain, partaking of the beverage offered to the tenants of the shade. Chance likewise led me to discover a new pleasure equally beneficial to my health. I wished to avail myself of my vicinity to the sea and bathe; but it was not possible near the town; there was no convenience. The young woman whom I mentioned to you proposed rowing me across the water amongst the rocks; but as she was pregnant, I insisted on taking one of the oars, and learning to row. It was not difficult, and I do not know a pleasanter exercise. I soon became expert, and my train of thinking kept time, as it were, with the oars, or I suffered the boat to be carried along by the current, indulging a pleasing forgetfulness or fallacious hopes. How fallacious! yet, without hope, what is to sustain life, but the fear of annihilation--the only thing of which I have ever felt a dread. I cannot bear to think of being no more--of losing myself--though existence is often but a painful consciousness of misery; nay, it appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust--ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream. Sometimes, to take up my oar once more, when the sea was calm, I was amused by disturbing the innumerable young star fish which floated just below the surface; I had never observed them before, for they have not a hard shell like those which I have seen on the seashore. They look like thickened water with a white edge, and four purple circles, of different forms, were in the middle, over an incredible number of fibres or white lines. Touching them, the cloudy substance would turn or close, first on one side, then on the other, very gracefully, but when I took one of them up in the ladle, with which I heaved the water out of the boat, it appeared only a colourless jelly. I did not see any of the seals, numbers of which followed our boat when we landed in Sweden; but though I like to sport in the water I should have had no desire to join in their gambols. Enough, you will say, of inanimate nature and of brutes, to use the lordly phrase of man; let me hear something of the inhabitants. The gentleman with whom I had business is the Mayor of Tonsberg. He speaks English intelligibly, and, having a sound understanding, I was sorry that his numerous occupations prevented my gaining as much information from him as I could have drawn forth had we frequently conversed. The people of the town, as far as I had an opportunity of knowing their sentiments, are extremely well satisfied with his manner of discharging his office. He has a degree of information and good sense which excites respect, whilst a cheerfulness, almost amounting to gaiety, enables him to reconcile differences and keep his neighbours in good humour. "I lost my horse," said a woman to me, "but ever since, when I want to send to the mill, or go out, the Mayor lends me one. He scolds if I do not come for it." A criminal was branded, during my stay here, for the third offence; but the relief he received made him declare that the judge was one of the best men in the world. I sent this wretch a trifle, at different times, to take with him into slavery. As it was more than he expected, he wished very much to see me, and this wish brought to my remembrance an anecdote I heard when I was in Lisbon. A wretch who had been imprisoned several years, during which period lamps had been put up, was at last condemned to a cruel death, yet, in his way to execution, he only wished for one night's respite to see the city lighted. Having dined in company at the mayor's I was invited with his family to spend the day at one of the richest merchant's houses. Though I could not speak Danish I knew that I could see a great deal; yes, I am persuaded that I have formed a very just opinion of the character of the Norwegians, without being able to hold converse with them. I had expected to meet some company, yet was a little disconcerted at being ushered into an apartment full of well dressed people, and glancing my eyes round they rested on several very pretty faces. Rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, and light brown or golden locks; for I never saw so much hair with a yellow cast, and, with their fine complexions, it looked very becoming. These women seem a mixture of indolence and vivacity; they scarcely ever walk out, and were astonished that I should for pleasure, yet they are immoderately fond of dancing. Unaffected in their manners, if they have no pretensions to elegance, simplicity often produces a gracefulness of deportment, when they are animated by a particular desire to please, which was the case at present. The solitariness of my situation, which they thought terrible, interested them very much in my favour. They gathered round me, sung to me, and one of the prettiest, to whom I gave my hand with some degree of cordiality, to meet the glance of her eyes, kissed me very affectionately. At dinner, which was conducted with great hospitality, though we remained at table too long, they sung several songs, and, amongst the rest, translations of some patriotic French ones. As the evening advanced they became playful, and we kept up a sort of conversation of gestures. As their minds were totally uncultivated I did not lose much, perhaps gained, by not being able to understand them; for fancy probably filled up, more to their advantage, the void in the picture. Be that as it may, they excited my sympathy, and I was very much flattered when I was told the next day that they said it was a pleasure to look at me, I appeared so good-natured. The men were generally captains of ships. Several spoke English very tolerably, but they were merely matter-of-fact men, confined to a very narrow circle of observation. I found it difficult to obtain from them any information respecting their own country, when the fumes of tobacco did not keep me at a distance. I was invited to partake of some other feasts, and always had to complain of the quantity of provision and the length of time taken to consume it; for it would not have been proper to have said devour, all went on so fair and softly. The servants wait as slowly as their mistresses carve. The young women here, as well as in Sweden, have commonly bad teeth, which I attribute to the same causes. They are fond of finery, but do not pay the necessary attention to their persons, to render beauty less transient than a flower, and that interesting expression which sentiment and accomplishments give seldom supplies its place. The servants have, likewise, an inferior sort of food here, but their masters are not allowed to strike them with impunity. I might have added mistresses, for it was a complaint of this kind brought before the mayor which led me to a knowledge of the fact. The wages are low, which is particularly unjust, because the price of clothes is much higher than that of provision. A young woman, who is wet nurse to the mistress of the inn where I lodge, receives only twelve dollars a year, and pays ten for the nursing of her own child. The father had run away to get clear of the expense. There was something in this most painful state of widowhood which excited my compassion and led me to reflections on the instability of the most flattering plans of happiness, that were painful in the extreme, till I was ready to ask whether this world was not created to exhibit every possible combination of wretchedness. I asked these questions of a heart writhing with anguish, whilst I listened to a melancholy ditty sung by this poor girl. It was too early for thee to be abandoned, thought I, and I hastened out of the house to take my solitary evening's walk. And here I am again to talk of anything but the pangs arising from the discovery of estranged affection and the lonely sadness of a deserted heart. The father and mother, if the father can be ascertained, are obliged to maintain an illegitimate child at their joint expense; but, should the father disappear, go up the country or to sea, the mother must maintain it herself. However, accidents of this kind do not prevent their marrying, and then it is not unusual to take the child or children home, and they are brought up very amicably with the marriage progeny. I took some pains to learn what books were written originally in their language; but for any certain information respecting the state of Danish literature I must wait till I arrive at Copenhagen. The sound of the language is soft, a great proportion of the words ending in vowels; and there is a simplicity in the turn of some of the phrases which have been translated to me that pleased and interested me. In the country the farmers use the _thou_ and _thee_; and they do not acquire the polite plurals of the towns by meeting at market. The not having markets established in the large towns appears to me a great inconvenience. When the farmers have anything to sell they bring it to the neighbouring town and take it from house to house. I am surprised that the inhabitants do not feel how very incommodious this usage is to both parties, and redress it; they, indeed, perceive it, for when I have introduced the subject they acknowledged that they were often in want of necessaries, there being no butchers, and they were often obliged to buy what they did not want; yet it was the custom, and the changing of customs of a long standing requires more energy than they yet possess. I received a similar reply when I attempted to persuade the women that they injured their children by keeping them too warm. The only way of parrying off my reasoning was that they must do as other people did; in short, reason on any subject of change, and they stop you by saying that "the town would talk." A person of sense, with a large fortune to ensure respect, might be very useful here, by inducing them to treat their children and manage their sick properly, and eat food dressed in a simpler manner--the example, for instance, of a count's lady. Reflecting on these prejudices made me revert to the wisdom of those legislators who established institutions for the good of the body under the pretext of serving heaven for the salvation of the soul. These might with strict propriety be termed pious frauds; and I admire the Peruvian pair for asserting that they came from the sun, when their conduct proved that they meant to enlighten a benighted country, whose obedience, or even attention, could only be secured by awe. Thus much for conquering the _inertia_ of reason; but, when it is once in motion, fables once held sacred may be ridiculed; and sacred they were when useful to mankind. Prometheus alone stole fire to animate the first man; his posterity needs not supernatural aid to preserve the species, though love is generally termed a flame; and it may not be necessary much longer to suppose men inspired by heaven to inculcate the duties which demand special grace when reason convinces them that they are the happiest who are the most nobly employed. In a few days I am to set out for the western part of Norway, and then shall return by land to Gothenburg. I cannot think of leaving this place without regret. I speak of the place before the inhabitants, though there is a tenderness in their artless kindness which attaches me to them; but it is an attachment that inspires a regret very different from that I felt at leaving Hull in my way to Sweden. The domestic happiness and good-humoured gaiety of the amiable family where I and my Frances were so hospitably received would have been sufficient to ensure the tenderest remembrance, without the recollection of the social evening to stimulate it, when good breeding gave dignity to sympathy and wit zest to reason. Adieu!--I am just informed that my horse has been waiting this quarter of an hour. I now venture to ride out alone. The steeple serves as a landmark. I once or twice lost my way, walking alone, without being able to inquire after a path; I was therefore obliged to make to the steeple, or windmill, over hedge and ditch. Yours truly. LETTER IX. I have already informed you that there are only two noblemen who have estates of any magnitude in Norway. One of these has a house near Tonsberg, at which he has not resided for some years, having been at court, or on embassies. He is now the Danish Ambassador in London. The house is pleasantly situated, and the grounds about it fine; but their neglected appearance plainly tells that there is nobody at home. A stupid kind of sadness, to my eye, always reigns in a huge habitation where only servants live to put cases on the furniture and open the windows. I enter as I would into the tomb of the Capulets, to look at the family pictures that here frown in armour, or smile in ermine. The mildew respects not the lordly robe, and the worm riots unchecked on the cheek of beauty. There was nothing in the architecture of the building, or the form of the furniture, to detain me from the avenue where the aged pines stretched along majestically. Time had given a greyish cast to their ever-green foliage; and they stood, like sires of the forest, sheltered on all sides by a rising progeny. I had not ever seen so many oaks together in Norway as in these woods, nor such large aspens as here were agitated by the breeze, rendering the wind audible--nay musical; for melody seemed on the wing around me. How different was the fresh odour that reanimated me in the avenue, from the damp chillness of the apartments; and as little did the gloomy thoughtfulness excited by the dusty hangings, and worm-eaten pictures, resemble the reveries inspired by the soothing melancholy of their shade. In the winter, these august pines, towering above the snow, must relieve the eye beyond measure and give life to the white waste. The continual recurrence of pine and fir groves in the day sometimes wearies the sight, but in the evening, nothing can be more picturesque, or, more properly speaking, better calculated to produce poetical images. Passing through them, I have been struck with a mystic kind of reverence, and I did, as it were, homage to their venerable shadows. Not nymphs, but philosophers, seemed to inhabit them--ever musing; I could scarcely conceive that they were without some consciousness of existence--without a calm enjoyment of the pleasure they diffused. How often do my feelings produce ideas that remind me of the origin of many poetical fictions. In solitude, the imagination bodies forth its conceptions unrestrained, and stops enraptured to adore the beings of its own creation. These are moments of bliss; and the memory recalls them with delight. But I have almost forgotten the matters of fact I meant to relate, respecting the counts. They have the presentation of the livings on their estates, appoint the judges, and different civil officers, the Crown reserving to itself the privilege of sanctioning them. But though they appoint, they cannot dismiss. Their tenants also occupy their farms for life, and are obliged to obey any summons to work on the part he reserves for himself; but they are paid for their labour. In short, I have seldom heard of any noblemen so innoxious. Observing that the gardens round the count's estate were better cultivated than any I had before seen, I was led to reflect on the advantages which naturally accrue from the feudal tenures. The tenants of the count are obliged to work at a stated price, in his grounds and garden; and the instruction which they imperceptibly receive from the head gardener tends to render them useful, and makes them, in the common course of things, better husbandmen and gardeners on their own little farms. Thus the great, who alone travel in this period of society, for the observation of manners and customs made by sailors is very confined, bring home improvement to promote their own comfort, which is gradually spread abroad amongst the people, till they are stimulated to think for themselves. The bishops have not large revenues, and the priests are appointed by the king before they come to them to be ordained. There is commonly some little farm annexed to the parsonage, and the inhabitants subscribe voluntarily, three times a year, in addition to the church fees, for the support of the clergyman. The church lands were seized when Lutheranism was introduced, the desire of obtaining them being probably the real stimulus of reformation. The tithes, which are never required in kind, are divided into three parts--one to the king, another to the incumbent, and the third to repair the dilapidations of the parsonage. They do not amount to much. And the stipend allowed to the different civil officers is also too small, scarcely deserving to be termed an independence; that of the custom-house officers is not sufficient to procure the necessaries of life--no wonder, then, if necessity leads them to knavery. Much public virtue cannot be expected till every employment, putting perquisites out of the question, has a salary sufficient to reward industry;--whilst none are so great as to permit the possessor to remain idle. It is this want of proportion between profit and labour which debases men, producing the sycophantic appellations of patron and client, and that pernicious _esprit du corps_, proverbially vicious. The farmers are hospitable as well as independent. Offering once to pay for some coffee I drank when taking shelter from the rain, I was asked, rather angrily, if a little coffee was worth paying for. They smoke, and drink drams, but not so much as formerly. Drunkenness, often the attendant disgrace of hospitality, will here, as well as everywhere else, give place to gallantry and refinement of manners; but the change will not be suddenly produced. The people of every class are constant in their attendance at church; they are very fond of dancing, and the Sunday evenings in Norway, as in Catholic countries, are spent in exercises which exhilarate the spirits without vitiating the heart. The rest of labour ought to be gay; and the gladness I have felt in France on a Sunday, or Decadi, which I caught from the faces around me, was a sentiment more truly religious than all the stupid stillness which the streets of London ever inspired where the Sabbath is so decorously observed. I recollect, in the country parts of England, the churchwardens used to go out during the service to see if they could catch any luckless wight playing at bowls or skittles; yet what could be more harmless? It would even, I think, be a great advantage to the English, if feats of activity (I do not include boxing matches) were encouraged on a Sunday, as it might stop the progress of Methodism, and of that fanatical spirit which appears to be gaining ground. I was surprised when I visited Yorkshire, on my way to Sweden, to find that sullen narrowness of thinking had made such a progress since I was an inhabitant of the country. I could hardly have supposed that sixteen or seventeen years could have produced such an alteration for the worse in the morals of a place--yes, I say morals; for observance of forms, and avoiding of practices, indifferent in themselves, often supply the place of that regular attention to duties which are so natural, that they seldom are vauntingly exercised, though they are worth all the precepts of the law and the prophets. Besides, many of these deluded people, with the best meaning, actually lose their reason, and become miserable, the dread of damnation throwing them into a state which merits the term; and still more, in running after their preachers, expecting to promote their salvation, they disregard their welfare in this world, and neglect the interest and comfort of their families; so that, in proportion as they attain a reputation for piety, they become idle. Aristocracy and fanaticism seem equally to be gaining ground in England, particularly in the place I have mentioned; I saw very little of either in Norway. The people are regular in their attendance on public worship, but religion does not interfere with their employments. As the farmers cut away the wood they clear the ground. Every year, therefore, the country is becoming fitter to support the inhabitants. Half a century ago the Dutch, I am told, only paid for the cutting down of the wood, and the farmers were glad to get rid of it without giving themselves any trouble. At present they form a just estimate of its value; nay, I was surprised to find even firewood so dear when it appears to be in such plenty. The destruction, or gradual reduction, of their forests will probably ameliorate the climate, and their manners will naturally improve in the same ratio as industry requires ingenuity. It is very fortunate that men are a long time but just above the brute creation, or the greater part of the earth would never have been rendered habitable, because it is the patient labour of men, who are only seeking for a subsistence, which produces whatever embellishes existence, affording leisure for the cultivation of the arts and sciences that lift man so far above his first state. I never, my friend, thought so deeply of the advantages obtained by human industry as since I have been in Norway. The world requires, I see, the hand of man to perfect it, and as this task naturally unfolds the faculties he exercises, it is physically impossible that he should have remained in Rousseau's golden age of stupidity. And, considering the question of human happiness, where, oh where does it reside? Has it taken up its abode with unconscious ignorance or with the high-wrought mind? Is it the offspring of thoughtless animal spirits or the dye of fancy continually flitting round the expected pleasure? The increasing population of the earth must necessarily tend to its improvement, as the means of existence are multiplied by invention. You have probably made similar reflections in America, where the face of the country, I suppose, resembles the wilds of Norway. I am delighted with the romantic views I daily contemplate, animated by the purest air; and I am interested by the simplicity of manners which reigns around me. Still nothing so soon wearies out the feelings as unmarked simplicity. I am therefore half convinced that I could not live very comfortably exiled from the countries where mankind are so much further advanced in knowledge, imperfect as it is, and unsatisfactory to the thinking mind. Even now I begin to long to hear what you are doing in England and France. My thoughts fly from this wilderness to the polished circles of the world, till recollecting its vices and follies, I bury myself in the woods, but find it necessary to emerge again, that I may not lose sight of the wisdom and virtue which exalts my nature. What a long time it requires to know ourselves; and yet almost every one has more of this knowledge than he is willing to own, even to himself. I cannot immediately determine whether I ought to rejoice at having turned over in this solitude a new page in the history of my own heart, though I may venture to assure you that a further acquaintance with mankind only tends to increase my respect for your judgment and esteem for your character. Farewell! LETTER X. I have once more, my friend, taken flight, for I left Tonsberg yesterday, but with an intention of returning in my way back to Sweden. The road to Laurvig is very fine, and the country the best cultivated in Norway. I never before admired the beech tree, and when I met stragglers here they pleased me still less. Long and lank, they would have forced me to allow that the line of beauty requires some curves, if the stately pine, standing near, erect, throwing her vast arms around, had not looked beautiful in opposition to such narrow rules. In these respects my very reason obliges me to permit my feelings to be my criterion. Whatever excites emotion has charms for me, though I insist that the cultivation of the mind by warming, nay, almost creating the imagination, produces taste and an immense variety of sensations and emotions, partaking of the exquisite pleasure inspired by beauty and sublimity. As I know of no end to them, the word infinite, so often misapplied, might on this occasion be introduced with something like propriety. But I have rambled away again. I intended to have remarked to you the effect produced by a grove of towering beech, the airy lightness of their foliage admitting a degree of sunshine, which, giving a transparency to the leaves, exhibited an appearance of freshness and elegance that I had never before remarked. I thought of descriptions of Italian scenery. But these evanescent graces seemed the effect of enchantment; and I imperceptibly breathed softly, lest I should destroy what was real, yet looked so like the creation of fancy. Dryden's fable of the flower and the leaf was not a more poetical reverie. Adieu, however, to fancy, and to all the sentiments which ennoble our nature. I arrived at Laurvig, and found myself in the midst of a group of lawyers of different descriptions. My head turned round, my heart grew sick, as I regarded visages deformed by vice, and listened to accounts of chicanery that was continually embroiling the ignorant. These locusts will probably diminish as the people become more enlightened. In this period of social life the commonalty are always cunningly attentive to their own interest; but their faculties, confined to a few objects, are so narrowed, that they cannot discover it in the general good. The profession of the law renders a set of men still shrewder and more selfish than the rest; and it is these men, whose wits have been sharpened by knavery, who here undermine morality, confounding right and wrong. The Count of Bernstorff, who really appears to me, from all I can gather, to have the good of the people at heart, aware of this, has lately sent to the mayor of each district to name, according to the size of the place, four or six of the best-informed inhabitants, not men of the law, out of which the citizens were to elect two, who are to be termed mediators. Their office is to endeavour to prevent litigious suits, and conciliate differences. And no suit is to be commenced before the parties have discussed the dispute at their weekly meeting. If a reconciliation should, in consequence, take place, it is to be registered, and the parties are not allowed to retract. By these means ignorant people will be prevented from applying for advice to men who may justly be termed stirrers-up of strife. They have for a long time, to use a significant vulgarism, set the people by the ears, and live by the spoil they caught up in the scramble. There is some reason to hope that this regulation will diminish their number, and restrain their mischievous activity. But till trials by jury are established, little justice can be expected in Norway. Judges who cannot be bribed are often timid, and afraid of offending bold knaves, lest they should raise a set of hornets about themselves. The fear of censure undermines all energy of character; and, labouring to be prudent, they lose sight of rectitude. Besides, nothing is left to their conscience, or sagacity; they must be governed by evidence, though internally convinced that it is false. There is a considerable iron manufactory at Laurvig for coarse work, and a lake near the town supplies the water necessary for working several mills belonging to it. This establishment belongs to the Count of Laurvig. Without a fortune and influence equal to his, such a work could not have been set afloat; personal fortunes are not yet sufficient to support such undertakings. Nevertheless the inhabitants of the town speak of the size of his estate as an evil, because it obstructs commerce. The occupiers of small farms are obliged to bring their wood to the neighbouring seaports to be shipped; but he, wishing to increase the value of his, will not allow it to be thus gradually cut down, which turns the trade into another channel. Added to this, nature is against them, the bay being open and insecure. I could not help smiling when I was informed that in a hard gale a vessel had been wrecked in the main street. When there are such a number of excellent harbours on the coast, it is a pity that accident has made one of the largest towns grow up on a bad one. The father of the present count was a distant relation of the family; he resided constantly in Denmark, and his son follows his example. They have not been in possession of the estate many years; and their predecessor lived near the town, introducing a degree of profligacy of manners which has been ruinous to the inhabitants in every respect, their fortunes not being equal to the prevailing extravagance. What little I have seen of the manners of the people does not please me so well as those of Tonsberg. I am forewarned that I shall find them still more cunning and fraudulent as I advance towards the westward, in proportion as traffic takes place of agriculture, for their towns are built on naked rocks, the streets are narrow bridges, and the inhabitants are all seafaring men, or owners of ships, who keep shops. The inn I was at in Laurvig this journey was not the same that I was at before. It is a good one--the people civil, and the accommodations decent. They seem to be better provided in Sweden; but in justice I ought to add that they charge more extravagantly. My bill at Tonsberg was also much higher than I had paid in Sweden, and much higher than it ought to have been where provision is so cheap. Indeed, they seem to consider foreigners as strangers whom they shall never see again, and may fairly pluck. And the inhabitants of the western coast, isolated, as it were, regard those of the east almost as strangers. Each town in that quarter seems to be a great family, suspicious of every other, allowing none to cheat them but themselves; and, right or wrong, they support one another in the face of justice. On this journey I was fortunate enough to have one companion with more enlarged views than the generality of his countrymen, who spoke English tolerably. I was informed that we might still advance a mile and a quarter in our cabrioles; afterwards there was no choice, but of a single horse and wretched path, or a boat, the usual mode of travelling. We therefore sent our baggage forward in the boat, and followed rather slowly, for the road was rocky and sandy. We passed, however, through several beech groves, which still delighted me by the freshness of their light green foliage, and the elegance of their assemblage, forming retreats to veil without obscuring the sun. I was surprised, at approaching the water, to find a little cluster of houses pleasantly situated, and an excellent inn. I could have wished to have remained there all night; but as the wind was fair, and the evening fine, I was afraid to trust to the wind--the uncertain wind of to-morrow. We therefore left Helgeraac immediately with the declining sun. Though we were in the open sea, we sailed more amongst the rocks and islands than in my passage from Stromstad; and they often forced very picturesque combinations. Few of the high ridges were entirely bare; the seeds of some pines or firs had been wafted by the winds or waves, and they stood to brave the elements. Sitting, then, in a little boat on the ocean, amidst strangers, with sorrow and care pressing hard on me--buffeting me about from clime to clime--I felt "Like the lone shrub at random cast, That sighs and trembles at each blast!" On some of the largest rocks there were actually groves, the retreat of foxes and hares, which, I suppose, had tripped over the ice during the winter, without thinking to regain the main land before the thaw. Several of the islands were inhabited by pilots; and the Norwegian pilots are allowed to be the best in the world--perfectly acquainted with their coast, and ever at hand to observe the first signal or sail. They pay a small tax to the king and to the regulating officer, and enjoy the fruit of their indefatigable industry. One of the islands, called Virgin Land, is a flat, with some depth of earth, extending for half a Norwegian mile, with three farms on it, tolerably well cultivated. On some of the bare rocks I saw straggling houses; they rose above the denomination of huts inhabited by fishermen. My companions assured me that they were very comfortable dwellings, and that they have not only the necessaries, but even what might be reckoned the superfluities of life. It was too late for me to go on shore, if you will allow me to give that name to shivering rocks, to ascertain the fact. But rain coming on, and the night growing dark, the pilot declared that it would be dangerous for us to attempt to go to the place of our destination--East Rusoer--a Norwegian mile and a half further; and we determined to stop for the night at a little haven, some half dozen houses scattered under the curve of a rock. Though it became darker and darker, our pilot avoided the blind rocks with great dexterity. It was about ten o'clock when we arrived, and the old hostess quickly prepared me a comfortable bed--a little too soft or so, but I was weary; and opening the window to admit the sweetest of breezes to fan me to sleep, I sunk into the most luxurious rest: it was more than refreshing. The hospitable sprites of the grots surely hovered round my pillow; and, if I awoke, it was to listen to the melodious whispering of the wind amongst them, or to feel the mild breath of morn. Light slumbers produced dreams, where Paradise was before me. My little cherub was again hiding her face in my bosom. I heard her sweet cooing beat on my heart from the cliffs, and saw her tiny footsteps on the sands. New-born hopes seemed, like the rainbow, to appear in the clouds of sorrow, faint, yet sufficient to amuse away despair. Some refreshing but heavy showers have detained us; and here I am writing quite alone--something more than gay, for which I want a name. I could almost fancy myself in Nootka Sound, or on some of the islands on the north-west coast of America. We entered by a narrow pass through the rocks, which from this abode appear more romantic than you can well imagine; and seal-skins hanging at the door to dry add to the illusion. It is indeed a corner of the world, but you would be surprised to see the cleanliness and comfort of the dwelling. The shelves are not only shining with pewter and queen's ware, but some articles in silver, more ponderous, it is true, than elegant. The linen is good, as well as white. All the females spin, and there is a loom in the kitchen. A sort of individual taste appeared in the arrangement of the furniture (this is not the place for imitation) and a kindness in their desire to oblige. How superior to the apish politeness of the towns! where the people, affecting to be well bred, fatigue with their endless ceremony. The mistress is a widow, her daughter is married to a pilot, and has three cows. They have a little patch of land at about the distance of two English miles, where they make hay for the winter, which they bring home in a boat. They live here very cheap, getting money from the vessels which stress of weather, or other causes, bring into their harbour. I suspect, by their furniture, that they smuggle a little. I can now credit the account of the other houses, which I last night thought exaggerated. I have been conversing with one of my companions respecting the laws and regulations of Norway. He is a man within great portion of common sense and heart--yes, a warm heart. This is not the first time I have remarked heart without sentiment; they are distinct. The former depends on the rectitude of the feelings, on truth of sympathy; these characters have more tenderness than passion; the latter has a higher source--call it imagination, genius, or what you will, it is something very different. I have been laughing with these simple worthy folk--to give you one of my half-score Danish words--and letting as much of my heart flow out in sympathy as they can take. Adieu! I must trip up the rocks. The rain is ever. Let me catch pleasure on the wing--I may be melancholy to-morrow. Now all my nerves keep time with the melody of nature. Ah! let me be happy whilst I can. The tear starts as I think of it. I must flee from thought, and find refuge from sorrow in a strong imagination--the only solace for a feeling heart. Phantoms of bliss! ideal forms of excellence! again enclose me in your magic circle, and wipe clear from my remembrance the disappointments that reader the sympathy painful, which experience rather increases than damps, by giving the indulgence of feeling the sanction of reason. Once more farewell! LETTER XI. I left Portoer, the little haven I mentioned, soon after I finished my last letter. The sea was rough, and I perceived that our pilot was right not to venture farther during a hazy night. We had agreed to pay four dollars for a boat from Helgeraac. I mention the sum, because they would demand twice as much from a stranger. I was obliged to pay fifteen for the one I hired at Stromstad. When we were ready to set out, our boatman offered to return a dollar and let us go in one of the boats of the place, the pilot who lived there being better acquainted with the coast. He only demanded a dollar and a half, which was reasonable. I found him a civil and rather intelligent man; he was in the American service several years, during the Revolution. I soon perceived that an experienced mariner was necessary to guide us, for we were continually obliged to tack about, to avoid the rocks, which, scarcely reaching to the surface of the water, could only be discovered by the breaking of the waves over them. The view of this wild coast, as we sailed along it, afforded me a continual subject for meditation. I anticipated the future improvement of the world, and observed how much man has still to do to obtain of the earth all it could yield. I even carried my speculations so far as to advance a million or two of years to the moment when the earth would perhaps be so perfectly cultivated, and so completely peopled, as to render it necessary to inhabit every spot--yes, these bleak shores. Imagination went still farther, and pictured the state of man when the earth could no longer support him. Whither was he to flee from universal famine? Do not smile; I really became distressed for these fellow creatures yet unborn. The images fastened on me, and the world appeared a vast prison. I was soon to be in a smaller one--for no other name can I give to Rusoer. It would be difficult to form an idea of the place, if you have never seen one of these rocky coasts. We were a considerable time entering amongst the islands, before we saw about two hundred houses crowded together under a very high rock--still higher appearing above. Talk not of Bastilles! To be born here was to be bastilled by nature--shut out from all that opens the understanding, or enlarges the heart. Huddled one behind another, not more than a quarter of the dwellings even had a prospect of the sea. A few planks formed passages from house to house, which you must often scale, mounting steps like a ladder to enter. The only road across the rocks leads to a habitation sterile enough, you may suppose, when I tell you that the little earth on the adjacent ones was carried there by the late inhabitant. A path, almost impracticable for a horse, goes on to Arendall, still further to the westward. I inquired for a walk, and, mounting near two hundred steps made round a rock, walked up and down for about a hundred yards viewing the sea, to which I quickly descended by steps that cheated the declivity. The ocean and these tremendous bulwarks enclosed me on every side. I felt the confinement, and wished for wings to reach still loftier cliffs, whose slippery sides no foot was so hardy as to tread. Yet what was it to see?--only a boundless waste of water--not a glimpse of smiling nature--not a patch of lively green to relieve the aching sight, or vary the objects of meditation. I felt my breath oppressed, though nothing could be clearer than the atmosphere. Wandering there alone, I found the solitude desirable; my mind was stored with ideas, which this new scene associated with astonishing rapidity. But I shuddered at the thought of receiving existence, and remaining here, in the solitude of ignorance, till forced to leave a world of which I had seen so little, for the character of the inhabitants is as uncultivated, if not as picturesquely wild, as their abode. Having no employment but traffic, of which a contraband trade makes the basis of their profit, the coarsest feelings of honesty are quickly blunted. You may suppose that I speak in general terms; and that, with all the disadvantages of nature and circumstances, there are still some respectable exceptions, the more praiseworthy, as tricking is a very contagious mental disease, that dries up all the generous juices of the heart. Nothing genial, in fact, appears around this place, or within the circle of its rocks. And, now I recollect, it seems to me that the most genial and humane characters I have met with in life were most alive to the sentiments inspired by tranquil country scenes. What, indeed, is to humanise these beings, who rest shut up (for they seldom even open their windows), smoking, drinking brandy, and driving bargains? I have been almost stifled by these smokers. They begin in the morning, and are rarely without their pipe till they go to bed. Nothing can be more disgusting than the rooms and men towards the evening--breath, teeth, clothes, and furniture, all are spoilt. It is well that the women are not very delicate, or they would only love their husbands because they were their husbands. Perhaps, you may add, that the remark need not be confined to so small a part of the world; and, _entre nous_, I am of the same opinion. You must not term this innuendo saucy, for it does not come home. If I had not determined to write I should have found my confinement here, even for three or four days, tedious. I have no books; and to pace up and down a small room, looking at tiles overhung by rocks, soon becomes wearisome. I cannot mount two hundred steps to walk a hundred yards many times in the day. Besides, the rocks, retaining the heat of the sun, are intolerably warm. I am, nevertheless, very well; for though there is a shrewdness in the character of these people, depraved by a sordid love of money which repels me, still the comparisons they force me to make keep my heart calm by exercising my understanding. Everywhere wealth commands too much respect, but here almost exclusively; and it is the only object pursued, not through brake and briar, but over rocks and waves; yet of what use would riches be to me, I have sometimes asked myself, were I confined to live in such in a spot? I could only relieve a few distressed objects, perhaps render them idle, and all the rest of life would be a blank. My present journey has given fresh force to my opinion that no place is so disagreeable and unimproving as a country town. I should like to divide my time between the town and country; in a lone house, with the business of farming and planting, where my mind would gain strength by solitary musing, and in a metropolis to rub off the rust of thought, and polish the taste which the contemplation of nature had rendered just. Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does more to gratify a desire of knowledge than our best laid plans. A degree of exertion, produced by some want, more or less painful, is probably the price we must all pay for knowledge. How few authors or artists have arrived at eminence who have not lived by their employment? I was interrupted yesterday by business, and was prevailed upon to dine with the English vice-consul. His house being open to the sea, I was more at large; and the hospitality of the table pleased me, though the bottle was rather too freely pushed about. Their manner of entertaining was such as I have frequently remarked when I have been thrown in the way of people without education, who have more money than wit--that is, than they know what to do with. The women were unaffected, but had not the natural grace which was often conspicuous at Tonsberg. There was even a striking difference in their dress, these having loaded themselves with finery in the style of the sailors' girls of Hull or Portsmouth. Taste has not yet taught them to make any but an ostentatious display of wealth. Yet I could perceive even here the first steps of the improvement which I am persuaded will make a very obvious progress in the course of half a century, and it ought not to be sooner, to keep pace with the cultivation of the earth. Improving manners will introduce finer moral feelings. They begin to read translations of some of the most useful German productions lately published, and one of our party sung a song ridiculing the powers coalesced against France, and the company drank confusion to those who had dismembered Poland. The evening was extremely calm and beautiful. Not being able to walk, I requested a boat as the only means of enjoying free air. The view of the town was now extremely fine. A huge rocky mountain stood up behind it, and a vast cliff stretched on each side, forming a semicircle. In a recess of the rocks was a clump of pines, amongst which a steeple rose picturesquely beautiful. The churchyard is almost the only verdant spot in the place. Here, indeed, friendship extends beyond the grave, and to grant a sod of earth is to accord a favour. I should rather choose, did it admit of a choice, to sleep in some of the caves of the rocks, for I am become better reconciled to them since I climbed their craggy sides last night, listening to the finest echoes I ever heard. We had a French horn with us, and there was an enchanting wildness in the dying away of the reverberation that quickly transported me to Shakespeare's magic island. Spirits unseen seemed to walk abroad, and flit from cliff to cliff to soothe my soul to peace. I reluctantly returned to supper, to be shut up in a warm room, only to view the vast shadows of the rocks extending on the slumbering waves. I stood at the window some time before a buzz filled the drawing-room, and now and then the dashing of a solitary oar rendered the scene still more solemn. Before I came here I could scarcely have imagined that a simple object (rocks) could have admitted of so many interesting combinations, always grand and often sublime. Good night! God bless you! LETTER XII. I left East Rusoer the day before yesterday. The weather was very fine; but so calm that we loitered on the water near fourteen hours, only to make about six and twenty miles. It seemed to me a sort of emancipation when we landed at Helgeraac. The confinement which everywhere struck me whilst sojourning amongst the rocks, made me hail the earth as a land of promise; and the situation shone with fresh lustre from the contrast--from appearing to be a free abode. Here it was possible to travel by land--I never thought this a comfort before--and my eyes, fatigued by the sparkling of the sun on the water, now contentedly reposed on the green expanse, half persuaded that such verdant meads had never till then regaled them. I rose early to pursue my journey to Tonsberg. The country still wore a face of joy--and my soul was alive to its charms. Leaving the most lofty and romantic of the cliffs behind us, we were almost continually descending to Tonsberg, through Elysian scenes; for not only the sea, but mountains, rivers, lakes, and groves, gave an almost endless variety to the prospect. The cottagers were still carrying home the hay; and the cottages on this road looked very comfortable. Peace and plenty--I mean not abundance--seemed to reign around--still I grew sad as I drew near my old abode. I was sorry to see the sun so high; it was broad noon. Tonsberg was something like a home--yet I was to enter without lighting up pleasure in any eye. I dreaded the solitariness of my apartment, and wished for night to hide the starting tears, or to shed them on my pillow, and close my eyes on a world where I was destined to wander alone. Why has nature so many charms for me--calling forth and cherishing refined sentiments, only to wound the breast that fosters them? How illusive, perhaps the most so, are the plans of happiness founded on virtue and principle; what inlets of misery do they not open in a half-civilised society? The satisfaction arising from conscious rectitude, will not calm an injured heart, when tenderness is ever finding excuses; and self-applause is a cold solitary feeling, that cannot supply the place of disappointed affection, without throwing a gloom over every prospect, which, banishing pleasure, does not exclude pain. I reasoned and reasoned; but my heart was too full to allow me to remain in the house, and I walked, till I was wearied out, to purchase rest--or rather forgetfulness. Employment has beguiled this day, and to-morrow I set out for Moss, on my way to Stromstad. At Gothenburg I shall embrace my Fannikin; probably she will not know me again--and I shall be hurt if she do not. How childish is this! still it is a natural feeling. I would not permit myself to indulge the "thick coming fears" of fondness, whilst I was detained by business. Yet I never saw a calf bounding in a meadow, that did not remind me of my little frolicker. A calf, you say. Yes; but a capital one I own. I cannot write composedly--I am every instant sinking into reveries--my heart flutters, I know not why. Fool! It is time thou wert at rest. Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing. As objects merely to exercise my taste, I therefore like to see people together who have an affection for each other; every turn of their features touches me, and remains pictured on my imagination in indelible characters. The zest of novelty is, however, necessary to rouse the languid sympathies which have been hackneyed in the world; as is the factitious behaviour, falsely termed good-breeding, to amuse those, who, defective in taste, continually rely for pleasure on their animal spirits, which not being maintained by the imagination, are unavoidably sooner exhausted than the sentiments of the heart. Friendship is in general sincere at the commencement, and lasts whilst there is anything to support it; but as a mixture of novelty and vanity is the usual prop, no wonder if it fall with the slender stay. The fop in the play paid a greater compliment than he was aware of when he said to a person, whom he meant to flatter, "I like you almost as well as a _new acquaintance_." Why am I talking of friendship, after which I have had such a wild-goose chase. I thought only of telling you that the crows, as well as wild-geese, are here birds of passage. LETTER XIII. I left Tonsberg yesterday, the 22nd of August. It is only twelve or thirteen English miles to Moss, through a country less wild than any tract I had hitherto passed over in Norway. It was often beautiful, but seldom afforded those grand views which fill rather than soothe the mind. We glided along the meadows and through the woods, with sunbeams playing around us; and, though no castles adorned the prospects, a greater number of comfortable farms met my eyes during this ride than I have ever seen, in the same space, even in the most cultivated part of England; and the very appearance of the cottages of the labourers sprinkled amidst them excluded all those gloomy ideas inspired by the contemplation of poverty. The hay was still bringing in, for one harvest in Norway treads on the heels of the other. The woods were more variegated, interspersed with shrubs. We no longer passed through forests of vast pines stretching along with savage magnificence. Forests that only exhibited the slow decay of time or the devastation produced by warring elements. No; oaks, ashes, beech, and all the light and graceful tenants of our woods here sported luxuriantly. I had not observed many oaks before, for the greater part of the oak-planks, I am informed, come from the westward. In France the farmers generally live in villages, which is a great disadvantage to the country; but the Norwegian farmers, always owning their farms or being tenants for life, reside in the midst of them, allowing some labourers a dwelling rent free, who have a little land appertaining to the cottage, not only for a garden, but for crops of different kinds, such as rye, oats, buck-wheat, hemp, flax, beans, potatoes, and hay, which are sown in strips about it, reminding a stranger of the first attempts at culture, when every family was obliged to be an independent community. These cottagers work at a certain price (tenpence per day) for the farmers on whose ground they live, and they have spare time enough to cultivate their own land and lay in a store of fish for the winter. The wives and daughters spin and the husbands and sons weave, so that they may fairly be reckoned independent, having also a little money in hand to buy coffee, brandy and some other superfluities. The only thing I disliked was the military service, which trammels them more than I at first imagined. It is true that the militia is only called out once a year, yet in case of war they have no alternative but must abandon their families. Even the manufacturers are not exempted, though the miners are, in order to encourage undertakings which require a capital at the commencement. And, what appears more tyrannical, the inhabitants of certain districts are appointed for the land, others for the sea service. Consequently, a peasant, born a soldier, is not permitted to follow his inclination should it lead him to go to sea, a natural desire near so many seaports. In these regulations the arbitrary government--the King of Denmark being the most absolute monarch in Europe--appears, which in other respects seeks to hide itself in a lenity that almost renders the laws nullities. If any alteration of old customs is thought of, the opinion of the old country is required and maturely considered. I have several times had occasion to observe that, fearing to appear tyrannical, laws are allowed to become obsolete which ought to be put in force or better substituted in their stead; for this mistaken moderation, which borders on timidity, favours the least respectable part of the people. I saw on my way not only good parsonage houses, but comfortable dwellings, with glebe land for the clerk, always a consequential man in every country, a being proud of a little smattering of learning, to use the appropriate epithet, and vain of the stiff good-breeding reflected from the vicar, though the servility practised in his company gives it a peculiar cast. The widow of the clergyman is allowed to receive the benefit of the living for a twelvemonth after the death of the incumbent. Arriving at the ferry (the passage over to Moss is about six or eight English miles) I saw the most level shore I had yet seen in Norway. The appearance of the circumjacent country had been preparing me for the change of scene which was to greet me when I reached the coast. For the grand features of nature had been dwindling into prettiness as I advanced; yet the rocks, on a smaller scale, were finely wooded to the water's edge. Little art appeared, yet sublimity everywhere gave place to elegance. The road had often assumed the appearance of a gravelled one, made in pleasure-grounds; whilst the trees excited only an idea of embellishment. Meadows, like lawns, in an endless variety, displayed the careless graces of nature; and the ripening corn gave a richness to the landscape analogous with the other objects. Never was a southern sky more beautiful, nor more soft its gales. Indeed, I am led to conclude that the sweetest summer in the world is the northern one, the vegetation being quick and luxuriant the moment the earth is loosened from its icy fetters and the bound streams regain their wonted activity. The balance of happiness with respect to climate may be more equal than I at first imagined; for the inhabitants describe with warmth the pleasures of a winter at the thoughts of which I shudder. Not only their parties of pleasure but of business are reserved for this season, when they travel with astonishing rapidity the most direct way, skimming over hedge and ditch. On entering Moss I was struck by the animation which seemed to result from industry. The richest of the inhabitants keep shops, resembling in their manners and even the arrangement of their houses the tradespeople of Yorkshire; with an air of more independence, or rather consequence, from feeling themselves the first people in the place. I had not time to see the iron-works, belonging to Mr. Anker, of Christiania, a man of fortune and enterprise; and I was not very anxious to see them after having viewed those at Laurvig. Here I met with an intelligent literary man, who was anxious to gather information from me relative to the past and present situation of France. The newspapers printed at Copenhagen, as well as those in England, give the most exaggerated accounts of their atrocities and distresses, but the former without any apparent comments or inferences. Still the Norwegians, though more connected with the English, speaking their language and copying their manners, wish well to the Republican cause, and follow with the most lively interest the successes of the French arms. So determined were they, in fact, to excuse everything, disgracing the struggle of freedom, by admitting the tyrant's plea, necessity, that I could hardly persuade them that Robespierre was a monster. The discussion of this subject is not so general as in England, being confined to the few, the clergy and physicians, with a small portion of people who have a literary turn and leisure; the greater part of the inhabitants having a variety of occupations, being owners of ships, shopkeepers, and farmers, have employment enough at home. And their ambition to become rich may tend to cultivate the common sense which characterises and narrows both their hearts and views, confirming the former to their families, taking the handmaids of it into the circle of pleasure, if not of interest, and the latter to the inspection of their workmen, including the noble science of bargain-making--that is, getting everything at the cheapest, and selling it at the dearest rate. I am now more than ever convinced that it is an intercourse with men of science and artists which not only diffuses taste, but gives that freedom to the understanding without which I have seldom met with much benevolence of character on a large scale. Besides, though you do not hear of much pilfering and stealing in Norway, yet they will, with a quiet conscience, buy things at a price which must convince them they were stolen. I had an opportunity of knowing that two or three reputable people had purchased some articles of vagrants, who were detected. How much of the virtue which appears in the world is put on for the world? And how little dictated by self-respect?--so little, that I am ready to repeat the old question, and ask, Where is truth, or rather principle, to be found? These are, perhaps, the vapourings of a heart ill at ease--the effusions of a sensibility wounded almost to madness. But enough of this; we will discuss the subject in another state of existence, where truth and justice will reign. How cruel are the injuries which make us quarrel with human nature! At present black melancholy hovers round my footsteps; and sorrow sheds a mildew over all the future prospects, which hope no longer gilds. A rainy morning prevented my enjoying the pleasure the view of a picturesque country would have afforded me; for though this road passed through a country a greater extent of which was under cultivation than I had usually seen here, it nevertheless retained all the wild charms of Norway. Rocks still enclosed the valleys, the great sides of which enlivened their verdure. Lakes appeared like branches of the sea, and branches of the sea assumed the appearance of tranquil lakes; whilst streamlets prattled amongst the pebbles and the broken mass of stone which had rolled into them, giving fantastic turns to the trees, the roots of which they bared. It is not, in fact, surprising that the pine should be often undermined; it shoots its fibres in such a horizontal direction, merely on the surface of the earth, requiring only enough to cover those that cling to the crags. Nothing proves to me so clearly that it is the air which principally nourishes trees and plants as the flourishing appearance of these pines. The firs, demanding a deeper soil, are seldom seen in equal health, or so numerous on the barren cliffs. They take shelter in the crevices, or where, after some revolving ages, the pines have prepared them a footing. Approaching, or rather descending, to Christiania, though the weather continued a little cloudy, my eyes were charmed with the view of an extensive undulated valley, stretching out under the shelter of a noble amphitheatre of pine-covered mountains. Farm houses scattered about animated, nay, graced a scene which still retained so much of its native wildness, that the art which appeared seemed so necessary, it was scarcely perceived. Cattle were grazing in the shaven meadows; and the lively green on their swelling sides contrasted with the ripening corn and rye. The corn that grew on the slopes had not, indeed, the laughing luxuriance of plenty, which I have seen in more genial climes. A fresh breeze swept across the grain, parting its slender stalks, but the wheat did not wave its head with its wonted careless dignity, as if nature had crowned it the king of plants. The view, immediately on the left, as we drove down the mountain, was almost spoilt by the depredations committed on the rocks to make alum. I do not know the process. I only saw that the rocks looked red after they had been burnt, and regretted that the operation should leave a quantity of rubbish to introduce an image of human industry in the shape of destruction. The situation of Christiania is certainly uncommonly fine, and I never saw a bay that so forcibly gave me an idea of a place of safety from the storms of the ocean; all the surrounding objects were beautiful and even grand. But neither the rocky mountains, nor the woods that graced them, could be compared with the sublime prospects I had seen to the westward; and as for the hills, "capped with _eternal_ snow," Mr. Coxe's description led me to look for them, but they had flown, for I looked vainly around for this noble background. A few months ago the people of Christiania rose, exasperated by the scarcity and consequent high price of grain. The immediate cause was the shipping of some, said to be for Moss, but which they suspected was only a pretext to send it out of the country, and I am not sure that they were wrong in their conjecture. Such are the tricks of trade. They threw stones at Mr. Anker, the owner of it, as he rode out of town to escape from their fury; they assembled about his house, and the people demanded afterwards, with so much impetuosity, the liberty of those who were taken up in consequence of the tumult, that the Grand Bailiff thought it prudent to release them without further altercation. You may think me too severe on commerce, but from the manner it is at present carried on little can be advanced in favour of a pursuit that wears out the most sacred principles of humanity and rectitude. What is speculation but a species of gambling, I might have said fraud, in which address generally gains the prize? I was led into these reflections when I heard of some tricks practised by merchants, miscalled reputable, and certainly men of property, during the present war, in which common honesty was violated: damaged goods and provision having been shipped for the express purpose of falling into the hands of the English, who had pledged themselves to reimburse neutral nations for the cargoes they seized; cannon also, sent back as unfit for service, have been shipped as a good speculation, the captain receiving orders to cruise about till he fell in with an English frigate. Many individuals I believe have suffered by the seizures of their vessels; still I am persuaded that the English Government has been very much imposed upon in the charges made by merchants who contrived to get their ships taken. This censure is not confined to the Danes. Adieu, for the present, I must take advantage of a moment of fine weather to walk out and see the town. At Christiania I met with that polite reception, which rather characterises the progress of manners in the world, than of any particular portion of it. The first evening of my arrival I supped with some of the most fashionable people of the place, and almost imagined myself in a circle of English ladies, so much did they resemble them in manners, dress, and even in beauty; for the fairest of my countrywomen would not have been sorry to rank with the Grand Bailiff's lady. There were several pretty girls present, but she outshone them all, and, what interested me still more, I could not avoid observing that in acquiring the easy politeness which distinguishes people of quality, she had preserved her Norwegian simplicity. There was, in fact, a graceful timidity in her address, inexpressibly charming. This surprised me a little, because her husband was quite a Frenchman of the _ancien regime_, or rather a courtier, the same kind of animal in every country. Here I saw the cloven foot of despotism. I boasted to you that they had no viceroy in Norway, but these Grand Bailiffs, particularly the superior one, who resides at Christiania, are political monsters of the same species. Needy sycophants are provided for by their relations and connections at Copenhagen as at other courts. And though the Norwegians are not in the abject state of the Irish, yet this second-hand government is still felt by their being deprived of several natural advantages to benefit the domineering state. The Grand Bailiffs are mostly noblemen from Copenhagen, who act as men of common minds will always act in such situations--aping a degree of courtly parade which clashes with the independent character of a magistrate. Besides, they have a degree of power over the country judges, which some of them, who exercise a jurisdiction truly patriarchal most painfully feel. I can scarcely say why, my friend, but in this city thoughtfulness seemed to be sliding into melancholy or rather dulness. The fire of fancy, which had been kept alive in the country, was almost extinguished by reflections on the ills that harass such a large portion of mankind. I felt like a bird fluttering on the ground unable to mount, yet unwilling to crawl tranquilly like a reptile, whilst still conscious it had wings. I walked out, for the open air is always my remedy when an aching head proceeds from an oppressed heart. Chance directed my steps towards the fortress, and the sight of the slaves, working with chains on their legs, only served to embitter me still more against the regulations of society, which treated knaves in such a different manner, especially as there was a degree of energy in some of their countenances which unavoidably excited my attention, and almost created respect. I wished to have seen, through an iron grate, the face of a man who has been confined six years for having induced the farmers to revolt against some impositions of the Government. I could not obtain a clear account of the affair, yet, as the complaint was against some farmers of taxes, I am inclined to believe that it was not totally without foundation. He must have possessed some eloquence, or have had truth on his side; for the farmers rose by hundreds to support him, and were very much exasperated at his imprisonment, which will probably last for life, though he has sent several very spirited remonstrances to the upper court, which makes the judges so averse to giving a sentence which may be cavilled at, that they take advantage of the glorious uncertainty of the law, to protract a decision which is only to be regulated by reasons of state. The greater number of the slaves I saw here were not confined for life. Their labour is not hard; and they work in the open air, which prevents their constitutions from suffering by imprisonment. Still, as they are allowed to associate together, and boast of their dexterity, not only to each other but to the soldiers around them, in the garrison; they commonly, it is natural to conclude, go out more confirmed and more expert knaves than when they entered. It is not necessary to trace the origin of the association of ideas which led me to think that the stars and gold keys, which surrounded me the evening before, disgraced the wearers as much as the fetters I was viewing--perhaps more. I even began to investigate the reason, which led me to suspect that the former produced the latter. The Norwegians are extravagantly fond of courtly distinction, and of titles, though they have no immunities annexed to them, and are easily purchased. The proprietors of mines have many privileges: they are almost exempt from taxes, and the peasantry born on their estates, as well as those on the counts', are not born soldiers or sailors. One distinction, or rather trophy of nobility, which I might have occurred to the Hottentots, amused me; it was a bunch of hog's bristles placed on the horses' heads, surmounting that part of the harness to which a round piece of brass often dangles, fatiguing the eye with its idle motion. From the fortress I returned to my lodging, and quickly was taken out of town to be shown a pretty villa, and English garden. To a Norwegian both might have been objects of curiosity; and of use, by exciting to the comparison which leads to improvement. But whilst I gazed, I was employed in restoring the place to nature, or taste, by giving it the character of the surrounding scene. Serpentine walks, and flowering-shrubs, looked trifling in a grand recess of the rooks, shaded by towering pines. Groves of smaller trees might have been sheltered under them, which would have melted into the landscape, displaying only the art which ought to point out the vicinity of a human abode, furnished with some elegance. But few people have sufficient taste to discern, that the art of embellishing consists in interesting, not in astonishing. Christiania is certainly very pleasantly situated, and the environs I passed through, during this ride, afforded many fine and cultivated prospects; but, excepting the first view approaching to it, rarely present any combination of objects so strikingly new, or picturesque, as to command remembrance. Adieu! LETTER XIV. Christiania is a clean, neat city; but it has none of the graces of architecture, which ought to keep pace with the refining manners of a people--or the outside of the house will disgrace the inside, giving the beholder an idea of overgrown wealth devoid of taste. Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying more than Gothic barbarism. Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the period when they were erected; but size, without grandeur or elegance, has an emphatical stamp of meanness, of poverty of conception, which only a commercial spirit could give. The same thought has struck me, when I have entered the meeting-house of my respected friend, Dr. Price. I am surprised that the dissenters, who have not laid aside all the pomps and vanities of life, should imagine a noble pillar, or arch, unhallowed. Whilst men have senses, whatever soothes them lends wings to devotion; else why do the beauties of nature, where all that charm them are spread around with a lavish hand, force even the sorrowing heart to acknowledge that existence is a blessing? and this acknowledgment is the most sublime homage we can pay to the Deity. The argument of convenience is absurd. Who would labour for wealth, if it were to procure nothing but conveniences. If we wish to render mankind moral from principle, we must, I am persuaded, give a greater scope to the enjoyments of the senses by blending taste with them. This has frequently occurred to me since I have been in the north, and observed that there sanguine characters always take refuge in drunkenness after the fire of youth is spent. But I have flown from Norway. To go back to the wooden houses; farms constructed with logs, and even little villages, here erected in the same simple manner, have appeared to me very picturesque. In the more remote parts I had been particularly pleased with many cottages situated close to a brook, or bordering on a lake, with the whole farm contiguous. As the family increases, a little more land is cultivated; thus the country is obviously enriched by population. Formerly the farmers might more justly have been termed woodcutters. But now they find it necessary to spare the woods a little, and this change will be universally beneficial; for whilst they lived entirely by selling the trees they felled, they did not pay sufficient attention to husbandry; consequently, advanced very slowly in agricultural knowledge. Necessity will in future more and more spur them on; for the ground, cleared of wood, must be cultivated, or the farm loses its value; there is no waiting for food till another generation of pines be grown to maturity. The people of property are very careful of their timber; and, rambling through a forest near Tonsberg, belonging to the Count, I have stopped to admire the appearance of some of the cottages inhabited by a woodman's family--a man employed to cut down the wood necessary for the household and the estate. A little lawn was cleared, on which several lofty trees were left which nature had grouped, whilst the encircling firs sported with wild grace. The dwelling was sheltered by the forest, noble pines spreading their branches over the roof; and before the door a cow, goat, nag, and children, seemed equally content with their lot; and if contentment be all we can attain, it is, perhaps, best secured by ignorance. As I have been most delighted with the country parts of Norway, I was sorry to leave Christiania without going farther to the north, though the advancing season admonished me to depart, as well as the calls of business and affection. June and July are the months to make a tour through Norway; for then the evenings and nights are the finest I have ever seen; but towards the middle or latter end of August the clouds begin to gather, and summer disappears almost before it has ripened the fruit of autumn--even, as it were, slips from your embraces, whilst the satisfied senses seem to rest in enjoyment. You will ask, perhaps, why I wished to go farther northward. Why? not only because the country, from all I can gather, is most romantic, abounding in forests and lakes, and the air pure, but I have heard much of the intelligence of the inhabitants, substantial farmers, who have none of that cunning to contaminate their simplicity, which displeased me so much in the conduct of the people on the sea coast. A man who has been detected in any dishonest act can no longer live among them. He is universally shunned, and shame becomes the severest punishment. Such a contempt have they, in fact, for every species of fraud, that they will not allow the people on the western coast to be their countrymen; so much do they despise the arts for which those traders who live on the rocks are notorious. The description I received of them carried me back to the fables of the golden age: independence and virtue; affluence without vice; cultivation of mind, without depravity of heart; with "ever smiling Liberty;" the nymph of the mountain. I want faith! My imagination hurries me forward to seek an asylum in such a retreat from all the disappointments I am threatened with; but reason drags me back, whispering that the world is still the world, and man the same compound of weakness and folly, who must occasionally excite love and disgust, admiration and contempt. But this description, though it seems to have been sketched by a fairy pencil, was given me by a man of sound understanding, whose fancy seldom appears to run away with him. A law in Norway, termed the _odels right_, has lately been modified, and probably will be abolished as an impediment to commerce. The heir of an estate had the power of re-purchasing it at the original purchase money, making allowance for such improvements as were absolutely necessary, during the space of twenty years. At present ten is the term allowed for afterthought; and when the regulation was made, all the men of abilities were invited to give their opinion whether it were better to abrogate or modify it. It is certainly a convenient and safe way of mortgaging land; yet the most rational men whom I conversed with on the subject seemed convinced that the right was more injurious than beneficial to society; still if it contribute to keep the farms in the farmers' own hands, I should be sorry to hear that it were abolished. The aristocracy in Norway, if we keep clear of Christiania, is far from being formidable; and it will require a long the to enable the merchants to attain a sufficient moneyed interest to induce them to reinforce the upper class at the expense of the yeomanry, with whom they are usually connected. England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequence; the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank. Farewell! I must prepare for my departure. LETTER XV. I left Christiania yesterday. The weather was not very fine, and having been a little delayed on the road, I found that it was too late to go round, a couple of miles, to see the cascade near Fredericstadt, which I had determined to visit. Besides, as Fredericstadt is a fortress, it was necessary to arrive there before they shut the gate. The road along the river is very romantic, though the views are not grand; and the riches of Norway, its timber, floats silently down the stream, often impeded in its course by islands and little cataracts, the offspring, as it were, of the great one I had frequently heard described. I found an excellent inn at Fredericstadt, and was gratified by the kind attention of the hostess, who, perceiving that my clothes were wet, took great pains procure me, as a stranger, every comfort for the night. It had rained very hard, and we passed the ferry in the dark without getting out of our carriage, which I think wrong, as the horses are sometimes unruly. Fatigue and melancholy, however, had made me regardless whether I went down or across the stream, and I did not know that I was wet before the hostess marked it. My imagination has never yet severed me from my griefs, and my mind has seldom been so free as to allow my body to be delicate. How I am altered by disappointment! When going to Lisbon, the elasticity of my mind was sufficient to ward off weariness, and my imagination still could dip her brush in the rainbow of fancy, and sketch futurity in glowing colours. Now--but let me talk of something else--will you go with me to the cascade? The cross road to it was rugged and dreary; and though a considerable extent of land was cultivated on all sides, yet the rocks were entirely bare, which surprised me, as they were more on a level with the surface than any I had yet seen. On inquiry, however, I learnt that some years since a forest had been burnt. This appearance of desolation was beyond measure gloomy, inspiring emotions that sterility had never produced. Fires of this kind are occasioned by the wind suddenly rising when the farmers are burning roots of trees, stalks of beans, &c, with which they manure the ground. The devastation must, indeed, be terrible, when this, literally speaking, wildfire, runs along the forest, flying from top to top, and crackling amongst the branches. The soil, as well as the trees, is swept away by the destructive torrent; and the country, despoiled of beauty and riches, is left to mourn for ages. Admiring, as I do, these noble forests, which seem to bid defiance to time, I looked with pain on the ridge of rocks that stretched far beyond my eye, formerly crowned with the most beautiful verdure. I have often mentioned the grandeur, but I feel myself unequal to the task of conveying an idea of the beauty and elegance of the scene when the spiry tops of the pines are loaded with ripening seed, and the sun gives a glow to their light-green tinge, which is changing into purple, one tree more or less advanced contrasted with another. The profusion with which Nature has decked them with pendant honours, prevents all surprise at seeing in every crevice some sapling struggling for existence. Vast masses of stone are thus encircled, and roots torn up by the storms become a shelter for a young generation. The pine and fir woods, left entirely to Nature, display an endless variety; and the paths in the woods are not entangled with fallen leaves, which are only interesting whilst they are fluttering between life and death. The grey cobweb-like appearance of the aged pines is a much finer image of decay; the fibres whitening as they lose their moisture, imprisoned life seems to be stealing away. I cannot tell why, but death, under every form, appears to me like something getting free to expand in I know not what element--nay, I feel that this conscious being must be as unfettered, have the wings of thought, before it can be happy. Reaching the cascade, or rather cataract, the roaring of which had a long time announced its vicinity, my soul was hurried by the falls into a new train of reflections. The impetuous dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye produced an equal activity in my mind. My thoughts darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery. Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited were pleasurable; and, viewing it, my soul rose with renewed dignity above its cares. Grasping at immortality--it seemed as impossible to stop the current of my thoughts, as of the always varying, still the same, torrent before me; I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come. We turned with regret from the cascade. On a little hill, which commands the best view of it, several obelisks are erected to commemorate the visits of different kings. The appearance of the river above and below the falls is very picturesque, the ruggedness of the scenery disappearing as the torrent subsides into a peaceful stream. But I did not like to see a number of saw-mills crowded together close to the cataracts; they destroyed the harmony of the prospect. The sight of a bridge erected across a deep valley, at a little distance, inspired very dissimilar sensations. It was most ingeniously supported by mast-like trunks, just stripped of their branches; and logs, placed one across the other, produced an appearance equally light and firm, seeming almost to be built in the air when we were below it, the height taking from the magnitude of the supporting trees give them a slender graceful look. There are two noble estates in this neighbourhood, the proprietors of which seem to have caught more than their portion of the enterprising spirit that is gone abroad. Many agricultural experiments have been made, and the country appears better enclosed and cultivated, yet the cottages had not the comfortable aspect of those I had observed near Moss and to the westward. Man is always debased by servitude of any description, and here the peasantry are not entirely free. Adieu! I almost forgot to tell you that I did not leave Norway without making some inquiries after the monsters said to have been seen in the northern sea; but though I conversed with several captains, I could not meet with one who had ever heard any traditional description of them, much less had any ocular demonstration of their existence. Till the fact is better ascertained, I should think the account of them ought to be torn out of our geographical grammars. LETTER XVI. I set out from Fredericstadt about three o'clock in the afternoon, and expected to reach Stromstad before the night closed in; but the wind dying away, the weather became so calm that we scarcely made any perceptible advances towards the opposite coast, though the men were fatigued with rowing. Getting amongst the rocks and islands as the moon rose, and the stars darted forward out of the clear expanse, I forgot that the night stole on whilst indulging affectionate reveries, the poetical fictions of sensibility; I was not, therefore, aware of the length of time we had been toiling to reach Stromstad. And when I began to look around, I did not perceive anything to indicate that we were in its neighbourhood. So far from it, that when I inquired of the pilot, who spoke a little English, I found that he was only accustomed to coast along the Norwegian shore; and had been only once across to Stromstad. But he had brought with him a fellow better acquainted, he assured me, with the rocks by which they were to steer our course, for we had not a compass on board; yet, as he was half a fool, I had little confidence in his skill. There was then great reason to fear that we had lost our way, and were straying amidst a labyrinth of rocks without a clue. This was something like an adventure, but not of the most agreeable cast; besides, I was impatient to arrive at Stromstad, to be able to send forward that night a boy to order horses on the road to be ready, for I was unwilling to remain there a day without having anything to detain me from my little girl, and from the letters which I was impatient to get from you. I began to expostulate, and even to scold the pilot, for not having informed me of his ignorance previous to my departure. This made him row with more force, and we turned round one rock only to see another, equally destitute of the tokens we were in search of to tell us where we were. Entering also into creek after creek which promised to be the entrance of the bay we were seeking, we advanced merely to find ourselves running aground. The solitariness of the scene, as we glided under the dark shadows of the rocks, pleased me for a while; but the fear of passing the whole night thus wandering to and fro, and losing the next day, roused me. I begged the pilot to return to one of the largest islands, at the side of which we had seen a boat moored. As we drew nearer, a light through a window on the summit became our beacon; but we were farther off than I supposed. With some difficulty the pilot got on shore, not distinguishing the landing-place; and I remained in the boat, knowing that all the relief we could expect was a man to direct us. After waiting some time, for there is an insensibility in the very movements of these people that would weary more than ordinary patience, he brought with him a man who, assisting them to row, we landed at Stromstad a little after one in the morning. It was too late to send off a boy, but I did not go to bed before I had made the arrangements necessary to enable me to set out as early as possible. The sun rose with splendour. My mind was too active to allow me to loiter long in bed, though the horses did not arrive till between seven and eight. However, as I wished to let the boy, who went forward to order the horses, get considerably the start of me, I bridled in my impatience. This precaution was unavailing, for after the three first posts I had to wait two hours, whilst the people at the post-house went, fair and softly, to the farm, to bid them bring up the horses which were carrying in the first-fruits of the harvest. I discovered here that these sluggish peasants had their share of cunning. Though they had made me pay for a horse, the boy had gone on foot, and only arrived half an hour before me. This disconcerted the whole arrangement of the day; and being detained again three hours, I reluctantly determined to sleep at Quistram, two posts short of Uddervalla, where I had hoped to have arrived that night. But when I reached Quistram I found I could not approach the door of the inn for men, horses, and carts, cows, and pigs huddled together. From the concourse of people I had met on the road I conjectured that there was a fair in the neighbourhood; this crowd convinced me that it was but too true. The boisterous merriment that almost every instant produced a quarrel, or made me dread one, with the clouds of tobacco, and fumes of brandy, gave an infernal appearance to the scene. There was everything to drive me back, nothing to excite sympathy in a rude tumult of the senses, which I foresaw would end in a gross debauch. What was to be done? No bed was to be had, or even a quiet corner to retire to for a moment; all was lost in noise, riot, and confusion. After some debating they promised me horses, which were to go on to Uddervalla, two stages. I requested something to eat first, not having dined; and the hostess, whom I have mentioned to you before as knowing how to take care of herself, brought me a plate of fish, for which she charged a rix-dollar and a half. This was making hay whilst the sun shone. I was glad to get out of the uproar, though not disposed to travel in an incommodious open carriage all night, had I thought that there was any chance of getting horses. Quitting Quistram I met a number of joyous groups, and though the evening was fresh many were stretched on the grass like weary cattle; and drunken men had fallen by the road-side. On a rock, under the shade of lofty trees, a large party of men and women had lighted a fire, cutting down fuel around to keep it alive all night. They were drinking, smoking, and laughing with all their might and main. I felt for the trees whose torn branches strewed the ground. Hapless nymphs! your haunts, I fear, were polluted by many an unhallowed flame, the casual burst of the moment! The horses went on very well; but when we drew near the post-house the postillion stopped short and neither threats nor promises could prevail on him to go forward. He even began to howl and weep when I insisted on his keeping his word. Nothing, indeed, can equal the stupid obstinacy of some of these half-alive beings, who seem to have been made by Prometheus when the fire he stole from Heaven was so exhausted that he could only spare a spark to give life, not animation, to the inert clay. It was some time before we could rouse anybody; and, as I expected, horses, we were told, could not be had in less than four or five hours. I again attempted to bribe the churlish brute who brought us there, but I discovered that, in spite of the courteous hostess's promises, he had received orders not to go any father. As there was no remedy I entered, and was almost driven back by the stench--a softer phrase would not have conveyed an idea of the hot vapour that issued from an apartment in which some eight or ten people were sleeping, not to reckon the cats and dogs stretched on the floor. Two or three of the men or women were on the benches, others on old chests; and one figure started half out of a trunk to look at me, whom might have taken for a ghost, had the chemise been white, to contrast with the sallow visage. But the costume of apparitions not being preserved I passed, nothing dreading, excepting the effluvia, warily amongst the pots, pans, milk-pails, and washing-tubs. After scaling a ruinous staircase I was shown a bed-chamber. The bed did not invite me to enter; opening, therefore, the window, and taking some clean towels out of my night-sack, I spread them over the coverlid, on which tired Nature found repose, in spite of the previous disgust. With the grey of the morn the birds awoke me; and descending to inquire for the horses, I hastened through the apartment I have already described, not wishing to associate the idea of a pigstye with that of a human dwelling. I do not now wonder that the girls lose their fine complexions at such an early age, or that love here is merely an appetite to fulfil the main design of Nature, never enlivened by either affection or sentiment. For a few posts we found the horses waiting; but afterwards I was retarded, as before, by the peasants, who, taking advantage of my ignorance of the language, made me pay for the fourth horse that ought to have gone forward to have the others in readiness, though it had never been sent. I was particularly impatient at the last post, as I longed to assure myself that my child was well. My impatience, however, did not prevent my enjoying the journey. I had six weeks before passed over the same ground; still it had sufficient novelty to attract my attention, and beguile, if not banish, the sorrow that had taken up its abode in my heart. How interesting are the varied beauties of Nature, and what peculiar charms characterise each season! The purple hue which the heath now assumed gave it a degree of richness that almost exceeded the lustre of the young green of spring, and harmonised exquisitely with the rays of the ripening corn. The weather was uninterruptedly fine, and the people busy in the fields cutting down the corn, or binding up the sheaves, continually varied the prospect. The rocks, it is true, were unusually rugged and dreary; yet as the road runs for a considerable way by the side of a fine river, with extended pastures on the other side, the image of sterility was not the predominant object, though the cottages looked still more miserable, after having seen the Norwegian farms. The trees likewise appeared of me growth of yesterday, compared with those Nestors of the forest I have frequently mentioned. The women and children were cutting off branches from the beech, birch, oak, &c, and leaving them to dry. This way of helping out their fodder injures the trees. But the winters are so long that the poor cannot afford to lay in a sufficient stock of hay. By such means they just keep life in the poor cows, for little milk can be expected when they are so miserably fed. It was Saturday, and the evening was uncommonly serene. In the villages I everywhere saw preparations for Sunday; and I passed by a little car loaded with rye, that presented, for the pencil and heart, the sweetest picture of a harvest home I had ever beheld. A little girl was mounted a- straddle on a shaggy horse, brandishing a stick over its head; the father was walking at the side of the car with a child in his arms, who must have come to meet him with tottering steps; the little creature was stretching out its arms to cling round his neck; and a boy, just above petticoats, was labouring hard with a fork behind to keep the sheaves from falling. My eyes followed them to the cottage, and an involuntary sigh whispered to my heart that I envied the mother, much as I dislike cooking, who was preparing their pottage. I was returning to my babe, who may never experience a father's care or tenderness. The bosom that nurtured her heaved with a pang at the thought which only an unhappy mother could feel. Adieu! LETTER XVII. I was unwilling to leave Gothenburg without visiting Trolhaettae. I wished not only to see the cascade, but to observe the progress of the stupendous attempt to form a canal through the rocks, to the extent of an English mile and a half. This work is carried on by a company, who employ daily nine hundred men; five years was the time mentioned in the proposals addressed to the public as necessary for the completion. A much more considerable sum than the plan requires has been subscribed, for which there is every reason to suppose the promoters will receive ample interest. The Danes survey the progress of this work with a jealous eye, as it is principally undertaken to get clear of the Sound duty. Arrived at Trolhaettae, I must own that the first view of the cascade disappointed me; and the sight of the works, as they advanced, though a grand proof of human industry, was not calculated to warm the fancy. I, however, wandered about; and at last coming to the conflux of the various cataracts rushing from different falls, struggling with the huge masses of rock, and rebounding from the profound cavities, I immediately retracted, acknowledging that it was indeed a grand object. A little island stood in the midst, covered with firs, which, by dividing the torrent, rendered it more picturesque; one half appearing to issue from a dark cavern, that fancy might easily imagine a vast fountain throwing up its waters from the very centre of the earth. I gazed I know not how long, stunned with the noise, and growing giddy with only looking at the never-ceasing tumultuous motion, I listened, scarcely conscious where I was, when I observed a boy, half obscured by the sparkling foam, fishing under the impending rock on the other side. How he had descended I could not perceive; nothing like human footsteps appeared, and the horrific crags seemed to bid defiance even to the goat's activity. It looked like an abode only fit for the eagle, though in its crevices some pines darted up their spiral heads; but they only grew near the cascade, everywhere else sterility itself reigned with dreary grandeur; for the huge grey massy rocks, which probably had been torn asunder by some dreadful convulsion of nature, had not even their first covering of a little cleaving moss. There were so many appearances to excite the idea of chaos, that, instead of admiring the canal and the works, great as they are termed, and little as they appear, I could not help regretting that such a noble scene had not been left in all its solitary sublimity. Amidst the awful roaring of the impetuous torrents, the noise of human instruments and the bustle of workmen, even the blowing up of the rocks when grand masses trembled in the darkened air, only resembled the insignificant sport of children. One fall of water, partly made by art, when they were attempting to construct sluices, had an uncommonly grand effect; the water precipitated itself with immense velocity down a perpendicular, at least fifty or sixty yards, into a gulf, so concealed by the foam as to give full play to the fancy. There was a continual uproar. I stood on a rock to observe it, a kind of bridge formed by nature, nearly on a level with the commencement of the fall. After musing by it a long time I turned towards the other side, and saw a gentle stream stray calmly out. I should have concluded that it had no communication with the torrent had I not seen a huge log that fell headlong down the cascade steal peacefully into the purling stream. I retired from these wild scenes with regret to a miserable inn, and next morning returned to Gothenburg, to prepare for my journey to Copenhagen. I was sorry to leave Gothenburg without travelling farther into Sweden, yet I imagine I should only have seen a romantic country thinly inhabited, and these inhabitants struggling with poverty. The Norwegian peasantry, mostly independent, have a rough kind of frankness in their manner; but the Swedish, rendered more abject by misery, have a degree of politeness in their address which, though it may sometimes border on insincerity, is oftener the effect of a broken spirit, rather softened than degraded by wretchedness. In Norway there are no notes in circulation of less value than a Swedish rix-dollar. A small silver coin, commonly not worth more than a penny, and never more than twopence, serves for change; but in Sweden they have notes as low as sixpence. I never saw any silver pieces there, and could not without difficulty, and giving a premium, obtain the value of a rix- dollar in a large copper coin to give away on the road to the poor who open the gates. As another proof of the poverty of Sweden, I ought to mention that foreign merchants who have acquired a fortune there are obliged to deposit the sixth part when they leave the kingdom. This law, you may suppose, is frequently evaded. In fact, the laws here, as well as in Norway, are so relaxed that they rather favour than restrain knavery. Whilst I was at Gothenburg, a man who had been confined for breaking open his master's desk and running away with five or six thousand rix-dollars, was only sentenced to forty days' confinement on bread and water; and this slight punishment his relations rendered nugatory by supplying him with more savoury food. The Swedes are in general attached to their families, yet a divorce may be obtained by either party on proving the infidelity of the other or acknowledging it themselves. The women do not often recur to this equal privilege, for they either retaliate on their husbands by following their own devices or sink into the merest domestic drudges, worn down by tyranny to servile submission. Do not term me severe if I add, that after youth is flown the husband becomes a sot, and the wife amuses herself by scolding her servants. In fact, what is to be expected in any country where taste and cultivation of mind do not supply the place of youthful beauty and animal spirits? Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy, and few people have a principle of action sufficiently stable to produce rectitude of feeling; for in spite of all the arguments I have heard to justify deviations from duty, I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak people are willing to allow. But adieu to moralising. I have been writing these last sheets at an inn in Elsineur, where I am waiting for horses; and as they are not yet ready, I will give you a short account of my journey from Gothenburg, for I set out the morning after I returned from Trolhaettae. The country during the first day's journey presented a most barren appearance, as rocky, yet not so picturesque as Norway, because on a diminutive scale. We stopped to sleep at a tolerable inn in Falckersberg, a decent little town. The next day beeches and oaks began to grace the prospects, the sea every now and then appearing to give them dignity. I could not avoid observing also, that even in this part of Sweden, one of the most sterile, as I was informed, there was more ground under cultivation than in Norway. Plains of varied crops stretched out to a considerable extent, and sloped down to the shore, no longer terrific. And, as far as I could judge, from glancing my eye over the country as we drove along, agriculture was in a more advanced state, though in the habitations a greater appearance of poverty still remained. The cottages, indeed, often looked most uncomfortable, but never so miserable as those I had remarked on the road to Stromstad, and the towns were equal, if not superior, to many of the little towns in Wales, or some I have passed through in my way from Calais to Paris. The inns as we advanced were not to be complained of, unless I had always thought of England. The people were civil, and much more moderate in their demands than the Norwegians, particularly to the westward, where they boldly charge for what you never had, and seem to consider you, as they do a wreck, if not as lawful prey, yet as a lucky chance, which they ought not to neglect to seize. The prospect of Elsineur, as we passed the Sound, was pleasant. I gave three rix-dollars for my boat, including something to drink. I mention the sum, because they impose on strangers. Adieu! till I arrive at Copenhagen. LETTER XVIII.--COPENHAGEN. The distance from Elsineur to Copenhagen is twenty-two miles; the road is very good, over a flat country diversified with wood, mostly beech, and decent mansions. There appeared to be a great quantity of corn land, and the soil looked much more fertile than it is in general so near the sea. The rising grounds, indeed, were very few, and around Copenhagen it is a perfect plain; of course has nothing to recommend it but cultivation, not decorations. If I say that the houses did not disgust me, I tell you all I remember of them, for I cannot recollect any pleasurable sensations they excited, or that any object, produced by nature or art, took me out of myself. The view of the city, as we drew near, was rather grand, but without any striking feature to interest the imagination, excepting the trees which shade the footpaths. Just before I reached Copenhagen I saw a number of tents on a wide plain, and supposed that the rage for encampments had reached this city; but I soon discovered that they were the asylum of many of the poor families who had been driven out of their habitations by the late fire. Entering soon after, I passed amongst the dust and rubbish it had left, affrighted by viewing the extent of the devastation, for at least a quarter of the city had been destroyed. There was little in the appearance of fallen bricks and stacks of chimneys to allure the imagination into soothing melancholy reveries; nothing to attract the eye of taste, but much to afflict the benevolent heart. The depredations of time have always something in them to employ the fancy, or lead to musing on subjects which, withdrawing the mind from objects of sense, seem to give it new dignity; but here I was treading on live ashes. The sufferers were still under the pressure of the misery occasioned by this dreadful conflagration. I could not take refuge in the thought: they suffered, but they are no more! a reflection I frequently summon to calm my mind when sympathy rises to anguish. I therefore desired the driver to hasten to the hotel recommended to me, that I might avert my eyes and snap the train of thinking which had sent me into all the corners of the city in search of houseless heads. This morning I have been walking round the town, till I am weary of observing the ravages. I had often heard the Danes, even those who had seen Paris and London, speak of Copenhagen with rapture. Certainly I have seen it in a very disadvantageous light, some of the best streets having been burnt, and the whole place thrown into confusion. Still the utmost that can, or could ever, I believe, have been said in its praise, might be comprised in a few words. The streets are open, and many of the houses large; but I saw nothing to rouse the idea of elegance or grandeur, if I except the circus where the king and prince royal reside. The palace, which was consumed about two years ago, must have been a handsome, spacious building; the stone-work is still standing, and a great number of the poor, during the late fire, took refuge in its ruins till they could find some other abode. Beds were thrown on the landing- places of the grand staircase, where whole families crept from the cold, and every little nook is boarded up as a retreat for some poor creatures deprived of their home. At present a roof may be sufficient to shelter them from the night air; but as the season advances, the extent of the calamity will be more severely felt, I fear, though the exertions on the part of Government are very considerable. Private charity has also, no doubt, done much to alleviate the misery which obtrudes itself at every turn; still, public spirit appears to me to be hardly alive here. Had it existed, the conflagration might have been smothered in the beginning, as it was at last, by tearing down several houses before the flames had reached them. To this the inhabitants would not consent; and the prince royal not having sufficient energy of character to know when he ought to be absolute, calmly let them pursue their own course, till the whole city seemed to be threatened with destruction. Adhering, with puerile scrupulosity, to the law which he has imposed on himself, of acting exactly right, he did wrong by idly lamenting whilst he marked the progress of a mischief that one decided step would have stopped. He was afterwards obliged to resort to violent measures; but then, who could blame him? And, to avoid censure, what sacrifices are not made by weak minds? A gentleman who was a witness of the scene assured me, likewise, that if the people of property had taken half as much pains to extinguish the fire as to preserve their valuables and furniture, it would soon have been got under. But they who were not immediately in danger did not exert themselves sufficiently, till fear, like an electrical shock, roused all the inhabitants to a sense of the general evil. Even the fire- engines were out of order, though the burning of the palace ought to have admonished them of the necessity of keeping them in constant repair. But this kind of indolence respecting what does not immediately concern them seems to characterise the Danes. A sluggish concentration in themselves makes them so careful to preserve their property, that they will not venture on any enterprise to increase it in which there is a shadow of hazard. Considering Copenhagen as the capital of Denmark and Norway, I was surprised not to see so much industry or taste as in Christiania. Indeed, from everything I have had an opportunity of observing, the Danes are the people who have made the fewest sacrifices to the graces. The men of business are domestic tyrants, coldly immersed in their own affairs, and so ignorant of the state of other countries, that they dogmatically assert that Denmark is the happiest country in the world; the Prince Royal the best of all possible princes; and Count Bernstorff the wisest of ministers. As for the women, they are simply notable housewives; without accomplishments or any of the charms that adorn more advanced social life. This total ignorance may enable them to save something in their kitchens, but it is far from rendering them better parents. On the contrary, the children are spoiled, as they usually are when left to the care of weak, indulgent mothers, who having no principle of action to regulate their feelings, become the slaves of infants, enfeebling both body and mind by false tenderness. I am, perhaps, a little prejudiced, as I write from the impression of the moment; for I have been tormented to-day by the presence of unruly children, and made angry by some invectives thrown out against the maternal character of the unfortunate Matilda. She was censured, with the most cruel insinuation, for her management of her son, though, from what I could gather, she gave proofs of good sense as well as tenderness in her attention to him. She used to bathe him herself every morning; insisted on his being loosely clad; and would not permit his attendants to injure his digestion by humouring his appetite. She was equally careful to prevent his acquiring haughty airs, and playing the tyrant in leading-strings. The Queen Dowager would not permit her to suckle him; but the next child being a daughter, and not the Heir-Apparent of the Crown, less opposition was made to her discharging the duty of a mother. Poor Matilda! thou hast haunted me ever since may arrival; and the view I have had of the manners of the country, exciting my sympathy, has increased my respect for thy memory. I am now fully convinced that she was the victim of the party she displaced, who would have overlooked or encouraged her attachment, had not her lover, aiming at being useful, attempted to overturn some established abuses before the people, ripe for the change, had sufficient spirit to support him when struggling in their behalf. Such indeed was the asperity sharpened against her that I have heard her, even after so many years have elapsed, charged with licentiousness, not only for endeavouring to render the public amusements more elegant, but for her very charities, because she erected, amongst other institutions, a hospital to receive foundlings. Disgusted with many customs which pass for virtues, though they are nothing more than observances of forms, often at the expense of truth, she probably ran into an error common to innovators, in wishing to do immediately what can only be done by time. Many very cogent reasons have been urged by her friends to prove that her affection for Struensee was never carried to the length alleged against her by those who feared her influence. Be that as it may she certainly was no a woman of gallantry, and if she had an attachment for him it did not disgrace her heart or understanding, the king being a notorious debauchee and an idiot into the bargain. As the king's conduct had always been directed by some favourite, they also endeavoured to govern him, from a principle of self-preservation as well as a laudable ambition; but, not aware of the prejudices they had to encounter, the system they adopted displayed more benevolence of heart than soundness of judgment. As to the charge, still believed, of their giving the King drugs to injure his faculties, it is too absurd to be refuted. Their oppressors had better have accused them of dabbling in the black art, for the potent spell still keeps his wits in bondage. I cannot describe to you the effect it had on me to see this puppet of a monarch moved by the strings which Count Bernstorff holds fast; sit, with vacant eye, erect, receiving the homage of courtiers who mock him with a show of respect. He is, in fact, merely a machine of state, to subscribe the name of a king to the acts of the Government, which, to avoid danger, have no value unless countersigned by the Prince Royal; for he is allowed to be absolutely aim idiot, excepting that now and then an observation or trick escapes him, which looks more like madness than imbecility. What a farce is life. This effigy of majesty is allowed to burn down to the socket, whilst the hapless Matilda was hurried into an untimely grave. "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." Adieu! LETTER XIX. Business having obliged me to go a few miles out of town this morning I was surprised at meeting a crowd of people of every description, and inquiring the cause of a servant, who spoke French, I was informed that a man had been executed two hours before, and the body afterwards burnt. I could not help looking with horror around--the fields lost their verdure--and I turned with disgust from the well-dressed women who were returning with their children from this sight. What a spectacle for humanity! The seeing such a flock of idle gazers plunged me into a train of reflections on the pernicious effects produced by false notions of justice. And I am persuaded that till capital punishments are entirely abolished executions ought to have every appearance of horror given to them, instead of being, as they are now, a scene of amusement for the gaping crowd, where sympathy is quickly effaced by curiosity. I have always been of opinion that the allowing actors to die in the presence of the audience has an immoral tendency, but trifling when compared with the ferocity acquired by viewing the reality as a show; for it seems to me that in all countries the common people go to executions to see how the poor wretch plays his part, rather than to commiserate his fate, much less to think of the breach of morality which has brought him to such a deplorable end. Consequently executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deferred anyone from the commission of a crime, because, in committing it, the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances. It is a game at hazard, at which all expect the turn of the die in their own favour, never reflecting on the chance of ruin till it comes. In fact, from what I saw in the fortresses of Norway, I am more and more convinced that the same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful to society, had that society been well organised. When a strong mind is not disciplined by cultivation it is a sense of injustice that renders it unjust. Executions, however, occur very rarely at Copenhagen; for timidity, rather than clemency, palsies all the operations of the present Government. The malefactor who died this morning would not, probably, have been punished with death at any other period; but an incendiary excites universal execration; and as the greater part of the inhabitants are still distressed by the late conflagration, an example was thought absolutely necessary; though, from what I can gather, the fire was accidental. Not, but that I have very seriously been informed, that combustible materials were placed at proper distance, by the emissaries of Mr. Pitt; and, to corroborate the fact, many people insist that the flames burst out at once in different parts of the city; not allowing the wind to have any hand in it. So much for the plot. But the fabricators of plots in all countries build their conjectures on the "baseless fabric of a vision;" and it seems even a sort of poetical justice, that whilst this Minister is crushing at home plots of his own conjuring up, on the Continent, and in the north, he should, with as little foundation, be accused of wishing to set the world on fire. I forgot to mention to you, that I was informed, by a man of veracity, that two persons came to the stake to drink a glass of the criminal's blood, as an infallible remedy for the apoplexy. And when I animadverted in the company, where it was mentioned, on such a horrible violation of nature, a Danish lady reproved me very severely, asking how I knew that it was not a cure for the disease? adding, that every attempt was justifiable in search of health. I did not, you may imagine, enter into an argument with a person the slave of such a gross prejudice. And I allude to it not only as a trait of the ignorance of the people, but to censure the Government for not preventing scenes that throw an odium on the human race. Empiricism is not peculiar to Denmark; and I know no way of rooting it out, though it be a remnant of exploded witchcraft, till the acquiring a general knowledge of the component parts of the human frame becomes a part of public education. Since the fire, the inhabitants have been very assiduously employed in searching for property secreted during the confusion; and it is astonishing how many people, formerly termed reputable, had availed themselves of the common calamity to purloin what the flames spared. Others, expert at making a distinction without a difference, concealed what they found, not troubling themselves to inquire for the owners, though they scrupled to search for plunder anywhere, but amongst the ruins. To be honester than the laws require is by most people thought a work of supererogation; and to slip through the grate of the law has ever exercised the abilities of adventurers, who wish to get rich the shortest way. Knavery without personal danger is an art brought to great perfection by the statesman and swindler; and meaner knaves are not tardy in following their footsteps. It moves my gall to discover some of the commercial frauds practised during the present war. In short, under whatever point of view I consider society, it appears to me that an adoration of property is the root of all evil. Here it does not render the people enterprising, as in America, but thrifty and cautious. I never, therefore, was in a capital where there was so little appearance of active industry; and as for gaiety, I looked in vain for the sprightly gait of the Norwegians, who in every respect appear to me to have got the start of them. This difference I attribute to their having more liberty--a liberty which they think their right by inheritance, whilst the Danes, when they boast of their negative happiness, always mention it as the boon of the Prince Royal, under the superintending wisdom of Count Bernstorff. Vassalage is nevertheless ceasing throughout the kingdom, and with it will pass away that sordid avarice which every modification of slavery is calculated to produce. If the chief use of property be power, in the shape of the respect it procures, is it not among the inconsistencies of human nature most incomprehensible, that men should find a pleasure in hoarding up property which they steal from their necessities, even when they are convinced that it would be dangerous to display such an enviable superiority? Is not this the situation of serfs in every country. Yet a rapacity to accumulate money seems to become stronger in proportion as it is allowed to be useless. Wealth does not appear to be sought for amongst the Danes, to obtain the excellent luxuries of life, for a want of taste is very conspicuous at Copenhagen; so much so that I am not surprised to hear that poor Matilda offended the rigid Lutherans by aiming to refine their pleasures. The elegance which she wished to introduce was termed lasciviousness; yet I do not find that the absence of gallantry renders the wives more chaste, or the husbands more constant. Love here seems to corrupt the morals without polishing the manners, by banishing confidence and truth, the charm as well as cement of domestic life. A gentleman, who has resided in this city some time, assures me that he could not find language to give me an idea of the gross debaucheries into which the lower order of people fall; and the promiscuous amours of the men of the middling class with their female servants debase both beyond measure, weakening every species of family affection. I have everywhere been struck by one characteristic difference in the conduct of the two sexes; women, in general, are seduced by their superiors, and men jilted by their inferiors: rank and manners awe the one, and cunning and wantonness subjugate the other; ambition creeping into the woman's passion, and tyranny giving force to the man's, for most men treat their mistresses as kings do their favourites: _ergo_ is not man then the tyrant of the creation? Still harping on the same subject, you will exclaim--How can I avoid it, when most of the struggles of an eventful life have been occasioned by the oppressed state of my sex? We reason deeply when we feel forcibly. But to return to the straight road of observation. The sensuality so prevalent appears to me to arise rather from indolence of mind and dull senses, than from an exuberance of life, which often fructifies the whole character when the vivacity of youthful spirits begins to subside into strength of mind. I have before mentioned that the men are domestic tyrants, considering them as fathers, brothers, or husbands; but there is a kind of interregnum between the reign of the father and husband which is the only period of freedom and pleasure that the women enjoy. Young people who are attached to each other, with the consent of their friends, exchange rings, and are permitted to enjoy a degree of liberty together which I have never noticed in any other country. The days of courtship are, therefore, prolonged till it be perfectly convenient to marry: the intimacy often becomes very tender; and if the lover obtain the privilege of a husband, it can only be termed half by stealth, because the family is wilfully blind. It happens very rarely that these honorary engagements are dissolved or disregarded, a stigma being attached to a breach of faith which is thought more disgraceful, if not so criminal, as the violation of the marriage-vow. Do not forget that, in my general observations, I do not pretend to sketch a national character, but merely to note the present state of morals and manners as I trace the progress of the world's improvement. Because, during my residence in different countries, my principal object has been to take such a dispassionate view of men as will lead me to form a just idea of the nature of man. And, to deal ingenuously with you, I believe I should have been less severe in the remarks I have made on the vanity and depravity of the French, had I travelled towards the north before I visited France. The interesting picture frequently drawn of the virtues of a rising people has, I fear, been fallacious, excepting the accounts of the enthusiasm which various public struggles have produced. We talk of the depravity of the French, and lay a stress on the old age of the nation; yet where has more virtuous enthusiasm been displayed than during the two last years by the common people of France, and in their armies? I am obliged sometimes to recollect the numberless instances which I have either witnessed, or heard well authenticated, to balance the account of horrors, alas! but too true. I am, therefore, inclined to believe that the gross vices which I have always seem allied with simplicity of manners, are the concomitants of ignorance. What, for example, has piety, under the heathen or Christian system, been, but a blind faith in things contrary to the principles of reason? And could poor reason make considerable advances when it was reckoned the highest degree of virtue to do violence to its dictates? Lutherans, preaching reformation, have built a reputation for sanctity on the same foundation as the Catholics; yet I do not perceive that a regular attendance on public worship, and their other observances, make them a whit more true in their affections, or honest in their private transactions. It seems, indeed, quite as easy to prevaricate with religious injunctions as human laws, when the exercise of their reason does not lead people to acquire principles for themselves to be the criterion of all those they receive from others. If travelling, as the completion of a liberal education, were to be adopted on rational grounds, the northern states ought to be visited before the more polished parts of Europe, to serve as the elements even of the knowledge of manners, only to be acquired by tracing the various shades in different countries. But, when visiting distant climes, a momentary social sympathy should not be allowed to influence the conclusions of the understanding, for hospitality too frequently leads travellers, especially those who travel in search of pleasure, to make a false estimate of the virtues of a nation, which, I am now convinced, bear an exact proportion to their scientific improvements. Adieu. LETTER XX. I have formerly censured the French for their extreme attachment to theatrical exhibitions, because I thought that they tended to render them vain and unnatural characters; but I must acknowledge, especially as women of the town never appear in the Parisian as at our theatres, that the little saving of the week is more usefully expended there every Sunday than in porter or brandy, to intoxicate or stupify the mind. The common people of France have a great superiority over that class in every other country on this very score. It is merely the sobriety of the Parisians which renders their fetes more interesting, their gaiety never becoming disgusting or dangerous, as is always the case when liquor circulates. Intoxication is the pleasure of savages, and of all those whose employments rather exhaust their animal spirits than exercise their faculties. Is not this, in fact, the vice, both in England and the northern states of Europe, which appears to be the greatest impediment to general improvement? Drinking is here the principal relaxation of the men, including smoking, but the women are very abstemious, though they have no public amusements as a substitute. I ought to except one theatre, which appears more than is necessary; for when I was there it was not half full, and neither the ladies nor actresses displayed much fancy in their dress. The play was founded on the story of the "Mock Doctor;" and, from the gestures of the servants, who were the best actors, I should imagine contained some humour. The farce, termed ballet, was a kind of pantomime, the childish incidents of which were sufficient to show the state of the dramatic art in Denmark, and the gross taste of the audience. A magician, in the disguise of a tinker, enters a cottage where the women are all busy ironing, and rubs a dirty frying-pan against the linen. The women raise a hue-and-cry, and dance after him, rousing their husbands, who join in the dance, but get the start of them in the pursuit. The tinker, with the frying-pan for a shield, renders them immovable, and blacks their cheeks. Each laughs at the other, unconscious of his own appearance; meanwhile the women enter to enjoy the sport, "the rare fun," with other incidents of the same species. The singing was much on a par with the dancing, the one as destitute of grace as the other of expression; but the orchestra was well filled, the instrumental being far superior to the vocal music. I have likewise visited the public library and museum, as well as the palace of Rosembourg. This palace, now deserted, displays a gloomy kind of grandeur throughout, for the silence of spacious apartments always makes itself to be felt; I at least feel it, and I listen for the sound of my footsteps as I have done at midnight to the ticking of the death- watch, encouraging a kind of fanciful superstition. Every object carried me back to past times, and impressed the manners of the age forcibly on my mind. In this point of view the preservation of old palaces and their tarnished furniture is useful, for they may be considered as historical documents. The vacuum left by departed greatness was everywhere observable, whilst the battles and processions portrayed on the walls told you who had here excited revelry after retiring from slaughter, or dismissed pageantry in search of pleasure. It seemed a vast tomb full of the shadowy phantoms of those who had played or toiled their hour out and sunk behind the tapestry which celebrated the conquests of love or war. Could they be no more--to whom my imagination thus gave life? Could the thoughts, of which there remained so many vestiges, have vanished quite away? And these beings, composed of such noble materials of thinking and feeling, have they only melted into the elements to keep in motion the grand mass of life? It cannot be!--as easily could I believe that the large silver lions at the top of the banqueting room thought and reasoned. But avaunt! ye waking dreams! yet I cannot describe the curiosities to you. There were cabinets full of baubles and gems, and swords which must have been wielded by giant's hand. The coronation ornaments wait quietly here till wanted, and the wardrobe exhibits the vestments which formerly graced these shows. It is a pity they do not lend them to the actors, instead of allowing them to perish ingloriously. I have not visited any other palace, excepting Hirsholm, the gardens of which are laid out with taste, and command the finest views the country affords. As they are in the modern and English style, I thought I was following the footsteps of Matilda, who wished to multiply around her the images of her beloved country. I was also gratified by the sight of a Norwegian landscape in miniature, which with great propriety makes a part of the Danish King's garden. The cottage is well imitated, and the whole has a pleasing effect, particularly so to me who love Norway--its peaceful farms and spacious wilds. The public library consists of a collection much larger than I expected to see; and it is well arranged. Of the value of the Icelandic manuscripts I could not form a judgment, though the alphabet of some of them amused me, by showing what immense labour men will submit to, in order to transmit their ideas to posterity. I have sometimes thought it a great misfortune for individuals to acquire a certain delicacy of sentiment, which often makes them weary of the common occurrences of life; yet it is this very delicacy of feeling and thinking which probably has produced most of the performances that have benefited mankind. It might with propriety, perhaps, be termed the malady of genius; the cause of that characteristic melancholy which "grows with its growth, and strengthens with its strength." There are some good pictures in the royal museum. Do not start, I am not going to trouble you with a dull catalogue, or stupid criticisms on masters to whom time has assigned their just niche in the temple of fame; had there been any by living artists of this country, I should have noticed them, as making a part of the sketches I am drawing of the present state of the place. The good pictures were mixed indiscriminately with the bad ones, in order to assort the frames. The same fault is conspicuous in the new splendid gallery forming at Paris; though it seems an obvious thought that a school for artists ought to be arranged in such a manner, as to show the progressive discoveries and improvements in the art. A collection of the dresses, arms, and implements of the Laplanders attracted my attention, displaying that first species of ingenuity which is rather a proof of patient perseverance, than comprehension of mind. The specimens of natural history, and curiosities of art, were likewise huddled together without that scientific order which alone renders them useful; but this may partly have been occasioned by the hasty manner in which they were removed from the palace when in flames. There are some respectable men of science here, but few literary characters, and fewer artists. They want encouragement, and will continue, I fear, from the present appearance of things, to languish unnoticed a long time; for neither the vanity of wealth, nor the enterprising spirit of commerce, has yet thrown a glance that way. Besides, the Prince Royal, determined to be economical, almost descends to parsimony; and perhaps depresses his subjects, by labouring not to oppress them; for his intentions always seem to be good--yet nothing can give a more forcible idea of the dulness which eats away all activity of mind, than the insipid routine of a court, without magnificence or elegance. The Prince, from what I can now collect, has very moderate abilities; yet is so well disposed, that Count Bernstorff finds him as tractable as he could wish; for I consider the Count as the real sovereign, scarcely behind the curtain; the Prince having none of that obstinate self-sufficiency of youth, so often the forerunner of decision of character. He and the Princess his wife, dine every day with the King, to save the expense of two tables. What a mummery it must be to treat as a king a being who has lost the majesty of man! But even Count Bernstorff's morality submits to this standing imposition; and he avails himself of it sometimes, to soften a refusal of his own, by saying it is the _will_ of the King, my master, when everybody knows that he has neither will nor memory. Much the same use is made of him as, I have observed, some termagant wives make of their husbands; they would dwell on the necessity of obeying their husbands, poor passive souls, who never were allowed _to will_, when they wanted to conceal their own tyranny. A story is told here of the King's formerly making a dog counsellor of state, because when the dog, accustomed to eat at the royal table, snatched a piece of meat off an old officer's plate, he reproved him jocosely, saying that he, _monsieur le chien_, had not the privilege of dining with his majesty, a privilege annexed to this distinction. The burning of the palace was, in fact, a fortunate circumstance, as it afforded a pretext for reducing the establishment of the household, which was far too great for the revenue of the Crown. The Prince Royal, at present, runs into the opposite extreme; and the formality, if not the parsimony, of the court, seems to extend to all the other branches of society, which I had an opportunity of observing; though hospitality still characterises their intercourse with strangers. But let me now stop; I may be a little partial, and view everything with the jaundiced eye of melancholy--for I am sad--and have cause. God bless you! LETTER XXI. I have seen Count Bernstorff; and his conversation confirms me in the opinion I had previously formed of him; I mean, since my arrival at Copenhagen. He is a worthy man, a little vain of his virtue _a la_ Necker; and more anxious not to do wrong, that is to avoid blame, than desirous of doing good; especially if any particular good demands a change. Prudence, in short, seems to be the basis of his character; and, from the tenor of the Government, I should think inclining to that cautious circumspection which treads on the heels of timidity. He has considerable information, and some finesse; or he could not be a Minister. Determined not to risk his popularity, for he is tenderly careful of his reputation, he will never gloriously fail like Struensee, or disturb, with the energy of genius, the stagnant state of the public mind. I suppose that Lavater, whom he invited to visit him two years ago--some say to fix the principles of the Christian religion firmly in the Prince Royal's mind, found lines in his face to prove him a statesman of the first order; because he has a knack at seeing a great character in the countenances of men in exalted stations, who have noticed him or his works. Besides, the Count's sentiments relative to the French Revolution, agreeing with Lavater's, must have ensured his applause. The Danes, in general, seem extremely averse to innovation, and if happiness only consist in opinion, they are the happiest people in the world; for I never saw any so well satisfied with their own situation. Yet the climate appears to be very disagreeable, the weather being dry and sultry, or moist and cold; the atmosphere never having that sharp, bracing purity, which in Norway prepares you to brave its rigours. I do not hear the inhabitants of this place talk with delight of the winter, which is the constant theme of the Norwegians; on the contrary, they seem to dread its comfortless inclemency. The ramparts are pleasant, and must have been much more so before the fire, the walkers not being annoyed by the clouds of dust which, at present, the slightest wind wafts from the ruins. The windmills, and the comfortable houses contiguous, belonging to the millers, as well as the appearance of the spacious barracks for the soldiers and sailors, tend to render this walk more agreeable. The view of the country has not much to recommend it to notice but its extent and cultivation: yet as the eye always delights to dwell on verdant plains, especially when we are resident in a great city, these shady walks should be reckoned amongst the advantages procured by the Government for the inhabitants. I like them better than the Royal Gardens, also open to the public, because the latter seem sunk in the heart of the city, to concentrate its fogs. The canals which intersect the streets are equally convenient and wholesome; but the view of the sea commanded by the town had little to interest me whilst the remembrance of the various bold and picturesque shores I had seen was fresh in my memory. Still the opulent inhabitants, who seldom go abroad, must find the spots were they fix their country seats much pleasanter on account of the vicinity of the ocean. One of the best streets in Copenhagen is almost filled with hospitals, erected by the Government, and, I am assured, as well regulated as institutions of this kind are in any country; but whether hospitals or workhouses are anywhere superintended with sufficient humanity I have frequently had reason to doubt. The autumn is so uncommonly fine that I am unwilling to put off my journey to Hamburg much longer, lest the weather should alter suddenly, and the chilly harbingers of winter catch me here, where I have nothing now to detain me but the hospitality of the families to whom I had recommendatory letters. I lodged at an hotel situated in a large open square, where the troops exercise and the market is kept. My apartments were very good; and on account of the fire I was told that I should be charged very high; yet, paying my bill just now, I find the demands much lower in proportion than in Norway, though my dinners were in every respect better. I have remained more at home since I arrived at Copenhagen than I ought to have done in a strange place, but the mind is not always equally active in search of information, and my oppressed heart too often sighs out-- "How dull, flat, and unprofitable Are to me all the usages of this world: That it should come to this!" Farewell! Fare thee well, I say; if thou canst, repeat the adieu in a different tone. LETTER XXII. I arrived at Corsoer the night after I quitted Copenhagen, purposing to take my passage across the Great Belt the next morning, though the weather was rather boisterous. It is about four-and-twenty miles but as both I and my little girl are never attacked by sea-sickness--though who can avoid _ennui_?--I enter a boat with the same indifference as I change horses; and as for danger, come when it may, I dread it not sufficiently to have any anticipating fears. The road from Copenhagen was very good, through an open, flat country that had little to recommend it to notice excepting the cultivation, which gratified my heart more than my eye. I took a barge with a German baron who was hastening back from a tour into Denmark, alarmed by the intelligence of the French having passed the Rhine. His conversation beguiled the time, and gave a sort of stimulus to my spirits, which had been growing more and more languid ever since my return to Gothenburg; you know why. I had often endeavoured to rouse myself to observation by reflecting that I was passing through scenes which I should probably never see again, and consequently ought not to omit observing. Still I fell into reveries, thinking, by way of excuse, that enlargement of mind and refined feelings are of little use but to barb the arrows of sorrow which waylay us everywhere, eluding the sagacity of wisdom and rendering principles unavailing, if considered as a breastwork to secure our own hearts. Though we had not a direct wind, we were not detained more than three hours and a half on the water, just long enough to give us an appetite for our dinner. We travelled the remainder of the day and the following night in company with the same party, the German gentleman whom I have mentioned, his friend, and servant. The meetings at the post-houses were pleasant to me, who usually heard nothing but strange tongues around me. Marguerite and the child often fell asleep, and when they were awake I might still reckon myself alone, as our train of thoughts had nothing in common. Marguerite, it is true, was much amused by the costume of the women, particularly by the pannier which adorned both their heads and tails, and with great glee recounted to me the stories she had treasured up for her family when once more within the barriers of dear Paris, not forgetting, with that arch, agreeable vanity peculiar to the French, which they exhibit whilst half ridiculing it, to remind me of the importance she should assume when she informed her friends of all her journeys by sea and land, showing the pieces of money she had collected, and stammering out a few foreign phrases, which she repeated in a true Parisian accent. Happy thoughtlessness! ay, and enviable harmless vanity, which thus produced a _gaite du coeur_ worth all my philosophy! The man I had hired at Copenhagen advised me to go round about twenty miles to avoid passing the Little Belt excepting by a ferry, as the wind was contrary. But the gentlemen overruled his arguments, which we were all very sorry for afterwards, when we found ourselves becalmed on the Little Belt ten hours, tacking about without ceasing, to gain the shore. An oversight likewise made the passage appear much more tedious, nay, almost insupportable. When I went on board at the Great Belt, I had provided refreshments in case of detention, which remaining untouched I thought not then any such precaution necessary for the second passage, misled by the epithet of "little," though I have since been informed that it is frequently the longest. This mistake occasioned much vexation; for the child, at last, began to cry so bitterly for bread, that fancy conjured up before me the wretched Ugolino, with his famished children; and I, literally speaking, enveloped myself in sympathetic horrors, augmented by every fear my babe shed, from which I could not escape till we landed, and a luncheon of bread and basin of milk routed the spectres of fancy. I then supped with my companions, with whom I was soon after to part for ever--always a most melancholy death-like idea--a sort of separation of soul; for all the regret which follows those from whom fate separates us seems to be something torn from ourselves. These were strangers I remember; yet when there is any originality in a countenance, it takes its place in our memory, and we are sorry to lose an acquaintance the moment he begins to interest us, through picked up on the highway. There was, in fact, a degree of intelligence, and still more sensibility, in the features and conversation of one of the gentlemen, that made me regret the loss of his society during the rest of the journey; for he was compelled to travel post, by his desire to reach his estate before the arrival of the French. This was a comfortable inn, as were several others I stopped at; but the heavy sandy roads were very fatiguing, after the fine ones we had lately skimmed over both in Sweden and Denmark. The country resembled the most open part of England--laid out for corn rather than grazing. It was pleasant, yet there was little in the prospects to awaken curiosity, by displaying the peculiar characteristics of a new country, which had so frequently stole me from myself in Norway. We often passed over large unenclosed tracts, not graced with trees, or at least very sparingly enlivened by them, and the half-formed roads seemed to demand the landmarks, set up in the waste, to prevent the traveller from straying far out of his way, and plodding through the wearisome sand. The heaths were dreary, and had none of the wild charms of those of Sweden and Norway to cheat time; neither the terrific rocks, nor smiling herbage grateful to the sight and scented from afar, made us forget their length. Still the country appeared much more populous, and the towns, if not the farmhouses, were superior to those of Norway. I even thought that the inhabitants of the former had more intelligence--at least, I am sure they had more vivacity in their countenances than I had seen during my northern tour: their senses seemed awake to business and pleasure. I was therefore gratified by hearing once more the busy hum of industrious men in the day, and the exhilarating sounds of joy in the evening; for, as the weather was still fine, the women and children were amusing themselves at their doors, or walking under the trees, which in many places were planted in the streets; and as most of the towns of any note were situated on little bays or branches of the Baltic, their appearance as we approached was often very picturesque, and, when we entered, displayed the comfort and cleanliness of easy, if not the elegance of opulent, circumstances. But the cheerfulness of the people in the streets was particularly grateful to me, after having been depressed by the deathlike silence of those of Denmark, where every house made me think of a tomb. The dress of the peasantry is suited to the climate; in short, none of that poverty and dirt appeared, at the sight of which the heart sickens. As I only stopped to change horses, take refreshment, and sleep, I had not an opportunity of knowing more of the country than conclusions which the information gathered by my eyes enabled me to draw, and that was sufficient to convince me that I should much rather have lived in some of the towns I now pass through than in any I had seen in Sweden or Denmark. The people struck me as having arrived at that period when the faculties will unfold themselves; in short; they look alive to improvement, neither congealed by indolence, nor bent down by wretchedness to servility. From the previous impression--I scarcely can trace whence I received it--I was agreeably surprised to perceive such an appearance of comfort in this part of Germany. I had formed a conception of the tyranny of the petty potentates that had thrown a gloomy veil over the face of the whole country in my imagination, that cleared away like the darkness of night before the sun as I saw the reality. I should probably have discovered much lurking misery, the consequence of ignorant oppression, no doubt, had I had time to inquire into particulars; but it did not stalk abroad and infect the surface over which my eye glanced. Yes, I am persuaded that a considerable degree of general knowledge pervades this country, for it is only from the exercise of the mind that the body acquires the activity from which I drew these inferences. Indeed, the King of Denmark's German dominions--Holstein--appeared to me far superior to any other part of his kingdom which had fallen under my view; and the robust rustics to have their muscles braced, instead of the, as it were, lounge of the Danish peasantry. Arriving at Sleswick, the residence of Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel, the sight of the soldiers recalled all the unpleasing ideas of German despotism, which imperceptibly vanished as I advanced into the country. I viewed, with a mixture of pity and horror, these beings training to be sold to slaughter, or be slaughtered, and fell into reflections on an old opinion of mine, that it is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of the Deity throughout the whole of Nature. Blossoms come forth only to be blighted; fish lay their spawn where it will be devoured; and what a large portion of the human race are born merely to be swept prematurely away! Does not this waste of budding life emphatically assert that it is not men, but Man, whose preservation is so necessary to the completion of the grand plan of the universe? Children peep into existence, suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into the flame; war, and "the thousand ills which flesh is heir to," mow them down in shoals; whilst the more cruel prejudices of society palsy existence, introducing not less sure though slower decay. The castle was heavy and gloomy, yet the grounds about it were laid out with some taste; a walk, winding under the shade of lofty trees, led to a regularly built and animated town. I crossed the drawbridge, and entered to see this shell of a court in miniature, mounting ponderous stairs--it would be a solecism to say a flight--up which a regiment of men might have marched, shouldering their firelocks to exercise in vast galleries, where all the generations of the Princes of Hesse-Cassel might have been mustered rank and file, though not the phantoms of all the wretched they had bartered to support their state, unless these airy substances could shrink and expand, like Milton's devils, to suit the occasion. The sight of the presence-chamber, and of the canopy to shade the fauteuil which aped a throne, made me smile. All the world is a stage, thought I; and few are there in it who do not play the part they have learnt by rote; and those who do not, seem marks set up to be pelted at by fortune, or rather as sign-posts which point out the road to others, whilst forced to stand still themselves amidst the mud and dust. Waiting for our horses, we were amused by observing the dress of the women, which was very grotesque and unwieldy. The false notion of beauty which prevails here as well as in Denmark, I should think very inconvenient in summer, as it consists in giving a rotundity to a certain part of the body, not the most slim, when Nature has done her part. This Dutch prejudice often leads them to toil under the weight of some ten or a dozen petticoats, which, with an enormous basket, literally speaking, as a bonnet, or a straw hat of dimensions equally gigantic, almost completely conceal the human form as well as face divine, often worth showing; still they looked clean, and tripped along, as it were, before the wind, with a weight of tackle that I could scarcely have lifted. Many of the country girls I met appeared to me pretty--that is, to have fine complexions, sparkling eyes, and a kind of arch, hoyden playfulness which distinguishes the village coquette. The swains, in their Sunday trim, attended some of these fair ones in a more slouching pace, though their dress was not so cumbersome. The women seem to take the lead in polishing the manners everywhere, this being the only way to better their condition. From what I have seen throughout my journey, I do not think the situation of the poor in England is much, if at all, superior to that of the same class in different parts of the world; and in Ireland I am sure it is much inferior. I allude to the former state of England; for at present the accumulation of national wealth only increases the cares of the poor, and hardens the hearts of the rich, in spite of the highly extolled rage for almsgiving. You know that I have always been an enemy to what is termed charity, because timid bigots, endeavouring thus to cover their sins, do violence to justice, till, acting the demigod, they forget that they are men. And there are others who do not even think of laying up a treasure in heaven, whose benevolence is merely tyranny in disguise; they assist the most worthless, because the most servile, and term them helpless only in proportion to their fawning. After leaving Sleswick, we passed through several pretty towns; Itzchol particularly pleased me; and the country, still wearing the same aspect, was improved by the appearance of more trees and enclosures. But what gratified me most was the population. I was weary of travelling four or five hours, never meeting a carriage, and scarcely a peasant; and then to stop at such wretched huts as I had seen in Sweden was surely sufficient to chill any heart awake to sympathy, and throw a gloom over my favourite subject of contemplation, the future improvement of the world. The farmhouses, likewise, with the huge stables, into which we drove whilst the horses were putting to or baiting, were very clean and commodious. The rooms, with a door into this hall-like stable and storehouse in one, were decent; and there was a compactness in the appearance of the whole family lying thus snugly together under the same roof that carried my fancy back to the primitive times, which probably never existed with such a golden lustre as the animated imagination lends when only able to seize the prominent features. At one of them, a pretty young woman, with languishing eyes of celestial blue, conducted us into a very neat parlour, and observing how loosely and lightly my little girl was clad, began to pity her in the sweetest accents, regardless of the rosy down of health on her cheeks. This same damsel was dressed--it was Sunday--with taste and even coquetry, in a cotton jacket, ornamented with knots of blue ribbon, fancifully disposed to give life to her fine complexion. I loitered a little to admire her, for every gesture was graceful; and, amidst the other villagers, she looked like a garden lily suddenly rearing its head amongst grain and corn-flowers. As the house was small, I gave her a piece of money rather larger than it was my custom to give to the female waiters--for I could not prevail on her to sit down--which she received with a smile; yet took care to give it, in my presence, to a girl who had brought the child a slice of bread; by which I perceived that she was the mistress or daughter of the house, and without doubt the belle of the village. There was, in short, an appearance of cheerful industry, and of that degree of comfort which shut out misery, in all the little hamlets as I approached Hamburg, which agreeably surprised me. The short jackets which the women wear here, as well as in France, are not only more becoming to the person, but much better calculated for women who have rustic or household employments than the long gowns worn in England, dangling in the dirt. All the inns on the road were better than I expected, though the softness of the beds still harassed me, and prevented my finding the rest I was frequently in want of, to enable me to bear the fatigue of the next day. The charges were moderate, and the people very civil, with a certain honest hilarity and independent spirit in their manner, which almost made me forget that they were innkeepers, a set of men--waiters, hostesses, chambermaids, &c., down to the ostler, whose cunning servility in England I think particularly disgusting. The prospect of Hamburg at a distance, as well as the fine road shaded with trees, led me to expect to see a much pleasanter city than I found. I was aware of the difficulty of obtaining lodgings, even at the inns, on account of the concourse of strangers at present resorting to such a centrical situation, and determined to go to Altona the next day to seek for an abode, wanting now only rest. But even for a single night we were sent from house to house, and found at last a vacant room to sleep in, which I should have turned from with disgust had there been a choice. I scarcely know anything that produces more disagreeable sensations, I mean to speak of the passing cares, the recollection of which afterwards enlivens our enjoyments, than those excited by little disasters of this kind. After a long journey, with our eyes directed to some particular spot, to arrive and find nothing as it should be is vexatious, and sinks the agitated spirits. But I, who received the cruellest of disappointments last spring in returning to my home, term such as these emphatically passing cares. Know you of what materials some hearts are made? I play the child, and weep at the recollection--for the grief is still fresh that stunned as well as wounded me--yet never did drops of anguish like these bedew the cheeks of infantine innocence--and why should they mine, that never was stained by a blush of guilt? Innocent and credulous as a child, why have I not the same happy thoughtlessness? Adieu! LETTER XXIII. I might have spared myself the disagreeable feelings I experienced the first night of my arrival at Hamburg, leaving the open air to be shut up in noise and dirt, had I gone immediately to Altona, where a lodging had been prepared for me by a gentleman from whom I received many civilities during my journey. I wished to have travelled in company with him from Copenhagen, because I found him intelligent and friendly, but business obliged him to hurry forward, and I wrote to him on the subject of accommodations as soon as I was informed of the difficulties I might have to encounter to house myself and brat. It is but a short and pleasant walk from Hamburg to Altona, under the shade of several rows of trees, and this walk is the more agreeable after quitting the rough pavement of either place. Hamburg is an ill, close-built town, swarming with inhabitants, and, from what I could learn, like all the other free towns, governed in a manner which bears hard on the poor, whilst narrowing the minds of the rich; the character of the man is lost in the Hamburger. Always afraid of the encroachments of their Danish neighbours, that is, anxiously apprehensive of their sharing the golden harvest of commerce with them, or taking a little of the trade off their hands--though they have more than they know what to do with--they are ever on the watch, till their very eyes lose all expression, excepting the prying glance of suspicion. The gates of Hamburg are shut at seven in the winter and nine in the summer, lest some strangers, who come to traffic in Hamburg, should prefer living, and consequently--so exactly do they calculate--spend their money out of the walls of the Hamburger's world. Immense fortunes have been acquired by the per-cents. arising from commissions nominally only two and a half, but mounted to eight or ten at least by the secret manoeuvres of trade, not to include the advantage of purchasing goods wholesale in common with contractors, and that of having so much money left in their hands, not to play with, I can assure you. Mushroom fortunes have started up during the war; the men, indeed, seem of the species of the fungus, and the insolent vulgarity which a sudden influx of wealth usually produces in common minds is here very conspicuous, which contrasts with the distresses of many of the emigrants, "fallen, fallen from their high estate," such are the ups and downs of fortune's wheel. Many emigrants have met, with fortitude, such a total change of circumstances as scarcely can be paralleled, retiring from a palace to an obscure lodging with dignity; but the greater number glide about, the ghosts of greatness, with the _Croix de St. Louis_ ostentatiously displayed, determined to hope, "though heaven and earth their wishes crossed." Still good breeding points out the gentleman, and sentiments of honour and delicacy appear the offspring of greatness of soul when compared with the grovelling views of the sordid accumulators of cent. per cent. Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed: so much so, inferring from what I have lately seen, that I mean not to be severe when I add--previously asking why priests are in general cunning and statesmen false?--that men entirely devoted to commerce never acquire or lose all taste and greatness of mind. An ostentatious display of wealth without elegance, and a greedy enjoyment of pleasure without sentiment, embrutes them till they term all virtue of an heroic cast, romantic attempts at something above our nature, and anxiety about the welfare of others, a search after misery in which we have no concern. But you will say that I am growing bitter, perhaps personal. Ah! shall I whisper to you, that you yourself are strangely altered since you have entered deeply into commerce--more than you are aware of; never allowing yourself to reflect, and keeping your mind, or rather passions, in a continual state of agitation? Nature has given you talents which lie dormant, or are wasted in ignoble pursuits. You will rouse yourself and shake off the vile dust that obscures you, or my understanding, as well as my heart, deceives me egregiously--only tell me when. But to go farther afield. Madame la Fayette left Altona the day I arrived, to endeavour, at Vienna, to obtain the enlargement of her husband, or permission to share his prison. She lived in a lodging up two pairs of stairs, without a servant, her two daughters cheerfully assisting; choosing, as well as herself, to descend to anything before unnecessary obligations. During her prosperity, and consequent idleness, she did not, I am told, enjoy a good state of health, having a train of nervous complaints, which, though they have not a name, unless the significant word _ennui_ be borrowed, had an existence in the higher French circles; but adversity and virtuous exertions put these ills to flight, and dispossessed her of a devil who deserves the appellation of legion. Madame Genus also resided at Altona some time, under an assumed name, with many other sufferers of less note though higher rank. It is, in fact, scarcely possible to stir out without meeting interesting countenances, every lineament of which tells you that they have seen better days. At Hamburg, I was informed, a duke had entered into partnership with his cook, who becoming a _traiteur_, they were both comfortably supported by the profit arising from his industry. Many noble instances of the attachment of servants to their unfortunate masters have come to my knowledge, both here and in France, and touched my heart, the greatest delight of which is to discover human virtue. At Altona, a president of one of the _ci-devant_ parliaments keeps an ordinary, in the French style; and his wife with cheerful dignity submits to her fate, though she is arrived at an age when people seldom relinquish their prejudices. A girl who waits there brought a dozen _double louis d'or_ concealed in her clothes, at the risk of her life, from France, which she preserves lest sickness or any other distress should overtake her mistress, "who," she observed, "was not accustomed to hardships." This house was particularly recommended to me by an acquaintance of yours, the author of the "American Farmer's Letters." I generally dine in company with him: and the gentleman whom I have already mentioned is often diverted by our declamations against commerce, when we compare notes respecting the characteristics of the Hamburgers. "Why, madam," said he to me one day, "you will not meet with a man who has any calf to his leg; body and soul, muscles and heart, are equally shrivelled up by a thirst of gain. There is nothing generous even in their youthful passions; profit is their only stimulus, and calculations the sole employment of their faculties, unless we except some gross animal gratifications which, snatched at spare moments, tend still more to debase the character, because, though touched by his tricking wand, they have all the arts, without the wit, of the wing-footed god." Perhaps you may also think us too severe; but I must add that the more I saw of the manners of Hamburg, the more was I confirmed in my opinion relative to the baleful effect of extensive speculations on the moral character. Men are strange machines; and their whole system of morality is in general held together by one grand principle which loses its force the moment they allow themselves to break with impunity over the bounds which secured their self-respect. A man ceases to love humanity, and then individuals, as he advances in the chase after wealth; as one clashes with his interest, the other with his pleasures: to business, as it is termed, everything must give way; nay, is sacrificed, and all the endearing charities of citizen, husband, father, brother, become empty names. But--but what? Why, to snap the chain of thought, I must say farewell. Cassandra was not the only prophetess whose warning voice has been disregarded. How much easier it is to meet with love in the world than affection! Yours sincerely. LETTER XXIV. My lodgings at Altona are tolerably comfortable, though not in any proportion to the price I pay; but, owing to the present circumstances, all the necessaries of life are here extravagantly dear. Considering it as a temporary residence, the chief inconvenience of which I am inclined to complain is the rough streets that must be passed before Marguerite and the child can reach a level road. The views of the Elbe in the vicinity of the town are pleasant, particularly as the prospects here afford so little variety. I attempted to descend, and walk close to the water's edge; but there was no path; and the smell of glue, hanging to dry, an extensive manufactory of which is carried on close to the beach, I found extremely disagreeable. But to commerce everything must give way; profit and profit are the only speculations--"double--double, toil and trouble." I have seldom entered a shady walk without being soon obliged to turn aside to make room for the rope-makers; and the only tree I have seen, that appeared to be planted by the hand of taste, is in the churchyard, to shade the tomb of the poet Klopstock's wife. Most of the merchants have country houses to retire to during the summer; and many of them are situated on the banks of the Elbe, where they have the pleasure of seeing the packet-boats arrive--the periods of most consequence to divide their week. The moving picture, consisting of large vessels and small craft, which are continually changing their position with the tide, renders this noble river, the vital stream of Hamburg, very interesting; and the windings have sometimes a very fine effect, two or three turns being visible at once, intersecting the flat meadows; a sudden bend often increasing the magnitude of the river; and the silvery expanse, scarcely gliding, though bearing on its bosom so much treasure, looks for a moment like a tranquil lake. Nothing can be stronger than the contrast which this flat country and strand afford, compared with the mountains and rocky coast I have lately dwelt so much among. In fancy I return to a favourite spot, where I seemed to have retired from man and wretchedness; but the din of trade drags me back to all the care I left behind, when lost in sublime emotions. Rocks aspiring towards the heavens, and, as it were, shutting out sorrow, surrounded me, whilst peace appeared to steal along the lake to calm my bosom, modulating the wind that agitated the neighbouring poplars. Now I hear only an account of the tricks of trade, or listen to the distressful tale of some victim of ambition. The hospitality of Hamburg is confined to Sunday invitations to the country houses I have mentioned, when dish after dish smokes upon the board, and the conversation ever flowing in the muddy channel of business, it is not easy to obtain any appropriate information. Had I intended to remain here some time, or had my mind been more alive to general inquiries, I should have endeavoured to have been introduced to some characters not so entirely immersed in commercial affairs, though in this whirlpool of gain it is not very easy to find any but the wretched or supercilious emigrants, who are not engaged in pursuits which, in my eyes, appear as dishonourable as gambling. The interests of nations are bartered by speculating merchants. My God! with what _sang froid_ artful trains of corruption bring lucrative commissions into particular hands, disregarding the relative situation of different countries, and can much common honesty be expected in the discharge of trusts obtained by fraud? But this _entre nous_. During my present journey, and whilst residing in France, I have had an opportunity of peeping behind the scenes of what are vulgarly termed great affairs, only to discover the mean machinery which has directed many transactions of moment. The sword has been merciful, compared with the depredations made on human life by contractors and by the swarm of locusts who have battened on the pestilence they spread abroad. These men, like the owners of negro ships, never smell on their money the blood by which it has been gained, but sleep quietly in their beds, terming such occupations lawful callings; yet the lightning marks not their roofs to thunder conviction on them "and to justify the ways of God to man." Why should I weep for myself? "Take, O world! thy much indebted tear!" Adieu! LETTER XXV. There is a pretty little French theatre at Altona, and the actors are much superior to those I saw at Copenhagen. The theatres at Hamburg are not open yet, but will very shortly, when the shutting of the gates at seven o'clock forces the citizens to quit their country houses. But, respecting Hamburg, I shall not be able to obtain much more information, as I have determined to sail with the first fair wind for England. The presence of the French army would have rendered my intended tour through Germany, in my way to Switzerland, almost impracticable, had not the advancing season obliged me to alter my plan. Besides, though Switzerland is the country which for several years I have been particularly desirous to visit, I do not feel inclined to ramble any farther this year; nay, I am weary of changing the scene, and quitting people and places the moment they begin to interest me. This also is vanity! DOVER. I left this letter unfinished, as I was hurried on board, and now I have only to tell you that, at the sight of Dover cliffs, I wondered how anybody could term them grand; they appear so insignificant to me, after those I had seen in Sweden and Norway. Adieu! My spirit of observation seems to be fled, and I have been wandering round this dirty place, literally speaking, to kill time, though the thoughts I would fain fly from lie too close to my heart to be easily shook off, or even beguiled, by any employment, except that of preparing for my journey to London. God bless you! MARY ----. APPENDIX. Private business and cares have frequently so absorbed me as to prevent my obtaining all the information during this journey which the novelty of the scenes would have afforded, had my attention been continually awake to inquiry. This insensibility to present objects I have often had occasion to lament since I have been preparing these letters for the press; but, as a person of any thought naturally considers the history of a strange country to contrast the former with the present state of its manners, a conviction of the increasing knowledge and happiness of the kingdoms I passed through was perpetually the result of my comparative reflections. The poverty of the poor in Sweden renders the civilisation very partial, and slavery has retarded the improvement of every class in Denmark, yet both are advancing; and the gigantic evils of despotism and anarchy have in a great measure vanished before the meliorating manners of Europe. Innumerable evils still remain, it is true, to afflict the humane investigator, and hurry the benevolent reformer into a labyrinth of error, who aims at destroying prejudices quickly which only time can root out, as the public opinion becomes subject to reason. An ardent affection for the human race makes enthusiastic characters eager to produce alteration in laws and governments prematurely. To render them useful and permanent, they must be the growth of each particular soil, and the gradual fruit of the ripening understanding of the nation, matured by time, not forced by an unnatural fermentation. And, to convince me that such a change is gaining ground with accelerating pace, the view I have had of society during my northern journey would have been sufficient had I not previously considered the grand causes which combine to carry mankind forward and diminish the sum of human misery. 
43152	----	The Career of Claudia By Frances Peard Published by Richard Bentley and Son, London. This edition dated 1897. The Career of Claudia, by Frances Peard. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ THE CAREER OF CLAUDIA, BY FRANCES PEARD. CHAPTER ONE. She was, it must be owned, rather surprised that no one had come to meet her at the station. Certainly she had assured them in her last letter that it was unnecessary, and that she could manage very well by herself; but, in spite of assurances, she had hardly expected to be taken at her word, and when the train stopped, looked questioningly up and down the platform for the faces of her cousins. No one, however, whom she had ever seen before, presented herself, and Claudia found that she was thrust upon her own resources. They were fully equal to the strain, the arrival offered no difficulty and required no assistance; it was merely that she had pictured its causing some thrill of excitement in her new home, since it is not every day that a young cousin, so much in advance of the world, as she could not help believing herself to be, comes to live with three elderly, and, therefore, from sheer necessity of circumstance, commonplace sisters. Put into words the thought smacks of conceit, but nothing would have shocked Claudia more than to have seen it in words: it was not even sufficiently formed to deserve to be called a thought, and was, rather, a vague impression, a shadowy groundwork for the surprise. Still, it existed sufficiently to impel her to look out of the window of the fly, after having assured herself that her bicycle was safe, and to wonder whether, even yet, some unpunctual feminine figure might not be seen hurrying along the street, all excuses and welcome. She looked also critically at the rows of houses on either side, such as are common enough in every country town, and at the grey towers of the cathedral rising beyond the roofs. Roads branched away, she passed a church, defiant in the ugliness of some sixty years ago, the rows of houses changed to lower walls with tall trees feathering over them, and at last the fly turned at an iron gate, and drove towards a white house, with a door set squarely on the western side, and a blaze of colour about it which Claudia dismissed with contempt as "bedding-out stuff." It was likely, she felt, that the door would be hospitably open, and an expectant flutter of draperies prove that she was eagerly watched for; when nothing of the sort was visible, Claudia philosophically withdrew her head, convinced that urgent engagements stood in the way of her cousins' welcome, and, although still surprised, she was not in the least affronted. The few moments which remained she spent in a flying wonder as to what her future life would be like, if wonder is not too strong a word, for to herself she had pictured it as clearly as she ever pictured anything, being a young woman who held that definite outlines savoured of Philistinism, and that in order to receive impressions truthfully, the mind should be in the condition of blotting-paper. She wished to begin her new life in this recipient state, and she piqued herself upon her powers of adaptation, which, to say the truth, had not as yet been much exercised. Possibly it was to prove their strength that she had chosen to run counter to the prognostications of the world--her world--and when her mother died, and a dozen relations opened their doors to receive her, at the end of a year which she spent at a college, preferred to write to the three sisters who had made no sign, and ask them to admit her into their home--for the present. She was careful to make that reservation. Claudia took this step from choice, not from disgust, feeling nothing but kindliness in the opening of the dozen doors, to her and her fortune. She flattered herself that she was a cynic, but her nature was really frankly unsuspicious, and, finding no difficulty in believing that her society might add a pleasantness to life, it did not surprise her that her relations should wish to enjoy it. But something--it is difficult to say what--drew her imagination to fasten upon the prosaic aspect of the three cousins, living in a remote county, near a quiet cathedral city. She had reasons for the step which she considered sufficient, but perhaps it was the very prose of the situation which chiefly attracted her, for she loved poetry so passionately that she would be certain to do prosaic things. The fly stopped, and the bell was rung, without a head appearing at either window, and though the maid who opened the door looked agreeably expectant, it appeared that neither of the Miss Cartwrights was at home. Miss Philippa, however, had left a message that if she were not in she hoped to be back very shortly, and Miss Hamilton must have tea without waiting. Claudia accordingly went through the hall into the drawing-room, smiling, but a little disappointed that the house in which she found herself was not more like what she had expected, a home in which she might have worked a beneficent revolution. There was a good-sized, if rather dark, hall, hung with fine prints, and the drawing-room was almost too bright and cheerful. Flowers, books, and china, she might have expected, but there was grouping on which her eye fell with some surprise. She reflected with a sigh for which she might have found it difficult to account, that fashion now penetrated everywhere. Then she sat down in an extremely easy-chair, took off her hat, took up a book, and waited. Seen thus, Claudia's beauty was more striking than when the hat hid a small dark head, and to some extent shadowed eyes which were at once sweet and eager. Her nose was rather piquante than classical, and her cheek had a charming dimpled roundness. Her figure was both small and slight, and her clothes fitted admirably. Altogether, when Philippa Cartwright came hurriedly in, her eyes fell upon a pretty picture of a young girl lying in a deep chair, her dark hair flung into strong relief by the red silk cushion in which it was buried, and on which slanted the rays of an afternoon sun. "My dear Claudia," she exclaimed, "how inhospitable you must think us! And why didn't you have your tea? I told Jane to insist upon it. Anne and Emily are in the town with Harry Hilton, and I intended to have been at home long ago. I might have known better. But you shall have tea at once. Here it comes, and plenty of scones, I hope. Sugar?" "Please. But let me pour it out," said the girl, pleasantly. "I dare say you are much more tired than I am." Miss Philippa laughed. "I? Oh, I am never tired," she said. "I haven't the time. Let me see, Claudia, I quite forget if you know our country?" "Not at all. And I thought it lovely as I came along, though one couldn't say much for the farming." Her voice changed, and she said more shyly, "It is very good of you to have me in this way." "Well, it is simply an experiment on either side," returned her cousin, giving her a comprehensive look. "We don't in the least know whether you will be able to do with us, and of course it will take you a little time to discover, so that no one is to feel at all bound in the matter. That is my one stipulation. And we have agreed that from the very beginning--unless you dislike it--you are not to be treated as a visitor, but as if you lived here, and had all the independence of home. I began, you see, by coming back too late to receive you," added Miss Philippa, with twinkling eyes. "Otherwise it doesn't seem to me as if you could judge fairly whether you like the position or not. What do you think about it?" Claudia was looking straight at her and evidently considering. "Yes," she said, with a little nod, "I agree with you. There is a good deal I have to explain, but that can wait. Yes. That will leave us freedom on both sides, for I warn you, you are very likely to disapprove of me. I hardly liked to use the word experiment, but I should have had to get at it somehow. You see, my sympathies are very much with what I suppose you call the new woman." "When you're my age, my dear," said Philippa, bluntly, "you will have discovered that there's nothing new under the sun. However, you can be as new as you like here, and you will charm Emily--so long as you don't consider it a part of your mission to call for brandies and sodas. She is a blue-ribboner, and so is Jane, the parlourmaid." Claudia detected ridicule, and flushed. "I think teetotalers are extraordinarily ill-balanced, though I respect them," she returned stiffly. "Yes, please respect them," said Philippa, with a laugh. "Now, will you come to your room?" Claudia got up and went to the window. She turned with easier excitement. "A river! Is that really a river? Oh, delightful!" "Yes, we can provide you with that, and it is a very tidy river for fish, I believe--at least Harry Hilton says so," said her cousin, following her. "He will be able to tell you more about it." "Oh, I don't care about fishing," the girl said hastily. "I was thinking of its capabilities, and how splendidly one can utilise them." "Its capabilities?" repeated Philippa, puzzled. "Well, whatever they are, your window commands them, for we have given you the south room on account of the view, otherwise there is a larger one to the west. But come and see for yourself, for if you prefer the other, it is quite easy to change. Jane will help you to unpack." "No, thank you,"--Claudia spoke firmly--"I like to do everything for myself." "Well, you know best, only don't crowd your experiments. Here is your room," went on Miss Cartwright, opening a door at the end of a passage; "your room, that is, unless you like the other better. I hope they have brought up all your things. Dinner is at seven, because Emily has a meeting to-night. You will have to accommodate yourself to meetings. By the way, Harry Hilton is staying with us, and he says he once met you at the Grants'." "I dare say," returned Claudia, indifferently. "I don't remember." "Well, he is a cousin on the other side of the house, one of the Hiltons of Thornbury, you know--or perhaps you don't know--and is here a good deal--on and off. Now I will leave you in peace." She was gone, and Claudia, barely glancing at her pretty room, sat down on the window-seat, and stared enthusiastically at the strip of silver light which marked the course of the river. It gave a charm and variety which would otherwise have been wanting, for though the country round was fertile and smiling, it had neither breadth nor distinctive features. At one point, indeed, there was a tantalising peep of vanishing blue hills, but the foliage of the elms was heavy, and the trees themselves stiff with the cutting which deprived them of their lower branches. After a long silent gaze, Claudia broke out into an exclamation-- "Oh, how one could improve it!" she cried, leaning forward, and eagerly tracing lines and curves in the air with a sweeping finger. "What opportunities they have thrown away! To raise the ground there by a long beautiful slope of grass, to plant out those hideous chimneys, and cut, cut, cut! They will--they must--let me do it, and then one could get the most splendid effects of light out of the water. Emily and her meetings and her blue ribbons may be an infliction, but I could bear almost anything for the sake of having a river to study." She jumped up eagerly, unlocked a bag, and took out a book full of blank pages, in which she was presently alternately writing and drawing, not pausing so much as to look at the garden below when she heard voices beneath her window. Meanwhile Philippa Cartwright ran downstairs to a small morning-room where she wrote notes with vigour until her sister, Anne, the eldest of the three, a woman rather heavily built, and with a kindly sympathetic face, looked in upon her. "Is Claudia come?" "Yes--and--unfortunately--I--was--not--home--in time," said Philippa, speaking more slowly as she wrote more hastily. "There!" She folded and flattened the note, addressed it, and began another. "Where's Harry?" "Matthews has got hold of him about the vines. Can't I help you?" "Bless you, my dear Anne, haven't you yet learned to keep in your own sphere? Notes belong to mine. By the way, talking of spheres, I think you may as well enlarge yours and take in Claudia." "Why? Isn't she nice?" "Very! Charming! And I don't deserve that speech when I am presenting her to you just because I think she will be such an effective charge. See if she doesn't distinguish our house!" Anne shook her head gravely. "You don't like her." "I do, I do, I do! Don't you know me well enough to see that I am at this moment dying of jealousy? It is such a splendid thing to be young, as one only finds out too late. Her dark eyes are so pretty, and her figure is so pretty, and her frock fits so well! One oughtn't to have such contrasts forced upon one if one is expected to keep amiable. Why, up to to-day, I had fancied that because Emily had so few grey hairs, she was quite a young thing! It is all very well to pretend to be philosophical. I say straight out that I hate growing old." "Is that all you have against Claudia?" asked Anne, smiling. "Oh, it's enough! It means that you will lose your heart to her, and so will Harry." "Harry?" "Yes. I am not sure he did not do so a little the first time that he met her. Well--he must take his chance. You and his mother are always fussing about his marrying, and here's his opportunity. I don't know that even you can wish for anything better. An extremely good-looking girl, and a pretty fortune." Philippa began to laugh. "What is it?" "Only something she told me. Never mind. She will tell you all without loss of time." "Well, as to Harry, I give my consent--if you do; for, in spite of jeers, you will be quite as particular as I. I wonder whether there is really any chance of his taking a fancy?" questioned the elder sister, with a touch of wistfulness behind her words to which Philippa at once became responsive. "He is a very good fellow, bless him!" she declared heartily, "a very good fellow indeed, even if he has a few more faults than you and Minnie will admit, and I must see a great deal more of Miss Claudia before I give my consent--which has so much to do with the matter!" she added, falling back on her usual manner. "Harry thinks a great deal of your judgment." "That's an appreciation apt to be tucked on one side in the great affairs of life. Still, I'm very much obliged to Harry for the compliment, and it will certainly make me careful to avoid rash counsels." Claudia came down to dinner in excellent time. Her black dress was well cut, and set off the small dark head, and the eager eyes; if she were at all shy, she did not show it, and she kissed her cousins and shook hands with Mr Hilton without a trace of the new manners for which Philippa was amusedly watching. "I remember you now," she said to Harry; "at least I think it was you who told me about a fox-terrier?" "I have her here," said Harry, flushing with pleasure. He was a young man with, as she decided at once, an excellent face, although both in face and figure there was a wasteful inclination to breadth. The eyes were grey and honest, however, and would have redeemed worse faults. He laughed readily and happily, and Claudia reflected further that if he were never likely to set the Thames on fire, he was certain to be a popular man in his own neighbourhood. He did not interest her, but inwardly she gave him a half-contemptuous credit for a dozen safe and good qualities, which she reflected were probably allowed to run idly to seed. Claudia was in the first ferment of life, in which she required that every one's work should be spread before them, parcelled out as distinctly as any allotment ground. Yet her cousin Emily, the youngest of the three sisters, whose views ran in the same direction if in a different groove, roused in her an immediate antagonism. Emily was the useful woman of the town; secretary to two or three societies, warden, committee woman, what not! To her turned the thoughts of all the clergy when a new work had to be started, or an old one revived. She knew exactly how many pounds of butter and pots of jam were necessary for a parish tea; she slaved at school-treats, and did the work of two curates in her district. Claudia, whose schemes swept to the regeneration of mankind, and a general equalisation of things in the world, was partly contemptuous of, and partly irritated by Emily's absorption in what she regarded as miserable make-shifts, unworthy of the consideration of any one who had passed a course in political economy, and whose papers had been favourably annotated by the examiner. She spent her evening in garnering observations, telling herself that she was naturally curious about her new surroundings; what, however, continued to surprise her most, was that she herself appeared to excite less interest. Her cousins, Anne especially, accepted her with kindly goodwill, but when Philippa had said that from the first she was to be treated as one of the family, it was evident that she was not using a figure of speech. No one was in the least overwhelmed by her arrival, nor did it cause any divergence in the currents of interest which flowed strongly. Claudia listened, wondering whether under any circumstances of life could she be carried along by such currents; she hoped that would never be expected of her, but meanwhile could not doubt that expectations of some sort existed, and began to have an unacknowledged desire to say something which should astonish her hostesses. She had no such wish as to Harry Hilton, perhaps instinctively aware that she could impress him by simpler means, and she talked chiefly to him, suiting her remarks to his capacity, while listening as attentively as she could to the remarks which dropped from the others. "Well, Emily," Philippa was saying, "I warn you that if you're going to trust to Mr Helmore's eloquence, your meeting will be a dismal failure. He's a stick. You had better get some one sent down from head-quarters, even if it does increase the expenses." "I really must try to avoid that," said her sister, nervously; "and I assure you I haven't come to the end of my resources yet." "You're a wonderful woman." "Here's Harry," put in Anne. "Harry has done nothing for a long while." "They know my jests by heart. No, no: here is Miss Hamilton." "To make a speech?" asked Claudia, smiling. She was careful to express no surprise, for, so far as she knew, there was no possible reason why she should not make a speech. But Harry was evidently of another opinion. "Good gracious, no!" he protested. "Only to help in the entertainment." "Don't ask her," interrupted Philippa. "She's a Radical." "Of course," said Claudia, calmly; "and a Socialist. I don't see how one can be anything else--that is to say, any one who takes the least interest in his fellow-creatures." She was a little disappointed at the effect upon her listeners. Harry, it is true, became rather redder, and Emily uttered a protesting "Oh!" but Philippa and Anne showed no signs of having received a shock. They were smiling. It was Harry who hastened to say-- "Oh, you'll be converted. You've come to the right house." "I don't think I ever converted any one in my life except old Pentecost, who you all vow is half-witted," said Philippa, shaking her head. "In these days no one is converted. He or she grows up with an idea, and takes in the newspaper which supports it. But I am rather glad about Claudia, and I think she shall make a speech after all." "Just as you like," said Claudia, easily. "Do you speak yourself?" "Oh no; I have never been young enough." "Debating clubs do that for one, at any rate," went on the girl, unheeding. "They take away all fear of one's own voice. But I haven't gone in for them much, because, of course, that sort of thing is not required in my profession." This time she was more successful in moving her audience. Emily said eagerly--"Your profession? Oh, Claudia, this is very interesting! What is it?" "I am a landscape gardener. Didn't you know that I had been studying at the college?" "Yes, but we thought--well, we did not realise that you were actually working there." She assured them that this had been the case, keenly enjoying their surprise. Philippa, however, asked at once-- "Well, but the result, the outcome? Shall you practice?" "Certainly." "And take pay?" "If I did not, I should have no right to enter the market at all. I go into the ranks, to be treated exactly like the others." "Only what is play to you is living to them," remarked Philippa. "You can never place yourself on the same footing. However, as Emily says, this is interesting. Had you a particular fondness for gardening?" Claudia could not say that she had. "But one had to choose something. I could not have been idle. I did think of shop-dressing." "Shop-dressing?" "Yes; a girl I know has taken to that. She starts very early every morning in order to arrange the things in certain shop-windows. It is pleasant work enough, and she gets three hundred a year. But it is rather a bore having to go out at such an unearthly hour, and on the whole I thought landscape gardening preferable." "But what is it? How do you do it?" asked Anne, leaning forward and smiling. She was the softest of the sisters, large and fair. "I lay out gardens for people," said Claudia. She scented ridicule, and was determined to speak simply. "Gardens? Gardens on a great scale, I suppose?" put in Philippa. "A landscape means something vast." "Oh, not necessarily. Of course one might have to rearrange a park; but your garden, for instance, is a delightful size. And now you know why your river enchanted me. I always wanted to try my hand upon a river." "Did I not tell you she was a Radical?" asked Philippa, addressing the others. "Imagine our good, respectable, steady-going river turned out of his centuries-old groove! No, Claudia, we are not going to deliver him up to your tender mercies, and could not if we would. A river--a real river--is a more important personage than you conceive; not to be trifled with even so much as the government of a country." "That is what I say," returned Claudia, smiling. "England is so full of absurd restrictions that, do what you will, you run your head against them." "You will have to try the colonies," said Anne. "Or a thousand miles or so of prairies." Claudia coloured. She had an uncomfortable conviction that her cousin Philippa was mocking. "It is opportunity I want--not size," she said with dignity, and as she spoke she looked at Harry, who had been listening to the conversation in amazement--mute, except for an occasional muttered "By Jove!" But to her look he answered at once. "Of course," he said boldly. "There must be dozens of people who want their places set to rights. Would Thornbury do to begin with? If you would come to Thornbury, you could have a free hand, and lots of flowers to do anything with." Claudia turned her face towards him with a sigh. "I am not a florist, and I know nothing whatever about flowers, because they don't in the least enter into my scheme. But as to grouping and re-arranging trees, if I can be of any use I shall be happy to do all I can." "The Thornbury trees!" murmured Philippa. "And transplanting is so easily managed now," the girl went on, "that really I can't conceive why people are not more enterprising in trying new effects. If you think of it, how should the planting at haphazard which went on everywhere, produce the best combinations? Whereas, bring art to bear, and the whole falls into a beautiful unity." He agreed enthusiastically. "Exactly. I never thought of it before, but now you speak of it, it does seem extraordinary that we should leave so much to chance, I believe ours may be very much improved." Philippa, with an amused twinkle in her eyes, inquired whether Claudia had found an opportunity of trying her powers. "At the college, of course. But I am hoping for larger work," said Claudia, eagerly. "It is like everything else, one has to begin in a small way, and get known by degrees." And, as she spoke, vague shadows floated before Harry Hilton's eyes. He saw a girl's light figure flitting along the grassy rides at Thornbury, transformations, golden sunshine everywhere. The evening was touched to him with a strange strong delight which marked it out from all the other evenings he had ever known. Claudia herself awoke to enthusiasm and plans. From her window she saw food for both in a stretch of fair wooded country lying in a morning haze, with the silver arrow of the river flashing through the green. Her thoughts immediately busied themselves with planting, thinning, and grouping, and Harry Hilton's cheerful whistle to his dog under her window only suggested a hope that he would carry out his proposal of getting her a free hand at Thornbury. She resolved to talk to her cousins that day, and explain fully how she was desirous of making their house her head-quarters, holding herself absolutely at liberty to go and come as her calling required. She expected argument and disapproval, since it was unlikely that three sisters living on the outskirts of a provincial town, should have sufficiently caught the spirit of the age, and the new development of woman, not to detect strong objections in any career which offered independence to a girl of her age. But against argument she felt herself duly fortified, even thirsted for it as a young soldier might thirst for the first brush of battle. She was the least little bit in the world therefore disappointed that her announcement of the evening before had not shocked them into stiffer protest, but she told herself that they had not been alone, and that the struggle would be in private. "You see, Philippa," she found herself saying with eagerness, when after several vain attempts to capture her cousin, she had run her to the earth in the small morning-room which was called the den, "I should be simply wretched if I had nothing to do, and in these days everything is over-stocked. I dare say you feel that it would be more useful to undertake something in the philanthropic line, but I haven't the least inclination for that sort of thing--I should hate to go about collecting rents from poor creatures who can't pay, and oughtn't to be made to; or dragging girls into clubs. I couldn't, indeed!" "My dear," said Philippa, "please don't set me up as an imaginary nine-pin in order to knock me down flat. I assure you you will discover I haven't nearly so many opinions as you have, for as I grow older, I find a privilege of age consists in putting away pre-conceived notions, and possessing one's self of a receptive mind." Claudia glanced quickly at her. "Most people," murmured the girl, "rather object." "We shan't try you in that way. So long as we ourselves are not improved upon by force, nobody here will interfere with your improving other people. And really I thought Harry's a handsome offer last night." "Oh," said Claudia, carelessly, "it didn't come from conviction. He thought I was a girl and not bad-looking, and that I didn't mean actual business." Miss Cartwright smiled behind a newspaper; but Claudia's tone was quite frank and free from self-consciousness. "He's not very brilliant, is he?" she went on. "You like him, I can see, and I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but of course his must be a terribly deteriorating sort of life. Imagine a man caring to knock about with no particular object! I don't myself understand how any man could stand such an existence, or woman either. Of course that is now getting to be recognised, only we unfortunate women, having been in the groove for centuries, find it hard to emancipate ourselves; while men have had all the advantages of action and movement, so that, luckily for them, a dilly-dallying life strikes lookers-on as a failure, and public opinion forces them into some sort of exertion. That's the secret of their success, and it is horribly unfair upon women, but it's going to be different now!" she exclaimed with enthusiasm. Philippa groaned. "If that means we are to have more than ever to do, what will become of us?" "Oh, this will be work worth the doing!" cried Claudia. "I see. Well, my dear, do it. As I said before, no one here will say you nay, provided their own liberties are guaranteed to them. Do you begin at once, or is this to be an off day?" "I am going on the bicycle to try a new brake, and then I may draw out some plans in the garden." "You will find a comfortable seat under the great beech." And there, some hour later, Philippa, having finished her accounts and written letters, beheld Claudia established, surrounded by fluttering papers and pencil sketches, which Harry Hilton carefully guarded from the wind. Miss Cartwright, to tell the truth, was not best pleased at the sight. She bit her lip, and rubbed her left ear. "Now, is she good enough for him, or is she going to make ducks and drakes of the honestest heart in the county? Which, I wonder? And what an old fool I am to suppose that anything I can do will affect either of them! No, my dear Harry, you must manage for yourself, and if Miss Claudia despises you, you will have to put up with it. She is a great deal too narrow-minded at present to fall in love, and, bless her, with all that fine sweeping scorn of grooves, how little she understands what a broad outlook means! Well, well, it's natural enough, and I am sure the rising generation is delightfully in earnest in views and reforms; only, when it sets to work to reform one's self, human nature is disposed to be nasty. You will be a wiser woman, Philippa Cartwright, if you step on one side, and accept the position. Is that you, Anne? You have come just in time to assist in an act of abdication." "Who is ironic to abdicate?" "I. From to-day I take a back seat." "Claudia again, I suppose?" said her sister, with a laugh. "My dear Philippa, you will not stay there long. Now, _I_ am deeply interested in Claudia." "Oh, so am I, and so is Harry. Look under the big beech and see for yourself." Anne looked, and was silent. "Well?" "Well,"--slowly--"I suppose the old story is too strong for the new woman." "Of course it is--mercifully," retorted Philippa with impatience, "and, if it comes to that, I say nothing; but my impression is that the new woman by no means shuts out love of admiration, though she calls it by another name, and I don't want Harry to be its victim." "Oh, she will get over that sort of thing. She is very young." "There is just one tiresome point in your character, Anne. You can never hear a person found fault with but you must stand up for him or her. Consequence. Sinners like myself can't rest till we have proved our case. Claudia has come here with the intention of setting us all to rights, and educating us up to her standard; and if you don't call that conceited--I do." "I dare say we were all conceited at her age." "No, I wasn't; nor were you. We should have been put into our proper places quickly enough. However, you have sent my good resolutions to flight with your exasperating charity, for when you arrived I was thinking most piously about our cousin, and had made my mind up to see Harry make a fool of himself, yet say nothing. Now I am all prickles again." Anne laughed and said no more. CHAPTER TWO. Claudia, sitting under the great beech with Harry Hilton, was becoming interested in her listener, because he showed what she called a recipient mind, meaning that he attended to all she said, and was ready and eager to admit the good effects which were to result to woman from her taking up landscape gardening. How was she to know that his thoughts meanwhile fastened themselves upon the dimple in her cheek, the waving tendrils of her hair, the whiteness of her throat? He would have agreed to almost anything uttered in her young clear voice, for the mere pleasure of hearing her speak, and his own happy and genial nature accepted the charm frankly. She was good, he was sure, and her schemes, whatever they were--and it cannot be said that he quite understood their aim--must be good too. She wanted her fellow-creatures to be raised, and she had her own ideas as to how the rise was to be effected--he thought her adorable for the wish, and more adorable for telling him about it. "People will believe me mad," she said. "I am quite used to that. No one is prepared for a woman who has money enough to let her sit still and fold her hands, choosing to plunge into a regular money-making occupation. Half my friends suppose it to be just a fad, and I can't tell you how many letters I get asking me to stay, and assuring me that nobody will object to my amusing myself in their gardens. Amusing myself! Why, I make it a strictly professional matter. If I do anything--even here, for my cousins--it must be for payment. I couldn't oppose the laws of political economy." "No, no," said Harry, doing his best to struggle after her, "of course not. I think it a capital idea. When a woman has no actual home of her own, naturally she wants occupation." But this was not right, and Claudia frowned. "She always wants, or ought to have, her occupations. Do you imagine that if I married, for instance, I should be content to merge all my interests in ordering dinner, or talking about servants?" He looked at her puzzled. "I should continue to work," said Claudia, calmly. "But," burst from honest Harry, "you don't mean--? No man who could work would stand his wife having to grind!" "Why not?" she demanded. "If the woman has learnt her business, why on earth shouldn't she grind, as you call it, as well as her husband?" "Why? Well, simply, he would be a cad if he allowed it, unless it was absolutely necessary." Claudia sat up straight, and turned her bright face upon him. "Ah, these are the behind-hand ideas which we have to live down. Don't you understand that we hold there ought not to be the social differences which have hitherto existed? We maintain that idleness is a sin, and that we ought all to be working men and women. Of course while different degrees of culture and education handicap some of us, the work cannot be alike, but by decrees that will right itself--By degrees? I believe it is coming by leaps and bounds. I suppose, now," she added, "you think there is a difference between me and--say a charwoman?" "By Jove, yes!" blurted out Harry, with a laugh. "Well, I expect if we could project ourselves fifty years or so, you wouldn't find much. That difference is something we have to be ashamed of, and to rectify. We must give the people our opportunities and the chance of reaching a higher level. I dare say that horrifies you?" "Oh, not at all," he said, struggling between admiration and a sense of the ludicrous. "I am only a little puzzled." "Yes?" she said graciously; for to puzzle her hearers and then enlighten them, was a fascinating process. "Yes?" "I was wondering who would do the washing?" "They, of course. They, just the same, only with higher standards of perfection and better methods. It will have reached the dignity of a fine art by that time." All his admiration could not keep back an explosive laugh. "You mustn't be angry," he said, "I think it's splendid--as you put it." "Oh, I'm not angry," returned Claudia, frankly. "One can't expect to make people look at things from one's own point of view in a minute. You've all of you a thousand prejudices to get rid of to begin with. The great point is if you wish to learn." "If that's all, I want to--awfully." "Really?" "I should think so!" "Well, then, I don't mind telling you." She was looking gravely at him, her chin resting on her hand. "That's tremendously good of you." "Yours is a good face," she went on calmly, with her eyes still upon him; "not clever, you know, but honest and straight. I should think you always tried to do what was right, and that you might be trusted. I'm ready to be friends, if you are." And as she spoke, she stretched out a small white hand with a frank gesture. Harry Hilton flushed like a girl to the roots of his hair, as he took it. "You're--you're too good, Miss Hamilton," he stammered. "Why?" said Claudia, opening her eyes and smiling. "Don't you think it's nice to have friends? I had so many at the college, and I really miss them here. I can't stand writing and that sort of thing--I haven't the time. So that if you like it." "Like it!" "People are so stupid," she went on; "they always talk as if men and women couldn't be friends without fancying themselves in love, or some such nonsense. Several of us agreed that we would make our own lines, and not give way to foolish conventionalities. Why should we not show the world that it is mistaken?" "Yes," he said more doubtfully. But Claudia was filled with the enthusiasm of her own convictions, and the hesitation of his acquiescence was lost upon her. "Of course we can, and we will. You and I, for instance, will be good comrades, ready to help each other on either side. If I think you wrong in any matter I shall tell you, and you must do the same by me. Then there are certain things I will never have." "What are they?" said Harry, hastily. "If you pay compliments or flatter, the compact's off. I can't stand either one or the other." "Mayn't I say if I admire anything very much?" "Certainly not. Is that how you talk to other men? You must try to think that I am another man, and talk as you would then." "Oh!" groaned Harry. He murmured that it was all new to him. The sudden limit which she put to this delightful offer of friendship was disconcerting, but he reflected that, after all, and for a time, friendship was a step in the right direction. There was no doubt that Claudia meant what she said, even if she spoke with extraordinary simplicity. Now, as she began to gather her fluttering leaves together, he said eagerly, "You're not going?" "You are," said the girl, with a smile. "We've talked enough." "We haven't said a word about Thornbury. You'll come to Thornbury, won't you?" "Is that where you live? Yes, if I can do anything there. My engagements have not yet begun, and Thornbury may as well start them as any other place." She spoke in a business-like tone, and took out a note-book. "Let me see; how much time will you want, and when?" "As soon as possible, and for as long as possible." "That won't do," she said, laying down her book, and speaking coldly. "This is strictly business." "I'll get my mother to write," said Harry, hurriedly. Claudia opened her eyes. "Why trouble her? Surely I can arrange it with you?" "Well, you see--" he began, and stopped. "Did you speak?" "I want to thank you. I think it most awfully kind. Still, I believe my mother would like to write. She's--" "Yes?" "We're all of us rather old-fashioned people, you see." "Oh yes, I see. I think you might even say--very," said Claudia, gaily. "Well, settle it any way you like. I only warned you because I dare say I shall soon be having plenty of applications and getting my time filled up. And you had better tell her that my terms are ten pounds for one week, or fifteen for a fortnight. It is always well," she added, "to have things square beforehand. Now I must get to work." Left to himself, Harry Hilton's face broadened into a smile. He lit a cigarette, stuck his hands into his pockets and sauntered towards the river to see whether any fish were rising. His head was full of Claudia's face, and the flashings and cloudings which swept across it, giving it a charm even more irresistible than mere beauty. He felt a great desire to stand well with her. "If I can get her to Thornbury, and let her go ahead with some of the young trees, she'll be pleased. The mater will ask her, fast enough, if she knows I want it; and I'll get Philippa to tackle--her, and see that she writes a civil answer. I want her to make a good impression. I wonder if I'm falling in love? Well, hang it all! if I am, it's not unpleasant. _I_ don't mind. I hope it won't spoil my fishing. `Ten pounds for a week, and fifteen for a fortnight'! Oh, I say, I can't tell the mater that, I really can't!" He was laughing again, for he was not yet so much in love as to fail to see the comic side of Claudia's announcements. His nature was simple and broadly lined, but furnished with good common sense which would prevent his ever making a fool of himself, or being made a fool of by others. Claudia, at this period of her life, admired complexity and unfathomable sayings, and it would have mortified her beyond expression to have realised with what ease Harry pushed aside her small eccentricities as absolutely matters of no moment. They did not affect the attraction he felt a whit more than an unbecoming fashion would have detracted from his admiration for a beautiful face. Then how frank she was, how free from petty ways and shams! He looked at the hand in which her white hand had rested, and his smile became very grave and tender. He stood so long, indeed, that Vic, the fox-terrier, came back and jumped on him inquiringly. Harry patted her, laughed happily again, and set himself to consider the best method of getting an invitation to Thornbury couched in such terms as should satisfy Claudia's views as to the exigencies of political economy. He made up his mind to go home himself the next morning, and he had a hope that Claudia would express a little regret at his leaving--a hope which was not realised. All that fell from her was a casual remark at dinner. "Let me know as soon as you can if you want any time kept for Thornbury, for I shall be writing to the college in a day or two." "And what does the college do?" asked Philippa. "It acts as a medium. Naturally, people apply to the Principal to recommend a capable person." "And she would recommend you?" "Why not? She knows how much or how little I am good for. If she did not think I was up to the work, another would be put in." "I see." "But you don't require us to write to the Principal?" said Harry, anxiously. "You would be wiser if you did," retorted Claudia. "But we do not require it, for we are all at liberty to make our own arrangements." "And yet remain a sort of society? I think it is very interesting," said Emily. "I always maintain we don't co-operate enough." "It depends upon what you co-operate for," the girl answered coolly, for she thought Emily's schemes, where they were not mischievous, inadequate, and was resolved to avoid being drawn into their meshes. For Anne she felt that universal attraction which a large power of sympathy creates, and, though she now and then winced under Philippa's trenchant sentences, she enjoyed their humour and blunt directness; but for Emily's best intentions she had no other word than--inadequate, which expressed a good deal of contempt. As for Harry Hilton, she liked him cordially, but her offer of friendship was made perhaps more with a view to his benefit than her own pleasure. A man with so limited a horizon that he was content to live without a profession or hope of a career, was a man to be profoundly pitied, and stirred, if possible, to a nobler ambition. If she had realised that he seriously admired her, the idea would only have caused irritation, as that with which she might have regarded any tiresome person who wished to place an obstacle in her way. This impatient anger is not unusual with young girls for whom the world is just unfolding. They are eagerly expectant, time looks infinite, sentiment ridiculous, the lover comes before their hearts are ready, he is in their way, and they call him silly. They will accept him as a comrade, a companion; but the feeling which they are always credited with wishing to inspire is, in many a case, so irksome that they cannot forgive the man who offers it, and he never recovers the ground which that first repulsion lost. CHAPTER THREE. Harry departed, and Claudia expressed her compassion to Philippa. Philippa grew hot in his defence. "Of course you like him," said the girl. "I think he is a capital fellow, and that's the pity of it. Yes, yes, I know. He and you are convinced that he will do very well by-and-by to reign at Thornbury, where they will touch their hats and curtsy to him, and he will send down soup when they are ill. That's his line exactly, and it may exist in England a few years longer, but it's on its last legs." "Aren't you getting rather mixed?" asked Philippa. "The soup, or the line, or what?" Claudia laughed. "You know what I mean. The old order. It had its good points, I'm quite ready to admit, but it is over, it must be put away, and a new situation faced. The People, with a capital letter." "Aren't we the People, with a capital letter?" murmured Miss Cartwright. "Yes, if you join the movement. Otherwise you're only--I beg your pardon, Philippa, but I know you would hate humbug--only a fly on the wheel. You'd be swept along anyway, but you wouldn't help." "I'm not sure I shouldn't have the best of it, though, except for the dust," Philippa said meditatively. "And poor Harry! I think you are ungrateful to him when he is boldly facing the new situation on your behalf. Think of his mother's face!" "Ah!" said Claudia, smiling. "Yes, think!" "Then won't you admit him as one of the People?" "When he puts his shoulder to the wheel." "I believe, if he's wise, he'll come and sit by my side. I'm growing more and more to prefer the fly." "It's natural for you," said the girl. "It is we younger ones who are responsible for the forward movement." Philippa winced. "Yes, my dear, I know, and God forbid that I should forget it!" she said, with a touch of wistfulness in her voice. "Only it may surprise you by-and-by to find how quickly you grow old in the eyes of the younger. Sometimes think of that, and don't be in too great a hurry to push the old workers out of the ranks." Claudia looked uncomfortable. "I--I didn't mean anything of that sort." "And I don't mean to be pushed," said Miss Cartwright, recovering herself with a laugh. "I flatter myself that we elders have some staying power. Take Harry, however, by all means, if you can get him to push. I dare say it will be good for him." "That," returned the girl, "is what I think. Of course, in a sort of way, it is easy enough to get workers--men, I mean," she added, with a fine disdain, "one has but to lift one's little finger. But what is the use of them? They just take it as a new variety of flirting, and haven't an idea beyond. It simply means that so long as it amuses them they will go on, and as soon as they are tired, drop it. Oh, I know!" "She is weary with the wisdom of the ages," Philippa said afterwards to Anne. "If you had heard that `Oh, I know!' and the depth of experience it conveyed! The world is topsy-turvy, frivolity will soon become a virtue of the aged, all the merrymakings and junketings will be reserved for the end of life, we shall be the last left to pipe and dance, while youth regards us scornfully. Claudia depresses me. A hundred wrinkles have grown in my face during the past week. I am ashamed of my poor innocent jestings. If I smile, I look furtively at her to see if she disapproves. What mission has been mine? Have I ever coursed cookery through lectures, or passed the mildest of exams? I did think I knew something about housekeeping, but Claudia has proved that I work on a wrong basis, and even in that I have to write myself a miserable failure." "Yet there is a delightful charm about her," her sister said, disregarding this outbreak. "She is wonderfully attractive and bright." "Bless her, yes! She'll do well enough; she'll find her limitations quite honestly, if not at once." "And will she go to Thornbury?" "She's in the mood to go anywhere, only desirous of new worlds to conquer; and she hopes to induce Harry to support the cause, without being idiotic, like other men. She is quite frank with her experiences." Both sisters laughed. Meanwhile Claudia easily made herself at home, came and went as she liked, and refused to be bound by the slenderest of social fetters. The kindly placid circle of a cathedral town, desirous--from respect to the Miss Cartwrights--to exercise hospitable duties towards a young girl who had but just fluttered into it, and might be supposed to require encouragement and support, was absolutely paralysed by the abruptness of Claudia's renunciation of such benefits. The Dean's wife went so far as to ask her to dine, which, considering the plethora of young ladies, and the difficulty of providing each lady with a dignitary, or even a curate, was an attention scarcely short of the heroic. It was the more startling when a note arrived, written in an upright manly hand, and announcing that owing to professional duties, Miss Hamilton would be unable to accept any invitation. "Professional!" repeated Mrs Dean, staring at the note. "Is she a lady doctor?" hazarded her eldest daughter. "She has not that appearance," said the Dean, with decision. "But, my dear, she must be something odd. And then to state it in such a barefaced way! A young creature not older than Rosa! Well, we have done all that could have been expected, and I can only say I am truly thankful she is not coming." For all this, Claudia came and went contentedly, and if she had heard the speeches would have enjoyed them, as in some degree emphasising her position. Philippa laughed, and Anne smoothed over where smoothing was necessary, but Emily was ruffled, because before her young cousin's appearance she had been considered to lead the van of progress, and she was afraid that Claudia's Radical theories might be confounded with her own. Besides, Claudia's scorn of leagues and friendly societies and blue ribbons was apt to be scathing; she talked socialism, and combined it with an innocent despotism contradictory enough to belong only to original woman. Mrs Hilton's letter of invitation came enclosed in one to Philippa. "My dear Philippa (it said):-- "Harry tells me you have a young cousin staying with you, who is very fond of what they call landscape gardening, and he seems to think it would amuse her to come to Thornbury. I am sure we shall be delighted to have her here, for it must be dreadfully sad for her to be alone in the world, poor thing! and if she likes flowers we have plenty, though there they are, all in their beds, and I don't know what old Thomas will say if anybody digs them up! However, Harry can always manage. We are going to have a few friends next week, because it makes it more lively for Harry. Captain Fenwick on leave, and Ruth Baynes, and perhaps Helen Arbuthnot will come, so that your little cousin would not find it so dull." Philippa read this to Anne with great amusement. "What would our little cousin say if she saw?" "Minnie has written." "Not in these terms. Harry would dictate the letter to his mother." "Harry may dictate, but he will never get Minnie to understand that Claudia is to be paid." "Oh, well, it will be so amusing to see her awake to the fact, that, upon my word, if it weren't that Emily's feelings would be so dreadfully hurt if I deserted her meeting, I should be tempted to take Claudia--I beg her pardon, travel under Claudia's wing--myself." "That, my dear," said Anne, laughing, "you couldn't do. Claudia will go on her bicycle, and send her luggage." Anne was right. "I don't so much care about bicycling for the pleasure of the thing," Claudia remarked. "But I much prefer it to your cross-country journeys. It is but twenty miles as the crow flies." "You will lose your way," said Emily. "With a map and a compass? How could I?" She made all her arrangements with exactitude, and Emily, who had prognosticated trouble for Philippa, had to own herself mistaken when Claudia wrote all the necessary notes and directions, sent off her luggage in excellent time, and came down in a very neat and well-cut dress. "You are a woman of business. You don't leave your friends much to do for you," said Anne, with her kind smile. "We have learned that much," returned Claudia, pleased. "What a nuisance those poor clinging blushing women must have been, fainting away on a man's shoulder whenever an emergency arrived!" "Stop, stop!" put in Philippa. "I won't have the heroines of my youth abused. Each generation offers a spectacle for the next to mock at. Don't expect to escape yourself, Claudia." "Well, they shan't accuse us of helplessness," said the girl, serenely. "Can I do anything for you in the town? No? Then, good-bye." She settled herself on her bicycle, and rode quietly away. Emily looked vexed. "She might have taken the other road. Now she will meet them all coming out of the Cathedral." "Which she will enjoy," said Anne, with a smile. "Come, Emily, own that she looks charming. You are a woman of adventure yourself." Claudia enjoyed her twenty miles exceedingly. She met and scandalised the Dean's wife, and made a much more charitable impression upon the Dean himself, who looked after her with a sigh of envy, and a glance at his own gaitered legs. She noted both expressions, laughed, and then her mind flung itself forward with the eagerness with which it always seized upon the future. She pictured Thornbury, its opportunities, its deficiencies, and its altered aspect when she, Claudia, once more took the road back to Elmslie. The people she might meet were not nearly so interesting. The road, however, was neither good nor level, and often she was obliged to confine her attention to its roughnesses. Her real sense of beauty, too, was charmed by the tremulous gladness of the day, soft sunshine veiled in sudden glooms, which yet never became threatening; a hedge-growth rich in ever-varying depths of green; shadows from bordering elms wavering gently on the road, and here and there a gate, a break in the hedge, a twist in the road, opening out some blue distance, not mellow, indeed, with the glory of southern sunshine, but tender as only an English distance can be, and sweet as its remembrance. Claudia was young, vigorous, exultant. When the road climbed so steeply that she was obliged to get off and push her bicycle, it only made a pleasant change for her young strong arms. Every now and then she consulted her map, or, sitting on a stile, glanced at the ripening corn, watched the busy rooks, and ate, with an excellent appetite, the sandwiches supplied by Anne. It was on one of these halts, on the ridge of a hill steeper and stonier than she had yet encountered, that another rider passed her, a man who looked at her keenly. He was thin, sun-browned, and clean-shaven. She criticised his dress and style of riding, without being able to find faults; she noticed, too, that his bicycle had the latest improvements, such as she would hardly have expected to find in these remote regions. Then she glanced at her map. Thornbury was near--the Thornbury which in the glow of exercise she had almost forgotten--and she guessed that he was on his way there. This interested her merely because she looked forward to asking him some questions about his bicycle, which, she owned with a sigh, was better than her own. Harry, with half a dozen dogs, was waiting for her at the lodge. "I knew it must be you whom Fenwick described," he said joyously. "Down, Rob! How splendidly you must have come to be here in this time! I couldn't have done it." "Of course you couldn't, with that thing of yours," Claudia said disdainfully. "It's abominably clumsy. Captain Fenwick--if that's his name--has a beauty." "He's a clever fellow; he always has the best thing going," Harry returned with a laugh. "But how jolly it is to have got you here! How's everybody?" "I don't believe there's much chance since you were there last week. Is there ever any change at Elmslie?" "Oh, isn't there!" he exclaimed, still radiant, and thinking of a change which had meant a good deal in his life. "But, come along; my mother's expecting you, and you'll be glad of tea. The cart has brought your things up from the station all right." Claudia's welcome was warm. Only Mrs Hilton and Miss Baynes were in the drawing-room. Mrs Hilton, a large fair woman, whose mouth, habit and love of her son had kept in a smiling curve, but whose eyes were faded and weary, showered hospitalities upon the girl. "My poor husband is a sad invalid, my dear, almost confined to his chair, and sadly crippled, but I hope that at dinner, perhaps--" She broke off vaguely, and Claudia was not long in discovering that Mrs Hilton's sentences generally remained unfinished. So, probably, did her thoughts, but, as Philippa once said, her kindnesses never. "And how are our dear cousins? It was so good of them to spare you. I am only afraid, my dear, of your finding us--Well, at any rate, here is Ruth, who is always pleasant." And she smiled at Miss Baynes, who was handing Claudia her tea. "Thank you very much," said Claudia's young clear voice; "but you must not think at all of me, because I shall be so busy all the time I am here with the work you are kind enough to entrust to me. And then I have my bicycle, which makes me quite independent." Mrs Hilton gazed at her, struggling with novel ideas. "The work, my clear?" she said vaguely. "But you mustn't talk of it as work. Harry said you were so clever in suggesting things, and, I am sure, if you can amuse yourself with our garden--but--" Claudia was sitting up, frowning. "Did not Mr Hilton explain that my profession was landscape gardening?" she said with dignity. Harry, who had foreseen the scene, and whose mouth was twitching, broke in cheerfully-- "Yes, mother, you know all about it. It's a splendid thing for Thornbury to get Miss Hamilton here. But we mustn't forget that she's bicycled all the way from Elmslie, and when she has had her tea, I dare say Ruth would take her to her room." The mere suspicion of any one being tired brought out all Mrs Hilton's tenderness. "Of course, I ought to have remembered," she said, with compunction; "but I have such a poor head, my dear, that I leave most things to Harry. Indeed, you must go to your room. But did you really come alone on a bicycle? And Anne was not afraid to let you! Well, to-morrow you must tell me all about it." Ruth Baynes, who carried off Claudia, was tall and slight, with a small aquiline nose and a good-tempered expression. It did not take lone to discover that she had two brothers whom she adored, and various nephews an I nieces, almost equally near her heart. Whatever Claudia said or did was capped by something they had said or done--generally better. She left her at last to peace and a bath, and no one could look fresher or less jaded than Claudia when the dinner-gong sounded. Mr Hilton took her in to dinner--a thin querulous man, bent with rheumatism, and walking by the help of a stick. To her surprise, she found that he was a scholar, deeply read and fastidious, as even she could see, in his choice of expressions. The only subject, except that of books, which appeared to interest him, was his health, which excited a constant irritability. It was impossible for her to touch upon her own hobby, because he waved it away at once. "I know nothing about the place, and I care less," he said. "Harry is sufficiently fond of it to take that trouble off my shoulders, and I leave it all to him. Virtually he is master. If ever you should have the misfortune to be racked with rheumatism and lumbago, my dear young lady, you would find yourself quite unable to take an active part in life. So I shut myself into my library, and trouble nobody with my miseries." Claudia thought of Mrs Hilton's tired eyes, and wondered whether they did not tell a different tale. She found the conversation languishing, and was glad when Captain Fenwick came to the rescue, talking of some classical translation just offered to the world. She glanced at him inattentively, and looked again. If he were Harry Hilton's friend, here, she allowed, was a stronger personality, evident at once, for Harry was fair and sturdy, while this man was wiry, tall, and dark, carrying in his brown features marks of a more adventurous, perhaps impetuous, life. As she looked, his eyes fastened themselves upon hers with a penetration which she, for an instant, resented. The next moment her indifference returned, and she answered some remark of Miss Baynes', made across the table, with the eagerness which easily awoke in her face, and gave it a constantly varying charm. Harry was not a man of strategy, but he manoeuvred that night to prevent his mother from having anything but general conversation with her guest. The evening was rainy. Mr Hilton did not appear after dinner, and Ruth Baynes told Claudia they often did not see him for days. "He is only happy in his library," she added, "and sometimes he cannot even get there. Everything falls on Harry." "`Everything' can't be very much, I expect," said Claudia. "He must want occupation." "Oh, do you think so?" Miss Baynes opened her eyes. "My brother always says that the county business alone is enough for any man." "Perhaps, as to quantity." Her emphasis pointed the remark, but her companion only assented cheerfully, and proceeded to break fresh ground. "Are you musical?" she asked. "No. I found there was no time in which to take up music thoroughly, so I dropped it. What do you do?" "Play--sing--fiddle. I love it better than anything in the world." Claudia's face warmed. "Oh," she said, sitting up and speaking energetically, "then of course you really go in for it. Do you teach?" "Teach? No," returned the bewildered Ruth. "Why should I?" "To be of use--to spread your knowledge, to make it something more than a mere amusement. Otherwise of what good is it?" "Good? I don't know. I think people like it," said Ruth, vaguely. "Oh!" Claudia's "Oh!" implied a great deal as Mrs Hilton hurried towards them. "Dear Ruth, a little music, please." And as Miss Baynes took glad possession of the piano, Mrs Hilton murmured on to Claudia, "Ruth is so kind, always ready to play and sing, and Harry likes it so much! Do you play, my dear?" "No," Claudia said calmly. "At one time I thought of going in for it, but I hadn't talent enough to make it anything but a grind, with all those Dresden courses to pass." "Must you have gone to Dresden? I don't think that dear Ruth was ever out of England." "But I should only have studied it in order to teach." "My dear!" said kind Mrs Hilton, distressed. "I am sure that is very sad, at your age and all! Harry did say something, only--I had no idea! I hope, at any rate, you will take a nice holiday here, and--oh, you are much too young, dear, dear, dear!" "Please don't be sorry," said Claudia, touched yet triumphant. "I have no particular need to work, but we feel that we should cast in our lot with those who have, and that no one has any right to stand idle. That is our position, you know." "And if I had been a returned convict, I should scarcely have frightened her more," reflected the girl gleefully that night in a last sleepy retrospect which she cast on the evening. For a moment longer her thoughts lingered upon Captain Fenwick's dominant look, then she dismissed him with a yawn. CHAPTER FOUR. She awoke early and sprang up at once, fresh as the morning itself, and when she went to the window all her ambitions rushed to the front. What were people compared with those green masses in which she read promise of fame? An old place, with magnificent growth of timber, lay before her bathed in the serenity of a young day. From the lower ground a thin white mist was drifting with filmy nothingness, but the softly swelling uplands lay in beautifully rounded outlines against a clear sky, touched by a delicate sunshine, and here and there broken by depths of cool shade. Claudia looked, and drew a long breath of delight, then dressed rapidly, and was out in the park before any of the windows in the front of the house were unsealed. She glanced rapidly round her. A French garden, still in shadow, lay on the side of the house, but elsewhere only grass and trees, splendid trees, met her view. So far as she could see, chestnuts and limes predominated, although contrasts were not wanting in fir and cedar. One with the other they grew in stately order, evidently cared for, so far that there was scarcely any crowding, and the big limbs had full play and sweep. Claudia's first impression of entire satisfaction had, by the time she had plunged into some of the leafy intricacies, given way to more complicated criticism. She walked briskly, so as to acquaint herself with the lie of the ground, and pulling out a note-book and pencil as she walked, fell to jotting down possible improvements, chiefly with a view to obtaining distant effects. Time passed rapidly in this congenial occupation, until she heard voices close at hand, and looking up, saw Harry Hilton, a keeper, and many dogs. Harry at once made for her, and Claudia closed her book with an ungrateful sigh, considering that it was he who had obtained for her this splendid opportunity for renown. "This is most surprising!" he called out joyously. "Why?" asked Claudia as crossly. "I thought I had heard you protest against early rising?" "At Elmslie. I dare say. What was there to do at Elmslie? Every square inch was occupied by somebody." He laughed. "So it is, when one comes to think of it. I'm a lazy chap, and I suppose I don't mind." "I suppose you don't. I can't conceive how you can bury yourself here and there, and not do anything bigger in the world," said Claudia, looking at him meditatively. Her tone only expressed wonder, but his face fell. "Don't you like it, then?" he said, in a disappointed tone. "Oh!" she exclaimed with a change to enthusiasm, "do you mean this place? It is simply delightful. It holds the greatest possibilities, and I am longing to begin. It is far, far more beautiful than I expected; but of course it may be made more beautiful still." He nodded. He was looking at her, at the eager light in her eyes, at her smiling lips, at the dimple so absurdly attractive. This, he was sure, was what Thornbury wanted. She went on-- "May I really cut freely? Your father will not object?" He winced. Claudia did not ask whether he cared, yet to no one at Thornbury was every stick and stone of the old place so dear as to himself. His father buried himself in his books and his infirmities, and his mother saw everything through the medium of her son's eyes. But there was not a tree, nor a patch of shadow on the grass, nor tangle of underwood, nor green sweep of bracken, nor haunt of squirrel, which Harry did not know and love. "He won't object," he said hesitatingly. "But--when you think you must cut, you won't mind, will you, telling me beforehand?" "Oh no," she said, "not in the least. I know people have fancies and prejudices, and I should not like to hurt them, of course. Now will you please go away?" "Go away! Why? Have I offended you?" "Offended me? Why should you think so?" said Claudia, opening her eyes in frank wonder. "But you forget that I am here professionally, and have my work to do." "You're not going to work all day!" he exclaimed in dismay. "I hope so. Please don't misunderstand. I'm not here on the same footing as your other guests--as Miss Baynes, for instance. I have only come for a purpose." "What on earth has that to do with it?" "Everything. You really must try to see what I mean." "I can't," he muttered. "Oh yes, you can. Suppose, for instance, that I were an artist come down to paint your mother's portrait. Then you'd expect me to stick to my work, wouldn't you?" Claudia spoke sadly and temperately, as one might to a thick-headed child. "No artist would paint all day," he persisted obstinately. "Nor am I going to work all day. I suppose I shall eat and drink and sleep--" "And amuse yourself." "Yes, and amuse myself, when there is nothing better to do. But even while he was doing all this, the painter would have an eye to business; he would be studying your mother's expression, and little ways, and characteristic movements." "Oh, well, if that's what you'd like, I can take you all over the place, and show you everything," said Harry with renewed cheerfulness. "Nobody knows it better than I do. There are some old oaks behind the house." "Thanks," said Claudia, crushingly; "but I prefer to work out ideas by myself. Do you know you have wasted a great deal of my time this morning?" She looked at her wrist as she spoke. "There is only half an hour to breakfast, and I must do the best I can with that." He made another effort. "You'll lose your way." She escaped with a laugh. "If I do, I give you leave to come and hunt for me." Harry stood looking after her, mingled feelings in his heart. Each time that he saw her he seemed to like her better, and this morning her fresh charm, the light in her eyes, and the general harmony which existed between her youth and that of the day, the sky, and the woods, affected him strongly. He found it, too, very pleasant to see the woman he was beginning to love better than any one else in the world, in the place which was so dear to him, and her admiration for his old home gave him keen satisfaction. But there were damping reflections. He had enough shrewd common sense to be aware, not only that Claudia flung no glance in the direction where he would have had her look, but that her friendliness was, to say the least, pitying. He had heard her inveigh--with the vigour she was apt to put into her lightest words--against the drones who have no purpose in the world, and something in her manner had made him fully understand that she looked on him as a drone. He felt this hard, although he did not resent it, for he was not the man to talk about himself, and she could not be expected to realise how incapable his father was of managing the estate. But he was afraid it would always weigh with her, and the thought caused him great pain. He saw no way of altering her opinion, unless it came to her spontaneously, and in the light of a discovery of her own, for no one could know Claudia, even for a week--and he remembered with surprise that he had not actually known her much longer--without perceiving that she preferred her own judgments to those of other people. It need not be thought, however, that, because Harry saw difficulties ahead, he took them to be insuperable, or even particularly alarming. Young, sturdy, healthy, he was the last man in the world to become the prey of morbid fancies. He could not forget that moment in which her hand had lain in his. He had her at Thornbury, which was present joy; she was pleased with the place, and though he had no high opinion of his own attractions, he was quite ready to hope that the place might count for something, and told himself--it must be owned with a pang--not to be such a fool as to begrudge her a free hand among the trees. Then, his reflections having mounted his spirits high, he whistled cheerily to the dogs, stuck his hands into his pockets, and walked towards the house, heroically resisting all temptations to waylay Claudia. She arrived rather late. "Here you are, my dear," said Mrs Hilton, kindly. "How have you slept? Are you rested? Watkins said you would not let her do anything for you." "Thank you," said Claudia, pleasantly. "I always manage for myself." Her morning's round had put her into the best of humours, and she was fresh and smiling, but before breakfast was half over, longing to escape to the work which no one appeared disposed to regard gravely. Captain Fenwick, who was last of all, and dropped into the empty chair by her side, made no attempt to conceal his amusement. "You have been round the place already! Wonderful energy! And when are you really going to begin? Mayn't we all come and help?" "Do you think you could?" "I am sure I should be a very valuable adviser." "About as much so as I should be if I attempted to drill your men. I suppose that is the sort of thing you do?" said the girl, so quietly that he looked at her. "I am afraid that is a neat way of hinting that I should mind my own business." Her eyes began to dance. "Perhaps." "You cover me with confusion. But, indeed, you are mistaken. I am quite willing to learn." "Only I did not come here to give lessons. So don't you think we had both better keep to what we know?" He was piqued. He was accustomed to find himself popular, which, put into other words, meant courted, by women. From Claudia's manner it was plain that the honour of becoming his instructress did not appeal to her. If she had not really been very pretty he would have turned away; as it was, he said in a tone of mock humility-- "What cruelty! Do you refuse even to throw me a few crumbs?" "Oh dear no! Do they ever do any one any good? However, if they please you, and you find them about--May I ask for the mustard?" Mrs Hilton's voice was heard, addressing Claudia. "Harry tells me you will like to have your morning to yourself, and I dare say you have letters to write, haven't you, my dear? Anne will be wanting to hear how you got on yesterday. But after luncheon you must come for a drive, and later perhaps a little tennis? Or golf? Harry says that is what every one plays now, and I believe there are some links--isn't that the name? or something." "Thank you," said Claudia. "I only care about cricket." "Ah!" said Mrs Hilton, vaguely--"to look on at matches?" "Oh no! To play. It seems to me the one game worth anything. But, then, I never tried football." She glanced at her hostess, delighted to see her startled face. But Harry, who was on the watch, broke in cheerfully. "Cricket? Oh, of course. Heaps of girls play nowadays." (He did not add that his opinion of their play was low.) "I'm afraid there's nothing good to offer you, but Hurst is sending over an eleven to-morrow to play Thornbury." "Thank you," said Claudia again, and more coldly. "And we shall all be expected to look on, I suppose?" remarked Miss Baynes. "We do at Walter's. He and his boys are such first-rate cricketers, they are always in demand." She looked round enthusiastically, but no one appeared struck with the statement. "Other people's relations are even one degree less interesting than other people's ailments," murmured Captain Fenwick, so that only Claudia heard. He went on, "Well, you've had your choice of amusements." "I didn't come here to be amused." "And you have scorned them all, pointedly." "I!" Her face dimpled. "Don't you ever try to gloss over your feelings? You make me afraid to offer a suggestion." "Why?" said Claudia, looking at him with disconcerting frankness. "As it happens, there is something you shall do for me." He smiled. "I want to look at the brake of your bicycle, it seemed to act better than mine." "When? This morning?" "Certainly not. It must be in play-time." She turned, for Mrs Hilton was speaking again. "Will half-past three suit you, my dear? Ruth, I know,"--nodding at Miss Baynes--"will see that Mr Hilton has all he wants, and Harry-- Harry, won't it be a good plan for us to call at the station for Helen? Yes, I thought so; we will do that, and come home in good time for tea." Miss Baynes asked whether Miss Arbuthnot was expected. "Oh, didn't I tell you? So like me! Yes, she is coming for a week or two--for as long as she likes to stay," she added hospitably. "Helen almost belongs to the house, so that she will be able to help Harry." "To help Harry?" repeated Claudia in an undertone. "To amuse you," chuckled Fenwick. "Oh!" There was profound scorn in the "Oh!" "It's a little the case of _toujours perdrix_, isn't it?" he went on. "But Harry's the best fellow in the world." "You, too!" She thought impatiently of Elmslie. "Do let us take his virtues for granted by way of a change, and tell me about Miss Arbuthnot. Who is she? And what is she like?" A new girl was a far more interesting subject to her than any mere man; the girls at the college, and the lines they took or might be expected to take, had been fertile objects of speculation for their fellow-students. "She," said Fenwick, slowly, "is a daughter of Lord Ambleton. What is she like?" He hesitated. "How am I to answer?" Claudia opened her eyes. "Why? Is she so inscrutable?" "Inscrutable? Yes, perhaps. But just then I was reflecting on the difficulties of describing a woman to a woman without setting her against her." "Why?" asked the girl again, coolly. "I suppose you mean that women are jealous?" "I shouldn't venture on such plain speaking." "I wish you would," she said impatiently. "I hate people to be afraid to come round a corner without peeping first. As for being jealous, I don't agree. I think women are more ready to admire women than men men." "Of course if you think so." "Please don't pay silly compliments. Disagree as much as you like, and then the thing may be argued out." "Never!" "What do you mean?" "Everything in the world has been argued, and nothing ever has been, or will be, argued out." Claudia paused. "But that would strike at the root of all conviction," she said doubtfully. "Oh, by no means. Yours--excuse me--is a feminine leap at conclusions. Do you really suppose that half the convictions in the world are capable of being proved by argument?" "Then," she said, "I don't see how they can be convictions." "Well, experimentalise upon your own. If you are fair I suspect you'll find more than half are backed up by nothing better than a little prejudice and a little--No, I won't say the other thing." "Do," said Claudia, flushing. No one had ever spoken to her so plainly before, yet after what she had said, she could not have the satisfaction of showing her displeasure. She added quickly, "Though you know nothing of me." "I've only a conviction. Are you going?" "Yes, indeed; I've wasted time enough." "Even workers must eat!" returned Fenwick, maliciously, as he rose. CHAPTER FIVE. Miss Arbuthnot, when she appeared, awoke no remembrances of the college. She was a woman of past thirty, large, massive, and sleepy-looking. Claudia saw the meeting between her and Captain Fenwick, and was struck by the idea that they rather disliked each other. No two persons, indeed, could have presented a greater contrast. After the first morning, Fenwick exerted himself to give a personal touch to the conversations he held with Claudia, and it surprised him to find how much he cared to speak to her, since, as he reflected, it was very like running your head against a stone wall. Until now he had always avoided women with opinions and prejudices; it is true that he had not hitherto met them accompanied by a dimple, or eyes which grew brilliant in their eager enthusiasm, but the real attraction lay in the girl's absolute indifference. He was so accustomed to impress that, when he failed, he was like a hypnotist fighting against a strong will, there was something which had to be overcome. That Claudia should come and go without casting a glance in his direction, that no gleam of pleasure lit her face when he chose the seat next to hers, was an affront to his vanity. Almost unconsciously he began to study her more attentively, and to mark her likes and dislikes. As she announced them with careless freedom, this was not difficult, but it was less easy to please her, even when he had found them out. Harry Hilton arrived at the same rueful conclusion by another road. Heroic were the sacrifices he made in order that Claudia's plans might sweep freely in whatever direction she chose to extend them. There were two limes which she condemned--not, as she owned, without regret--and after the order had been given for their downfall, Harry rode away immediately after breakfast, and did not return until dinner-time. He told himself that he was an idiotic fool, but, do what he would, all day the broad shadow of the great branches haunted him, and he heard in fancy every stroke of the axe. Claudia, who was unusually well satisfied with her day's work, greeted him eagerly. "You don't know what a splendid opening we've got. I am longing for you to see and acknowledge it." "They are down?" said poor Harry, trying to speak cheerily. "Yes, quite." Then she laughed. "I wasn't going to wait, when you might have changed your mind, for you did not altogether agree with me, you know. But I was certain it would be the greatest improvement imaginable, and, even if it was a sacrifice,"--she was still smiling--"art is made up of sacrifice, isn't it?" "Is it?" he said humbly. "Why do I talk to him like that, when he hasn't a glimmer of understanding about art or anything beyond the commonplace, poor fellow?" reflected Claudia. Aloud she said, "When you see it to-morrow morning, you will be glad that I was firm." And then she nodded and went away. In an armchair close by, Miss Arbuthnot was sitting. She looked lazily up. "Harry," she said, "you might take me in to dinner for once instead of your father. All my wits have gone out into the suburbs this evening, and as you never had any, you won't miss them." "All right," he agreed, rather dejectedly. "There's the gong." He hoped to sit next Claudia, but Fenwick was too quick for him. "Never mind," said Miss Arbuthnot, "or if you do mind, bear it. Life, like art, is made up of sacrifices, and for once you might put up with me, particularly as I, too, should prefer you to be somebody else." "Who?" He stared. "Oh, you expect too much. Do you suppose it is the vicar? I am not going to talk about myself; when I do I like to have my wits at home, and, as I told you, they are out visiting. You are a much more simple subject, and as we are old friends, almost as old as you and the lime trees, I should like to know why you are allowing that little girl to ride you rough-shod?" He did not answer, and she asked, with a touch of anxiety-- "Now, Harry, you're not pretending to be affronted with me?" "Affronted? No." "But you've tumbled into love?" "Is there anything surprising in that?" he said in rather an injured tone. She took no notice of the question beyond remarking, with a sigh-- "No, I don't in the least believe in heredity." "What are you up to now?" he inquired resignedly. "If there were anything in it, don't tell me that, after centuries of falling in love, and out of it, man would not have developed some sort of understanding how to do it." "That's evolution," said Harry. "Imagine your knowing! Well, whatever it is, does nothing tell you what is labour lost?" He looked at her. "You mean I've no chance?" "You put things so baldly! Can't you see for yourself that nobody has any chance--yet? Your Claudia is launched on a career; it mayn't be a big one, but for concentration and determination, or any other five-syllabled things, commend me to a young woman on a career. She hasn't a thought to fling on anything else." "It won't last," he said stubbornly. "That's the first gleam of intelligence you've shown. No, it won't last, because there are tendencies, eternal tendencies, in us, which decline to be ignored, and one day she will have to face them. But not yet." "Fenwick gets on with her a lot better than I do," remarked Harry, with apparent inconsequence. There was a pause. "He has more experience," she said lightly. "Ah, you don't like him, you don't do him justice. He's an awfully clever fellow, quite different from the Johnnies she'd generally meet. It's natural she should prefer him." He spoke dejectedly, and she laughed. "I've never set you up on a pinnacle for admiration, have I? It _is_ quite natural, only it isn't the case. He may be occupied with her," she added a little bitterly, "but at present she's taken up with herself." Harry fired. "Oh, you women! Now, I call it an awfully plucky thing to break away and strike out a line for herself." "Oh, so do I," said Helen, with a sigh of unexpected meekness. "It's like bicycling--a splendid prerogative of youth. All that I'm trying to impress upon you is that while it lasts, it's absorbing. And much gratitude I get!" "Oh, I'm grateful. Only--" "What?" "You're clever, and you laugh at everything, until it's a bit hard to find out what you mean. I wonder why you say all this?" "For old acquaintance sake," she said quickly and kindly. "When things become serious I'm not such a bad sort." "And you'll really be on my side?" "Of course I will. Let me see the _menu_, and don't cheer up so preposterously. What I want you to realise is that nothing, no one, can be of any use just now. I don't expect you to believe me, and you'll probably rush in and blunder the whole affair; I only warn you that if you're wise you'll give your young woman time to trip along cheerfully on her career, and to find out for herself that it isn't all she expected. And I'm afraid, I'm very much afraid, this may cost you more lime trees." "I don't care a hang what it costs!" "You mustn't use bad words, or I shall have your mother down on me." His spirits rose. "You haven't told me what you think I'd better do." "Where's the use, when you'll do the contrary? My endeavour will be to introduce a little common sense on your side, and a little romance on hers. Be thankful for one thing." "What?" "That she's not a market-gardener. Market-gardening excludes romance. I defy you to make any running over a lot of cabbages. Now, trees, dewy lawns, grass rides--upon my word, they should have possibilities. Don't get cross. I'm quite serious." Something interrupted, but before dinner was ended, Harry, who had apparently been storing observations, said in a low voice-- "I say, do you expect me to look on and see Fenwick make all the running?" There was another momentary hesitation on Miss Arbuthnot's part before she said with a groan-- "Oh, the density of the male mind! Won't you understand that all Miss Hamilton's aspirations are bound up in that pocket-book to which I see her refer when she has got rid of you all? On the day the pocket-book disappears, I shall hope for you. Meanwhile, minister to her career; that is the best you can do, and all you can do. And it is so funny, that you ought to be extremely obliged to me for treating it seriously." He looked at her and laughed, and showed his trust in her discernment by avoiding Claudia for some days almost too pointedly. He rode away each morning and did not come back for hours, buried himself in the study with his father, or took Fenwick off to the next town. Mrs Hilton became uneasy for the amusement of her guests, and it was in vain that her son assured her they preferred being left to their own devices. Helen was tired after a London rush. "I am not talking about Helen," she said almost fretfully. "She is very well able to look after herself. And Ruth can make herself at home anywhere. But there is little Miss Hamilton." "Take my word for it, mother, she likes to go her own way." "My dear, you can't know about a young girl, and I am so afraid she thinks we may consider her to be in a sort of derogatory position here. I do wish you would let me explain to her, poor thing, that we are delighted to have her, and that she can do just as she likes if it's any amusement to her. I was afraid you might be vexed about the trees, but if you and your father are satisfied, it is all quite right." Harry laughed. "Oh, she doesn't in the least suppose she's doing anything derogatory. Things are changed in these days, mother, and Miss Hamilton wants you to understand that her being here is a simple matter of business." Mrs Hilton lifted her hands helplessly. "My dear Harry, it can't be! Of course if the poor girl is so sadly poor--" "She isn't." "--Or if she has taken it into her head to amuse herself." "Don't let her hear you!" "One would do everything one possibly could. But you can't expect me to have a pretty young creature like that here, and not try to make it pleasant for her, and we all know what girls like, and how pleased they are with attention, poor things! I really think, Harry, she ought not to be left so much alone." He dug his hands into his hair, and laughed again--not quite naturally. "Well, we'll see." But though he said little, his heart was leaping. Women were women all the world over, and why should not his mother be as right as Helen Arbuthnot? Might he not in these last days have been playing the fool, and losing ground? It suddenly struck him--and he flushed at the thought--that he had been wanting in pluck, hanging back, and letting Captain Fenwick amuse himself--for he knew him well enough to be convinced that he meant nothing more. He jumped up, and went to a window which overlooked the small French garden. Beyond it the ground swept softly upwards towards a belt of fine trees, and beneath them Claudia was standing bare-headed, her hands clasped behind her. Harry looked, hesitated, turned away, and turned again. It was too much. Helen Arbuthnot and her counsels of prudence were flung on one side, he put his hand on the window-sill and vaulted out, enthusiastically followed by Vic and Venom, the terriers. Claudia had been working for an hour with profound satisfaction to herself. Perhaps she had never been so happy in her life as in these last days at Thornbury. The sense of importance, the freedom from control, the range of ever-extending possibilities, were delightful, but beyond and above these causes for satisfaction there was the joy of youth, and a freshness which is its pleasant attribute, and puts it into delightful harmony with open-air nature. For the present it was as Miss Arbuthnot had divined; she needed nothing else, and would resent an unwelcome intrusion of disturbing elements. It was no less true that at some near time, and possibly at an unexpected moment, this tranquillity might be shattered, but by whom and when was as yet a problem. Was it by Harry, who now came towards her, walking as quickly as if he had just successfully accomplished the aim of a day's search? She put up her hand. "Two hundred feet by thirty," she remarked meditatively. "How are you getting on? Don't you want something? Mayn't I come and help?" He put the questions breathlessly. "Please don't interrupt. At last I do think I have got the proportions right." "But I shan't interfere with them?" "You do rather." She glanced at him with a laugh of which she immediately had the grace to feel ashamed. Harry's proportions might not be the best in the world, but she liked him very much indeed, and owed him kindliness. "You may stay if you won't interrupt." "I won't." "Then, look here," she said. "I'm going to sacrifice all these low shrubs, straighten that curve, cut down two or three unimportant trees, and--do you know what will come of it?" "Not in the least," he said with his eyes on her. "Guess." "I can't." She reflected impatiently that he was really dreadfully dense. "You will see the Marldon hills." "Really?" What did he care for all the hills in the country? "Yes, really," she exclaimed triumphantly. "I thought it might be so, and I have proved it. Why, it will be the most beautiful view in the whole neighbourhood, and I don't think any one could have believed it possible." Her eyes sparkled enthusiastically, her hat lay on the ground before her, and the wind tossed her dark hair. Harry looked at her, worshipping, with a sudden contempt for Miss Arbuthnot. What did his heart tell him? What was earth and air crying out? What were the birds singing? Love--love--love--and he--he only--must remain dumb, dull, cowardly. His voice shook with the effort he made to keep back the universal cry. "Aren't you tired? St--stop for a little while," he stammered. If she had been thinking of him, or even if her mind had been taken up less with her own interests, she could not have failed to notice something hoarse and strained in his voice, but she heard nothing. "Not exactly tired," she said lightly; "but perhaps--well, I do feel that I have done a good morning's work, and I am glad, because when this is finished, I must be going on." "Going on! What for?" he exclaimed so abruptly that this time she looked at him in surprise. But she did not see, and laughed. "Why, to work, of course. Thornbury is a fascinating old place." "You like it?" he interrupted eagerly. "Of course I do." She felt she owed him a tribute. "I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed what I have done here, but--one comes to an end. You don't want me to cut down all your trees, do you?" With that his head whirled. "Sit down," he said, pointing to a fallen trunk on which she had already experimented, and Claudia, still unsuspecting, seated herself, pushing back her hair with both hands--a trick she had. "I suppose I am rather tired, after all, and certainly hot," she allowed, drawing a deep breath; "but what delightful work it is!" "You've really enjoyed it?" "Of course I have, and you have let me alone, which people can't understand is what one wants. I am going next to a place called Huntingdon Hall. Friends of Captain Fenwick have got it, and he says it requires putting to rights terribly, and they haven't an idea how to set about it. I have heard from Lady Wilmot and have sent her my terms. I expect it will be quite straight sailing. Captain Fenwick says so." He scarcely heard. Love, love, love--everything was singing it tumultuously. "Claudia!" he cried. CHAPTER SIX. The tone in which Harry cried "Claudia!" pierced through even her unconsciousness. She looked at him, startled. He was breathing heavily, altogether unlike himself. "I must speak," he said. "Haven't you guessed how I love you?" "You?" she exclaimed in unmistakable amazement. "What can you be thinking of?" and something in her manner brought back his self-control. "There's nothing so wonderful about it, is there?" he said slowly. "I suppose it began from the first moment I saw you, and it has gone on. Can't you give me a little hope? I know you're a lot too good for me--" "Oh, don't say any more, don't!" She tried to rise, but he laid his hand on her arm. "I want you to listen--this once. I suppose I've taken you by surprise. I didn't mean to do that. I thought you must have seen all along." "I never saw!" interrupted Claudia indignantly. "I'm very angry with you." "If you don't care for me now," he went on, unheeding, "don't you think you might some day? You like the old place--" "The place!" She pushed away his hand, and her eyes were flaming. "Did you suppose I should want to marry a place? Oh, what nonsense this all is! If I could make you understand how much I dislike anything of the sort!" He laughed ruefully. "I think I understand. I was a fool--as usual." "Don't say `as usual'!" exclaimed the girl, still frowning. "I hate to hear you always running yourself down, and I hate to hear you trying to talk sentiment. We are excellent friends. Do be satisfied with that, and be nice, as you were before." She waited, but he was silent. "Well, then, if you won't," she said, lifting her eyebrows, "I'd better go back to the cousins." "No," he said hurriedly, "don't go. I shan't torment you." Claudia glanced doubtfully at him. In spite of her displeasure, the situation struck her as more comical than serious, and though she wished he had not been silly, she did not for a moment realise that she was causing him more than a passing disappointment. Besides, the view which remained to be opened, the improvements which had so entirely filled her imagination, and fired her ambition, were really of far more importance than this ridiculous situation, and if she were to go away before she could carry them out--what a collapse, what a feminine collapse! People would guess, she supposed, because people were so foolish, and so determined to make out that a girl's head could contain no ideas beyond those idiotic ones which she had just been invited to share; and they would all triumph, and say of course that was always the aim and end of a woman's efforts. Yet something within her persistently urged her to go, so that she felt cross, and naturally vented the crossness upon Harry. "I do so wish you would not have talked nonsense!" she exclaimed at last. "I did want to stay until I had finished what I have thought out, and it would have been the most wonderful improvement to the place! If I could just arrange it, and show you where to plant a few copper beeches--" Harry's laughter came readily, and it came now. "You mustn't think of leaving. If any one has to go, it will be I." "And if you go," said Claudia discontentedly, "no one else knows a thing about the trees. Well, I will stay on till Wednesday, if you promise to talk sense, and forget these absurd ideas of yours. They come because you have so little to do. Why on earth don't you get away, and find some real manly occupation?" He hesitated. "My father's very infirm. I left the army because he wanted me." "I should think you might do something." She had gathered her things together, and was walking towards the house. There may have been an unacknowledged effort to keep the conversation at arm's length from herself, or it may have been vexation with her companion which raised a keen desire to rebuke him for his shortcomings. Curtain it is that her tone was scornful. "Perhaps," he answered. "For a man or woman to be without occupation is so uninteresting, to say the least of it," continued his mentor, "that I would rather break stones on the road." He was silent, hardly hearing. He was looking at the round softness of her cheek, and wondering whether many men felt as miserable as he. Swiftly before his eyes rose a vision of Claudia wandering about the park at Huntingdon with Captain Fenwick by her side, and he straightened himself with something so like a groan that he glanced hurriedly at the girl, fearing to have annoyed her. But she was looking straight before her, relieved to see Helen Arbuthnot strolling towards them from the grass ride. "At least ten people are crying out for you," was her greeting to Harry. "Your mother, and your mother's maid, and the mother of the footman, and a sick bailiff. These are the most importunate, but there are five others dancing round. He must go," she went on to Claudia, "but if you really have an idle moment to spare, you might bestow it on me. I collect other people's." Claudia did not much care for Miss Arbuthnot, whom, with some reason, she suspected of ridiculing her, but at this minute she would have joyfully jumped at any means of escape. "Was that why you came to Thornbury?" she asked bluntly. "Was it? I don't know; and I never answer questions, because they recall acrostics. Come back to the grass ride." The grass ride remained unchanged. A broad strip of turf, and on either side tall slender trees springing from a wavy undergrowth of bracken; a ride shady through the hottest summer, yet with the sun filtering down sufficiently to fling broken lights on the close cool grass. Miss Arbuthnot stood still as they reached it, and looked in either direction. "It is an enchanting spot," she said. "Ye-e-s," agreed Claudia doubtfully. "But it might be tremendously improved." "I dare say. I hate improvements, whether in people or places. They destroy sentiment." Up jumped Claudia on her stilts. "I can't understand any one not wishing for the best." "No? That's your youth. It's the same sort of rage which sets people scraping ruins, when such charming weeds vanish! Half the attraction of everything consists in its little defects." Miss Arbuthnot spoke with extreme laziness, quite indifferent to the impression she produced; and the girl, who hated to be reminded of her youth, and felt as if her own efforts were belittled, was provoked. "If the world thought as you do," she said gravely, "there would be no advancement, no gain." "And how enjoyable!" sighed Miss Arbuthnot. "Are you going to cut down many more of poor Harry's favourite trees?" Claudia coloured. "I have only cut what was necessary," she said with still greater dignity. "From your point of view--yes. But from his?" "Does he object?" "He? Oh no, he knows better." "I don't think you understand," said Claudia impatiently. "I came here to try to make the place more beautiful--" "It does well enough," murmured Miss Arbuthnot, with a glance at the deep fern beside them. "You don't suppose I had the trees cut down except where it would be an improvement? And of course Mr Hilton is glad to--have those improvements." She felt her speech feeble, and it made her angry. "Of course. I am afraid what is good for one is often disagreeable, but, as you say, a supporting sense of virtue remains. Harry is such a capital fellow that he deserves all he can get." It should be noted that Miss Arbuthnot, accustomed to be regarded, had no idea that Harry had broken loose, and run his stubborn head against a wall, or she would not have chosen such a moment for sinking; his praises. Claudia was too young, or too ignorant of love, to feel kindly towards a man for falling in love with her, and was only annoyed at what she considered a commonplace episode in what she intended to be anything but a commonplace career. As yet she had no conception of the true proportion of things, and dismissing love and such trifles as mere hindrances, her companion's words irritated her the more against Harry. "Oh, he will get all he deserves, no doubt," she observed airily. "That kind of character doesn't want much." Then she had the grace to blush, and to go on hurriedly, "He will be always quite contented to vegetate at Thornbury, stroll about with his gun, and make an ideal magistrate-- or what people consider ideal, which does just as well." Miss Arbuthnot stopped to whisk away a wasp. "Do you find fault with your picture?" "Well, it doesn't seem very interesting, that's all." "I like discussing other people's characters," said Miss Arbuthnot lazily; "I find it much simpler than meditating upon one's own. So you think Harry commonplace? Why?" "Why? How can it be otherwise? He has no ambition, no aims beyond Thornbury, no work. A man who doesn't work is a wretched being." "Has he told you he doesn't work?" "One can see for one's self, I suppose?" Claudia said, with a fine scorn; and Helen shot a glance at her as if she had wakened up. "Oh no, you can't. When you are older you will learn that you can never trust your eyes. Go and ask the bailiff, and the keeper, and the gardeners." "_That_ kind of work!" "Well, we can't all be landscape gardeners. If we were, I suppose the estate would have to be kept going, or there wouldn't be much good in beautifying it?" "Agents," retorted Claudia. "Perhaps. But some people have an old-fashioned prejudice that when a father and mother are old and infirm, there are things which even an agent can't do. Harry _is_ old-fashioned. I have often told him he ought to be more up-to-date." There was a silence. Then Claudia remarked in a slightly altered voice-- "He has never said anything to make one suppose living here was any sacrifice." "Or that he felt the loss of his trees. Yet, I assure you, he has more than once ridden miles to avoid the crash of doom." Another pause. "I had really better go away at once," Claudia exclaimed impatiently. "Why did they ask me to come? It was his suggestion--not mine. And it is ridiculous. The place is ever so much improved by a little thinning." "Oh, I dare say. I'm not defending Harry, only when people can never be induced to blow their own trumpets, I feel irresistibly impelled to produce a blast. Let us talk about some one else. Captain Fenwick, for instance. Neither of us need blow for him." "He's amusing," remarked Claudia indifferently. "There's a tribute!" said Miss Arbuthnot, looking at her between half-closed eyelids. "And he rides a bicycle better than any one I know." "So that you are less hard on him than on poor idle Harry?" "Hard? I don't know. He idles too, but--" "More impressively." "He has been useful in getting me a commission to work at Huntingdon. He says it's in dreadful order, for Sir Peter has only just succeeded, and of course the worse it is, the better for me." This time the silence lasted longer. Then Miss Arbuthnot spoke without turning her head-- "He goes there too, I suppose?" "Oh yes! He thought,"--she laughed--"that I might feel lost among strangers. One has to get over that sort of thing when one takes up a profession. But he meant it very well, and perhaps if he is there, they will be less shy of me. That's what generally happens, because people can't forget their old tradition that a woman mustn't be professional. With a man it's taken as a matter of course." "And a man takes it as a matter of course," put in Helen. She was tired of her companion's girlish egotism, and administered her thrust sharply. "But she won't see," she reflected. Claudia did see, and coloured. "I dare say I am tiresome," she said frankly. "At the college they declared that no one rode their hobbies to death as I did. Only,"--she drew a deep breath--"these are wonderful times, aren't they? And how can one take one's part in the movement without enthusiasm?" "And pray, where are you moving?" asked Miss Arbuthnot. Then she changed her tone. "Was there ever such a heavenly day? I'm glad you've spared the grass ride. There's nothing like it at Huntingdon, whatever Captain Fenwick may say. When do you go?" "On Wednesday." "Does he take you?" "I suppose we shall bicycle there together. I shan't object, because he is a very clever rider, and can show one all sorts of useful dodges." "Oh, he is very clever!" agreed Miss Arbuthnot. She added quickly, with a touch of scorn--"and insatiable." Claudia did not catch the oddly chosen word, and certainly would not have understood it. "Well, here he is rather refreshing," she allowed, "because he has been about the world, and can talk; but, after all, men always strike me as uninteresting. Don't you think one more often meets with original women?" "At the college, of course." "Oh, at the college they were delightful." "If," Miss Arbuthnot said idly, "you want a definition of advancing years, I should say it was made up of modifications. I've had my theories too, though you mightn't believe it, but I find the hard edges almost gone, and my opinions grown hazy. One still, however, remains-- that the inevitable will be down on you. Who is the man in the distance?" "How tiresome!" Claudia exclaimed. "It is Captain Fenwick, and we shall not be able to talk any more. Perhaps he has not seen us, and we can escape." "Oh, he has seen us. Bring your philosophy to bear, for, after all, you find him more endurable than the others--him or his bicycle, which is it?" As Captain Fenwick came swiftly up, and swung himself off, she added, "That is one point I particularly dislike in the thing. It is always taking you unawares. There is no time to prepare, or to call up one's blandest expression. However, here is Miss Hamilton who has just been singing its praises--yours, I mean." "It's very good," said Claudia, eyeing it critically, "I wish I hadn't been in a hurry for mine." "Yours is well enough. You can have one or two things altered. Look here--" he was beginning, when Miss Arbuthnot broke in. "For pity's sake, spare me a digression on wheels and pistons, or whatever they may be. You can discuss them at your ease on your way to Huntingdon." He glanced at Claudia. Miss Arbuthnot glanced too. "So we can," said the girl cheerfully. "I expect you can put me up to all sorts of things." "Dear me," murmured Miss Arbuthnot, "the world has changed indeed since my day!" "Your day?" "It must have been a hundred years ago, for it would have held up many hands in horror at a young man and a young woman arriving by themselves at a country house." "Yes, it is improving," said Claudia, with scorn, "it doesn't think silly things as it did." The day before this would have been very well, but to-day conscience gave a little tweak at her elbow, recalling her scene with Harry, and she became suddenly silent. Helen noticed the change, and Claudia saw that she noticed. Something made her turn quickly to Fenwick. "I must go," she said. "If you're meaning to stay here, I wish you'd let me take your bicycle to the house. I want to look it over." Miss Arbuthnot stood watching her from under the green boughs. Then she glanced at Fenwick. "She's not going to fall in love with you," she remarked. "Aren't you a little--in advance of the situation?" "Not in advance of your thoughts. What attracts you? But I know." "You're bewildering," he observed rather savagely. "Not content with furnishing me with imaginary fancies, you provide an explanation of them." She went on as if he had not spoken. "She thinks no more of you than of a dozen others she has met in her small life." "You're encouraging." "Oh," said Helen sleepily, "do you want encouragement?" He saw his slip, and looked more angry, but suddenly laughed. "She's naive enough to be amusing in these days. Enthusiastic, and all that, and believing so intolerably in her career. No woman has a right to a career." "Beyond that of losing her heart to Arthur Fenwick." "--Until she's over thirty, at all events. It's got to be pointed out to her." "And you are engaged in the object-lesson? One after your own mind, isn't it?" She spoke in a bitter tone as they strolled along the soft turf. A startled young partridge fluttered across the ride in front of them. Fenwick seemed to have quite recovered his temper, for he laughed lightly. "What makes you so awfully down on me to-day?" "I suppose," she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, "that I was remembering." "If you remember fairly--" She interrupted him. "What woman does? Don't let us talk of what is over. Forget, forget, forget--that is the real lesson of life, and one which you, at any rate, learn easily." He had crown irritable again. "It depends upon what you choose to call forgetting," he said sharply. "Forgetting is like everything else, each person looks at it from his own standpoint." "And makes it a horrid nuisance for others. Come, wasn't that in your mind?" She laughed again. "You credit--discredit--me with thoughts I don't own to," he retorted. "Why am I to be held responsible for the past? If we felt we had made a mistake, was it only I who found it out?" "On the contrary, it was I." "Then why blame me?" "Because I am a woman, I suppose," she said, and a close listener might have detected that her voice trembled. "But I can assure you, I never really blame you. As you say, it was I, and--I was wise." "Oh, of course!" he said, with a touch of pique. "Still," she persisted, "mistakes some times cost more than they are worth, and it is not safe to repeat them." To this he made no answer. "So that you might, at any rate, leave that child alone." He shot out indignantly--"You always speak as if I were to blame!" "Forgive me," she said. "Of course it is unjust." She suddenly added, "What nonsense we have talked! It is disappointing, when one really meant to be useful. I shall go back to the house and try some other way--perhaps copy out a recipe for beef-tea for Mrs Hilton." "Since when have you indulged in such high aspirations?" His tone was still moody. "Oh, they awake, even in me, at times," she returned lightly. "Don't come with me." He lifted his hat stiffly, and Helen stood with a smile and watched him out of sight. Then she sat down on a mound of grass, and cried as if her heart would break. CHAPTER SEVEN. Claudia was ungratefully anxious to leave Thornbury. She had been happy there, but the young expect to be happy, and the last days had made her uncomfortable. Harry said no word, and tried hard to be as he had been when hope still lived in his heart, but Claudia was annoyed when she saw him looking grave, or when his mother remarked she did not know what could be the matter with Harry. "Perhaps he has toothache," said Ruth Baynes, lifting her eyebrows sympathetically. "My brother Walter gets dreadfully low when he has toothache. And it was much worse when he had mumps." "Mumps! Oh, my dear, I hope poor Harry has not caught anything of that sort! They are in the village, and the gardener's little girl certainly had a swollen face. Still--Harry has not complained, has he?" "Not to me," said Claudia, with a laugh. Perhaps in spite of the longing to keep her near him, Harry himself was not sorry when the last day came. The old kindly companionship, even if disdainful on her part, had been sweet, and now that, too, was gone. Claudia scolded him no more, laughed at him no more, and he felt as if she had stepped far away. He blamed himself for the change, but it took the heart out of him. And the gallant effort he made to prevent those who loved him from knowing that he suffered, seemed at times more than he could successfully keep up. Still, when the last moment came, and they all stood at the door to see Claudia and Captain Fenwick ride away together out of his life, Harry went through the worst sensation he had ever experienced. He did his best to hide it, laughed at his mothers misgivings, assuring her that nowadays it was the most common proceeding in the world, and that he meant to take Helen Arbuthnot home in the same fashion; and, instead of retiring to solitude, went straight off to the stable to doctor a lame horse. There were plenty of prosaic and unromantic details to be attended to, of which he shirked not one; the buying pigs, and deciding what should be done with an unprofitable cow, had to be talked over and arranged without impatience. After this he walked off to see the keeper's old mother, who was very irritable with constant pain, and dearly loved to grumble against all her family to Master Harry. And no one knew how big an ache he carried in his kindly heart. But meanwhile? Well, meanwhile it was summer-time, and under a blue sky veiled here and there with white clouds, through lanes in which honeysuckle still ran riot, Claudia and her companion raced swiftly along, or dawdled up the many hills. He was a little surprised at her vigorous enjoyment of all about them, and, so contagious is happiness, found himself, too, making merry over the veriest trifles. Wonder broke out at last. "You have turned me into a boy again. What magic do you use?" "It is not I," said Claudia merrily. "It is the air and the sky and the trees and the great simple things which we think nothing about. Why must you be a boy to feel the enchantment of them all?" "Do you advise me, then, to go and live in a hut?" "Oh, I don't advise. There's a splendid butterfly." She named it correctly. "One of the girls at the college collected butterflies. I don't do it myself because I like them too much. Look! here is a splendid bit of road for a spin. Let us race to that gate, though I shan't have a chance." She dashed off, and contrived so cleverly to prevent his passing, that only at the last minute could Fenwick succeed in slipping round her. "Only just!" she cried, waving her hand. "Oh, that was glorious! I wish we had timed ourselves." They raced again, teased each other, laughed, and behaved like two children on a holiday. As they went down the Huntingdon drive, Claudia gave a sigh of satisfaction. "I've enjoyed it so much, every bit of it, haven't you?" At another time he might have answered with some compliment, but the frank appeal confused him. He was unprepared for such simple delight, in which he could not but feel he had no more special share than twenty other things about them. Claudia had looked upon him as a playfellow-- nothing else. Nor could his vanity flatter him that she leaned upon him in this entry into a world of strangers. Quite unabashed, thoroughly direct, and changed and professional to her fingers' ends, Fenwick, with annoyance for which he could scarcely account, saw amusement growing in his cousin Lady Wilmot's dancing eyes. When they were left alone, it broke out. "Oh, Arthur, Arthur, now I understand!" "You understand nothing at all," he said roughly. There was an occasional roughness in his manner, which cynics said was what women liked. Lady Wilmot only smiled. "Do tell her not to be quite so solemn about it all," she said. "She is so exceedingly determined we shan't for one moment forget what she is here for, that she is for ever flaunting her calling in one's face. But she's quite a nice little thing." "Yes," he repeated in the same tone, "quite a nice little things-- whatever that may mean." "Don't be rude. You might allow for my surprise, when I had made up my mind to a middle-aged being with spectacles and an umbrella, at being confronted with this young little person. I'm very glad--at least I shall be if you can persuade her to unbend, and if Peter doesn't make love to her." "As if Peter had ever eyes for any one but yourself!" But if Lady Wilmot was astonished, Fenwick himself had odd sensations. Beginning his acquaintance with the girl with a certain amount of pique at an indifference to which he was unaccustomed, and a determination to drag her out of it, he had taken a great deal more trouble than was usual with him, and yet had failed. He knew women well enough to own that he had failed utterly, and as his vanity could never endure defeat, the consciousness made him more keen to carry out his purpose. Then came this summer afternoon in which he had seen Claudia in a new light, when something of harmony in the girl's nature with the fresh cool simplicity of a country world, touched him as nothing had touched him for years, and carried him back to his boyish days. For the first time he felt a sharp stab of annoyance when he found that she was up again on her heroic hobby-horse, and that Lady Wilmot's eyes were brimming over with amusement. "Good heavens!" he said to himself savagely, "I must speak to her, prevent her from making such a fool of herself. When she's out of this preposterous nonsense she's charming, but where are her eyes, where's her sense of the ridiculous?" Nor did he ask himself why Claudia's folly should disturb him. He stopped her the next morning in a corridor which served for a picture-gallery. She had on a white dress, and, with her hands clasped behind her, was standing looking at the portrait of a young girl. "Who is it by?" she asked. "I don't know about pictures, but this strikes me as very good." "Romney, I believe," he said; and then abruptly, "Look here, you and I are old friends." "Old friends!" Claudia repeated, opening her eyes. "Older than anybody here, at any rate. And I suppose you'll own that I've knocked about the world more than you? What on earth makes you cram all these people about your business here?" "I think you are rather rude," she said, flushing. "If you were in my position, you would understand." "Your position! We're most of us in some sort of position, but we don't go talking about it all day long. It's just as if you were ashamed of it." "Now I am sure you are rude," Claudia cried, still redder. "Ashamed, indeed! But I don't choose to appear as if I were merely a guest. That is not fair upon my employers. I am a professional, a working woman; I am not going to be paid for just driving about and amusing myself like other girls, and unless I make it quite clear, they will insist upon thinking that is what I expect." "Of course," he said, still roughly, "I know well enough what you have in your head, but you needn't be always cramming it down people's throats. State the fact, if you insist upon it, and then leave it alone." Claudia felt this to be very disagreeable indeed. She said slowly-- "Have you done?" "Naturally you're offended," he went on, with a sudden softening of his voice. "But if you think it fairly over, I believe I may get you to own that it can't have been very pleasant for me to speak?" Her face cleared, and she looked frankly at him. "I suppose it was not," she allowed. "Did you do it on my account, or because you disliked any one you had to do with being laughed at?" But before he had recovered from this rebuke, she added with a certain sweetness which was noticeable in her at times, "Still, you must not think that I am angry. I suppose I was for a moment, but it was foolish of me, because you were right, quite right, to say out what was in your mind. And I dare say, too, that you are right in what you think. I suppose it seems so much more important to me than to them all--not on my own account, but because we feel we are making a beginning--that I have let myself talk too much about it." "So that you forgive me?" he said, quite humbly for him. She laughed. "I forgive you. I dare say that by-and-by I shall have reached the height of being even grateful. But now you must let me go, because if I am not to talk I must work all the harder." "You can always talk to me," he said eagerly. "Oh no," she said, escaping, with a shake of her head. "I must break myself of a bad habit." If Claudia had been mortified by his plain speaking, there was no doubt that she took the lesson to heart. There was no more of that somewhat masterful enthusiasm with which she had up to this time indulged her hearers. She became, instead, extremely reticent, and not an allusion to the college or to professional duties passed her lips. Fenwick was half pleased, half vexed, because this was not the Claudia he knew. He found himself thinking of her with persistence which amazed him. He could not flatter himself that she was angry with him, but would have welcomed her anger as proof that in some way or another he affected her. Why did he not? He raged at the thought of caring that he should, but he could not deny her indifference. The days went by; Claudia still kept her word. She went quietly about the work she had in hand, but would not talk of it--even to Fenwick. This annoyed him, and one evening he threw himself into a chair by her side, and told her so. "Women always go into extremes," he grumbled, when he had made his complaint. Claudia looked at him and laughed. "I never knew any one so difficult to please," she said. "I thought I was carrying out my lessons." "So you are," he replied impatiently, "but you needn't practise your lessons upon everybody. I ought to be an exception." "Why?" "Because I am not a stranger like these other people." "Oh," said Claudia, laughing still more unfeelingly; "I never knew any one make quite so much out of a fortnight before! Wasn't it a fortnight that you had known me?" "I believe I have known you always," he returned hardily. "Days-- weeks--what have they to do with the matter?" "Is that a compliment?" "Uncompromising truth. Don't you see that it gives me the power of understanding you?" This is an appeal which rarely fails with women, and Fenwick knew how to accentuate it by fixing his dark eyes upon the girl, and flinging an intensity of will into his gaze. She merely lifted her eyebrows. "I dare say. I don't think any one ever found me mysterious." He was angrily aware that she spoke truly. There were few complexities in her character to baffle any one, but there was for him a baffling directness and simplicity against which his efforts beat themselves in vain. She met them with an indifference which perpetually incited him to break it down. Lady Wilmot was a little disappointed that Claudia did not carry out the promise of her first hours, for she was a small lady who liked nothing so well as amusement, and had foreseen a rich supply. With the other two or three who were staying there the girl was popular in her own way, which, however, kept her apart except at meals and in the evening. In truth, although she had taken Fenwick's hint both lightly and good-humouredly, it gave her the sort of shock one gets by running full tilt against a wall. She had been anxious to impress those about her with the gravity of woman's work, to see that they put it on a level with man's, to shake off the faintest accusation of frivolity; and, to accomplish this end she was prepared to be pointed at and scorned. With such lofty aspirations nothing could be well more humiliating than to find herself considered a bore. Here lay the point of Fenwick's moral, it was from this he wanted to save her. "A bore, a bore, a bore!" She scourged herself with the taunt, and vowed there should be no more of it, for to the young, ridicule is intolerable. But the resolution made her feel curiously lonely. The girls at the college, mostly reformers, all enthusiasts, largely impressed with the part they had to play, and occasionally in more open revolt, incited and encouraged each other over their work, which seemed to them of supreme importance. When Claudia came out of this atmosphere it still clung about her, so that she babbled of it gravely, as she had babbled to her companions. Now she was sure she had been a bore, and the thought stung. It made her, also, silent and reserved, although this was so unlike her nature that she only got at it by sheer force of will. Fenwick had certainly offered himself as sympathetic, but she was shrewd enough to reflect, "What he warned me against, he feels himself. He is ready to talk because I am a girl and not bad-looking, but only on that account, not because he really cares." And then thought flew to Harry Hilton, not with the wish that she had given him a different answer, but with absolute certainty that he would never have considered her a bore. CHAPTER EIGHT. Huntingdon Hall was a comfortable house, with rooms which Lady Wilmot had already transformed. The grounds, however, were not to compare with those of Thornbury, for they had passed through a long season of neglect, and the trees were tall and lank, requiring both thinning and autumn planting. Claudia's labours would not bear fruit for years. She said this to Sir Peter one day when she had sent to ask him to come and decide for himself whether a certain important change should be carried out. She liked Sir Peter. He was a big clumsy man, rather shy, with twinkling eyes which, when he smiled, screwed themselves into innumerable wrinkles, and a slight hesitation--not amounting to a stammer--in his speech. He invariably gave his decisions clearly. "We are very much obliged to you, Miss Hamilton," he said finally; "but my wife told me to tell you that you must take an off-day now and then, and she wants you to go to Barton Towers to-day." As Claudia hesitated he went on, "I warn you she will accept no denial, and really it is a place which you ought to see." A week ago she would have taken refuge behind her occupation, and afterwards she wished she had done so, at whatever cost; but her new dread of making it and herself ridiculous stopped the words which rose to her lips, and she was just agreeing when Lady Wilmot with her two pugs rustled round the corner. "Ah! here you are, Peter," she called out. "I wish you wouldn't let that boy, Charlie Carter, have your gun. Do go and take it away from him before he kills anybody." He went obediently, and she turned smilingly to Claudia. "Miss Hamilton, has Peter told you? I am not going to have any more unsociable excuses." "I should like to come, please," said Claudia at once. "I knew I should get you!" Lady Wilmot exclaimed triumphantly. "Come with me to the hothouses, and let the men go to their dinner. Do you mind going to Barton on your bicycle? I'd give anything to ride mine, but Peter says I can't because of old Lady Bodmin. It's such a nuisance having to sit up in the victoria with her." And then Lady Wilmot, who was noted for making imprudent speeches, made a very imprudent one indeed. "I'm so glad you will come. We see nothing of you, and I am tired of trying to console Arthur Fenwick." "Captain Fenwick? I don't understand," said Claudia coldly. Lady Wilmot laughed. "Don't you?" she said gaily. "Well, I can't help being amused, because generally it's the other way, and now any one can see that he's devoted, and you treat the poor fellow quite cruelly." "Oh, you are very much mistaken!" cried the girl, frowning. "You ought not--I beg your pardon, but really people ought not to imagine such foolish things. Captain Fenwick is absolutely nothing to me, nor I to him." "Now you are certainly blind. And do you mean to say you haven't thought of him--seriously, I mean?" "I? Never!" returned Claudia proudly. "Nor he of me." "Oh, there you are wrong," said Lady Wilmot, with amusement. She was going on, when Claudia interrupted her with a ring of indignation in her tone which took the other woman by surprise. "Please don't say any more; I hate it! I should hate it if it were true, and it isn't. I can't tell you how much I dislike such things being said!" She stopped. Lady Wilmot looked at her with interest. All emotion is impressive, and Claudia was very much moved in quite an unexpected way. She stood facing her hostess, her girlish features stirred and changed by an expression which had never before touched them. "I beg your pardon," said Lady Wilmot quickly. "I spoke carelessly, as one does sometimes--much too often, if I'm to believe Peter. Don't think of it again. It was only nonsense." "Yes," said Claudia, drawing a deep breath, "it was nonsense. Of course I shan't think of it again." Lady Wilmot hurried after her husband, and caught him in the library. "Peter, Peter," she said in an injured tone, "I thought new women didn't mind what was said to them, and I thought Miss Hamilton was a new woman, and I said the least little bit in the world to her about Arthur, and found myself in quite the wrong box. She fired up, and told me to hold my tongue, or as good as told me. Imagine a girl who is so exceedingly independent, and bent upon taking care of herself, minding a little chaff! I supposed she would mind nothing." "Did Arthur ask you to say anything?" "Don't be annoying. It was a small voyage of discovery on my own account, because I really think he likes her--seriously, I mean, and I wanted to find out." She went on impressively, "I don't think she cares herself one little bit." "Then there's an end of it." "How tiresome you are, Peter!" she said petulantly. "I'll never believe she can stand up against him if he takes the trouble to make love to her. Anyway, I think it very hard she should fly out at me when my intentions were so good." "Well, I hope your good intentions won't do any harm." "How can they? She'd never thought of him. You're rather priggish this morning, Peter, but I may as well tell you that I mean some of them to go on their bicycles--Arthur, and Charlie Carter at all events. I shall give her the chance. If she likes it better, she can drive." The same question was in Claudia's mind. She felt hunted, disdainful, indignant, all at once. First Harry and then Captain Fenwick thrust down her unwilling throat. It was persecution! She, who would have none of them, who was thinking of much more important business, who had meant to live her own life, and, so far as in her lay, to be mistress of her fate, bitterly resented an interruption which seemed to place her at once on a level with all the other pleasure-loving idle girls of the day, whose heads were full of offers and settlements. She! Claudia raised her chin, and looked like an angry nymph. If Fenwick had passed that way he would have met with scant civility. She thought Lady Wilmot impertinent, she wished she had not come to the place, and then suddenly, to her added annoyance, found her eyes brimming with hot tears, which put the final touch to her humiliation. She dashed them away with scornful fierceness. "So,"--she rated herself--"so it has come to this, that if a stupid thing happens, you cry about it! Oh, do pluck up a little spirit and resolve not to think twice about such folly! Most likely it is all her invention, or else he has just been amusing himself in the way men do, and pretending--pretending!--to her that he cares. You should expect to meet such men, Claudia. And what ought you to do? Certainly not trouble yourself about them. Turn yourself into a stone wall. I suppose you have sense enough left to go on just as usual? But I wish, I do wish she hadn't said it! It makes everything disagreeable and stupid. It shan't, though! What's the use of having a will of one's own if one can't use it? If he wants to speak, let him, and there's an end of it; and if he has the better sense to hold his tongue, I shall know she was wrong. And if, as I suppose, we are to go on our bicycles to this tiresome place to-day, I'm not going to blush prettily and draw back; I shall do exactly as I should have done if she hadn't come out and spoilt my morning. The most annoying part of it all is that I have quite forgotten what I meant to do with those hollies. I know that I had some capital notion, and it has gone. Oh, _how_ tiresome men are!" Claudia sat wrathfully down, pulled out her pocket-book, rested her chin on her hands, and forced her mind to stern consideration of her plans. In some degree this brought back her calm, so that when she appeared at luncheon, and ways and means for reaching Barton Towers were discussed, she did not allow a shadow of hesitation to appear in her manner. Lady Bodmin clung to the victoria, and Lady Wilmot made a little face of dismay. Claudia said calmly that of course she could bicycle, and inwardly hoped that Captain Fenwick would not be of the party. But this was far from his intention. "I thought you hated calls?" said Lady Wilmot mischievously. "One has to suffer sometimes." Lady Wilmot laid down her fork. "You might stay at home." "I should never hear the last of it." "Well, then," she said, looking meditatively at Claudia, "you three are provided for." "Three?" said Fenwick quickly. "Yes, Charlie--Charlie Carter. You always try to forget him." "He ought to be forgotten. He's not in the least wanted. Good heavens! a boy who plays practical jokes!" "That is why I want you to look after him," said Lady Wilmot in a firm voice. "Besides, he must go. Lady Bodmin agrees with me." Fenwick flung an aggrieved glance at Claudia, but she was gazing out of the window. In her heart she was saying joyfully-- "He may play practical jokes as much as he likes, and I shall take care he is not forgotten. If worse comes to worst I'll fetch him myself." But this sense of relief was so derogatory to the standard of the professional young woman which she had set up, that she was torn by different feelings, extremely pleased when Charlie Carter arrived, dripping, from a practical investigation of the Black Pond, yet so ashamed of clinging to such a fossilised an institution as a chaperon, that she took herself to task for not agreeing to Captain Fenwick's strongly expressed desire to start and leave the boy to follow. When she refused he hinted at a chancre in herself. "When we came here, you didn't mind trusting yourself to me." "Mind!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Do you suppose I mind, when if you weren't going I should go by myself?" He bit his lip, but pressed his point. "Then come along," he said, "and leave that wretched boy to follow. He has to get food and dry clothes, and will be an hour at least." "There's no hurry," said Claudia coolly. "If you want to overtake the others--go. We'll come after." "You are cruel," he said in a low voice. To this she made no reply, determined to ignore such speeches, but she could not help perceiving that her insistence annoyed him very much, or that he had scarcely recovered himself when they set off. The day was full of the rich strong beauty of late summer, freshened by recent rain which had washed the dusty hedges green again; the clouds were no longer grey and uniform, but broken into great precipitous masses, dazzlingly white in part, and here and there fading softly into blue. Their way at first ran along a road high on a hill, and commanding exquisite views of the country round. But Claudia, in spite of self-scolding, could not call back the fresh and delightful enjoyment of that other day when they had come to Huntingdon. She was on the watch, at times on the defensive, despising herself that it should be so, but heartily wishing that the ride was over. Nor could she utilise Charlie Carter as much as she would have liked, for he was one of a large family, with a profound contempt for all girls except his own sisters, and a yet more profound admiration for Captain Fenwick. He was therefore gruff, and disregardful of Claudia, sidling out of her way, and ready to please his hero by acting as scout and rushing along side lanes in search of short cuts. At such times Claudia made desperate attempts to push on, but there is a limit to this means of escape even on a bicycle, and when hills came, she was obliged to walk up them. Perhaps Fenwick noted the disturbance, and perhaps he preferred it to her former indifference, for now and then a smile crossed his face which it would have enraged her to see. He asked her suddenly whether she liked Huntingdon better than Thornbury. This was safe ground, and she breathed freely. "I have a bigger opening there," she said. "Thornbury was already beautiful, and Huntingdon has to be made so. It's very interesting." "You have said so little about it lately that I had fears." "Women go into extremes, you know," returned Claudia, dimpling, and quoting his own words. "Yes, but you are not like other women. You have independence and originality." As Claudia struggled breathlessly against the hill, he added in a vexed tone, "Why on earth must you be in such a hurry?" "You were in a hurry yourself just now." But she was obliged to get off, and all she could do was to walk with the bicycle between them. "That was to start, not to arrive. Did you really suppose I cared to find myself at Barton Towers?" "I don't know. I know I do. I expect to pick up a great many hints, after what Sir Peter said about the place." "All in good time," he said crossly. "What I want to say, if you will only give me the chance to speak--Good gracious! what is it now?" "Isn't there something wrong with the wheel?" "Nothing at all. What do you suppose I'm going to say, that you won't listen?" Claudia called all her dignity to her aid, and turned an offended face upon him. "Pray go on. I am quite ready to listen." "Well, it's only this. I think it hard that you should shut me out of your hopes and ambitions so determinedly as you have been doing lately. I had flattered myself that you, above all women, were fair enough not to visit on an unfortunate man's head his awkward carrying out of a good intention." "Oh," she cried rashly, "did you suppose--" And then she yet more rashly stopped, for it was a hundred times worse to let him guess at the real reason for her coldness. "If not?" he said, perceiving his advantage, and pushing it. Claudia took refuge in petulancy. "Why on earth must one explain why one does this, or doesn't do that? What do you complain of? That I haven't talked over my ideas with you? Very well, I will talk now. I suppose you have happened to notice a big group of firs, the only fine thing about the place?" And she flourished the note-book Miss Arbuthnot found so obnoxious. "There! As no one can see them unless they go to look, I suggest making a clean sweep of those worthless trees in front, then--" He put up his hand. "Spare me; I don't want detail." "Very well," said Claudia triumphantly. "Then you mustn't complain." "You have run off the track. All that has nothing to do with my complaint. I am anxious, very anxious, to be told what--if you were really not offended at my plain speaking--has altered you towards me." His voice changed, there crept into it a thrill which made Claudia miserably conscious of what might be at hand. She frowned and stared straight before her. "You don't know," he was saying, "how I have looked forward to a chance like this, when I might have you to myself, and now I can hardly get a glance. And yet you are not offended? Then why are you so different from what you were ten days ago?" "How can one always be exactly the same?" she asked coldly. "Besides, you are exaggerating; I don't feel any change." "Oh yes, you do. Something has brought it about. Some confounded tongues have been tattling." "Tattling!" repeated Claudia, frowning harder. "Yes, old cats like Lady Bodmin, who can't see a man and woman talking--" "I know! Isn't it idiotic?" said the girl frankly, turning a relieved face upon him. If she had not looked, perhaps he would not have spoken. In spite of his manoeuvring for a quiet and uninterrupted time with Claudia, he had no intention of saying anything serious--at least so soon. But, like many another man, he lost his balance when he least expected it, and, curiously enough, as with Harry Hilton, it was her name which broke from his lips. "Claudia!" To her unutterable relief, Charlie Carter shot out of a lane, not ten feet ahead of them. "I say, that ways no good," he shouted. "I've been ever so far. You've got to go down this hill, and you'd better look out, for there's a nasty sharp turn at the bottom." Claudia neither heard him nor would she have heeded. Anything at such a moment would have seemed better to her than being forced to listen to the words she felt were imminent. She got quickly on her bicycle, and called out joyfully-- "Oh, I am so tired of pushing! Who will race me down the hill?" "Stop!" cried Fenwick peremptorily. But nothing would have stopped her then. Escape, escape from what she most dreaded to hear lay before her. She was confident in her own powers, and, with a gay wave of the hand, down the steep rough road she went flying at a speed which she found dangerously intoxicating. Charlie Carter, giving an answering whoop of wild delight, rushed after, and Fenwick, inwardly anathematising the folly of his companions, spun past the boy, and closely followed Claudia's track, shouting to her to be careful, and each moment expecting to see her overturned by some of the many stones or ruts. In spite, however, of her excitement, she guided herself cleverly, and only called laughingly back without checking her pace. All might have gone well had it not been for the sharp turn at the foot of the hill. What made this perilous, and what neither Fenwick nor Claudia knew, was that another lane emerged at the same point. The old high-road which the three had taken was but little used for carriages, or such a danger would never have been tolerated. Fenwick realised it before the others, owing to his catching sight over the hedge of the top of a carter's hat. But the cart was jogging down its own hill into the road, and though he pressed his bell, and shouted at the top of his voice, the man did not hear, nor, indeed, so close was Claudia, did it seem possible to avert a collision. By a really prodigious effort, Fenwick shot in between them, pushing her bicycle so violently that it fell on one side, although clear of the cart. He himself was not so fortunate, for the near horse knocked him over, and before the startled driver could pull up, one of the heavy wheels had gone over him. CHAPTER NINE. For the first minutes Claudia could realise nothing but confusion, and a dreadful sense of terror; for the shock to herself had been so great as to set her head whirling, and prevent her instant understanding of what had happened. She slowly gathered herself up, while the driver, who was not quite sober, jumped off, swore loudly, and ran to his horses' heads. In his excitement he would have jerked them back, so that the wheel would again have passed over Fenwick, if Charlie Carter had not caught his arm. "Stop, you fool!" he said. "Can't you see what you're doing?" The driver swore another great oath, and rubbed his arm across his wet forehead. "'Twern't no fault o' mine," he protested. "Why didn't you look ahead?" "Shut up!" said Charlie tersely, "and hold these brutes of yours quiet while I get him out." Claudia, white as a ghost, came to his side. "I can help," she said. "Can you?" said the boy, looking distrustfully at her. "You won't faint, or anything?" "No." "It's all got awfully mixed up, you see. However, here goes! we can't leave him there. I say, I'll hand all I can out to you first before we move him." He was under the cart as he spoke, disentangling the wheels very handily, for the smash had been so complete that they were knotted and twisted in an extraordinary manner. Flies were making the horses fidgety, and a great cart-wheel was very close. At last, as part of the machinery was drawn from under Fenwick, there came a groan. "Oh, take care!" cried Claudia. "All right!" said the boy, more cheerily, for all this time he had been working with a deadly fear in his heart. "I think it must be his leg that's hurt." He emerged the next moment, and stood looking from Claudia to Fenwick, and back again. "Well?" she said, drawing a long breath. He nodded in the direction of the driver, who stood stupidly staring. "That ass of a fellow could lift him if he had the sense, but if any bones are broken he might make bad worse. I say, do you think you're strong enough to pull, or could you get under and keep his leg quiet while I draw him out?" "Give me the man's whip. I know how to make a splint." She was under the cart the next moment, and between them they managed the business by tearing their handkerchiefs into strips. The next thing was to draw him out as smoothly and easily as they could, but it seemed endless, Fenwick groaning heavily, and when the operation was over, Claudia, who prided herself upon her nerve, was disgusted to find herself shaking in every limb. The cart lumbered off, the man, who was really not to blame, but who was sufficiently muddled to be doubtful on the point, glad to escape, and Claudia and Charlie were left staring at each other. "You can stop here with him, can't you?" said the boy. "I must go and fetch a doctor or a carriage or something. That fellow would have been all day about it." "Of course I can stop. You'd better go to the Hall, and send a man for the doctor. Make them be quick." He flung a doubtful look at her, but there was no help for it, and great need for haste. He got on his bicycle and rode away, and Claudia was left with the unconscious Fenwick, and her own reflections. They were sufficiently miserable. Her foolhardiness, or, at any rate, her attempt to escape from an embarrassing situation, had undoubtedly caused the accident, while, to make matters worse, she, who ought to have been the sufferer, had been saved by Fenwick, perhaps at the expense of his own life or limb, for she could not but see that he was seriously hurt. To Claudia, apt to pride herself upon her independence, and power of going her own way, this alone would have been humiliating enough; add to it that the man loved her, for the ring of the one word "Claudia!" which was still in her ears, told her so much beyond a doubt. And here she was, helpless. Before Charlie Carter had been gone ten minutes, she had jumped up and run a little way along the road, feeling as if hours had passed, and help must be near. Then, blaming herself for leaving Fenwick, who might revive to find himself alone, she hurried back to his side, and tried to smooth the jacket which they had folded under his head, wishing meanwhile that she could have gone for help herself, for she was certain she would have been quicker. As it happened, matters had turned out extraordinarily well, for Charlie, on his way to the Hall, met a young surgeon well known to the Wilmots, who at once drove on to the scene of the accident, while the boy fetched a carriage; so that Claudia had not the length of time to wait that she imagined for herself. Moreover, the young man arrived having been told all particulars, and requiring no such explanations from her as she might have found it difficult to give. Indeed, when he glanced at her he saw that she was in no condition to be asked questions, and applied himself to the patient, who was beginning to recover consciousness. But when he got up he looked serious. "Is he very much hurt?" asked Claudia, trembling. "I hope not. I can hardly tell as yet," he answered evasively. "His leg is broken, and you have done all that was possible. Now will you allow me to offer you a little advice? You have also had a fall, I understand?" "Oh, not to hurt." She pulled her hair impatiently over a bruise on her temple. "You can do no more good here,"--Claudia was grateful for the "more"--"and the carriage will very soon arrive from the Hall. If you wouldn't object to my man driving you and your bicycle back, you can see that all is ready for us there." "Must I go?" said poor Claudia piteously. But she added at once, "Yes, yes, I see." The suggestion of overlooking the old housekeeper's preparations was a pious fraud, for there was nothing to be done except to answer a hundred questions, and to drink a certain decoction on which Mrs Graham prided herself, and which in more self-contained moments she would certainly have rejected. This gone through, walking up and down her own room, where she had been banished, she could no longer defend herself against a returning rush of remorse. "Why, why was I such a fool! As if I could not have let him speak and have done with it, instead of plunging off in that idiotic fashion! And then, if only he had left me alone! I should not in the least have minded a broken leg myself, or even worse." She dropped her hands, and stood at the window looking gravely out, for Claudia was at the age when living has not become so strong a habit, and death is not so much shrunk from. "But to see him lying there, and to know that it was all one's own fault--I don't think there could be a more horrid situation. And then it was very plucky, the most plucky thing he could have done, and just when I had been so nasty to him! Oh, Claudia, Claudia, a fine muddle you have made of it! As if you couldn't have kept your head, told him quietly you didn't care for him, and not behaved so altogether idiotically, and landed yourself in such a hateful position! I wish,"-- she paused--"yes, I do wish that Anne was here, for there isn't a soul to whom to turn. Even Harry Hilton. If Harry had done it--he wouldn't have been quick enough, but if he had, it wouldn't have mattered half so much, because he would have taken it as a matter of course, and never thought about it afterwards. But now,"--another pause--"I wonder if he does like me very much? Miss Arbuthnot saw, I suppose, when I didn't, and she implied that he was spoilt--I don't know, I think she might be jealous, and he must have cared a good deal to dash in like that. Oh, why, why was I such a fool as to put myself under such an obligation to any man! Perhaps it's not so bad, perhaps--Oh, there are the wheels. Now I shall know something, and anything, anything must be better than this dreadful uncertainty!" But the uncertainty continued. The leg was set, the patient had recovered consciousness, and had immediately asked for Claudia. But the doctor was still in the house, and had sent for a nurse. More, Claudia could not make out. She had come down, looking very white, and was giving Charlie Carter tea, and a great deal of tea-cake, after which he proposed, as he expressed it, to joggle over towards Barton Towers, expecting to meet and explain matters to Lady Wilmot. He had become more confidential towards Claudia, but also more contemptuous. "I say, how could you be such a duffer?" he demanded. "Didn't you hear me call out to you to look out for that turn?" "No, I didn't," she said meekly. "I wasn't attending." "Then you ought to attend, or you'll always be coming to grief. There's where Carry gets a pull over you." "Who's Carry?" "She's my sister, don't you know? The eldest of the lot. You and she go along much of a muchness, only she doesn't lose her head." "Oh!" murmured Claudia, too conscious that she deserved the reproach to defend herself. "I never saw any one get such a cropper before," he went on, "and it's an awful pity about that wheel of his. It's utterly and entirely done for." She plucked up spirit. "I wish to goodness he had left me alone!" "Me couldn't, of course, because you're a girl. I'm not sure that girls ought to ride at all," said Charlie, helping himself to more tea-cake. "Otherwise, I bet he'd have got out of the way fast enough. I never knew any one cut in as sharply as he did. I couldn't have done it myself." "You! Of course you couldn't, a boy like you!" She was stung to retort. "I wish you'd finish your tea and go. They'll all be wondering what has become of us." "I'll go. But I never saw such a beastly tea as old Fuller has brought in," he remarked, mournfully regarding the empty dish. "Charlie!" "Well?" "You go and ask Mrs Graham how Captain Fenwick is going on, and I'll order in a second tea-cake." "You won't dare." "Won't I?" "Oh, I shan't go up again." "You must. You must take the last, the very last news to Barton Towers. Sometimes five minutes makes a difference." "What rot! However, all right. I'll ring for old Fuller, if you're sure you can tackle him." Claudia was glad to get rid of the boy who seemed so certain that she and she only was to blame, that he served to accentuate her own self-reproach. Still, for the first time in her life, solitude was insupportable, and her thoughts turned longingly again and again to the kindly cousins at Elmslie. Should she telegraph and go back to them the next day, throwing up her work? The idea came weighted with longing, but she rejected it as cowardly; for in spite of the pain and perplexity of her position, she hated to give up what she had begun, conscience telling her that it was unfair to her employers. She flushed and paled too, as she reflected that it would be heartless to leave Huntingdon while Captain Fenwick lay there in a condition for which she might be held responsible, considering that it had been brought about by her own folly. Hateful reflection, which yet served to keep her mind fixed upon the sufferer. Never in her life had she passed such miserable hours. Never had her career seemed so unsatisfying. Nor was it much better when the others appeared. True it was that no one blurted out Charlie's exceedingly downright reproaches, but she had an immediate conviction that he had related the story in such a manner that all the blame rested upon her, while she was so handicapped that it was impossible to excuse herself by explaining the circumstances of the case. She held her head high and looked defiant when, after largely commiserating Captain Fenwick, Lady Bodmin, who had always considered Claudia unduly forward, remarked that she had been given to understand that only the most skilful of cyclists should venture into such stony roads. Claudia, who felt herself skilful, could not say so; but Lady Wilmot dashed to her rescue. "It was all the fault of that corner. It is most dreadfully dangerous, and I am always telling Peter that he must make a fuss about it. Think of Marjory,"--Marjory was the baby--"killing herself there some day!" "Happily Miss Hamilton has not killed herself," said Lady Bodmin sweetly, with a long drag on the last word. Claudia was accustomed to pride herself upon indifference to these pin-pricks, for they had been exercised upon her before. To-day, however, they were stabs, deadly stabs; she shivered as they came, and imagined them even when they did not exist. Her head ached from its severe bruise, and she had sprained her wrist, but not a word of complaint would she utter. Nor could she fail to see that, although both Lady Wilmot, and Sir Peter when he came back, were as kind and comforting as possible, and tried to make light of the disaster, they were uneasily anxious. Some words which she caught made her think that they were discussing sending for Mrs Leslie, Fenwick's married sister, and although Lady Wilmot evidently opposed the project, whatever it was, Claudia's heart stood still at what it might not portend. The evening passed in a strange disjointed fashion. Generally they all played billiards, to-night only Sir Peter and Charlie went off. Once Claudia stepped out on the terrace, thankful to find herself alone, with the great night about her. The sweep of the park lying in broad outline under a full moon, took a mysterious beauty which was wanting by day, and was inexpressibly soothing. She stood still for a little while and drank it in, then her eye fell upon a corner of the house from which through the open window a light darted out. As she looked, a dark shadow crossed it, and she remembered that it was the window of Fenwick's room. All her unrest returned. She walked down until she was underneath it, and stopped, vividly picturing the suffering which he was enduring, and she had caused. As she stood, another window was thrown open, and she heard voices. Evidently the doctor and some one else, the nurse or Lady Wilmot, had gone into the adjoining room, and in the still night the doctor's low words fell distinctly on her ears. "I must not conceal from you," he said, "that his condition is very grave." CHAPTER TEN. A writer has said, and with truth, that while a woman expects her friends to belong, as it were, to her whole life, and to adapt themselves to its many sides, a man, instead of desiring such universal sympathy, keeps his friends each on his own ground, and would be disgusted if either attempted to poach on the other. He may have thus a club friend, and a sporting friend, an antipodean and a corresponding friend, and such and such only they remain, while the sporting friend has never written him a letter in his life, and the antipodean would scarcely find a word to say if they met in Pall Mall. And this differing view of friendship makes difficulties between man and woman. Harry Hilton and Arthur Fenwick had been school friends, and there had remained, for as men they had little in common, and professed to find as little. Still the tie, such as it was, would last always, and Harry was a good deal shocked to hear of the accident, quite irrespectively of its bearing upon Claudia. He went over to Huntingdon Hall the next day, and Claudia, who forced herself to do her work, but broke off at intervals to hear the last report, met him near the house. She was so glad to see him that she forgot the past, and greeted him with her old ease. But he was shocked at her appearance. "Oh, that's nothing!" she said, trying to speak lightly. "We are all having a bad time, and as I was the wretched cause, of course, in some ways, mine is the worst. What have you heard?" "Only the fact that Fenwick was thrown under a cart. Why should you take the blame?" "Because it was my folly. I would race down a hill, the cart cut across at the bottom, and I should have been under it if he had not pushed me on one side. He couldn't get out of the way himself." She shuddered. "Oh, well," said Harry, instinctively trying to comfort her, "it was an accident which might have happened to any one. I'm only thankful he did push you." "I'm not," she said, frowning with the pain of remembrance. They walked on in silence. "How is he?" said Harry suddenly. Claudia's hands knotted themselves. "Very ill." "His leg is broken, isn't it?" "Yes, but not badly. They fear other injuries. A second doctor comes to-night, and Mrs Leslie--his sister." Harry's hopefulness asserted itself against her dreary tone. "It mayn't be as bad as they think. I know Fenwick better than they, and he's a tough fellow. He'll come round, you'll see!" A smile dawned on her face. "Do you really think so, or are you only-- saying it?" "Honour bright, I think so. You see, as I said, I know him, and they don't." He added with more effort, "Don't worry so much over it." She turned frankly towards him, and drew a deep breath. "Perhaps you're right. At any rate, I'm very glad you came, for there was no one I could speak to, freely. Sir Peter is in his study, and Lady Wilmot makes too light of it, and as for Lady Bodmin, she's hateful." "Yes, then I'm very glad I came," said Harry manfully. He was not clever, but he had that gift of helpfulness which makes the man or woman who possesses it a tower of strength to their friends. Everything looked brighter to Claudia, and she cast no reflection at what it cost him to walk by her side and feel convinced that all her thoughts were centred upon Fenwick. He owned with a sigh that it could hardly have been otherwise. Lady Wilmot insisted upon his remaining to luncheon, and Sir Peter welcomed him warmly. A more hopeful spirit seemed to have sprung up with his advent, yet the accounts of Fenwick remained alarming enough. "We've sent for Gertrude Leslie. Peter would have it, but it's a great bore," said Lady Wilmot, making a face. "She has all poor Arthur's faults and none of his charm. However! She hates nursing, so perhaps she won't stay." "Oh, she won't stay when she sees he's better," Harry agreed. "If he does get better," remarked Lady Bodmin, looking pointedly at Claudia. "Of course he will," said Harry, with decision. "What I expect is that he's having a touch of the fever he picked up in India, and that your doctor doesn't know about it, and is puzzled. How are your improvements getting on here, Miss Hamilton?" he went on cheerily. "My mother insists upon every one going to look at that view of the Marldon hills which you opened out for us, and my father is awfully pleased, because he says his father used to talk about seeing them when he was a boy, and he'd forgotten." She flung him a grateful look. "We're going to rival you, but not just yet," said Sir Peter. "We've got to take it on trust for some time. What I admire in Miss Hamilton is the determination she shows." Claudia was wishing that she had stuck to her work, and taken no holiday, but she owned with relief that Harry had made things brighter, and flung a ray of hope upon the situation. She liked him extremely, and flattered herself that he had forgotten that stupid slip of his which had vexed her so much, and obliged her to speak severely. But the past weeks had sufficiently shaken her sense of security to make her glad that when Sir Peter suggested a walk to the Black Pond, that Harry might see what she proposed doing, he came himself, and brought Charlie Carter. It was the spot she liked best at Huntingdon. The fine firs which, flinging their sullen shadows on the water, had given it its name, now stood out, bold and black, and free from cramping surroundings. Claudia had cleared with an unsparing hand, and with good results. Long grass and rushes fringed the waters edge, the moor-fowl's haunt, and on a still day the clear reflections doubled each green blade, while the great stems of the firs sprang up clean and straight and strong as columns. A little boathouse stood, picturesquely shadowed, and Charlie had got out the boat before any one saw what he was doing, and insisted on pulling them round the Pond. Harry took the other oar, Sir Peter steered, and Claudia sat looking round her, as the others supposed, with an eye to effects. She did, indeed, honestly try to call them up. But her work had suddenly become, if not distasteful, at least a labour, so that instead of the enthusiasm which used to possess her, as some thought, unduly, it required whip and scourge to hold her to it at all. And as they rowed along, through an opening in the trees, the house stood out distinctly, and, with the house, Fenwick's open window. Her eye fell upon it, and remained. She recollected how one day when she was planning and arranging, she had seen him coming along, striding through brake fern, and evidently in pursuit of her, and how she had slipped behind a trunk and so baffled his search. It was one of those little remembrances which circumstances may arm with a sting. What would she not have given to have seen him coming now! Tears, remorseful tears, gathered in her eyes, and as she glanced hastily at her companions she was sure that Harry Hilton had surprised them. She, on her part, had surprised the look which she dreaded, and when they parted, her good-bye was wanting in the frank friendliness which had marked her greeting. CHAPTER ELEVEN. The second doctor came, and his opinion was, on the whole, less unsatisfactory. He allowed that there was reason for alarm, and that some of the symptoms were perplexing, but with great care he thought it possible that a day or two might bring improvement. Mrs Leslie also arrived, and took prompt command, although she was careful to let her hosts understand that she had left home at great inconvenience to herself. "Such nonsense!" said Lady Wilmot to Claudia. "The great inconvenience means that she has been obliged to throw up one or two engagements. I'm sure her husband, poor man, must be grateful to us for giving him a little time in which he may call his soul his own." Claudia looked white and worried. Her fears had returned upon her, and she could not laugh lightly as Lady Wilmot seemed able to laugh, even when things were at their worst. Imagination often paints in stronger colours than reality; she had not seen Fenwick, and pictured him more suffering than was the case. Besides, she had just heard that the doctors could express no decided opinion for two or three days, a time which to her restlessness seemed unendurable. She looked blankly at Lady Wilmot, not at first realising who she was talking about. "Oh, Mrs Leslie," she said at last, forcing back her attention, "isn't she like her brother?" "Dreadfully. But what in a man is a nice peremptory manner, is simply odious in a woman. I wondered you didn't rend her when she talked to you in that way, and asked all those questions. And I wished you hadn't said that it was your fault." "It was." "It wasn't. It was the County Council's, or whoever it is who ought to see after our roads. Arthur said so himself, and he wanted of all things to know if you were hurt." "He is very kind," said Claudia coldly. She hated herself for minding anything at a time when anxiety held them all, but from behind Lady Wilmot's good-natured consolations it appeared to her that she detected a smile of triumph peeping out. "See what I told you!" it seemed to say, "see what he has done, and deny now, if you dare, that he cares for you!" With that "Claudia!" ringing in her ears, how could she deny it, even to herself? If no other result came from the whirl of inward questioning, it had no doubt the effect of fixing her thoughts very closely upon Captain Fenwick. Minutes--hours--crawled by. Claudia lived upon the crumbs which were flung to her, not daring to ask for them in larger quantities. Charlie Carter departed, and she missed him because, though casual in his answers, he was sure to know what was going on in the house, and sometimes imparted his knowledge. Then she fell to working feverishly again, keeping out of doors half the day. But wherever she was, she contrived with few and short intervals, to have the house in view, and with the house, Fenwick's window. Sometimes a white-aproned figure--the nurse--would stand there, looking out, and once when she drew down the blind to shut out the glare, Claudia went through a sudden and agonising dread. She stood staring, deaf to one of the workmen who had advanced to inquire about a particular order, and watching the other windows to see whether the too-significant sign were repeated in them. It was on this day that when she came down to dinner she found that Fenwick had been for some hours making steady improvement, and that all were hopeful. From this time, indeed, he improved steadily, and Lady Wilmot announced with some glee that he was only anxious to get rid of Mrs Leslie. "They're too much alike. They irritate each other." "I would back Arthur's will against most people's," said Sir Peter quietly. "Oh yes, and generally she has to knock under, but now, now that he is ill, she gets him at a disadvantage, and it is rather comic. However, she goes to-morrow, and then, as soon as he can be moved into my boudoir, we must all set to work to make it pleasant for him." And she flung a queer look at Claudia. Claudia herself, in spite of the comparative lifting of the load, was finding the decisions of life not quite so simple a matter as she had imagined. Fenwick was better, no doubt, but there was still talk which made her uneasy. And though she would gladly have gone off, her work was unfinished, and there seemed less excuse for a hurried departure than before. The Wilmots might not unnaturally wonder why she went. What could she say? What excuse could she offer? What excuse, at any rate, which Lady Wilmot's sharp eyes would not see through? She must wait, hoping earnestly that she might find an opportunity for leaving before she was called upon to take her turn in amusing the invalid's convalescence. Meanwhile, when she glanced at Fenwick's window, which was often, she pictured a much more dismal interior than facts warranted. If it had not been that the monotony of illness must be always irksome to an active man, Fenwick would have allowed that he was well off in a pleasant room, with every luxury in papers, books, flowers, and a cheerful selection of visitors to wile away the time. "It's better, anyway, than grilling in India, with fever on you, the temperature anything you like and a little more, and the punkah gone to sleep," he admitted one day when Sir Peter had left his wife to the not uncongenial task of raising her cousin's spirits, which happened to be rather depressed. "Thank you," she said politely. "Well, isn't it?" he returned, glancing at her. "I don't know. But I prefer gratitude not altogether expressed in negatives." "You know what I mean," he said rather sulkily. "How much longer am I going to be tied by the leg?" Lady Wilmot was a born matchmaker. Her eyes began to sparkle. "Never mind. I'm certain she's thinking of you a great deal." "That's nothing," he returned, in the same tone. "It's her way to take things violently. But if I'm only a weight on her conscience, as soon as I'm all right again, she'll fling me off." His cousin buried her head cosily in a soft silk cushion. "I wish you'd tell me seriously, Arthur, whether you really mean it?" "Of course I do." "You always say of course--each time." "Well, this time I've broken my leg over it. I couldn't do more, could I?" "No-o-o," replied Lady Wilmot doubtfully. "I know the symptoms, as you infer, and I assure you I never had them so strongly before." "You used to tell _me_ that." "They weren't to compare. One lives and learns." "You looked wretched enough," said Lady Wilmot, sitting up indignantly. "I'm sure I never saw such a contrast as between you and Peter at the wedding. Every one noticed it." "It didn't last. Look at us now. Peter--Peter is getting--well, let us call it broad I say, hands up! Don't pitch things at a man that's down." "I wonder your illness hasn't made you more truthful! What will you say next about Peter?" "I don't want to talk of him at all. He doesn't interest me." "Shall I call the nurse?" inquired Lady Wilmot, rising with dignity. "No, no; sit down, and tell me more about Claudia. It's awful to think how much time I'm wasting." His cousin settled herself once more against the cushion, took up one of the pugs, and smiled in token of forgiveness. "I'm not so sure," she said doubtfully. "Pity?" "And remorse. You see, Charlie Carter was for ever dinning into her that it was all her fault." "It wasn't, really," said Fenwick, hastily. "I can't exactly explain." "Oh, I can! I've felt all along that she was trying to avoid a crisis. You're so dreadfully impetuous." "I like that! If I had only chosen to be impetuous, as you call it, Peter would have been nowhere." "Perhaps, if you're expecting me to help you, you'll condescend to talk sense." "Oh, you'll help; you're dying to be at it." She vouchsafed no reply. "I'll tell you one thing you can do," he said eagerly. "If you really believe she's feeling a bit sentimental over my spill--" Lady Wilmot was playing with her pug's ears. She interrupted sweetly-- "I think she feels the injury to your bicycle very much." "That's all the same thing. Then, whatever happens, don't let her go till I'm about again, or stretched on a sofa, or something effective. Let her fuss about with the trees as much as she likes." "She can fuss, of course. But she has said a few words which make me think she wants to be off, and I'm not sure whether--" "Whether?" "If she sticks on here, whether she mayn't find her remorse just a little boring?" "No, no, she mustn't; it will grow for being fed upon. Look here, Flo, don't make me out too well." "I don't think you're very ill." "I'm recovering gradually, only gradually. The least disturbance may throw me back." "Oh!" "And meanwhile I'll harry Spooner till he lets me be carried into your sanctum. What's the good of all their carrying dodges if they don't use them?" Lady Wilmot put down the pug, rose up, and glanced mischievously at her cousin. "Well, I hope you really mean it this time. Remember Helen Arbuthnot." "If you talk about remembering," began Fenwick boldly. She was gone. It must have been this conversation which made Lady Wilmot after luncheon walk with Claudia towards the Black Pond, and become enthusiastic in her praises of what had been done. "We are so delighted!" she said. "Of course Peter thinks about the estate and all that kind of thing, but I think of Marjory. It's such a comfort to feel that by the time she grows up, she'll have a decent-looking place of her own ready for her, and really my heart sank when I brought her here after poor old Sir Ralph's death." Claudia was pleased, but said quickly-- "I shall soon have finished." "Oh no," said Lady Wilmot. "I know Peter wants your advice about some outlying things. Why should you go? You are your own mistress, aren't you?" With a pang quite new to her, she owned that she was. "And I heard you say you had no other engagement. Then what stands in your way? Don't say you find us horrid!" she added, with a gravity which concealed a smile. "Your going would be an awful disappointment to poor Arthur." "But he is much better?" "Better--yes. But I am afraid it must be a long business, and,"--she hesitated--"don't you think he deserves a little reward?" The girl winced and grew pale. As Fenwick said, she took things violently, she was at an age when she unconsciously exaggerated her own importance in the world, and it seemed to her as if all manner of tremendous issues hung upon her answer. Besides, up to now, since the accident Lady Wilmot had not dropped such a hint. Her heart beat too fast for her to speak. At last she turned a white face upon her companion. "I don't know," she said vaguely. Lady Wilmot drew her face towards her and kissed her. "Stay!" she said lightly. "Very well," returned Claudia, drawing a deep breath. For in that moment she renounced all--freedom, ambition--something within her whispering persistently that if she stayed it would be to become Arthur Fenwick's wife. Her thoughts were sufficiently in a whirl for her not to know whether the conviction brought delight or terror, but they had fastened themselves upon him so continuously of late, that quite an unexpected feeling had sprung up in her heart, so that, if she were not in love with himself, she was nearly so with the image she had created. Her very indifference became a wrong when she reflected that it had caused him such suffering. Lady Wilmot's sympathy was of a light-hearted nature, it was not profound enough to enable her to plunge into depths, but Claudia's was a sufficiently transparent countenance to betray that it cost her a struggle to utter these two words, and if there was a struggle, it probably had to do with more than the mere fact of going or staying. She therefore hastened to encourage her. "I am more than glad," she said smiling. "To-morrow that odious Lady Bodmin--as Peter isn't here I may abuse her--departs, and though the Comyns are due, I am not quite sure that Mr Comyns and Arthur hit it off very well; at any rate, I don't think Arthur cares much for either of them. So I particularly want him to have something pleasant to look forward to." Instinctively Claudia turned and faced her. "Will he care?" She spoke the words scarcely above her breath, and was hardly aware that in a sudden craving for sympathy and counsel she had uttered them. "Will he?" Lady Wilmot laughed out. "If you could have heard him to-day when I told him you had talked of going!" Claudia walked on silently. The longing had changed to shrinking, and she wished that Lady Wilmot would leave her, but instead of this she ventured on another step. "I assure you," she said, "that Arthur is a dear fellow." "Oh, don't let us talk about him any more!" cried the girl with sudden passion. She felt tossed, dragged, buffeted, a very shuttlecock of circumstance, impatient of the insistent tones in which that "Claudia!" still rang in her ears. Harry Hilton had also uttered her name, but it had not stirred her in the same imperative way, it had not been emphasised so disastrously, or burnt upon her memory. She trembled as she spoke, and Lady Wilmot looked at her with some bewilderment as to the cause of her emotion. She was not quite sure that it boded well. "No, you are right, we won't talk about him any more," she agreed soothingly. "You have promised to stay, and that is all we wanted. I foresee that after all we shall have a good time, and I am so glad, for Arthur has always been my favourite cousin, though he is sometimes tiresome, and I have always tried to help him to what he wanted. It used to be jam out of the housekeeper's closet," she added, with a laugh. The girl would not laugh. "She takes it all so seriously!" Lady Wilmot explained afterwards to her husband with light compunction. "Dear me, Peter, if I had thought so tremendously about such episodes, you'd have married a wreck! So far as I can remember, I used rather to enjoy them." This was not Claudia's condition. Enjoyment! It was misery; expectant, frightened, yet entrancing misery, such as she had never pictured to herself. It had been altogether different with Harry Hilton; she had scarcely thought of him except as a momentarily disturbing incident, and, quite sure that his healthy young face would never pale a shade, no idea of suffering had so much as crossed her mind. She flung him a restless thought now and then, comparing the two men, and certain that all the intellectual advantages were heaped on Fenwick. His natural gifts were varied, and he knew extraordinarily well how to make them appear at their best, helped to it by a dominating vanity, at once so strong and sensitive, that it never landed him in ridiculous positions, as may easily be the case with a coarser kind. Claudia, for instance, had never guessed its existence. She thought of him as a shrewd keen man, forgave him some shortness of temper, and liked the touch of roughness he occasionally showed. It had struck her that Miss Arbuthnot cared for him, and that he was indifferent, so that his evident attraction for herself flattered her. These were trifles, the real tie lay in his dash to her rescue and consequent suffering. Nothing could have smitten down her spirited independence so completely as the knowledge that he lay helpless owing to what he had done for her; it was the very thing to make her feel that any sacrifice must be made which could compensate. CHAPTER TWELVE. Helen Arbuthnot was used to come and go as she liked at Thornbury, but it was not very often that she returned within a week of taking leave. She had done so now, making some slight excuse, which for hospitable Mrs Hilton was unnecessary. The talk often fell upon Fenwick's accident, and she knew that Harry had been to Huntingdon. Ruth Baynes described how an accident, not certainly identical, but still an accident, once befell her eldest nephew. Helen listened in silence until she had Harry alone. "There's no actual danger, is there?" she asked indifferently. "Sir Peter said there was. At least the doctors were at fault." She had followed him into the gun-room, where he was rubbing the stock of a gun. "Then I suppose you'll be going over again?" "Not again. Somebody will write." She tapped the wooden arms of her chair impatiently. "Oh," she exclaimed, "you're the most lukewarm of lovers! I've no patience with you!" "Can't be helped," he exclaimed, polishing laboriously. "It can. Don't you see that it's nothing short of unfeeling to show no anxiety when--when your Claudia has nearly brought herself and her career to an end?" "She's all right. Besides, my Claudia, as you call her, isn't mine at all, and doesn't mean to have anything to do with me." "Only because you're so wrong-headed. Didn't I advise you to keep quiet?" "Yes." "And now I advise you to move. And you do just the contrary." He had his back turned to her. "Didn't it really ever strike you," he said, "that Fenwick cared?" After a moment's hesitation, she answered with a change of manner and a laugh-- "Oh, how like a man! When he takes a fancy he thinks every one else must be possessed with it too!" She ceased, however, to urge him, for good-tempered as he was, he could stick to his point, and she saw that he was resolved not to go again to Huntingdon. He had made this determination partly because he could not see Claudia without disturbance, and his healthy nature objected to the stirring up of emotions which could lead to nothing; and partly because in spite of Miss Arbuthnot's taunt he was persuaded that Fenwick liked Claudia, and a love of fair play inclined him to keep out of the way at a moment when his rival might be supposed to be at a disadvantage. It would not have changed his conduct had he known the truth, that, in his disabled condition, Fenwick, passive, was making such way as he might never have done had he been about as usual. Only Miss Arbuthnot's pertinacity had led to the conversation. She did not renew it, and he was not the man to care to talk of his own feelings. At the end of a few days better news arrived from Huntingdon, and Helen departed as suddenly as she had come. Then it was that Harry became more restless. Thornbury had too many bitter-sweet recollections, Huntingdon was too easily within reach, at Elmslie he might hear something of Claudia, and at Elmslie he would meet with Anne Cartwright's tender sympathy, never wanting in tact. At Elmslie, accordingly, he presented himself one day, unannounced, but certain of welcome. It was Philippa's shrewdness which first discovered that the times were out of joint. "Something has happened," she said to Anne, "and whatever it may be, take my word that Claudia is at the bottom of it." "Why?" said Anne, startled. "He hasn't talked of her at all." "And that's why," retorted Philippa. "When he left he was on the way to talk a great deal." "Then do you suppose?" "Yes, I suppose she has refused him, and that you will soon hear more about it. He is much too good for her, but I imagine you can't tell him so?" "Now you are unfair." Philippa laughed, shrugged her shoulders, and went off, rattling her keys. Anne, after a momentary hesitation, left the house, and strolled down to the river, where she found Harry smoking, with Vic stretched by his side. Looking at him with keener attention, she saw something in his eyes which told her that her quicker sister's surmise, at least as to his unhappiness, was right. He jumped up, and she put her hand on his arm. "I'm too old for damp grass, but here's the bench which Claudia hated." She added, very kindly, "What is it, Harry?" He laughed queerly. "Nothing out of the common. I've had a spill, and the world is going round a bit--that's all. It'll steady itself by-and-by, no doubt. You can't do anything, Anne, and I'm sure I don't know why I tell you." "Is it Claudia?" asked Anne unheeding. He nodded. "And?" She paused. "She didn't give me any hope, and I can't persuade myself that I've the ghost of a chance. Still--I suppose I should feel worse if there wasn't one." He broke off and laughed again. "She is very young. Oh, I shouldn't despair yet," urged Anne, born consoler. "Don't you think you've been hasty?" He pulled Vic's soft ears. "Perhaps. I couldn't wait." "Well, as I say, I wouldn't despair. Give her time." "She hasn't said anything herself?" He was thirsting for a word. "No. Indeed, Philippa and I have been puzzled that we have heard nothing from Claudia since she first went to the Wilmots'. We don't want her to feel bound to write, but generally she does. I suppose this explains it." "You know about the accident?" "Accident? No," said Anne, with alarm. "Oh, she's all right. But Fenwick, who was with her, got let in rather badly." And he gave her a brief account of the disaster. "Oh, poor child!" cried Anne. "How terrible for her! That explains, of course, particularly,"--she smiled--"because she knows we are old-fashioned enough to be a little shy of bicycles. Come, Harry, it seems to me that you have despaired too soon. Try again, later. Her head is filled with other ideas now, but give her time and she will come round." Irony is apt to follow on the heels of good advice. "I don't know," said Harry slowly. "I haven't quite told you all." She waited. "This other man, who got the chance--" "Captain Fenwick?" "She thinks me a stay-at-home duffer, as I am; while he--he's a clever chap, and has been about, and can talk of the things she fancies, and-- well, it can't be helped! Look here, Anne, Philippa must really speak to Smith about that hay." If it had been a relief to him to say so much, he was evidently indisposed to say more, and, Anne not being one to force confidences, they talked of indifferent matters, went to see the rick, strolled round the kitchen garden, ate apricots, and were turning towards the house when a maid came out, bringing a letter. "Oddly enough, this is from Claudia," exclaimed Anne impulsively. The next moment, as she glanced through it, she repented having spoken. "What's wrong?" demanded Harry, watching her face. As she hesitated, he added quietly, "You had better tell me." "It is from Claudia." "So you said. Well?" There was a new peremptoriness in his tone which she recognised. "She writes about what we talked of," she said, with difficulty, and keeping her eyes fixed on the letter. "She--she is engaged to this Captain Fenwick. You may read the letter, if you like," she added more quickly, holding it out to him. He did not take it, and there was a moment's silence. "Thank you," he said, and no more. His voice was hoarse, and she longed to comfort him, not knowing how, and casting about for words. "This accident--" He interrupted her. "It's over and done with--we won't talk about it. Can I do anything for you in the town?" Anne felt with a pang that it was not as in his old boyish troubles, and that the best she could do was to stand aside, and take no notice. She went off with her letter to Philippa, who was not very sympathetic. "I'm not sorry. Harry will meet with somebody else, somebody, I do hope, without a career. Of course he feels it at first, but he'll get over it, oh yes, Anne, I'm hardened enough to think so. Give me the letter. What does she say?--um--um--um--`saved my life at the risk of his own'--that's strong--`dreadfully hurt--getting better'--I don't see what else she could do--`stay on here for another week or two before going back to Elmslie.' One thing is certain, Anne, we needn't have had that new carpet for the bedroom." "She doesn't say much," commented Anne. "No, not much. I wonder--" CHAPTER THIRTEEN. If the wonder Philippa expressed related to Claudia's own feelings, she need have had no misgivings. In spite of hesitation, reluctance, beforehand, in spite of the coldness which stiffened her on the first day that she saw Fenwick in Lady Wilmot's den, she was becoming, daily, shyly, yet radiantly happy. Fenwick's treatment of her was subtly admirable. Her reserves, her pride, raised all his masterful instincts, and perhaps the sudden check to his active physical life inclined him the more to concentrate his energies upon conquering her love. It gave these energies a field. More than once she would have revolted from the touch of the new emotion; quivering and startled, she was inclined to fly, and it needed just the treatment he knew how to apply, to soothe her. The first sight of him, stretched helpless, had struck at her heart. The readiness with which he tossed aside her stammering words of regret made a direct appeal to her own generosity, and day by day the bond tightened. He knew--none better--how to play upon her ambitions and interests, talked as if they would continue, planned what further opportunities might be hers, let her suppose that here was perfect, satisfying sympathy, until it seemed to her that a delightful confidence had sprung up between them, such a confidence as even the college had never afforded. He waited for this, waited until, after some tentative advance and shrinking, it stood strong, and the rest was curiously easy. A few sentences instinct, as he knew how to make them, with all that was both tender and dominant, finished his work; Claudia was his almost before she realised that she had yielded, before Lady Wilmot, who was flitting in and out, could frame a tidy excuse for leaving the two alone. And it was extremely simple. Fenwick looked into her eyes, and thought them charming; she, trying to meet his with her usual frank directness, faltered, and could not face them. Then he whispered three words, and she made a mute sign, eloquent in its vagueness. No collapse could have been more complete, nothing could have been more unlike the manner in which she resolved to go through such a scene when, like other girls, she had rehearsed its possibilities. Claudia had always supposed that she should marry, and, when the moment came, intended to speak decidedly, very decidedly, to her lover, and let him make his choice; either take her with the understanding that she would stick to her profession, and accept whatever ties it imposed, or not take her at all. It is true that she almost invariably pictured him as yielding, but she meant to be dignified and quite firm; reflecting with contempt that the old ways of love-making were altogether unsuitable to the new girl, who was made of different stuff. And this was the result! Nothing, as she had to own, could have been less impressive than the figure she had cut; nothing more commonplace than the words spoken, except that she had a saving conviction that no one had ever spoken them with Fenwick's strength, and this made a difference. Indeed, although she was obliged to own that she had failed, the fact did not seem to trouble her. She looked in the glass, and smiled at her own dimpling face, remembering what he had said; and recollecting further that she had heard him remark that he liked a particular shade of yellow, sat down and wrote to London for an evening frock of that colour. As for the obnoxious pocket-book, it remained where it had been laid the day before. When she was alone, or with Fenwick, Claudia's happiness was like herself, eager and brilliant, for all happiness takes its colouring from the person it touches. With others she was not altogether at her ease, having an unacknowledged suspicion that Lady Wilmot was smiling in her sleeve, as indeed she was, and broadly. "Because it is so amusingly unexpected," she informed her husband. "No two persons could be more unsuited to each other." Sir Peter twinkled. "Is that recommendation likely to last?" "She was so _very_ indifferent, so _very_ much swallowed up by her own ideas," pursued his wife, unheeding; "and Arthur has a way of expecting women to flutter round him, and be flattered when he speaks. Oh, he's a very good fellow, but that's his little weakness, and that's what makes me laugh. But I'm really extremely glad. It's much better for him than marrying a woman like--well, for instance, like Helen Arbuthnot, all bitter herbs." Sir Peter, who was well aware that his wife was not without her jealousies, let this statement pass uncontradicted, but spoke a word or two as to Claudia. "I suppose she knows her own mind? She hasn't been talked into it?" "Talked! When she was as easy to get at as a prickly pear. What a dear old donkey you are, Peter! I would have given her all sorts of good advice, and told her a hundred and fifty useful things, but I never had the chance. No. It's very odd, but I can tell exactly what brought it about, and it's only another instance of Arthur's extraordinary luck. You know that day we went to Barton Towers?" "Well?" "Well, he said something which startled her, and, to stop it, away she dashed down the hill, and then came the smash up." "You call that luck, do you?" "Certainly," said his wife, with dignity. "What's a broken leg or two?" "No one would mind it, of course." "It will mend up all right, and it made Claudia listen to him. I should hope you would not have objected to breaking both legs on the day you proposed to me." He flicked the ash off his cigar. "Nothing of the sort was necessary," he remarked. "You were too happy." Lady Wilmot sighed. "How little you know! I've never liked to tell you, but--you're sure you won't mind?" "Go on." "As it happened, I tossed up." "Tossed up?" "You see, there was nothing else to do. I couldn't make up my mind between you and Lord Baliol, so I thought of this plan, and you happened to be heads. I shall tell Marjory about it when she grows up. It's so simple!" "I dare say. And suppose the wrong man comes up?" "Oh, then she needn't pay," explained Lady Wilmot, escaping with a laugh. "A woman has always that in reserve." It seemed, indeed, as if Fenwick's recovery became extraordinarily, almost suspiciously, rapid. After two or three days' rain the sun shone bravely again, and he was carried out on the lawn. He chose to have Claudia at command, and as she was scrupulously conscientious in wishing to finish her work, she used to be out at the earliest hour possible, planning and arranging, and leaving directions for the woodmen to carry out. Fenwick, on discovering this, declared she looked fagged. "I won't have you do it." "But," she protested, half laughing, half vexed, "it has to be done." "Not it! I'll talk to Peter. I'm your first consideration." And she yielded. Indeed by a sort of rebound from what Lady Wilmot had called prickliness, she was now extraordinarily yielding, finding it delightful to give up her will to his. Lady Wilmot, who had expected amusement from the situation and was disappointed, shook her head, and even went so far as to warn the girl that there was not a man in the world who could bear spoiling. Claudia was indignant. Fenwick drove her in a low pony carriage for the first time that afternoon, and as they went along the lanes she told him. "Don't let Flo lecture you," he said quickly. "I won't have her interfering." This fell in with her own desires and she agreed happily. She drew a long breath of content as she spoke. All at that moment seemed perfect, and, looking back, she wondered at nothing so much as her own hesitation. The day was bright and touched with keen exhilaration, the road, cut through deep hedges, ran, richly shadowed, up and down hill, and a fresh wind drove the clouds overhead. They passed the blacksmith's forge, and a dog flew barking after them, then they went up, up, up, past white cottages, each standing in its garden, and Fenwick let the reins lie loosely on the pony's back. When they reached the top they stopped. Behind, and on one side, the woods of Huntingdon, gaining dignity by distance, swept down the valley, while in front spread a fair broken view of pasture land running into blue upland, and darkened here and there by veiling cloud. It was Claudia's moment of absolute content, and Fenwick broke it. "I spoke to Spooner to-day about getting away." "What did he say?" "He thinks it's all right, and that I can go soon." "But--" She hesitated shyly. Fenwick bent forward and untwisted a rein without looking at her. "Doesn't he think you ought to keep quiet a little longer?" "I dare say. But one can't stick in one place for ever." Then, as if he realised that the words might convey a pang, he added quickly, "Of course it's delightful, only I must get back to the camp, where another fellow is howling at having to do my work." "I see," said Claudia, in a low voice. The pang had just touched her, but she would not acknowledge it. "And I have been here an unconscionable time. I shall go to Elmslie, and if the Wilmots want me again about anything, I can run down later on." "Oh, they won't want you," said Fenwick, dryly. "Well, go to Elmslie for a week or two if you think you must, and then come to Aldershot, and stay with Gertrude." "Will she have me?" He smiled at her. "Won't she? I believe you'll enjoy the life there immensely." She was quite happy and gay again. "And by that time your leg will be well, and we shall be able to go all over the country on our bicycles." "I think not," he returned rather grimly. "I don't care to see a woman at that work near the camp." "Oh," she cried impetuously, "I thought you were quite above that sort of thing!" "Did you? I'm not, then." His tone was the same, and she hesitated. Then she said more slowly-- "You're not afraid for me, are you? Of course, when I was so stupid the other day, it was only because--because--" "I'm not afraid," he said, touching up the pony. "I think you manage it very fairly well. I don't care about it for you--that's all. Except quite in the country." Her dismay was so evident that he turned and looked at her. "My darling, do you really mind very much? For my sake?" "For your sake?--oh no," faltered Claudia. "It isn't the bicycling, but--I--I thought we should have done so much together, and--do you mean that you have always disliked it?" "I don't object to it in some places, or when it isn't carried to extremes. Besides, there are sure to be occasional opportunities." He had her hand in his, and she could but smile and submit, and resolve that there should be no opposition where he felt so strongly. Perhaps, though he disclaimed it, the accident had left him nervous on her account, and, by-and-by, when he had forgotten, his dislike would subside. But, to her dismay, she found that many things of which he had hitherto spoken lightly, and, as she thought, approvingly, were not at all to his taste under the altered condition of things. She began to be aware that he was binding her round with small restrictions, pushing her into the very groove against which she had revolted, and, worse than all, ridiculing the revolt itself. He no longer restrained his mockery of her enthusiasms, enthusiasms which she had fondly imagined he shared. If she talked politics, Fenwick's face darkened at the opinions she expressed, and he told her in so many words that he did not wish her to allude to professional duties, or even to think about them any more. It is true that these demands were sweetened by the passionate vibrations of the voice in which he told her that he loved her, and at such moments all sacrifice for love seemed joy; but when she was alone her thoughts were not so restful and satisfied as in the first days. She even began to long for a breathing space at Elmslie, when she would no longer be swept away by his impetuous will, and could, as it were, stand, recover her breath, and face the changed view in which life confronted her. It came at last. Fenwick intended to have taken her himself to Elmslie, but was summoned to Aldershot a day sooner than he expected. And Claudia, Claudia who despised those girls who could not travel alone, was obliged to put up with the guardianship of Lady Wilmot's maid, and to go first class, with her beloved bicycle in the luggage-van. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Claudia had her breathing space, and at first enjoyed it. Her cousins were kind without being curious; she could say as little or as much as she liked about her engagement, and only Emily, Emily, whose remarks she assured herself she did not mind, so much as hinted at the changed circumstances of her career, for which, as she could not yet forget them herself, she was grateful. Nor, although she heard of Harry Hilton's visit, and, putting two and two together, realised that it coincided with her letter of announcement, could she accuse him of having said anything to prejudice her in her cousins' eyes. She would not have been sorry to find fault with him, but she had to own that he had behaved very well, and there was even a moment when the thought flashed upon her that, in his hands, her liberties would not have been so circumscribed as now appeared probable. She drove it indignantly from her. What was Harry by the side of Arthur Fenwick? On the other hand, Philippa maintained that Claudia was decidedly the better for her engagement. She said to Anne-- "She has gained broader views, and is not nearly so self-absorbed. The man must be a man of sense. She does not force her plans for reforming the world down one's throat with such vigour; indeed, I am almost inclined to doubt whether she now altogether expects to reform the world. That is, indeed, a discovery!" Anne, kind Anne, smiled and sighed, with thought of Harry. "I do hope that she likes him." "Could he have worked such a miracle if she did not?" In Claudia's mind there was no doubt. Away from Fenwick, his vigorous personality impressed her the more, and she told herself that his love was such a gift as would make a woman gladly give up all that clashed with it. There was something almost pathetic in her anxiety to put away what she had learnt to see that he disliked, and, though her strong young nature would always demand outlet for its energies, she hastily accepted what little was common to other girls and other lives about her. Her beloved pocket-book was laid aside, or only looked at surreptitiously, she wrote to the college, renouncing all wish for engagements; she cut tickets for Emily, took her bicycle into retired roads, never once tried to shock the Dean's wife, and controlled her very hand-writing. It was natural enough that after the first welcome breathing space such a life of suppression should soon weary her, and that she began to count the days before she might get her invitation to Aldershot. Once and once only was Harry specially alluded to. "Mr Hilton has been ill again," Philippa announced, folding a letter. "Poor Harry!" Claudia imagined a reproach. "Why should you call him poor Harry?" she said shortly. "I never saw any one quite so much his own master. Nobody at Thornbury thinks of contradicting him." "Let Anne enlarge," said Philippa laughing. "It's her topic." "Life has been for him one long contradiction!" Anne exclaimed, nothing loth. "I dare say he never told you how his whole mind was set upon being a soldier, and how he got into the very regiment he wanted, and then had to leave on account of his father's illness?" "No," returned Claudia, slowly: "he never told me." "Then, when Mr Hilton was better, he had a chance of going out to South Africa, and it was the same thing over again, the scheme completely knocked on the head. No one could know Harry, with his love of sport and roughing it, and suppose for a moment that his home life is what he would choose. But, as he never dreams of complaining, his giving up all he cares for is taken as a matter of course." Anne spoke with quite unusual vehemence, and Claudia reddened and did not answer. A month ago, she would have made light of such a tale, but love had already taught her something of its divine power of self-sacrifice, and it touched her. At the same time, by one of the contrarieties of a woman's nature, she felt indignant with Harry because she had been the means of losing him another of life's blessings. Why had he been so stupid? He had only to hold his tongue for them to have remained excellent friends. Then she fell to wondering whether, if the same accident had threatened her when Harry was by her side, he would have acted as Fenwick had acted, and was the more vexed to have to own that he could have done nothing else. She wanted, it will be seen, to keep all the glory for her special hero, but the mental training she had received, would not allow her to make her mind a present to her emotions. They left her, however, restless, and she regretfully decided that Elmslie was dull, and looked impatiently for the invitation to Aldershot. It came quite as quickly as was possible, Fenwick took care of that, and then she--she, Claudia!--had to wait for an escort, to Philippa's private and unbounded amusement; for although Fenwick wished her to have a maid, space was too limited in the hut to receive her, and that concession to helpless young ladyhood, as Claudia scornfully called it, had to be postponed until her return. Finally she went off in the companionship of two of the Dean's daughters, and Mrs Leslie's maid was to meet her at the junction where they parted. The bicycle was left behind, and Emily commented-- "How odd! I thought you took it everywhere." Claudia was trying to forget this innocent speech as she whirled along in the train by the side of the Dean's daughters, who, had she but known it, were as much astonished at the reversal of the position as she could be, but it rankled. She had made larger concessions without feeling as sore as she felt through the journey, and was only soothed by the glad sight of Fenwick's tall figure on the junction platform, in place of the maid she had expected. The next moment she frowned. He was not alone, Mrs Leslie was with him, and she felt oddly shy. She reflected, further, that the Dean's daughters had done nothing to require so many thanks. "As if I were a helpless parcel!" she murmured rebelliously. It was unfortunate, for it revived the spirit of antagonism which had met Mrs Leslie at Huntingdon. There, however, Claudia had seen but little of her, here she was somebody to be taken in hand, advised, checked, arranged for, informed that Arthur did not like this, that, or the other, and treated in fact as a very average young woman of early years, whose inexperience required superior counselling. "Arthur's is a curious nature," said his sister on the morning after Claudia's arrival. The girl lifted her eyebrows. "I think I understand him. Few persons do," pursued Mrs Leslie, reflectively, "and I always felt anxious that his wife should be a person of experience. You will require patience, for one thing, I warn you." "Perhaps he will require it, too," said Claudia, with a short laugh which made Mrs Leslie look at her. "I hope not," she said gravely. "I don't think his stock is large. I advise you to be the one to yield." Claudia found this and similar hints maddening, but when she carried her indignation to Fenwick, he was disposed to take his sister's side. "She has rather a peremptory manner," was the utmost he would allow. "It's only manner. She's had to pilot old Leslie along, and very well she's done it." "I dare say. But I don't require piloting," said Claudia stiffly. Fenwick smiled, and her colour rose. "What do you mean?" "By what?" "By looking like that." He rose and stretched his arms. "My dear Claudia, you're in an aggressive humour to-day." Her heart smote her. "I believe I was cross," she said with difficulty. "I thought that she--Gertrude--treated me as if I was a child." "Learn philosophy," he said, with a yawn. "What does it matter?" It is very well to be told to study philosophy, but there are times when the advice carries insult with it. Claudia jumped up and stood at the window. From thence she shot a glance at him. He was not looking at her, but strolling about the room, taking up a book here and there. "They've made themselves pretty snug here," he remarked at last. "Gertrude thoroughly understands how to rig up a hut." "I like the Marchmonts' better," said Claudia coldly. "Do you? Tastes differ, but it isn't really so good. Thornton, now, has dropped into comfortable quarters. By the way, somebody said that Miss Arbuthnot was due at the Thorntons' this week." Claudia was cross, and, conscious of it, tried to swallow her displeasure. "We met her yesterday," she said, "and--didn't you hear?--somebody else said that she was going to be married." He turned sharply. "Married? Miss Arbuthnot? Don't believe it." She opened her eyes at his tone. "Why? Is there anything extraordinary in the fact?" "Oh no," he said, recovering himself rather awkwardly from the momentary excitement. "It's the sort of thing which is always being said of her. She's food for gossips. And it never comes to anything." "It will have to come soon, I suppose," remarked Claudia, with the scorn of twenty-one for thirty-one. He took no notice of this, but as Mrs Leslie came into the room, turned sharply upon her. "Gertrude, what's this about Helen Arbuthnot?" "Helen!" reflected Claudia. "Colonel Tomlinson said she was going to marry Lord Dartmoor's eldest son." "That stick! Rot!" Mrs Leslie looked at him with warning in her eye. "Really, Arthur, I don't see why it shouldn't be true. She is sure to marry somebody." "Somebody, perhaps. It needn't be a fool." He spoke savagely, and Claudia wondered why. His sister made haste to change the subject. "Remember, Claudia, that there is the polo match this afternoon. We must go." The girl flung an imploring glance at Fenwick. "You?" she said inquiringly. "I can't," he returned. "I'm going to try a little bicycling of the most feeble description to suit a cripple." "Oh," she cried eagerly, "do let me come! The Marchmonts said I could always have one of their bicycles, and it would be delightful. Please, Arthur!" She went close to him, and he played with the frill of her sleeve. "Delightful, but not to be done. I hate to see women bicycling about these places." "But," she urged, "you used to go with the Marchmonts. They told me so." "He wasn't engaged to a Marchmont," said Mrs Leslie, arranging her flowers. "That makes all the difference." "Why?" asked Claudia. As no one answered her question she turned again to Fenwick, "Won't you let me come, this once, this first time? You really may want help." "I should say he had better look after himself--this time," said Mrs Leslie pointedly, and Claudia crimsoned. "I'm all right," said Fenwick, stretching himself again. "Look here, Claudia, go to the polo, like a good girl, and--if I can, I'll drop in there later." She said no more, and though she had a sense of defeat, it did not prevent her from becoming absorbingly interested in the rush and energy of the polo match. The day was both bright and showery; every now and then a sudden storm sent the carriages under the trees, then the sun broke out again, and no one was much the worse. As the afternoon wore on, her attention began to flag, for she expected Fenwick. He came late. "How have you managed?" she asked eagerly. "Well enough. I didn't go far." More hesitatingly he added, "I turned in at the Thorntons'." "Then," remarked his sister, "you heard whether the report about Helen Arbuthnot is true?" "I heard nothing." "I wonder she did not tell you." "There was an excellent reason," he said curtly. "They weren't at home. What's Bateman racing for?--oh, a new stick. I say, Lucas got that goal cleverly! I wonder what he'd take for his pony." Claudia's eyes sparkled. "I wish, oh, how I wish women could play polo!" "Good heavens! I'm thankful they don't attempt it!" She turned upon him with a laughing retort, but something in his face checked her. She said the next moment, "There is Miss Arbuthnot." Fenwick looked without making a remark, and exerted himself for Claudia's entertainment. Before long, however, he left her, strolling over to the carriage where Helen sat. She gave him the slightest of greetings, but, undismayed, he folded his arms on the side of the carriage, and talked in a low voice. "I have been to see you." "How judicious of you to choose such an admirably safe hour for visits!" "Is that all you have to say after what I've been going through? Weeks on a sick bed!" She looked at him between half-shut eyes. "Haven't I seen you since? Oh, don't expect me to pity you. I believe your accident was simply an ingenious plant, to get what you had set your mind upon. By the way, let me offer my congratulations." "Thank you. You are very good. Rumour says you will soon be requiring the same." "Yes?" The word was distinctly interrogative. Fenwick found himself pondering what it carried with it. Miss Arbuthnot's appearance was prosperous, her tone--provokingly indifferent--stung him into retort. "Does yes signify yes?" "I have never yet been sure. It so entirely depends on the speaker." "Then," he returned boldly, "in your case I should say it meant the opposite." Miss Arbuthnot appeared to consider. "You were never backward in assertion," she said. "Tell me, has your Claudia really given up her career and her pocket-book?" "Do you suppose I should allow my wife to make a fool of herself?" "Oh, forgive me! I did not know you were married." "You know, at any rate, what I mean." "Perhaps. By the way, I left your rival on a fair way to recovery." "My rival?" "Your friend, then--Harry Hilton. He is an excellent fellow, and honestly, I think he would have been more suitable to Claudia." "Thank you," said Fenwick grimly. "It seems she did not think so." "No. We women are so slow in learning our lessons that we are left with no time in which to use them." "You must have learnt yours, then, at an early age." The two fencers looked at each other, and she bent her head slightly. "Yes. I have at least learned to take the goods the gods send." "Meaning Mr Pelham, and a future twenty thousand a year?" Fenwick shot out sharply. She raised her eyebrows. "Possibly." He suddenly drew back, and went to the other side of the carriage. Claudia, in the pony-cart, had lost her interest in the match. She made only monosyllabic replies, but she was listening intently to Mrs Leslie's remarks, more than one of which related to Miss Arbuthnot. Finally she said-- "I wonder whether the report about her is true? It would be curious if she and Arthur married in the same year." "Why curious?" "Because at one time--Oh, well," she added with a laugh, "you can cross-question Arthur." Claudia made no answer; she seemed to be taken up with a wild gallop of the ponies across the ground. As they drove home they passed the Thornton carriage, and were stopped by a sign from its mistress. "Captain Fenwick has gone," she said, "and has half promised that you will all dine with us after the inspection to-morrow. Will you?" Mrs Leslie hesitated and accepted. Miss Arbuthnot, who had nodded to Claudia, now leaned forward. "The Thornbury trees," she said, "are beginning to recover from the shocks you gave them, but Harry has to go and explain and apologise to them. I know he apologises." The girl had not time to answer; the pony did not like stopping, and whisked them away. "Helen was looking very well," remarked Mrs Leslie. "What was she saying about the Thornbury trees?" "I had to cut down a few,"--Claudia hesitated--was it possible she was becoming reluctant to allude to what had been her pride?--"I went down there, you know,"--she lifted her head, and out came the obnoxious word--"professionally." "Good gracious, what do you mean?" "Has Arthur not told you that I was--that I am a landscape gardener?" asked Claudia, with all the dignity she could call to her aid. Mrs Leslie broke into a peal of laughter. "My dear child, I beg your pardon, but you are so comic! Arthur's wife a landscape gardener! How long have you played with this amazing fancy?" "It has not been play," said Claudia stiffening. "I went through a regular training, and have had two engagements." And then she broke off suddenly with a miserable wonder how the engagements, in which she had felt such an honest pride, had come to her. One was through Harry Hilton, and the other through Fenwick. Could it be possible! She murmured the Wilmots' name, and Mrs Leslie's next words completed her humiliation. "Oh, the Wilmots!" she said, still laughing. "Flo will do anything for Arthur." "Do you mean--" began the girl hotly. "Oh, of course they liked having you,"--Mrs Leslie felt that she had gone rather far--"but I tell you honestly that I suspect it was more because you were young and pretty, and perhaps because it amused them to see you taking life so seriously, than on account of your--what am I to call it--profession?" "Call it what you like," said Claudia proudly, and staring in front of her. "We are not likely to agree in the view we take of it. I have been brought up to think that idleness is not the desirable element in a woman's life which you all seem to consider it. As for Arthur, if he is ashamed of it for his wife, he has changed very much since he talked of it a few weeks ago." She made her little speech quietly and well, though her voice trembled as she ended, because she could not but feel that he had changed. "Settle that between you," said Mrs Leslie, in a light tone. "It doesn't seem to me at all his line." When she could get hold of her brother, she attacked him. "Arthur, why didn't you give me a hint? What extraordinary craze is this of Claudia's? Do you know that she calls herself a landscape gardener?" He frowned. "Has she gone back to that rubbish? I thought it was at an end. Though, mind you, there was something very engaging in the serious view she took of her duties. She hadn't a thought to fling in another direction." "Absurd! And you encouraged it?" "It was the only way of getting at her. Besides, I knew if once I made her care, I could stop it, and stopped it I have, unless you have rubbed her the wrong way again. How did you come upon it?" "Helen Arbuthnot alluded to the Thornbury trees. I can't think why Helen has come here now," said Mrs Leslie impatiently. "I wish she were married and done with." Fenwick made no answer. Possibly he had not heard. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. The march past was one of those brilliant spectacles with which the camp delights its visitors. Royalty was there--indeed, royalties had gathered; the day was perfect, not over-hot, with fleecy clouds flinging soft shadows on the downs. There were the usual manoeuvres on the Foxhills; there was the usual futile thirst for information as to what was going to happen, and the usual ignorance; the usual anxious dread on the part of husbands engaged lest their wives should get in the way, and stop the advance of a regiment; the usual thrills of pointing interest over distant puffs of smoke or gleaming metal; the usual captive balloon, and not quite the usual amount of dust. Claudia, eager and ready, was more like her usual self than she had been since her arrival at Aldershot, keenly interested, and rejoicing quite unduly when she found that Fenwick's battery was on the conquering side. Then came the stirring march past, artillery waggons lumbering along, cheerful regimental bands, a change, a skirl of pipes, and to the proud defiant tones of "The Campbells are comin'," the Argyll Highlanders swung by in splendid barbaric dress, like a company of giants. Claudia's eyes were bright, and she did not so much as hear her companion's criticisms. Fenwick's battery passed early, and, leaving it, he came back to where his sister and Claudia stood in the foremost row, for the girl had been far too much carried away to consent to remain in the carriage. He looked approvingly at her sparkling and animated face. "You should not have been in this place, though," he said to his sister. "You'd have seen better on the other side of the Duke." But Mrs Leslie demurred. "Colonel Manson advised us to come here, and nothing could have been nicer. There, we should have had horses all round us." "Well, they wouldn't have hurt you. Come along now, and see the end of it." "Why should we? Stay here, Claudia. You won't get such a good view higher up." The girl thought the same, but went. As soon, however, as Fenwick reached the coveted spot, he began to discover its shortcomings, and to complain of the dust and glare. Claudia laughed. "Let us go somewhere else," she said. "I don't mind." "Well, all the best is over, and there's no fun in sticking through it to the end. I want to speak to Lucas over there about his pony." "Is that the polo man?" "Yes." "And are you going in for polo?" "Not unlikely. If I do, I shall do the thing thoroughly, and his is about the only pony I fancy." "I shouldn't think he'd care to part with it." "So they say." Something in his tone told her that in the difficulty lay the attraction. They walked across the broken ground to the spot where young Lucas stood, and he laughed the suggestion to scorn. "Sell Tommy!" he said. "My dear fellow, not if I know it!" "Well, if you should--" "But I shan't. I shall have to be stone broke first." Fenwick went on unheeding--"Let me have the refusal." "Oh, as to that, all right! If worse comes to the worst and I've got to run, I'll leave word that Tommy is yours. Will that suit you?" "Down to the ground." Both men laughed, and as Claudia and Fenwick walked away, she said-- "I'm afraid you'll have to put up with another pony." "Not I!" he returned. "It's Tommy or none. But I shall get him." She glanced curiously at him. "Do you always get what you want?" "Pretty generally. When I set my mind upon it." "And," she went on slowly, "do you always care about it when you have got it?" But she did not wait for an answer. "Look," she said, "all the carriages are on the move, so it must be over. I'm sorry, for it has been delightful." For a minute he made no reply. Then he asked suddenly-- "Who's that man with the Thorntons?" "Gertrude fancied it was very likely Mr Pelham." "What an ass the fellow looks!" To this she made no answer. Fenwick was silent and abrupt; he took her to Mrs Leslie, and then left her to ride back to Aldershot. That evening was the Thorntons' dinner, and Claudia, who plumed herself upon her own powers of independent decision, found herself swept away by Mrs Leslie. "What are you going to wear?" she asked. "It had better be the green. I'm sure Arthur would prefer the green." And green she wore, although she scourged herself with hard words as she dressed. "It only remains to stick a white camellia in my hair, and go down, blushing and simpering behind ringlets. Whose business is it what I wear? Why do I give way? Why can't I hold my own? Oh, Claudia, Claudia, is this the end of all your fine theories?" And then the anguish of a question broke from her, a question which she had been prising down, dreading that if once it took form it might be unanswerable--"Does he care? Does he really care? He did, when I did not, and why was he so cruel as to force me into loving him, if he was not certain of himself? If I were only sure of him, should I mind one bit all his sister's domineering ways? Not I! I could hold my own against her, wear what I liked, say what I liked, do what I liked, in spite of all the `in laws' in the world. But now she has me at a disadvantage, and knows it. He is behind her, and when she says, `Arthur prefers this, Arthur chooses that,' all the resistance goes out of me and leaves me a limp coward. I fancy that she must know best, and that I had better do what she suggests, and I am not myself one bit. I have never been myself since I came here, I am just somebody else, and worse, for I am just the sort of girl I so despised, the very feeble creature I could not have imagined myself sinking into. How we used to laugh at them at the college! How the girls would laugh if they could see me now! And I am afraid I shouldn't even mind their laughing. I am fallen too low to have any self-respect left, and I know that if I were only sure in my own heart, I should give up all that I cared for-- everything--for him, just as he made me tell him I could; if only, only, I were convinced that he felt the same now that he did. And perhaps he does. Perhaps it is only that I don't quite understand. Perhaps it is all part of my turning into an idiotic girl. Perhaps all men--nice men--are the same. Certainly, I should hate his taking too much notice, being too effusive, too silly! I dare say it is only a foolish fancy of mine. On with your green frock, stupid Claudia, and for pity's sake look at things healthily, instead of taking to morbid fancies!" She sighed as she finished, but no self-harangue could have been wiser, and she resolutely set herself to carry it out; bore without flinching Mrs Leslie's comments upon her dress, and tried to be quite content with the young subaltern who fell to her lot at dinner, while to Fenwick was given Miss Arbuthnot, and Mr Pelham took in Mrs Thornton and sat by the side of Miss Arbuthnot. Claudia even tried to convince herself that the arrangement was one she would have chosen, because she was thus able to look at the others. She was curious to know whether the story of Helen's engagement was true. "She does not say much to him," she reflected, "but--as Arthur said--he does look rather a non-entity. And then she and Arthur have known each other a long time, and he can be so pleasant, and able to talk of things which I dare say that other man knows nothing about. It is odd, though, that when we were at Thornbury it never struck me that they were particularly friends." She stifled another sigh. "I suppose I was taken up with other things, and didn't notice. Well, now I mustn't stare at them so much, however interesting it is. I must talk to this poor boy next me, who is smiling, and quite pleased all about nothing." "Your Claudia looks pretty to-night," Miss Arbuthnot was remarking. She put up her glasses as she spoke. "My Claudia--as you call her--has a trick of looking pretty." "She has, and I never denied it. But she has upset my theories. I thought she would prove herself indifferent to you all for some time to come. Oh, don't smile! A man may be vain--he can't help himself, I suppose, but when his vanity peeps out it is insupportable." "Have you impressed that upon the individual to your right?" "Time enough," said Miss Arbuthnot coolly. "Besides, you are mistaken. He is not vain." "Fortunate man to have secured you as his advocate!" She was silent. "What other excellent characteristics does he boast?" "I did not know we were talking of him." "Oh, I must talk. I have been thinking of him ever since yesterday." "And why yesterday?" "Because it was then I heard what the world is saying." "I should have thought you of all men would have hesitated to believe what the world says." "Is it wrong, then?" asked Fenwick eagerly. She made a movement as of balancing her hands. "It may or may not be. You will see." "You speak as if it were a matter of indifference," he said so bitterly that she slowly turned her face towards him, and lifted her eyebrows. "As it must be--to you," she replied coldly. "Forgive me--that is impossible," he said, dropping his voice, and staring before him. The next moment Miss Arbuthnot was addressing a remark to her other neighbour. Fenwick marched up to Claudia directly the men reached the drawing-room. The Thorntons lived in the permanent barracks, and the regimental band was playing on the drilling ground. "How are you getting on? Bored?" he inquired. She might have said no if she had been an older woman. As it was, she replied truthfully that she had been, and allowed her eyes to express the pleasure she felt. "Every one was out of place at dinner. Mrs Thornton pitchforks people about." He spoke almost apologetically, and added quickly, "That's a pretty frock you've got on, Claudia." "Is it?" She blest it. "But," he went on, giving way to some inward irritation, "I agree with you that it's an awful bore having to come out in this way among a lot of people who can only talk rot. As for that,"--he indicated Pelham with a movement of his head--"I should be surprised to find that he owned a single idea." He spoke with unusual bitterness, and the girl looked at him, surprised. Fenwick not infrequently showed temper, but it required more to excite it than an occasional foolish young man, whom it was quite easy to avoid. Evidently, however, he was put out. He found fault with the band, with the airs they played, with the quarters, and, indeed, impartially, with whatever topic presented itself. Claudia, armed with a new forbearance, exerted herself to charm away the mood, and partly succeeded. She was conscious that, as he had implied, she was looking her best, and that when his eye fell upon her, it softened. Yet, by a curious contradiction, she was also conscious, and it gave her such a sick conviction of impotence as she had never before experienced, that he was not always attending to her, and, even worse than this, that she was beating her brains for some subject with which to divert him. She knew but little of those everyday topics to which most of us fly as to blessed houses of refuge. She had really bound herself, as Philippa quickly discovered, in narrowest fetters, flinging a strong personality into one interest, of which being suddenly deprived, she became like a dislodged hermit crab, unable to find another resting-place. But she knew this much, that two persons in full sympathy with each other, would have no need to seek for common subjects of interest. The love which Fenwick's vanity had set himself to awake, was indeed alive, stirring feelings partly of passionate joy, and partly sharp anguish; but she was also aware of strange forces which seemed to draw her in directions where she would not go, and of vague disturbances for which she could not account. It was a curious moment now for a swift flash of such discomfort to dart through her, yet here it was, and for just that moment it blinded her to her surroundings. She looked up with a start to find Fenwick on his feet, and Helen Arbuthnot standing before her. Helen was holding out her hand and smiling. "As you would not come to me, I have come to you," she said. "So I hear you are no longer a lady of the woods, but have joined the ordinary ways of us mortals." Claudia coloured. She was taken by surprise, and thought Miss Arbuthnot showed bad taste in harping upon these topics. Displeasure made her answer as she might not otherwise have done-- "I hope to be in woods again one day." "Really?" Somewhat to her surprise, Fenwick came to her assistance. "As she has nothing of that sort here on which to expend her energies, she is going to take up the moral improvement of the British soldier instead. I hear her asking very searching questions on the subject." His tone was light but not sarcastic, and Claudia turned and smiled at him. "That's not fair," she said. "I only asked questions because I know absolutely nothing." "I should ask questions too, if the answers weren't so unsatisfactory," said Miss Arbuthnot, taking the chair Fenwick had left. "Don't you find that people always know either too much or too little? But of course at this point it is for Captain Fenwick to answer any questions you may be pleased to put." The girl, who was shy of open allusions to her position, was annoyed by Miss Arbuthnot's manner. At Thornbury she had almost liked her, and to Thornbury she returned, ignoring the last remark. "Can you tell me anything about Mr Hilton? I hope he is better?" "I suppose so, but I don't know why you should hope it. Life can't give him much pleasure, and he manages to make it a burden for everybody else, especially for Harry." "Oh, Harry! Harry's a lucky beggar," said Fenwick. He had not sat down, but stood with his hands behind him, holding the back of the chair against which he leaned. "You say so? That's what comes of not grumbling. I should like to see you doing Harry's work for a day. We should all hear of it," she added sarcastically. "Oh, praise him as much as you like,"--was there a slight emphasis on the him?--"you are right, he deserves it. Granting a few limitations, Harry Hilton is a first-rate fellow." He looked at Miss Arbuthnot smiling, she, too, smiled back. Claudia, on the contrary, frowned slightly, not from displeasure, but from a feeling of being puzzled. "Now that they are both engaged they seem on better terms than they were before," she pondered. "I wonder why it should be, I wonder what has brought them together?" For she knew they had not met. The next moment she heard Miss Arbuthnot being invited to drive on the Artillery coach. "Thanks, no," she said indifferently. "I've too much on hand just now." "To go about with--him, I suppose," he said sharply. "But you can bring him--if you must." "What a real gush of hospitality!" she returned in a mocking tone. "Alas! even if I must, it is doubtful whether he would." "Well--ask him." "I think not." She stood up as she spoke, massive and handsome. "I don't think it would be any use. But I am going back now to talk to him." Claudia watched her cross the room, and caught Mr Pelham's beaming look. "Oh, it must be true, he looks so happy!" she cried impulsively. "And, Arthur, I think you are hard on him. He has quite a good face." She did not catch Fenwick's muttered ejaculation--"Confound him!" CHAPTER SIXTEEN. Claudia's young and vigorous interests were attracted by all that was connected with the camp, too much so, indeed, to please Fenwick. She ran out whenever a regiment passed, or when she heard distant sounds of drill. "You don't want to be shown the stables, do you?" "Oh, I do, particularly." He gave way, but with a discontent which took the pleasure out of it. Another time he remarked to his sister-- "Can't you give Claudia a hint not to be so tremendously excited about the band in church? She talked of it to Dawson till he must suppose she comes from the wilds." Something in his tone made Mrs Leslie look at him in dismay. "Arthur," she said impressively, "you are not getting tired of her, are you?" He turned angrily upon her. "Tired! Rubbish!" She went on, disregarding. "It would be simply disgraceful. I should be ashamed to look any one in the face. First Helen Arbuthnot, and then this poor girl." "Have you done?" he said savagely. "No. I mean to speak. I must. I have thought at times, I own, that in spite of the break off between you and Helen, you had a sneaking kindness for each other, but now you have both split away in different directions, so that is quite at an end." "She's not married yet, and I don't believe she can like that idiot," growled Fenwick. "Arthur!" "Well?" "You're not--" He interrupted her. "What have I said? Nothing about marrying her myself, have I? Take my advice, Gertrude, and don't meddle. I've never stood meddling yet, and I'm not going to now. Mind you, this doesn't matter to you or to any one else." "It does matter," she persisted. "With the girl in my house, I am certainly responsible." "I deny it. If she's satisfied, what have you to say?" "Oh," she said impatiently, "of course she's satisfied! You know how to talk, and it is easy enough to please a girl of that age." "Very well, then. By your own showing, you've nothing to say. I'm going to marry her, and that's the end of it." Fenwick was not a pleasant person to have an argument with; almost invariably it brought out in him a certain hard tenacity, which made other men angry. Perhaps Mrs Leslie was less sensitive to it than was the rest of the world, but even she shrank from the shock of clashing wills, which more than once had led to a bitter dispute between brother and sister. The conversation, however, had left her distinctly uncomfortable, and she reflected long whether she should give Claudia a hint. Yet it was difficult to know how much or how little she should say, and it seemed better that if nothing were really amiss, the girl should not have her suspicions raised. Only--for she was really a conscientious woman, and Claudia was a fatherless girl--she resolved that if things became worse, she would take her part determinedly against Arthur or any one else. And this not so much from liking as from an innate feeling for justice. Unfortunately, her hidden fear did not act very wisely. It made her watchful and almost irritable with Claudia. She could not say in so many words, "Don't do this, don't say that, your fate is trembling in the balance," but she contrived to convey it in her actions, growing so evidently anxious over the most trifling movements or expressions, that the girl, in spite of indignant self-protests, became nervously inflicted by her companion's distrust, and developed a new self-consciousness. She grew restless too. "I do wish you would not give yourself so much trouble over my amusement," she said one day to Mrs Leslie. "For instance, please don't imagine that it is necessary for me to go to the club-house every afternoon." "One must go somewhere," said her hostess vaguely. She could not explain that she had offered the pony-cart to Fenwick for him to drive Claudia into the country, and he had refused it. "I don't see that," said the girl, with a laugh. She added after a pause, "What I really should like would be to bicycle over some of the country round. But Arthur won't hear of it." "Don't tease him about it, pray don't," said Mrs Leslie, with over-- expressed anxiety. Claudia looked at her. "Why?" she asked, and such interrogations were becoming more and more difficult to answer. Mrs Leslie was hesitating over it when the young subaltern, Claudia's neighbour at the Thorntons' dinner-party, looked in. "You'll forgive my coming at this unearthly hour, won't you?" he said. "Fact is, Major Leslie asked me to tell you that you and Miss Hamilton had better come out. Orders are given that the Scots Greys are not to be allowed to get back to barracks, and he thinks you might like to see the fun. Can you get along by yourselves? I must be off." Mrs Leslie jumped up with a sense of relief, but she was an imprudent woman, and her imprudence broke out. "Why couldn't Arthur have let us know?" she said in a vexed voice. "There, I have let the children go off, and Frank will be so disappointed!" "Perhaps Arthur didn't know himself." "He must have found out by this time. However, be quick, Claudia. We can't wait for the cart; we'll walk." Claudia did what she was often doing at this time, hastily packed misgivings out of sight, and they started. Rain had fallen in the night; great pools of water stood waiting to be sucked up by the yellow soil, and massive banks of clouds moved sullenly to the east. Out from behind them the sun had flashed, and was shining steadily, transforming all he touched, and bringing, as he does in our northern lands, no languor, but an added energy. Now and then a body of troops marched briskly along up the road, passed the cavalry barracks, and turned to their right. "Where are the Greys, I wonder?" said Mrs Leslie impatiently. "I hate to be left in this way, knowing nothing of what is doing." Claudia had no answer ready, and they went on. Presently her companion broke out again-- "I always vow I will not come and see these things from the outside." "How can one see them otherwise?" asked Claudia, in good faith. "Oh, you must know what I mean. I call it outside when you toil along roads as we are toiling, and have no one to tell you where to go." "As to that, I suppose they're all trying to cut off the Greys." "Ah, you're not married," said Mrs Leslie gloomily. Presently she stopped. "I don't see the good of going on." "Oh yes!" "Most likely we are all wrong." "One can't tell--nobody here ever knows what's going to happen next. Suppose we walk across to that clump?" "Well--" began her companion, turning reluctantly. The next moment she exclaimed, "Here comes the Thorntons' carriage; we can ask them." Instinctively Claudia longed to break away, but, instead of doing so, stood still and tried to look indifferent. Mrs Thornton was driving Miss Arbuthnot, and, before there was time for inquiry, called out-- "You're going the wrong way. You should make for that mound." She flourished her whip. "Who told you so?" "Captain Fenwick. He looked in to say that would be the best place." "Really?" "_So_ sorry we can't give you a lift!" "Oh," said Mrs Leslie mendaciously, "we prefer walking. So I do," she added as the carriage rolled away--"so I do, to going with her. She irritates me. She's always in the right. But I think it was simply abominable of Arthur." "What does it matter?" said Claudia, with a fine display of indifference. "It matters a great deal, because, of course, if I had known it was going to be so far, I should have brought the carriage." "Well, don't let us toil to that mound. Let us go to the place we intended before. It is such a pretty day!" "I dare say it is, but we didn't come out to see the country." To her surprise, however, by dint of a little more pressure, Claudia carried her point, with the result that they saw nothing. But this she did not seem to mind, for she talked and laughed vigorously, in spite of many "I told you so's" from Mrs Leslie. "You are the oddest girl!" exclaimed that lady at last. "Why?" "Because you don't appear to care to stand on your rights. Now, I think that Arthur has behaved shamefully." It is certain that she would not have spoken so imprudently if she had conceived it possible that a young girl of Claudia's inexperience could seriously resent her lover's conduct; she only considered it desirable to point out to her that she might be too easy with him, and that it would be better for her were she to assert herself. And the girl's own anxiety to hide her wounds added to Mrs Leslie's failure to understand her. She showed no disturbance. "Aren't you hard on him? He may have been close to their quarters," she suggested, "and just turned in." "I dare say! He would not have found it so convenient if Helen Arbuthnot hadn't been then." Mrs Leslie liked to justify her statements. "No?" said Claudia indifferently. It would have taken a close observer to note a certain slight rigidity in the way she carried her head. "No. My dear Claudia, it's all very well to be magnanimous, but if you expect peace in your married life, you had better make up your mind to the fact that Arthur--though a good fellow in the main--is a bit of a flirt." Claudia did not turn her head. "I dare say," she said coolly, so coolly that Mrs Leslie prepared to strengthen her warning. "And I advise you to show him you don't like it--beforehand." "Thank you." Mrs Leslie could not have quite explained the character of this "thank you," but she preferred to consider that it breathed gratitude; and the morning having in other ways proved such a dismal failure, accepted this as partial compensation, feeling that now she had done her best to open Claudia's eyes, and that, whatever happened, she could not be blamed for having uttered no warning. She had been altogether tired and annoyed by her long vain tramp, and was not in the mood to spare her brother. Claudia, too, had been so provokingly quiescent that it was only to be supposed she did not see, and Arthur's wife would require to have all her senses about her. She therefore carried home both a grievance and a sense of fulfilled duty; which, together, make a person pretty nearly intolerable. But, though Claudia kept her proud silence, and could even say "thank you" to her counsellor, it must not be supposed that she was patient at heart. It was not this or that trifling circumstance; they were not the events of the morning, taken by themselves, which affected her; it was that, gradually, little by little, the conviction forced itself upon her that Fenwick no longer loved her, nay, possibly, that he was loving another woman. Why it should be so, she struggled to fathom, and failed. Why, when both were free, he should have preferred her to Helen Arbuthnot, who could tell? Only that it was so, she could now scarcely doubt. And with a yearning which seized and shook her with the violence of its desire, the motherless girl longed unutterably for some one to whom she could turn, some one who could give her the aid for which she was groping. What ought she to do? How do it? How, given if her love were smitten, maimed, down-trodden, should her womanly pride keep its dignity, and shield her from the pitying scorn with which she knew the world regarded a jilted woman? One day, although it was understood that she did not go out by herself, she slipped away, and, finding a church open, went in, and in its quiet silence, poured forth a torrent of tears and prayers, which brought relief. Her fears, like much else characteristic of Claudia in those days, were young, crude, and ill-balanced. Later on, she would have known that the world casts a few sentences, a few jibes, and has forgotten, before the sufferer has time to realise that the thing is known. Everything whirls past; we and our petty concerns, whisked to the surface one moment, are swept under the next. But, as with other things, it takes years to teach our inexperience the lesson. There was another difficulty. Think as she might, plan as she might, Claudia could not see before her the words or the moment she wanted for letting Fenwick know that he was free. There were times when she thought of rushing back to Elmslie, but to do this until the explanation had been made, was, she fancied, impossible. She had come for a three weeks' stay, and of this only a fortnight--was it credible? only a fortnight!--had passed. Then the college--for a moment she reflected hopefully on the college, and some proffered engagement. But, alas! again. Engagements did not pour in every day, and she flushed furiously as she realised that her own, which she had proudly regarded as an offering on the shrine of emancipated woman, were more probably due only to the efforts of two men who liked her. Humiliating conviction! Besides, at Fenwick's instigation, she had obediently written a request to the principal to withdraw her name from the lists of those seeking employment. Look as she would, she could not clearly see the road by which she might escape; yet each day seemed to make her position more unbearable. And Mrs Leslie, Mrs Leslie added tenfold to her difficulties, and this with the best intentions in the world. Claudia's wounded love flung itself for support on her woman's pride; like her race she could endure magnificently, if only she were allowed, unquestioned, to hide the anguish of the wound. But Mrs Leslie saw too much, pointed out what the girl would fain have passed over in silence, grumbled, protested, excused. She was personally affronted with her brother, and used Claudia as a weapon of retaliation. She did not approve of Helen Arbuthnot, she considered that Arthur was behaving scandalously, and she felt a large degree of responsibility for the girl under her care; so that it was constantly--"Well, certainly, Arthur, you have been most attentive to Claudia to-day!" or, "If I were Claudia, I should not thank you much for looking in upon me at the end of the afternoon;" or, "Claudia and I seem left very much to our own devices!" And these reproaches, uttered before Claudia herself, had the effect of paralysing the girl, and of taking from her what seemed her own just cause of complaint. There were dangerous moments, too, when Fenwick, smitten with remorse or swayed by caprice--who can say?--regained his old ascendancy; when she could almost believe that all was as it had been, moments when he was charming, tender; moments, alas! too fleeting, but sweet enough to make her own with a pang that if only they lasted, she must still be his. For the sake of their delicious glamour, a weaker nature might have readily consented to keep its eyes blinded, and to believe that all would yet be well. But Claudia was not weak. Her training, whatever else it had done or left undone, had exercised her intellect, and given her powers of self-control which came to her rescue now. She saw clearly that when Fenwick was charming, it was because he had made up his mind to charm; that it was not due to spontaneous love, but to intentional love-making, and that such intervals were succeeded by evident indifference. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Miss Arbuthnot was everywhere, and Mr Pelham shadowed her. Opinions were freely bandied as to the existence or non-existence of an engagement, the majority inclining to the belief that one existed. Fenwick, on the other hand, was seldom seen near her, Mrs Leslie began to recover her equanimity, and perhaps only Claudia was aware that when he was in the same room with Helen his eyes followed her, or that he was more than usually silent and self-occupied. She was invariably well dressed, in a manner which set off her large figure; people turned to look at her as she passed, and she seemed to fling into insignificance such slim beauties as Claudia. Whether from chance or intention, the two seldom said much to each other, but it happened that one grey afternoon at the club-house, they found themselves near each other watching a game of bicycle polo. Miss Arbuthnot deliberately walked up to Claudia. "Detesting games! I am bored to death," she said, "and so--I imagine-- are you. Don't you think we should suffer less if we escaped beyond the sounds of croquet and lawn-tennis, and everything except the clack of our own voices?" Claudia hesitated, and Helen added-- "You had better come. I assure you there are times when I can be intelligent, and Captain Fenwick will not be here just yet." The girl walked quickly on as if she had been stung. "What has that to do with it?" she said recklessly. Miss Arbuthnot was engaged in disentangling a bramble which had caught in her dress. When she looked up she said coolly-- "A good deal to me. You know--or do you not know?--that I have always liked him." Amazement struck Claudia almost speechless. She stammered with her sudden rush of anger. "You tell me--you can tell me--" "The truth. Isn't that always desirable? Besides, after all, have I said anything that should affront you? That I liked him. That was my remark." There was a pause. "It implied that he liked you," said Claudia, more calmly, though still choking. "Oh, not at all. Does the one thing invariably imply the other?" It might have been that there was--it seemed so to Claudia--a touch of mockery in the question. "If not--" she began hastily, and stopped. "If not, you think I was a fool? Well--perhaps. We were engaged, at any rate." "Oh!" cried the girl, stopping short. This was more than she had dreamed of. "You did not know it? But I imagine you are prepared to hear of such episodes?" Is any woman prepared? Claudia bit her lip to keep back the answer she would have liked to fling at her tormentor, and Miss Arbuthnot went on-- "It did not last very long. To adopt the stock phrase proper to these humiliating occasions, we discovered that we had made a mistake. Probably you wonder why I am going back to that not-too-agreeable time. I will tell you--" "Don't!" cried Claudia, quite suddenly. She hardly knew what she said, conscious only of a sharp thrill of pain, and a sickening dread of worse to come. Miss Arbuthnot glanced quickly at her, and went on as if she had not spoken. "It is because I am certain you are falling into the same mistake." She turned away as she spoke, and stood resting her arms upon a railing. Behind her she heard the girl breathing heavily. Then it seemed as if Claudia made an effort to speak, for her voice was strangely hoarse and low. "This is unendurable!" she said. "Oh no," returned Helen, "not by any means unendurable. The unendurable is when you have made the mistake permanent. If you could bring yourself to admit it to me--and you might, since I have gone through the same humiliation myself--you would own that you are uneasy, shaken, unhappy. I don't know what plan you adopt with him, perhaps you reproach him--I found it irresistible--perhaps you take refuge in silence. Take my word for it, there is no remedy in either. Love has flown, and you will never whistle him back. Be thankful he did not stay longer. Hug the wound, if you will, but go." Perhaps, in the sick bewilderment of the moment, the sensation uppermost in Claudia's mind was vexation at the manner in which Miss Arbuthnot reviewed the position. She spoke with a cool confidence always impressive, and she seemed to be able to express herself dispassionately, as if she were no more than a critic, looking on from the outside. It was true that she had taken extreme care to place herself on the same level with Claudia, but the girl was too angry and excited to accept this fellowship. It was, indeed, made impossible to her by the unacknowledged conviction that the dominion Miss Arbuthnot once possessed, she had, in some inexplicable manner, regained. She stood pale, furious, yet trying hard to prevent excitement from showing itself in voice or manner. "Why do you say this to me?" "Ah, why?" returned the other, lapsing into her usual careless tone. "To tell you the truth, you have me there. I did not intend to speak. I thought you might find out for yourself, but--who can account for impulses? Perhaps I imagined it might shorten the business. I see that so far I have failed, and you are only angry." "Angry!" Claudia flung back her head impetuously. "That isn't the word." "Well, I won't use a stronger," said Miss Arbuthnot, with an amused smile. "I dare say I should have felt the same myself. Yet, look at the matter philosophically. You only hate me for speaking, because your heart tells you I am right." "Oh, for more than that!" broke in the girl wildly. "For more than that?" The older woman turned and glanced curiously at her. She went on slowly. "You think, perhaps, then, that I am the cause of your unhappiness?" "Yes, I do. I think that you are treacherous, treacherous!" cried Claudia, stung beyond control. "You failed to keep his love yourself, yet could not endure to see it given to me. You set yourself to take it again--" Her voice failed--choked. It was Miss Arbuthnot's turn to grow a little pale, and she stood for a moment staring out at a bit of near common, across which soldiers were marching, light now and then flashing on their accoutrements. "But--if I have proved to you that it is worthless?" she said slowly at last. "Ah!" exclaimed Claudia scornfully, "do _you_ think it worthless?" Then Helen Arbuthnot did a strange thing. She turned and looked into Claudia's eyes, her own unflinching, and she spoke as people speak in a great crisis of their life. "Before Heaven, I do," she said, "and that although I once cared for it more than for anything else in the world. Now have I set myself low enough?" Something in her words, but more in the manner of their utterance, had indeed shaken and curiously affected Claudia. They might have been spoken by one who cared enough for her to venture much on her behalf. And yet they came from the lips of Miss Arbuthnot, the woman whom she had just accused of acting towards her in the most heartless manner in which woman can act towards woman, and who at this moment, she believed, was holding her love up to scorn. For a moment she was shaken, but she recovered herself. "You own you want it yourself!" she cried relentlessly. The other still gazed at her for a moment, and then her mood changed. The fire died out of her eyes, her look relaxed; she laughed, though not mirthfully. "Ah, well," she said, "I have already made you a present of the situation, so far as I am concerned. Doesn't that mollify you?" "So far as you are concerned!" Claudia repeated with scorn. "Oh, you are very much concerned! The situation, as far as I can read it, is that you are trying to persuade me to take myself out of the way, in order that you may feel still more perfectly free." Miss Arbuthnot looked at her once more. "Do you not see," she said slowly and cruelly, "that you are not in the way? It is what he cannot have which has the attraction for Arthur Fenwick." Was it so? The girl breathed hard, and put the question a second time. "Then why do you speak?" She had forgotten Helen's words. "Ah, why? That's what I have asked myself half a dozen times in as many minutes. Answer it as you like. Perhaps I love meddling." She turned as she spoke, and began to walk towards the club-house. Claudia, hot, bewildered, angry, marched by her side, unwilling either to go with her or to remain behind. She felt bruised and beaten, yet, after all, the pain came from an unacknowledged source. Were they not her own convictions which had taken shape from the mouth of another? Before they reached the garden, Fenwick met them. His first glad look, his first glad word, were for Helen. "At last I have escaped!" It was little enough, but there are times when a little does as well as a great deal. He recollected himself, it is true, and turned sharply to Claudia, but she could have sworn that the exclamation neither belonged to her, nor was caused by her presence. It was to Helen he had escaped. She tried to speak quietly, though her tongue felt stiffened. "I see Gertrude on the croquet ground, and she must be wondering what has become of me." If she was abrupt, she could not help it, yet, as she went, she was bitterly conscious that a short fortnight ago, Fenwick would have been almost tiresomely scrupulous that she did not cross the ground alone. And still, with her wretchedness, there was something of the joy of restored freedom. The shackles which she had worn gladly when she believed they belonged to excess of love, galled again, as soon as the love was wanting; so that when Mrs Leslie, vexed with her brother, vented her vexation on Claudia by whispering-- "Where is Arthur? My dear Claudia, you really ought not to walk about all over the place by yourself; he will be so annoyed!" the girl's answer was a repetition of his words. She drew a long breath. "At last I have escaped!" Fenwick, meanwhile, was in the midst of an interesting conversation. Both he and Miss Arbuthnot followed Claudia with their eyes. Then Helen turned hers upon him. "Well?" she said. He thrust his hands into his pockets. "She can take care of herself for once. And--I never see you." "I should have said we met fairly often." "I don't call it seeing to find you engulfed in a crowd." She lifted her eyebrows. "Since when have you been so desirous for a conversation _a deux_?" Fenwick looked at her hardily. The look did not seem to agree with his words. "You might have a little pity!" "I have a great deal. I have just been expressing it to your Claudia." He frowned. "To Claudia? And pity for me?" "Oh no!" said Miss Arbuthnot in her softest voice. "For her." This time there was a short silence. Fenwick walked away a few yards, and came back to where Miss Arbuthnot still stood waiting. "You are right," he said in an altered tone; "you are right. From beginning to end it has been a miserable mistake." She expressed no surprise, the two appearing to understand each other. She only inquired-- "And what do you intend to do?" "I must go on with it. We must marry," he returned moodily. "Certainly," said Miss Arbuthnot briskly, "certainly. No other course is open to you." He looked at her again. "And yet you haven't a word of pity to throw!" "Why should I? You are marrying the girl you chose, a nice girl, too, who had no thought of you until you insisted upon her falling in love. And now that you have got her there, you are discontented. Pity! Yes, I pity her with all my heart!" He still kept his eyes on her. "You won't be any better off yourself," he said with significance. She turned and faced him. "What do you mean?" she asked coldly. "That fellow--that Pelham--can you tell me honestly that you care for him?" "You have no possible right to put such a question," she said haughtily. "Be sure of one thing. I do not marry the man I do not care for. Here we are at the polo again, and here is Mrs Menzies." Fenwick had his dismissal, and swung away in a rage, angry with Helen, angry with Claudia, most angry with himself. He rated fate for opening his eyes when it was too late, and allowing him then, and not till then, to find out the insane folly of his conduct in letting slip the one woman for whom he was now certain that he cared. Glancing at the rapidly thinning group of brightly dressed people, he muttered an exclamation as he caught a glimpse of his sister's figure, and, with the intention of avoiding a meeting, went out of the place, and struck from the Farnborough road, with its oddly isolated groups of firs, across the common. By this time the sun was low, and, catching the fir stems, turned them to ruddy gold. A few wild clouds, threatening storm, barred the western sky, but the threat was splendid in colour and contrast, and, while bringing out the rich tints of the near common, had the effect of only adding to the serene beauty of the blue distance. Here and there a patch of white tents dotted a slope; smoke curled upwards from the camp fires; and an occasional sharp sound or call struck the silence. Fenwick neither saw nor heard. He walked, staring at the ground, caring nothing where he went, and only bent upon avoiding his kind. What devil was there in him, he asked himself impatiently, which was for ever dragging him into positions from which, when his eyes were open, he recoiled? In this question which he flung, it is possible that he caught a fleeting glimpse of the inordinate vanity which was the real cause of his disasters, but vanity is too subtle an imp not to have a hundred disguises ready for such a moment. Fenwick freely cursed an impetuous nature, idleness, imprudence, and left the actual mover unscathed and grinning. He had tired of Helen Arbuthnot for the very reason that he was secure of her preference; and when he accepted his dismissal and moved away, it was with the absolute confidence that if ever he liked to step back, he would find her waiting. And now apparently--by her own act, which was quite a different affair from his--she was placing herself beyond his reach; while he, like a raw fool, had bound himself to a girl who had ceased to be attractive from the moment in which he knew he had gained her heart. He did not put it so crudely, nor had he any thought of drawing back from his engagement. Fenwick was an honourable man, and he fully intended not only to marry Claudia, but to make her happy. As to his power to do this, he was curiously free from misgivings. On his own future life he bestowed a groan, but she loved him, and that would be enough for her. He even went so far as to glance at some of her crude latter-day ideas, and to decide that he would allow her a certain amount of freedom to exercise them; under careful control, of course, and, above all, in ways that should bring no ridicule upon him. Such an outlet for her enthusiasms would occupy and prevent her finding out that--that--well, that he no longer felt for her all that he had imagined. How he had imagined it still puzzled him, for he had no impulse towards solving the enigma in the only way in which it could have been solved--the confession that her cool indifference had piqued him into trying to stir it into warmth. So accustomed was he to flutter the hearts of the women who crossed his path, that to find a country girl treating him with profound carelessness, was not to be endured. It was very natural that Harry Hilton's clumsy attentions should fail to touch her--he liked her the better for being their object, and for rejecting them--but to be placed in the same category himself was another matter. Then, to win her cost him something. He had to let him-self go. For a time he felt the ardour of chase, the longing to gain; some, at least, of the many sensations which help to make up love; enough, indeed, as he bitterly owned, to deceive himself. And now, now he had won Claudia, and lost Helen. He walked far, so that when he turned all the fires of sunset had dulled in the west, and the firs stood black against a saffron sky. The camp was alive and busy, though the more active work of the day was over. Fenwick came back as he went. He told himself bitterly that this was no more than he expected. It was no question of future conduct which he had taken out into the solitudes to solve, but a burden which he was girding himself to bear. He had thought of himself from beginning to end, and of Claudia only as one towards whom he had a duty. For him to fulfil this was enough for her. But he could not see her that night. When he reached his quarters he sent a note to the hut saying that he was dining at mess, and would not be able to look in. He made another resolution, which appeared to him an admirable example of sacrifice, for there was a party to which Miss Arbuthnot was bidden and not the Leslies: he had intended to find himself there, and now resigned it. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. The result of Fenwick's meditation might have been foreseen; he felt himself the injured person, and went resignedly to the hut on the following day, prepared to act with magnanimity. Claudia met him as simply as usual, showing no trace of displeasure. A close observer might, it is true, have noticed that she was both pale and heavy-eyed, but, except under the influence of a dominant personal interest, Fenwick was not a close observer, and he merely registered a mental note that her young beauty was of too variable a nature to be counted upon. His sister, however, quickly became aware that he was himself disturbed, and she took an opportunity of calling Claudia into the next room. "Something has gone wrong with Arthur, I can see. I know his face so well! Do be careful what you say," she added anxiously. "Has anything gone wrong?" asked the girl, with a curious little laugh. "Well, don't be afraid. Perhaps I can set it right." Mrs Leslie shook her head. She had no confidence in Claudia's powers, and she dreaded beyond words, another eight days' wonder over her brother's love affairs. Major Leslie was waiting for her in the garden, and when she went out she was so full of her fears that she confided them, with signs towards the window. "I am dreadfully afraid there is something in the wind. Arthur looks like a thundercloud." "Pleasant for her!" said little Major Leslie, whistling. "That's the worst of it. She might manage, but unfortunately she has no tact whatever, and Arthur will require the most delicate handling from his wife. Lawrence, this gardener is absolutely no good." "I don't see anything amiss." "Then look at that border." The two wrangled, and strolled away together. Claudia, after a momentary hesitation, a momentary locking of her small fingers, went back to the pretty cool room, and sat down on the window-seat. Through the trees came glints of bright colour, as soldiers passed up and down the road, and now and then a cheery note of bugle or pipes rose shrill above other sounds. Fenwick walked restlessly about the room. "I suppose you'll be at the polo this afternoon," he remarked, stopping to straighten a picture, "as you're so awfully keen on that sort of thing, aren't you?" "I suppose I am," she said slowly. "But I am not going to the polo. It was about this afternoon that I wanted to say something." "All right. Here I am!" he said, flinging himself into a low chair by her side. But there was something ungracious in the movement, and his face darkened. He thought she intended to reproach him. Claudia spoke again, still slowly, for her voice was not altogether under control, and she dreaded above all things a breakdown. "I am just sending a telegram to Elmslie--to my cousins--to ask them to expect me to-day." "Oh!" said Fenwick, sitting up. "And may I ask what has brought about this sudden change?" His dry angry voice acted upon Claudia as a spur. Her eyes brightened as she faced him. "Need you ask?" Then her voice softened again. "Arthur," she said, "many words are not necessary, are they? It has all been hasty, mistaken, foolish, but it has not lasted very long. Now let us both-- forget." "Do you mean," he asked sharply, "that you wish to break off our engagement?" "Yes," she answered, groping for words so carefully that she hesitated--"yes, that is what I mean. I did foolishly to agree to it, and that will always be the first thing I shall remember. Why you wished it I don't know,"--she drew a long breath--"happily it is not yet too late, and it has just got to be as though it had never been." "I should still like to know what is my offence. That I left you to go back alone yesterday? I should have supposed that would have pleased you." "I think you are ungenerous," said the girl, with a flash. "Do you take me for a stone? I am not reproaching you. Oh," she broke out more wildly, "can't you let it be over and done with without words?" "No," said Fenwick savagely. "I suppose this is all woman's confounded jealousy." He was really angry, and conflicting with a sense of relief came indignation that she could let him go. "Have it as you like," Claudia answered proudly; "I have said enough. It has been a mistake, a mistake made by us both; but fortunately there is still time to draw back. Some day perhaps you will see that I could not have acted otherwise." She flung out her hands. "There! It is over. Will you ring the bell that I may send this?" Her manner still stung him, and he was not generous enough to own to himself how entirely he had forced it upon her. "You have taken the law into your own hands with a vengeance," he said bitterly, as he crossed the room. "Apparently I am expected to accept sentence without so much as being told the manner of my offending. Gloriously feminine, upon my word! Warren, take this to the telegraph office." He held it another moment in his hand and turned to her. "You wish it to go?" She bent her head, finding words impossible; and when the man had left the room, Fenwick hung back and stood staring at her. "Well," he said imperiously, "I am waiting for an explanation." She shook her head. "Don't expect me to be satisfied with signs. I must have chapter and verse." It was Claudia's turn to be impatient. She sprang to her feet, her eyes passionately reproachful, her voice firm-- "But I will not say more! Words--words are absolutely vain, and yet you want them: you want my thoughts and feelings put into shape for you to handle them. Don't you see, can't you see, that your very lack of power to do this for yourself shows what a gulf has opened between us? If you loved me,"--her voice faltered and recovered itself--"if you loved me, you would understand without words--" She was going to call to witness her own power of entering into his feelings, but checked herself in time, for no tenderness in his manner had gained the right to wring admissions from her which she instinctively knew would be but food for his vanity. That night, tossing sleepless, she had sworn that she would not let him learn how she had suffered, and to make sure of this kept her face turned from him, fancying that he might read it there. But she raised her hand as she spoke, and when she broke off it dropped heavily by her side. "No, I don't pretend to be clever enough to understand you," he said sharply. "You judge me harshly, you draw unwarrantable deductions, and refuse either to hear me speak or to speak yourself. How are we ever to hope to set matters right?" He stopped. The mere unexpected discovery that she could give him up, immeasurably raised her value, and yet at the same moment the thought of Helen Arbuthnot rushed into his brain. "I suppose," he went on more quietly, "you are vexed with something I have done or left undone?" "Is that it?" she asked faintly, with the same consciousness of tension in her speech--a tension which was growing well-nigh intolerable. "Perhaps--I don't know--no, I think it is something much deeper. Whatever it is, I cannot change, but there need be no unkindness between us." "Oh," he said scornfully, "you have the stock phrases at your fingers' ends!" And then his better angel moved him to compunction. "Claudia, forgive me!" It was the old intonation, the old tender tune which could yet shake her like a leaf. "Don't say that," she stammered hastily; "if--if it will make you happier, be sure I shall not ever think hardly of you. It has been what I said--a mistake--that is all. And there is one thing more," she went on in a stronger voice. "In these matters, I don't know, but I suppose the world always thinks that some one is to blame. I am that one, remember. It is I who have done it. Only, would you mind saying this to your sister yourself, and telling her that I must--I must go away to-day?" He had turned from her, and was leaning against the mantelpiece, his head buried in his arms. Claudia stood and looked at him for one yearning moment, her face troubled, her eyes full of tears. Before he had time to answer she was gone. Fenwick neither spoke nor stirred. For a moment he was shaken by a strange rush of feeling, pricked by an involuntary shame, conscious of something higher and better than himself. But the moment did not last. Other thoughts crowded thickly, and leapt into prominence. The habit of constantly appealing to his own personality, and measuring all things by their relation to it, the invariable dwarfing question which strangled nobler impulses, and could only ask, "How will this affect me?" rose up strong and strangling as ever. They made him hesitate, when generosity would have rushed the words, lest in their utterance he might say more than he would--later--find convenient. Self had through these instruments dominated his nature, checked his expansion, left him cold and self-conscious, made the nobler side of him hate himself. While Claudia spoke, something within him urged quick response, words which should at least answer more adequately to the sweetness of her farewell, more bravely own his fault. But he had crushed the whisper, from a base dread of saying too much, and with the opportunity gone, the poorer part of him began to dominate again. She had voluntarily given him up, and an irritable vanity, fastening upon this offence, swelled and fumed around it until all other issues were blotted from view. More than once in these latter days, he had been conscious of a wish that he could live over again those days at Huntingdon, but this was an altogether different matter from supposing that Claudia might also desire to reconsider them. He left his position, and, crossing to the window, stood staring blackly out of it, foreseeing many awkwardnesses, but without a thought for poor Claudia, who had flung herself face downwards upon her bed upstairs, and was sobbing passionately. Whatever pressure was put upon the wind bag of his vanity only forced it out on another side. He was standing, immovable, in the same place when his sister came in. "Oh, Arthur!" she exclaimed, stopping in the doorway. He did not look round. "Well, why `Oh, Arthur!'?" "Something has happened. I was certain something was going to happen. I wish I had not gone out. You and Claudia have quarrelled." "Certainly not." He laughed shortly. "If you like, we have agreed to differ." He broke off, and added with the same abruptness, "You've got to know, and you may as well know at once that it's all over--amicably, and probably for the best. Claudia goes back to Elmslie to-day, and the only thing for you and Lawrence to do is to hold your tongues." "That's very easy for you to say, but you must be aware that I shall have to give some sort of explanation," said Mrs Leslie, with a sense of affront underlying her real dismay. "No, I am not aware. To whom?" said Fenwick, facing round fiercely. "If the fools want to talk, let them!" "Of course they will talk." "As I say--let them!" Mrs Leslie drew herself up. "You might be more civil, Arthur, considering you have brought it on yourself. Pray do you suppose the situation will be agreeable for us?" "Hang it all!" he burst out. "Say what you like, then! The plain truth is, as any one might see, that we're unsuited, and it's come home to her at last. There it lies in a nutshell, and you may make what you can of it." "I saw it long ago." "I'll wager you did!" "And," went on his sister coldly, "I can't wonder at the poor child discovering it too. You forced it upon her pretty clearly, you and Helen Arbuthnot." Fenwick, not displeased at this conjunction of names, moderated his tone. "There was nothing for her to fuss about, only a woman's jealousy warps her common sense. You'll see that some one goes with her?" But this provision for her comfort Claudia resolutely declined. It had been only to please her lover that she had consented to be guarded by an escort on her journey to Aldershot, and now that she had no lover to please she would certainly go back in the manner she preferred; she was not in the mood to forego one of her privileges, and Mrs Leslie argued with her in vain. Free from personal vanity, she had much of the egotism of youth. She belonged to an age which was to reanimate the world, and to a cluster of girls who felt themselves instinct with corporate force, and whose ignorance had this in it that was noble, that it at least stretched out eager helping hands, with passionate impulses for good. This strong hopeful faith, this assurance that they had to show the world how different a thing a woman's life might become from what it had been in the ages past when shrinking dependence was her distinguishing characteristic, had been cruelly wounded in Claudia as much by her own acts as by the verdict of others. If she had not suffered from obloquy, she had been dangerously near to being laughed out of court, and she had yielded ignominiously to almost the first touch of so-called love. Sore and shamed, she doubted ever getting back to her starting-point. Her career had been cruelly shorn of its dignity, and she felt, not only miserable, but commonplace. At any rate she could--she would take care of herself in the train. Once there, she could think more consecutively, if more sadly. In the forlornness and humiliation of her experience, as unlike what she had pictured for herself as it was possible for experience to be, her remembrances turned gratefully to Elmslie; nay, even lingered with a certain tenderness round the Thornbury home. From there, at any rate, no wounding had come, although it seemed to her, looking back, that she had been singularly aggressive and unaccommodating. Mrs Hilton's amazement had been modulated by her fine instincts of courtesy, and Harry--Harry, if he had been foolish, at least believed in her. CHAPTER NINETEEN. Anne was in the drawing-room when Claudia reached Elmslie, Anne unquestioning and kindly. Claudia felt herself made welcome, and was conscious of a quiet atmosphere, grateful after the jar and turmoil of the past days. She was glad to rest in an easy-chair, to drink tea from the little old silver teapot which was the pride of Anne's heart, and to hear that Philippa and Emily had gone off to a garden-party. "Harry Hilton has been here," said Anne, occupying herself with cutting cake, "but he has gone." Claudia breathed relief. She had dreaded to find Harry established. The telegram announcing her unexpected return must have given an inkling of what had happened, and she could not have endured the sight of his face, with possibly a reawakened hope beaming in it. Now she could more freely tell her story. "Anne," she said, in a voice not quite steady, "I want to explain why I have come back." "If you like," Anne replied gently. "But you know this is to be home, without any need for explanations." "I know. And I don't think explain was quite the word to use, for I can't explain yet, even to myself. Only it is all over between Captain Fenwick and me." As Anne did not speak, she went on hurriedly, "You don't mind my not saying more, do you?" "No, I don't mind," said Anne, with that warm inflexion of the voice which is like a caress. "I am only wondering whether it is quite right to leave you to fight your own battles single-handed. Can nothing be done?" Claudia sprang up and went to the window. "Please," she said, with her back to her cousin, "I don't want sympathy." "Or help?" "Or help." "Then you shall go your own way in peace," Anne said, smiling. "And one thing more." Claudia came back to the table. "Whatever it is, you must understand that it is my own, absolutely my own doing." "I understand. For," said Anne afterwards to Philippa, "when people are miserable, the best one can do for them is to let them be miserable in their own fashion." "Is she miserable, or only sore?" "Only sore!" repeated Anne. "As if to be sore and shamed were not misery enough for a nature like Claudia's! But I believe she really loved the man, and has been hard hit, poor child!" "Well, it will do her no harm," Philippa announced. "What a pity it is that nothing of the sort ever happened to Emily!" "Philippa!" "To be sure Emily has never taken her independence fiercely, has never, indeed, taken it at all, but she has always sighed for it. If once the thing had advanced towards her, Emily would have screamed and run away, while Claudia has been so entranced with its charms that she has been ready to take shadow for substance. Harry, now, Harry's good stout sense would have allowed her a long tether, but no doubt Captain Fenwick jerked the rope too sharply." Claudia's departure made no stir at Aldershot, because it was supposed that her visit had come naturally to an end; and if there were any who had gleams of suspicion as to the real cause, Fenwick was not a man to offer himself readily for questioning, and Mrs Leslie took the opportunity of going away for a week or two. "Of course he and Helen Arbuthnot will make it up again, and then there will be a pretty talk!" she said irritably to her husband. "Well, I am sick of Arthur's love affairs. I wash my hands of them for the future." "Helen Arbuthnot? But isn't she engaged to young Pelham?" "Oh, what of that!" cried Mrs Leslie, with a fine scorn. Two or three days passed, however, and nothing had occurred to justify her words. On the fourth, Fenwick and Miss Arbuthnot met at a dinner given at a commanding officer's quarters. They did not exchange a word until the end of the evening, when the guests strolled out into the garden. Pelham was not there, and if Fenwick had watched for an opportunity, he took it, as usual, boldly. He walked straight to Miss Arbuthnot. "I must speak to you," he said. "Alone." She shrugged her shoulders, but made no objection. The night was hot, she wore a white dress, and round her throat had wrapped a scarf of a soft gauze, with silver threads running through it. In the moonlight these shimmered and flashed, and set off the rich brown of her hair. The regimental band was playing, otherwise it was strangely quiet for the neighbourhood of a camp. Presently they reached the limit of the turf, and Helen stopped. "Well," she asked abruptly, "what have you to say?" "How can I say anything when you speak in such a tone?" he demanded. "There is a seat under that tree beyond." She walked on. "Are you aware that we are affording much food for remarks?" she said presently. He took no notice of her question. "I had to speak to you," he began; "I want to be the first to tell you what has happened." "It was scarcely necessary," she returned coldly. "After hearing that Miss Hamilton had departed, I could draw in the details myself. For that matter, I could have drawn them beforehand." "No doubt you could, considering how much you had to do with them," he said, with a laugh so self-assured that Miss Arbuthnot bit her lip. "I?" "Yes. She was jealous of you, and I can hardly blame her." "Oh, I don't blame her at all." "Blame? No. Why, I bless her. She opened my eyes. A little longer, and it might have been too late." "Oh no. That misfortune," said Miss Arbuthnot scornfully, "could never happen to you. A means of deliverance always offers itself in good time. And did she--Claudia, I mean--enjoy her mission?" She had stung him at last, for he moved fretfully. "You might understand that--that it was all painful, and I don't want to talk about it. The point is--" he used Claudia's words--"that it is over and done with." "Well, go on," she said, opening and shutting her fan. "I understand that I am to keep my intelligence fixed on the fact that it is over and done with, and that Claudia's feelings belong to a side issue with which one has nothing to do. Go on." This time he turned angrily upon her. "You speak as if I had done the girl an injury. Granted that I was a fool--a double-distilled fool-- would it have been for her happiness to have persisted in the folly?" "No," said Miss Arbuthnot, in a low voice; "it would not." "Then you own I was right?" "Oh, don't make me your judge!" she cried impatiently. "Right? I see no right from beginning to end. But what of that? What have I to do with it?" He answered coolly, "Everything." She hesitated for a moment. Perhaps she was calling back her self-possession, which had been startled. At any rate, when she spoke again, it was more quietly. "This is interesting. May I hear more?" "I mean you to. I said that Claudia was jealous of you. That was because she discovered my secret. Helen, it has been madness, from beginning to end--our break-off, our fancying we had ceased to care, our taking up with others. Don't let us play any longer. My step is taken, take yours, and let us be married next month." "You mean," she said slowly, "I am to throw over--" "Oh, that fellow!" he exclaimed. "You're not engaged to him, you know very well, not seriously, and if you were, you care for me fifty times as well. Deny it if you can!" "Oh!" she said, with a gasp, "you think so?" "Think? I'm as certain as that I'm here." His sense of mastery made him almost indifferent to pleading. Each sentence breathed triumph. Miss Arbuthnot caught her breath, and turned her face towards him. He went on-- "People may--will--talk. Let them. Their hateful chatter will not affect us. Helen--dearest--" She broke in, and put up her hand. "No, no, stop, please! We have not got so far as `dearest.' Suppose we see where we are. Up to this point you have only assured me of my own feelings. What of your own?" "You know them, you must know them." "Excuse me, no. When last we discussed them I gathered that they were somewhat topsy-turvy, and you agreed with me that there had been a mistake. Now it seems there has been another, and you must own that it becomes perplexing." He made an impatient gesture. "Don't play with me, Helen, for I can't bear it. You're the only woman I ever cared for. There! Isn't that enough?" With a movement so sudden as to startle him, she sprang to her feet, standing with her head thrown back, and the moonlight whitening her face. "No," she exclaimed passionately, "it is not! Do you know that all your life, and all your love--such as it is!--has hinged only upon what _you_ feel, what _you_ want? You have measured everything, balanced everything, chosen everything by that and that alone. But what of us? I sometimes wonder whether you ever cast one thought at the poor puppets you set up, and whose hearts you demand. You want the flattery of their love; you have it and tire of it. Enough! Toss it on one side, it is over and done with--" He interrupted her with real amazement. "You can say this--Helen, you? Over! Why am I here to-night?" "Oh," she said with scorn, "because I have slipped out of your hold, and have suddenly become valuable. While you believed you had only to raise your finger to bring me back--at Thornbury, for instance--I was nothing, nothing! But now, now that unexpectedly the power seemed slipping from you, you could not endure the loss. It was the same with that girl. Your vanity, your worst self, was piqued by her indifference, her reluctance; you set yourself to win her, and when you had succeeded, she began to weary you. That was why I warned her. You believe, and she believes, that it was jealousy, but you are wrong--both of you. It was pity, profoundest pity, and a wish to spare her something of--what I had felt myself." Against her will her voice trembled over these last words, and Fenwick caught the change. "Say what hard things you like," he cried triumphantly, "you love me still!" Her voice, still not quite under control, sounded curiously dull. "No," she said. "You are mistaken. I do not." "Deny it," he broke in, with a short laugh, "deny it as you please, it is true. Come, Helen, you have had your say; I don't know why you have turned yourself into her advocate, but I'm ready to admit I haven't treated Claudia well. In spite of your hard hitting, can't you see that it was you who drove me to distraction? Suppose it had been too late." "It is," she said quietly. "You're not engaged!" "I have been engaged a week." "To that man?" "To Mr Pelham." He was silent, and she heard his hard breathing. When he spoke his voice was hoarse. "Well, you can't marry him." "Why not?" "Why?" He laughed gratingly. "Women are inexplicable, but isn't there still some sort of necessity to pretend that a little more than money is wanted for a husband?" "You are right," said Miss Arbuthnot slowly. "Fortunately for me I need not pretend. I am going to marry Mr Pelham because--I love him." There was a silence which lasted for what seemed to her an interminable time. Fenwick broke it with an effort. "We had better go back," he said. They walked across the moonlit grass, white flowers stood out starlike in the beds, and the band was playing very softly an air out of _Hansel and Grethel_. Suddenly he exclaimed, "You might have spared me this!" "How?" "You might have let me know I had no chance." "Why did you take it for granted that you had?" Miss Arbuthnot retorted coldly. "Oh, why?" He flung the question back at her, and strode moodily on. But at the door he turned once more. "Do you really intend to marry him?" "The wedding-day is fixed." "Absurd!" he cried roughly. CHAPTER TWENTY. As age creeps on, there are other deaths than those we mourn openly. Sometimes hope dies, or faith, or love--and from the infinite blackness of such loss, may God in His mercy keep us!--sometimes it is ambition, or friendship, which is worse. But all death is sad, except, as perhaps we shall find, our own, for that should mean recovering again some good things which we have lost. Claudia went through several phases at this time. It was not extraordinary; most men and women do after a crisis, particularly a crisis which has in it anything humiliating. She fancied that her old occupation would give her interest, and forced herself into working furiously at certain plans. When they failed, or seemed to fail, she lost heart, and believed herself incapable. By way of expiation, she sat humbly at Emily's feet, printing hundreds of leaflets in the palest and most uninviting inks, and dutifully attended Anne when she paid visits in the Close, and, far from flaunting nineteenth-century aims in the eyes of her listeners, tried to fling herself into the pettiest of local interests. "If she goes on like this, by-and-by she will elope with the Dean, or do something equally sinful," announced Philippa one day as she snipped withered flowers in the garden. "I know," said Anne uneasily. "But I don't know what to suggest. And I fancied she would be better for finding out for herself." "Get her to go bicycling again." "I suppose," Anne hesitated and sighed--"I suppose it would not do to have Harry? He is dying to come." "No, indeed. You prudent people are always the most reckless. We are all boring her to death just now, and Harry would be only another element of boredom. No; the bicycle." It was not easy, because the bicycle had unavoidable associations, and also made part of a certain untold scheme of renunciation. But restlessness, together with an inevitable reaction from the life into which she was squeezing herself, came to Anne's help. The burdens we choose for ourselves often gall and fret, while those which God lays on us are moulded to our use by the great Master's hand. The girl was growing sore and impatient over her self-imposed tasks, and Philippa was right. For now she went off by herself, and fought hard battles under fresh windy skies, often through rain and storm, and came back with wet cheeks and uncurled hair, but with the old glow and brightness awakening in her eyes. "I told you so!" cried Philippa, not in the least above that feminine weakness. "And I have another idea. She wants a playfellow, and Harry shall send her a dog." "A dog!" exclaimed Emily in dismay. "But you would never have one here on account of Belisarius." Belisarius was the cat, and he ruled Philippa with a rod of iron. "I think I could persuade Belisarius," she said, with a sigh. "He puts up with Vic, and I could make him understand that the dog was not ours." Claudia, sounded, expressed pleasure. Nothing was said as to Harry's part in the affair until a very perfectly bred fox-terrier arrived one day from Thornbury, and then she admired him too much to have qualms as to his acceptance. It is true that she said hastily to Anne, "My taking this doesn't mean anything?" And Anne could truthfully assure her that she was not the first person to receive a dog from Thornbury; but without this assurance, she did justice to a certain generosity in Harry Hilton's character, which would prevent his trying to place her under an obligation. The dog was a greater success than the bicycle, partly from his merits, partly from an aptitude for getting into trouble; not from disagreeableness--for he had a delightful temper, but from a cheerful joy in fighting for fighting's sake, which kept Claudia constantly on the alert. There was an awful battle on the first day between him and Belisarius, which laid a foundation of mutual respect, though it nearly killed Philippa; and a sponge and hot water were invariably ready for Claudia, when she returned from a long bicycle ride. One day she surprised Anne by saying-- "I think I will go to Thornbury to-morrow, before the days get too short." "Do," said Anne. "You won't find Harry there." "No. I heard you telling Emily that he was away. I should like to see Mrs Hilton and the trees." She carried out her intention, which was perhaps meant as much to give Fox pleasure as for any other reason. The morning was fresh, the sky whitening for rain. When she reached Thornbury, Mrs Hilton's delight and distress expressed themselves with many a "so." "My dear, it is so good of you to come! And all that way! Why, you must be tired to death, poor thing! And it is so annoying that Harry should be away! His father was a little better, and he had been waiting for an opportunity to run up to London, so he went, and will not be back till to-morrow. I am so sorry!" "I knew that he was away. I came to see you, and I thought you would give me some luncheon." "Indeed I will. So good of you to think of such a thing, and on your bicycle, too! I have just had a letter from Helen Arbuthnot; you remember her, don't you?" Claudia's face was turned in another direction. "Yes," she answered. "Well, she has quite taken my breath away, telling me she is going to be married, poor thing! and I hadn't the least idea of it. People are so sudden in these days, in and out of an engagement before one has time to look round,"--and then Mrs Hilton began to flounder--"my dear--you must forgive me--I never meant--oh dear! I wonder whether Mr Hilton has had his paper?" The moment had come, and Claudia, although she had paled, was scarcely conscious of her companion's distress. She was nerving herself for the expected tidings. "Who does she say she is going to marry?" she asked, in a voice which to her own ears sounded strange and unreal. Mrs Hilton joyfully ran to this outlet. "I think it was a Mr Pelham--somebody, I know, that I had never heard of--but it is in the Morning Post, so we can easily see. Huish,"--to the butler--"we want yesterday's paper." The news sent Claudia's blood coursing. She found herself constantly wondering how it had come to pass, and what--for something there surely must have been--had passed between Fenwick and Helen. It almost amazed her that it did not work a revulsion in her own feelings, as it seemed to show that, at least as to one point, she had jumped to a wrong conclusion. But she tried to keep before her eyes that on the principal point there could be no such mistake--he did not love her, he did not love her; in their last interview he had not even pretended love. And though a passionate heart cried out that it might re-awaken, pitiless sense told her that the dead do not come to life again--here. Such thoughts touched her, passed, returned, like a broken reflection on the water, while Mrs Hilton's kindly talk gurgled on, exacting little attention. If Claudia failed in an answer, she set it down to the physical weariness of her ride, and yet, as she said afterwards, she had never liked her so much, or found her so gentle. "You know, my dear, she rather kept me on tenter-hooks when she was here before, for, to my old-fashioned notions, she was just a little surprising, and I never quite knew what she was going to do next; but yesterday she was as nice as possible, and seemed so glad to be here again, poor thing! And she remembered all about Huish's rheumatism, which I thought wonderful in such a young girl. We walked all over the place, and she did not say a word about cutting down more trees, so I hope she has got over that funny little craze. I asked her when she would come and stay here again, and she thanked me so nicely! She said she would like it some day, but not just yet, and of course, poor thing! it is very natural she should want a little quiet time after that sad business. I really could not have believed it of that pleasant Captain Fenwick!" All this was spoken to Harry, who had but just returned from London, and who sat listening, his face in shade, and his arms on his knees. He was, as usual in cricket time, furiously burnt, and his laugh rang as cheerily as ever, though, his mother sometimes fancied, not so often. Now he neither laughed nor answered her, and she grew uncomfortable. "Perhaps I shouldn't have said that? Perhaps you would rather not have any one asked here just now? My dear boy, it is easy enough to put it off a little. On no account would I do anything you disliked." He laughed now. An odd little laugh. "_I_ shouldn't dislike it." After a momentary hesitation, he said, "I think you ought to know that nothing on earth would make me so happy as her coming of her own free will to stay. But she won't." To say that Mrs Hilton was astonished is to use an inadequate word. It is no less certain that she was dismayed, for no woman on earth appeared to her worthy to be her son's wife, and her "Oh, Harry!" carried in it unusual protest. He went on quickly-- "When she was here before I asked her to marry me, and she refused--" "Refused!" "--I don't know whether I shall ask her again. That depends. If I don't, one thing I know, I shall never marry another woman." "Refused you! What could she be thinking of!" His mother's indignation brought his old laugh. He got up, and straightened himself. "Well, I'm afraid it was that she didn't care for your son. Perhaps she never will. But she came over here to-day, and I don't mean to give up while there's the ghost of a chance." "A chance! My dear Harry, ridiculous!" cried his mother, impatiently. "But you take away my breath! I never thought of such a thing. I am not sure she's good enough, I am not, indeed! She is a pretty creature, of course, and one knows all about her, which is always a comfort, but she has such very peculiar notions. This going about on bicycles cutting trees. My dear, I couldn't bear that for your wife." "She will never do anything of which you and my father need be ashamed," he said shortly. "But her ideas--" "As for her ideas, time enough to talk about them if ever she consents to be my wife. I should not interfere with them." Mrs Hilton stood up, let all her knitting fall in a tangle on the floor, and laid a trembling hand on her son's arm. "Harry!" "Yes, mother." "You mustn't be angry. You know that your happiness is our first, our very first thought." "I know," he said briefly. But he put his hand on hers. "You have been such a son to us--my dear,"--she broke down a little--"may God bless you, and give you a good wife!" Is not any man the better for such a benediction? Whether the desire of his heart be granted or not, I think the strength of a mother's unselfish love carries it straight to the throne of God, and brings back a blessing, rich and plentiful. Harry had learnt wisdom, and did not rush off impetuously to Elmslie, as he felt inclined. He stayed away, indeed, so long that Philippa began to grumble, and Claudia to feel guiltily that she was depriving her cousins of their favourite visitor. She had made an unsuccessful effort to get work through the principal of the college, but either her late experiences had shaken their faith in her; or the authorities preferred giving orders to those who needed them more; or Claudia's first brilliant successes had been due to circumstances not so absolutely dependent upon her merits as she flattered herself. At any rate no orders came, and with winter at hand it did not seem likely that they would arrive. It was annoying, but one thing was evident to them all-- Claudia's heart was not broken. The want of interest, the evident strain of her first return, were, little by little but no less surely, wearing off. It could hardly have been otherwise, since, after all, she had been more dominated than attracted by Fenwick's strong personality, and once having snapped its bonds, her own character reasserted itself. There was, it is true, a danger lest the reaction of this self-assertion should be too complete, and leave her hardened. Perhaps it was the nature of her surroundings which saved her from the peril. For there was a fresh and wholesome vigour about Philippa Cartwright, an honest dutifulness in Emily, a true and delicate sympathy in Anne, which she could not but recognise, now that her eyes had opened to a broader view, and she was brave enough to own to her mistakes. The result was that her heart began to cling to Elmslie, while she was still occupied with plans for the future. At last-- "I think I will go abroad for three or four months," she announced to Anne one wet autumn day, as they trudged back from the town. "It would do me a lot of good to study some of the old Italian gardens. There's one in particular near Viterbo, laid out by Vignola. Will you come?" "Ah, I can't," Anne returned, shaking her head and smiling. "I have reached the point in life in which I know the world would collapse if I left Elmslie for more than a week. Ask Philippa. She's the adventurous one." "Well. Fox wouldn't like it, though." "We'll send him back to Thornbury." "And you could have Harry Hilton," mused Claudia. She gave an impatient shake. "How silly it all has been, and how many lives have been made uncomfortable! I suppose if I went away he would be here as much as he used to be?" "Perhaps he will come by-and-by even if you stayed." "No; and if he did, he would be looking or saying something which I should hate. Unless you can make him understand that I shall never marry." Anne was silent, and employed herself in closing her umbrella. The rain had ceased, but there was a wintry wind, and yellow leaves lay rotting in the road. As they came towards the gate, they saw a man's figure emerging, and Fox was off like a shot. "Harry!" cried Anne, and with such delight that Claudia stifled her own displeasure. She was displeased, because she expected a renewal of all that she disliked, but as the days went on, she was obliged to admit that Harry behaved admirably. That she was first with him--always--she could not fail to see, but neither word nor look forced the knowledge to her embarrassment. By degrees she unstiffened, and fell back on their old friendliness. Nor did he stay long. Perhaps to have done so and yet have made no sign, might have been beyond his powers, but, be that as it may, Claudia accepted his unexpected silence as proof of a stronger character than she had credited him with. Nor, now that she did not obstinately close her eyes, could she fail to see how in trouble or difficulty of whatever kind, it was to Harry that the trouble was taken with absolute confidence in his helpfulness. On the whole, Anne hoped he had rather made ground than lost it. Philippa and Claudia went abroad that winter, travelling in sun-baked out-of-the-way places in Italy, perhaps even more to Philippa's delight than Claudia's. Philippa wrote to her sister that the girl showed no sign of wishing to shock people, "but she seems resolved to pick up her work again when she returns to England, and is studying eagerly. The note-book, however, seldom steps into prominence, and I have never heard the word `career.' I remark that she is careful to check all interests that show signs of undue development." In the course of the early spring, news of Mr Hilton's death came to the travellers, and then Philippa, who had hitherto avoided talk of Harry, allowed herself to launch forth into an account of what he had given up for his father's sake. "And the poor man so irritable! I dare say it was caused by illness, but really he made every one's life a burden. Harry's patience was not to be told." Claudia expressed no opinion, but she listened. Further, she sent a message to Mrs Hilton and her son, and, that being over, appeared to forget them. She and Philippa left Rome in April, and travelled so as to reach London by the middle of May, going for two or three days to a hotel in South Kensington. There, on the morning after their return, Harry Hilton walked in. This time the girl showed no displeasure; it seemed to Philippa that she looked at him with an air of reflection. Philippa herself hailed him with delight. "I am so tired of taking care of myself!" she announced one morning, "and as Claudia allows me no conveyance more luxurious than a 'bus--in which she flatters herself she is paying homage to Socialism--I am thankful to have a man to find the right one." Claudia laughed gaily. "There's a mission for you!" He did not seem to object. He went everywhere with them, and Philippa, reading in his face that he meant again to put his fate to the touch before long, grew nervous herself, uncertain whether to utter a warning or not. She dropped the idea, but it touched her to the quick when she pictured a second rebuff. Their last morning they spent in the Park, where the rhododendrons were breaking into flower. Philippa met with an old friend, and Harry suggested to Claudia that they should stroll on and look at the Serpentine. She assented without hesitation, yet, as they silently walked, side by side, something in the silence set her heart fluttering, and, to her amazement, she became conscious of a painful want of breath. She would have given a good deal to have spoken, to have gone back, but she dared not trust herself, for the strange excitement, for which she could not account, was depriving her of her self-possession. Just before, she had been calm, talking to Harry with the ease of an old friend, and now something--she knew not what--had raised an unexpected tumult, and swept the rudder out of her hand. There was a din in her ears, and suddenly she heard his voice, hoarse and changed-- "Only give me one crumb of hope to live upon. Claudia, can't you love me?" Could this be love? "Oh, impossible!" she cried, almost angrily. "Why impossible?" he asked, persistently fighting for an answer. "I told you at Thornbury--" "But now--now--" He pressed her impetuously. "I can't! You mustn't ask me." "I must, I must!" Something was creeping into his voice which she had never heard there before, something at which her heart fluttered, her voice failed. "You forget what has passed." "Passed! What is that to me? Claudia!" "I must live my own life--I should shock your mother--your belongings." He caught her hands in his, and his honest eyes looked into hers, heedless of passers-by. "Mine!" he cried joyfully. "Mine at last!" So--while there is no resurrection for a dead love--love, fresh and living, often steals into our hearts from unexpected hiding-places, and makes them his own. And, so long as this can be, our old world, weary and suffering, blossoms again into rosy youth, and tastes the joy which is eternal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The End. 
6855	----	IDEALA BY SARAH GRAND "L'esprit ne nous garantit pas des sottises de notre humeur."--VAUVENARGUES PREFACE You will ask me, perhaps, even you who are all charity, why parts of this book are what they are. I can only answer with another question: Why are we what we are? But I warn you that it would not be fair to take any of Ideala's opinions, here given, as final. Much of what she thought was the mere effervescence of a strong mind in a state of fermentation, a mind passing successively through the three stages of the process; the _vinous_, alcoholic, or excitable stage; the _acetous_, jaundiced, or embittered stage; and the _putrefactive_, or unwholesome stage; and also embodying, at different times, the characteristics of all three. But, even during its worst phase, it was an earnest mind, seeking the truth diligently, and not to be blamed for stumbling upon good and bad together by the way. It is, in fact, not a perfect, but a transitional state which I offer for your consideration, a state which has its repulsive features, but which, it may be hoped, would result in a beautiful deposit, when at last the inevitable effervescence had subsided. But why exhibit the details of the process, you may ask. To encourage others, of course. What help is there in the contemplation of perfection ready made? It only disheartens us. We should lay down our arms, we should struggle no longer, we should be hopeless, despairing, reckless, if we never had a glimpse of growth, of those "stepping- stones of their dead selves" upon which men mount to higher things. The imperfections must be studied, because it is only from the details of the process that anything can be learned. Putting aside the people who criticise, not with a view to mending matters, but because a ... low desire Not to seem lowest makes them level all; the people who judge, who condemn, who have no mercy on any faults and failings but their own, and who, ... if they find Some stain or blemish in a name of note, Not grieving that their greatest are so small, Inflate themselves with some insane delight, and would ostracise a neighbour for the first offence by ruling that one mistake must mar a life--anybody's life but their own, of course; who have no peace in themselves, no habit of sweet thought; whose lives are one long agony of excitement, objection, envy, hate, and unrest; the decently clad devils of society who may be known by their eternal carping, and who are already in torment, and doing their utmost to drag others after them. Putting them aside, as any one may who has the courage to face them--for they are terrible cowards--and taking the best of us, and the best intentioned among us, we find that all are apt to make some one trait in the characters, some one trick in the manners, some one incident in the lives of people we meet the text of an objection to the whole person. And a state of objection is a miserable state, and a dangerous one, because it stops our growth by robbing us of half our power to love, in which lies all our strength, and which, with the delight of being loved, is the one thing worth living for. When we know in ourselves that love is heaven, and hate is hell, and all the intervals of like and dislike are antechambers to either, we possess the key to joy and sorrow, by which alone we can attain to the mystery that may not be mentioned here, but beyond which ecstasy awaits us. This is why such details are necessary. Doctors-spiritual must face the horrors of the dissecting-room, and learn before they can cure or teach; and even we, poor feeble creatures, who have no strength, however great our desire, to do either, can help at least a little by not hindering, if we attend to our own mental health, which we shall do all the better for knowing something of our moral anatomy, and the diseases to which it is liable. We hate and despise in our ignorance, and grow weak; but love and pity thrive on knowledge, and to love and pity we owe all the beauty of life, and all our highest power. _"It is that life of custom and accident in which many of us pass much of our time in this world; that life in which we do what we have not purposed, and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what we do not understand; that life which is overlaid by the weight of things external to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them; that which, instead of growing and blossoming under any wholesome dew, is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to the true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits if it stands in our way. All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in this sort; all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle matter; only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking this bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips upon the birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength."_ --RUSKIN. IDEALA CHAPTER I. She came among us without flourish of trumpets. She just slipped into her place, almost unnoticed, but once she was settled there it seemed as if we had got something we had wanted all our lives, and we should have missed her as you would miss the thrushes in the spring, or any other sweet familiar thing. But what the secret of her charm was I cannot say. She was full of inconsistencies. She disliked ostentation, and never wore those ornamental fidgets ladies delight in, but she would take a piece of priceless lace to cover her head when she went to water her flowers. And she said rings were a mistake; if your hands were ugly they drew attention to them, if pretty they hid their beauty; yet she wore half-a-dozen worthless ones habitually for the love of those who gave them, to her. It was said that she was striking in appearance, but cold and indifferent in manner. Some, on whom she had never turned her eyes, called her repellent. But it was noticed that men who took her down to dinner, or had any other opportunity of talking to her, were never very positive in, what they said of her afterwards. She made every one, men and women alike, feel, and she did it unconsciously. Without effort, without eccentricity, without anything you could name or define, she impressed you, and she held you --or at least she held _me_, always--expectant. Nothing about her ever seemed to be of the present. When she talked she made you wonder what her past had been, and when she was silent you began to speculate about her future. But she did not talk much as a rule, and when she did speak it was always some subject of interest, some fact that she wanted to ascertain accurately, or some beautiful idea, that occupied her; she had absolutely no small talk for any but her most intimate friends, whom she was wont at times to amuse with an endless stock of anecdotes and quaint observations; and this made people of limited capacity hard on her. Some of these called her a cold, ambitious, unsympathetic woman; and perhaps, from their point of view, she was so. She certainly aspired to something far above them, and had nothing but scorn for the dead level of dull mediocrity from which they would not try to rise. "To be distinguished among these people," she once said, "it is only necessary to have one's heart Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love. There is no need to _do_ anything; if you have the right _feeling_ you may be as passive as a cow, and still excel them all, for they never thrill to a noble thought." "Then, pity them," I said. "No, despise them," she answered. "Pity is for affliction, for such shortcomings as are hereditary and can hardly be remedied--for the taint in nature which is all but hopeless. But these people are not afflicted. They could do better if they would. They know the higher walk, and deliberately pursue the lower. Their whole feeling is for themselves, and such things as have power to move them through the flesh only. I would almost rather sin on the impulse of a generous but misguided nature, and have the power to appreciate and the will to be better, than live a perfect, loveless woman, caring only for myself, like these. I should do more good." They called Ideala unsympathetic, yet I have known her silent from excess of sympathy. She could walk with you, reading your heart and soul, sorrowing and rejoicing with you, and make you feel without a word that she did so. It was this power to sympathise, and the longing she had to find good in everything, that made her forgive the faults that were patent in a nature with which she was finally brought into contact, for the sake of the virtues which she discovered hidden away deep down under a slowly hardening crust of that kind of self- indulgence which mars a man. But her own life was set to a tune that admitted of endless variations. Sometimes it was difficult even for those who knew her best to detect the original melody among the clashing cords that concealed it; but, let it be hidden as it might, one felt that it would resolve itself eventually, through many a jarring modulation and startling cadence, perhaps, back to the perfect key. I saw her first at a garden party. She scarcely noticed me when we were introduced. There were great masses of white cloud drifting up over the blue above the garden, and she was wholly occupied with them when she could watch them without rudeness to those about her; and even when she was obliged to look away, I could see that she was still thinking of the sky. "Do you live much in cloudland?" I asked, and felt for a moment I had said a silly thing; but she turned to me quickly, and looked at me for the first time as if she saw me--and when I say she looked at me, I mean something more than an ordinary look, for Ideala's eyes were a wonder, affecting you as a poem does which has power to exalt. "Ah, you feel it too," she said. "Are they not beautiful? Will you sit beside me here? You can see the river as well--down there, beneath the trees." I thought she would have talked after that, but she did not. When I spoke to her once or twice she answered absently; and presently she forgot me altogether, and began to sing to herself softly: Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, Thy tribute wave deliver; No more by thee my steps shall be For ever and for ever. Then suddenly recollecting herself, she stopped, and exclaimed, in much confusion, "O please forgive me! That stupid thing has been running in my head all day--and it is a way I have. I always forget people and begin to sing." She did not see in the least that her apology might have been considered an adding of insult to injury, and, of course, I was careful not to let her know that I thought it so, although I must confess that for a moment I felt just a trifle aggrieved. I thought my presence had bored her, and was surprised to see, when I got up to go, that she would rather have had me stay. She cared little for people in general, and had few likings. It was love with her if anything; but those whom she loved once she loved always, never changing in her affection for them, however badly they might treat her. And she had the power of liking people for themselves, regardless of their feeling for her; indeed, her indifference on this score was curious. I once heard a lady say to her: "You are one of the few young married ladies whom I dare chaperon in these degenerate days. No degree of admiration or worship ever seems to touch you. Is it real or pretended, your unconsciousness?" "Unconsciousness of what?" "Of the feeling you excite." "The feeling _I_ excite?" Ideala seemed to think a moment; then she answered gravely: "I do not think I am conscious of anything that relates to myself, personally, in my intercourse with people. They are ideas to me for the most part--men especially so." That way she had of forgetting people's presence was one of her peculiarities. If she liked you she was content just to have you there, but she never showed it except by a regretful glance when you went away. She was very absent, too. One day I found her with a big, awkward volume on her knee, heated, excited, and evidently put out. "Is anything the matter?" I wanted to know. "O yes," she answered desperately; "I've lost my pen, and I'm writing for the mail." "Why, where are you looking for it?" I asked. She glanced at me, and then at the book. "I--I believe," she faltered, "I was looking for it among the p's in the French dictionary." On another occasion I watched her revising a manuscript. As she wrote her emendations she gummed them on over the old copy, and she was so absorbed that at last she put the gum-brush into the ink-bottle. Discovering her mistake, she gave a little disconcerted sort of laugh, and took the brush away to wash it. She returned presently, examining it critically to see if it were perfectly cleansed, and having satisfied herself, she carefully put it back in the ink-bottle. But perhaps the funniest instance of this peculiarity of hers was one that happened in the Grosvenor Gallery on a certain occasion. She had been busy with her catalogue, doing the pictures conscientiously, and not talking at all, when suddenly she burst out laughing. "Do you know what I have been doing?" she said. "I wanted to know who that man is"--indicating a gentleman of peculiar appearance in the crowd--"and I have been looking all over him for his number, that I might hunt up his name in the catalogue!" Her way of seeing analogies as plausible as the obvious relation of p to pen, and of acting on wholly wrong conclusions deduced from most unexceptionable premises, was another characteristic. She always blamed her early education, or rather want of education, for it. "If I had been taught to think," she said, "when my memory was being burdened with historical anecdotes torn from the text, and other useless scraps of knowledge, I should be able to see both sides of a subject, and judge rationally, now. As it is, I never see more than one side at a time, and when I have mastered that, I feel like the old judge in some Greek play, who, when he had heard one party to a suit, begged that the other would not speak as it would only poggle what was then clear to him." But in this Ideala was not quite fair to herself. It was not always--although, unfortunately, it was oftenest at critical moments--that she was beset with this inability to see more than one side of a subject at a time. The odd thing about it was that one never knew which side, the pathetic or the humorous, would strike her. Generally, however, it was the one that related least to herself personally. This self-forgetfulness, with a keen sense of the ludicrous, led her sometimes, when she had anything amusing to relate, to overlook considerations which would have kept other people silent. "I saw a pair of horses running away with a heavy wagon the other day," she told us once. "It was in Cross Street, and there was a child in the way--there always is a child in the way!--and, as there was no one else to do it, I ran into the road to remove that child. I had to pull it aside quickly, and there was no time to say 'Allow me'--in fact, there was no time for anything--and in my hurry I lost my balance and fell in the mud, and the wagon came tearing over me. It was an unpleasant sensation, but I wasn't hurt, you know; neither the wheels nor the horses touched me. I got very dirty, though, and I have no doubt I looked as ridiculous as I felt, and for that I expected to be tenderly dealt with; but when I went to ask after the child, a few days later, a neighbour told me that its mother was out, and it was a good thing too, as she had been heard to declare she would 'go for that lady the next time she saw her, for flingin' of her bairn about!'" When she had told the story, Ideala was horrified to find that the fact, which she had overlooked, of her having risked her life to save the child struck us all much more forcibly than the ingratitude that amused her. Although her sense of humour was keen, it was not always, as I said before, the humorous side of a subject that struck her. I found her one day looking utterly miserable. "What has happened?" I asked. "You look sad." "And I feel sad," she answered. "I was just thinking what a pity it is those gay, pleasure-loving, flower-clad people of Hawaii are dying out!" She was quite in earnest, and could not be made to see that there was anything droll in her mourning poignantly for a people so remote. Another instance of her absent-mindedness recurs to me. The incident was related at our house one evening, in Ideala's presence, by Mr. Lloyd, a mutual friend. A clever drawing by another friend, of Ideala trying to force a cabman to take ten shillings for a half-crown fare-- one of the great fears of her life being the chance of not giving people of that kind as much as they expected--had caused Ideala to protest that she _did_ understand money matters. "O yes, we all know that your capacity for business is quite extraordinary," Mr. Lloyd said, with a smile that meant something. And then, addressing us all, he asked: "Did I ever tell you about her coming to borrow five shillings from me one day? Shall I tell, Ideala?" "You may, if you like," Ideala answered, getting very red. "But the story is not interesting." We all began to be anxious to hear it. "Judge for yourselves," Mr. Lloyd said. "One day the head clerk came into my private room at the Bank, looking perplexed and discomfited. 'Please, sir' he said, 'a lady wishes to see you.' 'A lady,' I answered. 'Ladies have no business here. What does she want?' 'She would not say, sir, and she would not send in her name. She said it did not matter.' I began to wonder what I had been doing. 'What is she like?' I asked. He looked all round as if in search of a simile, and then he answered: 'Well, sir, she's more like a picture than anything.' 'Show her in,' I said." Here the story was interrupted by a shout of laughter. He laughed a little himself. "I should have been polite in any case," he declared, apologetically. "The clerk ushered in a lady whose extreme embarrassment made me sorry for her. She changed colour half-a-dozen times in as many seconds, and then she hurled her errand at my head in these words, without any previous preparation to break the blow: 'Mr. Lloyd, can you lend me five shillings?' and before I had recovered she continued--'I came in by train this morning, and I've lost my purse, and can't get back if you won't help me--at least I think I've lost my purse. I took it out to give sixpence to a beggar--and--and here is the sixpence!' and she held it out to me. She had given her purse to the beggar and carried the sixpence off in triumph. You may well say 'Oh, Ideala!'" "And Mr. Lloyd was so very good as to take me to the station, and see me into the train," Ideala murmured; "and he gave me his bank-book to amuse me on the journey, and carried Huxley's _Elementary Physiology_, which I had come in to buy, off in triumph!" But with all her self-forgetfulness there were moments in which she showed that she must have thought deeply about herself, weighing her own individuality against others, to see what place she occupied in her own age, and how she stood with regard to the ages that had gone before; yet even this she seemed to have done in a selfless way, having apparently examined herself coolly, critically, fairly, as she might have examined any other specimen of humanity in which she felt an interest, unbiassed by any special regard. "People always want to know if I write, or paint, or play, or what I do," she once said to me. "They all expect me to do something. My function is not to do, but to be. I make no poetry. I am a poem--if you read me aright." And again, in a moment of despondency, she said, "I am one of the weary women of the nineteenth century. No other age could have produced me." When she said she did nothing she must have meant she was not great in anything, for her time was all occupied, and those things in which she was interested were never so well done without her help. If any crying abuse were brought to light in the old Cathedral city; if any large measure of reform were set on foot; if the local papers suddenly became eloquent in favour of some good movement, and adroit in their powers of persuasion; if burdens had to be lifted from the oppressed, and the weak defended against great odds, you might be sure that Ideala was busy, and her work could be detected in it all. And she was especially active when efforts were being made to find amusement for the people. "That is what they want, poor things," she would say. "Their lives are such a dreary round of dull monotonous toil, and they have so little sun to cheer them. They ought to be taught to laugh, and have the brightness put into themselves, and then it would seem as if they had been relieved of half the atmospheric pressure beneath which they groan. Think what your own life would be if day day after day brought you nothing but toil; if you had nothing to look back upon, nothing to look forward to, but the labour that makes a machine of you, deadening the power to care, and holding mind and body in the galling bondage and weariness of everlasting routine." She thought laughter an unfailing specific for most of the ills of life. "We can none of us be thankful enough for the sensation," she said. "Nothing relieves the mental oppression, which does such moral and physical harm, like mirth; of course, I mean legitimate laughter, not levity, nor the ill-natured rejoicing of small minds in such subjects for sorrow as their neighbours' faults, follies, and mistakes. What I am thinking of is the pleasure without excitement which there is in sympathetic intercourse with those large, loving natures that elevate, and the laughter without bitterness which is always a part of it." Like most people whose goodness is neither affected nor acquired, but natural to them, Ideala saw no merit in her own works, and would not take the credit she deserved for them; nor would she have had her good deeds known at all if she could have helped it. But knowledge of these things leaks out somehow, although probably not a third of what she did will ever be even suspected. CHAPTER II. Speaking to me of women one day, she said: "Certainly they are _vainqueurs des vainqueurs de la terre_ in any sense they choose; but the pity of it is that they do not choose to exercise their power for good to any great extent. I agree with Madame Bernier--if it were Madame Bernier--who said: _'L'ignorance où les femmes sont de leurs devoirs, l'abus qu'elles font de leur puissance, leur font perdre le plus beau et le plus précieux de leurs avantages, celui d'être utiles.'_ But hundreds of other quotations will occur to you, written by thoughtful men and women in all ages, and all to the same effect; it is impossible to over-estimate their restraining and refining influence as the companions and mothers of men--and almost equally impossible to make them realise their responsibility or care to use their strength. I would have every woman feel herself a power for good in the land--and if only half of them did, what a world of difference it would make to everybody's health and happiness! But women should, as a rule, be silent powers. There are, of course, occasions when they _must_ speak--and all honour to those who do so when the need arises--but our influence is most felt when it is quietly persistent and unobtrusive. There is no social reform that we might not accomplish if we agreed among ourselves to do it, and then worked, each of us using her influence to that end in her own family, and among her own friends, only. I once induced some ladies to try a little experiment to prove this. At that time the gentlemen of our respective families were all wearing a certain kind of necktie. We agreed to banish the necktie, and in a month it had disappeared, and not one of those gentlemen was ever able to tell us why he had given it up. We don't deserve much credit for our ingenuity, though," she added, lightly. "Men are so easily managed. All you have to do is to feed them and flatter them." "I think that hardly fair," I commented. "What? The feeding and flattering?" "No, the conspiracy." "Well, that occurred to me too--afterwards, when it was too late to do anything but repent. At the time, I own, I thought of nothing but the success of the experiment as an example and proof of our will-power." "You considered one side of the subject only, as per usual, when you are eager and interested," I softly insinuated. She frowned at me thoughtfully; then, after a pause, she resumed: "Ah, yes! You may be sure there is a great deal of good motive power in women, but most of it is lost for want of knowledge and means to apply it. It works like the sails of a windmill not attached to the machinery, which whirl round and round with incredible velocity and every evidence of strength, but serve no better purpose than to show which way the wind blows." This question of the position of women in our own day occupied her a good deal. "The women of my time," she said to me once, "are in an unsettled state, it may be a state of transition. Much that made life worth having has lost its charm for them. The old interests pall upon them. Occupations that used to be the great business of their lives are now thought trivial, and are left to children and to servants. Principles accepted since the beginning of time have been called in question. Weariness and distrust have taken the place of peace and content, and doubt and dissatisfaction are the order of the day. Women want something; they are determined to have it, too; and doubtless they would get it if only they knew what it is that they want. They are struggling to arrive at something, but opinions differ widely as to what that something ought to be; and the result is that they have divided themselves into three classes, not exactly distinct: they dovetail into each other so nicely that it is hard to say where the influence of the one set ends and the other begins. There are, first of all, the women who in their struggles for political power have done so much to unsex us. They have tried to force themselves into unnatural positions, and the consequence has been about as pleasing and edifying as an attempt to make a goose sing. They clamour for change, mistaking change for progress. But don't let the puzzling dovetail confuse you. The people I speak of are not those who have so nobly devoted themselves to the removal of the wrongs of women, though they work together. But the object of all this class is good. They wish to raise us, and what they want, for the most part, is a little more common sense--as is shown in their system of education, for instance, which cultivates the intellectual at the expense of the physical powers, girls being crammed as boys (to their great let and hindrance also) are crammed, just when nature wants all their strength to assist their growth; the result of which becomes periodically apparent when a number of amiable young ladies are let loose on society without hair or teeth. But the thing they clamour for most is equality. There is a great deal to be said in favour of placing the sexes on an equal footing, and if social conventions are stronger and more admirable than natural instincts--and doubtless they are--the thing should be done; but the innate perversity of women make it difficult--for, I know this, that whatever the position of a true woman, and however much she may clamour for equality with men in general, the man she herself loves in particular will always be her master. "But such ridicule as this party has brought upon itself would not have mattered so much had nothing worse come of it. Unfortunately, there seems to be no neutral ground for us women: we either do good or harm; and I hold that first class responsible for the existence of those people who clamour for change of any kind, regardless of the consequences. Their ideas, shorn of all good intention, have resulted in the production of a new creature; and have made it possible for women who have the faults of both sexes and the virtues of neither to mix in society. The bad work done by the influence of this second class is only too apparent. It is to them we owe the fact that there is less refinement, less courtesy, less of the really good breeding which shows itself in kindness and consideration for others, and, Heaven help us! even less modesty among us now than there was some years ago." "These are the women, too, who spend their time and talents on the production of cleverly written books of the most corrupt tendency. Their works are a special feature of the age, and are doubly dangerous because they have the art of making the worst ideas attractive, by presenting them in forms too refined and beautiful to shock even the most delicate." "Besides these two classes there is the third, which is more difficult to define. It is the one on which our hope rests. The women who belong to it are dissatisfied like the others, but they are less decided, and therefore their dissatisfaction takes no positive shape. They also want something, and go this way and that as if in search of it, but they are not really trying for anything in particular. They do good and evil indiscriminately, and for the same motive: they find distraction in doing something--anything. But the desire to do good is latent in all of them; show them the way, and it will make itself apparent." "But what is the reason of all this dissatisfaction?" I asked. "Why don't you go to your husbands and brothers to be set right, as of old?" "Ah! when you ask me that, you get to the first cause of the trouble," she answered. "The truth is that we have lost faith in our men. They claim some superiority for themselves, but we find none. The age requires people to practise what they preach, and yet expects us to be guided by the counsels of those whose own lives, we know, have rendered them contemptible. They are not fit to guide us, and we are not fit to go alone. I suppose we shall come to an understanding eventually-- either they must be raised or we must be lowered. It is for the death of manliness we women mourn. We marry, and find we have taken upon ourselves misery, and lifelong widowhood of the mind and moral nature. Do you wonder that some of us ask: Why should we keep ourselves pure if impurity is to be our bedfellow? You make us breathe corruption, and wonder that we lose our health." "But why do you talk of the death of manliness? Men have as much courage now as they ever had." "Oh, of course--mere animal courage; there is plenty of that, but that is nothing. A cat will fight for her kittens. It is moral courage that makes a man, and where do you find it now? Are men self-denying? Are they scrupulous to a shadow of the truth? Are they disinterested? How many _gentlemen_ have you met in the course of your life? I know about half a dozen." "What do you call a gentleman, then?" I asked in surprise. "What makes a man one?" "Why, truth and affection, of course," she answered; "the one is the most ennobling, and the other the most refining quality. As a child I used to think ladies and gentlemen never told stories; it was only the common people who were dis-honourable, and that was what made them common. _Hélas_! one lives and learns!" "I don't think the world is worse than it ever was," I said, drily. "Not worse, when we know so much better!" she answered with scorn. "Not worse when we have learnt to see so clearly, and most of us acknowledge that It is our will Which thus enchains us to permitted ill! It is nearly two thousand years since Christianity began its work, and it is still unaccomplished. Do you know, I sometimes think that all this talk of virtue, and teaching of religion, is a kind of practical joke, gravely kept up to find a church parade of respectability for States, a profession for hundreds, and a means of influencing men by making a tender point in their nervous system to be touched, as with a rod, when necessary--a rod that is held over them always _in terrorem_! We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you will find that every man sees the necessity of it for his neighbour only. Goodness is happiness, and sin is disease. The truism is as old as the hills, and as evident; but if men were in earnest, do you suppose they would go on for ever choosing sin and its ghastly companion as they do? Do you know, there are moments when I think that even their reverence for the purity of women is a sham. For why do they keep us pure? Is it not to make each morsel more delicious for themselves, that sense and sentiment may be satisfied together, and their own pleasure made more complete? Individuals may be in earnest, but the great bulk of mankind is a hypocrite. When the history of this age is written, moral cowardice and self-indulgence will be found to have been the most striking characteristics of the people. There is no truth to be found in the inward parts." But Ideala did not often adopt this tone, and she would herself check other people who were preparing to assume it. She had a favourite quotation, adroitly mangled, to suit such occasions. "When we begin to inculcate morality as a science, we must discard moralising as a method," she declared; and she would also beg us to stop the hysteria. "It is the mortal malady of all well-beloved measures," she said; "and it spreads to an epidemic if the infected ones are not suppressed at once to prevent contagion." But, although she spoke so positively when taken out of herself by the interest and importance of a subject, she had no very high opinion of her own judgment and power to decide. A little more self-esteem would have been good for her; she was too diffident, "I have not come across people on whose knowledge I could rely," she told me. "I have been obliged to study alone, and to form my opinions for myself out of such scraps of information as I have had the capacity to acquire from reading and observation. I am, therefore, always prepared to find myself mistaken, even when I am surest about a thing--for What am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry! In practice, too, she frequently, albeit unconsciously, diverged from her theories to some considerable extent; as on one occasion, when, after talking long and earnestly of the sin of selfishness, she absently picked up a paper I had just cut with intent to enjoy myself, took it away with her to the drawing-room, and sat on it for the rest of the morning--as I afterwards heard. CHAPTER III. Ideala held that dignity and calm are essential in a woman, but, like the rest of the world, she found it hard to attain to her own standard of excellence. Her bursts of enthusiasm were followed by fits of depression, and these again by periods of indifference, when it was hard to rouse her to interest in anything. She always said, and was probably right, that want of proper discipline in childhood was the reason of this variableness, which she deplored, but could neither combat nor conceal. Temperament must also have had something to do with it. Her nervous system was too highly strung, she was too sensitive, too emotional, too intense. She reflected phases of feeling with which she was brought into contact as a lake reflects the sky above it, and the bird that skims across it, and the boats that rest upon its breast; yet, like the lake's, her own nature remained unchanged; it might be darkened by shadows, and lashed by tempests till it raged, but the pure element showed divinely even in its wrath, and the passion of it was expended always to some good end. But even her love of the beautiful was carried to excess. It was a passion with her which would, in a sturdier age, have been considered a vice. She delighted in the scent of flowers, the song of the thrushes in the spring; colour, and beautiful forms. Doubtless the emotion they caused her was pure enough, and it was natural that, highly bred, cultivated, and refined as she was, she should feel these delicate, sensuous pleasures in a greater degree than lower natures do. There was danger, however, in the over-education of the senses, which made their ready response inevitable, but neither limited the subjects, nor regulated the degree, to which they should respond. But it would be hard in any case to say where cultivation of love for the beautiful should end, and to determine the exact point at which the result ceases to be intellectual and begins to be sensual. I have sat and watched Ideala lolling at an open window in the summer. The house stood on a hill, a river wound through the valley below, and beyond the river--the land sloped up again, green and dotted with trees, to a range of low hills, crested with a fringe of wood. "Do you know what there is beyond those hills?" Ideala asked me once, abruptly. "_I_ don't know; but I love to believe that the sea is there, and that the sun is sinking into it now. Sometimes I fancy I can hear it murmur." And then followed a long silence. And the scent of mignonette and roses blew in upon her, and the twilight deepened, and I saw her grow pale with pleasure when the nightingale began to sing--and then I stole away and never was missed. She would lie in a long chair for hours like that, scarcely moving, and never speaking. At first I used to wonder what she thought about; but afterwards I knew that at such times she did not think, she only felt. I have some pictures of her as she was then, dressed in a gown of some quaint blue and white Japanese material, with her white throat bare--I was just going to catalogue her charms, but it seems indelicate to describe a woman, point by point, like a horse that is for sale. I have some other pictures of her, too, as she appeared to me one hot summer when I was painting a picture by the river, and she used to come down the towing-path to watch me work, and sit beside me on the grass for hours together, talking, reading aloud, reciting, or silent, according to her mood, but always interesting. It was then I learnt to know her best. And I am always glad to think of her as I used to see her then, coming towards me in one particular grey frock she wore, tight-fitting and perfect, yet with no detail evident. It was like an expression of herself, that dress, so quiet to all seeming, and yet so rich in material, and so complex in design. The wonder and the beauty of it grew upon you, and never failed of its effect. CHAPTER IV. When I first knew Ideala her religious opinions were all unsettled. "I neither believe nor disbelieve," she told me; "I am in a state of don't know; or perhaps it would be more exact to say that I both doubt and believe at one and the same time. I go indifferently to either church, Protestant or Catholic, and am thankful when any note of music, or thrill of feeling in the voice, or noble sentiment, elevates me so that I can pray. But I am told that both Catholics and Protestants consider me a weak waverer, and call me incorrigible. Sometimes I cannot pray for months together, and when I do it is generally to ask for something I want, not to praise or give thanks. But what a blank it is when one cannot pray; when one has lost the power to conceive that there is a something greater than man, to whom man is nevertheless all in all, and to whom we may look for comfort in all times of our tribulation, and for sympathy in all times of our wealth! To be able to give thanks to God when one is happy is the most rapturous, and to be able to call upon Him in the day of trouble is the most blessed, state of mind I know. Yet I believe we should only pray for the possible. The leafless tree may pray for the time of buds and blossoms; will the time come the sooner? Perhaps not, but it will come." "I must confess," she said on another occasion, "that I do have moments of pure scepticism; but when I cannot believe in the existence of a God, and a Beyond, I feel as if the sky were nearer, and weighed upon me, so that I could not lift my head." She thought religion consisted much more in doing right than in believing right, and set morality above faith; but I think she had a leaning towards the Roman Catholic religion nevertheless. "It is a grand old faith," she said, "only it has certain ramifications with which I should always quarrel, notably that of the Sacred Heart with which Catholics deface their lovely Lady in the churches. I always feel that such bad art cannot be good religion. When the Roman Catholic religion commanded respect it expressed itself better--as in the days when it carved itself in harmonies of solid stone, and wrote itself in tint and tone on glowing canvases, and learnt to speak in thundering mass and mighty hymns of praise! There are people who think these new shoots good as a sign of life in the tree, and this consideration might perhaps make their appearance welcome; but a great deal of strength is expended on their production, and it would be just as well to lop them off again. The old tree wants pruning and cutting back occasionally, and it is a false sentiment that is letting it fall to decay for the sake of these struggling branches. "There is another thing, too, for which we should all quarrel with the Catholic religion. I think the fact his already been noticed by some writer; at all events, it is evident enough to have occurred to any one. I mean the fact that the Church, by its narrow views about education, and its most unspiritual ambition for itself, has retarded the world's progress for centuries by interfering with the law of natural selection. As a matter of course for ages all the best men went into the Church; it was the only career open to them; and so they left no descendants." At our house, on another occasion, when the Roman Catholic religion happened to be under discussion, she launched forth some observations in her usual emphatic way. There were only two strangers present, a lady and her husband. Ideala asked the lady, who was sitting next to her, if she were a Catholic, to which the lady answered "No;" and Ideala, satisfied, proceeded to remark: "It may be the true religion, but it certainly is not the religion of truth. The doctrine of expediency, or the latitude they allow themselves on the score of expediency--I don't quite know how they put it--but it has much to answer for. I never find that my Roman Catholic friends are true, as my Protestant friends are. There is always a something kept back, a reservation; a want of straightforwardness, even when there is no positive deception--I can't describe the thing I mean, but it is quite perceptible, and causes an uneasy feeling of distrust, which is all the more tormenting from its vagueness and want of definition. The low-class Roman Catholics, I find, never hesitate if a lie will serve their purpose; and Roman Catholic servants are notoriously untrustworthy. That, of course, proves nothing, for one knows that low-class people of any religion are not to be depended on--still, there is no doubt that one finds deception more rife among Catholics than among Protestants, and one wonders why, if the religion is not to blame." My sister, Claudia, had tried to catch Ideala's eye, and stop her, but in vain; and the lady next her broke out the moment she paused: "Indeed, you are quite wrong. You cannot have known many Catholics. They are not untrue." "O yes, I have known numbers," Ideala answered; "I speak from experience. Yet it always seems to me that the Roman Catholic religion is good for individuals. There is pleasure in it, and help and comfort for them. But then it is death to the progress of nations, and the question is: Would an individual be justified in adding a unit more for his own benefit to a system which would ruin his country? I think not." Here, however, she stopped, seeing at last that something was wrong. "What dreadful mistake did I make this evening?" she asked me afterwards. "Mrs. Jervois declared she wasn't a Catholic." "But her husband is," I answered; "and he heard every word." Ideala groaned. Not long afterwards Mrs. Jervois wrote and told us she had entered the Catholic Church. "I had, in fact, been received before I went to you," she confessed. "There!" Ideala exclaimed. "It is just what I said. A want of common honesty is a part of the religion; and you see she had begun to practise it while she was here." "What an eternal lie it is they preach when they tell us life is not worth having," she said to me once, speaking of preachers generally. "I have heard an oleosaccharine priest preach for an hour on this subject, detailing the worthlessness of all earthly pleasures, with which he seemed to be intimately acquainted--his appearance making one suspect that he had not even yet exhausted them all himself--and giving a florid account of the glories of the life to come, about which he appeared to know as much but to care less; just as if heaven might not begin on earth if only men would let it." One day I had to warn her about acting so often on impulse. She heard what I had to say very good-naturedly, and, after thinking about it for a while, she said: "What a pity it is one never sees an impulse coming. It is impossible to know whether they arise from below, or descend from above. I always find if I act on one that it has arisen; and as surely if I leave it alone it proves to have been a good opportunity lost. And how curiously our thoughts go on, often so irrespective of ourselves. I was in a Roman Catholic church the other day, and the priest--a friend of mine, who looks like the last of the Mohicans minus the feathers in his hair; but a good man, with nice, soft, velvety brown eyes--preached most impressively. He told us that the Lord was there--there on that very altar, ready to answer our prayers; and, oh dear! when I came to think of it, there were so many of my prayers waiting to be answered! I 'felt like' presenting them all over again, it seemed such a good opportunity. And then they sang the _O salutaris Hostia_ divinely-- so divinely that I thought if the Lord really had been there He would certainly have made them sing it again--and I could not pray any more after that. You call this rank irreverence, do you not? _I_ do. And I wish I had not thought it. Yet it was one of those involuntary tricks of the mind for which I cannot believe that we are to be held responsible. Theologians would say it was a temptation of the devil, but they are wrong. The first cause of these mental lapses is to be found in some habit of levity, acquired young, and not easily got rid of, but still not hopeless. But prevention is better than cure, and children should be taught right-mindedness early. I wish I had been. Happy is the child who is started in life with a set of fixed principles, and the power to respect." I used to wish that there might be a universal religion, but Ideala did not share my feeling on this subject. "I suppose it is a fine idea," she said; "but while minds run in so many different grooves, it seems to me far finer for one system of morality to have found expressions enough to satisfy nearly everybody." She had very decided views about what heaven ought to be. "The mere material notion of abundance of gold and precious stones, which appealed to the early churchmen, has no charm for us," she declared. "We must have new powers of perception, and new pleasures provided for us, such, for instance, as Mr. Andrew Lang suggests in an exquisite little poem about the Homeric Phæacia--the land whose inhabitants were friends of the gods, a sort of heaven upon earth." And then she quoted: The languid sunset, mother of roses, Lingers, a light on the magic seas; The wide fire flames as a flower uncloses; Heavy with odour and loose to the breeze. * * * * * The strange flowers' perfume turns to singing, Heard afar over moonlit seas; The siren's song, grown faint with winging, Falls in scent on the cedar trees. "Those lines were the first to make me grasp the possibility of having new faculties added to our old ones in another state of existence," she said, "faculties which should give us a deeper insight into the nature of things, and enable us to discover new pleasures in the unity which may be expected to underlie beauty and excellence in all their manifestations, as Mr. Norman Pearson puts it. Did you ever read that paper of his, 'After Death,' in the _Nineteenth Century_? It embodies what I had long felt, but could never grasp before I found his admirable expression of it. 'I can see no reason,' he says, in one passage in particular which I remember word for word, I think, it gives me such pleasure to recall it--'I can see no reason for supposing that _some such_ insight would be impossible to the quickened faculties of a higher development. With a nature material so far as the existence of those faculties might require, but spiritual to the highest degree in their exercise and enjoyment: under physical conditions which might render us _practically_ independent of space, and _actually_ free from the host of physical evils to which we are now exposed, we might well attain a consummation of happiness, _generally_ akin to that for which we now strive, but idealised into something like perfection. The faculties which would enable us to obtain a deeper and truer view of all the manifestations of cosmic energy would at the same time reveal to us new forms of beauty, new possibilities of pleasure on every side: and--to take a single instance--the emotions to which the sight of Niagara now appeals might then be gratified by a contemplation of the fierce grandeur of some sun's chromosphere or the calmer glories of its corona.' That satisfies, does it not?" she added, with a sigh. "It suggests such infinite possibilities." * * * * * One day, when she was making herself miserable for want of a religion, I tried to comfort her by talking of the different people whose lives had been good and pure and noble, although they had had no faith. "I suppose my principles are right," she said; "but if they are, they have come right by accident. The children of the people are sent to Sunday-schools, and taught the difference between right and wrong; _we_ seem to be expected to know it instinctively. I think if I had learnt I might have profited, because I cling so fondly to the one principle I ever heard clearly enunciated. It was on the sin of shooting foxes; and I cannot tell you the horror I have of the crime, even down to the present day. But, now I think of it, I did receive two other scraps of religious training. My governess taught me the Ten Commandments by making me say them after her when I was eating bread and sugar for breakfast before going to church on Sunday. The thought of them always brings back the flavour of bread and sugar. And the other scrap I got from a clergyman to whom I was sent on a single occasion when I was thought old enough to be confirmed. He asked me which was the commandment with promise, and I didn't know, so he told me; and then I made him laugh about a horse of mine that used to have great fun trying to break my neck, and after that he said I should do. I did not agree with him, however, and I positively refused to be confirmed until I knew more about it. My mother said I was the most disagreeable child she had ever known, which was probably true, but as an argument it failed to convince. It was her last remark on the subject, happily, and after that the thing was allowed to drop." Ideala was fourteen when she refused to be confirmed for conscientious scruples, and although she made light of it in this way, she had suffered a good deal and been severely punished at the time for her refusal, but vainly, for she never gave in. In after-life she held, of course, that Christianity was the highest moral revelation the world had ever known; but when she saw that legal right was not always moral right, I think she began to look for a higher. By baptism she belonged to the Church of England, but she seems to have thought of the Sacrament always with the idea of transubstantiation in her mind. She spoke of it reverently, but had never been able to take it, and for a curious reason: she said the idea of it nauseated her. She felt that the elements were unnatural food, and therefore she could not touch them--and this feeling never left her but once, when she was dangerously ill, and yearned, as she told me, for the Sacrament more than for life and health. Day and night the longing never left her; but, not having been confirmed, she did not like to ask for it, and as she recovered the old feeling gradually returned. Religious difficulties always tormented her more or less. As she grew older she felt with Shelley that belief is involuntary, and a man is neither to be praised nor blamed for it; and she was always ready to acknowledge with Sir Philip Sidney that "Reason cannot show itself more reasonable than to leave reasoning on things above reason," but nevertheless her mind did not rest. I have also heard her quote, "Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength," and add that in matters of faith and religion we are all children, and I have thought at times that she had been able to leave it so; but something always fell from her sooner or later which showed that the old trouble was rankling still--as when she told me once: "I have never heard the Divine voice which has called you and all my friends. I listen for it, but it does not speak. I call, but there is no reply. I wait, but it does not come. The heaven of heavens is dark to me, and the yearning of my soul meets no response. Will it be so for ever?" No, not for ever--but she was led by tortuous ways, and left to work out her own salvation in very fear and trembling, till the dear human love was given to her in pity to help her to know something of that which is Divine. And then, I hope, above the trouble of her senses, and the turmoil of the world, the Divine voice did call her, and she was able at last to hear. CHAPTER V. Ideala often recurred to the subject of work for women. "There are so many thousands of us," she said, "who have no object in life, and nothing to make us take it seriously. My own is a case in point. I am not necessary, even to my husband. There is nothing I am bound to do for him, or that he requires of me, nothing but to be agreeable when he is with me, which would not interfere with a serious occupation if I had one, and is scarcely interest enough in life for an energetic woman. My household duties take, on an average, half an hour a day; and everything in our house is done regularly, and well done. My social duties may be got through at odd moments, and the more of a pastime I make them the better I fulfil them; and, with the exception of these, there is nothing in my life that I cannot have done for me by some one better able to do it than I am. And even if I had children I should not be much more occupied, for the things they ought to learn from their mothers are best taught by example. For all practical purposes, parents, as a rule, are bad masters for any but very young children. They err on the side of over severity or the reverse. So you see I have no obligations of consequence, and there is, therefore, nothing in my life to inspire a sense of responsibility. And all this seems to me a grievous waste of Me. I remember Lord Wensum telling me, when we discussed this subject, that he was travelling once with a well-known editor, and, noticing the number of villas that had sprung up of late years along the whole line of rail they were on, he said: 'I wonder what the ladies in those villas do with their time? I suppose their social duties are limited, and they are too well off to be obliged to trouble themselves about anything.' 'It is the existence of those villas,' the editor answered, 'that makes the present profession of the novelist possible.' But I think," said Ideala, "that those women might find something better to do than to make a profession for novelists." "But you do a good deal yourself, Ideala," I ventured. "Yes, in a purposeless way. All my acts are isolated; it would make little difference if they had never been done." "Then you are not content, after all, to be merely a poem?" I said, maliciously. "You would like to do as well as to be?" She laughed. Then, after a little, she said earnestly: "Do you know, I always feel as if I _could_ do something--teach something--or help others in a small way with some work of importance. I never believe I was born just to live and die. But I have a queer feeling about it. I am sure I shall be made to go down into some great depth of sin and misery myself, in order to learn what it is I have to teach." She loved music, and painting, and poetry, and science, and none of her loves were barren. She embraced them each in turn with an ardour that resulted in the production of an offspring--a song, a picture, a poem, or book on some most serious subject, and all worthy of note. But she was inconstant, and these children of her thought or fancy were generally isolated efforts that marked the culminating point of her devotion, and lessened her interest if they did not exhaust her strength. Perhaps, though, I wrong her when I call her inconstant. It seems to me now that each new interest was a step by which she mounted upwards, learning to sympathise practically and perfectly with all men in their work as she passed them on her way to find her own. CHAPTER VI. She knew the poor of the place well, and took a lively interest in all that concerned them; and occasionally she would confide some of her own odd observations and reflections to me. "On Sunday morning all the women wash their doorsteps," she told me; "I think it is part of their religion." And on another occasion she said: "They have such lovely children here, and such swarms of them. I am always hard on the women with lovely children. People say it is envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, that makes me so; but it really is because I think women who have nice children should be better than other women. It would be worse for one of them to do a wrong thing than for poor childless me." This conclusion may be quarrelled with as illogical, but the feeling that led to it was beautiful beyond question; and, indeed, all her ideas on that subject were beautiful. She went once, soon after she came among us, to comfort a lady in the neighbourhood who had lost a baby at its birth. "It is sad that you should lose your child," Ideala said to her; "but you are better off than I am, for I never knew what it was to be a mother." She would have thought it a privilege to have experienced even the sorrows of maternity. Talking about the people, she told me: "They draw such nice distinctions. They speak of 'a lady' and 'a real lady.' A 'real lady' is a person who gives no trouble. If Mrs. Vanbrugh wants anything from the butcher, and he has already sent to her house once that day, she does not expect him to send again; she sends to him--and she is 'a real lady.' Mrs. Stanton is also thoughtful, but she is something more; she is sociable and kind, and talks to them all in a friendly way, just as if they were human beings; and she is something more than 'a real lady'--she's 'a real nice lady.' "Do you know Mrs. Polter at the fish-shop? What a fine-looking woman she is! Middle-aged, intelligent, and a very good specimen of her class, I should think. She has eight children already, and would consider the ninth a further blessing. Her husband is a good-looking man, too, and most devoted. In fact, they are quite an ideal pair with their eight children and their fish-shop. He had to go to Yarmouth the other day to buy bloaters, and while he was away she went by the five o'clock train every morning to choose the day's supply of fish for the shop, and he was quite unhappy about it. He was afraid she would 'overdo' herself, and rather than that should happen he desired her to let the business go to the--ahem! He made her write every day to say how she was, and was wretched till he returned to relieve her of her arduous duties. She made friends with me during the scarlet fever epidemic. Number eight was a baby then, and she was afraid he might catch the disease and be taken to the hospital and die for want of her; and I sympathised strongly with her denunciations of the cruelty of the act. Fancy taking little babies from their mothers! Barbarous, don't you think it? One day a lady came into the shop while I was there. She was dressed in a bright pink costume, with a large hat all smothered in pink feathers. I thought of the Queen of Sheba, and felt alarmed. Mrs. Polter told me afterwards she was 'just a lady,' rolling in recently acquired wealth, and 'as hard to please as if she had never washed her own doorstep.' It was then I learnt the difference between 'a lady' and 'a real lady.'" One of Ideala's exploits got into the paper somehow, and she was annoyed about it, and anxious to make us believe the account of the risk she ran had been greatly exaggerated. I was present when she gave her own version of the story, which was characteristic in every way. "I heard frantic cries from the river," she said. "Some one was shrieking, 'The child will be drowned!' and I ran to see what was the matter. A man was tearing up and down on the bank, a child was struggling in the water, and as there was nobody else to be seen he looked to _me_ for assistance! I advised him to go in and bring the child out, but the idea did not appear to commend itself to him, so he took to running up and down again, bawling, 'The child will be drowned!' And indeed it seemed very likely; so I was obliged to go in and bring it out myself. The man was overjoyed when I restored it to him. He clasped it in his arms with every demonstration of affection; and then he looked at me and became embarrassed. He evidently felt that he ought to say something, but the difficulty was what to say. At last a bright idea seemed to strike him. His countenance cleared, and he spoke with much feeling. 'I am afraid you are rather wet,' he observed; and then he left me, and a sympathetic landlady, who keeps a little public-house by the river, and had witnessed the occurrence, took me in and dried me. She gave me whisky and hot water, and entertained me for the rest of the afternoon. She is a remarkable woman, and I should visit her often were it not for her love of, and faith in, whisky and hot water. I tell her there are five things which make the nose red-- viz., cold, tight-lacing, disease of the right side of the heart, dyspepsia, and alcohol, and the greatest of these is alcohol; but she says a little colour anywhere would be an improvement to me, and I feel that I can have nothing in common with a woman who has such bad taste in the distribution of colour." CHAPTER VII. Ideala's notions of propriety were altogether unconventional. She never could be made to understand that it was not the proper thing to talk familiarly to any one she met, and discuss any subject they were equal to with them. "It is good for people to talk, and natural, and therefore proper," she said. "If I can give pleasure to a stranger by doing so, or he can give pleasure to me, it would not be right to keep silent." She carried this idea of her duty to her neighbour rather far sometimes. I remember her telling me once about two old gentlemen she had travelled with the day before. "The sun came in and bothered me, and one of them offered to draw the blind," she said, "and he remarked it was rather a treat to see the sun, we have so little of it now; and I said that was true, and told him how I pitied the farmers. I had to stay in my room the other day with a bad cold, and I amused myself watching one of them at work in some fields opposite. The state of his mind was expressed by his boots. On Monday the sun was shining, the air was mild, and it seemed as if we were going to have a continuance of fine weather, and the farmer appeared of a cheerful countenance, and his boots were polished and laced. On Tuesday there was an east wind, veering south, with showers, and his boots were laced, but not polished. On Wednesday there was frost, fog, and gloom, and they were neither laced nor polished. On Thursday there was a snowstorm, and he had no boots at all on; and after that I did not see him, and I wondered if he had committed suicide--in which case I thought the jury might almost have brought in a verdict of 'justifiable _felo-de-se_.' And when I told that story the other old gentleman shut his book, and began to talk too. And I said I thought the weather was much colder than it used to be, for I could remember wearing muslin dresses in May, and I could not wear them at all now; but I did not know if the change were in the climate or in myself--perhaps a little of both--though, indeed, I knew that, to a certain extent, it was in the climate, which had been very much altered in different districts by drainage, and cutting, or planting--altered for the better, however, as a rule. And one old gentleman had heard that before, but did not understand it exactly, so I explained it to him; and then I talked about changes of climate in general, and the formation of beds of coal, and the ice period, and sun-spots, and the theory of comets, and about my husband getting up to see the last one, and going out in a felt hat and dressing-gown with a bed-candle to look for it--and about that dream of mine, did I tell you? I dreamt the comet came into our drawing-room, and the leg of a Chinese table turned into a snake and snorted at it, and the comet looked so taken aback that I woke myself with a shout of laughter. And then we talked of popular superstitions about comets, and dreams, and ghosts-- particularly ghosts, and I told a number of creepy stories, and one old gentleman pretended he didn't believe in them, but he did, and so did the other without any pretence; and we talked about Darwinism, and the nature of the soul, and Nihilism, and the state of society--and--and a few other things. And they were such dear delightful old gentlemen, and they knew such a lot, and were so clever; and one of them was a Railway Director, and the other couldn't let his farms, and was bothered about his pheasants, and wanted to have the trains altered to suit him. I should so like to meet them both again." "And how long did all this take, Ideala?" "Oh, some hours. I fancy their dreams would be rather confused last night," she added, naively. "Poor old gentlemen!" said I. This sociability and inclination to talk the matter out, and, I may say, a certain amount of innocence and lack of worldly wisdom into the bargain, betrayed her occasionally into small improprieties of conduct that were not to be excused, and would possibly not have been forgiven in any one but Ideala. But such things were allowed in her as certain things are allowed in certain people--not because the things are right in themselves, but because the people who do them see no harm in them. There are people, too, who seem to enjoy the privilege of making wrong right by doing it. Society, however, only accords this privilege to a limited and distinguished few. When Ideala saw for herself that she had done an unjustifiable thing she was very ready to confess it. I always fancied she had some latent idea of making atonement in that way. It never mattered how much a story told against herself, nor how much malicious people might make of it to her discredit; she told all, inimitably, and with scrupulous fidelity to fact. One day she was standing waiting for a train at the station at York, and in her absent way she fixed her eyes on a gentleman who was walking about the platform. Presently he went up to her, and, without any apology or show of respect, remarked: "I am sure I have seen you before." "Probably," Ideala rejoined, as if the occurrence were the most natural thing in the world, "but I do not remember you. Perhaps if I heard your name----?" "Oh, I don't suppose you ever heard my name," he said. "In that case I can never have known you," she answered, calmly. "I never know any one except by name. I suppose you are an Englishman?" "Yes," he said, eagerly; "I am in the 5th----" "Ah, I thought so," she interrupted, placidly. "Englishmen in the 5th, and some other regiments, are apt to have but the one idea----" "And that is?" "And that is a bad one." He looked at her for a moment, and then, hat in hand, he made her a low bow, and left her without another word. "I think he felt ill, and went to have some refreshment," she added, when she told me. From what happened afterwards I am sure that at the time she had no idea of the real significance of the position in which she found herself placed on this occasion. But, as a rule, if she did or said the wrong thing, she became painfully conscious of the fact immediately afterwards--indeed, it was generally _afterwards_ that she grasped the full meaning of most things. She was ready with repartee without being in the least quick of understanding; she had to think things over, and even then she was not sure to do the right thing next time. "Mr. Graves is ten years younger than his wife," she told me once, "and only fancy what I said one day. It was in his studio, and she was there. I declared a woman could have no sense of propriety at all who married a man younger than herself--that no good could possibly come of such marriages--and a lot more. Then I suddenly remembered, and you can imagine my feelings! But what do you think I did? I went there the next year, and said the same thing again exactly!" CHAPTER VIII. When we were a small party of intimate friends, and Ideala was quite at her ease with us, it was pleasant to see her lolling, a little languidly as was her wont (for physically her energy was fitful), in the corner of a couch, looking happy and interested, her face, which was sad in repose, lit up for the time with amusement, as she quietly listened to our talk, and observed all that was going on around her. Even when she did not speak a word she somehow managed to make her presence felt, and, as a rule, she spoke little on these occasions. But sometimes we managed to draw her out, and sometimes she would burst forth suddenly of her own accord, with a torrent of eloquence that silenced us all; and even when she was utterly wrong she charmed us. Her chance observations were generally noteworthy either for their sense or their humour. It was only her sense of humour, I think, that saved her from being sentimental; but she gave expression to it in season and out of season, and would let it carry her too far sometimes, for she made enemies for herself more than once by the way she exposed the absurdity of certain things to the very people who believed in them. Every lapse of this kind caused her infinite regret, but the fault seemed incurable: she was always either repenting of it or committing it, although, having so many quirks of her own, she felt that she, of all people in the world, should have dealt most tenderly with the weaknesses of others. She knew how narrowly she escaped being sentimental, and would often joke about her danger in that respect. "This lovely summer weather makes me _sickly_ sentimental," she told me once. "I feel like the heroine of a three-volume novel written by a young lady of eighteen, and I think continually of _him_. I don't know in the least who _he_ is, but that makes no difference. The thought of him delights me, and I want to write long letters to him, and make verses about him the whole day long. And he wants me to be good." She had two or three pet abominations of her own, any allusion to which was sure to make her outrageous--false sentiment and affectation of any kind were amongst them. She had little habits, too, that we were all pleased to fall in with. Sitting in the corner of a couch, and of one couch in particular in every house, was one of these; and people got into the way of giving up that seat to her whenever she appeared. I think it would have puzzled us all to say why or wherefore, for she never said or looked anything that could make us think she wished to appropriate it; she simply took it as a matter of course when it was offered to her, and probably did not know that she invariably sat there. Ideala was a splendid horsewoman, and swam like a fish; but she was not good at tennis or games of any kind, and she did not dance, for a curious reason: she objected to be touched by people for whom she had no special affection. She even disliked to shake hands, and often wished some one would put the custom out of fashion. With regard to dancing I have heard her say, too, that she sympathised entirely with the Oriental feeling on the subject. She thought it delightful to be danced to, to lie still with a pleasant companion near her who would not talk too much, and listen to the music, and enjoy the poetry of motion coolly and at ease. "I love to see the 'dancers dancing in tune,'" she said; "but to have to dance myself would be as great a bother as to have to cook my dinner as well as eat it. I suppose it is a healthy amusement--indeed, I know it is when you take it as I do; for when all you people come down the morning after a dance with haggard eyes and no power to do anything, I am as fresh as a lark, and have decidedly the best of it." She was not good at games because she was not ambitious. She did not care to have her skill commended, and was content to lose or win with equal indifference--so long as only the honour of the thing was involved; but when the stakes were more material she showed a vice of which she was quite conscious. "I daren't play for money," she said to me. "I never have, and I have always said that I never will. All the women of my family are born gamblers. My mother has often told me that regularly, when she was a girl, the day after she received her allowance she had either doubled it or lost it all; and before she was twenty she hadn't a jewel worth anything in her possession--and my aunts were as bad. One of them staked herself one night to a gentleman she was playing with, and he won, and married her. Gambling was more the custom then than it is now, but for me it is as much in the air as if it were still the fashion. When there is any talk of play I feel fascinated, and when I see a pack of cards the temptation is so irresistible that I have often to go away to save my resolution." Which made me think of a favourite quotation of Lessing's from _Minna_:--"_Tout les gens d'esprit aiment le jeu à la folie_." CHAPTER IX. Ideala's low esteem for "mere animal courage" was probably due to the fact that she possessed it herself in a high degree. Yet soon after I met her I began to suspect, and was afterwards convinced, that something in her manner which had puzzled me at first arose from fear. There was that in her life which made her afraid of the world, which would, had it guessed the truth, have pryed with curious eyes into her sorrow, and found an interest in seeing her suffer. The trouble was her husband. She rarely spoke of him herself, and I think I ought to follow her example, and say as little about him as possible. He was jealous of her, jealous of her popularity, and jealous of every one who approached her. He carried it so far that she scarcely dared to show a preference, and was even obliged to be cold and reserved with some of her best friends. I was a privileged person, allowed to be intimate with her from the first, partly because I insisted on it when I saw how matters stood, and partly because my position and reputation gave me a right to insist. I never had occasion to brave insults for her sake, but, like many others, I would have done so had it been necessary. Her friends were constantly being driven from her on one pretext or another. People would have taken her part readily enough had she complained, but complaint was contrary to her nature and her principles. Some, who suspected the truth, blamed her reticence; but I always thought it right, and on one occasion when we approached the subject indirectly I told her "Silence is best." I ought to have qualified the advice, for she carried it too far, and was silent afterwards when she should have spoken--that is to say, when it had become evident that endurance was useless and degrading. She fought hard to preserve her dignity, and was determined that "as the husband is, the wife is," should not be true in her case. But he did lower her insensibly, nevertheless. As her life became more and more unendurable she became a little reckless in speech; it was a sort of safety-valve by means of which she regained her composure, and I soon began to recognise the sign, and to judge of the amount she had suffered by the length to which she afterwards went in search of relief, and the extent to which suffering made her untrue to herself. As a rule, when with him, she was yielding, but she had fits of determination, too, when she knew she was right. One night, as they were driving home from a ball together, her husband suddenly declared that he would not allow her to be one of the patronesses of a fancy fair which was to be held for a charitable purpose, although she had already consented and he had made no objection at the time. "But why may I not?" Ideala asked. "Because I object. Do you hear? I will not have it, and you must withdraw." "I must decline to obey any such arbitrary injunction," she answered, quietly. He detained her on the doorstep until the carriage had driven round to the stables. "Now, are you going to obey me?" he asked. "Yes, if you give me a reason for what you require," she answered, wearily. "Oh, you are obstinate, are you?" he rejoined, in a jeering tone. "Well, stay in the garden and think it over. Perhaps reflection will make you more dutiful. I shall tell your maid you will not want her to-night. When you have made up your mind you can ring." And so saying he walked into the house and shut the door upon her. It was a summer night, but Ideala felt chilly with only a thin shawl over her ball dress. She walked about as long as she could, but fatigue overcame her at last, and she was obliged to lie down on one of the garden seats. She wrapped the train of her dress round her shoulders, and lay looking up at the stars. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers. The night was very still. Once or twice the rush of a passing train in the distance became audible; and the ceaseless, solemn, inarticulate murmur of the night was broken by a nightingale that sang out at intervals, divinely. Ideala never thought of submitting; she simply lay there, waiting without expecting. The night air overcame her more and more with a sense of fatigue, but she could not sleep. She saw the darkness fade and the dawn appear, and when at last the servants began to move in the house she watched her opportunity and slipped in unobserved. She went to one of the spare rooms, undressed, rang, and got into bed. When the bell was answered she ordered a hot bath and hot coffee immediately. The maid supposed she had slept there, and seemed surprised; but as her mistress offered no explanation she could make no remark; and so the matter ended. But I do not think Ideala suffered much on that occasion. Her strong young womanhood saved her somewhat--and there was a charm for her in the beauty of the night and the novelty of her position, which a less healthy organism would not have appreciated, had it been able to discover it--at such a time. CHAPTER X. Ideala had been married eight years, and two months after that night the long-delayed hope of her life, which she had begun to believe was beyond hope, was at last realised. Her child was a boy, and her joy in him is something that one is glad to have seen. But it was short-lived. I do not know if her husband were jealous of her happiness, or if he thought the child was more to her than he was, or if he were merely making a proposition, by way of experiment, which he never meant to carry into effect--probably the latter. At all events, he went to her one day when the child was about six weeks old, and told her he thought she must give up nursing him. The mother's nature was up in arms in a moment. I suppose she had not quite regained her strength, for she had been very ill, and, being weak, she was excitable. "I will not give my baby up! How can you think it?" she exclaimed. "Oh, well," he answered, coolly, "just as you like, you know. But I should think you'd better--for the child's sake, at least." "It isn't true. I don't believe it," she said, piteously. "Ask the doctor, then;" and he sauntered out, smiling, and perhaps not dreaming that she would. But "for the child's sake" had alarmed Ideala, and she sent for the doctor. It was hours before he could come to her, and, in the meantime, not knowing that her state of mind would affect the child, she had fidgeted and fretted herself into a fever, and when the doctor saw her, he could only confirm her husband's verdict. "I am afraid you must give up nursing," he said. "You are in such a nervous state it will do the child harm. But he's such a fine fellow! He'll thrive all right--you needn't be frightened." Ideala said nothing, but she sat in her own room night after night for a week, and heard the child crying for her, and could not go to him-- and even when he did not cry she fancied she heard him still. I think as the milk slowly and painfully left her, her last spark of affection for her husband dried up too. The child died of diphtheria some time afterwards, and in a little while, Ideala, who was then in her twenty-sixth year, returned to her old pursuits, and no one ever knew what she felt about it: For, it is with feelings as with waters-- The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb! CHAPTER XI. My widowed sister, Claudia, was one of Ideala's most intimate friends. She was a good deal older than Ideala, whom she loved as a mother loves a naughty child, for ever finding fault with her, but ready to be up in arms in a moment if any one else ventured to do likewise. She was inclined to quarrel with me because, although I never doubted Ideala's truth and earnestness (no one could), knowing her weak point, I feared for her. I thought if all the passion in her were ever focussed on one object she would do something extravagant--a prediction which Claudia, with good intent, rashly repeated to her once. Claudia was mistress of my house, and she and I had agreed from the first that, whatever happened, we would watch over Ideala and befriend her. My sister was one of the people who thought it would have been better for Ideala to have talked of her troubles. When I praised Ideala's loyalty, and her uncomplaining devotion to an uncongenial duty, Claudia said: "Loyalty is all very well; but I don't see much merit in a life- long devotion to a bad cause. If there were any good to be done by it, it would be different, of course; but, as it is, Ideala is simply sacrificing herself for nothing--and worse, she is setting a bad example by showing men they need not mend their manners since wives will endure anything. It is immoral for a woman to live with such a husband. I don't understand Ideala's meekness; it amounts to weakness sometimes, I think. I believe if he struck her she would say, 'Thank you,' and fetch him his slippers. I feel sure she thinks some unknown defect in herself is at the bottom of all his misdeeds." "I don't think she knows half as much about his misdeeds as we do," I observed. "Then I think it would be a charity to enlighten her," Claudia answered, decidedly. "One can't touch pitch without being defiled, and when it is too late we shall find she has suffered 'some taint in nature,' in spite of herself. Will you kindly take us to the Palace this evening? The Bishop wants us to go in after dinner, and Ideala has promised to come too." Ideala was fastidious about her dress, and being in one of her moods that evening she teased Claudia unmercifully, on the way to the Palace, about a blue woollen shawl she was wearing. "A delicate and refined nature expresses itself by nothing more certainly than elegant wraps," she said, parodying another famous dictum; "and I should not like to be able to understand the state of mind a lady was in when she bought herself a blue woollen shawl; but I could believe she was suffering at the time from a temporary aberration of intellect--only, if she wore it afterwards the thing would be quite inexplicable." Claudia drew the wrap round her with dignity, and made no reply; then Ideala laughed and turned to me. "Certainly your friend," she said, alluding to a young sculptor who was staying with me, "can 'invest his portraits with artistic merit.' Claudia's likeness in the Exhibition is capital, and the fame of it is being noised abroad with a vengeance. But I think something should be done to stop the little newspaper-boy nuisance: the reports they spread are quite alarming." "Ideala, what nonsense are you talking about sculptors and newspaper- boys?" Claudia exclaimed. "I'll tell you," said Ideala. "There was a small boy with a big voice standing at the corner of the market-place this afternoon. He had a sheaf of evening papers under his arm, and was yelling with much enthusiasm to an edified crowd:--'Noose of the War! Hawful mutilation of the dead! Fearful collision in the Channel! Eighty-eight lives lost! Narrative of survivors! Thrilling details! Shindy in Parl'ment! Hirish members to the front again! 'Orrible haccident in our own town! The Lady Claudia's bust!'" "Ideala, how _dare_ you?"--but just then the carriage stopped, and we had to get out. The good Bishop met us in the hall. Ideala positively declined to go upstairs when he asked her. "It is too much trouble," she said, not seeing in her absence what was meant. "I would rather leave my things here." "But I am afraid I _must_ trouble you," the Bishop answered, in despair. "The fact is, my wife is not so well this evening, and she was afraid of the cold, and is staying in her own sitting-room." The "sitting-room" was a snug apartment, warm, cosy, luxurious, and we found a genial little party of intimate acquaintances there when we arrived. Ideala's husband was not one of them. He did not take her out much at that time. Probably he was engaged in some private pursuit of his own, and insisted on her going everywhere alone to keep her out of the way. A little while before he would scarcely allow her to pay a call without him. But, as a rule, whatever his mood was, she did as he wished--and provoked him sometimes, I think, by her patient compliance; a little resistance would have made the exercise of his authority more exciting. When we entered the sitting-room "an ominous silence feel on the group," which was broken at last by one of the ladies remarking that a kind heart was an admirable thing. Another agreed, and made some observations on the merits of self-sacrifice generally. "But some people are not satisfied with merely _doing_ a good deed," a gentleman declared, with profound gravity. "They think there is no merit in it if they do not suffer for it in some way themselves." There was a good deal more of this kind of thing, and we were beginning to feel rather out of it, when presently the preternatural gravity of the party was broken by a laugh, and then it was explained. Ideala had gone to a neighbouring town one day by train, and before she started a poor woman got into the carriage. The woman had a third-class ticket, but she was evidently ill, and when the guard came and wanted to turn her out, Ideala took pity on her, insisted on changing tickets, and travelled third class herself. The woman had been to the Palace, and described the incident to the Bishop's wife that morning, and she had just told her guests, wondering who the lady could have been, and they in turn had put their heads together and decided that there was no one in the community but Ideala who would have done the thing in that way. "But what else could I have done?" she asked, when she saw we were laughing at her. "Well, my dear," said the Bishop, who always treated her with the kind indulgence that is accorded to a favourite child, "you might have paid the difference for the woman, and travelled comfortably yourself, don't you know?" Ideala never thought of that! Presently the dear old Bishop nestled back in his chair, and with a benign glance round, which, his scapegrace son said, meant: "Bless you, my children! Be happy and good in your own way, but don't make a noise!" he sank into a gentle doze, and the rest of the party relapsed into trivial gossip, some of which I give for what it is worth by way of illustration. It shows Ideala at about her worst, but marks a period in her career, a turning-point for the better. She was seldom bitter, and still more rarely frivolous, after that night. "Clare Turner will take none of the blame of that affair on his own shoulders," some one remarked. "Mr. Clare Turner is the little boy who always said 'It wasn't me!' grown up," Ideala decided, from the corner of her couch. "He is a sort of two-reason man." "How do you mean 'a two-reason man,' Ideala?" "Well, he has only two reasons for everything; one is his reason for doing anything he likes himself, which is always a good one; and the other is his reason why the rest of the world should not do likewise, which is equally clear--to himself. He thinks there should be one law for him and another for everybody else. I don't believe in him." "Nor I," said one of the gentlemen. "Underhand bowling was all he was celebrated for at school; he bowled most frightful sneaks all the time he was there." "Talking about Clare Turner," Charlie Lloyd put in, "I've brought a new book of poems--author unknown. I picked it up at the station to-day. There's one thing in it, called 'The Passion of Delysle,' that seems to be intense; but I've only just glanced at it, and don't really know what it's like. Shall I read it?" "Oh, do!" was the general exclamation, and we all settled ourselves to enjoy the following treat. Charlie began softly: O day and night! Oh day and night! and is this madness? O day and night! O day and night! and is this joy? Whence comes this bursting sense of life, and love, and gladness, This pain of pleasure, perfected, without alloy? Lo, flowing past me are the restless rivers, Or swelling round me is the boundless sea; Or else the widening waste of sand that quivers In shining stretches, shuts the world from me-- Or seems to shut it, while I would that what it seems might be. O day and night! O day and night! this mountain island, This saintly shrine, this fort--I scarce know what 'tis yet-- This sand, or sea-girt, rocky, town-clad, church-crown'd highland, This dull and rugged gem in golden deserts set, Has some delicious, unknown charm to hold me, To draw me to itself and keep me here; The old grey walls, it seems, with joy enfold me-- Or is it I that make the dead stones dear, And send the throbbing summer in my blood thro' all things near? O day and night! O day and night! where else do flowers Open their velvet lids like these to greet the light? Or raise such sun-kissed lips aglow to meet cool showers? Or cast more subtle scents abroad upon the night? These trees and trailing weeds that climb the cliff-side steep, The dusky pine trees, draped with wreaths of vine, Make bowers where love might lie and list the sea-voice deep, And drink the perfumed air, the light, like wine, Which threads intoxication through these hot, glad veins of mine. O day and night! O day and night! I sought this haven, From place and power, and wealth I flew in search of rest; They forced and bound me to a hard, detested craven, Who mocked my loathing with his head upon my breast. With deathless love I moaned for my young lover; To make me great they drove him from my side, And foully wrought with shame his name to cover-- My boy, my lord, my prince! In vain they lied! But should I always suffer for their false, inhuman pride? O day and night! O day and night! I left them flying, I fled by day and night as flies the nomad breeze, Across the silent land when light to dark was dying, And onward like a spirit lost across the seas; And on from sea and shore thro' apple-orchards blooming, Till all things melted in a moving haze; And on with rush and ring by tower and townlet glooming, By wood, and field, and hill, by verdant ways, While dawn to mid-day drew, and noon was lost in sunset blaze. O day and night! O day and night! light once more waxing, Still on with courage high, tho' strength was well-nigh spent; Grim spectres of pursuit the wearied brain perplexing, Fear-fraught, but ever met with spirit dedolent. The landscape reeled, there came a sense of slumber, And myriad shadows rose and wanned and waned, And flitting figures, visions without number, Took shape above the land till sight was pained, And floated round me till at last the longed-for goal I gained. O day and night! O day and night! with rest abounding, The soothing sinking down on hard-earned holy rest, With grateful ease that grew from all the calm surrounding, A languid, dreamful ease, my soul became possessed. The hoarse sea-wind comes soughing, sighing, singing, Its constant message from the patient waves. While high above cathedral bells were ringing, Or falling voices chanted hymns of praise, And all the land seemed filled with peace and promised length of days. * * * * * O day and night! O day and night! once, all unheeding, By sun and summer wind with tender touch caressed, I wandered where the strains, the sacred strains, were pleading, And, kneeling in the fane, my thoughts to prayer addressed. And softly rose the murmur'd organ mystery, And swell'd around the colonnaded aisle, Where smiled the pictured saints of holy history On prostrate penitents who prayed the while: I could not pray there, but I felt that God Himself might smile. O day and night! O day and night! while I was kneeling There came the strangest sense of some loved presence near; A re-awakening rush of well-remembered feeling Thrill'd thro' me, held me still, with vague expectant fear. Half turn'd from me, there stood beside the altar, Where incense-clouds nigh veiled him from my sight, A fair-haired priest--my quicken'd heart-beats falter! Or is he priest, or is he acolyte, Or layman devotee who prays in novice robes bedight? O day and night! O day and night! whence comes this feeling? For all unreal seem day and night and life and death, And all unreal the hope that sets my senses reeling, And stills my pulse an instant, checks my lab'ring breath. Yet louder rolls the mighty organ thund'ring. And downward slopes a beam of light divine, The perfumed clouds are cleft: he looks up wond'ring-- Looks up--what does he there before the shrine? He could not give himself to God, for he is mine, is mine! O day and night! O day and night! I go forth trembling, He did not meet my eyes, he never saw my face. My bosom swells with joy and jealousy resembling A war of good and evil waged in a holy place. No longer soft the day, the sun in splendour Pours all his might upon this green incline; I lie and watch the cirrus clouds surrender, Their glowing forms to one hot kiss resign-- How could he give himself to God when he is mine, is mine? O day and night! O day and night! beneath your glory The crimson flood of life itself has turned to fire! The rugged brows of those old rocks, storm-rent and hoary, Are quivering in their grim surprise at my desire. The mother earth, throbbing with pain and pleasure, Would sink her voices for the languid noon, But light airs wake a reckless madd'ning measure, And wavelets dance and sparkle to the tune. And mock the mocking malice of yon day-dimm'd gibbous moon. * * * * * O day and night! O day and night! a fisher maiden Is wand'ring up the path to where unseen I lie; She comes with some light spoil from off the shore beladen. And softly singing of the sea goes slowly by. And slowly rise great sun-tipped white cloud masses, Sublimely still their shadows flit and flee: How silently the work of nature passes-- The roll of worlds, the growth of flower and tree! Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me! O day and night! O day and night! the hours rolling Bring ev'ry one its change, its song, or chant, or chime: Now solemnly their sounds a distant death-knell tolling. And now the bells above beat forth the flight of time. I lie, unconsciously each trifle noting, The far-off sailors toiling on the quay, Or o'er the sand a broad-wing'd sea-bird floating, Or passing hum of honey-laden'd bee-- Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me! O day and night! O day and night! the scene surrounding Grows dim and all unreal beneath the sunset glow; And all the heat and rage pass into peace abounding, I moan, I fear no more, but wait, while still tears flow. The warm sweet airs scarce move the flowerets slender, A pause and hush have settled on the sea, A bird trills forth its love-song low and tender: O bird rejoice! thy love and thou art free- Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me! * * * * * O day and night! O day and night! ye knew it ever! Ye saw it written in the world's first golden prime! And smiled your giant smile at all my rash endeavour To snatch the cup unfill'd from out the hand of Time. He comes, O day and night! Spirits attending, Swift formless messengers my ev'ry sense apprise! He comes! the bright fair head o'er some old book low bending Dear Lord, at last! his eyes have met my eyes-- Gleam of light goes quivering across the happy skies! * * * * * O day and night! O day and night! Love sits between us. Far out the rising tide comas sweeping o'er the sand. The murmurous pine trees lend their purple shade to screen us, And breathe their fragrant sighs above the quiet land. And, like a sigh, the sunset blaze is over, The folding grey has veiled its colours bright; While swift from view fade out the gulls that hover, As round us sinks at last, on pinions light, The dark and radiant clarity of the beautiful still night. O day and night! O day and night! no words are spoken. Such pleasant joy profound no words could well express: His wand'ring fingers smooth my hair in silent token, And all my being answers to the tender mute caress. My head is resting on his breast for pillow, And as by music moved my soul is thrill'd; Flow on and clasp the land, O bursting billow! O breezes, tell the mountains many-rill'd! Our hearts now know each other, and our hope is all-fulfill'd. O day and night! O day and night! no shadow crosses This long'd-for solemn hour of all-forgetful bliss; No chilling thought, or stalking dread arising, tosses A poison'd drop of bitterness to spoil the ling'ring kiss: No mem'ries past or future fears assailing-- As soon might doubt bedim the stars that shine! Or souls released reach Paradise bewailing The end of pain, and clemency divine: The glorious present holds us: I am his and he is mine!" * * * * * O day and night! O day and night! and was it madness? Lo! all is changing, even sky, and sea, and shore; The heaving water ebbs itself away in sadness, The waves receding sigh, "Delight returns no more!" Far down the East the dawn is dimly burning, Its first chill breath has shivered thro' my frame, And with the light comes cruel Thought returning, The air seems full of voices speaking blame; Another day commences, but the world is not the same! O day and night! O day and night! its rashes pass'd us, We stand upon the brink and watch, the strong deep tide, And shrink already from the howls that soon must blast us, The world that sins unchidden, and the laws that would divide. "O Love, they rest in peace whom ocean covers!" One plunge, one clasp supernal, one long kiss! Then downward, like those old Italian lovers. Descend for ever through the long abyss, And float together, happy, all eternity like this! The charm of the reader's voice had held us spellbound, and the poem was well received; but after the usual compliments there was a pause, and then Ideala burst out impetuously: "I am sick of those old Italian lovers," she said; "they float into everything. Their story is the essence with which two-thirds of our love literature is flavoured. We should never have received them in society; why do we tolerate them in books? I like my company to be respectable even there; and when an author asks me to admire and sympathise with such people he insults me." "They must be brought in, though, for the sake of contrast," somebody observed. "They should be kept in their proper place, then," she answered. "You may choose what you please to point a moral, but for pity's sake be careful about what you use to adorn a tale." "Moral or no moral," said the young sculptor, "I think a new poem of any kind a thing to be thankful for." "And do you call that kind of thing new?" said Ideala. "I should say it was a fine compound of all the poems of the kind, and several other kinds, that have ever been written, with a dash of the peculiarly refined immorality of our own times, from which nothing is sacred; thrown in to make weight. Such writing, Like a new disease, unknown to men, Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd, . . . . . . . . . . . and saps The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse With devil's leaps, and poisons half the young. It is the feeling of the day accurately defined. Nobody sighs for love and peace now. The cry is for the indulgence of some fiery passion for an hour, and then, perdition!--if you like--since that is the recognised price of it." "Our loves are more intense than they used to be," said the sculptor, sighing. "Love!" Ideala answered. "Oh, do not desecrate 'the eternal God-word, love!' There is little enough of that in the business that goes by its name now-a-days. I am a lady--I cannot use the right word. But it is none the less the thing I mean because it calls blasphemously on God Almighty to help it to fulfil itself." "Well," said Charlie Lloyd, deprecatingly, "I didn't offer this, you know, as an admirable specimen of what our day can produce. I told you I hadn't read it, and now that I have I don't suppose any one has offered it to the public as a serious expression of sentiment." "You do not think people write books about what they really feel?" said Ideala. "I believe they do when the feeling is shameful. If you want to keep a secret, publish the exact truth in a book, and nobody will believe a word of it. I think people who publish such productions should be burned on a pile of their own works." "The writer is young, doubtless," I said, apologetically. It gives one a shock to hear a woman say harsh things. "He was evidently not too young to have bad thoughts," said Claudia, supporting her friend; "and he was certainly old enough to know better." "He!" ejaculated Ideala. "It is far more likely to be _she_. Do you read the reviews? You will find that all the most objectionable books are written by women--and condemned by men who lift up their voices now, as they have done from time immemorial, and insist that we should do as they say, and not as they do." "I am afraid you are right," said Charlie Lloyd. "So many of our best women--I mean the women who are likely to make most impression on the age--are going that way now." "But what horrid things you say, Ideala," one of the ladies chimed in, "and you make everybody else say horrid things. That 'Passion of Delysle' is not a bit worse than Tennyson's 'Fatima'--and there's a lot more in it--that part about 'the roll of worlds,' you know, is quite grand." "I always liked that idea," Ideala observed. "And--and--" the lady continued, "where she looks at everything, you know. She was very properly seeking distraction, and found it for a moment in the contemplation of nature, and that softened her mood, so that when the inevitable rush of recollection comes and forces the thought of him back upon her, her feeling finds expression in a prayer --instead of--instead of--" "A blasphemous remonstrance," Ideala put in. "Oh, I don't deny that there is just enough to be said in favour of all these things to make them sell--and this one has two unusual points of interest. It opens with a riddle, and the lady's lover is a priest, which gives an additional zest to the charm of wrong-doing, a _sauce piquante_ for jaded appetites." "Why do you call the opening verses a riddle?" said Charlie Lloyd. "Because I fancy no one will ever guess what kind of a place it was-- This mountain island, This saintly shrine, this fort-- I forget how it goes on." "Oh, the description of the place is not bad," Charlie answered, after reading it over again to himself. "It would do for the Mont St. Michael in Normandy." "Well, let that pass, then," said Ideala; "also the dear familiar 'subtle scents abroad upon the night.' But what does she mean by 'On with rush and ring'?" "She means the train, obviously." "What an outlandish periphrasis! And how about The rugged brows of those old rocks, storm-rent and hoary, Are quivering in their grim surprise?" "That is a 'pathetic fallacy.' She is not speaking of the things as they were, but as they appeared to her excited fancy. She chronicles her own death, though----" "So did Moses," said Ideala. "If you really want to justify 'The Passion of Delysle' I can help you. You see she was dreadfully badly treated by her friends, poor thing! and her marriage after all was no marriage, because she loved another man all the time; and your husband isn't properly your husband if you don't love him, love being the only possible sanctification--in fact, the only true marriage. And then her lover, thinking he had lost her, became a priest, and vows made under a misapprehension like that cannot be binding--it would be too much to expect us to suffer always for such mistakes. And then the world--but we all know how cruel the world is! And appearances were sadly against them, poor things! No one would ever have believed that they had stayed out all night to discuss their religious experiences. Suicide is shocking, of course; but still, when people are driven to it like that, we can only be sorry for them, and hope they will never do it again!" She nestled back more comfortably on her couch, and then continued in an altered tone: "But it is appalling to think of the quantity of machine-made verses like those that are imposed on the public year by year, verses the mere result of much reading and writing, without a scrap of inspiration in them, and as far removed from even schoolboy efforts of genius, as an oleograph is from an oil painting. Poets are as rare now as prophets, and inspiration has left us for our sins. I think any fairly educated one of us, with a tolerable memory and the habit of composition, could write that 'Passion of Delysle' again in half-an-hour." "Oh, could they, though!" said Ralph, the son of the house. "I dare bet anything you couldn't do it yourself in twice the time." "Dare you?" she answered, with a little smile. "Well, to adopt your elegant phraseology, Master Ralph, I bet I will produce the same story, with the same conclusion, but a different moral, in an hour--since you allow me twice the time I named--if I may be permitted to write it in blank verse, that is, and of course, with the understanding that what I write is not intended to be anything but mere versified prose." "Done with you!" cried Ralph. "Hush--h--h!" his mother exclaimed, deprecatingly. "Betting, and before the Bishop, too!" "What the Bishop don't know will do him no harm, Ma," said the youth in a stage whisper. "Sit down, Ideala, and begin. It's ten minutes to ten now." The Bishop slept serenely; conversation flagged; and Ideala wrote steadily for about three-quarters of an hour; then she gathered up the manuscript, rose from the table, and returned to her old seat. "'The Passion of Delysle' has become 'The Choice,'" she said. "Will you read it for me, Mr. Lloyd? I think it should have that advantage, at least." Charlie took the manuscript, and read: Once on a time, not very long gone by, A noble lady had a noble choice. The daughter of an ancient house was she, Beauty, and wealth, and highest rank were hers, But love was not, for of a proud, cold race Her people were, caring for nought but lands, Riches, and power; holding all tender thoughts As weakly folly, only fit for babes. The lady learnt their creed; her heart seem'd hard-- She thought it so; and when the moment came To choose 'twixt love, young love, and pride of place, She still'd an unwonted feeling that would rise, And saying calmly: "I have got no heart, And love is vain!" she chose to be the wife Of sinful age, corruption, and untruth, Scorning the steadfast love of one who yearn'd To win her from the crooked paths she trod, And break the sordid chains that bound her soul, And sweep the defiling dust of common thoughts From out her mind, until it shone at last With large imaginings of God and good. She chose: no more they met: her life was pass'd In constant round of pomp and proud display. But when he went, and never more there came The love-sad eyes to question and entreat, The voice of music praising noble deeds, The graceful presence and the golden hair, She miss'd the boy; but scoff'd at first and said: "One misses all things, common pets one spurn'd, Good slaves and bad alike when both are gone,-- A small thing makes the habit of a life!" But days wore on, and adulation palled. She knew not what she lack'd, nor that she loath'd The hollow semblance, the dull mockery, Which she had gain'd for joy by choosing rank, And money's worth, instead of peace and love. Yet ever as the long days grew to months More heavy hung the time, moved slower by. And all things troubled her and gave her pain, And morning, noon, and night the thought would rise, And grew insistent when she would not hear: "One loved me! out of all this crowd but one! And he is gone, and I have driven him forth!" Then in the silent solitude of night An old weird story that she once had heard Tormented her; a story speaking much Of a rock-island on the Norman coast, A mountain peak rising from barren sand, Or standing sea-girt when the tide returns, And beaten by the winds on ev'ry side, With wall'd-in town, and castle on the height, And high above the castle, strangely placed, A grey cathedral with its summit tipp'd By a gold figure of St. Michael crown'd, With burnished wings and flashing sword that shone A beacon in the sunset, seen for miles, As tho' the Archangel floated in the air. The castle and the church a sanctuary And refuge were, to which men often fled For rest or safety, finding what they sought. And as the lady thought about the place, A notion came that she would like to kneel And pray for peace at that far lonely shrine. The longing grew: she rested not nor slept. And should she fly and leave her wretched wealth? And if she fled she never could return; Yet if she stay'd she felt that she should die. So go or stay meant misery for her-- But misery is lessened when we move. Yes, she would go! and then she laugh'd to think Of the wild fury of her harsh old Lord When he should wake one day and find her gone-- Laugh'd! the first time for long and weary months. By Mont St. Michael, on the Norman coast, A restless river, changing oft its course, Flows sullenly; and racehorse-like the tide, Which, going, leaves a wilderness of sand. Comes rushing back, a foam-topp'd, wat'ry wall; And those who, wand'ring, 'scape the quicksand's grip, Are often caught and drown'd ere help can come. But fair the prospect from the Mount when bright The sunshine falls on Avranches far away, A white town straggling o'er a verdant hill; And on the tree-clad country toward the west, On apple orchards, and the fairy bloom Of feath'ry tam'risk bushes on the shore; Whilst high above in silent majesty Of hue and form the floating clouds support The far-extending vault of azure sky Such was the shrine the lady sought, and there In mute appeal for what she lack'd she knelt, Not knowing what she lack'd; but finding peace Steal o'er her soul there as she faintly heard The slow and solemn chanting of the priests, The mild monotony of murmured prayers, And hush of pauses when she seemed to feel The heart she deem'd so hard was melting fast, And listen'd to a voice within her say-- "Love is not vain! Love all things and rejoice!" And found warm tears were stealing down her cheeks. The mystery of love, of love, of love, Of hope, of joy, of life itself, she felt; The crown of life, which she had sacrificed In scornful pride for lust of power and place. The lady bow'd her head, and o'er her swept A wave of anguish, and she knew despair. "Could I but see him once again!" she moan'd, "See him, and beg forgiveness, and then die!" Did the Archangel Michael, standing there Upon her left, in shining silver, hear? Who knows? Her prayer was answer'd like a flash; For at that moment, clear and sweet o'er all The mingled music of the chanting choir, There rose a voice that thrill'd her inmost soul: It breathed a blessing; utter'd soft a prayer. No need to look: and yet she look'd, and saw A hooded monk before the altar kneel, A graceful presence, tho' in sordid dress. And as she gazed the cowl slipp'd back and show'd (But dimly thro' the incense-perfumed cloud) A pure pale face, a golden tonsured head, And blue eyes raised to heaven. Then the truth Was there reveal'd to her that he had left The world to watch and pray for such as she. Out of the castled-gate she hurried forth: What matter'd where she went, to east or west? What matter'd peasant's warning that the sand Was shifting ever, and the rushing tide Gave them no quarter whom it overtook? 'Twas death she courted, and with heedless step Onward to meet it swift the lady fled. Death is so beautiful at such a time, When all the land in summer sunshine lies, And lapse of distant waves breaks pleasantly The silence with a soothing dreamy sound, And danger seems no nearer than the sky, He tempts us from afar with hope of rest. She hurried on in search of death, nor heard That eager footsteps followed where she went. The voice that call'd her was not real, she thought, But a sweet portion of a strange sweet dream-- For now the terrible anguish quickly pass'd, And sense of peace at hand was all she felt. "O stop!" Ah! that was real. She turn'd and saw, Nor saw a moment till she felt his grasp Strong and determined on her rounded arm. "Thou shalt not die!" he cried. "What madness this?" "Madness!" she echoed: "nay, my love, 'tis bliss-- The first my life has known--to stand here still With thee beside me, and to wait for death. I know my heart at last, but all too late! I may not love thee, I another's wife; Thou mayst not love me, thou hast wedded heaven. We cannot be together in this world; I cannot live alone and know thee here. And thou art troubled! I for beneath that garb Thy heart beats ever hot with love for me; For love will not be quell'd by monkish vows. But all things change in death! so let us die Thus, hand in hand, and so together pass, And be together thro' eternity!" There was a struggle in the young monk's breast; He would not meet her pleading eyes and yield, But gazing up to heaven prayed for strength, Strength to resist, and guidance how to act, For death like that with her was luring--sweet-- A strong temptation, but he must resist, And strive to save and show her how to live. "We cannot make hereafter for ourselves," He answered softly; "all that we can do Is so to live that we shall win reward Of praise, and peace, and happy life to come. Thy duty lies before thee; so does mine. Let each return, and toil and watch and pray, Knowing each other's heart is fix'd on heaven. And do the good we can; not seeking death Nor shunning it, but living pure and true, With conscience clear to meet our God at last, And win each other for our great reward." The moving music of his words sank deep Her alter'd heart thrill'd high to holy thoughts. "Be thou my guide," she said. "My duty now Shall bring me peace; so shall I toil like thee To win the love I yearn for in the end." It might not be. The treach'rous, working sand Already clutched their feet, and check'd their speed; And dancing, sparkling, like a joyful thing, A glitt'ring, glassy wall of foam-fleck'd wave Towards them glided with that fatal speed You cannot mark because it is so swift. No use to struggle now: no time to fly! He clasp'd her to him: "God hath will'd it thus. Courage, my sister!" "Is this death?" she cried. "Yes, this is death." "It is not death, but joy!" And as she spoke the spot where they were seen Became a wat'ry waste of battling waves: While high above the summer sun shone on-- A passing seabird hoarsely shriek'd along! All things were changed, with that vast change which makes It seem as tho' nought else had ever been. "Well done, Ideala!" said Ralph, patronisingly; "you certainly have a memory, and are quite as good at patchwork as the author of 'Delysle.' I could criticise on another count, but taking into consideration time, place, circumstances, and the female intellect, I refrain. That is the generous sort of creature _I_ am. So, without expressing my own opinion further--except to remark that, though I don't think much of either of them, personally I prefer 'Delysle.' The other is wholesomer, doubtless, for those who like a mild diet. Milk and water doesn't agree with me. But I put it to the vote. Ladies and gentlemen, do you or do you not consider that this lady has won her bet?" "Oh, won it, most decidedly!" we all agreed. "By-the-by, what was the bet?" I asked. "My Pa's gaiters against Ideala's blue stockings. I regret to say that circumstances over which I have no control"--and he glanced at the unconscious Bishop--"prevent the immediate payment of my debt--unless, indeed, he has a second pair;" and he left the room hurriedly as if to see. He did not come back to us that evening, but I believe he was to be heard of later at the sign of the "Billiard and Cue." "Well," said the young sculptor, returning to the old point of departure, "for my own part, I find much that is elevating in modern works." "So do I," said Ideala; "I find much that raises me on stilts." "But even that eminence would enable you to look over other people's heads and beyond." "It would," she answered, "if human nature didn't desire a sense of security; but, as it is, when I am artificially set up, I find that all I can do is to look at my own feet, and tremble lest I fall. Modern literature stimulates; it doesn't nourish. It makes you feel like a giant for a moment, but leaves you crushed like a worm, and without faith, without love, without hope. It excites you pleasurably, and when you see life through its medium you never suspect that the vision is distorted. It makes you think the Iconoclast the greatest hero, and causes you to feel that you share his glory when you help him with your approval to overthrow all the images you ever cherished; but when the work of destruction is over, and you look about you once more with sober eyes, you find you have sacrificed your all for nothing. Your false guide fails you when you want him most. He robs you, and leaves you hungry, thirsty, and alone in the wilderness to which he has beguiled you. There is no need for new theories of Life and Religion; all we require is strength and courage to perfect the old ones. [Footnote: She quite changed her mind upon this subject eventually, and held that there was not only need of new theories, but good hope that we should have them.] What the mind wants is food it can grow upon, not stimulants which inflate it for a time with a fancied sense of power that has no real existence. But I have small hope for our nation when I think of the sparkling trash that the mind of the multitude daily imbibes and craves for. I mean our novels. What a fine affectation of goodness there is in most of them! And what a perfect moral is tacked on to them!--like the _balayeuse_ at the bottom of a lady's dress; but, like the _balayeuse_, it is only meant to be a protection and a finish, and, however precious it may be, it suffers from contact with the dirt, and sooner or later has to be cut out and cast aside, soiled and useless. Some doggerel a friend of mine scribbled on one book in particular describes dozens of popular novels exactly: O what a beautiful history! Think what temptations they passed! Each one more cruelly trying, More tempting, indeed, than the last. And what a lesson it teaches; No passion from evil's exempted-- Whilst admiring the moral it preaches, It makes you quite long to be tempted. I agree with those who tell us that society is breaking up, or will break up unless something is done at once to stop the dissolution. We have no high ideals of anything. Marriage itself is a mere commercial treaty, and only professional preachers speak of it in other terms--and those young people, with a passion for each other, who are about to be united--a passion that dies the death inevitably for want of knowledge, and wholesome principle, and self-control to support it. Some of us like our bargains better than others, but you can judge of the estimation in which marriage is held when you see how much happiness people generally find in it. If men and women were kept apart, and made to live purely from their cradles, they would still scarcely be fit for marriage; yet any man thinks he may marry, and never cares to be the nobler or the better for it. And when you see that this, the only perfect state, the most sacred bond of union between man and woman, is everywhere lightly considered, don't you think there is reason in the fear that we are falling on bad times? Oh, don't quote the Romans to me, and the Inevitable. We know better than the Romans, and could do better if we chose. But we have to mourn for the death of our manhood! Where is our manhood? Where are our men? Is there any wonder that we are losing what is best in life when only women are left to defend it? Believe me, the degradation of marriage is the tune to which the whole fabric of society is going to pieces----" "Eh, what!" exclaimed the Bishop, waking up with a start--"whole fabric of society going to pieces? Nonsense! When so many people come to church. And then look at all the societies at work for the--for the-- ah--prevention of everything. Why, I belong to a dozen at least myself; the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Rational Dress Reform, for doing away with petticoats--no, by-the-by, it is my wife who belongs to that. But, at any rate, everything is being done that should be done, and you talk nonsense, my dear"--looking at Ideala severely-- "because you don't know anything about it." "The faults we are hardest on in others are those we are most conscious of in ourselves--perhaps because we know how easy it would be to conquer them," Ideala observed vaguely. "Oh, come, now, my dear," said the Bishop, beaming round on all of us, "you must not believe what you hear about society being in such a bad state. I know idle people say so, and it is very wrong of them. Why, _I_ never see anything wrong." "Of course not," said Ideala. "We are all on our best behaviour before you." The Bishop patted his apron good-humouredly. "Well, now, take yourself for example," he said. "I am sure _you_ never do wrong--tell stories, you know, and that kind of thing." "Haven't I, though!" she answered, mischievously. "Not that it was much use, for I always repented and confessed; and now I have abandoned the practice to the best of my ability. It is horrid to feel you don't deserve the confidence that is placed in you, Bishop, isn't it?" "Ideala!" Claudia protested. The Bishop looked puzzled. "I can assure you I have suffered agonies of remorse because, in an idle moment, I deceived my cat--a big, comfortable creature, who used to come to me every day to be fed, and preferred to eat out of my hand. He was greedy, though, and snapped, and one day I offered him a piece of preserved ginger, and he dashed at it as usual, and swallowed it before he knew what it was. Then he just looked at me and walked away. He trusted me, and I had deceived him. It was an unpardonable breach of confidence, and I have always felt that I never could look that cat in the face again." The Bishop smiled and sighed at the little reminiscence. "I think you are right, though, in one way, Ideala," he presently observed. "The powers of Light and Darkness are certainly having a hard fight for it in our day; but we have every reason to hope. Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill." "And, granted that the popular literature of the day is corrupt," the young sculptor put in, "and that the standard of society is being yearly lowered by it, still there is Art----" "But there is so little of it," said Ideala; "I mean so little that elevates. Most of the subjects chosen are not worth painting; and what profit is there in contemplating a thing that is neither grand nor beautiful in itself, nor suggestive, by association, of anything that is grand or beautiful? The pictures one generally sees are not calculated to suggest anything to the minds that need suggestion most. The technical part may be good and gratifying to those who understand it, but that is the mere trade of the thing. We prefer to see it well done, of course, but if the canvas has nothing but the paint to recommend it, the artist might have saved himself the trouble of putting it on, for all the good it does or the pleasure it gives." "Oh, Ideala, do you know nothing of the charm of colour?" asked a lady who painted. "_I_ do," said Ideala, "but I may be supposed to have enjoyed exceptional advantages. And it is hardly charm we want to elevate us. There will always be enough in all conscience to appeal to the senses. But there is an absence even of charm." "Many a noble thought has been expressed in a coat of colour," said the lady. "I know it has," Ideala answered; "and all best thoughts give pleasure. I have been so thrilled by a noble idea, well expressed, that I could do nothing but sit with closed eyes and revel in the joy of it. But if such an idea were placed before you, and you did not know the language in which it was written, what good would it do you? An uneducated person seeing a picture of a donkey in a field sees only a donkey in a field, however well it may be painted; and I fancy very exceptional ability would be required to make any of us think a grey donkey sublime, or believe an ordinary green field to be one of the Elysian." "Talking about charm," the sculptor broke in, enthusiastically, "I suppose you haven't seen the new picture, 'Venus getting into the Bath?' That is a feast of colour, and realism, if you like! She is standing beside the bath with a dreamy look on her face. Her lovely eyes are fixed on the water. One arched and blue-veined foot is slightly raised as if the touch of the marble chilled her. Her limbs are in an easy attitude, and beautifully modelled. She is represented as a slight young girl, and the figure stands out in exquisite nudity from a background of Pompeian red, and the dark green of myrtles. With one hand she is holding aloft the masses of her rich brown hair--the attitude suggests the stretching of the muscles after repose; with the other"--but here his memory failed him. "What _is_ she doing with her other hand?" "Scratching herself!" slipped from Ideala, involuntarily, to her own horror and the delight of some. But she recovered herself quickly, and turning to the good Bishop, who was looking mildly astonished and much amused, she said: "There, my Lord, is an instance of the corrupt state of society in our own day. You see, even your restraining presence doesn't always keep us in order. I hope," she whispered to me, "I'm not going to be made the horrid example to prove the truth of all my theories." Soon after this the party broke up. Claudia returned in her wraps to say good-night to the Bishop's wife. "Claudia!" Ideala exclaimed, "you have forgotten that detestable old blue shawl." Claudia tried to stop her with a significant gesture, but in vain. Ideala was obtuse. "Claudia came out this evening in the most extraordinary covering I ever saw a lady wear," she said to the Bishop's wife. "I really think she must have borrowed it from one of the maids." "I am afraid you must mean the blue shawl I lent to Lady Claudia the other evening," the Bishop's wife replied, with a hurt smile. "Oh!" said Ideala, disconcerted for a moment. "But, really, Bishopess, you deserve to be upbraided. You should set a better example, and not provoke us to scorn on the subject of your shawls." Later, when I was alone with my sister, I said: "Ideala did nothing but put her foot in it this evening. What was the matter with her? I never heard her speak so strongly before, except when she was alone with us. And I don't think she ought to discuss such subjects with such people; it is hardly delicate." Claudia sighed wearily. "Who knows what pain is at the bottom of it all?" she said. "But one thing always puzzles me. Ideala rails at evils that never hurt her, and yet she speaks of marriage, which has been her bane, as if it were a holy and perfect state, upon which it is a privilege to enter." "Plenty of people have condemned marriage simply because their own experience of it has been unfortunate," I answered; "but Ideala is above that. She will let no petty personal mishap prejudice her judgment on the subject. She sees and feels the possibility of infinite happiness in marriage when there is such love and such devotion on both sides as she herself could have brought to it; and she understands that her own unhappy experience need only be exceptional." "I wish it were!" sighed Claudia. Some years later, Ideala confessed to me that she had written "The Passion of Delysle" herself, but had had no idea of its significance until she heard it read aloud that night, and then, as she elegantly expressed it, she could have cut her throat with shame and mortification, which I consider a warning to young ladies not to trust to their poetical inspirations, for--if the shade of Shelley will pardon the conclusion--alas! _apparently_, they know not what they do when they write verses! "I can't think how you could have criticised it like that, Ideala," I said, "now that I know you wrote it." "Neither can I," she answered. "You ought to have confessed you had written it, or have said nothing about it," I told her, frankly. "Yes," she assented. "Not doing so was a kind of falsehood. But neither course occurred to me." And then she explained: "I never see the meaning of what I write till the light of public opinion is turned upon it, or some cold critic comes and damps my enthusiasm. When a subject possesses me, and shapes itself into verse, it boils in my brain, and my pen is the only way of escape for it, the one safety-valve I have to ease the pressure. And I can't judge of its merits myself for long enough after it _is_ written, because the boiling begins again, you see, whenever I read it, and then there is such a steam of feeling I cannot see to think. For the verses, however poor they appear to you, contain for me the whole poem as I have it in my inner consciousness. It is beautiful as it exists there, but the power of expression is lacking. If only I could make you feel it as I do, I should be the greatest poet alive." It was a trick of Ideala's to miss the true import of a thing--often an act of her own--until the occasion had passed, or to see it strangely distorted, as she frequently did at this time--though that gradually ceased altogether as she grew older; but it was this peculiarity, so strongly marked in her, which first helped me to comprehend a curious trait there is in the moral nature of men and women while it is still in process of development. Many men, Frenchmen especially, have thought the trait peculiar to women. La Bruyére declares that "Women have no principles as men understand the word. They are guided by their feelings, and have full faith in their guide. Their notions of propriety and impropriety, right and wrong, they get from the little world embraced by their affections." And Alphonse Karr says: "Never attempt to prove anything to a woman: she believes only according to her feelings. Endeavour to please and persuade: she may yield to the person who reasons with her, not to his arguments"--opinions, however, which apply to men as often as not, and only to the young, impressible, passionate, and imperfectly educated of either sex. But there is scarcely a generalisation for one sex which does not apply equally to the other, so perfectly alike in nature are men and women. The difference is only in circumstance. Reverse the position of the sexes, require men to be modest and obedient, and they will develop every woman's weakness in a generation. If a man would comprehend a woman, let him consider himself; the woman has the same joys, sorrows, hopes, fears, pleasures, and passions--expressed in another way, that is all. But, certainly, for a long time Ideala's guide was her feeling about a thing. I have often said to her, when at last she decided to take some step which had obviously been the only course open to her from the first: "But, Ideala, _why_ have you hesitated so long? You knew it was right to begin with." "Yes," she would answer, "I _knew_ it was right; but I have only just now _felt_ that it was." She had never thought of acting on the mere cold knowledge. For feeling to knowledge, in young minds, is like the match to a fire laid in a grate; knowledge without feeling being as cheerless and impotent as the fire unlit. CHAPTER XII. A little while after that evening at the Palace we learnt to our dismay that Ideala's husband had taken a house in one of the rough manufacturing districts, to which he meant to remove immediately. Business was the pretext, as he had money in some great ironworks there; but I think the nearness of a large city, where a man of his stamp would be able to indulge all his tastes without let or hindrance, had something to do with the change. Ideala had kept up very well while she was among us, but soon after she went away we gathered from the tone of her letters that there was a change in her which alarmed us. Her health, which had hitherto been splendid, seemed to be giving way, and it was evident that her new position did not please her, and that, even after she had been there for months, she continued to feel herself "a stranger in a strange land." The people were uncongenial, and I think it likely they regarded Ideala's oddities with some suspicion, and did not take to her as we had done. She had not that extreme youth which had been her excuse when she came to us, and which, somehow, we had not missed when she lost it; and her habitual reserve on all matters that immediately concerned herself must also have tended to make her unpopular with people whose predominant quality was "an eminent curiosity." "They are far above books," Ideala wrote to Claudia; "what they study is each other, and in the pursuit of this branch of knowledge they are indefatigable. When they can get nothing out of me about myself, they question me about my husband and friends, and it is in vain that I answer them with those words of wisdom (I feel sure I misquote them)-- 'All that is mine own is yours till the end of my life; but the secret of my friend is not mine own'--they persevere. "Our house is near the town, Eighteen big chimneys darken our daylight and deluge us with smuts when the wind brings the smoke, our way; and besides the smoke we are subject to unsavoury vapours from chemical works in the other direction, so that when the wind shifts we only exchange evils. They say these chemical fumes are not unwholesome, and quote the death-rate, which is lower than any other place of the size in England. In fact, scarcely anybody dies here. They go away as soon as they begin to feel ill--perhaps that accounts for it. But those horrid chemical fumes have a great deal to answer for. They have killed the trees for miles around. It is the oaks that suffer principally. The tops are nipped first, and then they gradually die downwards till the whole tree is decayed all through. The absence of trees makes the country bleak and desolate, and I cannot help thinking the unlovely surroundings affect us all. The people themselves are unlovely in thought, and word, and deed; but I have found a good deal of rough kindliness amongst them nevertheless. They did mob me on one occasion, and made most unkind remarks about my nether garments, when I was obliged to walk through the town in my riding habit; but, as a rule, the mill girls merely observe 'That's a lady,' and let me go by unmolested--unless I happen to be carrying flowers. They do so love flowers, poor things and I cannot resist their pathetic entreaties when they beg for 'One, missus, on'y one!' Some of my lady friends are not let off so easily as I am. The girls chaff them unmercifully about their dress and personal peculiarities, and if they show signs of annoyance they call them names that are not to be repeated. The mill girls wear bright-coloured gowns, white aprons, and nothing on their heads. If a policeman catches them at any mischief they either clatter off in their clogs with shrieks of laughter, or knock him down and kick him most unmercifully. They are as strong as men, and as beautiful, some of them, as saints; but they are very unsaintlike creatures really--irresponsible, and with little or no idea of right and wrong. One scarcely believes that they have souls--and I am always surprised to find that anything not cruel and coarse can survive in the hearts of people, begrimed, body and mind, like these, by their hard surroundings; but it is there, nevertheless--the human nature, and the poetry, and the something ready to thrill to better things. A gentleman has a lovely place not far from us, where the trees have been spared by a miracle. Nightingales seldom wander so far north, but a few years ago a stray one was heard there, and the wonder and the beauty of its voice brought hundreds from the mills and crowded streets to hear it sing. Special trains were run from the neighbouring city to accommodate the crowds that came nightly to wait in the moonlight and listen; and an enterprising trader set up a stall, and sold gingerbeer. The story ends there, but I like it, don't you? especially the gingerbeer part of it. It was told me by one who remembers the circumstance. "My greatest pleasure in life is in my flowers, they are dearer to me than any I ever had before, because they are all so delicate, and require such infinite care and tenderness to keep them alive in this uncongenial climate. I have my thrushes also--two, which I stole from a nest in a wood one moonlight night, and brought up by hand on bread and milk and scraped beef. I had to get up at daylight, and feed them every hour until dark; but the clergy will not allow that this obligation was a proper excuse for staying away from church, and just now I am unhappy in the feeling that their religion must be inhuman. But my thrushes have well repaid the trouble. They call me when I go into the room, and come to me when I open the door of their cage, and perch on my shoulder. One of them, Israfil, sings divinely. People who come to hear him see only a little brown bird with speckled breast, and call him a thrush; but _I_ know he is Israfil, 'the angel of song, and most melodious of God's creatures;' and _he_ thinks that I have wings. He told me so! "I wish you would send me a basket of snails packed up in lettuce leaves. I don't know why, but I can find none here, and I cannot hear of one ever having been seen in the county. But please do not send them unless you are quite sure you can spare them." "Ideala is trying to hide herself behind these pretty trivialities," Claudia said. "I always suspect that there is something more wrong than usual when she adopts this playful tone and childlike simplicity of taste." "It must be trying to have a friend who believes so little in one as you do in Ideala," I answered. "Oh, how exasperating you are!" Claudia exclaimed. "You know what I mean quite well enough." Later, Ideala wrote: "You are anxious about my health. The fact is, I have developed a most extraordinary talent for taking cold. I went by train to see the museum in the city the other day. I took off my cloak while I was there, and stayed an hour, and when I came away, the antiquary, who knew I was a precious specimen, wrapped me up carefully himself. Nevertheless I caught cold. Then I went to stay with some people near here who clamoured much for the pleasure of my company. They live in a palace and are entertaining. The lady's papa took me in to dinner he first evening. He asked me about Major Gorst, and wanted to know, in an impressive tone of voice, if I had heard that he was the next heir but one to the Hearldom of Cathcourt. "The next day my hostess said to her husband: 'Dearest, do let me ride Oscar,' and he replied: 'No, my darling, I can't till I know he's safe. I must get some one to try him first'--and he looked at me--'Perhaps you wouldn't mind?' "They had never seen me on horseback, and I was longing to distinguish myself. I did distinguish myself. Oscar was a merry horse, but one never knew how he would take things. The first bridge we came to--I was 'sitting easy to a canter' with my foot out of the stirrup and my leg _over_ the third crutch--a bad habit I learnt from a foreign friend--and an express train rushed by. Oscar went on abruptly, but I remained. The next difficulty was at a brook. We ought to have crossed it together; but Oscar changed his mind at the last moment, so he remained and I went on. And after that we came to cross-roads, and had a difference of opinion about which was the right one. That ended in our coming over together, which made me feel solemn--disheartened, in fact--and then I thought we should never understand each other and be friends, so I gave him up. I did not talk much about riding to those people after that. "But I wore my summer habit that day, and of course I caught cold. And when that was nearly well I went downstairs to be civil to some people who had driven a long way to see me. The drawing-room was damp from disuse, and the fire had only just been lighted--and of course I caught cold. When that was better I went for a drive. The wind was east, and the carriage was open--and of course I caught cold. I don't know how it may strike you, but argument seems to me useless when a person has such a constitution." "Can you read between the lines of that letter?" Claudia asked me. "She seems to be dreadfully _don't care_," I said. "Exactly. She is more reckless, and therefore more miserable, than she used to be. I wouldn't live with him." "Ideala won't shirk her duty because it is hard and unpalatable," I answered. "I believe she likes it!" Claudia exclaimed; and then, smiling at her own inconsistency, she explained, "I mean if she really is miserable she ought to speak and let us do something." "It is contrary to her principles. She would think it wrong to disturb _your_ mind for a moment because her own life is a burden to her. That is why she always tries to seem happy, and is cheerful on the surface. If she made lament, we should suffer in sympathy, and all the more because there is so very little we could do to help her. Silence is best. If she ever gives way, she will not be able to bear it again." "But why _should_ she bear it?" Claudia demanded. "It is her duty." "I know she thinks so, and is sacrificing her life to that principle. But will you kindly tell me where a woman's duty to her husband ends and her duty to herself begins? I suppose you will allow that she has a duty to herself? And the line should be drawn somewhere." Claudia's mind was a sort of boomerang just then, returning inevitably to this point of departure; but I could make no suggestion that satisfied her. And I was uneasy myself. Ideala refused to come to us, and had made some excuse to prevent it when Claudia offered to go to her. This puzzled me; but we induced her at last to promise to meet us in London in May. It was April then, and we thought if she could be persuaded to stay two months of the season in town with us, and go with us afterwards to a place of mine in the North which she loved, she would probably recover her health and spirits. CHAPTER XIII. In the meantime, however, something decisive happened, as we afterwards learnt. It seems that after they left our neighbourhood Ideala had, by accident, made a number of small discoveries about her husband which had the effect of destroying any remnant of respect she may still have felt for him. She found that he was in the habit of examining her private papers in her absence, and that he had opened her letters and resealed them. His manner to her was unctuous as a rule; but she knew he lied to her without hesitation if it suited his purpose--and that alone would have been enough to destroy her liking for him, for it is not in the nature of such a woman to love a man who has looked her in the face and lied to her. These things, and the loneliness he brought upon her by driving from her the few people with whom she had any intellectual fellowship, she would have borne in the old uncomplaining way, but he did not stop there. One day she drove into town with a friend who got out to do some shopping. Ideala waited in the carriage, which had stopped opposite a public-house, and from where she sat she could see the little sitting- room behind the bar, and its occupants. They were her husband and the barmaid, who was sitting on his knee. Ideala arranged her parasol so that they might not see her if they chanced to look that way, and calmly resumed the conversation when her friend returned. She dined alone with her husband that evening, and talked as usual, telling him all she had done and what news there was in the paper, as she always did, to save him the trouble of reading it. In return he told her he had been at the ironworks all day, only leaving them in time to dress for dinner, a piece of news she received with a still countenance, and her soft eyes fixed on the fire. She was standing on the hearth at the time, and as he spoke he laid his hand upon her shoulder caressingly, but she could not bear it. Her powers of endurance were at an end, and for the first time she shrank from him openly. "How you do loathe me, Ideala," he exclaimed. "Yes, I loathe you," she answered. And then, in a sudden burst of rage, he raised his hand and struck her. Ideala's determination to be faithful to what she conceived to be her duty had kept her quiet hitherto, but now a sense of personal degradation made her desperate, and she forgot all that. Her first impulse was to consult somebody, to speak and find means to put an end to her misery; but I was not there, and to whom should she go for advice. Her impatience brooked no delay. She must see some one instantly. She thought of the Rector of the parish, but felt he would not do. He was a fine-looking, well-mannered old gentleman, much engaged in scientific pursuits, who always spoke of the Deity as if he were on intimate terms with Him, and had probably never been asked to administer any but the most formal kind of spiritual consolation in his life. The training and experience of a Roman Catholic priest, accustoming them as it does to deal with every phase of human suffering and passion, would have been more useful to her in such an emergency, but she knew none of the priests in that district, and did not think of going to them. But while she was considering the matter, as if by inspiration, she remembered something an acquaintance had lately written to her. This lady was a person for whom she felt much respect, and that doubtless influenced her decision considerably. The lady wrote: "It must be convenient to be only twenty minutes by train from such a big place. I suppose you go over for shopping, &c.? When you are there again I wish you would go and see my cousin Lorrimer. He is Adviser in General at the Great Hospital--a responsible position; and I am sure, if you go, he will be glad to do the honours of the place, which is most interesting." Ideala had felt from the first that she would rather consult a stranger who would be disinterested and unprejudiced. This gentleman's name promised well for him, for he belonged to people whose integrity was well known; and his position vouched for his ability--and also for his age to Ideala, whose imagination had pictured a learned old gentleman, bald, spectacled, benevolent, full of knowledge of the world, "wise saws and modern instances." No one, she thought, could be better suited for her purpose; and accordingly, next day, after attending to her household duties, she went by an early train to consult him. CHAPTER XIV. The Great Hospital had been founded by an eccentric old gentleman of enormous wealth for an entirely original purpose. He observed that great buildings were erected everywhere to receive patients suffering from all imaginable bodily ills, chronic mania, of course, when the brain was diseased, being one of them; but no one had thought of making provision for such troubles, mental, moral, and religious, as affect the mind; and he held that such suffering was as real, and, without proper treatment, as incurable and disastrous, as any form of physical ailment. He therefore determined to found an hospital for these unhappy ones, which should contain every requisite that Divine Revelation had suggested, or human ingenuity could devise, for the promotion of peace of mind. The idea had grown out of some great mental trouble with which he himself had been afflicted in early life, and for which the world, as it was, could offer him no relief. The first thing he did towards the carrying out of his plan was to buy a site for his hospital near a growing town on the banks of a big river. The building was to be surrounded by green fields, for the colour is refreshing; and within sight of a great volume of calmly flowing water, the silent power of which is solemn and tranquillising to the spirit; and human society was to be within easy reach, for many people find it beneficial. As soon as he had found the site, which was entirely satisfactory, he set about maturing his plan for the building. Such a scheme could not be carried out in a moment, and he spent thirty years in travelling to study human nature, and architecture, and all else that should help to bring his work to perfection. At the end of thirty years he had finished a plan for the building to his own entire satisfaction; but Mr. Ruskin had been growing up in the meantime, and had begun to write, and the founder, happening to come across his works by accident one day, discovered his own ideas to be wrong from beginning to end. However, as it was the Truth he was aiming at, and not a justification of himself, he calmly burnt his plans, put his fingers in his ears (figuratively speaking) that he might not hear the rest of the world bray, and for ten years more devoted himself to the study of Mr. Ruskin. At the end of that time he knew something about proportion, about masses and intervals of light and shade; about the grandeur and sublimity of size, and the grace and beauty of ornament; about depth and harmony of colour, and all the other wonders that make one sick with longing to behold them; and when he had mastered all this he determined to begin at the very beginning, that is to say, with the walls that were to enclose his vast experiment. Everything was to be real, everything was to be solid, everything had to be endowed with a power of expression that could not fail of its effect. And as soon as he felt he might safely begin, he hastened away to inspect the long neglected site for his wonderful building. But here an unexpected check awaited him. While he himself had been so hard at work, his future neighbours had not been idle. The town had grown to a city; the river's banks were crowded with wharves and human habitations; the river itself cradled a fleet on its bosom, its waters, once so sublimely clear and still, were turbid and yellow, befouled by the city sewers, and useful only; and all that remained to remind him of what had once been were a few acres of weeds enclosed by an iron railing--an eyesore to the inhabitants of that region, as the Corporation told him, with a polite hope that he would either build on it soon or leave it alone, which was their diplomatic way of requesting him to hand the lot over to themselves. And this he might have done had they said "Please;" but when he found the young city so ignorant, he thought it his duty to teach it manners, so he took a year or two more to consider the matter. Then he perceived that if he built his house on the site as it was now he should do even more good than he had intended, for the constant contemplation of such a stately pile would help to elevate the citizens outside the building, while those within might find comfort in seeing themselves surrounded by even greater misery than their own. And so the building rose and grew to perfection, and they found after all that no better site could have been chosen for it; for from every side as you approached it, it was seen to advantage, and the majesty and power of it were made manifest. Outside, the design was so evident in its grandeur that the mind was not wearied and perplexed by an effort to understand; it was simply elevated to a state of enjoyment bordering on exaltation--exaltation without excitement, and near akin to peace. And the interior of the building as you entered it maintained this first impression. Such ornament as there was touched you, as the clouds do, with a sense of suitability that left nothing to be desired. Art was so perfectly hidden that there seemed to have been no striving for effect in decoration or construction, it looked like a work of Nature, accomplished without effort, and beautiful without design; and the mind brought under its influence, and left free of conjecture, was gently compelled to revel in the peace which harmonious surroundings insensibly produce. Disturbing thoughts vanished as being too common and mean, too human, for such a place, and the spirit was soothed with a sense of repose--of sensuous restfulness, really, for the pleasure, as intended, affected the senses more than the intellect, which could here make holiday. Work-wearied brains were thus eased from pressure, and minds a prey to doubts and other disturbing thoughts which impaired their strength, if they did not render them useless, were at once relieved. And this was the beginning of the treatment which was afterwards continued in other parts of the building, and by other means, until the cure was complete--arrangements being made for the removal of cases that proved to be hopeless to those older establishments which have long existed at the expense of the country, or as the outcomes of private enterprise. Of course the staff of such a place had to be formed of men of a high order. Some of these had been patients themselves, and had been chosen on that account, it being thought that those who had suffered from certain ills would be apt to detect the symptoms in others, and able to devise remedies for them, which proved to be the case. The establishment was munificently endowed and liberally supported, and the Master, as he was reverently called, lived just long enough to see that it was a success. He had not thought of extending the charity to women, being under the impression that no such provision was necessary for them. He acknowledged that they had a large share of physical suffering to endure, but asserted that Nature, to preserve her balance, must have arranged their minds so as to render them incapable of suffering in any other way. Sentimentality, hysteria, and silliness, he said, were at the bottom of all their mental troubles, which did not, therefore, merit serious attention. CHAPTER XV. But of all this Ideala knew little or nothing when she went there, except that the Great Hospital existed for some learned purpose. She felt the power of the place, however, preoccupied as she was, and stopped involuntarily when she saw the building, ceasing for a moment to be conscious of anything but the awe and admiration it inspired. Then she passed up the broad steps, beneath the massive pillars of the portico, and entered the hall. A man-servant took her card to Mr. Lorrimer, and, returning presently, requested her to follow him. They left the great hall by a flight of low steps at the end of it, and, turning to the right, passed through glass doors into quite another part of the building. A long, dimly-lighted gallery led away into the distance. A few doors opened on to it, and at one of these the servant stopped and knocked. A tall gentleman opened the door himself, and, begging Ideala to enter, bade her be seated at a writing-table which stood in the middle of the room, and himself took the chair in front of it, and looked at Ideala's card which lay before him. Another gentleman, whom Lorrimer introduced as "My brother Julian," lounged on a high-backed chair at the other side of the table. The room was a good size, but so crowded with things that there was scarcely space to turn round. The light fell full upon Lorrimer as he sat facing the window, and Ideala saw a fair man of about thirty, not at all the sort of man she had imagined, and quite impossible for her purpose. An awkward pause followed her entrance. She was unable to tell him the real reason of her visit, and at a loss to invent a fictitious one. "I don't suppose you know in the least who I am," she said, seeing that he glanced at her card again, and then she explained, telling him what his cousin had written to her. "And you would like to see the Hospital?" he asked. "Please." He rose, took down a bunch of keys, and requested her to follow him. She felt no interest in the place, and knew it was a bore to him to show it to her; but the thing had to be done. He led her through halls and lecture-rooms, places of recreation and places for work; he showed her picture galleries, statuary, the library, and a museum, and told her the plan of it all clearly, like one reciting a lesson, and indifferently, like one performing a task that must be got through somehow, but making it all most interesting, nevertheless. Ideala began to be taken out of herself. "What a delightful place!" she said, when they came to the library. "And there is a whole row of books I want to consult. How I should like to come and read them." "Oh, pray do," he answered, "whenever you like. Ladies frequently do so. You have only to write and tell me when you wish to come, and I will see that you are properly attended to." "Thank you," Ideala rejoined. "It is just the very thing for me, for I am writing a little book, and cannot get on till I have consulted some authorities on the subject." In the museum they stopped to look at a mummy. "Oh, happy mummy!" burst from Ideala, involuntarily. "Why?" asked Lorrimer, aroused from his apathy. "It has done with it all, you know," she answered. Then he turned and looked at her, and she saw that he was something more than cold, pale-faced, and indifferent, which had been her first idea of him. His eyes were large, dark grey, and penetrating. She would have called his face fine, rather than handsome; but the upper part was certainly beautiful, in spite of some hard lines on it. There was something in the expression, more than in the formation, of the mouth and chin, however, that did not satisfy. His head and throat were splendid; the former narrowed a little at the back, but the forehead made up for the defect, which was not striking. He made Ideala think of Tito Melema and of Bayard. That remark of hers having broken the ice, they began to talk like human beings with something in common. But Ideala's mood was not calculated to produce a good impression. The failure of her enterprise brought on a fit of recklessness such as we understood, and she said some things which must have made a stranger think her peculiar. Lorrimer had begun to be amused before they returned to the great entrance hall. Once or twice he looked at her curiously. "What sort of a person are you, I wonder?" he was thinking, "I was dying of dulness," she said, telling him about the place she came from, "and so I came to see you." He left her for a moment, but presently returned with his brother. "You had better come and have some luncheon before you go back," he said. And she went. As they left the building Lorrimer asked her: "Where on earth did my cousin meet _you?"_--with the slightest possible emphasis. Ideala understood him, and laughed. "Upon my word I don't know who introduced her," she answered, standing on her dignity nevertheless. "I can't remember." They went to the refreshment-room at the station. It was crowded, but they managed to get a table to themselves. There was a vacant seat at it, and an old gentleman begged to be allowed to occupy it as there was no other in the room. The three chatted while they waited, each hiding him, or her, self beneath the light froth of easy conversation; and people, not accustomed to look on the surface for signs of what is working beneath, would have thought them merry enough. As she began to know her companions better, Ideala was more and more drawn to Lorrimer. His brother, who was a dark man, and very different in character, did not attract her. The old gentleman, meanwhile, was absorbed in his newspaper, and he marked his enjoyment of it by inhaling his breath and exhaling it again in that particular way which is called "blowing like a porpoise." Lorrimer, by an intelligent glance, expressed what he thought of the peculiarity to Ideala, who remarked: "It is the next gale developing dangerous energy on its way to the North British and Norwegian coasts." The laugh that followed caused the old gentleman to fold up his paper, and look benignly at the young people over his pince-nez. It was early in the season, and peas were a rare and forced vegetable. A small dish of them was brought, and handed to the dangerous gale, who absently took them all. "You have taken all the peas, sir; allow me to give you all the pepper," said Lorrimer, dexterously suiting the action to the word. The dangerous gale, though disconcerted at first, was finally moved to mirth. "Ah, young people! young people!" he said, and sighed--and being a merry and wise old gentleman, he found pleasure in their pleasure, and entered into their mood, little suspecting that Black Care was one of the party, or that a black bruise which would have aroused all the pity and indignation of his honest old heart, had he seen it, was almost under his eyes. And they all loved him. Presently he rose to go; but before he departed, he observed, looking kindly at Ideala and Lorrimer; "You're a handsome pair, my dears! Let me congratulate you; and may your children have the mother's sweetness and the father's strength, and may the love you have for each other last for ever--there's nothing like it. Thank God for it, and remember Him always--and keep yourselves unspotted from the world." And so saying, he went his way in peace. "Dear embarrassing old man!" said Lorrimer, regretfully. "I wish I hadn't spilt the pepper on his plate. "Is there a chance for Lorrimer?" his brother asked. But Ideala only stared at him. There was something in his tone that made her feel ill at ease, and brought back the recollection of her misery in a moment. Then all at once she became depressed, and both the young men noticed it. "I'm afraid you're rather down about something," Julian said. "You'd better tell us what it is. Perhaps we could cheer you up. And I'm a lawyer, you know. I might be able to help you." Lorrimer was looking at her, and seemed to wait for her to speak; but she only showed by a change of expression that the fact of his brother being a lawyer possessed a special interest for her. "If you will trust us," he said at last, "perhaps we _can_ help you." "I wish I could," she answered, wistfully; "I came to tell you." "This sounds serious," Julian said, lightly. "You will have to begin at the beginning, you know. Come, Lorrimer, we'll go down the river. And," to Ideala, "you might tell us all about it on the way, you know." "Yes, come," said Lorrimer. Ideala rose to accompany them without a thought. It all came about so easily that no question of propriety suggested itself--and if any had occurred to her she would probably have considered it an insult to these gentlemen to suppose they would allow her to put herself in a questionable position; and when Julian lit a cigarette without asking her permission, she was surprised. On the way to the river Ideala's spirits rose again, and they all talked lightly, making a jest of everything; but while they were waiting for a boat, Julian took up a bunch of charms that were attached to Ideala's watch-chain and began to examine them coolly, and the unwonted familiarity startled her. With a sudden revulsion of feeling she turned to Lorrimer. She was annoyed by the slight indignity, and also a little frightened. Whatever Lorrimer may have thought of her before, he understood her look now, and his whole manner changed. Julian left them for a moment. "I _am_ so ashamed of myself," Ideala said. "I have made some dreadful mistake. I have done something wrong." "I am very sorry for you," he answered, gravely--and then, to his brother, who had returned--"You can go on if you like. I am going back." "Oh, we can't go on without you," Ideala inter-posed; "and I would rather go back too." They began to retrace their steps, and Lorrimer, as they walked, managed, with a few adroit questions, to learn from Ideala that the trouble had something to do with her husband. "Regy Beaumont is coming to me this afternoon," he said to his brother. "Would you mind being there to receive him?" They exchanged glances, and Julian took his leave. "Now, tell me," Lorrimer said to Ideala. But an unconquerable fit of shyness came over her the moment they were left alone together. "I cannot tell you," she answered. "It is too dreadful to speak of." "Your husband has done you some great wrong?" he said. "Yes." "Something for which you can get legal redress?" "Yes." "And that made you desperate?" "Yes." "And what did you do?" He put the question abruptly, startling Ideala, as he had intended. "_I_? Oh, I--did nothing," she stammered. There was a pause. "My ideal of marriage is a high one," he said at last, "and I should be very hard on any short-comings of that kind." Ideala longed to confide in him, but her shyness continued, and she walked by his side like one in a dream. He took her to the station, and when they parted he said, "You will write and tell me?" Ideala looked up. There were no hard lines in his face now; he was slightly flushed. "Yes, I will write," she answered, almost in a whisper. And then the train, "with rush and ring," bore her away through the spring-country; but she neither saw the young green of the hedgerows, nor "the young lambs bleating in the meadows," nor the broad river as she passed it, nor the fleecy clouds that flecked the blue. She was not really conscious of anything for the moment, but that sudden great unspeakable uplifting of the spirit, which is joy. CHAPTER XVI. The following week Ideala came to London, but not to us--she had promised to stay with some other people first. She wrote three times to Lorrimer while she was with them--first to thank him for his kindness, to which he replied briefly, begging her to confide in him, and let him help her. In her second letter Ideala told him what had occurred. His reply was business-like. He urged her to let him consult his legal friends about her case; pointed out that she could not be expected to remain with her husband now; and showed her that she would not have to suffer much from all the publicity which was necessary to free her from him. She replied that her first impulse had been to obtain legal redress, but that now she could not make up her mind to face the publicity. She would see him, however, when she returned, and consult him about it; and she would also like to consult those books in the library. Her buoyant spirit was already recovering under the influence of a new interest in life. Lorrimer's answer was formal, as his other notes had been. He begged her to make any use of the library she pleased, only to let him know when to expect her, that she might have no trouble with the officials; and offered her any other help in his power. In the meantime my sister Claudia had seen Ideala, and had been pleased to find her, not looking well, certainly, but just as cheerful as usual. "It is evident the place does not agree with her," Claudia said; "but a few weeks with us will set her all right again." They drove in the park together one afternoon, and talked, as usual, of many things, the state of society being one of them. This was a subject upon which my sister descanted frequently, and it was from her that Ideala learnt all she knew of it. "Can you wonder," Claudia said on this occasion, "that men are immoral when ladies in society rather pride themselves than otherwise on imitating the _demi-monde_?" "Have you ever noticed," Ideala answered, indirectly, "how frequently a word or phrase which you know quite well by sight, but have never thought of and do not understand, is suddenly brought home to you as it were? You come across it everywhere, and at last take the trouble to find out what it means in self-defence. That expression--_demi- monde_--has begun to haunt me since I came to town, and I feel I shall be obliged to look it up at once to stop the nuisance. We went to a theatre the other night, and when we were settled there I saw my husband in the stalls with a lady in flame-coloured robes. I didn't know he was in town. The rest of our party saw him, too, and the gentlemen had a mysterious little consultation at the back of the box. Then one of them left us, but returned almost immediately, and told us the carriage had not gone, and hadn't we better try some other theatre --the piece at that one was not so good as they had supposed. But I knew they had taken a lot of trouble, entirely on my account, to get a box there, as I had expressed a wish to see that particular piece, and I said I had come to enjoy it, and meant to. I did enjoy it, too. It was so absorbing that I forgot all about my husband, and don't know when he left the theatre. I only know that he disappeared without coming near us. When we got back, Lilian came to my room and told me they were all saying downstairs that I had behaved splendidly, and I said I was delighted to hear it, particularly as I did not know how, or when, or where, I had come to deserve such praise. And then she asked me if I knew who it was my husband was with. I said, no; some alderman's wife, I supposed. 'Nothing half so good,' she answered. 'That woman is notorious: she is one of the _demimonde!_' 'Well,' I said, 'I don't suppose she is in society.' And then Lilian said, 'Good gracious, Ideala! how can you be so tranquil? You _must_ care. I think you are the most extraordinary person I ever met.' And I told her that the only extraordinary thing about me just then was a great 'exposition of sleep' that had come upon me. And then she left me; but she told me afterwards that she thought I was acting, and came back later to see if I really could sleep." "And you did sleep, Ideala?" "Like a top--why not? But now you are following suit with your ill- conducted people, and your _demi-monde_. I want to know what you mean by that phrase?" Then Claudia explained it to her. "But I thought all that had ended with the Roman Empire," Ideala protested. Claudia laughed, and then went on without pity, describing the class as they sink lower and lower, and cruelly omitting no detail that might complete the picture. "But the men are as bad," said Ideala. "Oh, as bad, yes!" was the answer. Ideala was pale with disgust. "And we have to touch them!" she said. Her ignorance of this phase of life had been so complete, and her faith in those about her so perfect, that the shock of this dreadful revelation was almost too much for her. At first, as the carriage drove on through the crowded streets, she saw in every woman's face a hopeless degradation, and in every man's eyes a loathsome sin; and she exclaimed, as another woman had exclaimed on a similar occasion: "Oh, Claudia! why did you tell me? It is too dreadful. I cannot bear to know it." "How a woman can be at once so clever and such a fool as you are, Ideala, puzzles me," Claudia remonstrated, not unkindly. She had warmed as she went on, and forgot in her indignation to take advantage of this long-looked-for opportunity to speak to Ideala about her own troubles; and afterwards, when she showed an inclination to open the subject, Ideala put her off with a jest. "'_Le mariage est beau pour les amants et utile pour les saints,_'" she quoted, lightly. "Class me with the saints, and talk of something interesting." A few days later Claudia came to me in dismay. "What do you think?" she said. "Ideala is not coming to us at all! She says she must go back at once." "Go back!" I exclaimed, "and why?" "She is going to write something, for which she requires to read a great deal, and she says she must go back to work." "But that is nonsense," I protested. "She can work as much as she likes here--I can even help her." "I know that," Claudia answered; "but she spoke so positively I could not insist. I suppose the truth is her husband has ordered her back, and she is going to be a good, obedient child, as usual." "Does she seem at all unhappy?" "No, and that is the strange part of it. She has coolly broken I don't know how many other engagements to return at once, and instead of seeming disappointed, she simply 'glows and is glad.' She says nothing, but I can see it. I don't know what on earth she is up to now." And Claudia left the room, frowning and perplexed. When I heard she was not unhappy, this sudden whim of Ideala's did not disturb me much; indeed, I was rather glad to think she had found something to be enthusiastic about. Her fits of enthusiasm were rarer now, and I thought this symptom of one a good sign. It was odd, though, that I had not seen her while she was in town. I was half inclined to believe she had avoided me. CHAPTER XVII. To give the story continuity it will be necessary to piece the events together as they followed. Many of them only came to my knowledge some time after they occurred, and even then I was left to surmise a good deal; but I am able now, with the help of papers that have lately come into my possession, to verify most of my conjectures and arrange the details. The summer weather had begun now. Laburnums and lilacs were in full flower, the air was sweet with scent and song, and to one who had borne the heavy winter with a heavy heart, but was able at last to lay down a load of care, the transition must have been like a sudden change from painful sickness to perfect health. Ideala went to the Great Hospital at once. She had written to fix a day, and Lorrimer was waiting for her. She was not taken to his room, however, as on the previous occasion, but to another part of the building, a long gallery hung with pictures, where she found him superintending the arrangement of some precious things in cabinets. Ideala looked better and younger that day in her summer dress than she had done in her heavy winter wraps on the occasion of their first meeting; but when she found herself face to face with Lorrimer she began to tremble, and was overcome with nervousness in a way that was new to her. He saw the change in her appearance and manner at a glance, and, smiling slightly, begged her to follow him, and led the way through long passages and many doors, passing numbers of people, to his own room. He spoke to her once or twice on the way, but she was only able to answer confusedly, in a voice that was rendered strident by the great effort she had to make to control it. He busied himself with some papers for a few minutes when they reached his room, to give her time to recover herself, and then he said, standing with his back to the fireplace, looking down at her, and speaking in a tone that was even more musical and caressing than she remembered it: "Well, and how are you? And how has it been with you since your return?" "I am utterly shaken and unnerved, as you see," she answered; then added passionately: "I cannot bear my life; it is too hateful." "There is no need to bear it," he said. "Nothing is easier than to get a separation after what has occurred. Was there any witness?" "No; and I don't think any one in the house suspects that there is anything wrong. And none of my friends know. I have never told them. I wonder why I told you?" "You wanted me to help you," he suggested. "I don't think I did," she said. "How could I want you to help me when I don't mean to do anything? I fancy I told you because I was afraid you would think me a little mad that day, and I would rather you knew the truth than think me mad. I don't mean to try for a separation. I can't leave him entirely to his own devices. If I did, he would certainly go from bad to worse." "And if you don't what will become of you? I think much more of such a life would make you reckless." She was silent for a little, then she exclaimed: "Help me not to grow reckless. I am so alone." He took her hands and looked down into her eyes. A sudden deep flush spread over his face, smoothing out all the lines, as she had seen it do once before, and transforming him. "It is like walking on the edge of a precipice in the dark," he said in a low voice, and his grasp tightened as he spoke. There was something mesmeric in his touch that overpowered Ideala. She felt a change in herself at the moment, and she was never the same woman again. "I will help you, if I can," he said, after another pause, and then he let her go. After that they talked for some time. He tried to persuade her to reconsider her decision and leave her husband. He honestly believed it was the best thing she could do, and told her why he thought so. She acknowledged the wisdom of his advice, but declined to follow it, and he was somewhat puzzled, for the reasons she gave were hardly enough to account for her determination. They wandered away from that subject at last, however, and talked of many other things. He told Ideala of his first coming to the Great Hospital as a patient, and gave her some of the details of his own case, and told her enough of his private history to arouse her sympathy and interest; but of the nature of these confidences I know nothing. Ideala felt in honour bound not to repeat them, as they were made to her in the course of a private conversation, and she was always scrupulously faithful to all such trusts. I know, however, that he was a man who had suffered acutely, both from unhappy circumstances and from those troubles of the mind which beset clever men at the outset of their career, and sometimes never leave them entirely at peace. But this man was something more than a clever man; he was a man in a thousand. He had in a strong degree all that is worst and best in a man. The highest and most spiritual aspirations warred in him with the most carnal impulses, and he spent his days in fighting to attain to the one and subdue the other. Ideala had never known a man like this man. His talents, his rapid changes of mood, as sense or conscience got the upper hand, and his versatility charmed her imagination and excited her interest; and he had, besides, that magnetic power over her by which it is given to some men to compel people of certain temperaments to their will. While she was with him he could have made her believe that black was white, and not only believe it, but be glad to think that it was so; and he always compelled her to say exactly what she had in her mind at the moment, even when it was something that she would very much rather not have said. "But I am forgetting my other object in coming," Ideala broke off at last. "May I look at the books?" Lorrimer took out his watch. "You ought to have some lunch first," he said. "If you will come now and have some, we can return and look at the books afterwards." Ideala acquiesced, fearing it was his own lunch time, and knowing it would detain him if she did not accompany him. Ladies not being allowed to lunch at the Great Hospital, they went, as before, to the station close by, and sat down side by side, perfectly happy together, chatting, laughing, talking about their childhood, and making those trifling confidences which go so far to promote intimacy, and are often the first evidence of affection. Now and then they touched on graver matters. He upheld all that was old, and believed we can have no better institutions in the future than those which have already existed in the past. Ideala had begun to think differently. "I am sure it is a mistake to be for ever looking back to the past for precedents," she said. "The past has its charm, of course, but it is the charm of the charnel house--it is the dead past, and what was good for one age is bad for another." "As one man's meat is another man's poison?" he said. "Proverbs prove nothing," she answered lightly. "Have you noticed that they go in pairs? There is always one for each side of an argument. 'One man's meat is another man's poison' is met by 'What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander'--and so on. But don't you think it absurd to cling to old customs that are dying a natural death? Learn of the past, if you like, but live in the present, and make your laws to meet its needs. It is this eternal waiting on the past to copy it rather than to be warned by its failures, to do as it did, under the impression, apparently, that we must succeed better than it did, following in its footsteps though we know they led to ruin once, and, because the way was pleasant, being surprised to find that it must end again in disaster--it is this abandonment of all hope of finding new and efficacious remedies for the old diseases of society that has checked our progress for hundreds of years, and will keep the world in some respects just as it was at the time of the Crucifixion. For my own part, I cannot see that history does repeat itself, except in trifling details, and in the lives of unimportant individuals. "I think," he rejoined, "if you have studied the decline of the Roman Empire, you must have seen a striking analogy between that and our own history at the present time. With the exception of changes of manners, which only affect the surface of society, we are in much the same state now as the Romans were then." "I know many people say so, and believe it," Ideala answered; "and there is evidence enough to prove it to people who are trying to arrive at a foregone conclusion; but it is not the resemblances we should look to, but the differences. It is in them that our hope lies, and they seem to me to be essential. Take the one grand difference that has been made by the teaching for hundreds of years of the perfect morality of the Christian religion! Do you think it possible for men, while they cling to it, to 'reel back into the beast and be no more'?" "But are men clinging to it?" "Yes, in a way, for it has insensibly become a part of all of us, and has made it possible for us to show whole communities of moral philosophers now in a generation; the ancients had only an occasional one in a century." "But such a one!" "The old moral philosophers were grand, certainly, but not grander than our own men are, of whom we only hear less because there are so many more of them." "But do you mean to say society is less sinful than it was?" "There is one section of society at the present day, they tell me, which is most desperately wicked. It is worse than any class was when the world was young, because it knows so much better. But I believe the bulk of the people like right so well that they only want a strong impulse to make them follow it. I feel sure sometimes that we are all living on the brink of a great change for the better, and that there is only one thing wanting now--a great calamity, or a great teacher--to startle us out of our apathy and set us to work. We are not bold enough. We should try more experiments; they can but fail, and if they do, we should still have learnt something from them. But I do not think we shall fail for ever. What we want is somewhere, and must be found eventually." "They tried some experiments with the marriage laws in France once," Lorrimer observed, tentatively. "Yes, and failed contemptibly because their motive was contemptible. They did not want to improve society, but to make self-indulgence possible without shame. I think our own marriage laws might be improved." "People are trying to improve them," he said, with a slight laugh. "A friend of mine has just married a girl who objected to take the oath of obedience. How absurd it is for a girl of nineteen to imagine she knows better than all the ages." "I think," said Ideala, "that it is more absurd for 'all the ages' to subscribe to an oath which something stronger than themselves makes it impossible for half of them to keep. Strength of character must decide the question of place in a household as it does elsewhere; and it is surely folly to require, and useless to insist on, the submission of the strong to the weak. The marriage oath is farcical. A woman is made to swear to love a man who will probably prove unlovable, to honour a man who is as likely as not to be undeserving of honour, and to obey a man who may be incapable of judging what is best either for himself or her. I have no respect for the ages that uphold such nonsense. There was never any need to bind us with an oath. If men were all they ought to be, wouldn't we obey them gladly? To be able to do so is all we ask." "Well, it is a difficult question," he answered, "and I don't think we need trouble ourselves about it any way. Do you like flowers?" "Yes," she burst out in another tone; "and easy chairs, and pictures, and china, and everything that is beautiful, and all sensual pleasures." She said it, but she knew in a moment that she had used the wrong word, and was covered with confusion. Lorrimer looked at her and laughed. "And so do I," he said. "Oh! if only I could unsay that!" thought Ideala; but the word had gone forth, and was already garnered against her. Then came an awful moment for her--the moment of going and paying. It was hateful to let him pay for her lunch, but she could not help it. She was seized with one of those fits of shyness which made it just a degree less painful to allow it than to make the effort to prevent it. They returned to Lorrimer's room and pored together over a catalogue, looking up the books she wanted. When they had found their names and numbers Lorrimer sent for them from the library, but it was too late to do anything that day, and so she rose to go. Lorrimer walked with her to the station, and saw her into the train. On the way they talked of little children. He loved them as she did. "A friend of mine," he said, "has the most beautiful child I ever saw. Just to look at it makes me feel a better man." CHAPTER XVIII. In the days that followed a singular change came over Ideala. No external circumstance affected her. She moved like one in a dream; thought had ceased for her; all life was one delicious sensation, and at times she could not bear the delight of it in silence. She would tell it in low songs in the twilight; she would make her piano speak it in a hundred chords: and it would burst from her in some sudden glow of enthusiasm that made people wonder--the apparent cause being too slight to account for it. While this lasted nothing hurt her. She saw the sufferings of others unmoved. She met her husband's brutalities with a smiling countenance, and bore the physical discomfort of a bad sprain without much consciousness of pain. And she knew nothing of time, and never asked herself to what she owed this joy. The utter forgetfulness of everything that came upon her when she was alone was almost incredible. One evening she spent two hours in walking a distance she might easily have done in forty minutes. She had been to see a sick person, and when she found herself in the fresh air, after having spent some time in a small, close room, the dream-like feeling came over her, and her spirit was uplifted with inexpressible gladness. The summer air was sweet and warm, a light rain was falling, and she took off her hat and wandered on, looking up, but noting nothing, and singing Schubert's "Hark! hark! the lark," to herself softly as she came. A man standing at a cottage door begged her to go in and shelter. She looked at him, and her face was radiant--the rain-drops sparkled on her hair. He was only a working man, "clay--and common clay," but the light in her eyes passed through him, and the memory of her stayed with him, a thing apart from his daily life, held sacred, and not to be described. A man might live a hundred years and never see a woman look like that. "I did not know it was raining," she said. "It is only light rain, and the air is so sweet, and the glow down there in the west is like heaven. How beautiful life is!" "Ay, lady!" he answered, and stood there spellbound, watching her as she passed on slowly, and listening to her singing as she went. A few days later she saw Lorrimer again. She found him in his room this time. He knew she was coming, and flushed with pleasure when he met her at the door. Ideala was not nervous; it all seemed a matter of course to her now. The books he had got for her from the library were where she had left them. He placed a chair for her beside his writing-table, and then went on with his own work. She had understood that she was to read in the library, but she did not think of that now; she simply acquiesced in this arrangement as she would have done in any other he might have made for her. A secretary was busy in another part of the room when she entered, but after awhile he left them. Then Lorrimer looked up and smiled. "You are looking better to-day," he said. "Tell me what you have been doing since I saw you." "Lotus-eating," she answered. "How lovely the summer is! Since I saw you I have wanted to do nothing but rest and dream." "You have been happy, then?" "Yes." "Is he kind to you?" "Oh--he! He is just the same. There is no change in my life. The change is in me." "Then you mean to be happy in spite of him? I call that the beginning of wisdom. I know two other ladies who hate their husbands, and they manage to enjoy life pretty well. And I don't see why _you_ should be miserable always because you happen to have married the wrong man. How was it you married him? Were you very much in love with him?" "No, not in the least." "Spooney, then?" "Not even 'spooney,' as you call it. I was very young at the time. Very young girls know nothing of love and marriage." "Very young," he repeated thoughtfully. He was drawing figures with his pen on the blotting-paper before him. "But why did you marry him, then?" "I can give you no reason--except that I was not happy at home." "You all say that," slipped from him, with a gesture of impatience. "I wish I had been more original," said Ideala. She took up her book again, and he resumed his writing, and for some time there was silence. But Ideala's attention wandered. She began to examine the room, which was, as usual, in a state of disorder. One side of it was lined with cabinets of various sizes and periods. Labels indicated the contents of some of them. Only one picture hung on that side of the room--it was the portrait of a gentleman--but several others stood on the ground against the cabinets. The walls were painted some dark colour. A Japanese screen was drawn across the door, and beside it was a hard narrow settee covered with dark green velvet. Books were piled upon it, and heavily embroidered foreign stuffs, and near it a number of Japanese drawings stood on a stand. The mantelpiece was crowded with an odd mixture of china and other curios, all looking as if they had just been unpacked. Above it another picture was hung, a steel engraving. The writing-table by which they sat was nearly in the middle of the room. In the window was another table, covered also with a miscellaneous collection of curios; and on every other available article of furniture books were piled. The high backs of the chairs were elaborately carved, the seats being of the same green velvet as the settee. A high wire-guard surrounded the fire place, and this unusual precaution made one think, that the contents of the room must be precious. The occupant of this apartment might have been an artist, a man of letters, or a virtuoso--probably the latter; but whatever he was, it was evident that his study was a workshop, and not a showroom. From the room Ideala looked to her companion. He was writing rapidly, and seemed absorbed in his subject. He was frowning slightly, his face was pale and set, and he looked older by ten years than when he had spoken last, and seemed cold and unimpassioned as a judge; but Ideala thought again that the face was a fine one. Presently he became conscious of her earnest gaze. He did not look up, but every feature softened, and a warm glow spread from forehead to chin; it was as if a deep shadow had been lifted, and a younger, but less noble, man revealed. "How you change!" Ideala exclaimed--"not from day to day, but from moment to moment. You are like two men. I wish I could get behind that horrid veil of flesh that hides you from me. I want to see your soul." He smiled. "You are getting tired," he said. "Do let me persuade you to come and have some lunch. When you begin to speculate, I know you have done enough." But Ideala could not go through the ordeal of who should pay for lunch again. She preferred to starve. The _camaraderie_ between them was mental enough to be manlike already, but only as long as there was no question of material outlay. "Mayn't I stay here and read?" she said. "I can have something by-and- by, when I want it. Do go and leave me." And he was obliged to go at last, wondering somewhat at her want of appetite. When he returned she was still working diligently, and they spent the rest of the afternoon together, reading, writing, and chatting, until it was time for Ideala to go. Lorrimer saw her into her train, and fixed another day for her to return and go on with her work. And so the thing became a settled arrangement. Whenever she could spare the time she went and worked beside him, and he was always the same, kindly, considerate, helping her now and then, but not, as a rule, interfering with her. She just came and went as she pleased, and as she would have done had he been her brother. Sometimes they were alone together for hours, sometimes his secretary worked in the room with them, and always there were people coming and going. There was nothing to suggest a thought of impropriety, and they were soon on quarrelling terms, falling out about a great many things--which is always the sign of a good understanding; but after the first they touched on no dangerous subject for a long time. At last, however, there came a change. Ideala noticed one day that Lorrimer was restless and irritable. "Am I interfering with your work to-day?" she said. "Do tell me. Any other day will suit me just as well." "Oh, no," he answered. "I am lazy, that is all. How are you getting on? Let me see." And he took the paper she was engaged upon, and looked at it. She watched him, and saw that he was not reading, although he held it before his eyes for some time. He was paler than usual, and there was a look of indecision in his face, very unlike its habitual expression, which was serene and self-contained. Looking up all at once, he met her eyes fixed on him frankly and affectionately, but he did not respond to her smile. "How do you suppose all this is going to end?" he said, abruptly. "Won't it do?" she answered, thinking of her paper. "Had I better give it up, or re-write it?" He threw the paper down with a gesture of impatience, and got up; and then, as if ashamed of his irritability, he took it again, and gave it back to her. In doing so his hand accidentally touched hers. "How cold you are," he said. "Let me warm your hands for you." "They are benumbed," she answered, letting him take them and rub them. After a moment he said, without looking at her, "Do you know, it is very good of you to come here like this." "Why?" she asked. "It suits my own convenience." "I know. But it is refreshing to find some one who will suit their own convenience so." "That sounds as if it were not the right thing to do!" she exclaimed. "Nonsense!" he answered. "You misunderstand me." Ideala withdrew her hands hastily, and half rose. "What is the matter?" he said. "Come, don't be idle! You should have mastered that book by this time." But Ideala was disturbed. "I can't read," she said. "Tell me what you thought of me when I came to you that first day? I fancied you were old. And I have been afraid since, in spite of your cousin's suggestion, that you may have considered it odd of me to introduce myself like that." "Oh, it is quite customary here," he answered. "But even if it had not been, we can't all be bound by the same common laws. The ordinary stars and planets have an ordinary course mapped out for them, and they daren't diverge an inch. But every now and then a comet comes and goes its own eccentric way, and all the lesser lights wonder and admire and let it go." "That would be very fine for us if only we were comets among the stars," she said. "Oh, you might condescend to claim a kindred with them," he answered lightly. "The only heavenly body I ever feel akin to is one of those meteors that flash and fall," she said. "They go their own way, too, do they not, and are lost?" "There is no question of being lost here," he interposed. "The most scrupulous have made an exception in favour of one person, and the world has not blamed them. After having endured so much you are entitled to some relaxation. I should do as I liked now, if I were you." She looked at him inquiringly. It seemed as if he were not expressing himself, but trying the effect of what he said upon her. He was sitting in his usual place now, drawing figures on the blotting- pad. "You have read, I suppose?" he added, after a pause, and without looking up. "I wish I had never read anything," she exclaimed passionately. "I wish I could neither read, write, nor think." But the trouble now was, if only she could have recognised it, that she did not think; she only felt. She got up and went to the mantelpiece; he remained where he was, sitting with his back to her. Presently she began to look at the china, absently at first, but afterwards with interest. There were some new specimens, just unpacked, and all crowded together. "What a lovely lotus-leaf," she said at last. "Satsuma, I suppose--no, Kioto; but what a good specimen. And it is broken, too. What a pity! I should so like to mend it." "Would you?" he said, rousing himself. "Then you shall." He went to one of the cabinets and got out the materials, and in a few minutes they were bending busily over the broken plaque, as interested and eager about it as if no subject of more vital importance had ever distracted them. They were like two children together, often as quarrelsome, always as inconsequent; happy hard at work, and equally happy idling; apt to torment each other at times about trifles, but always ready to forget and forgive, and with that habit in common of forgetting everything utterly but the occupation of the moment. They talked on now for a little longer, but not brilliantly. They were both considered brilliant in conversation, but somehow on these occasions neither of them shone. I suppose when two such bright and shining lights come together they put each other out. Then it was time for Ideala to go. A bitter wind met them in the face on their way to the station, and before they had gone far Ideala noticed that Lorrimer's mood had changed again. His face grew pale, his step less elastic, his manner cold and formal. All the brightness, all the sympathy, which made their intimacy seem the most natural, because it was the pleasantest, thing in the world to Ideala, had gone; he was like a man seized with a sudden fit of remorse, disgusted with himself, and moved to repent. "I should bear with your husband, if I were you," he said at last, breaking the silence. "He behaves like a brute, but I dare say he can't help it. A man can't help his temperament, and probably you provoke him more than you think." Ideala was surprised, it was so long since they had mentioned her husband. "I fear I am provoking," she answered, humbly. "But how am I to help it? I have tried so hard, and for so long, to be patient. And I only want to do right." They were parting then, and he looked down at her in silence for some seconds, and when Ideala saw the expression of his face, her heart sank. In that one moment she realised all that his friendship had been to her, and foresaw the terrible blank there would be for her if it should ever end. That there was any danger, that there could be anything but friendship between men and women who must not marry, had not even yet occurred to her. Her intimacy with myself had prepared the way for Lorrimer, and made this new intimacy seem also perfectly right. "What is the matter with you to-day?" she said. "What spirit of dissatisfaction has got hold of you?" "I _am_ dissatisfied," he said, raising his hat, and brushing his hand back over his hair. Then he looked at her. "Why don't you help me?" he asked. "How can I help you?" she answered. "I don't understand you." "You ought to. I wish to goodness you did"--and then his face cleared. "But you will come again," he added, in the old way. "I shall expect you soon." And so he let her go; and Ideala was glad, because an unpleasant jar was over. She did not trouble herself about his private worries; if he wished her to know he would tell her. Lorrimer had a temper--but then she had known that all along; and Lorrimer was Lorrimer--that was all about it. CHAPTER XIX. He let her go, somewhat bewildered, and not understanding herself or him, nor caring to understand, only happy, dangerously happy. The train bore her through an enchanted region of brightness and summer, and, although the power of thought was for the moment suspended, she was conscious of this, and her own delight was like the unreasoning pleasure of earth when the sun is upon it. There was no carriage to meet her at the station, and she set off to walk home. It was the first time she had been alone on foot in the squalid disorderly streets of that dingy place, and her way, which she was not quite sure of, took her through some of the worst of them. They were filled with loud-laughing uncleanly women, and skulking hang-dog- looking men, and the grime-clogged atmosphere was heavy with foul odours; but she noticed nothing of this. The golden glow the sun made in his efforts to shine through the clouds of smoke might have been a visible expression of her own ecstatic feeling, and she would have thought so at any other time, but now she never saw it. In a somewhat open and more lonely part of the road she met a tramp, a great rude, hulking, common fellow, with fine blue eyes. He stopped in the middle of the road and stared at Ideala as she came up to him, walking, as usual, with a slight undulating movement that made you think of a yacht in a breeze, her face up-raised and her lips parted. He took off his cap as she approached. The gesture attracted her attention, and, thinking he wanted to beg or ask some question, she stopped and looked at him inquiringly. "Well, you _are_ a nice lady!" he exclaimed. He hadn't the gift of language, but she saw the soul of a man in his eyes, and she understood him. "Thank you," she answered, and passed on, unsurprised. In the next street a breathless creature came running after her, a tawdry, painted, dishevelled girl. She stopped Ideala and stood panting, with hot dry lips, and eyes full of animal suffering. Her clothes exhaled the smell of some vile scent that was overpowering. Involuntarily Ideala shrank from her, and all the joy left her face. "I've run"--the girl gasped--"such a way--they said you'd gone this road. I've waited about all day to catch you. Come, for God's sake!" "But where?" "There's a girl dying"--and she clutched Ideala's arm, trying to drag her along with her--"or she would die and have done with it, but she can't till she's seen you. She've something on her mind--something to tell you. Come, my lady, come, for the love of the Lord and the Blessed Virgin. No harm'll happen to you." Ideala made a gesture. "Show me the way," she said. "But you don't seem able to walk. There's an empty cab coming. Get in and tell the man where to drive to." They stopped at a row of many-storeyed houses in a low by-street. A stout elderly woman with an evil countenance met them at the door. She began some speech in a cringing tone to Ideala, but the tawdry girl pushed her aside rudely. "Hold your jaw, and get out of the way," she said. "I'll show the lady up." The woman muttered something which Ideala fortunately did not hear, and let them pass. They went upstairs to the very top of the house, and entered a low room, furnished with a broken chair and a small bed only. On the bed lay a girl, who, in spite of disease and approaching death, looked not more than twenty, and was probably two years younger. She turned her haggard face to the door as it opened, and a gleam of satisfaction caused her eyes to dilate when she saw Ideala. They were large dark eyes, but her face was so distorted with suffering and discoloured by disease, it was impossible to imagine what it once had been. "Here she is, Polly," said the Tawdry One, triumphantly. "I said I'd bring her, now didn't I?" Ideala knelt down by the bed. "My! but you're a game un!" said the Tawdry One, admiringly. "You ain't afraid of catching nothing! Now, I'd have asked what was up before I'd have done that; and I wouldn't touch her with the tongs, nor stay in the room with her was it ever so. You just holler when you want me and I'll come back." And so saying she left them. "You are not afraid to touch me--you don't mind?" said the dying girl when Ideala had taken off her gloves, and knelt, holding her hands. "Afraid? Mind?" Ideala whispered, her eyes full of pity. "I only wish you would let me do something for you." At that moment they were startled by an uproar downstairs. A man and woman were quarrelling at the top of their voices. At first only their tones were audible, but these grew more distinct, and in a few seconds Ideala could hear what was said, and it was evident that the combatants were approaching. "I tell you the lady's all right," the woman Ideala had seen downstairs was heard to shriek, with sundry vile epithets. "Polly's dying, and she've come to visit her." "Seein' 's believin'," the man rejoined, doggedly. "Just show me the lady and shut up, you foul-mouthed devil you." The door was flung open, and there stood the fat harridan, and towering over her was a great red-haired policeman, who seemed both relieved and abashed when he saw Ideala. "What is the meaning of this?" she said, rising, and drawing herself up indignantly. "Don't you see how ill this girl is? Such an uproar at such a time is indecent." The woman shrank from her gaze and slunk away. The policeman wiped his hot face with a red handkerchief. "I saw the girl fetch you here, ma'am," he said, apologetically, "and I thought it was a trap. It ain't safe for a woman, let alone a lady, to come to no such a place. I'll just wait and see you safe out of it." He shut the door, and Ideala heard him walking up and down on the landing outside. The dying girl seemed scarcely conscious of what was passing. Ideala looked round for something to revive her. There was not even a cup of water in the room. She knelt once more beside the bed, and raised her in her arms, and let her head rest on her shoulder. All the mother in her was throbbing with tenderness for this poor outcast. The girl drew a long deep sigh. "Could you take anything?" Ideala asked. "No, lady, not now. The thirst was awful awhile ago, and I cried and cried, although I knew no one would listen to me, or come if they heard. They'd rather we'd die when we get ill. It's a bad thing for the house." She could only speak in gasps. "And what have you had?" Ideala asked. "The scarlet fever, ma'am. There's an awful bad kind about, and I caught it. They all die that gets it." Ideala drew her closer, and laid her own cool cheek on her damp forehead. "Tell me why you wished to see me," she said. "You are so good," the girl answered--"I thought you'd better know--and get--away from--that low brute." Ideala understood, and would fain have stopped the story, but it seemed a relief to the girl to speak, and so she listened. It was the old story, the old story aggravated by every incident that could make it more repulsive--and her husband was the hero of it. "Shall I go to hell?" the girl asked, shrinking closer. "For these Christ died," Ideala murmured. The words flashed through her mind, and the meaning of them was new to her. Her heart was wrung for the desolate girl, dying alone in sin and sorrow without a creature to care for her--dying alone in the arms of a strange woman, with a policeman outside guarding her. Ideala cried in her heart with an exceeding bitter cry: "God do so to him, and more also." "Pray for me, lady." But Ideala could not pray with a curse on her lips--and, besides, the power to pray had been taken from her for many a weary day before that. She thought of the policeman, and called him in. "See, she is dying," she said, looking up at him helplessly; "and she has asked me to pray, and I can't. Will you?" And, quite simply and reverently, as if it had been part of his ordinary duty, he took off his helmet and knelt down, a great rough- looking man in a hideous dress, and prayed: "Dear Lord, forgive her!" They were the last words she heard. CHAPTER XX. The people seemed to have deserted the house. Even the Tawdry One had disappeared, and Ideala was obliged to lay out the poor dear girl herself, and make her ready for decent burial. As soon as she could leave the place she went, escorted by the policeman, to the fever hospital to have her things fumigated. The risk of infection had not troubled her till she remembered the likelihood of taking it to others, but as soon as she thought of that she took the necessary precautions to prevent it. She sent a message from the hospital to her maid, telling her to pack up some things and meet her at the station in time for the mail at eleven o'clock that night. She had thought of some friends who lived a nine hours' journey from her home, and had determined to go to them for a time. She wrote to her husband also from the hospital. "The girl, Mary Morris, died of scarlet fever this afternoon in the house to which you sent her when you were tired of her," she said. "I was with her when she died. I am going to the Trelawneys to-night; but at present I have formed no plans for the future." During the first few days of her stay with the Trelawneys she just lived from hour to hour, not thinking of anything, past, present, or to come; but out of this apathy a desire grew by degrees. She wanted to see Lorrimer. She could speak to him, and she was sure he would help and advise her. She wrote to him, telling him she particularly wished to see him on a certain day, and asking him to meet her at the station, adding by way of postscript: "I do not think I quite know what you meant when you advised me to go my own way; but if any wrong-doing were part of the programme I should not be able to carry it out. However, I feel sure that you would be the last person in the world to let me do wrong, even if I were inclined to." She knew that her husband was away from home, and her intention had been to sleep there that night, and go on to Lorrimer the next morning; but she had been misinformed about the trains, and after many changes and tedious waits, she found herself alone in the middle of the night at a little railway junction, with no chance of a train to take her on for several hours; and what was worse, without money enough in her purse to pay her bill if she went to an hotel. The waiting-rooms were all closed for the night, and there seemed nothing for it but to wander about the station till the train came and released her. She told her dilemma to an old Scotch inspector who was waiting to see what she meant to do. He gave the matter his best consideration, but it evidently perplexed him. "If you was a box," he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "we could put you in the left-luggage office." "But I am not a box," Ideala answered, as if only the most positive denial would prevent mistake on the subject. It was raining hard, and bitterly cold. Only part of the platform was roofed in, and every now and then a gust of wind splashed the raindrops into their faces as they stood beside Ideala's luggage in a circle of yellow light cast upwards by a lantern which the inspector had put on the ground at their feet. "There's me and Tom, the porter," he said at last; "we've got to wait for the two o'clock down and the four o'clock up. Tom, he'll come 'ome and sit over the kitchen fire with me. I suppose, now, you wouldn't like to do that?" "Indeed I should be very glad to," Ideala answered; "that is," she added quickly, "if it would not inconvenience you." He made an inexplicable gesture, and seemed to consider the matter settled. "I'll just put this here luggage in the office," he said, shouldering a box and taking up a portmanteau; but he muttered as he went: "It's a pity, now, you wasn't luggage." Ideala followed him meekly from the luggage-office out into the lane, and down a country path to a little cottage. The door opened into the kitchen, and a young man in a porter's uniform was sitting over a cheery fire reading a newspaper by the light of a tallow candle. The kitchen was large for the size of the house. Besides the door they had entered by there were two others, both closed. The walls were panelled from floor to ceiling with wood darkened by age. Several of the panels were doors of cupboards that projected slightly from the wall, and shelves had been sunk in flush with it, and placed angle-wise in the corners. The shelves were covered with old china. There was a row of brass candlesticks of good design on the high mantelpiece, and more china stood behind them. On a panel above the mantelpiece a curious design of dogs and horses in a wood had been carved with much patience and some skill. The furniture of the place was an old oak table standing in the window--the window itself had a deep sill, on which was arranged a row of flower-pots, from which a faint perfume came at intervals--a long narrow oak chest, carved and polished, with the date, 1700, on the side of it, a settle, and a dresser covered with the ordinary crockery used by poor people. The brick floor was _rudded_ and sanded, the hearthstone was yellow, and the part under the grate was white. One high-backed old-fashioned chair stood on each side of the hearth. Tom the Porter was sitting in one of them, and at his elbow was a small round table with a pipe, tobacco jar, and two or three books upon it. A square table in the middle of the room was laid out for supper, with a dish, two plates, a beer mug, and half a loaf of bread. Some potatoes were roasting on the hob. "The old woman's asleep, I expects. You'll mind and not make a noise," the inspector said to Ideala, as if he were warning a child to be good. Tom the Porter rose, and gazed at the lady with his mouth open in a state of astonishment that was justified by the time and place of her advent; but he offered her his chair with the courtesy of a gentleman, and the old inspector bade her make herself at home, which she did by removing her hat and wraps and taking off her gloves. In a higher sphere of life those two men would have stared her out of countenance, but Tom the Porter and the old inspector, not from want of appreciation, but from the refinement that seems natural to people who come of an old stock, whatever their station, and have had china and carved oak in their possession from one generation to another--forebore even to look at her lest she should be embarrassed by their curiosity. They did the honours of the house with dignity, and without vulgar apology for a state of things that was natural to them, and Ideala at once adapted herself to the circumstances, and burnt her fingers while attending to the baked potatoes, which Tom had somewhat neglected. She always declared afterwards that there was nothing so good in the world as baked potatoes and salt, provided the company was agreeable; and now and then she would thrill us with reminiscences of that evening's entertainment--with wonderful accounts of railway accidents-- and of one in particular that happened on a pitch-dark night when fires had to be made to light the workers as they toiled fearfully amongst the wreck of the trains, searching for the mangled and mutilated, the dying and the dead, while the air was filled with horrid shrieks and groans. For it seems these three, when they had finished the baked potatoes, drew their chairs to the fire and talked. And one can well imagine what Ideala's stories were--her tales of the Japanese with whom she had lived; of Chinese prisons into which she had peeped; of earthquakes, tornadoes and shipwrecks, and other perils by land and sea, all told in a voice that thrilled you, whatever it said. Tom the Porter and the old Scotch inspector were in luck that night, and they knew it. When at last it was time for Ideala to go, and in return for her thanks for his kind hospitality, and the contents of her purse, which had rather more in it than she had fancied, the inspector expressed his appreciation with an earnest smack. "Well," he said, "you're rare good company. I shan't mind when you come along this way again." The train was late in arriving, and she had only time to rush up to the house, change her dress, and return to the station to catch the one by which she had asked Lorrimer to meet her. Perhaps it was the thought of what she had come to tell him that made her heart beat nervously as the train drew up at her destination, and she leant forward to look for him among the people on the platform. She looked in vain--he was not there. Something, of course, had happened to detain him; doubtless he had sent a message to explain. She waited a little, but nobody appeared to be looking for her. Then she left the station and walked in the direction of the Hospital, thinking he had missed the train, and she should probably meet him on the way. Her nervousness increased as she went. She was not used to be alone in crowded streets, and she began to feel faint and bewildered. Her heart seemed to stop whenever she saw a fair- headed man, but she reached the Hospital at last, and no Lorrimer had met her. Then a new fear disturbed her. Perhaps he was ill. She went up to the door, and there, just coming out, Lorrimer's secretary met her. "I was just coming to meet you, madam," he said; "I am sorry I am too late. Mr. Lorrimer has been detained by visitors, and sent me to apologise for his absence. If you will be so good as to come to the library, he will join you there as soon as he is disengaged." When she was settled in the library a servant brought her books to her. She had not come to read, but work was the daily habit of her life, and she went on now, mechanically, but carefully as usual, though with a curious sinking of the heart, and benumbing sense of loss and pain. As she came along in the train she had been thinking how it would amuse Lorrimer to hear of her night's adventure, and of the relief it would be to tell him of all the other things she had come to tell; but now she felt like one bidden to a bridal, and brought to a burial. People were going and coming continually in the library. A gentleman sat at a table near her, busily writing. Servants went backwards and forwards with books. Another gentleman came in and looked at her curiously, and then went away. She began to feel uncomfortable, and wondered what was keeping Lorrimer so long. She thought, too, of leaving the place at once, and going back by an earlier train than she had intended, but it would hardly have been polite. A servant came and told her the library was closed to visitors at two. "I am waiting for Mr. Lorrimer," she said. "Oh, in that case----" and the man withdrew. The name was an open sesame to all parts of the building. At last he came. She rose with a great sense of relief. "Let me take your books," he said. "I have done with them," she answered. And without another word he led the way to his own room. They took their accustomed seats. "I am sorry I could not meet you," he said. "I hope you do not think me rude. Some wretched people turned up at the last moment, and wanted to see everything. Just look at the room!" Every cabinet seemed to have been ransacked, and treasures of all kinds were lying about in most admired disorder. Lorrimer looked round him desperately, and pushed his hat back from his forehead. Ideala smiled. It was so like him to forget he had it on. Outside a heavy thundercloud gathered and darkened the room. Presently big drops of rain splashed against the window, and it began to lighten. Long claps of thunder rolled and muttered incessantly away in the distance, and every now and then one would burst directly above them, as it seemed, with splendid effect. Lorrimer looked up at the window straight before him, and played with a pen; and Ideala, half turning her back to him, sat silent also, watching the storm. There were some high houses opposite of which only the upper storeys were visible. Two children were playing in a dangerous position at an open window in one of them. Above the houses a strip of sky, heavy and dark and changeful, was all that showed. Ideala felt cold and faint. The long fast and fatigue were beginning to tell upon her. She was nervous, too; the silence was oppressive, but she could not break it. She felt some inexplicable change in her relations with Lorrimer which made it impossible to speak. Furtively she watched him, trying to discover if he felt it too. The look of age was on his face, and it was clouded with discontent. Anxiously she sought some sign of sickness to account for it. But, no. There was no trace of physical suffering; the trouble was mental. "You are not looking well," Lorrimer said at last. "I suppose you have been starving yourself since I saw you. You have had no lunch to-day again. You will kill yourself if you go on like that. I was speaking about you to a doctor the other day. He said you could not fast as you do without taking _something_--stimulants or sedatives." Ideala winced. "What an insulting thing to say," she exclaimed, indignantly. "I will not allow you to adopt that tone with me. You have no right to scold me." "I have, and shall," he retorted. "I suppose you want to kill yourself. Perhaps it is the best thing people can do who hate their lives." "I don't hate my life; I don't want to die," she rejoined. "The other day you said you loathed your life." "You are accusing me of inconsistency," she said. "You! who are in two states of mind every time I see you!" She got up. "And I _do_ mean what I say," she resumed. "I loathed the old life, but that is done with. I am living a new life now----" He turned to look at her, red chasing white from his face at every breath; then, yielding to an irresistible impulse, he went to her, grasped her folded hands in both of his, and looked into her eyes for one burning moment. The hot blood flamed to her face. She was startled. "Don't let us quarrel," he said, hoarsely. "Why do you try to?" she retorted. "It is always you who begin." "I think you want pluck," he said. "Oh, no; not that," she answered. "Just now you do." "Then I think you want discernment," she retorted with spirit. And so they went on, as if neither of them had ever heard of such a thing as conventional propriety. Lorrimer did not answer that last remark. He was standing at a little distance from her, watching her. Ideala was looking grave. "What is your conscience troubling you about now?" he asked. "I never listen to my conscience." "I don't believe you," she answered, promptly. "That is polite," he observed. Then there was another pause. "It must be time for me to go," she said at last. The rain was still falling in torrents. "Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "You mustn't go yet. Your train does not leave for another hour. Why do you want to go?" She was struggling with the button of a glove, and he went to help her, but she repulsed him, half unconsciously, as she would have brushed off a troublesome fly. The gesture irritated him. "I cannot believe you are not conscientious," she said, with a frown of intentness. "When a man of talent ceases to be true, he loses half his power." He turned from her coldly, sat down at the writing table, and began to write. Ideala was still putting on her gloves. Outside, the rain fell lightly now, and the clouds were clearing. The children were still playing at the open window of the house opposite. Lorrimer had often been obliged to answer notes when she was there; she thought nothing of that; but he was a long time, and at last she interrupted him. "Forgive me if I disturb you," she said, "but I am afraid I shall miss my train." "Oh, pardon me," he answered, jumping up, and looking at his watch. "But it is not nearly time yet. I cannot understand why you are in such a hurry to-day." "Yet you know that I always go when I have done my work," she said. "You have done unusually early then," he replied; "and I wish to goodness I had." He looked round the room pettishly, like a schoolboy out of temper. "I shall have to put all these things away when you're gone--a task I hate, but nobody can do it but myself." "Why wait till I've gone? Let me help you," said Ideala. His countenance cleared, and they set to work merrily, he explaining the curious histories of coins and cameos, of ancient gems, ornaments of gold and silver, and valuable intaglios, as they returned them to their places. Both forgot everything in the interest of the collection; so that, when the last tray was completed, they were surprised to find that two trains had gone while they were busy, and another had become due, and there was only time to jump into a hansom to catch it. Lorrimer was still irritable. "Why on earth does a lady always carry her purse in her hand?" he said, as they drove along. Ideala laughed, and put hers in her pocket. "When are you coming to go on with your work?" he asked. "I will write and fix a day," she said. "I shall be away a good deal for the next three weeks," he continued. "The twenty-third or twenty-sixth would be the most convenient days for me, if they would suit you." "Thank you," she answered, and hurried down the platform, without having said a word or given a thought to what she had come to say. And then at last the twenty-four hours' fasting, fatigue, and mental suffering overcame her. A little later she was lying insensible on the floor of her room, and she was alone. The servants had not seen her enter, and there was not a creature near her to help her. CHAPTER XXI. Ideala was unable to exert herself for many days after this. At last, however, she began to think of work again, and of Lorrimer. She was uneasy about him. He had not been himself on that last occasion. Something was wrong, she could not think what, but she felt anxious; and out of her anxiety arose an intense longing to see him again. So she wrote, first of all fixing the twenty-third for her visit; but when the day came she found herself unequal to the exertion, and wrote again, begging him to expect her on the twenty-sixth instead. He did not reply. He was generally overwhelmed with correspondence, and she had therefore begged him not to do so if the days she named suited him. Up to this time she had never heard Lorrimer mentioned by any one; but now, suddenly, his name seemed to be in everybody's mouth. She thought of him incessantly herself, and it was as if the strength of her own mind compelled all other minds to think of him while she was present, and to yield to her will and tell her all they knew. For, curiously enough, she had begun to want to know about him. I call it curious, because she was so confiding so unsuspicious, and also so penetrating, she never seemed to care to know more of people than she learnt from intercourse with them. But with regard to Lorrimer, she had evidently begun to distrust her own judgment, which is significant. One night, at a dinner-party, she was thinking of a gratuitous piece of information an old woman, who brought her some milk on one occasion at the Great Hospital, had given her. Ideala had noticed that the old woman had a bad cough, and had asked her, in her usual kindly way, if she were subject to it, and what she did for it, remarking that the north country air was trying to people with delicate chests, and warmer clothing and greater care were more necessary there than in the south; and thereupon the old woman had launched forth, as such people will upon the slightest provocation, with minute details of her own sufferings, and the sufferings of all the people she ever knew, from "the bronchitis" during the winter and spring, Mr. Lorrimer being included among the number. "Does Mr. Lorrimer suffer in that way?" Ideala had asked with interest. "Indeed, yes," was the answer, given with many shakings of the head and that air of importance and pleasure which vulgar bearers of bad news assume. "He was very bad in the spring. He coughed so as never was, and had to give in at last and keep his room, which he should have done at first; but it takes a deal to make him give in, for he takes no care of hisself though not strong, and we _were_ in a way! Eh! but it would be a bad thing for this place if anything happened to Mr. Lorrimer!" Ideala gave the woman half-a-crown. "People may have bronchitis without being delicate," she asserted. "Mr. Lorrimer is very kind to all of you, I suppose?" "If I was to tell you all his good deeds, ma'am," the woman said, impressively, "I'd not have done before to-morrow morning. But as to his not being delicate," she continued--in the hope, perhaps, of scoring another on that point-- "why, it just depends on what you call delicate." Ideala absently gave her another half-crown, and another after that, but she could not get her to say that Mr. Lorrimer's chest was strong. Later, when Lorrimerre turned, and they were both at work, he was interrupted in the middle of some cynical remarks on over-population, and the good it would do to check it by allowing the spread of epidemics and encouraging men to kill each other, by the arrival of another old woman in great distress. His manner changed in a moment. "I am afraid he is worse," he said to her most kindly. She could only shake her head. "There is the order," he went on, giving her a paper--"get him these things at once, and tell him I will come as soon as I am disengaged." When they were alone again, Ideala looked at Lorrimer and laughed. "Another instance, I shrewdly suspect, of the difference between theory and practice," she observed. He brushed his hand back over his forehead and hair, a trifle disconcerted. "He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow," he said. "And one can approve of capital punishment without having the nerve to see it inflicted, I suppose," Ideala commented, "and be convinced that it would be good for the human race to have a certain number of their children drowned, like kittens, every year, and yet not be able to see a single one disposed of in that way without risking one's own life to save it. Verily, I have heard this often, and yet I think I am more surprised to find it true than if I had never been warned! But that is always the way. Things surprise us just as much as we expect them to. When we went up the river to Canton and saw the Pagoda, we all exclaimed, 'Why, it is just like the pictures--river, and junks, and all!' If we had not seen the pictures I believe we should scarcely have noticed it, and certainly we should not have been surprised at all." "Haven't you done being surprised yet?" Lorrimer asked. "No. Have you?" "Quite. Nothing ever surprises me." "I have read somewhere," she said, trying hard to recall the passage, "that fast men, stupid men (_I think_), and rascals, profess to feel no surprise at anything." The colour flew over his face, he seemed about to speak, but took up his pen again as if the thing were not worth the trouble of a word, and went on with his work. The habit of treating men as ideas is not to be got rid of in a moment, and it was only when she thought it over at dinner this evening that she saw anything to hurt him in what she had said. Now that she did think of it, however, it certainly seemed natural that he should object to being classed in any category which included fast men, stupid men, or rascals; but even while she blamed herself, and credited him with much forbearance in that he had allowed her rudeness to pass unpunished, she was conscious of the existence, in that substratum of thought which goes on continually irrespective of our will, of a doubt as to whether he might not after all be one of these--say, a fast man. For what _did_ she know about him? Nothing, except that his manners were agreeable. True, she had heard of his good deeds, and there is never smoke without fire; but a man may balance his accounts, and many men do, in that way, topping up the scale of good deeds pretty high when the bad ones on the other side threaten to turn it; and, seeing that she knew nothing definitely about his private character, suppose she had been deceived in him? But, no! The thing was impossible. And just as she thought it, a gentleman, sitting opposite, one whom she had not met before, looked across the table and asked her if she knew Mr. Lorrimer. "I have seen him," she answered, with a burning blush, being taken unawares. "He's a charming fellow--don't you think so?" "Yes, I think so," she agreed, with an indescribable sense of relief. And the next day a young clergyman whom she stopped to speak to in the street began at once about Lorrimer. "I met him at dinner the other night," he said. "I suppose you know him? There is much truth in 'birds of a feather.' He fascinated us all with his talk of art and literature. He gave us such new ideas--described such varied experiences, and all with such grace and power." "Yes," she answered, thoughtfully. "I believe he is brilliant." "Many people are that," was the reply, given with hearty enthusiasm; "but Lorrimer is something more. He is good. He makes you feel it, and know it, and believe in him, without ever saying a word about himself." "Ah!" she sighed, "there is power in that. What lovely summer weather! It makes me dream. Don't you love the time of nasturtiums? Their pungent scent, and their colours? They seem to penetrate and glow through everything, and make the time their own." And so she left him. But that same day, an old gentleman, who came from another county, and looked as if he had come from another century--an old gentleman with curious wavy hair, parted in the middle, who worshipped the Idol of Days--the past and all that belonged to it--and, for evening dress, wore knee-breeches, frilled shirt, black silk stockings, and diamond buckles in his shoes; and had a bijou house, filled with a thousand relics of his Idol of Days, where noble ladies were wont to loll and listen to him, and drink tea out of his wonderful cups, and love him-- so it was said--this gentleman called on Ideala. He came to charm and to be charmed; and he, of all people in the world the one from whom she would least have expected it, although she knew they had met, began to sing Lorrimer's praises. "He raises the tone of everything he is engaged upon," this gentleman said. "He has not quite kept faith with me about a matter he promised to look into for me a year ago, but doubtless he is busy. I suppose you know him?" "Yes, I know him. He seems to be very much above the average." "Oh, very much above the average," was the warm response. "He's a charming fellow, and a thoroughly good fellow, too." This was the chorus to everything, and there was only one dissentient voice--that of a man who admired Ideala, and was a good soul himself, having gone out of his way to pay her trifling attentions, and even found occasion to do her some small acts of kindness. He began with the rest to praise Lorrimer, but when he saw he was doing so at his own expense, by diverting her attention from himself to his subject, he somewhat lowered his tone. "Every one seems to like Mr. Lorrimer," Ideala said. "O yes, he's certainly a nice fellow; but he puts a lot of side on." "And well he may, being so very good and well-beloved," she answered, smiling. "So spoilt and conceited, you might say," was the rejoinder; but she felt that there was jealousy in the tone, and only laughed. "What an interesting face he has," a lady remarked, who was having tea with Ideala, _tete-a-tete_, one afternoon, and had brought the conversation round to Lorrimer, as seemed inevitable in those days. "He must make a charming portrait." "Yes, it is a fine face," Ideala answered, dreamily--"a face for a bust in white marble; a face from out of the long ago--not Greek, but Roman --of the time when men were passing from a strong, simple, manly, into a luxuriously effeminate, self-indulgent stage; the face of a man who is midway between the two extremes, and a prey to the desires of both. I wish I had been his mother." "His mother was a noble woman." "I know; but she was not omniscient, and she never could have understood the boy. I daresay he was not enough of an ugly duckling to attract special attention, and with many other chicks in the brood he could not have more than the rest, and yet he required it. He ought to have been an only child. If he had been mine, I should have known what his dreaminess meant, why he loved to wander away and be alone; what was the conflict that began in his cradle--or earlier. Surely a mother must remember what there was in her mind to influence her child; she must have the key to all that is wrong in him; she must know if his soul is likely to be at war with his senses." And then Ideala forgot her listener, and burst out with one of those curious flashes of insight, irrespective of all knowledge, to which she was subject: "If I were only a soul to be saved, he would save me; but I am also a body to be loved, and whether he loves me or not, he suffers. It is the eternal conflict of mind and matter, spirit and flesh, two prisoners chained together--the one despising the other, yet ruled by him, and subservient to the needs of his lower nature." The lady stared at her. "You know Mr. Lorrimer very well, then, I suppose?" she remarked. "Let me see," said Ideala, awaking from her trance, "that is a question I often ask myself. And sometimes I say I _do_ know him very well, and sometimes I say I don't. I go to the Great Hospital frequently to read, and to look up information, and he helps me. He is a man who makes an instant impression, but he is many-sided, and, now you ask me, I think on the whole that I do not know him well. I should not be surprised to hear any number of the most contradictory things about him." "It is not a nice character to have," the lady said. "No," Ideala answered, "not at all nice, but very interesting." When at last the day arrived she felt an unusual impatience to see him. And she was in a strange flutter of nervous excitement. Should she tell him of those things which she had not been able to confide to him on the last occasion of their meeting? Could she? No; impossible! But she must see him, nevertheless. The desire was imperative. The servant she had been accustomed to see met her at the door of the Great Hospital. She fancied he looked at her peculiarly. He said he had heard something about Mr. Lorrimer being absent that day, but he would inquire. He left her, and, returning in a few minutes, told her Mr. Lorrimer was not there. "Did he leave no note, no message for me?" Ideala asked, faintly. "No, madam, nothing," was the reply. CHAPTER XXII. For quite three months we heard nothing of Ideala, but we were not alarmed, as she often neglected us in this way when she was busy. At last, however, Claudia received a note from her, written in pencil, and in her usual style. "It has been dull down here to a degree," she said. "I am beginning to think we are all too respectable. Are respectability and imbecility nearly allied, I wonder? But don't tell me; I don't want to know. All the trouble in the world comes from knowing too much. And then, I'm so dreadfully clever! If people take the trouble to explain things to me, I am sure to acquire some of the information they try to impart. I heard of the block system the other day. It sounded mysterious. I like mystery, and I went about in daily dread of having it all made plain to me by some officious person. One day I was sitting on a rail above the line watching the trains. A workman came and sat down near me. It is very hard to have a workman sit down near you and not to talk to him, so we talked. And before I knew what was coming, he had explained the whole of that block system to me. Only fancy! and I may never forget it! It is quite disheartening. "He said he was a pointsman, and I asked him if he would send a train down a wrong line for fifty pounds. He said fifty pounds was a large sum, and he had a mother depending on him! The people here are delicious. I think I shall write a book about them some day. "Have you felt the fascination of the trains? My favourite seat here is a lovely spot just above where they pass. I can look down on them, and into them. The line winds, rather, through meadows and between banks, where wild flowers grow; and under an ivied bridge or two, and by some woods. And the trains rush past--some slow, some fast; and now and then comes one that is just a flash and roar, and I cling to the railing for a moment till it passes, and quiver with excitement, feeling as if I must be swept away. I look at the carriage windows, too, trying to catch a glimpse of the people, and I always hope to see a face I know. In that lies all the charm. "I seem to be expected in town, and some Scotch friends have asked me to pay them a visit _en route_. I should like to go that way above everything; one would see so much more of the country! But I daren't go to London while the Bishop is there. He is making a dead set at me again (confirmation this time), and I am afraid if he heard of my arrival he would do something rash--dance down the Row in his gaiters, perhaps--which might excite comment even if people knew what he was after." And then she went on to say she had been a little out of sorts, and very lazy, and she thought the north country air would brace her nerves, and, if we would have her, she would like to go to us at once. She arrived late one afternoon, and I did not see her until she came down to the drawing-room dressed for dinner. I had not thought anything of her illness, she made so light of it, and I was therefore startled beyond measure when she appeared. "Why, my dear!" I exclaimed, involuntarily, "what have they done to you? You're a perfect wreck!" "Well, so _I_ thought," she answered; "but I did not like to tell you. I was afraid you might think I was trying to make much of myself-- wrecks are so interesting." There was a large party staying in the house, and I had no opportunity of speaking to her that evening; but the next morning she came into my studio with a brave assumption of her old manner. I cannot tell how it was that I knew in a moment she had broken down, but I did know it, and I could only look at her. Perhaps something in my look showed her she had betrayed herself, for all at once her false composure forsook her, and she stretched out her hands to me with a piteous little gesture: "What am I to do?" she said. "Will it always be like this?" But I could not help her. I turned to the picture I was working at, and went on painting without a word. By-and-by she recovered herself, and began to talk of other things. I blamed myself afterwards. I ought to have let her tell me then; but I had no notion of the truth. I only thought of her husband, and I selfishly shrank from encouraging her to speak. Complaint seemed to be beneath her. But I know now that she never wanted to make any complaint of him to me. It was of her new acquaintance that she longed to tell me. She had settled the difficulty with her husband without consulting any one. She had returned to his house, and remained there as his wife, nominally, and because he particularly wished that the world should know nothing of the rupture. I believe that she had done it sorely against the grain, and only because he represented that by so doing she would save his reputation. But from that time forward she would accept nothing from him but house-room, for she held that no high-minded woman could take anything from a man to whom she was bound by no tie more sacred than that of a mere legal contract. She was very quiet when she first came to us, but beyond that I noticed nothing unusual in her manner, and after the first I was inclined to think that being out of health accounted for everything. My sister Claudia, however, was not so easily deceived. She declared that Ideala was suffering from some serious trouble, either mental or bodily; and as the days wore on and there was no change for the better in her, but rather the contrary, I began to share Claudia's anxiety. Ideala grew paler and thinner, and more nervous. She was oftenest depressed, but occasionally had unnatural bursts of hilarity that would end suddenly in long fits of brooding. It seems she had at first believed that Lorrimer's absence was an intentional slight, and the humiliation, coming as it did upon the long train of troubles which had weakened her already both in body and mind, nearly killed her. She had been lying for weeks between life and death, and we had known nothing of it. But as her strength returned she began to think she had been unjust to Lorrimer. She could account for his absence in many ways. He had been called out suddenly, and had left no message because he expected to be back before she arrived, but had been detained; or perhaps he had left a message with one of the servants whom she had not seen--there were so many about the place; or it was just possible that he had never received her letter at all--a certain number are lost in the post every day; and altogether it was more difficult to think badly of him than to believe that there had been some mistake. But still there was a doubt in her mind, and she bore the torment of it rather than ask for an explanation which might only confirm her worst fears. CHAPTER XXIII. About a month after she came to us, Ideala caught a bad cold. The doctor said her chest was very delicate. There was no disease, but she required great care, and must not go out of doors. Soon afterwards he ordered her to remain in two rooms, and my sister had a favourite sitting-room turned into a bedroom for her. It opened into the blue drawing-room, and we took to sitting there in the evening, so that Ideala might join us without change of temperature. Ideala had always been careless about her health, and we expected some trouble with her now, but she acquiesced in all our arrangements without a word. It was easy to see, however, that her docility arose from indifference. The one idea possessed her, and she cared for nothing else. Did he, or did he not, mean it? was the question she asked herself, morning, noon, and night, till at last she could bear it no longer. Anything was better than suspense. She must write to him, she must know the truth one way or the other. I had stayed up in the blue drawing-room to read one night after the rest of the party had gone to their rooms, but my mind wandered from the book. Ideala had been very still that evening, and I could not help thinking about her. Once or twice I had caught her looking at me intently. It seemed as if she had something to say, but when I went to speak to her she answered quite at random. I was much troubled about her, and something happened presently which did not tend to set my mind at rest. The room was large, and the fire, though bright, and one shaded lamp standing on a low table, left the greater part of it in shadow. When I gave up the attempt to read, I had gone to the farther end of it to lie on a sofa which was quite in the shade. About midnight the door into Ideala's room opened and she stood on the threshold with a loose white wrapper round her. She could not see me, and I ought to have spoken and let her know I was there, but I was startled at first by her sudden appearance, and afterwards I was afraid of startling her. She was so nervous and fragile then that a very little might have led to serious consequences. I did not like to play the spy, but it was a choice of two evils, and I thought she had come for a book or something, and would go directly, and if she did discover me she would suppose me to be asleep. She walked about the room, however, for a little in an objectless way; then she sank down on the floor with a low moan beside a chair, and hid her face on her arm. Presently she looked up, and I saw she held something in her hand. It was a gold crucifix, and she fixed her eyes on it. The lamplight fell on her face, and I could see that it was drawn and haggard. Claudia had maintained latterly that her illness arose more from mental than from physical trouble; did this explain it? And was it a religious difficulty? A weary while she remained in the same attitude, gazing at the crucifix; but evidently there was no pity for her pain, and no relief. She neither prayed nor wept, and scarcely moved; and I dared not. At last, however, a great drowsiness came over me; and when I awoke I almost thought I had dreamt it all, for the daylight was streaming in, and I was alone. Later in the day when I saw Ideala she had just finished writing a letter. "Shall I take it down for you?" I asked. "The man will come for the others presently." She handed it to me without a word. On the way downstairs I saw that it was addressed to Lorrimer, of whom I had not then heard, but somehow I could not help thinking that this letter had something to do with what I had seen the night before. For a day or two after that Ideala seemed better. Then she grew restless, which was a new phase of her malady; she had been so still before; and soon it was evident that she was devoured by anxiety which she could not conceal. I felt sure she was expecting someone, or something, that never came. For days she wandered up and down, up and down, and she neither ate nor slept. One afternoon I went to ask if she had any letters for the post. At first she said she had not, then she wanted to know how soon the post was going. In a few minutes, I told her. She sat down on the impulse of the moment, and hurriedly wrote a note, which she handed to me. It was addressed to Lorrimer; but I asked no questions. Two days afterwards a single letter came by the post for Ideala. I took it to her myself, and saw in a moment that it was what she had waited for so anxiously: the cruel suspense was over at last. That evening she was radiant; but she told us she must go home next day, and we were thunderstruck. It was the depth of winter; the weather was bitterly cold, and she had not been out of the house for months, and under the circumstances to take such a journey was utter madness. But we remonstrated in vain. She was determined to go, and she went. CHAPTER XXIV. In a few days she returned to us, and we were amazed at the change in her. Her voice was clear again, her step elastic, her complexion had recovered some of its brilliancy; there was a light in her eyes that I had never seen there before, and about her lips a perpetual smile hovered. She was tranquil again, and self-possessed; but she was more than that--she was happy. One could see it in the very poise of her figure when she crossed the room. "This is delightful, is it not?" Claudia whispered to me in the drawing-room on the evening of her return. "Delightful," I answered; but I was puzzled. Ideala's variableness was all on the surface, and I felt sure that this sudden change, which looked like ease after agony, meant something serious. She did not keep me long in suspense. The next morning she came to my studio door and looked in shyly. "Come in," I said. "I have been expecting you," and then I went on with my painting. I saw she had something to tell me, and thought, as she was evidently embarrassed, it would be easier for her to speak if I did not look at her. "I hope you are going to stay with us some time now, Ideala," I added, glancing up at her as she came and looked over my shoulder at the picture. Her face clouded. "I--I am afraid not," she answered, hesitating, and nervously fidgeting with some paint brushes that lay on a table beside her. "I am afraid you will not want me when you know what I am going to do. I only came back to tell you." My heart stood still. "To tell me! Why, what are you going to do?" "It is very hard to tell you," she faltered. "You and Claudia are my dearest friends, and I cannot bear to give you pain. But I must tell you at once. It is only right that you should know--especially as you will disapprove." I turned to look at her, but she could not meet my eyes. "Give us pain! Disapprove!" I exclaimed. "What on earth do you mean, Ideala? What are you going to do?" "An immoral thing," she answered. "Good heavens!" I exclaimed, throwing down my palette, and rising to confront her. "I don't believe it." "I mean," she stammered--the blood rushing into her face and then leaving her white as she spoke--"something which you will consider so. "I cannot believe it," I reiterated. "But it is true. He says so." "_He_--who, in God's name?" "Lorrimer." "And who on earth is Lorrimer?" "That is what I came to tell you," she answered, faintly. I gathered up my palette and brushes, and sat down to my easel again. "Tell me, then," I said, as calmly as I could. I pretended to paint, and after a little while, still standing behind me so that I could not see her face, she began in a low voice, and told me, with her habitual accuracy, all that had passed between them. "And what did you think when you found he was not there?" I asked, for at that point she had stopped. "At first I thought he did not want to see me, and had gone away on purpose," she answered; "then I was ill; but after that, when I began to get better, I was afraid I had been unjust to him. There might have been some mistake, and I was half inclined to go and see, but I was frightened. And every day the longing grew, and I used to sit and look at my watch, and think--'I could be there in an hour;' or, 'I might be with him in forty minutes.' But I never went. And after a while I could not bear it any longer, and so I came to you. But the thought of him came with me, and the desire to know the truth grew and grew, until at last I could bear that no longer either, and then I wrote; and day after day I waited, and no answer came; and then I was sure he had done it on purpose, but yet I could not bear to think it of him. And I began not to know what people said when they spoke to me, and I think I should have killed myself; but I come of an old race, you know, and none of us ever did a cowardly thing, and I would rather suffer for ever than be the first--_noblesse oblige_. I don't deserve much credit for that, though, for I knew I should die if I did not see him again--die of grief, and shame, and humiliation because of what I had written, for as the days passed, and no answer came, I was afraid I had said too much, and he had misunderstood me, and would despise me. If I had only been sure that he did not want to see me again, of course I should never have written; but so many people have lost their only chance of happiness because they had not the courage to find out the truth in some such doubtful matter; and I _did_ believe in him so --I could not think he would do a _low_ thing. I was in a difficult position, and I did what I thought was right; but when no answer came to my letter I began to doubt, and then in a moment of rage, feeling myself insulted, I wrote again. Yet I don't know what made me write. It was an impulse--the sort of thing that makes one scream when one is hurt. It does no good, but the cry is out before you can think of that. All I said was: 'I understand your silence. You are cruel and unjust. But I can keep my word, and if I live for nothing else, I promise that I will make you respect me yet.' I never expected him to answer that second note, but he did, at once. And he offered to come here and explain--he was dreadfully distressed. But I preferred to go to him." "And you went?" "Yes. And I was frightened, and he was very kind." By degrees she told me much of what had passed at that interview. She seemed to have had no thought of anything but her desire to see him, and have her mind set at rest, until she found herself face to face with him, and then she was assailed by all kinds of doubts and fears; but he had put her at her ease in five minutes--and in five minutes more she had forgotten everything in the rapid change of ideas, the delightful intellectual contest and communion, which had made his companionship everything to her. She did just remember to ask him why he had not answered her first letter. He searched about amongst a pile of newly-arrived documents on his writing table. "There it is," he said, showing her the letter covered with stamps and postmarks. "It only arrived this morning--just in time, though, to speak for itself. I was abroad when you wrote, and it was sent after me, and has followed me from place to place as you see, so that I got your second letter first. You might have known there was some mistake." "Pardon me," Ideala answered. "I ought to have known." And then she had looked up at him and smiled, and never another doubt had occurred to her. "But, Ideala," I said to her, "you used the word 'immoral' just now. You were talking at random, surely? You are nervous. For heaven's sake collect yourself, and tell me what all this means." "No, I am not nervous," she answered. "See! my hand is quite steady. It is you who are trembling. I am calm now, and relieved, because I have told you. But, oh! I am so sorry to give you pain." "I do not yet understand," I answered, hoarsely. "He wants me to give up everything, and go to him," she said; "but he would not accept my consent until he had explained, and made me understand exactly what I was doing. 'The world will consider it an immoral thing,' he said, 'and so it would be if the arrangement were not to be permanent. But any contract which men and women hold to be binding on themselves should be sufficient now, and will be sufficient again, as it used to be in the old days, provided we can show good cause why any previous contract should be broken. You must believe that. You must be thoroughly satisfied now. For if your conscience were to trouble you afterwards--your troublesome conscience which keeps you busy regretting nearly everything you do, but never warns you in time to stop you--if you were to have any scruples, then there would be no peace for either of us, and you had better give me up at once.'" "And what did you say, Ideala?" "I said, perhaps I had. I was beginning to be frightened again." "And how did it end?" "He made me go home and consider." "Yes. And what then?" I demanded impatiently. "And next day he came to me--to know my decision--and--and--I was satisfied. I cannot live without him." I groaned aloud. What was I to say? What could I do? An arrangement of this sort is carefully concealed, as a rule, by the people concerned, and denied if discovered; but here were a lady and gentleman prepared, not only to take the step, but to justify it--under somewhat peculiar circumstances, certainly--and carefully making their friends acquainted with their intention beforehand, as if it were an ordinary engagement. I knew Ideala, and could understand her being over-persuaded. Something of the kind was what I had always feared for her. But, Lorrimer--what sort of a man was he? I own that I was strongly prejudiced against him from the moment she pronounced his name, and all she had told me of him subsequently only confirmed the prejudice. "Why was he not there that day to receive you?" I asked at last. "I don't know," she said. "I quite forgot about that. And I suppose he forgot too," she added, "since he never told me." "Oh, Ideala!" I exclaimed, "how like you that is! It is most important that you should know whether he intended to slight you on that occasion or not. It is the key to his whole action in this matter." "But supposing he did mean to be rude? I should have to forgive him, you know, because I have been rude to him--often. He does not approve of my conduct always, by any means," she placidly assured me. "And does he, of all people in the world, presume to sit in judgment on you?" I answered, indignantly. "I always thought _you_ the most extraordinary person in the world, Ideala, until I heard of this-- _gentleman_." "Hush!" she protested, as if I had blasphemed. "You must not speak of him like that. He _is_ a gentleman--as true and loyal as you are yourself. And he is everything to me." But these assurances were only what I had expected from Ideala, and in no way altered my opinion of Mr. Lorrimer. I knew Ideala's peculiar conscience well. She might do what all the world would consider wrong on occasion; but she would never do so until she had persuaded herself that wrong was right--for _her_ at all events. "He may be everything to you, but he has lowered you, Ideala," I resumed, thinking it best not to spare her. "I was degraded when I met him." "Circumstances cannot degrade us until they make us act unworthily," I rejoined. "Oh, no, he has not lowered me," she persisted; "quite the contrary. I have only begun to know the difference between right and wrong since I met him, and to understand how absolutely necessary for our happiness is right-doing, even in the veriest trifle. And there is one thing that I must always be grateful to him for--I can pray now. But I belied myself to him nevertheless. He asked me if I ever prayed, and I was shy; I could not tell him, because I only prayed for him. It was easier to say that sometimes I reviled. Ah! why can we not be true to ourselves?" "But I can't always pray," she went on sorrowfully; "only sometimes; generally when I am in church. The thought of him comes over me then, and a great longing to have him beside me, kneeling, with his heart made tender, and his soul purified and uplifted to God as mine is, possesses me--a longing so great that it fills my whole being, and finds a voice: 'My God! my God! give him to me!'" "'Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!'" I answered, bitterly. "Yes, I remember," she rejoined, "I said it in my arrogant ignorance. I did not understand, and this is different." "It is always _different_ in our own case," I answered. "Do you remember that passage Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes from Lord Bacon: 'Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic'? it seems to me that when you call upon God in that spirit you are worshipping Him with your senses only." "Then I believe it is possible to make the senses the means of saving the soul at critical times," she answered; "and at all events I know this, that I more earnestly desire to be a good woman now than I ever did before." "It would be a dangerous doctrine," I began. "Only in cases where the previous moral development had not been of a high order," she interrupted. I felt it was useless to pursue that part of the subject, so I waited a little, and then I said: "Am I to understand, then, that you are going to give up your position in society, and all your friends, for the sake of this one man, who probably does not care for you, who certainly does not respect you, and of whom you know nothing? Verily, he has gained an easy victory! But, of course, you know now what his object has been from the first." "I know what you mean," she answered, indignantly; "but you are quite wrong; he does care for me. And if I give up my position in society for his sake, he is worth it, and I am content. And it is my own doing, too. I know that there cannot be one law for me and another for all the other women in the world, and if I break through a social convention I am prepared to abide by the consequences. Do you want to make me believe that his sympathy was pretended, that he deliberately planned-- something I have no word to express--and would have carried out his plan absolutely in cold blood, without a spark of affection for me? It would be hard to believe it of any man; it is impossible to believe it of him. He is a man of strong passions, if you will, but of noble purpose; and if I make a sacrifice for him, he will be making one for me also. He may have been betrayed at times by grief, or other mental pain, which weakened his moral nature for the moment, and left him at the mercy of bad impulses; but I can believe such impulses were isolated, and any action they led him into was bitterly repented of; and no one will ever make me alter my conviction that I wronged him when I doubted him, even for a moment." "This is all very well, Ideala," I said, trying not to irritate her by direct opposition, "if you appeared to him as you appear to me. Do you think you did? Was there anything in your conduct that might have given him a low estimate of your character to begin with? Anything that might have led him to doubt your honesty, and think, when you made your confession, that you were trying to get up a little play in which you intended him to take a leading part? That you merely wished to ease your mind from some inevitable sense of shame in wrong-doing by finding an excuse for yourself to begin with--an excuse by which you would excite his interest and sympathy, and save yourself from his contempt?" "Oh!" she exclaimed, "could he--could any one--think such a thing possible?" "Such things are being done every day, Ideala, and a man of the world would naturally be on his guard against deception. If he thought he was being deceived, do you think it likely he would feel bound to be scrupulous?" "But he _did_ believe in me," she declared, passionately. "He pretended to; it was part of the play. You see he only kept it up until he thoroughly understood you, and then his real feelings appeared, and he was rude to you. For I call his absence on that occasion distinctly rude, and intentionally so too, since he sent no apology." "He was only rude to me to save me from myself, then, as Lancelot was rude to Elaine," she answered. "Or is it not just possible that he was disappointed when he found you better than he had supposed? that he felt he had wasted his time for nothing, and was irritated----" She interrupted me. "I forgive you," she said, "because you do not know him. But I shall never convince you. You are prejudiced. You do not think ill of me: why do you think ill of him?" I made no answer, and she was silent for a little. Then she began again, recurring to the point at issue: "If he did slight me on that occasion," she said--"and I maintain that he did not--but if he did, it was accidentally done." "The evidence is against him," I answered, drily. "Many innocent persons have suffered because it was," she said, with confidence. "You are infatuated," I answered, roughly. And then my heart sent up an exceeding great and bitter cry: "Ideala! Ideala! how did it ever come to this?" She was silent. But her eyes were bright once more, her figure was erect, there was new life in her--I could see that--and never a doubt. She was satisfied. She was happy. "Must I give you up?" she said at last, tentatively. "No, you must give him up," I answered. "Ah, that is impossible!" she cried. "We were made for each other. We cannot live apart." "Ideala," I exclaimed, exasperated, "he never believed in you. He thought you were as so many women of our set are, and he showed it, if only you could have understood, when you saw him at the Hospital on that last occasion. You felt that there was some change, as you say yourself, and that was it. You talked to him of truth then, and it irritated him as the devil quoting Scripture might be supposed to irritate; and when you went back again he showed what he thought of you by his unexplained absence. He thought you were not worth consideration, and he gave you none." "It would have been paying himself a very poor compliment if he had thought that only a corrupt woman could care for him," she answered, confidently. "But, I tell you, I am sure there is some satisfactory explanation of that business. I only wish I had remembered to ask for it, that I might satisfy you now. And, at any rate," she added, "whatever he may have thought, he knows better by this time." I could say no more. Baffled and sick at heart, I left her, wondering if some happy inspiration would come before it was too late, and help me to save her yet. CHAPTER XXV. I went to consult my sister Claudia. The blow was a heavy one for her also; but I was surprised to find that she did not share my contempt for the person whom I considered responsible for all this trouble. "Ideala is no common character herself," Claudia argued; "and it isn't likely that a common character would fascinate her as this man has done." "Will you speak to her, Claudia, and see what your influence will do?" "It is no use my speaking to her," she answered, disconsolately. "Ideala is a much cleverer woman than I am. She would make me laugh at my own advice in five minutes. And, besides, if she be infatuated, as you say she is, she will be only too glad to be allowed to talk about him, and that will strengthen her feeling for him. No. She has chosen you for her confidant, and you had better talk to her yourself--and may you succeed!" she added, laying her head on the table beside which she was sitting, and giving way to a burst of grief. I tried to comfort her, but I had little hope myself, and I could not speak at all confidently. "I believe," Claudia said, before we parted, "that there is nothing for her now but a choice of two evils. If she gives him up she will never care for anything again, and if she does not, she will have done an unjustifiable thing; and life after that for such a woman as Ideala would be like one of those fairy gifts which were bestowed subject to some burdensome condition that made the good of them null and void." I did not meet Ideala again until the evening, and then I was not sorry to see that her manner was less serene. It was just possible that she had been thinking over what I had said, and that some of the doubts I had suggested were beginning to disturb her perfect security. After dinner she brought the conversation round to those social laws which govern our lives arbitrarily. I did not see what she was driving at, neither did the good old Bishop, who was one of the party, nor a lawyer who was also present. "You want to know something," said the latter. "What is it? You must state your case clearly." "I want to know if a thing can be legally right and morally wrong," Ideala answered. "Of course not," the Bishop rashly asserted. "That depends," the lawyer said, cautiously. "If I signed a contract," Ideala explained, "and found out afterwards that those who induced me to become a party to it had kept me in ignorance of the most important clause in it, so that I really did not know to what I was committing myself, would you call that a moral contract?" "I should say that people had not dealt uprightly with you," the Bishop answered; "but there might be nothing in the clause to which you could object." "But suppose there _was_ something in the clause to which I very strongly objected, something of which my conscience disapproved, something that was repugnant to my whole moral nature; and suppose I was forced by the law to fulfil it nevertheless, should you say that was a moral contract? Should you not say that in acting against my conscience I acted immorally?" We all fell into the trap, and looked an encouraging assent. "And in that case," she continued, "I suppose my duty would be to evade the law, and act on my conscience?" The Bishop looked puzzled. "I should only be doing what the early martyrs had to do," she added. "That is true," he rejoined, with evident relief. "But I don't see what particular contract you are thinking of," said the lawyer. "The marriage contract," Ideala answered, calmly. This announcement created a sensation. The lawyer laughed: the Bishop looked grave. "Oh, but you cannot describe marriage in that way," he declared, with emphasis. "Humph!" the lawyer observed, meditatively. "I am afraid I must beg to differ from your Lordship. Many women might describe their marriages in that way with perfect accuracy." "Marriages are made in heaven!" the Bishop ejaculated, feebly. "Let us hope that some are, dear Bishop." Claudia sweetly observed, and all the married people in the room looked "Amen" at her. "I think an ideal of marriage should be fixed by law, and lectures given in all the colleges to teach it," Ideala went on; "and a standard of excellence ought to be set up for people to attain to before they could be allowed to marry. They should be obliged to pass examinations on the subject, and fit themselves for the perfect state by a perfect life. It should be made a reward for merit, and a goal towards which goodness only could carry us. Then marriages might seem to have been made in heaven, and the blessing of God would sanctify a happy union, instead of being impiously pronounced in order to ratify a business transaction, or sanction the indulgence of a passing fancy. But only the love that lasts can sanctify marriage, and a marriage without such love is an immoral contract." "Marriage an immoral contract!" the Bishop exclaimed. "O dear! O dear! This is not right, you know; this is not at all right. I must make a note of this--I really must. You are in the habit of saying things of this sort, my dear. I remember you said something like it once before; and really it is not a subject to joke about. Such an idea is quite pernicious; it must not be allowed to spread--even as a joke. I wish, my dear, you had not promulgated it, even in that spirit. You have--ah --a knack of making things seem plausible, and of giving weight to opinions by the way you express them, although the opinions themselves are quite erroneous, as on the present occasion. Some of your ideas are so very mistaken, you know; and you really ought to leave these matters to those who understand them, and can judge. It is very dangerous to discuss such subjects, especially--ah--when you know nothing about them, and--ah--cannot judge. I really must preach a sermon on the subject. Let me see. Next Sunday--ah, yes; next Sunday, if you will kindly come and hear me." We all thanked him as enthusiastically as we could. Later, I found Ideala alone in one of the conservatories. She took my arm affectionately, and we walked up and down for a time in silence. She was smiling and happy; so happy, indeed, that I found it hard to say anything to disturb her. For a moment I felt almost as she did about the step she proposed to take. There had been little joy in her life, and she had borne her cross long and bravely; what wonder that she should rebel at last, and claim her reward? "Do you remember how you used to talk about the women of the nineteenth century, Ideala," I said at last, "and describe the power for good which they never use, and rail at them as artificial, milliner-made, man-hunting, self-indulgent _animals?_" "I know," she answered; "and now you would say I am worse than any of them? I used to have big ideas about woman and her mission; but I always looked at the question broadly, as it affects the whole world; now my vision is narrowed, and I see it only with regard to one individual. But I am sure that is the right way to look at it. I think every woman will have to answer for one man's soul, and it seems to me that the noblest thing a woman can do is to devote her life to that soul first of all--to raise it if it be low, to help it to peace if peace be lacking, and to gather all the sunshine there is in the world for it; and, after that, if her opportunities and powers allow her to help others also, she should do what she can for them. I do not know all the places which it is legitimate for women to fill in the world, but it seems to me that they are many and various, and that the great object in life for a woman is to help. To be a Pericles I see that a man must have an Aspasia. Was Aspasia vile? some said so--yet she did a nobler work, and was finer in her fall, if she fell, than many good women in all the glory of uprightness are. And was she impure? then it is strange that her mind was not corrupting in its influence. And was she low? then whence came her power to raise others? It seems to me that it only rests with ourselves to make any position in life, which circumstances render it expedient for us to occupy, desirable." "And you propose to be an Aspasia to this modern Pericles?" "If you like to put it so. The cases are not dissimilar, as there was an obstacle in the way of their marriage also." "The law was the obstacle." "Yes; another of those laws which are more honoured in the breach than in the observance. They might not marry because she came from Miletus! and Lorrimer may not marry me because I came out of the house of bondage. Unwise laws make immoral nations." "But you have gone about this business in such an extraordinary way, Ideala," I said. "You seem to have tried to make it appear as bad for yourself as you can. Why did you not leave your husband when Lorrimer advised you to?" "If I had gone then I should have been obliged to live somewhere else-- a long way from Lorrimer; and I might never have seen him again." "And do you mean to say you decided to endure a life that had become hateful to you in every way, simply for the sake of seeing this gentleman occasionally?" "Yes. Ah! you do not know how good he is, nor how he raises me! I never knew the sort of creature I was until he told me. He said once, when we quarrelled, that I was fanciful, sentimental, lackadaisical, hysterical, and in an unhealthy state of mind, and yet--" I made a gesture of impatience, and she stopped. "But, Ideala," I asked her, after a little pause, "have you never felt that what you are doing is wrong?" "I cannot say that exactly," she answered. "I knew that certain social conventions forbade the thing--at least I began to acknowledge this to myself after a time. At first, you know, I thought of nothing. I was wholly absorbed in my desire to see him; that excluded every other consideration. Do you know what it is to be sure that a thing is wrong, and yet not to be able to feel it so--to have your reason acknowledge what your conscience does not confirm?" I made no answer, and we were silent for a little; then she spoke again: "One day when I was in Japan," she said, "I was living up in the hills at Hakone, a village on a lake three thousand feet above the level of the sea. The Mayor of the village was entertaining me, and whenever I went out he sent his son and several of his retainers as an escort, that I might not be subject to annoyance or insult from strangers. One day I was crossing the hills by a mountain-path there is between Hakone and Mianoshita, and after I passed Ashynoyou, where the sulphur springs are, I found myself in a dense fog. I could not see anything distinctly three yards in front of me. Kashywaya and the other men never walked with me; they used to hover about me, leaving me to all intents and purposes alone if I preferred it. The Japanese are very delicate in some things; it was weeks before I knew that I had a guard of honour at all. On that particular day I lost sight of them altogether, but I could hear them calling to each other through the fog; and I sat down feeling very wretched and lonely. I thought how all the beauty of life had been spoiled for me; how, past, present, and to come, it was all a blank; and I wished in my heart that I might die, and know no more. And, do you know, just at that moment the fog beneath me parted, and I saw the sea, sapphire blue and dotted with boats, and the sand a streak of silver, and the green earth, and a low horizon of shining clouds, and over all the sun! Dear Lord in heaven! how glad a sight it was!" She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. "And I was wandering," she continued, "in some such mental mist, lost and despairing, when Lorrimer came into my life, and changed everything for me in a moment, like the sun. Would you have me believe that he was sent to me then only for an evil purpose? That the good God, in whom I scarcely believed until in His mercy He allowed me to feel love for one of His creatures, and to realise through it the Divine love of which it is surely the foreshadowing--would you have me believe myself degraded by love so sent? Would you have me turn from it and call it sin, when I feel that God Himself is the giver?" I was silent, not knowing how to answer her. Presently I asked: "But why not have a legal separation, a divorce, from your husband now?" "I cannot," she answered, sadly. "At one time I had written proof of his turpitude, but I could not make up my mind to use it then, and I destroyed it eventually; so that now my word would be the only evidence against him, and that would not do, I suppose, although you all know, better than I do, I fancy, what his life has been." Other people had by this time come into the conservatory, and we were therefore obliged to change the subject. In the days that followed every one seemed to become conscious of some impending trouble. We were all depressed, and one by one our party left us, until at last only Ideala remained, for we had not the heart to ask other guests, even if it had been expedient, and, under the circumstances, Claudia did not consider it so. Ideala spent much of her time in writing to Lorrimer. Some of these letters were never sent. I fancy she wrote exactly as she felt, and often feared when she had done so that she had been too frank. How these two ever came to such an understanding I am at a loss to imagine, and I have searched in vain for any clue to the mystery. Only one thing is plain to me, that when at last Ideala understood her feeling for Lorrimer, she cherished it. After she found that her husband had broken every tie, disregarded every obligation, legal and moral, that bound her to him, she seems to have considered herself free. But I feel quite sure she had not acknowledged this, even to herself, when she returned to Lorrimer, and that simply because she had not contemplated the possibility of being asked to take any decided step. When the time came, however, she apparently never questioned her right to act on this fancied freedom. The circumstances under which they had met were probably responsible for a great deal. The whole of their acquaintance had had something unusual about it, which would naturally predispose their minds to further unaccustomed issues when any question of right or expediency arose. The restrictions which men and women have seen fit to place upon their intercourse with each other are the outcome of ages of experience, and they who disregard them bring upon themselves the troubles against which those same restrictions, irksome at times as they must be, are the only adequate defence. One letter I have here shows something of the strength and tenderness of Ideala's devotion; and I venture to think that, even under the circumstances, it must be good for a man to have been loved once in his life like that. The letter begins abruptly--"Oh, the delight of being able to write to you," she says, "without fear and without constraint. If it were possible to step from the dreary oppression of the northern midnight into the full blaze of the southern noon, the transition would not be greater than is the sense of rest and relief that has come to me after the weary days which are over. Do you know, I never believed that any one person could be so much to another as you are to me; that any one could be so happy as I am! I think I am _too_ happy. But, dear, I want you! I want you always; but most of all when anything good or beautiful moves me; I feel nearer to you then, and I know you would understand. Every good thought, every worthy aspiration, everything that is best in me, and every possibility of better things, seems due to your influence, and makes me crave for your presence. You have been the one thing wanting to me my whole life long. I believe that no soul is perfect alone, and that each of us must have a partner-soul _somewhere,_ kept apart from us--by false marriages, perhaps, or distance, or death, but still to be ours, if not in this state, then in some other, when both are perfect enough to make the union possible. We are not all fit for that love which is the beginning of heaven, and can have no end. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] Does this seem fanciful to you? It would comfort me if we were ever separated. _If_--I cannot tell you how it makes my heart sink just to look at that word, although I know it does not suggest anything that is possible in our case. What power would take you from me now, when there is no one else in the whole wide world for me _but_ you? and always you! and only you! You, with your ready sympathy and perfect refinement; your wit, your rapid changes, your ideality, your kindness, your cruelty, and the terrible discontent which makes you untrue to yourself. You are my world. But unless I can be to you what you are to me, you will always be one of the lonely ones. Tell me, again, that my absence makes a blank in your life. You did not write the word, you only left a space, and do you know how I filled it at first? 'It was such a _relief_ when you left off coming,' I read, and I raged at you. "I have heard it said lately that you are fickle, but these people do not understand you. You are true to your ideal, but the women you have hitherto known were only so many imperfect realisations of it, and so you went from one to the other, always searching, but never satisfied. And you have it in you to be so much happier or so much more miserable than other men--I should have trembled for you if your hopes had never been realised. "But what _would_ satisfy you? I often long to be that mummy you have in the Great Hospital, the one with the short nose and thick lips. When you looked at me spirit and flesh would grow one with delight, and I should come to life, and grow round and soft and warm again, and talk to you of Thebes, and you would be enchanted with me--you could not help it then. I should be so old, so very old, and genuine! "Dear, how I laugh at my fears now, or rather, how I bless them. If I had never known the horror of doubt, how could I have known what certainty is? And I did doubt you; I dare acknowledge it now. I wonder if you can understand what the shame of that doubt was? When I thought your absence and your silence were intentional slights, I knew how they felt when 'they called on the rocks to cover them, and I wished--oh, _how_ I wished!--that a thousand years had passed, and my spirit could be at the place where we met, and see the pillars broken, and. the ivy climbing over the ruins, and the lizards at home amongst them, and the shameless sunlight making bare the spot where we stood. "It was as if I had been punished for some awful unknown sin, and when I seemed to be dying, and I dared not write to you, and all hope of ever knowing the truth had departed, I used to exclaim in my misery: 'Verily, Lord, if Thy servant sinned she hath suffered! for the anguish of death has been doubled, and the punishment of the lost has begun while yet the tortured mind can make its lament and moan with the tortured body!' "But all that bitter past only enhances the present. "I wonder where you will be to-day. I believe you are always in that room of yours. You only leave it to walk to the station with me, after which you go back to it, and work there till it is dark; and then you rest, waiting for the daylight, and when it comes you go to work again. I cannot fancy you anywhere else. I should not like to realise that you have an existence of which I can know nothing, a life through which I cannot follow you, even in imagination. "But sometimes you come to me, and then how glad I am! You come to me and kiss me, and it is night and I am dreaming, and not ashamed. "Yes, the days do drag on slowly, for after all I am never quite happy, never at peace even, never for a moment, except when I am with you. I am sorry I feel so, for it seems ungrateful in the face of all the kindness and care that is being lavished on me by my friends. One lady here has seven children--another instance of the unequal distribution of the good things of this world. She has lent me one of them to comfort me because I am jealous. He sleeps in my room, and is a fair- haired boy, with eyes that remind me of you. Will he also, when he grows up, have 'the conscience of a saint among his warring senses'? I hope not, I should think when sense and conscience are equally delicate, and apt to thrill simultaneously, life must be a burden. Would such a state of things account for moods that vary perpetually, I wonder?" Here she breaks off, and I think these last reflections account for the fact that the letter was never sent. [Relocated Footnote: This passage might have been taken from Plato verbatim, but Ideala had not read Plato at the time it was written. The inborn passionate longing of the human soul for perfect companionship doubtless accounts for the coincidence, which also shows how deep-rooted and widely spread the hope of eventually obtaining the desired companionship is. Some will maintain that the desire for such a possibility has created the belief in it, but others claim to have met their partner-souls, and to have become united by a bond so perfect that even distance cannot sever it, there being some inexplicable means of communication between the two, which enables each to know what befalls the other wherever they may be. The idea might probably be traced back to that account of Adam which describes him as androgynous, or a higher union of man and woman--a union of all the attributes of either, which, to punish Adam for a grievous fault, was subsequently sundered into the contrast between man and woman, leaving each lonely, imperfect, and vainly longing for the other.] CHAPTER XXVI. Ideala lingered unwillingly, but the reason of her reluctance to go was not far to seek. Now that Lorrimer knew she loved him she was ashamed to go back. It would have been bad enough had he been able to come to her; but going to him was like reversing the natural order of things and unsexing herself. I suppose, however, that she forgot her shyness in her desire to be with him as the time went on, and the effort it cost her to conquer her fear and go to him was not so dreadful as the blank she would have been obliged to face had she stayed away. At all events, she fixed a day at last, and one morning she announced to us, sadly enough, that on the morrow she must say farewell. She made the announcement just after breakfast, and Claudia rose and left the room without a word. My sister had never been able to speak to Ideala on the subject, but she did not cease to urge me to expostulate, and she had suggested many arguments which had affected Ideala, and made her unhappy, but without altering her determination. I could not find a word to say to her that morning, and during the slow hours of the long day that dragged itself on so wearily for all of us, nothing new occurred to me. "It will be a relief when it is over," I said to my sister. "Yes," she answered; "it is worse than death." In the evening she came to my study and said: "Ideala is alone in the south drawing-room. I wish you would go to her, and make a last effort to dissuade her." I consented, hopelessly, and went. Ideala was standing in a window, looking out listlessly. She was very pale, and I could see that she had been weeping. I sat down near the fire; and presently she came and sat on the floor beside me, and laid her head against my knee. In all the years of my love for her she had never been so close to me before, and I was glad to let her rest a long, long time like that. "Were you happy while you were with Lorrimer, Ideala?" I asked at last. She did not answer at once, and when she did, it was almost in a whisper. "No, never quite happy till this last time," she said; "never entirely at ease, even. It was when I left him, when I was alone and could think of him, that the joy came." "There was nothing real in your pleasure, then," I went on; "it was purely imaginary--due to your trick of idealising everything and everybody, you care for?" "I do not know," she said. "Do you think it was the same with him?" I asked again--"I mean all along. Did it always make him happy to have you there?" "I cannot tell," she said. "Yes, I think at times he was glad. But a word would alter his mood, and then he would grow sad and silent." "Even on the last occasion?" "No, not on the last occasion. He was happy then"--and she smiled at the recollection--"ah, so happy! It was like new life to him, he was so young, so fresh, so glad--like a boy." "But before, when his moods varied so often, did it ever seem to you that he was troubled and dissatisfied with himself? that the intimacy had begun on his part under a misapprehension, and that when he began to know you better, he had tried to end it, and save you, by not seeing you on that occasion?" "Ah, _that occasion_ again!" she ejaculated. "I forgot to tell you, but I asked for an explanation just to satisfy you. Here it is!" And she took a note from her pocket-book and handed it to me. It was one which she had written to him. "I do not understand," I said. "Read it," she answered, "and you will find I asked him to expect me on _Monday_, the 26th. It was a clerical error. Tuesday was the 26th, and I went on Tuesday. He waited for me the whole long Monday, and that night he had to set off suddenly for the Continent on business connected with the Great Hospital. He went, wondering what had detained me, and expecting an explanation. When he returned he inquired, but nobody could tell him whether I had been or not. So he waited, and waited, as I did, expecting to hear, and as much perplexed and distressed as I was, and as proud, for he never thought of writing to me--nor did he think of looking at my note again until I wrote the other day, and then he discovered the mistake. Now, are you satisfied?" "About that--yes," I answered, reluctantly. It was no relief to end him blameless. "But what did he mean when he talked of conscience and scruples?" "He used to laugh at my 'troublesome conscience,' as he called it," she answered, evasively. "Would he have known you had a conscience, do you think, if he had had none himself?" I asked her. "Did he ever say anything that showed he was yielding to a strong inclination which he could not justify and would not conquer?" "Oh, no!" she said; then added, undecidedly: "at least--he did say once: 'Of course, in the opinion of the world the thing cannot be justified,' but then he went on as if it had slipped from him involuntarily: 'Bah! I am only doing as other men do.'" "Which shows he was not exactly satisfied to be only as other men are." "That is what I have often told you," she said; "his ideal of life, both for himself and others, is the highest possible, and he suffers when he falls below it, or even belies himself with a word." "Passion never lasts, and love does not lead to evil," I continued, meditatively; "if you love him, Ideala, how will you bear to feel that he has degraded himself by degrading you?" "Oh! do not speak like that!" she exclaimed. "There is no degradation in love. It is sin that degrades, and sin is something that corrupts our minds, is it not? and makes us unfit for any good work, and unwilling to undertake any. This is very different." "Ideala, do you remember telling me once that you had a strange feeling about yourself? that you thought you would be made to go down into some great depth of sin and suffering, in order to learn what it is you have to teach?" "Ah, yes!" she answered, "but I have not gone down. I must obey my own conscience, not yours; and my conscience tells me the thing is right which you hold to be wrong. I am quite willing to believe it would be wrong for you, but for me it is clearly right. You said the other day he had lowered me. What a fiction that is! In what have I changed for the worse? Do I fail in any duty of life since I knew him in which I previously succeeded? Oh, no! he has not lowered me! Love like this rounds a life and brings it to perfection; it could not wreck it." "But, Ideala, you are going to fail in a duty; you are going to fail in the most important duty of your life--your duty to society." "I owe nothing to society," she answered, obstinately. "I have always admired you," I pursued, "for not letting your own experience warp your judgment. Oh, what a falling-off is here! I have heard you wish to be something more than an independent unit of which no account need be taken. How can we, any of us, say we owe nothing to society, when we owe every pleasure in life to it? Do we owe nothing to those who have gone before, and whom we have to thank for the music, the painting, the poetry, and all the arts which would leave a big blank in _your_ life, Ideala, if they ceased to exist? You would have been a mere savage now, without refinement enough to appreciate that rose at your waistbelt, but for the labour and self-denial which the hundreds and thousands who lived, and loved, and suffered in order to make you what you are have bestowed on you, and on all of us. You would not say, if you thought a moment, that society had done nothing for you; and no one can honestly think that they owe it nothing in return. It seems to me that a rigid observance of the laws which hold society together, and make life possible for all of us, and pleasant for some, is the least we can do; and do you know, Ideala, when a woman ever thinks of doing what you propose to do, she has already gone down to a low depth--of ingratitude, if of nothing else." "I do not propose to do anything that will injure any one," she answered, coldly. "I am free, am I not, to dispose of myself as I like --to give myself to whomsoever I please?" "We are none of us free in that sense of the word," I replied. "All are but parts of one stupendous whole Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. You are, as I know you have desired to be, part of a system, and an important part. All the toil and trouble of the world, and all the work which began with the life of man, is directed towards one great end-- the doing away with sin and suffering, and the establishment of purity and peace. And this work seems almost hopeless, not because the multitude do not approve of it, but because individuals are cowardly, and will not do their share of it. Every act of yours has a meaning; it either helps or hinders, what is being done to further this, the object of life. Lately, Ideala, you have been talking wildly, without for a moment considering the harm you may be doing. You have expressed opinions which are calculated to make people discontented with things as they are. You rob them of the content which has made them comfortable heretofore, and yet you offer them nothing better in return for it. You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what? Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end, do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that they should press hardly on individuals occasionally; but it is clearly the duty of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community at large." "I do not understand your morality," she said. "Do you think that, although I love another man, it would be right for me to go back and live with my husband?" "Right, but, under the circumstances, not advisable. And, at any rate, nothing would make it moral for you to go to that other man." "Oh! do not fill my mind with doubt," she pleaded, piteously. "I love him. Let me go." I did not answer her, and after a while she began again, passionately-- "We _are_ free agents in these things. Individuals _must_ know what is best for themselves. If I devote my life to him, as I propose, who would be hurt by it? Should I be less pure-minded, and would he be less upright in all his dealings? When things can be legally right though morally wrong, can they not also be morally right though legally wrong?" "I have already tried to show you, Ideala," I answered, preparing to go over the old ground again, patiently, "that we none of us stand alone, that we are all part of this great system, and that, in cases like yours, individuals must suffer, must even be sacrificed, for the good of the rest. When the sacrifice is voluntary, we call it noble." "If I go to him I shall have sacrificed a good deal." "You will have sacrificed others, not yourself. He is all the world to you, Ideala; the loss would be nothing to the gain"--she hid her face in her hands--"and what is required of you is self-sacrifice. And surely it would be happier in the end for you to give him up now, than to live to feel yourself a millstone round his neck." "I do not understand you," she said, looking up quickly. "The world, you see, will know nothing of the fine sentiments which made you determine to take this step," I said. "You will be spoken of contemptuously, and he will be 'the fellow who is living with another man's wife, don't you know,' and that will injure him in many ways." "Do you think so?" she asked, anxiously. "I know it," I replied. "And look at it from that or any other point of view you like, and you must see you are making a mistake. A woman in your position sets an example whether she will or not, and even if all your best reasons for this step were made public, you would do harm by it, for there are only too many people apt enough as it is at finding specious excuses for their own shortcomings, who would be glad, if they dared, to do likewise. And you would not gain your object after all. You would neither be happy yourself, nor make Lorrimer happy. People like you are sensitive about their honour--it is the sign of their superiority; and the indulgence of love, even at the moment, and under the most favourable circumstances of youth, beauty, and intellectual equality, does not satisfy such natures, if the indulgence be not regulated and sanctified by all that men and women have devised to make their relations moral." This was my last argument, and when I had done she sat there for a long time silent, resting her head against my knee, and scarcely breathing. She was fighting it out with herself, and I thought it best to leave her alone--besides, I had already said all there was to say; repetition would only have irritated her, and there was nothing now for it but to wait. Outside, I could hear the dreary drip of raindrops; somewhere in the room a clock ticked obtrusively; but it was long past midnight, and the house was still. I thought that only the night and silence watched with me, and waited upon the suffering of this one poor soul. At last she moved, uttering a low moan, like one in pain. "I do see it," she said, almost in a whisper; "and I am willing to give him up." "God in His mercy help you!" I prayed. "And forgive me," she answered, humbly. She was quite exhausted, and passively submitted when I led her to her room. I closed the shutters to keep out the cheerless dawn, and made the fire burn up, and lit the lamps. She sat silently watching me, and did not seem to think it odd that I should do this for her. She clung to me then as a little child clings to its father, and, like a father, I ministered to her, reverently, then left her, as I hoped, to sleep. My sister opened her door as I passed. She was dressed, and had been watching, too, the whole night long. "Well?" she asked. I kissed her. "It is well," I answered; and she burst into tears. "Can I go to her now?" she said. "Yes, go." I went to Claudia's room, and waited. After a long time she returned. "She is quiet at last," she told me, sorrowfully. And so the long night ended. CHAPTER XXVII. Ideala had returned to us quite under the impression that if she took the step she proposed we should think it right to cast her off; and that little tentative: "Must I give you up?" was the only protest she had offered. But such was not our intention. Far from it! We do not forsake our friends in their bodily ailments, and we are poor, pitiful, egotistical creatures indeed when we desert them for their mental and moral maladies, leaving them to struggle against them and fight them out or succumb to them alone, according to their strength and circumstances. The world will forsake them fast enough, and that is sufficient punishment--if they deserve punishment. Of course, Ideala could never have come back to us as an honoured guest again, after taking such a step, but she would have continued to fill the same place in our affections, if not in our esteem. "And you will drive everybody else away, and keep the house empty all the year round, in order to be able to receive her--_and_ Mr. Lorrimer-- whenever they choose to visit us," Claudia had declared when we discussed the subject. That was not quite what I intended; but I had made Ideala understand that nothing she could do would affect her intercourse with us. I told her so at once, because I would not have her alter her determination for any consideration but the highest. She might at the last have hesitated to separate herself from us for ever; but I felt sure if that were the case, and it was not a better motive entirely which deterred her, she would not be satisfied eventually; and I know now that I was right. Ideala wrote to Lorrimer, and when she had finished her letter I found that she intended to impose a terrible task upon me. "Until you know him yourself you will always misjudge him," she said. "I want you to take him my letter, and make his acquaintance." I hesitated. "It is the least you can do," she pleaded. "I shall be easier in my mind if you will. It will be better for him to see you, and hear all the things I cannot tell him in my letter; and--and--if I must not see him myself it will be a comfort to see somebody who has. Do go. I shall be pained if you refuse." This decided me, and I went at once. It was a long journey, the same that Ideala herself had taken under such very different circumstances so short a time before. I thought of her going in doubt and uncertainty, her own feelings colouring the aspect of all she saw on the way; and returning in the first warm glow of her great and unexpected joy--her new-found happiness which was destined, alas! to be so short-lived. Miserable fate which robbed her of all that would have made her life worth having--a husband on whom she could rely; her child; and now the man upon whom she had been prepared to lavish the long pent-up passion, the concentrated devotion of her great and noble nature! Poor starved heart, crushed back upon itself, suffering silently, suffering always, but never hardening--on the contrary, growing tenderer for others the more it had to endure itself! Would it always be so? Was there no peace on earth for Ideala? No one who could be all her own? I felt responsible for this last hard blow; had I done well? The rush and rattle of the train shaped itself into a sort of sub-chorus to my thoughts as we sped through the pleasant fields: _Was it right? Was it right? Was it right?_ And I saw Ideala, with soft, sad eyes, pleading--mutely pleading--pleading always for some pleasure in life, some natural, womanly joy, while youth and the power to love lasted. By an effort of will I banished the question. I told myself that my action in the matter had been expedient from every point of view; but presently The rush of the grinding steel! The thundering crank, and the mighty wheel! took me to task again, and the chorus now became: _Expediency right! Expediency right! Expediency right!_ which, when I banished it, resolved itself into: _Cold, proud Puritan! Cold, proud Puritan!_ for the rest of the way. But the journey ended at last--though that was little relief with the task I had before me still unaccomplished. A bulbous functionary took my card to Lorrimer when I presented myself at the Great Hospital next day, and returning presently informed me that Mr. Lorrimer was disengaged, and would see me at once, if I would be so good as to come this way. How familiar the whole proceeding seemed! And how well I knew the place! the soothing silence, the massive grandeur, the long, dimly lighted gallery to the right, the door at which the servant stopped and knocked, the man who opened it, and met my eyes fearlessly, bowing with natural grace, and bidding me enter--a tall, fair man; self-contained and dignified; cold, pale, and unimpassioned--so I thought--but my equal in every way: the man who was "all the world" to Ideala. When I saw him I understood. * * * * * Lorrimer, after dismissing his secretary, was the first to speak. "You come to me from Ideala?" he said. "Is there anything wrong? Is she ill?" And I fancied he turned a trifle paler as the fear flashed through his mind. I reassured him. "Physically she is better," I said. "But mentally?" he interposed. "You give her no peace." I was silent. "I know you are no friend of mine," he added. "On the contrary," I answered. "I hope I am the best friend you have just now." "I know what that means," he said. "You have tried to dissuade Ideala, and having failed, you have come here to use your influence with me" "No," I answered. "I have not come to discuss the subject. I have brought you a letter from Ideala at her special request, and I am ready to take her any reply which you may think fit to send." I gave him the letter, and rose to go, but he detained me. "Stay till I have read it, if you can spare me the time," he said. "It is just possible that there is something in it which we _ought_ to discuss." I turned to the mantelpiece, and tried to interest myself in the lovely things with which it was crowded; but never in my life did my heart sink so for another; never have I endured such moments of pained suspense. I heard him open the envelope; I heard the paper rustle as he turned the page; and then there was silence-- Full of the city's stilly sound-- a moment only, but filled with Something which possess'd The darkness of the world, delight, Life, anguish, death, immortal love. Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress'd, Apart from space, witholding time-- a moment's silence, and then a heavy fall. Lorrimer had fainted. * * * * * I stayed three days at the Great Hospital, three days of the most delightful converse. At first, Lorrimer had rebelled, not realising that Ideala's last decision was irrevocable. "You have over-persuaded her," he said. "No," I answered; "I have convinced her. And I shall convince you, too." He pleaded for her pathetically, not for himself at all. "She has had so little joy!" he said; using the very words that had occurred to me. "And I wanted to silence her. I wanted to save her from her fate. For she is _une des cinq ou six creatures humaines qui naissent, dans tout un siècle, pour aimer la vérité, et pour mourir sans avoir pu la faire aimer des autres_. She must suffer terribly if she goes on." This was a point upon which we differed. He would have given her the natural joys of a woman--husband, home, children, friends, and only such intellectual pursuits which are pleasant. _I_ had always hoped to see her at work in a wider field. But she was one of those rare women who are born to fulfil both destinies at once, and worthily, if only circumstances had made it possible for her to combine the two. Before I had been with him many hours, I began to be sensible of that difference of feeling on certain subjects which would have made their union a veritable linking of the past to the future--his belief that nothing can be better than what has been, and that the old institutions revised are all that the world wants; and her faith in future developments of all good ideas, and further discoveries never yet imagined. For one thing, Lorrimer considered famine and war inevitable scourges of the human race, necessary for the removal of the surplus population, and useless to contend against, because destined to recur, so long as there is a human race; but he would have limited intellectual pursuits for women, because culture is held to prevent the trouble for which the elder expedients only provided a cure--a point upon which Ideala did not agree with him at all. "Nothing is more disastrous to social prosperity," she held, "or more likely to add to the criminal classes, than families which are too large for their parents to bring up, and educate comfortably, in their own station. If the higher education of women is a natural check on over-production of that kind, then encourage it thankfully as a merciful dispensation of providence for the prevention of much misery. I can see no reason in nature or ethics for a teeming population only brought into existence to be removed by famine and war. Why, this old green ball of an earth would roll on just as merrily without any of us." * * * * * Lorrimer wrote to her at last. He had been obliged to acquiesce; and I took Ideala his letter; but she, womanlike, though nothing would have altered her decision, was not at first satisfied with his compliance. It seemed to her too ready; and that made her doubt if she might not have been to blame after all. They wrote to each other once again, and when she received his last letter, she spoke to me about it. "He must have seen it as you do from the first, for he has said no word to alter my determination--rather the contrary," she told me. "We are not to meet again, nor to correspond; and doubtless it is a relief to him to have the matter settled in this way; but one thing puzzles me. In my last letter I bade him good-bye, adding 'since that is what you wish,' and he has replied: 'I never said I wished it; will you remember that?' I do remember it, and it comforts me; but why?" I knew that Lorrimer had said little in order to make her sacrifice as easy for her as possible; and I was silent, too, for the same reason. I thought if she felt herself to blame, her pride would come to the rescue, and make her loss appear rather inevitable than voluntary. For, say what we will, we reconcile ourselves to the inevitable sooner than to those sorrows which we might have saved ourselves had we deemed it right. "You insinuated once that it was all my fault," she said. "Perhaps it was--if fault there be. But if I tempted him, it must have been generosity that made him yield to the temptation. He pitied me, and was ready to make me happy by devoting himself to me, since that was what I seemed to require. And I agree with you now. I don't think we should, either of us, have found any real happiness in that way. But, oh, how I long for him! for his friendship! for his companionship! for his love! It is hard, hard, hard, if he does not miss me as I do him." Then I told her: "But he does. And he did not yield to your decision until I had convinced him that he could never make you happy in such a position." A great sigh of relief escaped her. And then I saw that I ought to have been frank with her from the first. It strengthened her to know that they still had something left to them in common, though that something was only their grief. I tried to comfort her by speaking of the many ways in which she might still find happiness. She listened patiently until I was obliged to stop for want of words, then she said: "This is all very well, but you know you are talking nonsense. What is the use of offering people everything but the one thing needful? What I say to myself is: Well, I have had my turn, have been Raised from the darkness of the clod, And for a glorious moment seen The brightness of the skirts of God. And I try to think I have no right to complain, but still I am not better satisfied than the child that has eaten its cake and wants to have it too. And I suppose there are many who would call me wretched, and say that my life, with my sorrowful marriage--which was no marriage, but a desecration of that holy state, and a sin--and my hopeless love, is a broken life. Certainly _I_ feel it so. And yet I don't know. With his nature it seems to me that some wrong-doing was inevitable. Do you think my suffering might be taken as expiation for his sins? Do you think we are allowed the happiness of bearing each other's burdens in that way if we will? If I were sure of that I should not fancy, as I used to, that I had a work to do in the world; I should know that my work is done, and that now I may rest. Ah, the blessing of rest!" Not long after this a cruel rumour reached us, on good authority, that Lorrimer was engaged to be married. I confess that my feeling about it was one of unmitigated contempt for the man, and I trembled for the effect of the news upon Ideala. She made no sign, however, when first she heard it. I was surprised, and fear I showed that I was, in spite of myself, for she spoke about it. "You do not understand," she said. "One event in his career is not of more consequence to me than another, because all are of the greatest consequence. But I have none of the dog-in-the-manger spirit. I think there must be something almost maternal in my feeling for him, which is why it does not change. Were I less constant it would prove that my affection is of a lower kind, less enduring because less pure. I do not care to talk about him, but I think of him always. I think of him as I saw him last with the sun on him. Do you know his hair is like light gold with the sun on it. Sometimes the memory of him fades a little, and I cannot recall his features, and then I am tormented; but of course he comes back to me--so vividly that I have started often when I looked up and found myself alone, The desire to be with him never lessens; it burns in me always, and is both a pain and a pleasure. But my love is too great to be selfish. His wishes for himself are my wishes, and what is best for him is happiest for me. Am I never jealous? Jealous! No! Do you not know that he is mine, mine through every change? Neither time nor distance separates us really. No common tie can keep him from me. Let him be bound as and to whomsoever he pleases, his soul is mine, and must return to me sooner or later. I like him to be happy in any way that is right, for I know that what he gives to others is not himself. I was not fit for the dear earthly love, but perhaps, if I keep myself pure, body and soul, for him, I shall be made worthy at last, and of something better. And my love is so great it would draw him in spite of himself; but it will not be in spite of himself, for he will find by-and-by that he cannot live with a smaller soul, and then he will come to me. Do you not understand what I want? His soul--purified, strengthened, ennobled--nothing less will satisfy me; and his mother might ask as much. If I might be made the means of saving it--" Then after a little pause, she added: "Ah, how beautiful death is! He will be glad, as I should be now, to meet it-- and yet more glad! for then the end will have come for him, but I should have still to wait." The rumour of Lorrimer's engagement, however, proved to be false. It was another Lorrimer, a cousin of his. "Lorrimer is restored to your good graces now, I suppose," Claudia said, in her half sarcastic way, when the mistake was explained. I had not told her what was in my mind; she had read my thoughts. "You think that a man whom Ideala has loved should consider himself sacred," she added. I did not answer. But I hold that all men who have felt or inspired great love will be sanctified by it if there be any true nobility in their nature; and I knew that one man, whom Ideala did not love, had been so sanctified by love for her, and held himself sacred always. But it was a relief to my mind to know that Lorrimer was not unworthy. He was a distinguished man then, and I felt sure that he would become still more distinguished eventually. He was not one of the many who come and go, and are forgotten; but one of those destined to live for ever In minds made better by their presence. The good in his nature was certainly as far above the average as were his splendid abilities, and Ideala was right when she declared that she could answer for his principles. It is impulse that is beyond calculation, and for his own or another's impulses no wise man will answer. Ideala continued to droop. "She will never get over it;" I said to Claudia one day, when we were alone together. "Indeed she will," Claudia answered, confidently. "Out of the depth of your profound ignorance of natural history do you speak, my brother. I dread the reaction, though. When it comes she will be overwhelmed with shame; but it will come. All this is only a phase. She is in a state of transition now. It is her pride that makes her nurse her grief, and will not let her give him up. She cannot bear to think that she, of all women in the world, should have been the victim of anything so trivial as a passing fancy. Not that it would have been a passing fancy if they had not been separated; but as it is--why, no fire can burn without fuel." Claudia had evidently changed her mind, and she might be right; but my own fear was that her first impression would be justified, and that Ideala would never be able to take a healthy interest in anything again. "I cannot care," was her constant complaint. "Nothing ever touches me either painfully or pleasurably. Nothing will ever make me glad again." She said this one evening when she was sitting alone with Claudia and myself, and there was a long silence after she had finished speaking, during which she sat in a dejected attitude, her face buried in her hands. All at once she looked up. "It is very strange," she said, "but half that feeling seems to have gone with the expression of it." "I think," Claudia decided, in her common-sense tone, "that you are nursing this unholy passion, Ideala. You are afraid to give it up lest there should be nothing left to you. Can you not free your mind from the trammels of it, and grasp something higher, better, and nobler? Can you not become mistress of yourself again, and enter on a larger life which shall be full of love--not the narrow, selfish passion you are cherishing for one, but that pure and holy love which only the best-- and such women as you may always be of the best--can feel for all? If you could but get the fumes of this evil feeling out of yourself, you would see, as we see, what a common thing it is, and you would recognise, as we recognise, that your very expression of it is just such as is given to it by every hysterical man or woman that has ever experienced it. It is a physical condition caused by contact, and kept up by your own perverse pleasure in it--nothing more. Every one grows out of it in time, and any one with proper self-control could conquer it. You are wavering yourself. You see, now that you have crystallised the feeling into words, that it is a pitiful thing after all, that the object is not worth such an expenditure of strength--certainly not worth the sacrifice of your power to enjoy anything else. Such devotion to the memory of a dead husband has been thought grand by some, although for my part I can see nothing grand in any form of self- indulgence, whether it be the indulgence of sorrow or joy, which narrows our sphere of usefulness, and causes us to neglect the claims of those who love us upon our affection, and the claims of our fellow- creatures generally upon our consideration; but in your case it is simply----" Claudia paused for want of a word. "You would say it is simply degrading," Ideala interposed. "I do not feel it so. I glory in it." "I know," said Claudia, pitilessly. "You all do." And then she got up, and laid her hand on Ideala's shoulder. "It is time," she said, earnestly, "It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye, That old hysterical mock-disease should die." CHAPTER XXVIII. I hoped Claudia's plain speaking had made an impression, but for a long time after that it seemed as if Ideala's interest in life had really ended, that her sphere of usefulness had contracted, and that she herself would become like the rest--a doer of unconnected trifles that have meaning only as the straws have meaning which show which way the current sets. One cannot help thinking how many of these significant straws must go down to the ocean and be lost, their little use unrecognised, their little labour unavailing: because it does so little good merely to know which way the stream is setting, or what ocean will receive it at last, if we have no power to profit by the knowledge. At this time Ideala's own life was not unlike one of these hapless straws, and it seemed a wretched failure of its early promise, that ending as a straw on the common stream, when so little might have made her influence in her own sphere like the river itself, strong and beautiful. Those who loved her watched her in her trouble with eager hope that some good might yet come of it; but the hope diminished always as the days wore on. At first her mind had raged and stormed; one could see it, though she said so little. Her renunciation was perfect, but nevertheless she could not reconcile herself to it. She would not go back, but she could not go on, and so she remained midway between the past, which was hateful to her, and the future, which was a blank, raging at both. But gradually the storm subsided; and then came a period of calm, but whether it was the calm of apathy or the calm of resignation it was hard to say--and meantime she lost her health again, and became so fragile that my sister only expressed what I felt when she was speaking of her one day, and said, sadly: "Her cheek is so waxenly thin, As if deathward 'twere whitening in, And the cloud of her flesh, still more white, Were clearing till soul is in sight. * * * * * Her large eyes too liquidly glister! Her mouth is too red. Have they kissed her--- The angels that bend down to pull Our buds of the Beautiful, And whispered their own little Sister?" We were anxious to take her abroad, but she would not accompany us. She talked of going alone, but she did not go, and after a time we gave up thinking about it. Then one day, quite suddenly, she said: "It _is_ time this old hysterical mock-disease should die," and she told us that she had at last decided to travel--somewhere; nothing more definite than that, for she said she had no fixed plans. We concluded, however, that she meant to be away some time, for she said something about perils of the deep, and the uncertainty of life generally, and she confided her private papers to my care, telling me to look at them if they would interest me, and make what use of them I pleased; and that was how those from which I have gathered much of her story came into my possession. And then she left us, and for a whole year we heard nothing of her--not one word. Claudia chafed a little, and complained, as women will when things do not arrange themselves exactly as they would have ordered them; but I was content to wait, and, because I expected nothing, the time did not seem so long as perhaps it might have done. We lived our usual life--part of the year in one of the eastern counties, and part in London, and then we came north again. It was winter weather, frosty and clear and bright, and I was tempted out a great deal, taking long rides, begun before sunset and ending by moonlight, and generally alone. And always when the world seemed most beautiful I thought of Ideala, and how she had loved its beauty-- mountain and plain, flood and field, forest and flower, the snow and the sunshine, and all the alternations of light and shade; the wonders of form, and the depth and harmony of colour; the blue sky by day, with its glories of sunrise and sunset; the dark sky by night, with its moonlight and starlight--the sky always! that cloudland to which, when we are wearied by the more monotonous earth, we had only to lift our eyes and there the scene is changing for ever--the sky--and the sea: In all its vague immensity! Would she ever see it again in the old way? When she left us one might have said of her mental state: O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon-- Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! And where was she now? and was she learning to see again? I own I sometimes had the presumption to think that if she had stayed with us I might have helped her. It seemed hardly credible that she should be able to stand alone at such a time, not to speak of the strength required to take her out of herself. And was not the loneliness itself an added misery? She never could bear to be alone, and I always thought the worst trial of her married life was the mental solitude to which it had reduced her by making her feel the necessity for reserve, even with her best friends. Of course she had chosen to go alone; it was quite her own doing; but I could not help thinking, uneasily at times, that she would not have gone at all if she had not noticed how anxious we were about her, and fancied she could relieve us of our trouble by relieving us of her presence. That would have been so like Ideala! And then my thoughts would wander off, recalling her numberless little deeds of love, her perfect selflessness, and all the depth and beauty of her great and tender nature, as we do recall such things of one who has gone and will nevermore return, as in the old days, to make us glad. There was the day I had seen her from the club window stoop to pick up a little ragged barefooted child that was crying in the street, and wrap her furs about it and carry it off, smiling and happy, in her arms, with no more thought of the attention such an action would attract than if she had been alone with her waif in the desert. But many and many a time, and in many a way, she had made glad hearts by deeds like that; and now where was she? And was there never a one in the whole wide world to help her to bear her own sorrow and ease her pain? One evening in particular I had been more than usually tormented by such thoughts. I had been blaming myself bitterly for having allowed her to go away alone, and when I rode up to my own door I was conscious of a half-formed resolution to follow her without delay and bring her back. Claudia was standing on the steps in the crisp, fresh evening air, apparently watching for me. She put her arms round my neck when I alighted, and kissed me. "Has she written?" I exclaimed, for Claudia was not demonstrative, and this meant something. "She is here," was the answer. My heart gave a great leap, but I could not ask if it were well with her. I could only look at Claudia, and wonder if it were the moonlight that made the expression of her face so singularly content and sweet. I went into the lighted house, and being somewhat dazed and altogether too eager to see her at once, I dressed for the evening, leisurely, and then I went to find her. There was a change in the house already. It was lighted from top to bottom as befits a time of rejoicing, and our other guests, whom I passed in my search, seemed gayer--or I fancied so. She was not among them, but I took the liberty of going to her rooms and knocked at the sitting-room door, and entered. She rose to receive me, stretching out her hands, and my first impression was that she had grown; afterwards I understood that it was a change in the fashion of her dress that made it appear so. She wore a long robe, exquisitely draped, which was loose, but yet clung to her, and fell in rich folds about her with a grace that satisfied. I cannot describe the fashion of this robe, or the form, but I have seen one like it somewhere--it must have been in a picture, or on a statue of a grand heroic woman or a saint; and it suggested something womanly and strong, but not to be defined. It was Ideala, herself--not as she had been, but as I always hoped she would be, and felt she might. She showed the change in every gesture, but most of all in her clear and steady eyes, which made you feel she had a purpose now, and a future yet before her. She looked as women look when they know themselves entrusted with a work, and have the courage and resolution to be true and worthy of their trust. She was very gracious, but somehow in the first moment of our meeting I felt abashed--abashed before this woman who had gone down to the verge of dishonour, but whose goodness, with the vitality of all goodness, had raised her again above the best; whose trouble had been to her, because of this goodness, as is a painful operation which must be gone through if the patient would ever be strong. I fancy she thought me cold because my great respect made me shy, and I hesitated to show her all the joy I felt. "Won't you kiss me once after my long, long voyage?" she said, holding up her face like a child to be kissed. And it made me inexpressibly glad, to perceive that, while gaining in dignity and purpose, her character had lost none of the childlike faith and affection which had been one of the greatest charms of the old Ideala. I could not help examining her curiously, looking for traces of a conflict, for those lines of suffering which are generally left by fierce mental troubles like scars after a battle, showing that the fight has been no child's play, but a struggle for life or death. Such a conflict there must have been, but all trace of it was swept away by the wonderful peace that had succeeded it. Ideala looked younger, certainly, but the change showed itself most in her perfect serenity, and in the steadfast earnestness of her wonderful eyes. But I had no time to talk to her, for Claudia, in diamonds and velvet and lace--her donning of which is her one way of expressing a satisfaction too deep for words--blazed in upon us. If it had occurred so her, she would certainly have had the bells of the parish rung-- provided my authority as lay Rector could have accomplished such an extravagance. She took us away with her now to join our other guests, and when dinner was announced I offered Ideala my arm. She was silent as we went, but looked about her with a grave little smile on her lips, renewing her acquaintance with familiar objects, and noting every change. And so busy was she with her own reflections, so thoroughly absorbed, that, when we were seated at table, she put her serviette beside her plate and her bread on her lap mechanically, and took up her knife and fork to eat her soup. She seemed puzzled for a moment when she found that the implements did not answer, and then she laughed! Such a fresh, girlish laugh! It did one's heart good to hear her! Yes, verily! Ideala was herself again, absent-mindedness and all. And before dinner was over a wonderful thing had happened. For whereas we had hitherto been the most commonplace and prosaic party imaginable, getting along smoothly, taking no particular interest in each other, or in anything else, and only remarkable for a degree of dulness which would have astonished us by its bulk could it have been weighed and measured--to-night, for no apparent reason, we suddenly woke up and astounded ourselves by more originality than we had been accustomed to believe was left in the world altogether--while something put into our conversation just the right amount of polite friction to act as a counter-irritant, so that, when we left the table, each felt that he had been at his best--had been brilliant, in fact, and shone with lustre enough to make any man happy. Once in a London theatre I saw an actress walk across the stage. She did not utter a word, she never looked at the audience, she was apparently unconscious of everything but what she had in her own mind; yet before she was half across the stage the people rose to their feet with a roar. Ideala's coming amongst us had produced some such startling effect; but _her_ power was altogether occult. The audience knew what the actress meant, but we did not understand Ideala, and yet we applauded by laying our best before her, and acknowledged the charm of her presence in every word. She spoke very little, however. Indeed, I remember nothing she said until we went to the drawing-room. On the way thither Claudia had picked up a crumpled paper, and, glancing at it, had exclaimed--"Why, Ideala, here are some of your verses! Do you still write verses?" It was curious that we all spoke as if she had been away for years. "Yes," she answered, tranquilly; and Claudia coolly proceeded to read the verses aloud, a difficult task, as they were scribbled in pencil on half a sheet of note-paper, and were scarcely decipherable. Ideala, meanwhile, listened, with calm eyes fixed on vacancy, like one trying to be polite, but finding it hard for lack of interest. "By Arno, when the tale was o'er, At sunset, as in days of yore, I wandered forth and dreamed. The sky above, the town below. The solemn river's silent flow, The ancient story-haunts I know, In varied colours gleamed. By Arno calm my steps I stayed, Just where the river's bank displayed A tangled growth of weeds; Tall houses near, and on the right An arched bridge upreared its height, And boats drew near, and passed from sight-- I heard the tramp of steeds. I heard, and saw, but heeded not; My feet were rooted to the spot, A fancy checked my breath. 'Twas here that Tito lay, I knew. His fair face upward to the blue, His velvet tunic soaking through, Most beautiful in death. But Baldassarre was not there, 'Twas I that stooped to kiss the hair, Besprent with ooze and dew. Ah, God! light gold the locks caressed-- I saw no Greek in velvet dressed-- But wildly to my bosom pressed-- Not Tito, love, but you! The massive, godlike head and throat Belonged not to those days remote, The fine grey eye--the limb; It was the soul I know so well, So full of earth, and heaven, and hell, That came from out that time to dwell In you and make you him. And I, the victim of your smiles, And I, the victim of your wiles, My vengeance shall prevail. The river Time shall float you nigh, And earth and hell your soul shall fly. And only heaven remain when I The deed triumphant hail!" It surprised me to find that Claudia could read those verses to the end, their import--to me, at least--was so obvious. But Ideala continued unmoved; and when the little buzz of friendly criticism had subsided, she remarked, with unimpassioned directness: "I am quite sure that all my verses are rubbish; but nevertheless they delight me. I should feel dumb without the power to make verses; it is a means of expression that satisfies when nothing else will. I always carry my last about in my pocket. I know them by heart, of course, but still it is a pleasure to read them; and so it continues until I write some more; and then I immediately perceive that the old ones are bad, and I destroy them--when I remember. Those were condemned ages ago, so please oblige me, Claudia, by putting them into the fire." Claudia was about to obey, but I interposed. I had a fancy for keeping those verses. They are rubbishy if you will; but the sentiment which struggles to find expression in them is far from despicable. No one smoked that evening; no one played billiards; no one cared for music; we just sat round the fire in a circle, and talked. "And where have you come from, Ideala?" was the first question. "From China," she answered. There was a general exclamation. "I have been with the missionaries in China," she added. "Oh, isn't it very strange, the life in China?" some one asked. "It looks different," she said, "but its feels like our own. To begin with, one is struck by the strange appearance of the people, and the quaint humour of their art; but when the first effect wears off, and you learn to know them, you find after all that theirs is the same human nature, only in another garb; the familiar old tune, as it were, with a new set of variations. The like in unlikeness is common enough, but still the finding of a remarkable similarity in things apparently unlike continues to surprise us." "But, Ideala, you cannot compare the Chinese to ourselves! Think of the state of degradation the people are in! Every crime is rife among them --infanticide is quite common!" "Yes," said Ideala, as, if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Yes, doubtless, the lower classes in China kill their children; here, in certain districts, they insure them," Ideala concluded gravely. "But then," said Claudia--"Oh! Ideala, I don't think you can establish your parallel. We all know the sort of a life a Chinese lady leads." "When the lady is not at the head of her house it is certainly vacuous," Ideala agreed, "like the lives of our own ladies when they are not forced to do anything. Why, at Scarborough this year they had to take to changing their dresses four times a day; so you can imagine how they languish for want of occupation." "Well, at all events, English girls are not sold into a hateful form of slavery," some one observed contentedly. "Are they not?" Ideala rejoined with a flash. "I can assure you that both women and men, fathers, husbands, and brothers, of the same class in England, do sell their young girls--and I can prove it." "We have the pull over them in the matter of marriage, then. We don't give our daughters away against their will as they do." "That is not a fair way of putting it. A Chinese girl expects to be so disposed of, and accepts the arrangement as a matter of course. And the system has its advantages. The girl has no illusions to be shattered, she expects no new happiness in her married life, so that any that comes to her is clear gain. As to our daughters' inclinations not being forced, I suppose they are not, exactly. But have you never been conscious of the tender pressure that is brought to bear when a desirable suitor offers? Have you never seen a girl who won't marry when she is wanted to, wincing from covert stabs, mourning over cold looks, and made to feel outside everything--suffering a small martyrdom under the general displeasure of all for whom she cares, her world, without whose love life is a burden to her; whom she believes to know best about everything? As Mrs. Bread said about Madame de Cintre: 'She is a delicate creature, and they make her feel wicked'--and she ends by thinking any sacrifice light at the moment, if only it wins her back the affection and esteem of her friends." Ideala had been carried away by her earnestness, and now she stopped abruptly, somewhat disconcerted to find every one listening to her. The ladies sat with their eyes on the floor, the gentlemen exchanged glances, but no one spoke for some time. At last my sister made a move, and the spell was broken. We separated for the night, and many were the lady-like whispers that reached my ears, all ending in: "So like Ideala!" But, as Ideala herself remarked on another occasion, "You can't sweep a room that requires it without raising a dust; the thing is to let the dust settle again, and then remove it." CHAPTER XXIX. Claudia did not see the change in Ideala all at once. She said: "She is looking her best, and is our own Ideala again--faults and all! How she talked last night!" "Just in the old way," I agreed, "but with a difference; for in the old days she talked at random, but now I feel sure she has a plan and a purpose, and all that she says is part of it." This suggested new possibilities to Claudia, and when Ideala joined us presently, she asked, abruptly: "Are you going back to China?" Ideala answered deliberately: "I did think of becoming a missionary--that was why I went out there. But I know all radical reforms take time, and when I saw what the Chinese women were doing for themselves, and compared their state with our own, it seemed to me that there was work in plenty to be done at home, and so I returned. Certainly, the Chinese women of the day bind their feet. When a girl is seven or eight years old, her mother binds them for her, and everybody approves, If the mother did otherwise, the girl herself would be the first to reproach her when she grew up. It is wonderful how they endure the torture; but public opinion has sanctioned the custom for centuries, and made it as much a duty for a Chinese woman to have small feet as it is for us to wear clothes! And yet they do a wonderful thing. When they are taught how wrong the practice is, how it cripples them, and weakens them, and renders them unfit for their work in the world, they take off their bandages! Think of that! and remember that they are timid and sensitive in a womanly way to a degree that is painful. When I learnt that, and when I remembered that my countrywomen bind every organ in their bodies, though they know the harm of it, and public opinion is against it, I did not feel that I had time to stay and teach the heathen. It seemed to me that there was work enough left yet to do at home." "But, Ideala," Claudia protested, "what is the use of drawing degrading comparisons between ourselves and other nations? You gave great offence last night." "I said more than I intended," she answered; "I always do. It was Tourgenieff, was it not, who said that the age of talkers must precede the age of practical reformers? I seem to have been born in the age of talkers. But I shall not say much more. Last night I did not really _intend_ to say anything. You led me on. But I _do_ want to make their hearts burn within them, and if I succeed, then I shall not care about the offence. An English-woman is nothing if she is not patriotic. She will not bear the humiliation, if she is made to see that she is really no better, with all her opportunities, than a much- despised Chinese. She would not like the contempt the women of that nation feel for her if she were made to acknowledge the truth--that she deserved it. And so much depends on our women now. There are plenty of people, you know, who believe that no nation can get beyond a certain point of prosperity, and that when it reaches that point it cannot stay there, but must begin to go down again; and they say that the English nation has now reached its extreme point. They compare it with Rome in the days which immediately preceded her decline and fall--when men ceased to be brave and self-denying, and became idle, luxurious, and effeminate; and women traded on their weakness, and made light of their evil deeds. It is a question of the sanctity of marriage now, as it was in the days of the decline of Rome. De Quincey traces her fall to the loosening of the marriage tie. He says that few indeed, if any, were the obligations in a proper sense _moral_ which pressed upon the Roman. The main fountains of moral obligation had in Rome, by law or custom, been thoroughly poisoned. Marriage had corrupted itself through the facility of divorce, and through the consequences of that facility (viz., levity in choosing, and fickleness in adhering to the choice), into so exquisite a traffic of selfishness, that it could not yield so much as a phantom model of sanctity. The relation of husband and wife had, for all moral impressions, perished amongst the Romans. And, although it is not quite so bad with ourselves at present, that is what it is coming to. "But there are two sides to every question, and the one which we must by no means lose sight of just now is not that which shows the respects in which we resemble the Romans, so much as the one which shows the respects in which we differ from them. It is therein that our hope lies. And we differ from them in two important respects. We differ from them in the matter of experience, and in the use we are disposed to make of our experiences. We are beginning to know the rocks upon which they split, and we shall soon be making use of our knowledge to steer clear of them. But there is another respect in which we differ from all the older nations, not even excepting the Jewish. I mean morality. We have the grandest and purest ideal of morality that was ever preached upon earth, and, if we do but practise it, there is no doubt that the promise will be fulfilled, and our days as a nation will be prolonged with rejoicing. "The future of the race has come to be a question of morality and a question of health. Perhaps I should reverse it, and say a question of health and morality, since the latter is so dependent on the former. We want grander minds, and we must have grander bodies to contain them. And it all rests with us women. To us is confided the care of the little ones--of the young bodies and the young minds yet unformed. Ours will be the joy of success or the shame of failure, and we should fit ourselves for the task both morally and physically by the practice of every virtue, and by every art known to the science and skill of man." "Englishwomen could not sit still and know that their lovely homes will be wrecked eventually, and left desolate: that this country of theirs will become a wilderness of ruin, such as Egypt is, but rank and overgrown, its beauty of sweet grass and stately trees, and all its rich luxuriance of flowers and fruits and foliage plants, only accentuating the ruin--bearing witness to the neglect. No, our greatness shall not depart. The decay may have begun, but it shall be arrested. I am not afraid." "But if it is the fate of nations, Ideala----" "I propose to conquer fate," said Ideala. "Fate itself is no match for one woman with a will, let alone for thousands! When horrid war is threatened, men flock to fight for their country; and they volunteer for every other arduous duty to be done. Do you think women are less brave? No. When they realise the truth they will fight for it. They will fly to arms. They will use the weapons with which Nature has provided them; love, constancy, self-sacrifice, their intellectual strength, and will. And so they will save the nation." Claudia, the unimaginative, sat silent and perplexed. "I would join," she said at last, "if I were quite sure----Oh, Ideala! it is not a sort of Woman's Rights business, and all that, you are going in for, is it? A woman can do good in her own sphere only." Ideala laughed. "But 'her own sphere' is such a very indefinite phrase," she observed. "It is nonsense, really. A woman may do anything which she can do in a womanly way. They say that our brains are lighter, and that therefore we must not be taught too much. But why not educate us to the limit of our capacity, and leave it there? Why, if we are inferior, should there be any fear of making us superior? We must stop when we cannot go any further, and all this old-womanish cackle on the subject, the everlasting trying to prove what is already said to be proved--the looking for the square in space after laying it down as a law that only the circle exists--is a curious way of showing us how to control the 'exuberance of our own verbosity.' They say we shall not be content when we get what we want, and there they are right, for as soon as our own 'higher education' is secure we shall begin to clamour for the higher education of men. For the prayer of every woman worth the name is not 'Make me superior to my husband,' but, 'Lord, make my husband superior to me!' Is there any more pitiful position in the world than that of a right-minded woman who is her husband's superior, and knows it! There is in every educated and refined woman an inborn desire to submit, and she must do violence to what is best in herself when she cannot. You know what the history of such marriages is. The girl has been taught to expect to find a guide, philosopher, and friend in her husband. He is to be head of the house and lord of her life and liberty, sole arbiter on all occasions. It is right and convenient to have him so; the world requires him to fill that position, and the wife prefers that he should. But the probabilities are about equal that he, being morally her inferior, will not be fit for it, and that, therefore, she will find herself in a false position. There will then be an interval of intense misery for the wife. Her education and prejudices will make her try to submit at first to what her sense knows to be impossible; but eventually she is forced out of her unnatural position by circumstances. To save her house and family she must rebel, take the reins of government into her own hands, and face life, a disappointed and lonely woman." "Heaven help her!" said Claudia. "One knows that the future of a woman in that state of mind is only a question of circumstance and temperament; she may rise, but----" Ideala looked up quickly. "But she may fall, you were going to say-- yes. But you know if she does it is her own fault. She _must_ know better." "She may not be quite mistress of herself at the time--she may be fascinated; she may be led on!" I interposed, quickly. Claudia seemed to have forgotten. "But one thing is certain, if she has any real good in her she will always stop before it is too late." "I think," said Claudia, "it would be better, after all, if women were taught to expect to find themselves their husbands' equals--the disappointment would not be so great if the husband proved inferior; but when a woman has been led to look for so much, her imagination is full of dreams in which he figures as an infallible being; she expects him to be her refuge, support, and comfort at all times; and when a man has such a height to fall from in any one's estimation, there can be but little of him left if he does fall." Ideala sighed, and after a short pause she said: "I have been wondering what makes it possible for a woman to love a man? Not the flesh that she sees and can touch, though that may attract her as the colour of the flower attracts. It must be the mind that is in him--the scent of the flower, as it were. If she finds eventually that his mind is corrupt, she must shrink from it as from any other form of corruption, and finally abandon him on account of it, as she would abandon the flower if she found its odour fetid--indeed, she has already abandoned her husband when she acknowledges that he is not what she thought him." She paused a moment, and then went on passionately: "I cannot tell you what it was--the battling day by day with a power that was irresistible because it had to put forth no strength to accomplish its work; it simply was itself, and by being itself it lowered me. I cannot tell you what it was to feel myself going down, and not to be able to help it, try as I would; to feel the gradual change in my mind as it grew to harbour thoughts which were reflections of his thoughts, low thoughts; and to be filled with ideas, recollections of his conversations, which had caused me infinite disgust at the time, but remained with me like the taste of a nauseous drug, until I almost acquired a morbid liking for them. Oh, if I could save other women from that!" Claudia hastily interposed to divert her. "That is a good idea, the higher education of men," she said. "I don't know whether they have abandoned hope, or whether they think themselves already perfect, certain it is the idea of improving themselves does not seem to occur to them often. And we want good men in society. If the clergy and priests are good, it is only what is required of them, what everybody expects, and, therefore, their goodness is accepted as a matter of course, and is viewed as indifferently as other matters of course. One good man in society has more effect as an example than ten priests." "But you have not told us what you propose to do, Ideala?" I said. "I hope it is nothing unwomanly," Claudia interposed, anxiously. Ideala looked at her and laughed, and Claudia laughed too, the moment after she had spoken. The fear of Ideala doing anything unwomanly was absurd, even to herself. "An unwomanly woman is such a dreadful creature," Claudia added, apologetically. "Yes," said Ideala, "but you should pity her. In nine cases out of ten there is a great wrong or a great grief at the bottom of all her unwomanliness--perhaps both; and if she shrieks you may be sure that she is suffering; ease her pain, and she will be quiet enough. The average woman who is happy in her marriage does not care to know more of the world than she can learn in her own nursery, nor to see more of it, as a rule, than she can see from her own garden gate. She is a great power; but, unfortunately, there is so very little of her! "What I want to do is to make women discontented--you have heard of a noble spirit of discontent? I thought for a long time that everything had been done that could be done to make the world better; but now I see that there is still one thing more to be tried. Women have never yet united to use their influence steadily and all together against that of which they disapprove. They work too much for themselves, each trying to make their own life happier. They have yet to learn to take a wider view of things, and to be shown that the only way to gain their end is by working for everybody else, with intent to make the whole world better, which means happier. And in order to accomplish this they must be taught that they have only to _will_ it--each in her own family and amongst her own friends; that, after having agreed with the rest about what they mean to put down, they have only to go home and use their influence to that end, quietly, consistently, and without wavering, and the thing will be done. Our influence is like those strong currents which run beneath the surface of the ocean without disturbing it, and yet with irresistible force, and at a rate that may be calculated. It is to help in the direction of that force that I am going to devote my life. Do not imagine," she went on hurriedly, "that I think myself fit for such a work. I have had conscientious scruples-- been sorely troubled about my own unworthiness, which seemed to unfit me for any good work. But now I see things differently. One may be made an instrument for good without merit of one's own. So long as we do not deceive ourselves by thinking we are worthy, and so long as we are trying our best to become so, I think we may hope; I think we may even know that we shall eventually----" She stopped and looked at me. "Be made worthy," said Claudia, kissing her; "and if it were not so, Ideala, if everybody had to begin by being as good themselves as they want others to be, there would be no good workers left in the world at all." At this moment a noisy party burst in upon our grave debate and carried Ideala off for a ride. We saw them leave the house, and watched them ride away until the last glimpse of them was veiled by the misty brightness of the frosty air and the morning sunshine. "How well she looks!" Claudia exclaimed; "better than any of them. She has quite recovered, and is none the worse." "I do not know about recovery," I answered, dubiously. "She will never ----" But Claudia interrupted hotly: "I know what you are going to say, and I do wish you would leave off speaking of Ideala in that way. Any one to hear you would suppose she had committed a sin, and you know quite well that that was not the case. If she acted without common prudence--and I will not deny that she did--it was entirely your own fault. She has never been intimate with any man but yourself, and you have made her believe that all men are like you. How could she harbour suspicion when she did not know what to suspect? Of course she saw everything wrongly and awry. The old life had become impossible to her, and she nearly made a mistake as to what the new one should be, that was all. I know she wavered for a moment, but the weakness was more physical than moral, I think. Her vision was clouded at the time, but as soon as she was restored to health she saw things clearly enough. She is a great and good woman, pure-hearted and full of charity. God bless her for all her tenderness, and for her wonderful power to love. He alone can count the number who have reason to wish her well." "That is true," I answered. "And I was merely going to remark, when you interrupted me, that she will never think herself 'none the worse'--" "I don't see what difference that makes," Claudia again interposed. "She always did think herself least of the least when she thought of herself at all, and that was not often. You are dwelling too long on the past, really, and making too much of it. Men, when they are saints, are twice as bad as women." I pointed out to my sister something confusing in her way of expressing the fact, but my kindness seemed to exasperate her. "You know what I mean quite well," she said tartly. "Yes, _I_ know," I rejoined; "but I wanted to help you to make yourself intelligible to other people." Claudia made a gesture of impatience, but laughed, and left me; and I remained for a long time thinking over all that Ideala had said, and also thinking of her as she looked at the time; and the subject was so inspiring that, although my strong point is landscape, in an ambitious mood I began to paint an allegorical picture of her as a mother nursing the Infant Goodness of the race. She saw it when it was nearly finished, but did not recognise herself, and exclaimed; "What a gaunt creature! and that baby weighs at least twelve stone!" The picture was never finished. CHAPTER XXX. We soon found that Ideala, having at last put her hand to the plough, worked with a will, and although she was true to her principle that a woman's best work is done beneath the surface, I think her own labours will eventually make themselves felt with a good result in the world. But the life she has chosen for herself is martyrdom, and her womanly shrinking from the suffering she would alleviate is never lessened by use. Yet she does not waver. Other women admire her devotion, and follow in her footsteps; they do not doubt but that she has chosen the better part; but I fancy that most men who have seen her draw the little children about her and forget everything for a moment but her delight in them, have felt that there must be something wrong in the world when such a woman misses her vocation, and has to scatter her love to the four winds of heaven, for want of an object upon which to concentrate it in all its strength. I do not know if her feeling for Lorrimer has changed. My sister declares in her positive way that of course it has, completely; but my sister is not always right. Ideala has never mentioned his name since she returned to us, nor given us any other clue by which we could judge. Only on one occasion, when some allusion was made to the course she had intended to pursue in the past, she exclaimed: "Oh, how could I!" and covered her face with her hands. From where I sit just now I can see her walking up the avenue. She is as straight as an arrow, young-looking, and fresh. Her step is firm and light and elastic, and she moves with an easy grace only possible when every muscle is unconstrained. Her dress is a work of art, light in weight, but rich in colour and texture. "What a beautiful woman!" I think involuntarily. I see her daily, and pay her that tribute every time we meet, for-- Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Her intellect and selflessness preserve her youth. She is changed, certainly. She has arisen, and can return no more to the lower walks, to the old purposeless life, and desultory ways; but yet she is the same Ideala, and holds you always expectant--you, who see beneath the surface. The world will call her cold and self-contained till the end, and so she is and will be--a snow-crowned volcano, with wonderful force of fire working within. And she will not stop where she is; there is something yet to come--some further development--something more-- something beyond! and she makes you feel that there is. What she says of other women is true of herself. "Do not stand in their way," she begs; "do not hinder them--above all, do not stop them. They are running water; if you check them they stagnate, and you must suffer yourself from their noisome exhalations. For the moral nature is like water; it must have movement and air and sunshine to stay corruption and keep it sweet and wholesome; and its movement is good works; its air, faith in their efficiency; its sunshine, the evidence of this and hope." Comparative anatomists have proved that the human brain, from its first appearance as a semi-fluid and shapeless mass, passes in succession through the several structures that constitute the permanent and perfect brains of fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammalia; but ultimately it passes beyond them all, and acquires a marvellous development of its own. And so it is with the human soul. It must rise through analogous stages, and add to its own strength and beauty by daily bread of love and thought, growing to greatness by help of these aliments only, and reaching ultimately to such perfection as we cannot divine, for the end is not here. But we might reach it sooner than we do were it not for our own impatience. Growth is so exquisitely minute, it bursts upon us an accomplished fact. We know this, and yet we would see the process; and not seeing it we lose faith, waver, hesitate, stop, and recoil--a going back _pour mieux sauter_ it is with the choicer spirit; but we all are deficient in hope, all have our retrograde moments of despair. We do not look about us enough to see what is being done for others, how they are progressing, by what strange paths they are led. We keep our eyes on our own ground too much, and, because we will not compare cheerfully, we think our own way the roughest, our own journey the longest--if there be any end to it at all! Yet all the time we might see the end if only we would look up. And we need never despair and lag, need never be cold and comfortless, if we would but love and remember. For, while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far out, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main! Ideala raises her eyes to mine now, and smiles as she passes beneath my window. Another woman--a woman whom Claudia had long refused to know--is leaning on her arm, talking to her earnestly. And that is Ideala's attitude always. She gathers the useless units of society about her, and makes them worthy women. There is no kind of sorrow for which she has not found comfort, no folly she has not been successful in checking, no vice she has not managed to cure, and no form of despair which she has not relieved with hope. Her own experiences have taught her to sympathise with every phase of feeling, and be lenient to every shortcoming and excess. Wherever she is you may be sure that another woman is there also--some one with a sorrowful history, probably; and you may be equally sure that she is leaning on Ideala. God bless her! 
34856	----	MRS. PANKHURST'S OWN STORY [Illustration: E. Pankhurst] MY OWN STORY BY EMMELINE PANKHURST [Illustration: Logo] ILLUSTRATED LONDON EVELEIGH NASH 1914 Copyright, 1914, by HEARSTS'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO., INC. _All rights reserved, including the translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian._ CONTENTS BOOK I THE MAKING OF A MILITANT CHAPTER PAGE I 1 II 18 III 37 IV 57 BOOK II FOUR YEARS OF PEACEFUL MILITANCY CHAPTER PAGE I 81 II 97 III 116 IV 131 V 149 VI 160 VII 166 VIII 185 BOOK III THE WOMEN'S REVOLUTION CHAPTER PAGE I 205 II 221 III 249 IV 270 V 285 VI 303 VII 323 VIII 339 IX 350 ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of Mrs. Pankhurst _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Mrs. Pankhurst addressing a by-election crowd 74 Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel hiding from the police on the roof garden at Clements Inn, October, 1908 120 Christabel, Mrs. Drummond and Mrs. Pankhurst in the dock, First Conspiracy Trial, October, 1908 126 Mrs. Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst in prison dress 132 Inspector Wells conducting Mrs. Pankhurst to the House of Commons, June, 1908 140 Over 1,000 women had been in prison--Broad arrows in the 1910 parade 170 The head of the deputation on Black Friday, November, 1910 178 For hours scenes like this were enacted on Black Friday, November, 1910 180 Riot scenes on Black Friday, November, 1910 186 In this manner thousands of women throughout the Kingdom slept in unoccupied houses over census night 194 The argument of the broken window pane 218 A suffragette throwing a bag of flour at Mr. Asquith in Chester 260 Re-Arrest of Mrs. Pankhurst at Woking, May 26, 1913 312 Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel in the garden of Christabel's home in Paris 324 "Arrested at the King's gate!" May, 1914 348 ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author wishes to express her deep obligation to Rheta Childe Dorr for invaluable editorial services performed in the preparation of this volume, especially the American edition. FOREWORD The closing paragraphs of this book were written in the late summer of 1914, when the armies of every great power in Europe were being mobilised for savage, unsparing, barbarous warfare--against one another, against small and unaggressive nations, against helpless women and children, against civilisation itself. How mild, by comparison with the despatches in the daily newspapers, will seem this chronicle of women's militant struggle against political and social injustice in one small corner of Europe. Yet let it stand as it was written, with peace--so-called, and civilisation, and orderly government as the background for heroism such as the world has seldom witnessed. The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood, and for these deeds of horror and destruction men have been rewarded with monuments, with great songs and epics. The militancy of women has harmed no human life save the lives of those who fought the battle of righteousness. Time alone will reveal what reward will be allotted to the women. This we know, that in the black hour that has just struck in Europe, the men are turning to their women and calling on them to take up the work of keeping civilisation alive. Through all the harvest fields, in orchards and vineyards, women are garnering food for the men who fight, as well as for the children left fatherless by war. In the cities the women are keeping open the shops, they are driving trucks and trams, and are altogether attending to a multitude of business. When the remnants of the armies return, when the commerce of Europe is resumed by men, will they forget the part the women so nobly played? Will they forget in England how women in all ranks of life put aside their own interests and organised, not only to nurse the wounded, care for the destitute, comfort the sick and lonely, but actually to maintain the existence of the nation? Thus far, it must be admitted, there are few indications that the English Government are mindful of the unselfish devotion manifested by the women. Thus far all Government schemes for overcoming unemployment have been directed towards the unemployment of men. The work of women, making garments, etc., has in some cases been taken away. At the first alarm of war the militants proclaimed a truce, which was answered half-heartedly by the announcement that the Government would release all suffrage prisoners who would give an undertaking "not to commit further crimes or outrages." Since the truce had already been proclaimed, no suffrage prisoner deigned to reply to the Home Secretary's provision. A few days later, no doubt influenced by representations made to the Government by men and women of every political faith--many of them never having been supporters of revolutionary tactics--Mr. McKenna announced in the House of Commons that it was the intention of the Government, within a few days, to release unconditionally, all suffrage prisoners. So ends, for the present, the war of women against men. As of old, the women become the nurturing mothers of men, their sisters and uncomplaining helpmates. The future lies far ahead, but let this preface and this volume close with the assurance that the struggle for the full enfranchisement of women has not been abandoned; it has simply, for the moment, been placed in abeyance. When the clash of arms ceases, when normal, peaceful, rational society resumes its functions, the demand will again be made. If it is not quickly granted, then once more the women will take up the arms they to-day generously lay down. There can be no real peace in the world until woman, the mother half of the human family, is given liberty in the councils of the world. BOOK I THE MAKING OF A MILITANT Mrs. Pankhurst's Own Story CHAPTER I Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress. It is an added good fortune to have parents who take a personal part in the great movements of their time. I am glad and thankful that this was my case. One of my earliest recollections is of a great bazaar which was held in my native city of Manchester, the object of the bazaar being to raise money to relieve the poverty of the newly emancipated negro slaves in the United States. My mother took an active part in this effort, and I, as a small child, was entrusted with a lucky bag by means of which I helped to collect money. Young as I was--I could not have been older than five years--I knew perfectly well the meaning of the words slavery and emancipation. From infancy I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession. Broadly speaking, the propertied classes were pro-slavery, but there were many exceptions to the rule. Most of those who formed the circle of our family friends were opposed to slavery, and my father, Robert Goulden, was always a most ardent abolitionist. He was prominent enough in the movement to be appointed on a committee to meet and welcome Henry Ward Beecher when he arrived in England for a lecture tour. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," was so great a favourite with my mother that she used it continually as a source of bedtime stories for our fascinated ears. Those stories, told almost fifty years ago, are as fresh in my mind to-day as events detailed in the morning's papers. Indeed they are more vivid, because they made a much deeper impression on my consciousness. I can still definitely recall the thrill I experienced every time my mother related the tale of Eliza's race for freedom over the broken ice of the Ohio River, the agonizing pursuit, and the final rescue at the hands of the determined old Quaker. Another thrilling tale was the story of a negro boy's flight from the plantation of his cruel master. The boy had never seen a railroad train, and when, staggering along the unfamiliar railroad track, he heard the roar of an approaching train, the clattering car-wheels seemed to his strained imagination to be repeating over and over again the awful words, "Catch a nigger--catch a nigger--catch a nigger--" This was a terrible story, and throughout my childhood, whenever I rode in a train, I thought of that poor runaway slave escaping from the pursuing monster. These stories, with the bazaars and the relief funds and subscriptions of which I heard so much talk, I am sure made a permanent impression on my brain and my character. They awakened in me the two sets of sensations to which all my life I have most readily responded: first, admiration for that spirit of fighting and heroic sacrifice by which alone the soul of civilisation is saved; and next after that, appreciation of the gentler spirit which is moved to mend and repair the ravages of war. I do not remember a time when I could not read, nor any time when reading was not a joy and a solace. As far back as my memory runs I loved tales, especially those of a romantic and idealistic character. "Pilgrim's Progress" was an early favourite, as well as another of Bunyan's visionary romances, which does not seem to be as well known, his "Holy War." At nine I discovered the Odyssey and very soon after that another classic which has remained all my life a source of inspiration. This was Carlyle's "French Revolution," and I received it with much the same emotion that Keats experienced when he read Chapman's translation of Homer--" ... like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken." I never lost that first impression, and it strongly affected my attitude toward events which were occurring around my childhood. Manchester is a city which has witnessed a great many stirring episodes, especially of a political character. Generally speaking, its citizens have been liberal in their sentiments, defenders of free speech and liberty of opinion. In the late sixties there occurred in Manchester one of those dreadful events that prove an exception to the rule. This was in connection with the Fenian Revolt in Ireland. There was a Fenian riot, and the police arrested the leaders. These men were being taken to the jail in a prison van. On the way the van was stopped and an attempt was made to rescue the prisoners. A man fired a pistol, endeavouring to break the lock of the van door. A policeman fell, mortally wounded, and several men were arrested and were charged with murder. I distinctly remember the riot, which I did not witness, but which I heard vividly described by my older brother. I had been spending the afternoon with a young playmate, and my brother had come after tea to escort me home. As we walked through the deepening November twilight he talked excitedly of the riot, the fatal pistol shot, and the slain policeman. I could almost see the man bleeding on the ground, while the crowd swayed and groaned around him. The rest of the story reveals one of those ghastly blunders which justice not infrequently makes. Although the shooting was done without any intent to kill, the men were tried for murder and three of them were found guilty and hanged. Their execution, which greatly excited the citizens of Manchester, was almost the last, if not the last, public execution permitted to take place in the city. At the time I was a boarding-pupil in a school near Manchester, and I spent my week-ends at home. A certain Saturday afternoon stands out in my memory, as on my way home from school I passed the prison where I knew the men had been confined. I saw that a part of the prison wall had been torn away, and in the great gap that remained were evidences of a gallows recently removed. I was transfixed with horror, and over me there swept the sudden conviction that that hanging was a mistake--worse, a crime. It was my awakening to one of the most terrible facts of life--that justice and judgment lie often a world apart. I relate this incident of my formative years to illustrate the fact that the impressions of childhood often have more to do with character and future conduct than heredity or education. I tell it also to show that my development into an advocate of militancy was largely a sympathetic process. I have not personally suffered from the deprivations, the bitterness and sorrow which bring so many men and women to a realisation of social injustice. My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal. This vague feeling of mine began to shape itself into conviction about the time my brothers and I were sent to school. The education of the English boy, then as now, was considered a much more serious matter than the education of the English boy's sister. My parents, especially my father, discussed the question of my brothers' education as a matter of real importance. My education and that of my sister were scarcely discussed at all. Of course we went to a carefully selected girls' school, but beyond the facts that the head mistress was a gentlewoman and that all the pupils were girls of my own class, nobody seemed concerned. A girl's education at that time seemed to have for its prime object the art of "making home attractive"--presumably to migratory male relatives. It used to puzzle me to understand why I was under such a particular obligation to make home attractive to my brothers. We were on excellent terms of friendship, but it was never suggested to them as a duty that they make home attractive to me. Why not? Nobody seemed to know. The answer to these puzzling questions came to me unexpectedly one night when I lay in my little bed waiting for sleep to overtake me. It was a custom of my father and mother to make the round of our bedrooms every night before going themselves to bed. When they entered my room that night I was still awake, but for some reason I chose to feign slumber. My father bent over me, shielding the candle flame with his big hand. I cannot know exactly what thought was in his mind as he gazed down at me, but I heard him say, somewhat sadly, "What a pity she wasn't born a lad." My first hot impulse was to sit up in bed and protest that I didn't want to be a boy, but I lay still and heard my parents' footsteps pass on toward the next child's bed. I thought about my father's remark for many days afterward, but I think I never decided that I regretted my sex. However, it was made quite clear that men considered themselves superior to women, and that women apparently acquiesced in that belief. I found this view of things difficult to reconcile with the fact that both my father and my mother were advocates of equal suffrage. I was very young when the Reform Act of 1866 was passed, but I very well remember the agitation caused by certain circumstances attending it. This Reform Act, known as the Household Franchise Bill, marked the first popular extension of the ballot in England since 1832. Under its terms, householders paying a minimum of ten pounds a year rental were given the Parliamentary vote. While it was still under discussion in the House of Commons, John Stuart Mill moved an amendment to the bill to include women householders as well as men. The amendment was defeated, but in the act as passed the word "man," instead of the usual "male person," was used. Now, under another act of Parliament it had been decided that the word "man" always included "woman" unless otherwise specifically stated. For example, in certain acts containing rate-paying clauses, the masculine noun and pronoun are used throughout, but the provisions apply to women rate-payers as well as to men. So when the Reform Bill with the word "man" in it became law, many women believed that the right of suffrage had actually been bestowed upon them. A tremendous amount of discussion ensued, and the matter was finally tested by a large number of women seeking to have their names placed upon the register as voters. In my city of Manchester 3,924 women, out of a total of 4,215 possible women voters, claimed their votes, and their claim was defended in the law courts by eminent lawyers, including my future husband, Dr. Pankhurst. Of course the women's claim was settled adversely in the courts, but the agitation resulted in a strengthening of the woman-suffrage agitation all over the country. I was too young to understand the precise nature of the affair, but I shared in the general excitement. From reading newspapers aloud to my father I had developed a genuine interest in politics, and the Reform Bill presented itself to my young intelligence as something that was going to do the most wonderful good to the country. The first election after the bill became law was naturally a memorable occasion. It is chiefly memorable to me because it was the first one in which I ever participated. My sister and I had just been presented with new winter frocks, green in colour, and made alike, after the custom of proper British families. Every girl child in those days wore a red flannel petticoat, and when we first put on our new frocks I was struck with the fact that we were wearing red and green--the colours of the Liberal party. Since our father was a Liberal, of course the Liberal party ought to carry the election, and I conceived a brilliant scheme for helping its progress. With my small sister trotting after me, I walked the better part of a mile to the nearest polling-booth. It happened to be in a rather rough factory district, but we did not notice that. Arrived there, we two children picked up our green skirts to show our scarlet petticoats, and brimful of importance, walked up and down before the assembled crowds to encourage the Liberal vote. From this eminence we were shortly snatched by outraged authority in the form of a nursery-maid. I believe we were sent to bed into the bargain, but I am not entirely clear on this point. I was fourteen years old when I went to my first suffrage meeting. Returning from school one day, I met my mother just setting out for the meeting, and I begged her to let me go along. She consented, and without stopping to lay my books down I scampered away in my mother's wake. The speeches interested and excited me, especially the address of the great Miss Lydia Becker, who was the Susan B. Anthony of the English movement, a splendid character and a truly eloquent speaker. She was the secretary of the Manchester committee, and I had learned to admire her as the editor of the _Women's Suffrage Journal_, which came to my mother every week. I left the meeting a conscious and confirmed suffragist. I suppose I had always been an unconscious suffragist. With my temperament and my surroundings I could scarcely have been otherwise. The movement was very much alive in the early seventies, nowhere more so than in Manchester, where it was organised by a group of extraordinary men and women. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Bright, who were always ready to champion the struggling cause. Mr. Jacob Bright, a brother of John Bright, was for many years member of Parliament for Manchester, and to the day of his death was an active supporter of woman suffrage. Two especially gifted women, besides Miss Becker, were members of the committee. These were Mrs. Alice Cliff Scatcherd and Miss Wolstentholm, now the venerable Mrs. Wolstentholm-Elmy. One of the principal founders of the committee was the man whose wife, in later years, I was destined to become, Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst. When I was fifteen years old I went to Paris, where I was entered as a pupil in one of the pioneer institutions in Europe for the higher education of girls. This school, one of the founders of which was Madame Edmond Adam, who was and is still a distinguished literary figure, was situated in a fine old house in the Avenue de Neuilly. It was under the direction of Mlle. Marchef-Girard, a woman distinguished in education, and who afterward was appointed government inspector of schools in France. Mlle. Marchef-Girard believed that girls' education should be quite as thorough and even more practical than the education boys were receiving at that time. She included chemistry and other sciences in her courses, and in addition to embroidery she had her girls taught bookkeeping. Many other advanced ideas prevailed in this school, and the moral discipline which the pupils received was, to my mind, as valuable as the intellectual training. Mlle. Marchef-Girard held that women should be given the highest ideals of honour. Her pupils were kept to the strictest principles of truth-telling and candour. Myself she understood and greatly benefited by an implicit trust which I am sure I could not have betrayed, even had I felt for her less real affection. My roommate in this delightful school was an interesting young girl of my own age, Noemie Rochefort, daughter of that great Republican, Communist, journalist, and swordsman, Henri Rochefort. This was very shortly after the Franco-Prussian War, and memories of the Empire's fall and of the bloody and disastrous Commune were very keen in Paris. Indeed my roommate's illustrious father and many others were then in exile in New Caledonia for participation in the Commune. My friend Noemie was torn with anxiety for her father. She talked of him constantly, and many were the blood-curdling accounts of daring and of patriotism to which I listened. Henri Rochefort was, in fact, one of the moving spirits of the Republican movement in France, and after his amazing escape in an open boat from New Caledonia, he lived through many years of political adventures of the most lively and picturesque character. His daughter and I remained warm friends long after our school-days ended, and my association with her strengthened all the liberal ideas I had previously acquired. I was between eighteen and nineteen when I finally returned from school in Paris and took my place in my father's home as a finished young lady. I sympathised with and worked for the woman-suffrage movement, and came to know Dr. Pankhurst, whose work for woman suffrage had never ceased. It was Dr. Pankhurst who drafted the first enfranchisement bill, known as the Women's Disabilities Removal Bill, and introduced into the House of Commons in 1870 by Mr. Jacob Bright. The bill advanced to its second reading by a majority vote of thirty-three, but it was killed in committee by Mr. Gladstone's peremptory orders. Dr. Pankhurst, as I have already said, with another distinguished barrister, Lord Coleridge, acted as counsel for the Manchester women, who tried in 1868 to be placed on the register as voters. He also drafted the bill giving married women absolute control over their property and earnings, a bill which became law in 1882. My marriage with Dr. Pankhurst took place in 1879. I think we cannot be too grateful to the group of men and women who, like Dr. Pankhurst, in those early days lent the weight of their honoured names to the suffrage movement in the trials of its struggling youth. These men did not wait until the movement became popular, nor did they hesitate until it was plain that women were roused to the point of revolt. They worked all their lives with those who were organising, educating, and preparing for the revolt which was one day to come. Unquestionably those pioneer men suffered in popularity for their feminist views. Some of them suffered financially, some politically. Yet they never wavered. My married life lasted through nineteen happy years. Often I have heard the taunt that suffragists are women who have failed to find any normal outlet for their emotions, and are therefore soured and disappointed beings. This is probably not true of any suffragist, and it is most certainly not true of me. My home life and relations have been as nearly ideal as possible in this imperfect world. About a year after my marriage my daughter Christabel was born, and in another eighteen months my second daughter Sylvia came. Two other children followed, and for some years I was rather deeply immersed in my domestic affairs. I was never so absorbed with home and children, however, that I lost interest in community affairs. Dr. Pankhurst did not desire that I should turn myself into a household machine. It was his firm belief that society as well as the family stands in need of women's services. So while my children were still in their cradles I was serving on the executive committee of the Women's Suffrage Society, and also on the executive board of the committee which was working to secure the Married Women's Property Act. This act having passed in 1882, I threw myself into the suffrage work with renewed energy. A new Reform Act, known as the County Franchise Bill, extending the suffrage to farm labourers, was under discussion, and we believed that our years of educational propaganda work had prepared the country to support us in a demand for a women's suffrage amendment to the bill. For several years we had been holding the most splendid meetings in cities all over the kingdom. The crowds, the enthusiasm, the generous response to appeals for support, all these seemed to justify us in our belief that women's suffrage was near. In fact, in 1884, when the County Franchise Bill came before the country, we had an actual majority in favour of suffrage in the House of Commons. But a favourable majority in the House of Commons by no means insures the success of any measure. I shall explain this at length when I come to our work of opposing candidates who have avowed themselves suffragists, a course which has greatly puzzled our American friends. The Liberal party was in power in 1884, and a great memorial was sent to the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable William E. Gladstone, asking that a women's suffrage amendment to the County Franchise Bill be submitted to the free and unbiased consideration of the House. Mr. Gladstone curtly refused, declaring that if a women's suffrage amendment should be carried, the Government would disclaim responsibility for the bill. The amendment was submitted nevertheless, but Mr. Gladstone would not allow it to be freely discussed, and he ordered Liberal members to vote against it. What we call a whip was sent out against it, a note virtually commanding party members to be on hand at a certain hour to vote against the women's amendment. Undismayed, the women tried to have an independent suffrage bill introduced, but Mr. Gladstone so arranged Parliamentary business that the bill never even came up for discussion. I am not going to write a history of the woman suffrage movement in England prior to 1903, when the Women's Social and Political Union was organised. That history is full of repetitions of just such stories as the one I have related. Gladstone was an implacable foe of woman suffrage. He believed that women's work and politics lay in service to men's parties. One of the shrewdest acts of Mr. Gladstone's career was his disruption of the suffrage organisation in England. He accomplished this by substituting "something just as good," that something being Women's Liberal Associations. Beginning in 1881 in Bristol, these associations spread rapidly through the country and, in 1887, became a National Women's Liberal Federation. The promise of the Federation was that by allying themselves with men in party politics, women would soon earn the right to vote. The avidity with which the women swallowed this promise, left off working for themselves, and threw themselves into the men's work was amazing. The Women's Liberal Federation is an organisation of women who believe in the principles of the Liberal party. (The somewhat older Primrose League is a similar organisation of women who adhere to Conservative party principles.) Neither of these organisations have woman suffrage for their object. They came into existence to uphold party ideas and to work for the election of party candidates. I am told that women in America have recently allied themselves with political parties, believing, just as we did, that such action would break down opposition to suffrage by showing the men that women possess political ability, and that politics is work for women as well as men. Let them not be deceived. I can assure the American women that our long alliance with the great parties, our devotion to party programmes, our faithful work at elections, never advanced the suffrage cause one step. The men accepted the services of the women, but they never offered any kind of payment. As far as I am concerned, I did not delude myself with any false hopes in the matter. I was present when the Women's Liberal Federation came into existence. Mrs. Gladstone presided, offering the meeting many consolatory words for the absence of "our great leader," Mr. Gladstone, who of course had no time to waste on a gathering of women. At Mrs. Jacob Bright's request I joined the Federation. At this stage of my development I was a member of the Fabian Society, and I had considerable faith in the permeating powers of its mild socialism. But I was already fairly convinced of the futility of trusting to political parties. Even as a child I had begun to wonder at the _naïve_ faith of party members in the promises of their leaders. I well remember my father returning home from political meetings, his face aglow with enthusiasm. "What happened, father?" I would ask, and he would reply triumphantly, "Ah! We passed the resolution." "Then you'll get your measure through the next session," I predicted. "I won't say that," was the usual reply. "Things don't always move as quickly as that. But we passed the resolution." Well, the suffragists, when they were admitted into the Women's Liberal Federation must have felt that they had passed their resolution. They settled down to work for the party and to prove that they were as capable of voting as the recently enfranchised farm labourers. Of course a few women remained loyal to suffrage. They began again on the old educational lines to work for the cause. Not one woman took counsel with herself as to how and why the agricultural labourers had won their franchise. They had won it, as a matter of fact, by burning hay-ricks, rioting, and otherwise demonstrating their strength in the only way that English politicians can understand. The threat to march a hundred thousand men to the House of Commons unless the bill was passed played its part also in securing the agricultural labourer his political freedom. But no woman suffragist noticed that. As for myself, I was too young politically to learn the lesson then. I had to go through years of public work before I acquired the experience and the wisdom to know how to wring concessions from the English Government. I had to hold public office. I had to go behind the scenes in the government schools, in the workhouses and other charitable institutions; I had to get a close-hand view of the misery and unhappiness of a man-made world, before I reached the point where I could successfully revolt against it. It was almost immediately after the collapse of the woman suffrage movement in 1884 that I entered upon this new phase of my career. CHAPTER II In 1885, a year after the failure of the third women's suffrage bill, my husband, Dr. Pankhurst, stood as the Liberal candidate for Parliament in Rotherline, a riverside constituency of London. I went through the campaign with him, speaking and canvassing to the best of my ability. Dr. Pankhurst was a popular candidate, and unquestionably would have been returned but for the opposition of the Home-Rulers. Parnell was in command, and his settled policy was opposition to all Government candidates. So, in spite of the fact that Dr. Pankhurst was a staunch upholder of home rule, the Parnell forces were solidly opposed to him, and he was defeated. I remember expressing considerable indignation, but my husband pointed out to me that Parnell's policy was absolutely right. With his small party he could never hope to win home rule from a hostile majority, but by constant obstruction he could in time wear out the Government, and force it to surrender. That was a valuable political lesson, one that years later I was destined to put into practice. The following year found us living in London, and, as usual, interesting ourselves with labour matters and other social movements. This year was memorable for a great strike of women working in the Bryant and May match factories. I threw myself into this strike with enthusiasm, working with the girls and with some women of prominence, among these the celebrated Mrs. Annie Besant. The strike was a successful one, the girls winning substantial improvements in their working conditions. It was a time of tremendous unrest, of labour agitations, of strikes and lockouts. It was a time also when a most stupid reactionary spirit seemed to take possession of the Government and the authorities. The Salvation Army, the Socialists, the trade-unionists--in fact, all bodies holding outdoor meetings--were made special objects of attack. As a protest against this policy a Law and Liberty League was formed in London, and an immense Free Speech meeting was held in Trafalgar Square, John Burns and Cunningham Graham being the principal speakers. I was present at this meeting, which resulted in a bloody riot between the police and the populace. The Trafalgar Square Riot is historic, and to it Mr. John Burns owes, in large part, his subsequent rise to political eminence. Both John Burns and Cunningham Graham served prison sentences for the part they played in the riot, but they gained fame, and they did much to establish the right of free speech for English men. English women are still contending for that right. In 1890 my last child was born in London. I now had a family of five young children, and for a time I was less active in public work. On the retirement of Mrs. Annie Besant from the London School Board I had been asked to stand as candidate for the vacancy, but although I should have enjoyed the work, I decided not to accept this invitation. The next year, however, a new suffrage association, the Women's Franchise League, was formed, and I felt it my duty to become affiliated with it The League was preparing a new suffrage bill, the provisions of which I could not possibly approve, and I joined with old friends, among whom were Mrs. Jacob Bright, Mrs. Wolstentholm-Elmy, who was a member of the London School Board, and Mrs. Stanton Blatch, then resident in England, in an effort to substitute the original bill drafted by Dr. Pankhurst. As a matter of fact, neither of the bills was introduced into Parliament that year. Mr. (now Lord) Haldane, who had the measure in charge, introduced one of his own drafting. It was a truly startling bill, royally inclusive in its terms. It not only enfranchised all women, married and unmarried, of the householding classes, but it made them eligible to all offices under the Crown. The bill was never taken seriously by the Government, and indeed it was never intended that it should be, as we were later made to understand. I remember going with Mrs. Stanton Blatch to the law courts to see Mr. Haldane, and to protest against the introduction of a measure that had not the remotest chance of passing. "All, that bill," said Haldane, "is for the future." All their woman suffrage bills are intended for the future, a future so remote as to be imperceptible. We were beginning to understand this even in 1891. However, as long as there was a bill, we determined to support it. Accordingly, we canvassed the members, distributed a great deal of literature, and organised and addressed meetings. We not only made speeches ourselves, but we induced friendly members of Parliament to go on our platforms. One of these meetings, held in an East End Radical club, was addressed by Mr. Haldane and a young man who accompanied him. This young man, Sir Edward Grey, then in the beginning of his career, made an eloquent plea for woman's suffrage. That Sir Edward Grey should, later in life, become a bitter foe of woman's suffrage need astonish no one. I have known many young Englishmen who began their political life as suffrage speakers and who later became anti-suffragists or traitorous "friends" of the cause. These young and aspiring statesmen have to attract attention in some fashion, and the espousal of advanced causes, such as labour or women's suffrage, seems an easy way to accomplish that end. Well, our speeches and our agitation did nothing at all to assist Mr. Haldane's impossible bill. It never advanced beyond the first reading. Our London residence came to an end in 1893. In that year we returned to our Manchester home, and I again took up the work of the Suffrage Society. At my suggestion the members began to organise their first out-of-door meetings, and we continued these until we succeeded in working up a great meeting that filled Free Trade Hall, and overflowed into and crowded a smaller hall near at hand. This marked the beginning of a campaign of propaganda among working people, an object which I had long desired to bring about. And now began a new and, as I look back on it, an absorbingly interesting stage of my career. I have told how our leaders in the Liberal Party had advised the women to prove their fitness for the Parliamentary franchise by serving in municipal offices, especially the unsalaried offices. A large number of women had availed themselves of this advice, and were serving on Boards of Guardians, on school boards, and in other capacities. My children now being old enough for me to leave them with competent nurses, I was free to join these ranks. A year after my return to Manchester I became a candidate for the Board of Poor Law Guardians. Several weeks before, I had contested unsuccessfully for a place on the school board. This time, however, I was elected, heading the poll by a very large majority. For the benefit of American readers I shall explain something of the operation of our English Poor Law. The duty of the law is to administer an act of Queen Elizabeth, one of the greatest reforms effected by that wise and humane monarch. When Elizabeth came to the throne she found England, the Merrie England of contemporary poets, in a state of appalling poverty. Hordes of people were literally starving to death, in wretched hovels, in the streets, and at the very gates of the palace. The cause of all this misery was the religious reformation under Henry VIII, and the secession from Rome of the English Church. King Henry, it is known, seized all the Church lands, the abbeys and the convents, and gave them as rewards to those nobles and favourites who had supported his policies. But in taking over the Church's property the Protestant nobles by no means assumed the Church's ancient responsibilities of lodging wayfarers, giving alms, nursing the sick, educating youths, and caring for the young and the superannuated. When the monks and the nuns were turned out of their convents these duties devolved on no one. The result, after the brief reign of Edward VI and the bloody one of Queen Mary, was the social anarchy inherited by Elizabeth. This great queen and great woman, perceiving that the responsibility for the poor and the helpless rightfully rests on the community, caused an act to be passed creating in the parishes public bodies to deal with local conditions of poverty. The Board of Poor Law Guardians disburses for the poor the money coming from the Poor Rates (taxes), and some additional moneys allowed by the local government board, the president of which is a cabinet minister. Mr. John Burns is the present incumbent of the office. The Board of Guardians has control of the institution we call the workhouse. You have, I believe, almshouses, or poorhouses, but they are not quite so extensive as our workhouses, which are all kinds of institutions in one. We had, in my workhouse, a hospital with nine hundred beds, a school with several hundred children, a farm, and many workshops. When I came into office I found that the law in our district, Chorlton, was being very harshly administered. The old board had been made up of the kind of men who are known as rate savers. They were guardians, not of the poor but of the rates, and, as I soon discovered, not very astute guardians even of money. For instance, although the inmates were being very poorly fed, a frightful waste of food was apparent. Each inmate was given each day a certain weight of food, and bread formed so much of the ration that hardly anyone consumed all of his portion. In the farm department pigs were kept on purpose to consume this surplus of bread, and as pigs do not thrive on a solid diet of stale bread the animals fetched in the market a much lower price than properly fed farm pigs. I suggested that, instead of giving a solid weight of bread in one lump, the loaf be cut in slices and buttered with margarine, each person being allowed all that he cared to eat. The rest of the board objected, saying that our poor charges were very jealous of their rights, and would suspect in such an innovation an attempt to deprive them of a part of their ration. This was easily overcome by the suggestion that we consult the inmates before we made the change. Of course the poor people consented, and with the bread that we saved we made puddings with milk and currants, to be fed to the old people of the workhouse. These old folks I found sitting on backless forms, or benches. They had no privacy, no possessions, not even a locker. The old women were without pockets in their gowns, so they were obliged to keep any poor little treasures they had in their bosoms. Soon after I took office we gave the old people comfortable Windsor chairs to sit in, and in a number of ways we managed to make their existence more endurable. These, after all, were minor benefits. But it does gratify me when I look back and remember what we were able to do for the children of the Manchester workhouse. The first time I went into the place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors. These little girls were clad, summer and winter, in thin cotton frocks, low in the neck and short sleeved. At night they wore nothing at all, night dresses being considered too good for paupers. The fact that bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time had not suggested to the guardians any change in the fashion of their clothes. There was a school for the children, but the teaching was of the poorest order. They were forlorn enough, these poor innocents, when I first met them. In five years' time we had changed the face of the earth for them. We had bought land in the country and had built a cottage system home for the children, and we had established for them a modern school with trained teachers. We had even secured for them a gymnasium and a swimming-bath. I may say that I was on the building committee of the board, the only woman member. Whatever may be urged against the English Poor Law system, I maintain that under it no stigma of pauperism need be applied to workhouse children. If they are treated like paupers of course they will be paupers, and they will grow up paupers, permanent burdens on society; but if they are regarded merely as children under the guardianship of the state, they assume quite another character. Rich children are not pauperized by being sent to one or another of the free public schools with which England is blest. Yet a great many of those schools, now exclusively used for the education of upper middle-class boys, were founded by legacies left to educate the poor--girls as well as boys. The English Poor Law, properly administered, ought to give back to the children of the destitute what the upper classes have taken from them, a good education on a self-respecting basis. The trouble is, as I soon perceived after taking office, the law cannot, in existing circumstances, do all the work, even for children, that it was intended to do. We shall have to have new laws, and it soon became apparent to me that we can never hope to get them until women have the vote. During the time I served on the board, and for years since then, women guardians all over the country have striven in vain to have the law reformed in order to ameliorate conditions which break the hearts of women to see, but which apparently affect men very little. I have spoken of the little girls I found scrubbing the workhouse floors. There were others at the hateful labour who aroused my keenest pity. I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world. Many of them were unmarried women, very, very young, mere girls. These poor mothers were allowed to stay in the hospital after confinement for a short two weeks. Then they had to make a choice of staying in the workhouse and earning their living by scrubbing and other work, in which case they were separated from their babies; or of taking their discharges. They could stay and be paupers, or they could leave--leave with a two-weeks-old baby in their arms, without hope, without home, without money, without anywhere to go. What became of those girls, and what became of their hapless infants? That question was at the basis of the women guardians' demand for a reform of one part of the Poor Law. That section deals with the little children who are boarded out, not by the workhouse, but by the parents, that parent being almost always the mother. It is from that class of workhouse mothers--mostly young servant girls--which thoughtless people say all working girls ought to be; it is from that class more than from any other that cases of illegitimacy come. Those poor little servant girls, who can get out perhaps only in the evening, whose minds are not very cultivated, and who find all the sentiment of their lives in cheap novelettes, fall an easy prey to those who have designs against them. These are the people by whom the babies are mostly put out to nurse, and the mothers have to pay for their keep. Of course the babies are very badly protected. The Poor Law Guardians are supposed to protect them by appointing inspectors to visit the homes where the babies are boarded. But, under the law, if a man who ruins a girl pays down a lump sum of twenty pounds, less than a hundred dollars, the boarding home is immune from inspection. As long as a baby-farmer takes only one child at a time, the twenty pounds being paid, the inspectors cannot inspect the house. Of course the babies die with hideous promptness, often long before the twenty pounds have been spent, and then the baby-farmers are free to solicit another victim. For years, as I have said, women have tried in vain to get that one small reform of the Poor Law, to reach and protect all illegitimate children, and to make it impossible for any rich scoundrel to escape future liability for his child because of the lump sum he has paid down. Over and over again it has been tried, but it has always failed, because the ones who really care about the thing are mere women. I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity. These poor, unprotected mothers and their babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant. In fact, all the women I came in contact with in the workhouse contributed to that education. Very soon after I went on the board I saw that the class of old women who came into the workhouse were in many ways superior to the kind of old men who came into the workhouse. One could not help noticing it. They were, to begin with, more industrious. In fact, it was quite touching to see their industry and patience. Old women, over sixty and seventy years of age, did most of the work of that place, most of the sewing, most of the things that kept the house clean and which supplied the inmates with clothing. I found that the old men were different. One could not get very much work out of them. They liked to stop in the oakum picking-room, where they were allowed to smoke; but as to real work, very little was done by our old men. I began to make inquiries about these old women. I found that the majority of them were not women who had been dissolute, who had been criminal, but women who had lead perfectly respectable lives, either as wives and mothers, or as single women earning their own living. A great many were of the domestic-servant class, who had not married, who had lost their employment, and had reached a time of life when it was impossible to get more employment. It was through no fault of their own, but simply because they had never earned enough to save. The average wage of working women in England is less than two dollars a week. On this pittance it is difficult enough to keep alive, and of course it is impossible to save. Every one who knows anything about conditions under which our working women live knows that few of them can ever hope to put by enough to keep them in old age. Besides, the average working woman has to support others than herself. How can she save? Some of our old women were married. Many of them, I found, were widows of skilled artisans who had had pensions from their unions, but the pensions had died with the men. These women, who had given up the power to work for themselves, and had devoted themselves to working for their husbands and children, were left penniless. There was nothing for them to do but to go into the workhouse. Many of them were widows of men who had served their country in the army or the navy. The men had had pensions from the government, but the pensions had died with them, and so the women were in the workhouse. We shall not in future, I hope, find so many respectable old women in English workhouses. We have an old-age pension law now, which allows old women as well as old men the sum of five shillings--$1.20--a week; hardly enough to live on, but enough to enable the poor to keep their old fathers and mothers out of the workhouse without starving themselves or their children. But when I was a Poor Law Guardian there was simply nothing to do with a woman when her life of toil ceased except make a pauper of her. I wish I had space to tell you of other tragedies of women I witnessed while I was on that board. In our out-relief department, which exists chiefly for able-bodied poor and dependent persons, I was brought into contact with widows who were struggling desperately to keep their homes and families together. The law allowed these women relief of a certain very inadequate kind, but for herself and one child it offered no relief except the workhouse. Even if the woman had a baby at her breast she was regarded, under the law, as an able-bodied man. Women, we are told, should stay at home and take care of their children. I used to astound my men colleagues by saying to them: "When women have the vote they will see that mothers _can_ stay at home and care for their children. You men have made it impossible for these mothers to do that." I am convinced that the enfranchised woman will find many ways in which to lessen, at least, the curse of poverty. Women have more practical ideas about relief, and especially of prevention of dire poverty, than men display. I was struck with this whenever I attended the District Conferences and the annual Poor Law Union Meetings. In our discussions the women showed themselves much more capable, much more resourceful, than the men. I remember two papers which I prepared and which caused considerable discussion. One of these was on the Duties of Guardians in Times of Unemployment, in which I pointed out that the government had one reserve of employment for men which could always be used. We have, on our northwest coast, a constant washing away of the fore shore. Every once in a while the question of coast reclamation comes up for discussion, but I had never heard any man suggest coast reclamation as a means of giving the unemployed relief. In 1898 I suffered an irreparable loss in the death of my husband. His death occurred suddenly and left me with the heavy responsibility of caring for a family of children, the eldest only seventeen years of age. I resigned my place on the Board of Guardians, and was almost immediately appointed to the salaried office of Registrar of Births and Deaths in Manchester. We have registrars of births, deaths and marriages in England, but since the act establishing the last named contains the words "male person," a woman may not be appointed a registrar of marriages. The head of this department of the government is the registrar-general, with offices at Somerset House, London, where all vital statistics are returned and all records filed. It was my duty as registrar of births and deaths to act as chief census officer of my district; I was obliged to receive all returns of births and deaths, record them, and send my books quarterly to the office of the registrar-general. My district was in a working-class quarter, and on this account I instituted evening office hours twice a week. It was touching to observe how glad the women were to have a woman registrar to go to. They used to tell me their stories, dreadful stories some of them, and all of them pathetic with that patient and uncomplaining pathos of poverty. Even after my experience on the Board of Guardians, I was shocked to be reminded over and over again of the little respect there was in the world for women and children. I have had little girls of thirteen come to my office to register the births of their babies, illegitimate, of course. In many of these cases I found that the child's own father or some near male relative was responsible for her state. There was nothing that could be done in most cases. The age of consent in England is sixteen years, but a man can always claim that he thought the girl was over sixteen. During my term of office a very young mother of an illegitimate child exposed her baby, and it died. The girl was tried for murder and was sentenced to death. This was afterwards commuted, it is true, but the unhappy child had the horrible experience of the trial and the sentence "to be hanged by the neck, until you are dead." The wretch who was, from the point of view of justice, the real murderer of the baby, received no punishment at all. I needed only one more experience after this one, only one more contact with the life of my time and the position of women, to convince me that if civilisation is to advance at all in the future, it must be through the help of women, women freed of their political shackles, women with full power to work their will in society. In 1900 I was asked to stand as a candidate for the Manchester School Board. The schools were then under the old law, and the school boards were very active bodies. They administered the Elementary Education Act, bought school sites, erected buildings, employed and paid teachers. The school code and the curriculum were framed by the Board of Education, which is part of the central government. Of course this was absurd. A body of men in London could not possibly realise all the needs of boys and girls in remote parts of England. But so it was. As a member of the school board I very soon found that the teachers, working people of the higher grade, were in exactly the same position as the working people of the lower grades. That is, the men had all the advantage. Teachers had a representative in the school board councils. Of course that representative was a man teacher, and equally of course, he gave preference to the interests of the men teachers. Men teachers received much higher salaries than the women, although many of the women, in addition to their regular class work, had to teach sewing and domestic science into the bargain. They received no extra pay for their extra work. In spite of this added burden, and in spite of the lower salaries received, I found that the women cared a great deal more about their work, and a great deal more about the children than the men. It was a winter when there was a great deal of poverty and unemployment in Manchester. I found that the women teachers were spending their slender salaries to provide regular dinners for destitute children, and were giving up their time to waiting on them and seeing that they were nourished. They said to me, quite simply: "You see, the little things are too badly off to study their lessons. We have to feed them before we can teach them." Well, instead of seeing that women care more for schools and school children than men do and should therefore have more power in education, the Parliament of 1900 actually passed a law which took education in England entirely out of the hands of women. This law abolished the school board altogether and placed the administration of schools in the hands of the municipalities. Certain corporations had formerly made certain grants to technical education--Manchester had built a magnificent technical college--and now the corporations had full control of both elementary and secondary education. The law did indeed provide that the corporations should co-opt at least one woman on their education boards. Manchester co-opted four women, and at the strong recommendation of the Labour Party, I was one of the women chosen. At their urgent solicitation I was appointed to the Committee on Technical Instruction, the one woman admitted to this committee. I learned that the Manchester Technical College, called the second best in Europe, spending thousands of pounds annually for technical training, had practically no provision for training women. Even in classes where they might easily have been admitted, bakery and confectionery classes and the like, the girls were kept out because the men's trades unions objected to their being educated for such skilled work. It was rapidly becoming clear to my mind that men regarded women as a servant class in the community, and that women were going to remain in the servant class until they lifted themselves out of it. I asked myself many times in those days what was to be done. I had joined the Labour Party, thinking that through its councils something vital might come, some such demand for the women's enfranchisement that the politicians could not possibly ignore. Nothing came. All these years my daughters had been growing up. All their lives they had been interested in women's suffrage. Christabel and Sylvia, as little girls, had cried to be taken to meetings. They had helped in our drawing-room meetings in every way that children can help. As they grew older we used to talk together about the suffrage, and I was sometimes rather frightened by their youthful confidence in the prospect, which they considered certain, of the success of the movement. One day Christabel startled me with the remark: "How long you women have been trying for the vote. For my part, I mean to get it." Was there, I reflected, any difference between trying for the vote and getting it? There is an old French proverb, "If youth could know; if age could do." It occurred to me that if the older suffrage workers could in some way join hands with the young, unwearied and resourceful suffragists, the movement might wake up to new life and new possibilities. After that I and my daughters together sought a way to bring about that union of young and old which would find new methods, blaze new trails. At length we thought we had found a way. CHAPTER III In the summer of 1902--I think it was 1902--Susan B. Anthony paid a visit to Manchester, and that visit was one of the contributory causes that led to the founding of our militant suffrage organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union. During Miss Anthony's visit my daughter Christabel, who was very deeply impressed, wrote an article for the Manchester papers on the life and works of the venerable reformer. After her departure Christabel spoke often of her, and always with sorrow and indignation that such a splendid worker for humanity was destined to die without seeing the hopes of her lifetime realised. "It is unendurable," declared my daughter, "to think of another generation of women wasting their lives begging for the vote. We must not lose any more time. We must act." By this time the Labour Party, of which I was still a member, had returned Mr. Keir Hardie to Parliament, and we decided that the first step in a campaign of action was to make the Labour Party responsible for a new suffrage bill. At a recent annual conference of the party I had moved a resolution calling upon the members to instruct their own member of Parliament to introduce a bill for the enfranchisement of women. The resolution was passed, and we determined to organise a society of women to demand immediate enfranchisement, not by means of any outworn missionary methods, but through political action. It was in October, 1903, that I invited a number of women to my house in Nelson street, Manchester, for purposes of organisation. We voted to call our new society the Women's Social and Political Union, partly to emphasise its democracy, and partly to define its object as political rather than propagandist. We resolved to limit our membership exclusively to women, to keep ourselves absolutely free from any party affiliation, and to be satisfied with nothing but action on our question. Deeds, not words, was to be our permanent motto. To such a pass had the women's suffrage cause come in my country that the old leaders, who had done such fine educational work in the past, were now seemingly content with expressions of sympathy and regret on the part of hypocritical politicians. This fact was thrust upon me anew by an incident that occurred almost at the moment of the founding of the Women's Social and Political Union. In our Parliament no bill has a chance of becoming a law unless it is made a Government measure. Private members are at liberty to introduce measures of their own, but these rarely reach the second reading, or debatable stage. So much time is given to discussion of Government measures that very little time can be given to any private bills. About one day in a week is given over to consideration of private measures, to which, as we say, the Government give facilities; and since there are a limited number of weeks in a session, the members, on the opening days of Parliament, meet and draw lots to determine who shall have a place in the debates. Only these successful men have a chance to speak to their bills, and only those who have drawn early chances have any prospect of getting much discussion on their measures. Now, the old suffragists had long since given up hope of obtaining a Government suffrage bill, but they clung to a hope that a private member's bill would some time obtain consideration. Every year, on the opening day of Parliament, the association sent a deputation of women to the House of Commons, to meet so-called friendly members and consider the position of the women's suffrage cause. The ceremony was of a most conventional, not to say farcical character. The ladies made their speeches and the members made theirs. The ladies thanked the friendly members for their sympathy, and the members renewed their assurances that they believed in women's suffrage and would vote for it when they had an opportunity to do so. Then the deputation, a trifle sad but entirely tranquil, took its departure, and the members resumed the real business of life, which was support of their party's policies. Such a ceremony as this I attended soon after the founding of the W. S. P. U. Sir Charles M'Laren was the friendly member who presided over the gathering, and he did his full duty in the matter of formally endorsing the cause of women's suffrage. He assured the delegation of his deep regret, as well as the regret of numbers of his colleagues, that women so intelligent, so devoted, etc., should remain unenfranchised. Other members did likewise. The ceremonies drew to a close, but I, who had not been asked to speak, determined to add something to the occasion. "Sir Charles M'Laren," I began abruptly, "has told us that numbers of his colleagues desire the success of the women's suffrage cause. Now every one of us knows that at this moment the members of the House of Commons are balloting for a place in the debates. Will Sir Charles M'Laren tell us if any member is preparing to introduce a bill for women's suffrage? Will he tell us what he and the other members will pledge themselves to _do_ for the reform they so warmly endorse?" Of course, the embarrassed Sir Charles was not prepared to tell us anything of the kind, and the deputation departed in confusion and wrath. I was told that I was an interloper, an impertinent intruder. Who asked me to say anything? And what right had I to step in and ruin the good impression they had made? No one could tell how many friendly members I had alienated by my unfortunate remarks. I went back to Manchester and with renewed energy continued the work of organising for the W. S. P. U. In the spring of 1904 I went to the annual conference of the Independent Labour Party, determined if possible to induce the members to prepare a suffrage bill to be laid before Parliament in the approaching session. Although I was a member of the National Administrative Council and presumably a person holding some influence in the party, I knew that my plan would be bitterly opposed by a strong minority, who held that the Labour Party should direct all its efforts toward securing universal adult suffrage for both men and women. Theoretically, of course, a Labour party could not be satisfied with anything less than universal adult suffrage, but it was clear that no such sweeping reform could be effected at that time, unless indeed the Government made it one of their measures. Besides, while a large majority of members of the House of Commons were pledged to support a bill giving women equal franchise rights with men, it was doubtful whether a majority could be relied upon to support a bill giving adult suffrage, even to men. Such a bill, even if it were a Government measure, would probably be difficult of passage. After considerable discussion, the National Council decided to adopt the original Women's Enfranchisement Bill, drafted by Dr. Pankhurst, and advanced in 1870 to its second reading in the House of Commons. The Council's decision was approved by an overwhelming majority of the conference. The new session of Parliament, so eagerly looked forward to, met on February 13, 1905. I went down from Manchester, and with my daughter Sylvia, then a student at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington, spent eight days in the Strangers' Lobby of the House of Commons, working for the suffrage bill. We interviewed every one of the members who had pledged themselves to support a suffrage bill when it should be introduced, but we found not one single member who would agree that his chance in the ballot, if he drew such a chance, should be given to introducing the bill. Every man had some other measure he was anxious to further. Mr. Keir Hardie had previously given us his pledge, but his name, as we had feared, was not drawn in the ballot. We next set out to interview all the men whose names had been drawn, and we finally induced Mr. Bamford Slack, who held the fourteenth place, to introduce our bill. The fourteenth place was not a good one, but it served, and the second reading of our bill was set down for Friday, May 12th, the second order of the day. This being the first suffrage bill in eight years, a thrill of excitement animated not only our ranks but all the old suffrage societies. Meetings were held, and a large number of petitions circulated. When the day came for consideration on our bill, the Strangers' Lobby could not hold the enormous gathering of women of all classes, rich and poor, who flocked to the House of Commons. It was pitiful to see the look of hope and joy that shone on the faces of many of these women. We knew that our poor little measure had the very slightest chance of being passed. The bill that occupied the first order of the day was one providing that carts travelling along public roads at night should carry a light behind as well as before. We had tried to induce the promoters of this unimportant little measure to withdraw it in the interests of our bill, but they refused. We had tried also to persuade the Conservative Government to give our bill facilities for full discussion, but they also refused. So, as we fully anticipated, the promoters of the Roadway Lighting Bill were allowed to "talk out" our bill. They did this by spinning out the debate with silly stories and foolish jokes. The members listened to the insulting performance with laughter and applause. When news of what was happening reached the women who waited in the Strangers' Lobby, a feeling of wild excitement and indignation took possession of the throng. Seeing their temper, I felt that the moment had come for a demonstration such as no old-fashioned suffragist had ever attempted. I called upon the women to follow me outside for a meeting of protest against the government. We swarmed out into the open, and Mrs. Wolstenholm-Elmy, one of the oldest suffrage workers in England, began to speak. Instantly the police rushed into the crowd of women, pushing them about and ordering them to disperse. We moved on as far as the great statue of Richard Coeur de Lion that guards the entrance to the House of Lords, but again the police intervened. Finally the police agreed to let us hold a meeting in Broad Sanctuary, very near the gates of Westminster Abbey. Here we made speeches and adopted a resolution condemning the Government's action in allowing a small minority to talk out our bill. This was the first militant act of the W. S. P. U. It caused comment and even some alarm, but the police contented themselves with taking our names. The ensuing summer was spent in outdoor work. By this time the Women's Social and Political Union had acquired some valuable accessions, and money began to come to us. Among our new members was one who was destined to play an important rôle in the unfolding drama of the militant movement. At the close of one of our meetings at Oldham a young girl introduced herself to me as Annie Kenney, a mill-worker, and a strong suffrage sympathiser. She wanted to know more of our society and its objects, and I invited her and her sister Jenny, a Board School teacher, to tea the next day. They came and joined our Union, a step that definitely changed the whole course of Miss Kenney's life, and gave us one of our most distinguished leaders and organisers. With her help we began to carry our propaganda to an entirely new public. In Lancashire there is an institution known as the Wakes, a sort of travelling fair where they have merry-go-rounds, Aunt-Sallies, and other festive games, side-shows of various kinds, and booths where all kinds of things are sold. Every little village has its Wakes-week during the summer and autumn, and it is the custom for the inhabitants of the villages to spend the Sunday before the opening of the Wakes walking among the booths in anticipation of tomorrow's joys. On these occasions the Salvation Army, temperance orators, venders of quack medicines, pedlars, and others, take advantage of the ready-made audience to advance their propaganda. At Annie Kenney's suggestion we went from one village to the other, following the Wakes and making suffrage speeches. We soon rivalled in popularity the Salvation Army, and even the tooth-drawers and patent-medicine pedlars. The Women's Social and Political Union had been in existence two years before any opportunity was presented for work on a national scale. The autumn of 1905 brought a political situation which seemed to us to promise bright hopes for women's enfranchisement. The life of the old Parliament, dominated for nearly twenty years by the Conservative Party, was drawing to an end, and the country was on the eve of a general election in which the Liberals hoped to be returned to power. Quite naturally the Liberal candidates went to the country with perfervid promises of reform in every possible direction. They appealed to the voters to return them, as advocates and upholders of true democracy, and they promised that there should be a Government united in favour of people's rights against the powers of a privileged aristocracy. Now repeated experiences had taught us that the only way to attain women's suffrage was to commit a Government to it. In other words, pledges of support from candidates were plainly useless. They were not worth having. The only object worth trying for was pledges from responsible leaders that the new Government would make women's suffrage a part of the official programme. We determined to address ourselves to those men who were likely to be in the Liberal Cabinet, demanding to know whether their reforms were going to include justice to women. We laid our plans to begin this work at a great meeting to be held in Free Trade Hall, Manchester, with Sir Edward Grey as the principal speaker. We intended to get seats in the gallery, directly facing the platform and we made for the occasion a large banner with the words: "Will the Liberal Party Give Votes for Women?" We were to let this banner down over the gallery rails at the moment when our speaker rose to put the question to Sir Edward Grey. At the last moment, however, we had to alter the plan because it was impossible to get the gallery seats we wanted. There was no way in which we could use our large banner, so, late in the afternoon on the day of the meeting, we cut out and made a small banner with the three-word inscription: "Votes for Women." Thus, quite accidentally, there came into existence the present slogan of the suffrage movement around the world. Annie Kenney and my daughter Christabel were charged with the mission of questioning Sir Edward Grey. They sat quietly through the meeting, at the close of which questions were invited. Several questions were asked by men and were courteously answered. Then Annie Kenney arose and asked: "If the Liberal party is returned to power, will they take steps to give votes for women?" At the same time Christabel held aloft the little banner that every one in the hall might understand the nature of the question. Sir Edward Grey returned no answer to Annie's question, and the men sitting near her forced her rudely into her seat, while a steward of the meeting pressed his hat over her face. A babel of shouts, cries and catcalls sounded from all over the hall. As soon as order was restored Christabel stood up and repeated the question: "Will the Liberal Government, if returned, give votes to women?" Again Sir Edward Grey ignored the question, and again a perfect tumult of shouts and angry cries arose. Mr. William Peacock, chief constable of Manchester, left the platform and came down to the women, asking them to write their question, which he promised to hand to the speaker. They wrote: "Will the Liberal Government give votes to working-women? Signed, on behalf of the Women's Social and Political Union, Annie Kenney, member of the Oldham committee of the card-and blowing-room operatives." They added a line to say that, as one of 96,000 organised women textile-workers, Annie Kenney earnestly desired an answer to the question. Mr. Peacock kept his word and handed the question to Sir Edward Grey, who read it, smiled, and passed it to the others on the platform. They also read it with smiles, but no answer to the question was made. Only one lady who was sitting on the platform tried to say something, but the chairman interrupted by asking Lord Durham to move a vote of thanks to the speaker. Mr. Winston Churchill seconded the motion, Sir Edward Grey replied briefly, and the meeting began to break up. Annie Kenney stood up in her chair and cried out over the noise of shuffling feet and murmurs of conversation: "Will the Liberal Government give votes to women?" Then the audience became a mob. They howled, they shouted and roared, shaking their fists fiercely at the woman who dared to intrude her question into a man's meeting. Hands were lifted to drag her out of her chair, but Christabel threw one arm about her as she stood, and with the other arm warded off the mob, who struck and scratched at her until her sleeve was red with blood. Still the girls held together and shouted over and over: "The question! The question! Answer the question!" Six men, stewards of the meeting, seized Christabel and dragged her down the aisle, past the platform, other men following with Annie Kenney, both girls still calling for an answer to their question. On the platform the Liberal leaders sat silent and unmoved while this disgraceful scene was taking place, and the mob were shouting and shrieking from the floor. Flung into the streets, the two girls staggered to their feet and began to address the crowds, and to tell them what had taken place in a Liberal meeting. Within five minutes they were arrested on a charge of obstruction and, in Christabel's case, of assaulting the police. Both were summonsed to appear next morning in a police court, where, after a trial which was a mere farce, Annie Kenney was sentenced to pay a fine of five shillings, with an alternative of three days in prison, and Christabel Pankhurst was given a fine of ten shillings or a jail sentence of one week. Both girls promptly chose the prison sentence. As soon as they left the court-room I hurried around to the room where they were waiting, and I said to my daughter: "You have done everything you could be expected to do in this matter. I think you should let me pay your fines and take you home." Without waiting for Annie Kenney to speak, my daughter exclaimed: "Mother, if you pay my fine I will never go home." Before going to the meeting she had said, "We will get our question answered or sleep in prison to-night." I now knew her courage remained unshaken. Of course the affair created a tremendous sensation, not only in Manchester, where my husband had been so well known and where I had so long held public office, but all over England. The comments of the press were almost unanimously bitter. Ignoring the perfectly well-established fact that men in every political meeting ask questions and demand answers of the speakers, the newspapers treated the action of the two girls as something quite unprecedented and outrageous. They generally agreed that great leniency had been shown them. Fines and jail-sentences were too good for such unsexed creatures. "The discipline of the nursery" would have been far more appropriate. One Birmingham paper declared that "if any argument were required against giving ladies political status and power it had been furnished in Manchester." Newspapers which had heretofore ignored the whole subject now hinted that while they had formerly been in favour of women's suffrage, they could no longer countenance it. The Manchester incident, it was said, had set the cause back, perhaps irrevocably. This is how it set the cause back. Scores of people wrote to the newspapers expressing sympathy with the women. The wife of Sir Edward Grey told her friends that she considered them quite justified in the means they had taken. It was stated that Winston Churchill, nervous about his own candidacy in Manchester, visited Strangeways Gaol, where the two girls were imprisoned, and vainly begged the governor to allow him to pay their fines. On October 20, when the prisoners were released, they were given an immense demonstration in Free-Trade Hall, the very hall from which they had been ejected the week before. The Women's Social and Political Union received a large number of new members. Above all, the question of women's suffrage became at once a live topic of comment from one end of Great Britain to the other. We determined that from that time on the little "Votes For Women" banners should appear wherever a prospective member of the Liberal Government rose to speak, and that there should be no more peace until the women's question was answered. We clearly perceived that the new Government, calling themselves Liberal, were reactionary so far as women were concerned, that they were hostile to women's suffrage, and would have to be fought until they were conquered, or else driven from office. We did not begin to fight, however, until we had given the new Government every chance to give us the pledge we wanted. Early in December the Conservative Government had gone out, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal leader, had formed a new Cabinet. On December 21 a great meeting was held in Royal Albert Hall, London, where Sir Henry, surrounded by his cabinet, made his first utterance as Prime Minister. Previous to the meeting we wrote to Sir Henry and asked him, in the name of the Women's Social and Political Union, whether the Liberal Government would give women the vote. We added that our representatives would be present at the meeting, and we hoped that the Prime Minister would publicly answer the question. Otherwise we should be obliged publicly to protest against his silence. Of course Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman returned no reply, nor did his speech contain any allusion to women's suffrage. So, at the conclusion, Annie Kenney, whom we had smuggled into the hall in disguise, whipped out her little white calico banner, and called out in her clear, sweet voice: "Will the Liberal Government give women the vote?" At the same moment Theresa Billington let drop from a seat directly above the platform a huge banner with the words: "Will the Liberal Government give justice to working-women?" Just for a moment there was a gasping silence, the people waiting to see what the Cabinet Ministers would do. They did nothing. Then, in the midst of uproar and conflicting shouts, the women were seized and flung out of the hall. This was the beginning of a campaign the like of which was never known in England, or, for that matter, in any other country. If we had been strong enough we should have opposed the election of every Liberal candidate, but being limited both in funds and in members we concentrated on one member of the Government, Mr. Winston Churchill. Not that we had any animus against Mr. Churchill. We chose him simply because he was the only important candidate standing for constituencies within reach of our headquarters. We attended every meeting addressed by Mr. Churchill. We heckled him unmercifully; we spoiled his best points by flinging back such obvious retorts that the crowds roared with laughter. We lifted out little white banners from unexpected corners of the hall, exactly at the moment when an interruption was least desired. Sometimes our banners were torn from our hands and trodden under foot. Sometimes, again, the crowds were with us, and we actually broke up the meeting. We did not succeed in defeating Mr. Churchill, but he was returned by a very small majority, the smallest of any of the Manchester Liberal candidates. We did not confine our efforts to heckling Mr. Churchill. Throughout the campaign we kept up the work of questioning Cabinet Ministers at meetings all over England and Scotland. At Sun Hall, Liverpool, addressed by the Prime Minister, nine women in succession asked the important question, and were thrown out of the hall; this in the face of the fact that Sir Campbell-Bannerman was an avowed suffragist. But we were not questioning him as to his private opinions on the suffrage; we were asking him what his Government were willing to do about suffrage. We questioned Mr. Asquith in Sheffield, Mr. Lloyd-George in Altrincham, Cheshire, the Prime Minister again in Glasgow, and we interrupted a great many other meetings as well. Always we were violently thrown out and insulted. Often we were painfully bruised and hurt. What good did it do? We have often been asked that question, even by the women our actions spurred into an activity they had never before thought themselves capable of. For one thing, our heckling campaign made women's suffrage a matter of news--it had never been that before. Now the newspapers were full of us. For another thing, we woke up the old suffrage associations. During the general election various groups of non-militant suffragists came back to life and organised a gigantic manifesto in favour of action from the Liberal Government. Among others, the manifesto was signed by the Women's Co-operative Guild with nearly 21,000 members; the Women's Liberal Federation, with 76,000 members; the Scottish Women's Liberal Federation, with 15,000 members; the North-of-England Weavers' Association, with 100,000 members; the British Women's Temperance Association, with nearly 110,000 members; and the Independent Labour Party with 20,000 members. Surely it was something to have inspired all this activity. We decided that the next step must be to carry the fight to London, and Annie Kenney was chosen to be organiser there. With only two pounds, less than ten dollars, in her pocket the intrepid girl set forth on her mission. In about a fortnight I left my official work as registrar in the hands of a deputy and went down to London to see what had been accomplished. To my astonishment I found that Annie, working with my daughter Sylvia, had organised a procession of women and a demonstration to be held on the opening day of Parliament. The confident young things had actually engaged Caxton Hall, Westminster; they had had printed a large number of handbills to announce the meeting, and they were busily engaged in working up the demonstration. Mrs. Drummond, who had joined the Union shortly after the imprisonment of Annie Kenney and Christabel, sent word from Manchester that she was coming to help us. She had to borrow the money for her railroad-fare, but she came, and, as ever before and since, her help was invaluable. How we worked, distributing handbills, chalking announcements of the meeting on pavements, calling on every person we knew and on a great many more we knew only by name, canvassing from door to door! At length the opening day of Parliament arrived. On February 19, 1906, occurred the first suffrage procession in London. I think there were between three and four hundred women in that procession, poor working-women from the East End, for the most part, leading the way in which numberless women of every rank were afterward to follow. My eyes were misty with tears as I saw them, standing in line, holding the simple banners which my daughter Sylvia had decorated, waiting for the word of command. Of course our procession attracted a large crowd of intensely amused spectators. The police, however, made no attempt to disperse our ranks, but merely ordered us to furl our banners. There was no reason why we should not have carried banners but the fact that we were women, and therefore could be bullied. So, bannerless, the procession entered Caxton Hall. To my amazement it was filled with women, most of whom I had never seen at any suffrage gathering before. Our meeting was most enthusiastic, and while Annie Kenney was speaking, to frequent applause, the news came to me that the King's speech (which is not the King's at all, but the formally announced Government programme for the session) had been read, and that there was in it no mention of the women's suffrage question. As Annie took her seat I arose and made this announcement, and I moved a resolution that the meeting should at once proceed to the House of Commons to urge the members to introduce a suffrage measure. The resolution was carried, and we rushed out in a body and hurried toward the Strangers' Entrance. It was pouring rain and bitterly cold, yet no one turned back, even when we learned at the entrance that for the first time in memory the doors of the House of Commons were barred to women. We sent in our cards to members who were personal friends, and some of them came out and urged our admittance. The police, however, were obdurate. They had their orders. The Liberal government, advocates of the people's rights, had given orders that women should no longer set foot in their stronghold. Pressure from members proved too great, and the government relented to the extent of allowing twenty women at a time to enter the lobby. Through all the rain and cold those hundreds of women waited for hours their turn to enter. Some never got in, and for those of us who did there was small satisfaction. Not a member could be persuaded to take up our cause. Out of the disappointment and dejection of that experience I yet reaped a richer harvest of happiness than I had ever known before. Those women had followed me to the House of Commons. They had defied the police. They were awake at last. They were prepared to do something that women had never done before--fight for themselves. Women had always fought for men, and for their children. Now they were ready to fight for their own human rights. Our militant movement was established. CHAPTER IV To account for the phenomenal growth of the Women's Social and Political Union after it was established in London, to explain why it made such an instant appeal to women hitherto indifferent, I shall have to point out exactly wherein our society differs from all other suffrage associations. In the first place, our members are absolutely single minded; they concentrate all their forces on one object, political equality with men. No member of the W. S. P. U. divides her attention between suffrage and other social reforms. We hold that both reason and justice dictate that women shall have a share in reforming the evils that afflict society, especially those evils bearing directly on women themselves. Therefore, we demand, before any other legislation whatever, the elementary justice of votes for women. There is not the slightest doubt that the women of Great Britain would have been enfranchised years ago had all the suffragists adopted this simple principle. They never did, and even to-day many English women refuse to adopt it. They are party members first and suffragists afterward; or they are suffragists part of the time and social theorists the rest of the time. We further differ from other suffrage associations, or from others existing in 1906, in that we clearly perceived the political situation that solidly interposed between us and our enfranchisement. For seven years we had had a majority in the House of Commons pledged to vote favourably on a suffrage bill. The year before, they had voted favourably on one, yet that bill did not become law. Why? Because even an overwhelming majority of private members are powerless to enact law in the face of a hostile Government of eleven cabinet ministers. The private member of Parliament was once possessed of individual power and responsibility, but Parliamentary usage and a changed conception of statesmanship have gradually lessened the functions of members. At the present time their powers, for all practical purposes, are limited to helping to enact such measures as the Government introduces or, in rare instances, private measures approved by the Government. It is true that the House can revolt, can, by voting a lack of confidence in the Government, force them to resign. But that almost never happens, and it is less likely now than formerly to happen. Figureheads don't revolt. This, then, was our situation: the Government all-powerful and consistently hostile; the rank and file of legislators impotent; the country apathetic; the women divided in their interests. The Women's Social and Political Union was established to meet this situation, and to overcome it. Moreover we had a policy which, if persisted in long enough, could not possibly fail to overcome it. Do you wonder that we gained new members at every meeting we held? There was little formality about joining the Union. Any woman could become a member by paying a shilling, but at the same time she was required to sign a declaration of loyal adherence to our policy and a pledge not to work for any political party until the women's vote was won. This is still our inflexible custom. Moreover, if at any time a member, or a group of members, loses faith in our policy; if any one begins to suggest, that some other policy ought to be substituted, or if she tries to confuse the issue by adding other policies, she ceases at once to be a member. Autocratic? Quite so. But, you may object, a suffrage organisation ought to be democratic. Well the members of the W. S. P. U. do not agree with you. We do not believe in the effectiveness of the ordinary suffrage organisation. The W. S. P. U. is not hampered by a complexity of rules. We have no constitution and by-laws; nothing to be amended or tinkered with or quarrelled over at an annual meeting. In fact, we have no annual meeting, no business sessions, no elections of officers. The W. S. P. U. is simply a suffrage army in the field. It is purely a volunteer army, and no one is obliged to remain in it. Indeed we don't want anybody to remain in it who does not ardently believe in the policy of the army. The foundation of our policy is opposition to a Government who refuse votes to women. To support by word or deed a Government hostile to woman suffrage is simply to invite them to go on being hostile. We oppose the Liberal party because it is in power. We would oppose a Unionist government if it were in power and were opposed to woman suffrage. We say to women that as long as they remain in the ranks of the Liberal party they give their tacit approval to the Government's anti-suffrage policy. We say to members of Parliament that as long as they support any of the Government's policies they give their tacit approval to the anti-suffrage policy. We call upon all sincere suffragists to leave the Liberal party until women are given votes on equal terms with men. We call upon all voters to vote against Liberal candidates until the Liberal Government does justice to women. We did not invent this policy. It was most successfully pursued by Mr. Parnell in his Home Rule struggle more than thirty-five years ago. Any one who is old enough to remember the stirring days of Parnell may recall how, in 1885, the Home Rulers, by persistently voting against the Government in the House of Commons, forced the resignation of Mr. Gladstone and his Cabinet. In the general election which followed, the Liberal party was again returned to power, but by the slender majority of eighty-four, the Home Rulers having fought every Liberal candidate, even those, who, like my husband, were enthusiastic believers in Home Rule. In order to control the House and keep his leadership, Mr. Gladstone was obliged to bring in a Government Home Rule Bill. The downfall, through private intrigue, and the subsequent death of Parnell prevented the bill from becoming law. For many years afterward the Irish Nationalists had no leader strong enough to carry on Parnell's anti-government policy, but within late years it was resumed by Mr. James Redmond, with the result that the Commons passed a Home Rule Bill. The contention of the old-fashioned suffragists, and of the politicians as well, has always been that an educated public opinion will ultimately give votes to women without any great force being exerted in behalf of the reform. We agree that public opinion must be educated, but we contend that even an educated public opinion is useless unless it is vigorously utilised. The keenest weapon is powerless unless it is courageously wielded. In the year 1906 there was an immensely large public opinion in favour of woman suffrage. But what good did that do the cause? We called upon the public for a great deal more than sympathy. We called upon it to demand of the Government to yield to public opinion and give women votes. And we declared that we would wage war, not only on all anti-suffrage forces, but on all neutral and non-active forces. Every man with a vote was considered a foe to woman suffrage unless he was prepared to be actively a friend. Not that we believed that the campaign of education ought to be given up. On the contrary, we knew that education must go on, and in much more vigorous fashion than ever before. The first thing we did was to enter upon a sensational campaign to arouse the public to the importance of woman suffrage, and to interest it in our plans for forcing the Government's hands. I think we can claim that our success in this regard was instant, and that it has proved permanent. From the very first, in those early London days, when we were few in numbers and very poor in purse, we made the public aware of the woman suffrage movement as it had never been before. We adopted Salvation Army methods and went out into the highways and the byways after converts. We threw away all our conventional notions of what was "ladylike" and "good form," and we applied to our methods the one test question, Will it help? Just as the Booths and their followers took religion to the street crowds in such fashion that the church people were horrified, so we took suffrage to the general public in a manner that amazed and scandalised the other suffragists. We had a lot of suffrage literature printed, and day by day our members went forth and held street meetings. Selecting a favourable spot, with a chair for a rostrum, one of us would ring a bell until people began to stop to see what was going to happen. What happened, of course, was a lively suffrage speech, and the distribution of literature. Soon after our campaign had started, the sound of the bell was a signal for a crowd to spring up as if by magic. All over the neighbourhood you heard the cry: "Here are the Suffragettes! Come on!" We covered London in this way; we never lacked an audience, and best of all, an audience to which the woman-suffrage doctrine was new. We were increasing our favourable public as well as waking it up. Besides these street meetings, we held many hall and drawing-room meetings, and we got a great deal of press publicity, which was something never accorded the older suffrage methods. Our plans included the introduction of a Government suffrage bill at the earliest possible moment, and in the spring of 1906 we sent a deputation of about thirty of our members to interview the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The Prime Minister, it was stated, was not at home; so in a few days we sent another deputation. This time the servant agreed to carry our request to the Prime Minister. The women waited patiently on the doorstep of the official residence, No. 10 Downing Street, for nearly an hour. Then the door opened and two men appeared. One of the men addressed the leader of the deputation, roughly ordering her and the others to leave. "We have sent a message to the Prime Minister," she replied, "and we are waiting for the answer." "There will be no answer," was the stern rejoinder, and the door closed. "Yes, there will be an answer," exclaimed the leader, and she seized the door-knocker and banged it sharply. Instantly the men reappeared, and one of them called to a policeman standing near, "Take this woman in charge." The order was obeyed, and the peaceful deputation saw its leader taken off to Canon Row Station. Instantly the women protested vigorously. Annie Kenney began to address the crowd that had gathered, and Mrs. Drummond actually forced her way past the doorkeeper into the sacred residence of the Prime Minister of the British Empire! Her arrest and Annie's followed. The three women were detained at the police station for about an hour, long enough, the Prime Minister probably thought, to frighten them thoroughly and teach them not to do such dreadful things again. Then he sent them word that he had decided not to prosecute them, but would, on the contrary, receive a deputation from the W. S. P. U., and, if they cared to attend, from other suffrage societies as well. All the suffrage organisations at once began making preparations for the great event. At the same time two hundred members of Parliament sent a petition to the Prime Minister, asking him to receive their committee that they might urge upon him the necessity of a Government measure for woman suffrage. Sir Henry fixed May 19th as the day on which he would receive a joint deputation from Parliament and from the women's suffrage organisations. The W. S. P. U. determined to make the occasion as public as possible, and began preparations for a procession and a demonstration. When the day came we assembled at the foot of the beautiful monument to the warrior-queen, Boadicea, that guards the entrance to Westminster Bridge, and from there we marched to the Foreign Office. At the meeting eight women spoke in behalf of an immediate suffrage measure, and Mr. Keir Hardie presented the argument for the suffrage members of Parliament. I spoke for the W. S. P. U., and I tried to make the Prime Minister see that no business could be more pressing than ours. I told him that the group of women organised in our Union felt so strongly the necessity for women enfranchisement that they were prepared to sacrifice for it everything they possessed, their means of livelihood, their very lives, if necessary. I begged him to make such a sacrifice needless by doing us justice now. What answer do you think Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman made us? He assured us of his sympathy with our cause, his belief in its justice, and his confidence in our fitness to vote. And then he told us to have patience and wait; he could do nothing for us because some of his Cabinet were opposed to us. After a few more words the usual vote of thanks was moved, and the deputation was dismissed. I had not expected anything better, but it wrung my heart to see the bitter disappointment of the W. S. P. U. women who had waited in the street to hear from the leaders the result of the deputation. We held a great meeting of protest that afternoon, and determined to carry on our agitation with increased vigor. Now that it had been made plain that the Government were resolved not to bring in a suffrage bill, there was nothing to do but to continue our policy of waking up the country, not only by public speeches and demonstrations, but by a constant heckling of Cabinet Ministers. Since the memorable occasion when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were thrown out of Sir Edward Grey's meeting in Manchester, and afterward imprisoned for the crime of asking a courteous question, we had not lost an opportunity of addressing the same question to every Cabinet Minister we could manage to encounter. For this we have been unmercifully criticised, and in a large number of cases most brutally handled. In almost every one of my American meetings I was asked the question, "What good do you expect to accomplish by interrupting meetings?" Is it possible that the time-honoured, almost sacred English privilege of interrupting is unknown in America? I cannot imagine a political meeting from which "the Voice" was entirely absent. In England it is invariably present. It is considered the inalienable right of the opposition to heckle the speaker and to hurl questions at him which are calculated to spoil his arguments. For instance, when Liberals attend a Conservative gathering they go prepared to shatter by witticisms and pointed questions all the best effects of the Conservative orators. The next day you will read in Liberal newspapers headlines like these: "The Voice in Fine Form," "Short Shrift for Tory Twaddle," "Awkward Answers from the Enemy's Platform." In the body of the article you will learn that "Lord X found that the Liberals at his meeting were more than a match for him," that "there was continued interruption during Sir So-and-so's speech," that "Lord M fared badly last night in his encounter with the Voice," or that "Captain Z had the greatest difficulty in making himself heard." In accordance with this custom we heckle Cabinet Ministers. Mr. Winston Churchill, for example, is speaking. "One great question," he exclaims, "remains to be settled." "And that is woman suffrage," shouts a voice from the gallery. Mr. Churchill struggles on with his speech: "The men have been complaining of me----" "The women have been complaining of you, too, Mr. Churchill," comes back promptly from the back of the hall. "In the circumstances what can we do but----" "Give votes to women." Our object, of course, is to keep woman suffrage in the foreground of interest and to insist on every possible occasion that no other reform advocated is of such immediate importance. From the first the women's interruptions have been resented with unreasoning anger. I remember hearing Mr. Lloyd-George saying once of a man who interrupted him: "Let him remain. I like interruptions. They show that people holding different opinions to mine are present, giving me a chance to convert them." But when suffragists interrupt Mr. Lloyd-George he says something polite like this: "Pay no attention to those cats mewing." Some of the ministers are more well bred in their expressions, but all are disdainful and resentful. All see with approval the brutal ejection of the women by the Liberal stewards. At one meeting where Mr. Lloyd-George was speaking, we interrupted with a question, and he claimed the sympathy of the audience on the score that he was a friend to woman suffrage. "Then why don't you do something to give votes to women?" was the obvious retort. But Mr. Lloyd-George evaded this by the counter query: "Why don't they go for their enemies? Why don't they go for their greatest enemy?" Instantly, all over the hall, voices shouted, "Asquith! Asquith!" For even at that early day it was known that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer was a stern foe of women's independence. In the summer of 1906, together with other members of the W. S. P. U., I went to Northampton, where Mr. Asquith was holding a large meeting in behalf of the Government's education bills. We organised a number of outdoor meetings, and of course prepared to attend Mr. Asquith's meeting. In conversation with the president of the local Women's Liberal Association, I mentioned the fact that we expected to be put out, and she indignantly declared that such a thing could not happen in Northampton, where the women had done so much for the Liberal party. I told her that I hoped she would be at the meeting. I had not intended to go myself, my plans being to hold a meeting of my own outside the door. But our members, before Mr. Asquith began to speak, attempted to question him, and were thrown out with violence. So then, turning my meeting over to them, I slipped quietly into the hall and sat down in the front row of a division set apart for wives and women friends of the Liberal leaders. I sat there in silence, hearing men interrupt the speaker and get answers to their questions. At the close of the speech I stood up and, addressing the chairman, said: "I should like to ask Mr. Asquith a question about education." The chairman turned inquiringly to Mr. Asquith, who frowningly shook his head. But without waiting for the chairman to say a word, I continued: "Mr. Asquith has said that the parents of children have a right to be consulted in the matter of their children's education, especially upon such questions as the kind of religious instruction they should receive. Women are parents. Does not Mr. Asquith think that women should have the right to control their children's education, as men do, through the vote?" At this point the stewards seized me by the arms and shoulders and rushed me, or rather dragged me, for I soon lost my footing, to the door and threw me out of the building. The effect on the president of the Northampton Women's Liberal Association was most salutary. She resigned her office and became a member of the W. S. P. U. Perhaps her action was influenced further by the press reports of the incident. Mr. Asquith was reported as saying, after my ejection, that it was difficult to enter into the minds of people who thought they could serve a cause which professed to appeal to the reason of the electors of the country by disturbing public meetings. Apparently he could enter into the minds of the men who disturbed public meetings. To our custom of public heckling of the responsible members of the hostile Government we added the practice of sending deputations to them for the purpose of presenting orderly arguments in favour of our cause. After Mr. Asquith had shown himself so uninformed as to the objects of the suffragists, we decided to ask him to receive a deputation from the W. S. P. U. To our polite letter Mr. Asquith returned a cold refusal to be interviewed on any subject not connected with his particular office. Whereupon we wrote again, reminding Mr. Asquith that as a member of the Government he was concerned with all questions likely to be dealt with by Parliament. We said that we urgently desired to put our question before him, and that we would send a deputation to his house hoping that he would feel it his duty to receive us. Our first deputation was told that Mr. Asquith was not at home. He had, in fact, escaped from the house through the back door, and had sped away in a fast motor-car. Two days later we sent a larger deputation, of about thirty women, to his house in Cavendish Square. To be accurate, the deputation got as near the house as the entrance to Cavendish Square; there the women met a strong force of police, who told them that they would not be permitted to go farther. Many of the women were carrying little "Votes for Women" banners, and these the police tore from them, in some cases with blows and insults. Seeing this, the leader of the deputation cried out: "We will go forward. You have no right to strike women like that." The reply, from a policeman near her, was a blow in the face. She screamed with pain and indignation, whereupon the man grasped her by the throat and choked her against the park railings until she was blue in the face. The young woman struggled and fought back, and for this she was arrested on a charge of assaulting the police. Three other women were arrested, one because, in spite of the police, she succeeded in ringing Mr. Asquith's door-bell and another because she protested against the laughter of some ladies who watched the affair from a drawing-room window. She was a poor working-woman, and it seemed to her a terrible thing that rich and protected women should ridicule a cause that to her was so profoundly serious. The fourth woman was taken in charge, because after she had been pushed off the pavement, she dared to step back. Charged with disorderly conduct, these women were sentenced to six weeks in the Second Division. They were given the option of a fine, it is true, but the payment of a fine would have been an acknowledgment of guilt, which made such a course impossible. The leader of the deputation was given a two months' sentence, with the option of a fine of ten pounds. She, too, refused to pay, and was sent to prison; but some unknown friend paid the fine secretly, and she was released before the expiration of her sentence. About the time these things were happening in London, similar violence was offered our women in Manchester, where John Burns, Lloyd-George, and Winston Churchill, all three Cabinet Ministers, were addressing a great Liberal demonstration. The women were there, as usual, to ask government support for our measure. There, too, they were thrown out of the meeting, and three of them were sent to prison. There are people in England, plenty of them, who will tell you that the Suffragettes were sent to prison for destroying property. The fact is that hundreds of women were arrested for exactly such offences as I have described before it ever occurred to any of us to destroy property. We were determined, at the beginning of our movement, that we would make ourselves heard, that we would force the Government to take up our question and answer it by action in Parliament. Perhaps you will see some parallel to our case in the stand taken in Massachusetts by the early Abolitionists, Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. They, too, had to fight bitterly, to face insult and arrest, because they insisted on being heard. And they were heard; and so, in time, were we. I think we began to be noticed in earnest after our first success in opposing a Liberal candidate. This was in a by-election held at Cockermouth in August, 1906. I shall have to explain that a by-election is a local election to fill a vacancy in Parliament caused by a death or a resignation. The verdict of a by-election is considered as either an indorsement or a censure of the manner in which the Government have fulfilled their pre-election pledges. So we went to Cockermouth and told the voters how the Liberal party had fulfilled its pledges of democracy and lived up to its avowed belief in the rights of all the people. We told them of the arrests in London and Manchester, of the shameful treatment of women in Liberal meetings, and we asked them to censure the Government who had answered so brutally our demand for a vote. We told them that the only rebuke that the politicians would notice was a lost seat in Parliament, and that on that ground we asked them to defeat the Liberal candidate. How we were ridiculed! With what scorn the newspapers declared that "those wild women" could never turn a single vote. Yet when the election was over it was found that the Liberal candidate had lost the seat, which, at the general election a little more than a year before, had been won by a majority of 655. This time the Unionist candidate was returned by a majority of 609. Tremendously elated, we hurried our forces off to another by-election. Now the ridicule was turned to stormy abuse. Mind you, the Liberal Government still refused to notice the women's question; they declared through the Liberal press that the defeat at Cockermouth was insignificant, and that anyhow it wasn't caused by the Suffragettes; yet the Liberal leaders were furiously angry with the W. S. P. U. Many of our members had been Liberals, and it was considered by the men that these women were little better than traitors. They were very foolish and ill-advised, into the bargain, the Liberals said, because the vote, if won at all, must be gained from the Liberal party; and how did the women suppose the Liberal party would ever give the vote to open and avowed enemies? This sage argument was used also by the women Liberals and the constitutional suffragists. They advised us that the proper way was to work for the party. We retorted that we had done that unsuccessfully for too many years already, and persisted with the opposite method of persuasion. Throughout the summer and autumn we devoted ourselves to the by-election work, sometimes actually defeating the Liberal candidate, sometimes reducing the Liberal majority, and always raising a tremendous sensation and gaining hundreds of new members to the Union. In almost every neighbourhood we visited we left the nucleus of a local union, so that before the year was out we had branches all over England and many in Scotland and Wales. I especially remember a by-election in Wales at which Mr. Samuel Evans, who had accepted an officership under the Crown, had to stand for re-election. Unfortunately no candidate had been brought out against him. So there was nothing for my companions and me to do but make his campaign as lively as possible. Mr.--now Sir Samuel--Evans was the man who had incensed women by talking out a suffrage resolution introduced into the House by Keir Hardie. So we went to two of his meetings and literally talked him out, breaking up the gatherings amid the laughter and cheers of delighted crowds. On October 23d Parliament met for its autumn session, and we led a deputation to the House of Commons in another effort to induce the Government to take action on woman suffrage. In accordance with orders given the police, only twenty of us were admitted to the Strangers' Lobby. We sent in for the chief Liberal whip, and asked him to take a message to the Prime Minister, the message being the usual request to grant women the vote that session. We also asked the Prime Minister if he intended to include the registration of qualified women voters in the provisions of the plural voting bill, then under consideration. The Liberal whip came back with the reply that nothing could be done for women that session. [Illustration: MRS. PANKHURST ADDRESSING A BY-ELECTION CROWD] "Does the Prime Minister," I asked, "hold out any hope for the women for any session during this Parliament, or at any future time?" The Prime Minister, you will remember, called himself a suffragist. The Liberal whip replied, "No, Mrs. Pankhurst, the Prime Minister does not." What would a deputation of unenfranchised men have done in these circumstances--men who knew themselves to be qualified to exercise the franchise, who desperately needed the protection of the franchise, and who had a majority of legislators in favour of giving them the franchise? I hope they would have done at least as much as we did, which was to start a meeting of protest on the spot. The newspapers described our action as creating a disgraceful scene in the lobby of the House of Commons, but I think that history will otherwise describe it. One of the women sprang up on a settee and began to address the crowd. In less than a minute she was pulled down, but instantly another woman took her place; and after she had been dragged down, still another sprang to her place, and following her another and another, until the order came to clear the lobby, and we were all forced outside. In the mêlée I was thrown to the floor and painfully hurt. The women, thinking me seriously injured, crowded around me and refused to move until I was able to regain myself. This angered the police, who were still more incensed when they found that the demonstration was continued outside. Eleven women were arrested, including Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, our treasurer, Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Annie Kenney and three more of our organisers; and they were all sent to Holloway for two months. But the strength of our movement was proved by the number of volunteers who immediately came forward to carry on the work. Mrs. Tuke, now Hon. Secretary of the W. S. P. U., joined the Union at this time. It had not occurred to the authorities that their action would have this effect. They thought to crush the Union at a blow, but they gave it the greatest impetus it had yet received. The leaders of the older suffrage organisations for the time forgot their disapproval of our methods, and joined with women writers, physicians, actresses, artists, and other prominent women in denouncing the affair as barbarous. One more thing the authorities failed to take into account. The condition of English prisons was known to be very bad, but when two of our women were made so ill in Holloway that they had to be released within a few days, the politicians began to tremble for their prestige. Questions were asked in Parliament concerning the advisability of treating the Suffragettes not as common criminals but as political offenders with the right to confinement in the First Division. Mr. Herbert Gladstone, the Home Secretary, replied to these questions that he had no power to interfere with the magistrates' decisions, and could do nothing in the matter of the suffragettes' punishment. I shall ask you to remember this statement of Mr. Herbert Gladstone's, as later we were able to prove it a deliberate falsehood--although really the falsehood proved itself when the women, by Government order, were released from prison when they had served just half their sentences. The reason for this was that an important by-election was being held in the north of England, and we had distributed broadcast throughout the constituency hand bills telling the electors that nine women, including the daughter of Richard Cobden, were being held as common criminals by the Liberal Government who were asking for their votes. I took a group of the released prisoners to Huddersfield, and they told prison stories to such effect that the Liberal majority was reduced by 540 votes. As usual the Liberal leaders denied that our work had anything to do with the slender majority by which the party retained the seat, but among our souvenirs is a handbill, one of thousands given out from Liberal headquarters: +------------------------------+ | MEN OF HUDDERSFIELD | | DON'T BE MISLED | | BY SOCIALISTS, SUFFRAGETTES | | OR TORIES | | VOTE FOR SHERWELL | +------------------------------+ Meanwhile, other demonstrations had taken place before the House of Commons, and at Christmas time twenty-one suffragettes were in Holloway Prison, though they had committed no crime. The Government professed themselves unmoved, and members of Parliament spoke with sneers of the "self-made martyrs." However, a considerable group of members, strongly moved by the passion and unquenchable ardor of this new order of suffragists, met during the last week of the year and formed a committee whose object it was to press upon the government the necessity of giving the franchise to women during that Parliament. The committee resolved that its members would work to educate a wider public opinion on the question, and especially to advocate suffrage when addressing meetings in their constituencies, to take Parliamentary action on every possible occasion, and to induce as many members of Parliament as possible to ballot for the introduction of a suffrage bill or motion next session. Our first year in London had borne wonderful fruits. We had grown from a mere handful of women, a "family party" the newspapers had derisively called us, to a strong organisation with branches all over the country, permanent headquarters in Clements Inn, Strand; we had found good financial backing, and above all, we had created a suffrage committee in the House of Commons. BOOK II FOUR YEARS OF PEACEFUL MILITANCY CHAPTER I The campaign of 1907 began with a Women's Parliament, called together on February 13th in Caxton Hall, to consider the provisions of the King's speech, which had been read in the national Parliament on the opening day of the session, February 12th. The King's speech, as I have explained, is the official announcement of the Government's programme for the session. When our Women's Parliament met at three o'clock on the afternoon of the thirteenth we knew that the Government meant to do nothing for women during the session ahead. I presided over the women's meeting, which was marked with a fervency and a determination of spirit at that time altogether unprecedented. A resolution expressing indignation that woman suffrage should have been omitted from the King's speech, and calling upon the House of Commons to give immediate facilities to such a measure, was moved and carried. A motion to send the resolution from the hall to the Prime Minister was also carried. The slogan, "Rise up, women," was cried from the platform, the answering shout coming back as from one woman, "Now!" With copies of the resolution in their hands, the chosen deputation hurried forth into the February dusk, ready for Parliament or prison, as the fates decreed. Fate did not leave them very long in doubt. The Government, it appeared, had decided that not again should their sacred halls of Parliament be desecrated by women asking for the vote, and orders had been given that would henceforth prevent women from reaching even the outer precincts of the House of Commons. So when our deputation of women arrived in the neighbourhood of Westminster Abbey they found themselves opposed by a solid line of police, who, at a sharp order from their chief, began to stride through and through the ranks of the procession, trying to turn the women back. Bravely the women rallied and pressed forward a little farther. Suddenly a body of mounted police came riding up at a smart trot, and for the next five hours or more, a struggle, quite indescribable for brutality and ruthlessness, went on. The horsemen rode directly into the procession, scattering the women right and left. But still the women would not turn back. Again and again they returned, only to fly again and again from the merciless hoofs. Some of the women left the streets for the pavements, but even there the horsemen pursued them, pressing them so close to walls and railings that they were obliged to retreat temporarily to avoid being crushed. Other strategists took refuge in doorways, but they were dragged out by the foot police and were thrown directly in front of the horses. Still the women fought to reach the House of Commons with their resolution. They fought until their clothes were torn, their bodies bruised, and the last ounce of their strength exhausted. Fifteen of them did actually fight their way through those hundreds on hundreds of police, foot and mounted, as far as the Strangers' Lobby of the House. Here they attempted to hold a meeting, and were arrested. Outside, many more women were taken into custody. It was ten o'clock before the last arrest was made, and the square cleared of the crowds. After that the mounted men continued to guard the approaches to the House of Commons until the House rose at midnight. The next morning fifty-seven women and two men were arraigned, two and three at a time, in Westminster police court. Christabel Pankhurst was the first to be placed in the dock. She tried to explain to the magistrate that the deputation of the day before was a perfectly peaceful attempt to present a resolution, which, sooner or later, would be presented and acted upon. She assured him that the deputation was but the beginning of a campaign that would not cease until the Government yielded to the women's demand. "There can be no going back for us," she declared, "and more will happen if we do not get justice." The magistrate, Mr. Curtis Bennett, who was destined later to try women for that "more," rebuked my daughter sternly, telling her that the Government had nothing to do with causing the disorders of the day before, that the women were entirely responsible for what had occurred, and finally, that these disgraceful scenes in the street must cease--just as King Canute told the ocean that it must roll out instead of in. "The scenes can be stopped in only one way," replied the prisoner. His sole reply to that was, "Twenty shillings or fourteen days," Christabel chose the prison sentence, and so did all the other prisoners. Mrs. Despard, who headed the deputation, and Sylvia Pankhurst, who was with her, were given three weeks in prison. Of course the raid, as it was called, gave the Women's Social and Political Union an enormous amount of publicity, on the whole, favourable publicity. The newspapers were almost unanimous in condemning the Government for sending mounted troops out against unarmed women. Angry questions were asked in Parliament, and our ranks once more increased in size and ardour. The old-fashioned suffragists, men as well as women, cried out that we had alienated all our friends in Parliament; but this proved to be untrue. Indeed, it was found that a Liberal member, Mr. Dickinson, had won the first place in the ballot, and had announced that he intended to use it to introduce a women's suffrage bill. More than this, the prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, promised to give the bill his support. For a time, a very short time, it is true, we felt that the hour of our freedom might be at hand, that our prisoners had perhaps already won us our precious symbol--the vote. Soon, however, a number of professed suffragists in the House began to complain that Mr. Dickinson's bill, practically the original bill, was not "democratic" enough, that it would enfranchise only the women of the upper classes--to which, by the way, most of them belonged. That this was not true had been proved again and again from the municipal registers, which showed a majority of working women's names as qualified householders. The contention was but a shallow excuse, and we knew it. Therefore we were not surprised when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman departed from his pledge of support, and allowed the bill to be talked out. Following this event, the second Women's Parliament assembled, on the afternoon of March 20, 1907. As before, we adopted a resolution calling upon the Government to introduce an official suffrage measure, and again we voted to send the resolution from the hall to the Prime Minister. Lady Harberton was chosen to lead the deputation, and instantly hundreds of women sprang up and volunteered to accompany her. This time the police met the women at the door of the hall, and another useless, disgraceful scene of barbarous, brute-force opposition took place. Something like one thousand police had been sent out to guard the House of Commons from the peaceful invasion of a few hundred women. All afternoon and evening we kept Caxton Hall open, the women returning every now and again, singly and in small groups, to have their bruises bathed, or their torn clothing repaired. As night fell the crowds in the street grew denser, and the struggle between the women and the police became more desperate. Lady Harberton, we heard, had succeeded in reaching the entrance to the House of Commons, nay, had actually managed to press past the sentries into the lobby, but her resolution had not been presented to the Prime Minister. She and many others were arrested before the police at last succeeded in clearing the streets, and the dreadful affair was over. The next day, in Westminster police court, the magistrate meted out sentences varying from twenty shillings or fourteen days to forty shillings or one month's imprisonment. Two of the women, Miss Woodlock and Mrs. Chatterton, who had left Holloway only a week before, were, as "old offenders," given thirty days without the option of a fine. Another woman, Mary Leigh, was given thirty days because she offended the magistrate's dignity by hanging a "Votes for Women" banner over the edge of the dock. Those of my readers who are unable to connect the word "militancy" with anything milder than arson are invited to reflect that within the first two months of the year 1907 the English Government sent to prison one hundred and thirty women whose "militancy" consisted merely of trying to carry a resolution from a hall to the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. Our crime was called obstructing the police. It will be seen that it was the police who did the obstructing. It may be asked why neither of these deputations was led by me personally. The reason was that I was needed in another capacity, that of leader and supervisor of the suffrage forces in the field to defeat Government candidates at by-elections. On the night of the second "riot," while our women were still struggling in the streets, I left London for Hexham in Northumberland, where by our work the majority of the Liberal candidate was reduced by a thousand votes. Seven more by-elections followed in rapid succession. Our by-election work was such a new thing in English politics that we attracted an enormous amount of attention wherever we went. It was our custom to begin work the very hour we entered a town. If, on our way from the station to the hotel, we encountered a group of men, say, in the market-place, we either stopped and held a meeting on the spot, or else we stayed long enough to tell them when and where our meetings were to be held, and to urge them to attend. The usual first step, after securing lodgings, was to hire a vacant shop, fill the windows with suffrage literature, and fling out our purple, green, and white flag. Meanwhile, some of us were busy hiring the best available hall. If we got possession of the battle-ground before the men, we sometimes "cornered" all the good halls and left the candidate nothing but schoolhouses for his indoor meetings. Truth to tell, our meetings were so much more popular than theirs that we really needed the larger halls. Often, a candidate with the Suffragettes for rivals spoke to almost empty benches. The crowds were away listening to the women. Naturally, this greatly displeased the politicians, and it scandalised many of the old-fashioned Liberal partisans. In one place, I think it was Colne Valley in Yorkshire, an amusing instance of masculine hostility occurred. We had arrived on a day when both Conservative and Liberal committees were choosing their candidates, and we thought it a good opportunity to hold a series of outdoor meetings. We tried to get a lorry for a rostrum, but the only man in town who had these big vans to let disapproved of Suffragettes so violently that he wouldn't let us have one. So we borrowed a chair from a woman shopkeeper, and went at it. Soon we had a large crowd and an interested audience. We also got the attention of a number of small boys with pea-shooters, and had to make our speeches under a blistering fire of dried peas. While I was speaking the fire ceased, to my relief--for dried peas sting. I continued my speech with renewed vigor, only to have one of my best points spoiled by roars of laughter from the crowd. I finished somehow, and sat down; and then it was explained to me that the pea-shooters had been financed by one of the prominent Liberals of the town, another man who disapproved of our policy of opposing the Government. As soon as the ammunition gave out this man furnished the boys with a choice supply of rotten oranges. These were not so easily handled, it appeared, for the very first one went wild, and struck the chivalrous gentleman violently in the neck. This it was that had caused the laughter, and stopped the attack on the women. We met with some pretty rough horse-play, and even with some brutality, in several by-elections, but on the whole we found the men ready, and the women more than ready, to listen to us. We tamed and educated a public that had always been used to violence at elections. We even tamed the boys, who came to the meetings on purpose to skylark. When we were in Rutlandshire that spring three schoolboys came to see me and told me, shyly, that they were interested in suffrage. They had had a debate on the subject at their school, and although the decision had been for the other side, all the boys wanted to know more about it. Wouldn't I please have a meeting especially for them? Of course I consented, and I found my boy audience quite delightful. Indeed, I hope they liked me half as well as I did them. All through the spring our by-election work continued with amazing success, although our part in the Government losses was rarely admitted by the politicians. The voters knew, however. At an election in Suffolk, where we helped to double the Unionist vote, the successful candidate, speaking to the crowd from his hotel window, said, "What has been the cause of the great and glorious victory?" Instantly the crowd roared, "Votes for Women!"--"Three cheers for the Suffragettes!" This was not at all what the successful candidate had intended, but he waved his hand graciously and said, "No doubt the ladies had something to do with it." The newspaper correspondents were not so reluctant to acknowledge our influence. Even when they condemned our policy, they were unsparing in their admiration for our energy, and the courage and ardour of our workers. Said the correspondent of the London _Tribune_, a Liberal paper hostile to our tactics: "Their staying power, judging them by the standards of men, is extraordinary. By taking afternoon as well as evening meetings, they have worked twice as hard as the men. They are up earlier, they retire just as late. Women against men, they are better speakers, more logical, better informed, better phrased, with a surer insight for the telling argument." After a summer spent in strengthening our forces, organising new branches, holding meetings--something like three thousand of these between May and October--invading meetings of Cabinet Ministers--we managed to do that about once every day--electioneering, and getting up huge demonstrations in various cities, we arrived at the end of the year. In the last months of the year, I directed several hotly contested by-elections, at one of which I met with one of the most serious misadventures of my life. This by-election was held in the division of Mid-Devon, a stronghold of Liberalism. In fact, since its creation in 1885, the seat has never been held by any except a Liberal member. The constituency is a large one, divided into eight districts. The population of the towns is a rough and boisterous one, and its devotion, blind and unreasoning, to the Liberal party has always reflected the rude spirit of the voters. A Unionist woman told me, shortly after my arrival, that my life would be unsafe if I dared openly to oppose the Liberal candidate. She had never dared, she assured me, to wear her party colours in public. However, I did speak--in our headquarters at Newton Abbott, the principal town of the division, at Hull, and at Bovey Tracey. We held meetings twice a day, calling upon the voters to "beat the Government in Mid-Devon, as a message that women must have votes next year." Although some of the meetings were turbulent, we were treated with much more consideration than either of the candidates, who, not infrequently, were howled down and put to flight. Often the air of their meetings was thick with decayed vegetables and dirty snowballs. We had some rather lively sessions, too. Once, at an outdoor meeting, some young roughs dragged our lorry round and round until it seemed that we must be upset, and several times the language hurled at us from the crowd was quite unfit for me to repeat. Still, we escaped actual violence until the day of the election, when it was announced that the Unionist candidate had won the seat by a majority of twelve hundred and eighty. We knew instantly that the deepest resentment of the Liberals would be aroused, but it did not occur to us that the resentment would be directed actively against us. After the declaration at the polls, my companion, Mrs. Martel, and I started to walk to our lodgings. Some of our friends stopped us, and drew our attention to the newly elected Unionist member of Parliament, who was being escorted from the polling place by a strong guard of police. We were warned that our safety demanded an immediate flight from the town. I laughingly assured our friends that I was never afraid to trust myself in a crowd, and we walked on. Suddenly we were confronted by a crowd of young men and boys, clay-cutters from the pits on the edge of town. These young men, who wore the red rosettes of the Liberal party, had just heard of their candidate's defeat, and they were mad with rage and humiliation. One of them pointed to us, crying: "They did it! Those women did it!" A yell went up from the crowd, and we were deluged with a shower of clay and rotten eggs. We were not especially frightened, but the eggs were unbearable, and to escape them we rushed into a little grocer's shop close at hand. The grocer's wife closed and bolted the door, but the poor grocer cried out that his place would be wrecked. I did not want that to happen, of course, so I asked them to let us out by the back door. They led us out the door, into a small back yard which led into a little lane, whence we expected to make our escape. But when we reached the yard we found that the rowdies, anticipating our move, had surged round the corner, and were waiting for us. They seized Mrs. Martel first, and began beating her over the head with their fists, but the brave wife of the shopkeeper, hearing the shouts and the oaths of the men, flung open the door and rushed to our rescue. Between us we managed to tear Mrs. Martel from her captors and get her into the house. I expected to get into the house, too, but as I reached the threshold a staggering blow fell on the back of my head, rough hands grasped the collar of my coat, and I was flung violently to the ground. Stunned, I must have lost consciousness for a moment, for my next sensation was of cold, wet mud seeping through my clothing. Sight returning to me, I perceived the men, silent now, but with a dreadful, lowering silence, closing in a ring around me. In the centre of the ring was an empty barrel, and the horrid thought occurred to me that they might intend putting me in it. A long time seemed to pass, while the ring of men slowly drew closer. I looked at them, in their drab clothes smeared with yellow pit-clay, and they appeared so underfed, so puny and sodden, that a poignant pity for them swept over me. "Poor souls," I thought, and then I said suddenly, "Are none of you _men_?" Then one of the youths darted toward me, and I knew that whatever was going to happen to me was about to begin. At that very moment came shouts, and a rush of police who had fought their way through hostile crowds to rescue us. Of course the mob turned tail and fled, and I was carried gently into the shop, which the police guarded for two hours, before it was deemed safe for us to leave in a closed motor-car. It was many months before either Mrs. Martel or I recovered from our injuries. The rowdies, foiled of their woman prey, went to the Conservative Club, smashed all the windows in the house, and kept the members besieged there through the night. The next morning the body of a man, frightfully bruised about the head, was found in the mill-race. Throughout all this disorder and probable crime, not a man was arrested. Contrast this, if you like, with the treatment given our women in London. The King opened Parliament in great state on January 29, 1908. Again his speech omitted all mention of woman suffrage, and again the W. S. P. U. issued a call for a Women's Parliament, for February 11th, 12th and 13th. Before it was convened we heard that an excellent place in the ballot had been won by a friend of the movement, Mr. Stanger, who promised to introduce a suffrage bill, February 28th was the day fixed for the second reading, and we realised that strong pressure would have to be brought to bear to prevent the bill being wrecked, as the Dickinson bill had been the previous year. Therefore, on the first day of the Women's Parliament, almost every woman present volunteered for the deputation, which was to try to carry the resolution to the prime minister. Led by two well-known portrait painters, the deputation left Caxton Hall and proceeded in orderly ranks, four abreast, toward the House of Commons. The crowds in the streets were enormous, thousands of sympathisers coming out to help the women, thousands of police determined that the women should not be helped, and thousands of curious spectators. When the struggle was over, fifty women were locked up in police-court cells. The next morning, when the cases were tried, Mr. Muskett, who prosecuted for the Crown, and who was perhaps a little tired of telling the Suffragettes that these scenes in the streets must cease, and then seeing them go on exactly as if he had not spoken, made a very severe and terrifying address. He told the women that this time they would be subject to the usual maximum of two months' imprisonment, with the option of a fine of five pounds, but that, in case they ever offended again, the law had worse terrors in store for them. It was proposed to revive, for the benefit of the Suffragettes, an Act passed in the reign of Charles II, which dealt with "Tumultuous Petitions, either to the Crown or Parliament." This Act provided that no person should dare to go to the King or to Parliament "with any petition, complaint, remonstrance, declaration or other address" accompanied with a number of persons above twelve. A fine of one hundred pounds, or three months' imprisonment, might be imposed under this law. The magistrate then sentenced all but two of the women to be bound over for twelve months, or to serve six weeks in the second division. Two other women, "old offenders," were given one month in the third division, or lowest class. All the prisoners, except two who had very ill relatives at home, chose the prison sentence. The next day's session of the Women's Parliament was one of intense excitement, as the women reviewed the events of the previous day, the trials, and especially the threat to revive the obsolete Act of Charles II, an act _which was passed to obstruct the progress of the Liberal party, which came into existence under the Stuarts, and under the second Charles was fighting for its life_. It was an amazing thing that the political descendants of these men were proposing to revive the Act to obstruct the advance of the women's cause, fighting for its life under George V and his Liberal government. At least, it was evidence that the Government were baffled in their attempt to crush our movement. Christabel Pankhurst, presiding over the second session of the Women's Parliament, said: "At last it is realized that women are fighting for freedom, as their fathers fought. If they want twelve women, aye, and more than twelve, if a hundred women are wanted to be tried under that act and sent to prison for three months, they can be found." I was not present at this session, nor had I been present at the first one. I was working in a by-election at South Leeds, the last of several important by-elections in great industrial centres, where our success was unquestioned, except by the Liberal press. The elections had wound up with a great procession, and a meeting of 100,000 people on Hounslet Moor. The most wonderful enthusiasm marked that meeting. I shall never forget what splendid order the people kept, in spite of the fact that no police protection was given us; how the vast crowd parted to let our procession through; how the throngs of mill women kept up a chorus in broad Yorkshire: "Shall us win? Shall us have the vote? We shall!" No wonder the old people shook their beads, and declared that "there had never been owt like it." CHAPTER II With those brave shouts in my ears, I hurried down to London for the concluding session of the parliament, for I had determined that I must be the first person to challenge the Government to carry out their threat to revive the old Act of Charles II. I made a long speech to the women that day, telling them something of my experiences of the past months, and how all that I had seen and heard throughout the country had only deepened my conviction of the necessity for women's votes. "I feel," I concluded, "that the time has come when I must act, and I wish to be one of those to carry our resolution to Parliament this afternoon. My experience in the country, and especially in South Leeds, has taught me things that Cabinet Ministers, who have not had that experience, do not know, and has made me feel that I must make one final attempt to see them, and to urge them to reconsider their position before some terrible disaster has occurred." Amid a good deal of excitement and emotion, we chose the requisite thirteen women, who were prepared to be arrested and tried under the Charles II "Tumultuous Petitions" Act. I had not entirely recovered from the attack made upon me at Mid-Devon, and my wrenched ankle was still too sensitive to make walking anything but a painful process. Seeing me begin almost at once to limp badly, Mrs. Drummond, with characteristic, blunt kindness, called to a man driving a dog-cart and asked him if he would drive me to the House of Commons. He readily agreed, and I mounted to the seat behind him, the other women forming in line behind the cart. We had not gone far when the police, who already surrounded us in great force, ordered me to dismount. Of course I obeyed and walked, or rather limped along with my companions. They would have supported me, but the police insisted that we should walk single-file. Presently I grew so faint from the pain of the ankle that I called to two of the women, who took hold of my arms and helped me on my way. This was our one act of disobedience to police orders. We moved with difficulty, for the crowd was of incredible size. All around, as far as eye could see, was the great moving, swaying, excited multitude, and surrounding us on all sides were regiments of uniformed police, foot and mounted. You might have supposed that instead of thirteen women, one of them lame, walking quietly along, the town was in the hands of an armed mob. We had progressed as far as the entrance to Parliament Square, when two stalwart policemen suddenly grasped my arms on either side and told me that I was under arrest. My two companions, because they refused to leave me, were also arrested, and a few minutes later Annie Kenney and five other women suffered arrest. That night we were released on bail, and the next morning we were arraigned in Westminster police court for trial under the Charles II Act. But, as it turned out, the authorities, embarrassed by our readiness to test the act, announced that they had changed their minds, and would continue, for the present, to treat us as common street brawlers. This was my first trial, and I listened, with a suspicion that my ears were playing tricks with my reason, to the most astonishing perjuries put forth by the prosecution. I heard that we had set forth from Caxton Hall with noisy shouts and songs, that we had resorted to the most riotous and vulgar behaviour, knocking off policemen's helmets, assaulting the officers right and left as we marched. Our testimony, and that of our witnesses, was ignored. When I tried to speak in my own defence, I was cut short rudely, and was told briefly that I and the others must choose between being bound over or going to prison, in the second division, for six weeks. I remember only vaguely the long, jolting ride across London to Holloway Prison. We stopped at Pentonville, the men's prison, to discharge several men prisoners, and I remember shuddering at the thought of our women, many of them little past girlhood, being haled to prison in the same van with criminal men. Arriving at the prison, we groped our way through dim corridors into the reception-ward, where we were lined up against the wall for a superficial medical examination. After that we were locked up in separate cells, unfurnished, except for low, wooden stools. It seemed an endless time before my cell door was opened by a wardress, who ordered me to follow her. I entered a room where another wardress sat at a table, ready to take an inventory of my effects. Obeying an order to undress, I took off my gown, then paused. "Take off everything," was the next order. "Everything?" I faltered. It seemed impossible that they expected me to strip. In fact, they did allow me to take off my last garments in the shelter of a bath-room. I shivered myself into some frightful underclothing, old and patched and stained, some coarse, brown woollen stockings with red stripes, and the hideous prison dress stamped all over with the broad arrow of disgrace. I fished a pair of shoes out of a big basket of shoes, old and mostly mismates. A pair of coarse but clean sheets, a towel, a mug of cold cocoa, and a thick slice of brown bread were given me, and I was conducted to my cell. My first sensations when the door was locked upon me were not altogether disagreeable. I was desperately weary, for I had been working hard, perhaps a little too hard, for several strenuous months. The excitement and fatigue of the previous day, and the indignation I had suffered throughout the trial, had combined to bring me to the point of exhaustion, and I was glad to throw myself on my hard prison bed and close my eyes. But soon the relief of being alone, and with nothing to do, passed from me. Holloway Prison is a very old place, and it has the disadvantages of old places which have never known enough air and sunshine. It reeks with the odours of generations of bad ventilation, and it contrives to be at once the stuffiest and the draughtiest building I have ever been in. Soon I found myself sickening for fresh air. My head began to ache. Sleep fled. I lay all night suffering with cold, gasping for air, aching with fatigue, and painfully wide awake. The next day I was fairly ill, but I said nothing about it. One does not expect to be comfortable in prison. As a matter of fact, one's mental suffering is so much greater than any common physical distress that the latter is almost forgotten. The English prison system is altogether mediæval and outworn. In some of its details the system has improved since they began to send the Suffragettes to Holloway. I may say that we, by our public denunciation of the system, have forced these slight improvements. In 1907 the rules were excessively cruel. The poor prisoner, when she entered Holloway, dropped, as it were, into a tomb. No letters and no visitors were allowed for the first month of the sentence. Think of it--a whole month, more than four weeks, without sending or receiving a single word. One's nearest and dearest may have gone through dreadful suffering, may have been ill, may have died, meantime. One was given plenty of time to imagine all these things, for the prisoner was kept in solitary confinement in a narrow, dimly-lit cell, twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any human being, no matter what his crime. Hardened criminals in the men's prisons, it is said, often beg for the lash instead. Picture what it must be to a woman who has committed some small offence, for most of the women who go to Holloway are small offenders, sitting alone, day after day, in the heavy silence of a cell--thinking of her children at home--thinking, thinking. Some women go mad. Many suffer from shattered nerves for a long period after release. It is impossible to believe that any woman ever emerged from such a horror less criminal than when she entered it. Two days of solitary confinement, broken each day by an hour of silent exercise in a bitterly cold courtyard, and I was ordered to the hospital. There I thought I should be a little more comfortable. The bed was better, the food a little better, and small comforts, such as warm water for washing, were allowed. I slept a little the first night. About midnight I awoke, and sat up in bed, listening. A woman in the cell next mine was moaning in long, sobbing breaths of mortal pain. She ceased for a few minutes, then moaned again, horribly. The truth flashed over me, turning me sick, as I realised that a life was coming into being, there in that frightful prison. A woman, imprisoned by men's laws, was giving a child to the world. A child born in a cell! I shall never forget that night, nor what I suffered with the birth-pangs of that woman, who, I found later, was simply waiting trial on a charge which was found to be baseless. The days passed very slowly, the nights more slowly still. Being in hospital, I was deprived of chapel, and also of work. Desperate, at last I begged the wardress for some sewing, and she kindly gave me a skirt of her own to hem, and later some coarse knitting to do. Prisoners were allowed a few books, mostly of the "Sunday-school" kind. One day I asked the chaplain if there were not some French or German books in the library, and he brought me a treasure, "_Autour de mon Jardin_," by Jules Janin. For a few days I was quite happy, reading my book and translating it on the absurd little slate they gave us in lieu of paper and pencil. That slate was, after all, a great comfort. I did all kinds of things with it. I kept a calendar, I wrote all the French poetry I could remember on it, I even recorded old school chorals and old English exercises. It helped wonderfully to pass the endless hours until my release. I even forgot the cold, which was the harder to bear because of the fur coat, which I knew was put away, ticketed with my name. I begged them for the coat, but they wouldn't let me have it. At last the time came when they gave me back all my things, and let me go free. At the door the Governor spoke to me, and asked me if I had any complaints to make. "Not of you," I replied, "nor of any of the wardresses. Only of this prison, and all of men's prisons. We shall raze them to the ground." Back in my comfortable home, surrounded by loving friends, I would have rested quietly for a few days, but there was a great meeting that night at Albert Hall, to mark the close of a week of self-denial to raise money for the year's campaign. Women had sold papers, flowers, toys, swept crossings, and sung in the streets for the cause. Many women, well known in the world of art and letters, did these things. I felt that I should be doing little if I merely attended the meeting. So I went. My release was not expected until the following morning, and no one thought of my appearing at the meeting. My chairman's seat was decorated with a large placard with the inscription, "Mrs. Pankhurst's Chair." After all the others were seated, the speakers, and hundreds of ex-prisoners. I walked quietly onto the stage, took the placard out of the chair and sat down. A great cry went up from the women as they sprang from their seats and stretched their hands toward me. It was some time before I could see them for my tears, or speak to them for the emotion that shook me like a storm. The next morning I, with the other released prisoners, drove off to Peckham, a constituency of London, where the W. S. P. U. members were fighting a vigorous by-election. In open brakes we paraded the streets, dressed in our prison clothes, or exact reproductions of them. Naturally, we attracted a great deal of attention and sympathy, and our daily meetings on Peckham Rye, as their common is known, drew enormous crowds. When polling day came our members were stationed at every polling booth, and many men as they came to the booths told us that they were, for the first time, voting "for the women," by which they meant against the Government. That night, amid great excitement, it was made known that the Liberal majority of 2,339 at the last general election had been turned into a Conservative majority of 2,494. Letters poured into the newspapers, declaring that the loss of this important Liberal seat was due almost entirely to the work of the Suffragettes, and many prominent Liberals called upon party leaders to start doing something for women before the next general election. The Liberal leaders, with the usual perspicacity of politicians, responded not at all. Instead they beheld with approval the rise to highest power the arch-enemy of the suffragists, Mr. Asquith. Mr. Asquith became prime minister about Easter time, 1908, on the resignation, on account of ill health, of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Mr. Asquith was chosen, not because of any remarkable record of statesmanship, nor yet because of great personal popularity--for he possessed neither--but simply because no better man seemed available just then. He was known as a clever, astute, and somewhat unscrupulous lawyer. He had filled several high offices to the satisfaction of his party, and under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, a post which is generally regarded as a stepping-stone to the Premiership. The best thing the Liberal press found to say of the new Premier was that he was a "strong" man. Generally in politics this term is used to describe an obstinate man, and this we already knew Mr. Asquith to be. He was a bluntly outspoken opponent of woman suffrage, and it was sufficiently plain to us that no methods of education or persuasion would ever prove successful where he was concerned. Therefore the necessity of action on our part was greater than ever. Such an opportunity presented itself at once through changes that took place in the new Cabinet. According to English law, all new comers into the Cabinet are obliged to resign their seats in Parliament and offer themselves to their constituencies for re-election. Besides these vacancies there were several others, on account of death or elevations to the peerage. This made necessary a number of by-elections, and the Women's Social and Political Union once more went into the field against the Liberal candidates. I shall deal no further with these by-elections than is necessary to show the effect of our work on the Government, and its subsequent effect on our movement--which was to force us into more and more militancy. I shall leave it to the honest judgment of my readers to place where it ought rightly to be placed the responsibility for those first broken windows. We selected as our first candidate for defeat Mr. Winston Churchill, who was about to appeal to his constituency of North West Manchester to sanction his appointment as president of the Board of Trade. My daughter Christabel took charge of this election, and the work of herself and her forces was so successful that Mr. Churchill lost his seat by 420 votes. All the newspapers acknowledged that it was the Suffragettes who had defeated Mr. Churchill, and one Liberal newspaper, the London _Daily News_, called upon the party to put a stop to an intolerable state of affairs by granting the women's demand for votes. Another seat was immediately secured for Mr. Churchill, that of Dundee, then strongly--in the merely party sense--Liberal, and therefore safe. Nevertheless, we determined to fight Mr. Churchill there, to defeat him if possible, and to bring down the Liberal majority in any case. I took personal charge of the campaign, holding a very large meeting in Kinnaird Hall on the evening before Mr. Churchill's arrival. Although he felt absolutely sure of election in this Scottish constituency, Mr. Churchill dreaded the effect of our presence on the Liberal women. The second meeting he addressed in Dundee was held for women only, and instead of asking for support of the various measures actually on the government's programme, the politician's usual method, he talked about the certainty of securing, within a short time, the Parliamentary franchise for women. "No one," he declared, "can be blind to the fact that at the next general election woman suffrage will be a real, practical issue; and the next Parliament, I think, ought to see the gratification of the women's claims. I do not exclude the possibility of the suffrage being dealt with in this Parliament." Mr. Churchill earnestly reiterated his claim to be considered a true friend of the women's cause; but when pressed for a pledge that his Government would take action, he urged his inability to speak for his colleagues. This specious promise, or rather, prophecy of woman suffrage at some indefinite time, won over a great many of the Liberal women, who forthwith went staunchly to work for Mr. Churchill's election. Dundee has a large population of extremely poor people, workers in the jute mills and the marmalade factories. Some concessions in the matter of the sugar tax, timely made, and the announcement that the new Government meant to establish old age pensions, created an immense wave of Liberal enthusiasm that swept Mr. Churchill into office in spite of our work, which was untiring. We held something like two hundred meetings, and on election eve, five huge demonstrations--four of them in the open air and one which filled a large drill hall. Polling day, May 9th, was very exciting. For every Suffragette at the polling-booths there were half a dozen Liberal men and women, handing out bills with such legends as "Vote for Churchill, and never mind the women," and "Put Churchill in and keep the women out." Yet for all their efforts, Mr. Churchill polled 2200 votes less than his Liberal predecessor had polled at the general election. In the first seven by-elections following Mr. Asquith's elevation to the premiership, we succeeded in pulling down the Liberal vote by 6663. Then something happened to check our progress. Mr. Asquith received a deputation of Liberal members of Parliament, who urged him to allow the Stanger suffrage bill, which had passed its second reading by a large majority, to be carried into law. Mr. Asquith replied that he himself did not wish to see women enfranchised, and that it would not be possible for the Government to give the required facilities to Mr. Stanger's bill. He added that he was fully alive to the many defects of the electoral system, and that the Government intended, "barring accidents," to bring in a reform bill before the close of that Parliament. Woman suffrage would have no place in it, but it would be so worded that a woman-suffrage amendment might be added if any member chose to move one. In that case, said Mr. Asquith, he should not consider it the duty of the Government to oppose the amendment if it were approved by a majority of the House of Commons--_provided_ that the amendment was on democratic lines, and that it had back of it the support, the strong and undoubted support, of the women of the country as well as the present electorate. One would not suppose that such an evasive utterance as this would be regarded in any quarter as a promise that woman suffrage would be given any real chances of success under the Asquith Government. That it was, by many, taken quite seriously is but another proof of the gullibility of the party-blinded public. The Liberal press lauded Mr. Asquith's "promise," and called for a truce of militancy in order that the Government might have every opportunity to act. Said the _Star_, in a leader typical of many others: "The meaning of Mr. Asquith's pledge is plain. Woman's suffrage will be passed through the House of Commons before the present Government goes to the country." As for the women's Liberal Associations, they were quite delirious with joy. In a conference called for the purpose of passing resolutions of gratitude, Lady Carlisle said: "This is a glorious day of rejoicing. Our great Prime Minister, all honour to him, has opened a way to us by which we can enter into that inheritance from which we have been too long debarred." At the two following by-elections, the last of the series, enormous posters were exhibited, "Premier's Great Reform Bill: Votes for Women." We tried to tell the electors that the pledge was false on the face of it; that the specious proviso that the amendment be "democratic" left no doubt that the Government would cause the rejection of any practical amendment that might be moved. Our words fell on deaf ears, and the Liberal majorities soared. Just a week later Mr. Asquith was questioned in the House of Commons by a slightly alarmed anti-suffragist member. The member asked Mr. Asquith whether he considered himself pledged to introduce the reform hill during that Parliament, whether he meant to allow such a bill to carry a woman-suffrage amendment, if such were moved, and whether, in that case, the suffrage amendment would become part of the Government policy. Evasive as ever, the Prime Minister, after some sparring, replied, "My honourable friend has asked me a question with regard to a remote and speculative future." Thus was our interpretation of Mr. Asquith's "promise" justified from his own lips. Yet the Liberal women still clung to the hope of Government action, and the Liberal press pretended to cling to it. As for the Women's Social and Political Union, we prepared for more work. We had to strike out along a new line, since it was evident that the Government could, for a time at least, neutralise our by-election work by more false promises. Consistent with our policy, of never going further than the Government compelled us to go, we made our first action a perfectly peaceable one. On the day when the Stanger bill had reached its second reading in the House, and several days after I had gone to Holloway for the first time, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, the Home Secretary, made a speech which greatly interested the Suffragettes. He professed himself a suffragist, and declared that he intended to vote for the bill. Nevertheless, he was confident that it could not pass, because of the division in the Cabinet, and because it had no political party united either for or against it. Woman suffrage, said Mr. Gladstone, must advance to victory through all the stages that are required for great reforms to mature. First academic discussion, then effective action, was the history of men's suffrage; it must be the same with women's suffrage. "Men," declared Mr. Gladstone, "have learned this lesson and know the necessity for demonstrating the greatness of their movement, and for establishing that _force majeure_ which actuates and arms a Government for effective work. That is the task before the supporters of this great movement. Looking back at the great political crises in the thirties, the sixties and the eighties, it will be found that the people did not go about in small crowds, nor were they content with enthusiastic meetings in large halls; they assembled in their tens of thousands all over the country. "Of course," added Mr. Gladstone, "it is not to be expected that women can assemble in such masses, but power belongs to masses, and through this power a Government can be influenced into more effective action than a Government will be likely to take under present conditions." The Women's Social and Political Union determined to answer this challenge. If assembling in great masses was all that was necessary to convince the Government that woman suffrage had passed the academic stage and now demanded political action, we thought we could undertake to satisfy the most skeptical member of the Cabinet. We knew that we could organise a demonstration that would out-rival any of the great franchise demonstrations held by men in the thirties, sixties, and eighties. The largest number of people ever gathered in Hyde Park was said to have approximated 72,000. We determined to organise a Hyde Park demonstration of at least 250,000 people. Sunday, June 21, 1908, was fixed for the date of this demonstration, and for many months we worked to make it a day notable in the history of the movement. Our example was emulated by the non-militant suffragists, who organised a fine procession of their own, about a week before our demonstration. Thirteen thousand women, it was said, marched in that procession. On our demonstration we spent, for advertising alone, over a thousand pounds, or five thousand dollars. We covered the hoardings of London and of all the principal provincial cities with great posters bearing portraits of the women who were to preside at the twenty platforms from which speeches were to be made; a map of London, showing the routes by which the seven processions were to advance, and a plan of the Hyde Park meeting-place were also shown. London, of course, was thoroughly organised. For weeks a small army of women was busy chalking announcements on sidewalks, distributing handbills, canvassing from house to house, advertising the demonstration by posters and sandwich boards carried through the streets. We invited everybody to be present, including both Houses of Parliament. A few days before the demonstration Mrs. Drummond and a number of other women hired and decorated a launch and sailed up the Thames to the Houses of Parliament, arriving at the hour when members entertain their women friends at tea on the terrace. Everyone left the tables and crowded to the water's edge as the boat stopped, and Mrs. Drummond's strong, clear voice pealed out her invitation to the Cabinet and the members of Parliament to join the women's demonstration in Hyde Park. "Come to the park on Sunday," she cried. "You shall have police protection, and there will be no arrests, we promise you." An alarmed someone telephoned for the police boats, but as they appeared, the women's boat steamed away. What a day was Sunday, June 21st--clear, radiant, filled with golden sunshine! As I advanced, leading, with the venerable Mrs. Wolstenholm-Elmy, the first of the seven processions, it seemed to me that all London had turned out to witness our demonstration. And a goodly part of London followed the processions. When I mounted my platform in Hyde Park, and surveyed the mighty throngs that waited there and the endless crowds that were still pouring into the park from all directions, I was filled with amazement not unmixed with awe. Never had I imagined that so many people could be gathered together to share in a political demonstration. It was a gay and beautiful as well as an awe-inspiring spectacle, for the white gowns and flower-trimmed hats of the women, against the background of ancient trees, gave the park the appearance of a vast garden in full bloom. The bugles sounded, and the speakers at each of the twenty platforms began their addresses, which could not have been heard by more than half or a third of the vast audience. Notwithstanding this, they remained to the end. At five o'clock the bugles sounded again, the speaking ceased, and the resolution calling upon the Government to bring in an official woman-suffrage bill without delay was carried at every platform, often without a dissenting vote. Then, with a three-times-repeated cry of "Votes for Women!" from the assembled multitude, the great meeting dispersed. The London _Times_ said next day: "Its organisers had counted on an audience of 250,000. That expectation was certainly fulfilled, and probably it was doubled, and it would be difficult to contradict any one who asserted that it was trebled. Like the distances and the number of the stars, the facts were beyond the threshold of perception." The _Daily Express_ said: "It is probable that so many people never before stood in one square mass anywhere in England. Men who saw the great Gladstone meeting years ago said that compared with yesterday's multitude it was as nothing." We felt that we had answered the challenge in Mr. Gladstone's declaration that "power belongs to the masses," and that through this power the Government could be influenced; so it was with real hope that we despatched a copy of the resolution to the Prime Minister, asking him what answer the Government would make to that unparalleled gathering of men and women. Mr. Asquith replied formally that he had nothing to add to his previous statement--that the Government intended, at some indefinite time, to bring in a general reform bill which _might_ be amended to include woman suffrage. Our wonderful demonstration, it appeared, had made no impression whatever upon him. CHAPTER III Now we had reached a point where we had to choose between two alternatives. We had exhausted argument. Therefore either we had to give up our agitation altogether, as the suffragists of the eighties virtually had done, or else we must act, and go on acting, until the selfishness and the obstinacy of the Government was broken down, or the Government themselves destroyed. Until forced to do so, the Government, we perceived, would never give women the vote. We realised the truth of John Bright's words, spoken while the reform bill of 1867 was being agitated. Parliament, John Bright then declared, had never been hearty for any reform. The Reform Act of 1832 had been wrested by force from the Government of that day, and now before another, he said, could be carried, the agitators would have to fill the streets with people from Charing Cross to Westminster Abbey. Acting on John Bright's advice, we issued a call to the public to join us in holding a huge demonstration, on June 30th outside the House of Commons. We wanted to be sure that the Government saw as well as read of our immense following. A public proclamation from the Commissioner of Police, warning the public not to assemble in Parliament Square and declaring that the approaches to the Houses of Parliament must be kept open, was at once issued. We persisted in announcing that the demonstration would take place, and I wrote a letter to Mr. Asquith telling him that a deputation would wait upon him at half-past four on the afternoon of June 30th. We held the usual Women's Parliament in Caxton Hall, after which Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, eleven other women, and myself, set forth. We met with no opposition from the police, but marched through cheering crowds of spectators to the Strangers' Entrance to the House of Commons. Here we were met by a large group of uniformed men commanded by Inspector Scantlebury, of the police. The inspector, whom I knew personally, stepped forward and demanded officially, "Are you Mrs. Pankhurst, and is this your deputation?" "Yes," I replied. "My orders are to exclude you from the House of Commons." "Has Mr. Asquith received my letter?" I asked. For answer the inspector drew my letter from his pocket and handed it to me. "Did Mr. Asquith return no message, no kind of reply?" I inquired. "No," replied the inspector. We turned and walked back to Caxton Hall, to tell the waiting audience what had occurred. We resolved that there was nothing to do but wait patiently until evening, and see how well the public would respond to our call to meet in Parliament Square. Already we knew that the streets were filled with people, and early as it was the crowds were increasing rapidly. At eight we went out in groups from Caxton Hall, to find Parliament Square packed with a throng, estimated next day at least 100,000. From the steps of public buildings, from stone copings, from the iron railings of the Palace Yard, to which they clung precariously, our women made speeches until the police pulled them down and flung them into the moving, swaying, excited crowds. Some of the women were arrested, others were merely ordered to move on. Mingled cheers and jeers rose from the spectators. Some of the men were roughs who had come out to amuse themselves. Others were genuinely sympathetic, and tried valiantly to help us to reach the House of Commons. Again and again the police lines were broken, and it was only as the result of repeated charges by mounted police that the people's attacks were repelled. Many members of Parliament, including Mr. Lloyd-George, Mr. Winston Churchill, and Mr. Herbert Gladstone, came out to witness the struggle, which lasted until midnight and resulted in the arrest of twenty-nine women. Two of these women were arrested after they had each thrown a stone through a window of Mr. Asquith's official residence in Downing Street, the value of the windows being about $2.40. This was the first window-breaking in our history. Mrs. Mary Leigh and Miss Edith New, who had thrown the stones, sent word to me from the police court that, having acted without orders, they would not resent repudiation from headquarters. Far from repudiating them, I went at once to see them in their cells, and assured them of my approval of their act. The smashing of windows is a time-honoured method of showing displeasure in a political situation. As one of the newspapers, commenting on the affair, truly said, "When the King and Queen dine at Apsley on the 13th inst. they will be entertained in rooms the windows of which the Duke of Wellington was obliged to protect with iron shutters from the fury of his political opponents." In Winchester a few years ago, to give but one instance, a great riot took place as a protest against the removal of a historic gun from one part of the town to another. In the course of this riot windows were broken and other property of various kinds was destroyed, very serious damage being done. No punishment was administered in respect of this riot and the authorities, bowing to public opinion thus riotously expressed, restored the gun to its original situation. Window-breaking, when Englishmen do it, is regarded as honest expression of political opinion. Window-breaking, when Englishwomen do it, is treated as a crime. In sentencing Mrs. Leigh and Miss New to two months in the first division, the magistrate used very severe language, and declared that such a thing must never happen again. Of course the women assured him that it would happen again. Said Mrs. Leigh: "We have no other course but to rebel against oppression, and if necessary to resort to stronger measures. This fight is going on." The summer of 1908 is remembered as one of the most oppressively hot seasons the country had known for years. Our prisoners in Holloway suffered intensely, some being made desperately ill from the heat, the bad air, and the miserable food. We who spent the summer campaigning suffered also, but in less degree. It was a tremendous relief when the cool days of autumn set in, and it was with renewed vigour that we prepared for the opening day of Parliament, which was October 12th. Again we resolved to send a deputation to the Prime Minister, and again we invited the general public to take part in the demonstration. We had printed thousands of little handbills bearing this inscription: "Men and Women, Help the Suffragettes to Rush the House of Commons, on Tuesday Evening, October 13th, at 7:30." On Sunday, October 11th, we held a large meeting in Trafalgar Square, my daughter Christabel, Mrs. Drummond and I speaking from the plinth of the Nelson monument. Mr. Lloyd-George, as we afterward learned, was a member of the audience. The police were there, taking ample notes of our speeches. We had not failed to notice that they were watching us daily, dogging our footsteps, and showing in numerous ways that they were under orders to keep track of all our movements. The climax came at noon on October 12th, when Christabel, Mrs. Drummond and I were each served with an imposing legal document which read, "Information has been laid this day by the Commissioner of Police that you, in the month of October, in the year 1908, were guilty of conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace by initiating and causing to be initiated, by publishing and causing to be published, a certain handbill, calling upon and inciting the public to do a certain wrongful and illegal act, viz., to rush the House of Commons at 7:30 P.M. on October 13th inst." [Illustration: MRS. PANKHURST AND CHRISTABEL HIDING FROM THE POLICE ON THE ROOF GARDEN AT CLEMENTS INN _October, 1908_] The last paragraph was a summons to appear at Bow Street police station that same afternoon at three o'clock. We did not go to Bow Street police station. We went instead to a crowded "At Home" at Queen's Hall, where it can be imagined that our news created great excitement. The place was surrounded by constables, and the police reporters were on hand to take stenographic reports of everything that was said from the platform. Once an excited cry was raised that a police inspector was coming in to arrest us. But the officer merely brought a message that the summons had been adjourned until the following morning. It did not suit our convenience to obey the adjourned summons quite so early, so I wrote a polite note to the police, saying that we would be in our headquarters, No. 4 Clements Inn, the next evening at six o'clock, and would then be at his disposal. Warrants for our arrests were quickly issued, and Inspector Jarvis was instructed to execute them at once. This he found impossible to do, for Mrs. Drummond was spending her last day of liberty on private business, while my daughter and I had retreated to another part of Clements Inn, which is a big, rambling building. There, in the roof-garden of the Pethick Lawrence's private flat, we remained all day, busy, under the soft blue of the autumn sky, with our work and our preparations for a long absence. At six we walked downstairs, dressed for the street. Mrs. Drummond arrived promptly, the waiting officers read the warrants, and we all proceeded to Bow Street in cabs. It was too late for the trial to be held. We asked for bail, but the authorities had no mind to allow us to take part in the "rush" which we had incited, so we were obliged to spend the night in the police station. All night I lay awake, thinking of the scenes which were going on in the streets. The next morning, in a courtroom crowded to its utmost capacity, my daughter rose to conduct her first case at law. She had earned the right to an LL.B. after her name, but as women are not permitted to practise law in England, she had never appeared at the bar in any capacity except that of defendant. Now she proposed to combine the two rôles of defendant and lawyer, and conduct the case for the three of us. She began by asking the magistrate not to try the case in that court, but to send it for trial before a judge and jury. We had long desired to take the Suffragettes' cases before bodies of private citizens, because we had every reason to suspect that the police-court officials acted under the direct commands of the very persons against whom our agitation was directed. Jury trial was denied us; but after the preliminary examination was over the magistrate, Mr. Curtis Bennett, allowed a week's adjournment for preparation of the case. On October 21st the trial was resumed, with the courtroom as full as before and the press table even more crowded, for it had been widely published that we had actually subpoenaed two members of the Government, who had witnessed the scenes on the night of October 13th. The first witness to enter the box was Mr. Lloyd-George. Christabel examined him at some length as to the meaning and merits of the word rush, and succeeded in making him very uncomfortable--and the charge against ourselves look very flimsy. She then questioned him about the speeches he had heard at Trafalgar Square, and as to whether there had been any suggestion that property be destroyed or personal violence used. He admitted that the speeches were temperate and the crowds orderly. Then Christabel suddenly asked, "There were no words used so likely to incite to violence as the advice you gave at Swansea, that the women should be ruthlessly flung out of your meeting?" Mr. Lloyd-George looked black, and answered nothing. The magistrate hastened to the protection of Mr. Lloyd-George. "This is quite irrelevant," he said. "That was a private meeting." It was a public meeting, and Christabel said so. "It was a private meeting _in a sense_," insisted the magistrate. Mr. Lloyd-George assumed an air of pompous indignation when Christabel asked him, "Have we not received encouragement from you, and if not from you from your colleagues, to take action of this kind?" Mr. Lloyd-George rolled his eyes upward as he replied, "I should be very much surprised to hear that, Miss Pankhurst." "Is it not a fact," asked Christabel, "that you yourself have set us an example of revolt?" "I never incited a crowd to violence," exclaimed the witness. "Not in the Welsh graveyard case?" she asked. "No!" he cried angrily. "You did not tell them to break down a wall and disinter a body?" pursued Christabel. He could not deny this but, "I gave advice which was found by the Court of Appeal to be sound legal advice," he snapped, and turned his back as far as he could in the narrow witness-box. Mr. Herbert Gladstone had asked to be allowed to testify early, as he was being detained from important public duties. Christabel asked to question one witness before Mr. Gladstone entered the box. The witness was Miss Georgiana Brackenbury, who had recently suffered six weeks' imprisonment for the cause, and had since met and had a talk with Mr. Horace Smith, the magistrate, who had made to her a most important and damaging admission of the government's interference in suffragists' trials. Christabel asked her one question. "Did Mr. Horace Smith tell you in sentencing you that he was doing what he had been told to do?" "You must not put that question!" exclaimed the magistrate. But the witness had already answered "Yes." There was an excited stir in the courtroom. It had been recorded under oath that a magistrate had admitted that Suffragettes were being sentenced not by himself, according to the evidence and according to law, but by the Government, for no one could possibly doubt where Mr. Horace Smith's orders came from. Mr. Gladstone, plump, bald, and ruddy, in no way resembles his illustrious father. He entered the witness-box smiling and confident, but his complacence vanished when Christabel asked him outright if the Government had not ordered the Commissioner of Police to take this action against us. Of course the magistrate intervened, and Mr. Gladstone did not answer the question. Christabel tried again. "Did you instruct Mr. Horace Smith to decide against Miss Brackenbury, and to send her to prison for six weeks?" That too was objected to, as were all questions on the subject. All through the examination the magistrate constantly intervened to save the Cabinet Minister from embarrassment, but Christabel finally succeeded in making Mr. Gladstone admit, point by point, that he had said that women could never get the vote because they could not fight for it as men had fought. A large number of witnesses testified to the orderly nature of the demonstration on the 13th, and then Christabel rose to plead. She began by declaring that these proceedings had been taken, as the legal saying is, "in malice and vexation," in order to lame a political enemy. She declared that, under the law, the charge which might properly be brought against us was that of illegal assembly, but the Government had not charged us with this offence, because the Government desired to keep the case in a police court. "The authorities dare not see this case come before a jury," she declared, "because they know perfectly well that if it were heard before a jury of our countrymen we should be acquitted, just as John Burns was acquitted years ago for taking action far more dangerous to the public peace than we have taken. We are deprived of trial by jury. We are also deprived of the right to appeal against the magistrate's decision. Very carefully has this procedure been thought out." Of the handbill she said: "We do not deny that we issued this bill; none of us three has wished to deny responsibility. We did issue the bill; we did cause it to be circulated; we did put upon it the words 'Come and help the suffragettes rush the House of Commons.' For these words we do not apologise. It is very well known that we took this action in order to press forward a claim, which, according to the British constitution, we are well entitled to make." In all that the Suffragettes had done, in all that they might ever do, declared my daughter, they would only be following in the footsteps of men now in Parliament. "Mr. Herbert Gladstone has told us in the speech I read to him that the victory of argument alone is not enough. As we cannot hope to win by force of argument alone, it is necessary to overcome by other means the savage resistance of the Government to our claim for citizenship. He says, 'Go on, fight as the men did.' And then, when we show our power and get the people to help us, he takes proceedings against us in a manner that would have been disgraceful even in the old days of coercion. Then there is Mr. Lloyd-George, who, if any man has done so, has set us an example. His whole career has been a series of revolts. He has said that if we do not get the vote--mark these words--we should be justified in adopting the methods the men had to adopt, namely, pulling down the Hyde Park railings." She quoted Lord Morley as saying of the Indian unrest: "'We are in India in the presence of a living movement, and a movement for what? For objects which we ourselves have taught them to think are desirable objects; and unless we can somehow reconcile order with satisfaction of those ideals and aspirations, the fault will not be theirs, it will be ours--it will mark the breakdown of British statesmanship.'--Apply those words to our case," she continued. [Illustration: CHRISTABEL, MRS. DRUMMOND AND MRS. PANKHURST IN THE DOCK, FIRST CONSPIRACY TRIAL _October, 1908_] "Remember that we are demanding of Liberal statesmen that which is for us the greatest boon and the most essential right--and if the present Government cannot reconcile order with our demand for the vote without delay, it will mark the breakdown of their statesmanship. Yes, their statesmanship has broken down already. They are disgraced. It is only in this court that they have the smallest hope of being supported." My daughter had spoken with passion and fervour, and her righteous indignation had moved her to words that caused the magistrate's face to turn an angry crimson. When I rose to address the Court I began by assuming an appearance of calmness which I did not altogether feel. I endorsed all that Christabel had said of the unfairness of our trial and the malice of the Government; I protested against the trial of political offenders in a common police court, and I said that we were not women who would come into the court as ordinary law-breakers. I described Mrs. Drummond's worthy career as a wife, a mother, and a self-sustaining business woman. I said, "Before you decide what is to be done with us, I should like you to hear from me a statement of what has brought me into the dock this morning." And then I told of my life and experiences, many of which I have related in these pages of what I had seen and known as a Poor Law Guardian and a registrar of births and deaths; of how I had learned the burning necessity of changing the status of women, of altering the laws under which they and their children live, and of the essential justice of making women self-governing citizens. "I have seen," I said, "that men are encouraged by law to take advantage of the helplessness of women. Many women have thought as I have, and for many, many years have tried, by that influence of which we have been so often reminded, to alter these laws, but we find that influence counts for nothing. When we went to the House of Commons we used to be told, when we were persistent, that members of Parliament were not responsible to women, they were responsible only to voters, and that their time was too fully occupied to reform those laws, although they agreed that they needed reforming. "We women have presented larger petitions in support of our enfranchisement than were ever presented for any other reform; we have succeeded in holding greater public meetings than men have ever held for any reform, in spite of the difficulty which women have in throwing off their natural diffidence, that desire to escape publicity which we have inherited from generations of our foremothers. We have broken through that. We have faced hostile mobs at street corners, because we were told that we could not have that representation for our taxes that men have won unless we converted the whole of the country to our side. Because we have done this, we have been misrepresented, we have been ridiculed, we have had contempt poured upon us, and the ignorant mob have been incited to offer us violence, which we have faced unarmed and unprotected by the safeguards which Cabinet Ministers enjoy. We have been driven to do this; we are determined to go on with this agitation because we feel in honour bound. Just as it was the duty of your forefathers, it is our duty to make the world a better place for women than it is to-day. "Lastly, I want to call attention to the self-restraint which was shown by our followers on the night of the 13th, after we had been arrested. Our rule has always been to be patient, exercise self-restraint, show our so-called superiors that we are not hysterical; to use no violence, but rather to offer ourselves to the violence of others. "That is all I have to say to you, sir. We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers." The burly policemen, the reporters, and most of the spectators were in tears as I finished. But the magistrate, who had listened part of the time with his hand concealing his face, still held that we were properly charged in a common police court as inciters to riot. Since we refused to be bound over to keep the peace, he sentenced Mrs. Drummond and myself to three months' imprisonment, and Christabel to ten weeks' imprisonment. It was destined to be a kind of imprisonment the authorities had never yet been called upon to deal with. CHAPTER IV My first act on reaching Holloway was to demand that the Governor be sent for. When he came I told him that the Suffragettes had resolved that they would no longer submit to being treated as ordinary law-breakers. In the course of our trial two Cabinet Ministers had admitted that we were political offenders, and therefore we should henceforth refuse to be searched or to undress in the presence of the wardresses. For myself I claimed the right, and I hoped the others would do likewise, to speak to my friends during exercise, or whenever I came in contact with them. The Governor, after reflection, yielded to the first two demands, but said that he would have to consult the Home Office before permitting us to break the rule of silence. We were accordingly allowed to change our clothing privately, and, as a further concession, were placed in adjoining cells. This was little advantage to me, however, since within a few days I was removed to a hospital cell, suffering from the illness which prison life always inflicts on me. Here the Governor visited me with the unwelcome news that the Home Secretary had refused to allow me the privilege of speech with my fellow prisoners. I asked him if I might, when I was strong enough to walk, take exercise with my friends. To this he assented, and I soon had the joy of seeing my daughter and the other brave comrades, and walking with them in the dismal courtyard of the prison. Single file we walked, at a distance of three or four feet from one another, back and forth under the stony eyes of the wardresses. The rough flags of the pavement hurt our feet, shod in heavy, shapeless prison boots. The autumn days were cold and cheerless, and we shivered violently under our scanty cloaks. But of all our hardships the ceaseless silence of our lives was worst. At the end of the second week I decided I would no longer endure it. That afternoon at exercise I suddenly called my daughter by name and bade her stand still until I came up to her. Of course she stopped, and when I reached her side we linked arms and began to talk in low tones. A wardress ran up to us, saying: "I shall listen to everything you say." I replied: "You are welcome to do that, but I shall insist on my right to speak to my daughter." Another wardress had hastily left the yard, and now she returned with a large number of wardresses. They seized me and quickly removed me to my cell, while the other suffrage prisoners cheered my action at the top of their voices. For their "mutiny" they got three days' solitary confinement, and I, for mine, a much more severe punishment. Unrepentant, I told the Governor that, in spite of any punishment he might impose on me, I would never again submit to the silence rule. To forbid a mother to speak to her daughter was infamous. For this I was characterised as a "dangerous criminal" and was sent into solitary confinement, without exercise or chapel, while a wardress was stationed constantly at my cell door to see that I communicated with no one. [Illustration: MRS. PANKHURST AND MISS CHRISTABEL PANKHURST IN PRISON DRESS] It was two weeks before I saw any of my friends again, and meantime the health of Mrs. Drummond had been so seriously impaired that she was released for hospital treatment. My daughter also, I learned, was ill, and in desperation I made application to the Board of Visiting Magistrates to be allowed to see her. After a long conference, during which I was made to wait outside in the corridor, the magistrates returned a refusal, saying that I might renew my application in a month. The answer then, they said, would depend on my conduct. A month! My girl might be dead by that time. My anxiety sent me to bed ill again, but, although I did not know it, relief was already on its way. I had told the visiting magistrates that I would wait until public opinion got within those walls, and this happened sooner than I had dared to hope. Mrs. Drummond, as soon as she was able to appear in public, and the other suffrage prisoners, as they were released, spread broadcast the story of our mutiny, and of a subsequent one led by Miss Wallace Dunlop, which sent a large number of women into solitary confinement. The Suffragettes marched by thousands to Holloway, thronging the approaches to the prison street. Round and round the prison they marched, singing the Women's Marseillaise and cheering. Faintly the sound came to our ears, infinitely lightening our burden of pain and loneliness. The following week they came again, so we afterwards learned, but this time the police turned them back long before they reached the confines of the prison. The demonstrations, together with a volley of questions asked in the House of Commons, told at last. Orders came from the Home Office that I was to see my daughter, and that we were to be allowed to exercise and to talk together for one hour each day. In addition, we were to be permitted the rare privilege of reading a daily newspaper. Then, on December 8th, the day of Christabel's release, orders came that I, too, should be discharged, two weeks before the expiration of my sentence. At the welcome breakfast given us, as released prisoners, at Lincoln's Inn Hotel, I told our members that henceforth we should all insist on refusing to abide by ordinary prison rules. We did not propose to break laws and then shirk punishment. We simply meant to assert our right to be recognised as political prisoners. We reached this point after due reflection. We first set ourselves not to complain of prison, not to say anything about it, to avoid it, to keep away from all side issues, to keep along the straight path of political reform, to get the vote; because we knew that when we had won it we could reform prisons and a great many other abuses as well. But now that we had had in the witness box the admission of Cabinet Ministers that we are political offenders, we should in future demand the treatment given to men political offenders in all civilised countries. "If nations," I said, "are still so governed that they make political offenders, then Great Britain is going to treat her political offenders as well as political offenders are treated by other nations. If it were the custom to treat political offenders as ordinary offenders against the well-being of society are treated, we should not have complained if we were treated like that; but it is not the international custom to do it, and so, for the dignity of the women of the country, and for the sake of the consciences of the men of the country, and for the sake of our nation amongst the nations of the earth, we are not going to allow the Liberal government to treat us like ordinary law-breakers in future." I said the same thing that night in a great meeting held in Queen's Hall to welcome the released prisoners, and, although we all knew that our determination involved a bitter struggle, our women endorsed it without a moment's hesitation. Had they been able to look forward to the events which were even then overshadowing us, could they have foreseen the new forms of suffering and danger that lay in waiting, I am certain that they would still have done the same thing, for our experiences had taught us to dispense with fear. Whatever of timidity, of shrinking from pain or hardship any of us had originally possessed, it had all vanished. There were no terrors that we were not now ready to face. The year 1909 marks an important point in our struggle, partly because of this decision of ours, never again to submit to be classed with criminals; and partly because in this year we forced the Liberal Government to go on record, publicly, in regard to the oldest of popular rights, the right of petition. We had long contemplated this step, and now the time seemed ripe for taking it. In the closing days of 1908 Mr. Asquith, speaking on the policy to be carried out in 1909, commented on the various deputations he was obliged at that time to receive. They called on him, he said, "from all quarters and in all causes, on an average of something like two hours on three days in every week." The deputations all asked for different things, and, although all of the things could not possibly be included in the King's speech, Mr. Asquith was inclined to agree that many of them ought to be included. This declaration from the Prime Minister that he was constantly receiving deputations of men, and listening favourably to their suggestions of what policies to pursue, aroused in the Suffragettes feelings of deep indignation. This in part they expressed on January 25th, when the first meeting of the Cabinet Council took place. A small deputation from the W. S. P. U. proceeded to Downing Street to claim the right to be heard, as men were heard. For knocking at the door of the official residence four of the women, including my sister, Mrs. Clark, were arrested and sent to prison for one month. A month later the seventh of our Women's Parliaments was called against this and against the fact that no mention of women had been included in the King's speech. Led by Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Lady Constance Lytton and Miss Daisy Solomon, a deputation of women endeavoured to carry the resolution to the House of Commons. They were promptly arrested and, next day, were sent to prison on sentences of from one to two months. The time was rapidly approaching when the legality of these arrests would have to be tested. In June of the year 1909 the test was made. It will be remembered that we had endeavoured to force the authorities to make good their threat to charge us under the obsolete Charles II "Tumultuous Petitions Act," which prescribes severe penalties for persons proceeding to Parliament in groups of more than twelve for the purpose of presenting petitions. It had been stated that if we were charged under that act our case would be given a hearing before a judge and jury instead of a police magistrate. Since this was exactly what we desired to have happen we had sent deputation after deputation of more than twelve persons, but always they were tried in police courts, and were sent to prison often for periods as long as that prescribed in the Charles II Act. Now we determined to do something still more ambitious; we resolved to test, not the Charles II Act, but the constitutional right of the subject to petition the Prime Minister as the seat of power. The right of petition, which has existed in England since the earliest known period, was written into the Bill of Rights which became law in 1689 on the accession of William and Mary. It was, in fact, one of the conditions attaching to the accession of the joint monarchs. According to the Bill of Rights, "It is the right of subjects to petition the King and all commitments, and prosecutions for such petitionings are illegal." The power of the King having passed almost completely into the hands of Parliament, the Prime Minister now stands where the King's majesty stood in former times. Clearly, then, the right of the subject to petition the Prime Minister cannot be legally denied. Thus were we advised, and in order to keep within the strict letter of the law, we accepted the limitations of the right of petition laid down in the Charles II Act, and decided that our petition should be carried to the House of Commons by small groups of women. Again I called together, on the evening of June 29th, a Parliament of women. Previously I had written to Mr. Asquith stating that a deputation of women would wait on him at the House of Commons at eight o'clock in the evening. I wrote him further that we were not to be refused, as we insisted upon our constitutional right to be received. To my note the Prime Minister returned a formal note declining to receive us. Nevertheless we continued our preparations, because we knew that the Prime Minister would continue to decline, but that in the end he would be forced to receive us. An incident which occurred a week before the date of the deputation was destined to have important consequences. Miss Wallace Dunlop went to St. Stephen's Hall in the House of Commons, and marked with printer's ink on the stone work of the Hall an extract from the Bill of Rights. The first time she made the attempt she was interrupted by a policeman, but two days later she succeeded in stamping on the ancient walls the reminder to Parliament that women as well as men possess constitutional rights, and that they were proposing to exercise those rights. She was arrested and sentenced to prison for one month, in the third division. The option of a heavy fine was given her, which of course she refused. Miss Wallace Dunlop's prison term began on June 22d. Perhaps her deed had something to do with the unusual interest taken in the approaching deputation, an interest which was shown not only by the public but by many members of Parliament. In the House of Commons a strong feeling that the women ought this time to be received manifested itself in many questions put to the Government. One member even asked leave to move the adjournment of the House on a matter of urgent public importance, namely the danger to the public peace, owing to the refusal of the Prime Minister to receive the deputation. This was denied, however, and the Government mendaciously disclaimed all responsibility for what action the police might take toward the deputation. The Home Secretary, Mr. Gladstone, when asked by Mr. Kier Hardie to give instructions that the deputation, if orderly, should be admitted to St. Stephen's, replied: "I cannot say what action the police ought to take in the matter." Our Women's Parliament met at half past seven on the evening of June 29th, and the petition to the Prime Minister was read and adopted. Then our deputation set forth. Accompanying me as leader were two highly respectable women of advanced years, Mrs. Saul Solomon, whose husband had been Prime Minister at the Cape, and Miss Neligan, one of the foremost of the pioneer educators of England. We three and five other women were preceded by Miss Elsie Howey, who, riding fast, went on horse-back to announce our coming to the enormous crowds that filled the streets. She, we afterward learned, progressed as far as the approaches to the House of Commons before being turned back by the police. As for the deputation, it pressed on through the crowd as far as St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, where we found a long line of police blocking the road. We paused for a moment, gathering strength for the ordeal of trying to push through the lines, when an unexpected thing happened. An order was given from some one, and instantly the police lines parted, leaving a clear space through which we walked towards the House. We were escorted on our way by Inspector Wells, and as we passed the crowd broke into vociferous cheering, firmly believing that we were after all to be received. As for myself I did little speculating as to what was about to happen. I simply led my deputation on as far as the entrance to St. Stephen's Hall. There we encountered another strong force of police commanded by our old acquaintance, Inspector Scantlebury, who stepped forward and handed me a letter. I opened it and read in aloud to the women. "The Prime Minister, for the reasons which he has already given in a written reply to their request, regrets that he is unable to receive the proposed deputation." I dropped the note to the ground and said: "I stand upon my rights, as a subject of the King, to petition the Prime Minister, and I am firmly resolved to stand here until I am received." [Illustration: INSPECTOR WELLS CONDUCTING MRS. PANKHURST TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS _June, 1908_] Inspector Scantlebury turned away and walked rapidly towards the door of the Strangers' Entrance. I turned to Inspector Jarvis, who remained, to several members of Parliament and some newspaper men who stood looking on, and begged them to take my message to the Prime Minister, but no one responded, and the Inspector, seizing my arm, began to push me away. I now knew that the deputation would not be received and that the old miserable business of refusing to leave, of being forced backward, and returning again and again until arrested, would have to be re-enacted. I had to take into account that I was accompanied by two fragile old ladies, who, brave as they were to be there at all, could not possibly endure what I knew must follow. I quickly decided that I should have to force an immediate arrest, so I committed an act of technical assault on the person of Inspector Jarvis, striking him very lightly on the cheek. He said instantly, "I understand why you did that," and I supposed then that we would instantly be taken. But the other police apparently did not grasp the situation, for they began pushing and jostling our women. I said to the inspector: "Shall I have to do it again?" and he said "Yes." So I struck him lightly a second time, and then he ordered the police to make the arrests. The matter did not end with the arrest of our deputation of eight women. In recurring deputations of twelve the Suffragettes again and again pressed forward in vain endeavour to reach the House of Commons. In spite of the fact that the crowds were friendly and did everything they could to aid the women, their deputations were broken up by the police and many of the women arrested. By nine o'clock Parliament Square was empty, an enormous force of mounted police having beaten the people back into Victoria Street and across Westminster Bridge. For a short time all looked tranquil, but soon little groups of women, seven or eight at a time, kept appearing mysteriously and making spirited dashes toward the House. This extraordinary procedure greatly exasperated the police, who could not unravel the mystery of where the women came from. As a matter of bygone history the explanation is that the W. S. P. U. had hired thirty offices in the neighborhood, in the shelter of which the women waited until it was time for them to sally forth. It was a striking demonstration of the ingenuity of women opposing the physical force of men, but it served still another purpose. It diverted the attention of the police from another demonstration which was going on. Other Suffragettes had gone to the official residence of the First Lord of the Admiralty, to the Home Office, the Treasury and Privy Council Offices, and had registered their contempt for the Government's refusal to receive the deputation by the time-honoured method of breaking a window in each place. One hundred and eight women were arrested that night, but instead of submitting to arrests and trial, the Women's Social and Political Union announced that they were prepared to prove that the Government and not the women had broken the law in refusing to receive the petition. My case, coupled with that of the Hon. Mrs. Haverfield, was selected as a test case for all the others, and Lord Robert Cecil was retained for the defence. Mr. Muskett, who conducted the case for the prosecution, tried to prove that our women had not gone to the House of Commons to present a petition, but this was easily demonstrated to be an unwarranted claim. The speeches of the leader, the official articles published in our newspaper, _Votes for Women_, and the letters sent to Mr. Asquith, not to speak of the indisputable facts that every member of the deputation carried a copy of the petition in her hand, furnished evidence enough of the nature of our errand. The whole case of the subject's right of petition was then brought forward for discussion. Mr. Muskett spoke first, then our council, Mr. Henle, then Lord Robert Cecil. Last of all I spoke, describing the events of June 29th. I told the magistrate that should he decide that we and not the Government had been guilty of an infraction of the law, we should refuse to be bound over, but should all choose to go to prison. In that case we should not submit to being treated like criminals. "There are one hundred and eight of us here to-day," I said, pointing to the benches where my fellow-prisoners sat, "and just as we have thought it is our duty to defy the police in the street, so when we get into prison, as we are political prisoners, we shall do our best to bring back into the twentieth century the treatment of political prisoners which was thought right in the case of William Cobbett, and other political offenders of his time." The magistrate, Sir Albert de Rutzen, an elderly, amiable man, rather bewildered by this unprecedented situation, then gave his decision. He agreed with Mr. Henle and Lord Robert Cecil that the right of petition was clearly guaranteed to every subject, but he thought that when the women were refused permission to enter the House of Commons, and when Mr. Asquith had said that he would not receive them, the women acted wrongly to persist in their demands. He should, therefore, fine them five pounds each, or sentence them to prison for one month in the second division. The sentence would be suspended for the present until learned counsel could obtain a decision from a higher court on the legal point of the right of petition. I then put in a claim for all the prisoners, and asked that all their cases might be held over until the test case was decided, and this was agreed to, except in regard to fourteen women charged with window-breaking. They were tried separately and sent to prison on sentences varying from six weeks to two months. Of them later. The appeal against Sir Albert de Rutzen's decision was tried in a Divisional Court early in December of that year. Lord Robert Cecil again appeared for the defence, and in a masterly piece of argumentation, contended that in England there was and always had been the right of petition, and that the right had always been considered a necessary condition of a free country and a civilised Government. The right of petition, he pointed out, had three characteristics: In the first place, it was the right to petition the actual repositories of power; in the second place, it was the right to petition in person; and in the third place, the right must be exercised reasonably. A long list of historical precedents were offered in support of the right to petition in person, but Lord Robert argued that even if these did not exist, the right was admitted in the Charles II "Tumultuous Petitions Act," which provides "That no person or persons whatsoever shall repair to His Majesty or both or either Houses of Parliament upon pretence of presenting or delivering any petition, complaint, remonstrance, or declaration or other address, accompanied with excessive number of people ..." etc. The Bill of Rights had specially confirmed the right of petition in so far as the King personally was concerned. "The women," pursued Lord Robert, "had gone to Parliament Square on June 29th in the exercise of a plain constitutional right, and that in going there with a petition they had acted according to the only constitutional method they possessed, being voteless, for the redress of their grievances." If then it were true, as contended, the subject not only possessed the right to petition, but to petition in person, the only point to be considered was whether the right had been exercised reasonably. If persons desired to interview the Prime Minister, it was surely reasonable to go to the House of Commons, and to present themselves at the Strangers' Entrance. Mrs. Pankhurst, Mrs. Haverfield and the others had, as the evidence showed, proceeded along the public highway and had been escorted to the door of the House of Commons by an officer of the police, and could not therefore, up to that point, have been acting in an unlawful manner. The police had kept clear a large open space opposite the House of Commons, the crowd being kept at a certain distance away. Within the open space there were only persons having business in the House of Commons, members of the police force and the eight women who formed the deputation. It could not possibly be contended that these eight women had caused an obstruction. It was true that a police officer told them that the Prime Minister was not in the House of Commons, but when one desired an interview with a Member of Parliament one did not make his request of a casual policeman in the street. Moreover, the police did not possess any authority to stop anyone from going into the House of Commons. The letter given the women, in which the Prime Minister said that he could not or would not see them, had been cited. Now, had the Prime Minister, in his letter, said that he could not or would not see the women at that time, that the time was not convenient; but that he would at some future time, at a more convenient time, receive them, that would have been a sufficient answer. The women would not have been justified in refusing to accept such an answer, because the right to petition must be exercised reasonably. But the letter contained an unqualified refusal, and that, if we allow the right of petition to exist, was no answer at all. Last of all Lord Robert argued that if there is a right to petition a Member of Parliament, then it must be incumbent on the part of a Member of Parliament to receive the petition, and that no one has a right to interfere with the petitioner. If the eight women were legally justified in presenting their petition, then they were also justified in refusing to obey the orders of the police to leave the place. In an address full of bias, and revealing plainly that he had no accurate knowledge of any of the events that had led up to the case in hand, the Lord Chief Justice delivered judgment. He said that he entirely agreed with Lord Robert Cecil as to the right to present a petition to the Prime Minister, either as Prime Minister or as a Member of Parliament; and he agreed also that petitions to the King should be presented to the Prime Minister. But the claim of the women, he said, was not merely to present a petition, but to be received in a deputation. He did not think it likely that Mr. Asquith would have refused to receive a petition from the women, but his refusal to receive the deputation was not unnatural, "in consequence of what we know did happen on previous occasions."[1] Referring to the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839, which provides that it shall be lawful for the Commissioner of Police to make regulations and to give instructions to the constable for keeping order, and for preventing any obstruction of thoroughfares in the immediate neighbourhood of the House of Commons, and the Sessional Order empowering the police to keep clear the approaches to the House of Commons, the Lord Chief Justice decided that I and the other women were guilty of an infraction of the law when we insisted on a right to enter the House of Commons. The Lord Chief Justice therefore ruled that our conviction in the lower court had been proper, and our appeal was dismissed with costs. Thus was destroyed in England the ancient constitutional right of petition, secured to the people by the Bill of Rights, and cherished by uncounted generations of Englishmen. I say the right was destroyed, for of how much value is a petition which cannot be presented in person? The decision of the high court was appalling to the members of the W. S. P. U., as it closed the last approach, by constitutional means, to our enfranchisement. Far from discouraging or disheartening us, it simply spurred us on to new and more aggressive forms of militancy. FOOTNOTE: [1] Mr. Asquith had never, since becoming Prime Minister, received a deputation of women, nor had he ever received a deputation of the W. S. P. U. So it was absurd of the Lord Chief Justice to speak of "what did happen, on previous occasions." CHAPTER V Between the time of the arrest in June and the handing down of the absurd decision of the Lord Chief Justice that although we, as subjects, possessed the right of petition, yet we had committed an offence in exercising that right, nearly six months had passed. In that interval certain grave developments had lifted the militant movement onto a new and more heroic plane. It will be remembered that a week before our deputation to test the Charles II Act, Miss Wallace Dunlop had been sent to prison for one month for stamping an extract from the Bill of Rights on the stone walls of St. Stephen's Hall. On arriving at Holloway on Friday evening, July 2nd, she sent for the Governor and demanded of him that she be treated as a political offender. The Governor replied that he had no power to alter the sentence of the magistrate, whereupon Miss Wallace Dunlop informed him that it was the unalterable resolution of the Suffragettes never again to submit to the prison treatment given to ordinary offenders against the law. Therefore she should, if placed in the second division as a common criminal, refuse to touch food until the Government yielded her point. It is hardly likely that the Government or the prison authorities realised the seriousness of Miss Wallace Dunlop's action, or the heroic mould of the Suffragettes' character. At all events the Home Secretary paid no attention to the letter sent him by the prisoner, in which she explained simply but clearly her motives for her desperate act, and the prison authorities did nothing except seek means of breaking down her resistance. The ordinary prison diet was replaced by the most tempting food, and this instead of being brought to her cell at intervals, was kept there night and day, but always untouched. Several times daily the doctor came to feel her pulse and observe her growing weakness. The doctor, as well as the Governor and the wardresses argued, coaxed and threatened, but without effect. The week passed without any sign of surrender on the part of the prisoner. On Friday the doctor reported that she was rapidly reaching a point at which death might at any time supervene. Hurried conferences were carried on between the prison and the Home Office, and that evening, June 8th, Miss Wallace Dunlop was sent home, having served one-fourth of her sentence, and having ignored completely all the terms of her imprisonment. On the day of her release the fourteen women who had been convicted of window breaking received their sentences, and learning of Miss Wallace Dunlop's act, they, as they were being taken to Holloway in the prison van, held a consultation and agreed to follow her example. Arrived at Holloway they at once informed the officials that they would not give up any of their belongings, neither would they put on prison clothing, perform prison labour, eat prison food or keep the rule of silence. The Governor agreed for the moment to allow them to retain their property and to wear their own clothing, but he told them that they had committed an act of mutiny and that he would have to so charge them at the next visit of the magistrates. The women then addressed petitions to the Home Secretary, demanding that they be given the prison treatment universally allowed political offenders. They decided to postpone the hunger strike until the Home Secretary had had time to reply. Meanwhile, after a vain appeal for more fresh air, for the weather was stiflingly hot, the women committed one more act of mutiny, they broke the windows of their cells. We learned this from the prisoners themselves. Several days after they had gone to prison, my daughter Christabel and Mrs. Tuke, filled with anxiety for their fate, gained admission to an upper story room of a house overlooking the prison. Calling at the top of their voices and waving a flag of the Union, they succeeded in attracting the prisoners' attention. The women thrust their arms through the broken panes, waving handkerchiefs, Votes for Women badges, anything they could get hold of, and in a few shouted words told their tale. That same day the visiting magistrates arrived, and the mutineers were sentenced to terms of seven to ten days of solitary confinement in the punishment cells. In these frightful cells, dark, unclean, dripping with moisture, the prisoners resolutely hunger struck. At the end of five days one of the women was reduced to such a condition that the Home Secretary ordered her released. The next day several more were released, and before the end of the week the last of the fourteen had gained their liberty. The affair excited the greatest sympathy all over England, sympathy which Mr. Gladstone tried to divert by charging two of the prisoners with kicking and biting the wardresses. In spite of their vigorous denials these two women were sentenced, on these charges, one to ten days and the other to a month in prison. Although still very weak from the previous hunger strike, they at once entered upon a second hunger strike, and in three days had to be released. After this each succeeding batch of Suffragette prisoners, unless otherwise directed, followed the example of these heroic rebels. The prison officials, seeing their authority vanish, were panic stricken. Holloway and other women's prisons throughout the Kingdom became perfect dens of violence and brutality. Hear the account given by Lucy Burns of her experience: "We remained quite still when ordered to undress, and when they told us to proceed to our cells we linked arms and stood with our backs to the wall. The Governor blew his whistle and a great crowd of wardresses appeared, falling upon us, forcing us apart and dragging us towards the cells. I think I had twelve wardresses for my share, and among them they managed to trip me so that I fell helplessly to the floor. One of the wardresses grasped me by my hair, wound the long braid around her wrist and literally dragged me along the ground. In the cell they fairly ripped the clothing from my back, forcing on me one coarse cotton garment and throwing others on the bed for me to put on myself. Left alone exhausted by the dreadful experience I lay for a time gasping and shivering on the floor. By and by a wardress came to the door and threw me a blanket. This I wrapped around me, for I was chilled to the bone by this time. The single cotton garment and the rough blanket were all the clothes I wore during my stay in prison. Most of the prisoners refused everything but the blanket. According to agreement we all broke our windows and were immediately dragged off to the punishment cells. There we hunger struck, and after enduring great misery for nearly a week, we were one by one released." How simply they tell it. "After enduring great misery--" But no one who has not gone through the awful experience of the hunger strike can have any idea of how great that misery is. In an ordinary cell it is great enough. In the unspeakable squalor of the punishment cells it is worse. The actual hunger pangs last only about twenty-four hours with most prisoners. I generally suffer most on the second day. After that there is no very desperate craving for food. Weakness and mental depression take its place. Great disturbances of digestion divert the desire for food to a longing for relief from pain. Often there is intense headache, with fits of dizziness, or slight delirium. Complete exhaustion and a feeling of isolation from earth mark the final stages of the ordeal. Recovery is often protracted, and entire recovery of normal health is sometimes discouragingly slow. The first hunger strike occurred in early July. In the two months that followed scores of women adopted the same form of protest against a Government who would not recognise the political character of their offences. In some cases the hunger strikers were treated with unexampled cruelty. Delicate women were sentenced, not only to solitary confinement, but to wear handcuffs for twenty-four hours at a stretch. One woman on refusing prison clothes was put into a straightwaistcoat. The irony of all this appears the greater when it is considered that, at this precise time, the leaders of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons were in the midst of their first campaign against the veto power of the Lords. On September 17th a great meeting was held in Birmingham, on which occasion Mr. Asquith was to throw down his challenge to the Lords, and to announce that their veto was to be abolished, leaving the people's will paramount in England. Of course the Suffragettes seized this opportunity for a demonstration. This course was perfectly logical. Denied the right of petition, shut out now from every Cabinet Minister's meeting, the women were forced to take whatever means that remained to urge their cause upon the Government. Mrs. Mary Leigh and a group of Birmingham members addressed a warning to the public not to attend Mr. Asquith's meeting as disturbances were likely to happen. From the time that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet left the House of Commons until the train drew in to the station at Birmingham they were completely surrounded with detectives and policemen. The precautions taken to guard Mr. Asquith have never been equalled except in the case of the Tsar during outbreaks of revolution in Russia. From the station he was taken by an underground passage a quarter of a mile in length to his hotel, where he dined in solitary state, after having been carried upstairs in a luggage lift. Escorted to the Bingley Hall by a strong guard of mounted police, he was so fearful of encountering the Suffragettes that he entered by a side door. The hall was guarded as for a siege. Over the glass roof a thick tarpaulin had been stretched. Tall ladders were placed on either side of the building, and firemen's hose were laid in readiness--not to extinguish fires, but to play upon the Suffragettes should they appear at an inaccessible spot on the roof. The streets on every hand were barricaded, and police, in regiments, were drawn up to defend the barricades against the onslaughts of the women. Nobody was allowed to pass the barricades without showing his entrance tickets to long files of police, and then the ticket holders were squeezed through the narrow doors one by one. Their precautions were in vain, for the determined Suffragettes found more than one way in which to turn Mr. Asquith's triumph into a fiasco. Although no women gained access to the hall, there were plenty of men sympathisers present, and before the meeting had proceeded far thirteen men had been violently thrown out for reminding the Prime Minister that "the people" whose right to govern he was professing to uphold, included women as well as men. Outside, mingling in the vast crowds, bands of women attacked the barricades, the outer barricades being thrown down in spite of the thousands of police. From the roof of a neighbouring house Mrs. Leigh and Charlotte Marsh tore up dozens of slates and threw them on the roof of Bingley Hall and in the streets below, taking care, however, to strike no one. As Mr. Asquith drove away the women hurled slates at the guarded motor car. The fire hose was brought forth and the firemen were ordered to turn the water on the women. They refused, to their credit be it said, but the police, infuriated by their failure to keep the peace, did not scruple to play the cold water on the women as they crouched and clung to the dangerous slope of the roof. Roughs in the streets flung bricks at them, drawing blood. Eventually the women were dragged down by the police and in their dripping garments marched through the streets to the police station. The Suffragettes who had rushed the barricades and flung stones at Mr. Asquith's departing train received sentences from a fortnight to one month, but Miss Marsh and Mrs. Leigh were sent to prison for three and four months respectively. All of the prisoners adopted the hunger strike, as we knew they would. Several days later we were horrified to read in the newspapers that these prisoners were being forcibly fed by means of a rubber tube thrust into the stomach. Members of the Union applied at once both at the prison and at the Home Office to learn the truth of the report, but all information was refused. On the following Monday at our request, Mr. Keir Hardie, at question time in the House, insisted on information from the Government. Mr. Masterman, speaking for the Home Secretary, reluctantly admitted that, in order to preserve the dignity of the Government and at the same time save the lives of the prisoners, "hospital treatment" was being administered. "Hospital treatment" was the term used to draw attention from one of the most disgusting and brutal expedients ever resorted to by prison authorities. No law allows it except in the case of persons certified to be insane, and even then when the operation is performed by skilled nursing attendants under the direction of skilled medical men, it cannot be called safe. In fact, the asylum cases usually die after a short time. _The Lancet_, perhaps the best known medical journal in the language, published a long list of opinions from distinguished physicians and surgeons who condemned the practice as applied to the suffrage prisoners as unworthy of civilisation. One physician told of a case which had come under his observation in which death had occurred almost as soon as the tube had been inserted. Another cited a case where the tongue, twisted behind the feeding tube, had, in the struggle, been almost bitten off. Cases where food had been injected into the lungs were not unknown. Mr. C. Mansell-Moullin, M.D., F.R.C.S., wrote to _The Times_ that as a hospital surgeon of more than thirty years' experience he desired indignantly to protest against the Government's term "Hospital treatment" in connection with the forcible feeding of women. It was a foul libel, he declared, for violence and brutality have no place in hospitals. A memorial signed by 116 well-known physicians was addressed to the Prime Minister protesting against the practice of forcible feeding, and pointing out to him in detail the grave dangers attaching to it. So much for medical testimony against a form of brutality which continued and still continues in our English prisons, as a punishment for women who are there for consciences' sake. As for the testimony of the victims, it makes a volume of most revolting sort. Mrs. Leigh, the first victim, is a woman of sturdy constitution, else she could scarcely have survived the experience. Thrown into Birmingham prison after the Asquith demonstration, she had broken the windows of her cell, and as a punishment was sent to a dark and cold punishment cell. Her hands were handcuffed, behind her during the day, and at night in front of her body _with the palms out_. She refused to touch the food that was brought to her, and three days after her arrival she was taken to the doctor's room. What she saw was enough to terrify the bravest. In the centre of the room was a stout chair resting on a cotton sheet. Against the wall, as if ready for action stood four wardresses. The junior doctor was also on hand. The senior doctor spoke, saying: "Listen carefully to what I have to say. I have orders from my superior officers that you are not to be released even on medical grounds. If you still refrain from food I must take other measures to compel you to take it." Mrs. Leigh replied that she did still refuse, and she said further that she knew that she could not legally be forcibly fed because an operation could not be performed without the consent of the patient if sane. The doctor repeated that he had his orders and would carry them out. A number of wardresses then fell upon Mrs. Leigh, held her down and tilted her chair backward. She was so taken by surprise that she could not resist successfully that time. They managed to make her swallow a little food from a feeding cup. Later two doctors and the wardresses appeared in her cell, forced Mrs. Leigh down to the bed and held her there. To her horror the doctors produced a rubber tube, two yards in length, and this he began to stuff up her nostril. The pain was so dreadful that she shrieked again and again. Three of the wardresses burst into tears and the junior doctor begged the other to desist. Having had his orders from the Government, the doctor persisted and the tube was pushed down into the stomach. One of the doctors, standing on a chair and holding the tube high poured liquid food through a funnel almost suffocating the poor victim. "The drums of my ears," she said afterwards, "seemed to be bursting. I could feel the pain to the end of the breast bone. When at last the tube was withdrawn it felt as if the back of my nose and throat were being torn out with it." In an almost fainting condition Mrs. Leigh was taken back to the punishment cell and laid on her plank bed. The ordeal was renewed day after day. The other prisoners suffered similar experiences. CHAPTER VI The militant movement was at this point when, in October, 1909, I made my first visit to the United States. I shall never forget the excitement of my landing, the first meeting with the American "reporter," an experience dreaded by all Europeans. In fact the first few days seemed a bewildering whirl of reporters and receptions, all leading up to my first lecture at Carnegie Hall on October 25th. The huge hall was entirely filled, and an enormous crowd of people thronged the streets outside for blocks. With me on the stage were several women whom I had met in Europe, and in the chair was an old friend, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, whose early married life had been spent in England. The great crowd before me, however, was made up of strangers, and I could not know how they would respond to my story. When I rose to speak a deep hush fell, but at my first words: "I am what you call a hooligan--" a great shout of warm and sympathetic laughter shook the walls. Then I knew that I had found friends in America. And this all the rest of the tour demonstrated. In Boston the committee met me with a big grey automobile decorated in the colours of our Union, and that night at Tremont Temple I spoke to an audience of 2,500 people all most generous in their responsiveness. In Baltimore professors, and students from Johns Hopkins University acted as stewards of the meeting. I greatly enjoyed my visit to Bryn Mawr College and to Rosemary Hall, a wonderful school for girls in Connecticut. In Chicago, I met, among other notable people, Miss Jane Addams and Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, superintendent of schools. My visit to Canada will always be remembered, especially Toronto, where the mayor, dressed in the chains of his office, welcomed me. I met too the venerable Goldwin Smith, since dead. Everywhere I found the Americans kind and keen, and I cannot say too much for the wonderful hospitality they showed me. The women I found were remarkably interested in social welfare. The work of the women's clubs struck me very favourably, and I thought these institutions a perfect basis for a suffrage movement. But at that time, 1909, the suffrage movement in the United States was in a curious state of quiescence. A large number of women with whom I came in contact appeared to think it only just that they should have a vote, but few seemed to realise any actual need of it. Some, it is true, were beginning to connect the vote with the reforms for which they were working so unselfishly and so devotedly. It was when talking with the younger women that I came to feel that under the surface of things in America, a strong suffrage movement was stirring. Those young women, leaving their splendid colleges to begin life were realising in a very intelligent fashion that they needed and would be obliged to secure for themselves a political status. On December 1st I sailed on the _Mauretania_ for England, and on arriving I learned that the prison sentence which hung over me while the petitions case had been argued, was discharged, some unknown friend having paid my fine while I was on the ocean. The year 1910 began with a general election, precipitated by the House of Lords' rejection of Mr. Lloyd-George's 1909 budget. The Liberal Party went to the country with promises of taxes on land values. They promised also abolition of the veto power of the Lords, Irish Home Rule, disestablishment of the Church of Wales, and other reforms. Woman suffrage was not directly promised, but Mr. Asquith pledged that, if retained in office, he would introduce an electoral reform bill which could be amended to include woman suffrage. The Unionists under the leadership of Mr. Balfour, had tariff reform for their programme, and they offered not even a vague promise of a possible suffrage measure. Yet we, as usual, went into the constituencies and opposed the Liberal Party. We had no faith in Mr. Asquith's pledge, and besides, if we had failed to oppose the party in power we should but have invited Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour to enter into an agreement not to deal with the suffrage, with the view of keeping the cause permanently outside practical politics. We were in something of the same position as the Irish Nationalists in 1885, when neither the Liberal nor the Conservative leaders would include home rule in their programme. The Irish opposed the Liberal Party, with the result that it was returned by such a narrow majority that the Liberal Government was dependent on the Irish vote in Parliament in order to remain in office. On this account they were obliged to bring in a Home Rule Bill. The other suffrage societies and many of the Liberal women begged us not to oppose the Liberal party at this election. We were implored to waive our claim "just this once" in view of the importance of the struggle between the Commons and the House of Lords over the budget. We replied that the same plea had been made in 1906 when we were implored to waive our claim "just this once" on account of the fiscal issue. For women there was only one political issue, we said, and that was the issue of their own enfranchisement. The dispute between the Lords and the Commons was far less vital than the claims of the people--represented in this case by women--to be admitted to citizenship. From our point of view both Houses of Parliament were unrepresentative until women had a voice in choosing legislators and influencing law making. We opposed Liberal candidates in forty constituencies, and in almost every one of these the Liberal majorities were reduced and no less than eighteen seats were wrested from the Liberal candidates. It really was a terrible election for the Government. Mr. Asquith travelled from one constituency to another accompanied by a body guard of detectives, and official "chuckers out," whose sole duty was to eject women, and men as well, who interrupted his meetings on the question of Votes for Women. The halls where he spoke had the windows boarded up or the glass covered with strong wire netting. Every thoroughfare leading to the halls was barricaded, traffic was suspended, and large forces of police were on guard. The most extraordinary precautions were taken to protect the Prime Minister. At one place he went to his meeting strongly guarded and by way of a secret pathway that led through gooseberry bushes and a cabbage patch to a back door. After the meeting he escaped through the same door and was solemnly guided along a path heavily laid with sawdust to deaden his footsteps, to a concealed motor car, where he sat until the crowd had all dispersed. The other ministers had to resort to similar precautions. They lived under the constant protection of body-guards. Their meetings were policed in a manner without precedent. Of course no women were admitted to their meetings, but they got in just the same. Two women hid for twenty-five hours in the rafters of a hall in Louth where Mr. Lloyd-George spoke. They were arrested, but not until after they had made their demonstration. Two others hid under a platform for twenty-two hours in order to question the Prime Minister. I could continue this record almost indefinitely. We had printed a wonderful poster showing the process of forcible feeding, and we used it on hoardings everywhere. We told the electors that the "Liberal Party," the people's friend, had imprisoned 450 women for the crime of asking for a vote. They were torturing women at that time in Holloway. It was splendid ammunition and it told. The Liberal Party was returned to power, but with their majority over all sections of the House of Commons swept away. The Asquith Government were dependent now for their very existence on the votes of the Labour Party and the Irish Nationalists. CHAPTER VII The first months of 1910 were occupied by the re-elected Government in a struggle to keep control of affairs. A coalition with the Irish party, the leaders of which agreed, if the Home Rule bill were advanced, to stand by the budget. No publicly announced coalition with the Labour Party was made at that time, Keir Hardie, at the annual conference of the party, announcing that they would continue to be independent of the Government. This was important to us because it meant that the Labour Party, instead of entering into an agreement to give general support to all Government measures, would be free to oppose the Government in the event of the continued withholding of a franchise bill. Other things combined to make us hopeful that the tide had turned in our favour. It was hinted to us that the Government were weary of our opposition and were ready to end the struggle in the only possible way, providing they could do so without appearing to yield to coercion. We therefore, early in February, declared a truce to all militancy. Parliament met on February 15th and the King's speech was read on February 21st. No mention of women's suffrage was made in the speech nor was any private member successful in winning a place in the ballot for a suffrage bill. However, since the situation, on account of the proposed abolition of the Lord's power of veto, was strained and abnormal, we decided to wait patiently for a while. It was confidently expected that another general election would have to be held before the contentions between the two Houses of Parliament were settled, and this event unquestionably would have occurred, not later than June, but for the unexpected death of King Edward VII. This interrupted the strained situation. The passing of the King served as an occasion for the temporary softening of animosities and produced a general disposition to compromise on all troubled issues. The question of women's enfranchisement was taken up again in this spirit, and in a manner altogether creditable to the members with whom the movement originated. A strictly non-party committee on women's suffrage had been established in the House of Commons in 1887, mainly through the efforts of Miss Lydia Becker, whom I have mentioned before as the Susan B. Anthony of the English suffrage movement. In 1906, for reasons not necessary to enumerate, the original committee had been allowed to lapse, the Liberal supporters of women's suffrage forming a committee of their own. Now, in this period of good feeling, at the suggestion of certain members, led by Mr. H. N. Brailsford, not himself a member of Parliament, formed another non-party body which they called the Conciliation Committee. Its object was declared to be the bringing together of the full strength of suffragists of the House of Commons, regardless of party affiliation, and of framing a suffrage measure that could be passed by their united effort. The Earl of Lytton accepted the chairmanship of the committee and Mr. Brailsford was made its secretary. The committee consisted of twenty-five Liberals, seventeen Conservatives, six Irish Nationalists, and six members of the Labour Party. Under difficulties which I can hardly hope to make clear to American readers the committee laboured to frame a bill which should win the support of all sections of the House. The Conservatives insisted on a moderate bill, whilst the Liberals were concerned lest the terms of the bill should add to the power of the propertied classes. The original suffrage bill, drafted by my husband. Dr. Pankhurst, giving the vote to women on equal terms with men, was abandoned, and a bill was drawn up along the lines of the existing municipal franchise law. The basis of the municipal franchise is occupation, and the Conciliation Bill, as first drafted, proposed to extend the Parliamentary vote to women householders, and to women occupiers of business premises paying ten pounds rental and upwards. It was estimated that about ninety-five per cent. of the women who would be enfranchised under the bill were householders. This, in England, does not mean a person occupying a whole house. Any one who inhabits even a single room over which he or she exercises full control is a householder. The text of the Conciliation Bill was submitted to all the suffrage societies and other women's organisations, and it was accepted by every one of them. Our official newspaper said editorially: "We of the Women's Social and Political Union are prepared to share in this united and peaceful action. The new bill does not give us all that we want, but we are for it if others are also for it." It seemed certain that an overwhelming majority of the House of Commons were for the bill, and were prepared to vote it into law. Although we knew that it could not possibly pass unless the Government agreed that it should, we hoped that the leaders of all parties and the majority of their followers would unite in an agreement that the bill should pass. This settlement by consent is rare in the English Parliament, but some extremely important and hard fought measures have been carried thus. The extension of the franchise in 1867 is a case in point. The Conciliation Bill was introduced into the House of Commons on June 14th, 1910, by Mr. D. J. Shackleton, and was received with the most extraordinary enthusiasm. The newspapers remarked on the feeling of reality which marked the attitude of the House towards the bill. It was plain that the members realised that here was no academic question upon which they were merely to debate and to register their opinions, but a measure which was intended to be carried through all its stages and to be written into English law. The enthusiasm of the House swept all over the Kingdom. The medical profession sent in a memorial in its favour, signed by more than three hundred of the most distinguished men and women in the profession. Memorials from writers, clergymen, social workers, artists, actors, musicians, were also sent. The Women's Liberal Federation met and unanimously resolved to ask the Prime Minister to give full facilities to the bill. Some advanced spirits in the Federation actually proposed to send then and there a deputation to the House of Commons with the resolution, but this proposal was rejected as savouring too much of militancy. A request for an interview was sent to Mr. Asquith, and he replied promising to receive, at an early day, representatives of both the Liberal Women's Federation and of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. The joint deputation was received by Mr. Asquith on June 21st, and Lady M'Laren, as a representative of the Women's Liberal Federation, spoke very directly to her party's leader. She said in part: "If you refuse our request we shall have to go to the country and say you, who are against the veto of the House of Lords, are placing a veto on the House of Commons by refusing to allow a second reading of this bill." Mr. Asquith replied warily that he could not decide alone on such a serious matter, but would have to consult his Cabinet, the majority of whom, he admitted, were suffragists. Their decision, he said, would be given in the House of Commons. [Illustration: OVER 1,000 WOMEN HAD BEEN IN PRISON--BROAD ARROWS IN THE 1910 PARADE] The Women's Social and Political Union arranged a demonstration in support of the Conciliation Bill, the greatest that had, up to that time, been made. It was a national, indeed an inter-national affair in which all the suffrage groups took part, and its massed ranks were so great that the procession required an hour and a half to pass a given point. At the head marched six hundred and seventeen women, white clad and holding long silver staves tipped with the broad arrow. These were the women who had suffered imprisonment for the cause, and all along the line of march they received a tribute of cheers from the public. The immense Albert Hall, the largest hall in England, although it was packed from orchestra to the highest gallery, was not large enough to hold all the marchers. Amid great joy and enthusiasm Lord Lytton delivered a stirring address in which he confidently predicted the speedy advance of the bill. The women, he declared, had every reason to believe that their enfranchisement was actually at hand. It was true that the time for passing a suffrage bill was ripe. Not in fifty years had the way been so clear, because the momentary absence of ordinary legislation left the field open for an electoral reform bill. Yet when the Prime Minister was asked in the House of Commons whether he would give the members an early opportunity for discussion, the answer was not encouraging. The Government, said Mr. Asquith, were prepared to give time before the close of the session for full debate and division on second reading, but they could not allow any further facilities. He stated frankly that he personally did not want the bill to pass, but the Government realised that the House of Commons ought to have an opportunity, if that was their deliberate desire, for effectively dealing with the whole question. This cryptic utterance was taken by the majority of the suffragists, by the press and by the public generally to mean that the Government were preparing gracefully to yield to the undoubted desire of the House of Commons to pass the bill. But the Women's Social and Political Union were doubtful. Mr. Asquith's remark was ambiguous, and was capable of being interpreted in several ways. It could mean that he was prepared to accept the verdict of the majority and let the bill pass through all its stages. That of course would be the only way to allow the House opportunity effectively to deal with the whole question. On the other hand Mr. Asquith might be intending to let the bill pass through its debating stages and be afterwards smothered in committee. We feared treachery, but in view of the announcement that the Government had set apart July 11 and 12 for debate on the second reading, we preserved a spirit of waiting calm. July 26th had been fixed as the day for the adjournment of Parliament, and if the bill was voted on favourably on the 12th there would be ample time to take it through its final stages. When a bill passes its second reading it is normally sent upstairs to a Grand Committee which sits while the House of Commons is transacting other business, and thus the committee stage can proceed without special facilities. The bill does not go back to the House until the report stage is reached, at which time the third and last reading occurs. After that the bill goes to the House of Lords. A week at most is all that is required for this procedure. A bill may be referred to the Whole House, and in this case it cannot be brought up for its committee stage unless it is given special facilities. In our paper and in many public speeches we urged that the members vote to send the bill to a Grand Committee. Some days before the bill reached its second reading it was rumoured that Mr. Lloyd-George was going to speak against it, but we refused to credit this. Unfair to women as Mr. Lloyd-George had shown himself in various ways, he had consistently posed as a staunch friend of women's suffrage, and we could not believe that he would turn against us at the eleventh hour. Mr. Winston Churchill, whose speech to the women of Dundee I quoted in a previous chapter, the promoters of the Bill also counted upon, as it was known that he had more than once expressed sympathy with its objects. But when the debates began we found both of these ardent suffragists arrayed against the bill. Mr. Churchill, after making a conventional anti-suffrage speech, in which he said that women did not need the ballot, and that they really had no grievances, attacked the Conciliation Bill because the class of women who would be enfranchised under it did not suit him. Some women, he conceded, ought to be enfranchised, and he thought the best plan would be to select "some of the best women of all classes" on considerations of property, education and earning capacity. These special franchises would be carefully balanced, "so as not on the whole to give undue advantage to the property vote against the wage earning vote." A more fantastic proposal and one less likely to find favour in the House of Commons could not possibly be imagined. Mr. Churchill's second objection to the bill was that it was anti-democratic! It seemed to us that anything was more democratic than his proposed "fancy" franchises. Mr. Lloyd-George said that he agreed with everything Mr. Churchill had said "both relevant and irrelevant." He made the amazing assertion that the Conciliation Committee that had drafted the bill was a "committee of women meeting outside the House." And that this committee said to the House of Commons not only that they must vote for a women's suffrage bill but "You must vote for the particular form upon which we agree, and we will not even allow you to deliberate upon any other form." Of course these statements were wholly false. The Conciliation Bill was drafted by men, and it was introduced because the Government had refused to bring in a party measure. The suffragists would have been only too glad to have had the Government deliberate on a broader form of suffrage. Because they refused to deliberate on any form, this private bill was introduced. This fact was brought forward in the course of Mr. Lloyd-George's speech. It had been urged, said he, that this bill was better than none at all, but why should that be the alternative? "What is the other?" called out a member, but Mr. Lloyd-George dodged the question with a careless "Well, I cannot say for the present." Later on he said: "If the promoters of this bill say that they regard the second reading merely as an affirmation of the principle of women's suffrage, and if they promise that when they re-introduce the bill it will be in a form which will enable the House of Commons to move any amendment either for restriction or extension I shall be happy to vote for this bill." Mr. Philip Snowden, replying to this, said: "We will withdraw this bill if the Right Honourable gentleman, on behalf of the Government, or the Prime Minister himself will undertake to give to this House the opportunity of discussing and carrying through its various stages another form of franchise bill. If we cannot get that, then we shall prosecute this bill." The Government made no reply at all to this, and the debate proceeded. Thirty-nine speeches were made, the Prime Minister showing plainly in his speech that he intended to use all his power to prevent the bill becoming law. He began by saying that a franchise measure ought never to be sent to a Grand Committee, but to one of the Whole House. He said also that his conditions, that the majority of women should show beyond any doubt that they desired the franchise, and that the bill be democratic in its terms, had not been complied with. When the division was taken it was seen that the Conciliation Bill had passed its second reading by a majority of 109, a larger majority than the Government's far famed budget or the House of Lords Resolution had received. In fact no measure during that Parliament had received so great a majority--299 members voted for it as against 190 opposed. Then the question arose as to which committee should deal with the bill. Mr. Asquith had said that all franchise bills should go to a Committee of the Whole House, so that in the division his words moved many sincere friends of the bill to send it there. Others understood that this was a mischievous course, but were afraid of incurring the anger of the Prime Minister. Of course all the anti-suffragists voted the same way, and thus the bill went to the Whole House. Even then the bill could have been advanced to its final reading. The House had time on their hands, as virtually all important legislative work was halted because of the deadlock between the Lords and the Commons. Following the death of the King a conference of leaders of the Conservative and the Liberal Parties had been arranged to adjust the matters at issue, and this conference had not yet reported. Hence Parliament had little business on hand. The strongest possible pressure was brought to bear upon the Government to give facilities to the Conciliation Bill. A number of meetings were held in support of the bill. The Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement, the Men's League for Women's Suffrage and the Conciliation Committee held a joint meeting in Hyde Park. Some of the old school of suffragists held another large meeting in Trafalgar Square. The Women's Social and Political Union, on July 23rd, which was the anniversary of the day in 1867 on which working men, agitating for their vote, had pulled down the Hyde Park railings, held another enormous demonstration there. A space of half a square mile was cleared, forty platforms erected, and two great processions marched from east and west to the meeting. Many other suffrage societies co-operated with us on this occasion. On the very day of that meeting Mr. Asquith wrote to Lord Lytton refusing to allow any more time for the bill during that session. Those who still had faith that the Government could be induced to do justice to women set their hopes on the autumn session of Parliament. Resolutions urging the Government to give the bill facilities during the autumn were sent, not only by the suffrage associations but from many organisations of men. The Corporations of thirty-eight cities, including Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Dublin and Cork, sent resolutions to this effect. Cabinet Ministers were besieged with requests to receive deputations of women, and since the country was on the verge of a general election, and the Liberal Party wanted the services of women, their requests could not altogether be ignored. Mr. Asquith, early in October, received a deputation of women from his own constituency of East Fife, but all he had to tell them was that the bill could not be advanced that year. "What about next year?" They asked, and he replied shortly: "Wait and see." It had been exceedingly difficult, during these troublous days, to hold all the members of the W. S. P. U. to the truce, and when it became perfectly apparent that the Conciliation Bill was doomed, war was again declared. At a great meeting held in Albert Hall on November 10th, I myself threw down the gage of battle. I said, because I wanted the whole matter to be clearly understood by the public as well as by our members: "This is the last constitutional effort of the Women's Social and Political Union to secure the passage of the bill into law. If the Bill, in spite of our efforts, is killed by the Government, then first of all, I have to say there is an end of the truce. If we are met by the statement that there is no power to secure on the floor of the House of Commons time for our measure, then our first step is to say, 'We take it out of your hands, since you fail to help us, and we resume the direction of the campaign ourselves.'" Another deputation, I declared, must go to the House of Commons to carry a petition to the Prime Minister. I myself would lead, and if no one cared to follow me I would go alone. Instantly, all over the hall, women sprang to their feet crying out, "Mrs. Pankhurst, I will go with you!" "I will go!" "I will go!" And I knew that our brave women were as ever ready to give themselves, their very lives, if need be, for the cause of freedom. The autumn session convened on Friday, November 18th, and Mr. Asquith announced that Parliament would be adjourned on November 28th. While his speech was in progress, 450 women, in small groups, to keep within the strict letter of the law, were marching from Caxton Hall and from the headquarters of the Union. [Illustration: THE HEAD OF THE DEPUTATION ON BLACK FRIDAY _November, 1910_] How to tell the story of that dreadful day, Black Friday, as it lives in our memory--how to describe what happened to English women at the behest of an English Government, is a difficult task. I will try to tell it as simply and as accurately as possible. The plain facts, baldly stated, I am aware will strain credulity. Remember that the country was on the eve of a general election, and that the Liberal Party needed the help of Liberal women. This fact made the wholesale arrest and imprisonment of great numbers of women, who were demanding the passage of the Conciliation Bill, extremely undesirable from the Government's point of view. The Women's Liberal Federations also wanted the passage of the Conciliation Bill, although they were not ready to fight for it. What the Government feared, was that the Liberal women would be stirred by our sufferings into refraining from doing election work for the party. So the Government conceived a plan whereby the Suffragettes were to be punished, were to be turned back and defeated in their purpose of reaching the House, but would not be arrested. Orders were evidently given that the police were to be present in the streets, and that the women were to be thrown from one uniformed or ununiformed policeman to another, that they were to be so rudely treated that sheer terror would cause them to turn back. I say orders were given and as one proof of this I can first point out that on all previous occasions the police had first tried to turn back the deputations and when the women persisted in going forward, had arrested them. At times individual policemen had behaved with cruelty and malice toward us, but never anything like the unanimous and wholesale brutality that was shown on Black Friday. The Government very likely hoped that the violence of the police towards the women would be emulated by the crowds, but instead the crowds proved remarkably friendly. They pushed and struggled to make a clear pathway for us, and in spite of the efforts of the police my small deputation actually succeeded in reaching the door of the Strangers' Entrance. We mounted the steps to the enthusiastic cheers of the multitudes that filled the streets, and we stood there for hours gazing down on a scene which I hope never to look upon again. At intervals of two or three minutes small groups of women appeared in the square, trying to join us at the Strangers' Entrance. They carried little banners inscribed with various mottoes, "Asquith Has Vetoed Our Bill," "Where There's a Bill There's a Way," "Women's Will Beats Asquith's Won't," and the like. These banners the police seized and tore in pieces. Then they laid hands on the women and literally threw them from one man to another. Some of the police used their fists, striking the women in their faces, their breasts, their shoulders. One woman I saw thrown down with violence three or four times in rapid succession, until at last she lay only half conscious against the curb, and in a serious condition was carried away by kindly strangers. Every moment the struggle grew fiercer, as more and more women arrived on the scene. Women, many of them eminent in art, in medicine and science, women of European reputation, subjected to treatment that would not have been meted out to criminals, and all for the offence of insisting upon the right of peaceful petition. [Illustration: FOR HOURS SCENES LIKE THIS WERE ENACTED ON BLACK FRIDAY _November, 1910_] This struggle lasted for about an hour, more and more women successfully pushing their way past the police and gaining the steps of the House. Then the mounted police were summoned to turn the women back. But, desperately determined, the women, fearing not the hoofs of the horses or the crushing violence of the police, did not swerve from their purpose. And now the crowds began to murmur. People began to demand why the women were being knocked about; why, if they were breaking the law, they were not arrested; why, if they were not breaking the law, they were not permitted to go on unmolested. For a long time, nearly five hours, the police continued to hustle and beat the women, the crowds becoming more and more turbulent in their defence. Then, at last the police were obliged to make arrests. One hundred and fifteen women and four men, most of them bruised and choked and otherwise injured, were arrested. While all this was going on outside the House of Commons, the Prime Minister was obstinately refusing to listen to the counsels of some of the saner and more justice-loving members of the House. Keir Hardie, Sir Alfred Mondell and others urged Mr. Asquith to receive the deputation, and Lord Castlereagh went so far as to move as an amendment to a Government proposal, another proposal which would have compelled the Government to provide immediate facilities to the Conciliation Bill. We heard of what was going on, and I sent in for one and another friendly member and made every possible effort to influence them in favour of Lord Castlereagh's amendment. I pointed to the brutal struggle that was going on in the square, and I begged them to go back and tell the others that it must be stopped. But, distressed as some of them undoubtedly were, they assured me that there was not the slightest chance for the amendment. "Is there not a single _man_ in the House of Commons," I cried, "one who will stand up for us, who will make the House see that the amendment must go forward?" Well, perhaps there were men there, but all save fifty-two put their party loyalty before their manhood, and, because Lord Castlereagh's proposal would have meant censure of the Government, they refused to support it. This did not happen, however, until Mr. Asquith had resorted to his usual crafty device of a promise of future action. In this instance he promised to make a statement on behalf of the Government on the following Tuesday. The next morning the suffrage prisoners were arraigned in police court. Or rather, they were kept waiting outside the court room while Mr. Muskett, who prosecuted on behalf of the Chief Commissioner of Police, explained to the astounded magistrate that he had received orders from the Home Secretary that the prisoners should all be discharged. Mr. Churchill it was declared, had had the matter under careful consideration, and had decided that "no public advantage would be gained by proceeding with the prosecution, and accordingly no evidence would be given against the prisoners." Subdued laughter and, according to the newspapers, some contemptuous booing were raised in the court, and when order was restored the prisoners were brought in in batches and told that they were discharged. On the following Tuesday the W. S. P. U. held another meeting of the Women's Parliament in Caxton Hall to hear the news from the House of Commons. Mr. Asquith said: "The Government will, if they are still in power, give facilities in the next Parliament for effectively proceeding with a franchise bill which is so framed as to admit of free amendment." He would not promise that this would be done during the first year of Parliament. We had demanded facilities for the Conciliation Bill, and Mr. Asquith's promise was too vague and too ambiguous to please us. The Parliament now about to be dissolved had lasted a scant ten months. The next one might not last longer. Therefore, Mr. Asquith's promise, as usual, meant nothing at all. I said to the women, "I am going to Downing Street. Come along, all of you." And we went. We found a small force of police in Downing Street, and we easily broke through their line and would have invaded the Prime Minister's residence had not reinforcements of police arrived on the scene. Mr. Asquith himself appeared unexpectedly, and as we thought, very opportunely. Before he could have realised what was happening he found himself surrounded by angry Suffragettes. He was well hooted and, it is said, well shaken, before he was rescued by the police. As his taxicab rushed away some object struck one of the windows, smashing it. Another Cabinet Minister, Mr. Birrell, unwittingly got into the midst of the mêlée, and I am obliged to record that he was pretty thoroughly hustled. But it is not true that his leg was injured by the women. His haste to jump into a taxicab resulted in a slightly sprained ankle. That night and the following day windows were broken in the houses of Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. Lewis Harcourt and Mr. John Burns; and also in the official residences of the Premier and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That week 160 Suffragettes were arrested, but all except those charged with window-breaking or assault were discharged. This amazing court action established two things: First, that when the Home Secretary stated that he had no responsibility for the prosecution and sentencing of Suffrage prisoners, he told a colossal falsehood; and second, that the Government fully realised that it was bad election tactics to be responsible for the imprisonment of women of good character who were struggling for citizenship. CHAPTER VIII Almost immediately after the events chronicled in the preceding chapter I sailed for my second tour through the United States. I was delighted to find a thoroughly alive and progressive suffrage movement, where before had existed with most people only an academic theory in favour of equal political rights between men and women. My first meeting, held in Brooklyn, was advertised by sandwich women walking through the principal streets of the city, quite like our militant suffragists at home. Street meetings, I found, were now daily occurrences in New York. The Women's Political Union had adopted an election policy, and throughout the country as far west as I travelled, I found women awakened to the necessity of political action instead of mere discussion of suffrage. My second visit to America, like my first one, is clouded in my memory with sorrow. Very soon after my return to England a beloved sister, Mrs. Mary Clarke died. My sister, who was a most ardent suffragist and a valued worker in the Women's Social and Political Union, was one of the women who was shockingly maltreated in Parliament Square on Black Friday. She was also one of the women who, a few days later, registered their protest against the Government by throwing a stone through the window of an official residence. For this act she was sent to Holloway prison for a term of one month. Released on December 21st, it was plain to those who knew her best that her health had suffered seriously from the dreadful experience of Black Friday and the after experience of prison. She died suddenly on Christmas day, to the profound sorrow of all her associates. Hers was not the only life that was sacrificed as a result of that day. Other deaths occurred, mostly from hearts weakened by overstrain. Miss Henria Williams died on January 2nd, 1911, from heart failure. Miss Cecelia Wolseley Haig was another victim. Ill treatment on Black Friday resulted in her case in a painful illness which ended, after a year of intense suffering, in her death on December 21st, 1911. It is not possible to publish a full list of all the women who have died or have been injured for life in the course of the suffrage agitation in England. In many cases the details have never been made public, and I do not feel at liberty to record them here. A very celebrated case, which is public property, is that of Lady Constance Lytton, sister of the Earl of Lytton, who acted as chairman of the Conciliation Committee. Lady Constance had twice in 1909 gone to prison as a result of suffrage activities, and on both occasions had been given special privileges on account of her rank and family influence. In spite of her protests and her earnest pleadings to be accorded the same treatment as other suffrage prisoners, the snobbish and cowardly authorities insisted in retaining Lady Constance in the hospital cells and discharging her before the expiration of her sentence. This was done on a plea of her ill health, and it was true that she suffered from a valvular disease of the heart. [Illustration: RIOT SCENES ON BLACK FRIDAY _November, 1910_] Smarting under the sense of the injustice done her comrades in this discrimination, Lady Constance Lytton did one of the most heroic deeds to be recorded in the history of the suffrage movement. She cut off her beautiful hair and otherwise disguised herself, put on cheap and ugly clothing, and as "Jane Warton" took part in a demonstration at Newcastle, again suffering arrest and imprisonment. This time the authorities treated her as an ordinary prisoner. Without testing her heart or otherwise giving her an adequate medical examination, they subjected her to the horrors of forcible feeding. Owing to her fragile constitution she suffered frightful nausea each time, and when on one occasion the doctor's clothing was soiled, he struck her contemptuously on the cheek. This treatment was continued until the identity of the prisoner suddenly became known. She was, of course, immediately released, but she never recovered from the experience, and is now a hopeless invalid.[2] I want to say right here, that those well-meaning friends on the outside who say that we have suffered these horrors of prison, of hunger strikes and forcible feeding, because we desired to martyrise ourselves for the cause, are absolutely and entirely mistaken. We never went to prison in order to be martyrs. We went there in order that we might obtain the rights of citizenship. We were willing to break laws that we might force men to give us the right to make laws. That is the way men have earned their citizenship. Truly says Mazzini that the way to reform has always led through prison. The result of the general election, which took place in January, 1911, was that the Liberal Party was again returned to power. Parliament met on January 31st, but the session formally opened on February 6th with the reading of the King's speech. The programme for the session included the Lords' veto measure, Home Rule, payment for members of Parliament, and the abolishment of plural voting. Invalid insurance was also mentioned and certain amendments to the old age pension bill. Women's suffrage was not mentioned. Nevertheless, we were singularly lucky, the first three places in the ballot being secured by members of the Conciliation Committee. Mr. Philips, an Irish member, drew the first place, but as the Irish party had decided not to introduce any bills that session, he yielded to Sir George Kemp, who announced that he would use his place for the purpose of taking a second reading debate on the new Conciliation Bill. The old bill had been entitled: "A Bill to give the Vote to Women Occupiers," a title that made amendment difficult. The new bill bore the more flexible title, "A Bill to Confer the Parliamentary Franchise on Women," thus doing away with one of Mr. Lloyd-George's most plausible objections to it. The £10 occupation clause was omitted, doing away with another objection, that of the possibility of "faggot voting," that is, of a rich man conferring the vote on a family of daughters by the simple expedient of making them tenants of slices of his own property. The Conciliation Bill now read: "1. Every woman possessed of a household qualification within the meaning of the Representation of the People Act (1884) shall be entitled to be registered as a voter, and when registered to vote in the county or borough in which the qualifying premises are situated. "2. For the purposes of this Act a woman shall not be disqualified by marriage for being registered as a voter, provided that a husband and wife shall not both be registered as voters in the same Parliamentary borough or county division." This bill met with even warmer approval than the first one, because it was believed that it would win votes from those members who felt that the original measure had fallen short of being truly democratic. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister showed from the first that he intended to oppose it, as he had all previous suffrage measures. He announced that all Fridays up to Easter and also all time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays usually allowed for private members' bills were to be occupied with consideration of Government measures. Hardly a Liberal voice was raised against this arbitrary ruling. The Irish members indeed were delighted with it, since it gave the Home Rule Bill an advantage. The Labour members seemed complacent, and the rest of the coalition were indifferent. One back bench Liberal went so far as to rise and thank the Prime Minister for the courtesy with which the gagging process was accomplished. There was some show of fight made by the Opposition, but Conservative indignation was tempered by the reflection that the precedent established might be followed to advantage when their party came into power. Sir George Kemp then announced that he would take May 5th for the second reading of the Conciliation Bill, and the supporters of the bill, according to their various convictions, set to work to further its interests. The conviction of the W. S. P. U. was that Mr. Asquith's Government would never allow the bill to pass until they were actually forced to do so, and we adopted our own methods to secure a definite pledge from the Government that they would give facilities to the bill. In April of that year the census was to be taken, and we organised a census resistance on the part of women. According to our law the census of the entire kingdom must be taken every ten years on a designated day. Our plan was to reduce the value of the census for statistical purposes by refusing to make the required returns. Two ways of resistance presented themselves. The first and most important was direct resistance by occupiers who should refuse to fill in the census papers. This laid the register open to a fine of £5 or a month's imprisonment, and thus required the exercise of considerable courage. The second means of resistance was evasion--staying away from home during the entire time that the enumerators were taking the census. We made the announcement of this plan and instantly there ensued a splendid response from women and a chorus of horrified disapproval from the conservative public. The _Times_ voiced this disapproval in a leading article, to which I replied, giving our reasons for the protest. "The Census," I wrote, "is a numbering of the people. Until women count as people for the purpose of representation in the councils of the nation as well as for purposes of taxation, we shall refuse to be numbered." On the subject of laws made by men--without the assistance of women--for the protection of women and children, I have a very special feeling. From my experience as poor law guardian and as Registrar of Births and Deaths, I know how ridiculously, say rather how tragically, these laws fall short of protection. Take for instance the vaunted "Children's Charter" of 1906, the measure which spread Mr. Lloyd-George's fame throughout the world. A volume could be filled with the mistakes and the cruelties of that Act, the object of which is the preservation and improvement of child life. A distinguishing characteristic of the Act is that it puts most of the responsibility for neglect of children on the backs of the mothers, who, under the laws of England, have no rights as parents. Two or three especially striking cases of this kind came into notice about this time, and gave the census resistance an additional justification. The case of Annie Woolmore was a very pitiful one. She was arrested and sentenced to Holloway for six weeks for neglecting her children. The evidence showed that the woman lived with her husband and children in a miserable hovel, which would have been almost impossible to keep clean even if there had been water in the house. As it was the poor soul, who was in ill health and weakened by deprivation, had to carry all the water she used across a great distance. The children as well as the house were very dirty, it was true, but the children were well nourished and kindly treated. The husband, a labourer, out of work much of the time, testified that his wife "starved herself to feed the kids." Yet she had violated the terms of the "Children's Charter" and she went to prison. I am glad to say that owing to the efforts of suffragists she was pardoned and provided with a better home. Another case was that of Helen Conroy, who was charged with living in one wretched room, with her husband and seven children, the youngest a month old. According to the law the mother was forbidden to have this infant in bed with her overnight, yet part of the charge against her was that the child was found sleeping in a box of damp straw. Doubtless she would have preferred a cradle, or even a box of dry straw. But direst poverty made the cradle impossible and the conditions of the tenement kept the straw damp. Both parents in this instance were sent to prison for three months at hard labour. The magistrate casually remarked that the house in which these poor people lived had been condemned two years before, but some respectable property owner was still collecting rents from it. Another poor mother, evicted from her home because she could not pay the rent, took her four children out into the open country, and when found was sleeping with them in a gravel pit. She was sent to prison for a month and the children went to the workhouse. These sorry mothers, logical results of the subjection of women, are enough in themselves to justify almost any defiance of a Government who deny the women the right to work out their destinies in freedom. No pledge having been secured from the Prime Minister by April 1st, we carried out, and most successfully, our census resistance. Many thousands of women all over the country refused or evaded the returns. I returned my census paper with the words "No vote no census" written across it, and other women followed that example with similar messages. One woman filled in the blank with full information about her one man servant, and added that there were many women but no more persons in her household. In Birmingham sixteen women of wealth packed their houses with women resisters. They slept on the floors, on chairs and tables, and even in the baths. The head of a large college threw open the building to 300 women. Many women in other cities held all night parties for friends who wished to remain away from home. In some places unoccupied houses were rented for the night by resisters, who lay on the bare boards. Some groups of women hired gipsy vans and spent the night on the moors. In London we gave a great concert at Queen's Hall on Census night. Many of us walked about Trafalgar Square until midnight and then repaired to Aldwich skating rink, where we amused ourselves until morning. Some skated while others looked on, and enjoyed the admirable musical and theatrical entertainment that helped to pass the hours. We had with us a number of the brightest stars in the theatrical world, and they were generous in their contributions. It being Sunday night, the chairman had to call on each of the artists for a "speech" instead of a song or other turn. An all-night restaurant near at hand did a big business, and on the whole the resisters had a very good time. The Scala Theatre was the scene of another all-night entertainment. There was a good deal of curiosity to see what the Government would devise in the way of a punishment for the rebellious women, but the Government realised the impossibility of taking punitive action, and Mr. John Burns, who, as head of the Local Government Board, was responsible for the census, announced that they had decided to treat the affair with magnanimity. The number of evasions, he declared, was insignificant. But every one knew that this was the exact reverse of the facts. [Illustration: IN THIS MANNER THOUSANDS OF WOMEN THROUGHOUT THE KINGDOM SLEPT IN UNOCCUPIED HOUSES OVER CENSUS NIGHT] The Conciliation Bill was debated on May 5th and passed its second reading by the enormous majority of 137. And now the public and a section of the press united in a strong demand that the Government yield to the undoubted will of the House and grant facilities to the bill. The Conciliation Committee sent a deputation of members to the Prime Minister to remind him of his pre-election promise that the House of Commons should have an opportunity of dealing with the whole question of woman suffrage, but they succeeded only in getting his assurance that he had the matter under consideration. Late in the month the announcement was made in the House that the Government would not grant facilities during that session, but, since the new bill fulfilled the conditions named by the Prime Minister, and was now capable of amendment, the Government recognised it to be their duty to grant facilities in some session of the present Parliament. They would be prepared next session, when the bill had been again read for the second time, either as a result of obtaining a good place in the ballot, or (if that did not happen) by a grant of a Government day for the purpose, to give a week, which they understood to be the time suggested as reasonable by the promoters for its further stages. This pledge was made in order to deter the W. S. P. U. from making a militant demonstration in connection with the coronation of the King. Keir Hardie asked if the Government would, by means of a closure or otherwise, make certain that the bill would go through in the week, and the Prime Minister replied, "No, I cannot give an assurance of that kind. After all, it is a problem of the very greatest magnitude." This reply seemed to make the Government's pledge practically worthless. The Conciliation Committee also realised the possibilities of the bill being talked out, and Lord Lytton wrote to Mr. Asquith and asked him for assurances that the facilities offered were intended not for academic discussion but for effective opportunity for carrying the bill. He also asked that the week offered should not be construed rigidly but that, providing the committee stage were got through in the time, additional days for the report and third reading stages might be forthcoming. Reasonable opportunity for making use of the closure was also asked. To Lord Lytton's letter the Prime Minister replied as follows: _My dear Lytton_--In reply to your letter on the subject of the Women's Enfranchisement Bill, I would refer you to some observations recently made in a speech at the National Liberal Club by Sir Edward Grey, which accurately expresses the intention of the Government. It follows (to answer your specific inquiries), that the "week" offered will be interpreted with reasonable elasticity, that the Government will interpose no reasonable obstacle to the proper use of the closure, and that if (as you suggest) the bill gets through committee in the time proposed, the extra days required for report and third reading will not be refused. The Government, though divided in opinion on the merits of the bill, are unanimous in their determination to give effect, not only in the letter but in the spirit, to the promise in regard to facilities which I made on their behalf before the last general election. Yours etc., H. H. ASQUITH. Sceptical up to this point, the W. S. P. U. was now convinced that the Government were sincere in their promise to give the bill full facilities in the following year. We held a joyful mass meeting in Queen's Hall and I again declared that warfare against the Government was at an end. Our new policy was the inauguration of a great holiday campaign, with the object of making victory in 1912 absolutely certain. Electors must be aroused, members of Parliament held to their allegiance. Women must be organised in order that questions that vitally affect the social welfare of the country might be placed before them. I chose Scotland and Wales as the scenes of my holiday labours. I may say that our confidence was fully shared by the public at large. The belief in Mr. Asquith's pledge was accurately reflected in a leader published in _The Nation_, which said: "From the moment the Prime Minister signed the frank and ungrudging letter to Lord Lytton which appeared in last Saturday's newspapers, women became, in all but the legal formality, voters and citizens. For at least two years, if not for longer, nothing has been lacking save a full and fair opportunity for the House of Commons to translate its convictions into the precise language of a statute. That opportunity has been promised for next session and promised in terms and under conditions which ensure success." The only thing, as we thought, that we had to fear were wrecking amendments to the bill, and in the new by-election policy which we adopted we worked against all candidates of every party who would refuse to promise, not only to support the Conciliation Committee to carry the bill, but also to vote against any amendment the committee thought dangerous. We believed that we had covered every possibility of disaster. But we had something yet to learn of the treachery of the Asquith Ministry and their capacity for cold-blooded lying. Mr. Lloyd-George from the first was an open enemy of the bill, but since we had no doubt of the sincerity of the Prime Minister, we could only conclude that Mr. Lloyd-George had detached himself from the main body of the Government and had become the self-constituted leader of the opposition. In an address to a large Liberal group Mr. Lloyd-George advised that Liberal members be asked to ballot for a place for a "democratic measure," in order that such a measure might claim the Prime Minister's pledge for facilities next session. In one or two other speeches he made vague allusions to the possibilities of introducing another suffrage bill. His own idea was to amend the bill to give a vote to wives of all electors--making married women voters in virtue of their husband's qualification. The inevitable effect of such an amendment would be to wreck the bill, since it would have enfranchised about 6,000,000 women in addition to the million and a half who would benefit by the original terms of the bill. Such a wholesale addition to the electorate was never known in England; the number enfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1832 being hardly more than half a million. The Reform Bill of 1867 admitted a million new voters, and that of 1884 perhaps two millions. The absurdity of Mr. Lloyd-George's proposition was such that we did not regard it seriously. We did not allow his opposition to give us serious alarm until a day in August when a Welsh member, Mr. Leif Jones, asked the Prime Minister from the floor of the House, whether he was aware that his promise for facilities for the Conciliation Bill in the next session was being claimed exclusively for that bill, and asked further for a statement that the promised facilities would be equally granted to any other suffrage bill that might secure a second reading and was capable of amendment. Mr. Lloyd-George, speaking for the Government, replied that they could not undertake to give facilities to more than one bill on the same subject, but that any bill which, satisfying these tests, secured a second reading, would be treated by them as falling within their engagements. Astounded at this plain evasion of a sacred promise, Lord Lytton again wrote to the Prime Minister, reviewing the entire matter, and asking for another statement of the Government's intentions. The following is the text of Mr. Asquith's reply: _My dear Lytton_--I have no hesitation in saying that the promises made by, and on behalf of the Government, in regard to giving facilities to the Conciliation Bill, will be strictly adhered to, both in letter and in spirit. Yours sincerely, H. H. ASQUITH. August 23, 1911. Again we were reassured, and our confidence in the Premier's pledge remained unshaken throughout the campaign, although Mr. Lloyd-George continued to throw out hints that the promises of facilities for the bill were altogether illusory. We could not believe him, and when, two months later, I was asked in America: "When will English women vote?" I replied with perfect conviction, "Next year." This was in Louisville, Kentucky, where I attended the 1911 Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. I remember this third visit to the United States with especial pleasure. I was the guest in New York of Dr. and Mrs. John Winters Brannan, and through the courtesy of Dr. Brannan, who is at the head of all the city hospitals, I saw something of the penal system and the institutional life of America. We visited the workhouse and the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, and although I am told that these places are not regarded as model institutions, I can assure my readers that they are infinitely superior to the English prisons where women are punished for trying to win their political freedom. In the American prisons, much as they lacked in some essentials, I saw no solitary confinement, no rule of silence, no deadly air of officialdom. The food was good and varied, and above all there was an air of kindness and good feeling between the officials and the prisoners that is almost wholly lacking in England. But, after all, in the United States as in other countries, the problem of the relations between unfranchised women and the State remains unsolved and unsatisfactory. One night my friends took me to that sombre and terrible institution, the Night Court for Women. We sat on the bench with the magistrate, and he very courteously explained everything to us. The whole business was heart-breaking. All the women, with one exception--an old drunkard--were charged with solicitation. Most of them were of high type by nature. It all seemed so hopeless, and it was clear that they were victims of an evil system. Their conviction was a foregone conclusion. The magistrate said that in most cases the reason for their coming there was economic. One case of a little cigar maker, who said very simply that she only went on the streets when out of work, and that when in work she earned $8 a week, was very tragic and touching. I could not keep the Night Court out of my speeches after that. The whole dreadful injustice of women's lives seemed mirrored in that place. I went as far west as the Pacific Coast on this visit, spending Christmas day in Seattle, and for the first time seeing a community where women and men existed on terms of exact equality. It was a delightful experience. As I wrote home to our members, the men of the western States seemed to my eyes eager, earnest, rough men, building a great community in a great hurry, but never have I seen greater respect, courtesy and chivalry shown to women than in that one Suffrage State it has been my privilege to visit. I am getting a little ahead of my story, however. It was in November, when I was in the city of Minneapolis, that a crushing blow descended on the English suffragists. I learned of this through cabled despatches in the newspapers and from private cables, and was so staggered that I could scarcely command myself sufficiently to fill my immediate engagements. This was the news, that the Government had broken their plighted word and had deliberately destroyed the Conciliation Bill. My first wild thought, on hearing of this act of treachery, was to cancel all engagements and return to England, but my final decision to remain afterwards proved the right one, because the women at home, without a moment's loss of time, struck the answering blow, guided by that insight which has been characteristic of every act of the members of our Union. I did not return to England until January 11, 1912, and by that time great deeds had been done. Our movement had entered upon a new and more vigorous stage of militancy. FOOTNOTE: [2] Lady Constance Lytton's story has been thrillingly told in her book "Prisons and Prisoners," Heinemann. BOOK III THE WOMEN'S REVOLUTION CHAPTER I Parliament had reassembled on October 25th, 1911, and the first move on the part of the Government was, to say the least of it, rather unpropitious. The Prime Minister submitted two motions, the first one empowering them to take all the time of the House during the remainder of the session, and the second guillotining discussion on the Insurance Bill so as to force the measure through before Christmas. One day only was allotted to the clauses relating to women in that bill. These clauses were notoriously unfair; they provided for sickness insurance of about four million women and unemployment insurance of no women at all. Under the provision of the bill eleven million men were ensured against sickness and about two and a half million against unemployment. Women were given lower benefits for the same premium as men, and premiums paid out of the family income were credited solely to the men's account. The bill as drafted provided no form of insurance for wives, mothers and daughters who spent their lives at home working for the family. It penalised women for staying in the home, which most men agree is women's only legitimate sphere of action. The amended bill grudgingly allowed aside from maternity benefits, a small insurance, on rather difficult terms, for workingmen's wives. Thus the re-elected Government's first utterance to women was one of contempt; and this was followed, on November 7th, by the almost incredible announcement that the Government intended, at the next session, to introduce a manhood suffrage bill. This announcement was not made in the House of Commons, but to a deputation of men from the People's Suffrage Federation, a small group of people who advocated universal adult suffrage. The deputation, which was very privately arranged for, was received by Mr. Asquith, and the then Master of Elibank (Chief Liberal Whip). The spokesman asked Mr. Asquith to bring in a Government measure for universal adult suffrage, including adult women. The Prime Minister replied that the Government had pledged facilities for the Conciliation Bill, which was as far as they were prepared to go in the matter of women's suffrage. But, he added, the Government intended in the next session to introduce and to pass through all its stages a genuine reform bill which would sweep away existing qualifications for the franchise, and substitute a single qualification of residence. The bill would apply to adult males only, but it would be so framed as to be open to a woman suffrage amendment in case the House of Commons desired to make that extension and amendment. This portentous announcement came like a bolt from the blue, and there was strong condemnation of the Government's treachery to women. Said the _Saturday Review_: With absolutely no demand, no ghost of a demand, for more votes for men, and with--beyond all cavil--a very strong demand for votes for women, the Government announce their Manhood Suffrage Bill and carefully evade the other question! For a naked, avowed plan of gerrymandering no Government surely ever did beat this one. The _Daily Mail_ said that the "policy which Mr. Asquith proposes is absolutely indefensible." And the _Evening Standard and Globe_ said: "We are no friends of female suffrage, but anything more contemptible than the attitude assumed by the Government it is difficult to imagine." If the Government hoped to deceive any one by their dishonest reference to the possibility of a woman suffrage amendment, they were disappointed. Said the _Evening News_: Mr. Asquith's bombshell will blow the Conciliation Bill to smithereens, for it is impossible to have a manhood suffrage for men and a property qualification for women. True, the Premier consents to leave the question of women's suffrage to the House, but he knows well enough what the decision of the House will be. The Conciliation Bill had a chance, but the larger measure has none at all. I have quoted these newspaper leaders to show you that our opinion of the Government's action was shared even by the press. Universal suffrage in a country where women are in a majority of one million is not likely to happen in the lifetime of any reader of this volume, and the Government's generous offer of a possible amendment was nothing more than a gratuitous insult to the suffragists. The truce, naturally, came to an abrupt end. The W. S. P. U. wrote to the Prime Minister, saying that consternation had been aroused by the Government's announcement, and that it had been decided accordingly to send a deputation representing the Women's Social and Political Union to wait upon himself and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the evening of November 21st. The purpose of the deputation was to demand that the proposed manhood suffrage bill be abandoned, and that in its place should be introduced a Government measure giving equal franchise rights to men and women. A similar letter was despatched to Mr. Lloyd-George. Six times before on occasions of crisis had the W. S. P. U. requested an interview with Mr. Asquith, and each time they had been refused. This time the Prime Minister replied that he had decided to receive a deputation of the various suffrage societies on November 17th, "including your own society, if you desire it." It was proposed that each society appoint four representatives as members of the deputation which would be received by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Nine suffrage societies sent representatives to the meeting, our own representatives being Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Miss Annie Kenney, Lady Constance Lytton and Miss Elizabeth Robins. Christabel and Mrs. Lawrence spoke for the Union, and they did not hesitate to accuse the two Ministers to their faces of having grossly tricked and falsely misled women. Mr. Asquith, in his reply to the deputation, resented these imputations. He had kept his pledge, he insisted, in regard to the Conciliation Bill. He was perfectly willing to give facilities to the Bill, if the women preferred that to an amendment to his reform bill. Moreover, he denied that he had made any new announcement. As far back as 1908 he had distinctly declared that the Government regarded it as a sacred duty to bring forward a manhood suffrage bill before that Parliament came to an end. It was true that the Government did not carry out that binding obligation, and it was also true that until the present time nothing more was ever said about a manhood suffrage bill, but that was not the Government's fault. The crisis of the Lord's veto, had momentarily displaced the bill. Now he merely proposed to fulfil his promise made in 1908, and also his promise about giving facilities to the Conciliation Bill. He was ready to keep both promises. Well he knew that those promises were incompatible, that the fulfilment of both was therefore impossible, and Christabel told him so bluntly and fearlessly. "We are not satisfied," she warned him, and the Prime Minister said acidly: "I did not expect to satisfy _you_." The reply of the W. S. P. U. was immediate and forceful. Led by Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, our women went out with stones and hammers and broke hundreds of windows in the Home Office, the War and Foreign Offices, the Board of Education, the Privy Council Office, the Board of Trade, the Treasury, Somerset House, the National Liberal Club, several post offices, the Old Banqueting Hall, the London and South Western Bank, and a dozen other buildings, including the residence of Lord Haldane and Mr. John Burns. Two hundred and twenty women were arrested and about 150 of them sent to prison for terms varying from a week to two months. One individual protest deserves mention because of its prophetic character. In December Miss Emily Wilding Davison was arrested for attempting to set fire to a letter box at Parliament Street Post Office. In court Miss Davison said that she did it as a protest against the Government's treachery, and as a demand that women's suffrage be included in the King's speech. "The protest was meant to be serious," she said, "and so I adopted a serious course. In past agitation for reform the next step after window-breaking was incendiarism, in order to draw the attention of the private citizens to the fact that this question of reform was their concern as well as that of women." Miss Davison received the severe sentence of six months' imprisonment for her deed. To this state of affairs I returned from my American tour. I had the comfort of reflecting that my imprisoned comrades were being accorded better treatment than the early prisoners had known. Since early in 1910 some concessions had been granted, and some acknowledgment of the political character of our offences had been made. During the brief period when these scant concessions to justice were allowed, the hunger strike was abandoned and prison was robbed of its worst horror, forcible feeding. The situation was bad enough, however, and I could see that it might easily become a great deal worse. We had reached a stage at which the mere sympathy of members of Parliament, however sincerely felt, was no longer of the slightest use. Reminding our members this, in the first speeches made after returning to England I asked them to prepare themselves for more action. If women's suffrage was not included in the next King's speech we should have to make it absolutely impossible for the Government to touch the question of the franchise. The King's speech, when Parliament met in February, 1912, alluded to the franchise question in very general terms. Proposals, it was stated, would be brought forward for the amendment of the law with respect to the franchise and the registration of electors. This might be construed to mean that the Government were going to introduce a manhood suffrage bill or a bill for the abolition of plural voting, which had been suggested in some quarters as a substitute for the manhood suffrage bill. No precise statement of the Government's intentions was made, and the whole franchise question was left in a cloud of uncertainty. Mr. Agg Gardner, a Unionist member of the Conciliation Committee, drew the third place in the ballot, and he announced that he should reintroduce the Conciliation Bill. This interested us very slightly, for knowing its prospect of success to have been destroyed, for we were done with the Conciliation Bill forever. Nothing less than a Government measure would henceforth satisfy the W. S. P. U., because it had been clearly demonstrated that only a Government measure would be allowed to pass the House of Commons. With sublime faith, or rather with a deplorable lack of political insight, the Women's Liberal Federation and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies professed full confidence in the proposed amendment to a manhood suffrage bill, but we knew how futile was that hope. We saw that the only course to take was to offer determined opposition to any measure of suffrage that did not include as an integral part, equal suffrage for men and women. On February 16th we held a large meeting of welcome to a number of released prisoners who had served two and three months for the window breaking demonstration that had taken place in the previous November. At this meeting we candidly surveyed the situation and agreed on a course of action which we believed would be sufficiently strong to prevent the Government from advancing their threatened franchise bill. I said on this occasion: "We don't want to use any weapons that are unnecessarily strong. If the argument of the stone, that time-honoured official political argument, is sufficient, then we will never use any stronger argument. And that is the weapon and the argument that we are going to use next time. And so I say to every volunteer on our demonstration, 'Be prepared to use that argument.' I am taking charge of the demonstration, and that is the argument I am going to use. I am not going to use it for any sentimental reason, I am going to use it because it is the easiest and the most readily understood. Why should women go to Parliament Square and be battered about and insulted, and most important of all, produce less effect than when we throw stones? We tried it long enough. We submitted for years patiently to insult and assault. Women had their health injured. Women lost their lives. We should not have minded if that had succeeded, but that did not succeed, and we have made more progress with less hurt to ourselves by breaking glass than ever we made when we allowed them to break our bodies. "After all, is not a woman's life, is not her health, are not her limbs more valuable than panes of glass? There is no doubt of that, but most important of all, does not the breaking of glass produce more effect upon the Government? If you are fighting a battle, that should dictate your choice of weapons. Well, then, we are going to try this time if mere stones will do it. I do not think it will ever be necessary for us to arm ourselves as Chinese women have done, but there are women who are prepared to do that if it should be necessary. In this Union we don't lose our heads. We only go as far as we are obliged to go in order to win, and we are going forward with this next protest demonstration in full faith that this plan of campaign, initiated by our friends whom we honour to-night, will on this next occasion prove effective." Ever since militancy took on the form of destruction of property the public generally, both at home and abroad, has expressed curiosity as to the logical connection between acts such as breaking windows, firing pillar boxes, et cetera, and the vote. Only a complete lack of historical knowledge excuses that curiosity. For every advance of men's political freedom has been marked with violence and the destruction of property. Usually the advance has been marked by war, which is called glorious. Sometimes it has been marked by riotings, which are deemed less glorious but are at least effective. That speech of mine, just quoted, will probably strike the reader as one inciting to violence and illegal action, things as a rule and in ordinary circumstances quite inexcusable. Well, I will call the reader's attention to what was, in this connection, a rather singular coincidence. At the very hour when I was making that speech, advising my audience of the political necessity of physical revolt, a responsible member of the Government, in another hall, in another city, was telling his audience precisely the same thing. This Cabinet Minister, the right Honourable C. E. H. Hobhouse, addressing a large anti-suffrage meeting in his constituency of Bristol, said that the suffrage movement was not a political issue because its adherents had failed to prove that behind this movement existed a large public demand. He declared that "In the case of the suffrage demand there has not been the kind of popular sentimental uprising which accounted for Nottingham Castle in 1832 or the Hyde Park railings in 1867. There has not been a great ebullition of popular feeling." The "popular sentimental uprising" to which Mr. Hobhouse alluded was the burning to the ground of the castle of the anti-suffrage Duke of Newcastle, and of Colwick Castle, the country seat of another of the leaders of the opposition against the franchise bill. The militant men of that time did not select uninhabited buildings to be fired. They burned both these historic residences over their owners' heads. Indeed, the wife of the owner of Colwick Castle died as a result of shock and exposure on that occasion. No arrests were made, no men imprisoned. On the contrary the King sent for the Premier, and begged the Whig Ministers favourable to the franchise bill not to resign, and intimated that this was also the wish of the Lords who had thrown out the bill. Molesworth's History of England says: These declarations were imperatively called for. The danger was imminent and the Ministers knew it and did all that lay in their power to tranquillise the people, and to assure them that the bill was only delayed and not finally defeated. For a time the people believed this, but soon they lost patience, and seeing signs of a renewed activity on the part of the anti-suffragists, they became aggressive again. Bristol, the very city in which Mr. Hobhouse made his speech, was set on fire. The militant reformers burned the new gaol, the toll houses, the Bishop's Palace, both sides of Queen's Square, including the Mansion House, the custom house, the excise office, many warehouses, and other private property, the whole valued at over £100,000--five hundred thousand dollars. It was as a result of such violence, and in fear of more violence, that the reform bill was hurried through Parliament and became law in June, 1832. Our demonstration, so mild by comparison with English men's political agitation, was announced for March 4th, and the announcement created much public alarm. Sir William Byles gave notice that he would "ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention had been drawn to a speech by Mrs. Pankhurst last Friday night, openly and emphatically inciting her hearers to violent outrage and the destruction of property, and threatening the use of firearms if stones did not prove sufficiently effective; and what steps he proposes to take to protect Society from this outbreak of lawlessness." The question was duly asked, and the Home Secretary replied that his attention had been called to the speech, but that it would not be desirable in the public interest to say more than this at present. Whatever preparations the police department were making to prevent the demonstration, they failed because, while as usual, we were able to calculate exactly what the police department were going to do, they were utterly unable to calculate what we were going to do. We had planned a demonstration for March 4th, and this one we announced. We planned another demonstration for March 1st, but this one we did not announce. Late in the afternoon of Friday, March 1st, I drove in a taxicab, accompanied by the Hon. Secretary of the Union, Mrs. Tuke and another of our members, to No. 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister. It was exactly half past five when we alighted from the cab and threw our stones, four of them, through the window panes. As we expected we were promptly arrested and taken to Cannon Row police station. The hour that followed will long be remembered in London. At intervals of fifteen minutes relays of women who had volunteered for the demonstration did their work. The first smashing of glass occurred in the Haymarket and Piccadilly, and greatly startled and alarmed both pedestrians and police. A large number of the women were arrested, and everybody thought that this ended the affair. But before the excited populace and the frustrated shop owners' first exclamation had died down, before the police had reached the station with their prisoners, the ominous crashing and splintering of plate glass began again, this time along both sides of Regent Street and the Strand. A furious rush of police and people towards the second scene of action ensued. While their attention was being taken up with occurrences in this quarter, the third relay of women began breaking the windows in Oxford Circus and Bond Street. The demonstration ended for the day at half past six with the breaking of many windows in the Strand. The _Daily Mail_ gave this graphic account of the demonstration: From every part of the crowded and brilliantly lighted streets came the crash of splintered glass. People started as a window shattered at their side; suddenly there was another crash in front of them; on the other side of the street; behind--everywhere. Scared shop assistants came running out to the pavements; traffic stopped; policemen sprang this way and that; five minutes later the streets were a procession of excited groups, each surrounding a woman wrecker being led in custody to the nearest police station. Meanwhile the shopping quarter of London had plunged itself into a sudden twilight. Shutters were hurriedly fitted; the rattle of iron curtains being drawn came from every side. Guards of commissionaires and shopmen were quickly mounted, and any unaccompanied lady in sight, especially if she carried a hand bag, became an object of menacing suspicion. At the hour when this demonstration was being made a conference was being held at Scotland Yard to determine what should be done to prevent the smashing of windows on the coming Monday night. But we had not announced the hour of our March 4th protest. I had in my speech simply invited women to assemble in Parliament Square on the evening of March 4th, and they accepted the invitation. Said the _Daily Telegraph_: By six o'clock the neighbourhood Houses of Parliament were in a stage of siege. Shop keepers in almost every instance barricaded their premises, removed goods from the windows and prepared for the worst. A few minutes before six o'clock a huge force of police, amounting to nearly three thousand constables, was posted in Parliament Square, Whitehall, and streets adjoining, and large reserves were gathered in Westminster Hall and Scotland Yard. By half past eight Whitehall was packed from end to end with police and public. Mounted constables rode up and down Whitehall keeping the people on the move. At no time was there any sign of danger.... The demonstration had taken place in the morning, when a hundred or more women walked quietly into Knightsbridge and walking singly along the streets demolished nearly every pane of glass they passed. Taken by surprise the police arrested as many as they could reach, but most of the women escaped. [Illustration: THE ARGUMENT OF THE BROKEN WINDOW PANE] For that two days' work something like two hundred suffragettes were taken to the various police stations, and for days the long procession of women streamed through the courts. The dismayed magistrates found themselves facing, not only former rebels, but many new ones, in some cases, women whose names, like that of Dr. Ethel Smyth, the composer, were famous throughout Europe. These women, when arraigned, made clear and lucid statements of their positions and their motives, but magistrates are not schooled to examine motives. They are trained to think only of laws and mostly of laws protecting property. Their ears are not tuned to listen to words like those spoken by one of the prisoners, who said: "We have tried every means--processions and meetings--which were of no avail. We have tried demonstrations, and now at last we have to break windows. I wish I had broken more. I am not in the least repentant. Our women are working in far worse condition than the striking miners. I have seen widows struggling to bring up their children. Only two out of every five are fit to be soldiers. What is the good of a country like ours? England is absolutely on the wane. You only have one point of view, and that is the men's, and while men have done the best they could, they cannot go far without the women and the women's views. We believe the whole is in a muddle too horrible to think of." The coal miners were at that time engaging in a terrible strike, and the Government, instead of arresting the leaders, were trying to come to terms of peace with them. I reminded the magistrate of this fact, and I told him that what the women had done was but a fleabite by comparison with the miners' violence. I said further: "I hope our demonstration will be enough to show the Government that the women's agitation is going on. If not, if you send me to prison, I will go further to show that women who have to help pay the salaries of Cabinet Ministers, and your salary too, sir, are going to have some voice in the making of the laws they have to obey." I was sentenced to two months' imprisonment. Others received sentences ranging from one week to two months, while those who were accused of breaking glass above five pounds in value, were committed for trial in higher courts. They were sent to prison on remand, and when the last of us were behind the grim gates, not only Holloway but three other women's prisons were taxed to provide for so many extra inmates. It was a stormy imprisonment for most of us. A great many of the women had received, in addition to their sentences, "hard labour," and this meant that the privileges at that time accorded to Suffragettes, as political offenders, were withheld. The women adopted the hunger strike as a protest, but as the hint was conveyed to me that the privileges would be restored, I advised a cessation of the strike. The remand prisoners demanded that I be allowed to exercise with them, and when this was not answered they broke the windows of their cells. The other suffrage prisoners, hearing the sound of shattered glass, and the singing of the Marseillaise, immediately broke their windows. The time had long gone by when the Suffragettes submitted meekly to prison discipline. And so passed the first days of my imprisonment. CHAPTER II The panic stricken Government did not rest content with the imprisonment of the window breakers. They sought, in a blind and blundering fashion, to perform the impossible feat of wrecking at a blow the entire militant movement. Governments have always tried to crush reform movements, to destroy ideas, to kill the thing that cannot die. Without regard to history, which shows that no Government have ever succeeded in doing this, they go on trying in the old, senseless way. For days before the two demonstrations described in the last chapter our headquarters in Clement's Inn had been under constant observation by the police, and on the evening of March 5th an inspector of police and a large force of detectives suddenly descended on the place, with warrants for the arrest of Christabel Pankhurst and Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, who with Mrs. Tuke and myself were charged with "conspiring to incite certain persons to commit malicious damage to property." When the officers entered they found Mr. Pethick Lawrence at work in his office, and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence in her flat upstairs. My daughter was not in the building. The Lawrences, after making brief preparations drove in a taxicab to Bow Street Station, where they spent the night. The police remained in possession of the offices, and detectives were despatched to find and arrest Christabel. But that arrest never took place. Christabel Pankhurst eluded the entire force of detectives and uniformed police, trained hunters of human prey. Christabel had gone home, and at first, on hearing of the arrest of Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, had taken her own arrest for granted. A little reflection however showed her the danger in which the Union would stand if completely deprived of its accustomed leadership, and seeing that it was her duty to avoid arrest, she quietly left the house. She spent that night with friends who, next morning, helped her to make the necessary arrangements and saw her safely away from London. The same night she reached Paris, where she has since remained. My relief, when I learned of her flight, was very great, because I knew that whatever happened to the Lawrences and myself, the movement would be wisely directed, this in spite of the fact that the police remained in full possession of headquarters. The offices in Clement's Inn were thoroughly ransacked by the police, in a determined effort to secure evidence of conspiracy. They went through every desk, file and cabinet, taking away with them two cab loads of books and papers, including all my private papers, photographs of my children in infancy, and letters sent me by my husband long ago. Some of these I never saw again. The police also terrorised the printer of our weekly newspaper, and although the paper came out as usual, about a third of its columns were left blank. The headlines, however, with the ensuing space mere white paper produced a most dramatic effect. "History Teaches" read one headline to a blank space, plainly indicating that the Government were not willing to let the public know some of the things that history teaches. "Women's Moderation" suggested that the destroyed paragraph called for comparison of the women's window breaking with men's greater violence in the past. Most eloquent of all was the editorial page, absolutely blank except for the headline, "A Challenge!" and the name at the foot of the last column, Christabel Pankhurst. What words could have breathed a prouder defiance, a more implacable resolve? Christabel was gone, out of the clutches of the Government, yet she remained in complete possession of the field. For weeks the search for her went relentlessly on. Police searched every railway station, every train, every sea port. The police of every city in the Kingdom were furnished with her portrait. Every amateur Sherlock Holmes in England joined with the police in finding her. She was reported in a dozen cities, including New York. But all the time she was living quietly in Paris, in daily communication with the workers in London, who within a few days were once more at their appointed tasks. My daughter has remained in France ever since. Meanwhile, I found myself in the anomalous position of a convicted offender serving two months' prison sentence, and of a prisoner on remand waiting to be charged with a more serious offence. I was in very bad health, having been placed in a damp and unwarmed third division cell, the result being an acute attack of bronchitis. I addressed a letter to the Home Secretary, telling him of my condition, and urging the necessity of liberty to recover my health and to prepare my case for trial. I asked for release on bail, the plain right of a remand prisoner, and I offered if bail were granted now to serve the rest of my two months' sentence later on. The sole concessions granted me, however, were removal to a better cell and the right to see my secretary and my solicitor, but only in the presence of a wardress and a member of the prison clerical staff. On March 14th Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Mrs. Tuke and myself were brought up for preliminary hearing on the charge of having, on November 1, 1911, and on various other dates "conspired and combined together unlawfully and maliciously to commit damage, etc." The case opened on March 14th in a crowded courtroom in which I saw many friends. Mr. Bodkin, who appeared for the prosecution, made a very long address, in which he endeavoured to prove that the Women's Social and Political Union was a highly developed organisation of most sinister character. He produced much documentary evidence, some of it of such amusing character that the court rocked with stifled laughter, and the judge was obliged to conceal his smiles behind his hand. Mr. Bodkin cited our code book with the assistance of which we were able to communicate private messages. His voice sank to a scandalised half whisper as he stated the fact that we had presumed to include the sacred persons of the Government in our private code. "We find," said Mr. Bodkin portentously, "that public men in the service of His Majesty as members of the Cabinet are tabulated here under code names. We find that the Cabinet collectively has its code word "Trees," and individual members of the Cabinet are designated by the name, sometimes of trees, but I am also bound to say the commonest weeds as well." Here a ripple of laughter interrupted. Mr. Bodkin frowned heavily, and continued: "There is one," he said solemnly, "called Pansy; another one--more complimentary--Roses, another, Violets, and so on." Each of the defendants was designated by a code letter. Thus Mrs. Pankhurst was identified by the letter F; Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, D; Miss Christabel Pankhurst, E. Every public building, including the House of Commons, had its code name. The deadly possibilities of the code were illustrated by a telegram found in one of the files. It read: "Silk, thistle, pansy, duck, wool, E. Q." Translated by the aid of the code book the telegram read: "Will you protest Asquith's public meeting to-morrow evening but don't get arrested unless success depends on it. Wire back to Christabel Pankhurst, Clements Inn." More laughter followed these revelations, which after all proved no more than the business-like methods employed by the W. S. P. U. The laughter proved something a great deal more significant, for it was a plain indication that the old respect in which Cabinet Ministers had been held was no more. We had torn the veil from their sacro-sanct personalities and shown them for what they were, mean and scheming politicians. More serious from the point of view of prosecution was the evidence brought in by members of the police department in regard to the occurrences of March 1st and 4th. The policemen who arrested me and my two companions in Downing Street on March 1st, after we had broken the windows in the Premier's house, testified that following the arrest, we had handed him our reserve stock of stones, and that they were all alike, heavy flints. Other prisoners were found in possession of similar stones, tending to prove that the stones all came from one source. Other officers testified to the methodical manner in which the window breaking of March 1st and 4th was carried out, how systematically it had been planned and how soldierly had been the behaviour of the women. By twos and threes March 4th they had been seen to go to the headquarters at Clement's Inn, carrying handbags, which they deposited at headquarters, and had then gone on to a meeting at the Pavillion Music Hall. The police attended the meeting, which was the usual rally preceding a demonstration or a deputation. At five o'clock the meeting adjourned and the women went out, as if to go home. The police observed that many of them, still in groups of twos and threes, went to the Gardenia restaurant in Catherine Street, Strand, a place where many Suffragette breakfasts and teas had been held. The police thought that about one hundred and fifty women congregated there on March 4th. They remained until seven o'clock, and then, under the watching eyes of the police, they sauntered out and dispersed. A few minutes later, when there was no reason to expect such a thing, the noise was heard, in many streets, of wholesale window smashing. The police authorities made much of the fact that the women who had left their bags at headquarters and were afterwards arrested, were bailed out that night by Mr. Pethick Lawrence. The similarity of the stones used; the gathering of so many women in one building, prepared for arrest; the waiting at the Gardenia Restaurant; the apparent dispersal; the simultaneous destruction in many localities of plate glass, and the bailing of prisoners by a person connected with the headquarters mentioned, certainly showed a carefully worked out plan. Only a public trial of the defendants could establish whether or not the plan was a conspiracy. On the second day of the Ministerial hearing, Mrs. Tuke, who had been in the prison infirmary for twenty days and had to be attended in court by a trained nurse, was admitted to bail. Mr. Pethick Lawrence made a strong plea for bail for himself and his wife, pointing out that they had been in prison on remand for two weeks and were entitled to bail. I also demanded the privileges of a prisoner on remand. Both of these pleas were denied by the court, but a few days later the Home Secretary wrote to my solicitor that the remainder of my sentence of two months would be remitted until after the conspiracy trail at Bow Street. Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence had already been admitted to bail. Public opinion forced the Home Secretary to make these concessions, as it is well known that it is next to impossible to prepare a defence while confined in prison. Aside from the terrible effect of prison on one's body and nerves, there is the difficulty of consulting documents and securing other necessary data to be considered. On April 4th the Ministerial hearing ended in the acquittal of Mrs. Tuke, whose activities in the W. S. P. U. were shown to be purely secretarial. Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and myself were committed for trial at the next session of the Central Criminal Court, beginning April 23rd. Because of the weak state of my health the judge was with great difficulty prevailed upon to postpone the trial two weeks and it was, therefore, not until May 15th that the case was opened. The trial at Old Bailey is a thing that I shall never forget. The scene is clear before me as I write, the judge impressively bewigged and scarlet robed, dominating the crowded courtroom, the solicitors at their table, the jury, and looking very far away, the anxious pale faces of our friends who crowded the narrow galleries. By the veriest irony of fate this judge, Lord Coleridge, was the son of Sir Charles Coleridge who, in the year 1867, appeared with my husband, Dr. Pankhurst, in the famous case of Chorlton v. Lings, and sought to establish that women were persons, and as such were entitled to the Parliamentary vote. To make the irony still deeper the Attorney General, Sir Rufus Isaacs, who appeared as Counsel for the prosecution against women militants, himself had been guilty of remarkable speeches in corroboration of our point of view. In a speech made in 1910, in relation to the abolition of the Lords' veto, Sir Rufus made the statement that, although the agitation against privilege was being peacefully conducted, the indignation behind it was very intense. Said Sir Rufus: "Formerly when the great mass of the people were voteless they had to do something violent in order to show what they felt; to-day the elector's bullet is his ballot. Let no one be deceived, therefore, because in this present struggle everything is peaceful and orderly, in contrast to the disorderliness of other great struggles of the past." We wondered if the man who said these words could fail to realise that voteless women, deprived of every constitutional means of righting their grievances, were also obliged to do something violent in order to show how they felt. His opening address removed all doubt on that score. Sir Rufus Isaacs has a clear-cut, hawk-like face, deep eyes, and a somewhat world worn air. The first words he spoke were so astoundingly unfair that I could hardly believe that I heard them aright. He began his address to the jury by telling them that they must not, on any account, connect the act of the defendants with any political agitation. "I am very anxious to impress upon you," he said, "from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, that all questions of whether a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a man, are questions which are in no sense involved in the trial of this issue.... Therefore, I ask you to discard altogether from the consideration of the matters which will be placed before you any viewpoint you may have on this no doubt very important political issue." Nevertheless Sir Rufus added in the course of his remarks that he feared that it would not be possible to keep out of the conduct of the case various references to political events, and of course the entire trial, from beginning to end, showed clearly that the case was what Mr. Tim Healey, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's counsel, called it, a great State Trial. Proceeding, the Attorney General described the W. S. P. U., which he said he thought had been in existence since 1907, and had used what were known as militant methods. In 1911 the association had become annoyed by the Prime Minister because he would not make women's suffrage what was called a Government question. In November, 1911, the Prime Minister announced the introduction of a manhood suffrage bill. From that time on the defendants set to work to carry out a campaign which would have meant nothing less than anarchy. Women were to be induced to act together at a given time, in different given places, in such numbers that the police should be paralysed by the number of persons breaking the law, in order, to use the defendant's own words, "to bring the Government to its knees." After designating the respective positions held by the four defendants in the W. S. P. U., Sir Rufus went on to relate the events which resulted in the smashing of plate glass windows valued at some two thousand pounds, and the imprisonment of over two hundred women who were incited to their deeds by the conspirators in the dock. He entirely ignored the motive of the acts in question, and he treated the whole affair as if the women had been burglars. This inverted statement of the matter, though accurate enough as to facts, was such as might have been given by King John of the signing of Magna Charta. A very great number of witnesses were examined, a large number of them being policemen, and their testimony, and our cross examination disclosed the startling fact that there exists in England a special band of secret police entirely engaged in political work. These men, seventy-five in number, form what is known as the political branch of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Police. They go about in disguise, and their sole duty is to shadow Suffragettes and other political workers. They follow certain political workers from their homes to their places of business, to their social pleasures, into tea rooms and restaurants, even to the theatre. They pursue unsuspecting people in taxicabs, sit beside them in omnibuses. Above all they take down speeches. In fact the system is exactly like the secret police system of Russia. Mr. Pethick Lawrence and I spoke in our own defence, and Mr. Healey M. P. defended Mrs. Pethick Lawrence. I cannot give our speeches in full, but I should like to include as much of them as will serve to make the entire situation clear to the reader. Mr. Lawrence spoke first at the opening of the case. He began by giving an account of the suffrage movement and why he felt the enfranchisement of women appeared to him a question so grave that it warranted strong measures in its pursuit. He sketched briefly the history of the Women's Social and Political Union, from the time when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were thrown out of Sir Edward Grey's meeting and imprisoned for asking a political question, to the torpedoing of the Conciliation Bill. "The case that I have to put before you," he said, "is that neither the conspiracy nor the incitement is ours; but that the conspiracy is a conspiracy of the Cabinet who are responsible for the Government of this country; and that the incitement is the incitement of the Ministers of the Crown." And he did this most effectually not only by telling of the disgraceful trickery and deceit with which the Government had misled the suffragists in the matter of suffrage bills, but by giving the plain words in which members of the Cabinet had advised the women that they would never get the vote until they had learned to fight for it as men had fought in the past. When it came my turn to speak, realising that the average man is profoundly ignorant of the history of the women's movement--because the press has never adequately or truthfully chronicled the movement--I told the jury, as briefly as I could, the story of the forty years' peaceful agitation before my daughters and I resolved that we would give our lives to the work of getting the vote for women, and that we should use whatever means of getting the vote that were necessary to success. "We founded the Women's Social and Political Union," I said, "in 1903. Our first intention was to try and influence the particular political Party, which was then coming into power, to make this question of the enfranchisement of women their own question and to push it. It took some little time to convince us--and I need not weary you with the history of all that has happened--but it took some little time to convince us that that was no use; that we could not secure things in that way. Then in 1905 we faced the hard facts. We realised that there was a Press boycott against Women's Suffrage. Our speeches at public meetings were not reported, our letters to the editors, were not published, even if we implored the editors; even the things relating to Women's Suffrage in Parliament were not recorded. They said the subject was not of sufficient public interest to be reported in the Press, and they were not prepared to report it. Then with regard to the men politicians in 1905: we realised how shadowy were the fine phrases about democracy, about human equality, used by the gentlemen who were then coming into power. They meant to ignore the women--there was no doubt whatever about that. For in the official documents coming from the Liberal party on the eve of the 1905 election, there were sentences like this: 'What the country wants is a simple measure of Manhood Suffrage.' There was no room for the inclusion of women. We knew perfectly well that if there was to be franchise reform at all, the Liberal party which was then coming into power did not mean Votes for Women, in spite of all the pledges of members; in spite of the fact that a majority of the House of Commons, especially on the Liberal side, were pledged to it--it did not mean that they were going to put it into practice. And so we found some way of forcing their attention to this question. "Now I come to the facts with regard to militancy. We realised that the plans we had in our minds would involve great sacrifice on our part, that it might cost us all we had. We were at that time a little organisation, composed in the main of working women, the wives and daughters of working men. And my daughters and I took a leading part, naturally, because we thought the thing out, and, to a certain extent, because we were of better social position than most of our members, and we felt a sense of responsibility." I described the events that marked the first days of our work, the scene in Free Trade Hall, Manchester, when my daughter and her companion were arrested for the crime of asking a question of a politician, and I continued: "What did they do next? (I want you to realise that no step we have taken forward has been taken until after some act of repression on the part of our enemy, the Government--because it is the Government that is our enemy; it is not the Members of Parliament, it is not the men in the country; it is the Government in power alone that can give us the vote. It is the Government alone that we regard as our enemy, and the whole of our agitation is directed to bringing just as much pressure as necessary upon those people who can deal with our grievance.) The next step the women took was to ask questions during the course of meetings, because, as I told you, these gentlemen gave them no opportunity of asking them afterwards. And then began the interjections of which we have heard, the interference with the right to hold public meetings, the interference with the right of free speech, of which we have heard, for which these women, these hooligan women, as they have been called--have been denounced. I ask you, gentlemen, to imagine the amount of courage which it needs for a woman to undertake that kind of work. When men come to interrupt women's meetings, they come in gangs, with noisy instruments, and sing and shout together, and stamp their feet. But when women have gone to Cabinet Ministers' meetings--only to interrupt Cabinet Ministers and nobody else--they have gone singly. And it has become increasingly difficult for them to get in, because as a result of the women's methods there has developed the system of admission by ticket and the exclusion of women--a thing which in my Liberal days would have been thought a very disgraceful thing at Liberal meetings. But this ticket system developed, and so the women could only get in with very great difficulty. Women have concealed themselves for thirty-six hours in dangerous positions, under the platforms, in the organs, wherever they could get a vantage point. They waited starving in the cold, sometimes on the roof exposed to a winter's night, just to get a chance of saying in the course of a Cabinet Minister's speech, 'When is the Liberal Government going to put its promises into practice?' That has been the form militancy took in its further development." I went over the whole matter of our peaceful deputations, and of the violence with which they were invariably met; of our arrests and the farcical police court trials, where the mere evidence of policemen's unsupported statements sent us to prison for long terms; of the falsehoods told of us in the House of Commons by responsible members of the Government--tales of women scratching and biting policemen and using hatpins--and I accused the Government of making these attacks against women who were powerless to defend themselves because they feared the women and desired to crush the agitation represented by our organisation. "Now it has been stated in this Court," I said, "that it is not the Women's Social and Political Union that is in the Court, but that it is certain defendants. The action of the Government, gentlemen, is certainly against the defendants who are before you here to-day, but it is also against the Women's Social and Political Union. The intention is to crush that organisation. And this intention apparently was arrived at after I had been sent to prison for two months for breaking a pane of glass worth, I am told, 2s. 3d., the punishment which I accepted because I was a leader of this movement, though it was an extraordinary punishment to inflict for so small an act of damages as I had committed. I accepted it as the punishment for a leader of an agitation disagreeable to the Government; and while I was there this prosecution started. They thought they would make a clean sweep of the people who they considered were the political brains of the movement. We have got many false friends in the Cabinet--people who by their words appear to be well-meaning towards the cause of Women's Suffrage. And they thought that if they could get the leaders of the Union out of the way, it would result in the indefinite postponement and settlement of the question in this country. Well, they have not succeeded in their design, and even if they had got all the so-called leaders of this movement out of their way they would not have succeeded even then. Now why have they not put the Union in the dock? We have a democratic Government, so-called. This Women's Social and Political Union is not a collection of hysterical and unimportant wild women, as has been suggested to you, but it is an important organisation, which numbers amongst its membership very important people. It is composed of women of all classes of the community, women who have influence in their particular organisations as working women; women who have influence in professional organisations as professional women; women of social importance; women even of Royal rank are amongst the members of this organisation, and so it would not pay a democratic Government to deal with this organisation as a whole. "They hoped that by taking away the people that they thought guided the political fortunes of the organisation they would break the organisation down. They thought that if they put out of the way the influential members of the organisation they, as one member of the Cabinet, I believe, said, would crush the movement and get it 'on the run.' Well, Governments have many times been mistaken, gentlemen, and I venture to suggest to you that Governments are mistaken again. I think the answer to the Government was given at the Albert Hall meeting held immediately after our arrest. Within a few minutes, without the eloquence of Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, without the appeals of the people who have been called the leaders of this movement, in a very few minutes £10,000 was subscribed for the carrying on of this movement. "Now a movement like that, supported like that, is not a wild, hysterical movement. It is not a movement of misguided people. It is a very serious movement. Women, I submit, like our members, and women, I venture to say, like the two women, and like the man who are in the dock to-day, are not people to undertake a thing like this lightly. May I just try to make you feel what it is that has made this movement the gigantic size it is from the very small beginnings it had? It is one of the biggest movements of modern times. A movement which is not only an influence, perhaps not yet recognised, in this country, but is influencing the women's movement all over the world. Is there anything more marvellous in modern times than the kind of spontaneous outburst in every country of this woman's movement? Even in China--and I think it somewhat of a disgrace to Englishmen--even in China women have won the vote, as an outcome of a successful revolution, with which, I dare say, members of his Majesty's Government sympathise--a bloody revolution. "One more word on that point. When I was in prison the second time, for three months as a common criminal for no greater offence than the issue of a handbill--less inflammatory in its terms than some of the speeches of members of the Government who prosecute us here--during that time, through the efforts of a member of Parliament, there was secured for me permission to have the daily paper in prison, and the first thing I read in the daily Press was this: that the Government was at that moment fêting the members of the Young Turkish Revolutionary Party, gentlemen who had invaded the privacy of the Sultan's home--we used to hear a great deal about invading the privacy of Mr. Asquith's residence when we ventured to ring his door bell--gentlemen who had killed and slain, and had been successful in their revolution, while we women had never thrown a stone--for none of us was imprisoned for stone throwing, but merely for taking the part we had then taken in this organisation. There we were imprisoned while these political murderers were being fêted by the very Government who imprisoned us, and were being congratulated on the success of their revolution. Now I ask you, was it to be wondered at that women said to themselves: 'Perhaps it is that we have not done enough. Perhaps it is that these gentlemen do not understand womenfolk. Perhaps they do not realise women's ways, and because we have not done the things that men have done, they may think we are not in earnest.' "And then we come down to this last business of all, when we have responsible statesmen like Mr. Hobhouse saying that there had never been any sentimental uprising, no expression of feeling like that which led to the burning down of Nottingham Castle. Can you wonder, then, that we decided we should have to nerve ourselves to do more, and can you understand why we cast about to find a way, as women will, that would not involve loss of human life and the maiming of human beings, because women care more about human life than men, and I think it is quite natural that we should, for we know what life costs. We risk our lives when men are born. Now, I want to say this deliberately as a leader of this movement. We have tried to hold it back, we have tried to keep it from going beyond bounds, and I have never felt a prouder woman than I did one night when a police constable said to me, after one of these demonstrations, 'Had this been a man's demonstration, there would have been bloodshed long ago.' Well, my lord, there has not been any bloodshed except on the part of the women themselves--these so-called militant women. Violence has been done to us, and I who stand before you in this dock have lost a dear sister in the course of this agitation. She died within three days of coming out of prison, a little more than a year ago. These are things which, wherever we are, we do not say very much about. We cannot keep cheery, we cannot keep cheerful, we cannot keep the right kind of spirit, which means success, if we dwell too much upon the hard part of our agitation. But I do say this, gentlemen, that whatever in future you may think of us, you will say this about us, that whatever our enemies may say, we have always put up an honourable fight, and taken no unfair means of defeating our opponents, although they have not always been people who have acted so honourably towards us. "We have assaulted no one; we have done no hurt to any one; and it was not until 'Black Friday'--and what happened on 'Black Friday' is that we had a new Home Secretary, and there appeared to be new orders given to the police, because the police on that occasion showed a kind of ferocity in dealing with the women that they had never done before, and the women came to us and said: 'We cannot bear this'--it was not until then we felt this new form of repression should compel us to take another step. That is the question of 'Black Friday,' and I want to say here and now that every effort was made after 'Black Friday' to get an open public judicial inquiry into the doings of 'Black Friday,' as to the instructions given to the police. That inquiry was refused; but an informal inquiry was held by a man, whose name will carry conviction as to his status and moral integrity on the one side of the great political parties, and a man of equal standing on the Liberal side. These two men were Lord Robert Cecil and Mr. Ellis Griffith. They held a private inquiry, had women before them, took their evidence, examined that evidence, and after hearing it said that they believed what the women had told them was substantially true, and that they thought there was good cause for that inquiry to be held. That was embodied in a report. To show you our difficulties, Lord Robert Cecil, in a speech at the Criterion Restaurant, spoke on this question. He called upon the Government to hold this inquiry, and not one word of that speech was reported in any morning paper. That is the sort of thing we have had to face, and I welcome standing here, if only for the purpose of getting these facts out, and I challenge the Attorney General to institute an inquiry into these proceedings--not that kind of inquiry of sending their inspectors to Holloway and accepting what they are told by the officials--but to open a public inquiry, with a jury, if he likes, to deal with our grievances against the Government and the methods of this agitation. "I say it is not the defendants who have conspired, but the Government who have conspired against us to crush this agitation; but however the matter may be decided, we are content to abide by the verdict of posterity. We are not the kind of people who like to brag a lot; we are not the kind of people who would bring ourselves into this position unless we were convinced that it was the only way. I have tried--all my life I have worked for this question--I have tried arguments, I have tried persuasion. I have addressed a greater number of public meetings, perhaps, than any person in this court, and I have never addressed one meeting where substantially the opinion of the meeting--not a ticket meeting, but an open meeting, for I have never addressed any other kind of a meeting--has not been that where women bear burdens and share responsibilities like men they should be given the privileges that men enjoy. I am convinced that public opinion is with us--that it has been stifled--wilfully stifled--so that in a public Court of Justice one is glad of being allowed to speak on this question." The Attorney General's summing up for the prosecution was very largely a defence of the Liberal Party and its course in regard to woman suffrage legislation. Therefore, Mr. Tim Healey, in his defence of Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, did well to lay stress on the political character of the conspiracy charge and trial. He said: "It is no doubt a very useful thing when you have political opponents to be able to set the law in motion against them. I have not the smallest doubt it would be a very convenient thing, if they had the courage to do it, to shut up the whole of His Majesty's Opposition while the present Government is in office--to lock up all the men of lustre and distinction in our public forum and on our public platforms--all the Carsons, F. E. Smiths, Bonar Laws, and so on. It would be a most convenient thing to end the whole thing, as it would be to end women's agitation in the form of the indictment. Gentlemen of the jury, whatever words have been spoken by mutual opponents, whatever instructions have been addressed, not to feeble females, but to men who boast of drilling and of arms, they have not had the courage to prosecute anybody, except women, by means of an indictment. Yet the Government of my learned friend have selected two dates as cardinal dates, and they ask you to pass judgment upon the prisoners at the bar, and to say that, without rhyme or reason, taking the course suggested without provocation, these responsible, well-bred, educated, University people, have suddenly, in the words of the indictment, wickedly and with malice aforethought engaged in these criminal designs. "Gentlemen of the jury, the first thing I would ask in that connection is this: What is there in the course of this demand put forward by women which should have excited the treatment at the hands of His Majesty's Ministers which this movement, according to the documents which are in evidence before me, has received? I should suppose that the essence of all government is the smooth conduct of affairs, so that those who enjoy high station, great emoluments, should not be parties against whom the accusation of provoking civic strife and breeding public turmoil should be brought. What do we find? We find that, in regard to the treatment of the demand which had always been put forward humbly, respectably, respectfully, in its origin, by those who have received trade unionists, anti-vaccinators, deceased wife's sisters, and all other forms of political demand, and who have received them humbly and yielded to them, we find that when these people advocating this particular form of civic reform request an audience, request admission, request even to have their petitions respectfully received, they have met, judicially, at all events, with a flat and solemn negative. That is the beginning of this unhappy spirit bred in the minds of persons like the defendants, persons like those against whom evidence has been tendered--which has led to your being empanelled in that box to-day. And I put it to you when you are considering whether it is the incitement of my clients or the conduct of Ministers that have led to these events--whether I cannot ask you to say that even a fair apportionment of blame should not rest upon more responsible shoulders, and whether you should go out of your way to say that these persons in the dock alone are guilty." In closing Mr. Healey reverted to the political character of the trial. "The Government have undertaken this prosecution," he declared, "to seclude for a considerable period their chief opponents. They hope there will be at public meetings which they attend no more inconvenient cries of 'Votes for Women.' I cannot conceive any other object which they could have in bringing the prosecution. I have expressed my regret at the loss which the shopkeepers, tradesmen and others have suffered. I regret it deeply. I regret that any person should bring loss or suffering upon innocent people. But I ask you to say that the law has already been sufficiently vindicated by the punishment of the immediate authors of the deed. What can be gained? Does justice gain? "I almost hesitate to treat this as a legal inquiry. I regard it as a vindictive political act. Of all the astonishing acts that have ever been brought into a public court against a prisoner I cannot help feeling the charge against Mr. Pethick Lawrence is the most astonishing. He ventured to attend at some police courts and gave bail for women who had been arrested in endeavouring, as I understand, to present petitions to Parliament or to have resort to violence. I do not complain of the way in which my learned friend has conducted the prosecution, but I do complain of the police methods--inquiring into the homes and the domestic circumstances of the prisoners, obtaining their papers, taking their newspaper, going into their banking account, bringing up their bankers here to say what is their balance; and I do say that in none of the prosecutions of the past have smaller methods belittled a great State trial, because, look at it as you will, you cannot get away from it that this is a great State trial. It is not the women who are on trial. It is the men. It is the system of Government which is upon its trial. It is this method of rolling the dice by fifty-four counts in an indictment without showing to what any bit of evidence is fairly attributable; the system is on its trial--a system whereby every innocent act in public life is sought to be enmeshed in a conspiracy." The jury was absent for more than an hour, showing that they had some difficulty in agreeing upon a verdict. When they returned it was plain from their strained countenances that they were labouring under deep feeling. The foreman's voice shook as he pronounced the verdict, guilty as charged, and he had hard work to control his emotion as he added: "Your Lordship, we unanimously desire to express the hope that, taking into consideration the undoubtedly pure motives that underlie the agitation that has led to this trouble, you will be pleased to exercise the utmost clemency and leniency in dealing with the case." A burst of applause followed this plea. Then Mr. Pethick Lawrence arose and asked to say a few words before sentence was pronounced. He said that it must be evident, aside from the jury's recommendation, that we had been actuated by political motives, and that we were in fact political offenders. It had been decided in English Courts that political offenders were different from ordinary offenders, and Mr. Lawrence cited the case of a Swiss subject whose extradition was refused because of the political character of his offence. The Court on that occasion had declared that even if the crime were murder committed with a political motive it was a political crime. Mr. Lawrence also reminded the judge of the case of the late Mr. W. T. Stead, convicted of a crime, yet because of the unusual motive behind the crime, was allowed first division treatment and full freedom to receive his family and friends. Last of all the case of Dr. Jameson was cited. Although his raid resulted in the death of twenty-one persons and the wounding of forty-six more, the political character of his offence was taken into account and he was made a first division prisoner. They were men, fighting in a man's war. We of the W. S. P. U. were women, fighting in a woman's war. Lord Coleridge, therefore, saw in us only reckless and criminal defiers of law. Lord Coleridge said: "You have been convicted of a crime for which the law would sanction, if I chose to impose it, a sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour. There are circumstances connected with your case which the jury have very properly brought to my attention, and I have been asked by you all three to treat you as first class misdemeanants. If, in the course of this case, I had observed any contrition or disavowal of the acts you have committed, or any hope that you would avoid repetition of them in future, I should have been very much prevailed upon by the arguments that have been advanced to me." No contrition having been expressed by us, the sentence of the Court was that we were to suffer imprisonment, in the second division, for the term of nine months, and that we were to pay the costs of the prosecution. CHAPTER III The sentence of nine months astonished us beyond measure, especially in view of certain very recent events, one of these being the case of some sailors who had mutinied in order to call attention to something which they considered a peril to themselves and to all seafarers. They were tried and found technically guilty, but because of the motive behind their mutiny, were discharged without punishment. Perhaps more nearly like our case than this was the case of the labour leader, Tom Mann, who, shortly before, had written a pamphlet calling upon His Majesty's soldiers not to fire upon strikers when commanded to do so by their superior officers. From the Government's point of view this was a much more serious kind of inciting than ours, because if it had been responded to the authorities would have been absolutely crippled in maintaining order. Besides, soldiers who refuse to obey orders are liable to the death penalty. Tom Mann was given a sentence of six months, but this was received, on the part of the Liberal Press and Liberal politicians, with so much clamour and protest that the prisoner was released at the end of two months. So, even on our way to prison, we told one another that our sentences could not stand. Public opinion would never permit the Government to keep us in prison for nine months, or in the second division for any part of our term. We agreed to wait seven Parliamentary days before we began a hunger strike protest. It was very dreary waiting, those seven Parliamentary days, because we could not know what was happening outside, or what was being talked of in the House. We could know nothing of the protests and memorials that were pouring in, on our behalf, from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, from members of learned societies, and from distinguished men and women of all professions, not only in England but in every country of Europe, from the United States and Canada, and even from India. An international memorial asking that we be treated as political prisoners was signed by such great men and women as Prof. Paul Milyoukoff, leader of the Constitutional Democrats in the Duma; Signor Enrico Ferri, of the Italian Chamber of Deputies; Edward Bernstein, of the German Reichstag; George Brandes, Edward Westermarck, Madame Curie, Ellen Key, Maurice Maeterlinck, and many others. The greatest indignation was expressed in the House, Keir Hardie and Mr. George Lansbury leading in the demand for a drastic revision of our sentences and our immediate transference to the first division. So much pressure was brought to bear that within a few days the Home Secretary announced that he felt it his duty to examine into the circumstances of the case without delay. He explained that the prisoners had not at any time been forced to wear prison clothes. Ultimately, which in this case means shortly before the expiration of the seven Parliamentary days, we were all three placed in the first division. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence was given the cell formerly occupied by Dr. Jameson and I had the cell adjoining. Mr. Pethick Lawrence, in Brixton Gaol, was similarly accommodated. We all had the privilege of furnishing our cells with comfortable chairs, tables, our own bedding, towels, and so on. We had meals sent in from the outside; we wore our own clothing and had what books, newspapers and writing materials we required. We were not permitted to write or receive letters or to see our friends except in the ordinary two weeks' routine. Still we had gained our point that suffrage prisoners were politicals. We had gained it, but, as it turned out, only for ourselves. When we made the inquiry, "Are all our women now transferred to the first division?" the answer was that the order for transference referred only to Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and myself. Needless to say, we immediately refused to accept this unfair advantage, and after we had exhausted every means in our power to induce the Home Secretary to give the other suffrage prisoners the same justice that we had received, we adopted the protest of the hunger strike. The word flew swiftly through Holloway, and in some mysterious way travelled to Brixton, to Aylesbury, and Winson Green, and at once all the other suffrage prisoners followed our lead. The Government then had over eighty hunger strikers on their hands, and, as before, had ready only the argument of force, which means that disgusting and cruel process of forcible feeding. Holloway became a place of horror and torment. Sickening scenes of violence took place almost every hour of the day, as the doctors went from cell to cell performing their hideous office. One of the men did his work in such brutal fashion that the very sight of him provoked cries of horror and anguish. I shall never while I live forget the suffering I experienced during the days when those cries were ringing in my ears. In her frenzy of pain one woman threw herself from the gallery on which her cell opened. A wire netting eight feet below broke her fall to the iron staircase beneath, else she must inevitably have been killed. As it was she was frightfully hurt. The wholesale hunger strike created a tremendous stir throughout England, and every day in the House the Ministers were harassed with questions. The climax was reached on the third or fourth day of the strike, when a stormy scene took place in the House of Commons. The Under Home Secretary, Mr. Ellis Griffith, had been mercilessly questioned as to conditions under which the forcible feeding was being done, and as soon as this was over one of the suffragist members made a moving appeal to the Prime Minister himself to order the release of all the prisoners. Mr. Asquith, forced against his will to take part in the controversy, rose and said that it was not for him to interfere with the actions of his colleague, Mr. McKenna, and he added, in his own suave, mendacious manner: "I must point out this, that there is not one single prisoner who cannot go out of prison this afternoon on giving the undertaking asked for by the Home Secretary." Meaning an undertaking to refrain henceforth from militancy. Instantly Mr. George Lansbury sprang to his feet and exclaimed: "You know they cannot! It is perfectly disgraceful that the Prime Minister of England should make such a statement." Mr. Asquith glanced carelessly at the indignant Lansbury, but sank into his seat without deigning to reply. Shocked to the depths of his soul by the insult thrown at our women, Mr. Lansbury strode up to the Ministerial bench and confronted the Prime Minister, saying again: "That was a disgraceful thing for you to say, Sir. You are beneath contempt, you and your colleagues. You call yourselves gentlemen, and you forcibly feed and murder women in this fashion. You ought to be driven out of office. Talk about protesting. It is the most disgraceful thing that ever happened in the history of England. You will go down to history as the men who tortured innocent women." By this time the House was seething, and the indignant Labour member had to shout at the top of his big voice in order to be heard over the din. Mr. Asquith's pompous order that Mr. Lansbury leave the House for the day was probably known to very few until it appeared in print next day. At all events Mr. Lansbury continued his protest for five minutes longer. "You murder, torture and drive women mad," he cried, "and then you tell them they can walk out. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You talk about principle--you talk about fighting in Ulster--you, too--" turning to the Unionist benches--"You ought to be driven out of public life. These women are showing you what principle is. You ought to honour them for standing up for their womanhood. I tell you, Commons of England, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves." The Speaker came to Mr. Asquith's rescue at last and adjured Mr. Lansbury that he must obey the Prime Minister's order to leave the House, saying that such disorderly conduct would cause the House to lose respect. "Sir," exclaimed Mr. Lansbury, in a final burst of righteous rage, "it has lost it already." This unprecedented explosion of wrath and scorn against the Government was the sensation of the hour, and it was felt on all sides that the release of the prisoners, or at least cessation of forcible feeding, which amounted to the same thing, would be ordered. Every day the Suffragettes marched in great crowds to Holloway, serenading the prisoners and holding protest meetings to immense crowds. The music and the cheering, faintly wafted to our straining ears, was inexpressibly sweet. Yet it was while listening to one of these serenades that the most dreadful moment of my imprisonment occurred. I was lying in bed, very weak from starvation, when I heard a sudden scream from Mrs. Lawrence's cell, then the sound of a prolonged and very violent struggle, and I knew that they had dared to carry their brutal business to our doors. I sprang out of bed and, shaking with weakness and with anger, I set my back against the wall and waited for what might come. In a few moments they had finished with Mrs. Lawrence and had flung open the door of my cell. On the threshold I saw the doctors, and back of them a large group of wardresses. "Mrs. Pankhurst," began the doctor. Instantly I caught up a heavy earthenware water jug from a table hard by, and with hands that now felt no weakness I swung the jug head high. "If any of you dares so much as to take one step inside this cell I shall defend myself," I cried. Nobody moved or spoke for a few seconds, and then the doctor confusedly muttered something about to-morrow morning doing as well, and they all retreated. I demanded to be admitted to Mrs. Lawrence's cell, where I found my companion in a desperate state. She is a strong woman, and a very determined one, and it had required the united strength of nine wardresses to overcome her. They had rushed into the cell without any warning, and had seized her unawares, else they might not have succeeded at all. As it was she resisted so violently that the doctors could not apply the stethoscope, and they had very great difficulty in getting the tube down. After the wretched affair was over Mrs. Lawrence fainted, and for hours afterwards was very ill. This was the last attempt made to forcibly feed either Mrs. Lawrence or myself, and two days later we were ordered released on medical grounds. The other hunger strikers were released in batches, as every day a few more triumphant rebels approached the point where the Government stood in danger of committing actual murder. Mr. Lawrence, who was forcibly fed twice a day for more than ten days, was released in a state of complete collapse on July 1st. Within a few days after that the last of the prisoners were at liberty. As soon as I was sufficiently recovered I went to Paris and had the joy of seeing again my daughter Christabel, who, during all the days of strife and misery, had kept her personal anxiety in the background and had kept staunchly at her work of leadership. The absence of Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence had thrown the entire responsibility of the editorship of our paper, _Votes for Women_, on her shoulders, but as she has invariably risen to meet new responsibility, she conducted the paper with skill and discretion. We had much to talk about and to consider, because it was evident that militancy, instead of being dropped, as the other suffrage societies were constantly suggesting, must go on very much more vigorously than before. The struggle had been too long drawn out. We had to seek ways to shorten it, to bring it to such a climax that the Government would acknowledge that something had to be done. We had already demonstrated that our forces were impregnable. We could not be conquered, we could not be terrified, we could not even be kept in prison. Therefore, since the Government had their war lost in advance, our task was merely to hasten the surrender. The situation in Parliament, as far as the suffrage question was concerned, was clean swept and barren. The third Conciliation Bill had failed to pass its second reading, the majority against it being fourteen. Many Liberal members were afraid to vote for the bill because Mr. Lloyd-George and Mr. Lewis Harcourt had persistently spread the rumour that its passage, at that time, would result in splitting the Cabinet. The Irish Nationalist members had become hostile to the bill because their leader, Mr. Redmond, was an anti-suffragist, and had refused to include a woman suffrage clause in the Home Rule Bill. Our erstwhile friends, the Labour members, were so apathetic, or so fearful for certain of their own measures, that most of them stayed away from the House on the day the bill reached its second reading. So it was lost, and the Militants were blamed for its loss! In June the Government announced that Mr. Asquith's manhood suffrage bill would soon be introduced, and very soon after this the bill did appear. It simplified the registration machinery, reduced the qualifying period of residence to six months, and abolished property qualifications, plural voting and University representation. In a word, it gave the Parliamentary franchise to every man above the age of twenty-one and it denied it to all women. Never in the history of the suffrage movement had such an affront been offered to women, and never in the history of England had such a blow been aimed at women's liberties. It is true that the Prime Minister had pledged himself to introduce a bill capable of being amended to include women's suffrage, and to permit any amendment that passed its second reading to become a part of the bill. But we had no faith in an amendment, nor in any bill that was not from its inception an official Government measure. Mr. Asquith had broken every pledge he had ever made the women, and this new pledge impressed us not at all. Well we knew that he had given it only to cover his treachery in torpedoing the Conciliation Bill, and in the hope of placating the suffragists, perhaps securing another truce to militancy. If this last was his hope he was most grievously disappointed. Signs were constantly appearing to indicate that women would no longer be contented with the symbolic militancy involved in window breaking. For example, traces were found in the Home Secretary's office at Whitehall of an attempt at arson. On the doorstep of another Cabinet Minister similar traces were found. Had the Government acted upon these warnings, by giving women the vote, all the serious acts of militancy that have occurred since would have been averted. But like the heart of Pharaoh, the heart of the Government hardened, and militant acts followed one another in rapid succession. In July the W. S. P. U. issued a manifesto which set forth our intentions in that regard. The manifesto read in part as follows: "The leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union have so often warned the Government that unless the vote were granted to women in response to the mild militancy of the past, a fiercer spirit of revolt would be awakened which it would be impossible to control. The Government have blindly disregarded the warning, and now they are reaping the harvest of their unstatesmanlike folly." This was issued immediately after a visit paid by Mr. Asquith to Dublin. The occasion had been intended to be one of great pomp and circumstance, a huge popular demonstration in honour of the sponsor of Home Rule, but the Suffragettes turned it into the most lamentable fiasco imaginable. From the hour of Mr. Asquith's attempted secret departure from London until his return he lived and moved in momentary dread of Suffragettes. Every time he entered or left a railway carriage or a steamer he was confronted by women. Every time he rose to speak he was interrupted by women. Every public appearance he made was turned into a riot by women. As he left Dublin a woman threw a hatchet into his motor car, without, however, doing him any injury. As a final protest against his reception by Irishmen, the Theatre Royal was set on fire by two women. The theatre was practically empty at the time, the performance having been completed, and the damage done was comparatively small, yet the two women chiefly concerned, Mrs. Leigh and Miss Evans, were given the barbarous sentences of five years each in prison. These were the first women sentenced to penal servitude in the history of our movement. Of course they did not serve their sentences. On entering Mountjoy Prison they put in the usual claim for first division treatment, and this being refused, they immediately adopted the hunger strike. A number of Irish Suffragettes were in Mountjoy at this time for a protest made against the exclusion of women from the Home Rule Bill. They were in the first division, and they were almost on the eve of their release, but such is the indomitable spirit of militancy that these women entered upon a sympathetic hunger strike. They were released, but the Government forbade the release of Mrs. Leigh and Miss Evans, that is, they ordered the authorities to retain the women as long as they could, by forcible feeding, be kept alive. After a struggle which, for fierceness and cruelty, is almost unparalleled in our annals, the two women fought their way out. All during that summer militancy surged up and down throughout the Kingdom. A series of attacks on golf links was instituted, not at all in a spirit of wanton mischief, but with the direct and very practical object of reminding the dull and self-satisfied English public that when the liberties of English women were being stolen from them was no time to think of sports. The women selected country clubs where prominent Liberal politicians were wont to take their week-end pleasures, and with acids they burned great patches of turf, rendering the golf greens useless for the time being. They burned the words, Votes for Women, in some cases, and always they left behind them reminders that women were warring for their freedom. On one occasion when the Court was at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the Suffragettes invaded the Royal golf links, and when Sunday morning dawned all the marking flags were found to have been replaced by W. S. P. U. flags hearing inscriptions such as "Votes for Women means peace for Ministers," "Forcible feeding must be stopped," and the like. The golf links were frequently visited by Suffragettes in order to question recreant ministers. Two women followed the Prime Minister to Inverness, where he was playing golf with Mr. McKenna. Approaching the men one Suffragette exclaimed: "Mr. Asquith, you must stop forcible feeding--" She got no farther, for Mr. Asquith, turning pale with rage--perhaps--retreated behind the Home Secretary, who, quite forgetting his manners, seized the Suffragette, crying out that he was going to throw her into the pond. "Then we will take you with us," the two retorted, after which a very lively scuffle ensued, and the women were not thrown into the pond. [Illustration: A SUFFRAGETTE THROWING A BAG OF FLOUR AT MR. ASQUITH IN CHESTER] This golf green activity really aroused more hostility against us than all the window-breaking. The papers published appeals to us not to interfere with a game that helped weary politicians to think clearly, but our reply to this was that it had not had any such effect on the Prime Minister or Mr. Lloyd-George. We had undertaken to spoil their sport and that of a large class of comfortable men in order that they should be obliged to think clearly about women, and women's firm determination to get justice. I made my return to active work in the autumn by speaking at a great meeting of the W. S. P. U., held in the Albert Hall. At that meeting I had the announcement to make that the six years' association of Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the W. S. P. U. had ended. Since personal dissensions have never been dwelt upon in the W. S. P. U., have never been allowed to halt the movement or to interfere for an hour with its progress, I shall not here say any more about this important dissension than I said at our first large meeting in Albert Hall after the holiday, on October 17th. That day a new paper was sold on the streets. It was called _The Suffragette_, it was edited by Christabel Pankhurst, and was henceforth to be the official organ of the Union. Both in this new paper and in _Votes for Women_, the following announcement appeared: GRAVE STATEMENT BY THE LEADERS At the first reunion of the leaders after the enforced holiday, Mrs. Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst outlined a new militant policy which Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence found themselves altogether unable to approve. Mrs. Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst indicated that they were not prepared to modify their intentions, and recommended that Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence should resume control of the Paper, _Votes for Women_, and should leave the Women's Social and Political Union. Rather than make schism in the ranks of the Union Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence consented to take this course. This was signed by all four. That night at the meeting I further explained to the members that, hard as partings from old friends and comrades unquestionably were, we must remember that we were fighting in an army, and that unity of purpose and unity of policy are absolutely necessary, because without them the army is hopelessly weakened. "It is better," I said, "that those who cannot agree, cannot see eye to eye as to policy, should set themselves free, should part, and should be free to continue their policy as they see it in their own way, unfettered by those with whom they can no longer agree." Continuing I said: "I give place to none in appreciation and gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence for the incalculable services that they have rendered the militant movement for Woman Suffrage, and I firmly believe that the women's movement will be strengthened by their being free to work for woman suffrage in the future as they think best, while we of the Women's Social and Political Union shall continue the militant agitation for Woman Suffrage initiated by my daughter and myself and a handful of women more than six years ago." I then went on to survey the situation in which the W. S. P. U. now stood and to outline the new militant policy which he had decided upon. This policy, to begin with, was relentless opposition, not only to the party in power, the Liberal Party, but to all parties in the coalition. I reminded the women that the Government that had tricked and betrayed us and was now plotting to make our progress towards citizenship doubly difficult, was kept in office through the coalition of three parties. There was the Liberal Party, nominally the governing party, but they could not live another day without the coalition of the Nationalist and the Labour parties. So we should say, not only to the Liberal Party but to the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party, "So long as you keep in office an anti-suffrage Government, you are parties to their guilt, and from henceforth we offer you the same opposition which we give to the people whom you are keeping in power with your support." I said further: "We have summoned the Labour Party to do their duty by their own programme, and to go into opposition to the Government on every question until the Government do justice to women. They apparently are not willing to do that. Some of them tell us that other things are more important than the liberty of women--than the liberty of working women. We say, 'Then, gentlemen, we must teach you the value of your own principles, and until you are prepared to stand for the right of women to decide their lives and the laws under which they shall live, you, with Mr. Asquith and company, are equally responsible for all that has happened and is happening to women in this struggle for emancipation.'" Outlining further our new and stronger policy of aggression, I said: "There is a great deal of criticism, ladies and gentlemen, of this movement. It always seems to me when the anti-suffrage members of the Government criticise militancy in women that it is very like beasts of prey reproaching the gentler animals who turn in desperate resistance when at the point of death. Criticism from gentlemen who do not hesitate to order out armies to kill and slay their opponents, who do not hesitate to encourage party mobs to attack defenceless women in public meetings--criticism from them hardly rings true. Then I get letters from people who tell me that they are ardent suffragists but who say that they do not like the recent developments in the militant movement, and implore me to urge the members not to be reckless with human life. Ladies and gentlemen, the only recklessness the militant suffragists have shown about human life has been about their own lives and not about the lives of others, and I say here and now that it has never been and never will be the policy of the Women's Social and Political Union recklessly to endanger human life. We leave that to the enemy. We leave that to the men in their warfare. It is not the method of women. No, even from the point of view of public policy, militancy affecting the security of human life would be out of place. _There is something that governments care far more for than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy._ From henceforward the women who agree with me will say, 'We disregard your laws, gentlemen, we set the liberty and the dignity and the welfare of women above all such considerations, and we shall continue this war, as we have done in the past; and what sacrifice of property, or what injury to property accrues will not be our fault. It will be the fault of that Government who admit the justice of our demands, but refuses to concede them without the evidence, so they have told us, afforded to governments of the past, that those who asked for liberty were in earnest in their demands!" I called upon the women of the meeting to join me in this new militancy, and I reminded them anew that the women who were fighting in the Suffragette army had a great mission, the greatest mission the world has ever known--the freeing of one-half the human race, and through that freedom the saving of the other half. I said to them: "Be militant each in your own way. Those of you who can express your militancy by going to the House of Commons and refusing to leave without satisfaction, as we did in the early days--do so. Those of you who can express militancy by facing party mobs at Cabinet Ministers' meetings, when you remind them of their falseness to principle--do so. Those of you who can express your militancy by joining us in our anti-Government by-election policy--do so. Those of you who can break windows--break them. Those of you who can still further attack the secret idol of property, so as to make the Government realise that property is as greatly endangered by women's suffrage as it was by the Chartists of old--do so. And my last word is to the Government: I incite this meeting to rebellion. I say to the Government: You have not dared to take the leaders of Ulster for their incitement to rebellion. Take me if you dare, but if you dare I tell you this, that so long as those who incited to armed rebellion and the destruction of human life in Ulster are at liberty, you will not keep me in prison. So long as men rebels--and voters--are at liberty, we will not remain in prison, first division or no first division." I ask my readers, some of whom no doubt will be shocked and displeased at these words of mine that I have so frankly set down, to put themselves in the place of those women who for years had given their lives entirely and unstintingly to the work of securing political freedom for women; who had converted so great a proportion of the electorate that, had the House of Commons been a free body, we should have won that freedom years before; who had seen their freedom withheld from them through treachery and misuse of power. I ask you to consider that we had used, in our agitation, only peaceful means until we saw clearly that peaceful means were absolutely of no avail, and then for years we had used only the mildest militancy, until we were taunted by Cabinet Ministers, and told that we should never get the vote until we employed the same violence that men had used in their agitation for suffrage. After that we had used stronger militancy, but even that, by comparison with the militancy of men in labour disputes, could not possibly be counted as violent. Through all these stages of our agitation we had been punished with the greatest severity, sent to prison like common criminals, and of late years tortured as no criminals have been tortured for a century in civilised countries of the world. And during all these years we had seen disastrous strikes that had caused suffering and death, to say nothing at all of the enormous economic waste, and we had never seen a single strike leader punished as we had been. We, who had suffered sentences of nine months' imprisonment for inciting women to mild rebellion, had seen a labour leader who had done his best to incite an army to mutiny released from prison in two months by the Government. And now we had come to a point where we saw civil war threatened, where we read in the papers every day reports of speeches a thousand times more incendiary than anything we had ever said. We heard prominent members of Parliament openly declaring that if the Home Rule Bill was passed Ulster would fight, and Ulster would be right. None of these men were arrested. Instead they were applauded. Lord Selborne, one of our sternest critics, referring to the fact that Ulstermen were drilling under arms, said publicly: "The method which the people of Ulster are adopting to show the depths of their convictions and the intensity of their feelings will impress the imagination of the whole country." But Lord Selborne was not arrested. Neither were the mutinous officers who resigned their commissions when ordered to report for duty against the men of Ulster who were actually preparing for civil war. What does all this mean? Why is it that men's blood-shedding militancy is applauded and women's symbolic militancy punished with a prison cell and the forcible feeding horror? It means simply this, that men's double standard of sex morals, whereby the victims of their lust are counted as outcasts, while the men themselves escape all social censure, really applies to morals in all departments of life. Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for theirs.[3] They have decided that for men to remain silently quiescent while tyrannical rulers impose bonds of slavery upon them is cowardly and dishonourable, but that for women to do that same thing is not cowardly and dishonourable, but merely respectable. Well, the Suffragettes absolutely repudiate that double standard of morals. If it is right for men to fight for their freedom, and God knows what the human race would be like to-day if men had not, since time began, fought for their freedom, then it is right for women to fight for their freedom and the freedom of the children they bear. On this declaration of faith the militant women of England rest their case. FOOTNOTE: [3] There is no question that a great deal of the animus directed against us during 1913 and 1914 by the Government was due to sex bitterness stirred up by a series of articles written by Christabel Pankhurst and published in _The Suffragette_. These articles, a fearless and authoritative exposé of the evils of sexual immoralities and their blasting effect on innocent wives and children, have since been published in a book called "The Great Scourge, and how to end it," issued by David Nutt, New Oxford Street, London W. C. CHAPTER IV I had called upon women to join me in striking at the Government through the only thing that governments are really very much concerned about--property--and the response was immediate. Within a few days the newspapers rang with the story of the attack made on letter boxes in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, and half a dozen other cities. In some cases the boxes, when opened by postmen, mysteriously burst into flame; in others the letters were destroyed by corrosive chemicals; in still others the addresses were rendered illegible by black fluids. Altogether it was estimated that over 5,000 letters were completely destroyed and many thousands more were delayed in transit. It was with a deep sense of their gravity that these letter-burning protests were undertaken, but we felt that something drastic must be done in order to destroy the apathy of the men of England who view with indifference the suffering of women oppressed by unjust laws. As we pointed out, letters, precious though they may be, are less precious than human bodies and souls. This fact was universally realised at the sinking of the _Titanic_. Letters and valuables disappeared forever, but their loss was forgotten in the far more terrible loss of the multitude of human lives. And so, in order to call attention to greater crimes against human beings, our letter burnings continued. In only a few cases were the offenders apprehended, and one of the few women arrested was a helpless cripple, a woman who could move about only in a wheeled chair. She received a sentence of eight months in the first division, and, resolutely hunger striking, was forcibly fed with unusual brutality, the prison doctor deliberately breaking one of her teeth in order to insert a gag. In spite of her disabilities and her weakness the crippled girl persisted in her hunger strike and her resistance to prison rules, and within a short time had to be released. The excessive sentences of the other pillar box destroyers resolved themselves into very short terms because of the resistance of the prisoners, every one of whom adopted the hunger strike. Having shown the Government that we were in deadly earnest when we declared that we would adopt guerrilla warfare, and also that we would not remain in prison, we announced a truce in order that the Government might have full opportunity to fulfil their pledge in regard to a woman suffrage amendment to the Franchise Bill. We did not, for one moment, believe that Mr. Asquith would willingly keep his word. We knew that he would break it if he could, but there was a bare chance that he would not find this possible. However, our principal reason for declaring the truce was that we believed that the Prime Minister would find a way of evading his promise, and we were determined that the blame should be placed, not on militancy, but on the shoulders of the real traitor. We reviewed the history of past suffrage bills: In 1908 the bill had passed its second reading by a majority of 179; and then Mr. Asquith had refused to allow it to go on; in 1910 the Conciliation Bill passed its second reading by a majority of 110, and again Mr. Asquith blocked its progress, pledging himself that if the bill were reintroduced in 1911, in a form rendering it capable of free amendment, it would be given full facilities for becoming law; these conditions were met in 1911, and we saw how the bill, after receiving the increased majority of 167 votes, was torpedoed by the introduction of a Government manhood suffrage bill. Mr. Asquith this time had pledged himself that the bill would be so framed that a woman suffrage amendment could be added, and he further pledged that in case such an amendment was carried through its second reading, he would allow it to become a part of the bill. Just exactly how the Government would manage to wriggle out of their promise was a matter of excited speculation. All sorts of rumours were flying about, some hinting at the resignation of the Prime Minister, some suggesting the possibility of a general election, others that the amended bill would carry with it a forced referendum on women's suffrage. It was also said that the intention of the Government was to delay the bill so long that, after it was passed in the House, it would be excluded from the benefits of the Parliament Acts, according to which a bill, delayed of passage beyond the first two years of the life of a Parliament, has no chance of being considered by the Lords. In order to become a law without the sanction of the House of Lords, a bill must pass three times through the House of Commons. The prospect of a woman suffrage bill doing that was practically nil. To none of the rumours would Mr. Asquith give specific denial, and in fact the only positive utterance he made on the subject of the Franchise Bill was that he considered it highly improbable that the House would pass a woman suffrage amendment. In order to discourage woman suffrage sentiment in the House, Mr. Lloyd-George and Mr. Lewis Harcourt again busied themselves with spreading pessimistic prophecies of a Cabinet split in case an amendment was carried. No other threat, they well knew, would so terrorize the timid back bench Liberals, who, in addition to their blind party loyalty, stood in fear of losing their seats in the general election which would follow such a split. Rather than risk their political jobs they would have sacrificed any principle. Of course the hint of a Cabinet split was pure buncombe, and it deceived few of the members. But it established very clearly one thing, and this was that Mr. Asquith's promise that the House should be left absolutely free to decide the suffrage issue, and that the Cabinet stood ready to bow to the decision of the House was never meant to be fulfilled. The Franchise Bill unamended, by its very wording, specifically denied the right of any woman to vote. Sir Edward Grey moved an amendment deleting from the bill the word male, thus leaving room for a women's suffrage amendment. Two such amendments were moved, one providing for adult suffrage for men and women, and the other providing full suffrage for women householders and wives of householders. The latter postponed the voting age of women to twenty-five years, instead of the men's twenty-one. On January 24th, 1913, debate on the first of the amendments was begun. A day and a half had been allotted to consideration of Sir Edward Grey's amendment, which if carried would leave the way clear for consideration of the other two, to each of which one-third of a day was allotted. We had arranged for huge meetings to be held every day during the debates, and on the day before they were to open we sent a deputation of working women, led by Mrs. Drummond and Miss Annie Kenney, to interview Mr. Lloyd-George and Sir Edward Grey. We had asked Mr. Asquith to receive the deputation, but, as usual, he refused. The deputation consisted of the two leaders, four cotton mill operatives from Lancashire, four workers in sweated trades of London, two pit brow lassies, two teachers, two trained nurses, one shop assistant, one laundress, one boot and shoe worker and one domestic worker, twenty in all, the exact number specified by Mr. Lloyd-George. Some hundreds of working women escorted the deputation to the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and waited anxiously in the street to hear the result of the audience. The result was, of course, barren. Mr. Lloyd-George glibly repeated his confidence in the "great opportunity" afforded by the Franchise Bill, and Sir Edward Grey, reminding the women of the divergence of view held by the members of Cabinet on the suffrage question, assured them that their best opportunity for success lay in an amendment to the present bill. The women spoke with the greatest candour to the two ministers and questioned them sharply as to the integrity of the Prime Minister's pledge to accept the amendments, if passed. To such depth of infamy had English politics sunk that it was possible for women openly to question the plighted word of the King's chief Minister! Mrs. Drummond, who stands in awe of no human being, in plain words invited the slippery Mr. Lloyd-George to clear his own character from obloquy. In the closing words of her speech she put the whole matter clearly up to him, saying: "Now, Mr. Lloyd-George, you have doggedly stuck to your old age pensions, and the insurance act, and secured them, and what you have done for these measures you can do also for the women." The House met on the following afternoon to debate Sir Edward Grey's permissive amendment, but no sooner had the discussion opened than a veritable bombshell was cast into the situation. Mr. Bonar Law arose and asked for a ruling on the constitutionality of a woman's suffrage amendment to the bill as framed. The Speaker, who, besides acting as the presiding officer of the House, is its official parliamentarian, replied that, in his opinion, such an amendment would make a huge difference in the bill, and that he would be obliged, at a later stage of the debates, to consider carefully whether, if carried, any woman suffrage amendment would not so materially alter the bill that it would have to be withdrawn. In spite of this sinister pronouncement, the House continued to debate the Grey amendment, which was ably supported by Lord Hugh Cecil, Sir John Rolleston, and others. During the intervening week-end holiday two Cabinet councils were held, and when the House met on Monday the Prime Minister called upon the Speaker for his ruling. The Speaker declared that, in his opinion, the passage of any one of the woman suffrage amendments would so alter the scope of the Franchise Bill as practically to create a new bill, because the measure, as it was framed, did not have for its main object the bestowal of the franchise on a hitherto excluded class. Had it been so framed a woman suffrage amendment would have been entirely proper. But the main object of the bill was to alter the qualification, or the basis of registration for a Parliamentary vote. It would increase the male electorate, but only as an indirect result of the changed qualifications. An amendment to the bill removing the sex barrier from the election laws was not, in the Speaker's opinion, a proper one. The Prime Minister then announced the intentions of the Cabinet, which were to withdraw the Franchise Bill and to refrain from introducing, during that session, a plural voting bill. Mr. Asquith blandly admitted that his pledge in regard to women's suffrage had been rendered incapable of fulfilment, and he said that he felt constrained to give a new pledge to take its place. There were only two that could be given. The first was that the Government should bring in a bill to enfranchise women, and this the Government would not do. The second was that the Government agree to give full facilities as to time, during the next session of Parliament, to a private member's bill, so drafted as to be capable of free amendment. This was the course that the Government had decided to adopt. Mr. Asquith had the effrontery to say in conclusion that he thought that the House would agree that he had striven and had succeeded in giving effect, both in letter and in spirit, to every undertaking which the Government had given. Two members only, Mr. Henderson and Mr. Keir Hardie had the courage to stand up on the floor of the House and denounce the Government's treachery, for treachery it unquestionably was. Mr. Asquith had pledged his sacred honour to introduce a bill that would be capable of an amendment to include women's suffrage, and he had framed a bill that could not be so amended. Whether he had done the thing deliberately, with the plain intention of selling out the women, or whether ignorance of Parliamentary rules accounted for the failure of the bill was immaterial. The bill need not have been drawn in ignorance. The fount of wisdom represented by Mr. Speaker could have been consulted at the time the bill was under construction quite as easily as when it had reached the debating stage. Our paper said editorially, representing and perfectly expressing our member's views: "Either the Government are so ignorant of Parliamentary procedure that they are unfit to occupy any position of responsibility, or else they are scoundrels of the worst kind." I am inclined to think that the verdict of posterity will lean towards the later conclusion. If Mr. Asquith had been a man of honour he would have reframed the Franchise Bill in such a way that it could have included a suffrage amendment, or else he would have made amends for his stupendous blunder--if it was a blunder--by introducing a Government measure for women's suffrage. He did neither, but disposed of the matter by promising facilities for a private member's bill which he knew, and which everybody knew, could not possibly pass. There was no chance for a private member's bill, even with facilities, because of a number of reasons, but principally because the torpedoing of the Conciliation Bill had destroyed utterly the spirit of conciliation in which Conservatives, Liberals and Radicals in the House of Commons, and militant and non-militant women throughout the Kingdom had set aside their differences of opinion and agreed to come together on a compromise measure. When the second Conciliation Bill, of 1911, was under discussion, Lord Lytton had said: "If this bill does not go through, the woman suffrage movement will not be stopped, but the spirit of conciliation of which this bill is an expression will be destroyed, and there will he war throughout the country, raging, tearing, fierce, bitter strife, though nobody wants it." Lord Lytton's words were prophetic. At this last brazen piece of trickery on the part of the Government the country blazed with bitter wrath. All the suffrage societies united in calling for a Government measure for women's suffrage to be introduced without delay. The idle promise of facilities for a private member's bill was rejected with contumely and scorn. The Liberal women's executive committee met, and a strong effort was made to pass a resolution threatening the withdrawal from party work of the entire federation, but this failed and the executive merely passed a feeble resolution of regret. The membership of the Women's Liberal Federation was, at that time, close to 200,000, and if the executive had passed the strong resolution, refusing to do any more work for the party until a Government measure had been introduced, the Government would have been forced to yield. They could not have faced the country without the support of the women. But these women, many of them, were wives of men in the service, the paid service of the Liberal Party. Many of them were wives of Liberal members. They lacked the courage, or the intelligence, or the insight, to declare war as a body on the Government. A large number of women, and also many men, did resign from the Liberal Party, but the defections were not serious enough to affect the Government. The militants declared, and proceeded instantly to carry out, unrelenting warfare. We announced that either we must have a Government measure, or a Cabinet split--those men in the Cabinet calling themselves suffragists going out--or we would take up the sword again, never to lay it down until the enfranchisement of the women of England was won. It was at this time, February, 1913, less than two years ago as I write these words, that militancy, as it is now generally understood by the public began--militancy in the sense of continued, destructive, guerilla warfare against the Government through injury to private property. Some property had been destroyed before this time, but the attacks were sporadic, and were meant to be in the nature of a warning as to what might become a settled policy. Now we indeed lighted the torch, and we did it with the absolute conviction that no other course was open to us. We had tried every other measure, as I am sure that I have demonstrated to my readers, and our years of work and suffering and sacrifice had taught us that the Government would not yield to right and justice, what the majority of members of the House of Commons admitted was right and justice, but that the Government would, as other governments invariably do, yield to expediency. Now our task was to show the Government that it was expedient to yield to the women's just demands. In order to do that we had to make England and every department of English life insecure and unsafe. We had to make English law a failure and the courts farce comedy theatres; we had to discredit the Government and Parliament in the eyes of the world; we had to spoil English sports, hurt business, destroy valuable property, demoralise the world of society, shame the churches, upset the whole orderly conduct of life-- That is, we had to do as much of this guerilla warfare as the people of England would tolerate. When they came to the point of saying to the Government: "Stop this, in the only way it can be stopped, by giving the women of England representation," then we should extinguish our torch. Americans, of all people, ought to see the logic of our reasoning. There is one piece of American oratory, beloved of schoolboys, which has often been quoted from militant platforms. In a speech now included among the classics of the English language your great statesman, Patrick Henry, summed up the causes that led to the American Revolution. He said: "We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves at the foot of the throne, and it has all been in vain. We must fight--I repeat it, sir, we must fight." Patrick Henry, remember, was advocating killing people, as well as destroying private property, as the proper means of securing the political freedom of men. The Suffragettes have not done that, and they never will. In fact the moving spirit of militancy is deep and abiding reverence for human life. In the latter course of our agitation I have been called upon to discuss our policies with many eminent men, politicians, literary men, barristers, scientists, clergymen. One of the last named, a high dignitary of the Church of England, told me that while he was a convinced suffragist, he found it impossible to justify our doing wrong that right might follow. I said to him: "We are not doing wrong--we are doing right in our use of revolutionary methods against private property. It is our work to restore thereby true values, to emphasise the value of human rights against property rights. You are well aware, sir, that property has assumed a value in the eyes of men, and in the eyes of the law, that it ought never to claim. It is placed above all human values. The lives and health and happiness, and even the virtue of women and children--that is to say, the race itself--are being ruthlessly sacrificed to the god of property every day of the world." To this my reverend friend agreed, and I said: "If we women are wrong in destroying private property in order that human values may be restored, then I say, in all reverence, that it was wrong for the Founder of Christianity to destroy private property, as He did when He lashed the money changers out of the Temple and when He drove the Gaderene swine into the sea." It was absolutely in this spirit that our women went forth to war. In the first month of guerilla warfare an enormous amount of property was damaged and destroyed. On January 31st a number of putting greens were burned with acids; on February 7th and 8th telegraph and telephone wires were cut in several places and for some hours all communication between London and Glasgow were suspended; a few days later windows in various of London's smartest clubs were broken, and the orchid houses at Kew were wrecked and many valuable blooms destroyed by cold. The jewel room at the Tower of London was invaded and a showcase broken. The residence of H. R. H. Prince Christian and Lambeth Palace, seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, were visited and had windows broken. The refreshment house in Regents Park was burned to the ground on February 12th and on February 18th a country house which was being built at Walton-on-the-Hill for Mr. Lloyd-George was partially destroyed, a bomb having been exploded in the early morning before the arrival of the workmen. A hat pin and a hair pin picked up near the house--coupled with the fact that care had been taken not to endanger any lives--led the police to believe that the deed had been done by women enemies of Mr. Lloyd-George. Four days later I was arrested and brought up in Epsom police court, where I was charged with having "counselled and procured" the persons who did the damage. Admitted to bail for the night, I appeared next morning in court, where the case was fully reviewed. Speeches of mine were read, one speech, made at a meeting held on January 22nd, in which I called for volunteers to act with me in a particular engagement; and another, made the day after the explosion, in which I publicly accepted responsibility for all militant acts done in the past, and even for what had been done at Walton. At the conclusion of the hearing I was committed for trial at the May Assizes at Guildford. Bail would be allowed, it was stated, if I would agree to give the usual undertaking to refrain from all militancy or incitement to militancy. I asked that the case be set for speedy trial at the Assizes then in progress. I was entirely willing, I said, to give an undertaking for a short period, for a week, or even two weeks, but I could not possibly do so for a much longer period, looking at the fact that a new session of Parliament began in March, and was vitally concerned with the interests of women. The request was refused, and I was ordered to be taken to Holloway. I warned the magistrate that I should at once adopt the hunger strike, and I told him that if I lived at all until the summer it would be a dying woman who would come up for trial. Arriving at Holloway I carried out my intention, but within twenty-four hours I heard that the authorities had arranged that my trial should take place on April 1st, instead of at the end of June, and at the Central Criminal Court, London, instead of the Guildford Court. I then gave the required under-takings and was immediately released on bail. CHAPTER V When I entered Old Bailey on that memorable Wednesday, April 2nd, 1913, to be tried for inciting to commit a felony, the court was packed with women. A great crowd of women who could not obtain the necessary tickets remained in the streets below for hours waiting news of the trial. A large number of detectives from Scotland Yard, and a still larger number of uniformed police were on duty both inside and outside the court. I could not imagine why it was considered necessary to have such a regiment of police on hand, for I had not, at that time, realised the state of terror into which the militant movement, in its new development, had thrown the authorities. Mr. Bodkin and Mr. Travers Humphreys appeared to prosecute on behalf of the Crown, and I conducted my own case, in consultation with my solicitor, Mr. Marshall. The Judge, Mr. Justice Lush, having taken his seat I entered the dock and listened to the reading of the indictment. I pled "not guilty," not because I wished to evade responsibility for the explosion,--I had already assumed that responsibility--but because the indictment accused me of having wickedly and maliciously incited women to crime. What I had done was not wicked of purpose, but quite the opposite of wicked. I could not therefore truthfully plead guilty. The trial having opened the Judge courteously asked me if I would like to sit down. I thanked him, and asked if I might also have a small table on which to place my papers. By orders of the Judge a table was brought me. Mr. Bodkin opened the case by explaining the "Malicious Damages to Property Act" of 1861, under which I was charged, and after describing the explosion which had damaged the Lloyd-George house at Walton, said that I was accused of being in the affair an accessory before the fact. It was not suggested, he said, that I was present when the crime was committed, but it was charged that I had moved and incited, counselled and procured women whose names were unknown to carry out that crime. It would be for the jury to decide, after the evidence had been presented, whether the facts did not point most clearly to the conclusion that women, probably two in number, who committed the crime were members of the Women's Social and Political Union, which had its office in Kingsway in London, and of which the defendant was the head, moving spirit and recognised leader. The blowing up of Mr. Lloyd-George's house was then described in detail. That the damage was intended as an act against Mr. Lloyd-George was clear, Mr. Bodkin said, from the malicious statements made against him by the prisoner. He produced a private letter written by me to a friend in which I had defended militancy, and said that not only had it become a duty but in the circumstances it had also become a political necessity. Said Mr. Bodkin: "A letter of that kind proves very clearly several things. It shows that she is the leader. It shows her influence over the emotional members of this organisation. It shows that according to her, militancy can be withheld for a time and let loose upon society at another time. And it further shows that any person or any woman who wants to indulge in militancy, which is only a picturesque expression for committing crimes against society, has to communicate with her, and with her alone, by word of mouth or by letter. That is the Proclamation which went out to the members of this organisation. The plain language of that letter is, 'If we don't get what we want, the Government and their members will be responsible, and the Government and the public will be bullied into giving us what we want.'" Many extracts from my speeches made in January and February were read, and the final speech made just before my arrest at Chelsea. But before they were read I said: "I wish to lodge an objection now to the police reports of my speeches. They have been supplied to me, and the only report I accept is that of the journalist of Cardiff who is one of the witnesses. He has furnished a fairly accurate report of what I said in that town. The police reports I do not accept. They are grossly inaccurate and ignorant and ungrammatical, and they convey an absolutely wrong impression of what I said in many respects." Witnesses were then examined; the carter who heard and reported the explosion; the foreman in charge of the damaged house, who told the cost of the damages, and described the explosives, etc., found on the premises; several police officers who told of finding hairpins and a woman's rubber golosh in the house, and so on. Absolutely nothing was brought out that tended to show that the Suffragettes had anything to do with the affair. The Judge noted this for he said to Mr. Bodkin: "I am not quite sure how you present this case. There are two ways of looking at it. Do you only ask the jury to say that the defendant specifically counselled the perpetration of this crime, or do you also say that, looking at her speeches that you read--assuming you prove that they were uttered--that the language used being a general incitement to damage property, any one who acted on this invitation and perpetrated this outrage would be incited by her to do it?" Mr. Bodkin replied that the latter assumption was correct. "I say that the speeches generally are incitement to all kinds of acts of violence against property, and that they present evidence of attacks against property and a particular individual, and that there is evidence in the speeches which have been read, and which will be proved, of admissions by Mrs. Pankhurst of having been connected with the particular outrage in a way which makes her in law an accessory before the fact." "But you do not confine the case to the latter way of putting it?" "No," replied Mr. Bodkin. "Even if the jury are satisfied," said the Judge, "that Mrs. Pankhurst was not directly connected with this outrage by counselling it, you still ask the jury to say that by counselling, as you say she had in the speeches, the destruction of property, especially that belonging to a particular gentleman, anybody who acted on that and committed this outrage would have been incited by her to do it?" "Yes, my lord." "I think, Mrs. Pankhurst, you now understand the way it is put?" asked the Judge. "I understand it quite well, my lord," I replied. Proceedings were resumed on the following day, and the examination of witnesses for the prosecution went on. At the close of the examination, the Judge inquired whether I desired to call any witnesses. I replied: "I do not desire to give evidence or to call any witnesses, but I desire to address your Lordship." I began by objecting to some of the things Mr. Bodkin had said in his speech which concerned me personally. He had referred to me--or at least his words conveyed the suggestion--that I was a woman riding about in my motor car inciting other women to do acts which entail imprisonment and great suffering, while I, perhaps indulging in some curious form of pleasure, was protected, or thought myself protected, from serious consequences. I said that Mr. Bodkin knew perfectly well that I shared all the dangers the other women faced, that I had been in prison three times, serving two of the sentences in full, and being treated like an ordinary felon--searched, put in prison clothes, eating prison fare, given solitary confinement and conforming to all the abominable rules imposed upon women who commit crimes in England. I thought I owed it to myself, especially as the same suggestions--in regard to the luxury in which I lived, supported by the members of the W. S. P. U.--had been made, not only by Mr. Bodkin in court, but by members of the Government in the House of Commons--I thought I owed it to myself to say that I owned no motor car and never had owned one. The car in which I occasionally rode was owned by the organisation and was used for general propaganda work. In that car, and in cars owned by friends I had gone about my work as a speaker in the Woman Suffrage movement. It was equally untrue, I said, that some of us were making incomes of £1,000 to £1,500 a year out of the suffrage movement, as had actually been alleged in the debates in the House in which members of Parliament were trying to decide how to crush militancy. No woman in our organisation was making any such income, or anything remotely like it. Myself, I had sacrificed a considerable portion of my income because I had to surrender a very important part of it in order to be free to do what I thought was my duty in the movement. Addressing myself to my defence I told the Court that it was a very serious condition of things when a large number of respectable and naturally law abiding people, people of upright lives, came to hold the law in contempt, came seriously to making up their minds that they were justified in breaking the law. "The whole of good government," I said, "rests upon acceptance of the law, upon respect of the law, and I say to you seriously, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, that women of intelligence, women of training, women of upright life, have for many years ceased to respect the laws of this country. It is an absolute fact, and when you look at the laws of this country as they effect women it is not to be wondered at." At some length I went over these laws, laws that made it possible for the Judge to send me, if found guilty, to prison for fourteen years, while the maximum penalty for offences of the most revolting kind against little girls was only two years' imprisonment. The laws of inheritance, the laws of divorce, the laws of guardianship of children--all so scandalously unjust to women, I sketched briefly, and I said that not only these laws and others, but the administration of the laws fell so far short of adequacy that women felt that they must be permitted to share the work of cleaning up the entire situation. I tried here to tell of certain dreadful things that I had learned as the wife of a barrister, things about some of the men in high places who are entrusted with the administration of the law, of a judge of Assizes where many hideous crimes against women were tried, this judge himself being found dead one morning in a brothel, but the Court would not allow me to go into personalities, as he called it, with regard to "distinguished people," and told me that the sole question before the jury was whether or not I was guilty as charged. I must speak on that subject and on no other. After a hard fight to be allowed to tell the jury the reasons why women had lost respect for the law, and were making such a struggle in order to become law makers themselves, I closed my speech by saying: "Over one thousand women have gone to prison in the course of this agitation, have suffered their imprisonment, have come out of prison injured in health, weakened in body, but not in spirit. I come to stand my trial from the bedside of one of my daughters, who has come out of Holloway Prison, sent there for two months' hard labour for participating with four other people in breaking a small pane of glass. She has hunger-struck in prison. She submitted herself for more than five weeks to the horrible ordeal of feeding by force, and she has come out of prison having lost nearly two stone in weight. She is so weak that she cannot get out of her bed. And I say to you, gentlemen, that is the kind of punishment you are inflicting upon me or any other woman who may be brought before you. I ask you if you are prepared to send an incalculable number of women to prison--I speak to you as representing others in the same position--if you are prepared to go on doing that kind of thing indefinitely, because that is what is going to happen. There is absolutely no doubt about it. I think you have seen enough even in this present case to convince you that we are not women who are notoriety hunters. We could get that, heaven knows, much more cheaply if we sought it. We are women, rightly or wrongly, convinced that this is the only way in which we can win power to alter what for us are intolerable conditions, absolutely intolerable conditions. A London clergyman only the other day said that 60 per cent. of the married women in his parish were breadwinners, supporting their husbands as well as their children. When you think of the wages women earn, when you think of what this means to the future of the children of this country, I ask you to take this question very, very seriously. Only this morning I have had information brought to me which could be supported by sworn affidavits, that there is in this country, in this very city of London of ours, a regulated traffic, not only in women of full age, but in little children; that they are being purchased, that they are being entrapped, and that they are being trained to minister to the vicious pleasures of persons who ought to know better in their positions of life. "Well, these are the things that have made us women determined to go on, determined to face everything, determined to see this thing out to the end, let it cost us what it may. And if you convict me, gentlemen, if you find me guilty, I tell you quite honestly and quite frankly, that whether the sentence is a long sentence, whether the sentence is a short sentence, I shall not submit to it. I shall, the moment I leave this court, if I am sent to prison, whether to penal servitude or to the lighter form of imprisonment--because I am not sufficiently versed in the law to know what his lordship may decide; but whatever my sentence is, from the moment I leave this court I shall quite deliberately refuse to eat food--I shall join the women who are already in Holloway on the hunger strike. I shall come out of prison, dead or alive, at the earliest possible moment; and once out again, as soon as I am physically fit I shall enter into this fight again. Life is very dear to all of us. I am not seeking, as was said by the Home Secretary, to commit suicide. I do not want to commit suicide. I want to see the women of this country enfranchised, and I want to live until that is done. Those are the feelings by which we are animated. We offer ourselves as sacrifices, just as your forefathers did in the past, in this cause, and I would ask you all to put this question to yourselves:--Have you the right, as human beings, to condemn another human being to death--because that is what it amounts to? Can you throw the first stone? Have you the right to judge women? "You have not the right in human justice, not the right by the constitution of this country, if rightly interpreted, to judge me, because you are not my peers. You know, every one of you, that I should not be standing here, that I should not break one single law--if I had the rights that you possess, if I had a share in electing those who make the laws I have to obey; if I had a voice in controlling the taxes I am called upon to pay, I should not be standing here. And I say to you it is a very serious state of things. I say to you, my lord, it is a very serious situation, that women of upright life, women who have devoted the best of their years to the public weal, that women who are engaged in trying to undo some of the terrible mistakes that men in their government of the country have made, because after all, in the last resort, men are responsible for the present state of affairs--I put it to you that it is a very serious situation. You are not accustomed to deal with people like me in the ordinary discharge of your duties; but you are called upon to deal with people who break the law from selfish motives. I break the law from no selfish motive. I have no personal end to serve, neither have any of the other women who have gone through this court during the past few weeks, like sheep to the slaughter. Not one of these women would, if women were free, be law-breakers. They are women who seriously believe that this hard path that they are treading is the only path to their enfranchisement. They seriously believe that the welfare of humanity demands this sacrifice; they believe that the horrible evils which are ravaging our civilisation will never be removed until women get the vote. They know that the very fount of life is being poisoned; they know that homes are being destroyed; that because of bad education, because of the unequal standard of morals, even the mothers and children are destroyed by one of the vilest and most horrible diseases that ravage humanity. "There is only one way to put a stop to this agitation; there is only one way to break down this agitation. It is not by deporting us, it is not by locking us up in gaol; it is by doing us justice. And so I appeal to you gentlemen, in this case of mine, to give a verdict, not only on my case, but upon the whole of this agitation. I ask you to find me not guilty of malicious incitement to a breach of the law. "These are my last words. My incitement is not malicious. If I had power to deal with these things, I would be in absolute obedience to the law. I would say to women, 'You have a constitutional means of getting redress for your grievances; use your votes, convince your fellow-voters of the righteousness of your demands. That is the way to obtain justice.' I am not guilty of malicious incitement, and I appeal to you, for the welfare of the country, for the welfare of the race, to return a verdict of not guilty in this case that you are called upon to try." After recapitulating the charge the Judge, in summing up, said: "It is scarcely necessary for me to tell you that the topics urged by the defendant in her address to you with regard to provocation by the laws of the country and the injustice done to women because they are not given the vote as men are, have no bearing upon the question you have to decide. "The motive at the back of her mind, or at the back of the minds of those who actually did put the gunpowder there, would afford no defence to this indictment. I am quite sure you will deal with this case upon the evidence, and the evidence alone, without regard to any question as to whether you think the law is just or unjust. It has nothing to do with the case. I should think you will probably have no doubt that this defendant, if she did these things charged against her, is not actuated by the ordinary selfish motive that leads most of the criminals who are in this dock to commit the crimes that they do commit. She is none the less guilty if she did these things which are charged against her, although she believes that by means of this kind the condition of society will be altered." The jury retired, and soon after the afternoon session of the court opened they filed in, and in reply to the usual question asked by the clerk of arraigns, said that they had agreed upon a verdict. Said the clerk: "Do you find Mrs. Pankhurst guilty or not guilty?" "Guilty," said the foreman, "with a strong recommendation to mercy." I spoke once more to the Judge. "The jury have found me guilty, with a strong recommendation to mercy, and I do not see, since motive is not taken into account in human laws, that they could do otherwise after your summing up. But since motive is not taken into account in human laws, and since I, whose motives are not ordinary motives, am about to be sentenced by you to the punishment which is accorded to people whose motives are selfish motives, I have only this to say: If it was impossible for a different verdict to be found; if it is your duty to sentence me, as it will be presently, then I want to say to you, as a private citizen, and to the jury as private citizens, that I, standing here, found guilty by the laws of my country, I say to you it is your duty, as private citizens, to do what you can to put an end to this intolerable state of affairs. I put that duty upon you. And I want to say, _whatever the sentence you pass upon me, I shall do what is humanly possible to terminate that sentence at the earliest possible moment. I have no sense of guilt. I feel I have done my duty. I look upon myself as a prisoner of war. I am under no moral obligation to conform to, or in any way accept, the sentence imposed upon me._ I shall take the desperate remedy that other women have taken. It is obvious to you that the struggle will be an unequal one, but I shall make it--I shall make it as long as I have an ounce of strength left in me, or any life left in me. "I shall fight, I shall fight, I shall fight, from the moment I enter prison to struggle against overwhelming odds; I shall resist the doctors if they attempt to feed me. I was sentenced last May in this court to nine months' imprisonment. I remained in prison six weeks. There are people who have laughed at the ordeal of hunger-striking and forcible feeding. All I can say is, and the doctors can bear me out, that I was released because, had I remained there much longer, I should have been a dead woman. "I know what it is because I have gone through it. My own daughter[4] has only just left it. There are women there still facing that ordeal, facing it twice a day. Think of it, my lord, twice a day this fight is gone through. Twice a day a weak woman resisting overwhelming force, fights and fights as long as she has strength left; fights against women and even against men, resisting with her tongue, with her teeth, this ordeal. Last night in the House of Commons some alternative was discussed, or rather, some additional punishment. Is it not a strange thing, my lord, that laws which have sufficed to restrain men throughout the history of this country do not suffice now to restrain women--decent women, honourable women? "Well, my lord, I do want you to realise it. I am not whining about my punishment, I invited it. I deliberately broke the law, not hysterically or emotionally, but of set serious purpose, because I honestly feel it is the only way. Now, I put the responsibility of what is to follow upon you, my lord, as a private citizen, and upon the gentlemen of the jury, as private citizens, and upon all the men in this court--what are you, with your political powers, going to do to end this intolerable situation? "_To the women I have represented, to the women who, in response to my incitement, have faced these terrible consequences, have broken laws, to them, I want to say I am not going to fail them, but to face it as they face it, to go through with it, and I know that they will go on with the fight whether I live or whether I die._ "_This movement will go on and on until we have the rights of citizens in this country, as women have in our Colonies, as they will have throughout the civilised world before this woman's war is ended._ "That is all I have to say." Mr. Justice Lush, in passing sentence, said: "It is my duty, Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, and a very painful duty it is, to pass what, in my opinion, is a suitable and adequate sentence for the crime of which you have been most properly convicted, having regard to the strong recommendation to mercy by the jury. I quite recognise, as I have already said, that the motives that have actuated you in committing this crime are not the selfish motives that actuate most of the persons who stand in your position, but although you blind your eyes to it, I cannot help pointing out to you that the crime of which you have been convicted is not only a very serious one, but, in spite of your motives, it is, in fact, a wicked one. It is wicked because it not only leads to the destruction of property of persons who have done you no wrong, but in spite of your calculations, it may expose other people to the danger of being maimed or even killed. It is wicked because you are, and have been, luring other people--young women, it may be--to engage in such crimes, possibly to their own ruin; and it is wicked, because you cannot help being alive to it if you would only think. "You are setting an example to other persons who may have other grievances that they legitimately want to have put right by embarking on a similar scheme to yours, and trying to effect their object by attacking the property, if not the lives, of other people. I know, unfortunately--at least, I feel sure--you will pay no heed to what I say. I only beg of you to think of these things." "I have thought of them," I interjected. "Think, if only for one short hour, dispassionately," continued the majesty of law, "I can only say that, although the sentence I am going to pass must be a severe one, must be adequate to the crime of which you have been found guilty, if you would only realise the wrong you are doing, and the mistake you are making, and would see the error you have committed, and undertake to amend matters by using your influence in a right direction, I would be the first to use all my best endeavours to bring about a mitigation of the sentence I am about to pass. "I cannot, and I will not, regard your crime as a merely trivial one. It is not. It is a most serious one, and, whatever you may think, it is a wicked one. I have paid regard to the recommendation of the jury. You yourself have stated the maximum sentence which this particular offence is by the legislature thought to deserve. The least sentence I can pass upon you is a sentence of three years' penal servitude." As soon as the sentence was pronounced the intense silence which had reigned throughout the trial was broken, and an absolute pandemonium broke out among the spectators. At first it was merely a confused and angry murmur of "Shame!" "Shame!" The murmurs quickly swelled into loud and indignant cries, and then from gallery and court there arose a great chorus uttered with the utmost intensity and passion. "Shame!" "Shame!" The women sprang to their feet, in many instances stood on their seats, shouting "Shame!" "Shame!" as I was conducted out of the dock in charge of two wardresses. "Keep the flag flying!" shouted a woman's voice, and the response came in a chorus: "We will!" "Bravo!" "Three cheers for Mrs. Pankhurst!" That was the last I heard of the courtroom protest. Afterwards I heard that the noise and confusion was kept up for several minutes longer, the Judge and the police being quite powerless to obtain order. Then the women filed out singing the Women's Marseillaise-- "March on, march on, Face to the dawn, The dawn of liberty." The Judge flung after their retreating forms the dire threat of prison for any woman who dared repeat such a scene. Threat of prison--to Suffragettes! The women's song only swelled the louder and the corridors of Old Bailey reverberated with their shouts. Certainly that venerable building had never in its checkered history witnessed such a scene. The great crowd of detectives and police who were on duty seemed actually paralysed by the audacity of the protest, for they made no attempt to intervene. At three o'clock, when I left the court by a side entrance in Newgate Street, I found a crowd of women waiting to cheer me. With the two wardresses I entered a four wheeler and was driven to Holloway to begin my hunger strike. Scores of women followed in taxicabs, and when I arrived at the prison gates there was another protest of cheers for the cause and boos for the law. In the midst of all this intense excitement I passed through the grim gates into the twilight of prison, now become a battle-ground. FOOTNOTE: [4] Sylvia Pankhurst, who was forcibly fed for five weeks, during an original sentence of two months imposed for breaking one window. CHAPTER VI Prison had indeed been for us a battle-ground ever since the time when we had solemnly resolved that, as a matter of principle, we would not submit to the rules that bound ordinary offenders against the law. But when I entered Holloway on that April day in 1913, it was with full knowledge that I had before me a far more prolonged struggle than any that the militant suffragists had hitherto faced. I have described the hunger strike, that terrible weapon with which we had repeatedly broken our prison bars. The Government, at their wits' end to cope with the hunger strikers, and to overcome a situation which had brought the laws of England into such scandalous disrepute, had had recourse to a measure, surely the most savagely devised ever brought before a modern Parliament. In March of that year, while I was waiting trial on the charge of conspiring to destroy Mr. Lloyd-George's country house, a bill was introduced into the House of Commons by the Home Secretary, Mr. Reginald McKenna, a bill which had for its avowed object the breaking down of the hunger strike. This measure, now universally known as the "Cat and Mouse Act," provided that when a hunger striking suffrage prisoner (the law was frankly admitted to apply only to suffrage prisoners) was certified by the prison doctors to be in danger of death, she could be ordered released on a sort of a ticket of leave for the purpose of regaining strength enough to undergo the remainder of her sentence. Released, she was still a prisoner, the prisoner, or the patient, or the victim, as you may choose to call her, being kept under constant police surveillance. According to the terms of the bill the prisoner was released for a specified number of days, at the expiration of which she was supposed to return to prison on her own account. Says the Act: "The period of temporary discharge may, if the Secretary of State thinks fit, be extended on a representation of the prisoner that the state of her health renders her unfit to return to prison. If such representation be made, the prisoner shall submit herself, if so required, for medical examination by the medical officer of the above mentioned prison, or other registered medical practitioner appointed by the Secretary of State. The prisoner shall notify to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis the place of residence to which she goes on her discharge. She shall not change her residence without giving one clear day's notice in writing to the Commissioner, specifying the residence to which she is going and she shall not be temporarily absent from her residence for more than twelve hours without giving a like notice," etc. The idea of militant suffragists respecting a law of this order is almost humorous, and yet the smile dies before the pity one feels for the Minister whose confession of failure is embodied in such a measure. Here was a mighty Government weakly resolved that justice to women it would not grant, knowing that submission of women it could not force, and so was willing to compromise with a piece of class legislation absolutely contrary to all of its avowed principles. Said Mr. McKenna, pleading in the House for the advancement of his odious measure: "At the present time I cannot make these prisoners undergo their sentences without serious risk of death and I want to have power to enable me to compel a prisoner to undergo the sentence, and I want that power in all cases where the prisoner adopts the system of the hunger strike. At the present moment, although I have the power of release, I cannot release a prisoner without a pardon, and I have to discharge them for good. I want the power of releasing a prisoner without a pardon, with the sentence remaining alive.... I want to enforce the Law, and I want, if I can, to enforce it without forcible feeding, and without undergoing the risk of some one else's life." Interrogated by several members, Mr. McKenna admitted that the "Cat and Mouse" bill, if passed, would not inevitably do away with forcible feeding, but he promised that the hateful and disgusting process would be resorted to only when "absolutely necessary." We shall see later how hypocritical this representation was. Parliament, which had never had time to consider, beyond its initial stages, a women's suffrage measure, passed the Cat and Mouse Act through both houses within the limits of a few days. It was already law when I entered Holloway on April 3rd, 1913, and I grieve to state that many members of the Labour Party, pledged to support woman suffrage, helped to make it into law. Of course the Act was, from its inception, treated by the suffragists with the utmost contempt. We had not the slightest intention of assisting Mr. McKenna in enforcing unjust sentences against soldiers in the army of freedom, and when the prison doors closed behind me I adopted the hunger strike exactly as though I expected it to prove, as formerly, a means of gaining my liberty. That struggle is not a pleasant one to recall. Every possible means of breaking down my resolution was resorted to. The daintiest and most tempting food was placed in my cell. All sorts of arguments were brought to bear against me--the futility of resisting the Cat and Mouse Act, the wickedness of risking suicide--I shall not attempt to record all the arguments. They fell against a blank wall of consciousness, for my thoughts were all very far away from Holloway and all its torments. I knew, what afterwards I learned as a fact, that my imprisonment was followed by the greatest revolutionary outbreak that had been witnessed in England since 1832. From one end of the island to the other the beacons of the women's revolution blazed night and day. Many country houses--all unoccupied--were fired, the grand stand of Ayr race course was burned to the ground, a bomb was exploded in Oxted Station, London, blowing out walls and windows, some empty railroad carriages were blown up, the glass of thirteen famous paintings in the Manchester Art Gallery were smashed with hammers--these are simply random specimens of the general outbreak of secret guerilla warfare waged by women to whose liberties every other approach had been barricaded by the Liberal Government of free England. The only answer of the Government was the closing of the British Museum, the National Gallery, Windsor Castle, and other tourist resorts. As for the result on the people of England, that was exactly what we had anticipated. The public were thrown into a state of emotion of insecurity and frightened expectancy. Not yet did they show themselves ready to demand of the Government that the outrages be stopped in the only way they could be stopped--by giving votes to women. I knew that it would be so. Lying in my lonely cell in Holloway, racked with pain, oppressed with increasing weakness, depressed with the heavy responsibility of unknown happenings, I was sadly aware that we were but approaching a far goal. The end, though certain, was still distant. Patience, and still more patience, faith and still more faith, well, we had called upon these souls' help before and it was certain that they would not fail us at this greatest crisis of all. Thus in great anguish of mind and body passed nine terrible days, each one longer and more acutely miserable than the preceding. Towards the last, I was mercifully half unconscious of my surroundings. A curious indifference took possession of my over-wrought mind, and it was almost without emotion that I heard, on the morning of the tenth day, that I was to be released temporarily in order to recover my health. The Governor came to my cell and read me my licence, which commanded me to return to Holloway in fifteen days, and meanwhile to observe all the obsequious terms as to informing the police of my movements. With what strength my hands retained I tore the document in strips and dropped it on the floor of the cell. "I have no intention," I said, "of obeying this infamous law. You release me knowing perfectly well that I shall never voluntarily return to any of your prisons." They sent me away, sitting bolt upright in a cab, unmindful of the fact that I was in a dangerous condition of weakness, having lost two stone in weight and suffered seriously from irregularities of heart action. As I left the prison I was gratefully aware of groups of our women standing bravely at the gates, as though enduring a long vigil. As a matter of fact, relays of women had picketed the place night and day during the whole term of my imprisonment. The first pickets were arrested, but as others constantly arrived to fill their places the police finally gave in and allowed the women to march up and down before the prison carrying the flag. At the nursing home to which I was conveyed I learned that Annie Kenney, Mrs. Drummond, and our staunch friend, Mr. George Lansbury,[5] had been arrested during my imprisonment, and that all three had adopted the hunger strike. I also learned on my own account how desperately the Government were striving to make their Cat and Mouse Act--the last stand in their losing campaign--a success. Without regard to the extra expense laid on the unfortunate tax payers of the country, the Government employed a large extra force of police especially for this purpose. As I lay in bed, being assisted by every medical resource to return to life and health, these special police, colloquially termed "Cats," guarded the nursing home as if it were a besieged castle. In the street under my windows two detectives and a constable stood on guard night and day. In a house at right angles to my refuge three more detectives kept constant watch. In the mews at the rear of the house were more detectives, and diligently patrolling the road, as if in expectation of a rescuing regiment, two taxicabs, each with its quota of detectives, guarded the highways. All this made recovery slow and difficult. But worse was to come. On April 30th, just as I was beginning to rally somewhat, came the news that the police had swooped down on our headquarters in Kingsway and had arrested the entire official force. Miss Barrett, associate editor of _The Suffragette_; Miss Lennox, the sub-editor; Miss Lake, business manager; Miss Kerr, office manager, and Mrs. Sanders, financial secretary of the Union, were arrested, although not one of them had ever appeared in any militant action. Mr. E. G. Clayton, a chemist, was also arrested, accused of furnishing the W. S. P. U. with explosive materials. The offices were thoroughly searched, and, as on a former occasion, stripped of all books and papers. While this was being done another party of police, armed with a special warrant, proceeded to the printing office where our paper, _The Suffragette_, was published. The printer, Mr. Drew, was placed under arrest and the material for the paper, which was to appear on the following day, was seized. By one o'clock in the afternoon the entire plant and the headquarters of the Union were in the hands of the police, and to all appearances the militant movement--temporarily at least--was brought to a full stop. In my state of semi-prostration it at first seemed to me best to let the week's issue of the paper lapse, but on second thought I decided that even the appearance of surrender was not to be thought of. How we managed it need not here be told, but we actually did, overnight, with hardly any material, except Christabel's leading article, and with hastily summoned helpers, get out the paper as usual, and side by side with the morning journals which bore front page stories of the suppression of the Suffragette organ, our paper sellers sold _The Suffragette_. The front page bore, instead of the usual cartoon, the single word in bold faced type-- "RAIDED," the full story of the police search and the arrests being related in the other pages. Our headquarters, I may say in passing, remained closed less than forty-eight hours. We are so organised that the arrest of leaders does not seriously cripple us. Every one has an understudy, and when one leader drops out her substitute is ready instantly to take her place. In this emergency there appeared as chief organiser in Miss Kenney's place, Miss Grace Roe, one of the young Suffragettes of whom I, as belonging to the older generation, am so proud. Faced by difficulties as great as the Government could make them, Miss Roe at once showed herself to be equal to the situation, and to have the gift of unswerving loyalty combined with a strong and rapid judgment of things and people. Aiding her was Mrs. Dacre Fox, who surprised us all by her amazing ability to act as assistant editor of _The Suffragette_, manage a host of affairs in the office, and preside at our weekly meetings. Another member of the Union who came prominently to the front at the time of this crisis was Mrs. Mansel. In two days' time the office was open and running quite as usual, no outward sign showing the grief and indignation felt for our imprisoned comrades. Most of them refused bail and instantly hunger struck appearing in court for trial three days later in a pitiful state. Mrs. Drummond was so obviously ill and in need of medical attention that she was discharged and was very soon afterwards operated upon. Mr. Drew, the printer, was forced to sign an undertaking not to publish the paper again. The others were sentenced to terms varying from six to eighteen months. Mr. Clayton was sentenced to twenty-one months, and after desperate resistance, during which he was forcibly fed many times, escaped his prison. The others, following the same example, starved their way to liberty, and have ever since been pursued at intervals and rearrested under the Cat and Mouse Act. After my discharge, April 12th, I remained in the nursing home until partially restored, then, under the eyes of the police, I motored out to Woking, the country home of my friend, Dr. Ethel Smyth. This house, like the nursing home, was guarded by a small army of police. I never went to the window, I never took the air in the garden without being conscious of watching eyes. The situation became intolerable, and I determined to end it. On May 26th there was a great meeting at the London Pavillion, and I gave notice that I would attend it. Supported by Dr. Flora Murray, Dr. Ethel Smyth and my devoted Nurse Pine, I walked downstairs, to be confronted at the door by a detective, who demanded to know where I was going. I was in a weak state, much weaker than I had imagined, and in refusing the right of a man to question my movements I exhausted the last remnant of my strength and sank fainting in the arms of my friends. As soon as I recovered I got into the motor car. The detective instantly took his place beside me and told the chauffeur to drive to Bow Street Station. The chauffeur replied that he took his orders only from Mrs. Pankhurst, whereupon the detective summoned a taxicab and, placing me under arrest, took me to Bow Street. Under the Cat and Mouse Act a paroled prisoner can be thus arrested without the formality of a warrant, nor does the time she has spent at liberty, in regaining her health, count off from her prison sentence. The magistrate at Bow Street was therefore quite within his legal rights when he ordered me returned to Holloway. I felt it my duty, nevertheless, to point out to him the inhumanity of his act. I said to him: "I was released from Holloway on account of my health. Since then I have been treated exactly as if I were in prison. It has become absolutely impossible for any one to recover health under such conditions, and this morning I decided to make this protest against a state of affairs unparalleled in a civilised country." [Illustration: RE-ARREST OF MRS. PANKHURST AT WOKING _May 26, 1913_] The magistrate replied formally: "You quite understand what the position is. You have been arrested on this warrant and all I have to do is to make an order recommending you to prison." "I think" I said, "that you should do so, with a full sense of responsibility. If I am taken to Holloway on your warrant I shall resume the protest I made before which led to my release, and I shall go on indefinitely until I die, or until the Government decide, since they have taken upon themselves to employ you and other people to administer the laws, that they must recognise women as citizens and give them some control over the laws of this country." It was a five days' hunger strike this time, because the extreme weakness of my condition made it impossible for me to endure a longer term. I was released on May 30th on a seven days' licence, and in a half-alive state was again carried to a nursing home. Less than a week later, while I was still bed-ridden, a terrible event occurred, one that should have shaken the stolid British public into a realisation of the seriousness of the situation precipitated by the Government. Emily Wilding Davison, who had been associated with the militant movement since 1906, gave up her life for the women's cause by throwing herself in the path of the thing, next to property, held most sacred to Englishmen--sport. Miss Davison went to the races at Epsom, and breaking through the barriers which separated the vast crowds from the race course, rushed in the path of the galloping horses and caught the bridle of the King's horse, which was leading all the others. The horse fell, throwing his jockey and crushing Miss Davison in such shocking fashion that she was carried from the course in a dying condition. Everything possible was done to save her life. The great surgeon, Mr. Mansell Moullin, put everything aside and devoted himself to her case, but though he operated most skilfully, the injuries she had received were so frightful that she died four days later without once having recovered consciousness. Members of the Union were beside her when she breathed her last, on June 8th, and on June 14th they gave her a great public funeral in London. Crowds lined the streets as the funeral car, followed by thousands of women, passed slowly and sadly to St. George's Church, Bloomsbury, where the memorial services were held. Emily Wilding Davison was a character almost inevitably developed by a struggle such as ours. She was a B. A. of London University, and had taken first class honours at Oxford in English Language and Literature. Yet the women's cause made such an appeal to her reason and her sympathies that she put every intellectual and social appeal aside and devoted herself untiringly and fearlessly to the work of the Union. She had suffered many imprisonments, had been forcibly fed and most brutally treated. On one occasion when she had barricaded her cell against the prison doctors, a hose pipe was turned on her from the window and she was drenched and all but drowned in the icy water while workmen were breaking down her cell door. Miss Davison, after this experience, expressed to several of her friends the deep conviction that now, as in days called uncivilised, the conscience of the people would awaken only to the sacrifice of a human life. At one time in prison she tried to kill herself by throwing herself head-long from one of the upper galleries, but she succeeded only in sustaining cruel injuries. Ever after that time she clung to her conviction that one great tragedy, the deliberate throwing into the breach of a human life, would put an end to the intolerable torture of women. And so she threw herself at the King's horse, in full view of the King and Queen and a great multitude of their Majesties' subjects, offering up her life as a petition to the King, praying for the release of suffering women throughout England and the world. No one can possibly doubt that that prayer can forever remain unanswered, for she took it straight to the Throne of the King of all the worlds. The death of Miss Davison was a great shock to me and a very great grief as well, and although I was scarcely able to leave my bed I determined to risk everything to attend her funeral. This was not to be, however, for as I left the house I was again arrested by detectives who lay in waiting. Again the farce of trying to make me serve a three years' sentence was undertaken. But now the militant women had discovered a new and more terrible weapon with which to defy the unjust laws of England, and this weapon--the thirst strike--I turned against my gaolers with such effect that they were forced within three days to release me. The hunger strike I have described as a dreadful ordeal, but it is a mild experience compared with the thirst strike, which is from beginning to end simple and unmitigated torture. Hunger striking reduces a prisoner's weight very quickly, but thirst striking reduces weight so alarmingly fast that prison doctors were at first thrown into absolute panic of fright. Later they became somewhat hardened, but even now they regard the thirst strike with terror. I am not sure that I can convey to the reader the effect of days spent without a single drop of water taken into the system. The body cannot endure loss of moisture. It cries out in protest with every nerve. The muscles waste, the skin becomes shrunken and flabby, the facial appearance alters horribly, all these outward symptoms being eloquent of the acute suffering of the entire physical being. Every natural function is, of course, suspended, and the poisons which are unable to pass out of the body are retained and absorbed. The body becomes cold and shivery, there is constant headache and nausea, and sometimes there is fever. The mouth and tongue become coated and swollen, the throat thickens and the voice sinks to a thready whisper. When, at the end of the third day of my first thirst strike, I was sent home I was in a condition of jaundice from which I have never completely recovered. So badly was I affected that the prison authorities made no attempt to arrest me for nearly a month after my release. On July 13th I felt strong enough once more to protest against the odious Cat and Mouse Act, and, with Miss Annie Kenney, who was also at liberty "on medical grounds," I went to a meeting at the London Pavillion. At the close of the meeting, during which Miss Kenney's prison licence was auctioned off for £12, we attempted for the first time the open escape which we have so frequently since effected. Miss Kenney, from the platform, announced that we should openly leave the hall, and she forthwith walked coolly down into the audience. The police rushed in in overwhelming numbers, and after a desperate fight, succeeded in capturing her. Other detectives and policemen hurried to the side door of the hall to intercept me, but I disappointed them by leaving by the front door and escaping to a friend's house in a cab. The police soon traced me to the house of my friend, the distinguished scientist, Mrs. Hertha Ayrton, and the place straightway became a besieged fortress. Day and night the house was surrounded, not only by police, but by crowds of women sympathisers. On the Saturday following my appearance at the Pavillion we gave the police a bit of excitement of a kind they do not relish. A cab drove up to Mrs. Ayrton's door, and several well-known members of the Union alighted and hurried indoors. At once the word was circulated that a rescue was being attempted, and the police drew resolutely around the cab. Soon a veiled woman appeared in the doorway, surrounded by Suffragettes, who, when the veiled lady attempted to get into the cab, resisted with all their strength the efforts of the police to lay hands upon her. The cry went up from all sides: "They are arresting Mrs. Pankhurst!" Something very like a free fight ensued, occupying all the attention of the police who were not in the immediate vicinity of the cab. The men surrounding that rocking vehicle succeeded in tearing the veiled figure from the arms of the other women and piling into the cab ordered the chauffeur to drive full speed to Bow Street. Before they reached their destination, however, the veiled lady raised her veil--alas, it was not Mrs. Pankhurst, who by that time was speeding away in another taxicab in quite another direction. Our ruse infuriated the police, and they determined to arrest me at my first public appearance, which was at the Pavillion on the Monday following the episode just related. When I reached the Pavillion I found it literally surrounded by police, hundreds of them. I managed to slip past the outside cordon, but Scotland Yard had its best men inside the hall, and I was not permitted to reach the platform. Surrounded by plain clothes men, batons drawn, I could not escape, but I called out to the women that I was being taken, and so valiantly did they rush to the rescue that the police had their hands full for nearly half an hour before they got me into a taxicab bound for Holloway. Six women were arrested that day, and many more than six policemen were temporarily incapacitated for duty. By this time I had made up my mind that I would not only resist staying in prison, I would resist to the utmost of my ability going to prison. Therefore, when we reached Holloway I refused to get out of the cab, declaring to my captors that I would no longer acquiesce in the slow judicial murder to which the Government were subjecting women. I was lifted out and carried into a cell in the convicted hospital wing of the gaol. The wardresses who were on duty there spoke with some kindness to me, suggesting that, as I was very apparently exhausted and ill, I should do well to undress and go to bed. "No," I replied, "I shall not go to bed, not once while I am kept here. I am weary of this brutal game, and I intend to end it." Without undressing, I lay down on the outside of the bed. Later in the evening the prison doctor visited me, but I refused to be examined. In the morning he came again, and with him the Governor and the head wardress. As I had taken neither food nor water since the previous day my appearance had become altered to such an extent that the doctor was plainly perturbed. He begged me, "as a small concession," to allow him to feel my pulse, but I shook my head, and they left me alone for the day. That night I was so ill that I felt some alarm for my own condition, but I knew of nothing that could be done except to wait. On Wednesday morning the Governor came again and asked me with an assumption of carelessness if it were true that I was refusing both food and water. "It is true," I said, and he replied brutally: "You are very cheap to keep." Then, as if the thing were not a ridiculous farce, he announced that I was sentenced to close confinement for three days, with deprivation of all privileges, after which he left my cell. Twice that day the doctor visited me, but I would not allow him to touch me. Later came a medical officer from the Home Office, to which I had complained, as I had complained to the Governor and the prison doctor, of the pain I still suffered from the rough treatment I had received at the Pavillion. Both of the medical men insisted that I allow them to examine me, but I said: "I will not be examined by you because your intention is not to help me as a patient, but merely to ascertain how much longer it will be possible to keep me alive in prison. I am not prepared to assist you or the Government in any such way. I am not prepared to relieve you of any responsibility in this matter." I added that it must be quite obvious that I was very ill and unfit to be confined in prison. They hesitated for a moment or two, then left me. Wednesday night was a long nightmare of suffering, and by Thursday morning I must have presented an almost mummified appearance. From the faces of the Governor and the doctor when they came into my cell and looked at me I thought that they would at once arrange for my release. But the hours passed and no order for release came. I decided that I must force my release, and I got up from the bed where I had been lying and began to stagger up and down the cell. When all strength failed me and I could keep my feet no longer I lay down on the stone floor, and there, at four in the afternoon, they found me, gasping and half unconscious. And then they sent me away. I was in a very weakened condition this time, and had to be treated with saline solutions to save my life. I felt, however, that I had broken my prison walls for a time at least, and so this proved. It was on July 24th that I was released. A few days later I was borne in an invalid's chair to the platform of the London Pavillion. I could not speak, but I was there, as I had promised to be. My licence, which by this time I had ceased to tear up because it had an auction value, was sold to an American present for the sum of one hundred pounds. I had told the Governor on leaving that I intended to sell the licence and to spend the money for militant purposes, but I had not expected to raise such a splendid sum as one hundred pounds. I shall always remember the generosity of that unknown American friend. A great medical congress was being held in London in the summer of 1913, and on August 11th we held a large meeting at Kingsway Hall, which was attended by hundreds of visiting doctors. I addressed this meeting, at which a ringing resolution against forcible feeding was passed, and I was allowed to go home without police interference. It was, as a matter of fact, the second time during that month that I had spoken in public without molestation. The presence of so many distinguished medical men in London may have suggested to the authorities that I had better be left alone for the time being. At all events I was left alone, and late in the month I went, quite publicly, to Paris, to see my daughter Christabel and plan with her the campaign for the coming autumn. I needed rest after the struggles of the past five months, during which I had served, of my three years' prison sentence, not quite three weeks. FOOTNOTE: [5] Mr. Lansbury shortly before this had resigned his seat in Parliament and had gone to his constituents on the question of women's suffrage. Both the Liberal and the Conservative parties had united against him, with the result that a Unionist candidate was returned in his place. Mr. Lloyd-George publicly rejoiced in the result of this election, saying that Mr. Marsh, the Conservative candidate, had been his man. The Labour Party, in Parliament and out, meekly accepted this piece of Liberal chicanery without protest. CHAPTER VII The two months of the summer of 1913 which were spent with my daughter in Paris were almost the last days of peace and rest I have been destined since to enjoy. I spent the days, or some hours of them, in the initial preparation of this volume, because it seemed to me that I had a duty to perform in giving to the world my own plain statement of the events which have led up to the women's revolution in England. Other histories of the militant movement will undoubtedly be written; in times to come when in all constitutional countries of the world, women's votes will be as universally accepted as men's votes are now; when men and women occupy the world of industry on equal terms, as co-workers rather than as cut-throat competitors; when, in a word, all the dreadful and criminal discriminations which exist now between the sexes are abolished, as they must one day be abolished, the historian will be able to sit down in leisurely fashion and do full justice to the strange story of how the women of England took up arms against the blind and obstinate Government of England and fought their way to political freedom. I should like to live long enough to read such a history, calmly considered, carefully analysed, conscientiously set forth. It will be a better book to read than this one, written, as it were, in camp between battles. But perhaps this one, hastily prepared as it has been, will give the reader of the future a clearer impression of the strenuousness and the desperation of the conflict, and also something of the heretofore undreamed of courage and fighting strength of women, who, having learned the joy of battle, lose all sense of fear and continue their struggle up to and past the gates of death, never flinching at any step of the way. Every step since that meeting in October, 1912, when we definitely declared war on the peace of England, has been beset with danger and difficulty, often unexpected and undeclared. In October, 1913, I sailed in the French liner, _La Provence_, for my third visit to the United States. My intention was published in the public press of England, France and America. No attempt at concealment of my purpose was made, and in fact, my departure was witnessed by two men from Scotland Yard. Some hints had reached my ears that an attempt would be made by the Immigration Officers at the port of New York to exclude me as an undesirable alien, but I gave little credit to these reports. American friends wrote and cabled encouraging words, and so I passed my time aboard ship quite peacefully, working part of the time, resting also against the fatigue always attendant on a lecture tour. [Illustration: MRS. PANKHURST AND CHRISTABEL IN THE GARDEN OF CHRISTABEL'S HOME IN PARIS] We came to anchor in the harbour of New York on October 26th, and there, to my astonishment, the Immigration authorities notified me that I was ordered to Ellis Island to appear before a Board of Special Inquiry. The officers who served the order of detention did so with all courtesy, even with a certain air of reluctance. They allowed my American travelling companion, Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr, to accompany me to the Island, but no one, not even the solicitor sent by Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont to defend me, was permitted to attend me before the Board of Special Inquiry. I went before these three men quite alone, as many a poor, friendless woman, without any of my resources, has had to appear. The moment of my entrance to the room I knew that extraordinary means had been employed against me, for on the desk behind which the Board sat I saw a complete _dossier_ of my case in English legal papers. These papers may have been supplied by Scotland Yard, or they may have been supplied by the Government. I cannot tell, of course. They sufficed to convince the Board of Special Inquiry that I was a person of doubtful character, to say the least of it, and I was informed that I should have to be detained until the higher authorities at Washington examined my case. Everything was done to make me comfortable, the rooms of the Commissioner of Immigration being turned over to me and my companion. The very men who found me guilty of moral obloquy--something of which no British jury has ever yet accused me--put themselves out in a number of ways to make my detention agreeable. I was escorted all over the Island and through the quarters assigned detained immigrants, whose right to land in the United States is in question. The huge dining-rooms, the spotless kitchens and the admirably varied bill of fare interested and impressed me. Nothing like them exists in any English institution. I remained at Ellis Island two and a half days, long enough for the Commissioner of Immigration at Washington to take my case to the President who instantly ordered my release. Whoever was responsible for my detention entirely overlooked the advertising value of the incident. My lecture tour was made much more successful for it and I embarked for England late in November with a very generous American contribution to our war chest, a contribution, alas, that I was not permitted to deliver in person. The night before the White Star liner _Majestic_ reached Plymouth a wireless message from headquarters informed me that the Government had decided to arrest me on my arrival. The arrest was made, under very dramatic conditions, the next day shortly before noon. The steamer came to anchor in the outer harbour, and we saw at once that the bay, usually so animated with passing vessels, had been cleared of all craft. Far in the distance the tender, which on other occasions had always met the steamer, rested at anchor between two huge grey warships. For a moment or two the scene halted, the passengers crowding to the deckrails in speechless curiosity to see what was to happen next. Suddenly a fisherman's dory, power driven, dashed across the harbour, directly under the noses of the grim war vessels. Two women, spray drenched, stood up in the boat, and as it ploughed swiftly past our steamer the women called out to me: "The Cats are here, Mrs. Pankhurst! They're close on you--" Their voices trailed away into the mist and we heard no more. Within a minute or two a frightened ship's boy appeared on deck and delivered a message from the purser asking me to step down to his office. I answered that I would certainly do nothing of the kind, and next the police swarmed out on deck and I heard, for the fifth time that I was arrested under the Cat and Mouse Act. They had sent five men from Scotland Yard, two men from Plymouth and a wardress from Holloway, a sufficient number, it will be allowed, to take one woman from a ship anchored two miles out at sea. Following my firm resolve not to assist in any way the enforcing of the infamous law, I refused to go with the men, who thereupon picked me up and carried me to the waiting police tender. We steamed some miles up the Cornish coast, the police refusing absolutely to tell me whither they were conveying me, and finally disembarked at Bull Point, a Government landing-stage, closed to the general public. Here a motor car was waiting, and accompanied by my bodyguard from Scotland Yard and Holloway, I was driven across Dartmoor to Exeter, where I had a not unendurable imprisonment and hunger strike of four days. Everyone from the Governor of the prison to the wardresses were openly sympathetic and kind, and I was told by one confidential official that they kept me only because they had orders to do so until after the great meeting at Empress Theatre, Earls Court, London, which had been arranged as a welcome home for me. The meeting was held on the Sunday night following my arrest, and the great sum of £15,000 was poured into the coffers of militancy. This included the £4,500 which had been collected during my American tour. Several days after my release from Exeter I went openly to Paris to confer with my daughter on matters relating to the campaign about to open, returning to attend a W. S. P. U. meeting on the day before my license expired. Nevertheless the boat train carriage in which I travelled with my doctor and nurse was invaded at Dover town by two detectives who told me to consider myself under arrest. We were making tea when the men entered, but this we immediately threw out of the window, because a hunger strike always began at the instant of arrest. We never compromised at all, but resisted from the very first moment of attack. The reason for this uncalled for arrest at Dover was the fear on the part of the police of the body guard of women, just then organised for the expressed purpose of resisting attempts to arrest me. That the police, as well as the Government were afraid to risk encountering women who were not afraid to fight we had had abundant testimony. We certainly had it on this occasion, for knowing that the body guard was waiting at Victoria Station, the authorities had cut off all approaches to the arrival platform and the place was guarded by battalions of police. Not a passenger was permitted to leave a carriage until I had been carried across the arrival platform between a double line of police and detectives and thrown into a forty horse power motor car, guarded within by two plain clothes men and a wardress, and without by three more policemen. Around this motor car were twelve taxi-cabs filled with plain clothes men, four to each vehicle, and three guarding the outside, not to mention the driver, who was also in the employ of the police department. Detectives on motor cycles were on guard at various points ready to follow any rescuing taxicab. Arrived at Holloway I was again lifted from the car and taken to the reception room and placed on the floor in a state of great exhaustion. When the doctor came in and told me curtly to stand up I was obliged to tell him that I could not stand. I utterly refused to be examined, saying that I was resolved to make the Government assume full responsibility for my condition. "I refuse to be examined by you or any prison doctor," I declared, "and I do this as a protest against my sentence, and against my being here at all. I no longer recognise a prison doctor as a medical man in the proper sense of the word. I have withdrawn my consent to be governed by the rules of prison; I refuse to recognise the authority of any prison official, and I therefore make it impossible for the Government to carry out the sentence they have imposed upon me." Wardresses were summoned, I was placed in an invalid chair and so carried up three flights of stairs and put into an unwarmed cell with a concrete floor. Refusing to leave the chair I was lifted out and placed on the bed, where I lay all night without removing my coat or loosening my garments. It was on a Saturday that the arrest had been made, and I was kept in prison until the following Wednesday morning. During all that time no food or water passed my lips, and I added to this the sleep strike, which means that as far as was humanly possible I refused all sleep and rest. For two nights I sat or lay on the concrete floor, resolutely refusing the oft repeated offers of medical examination. "You are not a doctor," I told the man. "You are a Government torturer, and all you want to do is to satisfy yourself that I am not quite ready to die." The doctor, a new man since my last imprisonment, flushed and looked extremely unhappy. "I suppose you do think that," he mumbled. On Tuesday morning the Governor came to look at me, and no doubt I presented by that time a fairly bad appearance. At least I gathered as much from the alarmed expression of the wardress who accompanied him. To the Governor I made the simple announcement that I was ready to leave prison and that I intended to leave very soon, dead or alive. I told him that from that moment I should not even rest on the concrete floor, but should walk my cell until I was released or until I died from exhaustion. All day I kept to this resolution, pacing up and down the narrow cell, many times stumbling and falling, until the doctor came in at evening to tell me that I was ordered released on the following morning. Then I loosened my gown and lay down, absolutely spent, and fell almost instantly into a death-like sleep. The next morning a motor ambulance took me to the Kingsway headquarters where a hospital room had been arranged for my reception. The two imprisonments in less than ten days had made terrible drafts on my strength, and the coldness of the Holloway cell had brought on a painful neuralgia. It was many days before I recovered even a tithe of my usual health. These two arrests resulted exactly as the Government should have known that they would result, in a great outbreak of fresh militancy. As soon as the news spread that I had been taken at Plymouth a huge fire broke out in the timber yards at Richmond Walk, Devenport, and an acre and a half of timber, beside a pleasure fair and a scenic railway adjacent, to the value of thousands of pounds was destroyed. No one ever discovered the cause of the fire, the greatest that ever occurred in the neighbourhood, but tied to one of the railings was a copy of the _Suffragette_ and to another railing two cards, on one of which was written a message to the Government: "How dare you arrest Mrs. Pankhurst and allow Sir Edward Carson and Mr. Bonar Law to go free?" The second card bore the words: "Our reply to the torture of Mrs. Pankhurst, and her cowardly arrest at Plymouth." Besides this fire, which waged fiercely from midnight until dawn, a large unoccupied house at Bristol was destroyed by fire; a fine residence in Scotland, also unoccupied, was badly damaged by fire; St. Anne's Church in a suburb of Liverpool was partly destroyed; and many pillar boxes in London, Edinburgh, Derby and other cities were fired. In churches all over the Kingdom our women created consternation by interpolating into the services reverently spoken prayers for prisoners who were suffering for conscience' sake. The reader no doubt has heard of these interruptions, and if so he has read of brawling, shrieking women, breaking into the sanctity of religious services, and creating riot in the House of God. I think the reader should know exactly what does happen when militants, who are usually religious women, interrupt church services. On the Sunday when I was in Holloway, following my arrest at Dover, certain women attending the afternoon service at Westminster Abbey, chanted in concert the following prayer: "God save Emmeline Pankhurst, help us with Thy love and strength to guard her, spare those who suffer for conscience' sake. Hear us when we pray to Thee." They had hardly finished this prayer when vergers fell upon them and with great violence hustled them out of the Abbey. One kneeling man, who happened to be near one of the women, forgot his Christian intercessions long enough to beat her in the face with his fists before the vergers came. Similar scenes have taken place in churches and cathedrals throughout England and Scotland, and in many instances the women have been most barbarously treated by vergers and members of the congregations. In other cases the women not only have been left unmolested, but have been allowed to finish their prayers amid deep and sympathetic silence. Some clergymen have even been brave enough to add a reverent amen to these prayers for women in prison, and it has happened that clergymen have voluntarily offered prayers for us. The Church as a whole, however, has undoubtedly failed to live up to its obligation to demand justice for women, and to protest against the torture of forcible feeding. During the year just closing we sent many deputations to Church authorities, the Bishops, one after another having been visited in this manner. Some of the Bishops, including the reactionary Archbishop of Canterbury, refused to accord the desired interview, and when that happened, the answer of the deputation was to sit on the doorstep of the episcopal residence until surrender followed--as it invariably did. As Holloway Gaol is within his diocese, the Bishop of London was visited by the W. S. P. U. and the demand was made that the Bishop himself should witness forcible feeding in order to realise the horror of the proceeding. He did visit two of the tortured women, but he did not see them forcibly fed, and when he came out he gave the public an account of his interview with them which was in effect the Government's version of the facts. The W. S. P. U. was naturally indignant, while all the Government's friends hailed the Bishop as a supporter of the policy of torture. Only those who have suffered the pain and agony, not to speak of the moral humiliation of forcible feeding can realise the depths of the iniquity which the Bishop of London was manoeuvred by the Government to whitewash. It may be true, as the Bishop comforted himself by saying, that the victims of forcible feeding suffered the more because they struggled under the process. But, as Mary Richardson wrote in the _Suffragette_, to expect a victim not to struggle was the same as telling her that she would suffer less if she did not jump on getting a cinder in her eye. "The principle," declared Miss Richardson, "is the same. One struggles because the pain is excruciating, and the nerves of the eyes, ears and face are so tortured that it would be impossible not to resist to the uttermost. One struggles, also, because of another reason--a moral reason--for forcible feeding is an immoral assault as well as a painful physical one, and to remain passive under it would give one the feeling of sin; the sin of concurrence. One's whole nature is revolted; resistance is therefore inevitable." I think it proper here to explain also the policy upon which we embarked in 1914 of taking our cause directly to the King. The reader has perhaps heard of Suffragette "insults" to King George and Queen Mary, and it is but just that he should hear a direct account of how these "insults" are offered. Several isolated attempts had been made to present petitions to the King, once when he was on his way to Westminster to open Parliament, and again on an occasion when he paid a visit to Bristol. On the latter occasion the woman who tried to present the petition was assaulted by one of the King's equerries, who struck her with the flat of his sword. We finally resolved on the policy of direct petition to the king because we had been forced to abandon all hope of successful petitioning to his Ministers. Tricked and betrayed at every turn by the Liberal Government, we announced that we would not again put even a pretence of confidence in them. We would carry our demand for justice to the throne of the Monarch. Late in December, 1913, while I was in prison for the second time since my return to England, a great gala performance was given at Covent Garden, the opera being the Jeanne d'Arc of Raymond Rôze. The King and Queen and the entire Court were present, and the scene was expected to be one of unusual brilliance. Our women took advantage of the occasion to make one of the most successful demonstrations of the year. A box was secured directly opposite the Royal Box, and this was occupied by three women, beautifully gowned. On entering they had managed, without attracting the slightest attention, to lock and barricade the door, and at the close of the first act, as soon as the orchestra had disappeared, the women stood up, and one of them, with the aid of a megaphone, addressed the King. Calling attention to the impressive scenes on the stage, the speaker told the King that women were to-day fighting, as Joan of Arc fought centuries ago, for human liberty, and that they, like the maid of Orleans, were being tortured and done to death, in the name of the King, in the name of the Church, and with the full knowledge and responsibility of established Government. At this very hour the leader of these fighters in the army of liberty was being held in prison and tortured by the King's authority. The vast audience was thrown into a panic of excitement and horror, and amid a perfect turmoil of cries and adjurations, the door of the box was finally broken down and the women ejected. As soon as they had left the house others of our women, to the number of forty or more, who had been sitting quietly in an upper gallery, rose to their feet and rained suffrage literature on the heads of the audience below. It was fully three quarters of an hour before the excitement subsided and the singers could go on with the opera. The sensation caused by this direct address to Royalty inspired us to make a second attempt to arouse the King's conscience, and early in January, as soon as Parliament re-assembled, we announced that I would personally lead a deputation to Buckingham Palace. The plan was welcomed with enthusiasm by our members and a very large number of women volunteered to join the deputation, which was intended to make a protest against three things--the continued disfranchisement of women; the forcible feeding and the cat and mouse torture of those who were fighting against this injustice; and the scandalous manner in which the Government, while coercing and torturing militant women, were allowing perfect freedom to the men opponents of Home Rule in Ireland, men who openly announced that they were about to carry out a policy, not merely of attacking property, but of destroying human life. I wrote a letter to the King, conveying to him "the respectful and loyal request of the Women's Social and Political Union that Your Majesty will give audience to a deputation of women." The letter went on: "The deputation desire to submit to Your Majesty in person their claim to the Parliamentary vote, which is the only protection against the grievous industrial and social wrongs that women suffer; is the symbol and guarantee of British citizenship; and means the recognition of women's equal dignity and worth, as members of our great Empire. "The Deputation will further lay before Your Majesty a complaint of the mediæval and barbarous methods of torture whereby Your Majesty's Ministers are seeking to repress women's revolt against the deprivation of citizen rights--a revolt as noble and glorious in its spirit and purpose as any of those past struggles for liberty which are the pride of the British race. "We have been told by the unthinking--by those who are heedless of the constitutional principles upon which is based our loyal request for an audience of Your Majesty in person--that our conversation should be with Your Majesty's Ministers. "We repudiate this suggestion. In the first place, it would not only be repugnant to our womanly sense of dignity, but it would be absurd and futile for us to interview the very men against whom we bring the accusations of betraying the Women's Cause and torturing those who fight for that Cause. "In the second place, we will not be referred to, and we will not recognise the authority of men who, in our eyes, have no legal or constitutional standing in the matter, because we have not been consulted as to their election to Parliament nor as to their appointment as Ministers of the Crown." I then cited as a precedent in support of our claim to be heard by the King in person, the case of the Deputation of Irish Catholics, which, in the year 1793, was received by King George III in person. I further said: "Our right as women to be heard and to be aided by Your Majesty is far stronger than any such right possessed by men, because it is based upon our lack of every other constitutional means of securing the redress of our grievances. We have no power to vote for Members of Parliament, and therefore for us there is no House of Commons. We have no voice in the House of Lords. But we have a King, and to him we make our appeal. "Constitutionally speaking, we are, as voteless women, living in the time when the power of the Monarch was unlimited. In that old time, which is passed for men though not for women, men who were oppressed had recourse to the King--the source of power, of justice, and of reform. "Precisely in the same way we now claim the right to come to the foot of the Throne and to make of the King in person our demand for the redress of the political grievance which we cannot, and will not, any longer tolerate. "Because women are voteless, there are in our midst to-day sweated workers, white slaves, outraged children, and innocent mothers and their babes stricken by horrible disease. It is for the sake and in the cause of these unhappy members of our sex, that we ask of Your Majesty the audience that we are confident will be granted to us." It was some days before we had the answer to this letter, and in the meantime some uncommonly stirring and painful occurrences attracted the public attention. CHAPTER VIII For months before my return to England from my American lecture tour, the Ulster situation had been increasingly serious. Sir Edward Carson and his followers had declared that if Home Rule government should be created and set up in Dublin, they would--law or no law--establish a rival and independent Government in Ulster. It was known that arms and ammunition were being shipped to Ireland, and that men--and women too, for that matter--were drilling and otherwise getting ready for civil war. The W. S. P. U. approached Sir Edward Carson and asked him if the proposed Ulster Government would give equal voting rights to women. We frankly declared that in case the Ulster men alone were to have the vote, that we should deal with "King Carson" and his colleagues exactly in the same manner that we had adopted towards the British Government centred at Westminster. Sir Edward Carson at first promised us that the rebel Ulster Government, should it come into existence, would give votes to Ulster women. This pledge was later repudiated, and in the early winter months of 1914 militancy appeared in Ulster. It had been raging in Scotland for some time, and now the imprisoned Suffragettes in that country were being forcibly fed as in England. The answer to this was, of course, more militancy. The ancient Scottish church of Whitekirk, a relic of pre-Reformation days, was destroyed by fire. Several unoccupied country houses were also burned. It was about this time, February, 1914, that I undertook a series of meetings outside London, the first of which was to be held in Glasgow, in the St. Andrews Hall, which holds many thousands of people. In order that I might be free on the night of the meeting, I left London unknown to the police, in a motor car. In spite of all efforts to apprehend me I succeeded in reaching Glasgow and in getting to the platform of St. Andrews' where I found myself face to face with an enormous, and manifestly sympathetic audience. As it was suspected that the police might rush the platform, plans had been made to offer resistance, and the bodyguard was present in force. My speech was one of the shortest I have ever made. I said: "I have kept my promise, and in spite of His Majesty's Government I am here to-night. Very few people in this audience, very few people in this country, know how much of the nation's money is being spent to silence women. But the wit and ingenuity of women is overcoming the power and money of the British Government. It is well that we should have this meeting to-night, because to-day is a memorable day in the annals of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. To-day in the House of Commons has been witnessed the triumph of militancy--men's militancy--and to-night I hope to make it clear to the people in this meeting that if there is any distinction to be drawn at all between militancy in Ulster and the militancy of women, it is all to the advantage of the women. Our greatest task in this women's movement is to prove that we are human beings like men, and every stage of our fight is forcing home that very difficult lesson into the minds of men, and especially into the minds of politicians. I propose to-night at this political meeting to have a text. Texts are usually given from pulpits, but perhaps you will forgive me if I have a text to-night. My text is: 'Equal justice for men and women, equal political justice, equal legal justice, equal industrial justice, and equal social justice.' I want as clearly and briefly as I can to make it clear to you to-night that if it is justifiable to fight for common ordinary equal justice, then women have ample justification, nay, have greater justification, for revolution and rebellion, than ever men have had in the whole history of the human race. Now that is a big contention to make, but I am going to prove it. You get the proof of the political injustice--" As I finished the word "injustice," a steward uttered a warning shout, there was a tramp of heavy feet, and a large body of police burst into the hall, and rushed up to the platform, drawing their truncheons as they ran. Headed by detectives from Scotland Yard, they surged in on all sides, but as the foremost members attempted to storm the platform, they were met by a fusillade of flower-pots, tables, chairs, and other missiles. They seized the platform railing, in order to tear it down, but they found that under the decorations barbed wires were concealed. This gave them pause for a moment. Meanwhile, more of the invading host came from other directions. The bodyguard and members of the audience vigorously repelled the attack, wielding clubs, batons, poles, planks, or anything they could seize, while the police laid about right and left with their batons, their violence being far the greater. Men and women were seen on all sides with blood streaming down their faces, and there were cries for a doctor. In the middle of the struggle, several revolver shots rang out, and the woman who was firing the revolver--which I should explain was loaded with blank cartridges only--was able to terrorise and keep at bay a whole body of police. I had been surrounded by members of the bodyguard, who hurried me towards the stairs from the platform. The police, however, overtook us, and in spite of the resistance of the bodyguard, they seized me and dragged me down the narrow stair at the back of the hall. There a cab was waiting. I was pushed violently into it, and thrown on the floor, the seats being occupied by as many constables as could crowd inside. The meeting was left in a state of tremendous turmoil, and the people of Glasgow who were present expressed their sense of outrage at the behavior of the police, who, acting under the Government's instructions, had so disgraced the city. General Drummond, who was present on the platform, took hold of the situation and delivered a rousing speech, in which she exhorted the audience to make the Government feel the force of their indignation. I was kept in the Glasgow police-cells all night, and the next morning was taken, a hunger and thirst striking prisoner, to Holloway, where I remained for five memorable days. This was the seventh attempt the Government had made to make me serve a three years' term of penal servitude on a conspiracy charge, in connection with the blowing up of Mr. Lloyd-George's country house. In the eleven and a half months since I had received that sentence I had spent just thirty days in prison. On March 14th I was again released, still suffering severely, not only from the hunger and thirst strike, but from injuries received at the time of my brutal arrest in Glasgow. The answer to that arrest had been swift and strong. In Bristol, the scene of great riots and destruction when men were fighting for votes, a large timber-yard was burnt. In Scotland a mansion was destroyed by fire. A milder protest consisted of a raid upon the house of the Home Secretary, in the course of which eighteen windows were broken. The greatest and most startling of all protests hitherto made was the attack at this time on the Rokeby "Venus" in the National Gallery. Mary Richardson, the young woman who carried out this protest, is possessed of a very fine artistic sense, and nothing but the most compelling sense of duty would have moved her to the deed. Miss Richardson being placed on trial, made a moving address to the Court, in the course of which she said that her act was premeditated, and that she had thought it over very seriously before it was undertaken. She added: "I have been a student of art, and I suppose care as much for art as any one who was in the gallery when I made my protest. But I care more for justice than I do for art, and I firmly believe than when a nation shuts its eyes to justice, and prefers to have women who are fighting for justice ill-treated, mal-treated, and tortured, that such action as mine should be understandable; I don't say excusable, but it should be understood. "I should like to point out that the outrage which the Government has committed upon Mrs. Pankhurst is an ultimatum of outrages. It is murder, slow murder, and premeditated murder. That is how I have looked at it.... "How you can hold women up to ridicule and contempt, and put them in prison, and yet say nothing to the Government for murdering people, I cannot understand.... "The fact is that the nation is either dead or asleep. In my opinion there is undoubted evidence that the nation is dead, because women have knocked in vain at the door of administrators, archbishops, and even the King himself. The Government have closed all doors to us. And remember this--a state of death in a nation, as well as in an individual, leads to one thing, and that is dissolution. I do not hesitate to say that if the men of the country do not at this eleventh hour put their hand out and save Mrs. Pankhurst, before a few more years are passed they will stretch out their hand in vain to save the Empire." In sentencing Miss Richardson to six month's imprisonment the Magistrate said regretfully that if she had smashed a window instead of an art treasure he could have given her a maximum sentence of eighteen months, which illustrates, I think, one more queer anomaly of English law. A few weeks later another famous painting, the Sargent portrait of Henry James, was attacked by a Suffragette, who, like Miss Richardson, was sent through the farce of a trial and a prison sentence which she did not serve. By this time practically all the picture galleries and other public galleries and museums had been closed to the public. The Suffragettes had succeeded in large measure in making England unattractive to tourists, and hence unprofitable to the world of business. As we had anticipated, the reaction against the Liberal Government began to manifest itself. Questions were asked daily, in the press, in the House of Commons, everywhere, as to the responsibility of the Government in the Suffragette activities. People began to place that responsibility where it belonged, at the doors of the Government, rather than at our own. Especially did the public begin to contrast the treatment meted out to the rebel women with that accorded to the rebel men of Ulster. For a whole year the Government had been attacking the women's right of free speech, by their refusal to allow the W. S. P. U. to hold public meetings in Hyde Park. The excuse given for this was that we advocated and defended a militant policy. But the Government permitted the Ulster militants to advocate their war policy in Hyde Park, and we determined that, with or without the Government's permission, we should, on the day of the Ulster meeting, hold a suffrage meeting in Hyde Park. General Drummond was announced as the chief speaker at this meeting, and when the day came, militant Ulster men and militant women assembled in Hyde Park. The militant men were allowed to speak in defence of bloodshed; but General Drummond was arrested before she had uttered more than a few words. Another proof that the Government had a law of leniency for militant men and a law of persecution for militant women was shown at this time by the case of Miss Dorothy Evans, our organiser in Ulster. She and another Suffragette, Miss Maud Muir, were arrested in Belfast charged with having in their possession a quantity of explosives. It was well known that there were houses in Belfast that secreted tons of gunpowder and ammunition for the use of the rebels against Home Rule, but none of those houses were entered and searched by the police. The authorities reserved their energies in this direction for the headquarters of the militant women. Naturally enough the two suffrage prisoners, on being arraigned in court, refused to be tried unless the Government proceeded also against the men rebels. The prisoners throughout the proceedings kept up such a disturbance that the trial could not properly go on. When the case was called Miss Evans rose and protested loudly, saying: "I deny your jurisdiction entirely until there are in the dock beside us men who are well known leaders of the Ulster militant movement." Miss Muir joined Miss Evans in her protest and both women were dragged from the court. After an hour's adjournment the trial was resumed, but the women again began to speak, and the case was hurried through in the midst of indescribable din and commotion. The women were sent to prison on remand, and after a four days' hunger and thirst strike were released unconditionally. The result of this case was a severe outbreak of militancy, three fires destroying Belfast mansions within a few days. Fires blazed almost daily throughout England, a very important instance being the destruction of the Bath Hotel at Felixstowe, valued at £35,000. The two women responsible for this were afterwards arrested, and as their trials were delayed, they were, although unconvicted prisoners, tortured by forcible feeding for several months. This occurred in April, a few weeks before the day appointed for our deputation to the King. I had appointed May 21st for the deputation, in spite of the fact that the King had, through his Ministers, refused to receive us. Replying to this I had written, again directly to the King, that we utterly denied the constitutional right of Ministers, who not being elected by women were not responsible to them, to stand between ourselves and the Throne, and to prevent us from having an audience of His Majesty. I declared further that we would, on the date announced, present ourselves at the gates of Buckingham Palace to demand an interview. Following the despatch of this letter my life was made as uncomfortable and as insecure as the Government, through their police department, could contrive. I was not allowed to make a public appearance, but I addressed several huge meetings from the balcony of houses where I had taken refuge. These were all publicly announced, and each time the police, mingling with crowds, made strenuous efforts to arrest me. By strategy, and through the valiant efforts of the bodyguard, I was able each time to make my speech and afterwards to escape from the house. All of these occasions were marked by fierce opposition from the police and splendid courage and resistance on the part of the women. The deputation to the King was, of course, marked by the Government as an occasion on which I could be arrested, and when, on the day appointed, I led the great deputation of women to the gates of Buckingham Palace, an army of several thousand police were sent out against us. The conduct of the police showed plainly that they had been instructed to repeat the tactics of Black Friday, described in an earlier chapter. Indeed, the violence, brutality and insult of Black Friday were excelled on this day, and at the gates of the King of England. I myself did not suffer so greatly as others, because I had advanced towards the Palace unnoticed by the police, who were looking for me at a more distant point. When I arrived at the gates I was recognised by an Inspector, who at once seized me bodily, and conveyed me to Holloway. [Illustration: © _International News Service_ "ARRESTED AT THE KING'S GATE!" _May, 1914_] Before the Deputation had gone forth, I had made a short speech to them, warning them of what might happen, and my final message was: "Whatever happens, do not turn back." They did not, and in spite of all the violence inflicted upon them, they went forward, resolved, so long as they were free, not to give up the attempt to reach the Palace. Many arrests were made, and of those arrested many were sent to prison. Although for the majority, this was the first imprisonment, these brave women adopted the hunger strike, and passed seven or eight days without food and water before they were released, weak and ill as may be supposed. CHAPTER IX In the weeks following the disgraceful events before Buckingham Palace the Government made several last, desperate efforts to crush the W. S. P. U., to remove all the leaders and to destroy our paper, the _Suffragette_. They issued summonses against Mrs. Drummond, Mrs. Dacre Fox and Miss Grace Roe; they raided our headquarters at Lincolns Inn House; twice they raided other headquarters temporarily in use, not to speak of raids made upon private dwellings where the new leaders, who had risen to take the places of those arrested, were at their work for the organisation. But with each successive raid the disturbances which the Government were able to make in our affairs became less, because we were better able, each time, to provide against them. Every effort made by the Government to suppress the _Suffragette_ failed, and it continued to come out regularly every week. Although the paper was issued regularly, we had to use almost super-human energy to get it distributed. The Government sent to all the great wholesale news agents a letter which was designed to terrorise and bully them into refusing to handle the paper or to sell it to the retail news agents. Temporarily, at any rate, the letter produced in many cases the desired effect, but we overcame the emergency by taking immediate steps to build up a system of distribution which was worked by women themselves, independently of the newspaper trade. We also opened a "Suffragette Defence Fund," to meet the extra expense of publishing and distributing the paper. Twice more the Government attempted to force me to serve the three years' term of penal servitude, one arrest being made when I was being carried to a meeting in an ambulance. Wholesale arrests and hunger strikes occurred at the same time, but our women continued their work of militancy, and money flowed into our Protest and Defence Fund. At one great meeting in July the fund was increased by nearly £16,000. But now unmistakable signs began to appear that our long and bitter struggle was drawing to a close. The last resort of the Government of inciting the street mobs against us had been little successful, and we could see in the temper of the public abundant hope that the reaction against the Government, long hoped for by us, had actually begun. Every day of the militant movement was so extraordinarily full of events and changes that it is difficult to choose a point at which this narrative should be brought to a close. I think, however, that an account of a recent debate which took place in the House of Commons will give the reader the best idea of the complete breakdown of the Government in their effort to crush the women's fight for liberty. On June 11th, when the House of Commons had gone into a Committee of Supply, Lord Robert Cecil moved a reduction of 100 pounds on the Home Office vote, thus precipitating a discussion of militancy. Lord Robert said that he had read with some surprise that the Government were not dissatisfied with the measures which they had taken to deal with the violent suffragists, and he added with some asperity that the Government took a much more sanguine view of the matter than anybody else in the United Kingdom. The House, Lord Robert went on to declare, would not be in a position to deal with the case satisfactorily unless they realised the devotion of the followers to their leaders, who were almost fully responsible for what was going on. Ministerial cheers greeted this utterance, but they ceased suddenly when the speaker went on to say that these leaders could never have induced their followers to enter upon a career of crime but for the serious mistakes which had been made over and over again by the Government. Among these mistakes Lord Robert cited the shameful treatment of the women on Black Friday, the policy of forcible feeding and the scandal of the different treatment accorded Lady Constance Lytton and "Jane Warton." There were Opposition cheers at this, and they were again raised when Lord Robert deplored the terrible waste of energy, and "admirable material" involved in the militant movement. Although Lord Robert Cecil deemed it unjust as well as futile for Suffragist Members to withhold their support from the woman suffrage movement on account of militancy he himself was in favor of deportation for Suffragettes. At this there were cries of "Where to?" and "Ulster!" Mr. McKenna replied by first calling attention to the fact that in the militant movement they had a phenomenon "absolutely without precedent in our history." Women in numbers were committing crimes, beginning with window breaking, and proceeding to arson, not with the motives of ordinary criminals, but with the intention of advertising a political cause and of forcing the public to grant their demands. Mr. McKenna continuing said: "The number of women who commit crimes of that kind is extremely small, but the number of those who sympathise with them is extremely large. One of the difficulties which the police have in detecting this form of crime and in bringing home the offence to the criminal is that the criminals find so many sympathisers among the well-to-do and thoroughly respectable classes that the ordinary administration of the law is rendered comparatively impossible. Let me give the House some figures showing the number of women who have been committed to prison for offences since the beginning of the militant agitation in 1906. In that year the total number of commitments to prison was 31, all the persons charged being women. In 1909 the figure rose to 156; in 1911 to 188 (182 women and six men); and in 1912 to 290 (288 women and two men). In 1913 the number dropped to 183, and so far this year it has dropped to 108. These figures include all commitments to prison and rearrests under the Cat and Mouse Act. What is the obvious lesson to be drawn? Up to 1912 the number of offences committed for which imprisonment was the punishment was steadily increasing, but since the beginning of last year--that is to say, since the new Act came into force--the number of individual offences has been very greatly reduced. On the other hand, we see that the seriousness of the offences is much greater." This statement, that the number of imprisonments had decreased since the adoption of the Cat and Mouse Act, was of course, incorrect, or at best misleading. The fact was that the number of imprisonments decreased because, where formerly the militants went willingly to prison for their acts, they now escaped prison wherever possible. A comparatively small number of "mice" were ever rearrested by the police. Mr. McKenna went on to say that he realised fully the growing sense of indignation against the militant suffragists and he added, "Their one hope is, rightly or wrongly, that the well advertised indignation of the public will recoil on the head of the Government." "And so it will," interpolated a voice. "My honourable friend," replied Mr. McKenna, "says so it will. I believe that he is mistaken." But he gave no reasons for so believing. Referring to what he called the "recent grave rudenesses which have been committed against the King," Mr. McKenna said: "It is true that all subjects have the right of petitioning His Majesty, providing the petition is couched in respectful terms, but there is no right on the part of the subjects generally to personal audience for the purpose of the presentation of the petition or otherwise. It is the duty of the Home Secretary to present all such petitions to the King, and further to advise His Majesty what action should be taken. It was therefore ridiculous for any Suffragist to assert that there had been any breach of constitutional propriety on the part of the King in refusing, on the advice of the Home Secretary to receive the deputation." Also, said Mr. McKenna, in view of the fact that the petition for an audience was sent by a person under sentence of penal servitude--myself--it was the plain duty of the Home Secretary to advise the King not to grant it. He referred to the incident, he said, only because it was illustrative of the militant's methods of advertising their cause. He gave them credit, he was bound to say, for a certain degree of intelligence in adopting their methods. "No action has been so fruitful of advertisement as the recent absurdities which they have perpetrated in relation to the King." Coming down to the question of methods of meeting and overcoming militancy, Mr. McKenna said that he had received an almost unlimited correspondence on the subject from every section of the public. "Four methods were suggested," said he. "The first is to let them die. (Hear, hear.) That is, I should say, at the present moment, the most popular (laughter), judging by the number of letters I have received. The second is to deport them. (Hear, hear.) The third is to treat them as lunatics. (Hear, hear.) And the fourth is to give them the franchise. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) I think that is an exhaustive list. I notice each one of them is received with a certain very moderate amount of applause in this House. I hope to give reason why at the present time I think we should not adopt any one of them." The first suggestion was usually, not always, based on the assumption that the women would take their food if they knew that the alternative was death. Mr. McKenna read to the House in opposition to that view "the opinion of a great medical expert who had had intimate knowledge of the Suffragettes from the first." "We have to face the fact, therefore, that they would die," continued Mr. McKenna. "Let me say, also, with actual experience of dealing with suffragists, in many cases they have got in their refusal of food and water beyond the point when they could help themselves, and they have clearly done all that they could do to show their readiness to die.... There are those who hold another assumption. They think that after one or two deaths in prison militancy would cease. In my judgment there was never a greater delusion. I readily admit that this is the issue upon which I stand and upon which I feel I would fight to the end those who would adopt as their policy to let the prisoners die. So far from putting an end to militancy, I believe it would be the greatest incentive to militancy which could ever happen. For every woman who dies, there would be scores of women who would come forward for the honour, as they would deem it, of earning the crown of martyrdom." "How do you know?" called out an Opposition member. "How do I know?" retorted the Home Secretary. "I have had more to do with these women than the honourable member, much more. Those who hold that opinion leave out of account all recognition of the nature of these women. I do not speak in admiration of them. They are hysterical fanatics, but, coupled with their hysterical fanaticism, they have a courage, part of their fanaticism, which undoubtedly stands at nothing, and the honourable member who thinks that they would not come forward, not merely to risk death, but to undergo it, for what they deem the greatest cause on earth is making, in my judgment, a profound mistake.... They would seek death, and I am sure that however strong public opinion outside might be to-day in favour of allowing them to die, when there were twenty, thirty, forty, or more deaths in prison, you would have a violent reaction of public opinion, and the honourable gentleman who now so glibly says 'Let them die' would be among the first to blame the Government for what he would describe as the inhuman attitude they had adopted. "That policy," continued Mr. McKenna, "could not be adopted without an Act of Parliament. For the reason I have given I have not asked Parliament to remove from prison officials the responsibility under which they now rest for doing their best to keep those committed to their charge alive. But, supposing this legal responsibility were removed from the prison officials, let honourable members for a moment transport themselves in imagination to a prison cell and conceive of a prison doctor, a humane man, standing by watching a woman slowly being done to death by starvation and thirst, knowing that he could help her and that he could keep her alive. Did they think that any doctor would go on with such action, or that we should be able to retain medical men under such conditions in our service? I do not believe it. "The doctor would think, as I should think if I saw a woman lying there, 'What has been this woman's offence?' It may have been obstructing the police, coupled with the obstinacy derived from fanaticism which leads her to refuse food and water. Obstructing the police and she is to die! I could not distinguish, and no Home Secretary could ever say, that this woman should be left to die and that that woman should not. Once we were committed to a policy of allowing them to die if they did not take their food we should have to go on with it, and we should have woman after woman whose only offence may have been obstructing the police, breaking a window, or even burning down an empty house, dying because she was obstinate. I do not believe that that is a policy which on consideration will ever recommend itself to the British people, and I am bound to say for myself I could never take a hand in carrying that policy out." (Cheers.) Lord Robert Cecil's favourite remedy of deportation Mr. McKenna dismissed on the grounds that this would be merely removing the difficulty to some other country than Great Britain. If the suggested distant island were treated as a prison the women would hunger strike there as they did in English prisons. If the island were not treated as a prison, the Suffragettes' rich friends would come and rescue them in yachts. The suggestion that the militants be treated as lunatics was also dismissed as impossible. Admitting that he had tried to get them certified as lunatics and had failed because the medical profession would not consent to such a course, Mr. McKenna said that he could not, contrary to the advice of the doctors, get certification by Act of Parliament. "There remains," said Mr. McKenna, "the last proposal, that we should give them the franchise." "That is the right one," exclaimed Mr. William Redmond, but the Home Secretary replied: "Whatever may be said as to the merits or demerits of that proposal, it is clearly not one I can discuss now in Committee of Supply. I am not responsible, as Home Secretary, for the state of the law on the franchise, nor is there any occasion for me to express or conceal my own opinions on the point; but I certainly do not think, and I am sure the Committee will agree with me, that that could be seriously treated as a remedy for the existing state of lawlessness." Coming at last to the constructive part of his speech Mr. McKenna told the House of Commons that the Government had one last resort, which was to take legal proceedings against subscribers to the funds of the W. S. P. U. The funds of the society, he said, were undoubtedly beyond the arm of the British law. But the Government were in hopes of stopping future subscriptions. "We are now not without hope," he concluded, "that we have evidence which will enable us to proceed against the subscribers" (loud cheers) "in civil action, and if we succeed the subscribers will become personally liable for all the damage done." (Cheers.) "It is a question of evidence.... I have further directed that the question should be considered whether the subscribers could not be proceeded against criminally as well as by civil action." (Cheers.) "We have only been able to obtain this evidence by our now not infrequent raids upon the offices, and such property as we can get at of the society.... A year ago a raid was made on the offices of the society, but we obtained no such evidence. If we succeed in making the subscribers personally responsible individually for the whole damage done I have no doubt that the insurance companies will quickly follow the example set them by the Government, and in turn bring actions to recover the cost which has been thrown upon them. If that is done I have no doubt the days of militancy are over. "The militants live only by the subscriptions of rich women" (cheers) "who themselves enjoy all the advantages of wealth secured for them by the labour of others" (cheers) "and use their wealth against the interests of society, paying their unfortunate victims to undergo all the horrors of a hunger and thirst strike in the commission of a crime. Whatever feelings we may have against the wretched women who for 30s. and £2 a week go about the country burning and destroying, what must our feelings be for the women who give their money to induce the perpetration of these crimes and leave their sisters to undergo the punishment while they live in luxury?" (Cheers.) "If we can succeed against them we will spare no pains. If the action is successful in the total destruction of the means of revenue of the Women's Social and Political Union I think we shall see the last of the power of Mrs. Pankhurst and her friends." (Cheers.) In the general debate which followed the Government were obliged to listen to very severe criticisms of their past and present policy towards the militant women. Mr. Keir Hardie said in part: "We may not to-day discuss the question of the franchise, but surely it was possible for the Home Secretary, without any transgression on the rules of the House, to have held out just a ray of hope for the future as to the intentions of the Government in regard to this most urgent question. On that point, may I say that I am not one of those who believe that a right thing should be withheld because some of the advocates of it resort to weapons of which we do not approve. That note has been sounded more than once, and if it be true, and it is true, that a section of the public outside are strongly opposed to this conduct, it is equally true that the bulk of the people look with a very calm and indifferent eye upon what is happening so long as the vote is withheld from women." Mr. Hardie concluded by regretting that the House, instead of discussing Woman Suffrage, was discussing methods of penalising militant women. Mr. Rupert Gwynne said: "Nobody is in a more ridiculous position than the members on the Treasury Bench. They cannot address a meeting, or go to a railway station, or even get into a taxicab, without having detectives with them. Even if they like it, we, the public do not, because we have to pay for it. It is not worth the expense that it costs to have a detective staff following Cabinet Ministers wherever they go, whether in a private or a public capacity. "Further," said Mr. Gwynne, "if the Home Secretary is correct in saying that these women are prepared to die, and invite death, in order to advertise their devotion to their cause, does he really think they are going to mind if their funds are attached?" Another friend of the Suffragists, Mr. Wedgwood said: "We are dealing with a problem which is a very serious one indeed. To my mind, when you find a large body of public opinion, and a large number of people capable of going to these lengths, there is only one thing for a respectable House of Commons to do, and that is to consider very closely and clearly whether the complaints of those who complain are or are not justified. We are not justified in acting in panic. What it is our duty to do is to consider the rights and wrongs of these people who have acted in this way. I attribute myself no value to the vote, but I do think that when we seriously consider the question of Woman Suffrage, which has not been done by this House up to the present, we should remember that when you see people capable of this amount of self-sacrifice, that the one duty of the House of Commons is not to stamp the iron heel upon them, but to see how far their cause is just, and to act according to justice." When such a debate as this was possible in the House of Commons, it must be plain to every disinterested reader that militancy never set the cause of suffrage back, but on the contrary, set it forward at least half a century. When I remember how that same House of Commons, a few years ago, treated the mention of woman suffrage with scorn and contempt, how they permitted the most insulting things to be said of the women who were begging for their political freedom, how, with indecent laughter and coarse jokes they allowed suffrage bills to be talked out, I cannot but marvel at the change our militancy so quickly brought about. Mr. McKenna's speech was in itself a token of the complete surrender of the Government. Of course the promise of the Home Secretary that subscribers to our funds should, if possible, be held legally responsible for damage done to private property by the Suffragettes, was never meant to be adhered to. It was, in fact, a perfectly absurd promise, and I think that very few Members of Parliament were deceived by it. Our subscribers can always remain anonymous if they choose, and if it should ever be possible to attack them for our deeds, they would naturally take refuge behind that privilege. Our battles are practically over, we confidently believe. For the present at least our arms are grounded, for directly the threat of foreign war descended on our nation we declared a complete truce from militancy. What will come out of this European war--so terrible in its effects on the women who had no voice in averting it--so baneful in the suffering it must necessarily bring on innocent children--no human being can calculate. But one thing is reasonably certain, and that is that the Cabinet changes which will necessarily result from warfare will make future militancy on the part of women unnecessary. No future Government will repeat the mistakes and the brutality of the Asquith Ministry. None will be willing to undertake the impossible task of crushing or even delaying the march of women towards their rightful heritage of political liberty and social and industrial freedom. THE END 
4220	----	An Autobiography by Catherine Helen Spence CONTENTS CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE IN SCOTLAND. CHAPTER II. TOWARDS AUSTRALIA. CHAPTER III. A BEGINNING AT SEVENTEEN CHAPTER IV. LOVERS AND FRIENDS. CHAPTER V. NOVELS AND A POLITICAL INSPIRATION. CHAPTER VI. A TRIP TO ENGLAND. CHAPTER VII. MELROSE REVISITED. CHAPTER VIII. I VISIT EDINBURGH AND LONDON. CHAPTER IX. MEETING WITH J. S. MILL AND GEORGE ELIOT. CHAPTER X. RETURN FROM THE OLD COUNTRY. CHAPTER XI WARDS OF THE STATE. CHAPTER XII. PREACHING, FRIENDS, AND WRITING. CHAPTER XIII. MY WORK FOR EDUCATION. CHAPTER XIV. SPECULATION, CHARITY, AND A BOOK. CHAPTER XV. JOURNALISM AND POLITICS. CHAPTER XVI. SORROW AND CHANGE. CHAPTER XVII. IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. CHAPTER XVIII. BRITAIN, THE CONTINENT, AND HOME AGAIN. CHAPTER XIX. PROGRESS OF EFFECTIVE VOTING. CHAPTER XX. WIDENING INTERESTS. CHAPTER XXI PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND FEDERATION. CHAPTER XXII. A VISIT TO NEW SOUTH WALES. CHAPTER XXIII. MORE PUBLIC WORK. CHAPTER XXIV. THE EIGHTIETH MILESTONE AND THE END. CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE IN SCOTLAND. Sitting down at the age of eighty-four to give an account of my life, I feel that it connects itself naturally with the growth and development of the province of South Australia, to which I came with my family in the year 1839, before it was quite three years old. But there is much truth in Wordsworth's line, "the child is father of the man," and no less is the mother of the woman; and I must go back to Scotland for the roots of my character and Ideals. I account myself well-born, for My father and my mother loved each other. I consider myself well descended, going back for many generations on both sides of intelligent and respectable people. I think I was well brought up, for my father and mother were of one mind regarding the care of the family. I count myself well educated, for the admirable woman at the head of the school which I attended from the age of four and a half till I was thirteen and a half, was a born teacher in advance of her own times. In fact. like my own dear mother, Sarah Phin was a New Woman without knowing it. The phrase was not known in the thirties. I was born on October 31, 1825, the fifth of a family of eight born to David Spence and Helen Brodie, in the romantic village of Melrose, on the silvery Tweed, close to the three picturesque peaks of the Eildon Hills, which Michael Scott's familiar spirit split up from one mountain mass in a single night, according to the legend. It was indeed poetic ground. It was Sir Walter Scott's ground. Abbotsford was within two miles of Melrose, and one of my earliest recollections was seeing the long procession which followed his body to the family vault at Dryburgh Abbey. There was not a local note in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" or in the novels. "The Monastery" and "The Abbot," with which I was not familiar before I entered my teens. There was not a hill or a burn or a glen that had not a song or a proverb, or a legend about it. Yarrow braes were not far off. The broom of the Cowdenknowes was still nearer, and my mother knew the words as well as the tunes of the minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. But as all readers of the life of Scott know, he was a Tory, loving the past with loyal affection, and shrinking from any change. My father, who was a lawyer (a writer as it was called), and his father who was a country practitioner, were reformers, and so it happened that they never came into personal relations with the man they admired above all men in Scotland. It was the Tory doctor who attended to his health, and the Tory writer who was consulted about his affairs. I look back to a happy childhood. The many anxieties which reached both my parents were quite unknown to the children till the crisis in 1839. I do not know that I appreciated the beauty of the village I lived in so much with my own bodily eyes as through the songs and the literature, which were current talk. The old Abbey, with its 'prentice window, and its wonders in stonecarving, that Scott had written about and Washington Irving marvelled at--"Here lies the race of the House of Yair" as a tombstone--had a grand roll in it. In the churchyard of the old Abbey my people on the Spence side lay buried. In the square or market place there no longer stood the great tree described in The Monastery as standing just after Flodden Field, where the flowers of the forest had been cut down by the English; but in the centre stood the cross with steps up to it, and close to the cross was the well, to which twice a day the maids went to draw water for the house until I was nine years old, when we had pipes and taps laid on. The cross was the place for any public speaking, and I recalled, when I was recovering from the measles, the maid in whose charge I was, wrapped me in a shawl and took me with her to hear a gentleman from Edinburgh speak in favour of reform to a crowd gathered round. He said that the Tories had found a new name--they called themselves Conservatives because it sounded better. For his part he thought conserves were pickles, and he hoped all the Tories would soon find themselves in a pretty pickle. There were such shouts of laughter that I saw this was a great joke. We had gasworks in Melrose when I was 10 or 11, and a great joy to us children the wonderful light was. I recollect the first lucifer matches, and the wonder of them. My brother John had got 6d. from a visiting, uncle as a reward for buying him snuff to fill his cousin's silver snuffbox, and he spent the money in buying a box of lucifers, with the piece of sandpaper doubled, through which each match was to be smartly drawn, and he took all of us and some of his friends to the orchard, we called the wilderness, at the back of my grandfather Spence's house, and lighted each of the 50 matches, and we considered it a great exhibition. 'MY grandfather (old Dr. Spence) died before the era of lucifer matches. He used to get up early and strike a fire with flint and steel to boil the kettle and make a cup of tea to give to his wife in bed. He did it for his first wife (Janet Park), who was delicate, and he did the same for his second wife until her last fatal illness. It was a wonderful thing for a man to do in those days. He would not call the maid; he said young things wanted plenty of sleep. He had been a navy doctor, and was very intelligent. He trusted much to Nature and not too much to drugs. On the Sunday of the great annular eclipse of the sun in 1835, which was my brother John's eleventh birthday, he had a large double tooth extracted--not by a dentist, and gas was then unknown or any other anaesthetic, so he did not enjoy the eclipse as other people did. It took place in the afternoon, and there was no afternoon church. In summer we had two services--one in the forenoon and one in the afternoon. In winter we had two services at one sitting, which was a thing astonishing to English visitors. The first was generally called a lecture--a reading with comments, of a passage of Scripture--a dozen verses or more--and the second a regularly built sermon, with three or four heads, and some particulars, and a practical summing up. Prices and cost of living had fallen since my mother had married in 1815, three months after the battle of Waterloo. At that time tea cost 8/0 a lb., loaf sugar, 1/4, and brown sugar 11 1/2d. Bread and meat were then still at war prices, and calico was no cheaper than linen, and that was dear. She paid 3/6 a yard for fine calico to make petticoats. Other garments were of what was called home made linen. White cotton stockings at 4/9, and thinner at 3/9 each; silk stockings at 11/6. I know she paid 36/ for a yard of Brussels net to make caps of. It was a new thing to have net made in the loom. When a woman married she must wear caps at least in the morning. In 1838 my mother bought a chest of tea (84 lb.) for 20 pounds, a trifle under 5/0 a lb.; the retail price was 6/0--it was a great saving; and up to the time of our departure brown sugar cost 7 1/2d., and loaf sugar 10d. It is no wonder that these things were accounted luxuries. When a decent Scotch couple in South Australia went out to a station in the country in the forties and received their stores, the wife sat down at her quarter-chest of tea and gazed at her bag of sugar, and fairly wept to think of her old mother across the ocean, who had such difficulty in buying an ounce of tea and a pound of sugar. My mother even saw an old woman buy 1/4oz. of tea and pay 11/2d. for it, and another woman buy 1/4lb. of meat. We kept three maids. The cook got 8 pounds a year, the housemaid 7 pounds, and the nursemaid 6 pounds, paid half-yearly, but the summer half-year was much better paid than the winter, because there was the outwork in the fields, weeding and hoeing turnips and potatoes, and haymaking. The winter work in the house was heavier on account of the fires and the grate cleaning, but the wages were less. My mother gave the top wages in the district, and was considerate to her maids, but I blush yet to think how poorly those good women who made the comfort of my early home were paid for their labours. You could get a washerwoman for a shilling or 1/6 a day, but you must give her a glass of whisky as well as her food. You could get a sewing girl for a shilling or less, without the whisky. And yet cheap as sewing was it was the pride of the middle-elms women of those days that they did it all themselves at home. Half of the time of girls' schools was given to sewing when mother was taught. Nearly two hours a day was devoted to it in my time. A glass of whisky in Scotland in the thirties cost less than a cup of tea. I recollect my father getting a large cask of whisky direct from the distillery which cost 6/6 a gallon, duty paid. A bottle of inferior whisky could be bought at the grocer's for a shilling. It is surprising how much alcoholic beverages entered into the daily life, the business, and the pleasures of the people in those days. No bargain could be made without them. Christenings, weddings, funerals--all called for the pouring out of strong drink. If a lady called, the port and sherry decanters were produced, and the cake basket. If a gentleman, probably it was the spirit decanter. After the 3 o'clock dinner there was whisky and hot water and sugar, and generally the came after the 10 o'clock supper. Drinking habits were very prevalent among men, and were not in any way disgraceful, unless excessive. But there was less drinking among women than there is now, because public opinion was strongly against it. Without being abstainers, they were temperate. With the same heredity and the same environment, you would see all the brothers pretty hard drinkers and all the sisters quite straight. Such is the effect of public opinion. Nothing else has been so powerful in changing these customs as the cheapening of tea and coffee and cocoa, but especially tea. My brothers went to the parish school, one of the best in the county. The endowment from the tiends or tithes, extorted by John Knox from the Lords of the congregations, who had seized on the church lands, was more meagre for the schoolmasters than for the clergy. I think Mr. Thomas Murray had only 33 pounds in Money, a schoolhouse, and a residence and garden, and he had to make up a livelihood from school fees, which began at 2/ a quarter for reading, 3/6 when writing was taught, and 51 for arithmetic. Latin, I think, cost 10/6 a quarter, but it included English. Mr. Murray adopted a phonic system of teaching reading, not so complete as the late Mr. Hartley formulated for our South Australian schools, and was most successful with it. He not only used maps, but he had blank maps-a great innovation. My mother was only taught geography during the years in which she was "finished" in Edinburgh, and never saw a map then. She felt interested in geography when her children were learning it. No boy in Mr. Murray's school was allowed to be idle; every spare minute was given to arithmetic. In the parish school boys of all classes were taught. Sir David Brewster's sons went to it; but there were fewer girls, partly because no needlework was taught there, and needlework was of supreme importance. Mr. Murray was session clerk, for which he received 5 pounds a year. On Saturday afternoons he might do land measuring, like Goldsmith's schoolmaster in "The Deserted Village"-- Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And even the rumour ran that he could gauge. My mother felt that her children were receiving a much better education than she had had. The education seemed to begin after she left school. Her father united with six other tenant farmers in buying the third edition of "The Encyclopedia Britannica," seven for the price of six. Probably it was only in East Lothian that seven such purchasers could be found, and my mother studied it well, as also the unabridged Johnson's Dictionary in two volumes. She learned the Greek letters, so that she could read the derivations, but went no further. She saw the fallacy of Mr. Pitt's sinking fund when her father believed in it. To borrow more than was needed so as to put aside part on compound interest, would make the price of money rise. And why should not private people adopt the same way of getting rid of debts? The father said it would not do for them at all--it was only practicable for a nation. The things I recollect of the life in the village of Melrose, of 700 inhabitants, have been talked over with my mother, and many embodied in a little MS. volume of reminiscences of her life. I hold more from her than from my father; but, as he was an unlucky speculator, I inherit from him Hope, which is invaluable to a social or political reformer. School holidays were only a rarity in harvest time for the parish school. At Miss Phin's we had, besides, a week at Christmas. The boys had only New Year's Day. Saturday was only a half-holiday. We all had a holiday for Queen Victoria's coronation, and I went with a number of school fellows to see Abbotsford, not for the first time in my life. Two mail coaches--the Blucher and the Chevy Chase--ran through Melrose every day. People went to the post office for their letters, and paid for them on delivery. My two elder sisters--Agnes, who died of consumption at the age of 16, and Jessie, afterwards Mrs. Andrew Murray, of Adelaide and Melbourne, went to boarding school with their aunt, Mary Spence, lit Upper Wooden, halfway between Jedburgh and Kelso. Roxburghshire is rich in old monasteries. The border lands were more safe in the hands of the church than under feudal lords engaged in perpetual fighting, and the vassals of the abbeys had generally speaking, a more secure existence. Kelso. Jedburgh, and Dryburgh Abbeys lay in fertile districts, and I fancy that when these came into the hands of the Lords of the congregation, the vassals looked back with regret on the old times. I was not sent to Wooden, but kept at home, and I went to a dayschool called by the very popish name of St. Mary's Convent, though it was quite sufficiently Protestant. My mother had the greatest confidence in the lady who was at the head of it. She had been a governess in good situations, and had taught herself Latin, so that she might fit the boys of the family to take a good place in the Edinburgh High School. She discovered that she had an incurable disease, a form of dropsy, which compelled her to lie down for some time every day, and this she considered she could not do as a governess. So she determined to risk her savings, and start a boarding and day school in Melrose, a beautiful and healthy neighbourhood, and with the aid of a governess, impart what was then considered the education of a gentlewoman to the girls in the neighbourhood. She took with her her old mother, and a sister who managed the housekeeping, and taught the pupils all kinds of plain and fancy needlework. She succeeded, and she lived till the year 1866, although most of her teaching was done from her sofa. When my mother was asked what it was that made Phin so successful, and so esteemed, she said it was her commonsense. The governesses were well enough, but the invalid old lady was the life and soul of the school. There were about 14 boarders, and nearly as many day scholars there, so long as there was no competition. When that came there was a falling off, but my young sister Mary and I were faithful till the day when after nine years at the same school, I went with Jessie to Wooden, to Aunt Mary's, to hear there that my father was ruined, and had to leave Melrose and Scotland for ever, and that we must all go to Australia. That was in April, 1839. As I said, I had a very happy childhood. The death of my eldest sister at 16, and of my youngest sister at two years old, did not sink into the mind of a child as it did into that of my parents, and although they were seriously alarmed about my health when I was 12 years old, when I developed symptoms similar to those of Agnes at the same age, I was not ill enough to get at all alarmed. I was annoyed at having to stay away from school for three months. When the collapse came Jessie had a dear friend of some years' standing, and I had one whom had known only for some months, but I had spent a month with her in Edinburgh at Christmas, 1838, and we exchanged letters weekly through the box which came from Edinburgh with my brother John's, washing. It was too expensive for us to write by the post. Well, neither of our friends wrote a word to us. With regard to mine it was not to be wondered at much--she was only 13--but the other was more surprising. It was not till 1865 that an old woman told me that when Miss F. B. came to return some books and music to her to give to my aunt in Melrose, "she just sat in the chair and cried as if her heart would break." She was not quite a free agent. Very few single women were free agents in 1839. We were hopelessly ruined, our place would know us no more. The only long holidays I had in the year I spent at Thornton Loch, in East Lothian, 40 miles away. I did not know that my father was a heavy speculator in foreign wheat, and I thought his keen interest in the market in Mark lane was on account of the Thornton Loch crops, in which first my grandfather and afterwards the three Maiden aunts were deeply concerned. My mother's father, John Brodie, was one of the most enterprising agriculturists in the most advanced district of Great Britain. He won a prize of two silver salvers from the Highland Society for having the largest area of drilled wheat sown. He was called up twice to London to give evidence before Parliamentary committees on the corn laws, and he naturally approved of them, because, with three large farms held on 19 years' leases at war prices, the influx of cheap wheat from abroad would mean ruin. He proved that he paid 6,000 pounds a year for these three farms--two he worked himself, the third was for his eldest son; but he was liable for the rent. On his first London trip, my aunt Margaret accompanied him, and on his second he took my mother. That was in the year 1814, and both of them noted from the postchaise that farming was not up to what was done in East Lothian. My grandfather Brodie was a speculating man, and he lost nearly all his savings through starting, along with others, an East Lothian Bank, because the local banker had been ill used by the British Linen Company. He put in only 1,000 pounds; but was liable for all, and, as many of his fellow shareholders were defaulters, it cost 15,000 pounds before all was over, and if it had not been that he left the farm in the capable hands of Aunt Margaret, there would have been little or nothing left for the family. When he had a stroke of paralysis he wanted to turn over Thornton Loch, the only farm he then had, to his eldest son, but there were three daughters, and one of them said she would like to carry it on, and she did so. She was the most successful farmer in the country for 30 years, and then she transferred it to a nephew. The capacity for business of my Aunt Margaret, the wit and charm of my brilliant Aunt Mary, and the sound judgment and accurate memory of my own dear mother, showed me early that women were fit to share in the work of this world, and that to make the world pleasant for men was not their only mission. My father's sister Mary was also a remarkable and saintly woman, though I do not think she was such a born teacher as Miss Phin. When my father was a little boy, not 12 years old, an uncle from Jamaica came home for a visit. He saw his sister Janet a dying woman, with a number of delicate-looking children, and he offered to take David with him and treat him like his own son. No objections were made. The uncle was supposed to be well-to-do, and he was unmarried, but he took fever and died, and was found to be not rich but insolvent. The boy could read and write, and he got something to do on a plantation till his father sent money to pay his passage home. He must have been supposed to be worth something, for he got a cask of rum for his wages, which was shipped home, and when the duty had been paid was drunk in the doctor's household. But the boy had been away only 21 months, and he returned to find his mother dead, and two or three little brothers and sisters dead and buried, and his father married again to his mother's cousin, Katherine Swanston, an old maid of 45, who, however, two years afterwards was the mother of a fine big daughter, so that Aunt Helen Park's scheme for getting the money for her sister's children failed. In spite of my father's strong wish to be a farmer, and not a writer or attorney, there was no capital to start a farm upon, so he was indentured to Mr. Erskine, and after some years began business in Melrose for himself, and married Lelen (Helen?) Brodie. His elder brother John went as a surgeon in the Royal Navy--before he was twenty-one. The demand for surgeons was great during the war time. He was made a Freemason before the set age, because in case of capture friends from the fraternity might be of great use. He did not like his original profession, especially when after the peace he must be a country practitioner like his father, at every one's beck and call, so he was articled to his brother, and lived in the house till he married and settled at Earlston, five miles off. Uncle John Spence was a scholarly man, shy but kindly, who gave to us children most of the books we possessed. They were not in such abundance as children read nowadays, but they were read and re-read. In these early readings the Calvinistic teaching of the church and the shorter catechism was supported and exemplified. The only secular books to counteract them were the "Evenings at Home" and Miss Edgeworth's "Tales for Young and Old!" The only cloud on my young life was the gloomy religion, which made me doubt of my own salvation and despair of the salvation of any but a very small proportion of the people in the world. Thus the character of God appeared unlovely, and it was wicked not to love God; and this was my condemnation. I had learned the shorter catechism with the proofs from Scripture, and I understood the meaning of the dogmatic theology. Watts's hymns were much more easy to learn, but the doctrine was the same. There was no getting away from the feeling that the world was under a curse ever since that unlucky appleeating in the garden of Eden. Why, oh! why had not the sentence of death been carried out at once, and a new start made with more prudent people? The school in which as a day scholar I passed nine years of my life was more literary than many which were more pretentious. Needlework was of supreme importance, certainly, but during the hour and a half every day, Saturday's half-holiday not excepted, which was given to it by the whole school at once (odd half-hours were also put in), the best readers took turns about to read some book selected by Miss Phin. We were thus trained to pay attention. History, biography, adventures, descriptions, and story books were read. Any questions or criticisms about our sewing, knitting, netting, &c., were carried on in a low voice, and we learned to work well and quickly, and good reading aloud was cultivated. First one brother and then another had gone to Edinburgh for higher education than could be had at Melrose Parish School, and I wanted to go to a certain institution, the first of the kind, for advanced teaching for girls, which had a high reputation. I was a very ambitious girl at 13. I wanted to be a teacher first, and a great writer afterwards. The qualifications for a teacher would help me to rise to literary fame, so I obtained from my father a promise that I should go to Edinburgh next year; but he could not keep it. He was a ruined man. CHAPTER II. TOWARDS AUSTRALIA. Although my mother's family had lost heavily by him, her mother gave us 500 pounds to make a start in South Australia. An 80-acre section was built for 80 pounds, and this entitled us to the steerage passage of four adults. This helped for my elder sister and two brothers (my younger brother David was left for his education with his aunts in Scotland), but we had to have another female, so we took with us a servant girl--most ridiculous, it seems now. I was under the statutory age of 15. The difference between steerage and intermediate fares had to be made up, and we sailed from Greenock in July, 1839, in the barque Palmyra, 400 tons, bound for Adelaide, Port Phillip, and Sydney. The Palmyra was advertised to carry a cow and an experienced surgeon. Intermediate passengers had no more advantage of the cow than steerage folks, and except for the privacy of separate cabins and a pound of white biscuit per family weekly, we fared exactly as the other immigrants did, though the cost was double. Twice a week we had either fresh meat or tinned meat, generally soup and boudle, and the biscuit seemed half bran, and sometimes it was mouldy. But our mother thought it was very good for us to endure hardship, and so it was. There were 150 passengers, mostly South Australian immigrants, in the little ship. The first and second class passengers were bound for Port Philip and Sydney in greater proportion than for Adelaide There was in the saloon the youthful William Milne, and in the intermediate was Miss Disher, his future wife. He became President of the Legislative Council, and was knighted. There was my brother, J. B. Spence, who also sat in the Council, and was at one time Chief Secretary. There was George Melrose, a successful South Australian pastoralist; there was my father's valued clerk, Thomas Laidlaw, who was long in the Legislative Council of New South Wales and the leading man in the town of Yass. "Honest Torn of Yass" was his soubriquet. Bound for Melbourne there were Mr. and Mrs. Duncan, of Melrose, and Charles Williamson, from Hawick, who founded a great business house in Collins Street. There were Langs from Selkirk, and McHaffies, who became pastoralists. Our next cabin mate, who brought out a horse, had the Richmond punt when there was no bridge there. All the young men were reading a thick book brought out by the Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge about sheep, but they could dance in the evenings to the strains of Mr. Duncan's violin, and although I was not 14, I was in request as a partner, as ladies were scarce. Jessie Spence and Eliza Disher, who were grown up, were the belles of the Palmyra. Of all the passengers in the ship the young doctor, John Logan Campbell, has had the most distinguished career. Next to Sir George Grey he has had most to do with the development of New Zealand. He is now called the Grand Old Man of Auckland. He had his twenty-first birthday, this experienced surgeon(!) in the same week as I had my fourteenth, while the Palmyra was lying off Holdfast Bay (now Glenelg) before we could get to the old Port Adelaide to discharge. My brother saw him in 1883, but I have not set eye on him since that week in 1839. We have corresponded frequently since my brother's death. In his book "Poenama," written for his children, there is a picture of the Palmyra, with an account of the voyage and the only sensational incident in it. We had a collision in the Irish Sea, and our foremast was broken, so that we had to return to Greenock for repairs, and then obtained the concession of white biscuit for the second class for one day in the week. Sir John Campbell's gift of a beautiful park to the citizens of Auckland was made while my brother John was alive. Just recently he has given money and plans for building and equipping the first free kindergarten in Auckland--perhaps in New Zealand--and as this includes a training college for the students it is very complete. These Palmyra passengers have made their mark on the history of Australia and New Zealand. It is surprising what a fine class of people immigrated to Australia in these days to face all the troubles of a new country. The first issue of The Register was printed in London, and gave a glowing account of the province that was to be--its climate, its resources, the sound principles on which it was founded. It is sometimes counted as a reproach that South Australia was founded by doctrinaires and that we retain traces of our origin; to me it is our glory. In the land laws and the immigration laws it struck out a new path, and sought to found a new community where the sexes should be equal, and where land, labour, and capital should work harmoniously together. Land was not to be given away in huge grants, as had been done in New South Wales and Western Australia, to people with influence or position, but was to be sold at the high price of 20/ an acre. The price should be not too high to bring out people to work on the land. The Western Australian settlers had been wellnigh starved, because there was no labour to give real value to the paper or parchment deeds. The cheapest fare third class was from 17 pounds to 20 pounds, and the family immigration, which is the best, was quite out of the reach of those who were needed. The immigrants were not bound to work for any special individual or company, unless by special contract voluntarily made. They were often in better circumstances after the lapse of a few years than the landbuyers, and, in the old days, the owner of an 80-acre section worked harder and for longer hours than any hired man would do, or could be expected to do. In the South Australian Public Library there is a curious record--the minutes and proceedings of the South Australian Literary Society, in the years 1831-5. As the province was non-existent at that time, this cultivation of literature seems premature, but the members, 40 in number, were its founders, and pending the passage of the Bill by the Imperial Parliament, they met fortnightly in London to discuss its prospects, and to read papers on exploration and on matters of future development and government. The first paper was on education for the new land, and was read by Richard Davies Hanson. The South Australian Company and Mr. George Fife Angas came to the rescue by buying a considerable area of land and making up the amount of capital which was required. It is interesting to note that the casting vote in the House of Lords which decided that the province of South Australia should come into existence was given by the Duke of Wellington. Adelaide was to have been called Wellington, but somehow the Queen Consort's name carried the day. The name of the conquerer of Waterloo is immortalized in the capital of the Dominion of New Zealand, in the North Island, which, like South Australia, was founded on the Wakefield principle of selling land for money to be applied for immigration. The 40 signatures in the records of the South Australian Literary Society are most interesting to an old colonist like myself, and the names of many of them are perpetuated in those of our rivers and our streets:--Torrens, Wright, Brown, Gilbert, Gouger, Hanson, Kingston, Wakefield, Morphett, Childers, Hill (Rowland), Stephens, Mawn, Furniss, Symonds. The second issue of The Register was printed in Adelaide. It was also The Government Gazette. It gave the proclamation of the province, which was made under the historic gum tree near Holdfast Bay, now Glenelg. It also records the sales of the town acres which had not been allotted to the purchasers of preliminary sections. These were of 134 acres, and a town acre, at the price of 12/6 an acre. This was a temptation to invest at the very first, because afterwards the price was 20/ an acre, without any city lot. From this cheap investment came the frequent lamentation, "Why did not I buy Waterhouse's corner for 12/6?" But there was more than 12/6 needed. The investment was of 80 pounds, which secured the ownership of the corner block facing King William street and Rundle street, and besides 134 acres of valuable suburban land. There were connected with The Register from the earliest days the enterprising head of the house. Robert Thomas, who must have been well aided by his intelligent wife. The sons and daughters took their place in colonial society. Mr. George Stevenson left the staff of The Globe and Traveller, a good old London Paper, to try his fortunes in the new Province founded on the Wakefield principle, as Private Secretary to the first Governor (Capt. John Hindmarsh, R.N.). It is matter of history how the Governor and the Commissioner of Lands differed and quarrelled, the latter having the money and the former the power of government, and it was soon found that Mr. Stevenson could wield a trenchant pen. He had been on the "Traveller" branch of the London paper what would be called now a travelling correspondent. The Governor was replaced by Col. Gawler, and Mr. Stevenson went on The Register as editor. Mrs. Stevenson was a clever woman, and could help her husband. She knew Charles Dickens, and still better, the family of Hogarth, into which he married. My father and mother were surprised to find so good a paper and so well printed in the infant city. Then there were A. H. Davis, of the Reedbeds, and Nathaniel Hailes, who wrote under the cognomen of "Timothy Short," who had been publisher and bookseller. There was first Samuel Stephens, who came out in the first ship for the South Australian Company, and married a fellow passenger, Charlotte Hudson Beare, and died two years after, and then Edward, manager of the South Australian Bank, and later, John Stephens who founded The Weekly Observer, and afterwards bought The Register. These all belonged to a literary family. People came out on the smallest of salaries with big families--H. T. H. Beare on 100 pounds a year as architect, for the South Australian Company, and he had 18 children by two wives. I do not know what salary Mr. William Giles came out on with nine children and a young second wife, but I am sure it was less than 300 pounds. His family in all counted 21. But things were bad in the old country before the great lift given by railways, and freetrade, which made England the carrier for the world; and the possibilities of the new country were shown in that first issue of The Register in London in the highest colours. Not too high by any means in the light of what has been accomplished in 73 years, but there was a long row to hoe first, and few of the pioneers reaped the prizes. But, in spite of hardships and poverty and struggle, the early colonial life was interesting, and perhaps no city of its size at the time contained as large a population of intelligent and educated people as Adelaide. Mrs. Oliphant, writing in 1885 at the age of 57, says that reading the "Life of George Eliot" made her think of an autobiography, and this was written at the saddest crisis of her life. She survived her husband and all her children, and had just lost the youngest, the posthumous boy. For them and for the family of a brother she had carried on the strenuous literary work--fiction, biography, criticism, and history--and when she died at the age of 69 she had not completed the history of a great publishing house--that of Blackwood. Her life tallies with mine on many points, but it is not till I have completed my 84 years that her sad narrative impels me to set down what appears noteworthy in a life which was begun in similar circumstances, but which was spent mainly in Australia. The loss of memory which I see in many who are younger than myself makes me feel that while I can recollect I should fix the events and the ideals of my life by pen and ink. Like Mrs. Oliphant, I was born (three years earlier) in the south of Scotland. Like her I had an admirable mother but she lost hers at the age of 60, while I kept mine till she was nearly 97. Like Mrs. Oliphant, I was captivated by the stand made by the Free Church as a protest against patronage, and like her I shook off the shackles of the narrow Calvinism of Presbyterianism, and emerged into more light and liberty. But unlike Mrs. Oliphant, I have from my earliest youth taken an interest in politics, and although I have not written the tenth part of what she has done, I have within the last 20 years addressed many audiences in Australia and America, and have preached over 100 sermons. My personal influence has been exercised through the voice more strongly than by the pen, and in the growth and development of South Australia, to which I came with my parents and brothers and sisters when I was just 14, and the province not three years old, there have been opportunities for usefulness which might not have offered if I had remained in Melrose, in Sir Walter Scott's country. CHAPTER III. A BEGINNING AT SEVENTEEN Perhaps my turn for economics was partly inherited from my mother, and emphasized by my father having been an unlucky speculator in foreign wheat, tempted thereto by the sliding scale, which varied from 33/ a quarter, when wheat was as cheap as it was in 1837, to 1/ a quarter, when it was 70/ in 1839. It was supposed that my father had made his fortune when he took his wheat out of bond but losses and deterioration during seven years, and interest on borrowed money--credit having been strained to the utmost--brought ruin and insolvency, and he had to go to South Australia, followed by his wife and family soon after. It seems strange that this disaster should be the culmination of the peace, after the long Napoleonic war. When my father married in 1815 he showed he was making 600 pounds a year, with 2,000 pounds book debts, as a writer or attorney and as agent for a bank. But the business fell off, the book debts could not be collected; the bank called up the advances; and for 24 years there was a struggle. My mother would not have her dowry of 1,500 pounds and other money left by an aunt settled on herself--neither her father nor herself approved of it--the wife's fortune should come and go with her husband's. My father first speculated in hops and lost heavily. He took up unlucky people, whom other business men had drained. I suppose he caught at straws. He had the gentlest of manners--"the politest man in Melrose," the old shoemaker called him. My paternal grandfather was Dr. William Spence, of Melrose. His father was minister of the Established Church at Cockburn's Path, Berwickshire. His grandfather was a small landed proprietor, but he had to sell Spence's mains, and the name was changed to Chirnside. So (as my father used to say) he was sprung from the tail of the gentry; while my mother was descended from the head of the commonalty. The Brodies had been tenant farmers in East Lothian for six or seven generations, though they originally came from the north. My grandfather Brodie thought abrogation of the Corn Laws meant ruin for the farmers, who had taken 19 years' leases at war prices. But during the war times both landlords and farmers coined money, while the labourers had high prices for food and very little increase in their wages. I recollect both grandfathers well, and through the accurate memory of my mother t can tell how middle-class people in lowland Scotland lived and dressed and travelled, entertained visitors, and worshipped God. She told me of the "dear years" 1799 and 1800, and what a terrible thing a bad crop was, when the foreign ports were closed by Napoleon. She told me that but for the shortlived Peace of Amiens she never heard of anything but war till the Battle of Waterloo settled it three months before her marriage. From her own intimate relations with her grandmother, Margaret Fernie Brodie, who was born in 1736, and died in 1817, she knew how two generations before her people lived and thought. So that I have a grasp on the past which many might envy, and yet the present and the future are even more to me, as they were to my mother. On her death in 1887 I wrote a quatrain for her memorial, and which those who knew her considered appropriate-- HELEN BRODIE SPENCE Born at Whittingham, Scotland, 1791. Died at College Town, Adelaide, South Australia, 1887. Half a long life 'mid Scotland's heaths and pines, And half among our South Australian vines; Though loving reverence bound her to the past, Eager for truth and progress to the last. Although my mother had the greatest love for Sir Walter Scott, and the highest appreciation of his poems and novels, she never liked Melrose. She liked Australia better after a while. Indeed, when we arrived in November, 1839, to a country so hot, so dry, so new, we felt like the good old founder of The Adelaide Register, Robert Thomas, when he came to the land described in his own paper as "flowing with milk and honey." Dropped anchor at Holdfast Bay. "When I saw the place at which we were to land I felt inclined to go and cut my throat." When we sat down on a log in Light square, waiting till my father brought the key of the wooden house In Gilles street, in spite of the dignity of my 14 years just attained, I had a good cry. There had been such a drought that they had a dearth, almost a famine. People like ourselves with 80 acre land orders were frightened to attempt cultivation in an unknown climate, with seed wheat at 25/ a bushel or more, and stuck to the town. We lived a month in Gilles street, then we bought a large marquee, and pitched it on Brownhill Creek, above where Mitcham now stands, bought 15 cows and a pony and cart, and sold the milk in town at 1/ a quart. But how little milk the cows gave in those days! After seven months' encamping, in which the family lived chiefly on rice--the only cheap food, of which we bought a ton--we came with our herd to West terrace, Adelaide. My father got the position of Town Clerk at 150 pounds a year twelve months after our arrival, and kept it till the municipal corporation was ended, as the City of Adelaide was too poor to maintain the machinery; but 75 pounds was the rent of the house and yards. We sold the cows, and my brothers went farming, and we took cheaper quarters in Halifax street. The Town Clerkship, however, was the means of giving me a lesson in electoral methods. Into the Municipal Bill, drawn up under the superintendence of Rowland Hill (afterward the great post office reformer, but then the Secretary of the Colonization Commissioner for South Australia), he had introduced a clause providing for proportional representation at the option of the ratepayers. The twentieth part of the Adelaide ratepayers by uniting their votes upon one man instead of voting for 18, could on the day before the ordinary election appear and declare this their intention, and he would be a Councillor on their votes. In the first election, November, 1840, two such quorums elected two Councillors. The workmen in Borrow and Goodear's building elected their foreman, and another quorum of citizens elected Mr. William Senden; and this was the first quota representation in the world. My father explained this unique provision to me at the time, and showed its bearings for minority representation. After the break up of the municipality and the loss of his income my father lost health and spirits. The brothers did not succeed in the country. My sister had married Andrew Murray, an apparently prosperous man, in 1841, but the protecting of the Government bills bought for remitting to England, and other causes, brought down every mercantile firm in Adelaide except A. L. Elder, who had not been long established; and Murray & Greig came down too. Mr. Murray was a ready writer, and got work on The South Australian, the newspaper which supported Capt. Grey's policy of retrenchment and stoppage of public works; so, with a small salary, he managed to live. When I left Scotland I brought with me a letter of recommendation from my teacher, Miss Sarah Phin, concerning my qualifications and my turn for teaching. I don't know if it really did me any good, for the suspicious look and the question about how old I was at the time embarrassed me. Of course I was only 13 1/2 and probably my teacher over-estimated me a little, but here is, the letter, yellow with the dust of over 70 years. Melrose. June 20, 1839. My dearest Catherine--Our mutual friend, Mrs. Duncan, told me that you were not to sail for Australia till next month, and I have been thinking if my poor testimonial to your worth and abilities could be of any service to you I ought to give it but how can I trust myself?--for could any one read what I feel my heart dictates it would be thought absurd. You were always one of the greatest ornaments of my school, best girl and the best scholar, and from the time you could put three letters together you have evinced a turn for teaching--so clear-headed and so patient, and so thoroughly upright in word and deed, and your knowledge of the Scriptures equal to that of many students of Divinity, so should you ever become a teacher you have nothing to fear. You will be able to undertake both the useful and the ornamental branches of education--French, Italian, and Music you thoroughly understand. I feel conscious that you will succeed. Please to remember me to your excellent mother, and with love to Miss Spence and my darling Mary, believe me, my beloved Catherine, your affectionate friend and teacher. Sarah Phin. My knowledge of music was not great, even in those days, but I could teach beginners for two or three years with fair success. We thought that my mother and the two eldest girls could start a school, and brought out with us a good selection of schoolbooks, bought from Oliver J. Boyd. Edinburgh, superior to the English books obtainable here, which we used up in time; but we dared not launch out into such a venture in 1840, and my sister Jessie had no desire to teach at all. The years at Brownhill Creek and West terrace were the most unhappy of my life. I suffered from the want of some intellectual activity, and from the sense of frustrated ambition and religious despair. The few books we had, or which we could borrow, I read over and over again. Aikin's "British Poets," a gift from Uncle John Spence, and Goldsmith's complete works, a school prize of my brother William's, were thoroughly mastered, and the Waverley novels down to "Quentin Durward" were well absorbed. I read in Chambers's Journal of daily governesses getting a shilling an hour, and I told my friend, Mrs. Haining, that I would go out for 6d. an hour. Although she disliked that way of putting it, it was really on that basis that I had made my beginning when I reached the age of 17. In the meantime I had taught my younger sister Mary (afterwards Mrs. W. J. Wren) all I knew, and in the columns of The South Australian I wrote an occasional letter or a few verses. Through Mr. George Tinline we made the acquaintance of Mrs. Samuel Stephens her brother, Thomas Hudson Beare, and his family, who had all come out in the Duke of York, and lived six months on Kangaroo Island before South Australia was proclaimed a British province. I have been mixed up so much with this family that it is often supposed that they were relatives, but it was not so. Samuel Stephens had died from an accident two years after his marriage to a lady much older and much richer than himself, and she was living on two acres in North Adelaide, bought with her money at the first sale of city lands in 1837, and Mr. Tinline boarded with her till his marriage. The nephews, and especially the nieces, of the old lady interested me--Lucy, the eldest, a handsome girl, was about two years younger than myself; Arabella, about the age of my sister Mary; Elizabeth, the baby Beare, who was the first white person to set foot on South Australian soil after the foundation of the province, died from a burning accident when quite young. The only survivor of that first family now is William L. Beare (84), held in honour as one of our earliest pioneers. By a second marriage there were nine more children. Several died young, but some still survive. It was not till 1843 that I went as a daily governess at the rate of 6d. an hour, and gave two hours five days a week to the families of the Postmaster-General, the Surveyor-General, and the Private Secretary. Thus I earned three guineas a month. I don't recollect taking holidays, except a week at Christmas. I enjoyed the work, and I was proud of the payment. My mother said she never felt the bitterness of poverty after I began to earn money, and the shyness which, in spite of all her instructions and encouragement, I had felt with all strangers, disappeared when I felt independent. When a girl is very poor, and feels herself badly dressed, she cannot help being shy, especially if she has a good deal of Scotch pride. I think mother felt more sorry for me in those early days than for the others, because I was so ambitious, and took religious difficulties so hard. How old I felt at 17. Indeed, at 14 I felt quite grown up. In 1843 I felt I had begun the career in Australia that I had anticipated in Scotland. I was trusted to teach little girls, and they interested me, each individual with a difference. I had seen things I had written in print. If I was one of the oldest in feeling of the young folk in South Australia in my teens, I am the youngest woman in feeling in my eighties; so I have had abundant compensation. CHAPTER IV. LOVERS AND FRIENDS. It is always supposed that thoughts of love and marriage are the chief concerns in a girl's life, but it was not the case with me. I had only two offers of marriage in my life, and I refused both. The first might have been accepted if it had not been for the Calvinistic creed that made me shrink from the possibility of bringing children into the world with so little chance of eternal salvation, so I said. "No" to a very clever young man, with whom I had argued on many points, and with whom, if I had married him, I should have argued till one of us died! I was 17, and had just begun to earn money. I told him why I had refused him, and that it was final. In six weeks he was engaged to another woman. My second offer was made to me when I was 23 by a man aged 55, with three children. He was an artist, whose second wife and several children had been murdered by the Maoris near Wanganui during the Maori insurrection of the forties, and he had come to Adelaide with the three survivors. The massacre of that family was only one of the terrible tragedies of that time, but it was not the less shocking. The Maoris had never been known to kill a woman, and when the house was attacked, Mr. Gilfillan got out of a back window to call the soldiers to their help. Though struck on the back of the head and the neck and scarred for life--owing to which he was always compelled to wear his hair long--he succeeded in his mission. His wife put her own two children through the window, and they toddled off hand in hand until they met their father returning with the soldiers. The eldest daughter, a girl of 13, escaped with a neighbour's child, a baby in arms. She was seen by the Maoris, struck on the forehead with a stone axe, and left unconscious. The crying of the baby roused her, and she went to the cowyard and milked a cow to get milk for the hungry child, and there she was found by the soldiers. She was queer in her ways and thoughts afterwards, and, it was said, always remained 13 years old. She died in November last, aged 74. Her stepmother and the baby and her own brother and sister were murdered one by one as they tried to escape by the same window that had led the rest of the family to safety. One of the toddling survivors still lives in New Zealand. Now, these are all the chances of marriage I have had in my life. Dickens, in "David Copperfield," speaks of an old maid who keeps the remembrance of some one who might have made her an offer, the shadowy Pidger, in her heart until her death. I cannot forget these two men. I am constantly meeting with the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of the first. As for the other, Andrew Murray gave me a fine landscape painted by John A. Gilfillan as a slight acknowledgment of services rendered to his newspaper when he left it to go to Melbourne, and it hangs up in my sitting room for all to see. Mr. Gilfillan had a commission to paint "The Landing of Capt. Cook" with the help of Portraits and miniatures of the principal personages, and some sketches of his of Adelaide in 1849 are in the Adelaide Art Gallery. If the number of lovers has been few, no woman in Australia has been richer in friends. This narrative will show what good friends--men as well as women--have helped me and sympathized in my work and my aims. I believe that if I had been in love, especially if I had been disappointed in love, my novels would have been stronger and more interesting; but I kept a watch over myself, which I felt I knew I needed, for I was both imaginative and affectionate. I did not want to give my heart away. I did not desire a love disappointment, even for the sake of experience. I was 30 years old before the dark veil of religious despondency was completely lifted from my soul, and by that time I felt myself booked for a single life. People married young if they married at all in those days. The single aunts put on caps at 30 as a sort of signal that they accepted their fate; and, although I did not do so, I felt a good deal the same. I went on with daily teaching for some years, during which my father's health declined, but before his death two things had happened to cheer him. My brother John left Myponga and came to town, and obtained a clerkship in the South Australian Bank at 100 pounds a year. It was whilst occupying a position in the bank that he had some slight connection with the notorious Capt. Starlight, afterwards the hero of "Robbery Under Arms," for through his hands much of the stolen money passed. In 1900, when Mrs. Young and I were leaving Melbourne on our visit to Sydney, we were introduced to "Rolf Boldrewood," the author of that well-known story. His grave face lit up with a smile when my friend referred to the author of her son's hero. "Ah!" and he shook his head slowly. "I'm not quite sure about the wisdom of making heroes of such sorry stuff," he replied. I thought I could do better with a school. I was 20, and my sister Mary nearly 16, and my mother could help. My school opened in May, 1846, a month before my father's death, and he thought that our difficulties were over. My younger brother, David Wauchope, had been left behind for his education with the three maiden aunts, but he came out about the end of that year, and began life in the office of the Burra Mine at a small salary. My eldest brother William, was not successful in the country, and went to Western Australia for some years, and later to New Zealand, where he died in his eightieth year, soon after the death of my brother John in his seventy-ninth, leaving me the only survivor of eight born and of six who grew to full age. My eldest sister Agnes died of consumption at the age of 16; and, as my father's mother and four of his brothers and sisters had died of this malady, it was supposed to be in the family. The only time I was kept out of school during the nine years at Miss Phin's was when I was 12 when I had a cough and suppuration of the glands of the neck. As this was the way in which Agnes's illness had begun, my parents were alarmed, though I had no idea of it. I was leeched and blistered and drugged; I was put into flannel for the only time in my life; I was sent away for change of air; but no one could discover that the cough was from the lungs. It passed away with the cold weather, and I cannot say that I have had any illness since. My father died of decline, but, if he had been more fortunate, I think he would have lived much longer. Probably my mother's life was prolonged beyond that of a long-lived family by her coming to Australia in middle life; and if I ever had any tendency to consumption, the climate must have helped me. There were no special precautions against infection in those days: but no other member of the family took it, and the alarm about me was three years after Agnes's death. But to go on to those early days of the forties. There were two families with whom we were intimate. Mr. George Tinline (who had been clerk to my fathers' old friend, William Rutherford, of Jedburgh), who was in the bank of South Australia when in 1839, my father went to put our small funds in safety, introduced us to a beautiful young widow, Mrs. Sharpe, and her sisters Eliza and Harriet, and her brother, John Taylor. Harriet afterwards married Edward Stirling, a close friend of my brother-in-law, Andrew Murray, and I was a great deal interested in the Stirlings and their eight children. Mr. William Bakewell, of Bartley & Bakewell, solicitors, married Jane Warren of Springfield, Barossa, and I was a familiar friend of their five children. In one house I was "Miss Spence, the storyteller," in the other "Miss Spence, the teller of tales!" Some of the tales appeared long after as Christmas stories in The Adelaide Observer, but my young hearers preferred the oral narrative, with appropriate gestures and emphasis, and had no scruple about making faces, to anything printed in books. I took great liberties with what I had read and sometimes invented all. It was a part of their education, probably--certainly, it was a part of mine, and it gave me a command of language which helped me when I became a public speaker. My brother-in-law's newspaper furnished an occasional opportunity to me, though no doubt he considered that he could fill his twice-a-week journal without my help. He was, however, helpful in other ways. He was one of the subscribers to a Reading Club, and through him I had access to newspapers and magazines. The South Australian Institute was a treasure to the family. I recollect a newcomer being astonished at my sister Mary having read Macaulay's History. "Why, it was only just out when I left England," said he. "Well, it did not take longer to come out than you did," was her reply. We were all omnivorous readers, and the old-fashioned accomplishment of reading aloud was cultivated by both brothers and sisters. I was the only one who could translate French at sight, thanks to Miss Phin's giving me so much of Racine and Moliere and other good French authors in my school days. But more important than all this was the fact that we took hold of the growth and development of South Australia, and identified ourselves with it. Nothing is insignificant in the history of a young community, and--above all--nothing seems impossible. I had learned what wealth was, and a great deal about production and exchange for myself in the early history of South Australia--of the value of machinery, of roads and bridges, and of ports for transport and export. I had seen the 4-lb. loaf at 4/ and at 4d. I had seen Adelaide the dearest and the cheapest place to live in. I had seen money orders for 2/6, and even for 6d., current when gold and silver were very scarce. Even before the discovery of copper South Australia had turned the corner. We had gone on the land and become primary producers, and before the gold discoveries in Victoria revolutionized Australia and attracted our male population across the border, the Central State was the only one which had a large surplus of wheat and hay to send to the goldfields. Edward Wilson of The Argus, riding overland to Adelaide about 1848, was amazed to see from Willunga onward fenced and cultivated farms, with decent homesteads and machinery up to date. The Ridley stripper enabled our people to reap and thresh the corn when hands were all too few for the sickle. He said he felt as if the garden of Paradise must have been in King William street and that the earliest difference in the world--that between Cain and Abel--was about the advantages of the 80-acre system. Australia generally had already to realize the fact that the pastoral industry was not enough for its development, and South Australia had seemed to solve the problem through the doctrinaire founders, of family immigration, small estates, and the development of agriculture, horticulture, and viticulture. We owed a great deal in the latter branches to our German settlers--sent out originally by Mr. G. F. Angas, whose interest was aroused by their suffering persecution for religious dissent--who saw that Australia had a better climate than that of the Fatherland. We owed much to Mr. George Stevenson, who was an enthusiastic gardener and fruitgrower, and lectured on these subjects, but the contrast between the environs of Adelaide and those of Sydney and Melbourne were striking, and Mr. Wilson never lost an opportunity of calling on the Victorian Legislature and the Victorian public to develop their own wonderful resources. When you take gold out of the ground there is less gold to win. When you grow golden grain or ruddy grapes this year you may expect as much and as good next year. My brother David went with the thousands to buy their fortunes at the diggings, but my brother John stuck to the Bank of South Australia. My brother-in-law's subscribers and his printers had gone off and left him woefully embarrassed. He went to Melbourne. My friend John Taylor left his sheep in the wilderness and came to Adelaide to the aid of The Register. He had been engaged to Sophia Stephens, who died, and her father John Stephens also died soon after; and Mr. Taylor shouldered the management of the paper until the time of stress was over. When Andrew Murray obtained employment on The Argus as commercial editor, he left his twice-a-week newspaper in the charge of Mr. W. W. Whitridge, my brother John, and myself. If anything was needed to be written on State aid to religion I was to do it, as Mr. Whitridge was opposed to it. This lasted three months. The next quarter there were no funds for the editor, so John and I carried it on, and then let it die. At that time I believed in State aid, which had been abolished by the first elected Parliament of South Australia, although that Parliament consisted of one-third nominees pledged to vote for its continuance. CHAPTER V. NOVELS AND A POLITICAL INSPIRATION. It was the experience of a depopulated province which led me to write my first book, "Clara Morison--A Tale of South Australia during the Gold Fever." I entrusted the M.S. to my friend John Taylor, with whom I had just had the only tiff in my life. He, through his connection with The Register, knew that I was writing in The South Australian, trying to keep it alive, till Mr. Murray decided to let it go, and he told this to other people. At a subscription ball to which my brother John took me and my younger sister Mary, she found she had been pointed out and talked of as the lady who wrote for the newspapers. I did not like it even to be supposed of myself, but Mary was indignant, and I wrote an injured letter to my friend. He apologized, and said he thought I would be proud of doing disinterested work, and he was sorry the mistake had been made regarding the sister who did it. Of course, I forgave him. He was the last man in the world to give pain to anyone, and I highly admired him for his disinterested work on The Register. He reluctantly accepted 1,000 pounds when the paper was sold. He must have lost much more through neglect of his own affairs at such a critical time. He was taking a holiday with his sister Eliza in England and France, where the beautiful widowed sister was settled as Madam Dubois, and I asked him to take "Clara Morison" to Smith, Elder & Co.'s, in London, and to say nothing to anybody about it; but before it was placed he had to return to Adelaide, and in pursuance of my wishes, left it with my other good friend, Mr. Bakewell, who also happened to be visiting England with his family at the time--1853-4. I had an idea that, as there was so much interest in Australia and its gold, I might get 100 pounds for the novel. Mr. Bakewell wrote a preface from which I extract a passage:--"The writer's aim seems to have been to present some picture of the state of society in South Australia in the years 1851-2, when the discovery of gold in the neighbouring province of Victoria took place. At this time, the population of South Australia numbered between seventy and eighty thousand souls, the greater part of whom were remarkable for their intelligence, their industry, and their enterprise, which, in the instance of the Burra Burra, and other copper mines had met with such signal success. When it became known that gold in vast quantities could be found within 300 miles of their own territory, they could not remain unmoved. The exodus was almost complete, and entirely without parallel. In those days there was no King in Israel, and every woman did what was right in her own sight." Another reason I had for writing the book. Thackeray had written about an emigrant vessel taking a lot of women to Australia, as if these were all to be gentlemen's wives--as if there was such a scarcity of educated women there, that anything wearing petticoats had the prospect of a great rise in position. I had hoped that Smith, Elder, & Co. would publish my book, but their reader--Mr. Williams, who discovered Charlotte Bronte's genius when she sent them "The Professor," and told her she could write a better, which she did ("Jane Eyre")--wrote a similar letter to me, declining "Clara Morison," as he had declined "The Professor," but saying I could do better. J. W. Parker & Son published it in 1854, as one of the two-volume series, of which "The Heir of Redcliffe" had been most successful. The price was to be 40 pounds; but, as it was too long for the series, I was charged 10 pounds for abridging it. It was very fairly received and reviewed. I think I liked best Frederick Sinnett's notice in The Argus--that it was the work of an observant woman--a novelist who happened to live in Australia, but who did not labour to bring in bushrangers and convicts, and specially Australian features. While I was waiting to hear the fate of my first book, I began to write a second, "Tender and True," of which Mr. Williams thought better, and recommended it to Smith, Elder, and Co., who published it in two volumes in 1856, and gave me 20 pounds for the copyright. This is the only one of my books that went through more than one edition. There were two or three large editions issued, but I never got a penny more. I was told that nothing could be made out of shilling editions; but that book was well reviewed and now and then I have met elderly people who read the cheap edition and liked it. The motif of the book was the jealousy which husbands are apt to feel of their wives' relations. As if the most desirable wife was an amiable orphan--if an heiress, so much the better. But the domestic virtues which make a happy home for the husband are best fostered in a centre where brothers and sisters have to give and take; and a good daughter and sister is likely to make a good wife and mother. I have read quite recently that the jokes against the mother-in-law which are so many and so bitter in English and American journalism are worn out, and have practically ceased; but Dickens and Thackeray set the fashion, and it lasted a long time. While "Clara Morison" was making her debut, I paid my first visit to Melbourne. I went with Mr. and Mrs. Stirling in a French ship consigned to him, and we were 12 days on the way, suffering from the limited ideas that the captain of a French merchantman had of the appetites of Australians at sea. I intended to pay a six weeks' visit to my sister and her family, but she was so unwell that I stayed for eight months. I found that Melbourne in the beginning of 1854 was a very expensive place to live in, and consequently a very inhospitable place. Mr. Murray's salary sounded a good one, 500 pounds a year, but it did not get much comfort. His sister was housekeeper at Charles Williamson & Co.'s, and that was the only place where I could take off my bonnet and have a meal. From the windows I watched the procession that welcomed Sir Charles Hotham, the first Governor of the separated colony of Victoria. He was received with rejoicing, but he utterly failed to satisfy the people. He thought anything was good enough for them. One festivity I was invited to--a ball given on the opening of the new offices of The Argus in Collins street--and there I met Mr. Edward Wilson, a most interesting personality, the giver of the entertainment. He was then vigorously championing the unlocking of the land and the developing of other resources of Victoria than the gold. It had surprised him when he travelled overland to Adelaide to see from Willunga 30 miles of enclosed and cultivated farms, and it surprised me to see sheepruns close to Melbourne. With a better rainfall and equally good soil, Victoria had neither the farms nor the vineyards nor the orchards nor the gardens that had sprung up under the 80-acre section and immigration systems of South Australia. It had been an outlying portion of New South Wales, neglected and exploited for pastoral settlement only. The city, however, had been well planned, like that of Adelaide, but the suburbs were allowed to grow anyhow. In Adelaide the belt of park lands kept the city apart from all suburbs. Andrew Murray was as keen for the development of Victoria agriculturally and industrially as Mr. Wilson, and they worked together heartily. Owing to the state of my sister's health I was much occupied with her and her children; but in August she was well, and I returned with Mr. Taylor and his sister in the steamer Bosphorus, when it touched at Melbourne on the way home. He brought me 30 pounds for my book, and the assurance that it would be out soon, and that I should have six copies to give to my friends. Novel writing had not been to me a lucrative occupation. I had given up teaching altogether at the age of 25, and I felt that, though Australia was to be a great country, there was no market for literary work, and the handicap of distance from the reading world was great. My younger sister married in 1855 William J. Wren, then an articled clerk in Bartley & Bakewell's office, and afterwards a partner with the present Sir James Boucaut. Mr. Wren's health was indifferent, and caused us much anxiety. My brother John married Jessie Cumming in 1858, and they were spared together for many years. As the Wrens went on a long voyage to Hongkong and back for the sake of my brother-in-law's health, my mother and I had the charge of their little boy. But in that year, 1859, my mind received its strongest political inspiration, and the reform of the electoral system became the foremost object of my life. John Stuart Mill's advocacy of Thomas Hare's system of proportional representation brought back to my mind Rowland Hill's clause in the Adelaide Municipal Bill with wider and larger issues. It also showed me how democratic government could be made real, and safe, and progressive. I confess that at first I was struck chiefly by its conservative side, and I saw that its application would prevent the political association, which corresponded roughly with the modern Labour Party, from returning five out of six members of the Assembly for the City of Adelaide. But for blunders on ballot papers the whole ticket of six would have been elected. They also elected the three members for Burra, and Clare. I had then no footing on the Adelaide press, but I was Adelaide correspondent for The Melbourne Argus--that is to say, my brother was the correspondent, but I wrote the letters--he furnished the news. I read Mill's article one Monday night, and wrote what was meant for a leader on Tuesday morning, and went to read it to my brother at breakfast time, and posted it forthwith. I knew The Argus had been dissatisfied with the recent elections, and fancied that the editor would hail with joy the new idea; but I received the reply that The Argus was committed to the representation of majorities; and, though the idea was ingenious, he did not even offer to print it as a letter. About two years later Mr. Lavington Glyde, M.P., brought forward in the Assembly Mr. Fawcett's abstract of Hare's great scheme, and I seized the opportunity of writing a series of letters to The Register, signed by my initials. Mr. Glyde, seeing the House did not like his suggestions, dropped the matter, but I did not. I was no longer correspondent to The Argus--the telegraph stopped that altogether. My wonderful maiden aunts made up to me and my mother the 50 pounds a year that I had received as correspondent, and did as much for their brother, Alexander Brodie, of Morphett Vale, from 1,000 pounds they had sent to invest in South Australia. It was as easy to get 10 per cent. then as to get 4 per cent. now; indeed I think the money earned 12 per cent. at first. My brother John was accountant to the South Australian Railways, then not a very great department--I think the line stretched as far as Kapunda to the north from Port Adelaide. He was as much captivated by Mr. Hare's idea as I was, and he said that if I would write a pamphlet he would pay for the printing of 1,000 copies, to be sent to all the members of Parliament and other leading people in city and country. I called my pamphlet "A Plea for Pure Democracy," and when writing it I felt the democratic strength of the position as I had not felt it in reading Hare's own book. It cost my brother 15 pounds, but he never grudged it. While the pamphlet was in the press, I heard of the dangerous illness of my friend Lucy Anne Duval (nee Beare), one of the original passengers in the Duke of York, the first ship which arrived here. I went to consult Mr. Taylor and Mr. Stirling at their office. I saw only Mr. Stirling. I said, "I should like to go and nurse her," and he said. "If you will go, I'll pay your expenses;" and I went and stayed with her for three weeks, till she died, and left five children, three of them quite young. There were Duvals in England in good circumstances, and I wrote pleading for the three little ones, though every one said it was quite useless; but an uncle by marriage was touched, and sent 100 pounds a year for the benefit of the three children, and I was constituted the guardian. The youngest died within two years, but the allowance was not decreased, and I was able to get some schooling for an elder boy. This was my first guardianship. My pamphlet did not set the Torrens on fire. It did not convert The Register, but Mr. Fred Sinnett, who was conducting The Telegraph, was much impressed, especially as he had the greatest reverence for John Stuart Mill, and thought him a safe man to follow. I had another novel under way at the time, and Mr. Sinnett thought it would help The Telegraph to bring it out as a serial story in the weekly edition; and I seized my opportunity to bring in Mr. Hare and proportional representation. In England Mr. Hare, Mr. Mill, Rowland Hill, and his brother, and Professor Craik, all considered my "Plea for Pure Democracy" the best argument from the popular side that had appeared. I got the kindest of letters from them, and my brother considered my labour and his money well spent. Professor Craik, writing to Miss Florence Davenport Hill about the "Plea for Pure Democracy," says--"It is really a pity that the pamphlet should not be reproduced in this country--modified, of course, to the slight extent that would be necessary. It is really a very remarkable piece of exposition--the best for popular effect by far on this subject that has come in my way. I rejoice to hear that there is a chance of Mr. Hare's plan being adopted in South Australia." I may be allowed to observe that there is still a chance, but not yet a reality. My aunts at Thornton Loch were applied to by my English admirers to see if they would be at the cost of an English edition; but, though they were goodness itself to our material needs, they thought it was throwing money away to bring out a pamphlet on an unpopular subject that would not sell. Why, even in South Australia, though the price was marked at one shilling, not a single shilling had been paid for a single copy; and in South Australia I was known! Not so well known, however. I wrote under initials only, and many thought my letters and pamphlets were the work of Charles Simeon Hare, one of the tallest talkers in South Australia, who said Mr. Thomas Hare was his cousin. My novels were anonymous up to the third, which was not then written. If my name would have done the cause any good it would have been given, but it was too obscure then. The original title of my third book was "Uphill Work," and it took up the woman question as it appeared to me at the time--the difficulty of a woman earning a livelihood, even when she had as much ability, industry, and perseverance as a man. My friend Mrs. Graham, who had been receiving 100 pounds a year and many presents and much consideration from the Alstons, of Charles Williamson & Co., had to return to Scotland to cheer her father's last years. After his death she became housekeeper to the Crichton Asylum for the Insane, with 600 or 700 patients, at a salary of 30 pounds a year. This started me on the story of two girls educated well and soundly by an eccentric uncle, but not accomplished in the showy branches, who, fearing that the elder and favourite niece would marry a young neighbour, and that the other might be a confirmed invalid, disinherited them, and left his estate to a natural son with a strict proviso against his marrying either of his cousins. In that case the property was to go to a benevolent institution named. Jane Melville applied for the situation of housekeeper to this institution at 30 pounds a year, but was refused because she was too young and inexperienced. After all sorts of disappointments she took a situation to go out to Australia, and her sister accompanied her as a lady's maid in the same family. You may wonder how I brought in proportional representation, but I managed it. I think, on the whole, it is a stronger book than either of the others. The volume has two interesting associations, one which connects it with Mrs. Oliphant. My friend Mrs. Graham knew I had sent it to England for publication, and when she read the anonymous "Doctor's Family" she was sure it was mine, and was delighted with it. When I read of the brave Australian girl Nettie, taking on herself the burden of the flabby sister and her worthless husband and their children, I wished that I had written such a capital story. In a subsequent tale of Mrs. Oliphant's, "In Trust," a father disinherits the elder girl from a fear of an unworthy marriage, but he leaves a letter to be opened when Rosy is 21, which--should Anne not marry Cosmo Douglas--restores her to her own mother's fortune, which was in his power. There was no saving clause in my book. The nieces were left only 20 pounds a year each. Mr. Williams did not think "Uphill Work" as good as "Tender and True," and it was hung up till circumstances most unexpectedly brought me to England, and I tried Bentley, and found that his reader approved, but wished me to change the name, as the first critic would say it was uphill work to read it. Then let it be "Mr. Haliburton's Will." That would clash with "Mrs Haliburton's Troubles." So the name was changed to Hogarth, and the title became "Mr. Hogarth's Will." It was well reviewed, and I got 35 pounds as my half-share of the profits on a three-volume edition, besides 50 pounds from The Telegraph. But the book was to have more effect in unexpected quarters than I could imagine. When staying with my aunts in Scotland I had a letter from Mr. Edward Wilson's secretary, saying that he had wished to write an article for The Fortnightly on "The Representation of Classes," which was his cure for the excesses of democracy; but, as he could not see, and his doctor had forbidden him even to dictate, he had reluctantly abandoned the idea. He had, however, heard that I was in Scotland, and, though my idea was different from his, he believed that I could write the article from some letters reprinted from The Argus and a few hints from himself, and that I could adapt them to English conditions. I gladly undertook the work, and satisfied Mr. Wilson. Just before I left for Australia I went to Mr. Wilson's, and we went through the proofs together. Mr. Wilson, being a wealthy man, did not ask any payment from The Fortnightly, but he gave me 10 pounds and thanked me for stepping in to his assistance when he needed it. He said that my novel had been the subject of a great deal of discussion in his house. I asked, "Why?" He replied, "The uncle and the nieces, of course." I thought no more of it till the death of Mr. Wilson revealed that he had left his estate to the charities of Melbourne. Then my brother told me that when he was in England in 1877 Mr. Wilson had told him that it was seldom that a novel had any influence over a man's conduct, but that reading his sister's novel had set him thinking, and had made him alter his will. He did not think it to the advantage of his nieces to be made rich, and he would leave his money to Victoria and Melbourne, where he had made it. I was the innocent cause of disappointing the nieces, for I think I made it clear that the uncle did very wrongly. But when I see 5,000 pounds a year distributed among Melbourne charities, and larger gifts for the building of a new hospital, I cannot help thinking that these are the results of Mr. Wilson reading "Mr. Hogarth's Will" and it may be that other similar trusts are the results of Mr. Wilson's action. Another literary success I had during that visit to England. I went to Smith, Elder, & Co. to ask if I could not get anything for the shilling edition of "Tender and True," and was answered in the negative; but I had not talked ten minutes with Mr. Williams before he said that if I would put these ideas into shape, he thought he could get an article accepted by The Cornhill Magazine. "An Australian's Impressions of England" was approved by the editor, and appeared in The Cornhill for January 1866, and for that I received 12 pounds, the best-paid work I had ever had up to that time. The Saturday Review said of "Mr. Hogarth's Will" that there was no haziness about money matters in it such as is too common among lady writers. Mr. Bentley advised me to give my name, and not to sell my copyright; but the latter has been of no value to me; 500 copies of a three-volume novel exhausted the likely demand. I got 12 copies to give to friends, and one copy I gave to Mr. Hare. His daughters were a little amused to see their father in a novel, and as the book was in the circulating library their friends and acquaintances used to ask, "Is that really your papa that it is intended for?" I did not at the time think of facing anybody in England, but I had been both amused and annoyed with the portraits I was supposed to have drawn from real people in and about Adelaide--often people I had never seen and had not beard of. "But Harris is Ellis to the life," said my old Aunt Brodie of Morphett Vale. "Miss Withing is my sister-in-law," said another. Neither of these people had I seen. Of course, Mr. Reginald was Mr. John Taylor, the only squatter I knew, but I myself was not identified with my heroine Clara Morison. I was Margaret Elliott, the girl who was studying law with her brother Gilbert; but my brother and my cousin Louisa Brodie were supposed to be figuring in my book as lovers. In a small society it was easy to affix the characteristics to some one whom it was possible the author might have met; but I shrank from the idea that I was capable of "taking off" people of my acquaintance, and for many reasons would have liked if the book had not been known to be mine in South Australia. There must, however, have been some lifelike presentment of my characters, or they could not have been recognised. About this time I read and appreciated Jane Austen's novels--those exquisite miniatures, which no doubt her contemporaries identified without much interest. Her circle was as narrow as mine--indeed, narrower. She was the daughter of a clergyman in the country. She represented well-to-do grownup people, and them alone. The humour of servants, the sallies of children, the machinations of villains, the tricks of rascals, are not on her canvas; but she differentiated among equals with a firm hand, and with a constant ripple of amusement. The life I led had more breadth and wider interests. The life of Miss Austen's heroines, though delightful to read about, would have been deadly dull to endure. So great a charm have Jane Austen's books had for me that I have made a practice of reading them through regularly once a year. As we grew to love South Australia, we felt that we were in an expanding society, still feeling the bond to the motherland, but eager to develop a perfect society, in the land of our adoption. CHAPTER VI. A TRIP TO ENGLAND. I have gone on with the story of my three first novels consecutively, anticipating the current history of myself and South Australia. There were three great steps taken in the development of Australia. The first was when McArthur introduced the merino sheep; the second when Hargreaves and others discovered gold; and the latest when cold-storage was introduced to make perishable products available for the European markets. The second step created a sudden revolution; but the others were gradual, and the area of alluvial diggings in Victoria made thousands of men without capital or machinery rush to try their fortunes--first from the adjacent colonies, and afterwards from the ends of the earth. Law and order were kept on the goldfields of Mount Alexander, Bendigo, and Ballarat by means of a strong body of police, and the high licence fees for claims paid for their services, so that nothing like the scenes recorded of the Californian diggings could be permitted. But for the time ordinary industries were paralysed. Shepherds left their flocks, farmers their land, clerks their desks, and artisans their trades. Melbourne grew apace in spite of the highest wages known being exacted by masons and carpenters. Pastoralists thought ruin stared them in the face till they found what a market the goldfields offered for their surplus stock. Our South Australian farmers left their holdings in the hands of their wives and children too young to take with them, but almost all of them returned to grow grain and produce to send to Victoria. It was astonishing what the women had done during their absence. The fences were kept repaired and the stock attended to, the grapes gathered, and the wine made. In these days it was not so easy to get 80 acres or more in Victoria; so, with what the farmers brought from their labours on the goldfields, they extended their holdings and improved their homes. For many years the prices in Melbourne regulated prices in Adelaide, but when the land was unlocked and the Victorian soil and climate were found to be as good as ours it was Mark lane that fixed prices over all Australia for primary products. After the return of most of the diggers there was a great deal of marrying and giving in marriage. The miners who had left the Burra for goldseeking gradually came back, and the nine remarkable copper mines of Moonta and Wallaroo attracted the Cornishmen, who preferred steady wages and homes to the diminishing chances of Ballarat and Bendigo where machinery and deep sinking demanded capital, and the miners were paid by the week. These new copper mines were found in the Crown leases held by Capt. (afterwards Sir Walter) Hughes. He had been well dealt with by Elder, Smith, & Co., and gave them the opportunity of supporting him. At that time my friends Edward Stirling and John Taylor were partners in that firm, and they shared in the success. Mr. Bakewell belonged to the legal firm which did their business, so that my greatest friends seemed to be in it. I think my brother John profited less by the great advance of South Australia than he deserved for sticking to the Bank of South Australia. He got small rises in his salary, but the cost of living was so enhanced that at the end of seven years it did not buy much more than the 100 pounds he had begun with. My eldest maiden aunt died, and left to her brother and sister in South Australia all she had in her power. My mother bought a brick cottage in Pulteney street and a Burra share with her legacy--both excellent investments--and my brother left the bank and went into the aerated water business with James Hamilton Parr. We made the acquaintance of the family of Mrs. Francis Clark, of Hazelwood, Burnside. She was the only sister of five clever brothers--Matthew Davenport, Rowland, Edwin, Arthur, and Frederick Hill. Rowland is best known, but all were remarkable men. She was so like my mother in her sound judgment, accurate observation, and kind heart, that I was drawn to her at once. But it was Miss Clark who sought an introduction to me at a ball, because her uncle Rowland had written to her that "Clara Morison," the new novel, was a capital story of South Australian life. She was the first person to seek me out on account of literary work, and I was grateful to her. I think all the brothers Hill wrote books, and Rosamond and Florence Davenport Hill had just published "Our Exemplars." My friendship with Miss Clark led to much work together, and the introduction was a great widening of interests for me. There were four sons and three daughters--Miss Clark and Howard were the most literary, but all had great ability and intelligence. They were Unitarians, and W. J. Wren, my brother-in-law, was also a Unitarian, and had been one of the 12 Adelaide citizens who invited out a minister and guaranteed his salary. I was led to hear what the Rev. J. Crawford Woods had to say for that faith, and told my old minister (Rev. Robert Haining) that for three months I would hear him in the morning and Mr. Woods in the evening, and read nothing but the Bible as my guide; and by that time I would decide. I had been induced to go to the Sacrament at 17, with much heart searching, but when I was 25 I said I could not continue a communicant, as I was not a converted Christian. This step greatly surprised both Mr. and Mrs. Haining, as I did not propose to leave the church. The result of my three months' enquiry was that I became a convinced Unitarian, and the cloud was lifted from the universe. I think I have been a most cheerful person ever since. My mother was not in any way distressed, though she never separated from the church of her fathers. My brother was as completely converted as I was, and he was happy in finding a wife like minded. My sister, Mrs. Wren, also was satisfied with the new faith; so that she and her husband saw eye to eye. It was a very live congregation in those early days. We liked our pastor, and we admired his wife, and there were a number of interesting and clever people who went to the Wakefield Street Church. It was rather remarkable that my sister's husband and my brother's wife arrived on the same day in two different ships--one in the Anglier from England, and the other in the Three Bells from Glasgow--in 1851; but I did not make the acquaintance of either till 1854 and 1855. Jessie Cumming and Mary Spence shook hands and formed a friendship over Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." My brother-in-law (W. J. Wren) had fine literary tastes, especially for poetry. The first gift to his wife after marriage was Elizabeth Browning's poems in two volumes and Robert Browning's "Plays and Dramatic Lyrics" in two volumes, and Mary and I delighted in them all. In those days I considered my sister Mary and my sister-in-law the most brilliant conversationalists I knew. My elder sister, Mrs. Murray, also talked very well--so much so that her husband's friends and visitors fancied she must write a lot of his articles; but none of the three ladies went beyond writing good letters. I think all of them were keener of sight than I was--more observant of features, dress, and manners; but I took in more by the ear. As Sir Walter Scott says, "Speak that I may know thee." To my mind, dialogue is more important for a novel than description; and, if you have a firm grasp of your characters, the dialogue will be true. With me the main difficulty was the plot; and I was careful that this should not be merely possible, but probable. I have heard scores of people say that they have got good plots in their heads, and when pressed to tell them they proved to be only incidents. You need much more than an incident, or even two or three, with which to make a book. But when I found my plot the story seemed to write itself, and the actors to fit in. When the development of the Moonta Mine made some of my friends rich they were also liberal. Edward Stirling said that if I wanted a trip to England I should have it at his cost, but it seemed impossible. After the death of Mr. Wren my mother and I went to live with my sister, and put two small incomes together, so as to be able to bring up and educate her two children, a boy and a girl. My brother John had left the railway, and for nine years had been Official Assignee and Curator of Intestate Estates; and in 1863 he had been appointed manager of the new Adelaide branch of the English, Scottish, and Australian Bank. My friend, Mr. Taylor, had helped well to get the position for one he thought the fittest man in the city. He had lost his wife, Miss Mary Ann Dutton when on a visit to England, and at this time was engaged to Miss Harriet McDermott. His sisters both were very cold about the engagement. They did not like second marriages at all, and considered it a disrespect to the first wife's memory, even though a decent interval had elapsed. When he wrote to me about it I took quite a different view. He said it was the kindest and the wisest letter I had ever written in my life, and he knew I had loved his late wife very much. He came to thank me, and to tell me that he had always wished that I should be in England at the time he was there, and that he was going in a P. & 0. boat immediately after his marriage. Although Mr. Stirling had promised to pay my passage, I hesitated about going. There were my mother, who was 72, and my guardianship of the Duvals to think about. I had also undertaken the oversight of old Mrs. Stephens, the widow of one of the early proprietors of The Register. These objections were all overruled. I still hesitated. "I cannot go unless I have money to spend," I urged. "Let me do that," was the generous reply.--"I have left you 500 pounds in my will. Let me have the pleasure of giving you something while I live." I was not too proud to owe that memorable visit to England to my two good friends. John Taylor had put into my hands on board the Goolwa, in which I sailed, a draft for 200 pounds for my spending money, and in the new will he made after his marriage he bequeathed me 300 pounds. I said "Goodby" to him, with good wishes for his health and happiness. I never saw him again. He took a sickly looking child on his knee when crossing the Isthmus of Suez--there was no canal in 1864--to relieve a weary mother. The child had smallpox, and my friend took it and died of it. He was being buried beside his first wife at Brighton when the Goolwa sailed up the Channel after a passage of 14 weeks--as long as that of the Palmyra 25 years before--and the first news we heard was that Miss Taylor had lost a brother, the children a favourite uncle, and I, a friend. It was a sad household, but the Bakewells were in London on business connected with some claims of discovery of the Moonta Mines, and they took me to their house in Palace Gardens. Kensington, till I could arrange to go to my aunt's in Scotland. All our plans about seeing people and places together were, of course, at an end. I was to go "a lone hand." Mrs. Taylor had a posthumous son, who never has set foot in Australia. She married a second time, an English clergyman named Knight, and had several sons, but she has never revisited Adelaide, although she has many relatives here. So the friend who loved Australia, and was eager to do his duty by it--who thoroughly approved of the Hare system of representation, and thought I did well to take it up, was snatched away in the prime of life. I wonder if there is any one alive now to whom his memory is as precious. The Register files may preserve some of his work. At Palace Gardens the Bakewell family were settled in a furnished house belonging to Col. Palmer, one of the founders of South Australia, though never a resident. Palmer place, North Adelaide, bears his name. Thackeray's house we had to pass when we went out of the street in the direction of the city. His death had occurred in the previous year. I had an engagement with Miss Julia Wedgwood, through an introduction given by Miss Sophia Sinnett, an artist sister of Frederick Sinnett's. I was called for and sent home. I was not introduced to the family. It was a fine large house with men servants and much style. Miss Wedgwood, who was deaf, used an ear trumpet very cleverly. I found her as delightful as Miss Sinnett had represented her to be, and I discovered that Miss Sinnett had been governess to her younger sisters, but that there was real regard for her. I don't know that I ever spent a more delightful evening. She had just had Browning's "Dramatis Personae," and we read together "Rabbi Ben Ezira" and "Prospice." She knew about the Hare scheme of representation, supported by Mill and Fawcett and Craik. She was a good writer, with a fine critical faculty. Everything signed by her name in magazines or reviews was thenceforward interesting to me. I promised her a copy of my "Plea for Pure Democracy," which she accepted and appreciated. By the father's side she was a granddaughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of British pottery as a fine art. Her mother was a daughter of Sir James Mackintosh. Mrs. Wedgwood was so much pleased with my pamphlet that she wanted to be introduced to me, and when I returned to London I had the pleasure of making her acquaintance. Miss Wedgwood gave me a beautifully bound copy of "Men and Women," of which she had a duplicate, which I cherish in remembrance of her. During my stay I was visited by Mr. Hare. I had to face up to the people I had written to with no idea of any personal communication, and I must confess that I felt I must talk well to retain their good opinion. I promised to pay a visit to the Hares when I came to London for the season. He was a widower with eight children, whom he had educated with the help of a governess, but he was the main factor in their training. The two eldest daughters were married--Mrs. Andrews, the eldest, had helped him in his calculations for his great book on "Representation." His second daughter was artistic, and was married to John Westlake, an eminent lawyer, great in international law, a pupil of Colenso, who was then in London, and who was the best-abused man in the church. Another visitor was George Cowan, a great friend of my late brother-in-law, Mr. W. J. Wren, who wrote to him till his death, when the pen was taken up by my sister Mary till her death, and then I corresponded with him till his death. He came to London a raw Scotch lad, and met Mr. Wren at the Whittington Club. Both loved books and poetry, and both were struggling to improve themselves on small salaries. George Cowan had been entrusted with the printed slips of "Uphill Work," and had tried it at two publishers without success. I had to delay any operations till I returned to London, and promised to visit the Cowans there. CHAPTER VII. MELROSE REVISITED. Jack Bakewell and Edward Lancelot Stirling went to see me off by the night train to Dunbar Station, five miles from Thornton-Loch, and I got there in time for breakfast. The old house was just the same except for an oriel window in the drawing room looking out on the North Sea, and the rocks which lay between it and Colhandy path (where my great-grandfather Spence had preached and his wife had preferred Wesley), and Chirnside, or Spence's Mains in the same direction. All the beautiful gardens, the farm village, where about 80 souls lived, the fields and bridges were just as I remembered them. My aunt Margaret was no longer the vigorous business-like woman whom I recollected riding or driving in her little gig an over the farm of 800 English acres which my great-grandfather had rented since 1811. Not the Miss Thompson whom I had introduced into "Uphill Work." She had had a severe stroke of paralysis, and was a prisoner to the house, only being lifted from her bed to be dressed, and to sit in a wheeled chair and be taken round the garden on fine days. The vigorous intellect was somewhat clouded, and the power of speech also; but she retained her memory. She was always at work with her needle (for her hands were not affected) for the London children, grandnieces, and nephews who called her grandmamma, for she had had the care of their Parents during 11 years of her brother Alexander's widowhood. But Aunt Margaret could play a capital game of whist--long whist. I could see that she missed it much on Sunday. It was her only relaxation. She had given up the farm to James Brodie, who had married her cousin Jane, the eldest of the two children she had mothered, and he had to come to the farm once or twice a week, having a still larger farm of his own in East Lothian, and a stock farm in Berwickshire also to look after. The son of the old farm steward, John Burnet, was James Brodie's steward, and I think the farm was well managed, but not so profitable as in old times. Aunt Mary said, in her own characteristic way, "she always knew that her sister was a clever woman, but that the cleverest thing she had done was taking up farming and carrying it on for 30 years when it was profitable, and turning it over when it began to fall off." But she turned it over handsomely, and did not interfere in the management. My Aunt Mary deserves a chapter for herself. She was my beau ideal of what a maiden aunt should be, though why she was never married puzzles more than me. Between my mother and her there was a love passing the love of sisters--my father liked her better than his own sisters. When my letter announcing my probable visit reached her she misread it, and thought it was Helen herself who was to come; and when she found out her mistake she shed many tears. I was all very well in my way, but I was not Helen. It was not the practice in old times to blazon an engagement, or to tell of an offer that had been declined; but my mother firmly believed that her sister Mary, the cleverest and, as she thought, the handsomest of the five sisters, had never in her life had an offer of marriage, although she had a love disappointment at 30. She had fixed her affections on a brilliant but not really worthy man, and she had to tear him out of her heart with considerable difficulty. It cost her a severe illness, out of which she emerged with what she believed to be a change of heart. She was a converted Christian. I myself don't think there was so much change. She was always a noble, generous woman, but she found great happiness in religion. Aunt Mary's disappointment made her most sympathetic to all love stories, and without any disappointment at all, I think I may say the same of myself. She was very popular with the young friends of her youngest brother, who might have experienced calf love; so very real, but so very ineffectual. One of these said to her:--"Oh, Miss Mary, you're just a delight, you are so witty." Another, when she spoke of some man who talked such delightful nonsense, said, "If you would only come to Branxholme I'd talk nonsense to you the haill (whole) day." When I arrived at the old home I found Aunt Mary vigorously rubbing her hand and wrist (she had slipped downstairs in a neighbour's house, and broken her arm, and had to drive home before she could have it set). No one from the neighbour's house went to accompany her; no one came to enquire; no message was sent. When she recovered so far as to be able to be out, she met at Dunbar the gentleman and lady also driving in their conveyance. They greeted each other, and aunt could not resist the temptation to say:--"I am so glad to see you, and so glad that you have spoken to me, for I thought you were so offended at my taking the liberty of breaking my arm in your house that you did not mean to speak to me again." This little expression of what the French call malice, not the English meaning, was the only instance I can recollect of Aunt Mary's not putting the kindest construction on everybody's words and actions. But when I think of the love that Aunt Mary gathered to herself from brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and friends--it seems as if the happiest wife and mother of a large family could not reckon up as rich stores of affection. She was the unfailing correspondent of those members of the family who were separated by land and ocean from the old home, the link that often bound these together, the most tolerant to their failings, the most liberal in her aid--full of suggestions, as well as of sympathy. Now, in my Aunt Margaret's enfeebled state, she was the head of the house and the director of all things. Although she had differed from the then two single sisters and the family generally at the time of the disruption of the Church of Scotland, and gone over to the Free Church, the more intensely Calvinistic of the two, though accepting the same standards--the Westminster Confession and the Shorter Catechism--all the harsher features fell off the living texture of her faith like cold water off a duck's back. From natural preference she chose for her devotions those parts of the Bible which I selected with deliberate intention. She wondered to find so much spiritual kinship with me, when I built on such a different foundation. When I suggested that the 109th Psalm, which she read as the allotted portion in "Fletcher's Family Devotions," was not fit to be read in a Christian household, she said meekly--"You are quite right, I shall mark it, and never read it again." My mother always thought me like her sister Mary, and when I asked Mr. Taylor if he saw any resemblance between us, he said, with cruel candour--"Oh, no. Your Aunt Mary is a very handsome woman." But in ways and manners, both my sister Mary and myself had considerable resemblances to our mother's favourite sister; and I can see traces of it in my own nieces. There can be no direct descent from maiden aunts, though the working ants and bees do not inherit their industrious habits from either male or female parents, but from their maiden aunts. Galton's theory, that potentialities not utilized by individuals or by their direct descendants may miss a generation or two, opens a wide field of thought, and collaterals may draw from the original source what was never suspected. And the Brodies intermarried in such a way as to shock modern ideas. When my father was asked if a certain Mr. Dudgeon, of Leith, was related to him, he said--"He is my mother's cousin and my stepmother's cousin, and my father-in-law's cousin, and my mother-in-law's cousin." Except for Spences and Wauchopes there was not a relative of my father that was not related to my mother. Grandfather Brodie married his cousin, and Grandfather Spence married his late wife, Janet Parks cousin Katherine Swanston. I cannot see that these close marriages produced degenerates, either physical or mental, in the case of my own family. Of the twelve months I spent in the old country, I spent six with the dear old aunts. How proud Aunt Mary was of my third novel, with the sketch of Aunt Margaret in it, of the Cornhill article, and the request from Mr. Wilson to write for The Fortnightly. I introduced her to new books and especially to new poets; she had never heard of Browning and Jean Ingelow. She was so much cleverer than her neighbours that I often wondered how she could put up with them. How conservative these farmers and farmers' wives and daughters were, to be sure. These big tenants considered themselves quite superior to tradesmen, even to merchants, unless they were in a big way. There was infinitely more difference between their standard of living and that of their labourers than between theirs and that of the aristocratic landlords. James Barnet, the farm steward, said to me--"you have brought down the price of wheat with your Australian grain, and you do big things in wool, but you can never touch us in meat." This was quite true in 1865. I expected to see some improvement in the farm hamlet, but the houses built by the landlord were still very poor and bare. The wages had risen a little since 1839, but not much. The wheaten loaf was cheaper, and so was tea and sugar, but the poor were still living on porridge and bannocks of barley and pease meal instead of tea and white bread. It was questionable if they were as well nourished. There were 100 souls living on the farms of Thornton and Thornton Loch. A short visit from Mrs. Graham to me at Thornton Loch opened up to Aunt Mary some of my treasures of memory. She asked me to recite "Brother in the Lane," Hood's "Tale of a Trumpet," "Locksley Hall." "The Pied Piper," and Jean Ingelow's "Songs of Seven." She made me promise to go to see her, and find out how much she had to do for her magnificent salary of 30 pounds a year; but she impressed Aunt Mary much. Mrs. Graham had found that the Kirkbeen folks, among whom she lived, were more impressed by the six months' experiences of two maiden ladies, who had gone to Valparaiso to join a brother who died, than with her fresh and racy descriptions of four young Australian colonies. She had seen Melbourne from 1852 to 1855--a wonderful growth and development. The only idea the ladies from Valparaiso formed about Australia was that it was hot and must be Roman Catholic, and consequently the Sabbath must be desecrated. It was in vain that my friend spoke of the Scots Church and Dr. Cairns's Church. Heat and Roman Catholicism were inseparably connected in their minds. Visiting Uncle and Aunt Handyside and grown-up cousins, whom I left children, I saw a lot of good farming and the easy circumstances which I always associated with tenants' holdings in East Lothian. Next farm to Fenton was Fentonbarns, a Show place, which was held by George Hope, a cousin of my grandmother's He was an exceptional man--a radical, a freetrader, and a Unitarian. Cobden died that year. Uncle Handyside was surprised that George Hope did not go into mourning for him. John Bright still lived, and he was the bete noire of the Conservatives in that era; and the abolition of the corn laws was held to be the cause of the agricultural distress--not the high rent of agricultural land. George Hope was a striking personality. When my friend J. C. Woods was minister at St. Mark's Unitarian Church, Edinburgh, Mr. Hope used to be called the Bishop, though he lived 16 miles off. When the first Mrs. Woods died, leaving an infant son, it was Mrs. Hope who cared for it till it could go to his relatives in Ireland. Later he stood for Parliament himself. In the paper I wrote over the name of Edward Wilson for The Fortnightly I noted how the House of Commons represented the people--or misrepresented them. The House consisted of peers and sons of peers, military and naval officers, bankers, brewers, and landownership was represented enormously, but there were only two tenant farmers in the House. It was years after my return to Australia that I heard of his unsuccessful candidature, and that when he sought to take another lease of Fentonbarns, he was told that under no circumstances would his offer be entertained. Fentonbarns had been farmed by, three generations of Hopes for 100 years, and to no owner by parchment titles could it have been more dear. George Hope's friend, Russell, of The Scotsman, fulminated against the injustice of refusing a lease to the foremost agriculturist in Scotland--and when you say that you may say of the United Kingdom--because the tenant held certain political opinions and had the courage to express them. My uncle Handyside, however, always maintained that his neighbour was the most honourable man in business that he knew, and far from being an atheist or even a deist, he had family prayers, and on the occasion of a death in the family, the funeral service was most impressive. He was one of the salt of the earth, and the atmosphere was clearer around him for his presence. But I must give some space to my visit to Melrose, my childhood's home. My father's half-sister Janet Reid was alive and though her two sons were, one at St. Kitts and the other at Grand Canary, she lived with an old husband and her only daughter in Melrose still.. I can never forget the look of tender pity cast on me as I was sitting in our old seat in church, looking at seats filled by another generation. The paterfamilias, so wonderfully like his father of 1839, and sons and daughters, sitting in the place of uncles and aunts settled elsewhere. They grieved that I had been banished from the romantic associations and the high civilization of Melrose to rough it in the wilds, while my heart was full of thankfulness that I had moved to the wider spaces and the more varied activities of a new and progressive colony. My dear old teacher was still alive, though the school had been closed for many years. She lived at St. Mary's with her elder sister, who had taught me sewing and had done the housekeeping, but she herself was almost blind, and a girl came every day to read to her for two or three hours. She told me what a good thing it was that she knew all the Psalms in the prose version by heart, for in the sleepless nights which accompany old age so often they were such a comfort to her in the night watches. I had sent her my two novels when they were published, "Clara Morison" and "Tender and True." She would have been glad if they had been more distinctly religious in tone. Indeed, the novel I began at 19 would have suited her better, but my brother's insistence on reading it every day as I wrote it somehow made me see what poor stuff it was, and I did not go far with it. But Miss Phin was, on the whole, pleased with my progress, and glad that I was able to go to see her and talk of old times. How very small the village of Melrose looked! How little changed! The distances to the neighbouring villages of Darnick and Newstead, and across the Tweed to Gattonsville, seemed so shrunken. It was not so far to Abbotsford as to Norwood. The very Golden Hills looked lower than my childish recollection of them. Aunt Janet Reid rejoiced over me sufficiently. "You are not like your mother in the face, but, oh, Katie, you are like dear Mrs. David in your ways. How I was determined to hate her when she came to Melrose first. I was not 13 and she was taking away the best of my brothers, the one that I liked best; but it did not take long before I was as fond of her as of David himself." I also had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Murray, the parish schoolmaster, who taught my three brothers, then retired, living with his daughter, Louisa, an old schoolfellow at Miss Phin's. There was an absurd idea current in 1865 that all visiting Australians were rich and I could not disabuse people of that notion. Of all the two families of Brodies and Spences who came out in 1839 there was only my brother John who could be called successful. He was then manager of the Adelaide branch of the English, Scottish, and Australian Bank. If it had not been for help from the wonderful aunts from time to time both families would have been stranded. I had the greatest faith in the future of Australia, but I felt that for such gifts as I possessed there was no market at home. Possibly I should have tried literature earlier if I had remained in Scotland, but I am not at all sure that I could have succeeded as well. For the first time in my life I had as much money as I wanted. I am surprised now that I spent that 200 pounds when I had so much hospitality. In fact, except for a week in Paris, I never had any hotel expenses. I had got the money to enjoy it and I did. This was what my friend wished. I made a few presents. I bought some to take home with me. I spent money on dress freely, so as to present a proper appearance when visiting. I was liberal with veils, though I hate the practice. To a woman who had to look on both sides of a shilling since 1839 this experience was new and delightful. Among other people I went to see was Mrs. C----. the widow of the Tory writer and branch bank manager, who was my father's successful rival. He was not speculative like my father. He was a keen business man and had a great hunger for land. On the gravestones around Melrose Abbey are many names with the avocation added--John Smith, builder; William Hogg, mason--but many with the word portioner. They were small proprietors, but they were not distinguished for the careful cultivation which in France is known as "LA PETITE CULTURE." No; the portions were most carelessly handled, and in almost every instance they were "bonded" or mortgaged. I recollect in old days these portioners used to make moonlight, flittings and disappear, or they sold off their holdings openly and went to America, meaning the United States. The tendency was to buy up these portions, and a considerable estate could be built up by any shrewd man who had money, or the command of it. Before we left Melrose in 1839, Mr. C---- had possession of a good deal of land. When he died he left property of the value of 90,000 pounds, an unheard-of estate for a country writer before the era of freetrade and general expansion. He had asked so much revenue from the railway company when the plan was to cut through the gardens we as children used to play in, that the company made a deviation and left the garden severely alone. The eldest daughter had married a landed proprietor, the second was single, the third married to a wealthy man in the west, the fourth the richest widow in Scotland. One son had land, and the other son land, and another business training. All was material success, and I am sure I did not grudge it to them, but when I took stock of real things I had not the least glimmering of a wish to exchange. One generally desires a little more money than one has; but even that may cost too much. I think my dear old Aunt Reid felt that the Spences had gone down in my father's terrible smash in 1839, and the C---- family had steadily gone up, and she was pleased that a niece from Australia, who had written two books and a wonderful pamphlet, and, more important still in the eyes of Mrs. Grundy, had money to spend and to give, was staying with her in Melrose, and wearing good and well made clothes. Old servants--the old laundress--old schoolfellows were visited. My father's old clerk, Allan Freer, had a good business in Melrose, though not equal to that of the Tory firm. I think the portioners were all sold out before he could enter the field, and the fate of these Melrose people has thoroughly emphasized for me the importance of having our South Australian workmen's blocks, the glory of Mr. Cotton's life, maintained always on the same footing of perpetual lease dependent on residence. If the small owner has the freehold, he is tempted to mortgage it, and then in most instances the land is lost to him, and added to the possessions of the man who has money. With a perpetual lease, there is the same security of tenure as in the freehold--indeed, there is more security, because he cannot mortgage. I did not see the land question as clearly on this 1865 visit, as I did later; but the extinction of the old portioners and the wealth acquired by the moneyed man of Melrose gave me cause for thinking. CHAPTER VIII. I VISIT EDINBURGH AND LONDON. A visit to Glasgow and to the relatives of my sister-in-law opened out a different vista to me. This was a great manufacturing and commercial city, which had far outgrown Edinburgh in population and wealth; but the Edinburgh people still boasted of being the Athens of the north, the ancient capital with the grandest historic associations. In Glasgow I fell in with David Murray and his wife (of D. & W. Murray Adelaide)--not quite so important a personage as be became later. Not a relative of mine; but a family connection, for his brother William married Helen Cumming, Mrs. J. B. Spence's sister. David Murray was always a great collector of paintings, and especially of prints, which last he left to the Adelaide Art Gallery. He was a close friend of my brother John's until the death of the latter. One always enjoys meeting with Adelaide people in other lands, and comparing the most recent items of news. I went to Dumfries according to promise, and spent many days with my old friend Mrs. Graham, but stayed the night always with her sister, Mrs. Maxwell, wife of a printer and bookseller in the town. Dumfries was full of Burns's relies and memorials. Mr. Gilfillan had taken the likeness of Mrs. Burns and her granddaughter when he was a young man, and Mrs. Maxwell corresponded with the granddaughter. It was also full of associations with Carlyle. His youngest sister, Jean the Craw, as she was called on account of her dark hair and complexion was Mrs. Aitkin, a neighbour and close friend of Mrs. Maxwell. I was taken to see her, and I suppose introduced as a sort of author, and she regretted much that this summer Tom was not coming to visit her at Dumfries. She was a brisk, cheery person, with some clever daughters, who were friends of the Maxwell girls. When the Froude memorials came out no one was more indignant than Jean the Craw--"Tom and his wife always understood each other. They were not unhappy, though after her death he reproached himself for some things." I found that my friend had just as much to do from morning to night as she could do, and I hoped with a great hope that "Uphill Work" would be published, and all the world would see how badly capable and industrious women were paid. I fancied that a three-volume novel would be read, marked, and inwardly digested by everybody! But Mrs. Graham was appreciated by the matron, the doctors, and by the people of Dumfries, as she had not been in the village of Kirkbeen. Her picturesque descriptions of life in the various colonies interested home-staying folk, for she had the keenest observing faculties. There was an old cousin of Uncle Handyside's who always turned the conversation on to Russia, where he had visited successful brothers; but his talk was not incisive. My cousin Agnes asked me when I supposed this visit was paid, and I said a few years ago, probably, when she laughed and said--"Nicol Handyside spent six weeks in Russia 30 years ago, and he has been talking about it ever since." One visit I paid in Edinburgh to an old lady from Melrose, who lived with a married daughter. She had always been very deaf, and the daughter was out. With great difficulty I got her to see by my card that my name was Spence. "Are you Jessie Spence?" I shook my head. "No; Katie." "Are you Mary Spence?" Another headshake, "No; I am Katie." "Then who are you?" She could understand the negative by the headshaking, but not anything else. I wanted a piece of paper or a slate badly, but the daughter came in and made her mother understand that I was the middle Spence girl, and then the old lady said, "It is a very hot country you come from," her only idea apparently of wonderful Australia. And to think that in times long past some intriguing aunts tried very hard to arrange a marriage between my father and the deaf young lady who had about 600 pounds a year in land in and near Melrose. She might have been my mother! The idea was appalling! None of her children inherited the deafness, and they took a fair proportion of good looks from their father, for the mother was exceedingly homely. A brightlooking grandson was on the rug looking through a bound volume of Punch, as my nephew in Australia loved to do. The two mothers were school companions and playmates. My return to London introduced me to a wider range of society. I had admissions to the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons from Sir Charles Dilke, Professor Pearson's friend, and I had invitations to stay for longer or shorter periods with people various in means, in tastes, and in interests. To Mr. Hare I was especially drawn, and I should have liked to join him and his family in their yearly walking tour, which was to be through the Tyrol and Venice; but Aunt Mary protested for two good and sufficient reasons. The first was that I could not walk 16 or 20 miles a day, even in the mountains, which Katie Hare said was so much easier than on the plains; and the second was that to take six weeks out of my visit to the old country was a great deal too much. If it could have done any good to proportional representation I might have stood out; but it could not. For that I have since travelled thousands of miles by sea and by land; and, though not on foot, I have undergone much bodily fatigue and mental strain, but in these early days of the movement it had only entered the academic stage. My "Plea for Pure Democracy" had been written at a white heat of enthusiasm. I do not think I ever before or since reached a higher level. I took this reform more boldly than Mr. Mill, who sought by giving extra votes for property and university degrees or learned professions to cheek the too great advance of democracy. I was prepared to trust the people; and Mr. Hare was also confident that, if all the people were equitably represented in Parliament, the good would be stronger than the evil. The wise would be more effectual than the foolish. I do not think any one whom I met took the matter up so passionately as I did; and I had a feeling that in our new colonies the reform would meet with less obstruction than in old countries bound by precedent and prejudiced by vested interests. Parliament was the preserve of the wealthy in the United Kingdom. There was no property qualification for the candidate in South Australia, and we had manhood suffrage. South Australia was the first community to give the secret ballot for political elections. It had dispensed with Grand Juries. It had not required a member of either House to stand a new election if he accepted Ministerial office. Every elected man was eligible for office. South Australia had been founded by doctrinaires, and occasionally a cheap sneer had been levelled at it on that account; but, to my mind, that was better than the haphazard way in which other colonies grew. When I visited Sir Rowland Hill he was recognised as the great post office reformer. To me he was also one of the founders of our province, and the first pioneer of quota representation. When I met Matthew Davenport Hill I respected him because he tried to keep delinquent boys out of gaol, and promoted the establishment of reform schools; but I also was grateful to him for suggesting to his brother the park lands which surround Adelaide, and give us both beauty and health. To Col. Light, who laid out the city so well, we owe the many open spaces and squares; but he did not originate the idea of the park lands. Much of the work of Mr. Davenport Hill and of his brother Frederick I took up later with their niece (Miss C. E. Clark), and their ideas have been probably more thoroughly carried out in South Australia than anywhere else; but in 1865 I was learning a great deal that bore fruit afterwards. I fear it would make this narrative too long if I went into detail about the interesting people I met. Florence and Rossamund Davenport Hill introduced me to Miss Frances Power Cobbe, whose "Intuitive Morals" I admired so much. At Sir Rowland Hill's I met Sir Walter Crofter, a prison reformer; Mr. Wells, Editor of "All the Year Round;" Charles Knight, who had done so much for good and cheap literature; Madame Bodichon (formerly Barbara Smith), the great friend and correspondent of George Eliot, who was interesting to me because by introducing the Australian eucalyptus to Algeria she had made an unhealthy marshy country quite salubrious. She had a salon, where I met very clever men and women--English and French--and which made me wish for such things in Adelaide. The kindness and hospitality that were shown to me--an absolute stranger--by all sorts of people were surprising. Mr. and Mrs. Westlake took me on Sunday to see Bishop Colenso. He showed me the photo of the enquiring Zulu who made him doubt the literal truth of the early books of the Bible, and presented me with the people's edition of his work on the Pentateuch. In all my travels and visits I saw little of the theatre or concert room, and some of the candid confessions of Mrs. Oliphant might stand for my own. I had read so many plays before I saw one that the unreality of much of the acted drama impressed me unfavourably. The asides in particular seemed impossible, and I think the more carefully the pieces are put on the stage the more critical I become concerning their probability; and when I hear the praise of the beautiful and expensive theatrical wardrobes which, in the case of actresses seem to set the fashion for the wealthy and well-born, I feel that it is a costly means of making the story more unlikely. I seem to lose the identity of the heroine who in two hours wears three or four different toilettes complete. As Mrs. Oliphant did not identify the "nobody in white tights" who rendered from "Twelfth Night" the lovely lines beginning "That strain again; it had a dying fall" with the Orsino she had imagined when reading the play, so I, who knew "She Stoops to Conquer" almost by heart, was disappointed when I saw it on the stage. I was taken to the opera once by Mr. and Mrs. Bakewell, and heard Patti in "Don Giovanni," at Covent Garden, but opera of all kinds is wasted on me. I liked some of the familiar airs and choruses, but all opera needs far more make-believe than I am capable of. It is a pity that I am so insensible to the youngest and the most progressive of the fine arts. I am, however, in the good company of Mrs. Oliphant, who, speaking of the musical parties in Eton, where she lived so long, for the education of tier boys, writes in words that suit me perfectly: "In one of these friends' houses a family quartet played what were rather new and terrible to me--long sonatas and concerted pieces which filled my soul with dismay. It is a dreadful confession to make, and proceeds from want of education and instruction, but I fear any appreciation of music I have is purely literary. I love a song and a 'tune;' the humblest fiddler has sometimes given me the greatest pleasure, and sometimes gone to my heart; but music, properly so called, the only music that many of my friends would listen to, is to me a wonder and a mystery. My mind wanders through adagios and andantes, gaping, longing to understand. Will no one tell me what it means? I want to find the old unhappy far off things which Wordsworth imagined in the Gaelic song of the 'Highland Lass.' I feel out of it, uneasy, thinking all the time what a poor creature I must be. I remember the mother of the sonata players approaching me with beaming countenance on the occasion of one of these performances, expecting the compliment which I faltered forth, doing my best not to look insincere. 'And I have this every evening of my life,' cried the triumphant mother. 'Good heavens, and you have survived it all' was my internal response." But the worst thing is when you do not expect a musical evening and this superior music is sprung on you. Mrs. Webster and I were once invited to meet some very interesting people, some of the best conversationalists in Melbourne, and we were given high-class music instead, and scarcely could a remark be exchanged when a warning finger was held up and silence insisted on. I could not sing, but sometimes I attempted to hum a tune. I recollect during my first visit to Melbourne, my little nephew Johnnie, delighted in the rhymes and poems which I recited; but one day when I was ironing I began to sing, and he burst out with "Don't sing, auntie; let me hear the voice of your words." So for my own delectation I began Wordsworth's "Leechgatherer"-- There was a roaring in the wind all night, The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright. The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the stock dove broods. The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters, And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. "Oh, that's pretty, auntie; say it again," I said it again, and yet again, at his request, till he could almost repeat it. And he was not quite 4 years old. He is still alive, and has not become a poet, which was what I expected in those early days. He could repeat great screeds of Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin," which was his especial favourite. Music has often cheated me of what is to me the keenest pleasure in life. Like Samuel Johnson, I enjoy greatly "good talk," though I never took such a dominant part in it. There are two kinds of people who reduce me to something like silence--those who know too little and those who know too much. My brother-in-law's friend, Mr. Cowan, was a great talker, and a good one, but he scarcely allowed me a fair share. He was also an admirable correspondent. One predominant talker I met at Mr. Edwin Hill's--William Ellis, a special friend of the Hills, and a noteworthy man. One needs to look back 60 years to become conscious of how much English education was in the hands of the church. Not only the public schools and the university were overshadowed by the Established Church, but what schools were accessible to the poor were a sort of appanage to the rectory, and the teachers were bound to work for the good of the church and the convenience of the incumbent. The commercial schools, which were independent of the church, to which Non-conformists sent their boys, were satirised by Dickens, and they deserved the satire. The masters were generally incompetent, and the assistant teachers or ushers were the most miserable in regard to payment and status. William Ellis expended large sums of money, and almost all his leisure, in establishing secular schools that were good for something. He called them Birkbeck schools, thus doing honour to the founder of mechanics' institutes, and perhaps the founder of the first of these schools; and he taught what he called social science in them himself. He was the Senor Ferrer of England; and, though he escaped martyrdom in the more enlightened country he was looked on suspiciously by those who considered education that was not founded on revealed religion and permeated by its doctrines as dangerous and revolutionary. But there was one great personage who saw the value of those teachings on things that make for human happiness and intellectual freedom, and that was the Prince Consort. He asked William Ellis to give some lessons to the eldest of the Royal children--the Princess Victoria, Prince Edward (our present King), and Prince Alfred, afterwards Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Mr. Ellis said all three were intelligent, and Princess Victoria exceptionally so. What a tragedy it was--more so than that of many an epic or drama--that the Princess Royal and the husband of her choice, who had educated themselves and each other to take the reins of the German Empire, and had drawn up so many Plans for the betterment of the general conditions of the people, should, on their accession to power, have met death standing on the steps of the throne; and that only a powerless widow should have been left without much authority over her masterful son. But my firm belief is that in many of the excellent things that the Kaiser William has done for his people, he is working on the plans that had been committed to writing by the Crown Prince and Princess. Her father's memory was so dear to the Crown Princess that anything he had suggested to her was cherished all her life; and I do not doubt that these early lessons on the right relation of human beings to each other--the social science which regards human happiness as depending on justice and toleration--is even now bearing fruit in the Fatherland. Shortsighted mortals see the immediate failures, but in the larger eye of the Infinite and the Eternal there is always progress towards better things from every honest attempt to remedy injustice, and to increase knowledge. I arranged for a week in Paris with my young friends, Rosa and Symonds Clark, of Hazelwood, and we travelled as far as Paris with the Hare family, who went on to the Tyrol. We enjoyed the week. Louis Napoleon appeared then to be quite secure on his throne, and we saw the fetes and illuminations for his birthday. What a day and night of rain it was! But the thousands of people, joyful and good-humoured under umbrellas or without them--gave us a favourable impression of Parisian crowds. In London I had been with Mr. Cowan in the crush to the theatre. It was contrary to his principles to book seats, and I never was so frightened in my life. I thought a London crowd rough and merciless. I was the only one of the party who could speak any French, and I spoke it badly, and had great difficulty in following French conversations; but we got into a hotel where no English was spoken, and managed to pull through. But we did not know a soul, and I think we did not learn so much from our week's sightseeing as we should have done if Miss Katie Hare had stayed the week with us. I then paid a visit to Birmingham, and spent a week at the sittings of the British Association. By subscribing a guinea I was made an Associate, and some of the sessions were very interesting, but much too deep for me. I sat out a lecture on the Higher Mathematics, by Professor Henry Smith, to whom Professor Pearson gave me an introduction, in hopes that I might visit Oxford; but he was going abroad, and I could not go to Oxford if I knew nobody--especially alone. I went, however, to Carr's Lane Chapel, where a humble friend had begged me to go, because there she had been converted, and there the Rev. R. W. Dale happened to preach on "Where prayer was wont to be made." He said that consecration was not due to a Bishop or to any ecclesiastical ceremony, but to the devout prayers and praise of the faithful souls within it--that thousands over Scotland and England, and others in America, Australia, and New Zealand, look back to words which they had heard and praises and prayers in which they had joined as the holiest times in their lives. I thought of my good Mrs. Ludlow, and thanked God for her. When Mr. Cowan took me to the church in Essex place where he and his friend Wren used to hear Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, preach, a stranger, a young American, was there. I found out afterwards he was Moncure Conway, and he gave us a most striking discourse. There was going on in Birmingham at this time a controversy between the old Unitarians and the new. In the Church of the Messiah the old ministers gave a series of sermons on the absolute truth of the New Testament miracles. The Old Testament he was quite willing to give up, but he pinned his faith on those wrought by Christ and His apostles. Some of the congregation told me they had never thought of doubting them before, but the more Mr. B. defended them as the bulwarks of Christianity, the more they felt that our religion rested on other foundations. I saw a good deal of the industrial life of Birmingham, and had a sight of the Black Country by day and by night. Joseph Chamberlain was then a young man; I believe he was a Sunday school teacher. The Unitarian Sunday Schools taught writing and arithmetic as well as reading. In the terrible lack of national day schools many of the poor had no teaching at all but what was given on Sundays, and no time on other days of the week to learn anything. I could not help contrasting the provision made by the parish schools of Scotland out of the beggarly funds or tithes given for church and schools out of the spoils of the Ancient Church by the Lords of the Congregation. Education was not free, but it was cheap, and it was general. Scotchmen made their way all over the world better than Englishmen mainly because they were better educated. The Sunday school was not so much needed, and was much later in establishing itself in Scotland. Good Hannah More taught girls to read the Bible under a spreading tree in her garden because no church would give her a place to teach in. "If girls were taught to read where would we get servants?" It was an early cry. CHAPTER IX. MEETING WITH J. S. MILL AND GEORGE ELIOT. I leave to the last of my experiences in the old world in 1865-6 my interviews with John Stuart Mill and George Eliot. Stuart Mill's wife was the sister of Arthur and of Alfred Hardy, of Adelaide, and the former had given to me a copy of the first edition of Mill's "Political Economy," with the original dedication to Mrs. John Taylor, who afterwards became Mill's wife, which did not appear in subsequent editions; but, as he had two gift copies of the same edition, Mr. Hardy sent it on to me with his almost illegible handwriting:--"To Miss Spence from the author, not, indeed, directly, but in the confidence felt by the presenter that in so doing he is fulfilling the wish of the author--viz., circulating his opinions, more especially in such quarters as the present, where they will be accurately considered and tested." I had also seen the dedication to Harriet Mill's beloved memory of the noble book on "Liberty." Of her own individual work there was only one specimen extant--an article on the "Enfranchisement of women," included in Mill's collected essays--very good, certainly, but not so overpoweringly excellent as I expected. Of course, it was an early advocacy of the rights of women, or rather a revival of Mary Wollstoneeraft's grand vindication of the rights of the sex; and this was a reform which Mill himself took up more warmly than proportional representation, and advocated for years before Mr. Hare's revelation. For myself, I considered electoral reform on the Hare system of more value than the enfranchisement of women, and was not eager for the doubling of the electors in number, especially as the new voters would probably be more ignorant and more apathetic than the old. I was accounted a weak-kneed sister by those who worked primarily for woman suffrage, although I was as much convinced as they were that I was entitled to a vote, and hoped that I might be able to exercise it before I was too feeble to hobble to the poll. I have unfortunately lost the letter Mr. Mill wrote to me about my letters to The Register, and my "Plea for Pure Democracy," but it gave him great pleasure to see that a new idea both of the theory and practice of politics had been taken up and expanded by a woman, and one from that Australian colony, of which he had watched and aided the beginnings, as is seen by the name of Mill terrace, North Adelaide, to-day. Indeed, both Hare and Mill told me their first converts were women; and I felt that the absolute disinterestedness of my "Plea," which was not for myself, but only that the men who were supposed to represent me at the polling booth should be equitably represented themselves, lent weight to my arguments. I have no axe to grind--no political party to serve; so that it was not until the movement for the enfranchisement of women grew too strong to be neglected that I took hold of it at all; and I do not claim any credit for its success in South Australia and the Commonwealth, further than this--that by my writings and my spoken addresses I showed that one woman had a steady grasp on politics and on sociology. In 1865, when I was in England, Mr. Mill was permanently resident at Avignon, where his wife died, but he had to come to England to canvass for a seat in Parliament for Westminster as an Independent member, believed at that time to be an advanced Radical, but known to be a philosopher, and an economist of the highest rank in English literature. I had only one opportunity of seeing him personally, and I did not get so much out of him as I expected--he was so eager to know how the colony and colonial people were developing. He asked me about property in land and taxation, and the relations between employers and employes, and I was a little amused and a little alarmed when he said he was glad to get information from such a good authority. I had to disclaim such knowledge; but he said he knew I was observant and thoughtful, and what I had seen I had seen well. He was particularly earnest about woman's suffrage, and Miss Taylor, his stepdaughter, said she thought he had made a mistake in asking for the vote for single women only and widows with property and wives who had a separate estate; it would have been more logical to have asked for the vote on the same terms as were extended to men. The great man said meekly--"Well, perhaps I have made a mistake, but I thought with a property qualification the beginning would awake less antagonism." He said to me that if I was not to return to London till January we were not likely to meet again. He walked with me bareheaded to the gate, and it was farewell for both. Wise man as Mill was he did not foresee that his greatest object, the enfranchisement of women, would be carried at the antipodes long before there was victory either in England or America. When I received, in 1869 from the publisher, Mr. Mill's last book, "The Subjection of Women," I wrote thanking him for the gift. The reply was as follows:--"Avignon, November 28, 1869--Dear Madam--Your letter of August 16 has been sent to me here. The copy of my little book was intended for you, and I had much pleasure in offering it. The movement against women's disabilities generally, and for the suffrage in particular, has made great progress in England since you were last there. It is likely, I think, to be successful in the colonies later than in England, because the want of equality in social advantages between women and men is less felt in the colonies owing, perhaps, to women's having less need of other occupations than those of married life--I am, dear Madam, yours very truly, J. S. Mill." I have always held that, though the Pilgrim Fathers ignored the right of the Pilgrim Mothers to the credit of founding the American States--although these women had to take their full share of the toils and hardships and perils of pioneer and frontier life, and had in addition to put up with the Pilgrim Fathers themselves--Australian colonization was carried out by men who were conscious of the service of their helpmates, and grateful for it. In New Zealand and South Australia, founded on the Wakefield system, where the sexes were almost equal in number, and the immigration was mainly that of families, the first great triumphs for the political enfranchisement of women were won, and through South Australia the women of the Commonwealth obtained the Federal vote for both Houses: whereas even in the sparsely inhabited western states in the United States which have obtained the State vote the Federal vote is withheld from them. But Mill died in 1873, 20 years before New Zealand or Colorado obtained woman's suffrage. In treating of my one interview with Mr. Mill I have carried the narrative down to 1869. With regard to my single meeting with George Eliot, I have to begin in 1865, and conclude even later. Before I left England Mr. Williams, of Smith, Elder, & Co., offered me an introduction to George Henry Lewes, and I expressed the hope that it might also include an introduction to George Eliot, whose works I so admired. Mr. Lewes being away from home when I called, I requested that the introductory letter of Mr. Williams should be taken to George Eliot herself. She received me in the big Priory drawing room, with the grand piano, where she held her receptions and musical evenings; but she asked me if I had any business relating to the article which Mr. Williams had mentioned, and I had to confess that I had none. For once I felt myself at fault. I did not get on with George Eliot. She said she was not well, and she did not look well. That strong pale face, where the features were those of Dante or Savanarola, did not soften as Mill's had done. The voice, which was singularly musical and impressive, touched me--I am more susceptible to voices than to features or complexion--but no subject that I started seemed to fall in with her ideas, and she started none in which I could follow her lead pleasantly. It was a short interview, and it was a failure. I felt I had been looked on as an inquisitive Australian desiring an interview upon any pretext; and indeed, next day I had a letter from Mr. Williams, in which he told me that, but for the idea that I had some business arrangement to speak of, she would not have seen me at all. So I wrote to Mr. Williams that, as I had been received by mistake, I should never mention the interview; but that impertinent curiosity was not at all my motive in going that unlucky day to The Priory. Years passed by. I read everything, poetry and prose, that came from George Eliot's pen, and was so strong an admirer of her that Mr. W. L. Whitham, who took charge of the Unitarian Church while our pastor (Mr. Woods) had a long furlough in England, asked me to lecture on her works to his Mutual Improvement Society, and I undertook the task with joy. Mr. H. G. Turner asked for the MS. to publish in the second number of The Melbourne Review, a very promising quarterly for politics and literature. I thought that, if I sent the review to George Eliot with a note it might clear me from the suspicion of being a mere vulgar lionhunter. Her answer was as follows:--"The Priory, North Bank, Regent's Park, September 4, 1876. Dear Madam--Owing to an absence of some months, it was only the other day that I read your kind letter of April 17; and, although I have long been obliged to give up answering the majority of letters addressed to me, I felt much pleased that you had given me an opportunity of answering one from you; for I have always remembered your visit with a regretful feeling that I had probably caused you some pain by a rather unwise effort to give you a reception which the state of my health at the moment made altogether blundering and infelicitous. The mistake was all on my side, and you were not in the least to blame. I also remember that your studies have been of a serious kind, such as were likely to render a judgment on fiction and poetry, or, as the Germans, with better classification, say, in 'DICHTUNG' in general, quite other than the superficial haphazard remarks of which reviews are generally made. You will all the better understand that I have made it a rule not to read writing about myself. I am exceptionally sensitive and liable to discouragement; and to read much remark about my doings would have as depressing an effect on me as staring in a mirror--perhaps, I may say, of defective glass. But my husband looks at all the numerous articles that are forwarded to me, and kindly keeps them out of my way--only on rare occasions reading to me a passage which he thinks will comfort me by its evidence of unusual insight or sympathy. Yesterday he read your article in The Melbourne Review, and said at the end--'This is an excellently written article, which would do credit to any English periodical' adding the very uncommon testimony, 'I shall keep this.' Then he told me of some passages in it which gratified me by that comprehension of my meaning--that laying of the finger on the right spot--which is more precious than praise, and forthwith he went to lay The Melbourne Review in the drawer he assigns to any writing about me that gives him pleasure. For he feels on my behalf more than I feel on my own, at least in matters of this kind. If you come to England again when I happen to be in town I hope that you will give me the pleasure of seeing you under happier auspices than those of your former visit.--I am, dear madam, yours sincerely, M. G. Lewes." The receipt of this kind and candid letter gave me much pleasure; and, although on the strength of that, I cannot boast of being a correspendent of that great woman, I was able to say that I had seen and talked with her, and that she considered me a competent critic of her work. Mrs. Oliphant says that George Eliot's life impelled her to make an involuntary confession--"How have I been handicapped in life? Should I have done better if I had been kept, like her, in a mental green-house and taken care of? I have always had to think of other people and to plan everything for my own pleasure, it is true, very often, but always in subjection to the necessity which bound me to them. To bring up the boys--my own and Frank's--for the service of God was better than to write a fine novel, if it had been in my power to do so." The heart knows its own bitterness. There might have been some points in which George Eliot might have envied Mrs. Oliphant. CHAPTER X. RETURN FROM THE OLD COUNTRY. Before leaving Scotland I arranged that my friend, Mrs. Graham of the strenuous life and 30 pounds a year, should undertake the care of my aunts, to their mutual satisfaction. My last days in England were spent in either a thick London fog or an equally undesirable Scotch mist, which shrouded everything in obscurity, and made me long for the sunny skies and the clear atmosphere of Australia. I told my friends that in my country it either rained or let it alone. Indeed, the latest news from all Australia was that it had let it alone very badly, and that the overstocking of stations during the preceding good seasons had led to enormous losses. Sheepfarmers made such large profits in good seasons that they were apt to calculate that it was worth while to run the risk of drought; but experience has shown that overstocking does not really pay. The making of dams, the private and public provision of water in the underground reservoirs by artesian bores, and the facilities for travelling stock by such ways have all lessened the risks which the pioneer pastoralists ran bravely in the old days. An Australian drought can never be as disastrous in the twentieth century as it was in 1866; and South Australia, the Central State, has from the first been a pioneer in development as well as in exploration. The hum of the reaping machine first awoke the echoes in our wheatfields. The stump-jumping plough and the mullenicer which beats down the scrub or low bush so that it can be burnt, were South Australian inventions, copied elsewhere, which have turned land accounted worthless into prolific wheat fields. If South Australia was the first of the States to exhaust her agricultural soil, she was the first to restore it by means of fertilizers and the seed drill. When I see the drilled wheat fields I recollect my grandfather's two silver salvers--the Prizes from the Highland Society for having the largest area of drilled wheat in Scotland--and when I see the grand crops on the Adelaide Plains I recall the opinion that, with anything like a decent rainfall, that soil could grow anything. In 1866 the northern areas had not been opened. The farmers were continuing the process of exhausting the land by growing wheat--wheat--wheat, with the only variety wheaten hay. I recollect James Burnet's amazement when I said that our horses were fed on wheaten hay. "What a waste of the great possibilities of a grain harvest!" He was doubtful when I said that with plenty of wheaten hay the horses needed no corn. South Australia, except about Mount Gambier, does not grow oats, though Victoria depends on oaten hay. The British agriculturist thinks that meadow hay is the natural forage for horses and cattle, and for winter turnips are the standby. It was a little amusing to me that I could speak with some authority to skilled and experienced agriculturists, who felt our rivalry at Mark lane, but who did not dream that with the third great move of Australia towards the markets of the world through cold storage we could send beef, mutton, lamb, poultry, eggs, and all kinds of fruit to the consumers of Europe, and especially of England and its metropolis. I did not see it, any more than the people to whom I talked. I still thought that for meat and all perishable commodities the distance was an insuperable obstacle, and that, except for live stock from America, or canned meat from Australia, the United Kingdom would continue self-supporting on these lines. I returned to Australia, when this island continent was in the grip of one of the most severe and protracted droughts in its history. The war between Prussia and Austria had begun and ended; the failure of Overend and Gurney and others brought commercial disaster; and my brother, with other bankers, had anxious days and sleepless nights. Some rich men became richer; many poor men went down altogether. Our recovery was slow but sure. In the meantime I found life at home very dull after my interesting experiences abroad. There was nothing to do for proportional representation except to write an occasional letter to the press. So I started another novel, which was published serially in The Observer. Mr. George Bentley, who published it subsequently in book form, changed its title from "Hugh Lindsay's Guest" to "The Author's Daughter." But my development as a public speaker was more important than the publication of a fourth novel. Much had been written on the subject of public speaking by men, but so far nothing concerning the capacities of women in that direction. And yet I think all teachers will agree that girls in the aggregate excel boys in their powers of expression, whether in writing, or in speech, though boys may surpass them in such studies as arithmetic and mathematics. Yet law and custom have put a bridle on the tongue of women, and of the innumerable proverbs relating to the sex, the most cynical are those relating to her use of language. Her only qualification for public speaking in old days was that she could scold, and our ancestors imposed a salutary cheek on this by the ducking stool in public, and sticks no thicker than the thumb for marital correction in private. The writer of the Proverbs alludes to the perpetual dropping of a woman's tongue as an intolerable nuisance, and declares that it is better to live on the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house. A later writer, describing the virtuous woman, said that on her lips is the law of kindness, and after all this is the real feminine characteristic. As daughter, sister, wife, and mother--what does not the world owe to the gracious words, the loving counsel, the ready sympathy which she expresses? Until recent years, however, these feminine Rifts have been strictly kept for home consumption, and only exercised for the woman's family and a limited circle of friends. In 1825, when I first opened my eyes on the world, there were indeed women who displayed an interest in public affairs. My own mother not only felt the keenest solicitude regarding the passing of the Reform Bill, but she took up her pen, and with two letters to the local press, under the signature of "Grizel Plowter," showed the advantages of the proposed measure. But public speaking was absolutely out of the question for women, and though I was the most ambitious of girls, my desire was to write a great book--not at all to sway an audience. When I returned from my first visit to England in 1866, I was asked by the committee of the South Australian Institute to write a lecture on my impressions of England, different from the article which had appeared in The Cornhill Magazine under that title, but neither the committee nor myself thought of the possibility of my delivering it. My good friend, the late Mr. John Howard Clark, Editor of The Register, kindly offered to read it. I did not go to hear it, but I was told that he had difficulty in reading my manuscript, and that, though he was a beautiful reader, it was not very satisfactory. So I mentally resolved that if I was again asked I should offer to read my own MS. Five years afterwards I was asked for two literary lectures by the same committee, and I chose as my subjects the works of Elizabeth Browning and those of her husband, Robert Browning. Now, I consider that the main thing for a lecturer is to be heard, and a rising young lawyer (now our Chief Justice) kindly offered to take the back seat, and promised to raise his hand if he could not hear. It was not raised once, so I felt satisfied. I began by saying that I undertook the work for two reasons--first, to make my audience more familiar with the writings of two poets very dear to me; and second, to make easier henceforward for any woman who felt she had something to say to stand up and say it. I felt very nervous, and as if my knees were giving way; but I did not show any nervousness. I read the lecture, but most of the quotations I recited from memory. Not having had any lessons in elocution, I trusted to my natural voice, and felt that in this new role the less gesticulation I used the better. Whether the advice of Demosthenes is rightly translated or not--first requisite, action; second, action; third, action--I am sure that English word does not express the requisite for women. I should rather call it earnestness--a conviction that what you say is worth saying, and worth saying to the audience before you. I had a lesson on the danger of overaction from hearing a gentleman recite in public "The dream of Eugene Aram," in which he went through all the movements of killing and burying the murdered man. When a tale is crystallized into a poem it does not require the action of a drama. However little action I may use I never speak in public with gloves on. They interfere with the natural eloquence of the hand. After these lectures I occasionally was asked to give others on literary subjects. At this time I began to study Latin with my nephew, a boy of 14. He was then an orphan, my youngest and beloved sister Mary having recently died and left her two children to my care. My teacher thought me the more apt pupil, but it was really due more to my command of English than to my knowledge of Latin that I was able to get at the meaning of Virgil and Horace. When it came to Latin composition I was no better than the boy of 14. Before the death of my sister the family invested in land in Trinity street, College Town, and built a house. Mother had planned the house she moved into when I was six months old, and she delighted in the task, though she said it seemed absurd to build a house in her seventy-ninth year. But she lived in it from January, 1870, till December, 1887, and her youngest daughter lived in it for only ten months. Before that time I had embarked with my friend, Miss Clark, on one of the greatest enterprises of my life--one which led to so much that my friends are apt to say that, if I am recollected at all, it will be in connection with the children of the State and not with electoral reform. But I maintain now, as I maintained then, that the main object of my life is proportional representation, or, to use my brother John's term, effective voting. CHAPTER XI WARDS OF THE STATE. In a little book which the State Children's Council requested me to write as a memorial of the great work of Miss C. E. Clark on her retirement at the age of 80, I have given an account of the movement from the beginning down to 1907, which had its origin in South Australia under the leadership of Miss Clark. When I was on my way cut from England, Miss Clark wrote a letter to The Register, suggesting that the destitute, neglected, or orphaned children should be removed from the Destitute Asylum and placed in natural homes with respectable people; but the great wave which came over England about that time for building industrial schools and reformatories affected South Australia also, and the idea was that, though the children should be removed from the older inmates, it should be to an institution. Land was bought and plans were drawn up for an industrial school at Magill, five miles from Adelaide, when Miss Clark came to me and asked me to help her to take a different course. She enlisted Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Colton and Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Davenport in the cause, and we arranged for a deputation to the Minister; Howard Clark, Neville Blyth, and Mr. C. B. Young joined us. We offered to find country homes and provide lady visitors, but our request was simply scouted. As we did not offer to bear any of the cost it would be absurd to give us any share in the administration. Children would only be given homes for the sake of the money paid, and Oliver Twist's was held up as the sort of apprenticeship likely to be secured for pauper children. So we had to play the waiting game. The school built to accommodate 230 children was on four floors, though there was 40 acres of good land. It was so popular that, though only 130 went in at first, in two years it was so full that there was talk of adding a wing. This was our opportunity, and the same men and women went on another deputation, and this time we prevailed, and were allowed to place out the overflow as an experiment; and not only the Boarding-out Committee, but the official heads of the Destitute Department, were surprised and delighted with the good homes we secured for 5/ a week, and with the improvement in health, in intelligence, and in happiness that resulted from putting children into natural homes. What distinguishes work for children in Australia from what is done elsewhere is that it is national, and not philanthropic. The State is in loco-parentis, and sees that what the child needs are a home and a mother--that, if the home and the mother are good, the child shall be kept there; but that vigilant inspection is needed, voluntary or official--better to have both. Gradually the Magill School was emptied, and the children were scattered. Up to the age of 13 the home was subsidized, but when by the education law the child was free from school attendance, and went to service, the supervision continued until the age of 18 was reached. For nearly 14 years, from 1872 to 1886, the Boarding-out Society pursued its modest labours as auxiliary to the Destitute Board. Our volunteer visitors reported in duplicate--one copy for the official board, and one for the unofficial committee. When the method was inaugurated, Mr. T. S. Reed. Chairman of the Board, was completely won over. We had nothing to do with the reformatories, except that our visitors went to see those placed out at service in their neighbourhood. Our success attracted attention elsewhere. The late Dr. Andrew Garran, who was on The Register when I went to England, had moved to Sydney in my absence, and was on the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald. When Miss Clark went to England in 1877, after her mother`s death, Dr. Garran wrote to me for some account of our methods, and of their success, physical, moral, and financial. Dr. Garran came out with Mr. G. F. Angas and the Australian Constitution in 1851 in search of health and work, both of which he found here. The first pages of my four volumes of newspaper cuttings are filled with two long articles, "The Children of the State," and this started the movement in New South Wales, led by Mrs. Garran, nee Sabine, and Mrs. Jefferis wife of the leading Congregational minister, moved from Adelaide to Sydney. Professor Henry Pearson asked me a year or two later to give similar information to The Melbourne Age. Subsequently I wrote on this subject, by request, to Queensland, New Zealand, and I think also Tasmania, where we were imitated first, but where there are still to be found children of the State in institutions. In Victoria and New South Wales a vigorous policy emptied these buildings, which were used for other public purposes, and the children were dispersed. The innovation which at first was scouted as utopian, next suspected as leading to neglect, or even unkindness--for people would only take these children for what they could make out of them--was found to be so beneficial that nobody in Australia would like to return to the barrack home or the barrack school. If the inspection had been from the first merely official, public opinion would have been suspicious and sceptical, but when ladies saw the children in these homes, and watched how the dull faces brightened, and the languid limbs became alert after a few weeks of ordinary life--when the cheeks became rosier, and the eyes had new light in them; when they saw that the foster parents took pride in their progress at school, and made them handy about the house, as they could never be at an institution, where everything is done at the sound of a bell or the stroke of a clock--these ladies testified to what they knew, and the public believed in them. In other English-speaking countries boarding-out in families is sometimes permitted; but here, under the Southern Cross, it is the law of the land that children shall not be brought up in institutions, but in homes: that the child whose parent is the State shall have as good schooling as the child who has parents and guardians; that every child shall have, not the discipline of routine and redtape, but free and cheerful environment of ordinary life, preferably in the country--going to school with other young fellow citizens, going to church with the family in which he is placed, having the ordinary ditties, the ordinary difficulties, the ordinary pleasures of common life; but guarded from injustice, neglect, and cruelty by effective and kindly supervision. This movement, originated in South Australia, and with all its far-reaching developments and expansions, is due to the initiative of one woman of whom the State is justly proud--Miss Caroline Emily Clark. Even while we were only a Boarding-out Committee, it was found necessary to have one paid inspector; but there was great dissatisfaction with the Boys' Reformatory which had been located in an old leaky hulk, where the boys could learn neither seamanship nor anything else--and with some other details of the management of the destitute poor, and a commission with the Chief Justice as Chairman, was appointed to make enquiries and suggest reforms. The result was the separation of the young from the old absolutely; and a new body, the State Children's Council, of 12 men and women of nearly equal proportions, had authority over the reformatories, as well as what was called the industrial school, which was to be reduced to a mere receiving home, and all the children placed out, either on subsidy or at service. Most of the old committee were appointed; but, to my great joy, Dr. Edward C. Stirling and Mr. James Smith, the most enlightened man on the Destitute Board, were among the new members. We had a paid stall, with a most able secretary--Mr. J. B. Whiting. Dr. Stirling was unanimously voted in as President, and we felt we began our new duties under the most promising auspices. But, alas, in two years there was so much friction between the council and the Ministry that we all resigned in a body, except Mrs. Colton (who was in England) and Mrs. Farr. We were fighting the battle of the unpaid boards, and we were so strong in the public estimation that we might have won the victory. The Government had relieved children on the petition of parents, contrary to the strong recommendation of the council. Although the commission had declared that the reformatory boys should be removed at once from the hulk Fitzjames, they were still kept there, and the only offer of accommodation given was to share the Magill Industrial School with the reformatory girls. Now, this the council would not hear of, for we felt that the Government plans for separate entrances and separate staircases were absolutely futile and ridiculous for keeping apart these two dangerous classes in a single building. The Government gave way on the point of providing a separate building for the reformatory girls; and the committee, with the exception of Dr. Stirling and Mr. James Smith--our two strongest members--were reappointed. The official staff was increased by the appointment of clerks and inspectors, many of them women, who have always given every satisfaction, and who justify the claim made that women's work is conscientious and thorough. More departments were gradually added to our sphere of action. The separate trial of juvenile delinquents was strongly advocated by the council. Miss Clark and Mr. C. H. Goode were particularly keen on the introduction of Children's Courts. In this reform South Australia led the world, and in the new Act of 1896, after six years of tentative work, it became compulsory to try offenders under 18 at the Children's Court in the city and suburbs, and in the Magistrate's room in the country. The methods of organization and control vary in the different States of the Commonwealth, but on one point the six are all agreed--that dependent and delinquent children are a national asset and a national responsibility, and any forward step anywhere has every chance of being copied. The result of Children's Courts and probation has been that, while the population of the State has greatly increased, the committals to the Gaol and for penal servitude have steadily decreased, and the Boys' Reformatory has been reduced to one-third of the number in earlier days. There are, of course, many factors in all directions of social betterment, but the substitution of homes for institutions, and of probation carefully watched for summary punishment, are, in my opinion, the largest factors in, this State. The affection between children and their foster parents is often lifelong; and we see thousands who were taken from bad parents and evil environments taking their place in the industrial world, and filling it well. The movement in South Australia initiated by Miss Clark spread from State to State, and the happy thought of the President and Secretary of the Council that I should write an account of "Boarding-out and its Developments" as a memorial of her great work bore fruit in the legislation of the United Kingdom itself. A letter I received from Mr. Herbert Samuel, then Under-Secretary of State in the British Government, was gratifying, both to the council and to me:--"Home Office, Whitehall, S.W., August 5, 1907. Dear Madam--I have just read your little book on 'State Children in Australia;' and, although a stranger to you, would venture to write to thank you for the very valuable contribution you have made to the literature on the subject. The present Government in England are already engaged in promoting the more kindly and more effective methods of dealing with destitute, neglected, or delinquent children, which are already so widely adopted in South Australia. We are passing through Parliament this year a Bill to enable a system of probation officers, both paid and voluntary, to be established throughout the country, for dealing not indeed with child offenders alone, but with adult offenders also, who may be properly amenable to that treatment. And next year we propose to introduce a comprehensive Children's Bill, which has been entrusted to my charge, in which we hope to be able to include some of the reforms you have at heart. In the preparation of that Bill the experience of your colony and the account of it which you have published will be of no small assistance. Yours sincerely, Herbert Samuel." Another department of our work for the protection of infant life, and this we took over from the Destitute Board, where some unique provisions had been initiated by Mr. James Smith. The Destitute Asylum was the last refuge of the old and incapacitated poor, but it never opened its doors to the able bodied. In the Union Workhouse in England room is always found for friendless and penniless to come there for confinement, who leave as soon as they are physically strong enough to take their burden--their little baby--in their arms and face the world again. In Adelaide these women were in 1868 divided into two classes, one for girls who had made their first slip--girls weak, but very rarely wicked--so as to separate them, from women who came for a second or third time, who were cared for with their infants in the general asylum. Mr. James Smith obtained in 1881 legislation to empower the Destitute Board to make every woman sign an agreement to remain with her infant, giving it the natural nourishment, for six months. This has saved many infant lives, and has encouraged maternal affection. The Destitute Board kept in its hands the issuing of licences, and appointed a lady to visit the babies till they were two years old, and did good work; but when that department was properly turned over to the State Children's Council there was even more vigilance exercised, and the death rate among these babies, often handicapped before birth, and always artificially fed after, was reduced to something less than the average of all babies. We have been fortunate in our chief inspectress of babies. Her character has uplifted the licensed foster mothers, and the two combined have raised the real mothers. It is surprising how few such babies are thrown on the State. The department does not pay any board or find any clothing for these infants. It, however, pays for supervision and pays for a lady doctor, so that there need be no excuse for not calling in medical assistance if it is felt to be needed. Occasionally a visitor from other States or from England is allowed as a great favour to see, not picked cases, but the ordinary run, of the homes of foster mothers, and the question, "Where and how do you get such women?" is asked. We have weeded out the inferiors, and our instructions with regard to feeding and care are so definite, and found to be so sound, that the women take a pride in the health and the beauty of the little ones; and besides they keep up the love of the real mother by the care they give them. A recent Act has raised the age of supervision of illegitimate babies from two to seven years, and this has necessitated the appointment of an additional inspectress. In South Australia baby farming has been extinguished, and in the other States legislation on similar lines has been won, and they are in process of gradually weeding out bad and doubtful foster mothers. And the foster fathers are often as fond of the babies as their wives--and as softhearted. "Did you see that the poor girl had on broken boots this weather?" said he. "Yes, it's a Pity; but we are poor folks ourselves--we can't help it," said she. "Let her off the 6/ for a fortnight, so as she can get a pair of sound boots for her feet, we'll worry through without it." And they did. The extreme solicitude of the State Children's Department, as carried out by its zealous officers, for the life and the wellbeing of their babies serves them in Public extenuation, and the children are often so pretty and engaging that they win love all round. A grown-up son in the home was very fond of little Lily. "Mother will you get Lily a cream coat, such as I see other babies wearing, and I will pay for it." A most pathetic story I can tell of a girl respectably connected in the country, who had been cast off in disgrace, and came to town to take a place, committing her infant to a good foster mother. When he was old enough to move about, and was just trying to walk, the mother was taken dangerously ill to the Adelaide Hospital. The foster mother thought the girl's father should be sent for, and wrote to him giving her own address, but not disclosing her connection with the patient. The father of the girl came, and was told that he had better be accompanied by his informant, who could prepare the sick woman for the interview. The little boy was running about, and the old man took him on his knee while the woman got ready to go out. "You must come with us, Sonny," said she. "I can't leave you alone in the house." "A very fine little chap. Your youngest, I suppose. I can see he is a great pet." "No," said the woman slowly, "he is not my son, he is your grandson." "Good God, my grandson," Then, clasping the little fellow to his heart, he said, "I'll never part with him!" The mother recovered, and was taken home with her child and forgiven. Such is often the work of the good foster mother. In all the successes of the irresponsible committee and of the responsible State Children's Council the greatest factor has been the character of the good women who have been mothers to the little ones. The fears that only self-interest could induce them to take on the neglected and uncontrollable children were not borne out by experience, and in the ease of these babies not really illegitimate--it is the parents who deserve that title, no infant can--the mother's instinct came out very strong. At a conference of workers among dependent children, held in Adelaide in May, 1909, when all six States were represented, a Western Australian representative said that the average family home was not so good for its natural circle that it could be depended on for strangers; but our answer was that, both for the children of the State and for the babies who were not State children, we insisted on something better than the average home, and through our inspection we sought to improve it still further. We have not reached perfection by any means. When we begin to think we have, we are sure to fall back. Another good office the State Children's Department fills is that of advice gratis. One of the most striking chapters in Gen. Booth's "Darkest England" dealt with the helplessness of the poor and the ignorant in the face of difficulties, of injustice, and of extortion. When I was in Chicago in 1893 I saw that the first university settlement, that of Hull House, presided over by Miss Jane Addams (St. Jane some of her friends call her) was the centre to is which the poor American, German, Italian, or other alien went for advice as well as practical help. A word in season was often of more value than dollars. To be told what to do or what not to do at a crisis when decision is so important may be salvation for the pocket or for the character. CHAPTER XII. PREACHING, FRIENDS, AND WRITING. My life now became more interesting and varied. A wider field for my journalistic capabilities was open to me, and I also took part in the growth of education, both spiritual and secular. The main promoters of the ambitious literary periodical The Melbourne Review, to which I became a contributor, were Mr. Henry Gyles Turner (the banker), Mr. Alexander Sutherland, M.A. (author of "The History of Australia" and several other books), and A. Patchett Martin (the litterateur). It lived for nine years, and produced a good deal of creditable writing, but it never was able to pay its contributors, because it never attained such a circulation as would attract advertisements. The reviews and magazines of the present day depend on advertisements. They cheapen the price so as to gain a circulation, which advertisers cater for. I think my second article was on the death of Sir Richard Hanson (one of the original South Australian Literary Society, which met in London before South Australia existed). At the time of his death he was Chief Justice. He was the author of two books of Biblical criticism--"The Jesus of History" and "Paul and the Primitive Church"--and I undertook to deal with his life and work. About that time there was one of those periodic outbursts of Imperialism in the Australian colonies--not popular or general, but among politicians--on the question of how the colonies could obtain practical recognition in the Legislature of the United Kingdom. Each of the colonies felt that Downing street inadequately represented its claims and its aspirations, and there were several articles in "The Melbourne Review" suggesting that these colonies should be allowed to send members to the House of Commons. This, I felt, would be inadmissible; for, unless we were prepared to bear our share of the burdens, we had no right to sit in the taxing Assembly of the United Kingdom. The only House in which the colonies, small or great, could be represented was the House of Lords; and it appeared to me that, with a reformed House of Lords, this would be quite practicable. An article in Fraser's Magazine, "Why not the Lords, too?" had struck me much, and the lines on which it ran greatly resemble those laid down by Lord Rosebery for lessening in number and improving in character the unwieldy hereditary House of Peers; but neither that writer nor Lord Rosebery grasped the idea that I made prominent in an article I wrote for The Review, which was that the reduction of the peers to 200, or any other number ought to be made on the principle of proportional representation, because otherwise the majority of the peers, being Conservative, an election on ordinary lines would result in a selection of the most extreme Conservatives in the body. My mother had pointed out to me that the 16 representative Scottish peers elected by those who have not a seat as British peers, for the duration of each Parliament, were the most Tory of the Tories, and that the same could be said of the 28 representative peers for Ireland elected for life. So, though the House of Lords contains a respectable minority of Liberals, under no system of exclusively majority representation could any of them be chosen among the 200. I had the same idea of life peers to be added from the ranks of the professions, of science, and of literature, unburdened by the weight and cost of an hereditary title, that Lord Rosebery has; and into such a body I thought that representatives of the great self-governing colonies could enter, so that information about our resources, our politics, and our sociology might be available, and might permeate the press. But, greatly to my surprise, my article was sent back, but was afterwards accepted by Fraser's Magazine. This was better for me, for what would have been published for nothing in The Melbourne Review brought me 8/15/0 from a good English magazine. I continued to write for this review, until it ceased to exist, in 1885, literary and political articles. The former included a second one on "George Eliot's Life and Work," and one on "Honore de Balzac," which many of my friends thought my best literary effort. It was through Miss Martha Turner that I was introduced to her brother and to The Melbourne Review. She was at that time pastor of the Unitarian Church in Melbourne. She had during the long illness of the Rev. Mr. Higginson helped her brother with the services. At first she wrote sermons for him to deliver, but on some occasions when he was indisposed she read her own compositions. Fine reader as Mr. H. G. Turner is he did not come up to her, and especially he could not equal her in the presentment of her own thoughts. The congregation on the death of Mr. Higginson asked Miss Turner to accept the pastorate. She said she could conduct the services, but she absolutely declined to do the pastoral duties--visiting especially. She was licensed to conduct marriage services and baptized (or, as we call it, consecrated) children to the service of Almighty God and to the service of man. During the absence of our pastor for a long holiday in England Mr. C. L. Whitham afterwards an education inspector, took his place for two years, and he arranged for an exchange of three weeks with Miss Turner. She is the first woman I ever heard in the pulpit. I was thrilled by her exquisite voice, by her earnestness, and by her reverence. I felt as I had never felt before that if women are excluded from the Christian pulpit you shut out more than half of the devoutness that is in the world. Reading George Eliot's description of Dinah Morris preaching Methodisim on the green at Hayslope had prepared me in a measure, but when I heard a highly educated and exceptionally able woman conducting the services all through, and especially reading the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments with so much intelligence that they seemed to take on new meaning, I felt how much the world had been losing for so many centuries. She twice exchanged with Adelaide--the second time when Mr. Woods had returned--and it was the beginning to me of a close friendship. Imitation, they say, is the sincerest flattery; and when a similar opportunity was offered to me during an illness of Mr. Woods, when no layman was available, I was first asked to read a sermon of Martineau's and then I suggested that I might give something of my own. My first original sermon was on "Enoch and Columbus," and my second on "Content, discontent, and uncontent." I suppose I have preached more than a hundred times, in my life, mostly in the Wakefield Street pulpit; but in Melbourne and Sydney I am always asked for help; and when I went to America in 1893-4 I was offered seven pulpits--one in Toronto, Canada, and six in the United States. The preparation of my sermons--for, after the first one I delivered, they were always original--has always been a joy and delight to me, for I prefer that my subjects as well as their treatment shall be as humanly helpful as it is possible to make them. In Sydney particularly I have preached to fine audiences. On one occasion I remember preaching in a large hall, as the Unitarian Church could not have held the congregation. It was during the campaign that Mrs. Young and I conducted in Sydney--in 1900, and we had spent the day--a delightful one--with the present Sir George and Lady Reid at their beautiful home at Strathfield, and returned in time to take the evening service at Sydney. I spoke on the advantages of international peace, and illustrated my discourse with arguments, drawn from the South African War, which was then in progress. I seized the opportunity afforded me of speaking some plain home truths on the matter. I was afterwards referred to by The Sydney Bulletin as "the gallant little old lady who had more moral courage in her little finger than all the Sydney ministers had in their combined anatomies." For one of my sermons I wrote an original parable which pleased my friends so much that I include it in the account of my life's work. "And it came to pass after the five days of Creation which were periods of unknown length of time that God took the soul, the naked soul, with which He was to endow the highest of his creatures--into Eden to look with him on the work which He had accomplished. And the Soul could see, could hear, could understand, though there were neither eyes, nor ears, nor limbs, nor bodily organs, to do its bidding. And God said, 'Soul, thou shalt have a body as these creatures, that thou seest around thee have. Thou art to be king, and rule over them all. Thy mission is to subdue the earth, and make it fruitful and more beautiful than it is even now, in thus its dawn. Which of all these living creatures wouldst thou resemble?' And the Soul looked, and the Soul listened, and the Soul understood. The beauty of the birds first attracted him and their songs were sweet, and their loving care of their young called forth a response in the Prophetic Soul. But the sweet singers could not subdue the earth--nay, even the strongest voice could not. Then the Soul gazed on the lion in his strength; on the deer in his beauty. He saw the large-eyed bull with the cow by his side, licking her calf. The stately horse, the huge elephant, the ungainly camel--could any of these subdue the earth? He looked down, and they made it shake with their heavy tread, but the Soul knew that the earth could not be subdued by them. Then he saw a pair of monkeys climbing a tree--the female had a little one in her arms. Where the bird had wings, and the beasts four legs planted on the ground, the monkeys had arms, and, at the end of each, hands, with five fingers; they gathered nuts and cracked them, and picked out the kernels, throwing the shells away--the mother caressed her young one with gentle fingers. The Soul saw also the larger ape with its almost upright form. 'Ah!' sighed the Soul, 'they are not beautiful like the other creatures, neither are they so strong as many of them. But their forelimbs, with hands and fingers to grasp with, are what I need to subdue the earth, for they will be the servants who can best obey my will. Let me stand upright and gaze upward, and this is the body that I choose.' And God said, 'Soul, thou hast chosen well, Thou shalt be larger and stronger than these creatures thou seest thou shalt stand upright, and look upward and onward. And the Soul can create beauty for itself, when it shines through the body.' And it was so, and Adam stood erect and gave names to all other creatures." In the seventies the old education system, or want of system, was broken up, and a complete department of public instruction was constructed. Mr. J. A. Hartley, head master of Prince Alfred College, was placed at the head of it, and a vigorous policy was adopted. When the Misses Davenport Hill came out to visit aunt and cousins, I visited with them and Miss Clark the Grote Street Model School, and I was delighted with the new administration. I hoped that the instruction of the children of the people would attract the poor gentlewomen who were so badly paid as governesses in families or in schools; but my hope has not been at all adequately fulfilled. The Register had been most earnest in its desire for a better system of public education. The late Mr. John Howard Clark, its then editor, wanted some articles on the education of girls, and he applied to me to do them, and I wrote two leading articles on the subject, and another on the "Ladder of Learning." from the elementary school to the university, as exemplified in my native country where ambitious lads cultivated literature on a little oatmeal. For an Adelaide University was in the air, and took form owing to the benefactions of Capt. (afterwards Sir Walter Watson) Hughes, and Mr. (afterwards Sir Thomas) Elder. But the opposition to Mr. Hartley, which set in soon after his appointment, and his supposed drastic methods and autocratic attitude, continued. I did not knew Mr. Hartley personally, but I knew he had been an admirable head teacher, and the most valuable member of the Education Board which preceded the revolution. I knew, too, that the old school teachers were far inferior to what were needed for the new work, and that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. A letter which I wrote to Mr. Hartley, saying that I desired to help him in any way in my power, led to a friendship which lasted till his lamented death in 1896. I fancied at the time that my aid did him good, but I think now that the opposition had spent its force before I put in my oar by some letters to the press. South Australians became afterwards appreciative of the work done by Mr. Hartley, and proud of the good position this State took in matters educational among the sister States under the Southern Cross. It was due to Mrs. Webster's second visit to Adelaide to exchange with Mr. Woods that I made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. E. Barr Smith. They went to the church and were shown into my seat, and Mrs. Smith asked me to bring the eloquent preacher to Torrens Park to dine there. I discovered that they had long wanted to know me, but I was out of society. I recollect afterwards going to the office to see Mr. Smith on some business or other, when he was out, and meeting Mr. Elder instead. He pressed on me the duty of going to see Mrs. Black, a lady from Edinburgh, who had come out with her sons and daughter. Mr. Barr Smith came in, and his brother-in-law said, "I have just been telling Miss Spence she should go and call on the Blacks." "Tom," said Mr. Barr Smith, "we have been just 20 years making the acquaintance of Miss Spence. About the year 1899 Miss Spence will be dropping in on the Blacks." What a house Torrens Park was for books. There was no other customer of the book shops equal to the Torrens Park family. Rich men and women often buy books for themselves, and for rare old books they will give big prices; but the Barr Smiths bought books in sixes and in dozens for the joy of giving them where they would be appreciated. On my literary side Mrs. Barr Smith, a keen critic herself, fitted in with me admirably, and what I owed to her in the way of books for about 10 years cannot be put on paper, and in my journalistic work she delighted. Other friendships, both literary and personal, were formed in the decade which started the elementary schools and the University. The first Hughes professor of English literature was the Rev. John Davidson of Chalmers Church, married to Harriet, daughter of Hugh Miller, the self-taught ecologist and journalist. On the day of the inauguration of the University the Davidsons asked Miss Clark and myself to go with them, and there I met Miss Catherine Mackay (now Mrs. Fred Martin), from Mount Gambier. I at first thought her the daughter of a wealthy squatter of the south-east, but when I found she was a litterateur trying to make a living by her pen, bringing out a serial tale, "Bohemian Born," and writing occasional articles, I drew to her at once. So long as the serial tale lasted she could hold her own; but no one can make a living at occasional articles in Australia, and she became a clerk in the Education Office, but still cultivated literature in her leisure hours. She has published two novels--"An Australian Girl" and "The Silent Sea"--which so good a judge as F. W. H. Myers pronounced to be on the highest level ever reached in Australian fiction, and in that opinion I heartily concur. I take a very humble second place beside her, but in the seventies I wrote "Gathered In," which I believed to be my best novel--the novel into which I put the most of myself, the only novel I wrote with tears of emotion. Mrs. Oliphant says that Jeanie Deans is more real to her than any of her own creations, and probably it is the same with me, except for this one work. From an old diary of the fifties, when my first novels were written I take this extract:--"Queer that I who have such a distinct idea of what I approve in flesh-and-blood men should only achieve in pen and ink a set of impossible people, with an absurd muddy expression of gloom, instead of sublime depth as I intended. Men novelists' women are as impossible creations as my men, but there is this difference--their productions satisfy them, mine fail to satisfy me." But in my last novel--still unpublished--felt quite satisfied that I had at last achieved my ambition to create characters that stood out distinctly and real. Miss Clark took the MS. to England, but she could not get either Bentley or Smith Elder, or Macmillan to accept it. On the death of Mr. John Howard Clark, which took place at this time, Mr. John Harvey Finlayson was left to edit The Register, and I became a regular outside contributor to The Register and The Observer. He desired to keep up and if possible improve the literary side of the papers, and felt that the loss of Mr. Clark might be in some measure made up if I give myself wholeheartedly to the work. Leading articles were to be written at my own risk. If they suited the policy of the paper they would be accepted, otherwise not. What a glorious opening for my ambition and for my literary proclivities came to me in July, 1878, when I was in my fifty-third year! Many leading articles were rejected, but not one literary or social article. Generally these last appeared in both daily and weekly papers. I recollect the second original social article I wrote was on "Equality as an influence on society and manners," suggested by Matthew Arnold. The much-travelled Smythe, then, I think, touring with Charles Clark, wrote to Mr. Finlayson from Wallaroo thus:--"In this dead-alive place, where one might fire a mitrailleuse down the principal street without hurting anybody, I read this delightful article in yesterday's Register. When we come again to Adelaide, and we collect a few choice spirits, be sure to invite the writer of this article to join us." I felt as if the round woman had got at last into the round hole which fitted her; and in my little study, with my books and my pigeon holes, and my dear old mother sitting with her knitting on her rocking chair at the low window, I had the knowledge that she was interested in all I did. I generally read the MS to her before it went to the office. What is more remarkable, perhaps, is that the excellent maid who was with us for 12 years, picked out everything of mine that was in the papers and read it. A series of papers called "Some Social Aspects of Early Colonial Life" I contributed under the pseudonym of "A Colonist of 1839." From 1878 till 1893, when I went round the world via America, I held the position of outside contributor on the oldest newspaper in the State, and for these 14 years I had great latitude. My friend Dr. Garran, then editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, accepted reviews and articles from me. Sometimes I reviewed the same books for both, but I wrote the articles differently, and made different quotations, so that I scarcely think any one could detect the same hand in them; but generally they were different books and different subjects, which I treated. I tried The Australasian with a short story, "Afloat and Ashore," and with a social article on "Wealth, Waste, and Want." I contributed to The Melbourne Review, and later to The Victorian Review, which began by paying well, but filtered out gradually. I found journalism a better paying business for me than novel writing, and I delighted in the breadth of the canvas on which I could draw my sketches of books and of life. I believe that my work on newspapers and reviews is more characteristic of me, and intrinsically better work than what I have done in fiction; but when I began to wield the pen, the novel was the line of least resistance. When I was introduced in 1894 to Mrs. Croly, the oldest woman journalist in the United States, as an Australian journalist, I found that her work, though good enough, was essentially woman's work, dress, fashions, functions, with educational and social outlooks from the feminine point of view. My work might show the bias of sex, but it dealt with the larger questions which were common to humanity; and when I recall the causes which I furthered, and which in some instances I started, I feel inclined to magnify the office of the anonymous contributor to the daily press. And I acknowledge not only the kindness of friends who put some of the best new books in my way, but the large-minded tolerance of the Editors of The Register, who gave me such a free hand in the treatment of books, of men, and of public questions. CHAPTER XIII. MY WORK FOR EDUCATION. I was the first woman appointed on a Board of Advice under the Education Department, and found the work interesting. The powers of the board were limited to an expenditure of 5 pounds for repairs without applying to the department and to interviewing the parents of children who had failed to attend the prescribed number of days, as well as those who pleaded poverty as an excuse for the non-payment of fees. I always felt that the school fees were a heavy burden on the poor, and rejoiced accordingly when free education was introduced into South Australia. This was the second State to adopt this great reform, Victoria preceding it by a few years. I objected to the payment of fees on another ground. I felt they bore heavily on the innocent children themselves through the notion of caste which was created in the minds of those who paid fees to the detriment of their less fortunate school companions. And again, education that is compulsory should be free. Other women have since become members of School Boards, but I was the pioneer of that branch of public work for women in this State. It is a privilege that American women have been fighting for for many years--to vote for and to be eligible to sit on School Boards. In many of the States this has been won to their great advantage. In this present year of 1910 Mrs. Ella, Flagg Young, at the age of 65, has been elected by the Chigago Board, Director of the Education of that great city of over two millions of inhabitants at a salary of 2,000 pounds a year, with a male university professor as an assistant. At an age when we in South Australia are commanding our teachers to retire, in Chicago, which is said by Foster Fraser to cashier men at 40, this elderly woman has entered into her great power. It is characteristic of me that I like to do thoroughly what I undertake to do at all, and when, on one occasion I had not received the usual summons to attend a board meeting, I complained of the omission to the Chairman. "I do not want," I said, "to be a merely ornamental member of this board. I want to go to all the meetings." He replied, courteously, "It is the last thing that we would say of you, Miss Spence, that you are ornamental!" It was half a minute before he discovered that he had put his disclaimer in rather a different form from what he had intended, and he joined in the burst of laughter which followed. Another amusing contretemps occurred when the same gentleman and I were visiting the parents who had pleaded for exemption from the payment of fees. At one house there was a grown-up daughter who had that morning left the service of the gentleman's mother--a fact enlarged upon by my companion during the morning's drive. "Why is your eldest daughter out of a place?" was the first question he put to the woman. "She might be earning good wages, and be able to help you pay the fees." "Oh!" came the unexpected reply, "she had to leave old Mrs. ---- this morning; she was that mean there was no living in the house with her!" Knowing her interlocutor only as the man in authority, the unfortunate woman scarcely advanced her cause by her plain speaking, and I was probably the only member of the trio who appreciated the situation. I am sure many people who were poorer than this mother paid the fees rather than suffer the indignity of such cross-questioning by the school visitors and the board--an unfortunate necessity of the system, which disappeared with the abolition of school fees. It had been suggested by the Minister of Education of that period that the children attending the State schools should be instructed in the duties of citizenship, and that they should be taught something of the laws under which they lived, and I was commissioned to write a short and pithy statement of the case. It was to be simple enough for intelligent children in the fourth class; 11 or 12--it was to lead from the known to the unknown--it might include the elements of political economy and sociology--it might make use of familiar illustrations from the experience of a new country--but it must not be long. It was not very easy to satisfy myself and Mr. Hartley--who was a severe critic--but when the book of 120 pages was completed he was satisfied. A preface I wrote for the second edition--the first 5,000 copies being insufficient for the requirements of the schools--will give some idea of the plan of the work:--"In writing this little book, I have aimed less at symmetrical perfection than at simplicity of diction, and such arrangement as would lead from the known to the unknown, by which the older children in our public schools might learn not only the actual facts about the laws they live under, but also some of the principles which underlie all law." The reprinting gave me an opportunity to reply to my critics that "political economy, trades unions, insurance companies, and newspapers" were outside the scope of the laws we live under. But I thought that in a new State where the optional duties of the Government are so numerous, it was of great importance for the young citizen to understand economic principles. As conduct is the greater part of life, and morality, not only the bond of social union, but the main source of individual happiness, I took the ethical part of the subject first, and tried to explain that education was of no value unless it was used for good purposes. As without some wealth, civilization was impossible, I next sought to show that national and individual wealth depends on the security that is given by law, and on the industry and the thrift which that security encourages. Land tenure is of the first importance in colonial prosperity, and consideration of the land revenue and the limitations as to its expenditure led me to the necessity for taxation and the various modes of levying it. Taxation led me to the power which imposes, collects, and expends it. This involved a consideration of those representative institutions which make the Government at once the master and the servant of the people. Under this Government our persons and our prosperity are protected by a system of criminal, civil, and insolvent law--each considered in its place. Although not absolutely included in the laws we live under, I considered that providence, and its various outlets in banks, savings banks, joint stock companies, friendly societies, and trades unions, were matters too important to be left unnoticed; and also those influences which shape character quite as much as statute laws--public opinion, the newspaper, and amusements. As the use of my little book was restricted solely to school hours, my hope that the parents might be helped and encouraged by its teaching was doomed to disappointment. But the children of 30 years ago, when "The Laws We Live Under" was first published, are the men and women of to-day, and who shall say but that among them are to be found some at least worthy and true citizens, who owe to my little book their first inspiration to "hitch their wagon to a star." Last year an enthusiastic young Swedish teacher and journalist was so taken with this South Australian little handbook of civics that he urged on me the duty of bringing it up to date, and embracing women's suffrage, the relations of the States to the Commonwealth, as well as the industrial legislation which is in many ways peculiar to Australia, but although those in authority were sympathetic no steps have been taken for its reproduction. Identified as I had been for so many years with elementary education in South Australia, my mind was well prepared to applaud the movement in favour of the higher education of poorer children of both sexes by the foundation of bursaries and scholarships, and the opening up of the avenues of learning to women by admitting them to University degrees. Victoria was the first to take this step, and all over the Commonwealth the example has been followed. I am, however, somewhat disappointed that University women are not more generally progressive in their ideas. They have won something which I should have been very glad of, but which was quite out of reach. All opportunities ought to be considered as opportunities for service. As my brother David regarded the possession of honours and wealth as demanding sacrifice for the common good, so I regarded special knowledge and special culture as means for advancing the culture of all. It is said to be human nature when special privileges or special gifts are used only for egoistic ends; but the complete development of the human being demands that altruistic ideas should also be cultivated. We see that in China an aristocracy of letters--for it is through passing difficult examinations in old literature that the ruling classes are appointed--is no protection to the poor and ignorant from oppression or degradation. It is true that the classics in China are very old, but so are the literatures of Greece and Rome, on which so many university degrees are founded; and it ought to be impressed upon all seekers after academic honours that personal advantage is not the be-all and end-all of their pursuits. In our democratic Commonwealth, although there are some lower titles bestowed by the Sovereign on colonists more or less distinguished, these are not hereditary, so that an aristocracy is not hereditary. There may be an upper class, based on landed estate or one on business success, or one on learning, but all tend to become conservative as conservatism is understood in Australia. Safety is maintained by the free rise from the lower to the higher. But all the openings to higher education offered in high school and university do not tempt the working man's children who want to earn wages as soon as the law lets them go to work. Nor do they tempt their parents to their large share of the sacrifice which young Scotch lads and even American lads make to get through advanced studies. The higher education is still a sort of preserve of the well-to-do, and when one thinks of how greatly this is valued it seems a pity that it is not open to the talents, to the industry, to the enthusiasm of all the young of both sexes. But one exception I must make to the aloofness of people with degrees and professions from the preventible evils of the world, and that is in the profession that is the longest and the most exacting--the medical profession. The women doctors whom I have met in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney have a keen sense of their responsibility to the less fortunate. That probably is because medicine as now understood and practised is the most modern of the learned professions, and is more human than engineering, which is also modern. It takes us into the homes of the poor more intimately than even the clergyman, and it offers remedies and palliatives as well as advice. The law is little studied by women in Australia, but in the United States there are probably a thousand or more legal practitioners. It is the profession that I should have chosen when I was young if it had been in any way feasible. I had no bent for the medical profession, and still less for what every one thinks the most womanly of avocations--that of the trained nurse. I could nurse my own relatives more or less well, but did not distinguish myself in that way, and I could not devote myself to strangers. The manner in which penniless young men become lawyers in the United States seems impossible in Australia. Judge Lindsay, son of a ruined southern family, studied law and delivered newspapers in the morning, worked in a lawyer's office through the day, and acted as janitor at night. The course appears to be shorter, and probably less Latin and Greek were required in a western State than here. But during the long vacation in summer, students go as waiters in big hotels at seaside or other health resorts, or take up some other seasonal trade. All the Columbian guards at the Chicago Exhibition were students. They kept order, they gave directions, they wheeled invalids in bath chairs, and they earned all that was needed, for their next winter's course. In the long high school holidays youths and maidens who are poor and ambitious work for money. I have seen fairly well-paid professors who went back to the father's farm and worked hard all harvest time--and students always did so. It appears easier in America to get a job for three months' vacation than in England or Australia, and the most surprising thing about an American is his versatility. Teaching is with most American men only a step to something better, so that almost all elementary and the far greater proportion of high school teaching is in the hands of women. In Australia our male teachers have to spend so many years before they are fully equipped that they rarely leave the profession. The only check on the supply is that the course is so long and laborious that the youth prefers an easy clerkship. Women, in spite of the chance of marriage, enter the profession in the United States in greater numbers, and as the scale of salaries is by no means equal pay for equal work, except in New York, money is saved by employing women. I think that it is the student of arts (that English title which is as vague and unmeaning as the Scottish one of humanities)--student of ancient classical literature--who, whether man or woman, has least perception of the modern spirit or sympathy with the sorrows of the world. With all honour to the classical authors, there are two things in which they were deficient--the spirit of broad humanity and the sense of humour. All ancient literature is grave--nay, sad. It is also aristocratic for learning was the possession of the few. While writing this narrative I came upon a notable thing done by Miss Crystal Eastman, a member of the New York Bar, and Secretary of the State Commission on Employers' Liability. It is difficult for us to understand how so many good things are blocked, not only in the Federal Government, but in the separate States, by the written constitutions. In Great Britain the Constitution consists of unwritten principles embodied either in Parliamentary statutes or in the common law, and yields to any Act which Parliament may pass, and the judiciary can impose no veto on it. This is one reason why England is so far ahead of the United States in labour legislation. Miss Eastman was the principal speaker at the annual meeting in January, 1910, of the New York State Bar Association. She is a trained economic investigator as well as a lawyer, and her masterly analysis of conditions under the present liability law held close attention, and carried conviction to many present that a radical change was necessary. The recommendations for the statute were to make limited compensation for all accidents, except those wilfully caused by the victim, compulsory on all employers. With regard to dangerous occupations the person who profits by them should bear the greatest share of the loss through accident. As for the constitutionality of such legislation Miss Eastman said--"If our State Constitution cannot be interpreted so as to recognise such an idea of justice then I think we should amend our Constitution. I see no reason why we should stand in such awe of a document which expressly provides for its own revision every ten years." The evils against which this brave woman lawyer contends are real and grievous. Working people in America who suffer from injury are unmercifully exploited by the ambulance-chasing lawyers. Casualty insurance companies are said to be weary of being diverted from their regular business to become a mere fighting force in the Courts to prevent the injured or the dependents from getting any compensation. The long-suffering public is becoming aware that the taxpayers are compelled to bear the burden of supporting the pitifully great multitude of incapacitated or rendered dependent because of industrial accident or occupational diseases. Employers insure their liability, and the poor man has to fight an insurance company, and at present reform is blocked on the plea that it is unconstitutional. There are difficulties even in Australia, and to enquire into such difficulties would be good work for women lawyers. CHAPTER XIV. SPECULATION, CHARITY, AND A BOOK. In the meantime my family history went on. My nephew was sent to the Northern Territory to take over the branch of the English and Scottish Bank at Palmerston, and he took his sister from school to go with him and stay three months in the tropics. He was only 21 at the time. Four years after he went to inspect the branch, and took his sister with him again. I think she loved Port Darwin more than he did, and she always stood up for the climate. South Australia did a great work in building, unaided by any other Australian State, the telegraph line from Port Darwin to Adelaide, and at one time it was believed that rich goldfields were to be opened in this great empty land, which the British Government had handed over to South Australia, because Stuart had been the first to cross the island continent, and the handful of South Australian colonists bad connected telegraphically the north and the south. The telegraph building had been contracted for by Darwent and Dalwood, and my brother, through the South Australian Bank, was helping to finance them. That was in 1876-7. This was the first, but not the last by any means, of enterprises which contractors were not able to carry out in this State, either from taking a big enterprise at too low a rate or from lack of financial backing. The Government, as in the recent cases of the Pinnaroo Railway and the Outer Harbour, had to complete the halfdone work as the direct employer of labour and the direct purchaser of materials. A great furore for goldmining in the Northern Territory arose, and people in England bought city allotments in Palmerston, which was expected to become the queen city of North Australia, Port Darwin is no whit behind Sydney Harbour in beauty and capacity. The navies of the world could ride safely in its waters. A railway of 150 miles in length, the first section of the great transcontinental line, which was to extend from Palmerston to Port Augusta, was built to connect Pine Creek, where there was gold to be found, with the seaboard. South Australia was more than ever a misnomer for this State. Victoria lay more to the south than our province, and now that we stretched far inside the tropics the name seemed ridiculous. My friend Miss Sinnett suggested Centralia as the appropriate name for the State, which by this gift was really the central State; but in the present crisis, when South Australia finds the task of keeping the Northern Territory white too arduous and too costly, and is offering it on handsome terms to the Commonwealth, Centralia might not continue to be appropriate. Our northern possession has cost South Australia much. The sums of money sunk in prospecting for gold and other metals have been enormous, and at present there are more Chinese there than Europeans. In the early days, when the Wrens were there, Eleanor was surprised when their wonderful Chinese cook came to her and said, "Missie, I go along a gaol to-morrow. You take Ah Kei. He do all light till I go out!" The cook had been tried and condemned for larceny, but he was allowed to retain his situation till the last hour. Instead of being kept in gaol pending his trial he earned his wages and did his work. He had no desire to escape. He liked Palmerston and the bank, and he went back to the latter when released. He was an incorrigible thief, and got into trouble again; but as a cook he was superlative. That decade of the eighties was a most speculative time all over Australia and New Zealand. I was glad that leaving the English and Scottish Bank enabled my brother to go into political and official life, but it also allowed him to speculate far beyond what he could have done if he had been manager of a bank. Everybody speculated--in mines, in land, and in leases. I was earning by my pen a very decent income, and I spent it, sometimes wisely and sometimes foolishly. I could be liberal to church and to good causes. I was able to keep a dear little State child at school for two years after the regulation age, and I was amply repaid by seeing her afterwards an honoured wife and mother, able to assist her children and their companions with their lessons. I helped some lame dogs over the stile. One among them was a young American of brilliant scholastic attainments, who was the victim of hereditary alcoholism. His mother, a saintly and noble prohibitionist worker, whom I afterwards met in America, had heard of me, and wrote asking me to keep a watchful eye on her boy. This I did for about 12 months, and found him employment. He held a science degree, and was an authority on mineralogy, metallurgy, and kindred subjects. During this speculative period he persuaded me to plunge (rather wildly for me) in mining shares. I plunged to the extent of 500 pounds, and I owe it to the good sense and practical ability of my nephew that I lost no more heavily than I did, for he paid 100 pounds to let me off my bargain. My protege continued to visit me weekly, and we wrote to one another once a week or oftener. The books I lent to him I know to this day by their colour and the smell of tobacco. I wrote to his mother regularly, and consulted with his good friend, Mr. Waterhouse, over what was best to be done. One bad outburst he had when he had got some money through me to pay off liabilities. I recollect his penitent, despairing confession, with the reference to Edwin Arnold's poem He who died at Azun gave This to those who dug his grave. The time came when I felt I could hold him no longer, although that escapade was forgiven, and I determined to send him to his mother--not without misgivings about what she might have still to suffer. He wrote to me occasionally. His health was never good, and I attribute the craving for drink and excitement a good deal to physical causes; but at the same time I am sure that he could have withstood it by a more resolute will. The will is the character--it is the real man. When people say that the first thing in education is to break the will, they make a radical mistake. Train the will to work according to the dictates of an enlightened conscience, for it is all we have to trust to for the stability of character. My poor lad called me his Australian mother. When I saw his real mother, I wondered more and more what sort of a husband she had, or what atavism Edward drew from to produce a character so unlike hers. I heard nothing from herself of what she went through, but from her friends I gathered that he had several outbreaks, and cost her far more than she could afford. She paid everything that he owed in Adelaide, except her debt to me, but that I was repaid after her death in 1905, and she always felt that I had been a true friend to her wayward son. I recollect one day my friend coming on his weekly visit with a face of woe to tell me he had seen a man in dirt and rags, with half a shirt, who had been well acquainted with Charles Dickens and other notables in London. My friend had fed him and clothed him, but he wanted to return to England to rich friends. I wrote to a few good folk, and we raised the money and sent the wastrel to the old country. How grateful he appeared to be, especially to the kind people who had taken him in; but he never wrote a line. We never heard from him again. Years afterwards I wrote to his brother-in-law, asking where the object of our charity now was, if he were still alive. The reply was that his ingratitude did not surprise the writer--that he was a hopeless drunkard, a remittance man, whom the family had to ship off as soon as possible when our ill-judged kindness sent him to England. At that time he was in Canada, but it was not worth while to give any address. When Mr. Bowyear started the Charity Organization Society in Adelaide, he said I was no good as a visitor; I was too credulous, and had not half enough of the detective in me. But I had not much faith in this remittance man. I have been strongly tempted to omit altogether the next book which I wrote; but, as this is to be a sincere narrative of my life and its work, I must pierce the veil of anonymity and own up to "An Agnostic's Progress." I had been impressed with the very different difficulties the soul of man has to encounter nowadays from those so triumphantly overcome by Christian in the great work of John Bunyan in the first part of "The Pilgrim's Progress." He cannot now get out of the Slough of Despond by planting his foot on the stepping stones of the Promises. He cannot, like Hopeful, pluck from his bosom the Key of Promise which opens every lock in Doubting Castle when the two pilgrims are shut in it by Giant Despair, when they are caught trespassing on his grounds. Even assured Christians, we know, may occasionally trespass on these grounds of doubt; but the weapons of modern warfare are not of the seventeenth century. The Interpreter's House in the old allegory dealt only with things found in the Bible, the only channel of revelation to John Bunyan. To the modern pilgrim God reveals Himself in Nature, in art, in literature, and in history. The Interpreter's Hand had to do with all these things. Vanity Fair is not a place through which all pilgrims must pass as quickly as possible, shutting their eyes and stopping their ears so that they should neither see nor hear the wicked things that are done and said there. Vanity Fair is the world in which we all have to live and do our work well, or neglect it. Pope and Pagan are not the old giants who used to devour pilgrims, but who can now only gnash their teeth at them in impotent rage. They are live forces, quite active, and with agents and supporters alert to capture souls. Of all the influences which affected for evil my young life I perhaps resented most Mrs. Sherwood's "Infant's Progress." There were three children in it going from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City by the route laid down by John Bunyan; but they were handicapped even more severely than the good Christian himself with his heavy burden--for that fell off his back at the first sight of the Cross and Him who was nailed to it, accepted by the eye of Faith as the one Sacrifice for the sins of the world--for the three little ones, Humble Mind, Playful, and Peace, were accompanied always and everywhere by an imp called Inbred Sin, who never ceased to tempt them to evil. The doctrine of innate human depravity is one of the most paralysing dogmas that human fear invented or priestcraft encouraged. I did not think of publishing "An Agnostic's Progress" at first. I wrote it to relieve my own mind. I wanted to satisfy myself that reverent agnostics were by no means materialists; that man's nature might or might not be consciously immortal, but it was spiritual; that in the duties which lay before each of us towards ourselves and towards our fellow-creatures, there was scope for spiritual energy and spiritual emotion. I was penetrated by Browning's great idea expressed over and over again--the expansion of Paul's dictum that faith is not certainty, but a belief without sufficient proof, a belief which leads to right action and to self-sacrifice. Of the 70 years of life which one might hope to live and work in, I had no mean idea. I asked in the newspaper, "Is life so short?" and answered. "No." I expanded and spiritualized the idea in a sermon, and I again answered emphatically "No." I saw the continuation and the expansion of true ideas by succeeding generations. To the question put sometimes peevishly, "Is life worth living?" I replied with equal emphasis, "Yes." My mother told me of old times. I recalled half a century of progress, and I hoped the forward movement would continue. I read the manuscript of "An Agnostic's Progress" to Mr. and Mrs. Barr Smith, and they thought so well of it that they offered to take it to England on one of their many visits to the old country, where they had no doubt it would find a publisher. Trubner's reader reported most favourably of the book, and we thought there was an immediate prospect of its publication; but Mr. Trubner died, and the matter was not taken up by his successor, and my friends did what I had expressly said they were not to do, and had it printed and published at their own expense. There were many printer's errors in it, but it was on the whole well reviewed, though it did not sell well. The Spectator joined issue with me on the point that it is only through the wicket gate of Doubt that we can come to any faith that is of value; but I am satisfied that I took the right stand there. My mother was in no way disquieted or disturbed by my writing the book, and few of my friends read it or knew about it. I still appeared so engrossed with work on The Register and The Observer that my time was quite well enough accounted for. I tried for a prize of 100 pounds offered by The Sydney Mail with a novel called "Handfasted," but was not successful, for the judge feared that it was calculated to loosen the marriage tie--it was too socialistic and consequently dangerous. CHAPTER XV. JOURNALISM AND POLITICS. In reviewing books I took the keenest Interest in the "Carlyle Biographies and Letters," because my mother recollected Jeanie Welch as a child, and her father was called in always for my grandfather Brodie's illnesses. I was also absorbed in the "Life and Letters of George Eliot." The Barr Smiths gave me the "Life and Letters of Balzac," and many of his books in French, which led me to write both for The Register and for The Melbourne Review. I also wrote "A last word," which was lost by The Centennial in Sydney when it died out. It was also from Mrs. Barr Smith that I got so many of the works of Alphonse Daudet in French, which enabled me to give a rejoinder to Marcus Clark's assertion that Balzac was a French Dickens. Indeed, looking through my shelves, I see so many books which suggested articles and criticisms which were her gifts that I always connect her with my journalistic career. Many people have consulted me about publishing poems, novels, and essays. As I was known to have actually got books published in England, and to be a professional journalist and reviewer, I dare say some of those who applied to me for encouragement thought I was actuated by literary jealousy; but people are apt to think they have a plot when they have only an incident, or two or three incidents; and many who can write clever and even brilliant letters have no idea of the construction of a story that will arrest and sustain the reader's attention. The people who consulted me all wanted money for their work. They had such excellent uses for money. They had too little. They were neither willing nor able to bear the cost of publication, and it was absolutely necessary that their work should be good enough for a business man to undertake it. I am often surprised that I found English publishers myself, and the handicap of distance and other things is even greater now. If stories are excessively Australian, they lose the sympathies of the bulk of the public. If they are mildly Australian, the work is thought to lack distinctiveness. Great genius can overcome these things, but great genius is rare everywhere. Except for my friend Miss Mackay (Mrs. F. Martin), I know no Australian novelist of genius, and her work is only too rare in fiction. Mrs. Cross reaches her highest level in "The Masked Man." but she does not keep it up, though she writes well and pleasantly. Of course poetry does not pay anywhere until a great reputation is made. Poetry must be its own exceeding great reward. And yet I agree with Charles Kingsley that if you wish to cultivate a really good prose style you should begin with verse. In my teens I wrote rhymes and tried to write sonnets. I encouraged writing games among my young people, and it is surprising how much cleverness could be developed. I can write verses with ease, but very rarely could I rise to poetry; and therefore I fear I was not encouraging to the budding Australian poet. There was a column quite outside of The Register to which I liked to contribute for love. That was "The Riddler," which appeared in The Observer and in The Evening Journal on Saturdays. It brought me in contact with Mr. William Holden, long the oldest journalist in South Australia, who revelled in statistical returns and algebraical problems and earth measurements, but who also appreciated a good charade or double acrostic. I used to give some of the ingredients for his "Christmas Mince Pie," and wrote many riddles of various sorts. My charades were not so elegant as some arranged by Miss Clark, and not so easily found out; and my double acrostics were not so subtle as those given in competition nowadays, but they were in the eighties reckoned excellent. My fame had reached the ears of Mrs. Alfred Watts (nee Giles), who spent her early colonial life on Kangaroo Island, and she asked me to write some double acrostics for the poor incurables. I stared at her in amazement. "We want to be quite well to tackle double acrostics and to have access to books. Does not Punch speak of the titled lady, eager to win a guinea prize, who gave seven volumes of Carlyle's works to seven upper servants, and asked each to search one to find a certain quotation?" "Oh," said Mrs. Watts, "I don't mean for the incurables to amuse themselves with. I mean for the benefit of the home." In the end I prepared a book of charades and double acrostics, for the printing and binding of which Mrs. Watts paid. It was entitled "Silver Wattle," and the proceeds from the sale of this little book went to help the funds of the home. For a second volume issued for the same purpose Mrs. Strawbridge wrote some poems, Mrs. H. M. Davidson a translation of Victor Huge, Miss Clark her beautiful "Flowers of Greece," and her niece some pretty verses, which, combined with the double acrostics, and acting charades supplied by me, made an attractive volume. Mrs. Watts had something of a literary turn, which found expression in "Memories of Early Days in South Australia," a book printed for private circulation among her family and intimate friends. Dealing with the years between 1837 and 1845 it was very interesting to old colonists, particularly when they were able to identify the people mentioned, sometimes by initials and sometimes by pseudonyms. The author was herself an incurable invalid from an accident shortly after her marriage, and felt keenly for all the inmates of the Fullarton Home. In 1877 my brother John--with whom I had never quarrelled in my life, and who helped and encouraged me in everything that I did--retired from the English, Scottish, and Australian Bank, and decided to contest a seat for the Legislative Council. It was the last occasion on which the Council was elected with the State as one district. Although he announced his candidature only the night before nomination day, and did not address a single meeting, he was elected third on the poll. He afterwards became the Chief Secretary, and later Commissioner of Public Works. He was an excellent worker on committees, and was full of ideas and suggestions. Although not a good speaker, he rejoiced in my standing on platform or in pulpit. He was nearly as democratic as I was; and when he invented the phrase "effective voting" it was from the sense that true democracy demanded not merely a chance, but a certainty, that the vote given at the poll should be effective for some one. My brother David inherited all the Conservatism of the Brodies for generations back. Greatly interested in all abstruse problems and abstract questions he had various schemes for the regeneration of mankind. Two opposing theories concerning the working of bi-cameral Legislatures supplied me with material for a Review article. One theory was intensely Conservative, and emanated from my brother David, who was a poor man. The other was held by the richest man of my acquaintance, and was distinctly Liberal. My brother argued that the Upper House should have the power to tax its own constituents, and was utterly opposed to any extension of the franchise. My rich friend objected to the limited franchise, and desired to have the State proclaimed one electorate with proportional representation as a safeguard against unwise legislation and as a means to assist reforms. The great blot, he considered, on Australian Constitutions was the representation by districts, especially for the House that controlled the public purse. If districts were to be tolerated at all, they should be represented by men who had a longer tenure of office than our Assembly's three years, and who did not have so often to ask for votes, which frequently depended on a railway or a jetty or a Rabbit Bill. So long as a Government depends for its existence on the support of local representatives it is tempted to spend public money to gratify them. Both men were Freetraders, and both believed strongly in the justice of land values taxation. My friend the late Professor Pearson had entered into active political life in Melbourne, and was a regular writer for The Age. Perhaps no other man underwent more obloquy from his old friends for taking the side of Graham Berry, especially as he was a Freetrader, and the popular party was Protectionist. He justified his action by saying that a mistake in the fiscal policy of a country should not prevent a real Democrat from siding with the party which opposed monopoly, especially in land. He saw in "LATIFUNDIA"--huge estates--the ruin of the Roman Empire, and its prevalence in the United Kingdom was the greatest danger ahead of it. In these young countries the tendency to build up large holdings was naturally fostered by what was the earliest of our industries. Sheepfarming is not greatly pursued in the United States or Canada, because of the rigorous winter--but Australia is the favourite home of the merino sheep. Originally there was no need to buy land, or even to pay rent to the Government for it; the land had no value till settlement gave it. The squatter leased it on easy terms, and bought it only when it had sufficient value to be desired by agriculturists or by selectors who posed as agriculturists. When he bought it he generally complained of the price these selectors compelled him to pay, but it was then secure; and, with the growth of population and the railroads and other improvements, these enforced purchasers, even in 1877, had built up vast estates in single hands in every State in Australia. In The Melbourne Review for April, 1877, Professor Pearson sketched a plan of land taxation, which was afterwards carried out, in which the area of land held was the test for graduated taxation. Henry George had not then declared his gospel; and, although I felt that there was something very faulty in the scheme, I did not declare in my article on the subject that an acre in Collins street might be of more value than 50,000 acres of pastoral land 500 miles from the seaboard, and was therefore more fitly liable to taxation for the advantage of the whole community, who had given to that acre this exceptional value. I did not declare it because I did not believe it. But I thought that the end aimed at--the breaking up of large estates--could be better and more safely effected, though not so quickly, by a change in the incidence of succession duties. Some time after I saw a single copy of Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" on Robertson's shelves, and bought it, and it was I who after reading this book opened in the three most important Australian colonies the question of the taxation of land values. An article I wrote went into The Register, and Mr. Liston, of Kapunda, read it, and spoke of it at a farmers' meeting. I had then a commission from The Sydney Morning Herald to write on any important subject, and I wrote on this. It appeared, like a previous article on Howell's "Conflicts of Capital and Labour," as an unsigned article. A new review, The Victorian, had been started by Mortimer Franlyn, which paid contributors; and, now that I was a professional journalist, I thought myself entitled to ask remuneration. I sent to the new periodical, published in Melbourne, a fuller treatment of the book than had been given to the two newspapers, under the title of "A Californian Political Economist." This fell into the hands of Henry George himself, in a reading room in San Francisco, and he wrote an acknowledgment of it to me. In South Australia the first tax on unimproved land values was imposed. It was small--only a halfpenny in the pound, but without any exemption; and its imposition was encouraged by the fact that we had had bad seasons and a falling revenue. The income tax in England was originally a war tax, and they say that if there is not a war the United States will never be able to impose an income tax. The separate States have not the power to impose such a tax. Henry George said to me in his home in New York:--"I wonder at you, with your zeal and enthusiasm, and your power of speaking, devoting yourself to such a small matter as proportional representation, when you see the great land question before you." I replied that to me it was not a small matter. I cannot, however, write my autobiography without giving prominence to the fact that I was the pioneer in Australia in this as in the other matter of proportional representation. CHAPTER XVI. SORROW AND CHANGE. In the long and cheerful life of my dear mother there at last came a change. At 94 she fell and broke her wrist. The local doctor (a stranger), who was called in, not knowing her wonderful constitution, was averse from setting the wrist, and said that she would never be able to use the hand. But I insisted, and in six, weeks she was able to resume her knitting, and never felt any ill effects. At 95 she had a fall, apparently without cause, and was never able to stand again. She had to stay in bed for the last 13 months of her life, with a gradual decay of the faculties which had previously been so keen. My mother wanted me with her always. Her talk was all of times far back in her life--not of Melrose, where she had lived for 25 years, but of Scoryhall (pronounced Scole), where she had lived as a girl. I had been shown through the house by my aunt Handyside in 1865, and I could follow her mind wanderings and answer her questions. As she suffered so little pain it was difficult for my mother to realize the seriousness of her illness; and, tiring of her bedroom, she begged to be taken to the study, where, with her reading and knitting, she had spent so many happy hours while I did my writing. Delighted though she was at the change, a return to her bed--as to all invalids--was a comfort, and she never left it again. Miss Goodham--an English nurse and a charming woman, who has since remained a friend and correspondent of the family--was sent to help us for a few days at the last. Another sorrow came to us at this time in the loss of my ward's husband, and Rose Hood--nee Duval--returned to live near me with her three small children. Her commercial training enabled her to take a position as clerk in the State Children's Department, which she retained until her death. The little ones were very sweet and good, but the supervision of them during the day added a somewhat heavy responsibility to our already overburdened household. In these days, when one hears so much of the worthlessness of servants, it is a joy to remember how our faithful maid--we kept only one for that large house--at her own request, did all the laundry work for the family of five, and all through the three years of Eleanor's illness waited on her with untiring devotion. An amusing episode which would have delighted the heart of my dear friend Judge Lindsay occurred about this time. The fruit from our orange trees which grew along the wall bordering an adjoining paddock was an irresistible temptation to wandering juveniles, and many and grievous were the depredations. Patience, long drawn out, at last gave way, and when the milkman caught two delinquents one Saturday afternoon with bulging blouses of forbidden fruit it became necessary to make an example of some one. The trouble was to devise a fitting punishment. A Police Court, I had always maintained, was no place for children; corporal punishment was out of the question; and the culprits stood tremblingly awaiting their fate till a young doctor present suggested a dose of Gregory's powder. His lawyer friend acquiesced, and Gregory's powder it was. A moment's hesitation and the nauseous draught was swallowed to the accompaniment of openly expressed sympathy, one dear old lady remarking, "Poor children and not so much as a taste of sugar." Probably, however, the unkindest cut of all was the carrying away by the milkman of the stolen fruit! The cure was swift and effective; and ever after the youth of the district, like the Pharisee of old, passed by on the other side. My dear mother died about 8 o'clock on the evening of December 8, 1887, quietly and painlessly. With her death, which was an exceedingly great loss to me, practically ended my quiet life of literary work. Henceforth I was free to devote my efforts to the fuller public work for which I had so often longed, but which my mother's devotion to and dependence on me rendered impossible. But I missed her untiring sympathy, for with all her love for the old days and the old friends there was no movement for the advancement of her adopted land that did not claim her devoted attention. But though I was now free to take up public work, the long strain of my mother's illness and death had affected my usually robust health, and I took things quietly. I had been asked by the University Shakspeare Society to give a lecture on Donnelly's book, "The Great Cryptogram;" or "Who Wrote Shakspeare's Plays?" and it was prepared during this period, and has frequently been delivered since. October of the year following my mothers death found me again in Melbourne, where I rejoiced in the renewal of a friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Walker, the former of whom had been connected with the construction of the overland railway. They were delightful literary people, and I had met them at the hospitable house of the Barr-Smiths, and been introduced as "a literary lady." "Then perhaps," said Mr. Walker, "you can give us the information we have long sought in vain--who wrote 'Clara Morrison?'" Their surprise at my "I did" was equalled by the pleasure I felt at their kind appreciation of my book, and that meeting was the foundation of a lifelong friendship. Before my visit closed I was summoned to Gippsland through the death by accident of my dear sister Jessie--the widow of Andrew Murray, once editor of The Argus--and the year 1888 ended as sadly for me as the previous one had done. The following year saw the marriage of my nephew, Charles Wren of the E.S. and A. Bank, to Miss Hall, of Melbourne. On his deciding to live on in the old home, I, with Ellen Gregory, whom I had brought out in 1867 to reside with relations, but who has remained to be the prop and mainstay of my old age--and Mrs. Hood and her three children, moved to a smaller and more suitable house I had in another part of East Adelaide. A placid flowing of the river of life for a year or two led on to my being elected, in 1892, President of the Girls' Literary Society. This position I filled with joy to myself and, I hope, with advantage to others, until some years later the society ceased to exist. Crowded and interesting as my life had been hitherto, the best was yet to be. My realization of Browning's beautiful line from "Rabbi Ben Ezra"--"The last of life, for which the first was made," came when I saw opening before me possibilities for public service undreamed of in my earlier years. For the advancement of effective voting I had so far confined my efforts to the newspapers. My brother John had suggested the change of name from proportional representation to effective voting as one more likely to catch the popular ear, and I had proposed a modification of Hare's original plan of having one huge electorate, and suggested instead the adoption of six-member districts. The State as one electorate returning 42 members for the Assembly may be magnificent, and may also be the pure essence of democracy, but it is neither commonsense nor practicable. "Why not take effective voting to the people?" was suggested to me. No sooner said than done. I had ballot papers prepared and leaflets printed, and I began the public campaign which has gone on ever since. During a visit to Melbourne as a member of a charities conference it was first discovered that I had some of the gifts of a public speaker. My friend, the Rev. Charles Strong, had invited me to lecture before his working men's club at Collingwood, and I chose as my subject "Effective Voting." When on my return Mr. Barr Smith, who had long grasped the principle of justice underlying effective voting, and was eager for its adoption, offered to finance a lecturing tour through the State, I jumped at the offer. There was the opportunity for which I had been waiting for years. I got up at unearthly hours to catch trains, and sometimes succeeded only through the timely lifts of kindly drivers. Once I went in a carrier's van, because I had missed the early morning cars. I travelled thousands of miles in all weathers to carry to the people the gospel of electoral reform. Disappointments were frequent, and sometimes disheartening; but the silver lining of every cloud turned up somewhere, and I look back on that first lecturing tour as a time of the sowing of good seed, the harvest of which is now beginning to ripen. I had no advance agents to announce my arrival, and at one town in the north I found nobody at the station to meet me. I spent the most miserable two and a half hours of my life waiting Micawber-like for something to turn up; and it turned up in the person of the village blacksmith. I spoke to him, and explained my mission to the town. He had heard nothing of any meeting. Incidentally I discovered that my correspondent was in Adelaide, and had evidently forgotten all about my coming. "Well," I said to the blacksmith, "if you can get together a dozen intelligent men I will explain effective voting to them." He looked at me with a dumbfounded air, and then burst out, "Good G--, madam, there are not three intelligent men in the town." But the old order has changed, and in 1909 Mrs. Young addressed an enthusiastic audience of 150 in the same town and on the same subject. The town, moreover, is in a Parliamentary district, in which every candidate at the recent general election--and there were seven of them--supported effective voting. Far down in the south I went to a little village containing seven churches, which accounted (said the local doctor) for the extreme backwardness of its inhabitants. "They have so many church affairs to attend to that there is no time to think of anything else." At the close of this lecturing tour The Register undertook the public count through its columns, which did so much to bring the reform before the people of South Australia. Public interest was well aroused on the matter before my long projected trip to America took shape. "Come and teach us how to vote," my American friends had been writing to me for years; but I felt that it was a big order for a little woman of 68 to undertake the conversion to electoral reform of 60 millions of the most conceited people in the world. Still I went. I left Adelaide bound for America on April 4, 1893, as a Government Commissioner and delegate to the Great World's Fair Congresses in Chicago. In Melbourne and Sydney on my way to the boat for San Francisco I found work to do. Melbourne was in the throes of the great financial panic, when bank after bank closed its doors; but the people went to church as usual. I preached in the Unitarian Church on the Sunday, and lectured in Dr. Strong's Australian Church on Monday. In Sydney Miss Rose Scott had arranged a drawing-room meeting for a lecture on effective voting. A strong convert I made on that occasion was Mr. (afterwards Sr.) Walker. A few delightful hours I spent at his charming house on the harbour with his family, and was taken by them to see many beauty spots. Those last delightful days in Sydney left me with pleasant Australian memories to carry over the Pacific. When the boat sailed on April 17, the rain came down in torrents. Some interesting missionaries were on board. One of them, the venerable Dr. Brown, who had been for 30 years labouring in the Pacific, introduced me to Sir John Thurston. Mr. Newell was returning to Samoa after a two years' holiday in England. He talked much, and well about his work. He had 104 students to whom he was returning. He explained that they became missionaries to other more benighted and less civilized islands, where their knowledge of the traditions and customs of South Sea Islanders made them invaluable as propagandists. The writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, had prepared me to find in the Samoans a handsome and stalwart race, with many amiable traits, and I was not disappointed. The beauty of the scenery appealed to me strongly, and I doubt whether "the light that never was on sea or land" could have rivalled the magic charm of the one sunrise we saw at Samoa. During the voyage I managed to get in one lecture, and many talks on effective voting. Had I been superstitious my arrival in San Francisco on Friday, May 12, might have boded ill for the success of my mission, but I was no sooner ashore than my friend Alfred Cridge took me in charge, and the first few days were a whirl of meetings, addresses and interviews. CHAPTER XVII. IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. Alfred Cridge, who reminded me so much of my brother David that I felt at home with him immediately, had prepared the way for my lectures on effective voting in San Francisco. He was an even greater enthusiast than I. "America needs the reform more than Australia," he used to say. But if America needs effective voting to check corruption, Australia needs it just as much to prevent the degradation of political life in the Commonwealth and States to the level of American politics. My lectures in San Francisco, as elsewhere in America, were well attended, and even better received. Party politics had crushed out the best elements of political life, and to be independent of either party gave a candidate, as an agent told Judge Lindsay when he was contesting the governorship of Colorado, "as much chance as a snowball would have in hell." So that reformers everywhere were eager to hear of a system of voting that would free the electors from the tyranny of parties, and at the same time render a candidate independent of the votes of heckling minorities, and dependent only on the votes of the men who believed in him and his politics. I met men and women interested in public affairs--some of them well known, others most worthy to be known, and all willing to lend the weight of their character and intelligence to the betterment of human conditions at home and abroad. Among these were Judge Maguire, a leader of the Bar in San Francisco and a member of the State Legislature, who had fought trusts, "grafters," and "boodlers" through the whole of his public career, and Mr. James Barry, proprietor of The Star. "You come from Australia, the home of the secret ballot?" was the greeting I often received, and that really was my passport to the hearts of reformers all over America. From all sides I heard that it was to the energy and zeal of the Singletaxers in the various States--a well-organized and compact body--that the adoption of the secret ballot was due. To that celebrated journalist, poetess, and economic writer, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, who was a cultured Bostonian, living in San Francisco, I owed one of the best women's meetings I ever addressed. The subject was "State children and the compulsory clauses in our Education Act," and everywhere in the States people were interested in the splendid work of our State Children's Department and educational methods. Intelligence and not wealth I found to be the passport to social life among the Americans I met. At a social evening ladies as well as their escorts were expected to remove bonnets and mantles in the hall, instead of being invited into a private room as in Australia--a custom I thought curious until usage made it familiar. The homeliness and unostentatiousness of the middle class American were captivating. My interests have always been in people and in the things that make for human happiness or misery rather than in the beauties of Nature, art, or architecture. I want to know how the people live, what wages are, what the amount of comfort they can buy; how the people are fed, taught, and amused; how the burden of taxation falls; how justice is executed; how much or how little liberty the people enjoy. And these things I learned to a great extent from my social intercourse with those cultured reformers of America. Among these people I had not the depressing feeling of immensity and hugeness which marred my enjoyment when I arrived at New York. My literary lectures on the Brownings and George Eliot were much appreciated, especially in the East, where I found paying audiences in the fall or autumn of the year. These lectures have been delivered many times in Australia; and, as the result of the Browning lecture given in the Unitarian Schoolroom in Wakefield street, Adelaide, I received from the pen of Mr. J. B. Mather a clever epigram. The room was large and sparsely filled, and to the modest back seat taken by my friend my voice scarcely penetrated. So he amused himself and me by writing: I have no doubt that words of sense Are falling from the lips of Spence. Alas! that Echo should be drowning Both words of Spence and sense of Browning. I found the Brownings far better appreciated in America than in England, especially by American women. In spite of the fact that The San Francisco Chronicle had interviewed me favourably on my arrival, and that I knew personally some of the leading people on The Examiner, neither paper would report my lectures on effective voting. The Star, however, quite made up for the deficiencies of the other papers, and did all it could to help me and the cause. While in San Francisco I wrote an essay on "Electoral Reform" for a Toronto competition, in which the first prize was $500. Mr. Cridge was also a competitor; but, although many essays were sent in, for some reason the prize was never awarded, and we had our trouble for nothing. On my way to Chicago I stayed at a mining town to lecture on effective voting. I found the hostess of the tiny hotel a brilliant pianist and a perfect linguist, and she quoted poetry--her own and other people's--by the yard. A lady I journeyed with told me that she had been travelling for seven years with her husband and "Chambers's Encyclopedia." I thought they used the encyclopaedia as a guide book until, in a sort of postscript to our conversation, I discovered the husband to be a book agent, better known in America as a "book fiend." Nobody had ever seen anything like the World's Fair. My friend Dr. Bayard Holmes of Chigago, whose acquaintance I made through missing a suburban train, expressed a common feeling when he said he could weep at the thought that it was all to be destroyed--that the creation evolved from the best brains of America should be dissolved. Much of our human toil is lost and wasted, and much of our work is more ephemeral than we think; but this was a conscious creation of hundreds of beautiful buildings for a six months' existence. Nowhere else except in America could the thing have been done, and nowhere else in America but in Chicago. At the Congress of Charity and correction I found every one interested in Australia's work for destitute children. It was difficult for Miss Windeyer, of Sydney, and myself--the only Australians present--to put ourselves in the place of many who believed in institutions where children of low physique, low morals, and low intelligence are massed together, fed, washed, drilled, taught by rule, never individualized, and never mothered. I spoke from pulpits in Chicago and Indianapolis on the subject, and was urged to plead with the Governor of the latter State to use his influence to have at least tiny mites of six years of age removed from the reformatory, which was under the very walls of the gaol. But he was obdurate to my pleadings and arguments, as he had been to those of the State workers. He maintained that these tiny waifs of six were incorrigible, and were better in institutions than in homes. The most interesting woman I met at the conference was the Rev. Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, pastor of Bell Street Chapel, Providence. I visited her at home, in that retreat of Baptists, Quakers, and others from the hard persecution of the New England Orthodoxy, the founders of which had left England in search of freedom to worship God. Her husband was the Unitarian minister of another congregation in the same town. At the meetings arranged by Mrs. Spencer, Professor Andrews, one of the Behring Sea arbitrators, and Professor Wilson were present; and they invited me to speak on effective voting at the Brunn University. In Philadelphia I addressed seven meetings on the same subject. At six of them an editor of a little reform paper was present. For two years he had lived on brown bread and dried apples, in order that he could save enough to buy a newspaper plant for the advocacy of reforms. In his little paper he replied to the critics, who assured me that it was no use worrying, as everything would come right in time. "Time only brings wonders," he wrote, "when good and great men and women rise up to move the world along. Time itself brings only decay and death. The truth is 'Nothing will come right unless those who feel they have the truth speak, and Work, and strain as if on them alone rested the destinies of the world.'" I went to see a celebrated man, George W. Childs, who had made a fortune out of The Philadelphia Ledger, and who was one of the best employers in the States. He knew everybody, not only in America but in Europe; and his room was a museum of gifts from great folks all over the world. But, best of all, he, with his devoted friend Anthony Drexel, had founded the Drexel Institute, which was their magnificent educational legacy to the historic town. I saw the Liberty Bell in Chicago--the bell that rang out the Declaration of Independence, and cracked soon after--which is cherished by all good Americans. It had had a triumphant progress to and from the World's Fair, and I was present when once again it was safely landed in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. I think the Americans liked me, because I thought their traditions reputably old, and did not, like European visitors, call everything crude and new. The great war in America strengthened the Federal bond, while it loosened the attachment to the special Satte in which the United States citizen lives. Railroads and telegraphs have done much to make Americans homogeneous, and the school system grapples bravely with the greater task of Americanizing the children of foreigners, who arrive in such vast numbers. Canada allowed the inhabitants of lower Canada to keep their language, their laws, and their denominational schools; and the consequence is that these Canadian-British subjects are more French than the French, more conservative than the Tories, and more Catholic than Irish or Italians. Education is absolutely free in America up to the age of 18; but I never heard an American complain of being taxed to educate other people's children. In Auburn I met Harriet Tribman, called the "Moses of her people"--an old black woman who could neither read nor write, but who had escaped from slavery when young, and had made 19 journeys south, and been instrumental in the escape of 300 slaves. To listen to her was to be transferred to the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Her language was just that of Tom and old Jeff. A pious Christian, she was full of good works still. Her shanty was a refuge for the sick, blind, and maimed of her own people. I went all over Harvard University under the guidance of Professor Ashley, to whom our Chief Justice had given me a letter of introduction. He got up a drawing-room meeting for me, at which I met Dr. Gordon Ames, pastor of the Unitarian Church of the Disciples. He invited me to preach his thanksgiving service for him on the following Thursday, which I was delighted to do. Mrs. Ames was the factory inspector of women and children in Massachusetts, and was probably the wisest woman I met in my travels. She spoke to me of the evils of stimulating the religious sentiment too young, and said that the hushed awe with which most people spoke of God and His constant presence filled a child's mind with fear. She related an experience with her own child, who on going to bed had asked if God was in the room. The child was told that God was always besides us. After being left in darkness the child was heard sobbing, and a return to the nursery elicited the confession, "Oh, mamma, I can't bear to be left with no one but God." Better the simple anthropomorphism which makes God like the good father, the generous uncle, the indulgent grandfather, or the strong elder brother. Such ideas as these of God were held by the heroines of the following stories:--A little girl, a niece of the beloved Bishop Brooks, had done wrong, and was told to confess her sin to God before she slept, and to beg His forgiveness. When asked next day whether she had obeyed the command, she said--"Oh, yes! I told God all about it, and God said, 'Don't mention it, Miss Brooks.'" A similar injunction was laid upon a child brought up by a very severe and rather unjust aunt. Her reply when asked if she had confessed her sin was "I told God what I had done, and what you thought about it, and I just left it to Him." The response of a third American girl (who was somewhat of a "pickle" and had been reared among a number of boys) to the enquiry whether she had asked forgiveness for a wrong done was--"Oh, yes; I told God exactly what I had done, and He said, 'Great Scot, Elsie Murray, I know 500 little girls worse than you.'" To me this was a much healthier state of mind than setting children weeping for their sins, as I have done myself. On my second visit to Boston I spent three weeks with the family of William, Lloyd Garrison, son of the famous Abolitionist. The Chief Justice had given me a letter of introduction to him, and I found him a true-hearted humanitarian, as devoted to the gospel of single tax as his father had been to that of anti-slavery. They lived in a beautiful house in Brookline, on a terrace built by an enterprising man who had made his money in New South Wales. Forty-two houses were perfectly and equally warmed by one great furnace, and all the public rooms of the ground floor, dining, and drawing rooms, library, and hall were connected by folding doors, nearly always open, which gave a feeling of space I never experienced elsewhere. Electric lighting and bells all over the house, hot and cold baths, lifts, the most complete laundry arrangements, and cupboards everywhere ensured the maximum of comfort with the minimum of labour. But in this house I began to be a little ashamed of being so narrow in my views on the coloured question. Mr. Garrison, animated with the spirit of the true brotherhood of man, was an advocate of the heathen Chinee, and was continually speaking of the goodness of the negro and coloured and yellow races, and of the injustice and rapacity of the white Caucasians. I saw the files of his father's paper, The Liberator, from its beginning in 1831 till its close, when the victory was won in 1865. Of the time spent in the Lloyd-Garrison household "nothing now is left but a majestic memory," which has been kept green by the periodical letters received from this noble man up till the time of his death last year. He showed me the monument erected to the memory of his father in Boston in the town where years before the great abolitionist had been stoned by the mob. Only recently it rejoiced my heart to know that a memorial to Lloyd Garrison the younger had been unveiled in Boston, his native city; at the same time that a similar honour was paid to his venerated leader, "the prophet of San Francisco." I account it one of the greatest privileges of my visit to America that Mrs. Garrison introduced me to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and by appointment I had an hour and a half's chat with him in the last year of his long life. He was the only survivor of a famous band of New England writers, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorn, Bryant, Lowell, Whittier, and Whitman were dead. His memory was failing, and he forgot some of his own characters; but Elsie Venner he remembered perfectly and he woke to full animation when I objected to the fatalism of heredity as being about as paralysing to effort as the fatalism of Calvinism. As a medical man (and we are apt to forget the physician in the author) he took strong views of heredity. As a worker among our destitute children, I considered environment the greater factor of the two, and spoke of children of the most worth less parents who had turned out well when placed early in respectable and kindly homes. Before I left, the author presented me with an autograph copy of one of his books--a much-prized gift. He was reading Cotton Mather's "Memorabilia," not for theology, but for gossip. It was the only chronicle of the small beer of current events in the days of the witch persecutions, and the expulsion of the Quakers, Baptists, and other schismatics. I have often felt proud that of all the famous men I have mentioned in this connection there was only one not a Unitarian, and that was Whittier, the Quaker poet of abolition; and his theology was of the mildest. Another notable man with whom I had three hours' talk was Charles Dudley Warner, the humorous writer. I am not partial to American humorists generally, but the delicate and subtle humour of Dudley Warner I always appreciated. In our talk I saw his serious side, for he was keen on introducing the indeterminate sentence into his own State, on the lines of the Elmira and Concord Reformatories. He told me that he never talked in train: but during the three hours' journey to New York neither of us opened the books with which we had provided ourselves, and we each talked of our separate interests, and enjoyed the talk right through. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe I saw, but her memory was completely gone. With Julia Ward Howe, the writer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" I spent a happy time. She had been the President of the New England Women's Club for 25 years, and was a charming and interesting woman. I was said to be very like her, and, indeed was often accosted by her name; but I think probably the reason was partly my cap, for Howe always wears one, and few other American ladies do. Whenever I was with her I was haunted by the beautiful lines from the closing verse of the "Battle Hymn"-- In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born, across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. At her house I met many distinguished women. Mrs. J. F. Fields, the widow of the well-known author-publisher; Madame Blaine Bentzam, a writer for French reviews; Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, one of the most charming of New England write is, and others. My best work in Canada was the conversion to effective voting of my good friend Robert Tyson. For years now he has done yeoman service in the cause, and has corresponded with workers all over the world on the question of electoral reform. I visited Toronto, at the invitation of Mr. William Howland, with whom I had corresponded for years. I was invited to dinner with his father, Sir William Howland, who was the first Lieutenant-Governor of Toronto after the federation of the Dominion. I found it very difficult to remember the names of the many interesting people I met there, although I could recollect the things they spoke about. Mr. Howland took me on with him to an evening garden party--quite a novel form of entertainment for me--where there were other interesting people. One of these, a lady artist who had travelled all round the world, took me on the next afternoon to an at-home at Professor Goldwin Smith's. In a talk I had with this notable man he spoke of his strong desire that Canada should become absorbed in the States; but the feeling in Canada was adverse to such a change. Still, you found Canadians everywhere, for many more men were educated than could find careers in the Dominion. Sir Sandford Fleming, the most ardent proportionalist in Canada, left Toronto on his trip to New Zealand and Australia shortly after I arrived there. I spent a few hours with him, and owed a great deal of my success in the Dominion to his influence. I felt that I had done much good in Canada, and my time was so occupied that the only thing I missed was leisure. Much of the time in New York was spent in interviews with the various papers. I had a delightful few days at the house of Henry George, and both he and his wife did everything in their power to make my visit pleasant. Indeed, everywhere in America I received the greatest kindness and consideration. I had been 11 months in the States and Canada, and lived the strenuous life to the utmost. I had delivered over 100 lectures, travelled thousands of miles, and met the most interesting people in the world. I felt many regrets on parting with friends, comrades, sympathizers, and fellow-workers. When I reflected that on my arrival in San Francisco I knew only two persons in America in the flesh, and only two more through correspondence, and was able to look back on the hundreds of people who had personally interested me, it seemed as if there was some animal magnetism in the world, and that affinities were drawn together as if by magic. CHAPTER XVIII. BRITAIN, THE CONTINENT, AND HOME AGAIN. I went by steamer to Glasgow, as I found the fares by that route cheaper than to Liverpool. Municipal work in that city was then attracting world-wide attention, and I enquired into the methods of taxation and the management of public works, much to my advantage. The co-operative works at Shields Hall were another source of interest to me. At Peterborough I stayed with Mr. Hare's daughter, Katie, who had married Canon Clayton. Never before did I breathe such an ecclesiastical atmosphere as in that ancient canonry, part of the old monastery, said to be 600 years old. While there I spoke to the Guild of Co-operative Women on "Australia." In Edinburgh I had a drawing-room meeting at the house of Mrs. Muir Dowie, daughter of Robert Chambers and mother of Minnie Muriel Dowie, who wrote "Through the Carpathians," and another at the Fabian Society, both on effective voting. Mrs. Dowie and Priscilla Bright McLaren, sister of John Bright, were both keen on the suffrage, and most interesting women. I had been so much associated with the suffragists in America, with the veteran Susan B. Anthony at their head, that English workers in the cause gave me a warm welcome. London under the municipal guidance of the County Council was very different from the London I had visited 29 years earlier. Perhaps Glasgow and Birmingham have gone further in municipalizing monopolies than Londoners have, but the vastness of the scale on which London moves makes it more interesting. Cr. Peter Burt, of Glasgow, had worked hard to add publichouses to the list of things under municipal ownership and regulation, and I have always been glad to see the increasing attention paid to the Scandinavian methods of dealing with the drink traffic. I have deplored the division among temperance workers, which makes the prohibitionists hold aloof from this reform, when their aid would at least enable the experiment to be tried. But in spite of all hindrances the world moves on towards better things. It is not now a voice crying in the wilderness. There are many thousands of wise, brave, devoted men and women possessed with the enthusiasm of humanity in every civilized country, and they must prevail. Professor and Mrs. Westlake, the latter of whom was Mr. Hare's eldest daughter, arranged a most successful drawing-room meeting for me at their home, the River House, Chelsea, at which Mr. Arthur Balfour spoke. While he thought effective voting probably suitable for America and Australia, he scarcely saw the necessity for it in England. Party leaders so seldom do like to try it on themselves, but many of them are prepared to experiment on "the other fellow." In this State we find members of the Assembly anxious to try effective voting on the Legislative Council, Federal members on the State House, and vice versa. Other speakers who supported me were Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Leonard (now Lord) Courtney, Mr. Westlake, and Sir John Hall, of New Zealand. The flourishing condition of the Proportional Representation Society in England at present is due to the earnestness of the lastnamed gentlemen, and its extremely able hon. secretary (Mr. John H. Humphreys). A few days were spent with Miss Jane Hume Clapperton, author of "Scientific Meliorism," and we had an interesting time visiting George Eliot's haunts and friends. Through the Warwickshire lanes--where the high hedges and the great trees at regular intervals made it impossible to see anything beyond, except an occasional gate, reminding me of Mrs. Browning's-- And between the hedgerows green, How we wandered--I and you; With the bowery tops shut in, And the gates that showed the view. --we saw the homestead known as "Mrs. Poyser's Farm," as it answers so perfectly to the description in "Adam Bede." I was taken to see Mrs. Cash, a younger friend of George Eliot, and took tea with two most interesting, old ladies--one 82, and the other 80--who had befriended the famous authoress when she was poor and stood almost alone. How I grudged the thousands of acres of beautiful agricultural land given up to shooting and hunting! We in Australia have no idea of the extent to which field sports enter into the rural life of England. People excused this love of sport to me on the ground that it is as a safety valve for the energy of idle men. Besides, said one, hunting leads, at any rate, to an appreciation of Nature; but I thought it a queer appreciation of Nature that would lead keen fox hunters to complain of the "stinking" violets that throw the hounds off the scent of the fox. I saw Ascot and Epsom, but fortunately not on a race day. A horse race I have never seen. George Moore's realistic novel "Esther Waters" does not overstate the extent to which betting demoralizes not only the wealthier, but all classes. There is a great pauper school in Sutton, where from 1,600 to 1,800 children are reared and educated. On Derby Day the children go to the side of the railroad, and catch the coppers and silver coins thrown to them by the passengers, and these are gathered together to give the children their yearly treat. But this association in the children's minds of their annual pleasure with Derby Day must, I often think, have a demoralizing tendency. While in London I slipped in trying to avoid being run down by an omnibus and dislocated my right shoulder. I was fortunate in being the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Petherick at the time. I can never be sufficiently grateful to them for their care of and kindness to me. Only last year I went to Melbourne to meet them both again. It was the occasion of the presentation to the Federal Government of the Petherick Library, and I went over to sign and to witness the splendid deed of gift. I have left almost to the last of the account of my English visit all mention of the Baconians I met and from whom I gained valuable information in corroboration of the Baconian authorship. In some circles I found that, to suggest that Shakspeare did not write the plays and poems was equal to throwing a bombshell among them. As a Baconian I received an invitation to a picnic at the beautiful country house of Mr. Edwin Lawrence, with whom I had a pleasant talk. The house was built on a part of a royal forest, in which firs and pines were planted at the time of the great Napoleonic wars when timber could not be got from the Baltic and England had to trust to her own hearts of oak and her own growth of pine for masts and planks. Mr. Lawrence had written pamphlets and essays on the Baconian theory, and I found my knowledge of the subject expanding and growing under his intelligent talk. His wife's father (J. Benjamin Smith) had taught Cobden the ethics of free trade. It was through the kind liberality of Miss Florence Davenport Hill that a pamphlet, recording the speeches and results of the voting at River House, Chelsea, was printed and circulated. When I visited Miss Hill and her sister and found them as eager for social and political reform as they had been 29 years earlier, I had another proof of the eternal youth which large and high interests keep within us in spite of advancing years. Miss Davenport Hill had been a member of the London School Board for 15 years, and was reelected after I left England. Years of her life had been devoted to work for the children of the State, and she was a member of the Board of Guardians for the populous union of St. Pancras. Everyone acknowledged the great good that the admission of women to those boards had done. I spent a pleasant time at Toynbee Hall, a University centre, in the poorest part of London, founded by men. Canon and Mrs. Barrett were intensely interested in South Australian work for State children. Similar University centres which I visited in America, like Hull House, in Chicago, were founded by women graduates. Mrs. Fawcett I met several times, but Mrs. Garrett Anderson only once. When the suffrage was granted to the women of South Australia I received a letter of congratulation from Dr. Helen Blackburn, one of the first women to take a medical degree. Nowadays women doctors are accepted as part of our daily life, and it is to these brave pioneers of the women's cause, Drs. Elizabeth Blackwell, Helen Rackburn, Garrett Anderson, and other like noble souls, that the social and political prestige of women has advanced so tremendously all over the English-speaking world. It only remains now for a few women, full of the enthusiasm of humanity and gifted with the power of public speaking, to gain another and important step for the womanhood of the world in the direction of economic freedom. Before leaving England I was gratified at receiving a cheque from Mrs. Westlake, contributed by the English proportionalists, to help me in the cause. This was the second gift of the kind I had received, for my friends in San Francisco had already helped me financially on my way to reform. Socially I liked the atmosphere of America better than that of England, but politically England was infinitely more advanced. Steadily and surely a safer democracy seems to be evolving in the old country than in the Transatlantic Republic. I left England at the end of September, 1894. My intended visit to Paris was cancelled through the death a short time before of the only friend I wished to meet there, the Baroness Blaze-de-Bury, and I went straight through to Bale. I made a detour to Zurich, where I hoped to see people interested in proportional representation who could speak English. An interesting fellow-worker in the cause was Herr Karl Burkli, to whom I suggested the idea of lecturing with ballots. The oldest advocate of proportional representation on the Continent, M. Ernest Naville, I met at Geneva. In that tiny republic in the heart of Europe, which is the home of experimental legislation, I found effective voting already established in four cantons, and the effect in these cantons had been so good (said Ernest Naville) "that it is only a matter of time to see all the Swiss cantons and the Swiss Federation adopt it." In Zurich Herr Burkli was delighted that they had introduced progressive taxation into the canton, but the effect had been to drive away the wealthy people who came in search of quiet and healthy residence. Progressive taxation has not by any means proved the unmixed blessing which so many of its advocates claim it to be. In New Zealand, we are told, on the best authority, that land monopoly and land jobbery were never so rampant in the Dominion as since the introduction of the progressive land tax. One wondered how the three million Swiss people lived on their little territory, so much occupied by barren mountain, and lakes which supply only a few fish. My Zurich friends told me that it was by their unremitting industry and exceptional thrift, but others said that the foreign visitors who go to the recreation ground of Europe circulate so much money that instead of the prayer "Give us this day our daily bread" the Swiss people ask, "Send us this day one foreigner." In Italy I saw the most intense culture in the world--no pleasure grounds or deer parks for the wealthy. The whole country looked like a garden with trellised vines and laden trees. Italian wine was grown, principally for home consumption, and that was immense. Prohibitionists would speak to deaf ears there. Wine was not a luxury, but a necessity of life. It made the poor fare of dry bread and polenta (maize porridge) go down more pleasantly. It was the greater abundance of fruit and wine that caused the Italian poorer classes to look healthier than the German. In Germany, which taxed itself to give cheap beet sugar to the British consumer, the people paid 6d. a lb. for the little they could afford to use; and in Italy it was nearly 8d.--a source of revenue to the Governments, but prohibitive to the poor. There were no sweet shops in Italy. England only could afford such luxuries. I visited at Siena a home for deaf mutes, and found that each child had wine at two of its daily meals--about a pint a day. It was the light-red wine of the country, with little alcohol in it; but those who warn us against looking on the wine when it is red will be shocked to hear of these little ones drinking it like milk. Those, however, who live in Italy say that not once a year do they see any one drunk in the streets. I reached South Australia on December 12, 1894, after an absence of 20 months. I found the women's suffrage movement wavering in the balance. It had apparently come with a rush--as unexpected as it was welcome to those whose strenuous exertions at last seemed likely to be crowned with success. Though sympathetic to the cause, I had always been regarded as a weakkneed sister by the real workers. I had failed to see the advantage of having a vote that might leave me after an election a disfranchised voter, instead of an unenfranchised woman. People talk of citizens being disfranchised for the Legislative Council when they really mean that they are unenfranchised. You can scarcely be disfranchised if you have never been enfranchised; and I have regarded the enfranchisement of the people on the roll as more important for the time being than adding new names to the rolls. This would only tend to increase the disproportion between the representative and the represented. But I rejoiced when the Women's Suffrage Bill was carried, for I believe that women have thought more and accepted the responsibilities of voting to a greater extent than was ever expected of them. During the week I was accorded a welcome home in the old Academy of Music, Rundle street, where I listened with embarrassment to the avalanche of eulogium that overwhelmed me. "What a good thing it is, Miss Spence, that you have only one idea," a gentleman once said to me on my country tour. He wished thus to express his feeling concerning my singleness of purpose towards effective voting. But at this welcome home I felt that others realized what I had often said myself. It is really because I have so many ideas for making life better, wiser, and pleasanter all of which effective voting will aid--that I seem so absorbed in the one reform. My opinions on other matters I give for what they are worth--for discussion, for acceptance or rejection. My opinions on equitable representation I hold absolutely, subject to criticism of methods but impregnable as to principle. CHAPTER XIX. PROGRESS OF EFFECTIVE VOTING. My journalistic work after my return was neither so regular nor so profitable as before I left Adelaide. The bank failures had affected me rather badly, and financially my outlook was anything but rosy in the year 1895. There was, however, plenty of public work open to me, and, in addition to the many lectures I gave in various parts of the State on effective voting, I became a member of the Hospital Commission, appointed that year by the Kingston Government to enquire into the trouble at the Adelaide Hospital. That same year saw a decided step taken in connection with effective voting, and in July a league was formed, which has been in existence ever since. I was appointed the first President, my brother John became secretary pro tem, and Mr. A. W. Piper the first treasurer. I felt at last that the reform was taking definite shape, and looked hopefully to its future. The following year was especially interesting to the women of South Australia, and, indeed, to suffragists all over the world, for at the general election of 1896 women, for the first time in Australia, had the right to vote. New Zealand had preceded us with this reform, but the first election in this State found many women voters fairly well equipped to accept their responsibilities as citizens of the State. But in the full realization by the majority of women of their whole duties of citizenship I have been distinctly disappointed. Not that they have been on the whole less patriotic and less zealous than men voters; but, like their brothers, they have allowed their interest in public affairs to stop short at the act of voting, as if the right to vote were the beginning and the end of political life. There has been too great a tendency on the part of women to allow reform work--particularly women's branches of it--to be done by a few disinterested and public-spirited women. Not only is the home the centre of woman's sphere, as it should be, but in too many cases it is permitted to be its limitation. The larger social life has been ignored, and women have consequently failed to have the effect on public life of which their political privilege is capable. At the close of a second lecturing tour through the State, during which I visited and spoke at most of the village settlements, I received an invitation from the Women's Land Reform League to attend a social gathering at the residence of Miss Sutherland, Clark street, Norwood. The occasion was my seventy-first birthday, and my friends had chosen that day (October 31, 1896) to mark their appreciation of my public services. There were about 30 of the members present, all interesting by reason of their zealous care for the welfare of the State. Their President (Mrs. C. Proud) presented me, on behalf of the members, with a lady's handbag, ornamented with a silver plate, bearing my name, the date of the presentation, and the name of the cause for which I stood. From that day the little bag has been the inseparable companion of all my wanderings, and a constant reminder of the many kind friends who, with me, had realized that "love of country is one of the loftiest virtues which the Almighty has planted in the human heart." That association was the first in South Australia to place effective voting on its platform. My long comradeship with Mrs. A. H. Young began before the close of the year. A disfranchised voter at her first election, she was driven farther afield than the present inadequate system of voting to look for a just electoral method. She found it in effective voting, and from that time devoted herself to the cause. Early in 1897 Mrs. Young was appointed the first honorary secretary of the league. January of the same year found us stirred to action by the success of Sir Edward Braddon's first Bill for proportional representation in Tasmania. Though limited in its application to the two chief cities of the island State, the experiment was wholly successful. We had our first large public meeting in the Co-operative Hall in January, and carried a resolution protesting against the use of the block vote for the Federal Convention elections. A deputation to the acting Premier (Mr.--afterwards Sir Frederick--Holder) was arranged for the next morning. But we were disappointed in the result of our mission, for Mr. Holder pointed out that the Enabling Act distinctly provided for every elector having 10 votes, and effective voting meant a single transferable vote. I had written and telegraphed to the Hon. C. C. Kingston when the Enabling Act was being drafted to beg him to consider effective voting as the basis of election; but he did not see it then, nor did he ever see it. In spite, however, of the short sightedness of party leaders, events began to move quickly. Our disappointment over the maintenance of the block vote for the election of 10 delegates to the Federal Convention led to my brother John's suggestion that I should become a candidate. Startling as the suggestion was, so many of my friends supported it that I agreed to do so. I maintained that the fundamental necessity of a democratic Constitution such as we hoped would evolve from the combined efforts of the ablest men in the Australian States was a just system of representation and it was as the advocate of effective voting that I took my stand. My personal observation in the United States and Canada had impressed me with the dangers inseparable from the election of Federal Legislatures by local majorities--sometimes by minorities--where money and influence could be employed, particularly where a line in a tariff spelt a fortune to a section of the people, in the manipulation of the floating vote. Parties may boast of their voting strength and their compactness, but their voting strength under the present system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The stronger a party is in the Legislature the more is expected from it by every little section of voters to whom it owes its victory at the polls. The impelling force of responsibility which makes all Governments "go slow" creates the greatest discontent among impatient followers of the rank and file, and where a few votes may turn the scale at any general election a Government is often compelled to choose between yielding to the demands of its more clamorous followers at the expense of the general taxpayer or submitting to a Ministerial defeat. As much as we may talk of democracy in Australia, we are far from realizing a truly democratic ideal. A State in a pure democracy draws no nice and invidious distinctions between man and man. She disclaims the right of favouring either property, education, talent, or virtue. She conceives that all alike have an interest in good government, and that all who form the community, of full age and untainted by crime, should have a right to their share in the representation. She allows education to exert its legitimate power through the press; talent in every department of business, property in its social and material advantages; virtue and religion to influence public opinion and the public conscience. But she views all men as politically equal, and rightly so, if the equality is to be as real in operation as in theory. If the equality is actual in the representation of the citizens--truth and virtue, being stronger than error and vice, and wisdom being greater than folly, when a fair field is offered--the higher qualities subdue the lower and make themselves felt in every department of the State. But if the representation from defective machinery is not equal, the balance is overthrown, and neither education, talent, nor virtue can work through public opinion so as to have any beneficial influence on politics. We know that in despotisms and oligarchies, where the majority are unrepresented and the few extinguish the many, independence of thought is crushed down, talent is bribed to do service to tyranny, education is confined to a privileged class and denied to the people, property is sometimes pillaged and sometimes flattered, and even virtue is degraded by lowering its field and making subservience appear to be patience and loyalty, and religion is not unfrequently made the handmaid of oppression. Taxes fall heavily on the poor for the benefit of the rich, and the only check proceeds from the fear of rebellion. When, on the other hand, the majority extinguishes the minority, the evil effects are not so apparent. The body oppressed is smaller and generally wealthier, with many social advantages to draw off attention from the political injustice under which they suffer; but there is the same want of sympathy between class and class, moral courage is rare, talent is perverted, genius is overlooked, education is general, but superficial, and press and Pulpit often timid in exposing or denouncing popular errors. An average standard of virtue is all that is aimed at, and when no higher mark is set up there is great fear of falling below the average. Therefore it is incumbent on all States to look well to it that their representative systems really secure the political equality they all profess to give, for until that is done democracy has had no fair trial. In framing a new constitution the opportunity arose for laying the foundation of just representation, and, had I been elected, my first and last thought would have been given to the claims of the whole people to electoral justice. But the 7,500 votes which I received left me far enough from the lucky 10. Had Mr. Kingston not asserted both publicly and privately that, if elected, I could not constitutionally take my seat, I might have done better. There were rumours even that my nomination paper would be rejected. But to obviate this, Mrs. Young, who got it filled in, was careful to see that no name was on it that had no right there, and its presentation was delayed till five minutes before the hour of noon, in order that no time would be left to upset its validity. From a press cutting on the declaration of the poll I cull this item of news--"Several unexpected candidates were announced, but the only nomination which evoked any expressions of approval was that of Miss Spence." I was the first woman in Australia to seek election in a political contest. From the two main party lists I was, of course, excluded, but in the list of the "10 best men" selected by a Liberal organization my name appeared. When the list was taken to the printer--who, I think, happened to be the late Federal member, Mr. James Hutchison--he objected to the heading of the "10 best men," as one of them was a woman. He suggested that my name should be dropped, and a man's put in its place. "You can't say Miss Spence is one of the '10 best men.' Take her name out." "Not say she's one of the '10 best men?'" the Liberal organizer objected, "Why she's the best man of the lot." I had not expected to be elected, but I did expect that my candidature would help effective voting, and I am sure it did. Later the league arranged a deputation to Mr. Kingston, to beg him to use his influence for the adoption of the principle in time for the first Federal elections. We foresaw, and prophesied what has actually occurred--the monopoly of representation by one party in the Senate, and the consequent disfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters throughout the Commonwealth. But, as before, Mr. Kingston declined to see the writing on the wall. The Hon. D. M. Charleston was successful in carrying through the Legislative Council a motion in favour of its application to Federal elections, but Mr. Wynn in the Lower House had a harder row to hoe, and a division was never taken. Mrs. Young and I spent a pleasant evening at Government House in July of the same year, as Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton had expressed a desire to understand the system. In addition to a large house party, several prominent citizens were present, and all were greatly interested. On leaving at 11 o'clock we found the gate closed against us, as the porter was evidently unaware that visitors were being entertained. We were amused at the indignation of the London-bred butler, who, on coming to our rescue, cried with a perfect Cockney accent, "Gyte, gyte, yer don't lock gytes till visitors is off." This was a memorable year in the annals of our cause, for on his election to fill an extraordinary vacancy for North Adelaide Mr. Glynn promised to introduce effective voting into the House. This he did in July by tabling a motion for the adoption of the principle, and we were pleased to find in Mr. Batchelor, now the Minister for External Affairs in the Federal Government, a stanch supporter. Among the many politicians who have blown hot and cold on the reform as occasion arose, Mr. Batchelor has steadily and consistently remained a supporter of what he terms "the only system that makes majority rule possible." When Mrs. Young and I began our work together the question was frequently asked why women alone were working for effective voting? The answer was simple. There were few men with leisure in South Australia, and, if there were, the leisured man was scarcely likely to take up reform work. When I first seized hold of this reform women as platform speakers were unheard of. Indeed, the prejudice was so strong against women in public life that although I wrote the letters to The Melbourne Argus it was my brother John who was nominally the correspondent. So for 30 years I wrote anonymously to the press on this subject. I waited for some man to come forward and do the platform work for me. We women are accused of waiting and waiting for the coming man, but often he doesn't come at all; and oftener still, when he does come, we should be a great deal better without him. In this case he did not come at all, and I started to do the work myself; and, just because I was a woman working singlehanded in the cause, Mrs. Young joined me in the crusade against inequitable representation. For many years, however, the cause has counted to its credit men speakers and demonstrators of ability and talent all over the State, who are carrying the gospel of representative reform into every camp, both friendly and hostile. It was said of Gibbon when his autobiography was published that he did not know the difference between himself and the Roman Empire. I have sometimes thought that the same charge might be levelled against me with regard to effective voting; but association with a reform for half a century sometimes makes it difficult to separate the interests of the person from the interests of the cause. Following on my return from America effective voting played a larger part than ever in my life. I had come back cheered by the earnestness and enthusiasm of American reformers, and I found the people of my adopted country more than ever prepared to listen to my teaching. Parties had become more clearly defined, and the results of our system of education were beginning to tell, I think, in the increased interest taken by individuals as well as by societies in social and economic questions. I found interesting people everywhere, in every mode of life, and in every class of society. My friends sometimes accused me of judging people's intelligence by the interest they took in effective voting; but, although this may have been true to a certain extent, it was not wholly correct. Certainly I felt more drawn to effective voters, but there are friendships I value highly into which my special reform work never enters. Just as the more recent years of my life have been coloured by the growth of the movement which means more to me than anything else in the world, so must the remaining chapters of this narrative bear the imprint of its influence. CHAPTER XX. WIDENING INTERESTS. During this period my work on the State Children's Council continued, and I never found time hang heavily on my hands; so that when Mr. Kingston met me one day later in the year, and told me he particularly wished me to accept an appointment as a member of the Destitute Board, I hesitated. "I am too old," I objected. "No, no, Miss Spence," he replied laughingly, "it is only we who grow old--you have the gift of perpetual youth." But I was nearly 72, and at any rate I thought I should first consult my friends. I found them all eager that I should accept the position. I had agitated long and often for the appointment of women on all public boards, particularly where both sexes came under treatment, and I accepted the post. Although often I have found the work tiring, I have never regretted the step I took in joining the board. Experience has emphasized my early desire that two women at least should occupy positions on it. I hope that future Governments will rectify the mistake of past years by utilizing to a greater extent the valuable aid of capable and sympathetic women in a branch of public work for which they are peculiarly fitted. Early in my career as a member of the board I found grave defects in the daily bill of fare, and set myself to the task of remedying them as far as lay in my power. For 30 years the same kind of soup, day in and day out, followed by the eternal and evergreen cabbage as a vegetable, in season and out of season, found its way to the table. My own tastes and mode of life were simplicity personified, but my stomach revolted against a dietary as unvaried as it was unappetizing. An old servant who heard that I attended the Destitute Asylum every week was loud in her lamentations that "poor dear Miss Spence was so reduced that she had to go to the Destitute every week for rations!" My thankfulness that she had misconceived the position stirred me to leave no stone unturned for the betterment of the destitute bill of fare. I was successful, and the varied diet now enjoyed bears witness to the humanitarian views of all the members of the board, who were as anxious to help in the reform as I was. My heart has always gone out to the poor old folk whose faces bear the impress of long years of strenuous toil and who at the close of life at least should find a haven of restfulness and peace in the State for whose advancement they have laboured in the past. She was a witty woman who divided autobiographies into two classes... autobiographies and ought-not-to-biographies--but I am sure she never attempted to write one herself. There is so much in one's life that looms large from a personal point of view about which other people would care little, and the difficulty often arises, not so much about what to put in as what to leave out. How much my personal interests had widened during my absence from home could be gauged somewhat by the enormous increase in my correspondence after my return. American, Canadian, English, and Continental correspondents have kept me for many years well informed on reform and kindred subjects; and the letters I have received, and the replies they have drawn from me, go far to make me doubt the accuracy of the accepted belief that "letter writing has become a lost art." A full mind with a facile pen makes letter writing a joy, and both of these attributes I think I may fairly claim. My correspondence with Alfred Cridge was kept up till his death a few years ago, and his son, following worthily in the footsteps of a noble father, has taken up the broken threads of the lifework of my friend, and is doing his utmost to carry it to a successful issue. My love of reading, which has been a characteristic feature of my life, found full scope for expression in the piles of books which reached us from all parts of the world. It has always been my desire to keep abreast of current literature, and this, by means of my book club and other sources, I was able to do. Sometimes my friends from abroad sent me copies of their own publications, Dr. Bayard Holmes invariably forwarding to me a presentation copy of his most valuable treatises on medical subjects. Mrs. Stetson's poems and economic writings have always proved a source of inspiration to me, and I have distributed her books wherever I have thought they would be appreciated. Just at this time my financial position became brighter. I was fortunate in being able to dispose of my two properties in East Adelaide, and the purchasing of an annuity freed me entirely from money and domestic worries. Perhaps the greatest joy of all was that I was once more able to follow my charitable inclinations by giving that little mite which, coming opportunely, gladdens the heart of the disconsolate widow or smoothes the path of the struggling worker. Giving up my home entirely, I went to live with my dear friend Mrs. Baker, at Osmond terrace, where, perhaps, I spent the most restful period of a somewhat eventful life. The inauguration of a Criminological Society in Adelaide was a welcome sign to me of the growing public interest in methods of prison discipline and treatment. I was one of the foundation members of the society, and attended every meeting during its short existence. My one contribution to the lectures delivered under its auspices was on "Heredity and Environment." This was a subject in which I had long been interested, holding the view that environment had more to do with the building up of character than heredity had to do with its decadence. How much or how little truth there is in the cynical observation that the only believers in heredity nowadays are the fathers of very clever sons I am not prepared to say. I do say, however, that with the cruel and hopeless law of heredity as laid down by Zola and Ibsen I have little sympathy. According to these pessimists, who ride heredity to death, we inherit only the vices, the weaknesses, and the diseases of our ancestors. If this, however, were really the case, the world would be growing worse and not better, as it assuredly is, with every succeeding generation. The contrary view taken of the matter by Ibsen's fellowcountryman, Bjornsen, appears to me to be so much more commonsense and humanizing. He holds that if we know that our ancestors drank and gambled to excess, or were violent-tempered or immoral, we can quite easily avoid the pitfall, knowing it to be there. Too readily wrongdoers are prepared to lay their failings at the door of ancestors, society, or some other blamable source, instead of attributing them, as they should do, to their own selfish and weak indulgence and lack of self-control. Heredity, though an enormous factor in our constitution, need not be regarded as an over-mastering fate, for each human being has an almost limitless parentage to draw upon. Each child has both a father and a mother, and two grandparents on both sides, increasing as one goes back. But, besides drawing on a much wider ancestry than the immediate parents, we have more than we inherit, or where could the law of progress operate? Each generation, each child who is born, comes into a slightly different world, fed by more experience, blown upon by fresh influences. And each individual comes into the world, not with a body merely, but with a soul; and this soul is susceptible to impressions, not only from the outer material world but from the other souls also impressed by the old and the new, by the material and the ideal. "The History of the Jukes" is continually cited as proving the power and force of heredity. Most people who read the book through, however, instead of merely accepting allusions one-sided and defective to it, see clearly that it forms the strongest argument for change of environment that ever was brought forward. The assumed name of Jukes is given to the descendants of a worthless woman who emigrated to America upwards of a century and a half ago, and from whom hundreds of criminals, paupers, and prostitutes have descended. But how were the Jukes' descendants dealt with during this period? No helping hand removed the children from their vicious and criminal surroundings known as one of the crime-cradles of the State of New York. Neither church nor school took them under its protecting care. Born and reared in the haunts of vice and crime, nothing but viciousness and criminality could be expected as a result. Without going, so far as a wellknown ex-member of our State Legislature, whose antagonism to the humanitarian treatment of prisoners led him to the belief that "there wasn't nothin' in 'erry-ditty,' it was all tommy rot," I still hold to the belief that environment plays the larger part in the formation of character. Every phase of criminal reform is, I candidly admit, dealing with effects rather than causes. Effects, however, must be dealt with, and the more humanely they are dealt with the better for society at large. So long as society shuts its eyes to the social conditions under which the masses of the people live, move, and have their being as tending towards lowering rather than uplifting the individual and the community, the supply of cases for criminal treatment will unfortunately show little tendency to decrease. The work before reformers of the world is to prevent the creation of criminals by changing the environment of those with criminal tendencies as well as to seek to alleviate the resulting disease by methods of criminal reform. Many interesting lectures were given by prominent citizens under the auspices of the society, which did a great deal to awaken the public conscience on the important question of criminal reform. The Rev. J. Day Thompson, who was then in the zenith of his intellectual power and a noble supporter of all things that tended to the uplifting of humanity, dealt with the land question in relation to crime. He gave a telling illustration of his point--which I thought equally applicable to the question of environment in relation to prison reform--that no permanent good could result from social legislation until society recognised and dealt with the root of the social evil, the land question. "In a lunatic asylum," he said, "it is the custom to test the sanity of patients by giving them a ladle with which to empty a tub of water standing under a running tap. 'How do you decide?' the warder was asked. 'Why, them as isn't idiots stops the tap.'" It was the Rev. J. Day Thompson who first called me the "Grand Old Woman" of South Australia. When he left Adelaide for the wider sphere of service open to him in England I felt that we had lost one of the most cultured and able men who had ever come among us, and one whom no community could lose without being distinctly the poorer for his absence. Just at this time the visit of Dr. and Mrs. Mills created a little excitement in certain circles. Their lectures on Christian science, both public and private, were wonderfully well attended, and I missed few of them. I have all my life endeavoured to keep an open mind on these questions, and have been prepared to accept new ideas and new modes of thought. But, although I found much that was charming in the lectures that swayed the minds of so many of my friends, I found little to convince me that Christian scientists were right and the rest of the world wrong in their interpretation of the meaning of life. So far as the cultivation of will power, as it is called, is concerned, I have no quarrel with those who maintain that a power of self-control is the basis of human happiness. So far as the will can be trained to obey only those instincts that tend to the growth and maintenance of self-respect--to prevent the subordination of our better feelings to the overpowering effects of passion, greed, or injustice--it must help to the development of one of the primary necessities of a sane existence. When, however, the same agency is brought to bear on the treatment of diseases in any shape or form I find my faith wavering. Though there may be more things in earth and heaven than are dreamed of in my philosophy, I was not prepared to follow the teachings set before us by the interpreters of this belief, whose visit had made an interesting break in the lives of many people. Truth I find everywhere expressed, goodness in all things; but I neither look for nor expect perfection in any one thing the world has ever produced. "Tell me where God is," a somewhat, cynical sceptic asked of a child. "Tell me where He is not," replied the child; and the same thing applies to goodness. Do not tell me where goodness is, but point out to, me, if you can, where it is not. It is for each one to find out for himself where the right path lies, and to follow it with all his strength of mind and of purpose. Pippa's song, "God's in His heaven-all's right with the world," does not mean that the time has come for us to lay down our arms in the battle of right against wrong. No! no; it is an inspiration for us to gird our loins afresh, to "right the wrongs that need resistance;" for, God being in His heaven, and the world itself being right, makes it so much easier to correct mistakes that are due to human agencies and shortcomings only. I found time to spend a pleasant week at Victor Harbour with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. John Wyles. I remember one day being asked whether I was not sorry I never married. "No," I replied, "for, although I often envy my friends the happiness they find in their children, I have never envied them their husbands." I think we must have been in a frivolous mood; for a lady visitor, who was present, capped my remark with the statement that she was quite sure Miss Spence was thankful that when she died she would not be described as the "relic" of any man. It was the same lady who on another occasion, when one of the juvenile members of the party asked whether poets had to pay for poetical licence, wittily replied, "No, my dear, but their readers do!" Although so much of my time has been spent in public work, I have by no means neglected or despised the social side of life. Visits to my friends have always been delightful to me, and I have felt as much interested in the domestic virtues of my many acquaintances as I have been an admirer of their grasp of literature, politics, or any branch of the arts or sciences in which they have been interested. This seaside visit had been a welcome break in a year that had brought me a new occupation as a member of the Destitute Board, had given me the experience of a political campaign, had witnessed the framing of the Constitution for the Commonwealth 'neath the Southern Cross, and had seen effective voting advance from the academic stage into the realm of practical politics. During the year Mrs. Young and I addressed together 26 meetings on this subject. One of the most interesting was at the Blind School, North Adelaide. The keenness with which this audience gripped every detail of the explanation showed us how splendidly they had risen above their affliction. I was reminded of Helen Keller, the American girl, who at the age of 21 months had lost sight and hearing, and whom I had met in Chicago during my American visit, just before she took her degree at Harvard University. To all peacelovers the years from 1898 to 1901 were shadowed by the South African war. The din of battle was in our ears only to a less degree than in those of our kinsmen in the mother country. War has always been abhorrent to me, and there was the additional objection to my mind in the case of the South African war in that it was altogether unjustified. Froude's chapters on South Africa had impressed me on the publication of his book "Oceana," after his visit here in the seventies. His indictment of England for her treatment of the Boers from the earliest days of her occupation of Cape Colony was too powerful to be ignored. I felt it to be impossible that so great a historian as Froude should make such grave charges on insufficient evidence. The annexation of 1877, so bitterly condemned by him, followed by the treaty of peace of 1881, with its famous "suzerainty" clause, was, I think, but a stepping stone to the war which was said to have embittered the last years of the life of Queen Victoria. The one voice raised in protest against the annexation of 1877 in the British House of Commons was that of Mr. Leonard (now Lord) Courtney. Not afraid to stand alone, though all the world were against him, the war at the close of the century found Leonard Courtney again taking his stand against the majority of his countrymen, and this time it cost him his Parliamentary seat. I have often felt proud that the leadership of proportional representation in England should have fallen into the hands of so morally courageous a man as Leonard Courtney has invariably proved himself to be. We are apt to pride ourselves on the advance we have made in our civilization; but our self-glorification received a rude shock at the feelings of intolerance and race hatred that the war brought forth. Freedom of speech became the monopoly of those who supported the war, and the person who dared to express an opinion which differed from that of the majority needed a great deal more than the ordinary allowance of moral courage. Unfortunately the intolerance so characteristic of that period is a feature, to a greater or lesser extent, of every Parliamentary election in the Commonwealth. The clause in the Federal Electoral Act which makes disturbance of a political meeting a penal offence is a curious reflection on a so-called democratic community. But, though its justification can scarcely be denied even by the partisans of the noisier elements in a political crowd, its existence must be deplored by every right-minded and truehearted citizen. In Miss Rose Scott I found a sympathizer on this question of the war; and one of the best speeches I ever heard her make was on Peace and Arbitration. "Mafeking Day" was celebrated while we were in Sydney, and I remember how we three--Miss Scott, Mrs. Young, and I--remained indoors the whole day, at the charming home of our hostess, on Point Piper road. The black band of death and desolation was too apparent for us to feel that we could face the almost ribald excesses of that day. I felt the war far less keenly than did my two friends; but it was bad even for me. No one called, and the only companions of our chosen solitude were the books we all loved so much, and The secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart and mind to mind, In body and in soul can bind. I had hoped that the Women's National Council, a branch of which was formed in Adelaide a few years later, would have made a great deal of the question of peace and arbitration, just as other branches have done all over the world; and when the Peace Society was inaugurated a short time ago I was glad to be able to express my sympathy with the movement by becoming a member. As I was returning from a lecturing tour in the south during this time, an old Scotch farm-wife came into the carriage where I had been knitting in solitude. She was a woman of strong feelings, and was bitterly opposed to the war. We chatted on the subject for a time, getting along famously, until she discovered that I was Miss Spence. "But you are a Unitarian!" she protested in a shocked tone. I admitted the fact. "Oh, Miss Spence," she went on, "how can you be so wicked as to deny the divinity of Christ?" I explained to her what Unitarianism was, but she held dubiously aloof for a time. Then we talked of other things. She told me of many family affairs, and when she left me at the station she said, "All, well, Miss Spence, I've learned something this morning, and that is that a Unitarian can be just as good and honest as other folk." CHAPTER XXI PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND FEDERATION. In the debates of the Federal Convention I was naturally much interested. Many times I regretted my failure to win a seat when I saw how, in spite of warnings against, and years of lamentable experience of, a vicious system of voting, the members of the Convention went calmly on their way, accepting as a matter of course the crude and haphazard methods known to them, the unscientific system of voting so dear to the heart of the "middling" politician and the party intriguer. I believe Mr. Glynn alone raised his voice in favour of proportional representation, in the Convention, as he has done consistently in every representative assembly of which he has been a member. Instead of seeing to it that the foundations of the Commonwealth were "broad based upon the people's will" by the adoption of effective voting, and thus maintaining the necessary connection between the representative and the represented, these thinkers for the people at the very outset of federation sowed the seeds of future discontent and Federal apathy. Faced with disfranchisement for three or six years, possibly for ever--so long as the present system of voting remains--it is unreasonable to expect from the people as a whole that interest in the national well-being which alone can lead to the safety of a progressive nation. Proportional representation was for long talked of as a device for representing minorities. It is only in recent years that the real scope of the reform has been recognised. By no other means than the adoption of the single transferable vote can the rule of the majority obtain. The fundamental principle of proportional representation is that majorities must rule, but that minorities shall be adequately represented. An intelligent minority of representatives has great weight and influence. Its voice can be heard. It can fully and truly express the views of the voters it represents. It can watch the majority and keep it straight. These clear rights of the minority are denied by the use of the multiple vote. It has also been asked--Can a Government be as strong as it needs to be when--besides the organized Ministerial party and the recognised Opposition--there may be a larger number of independent members than at present who may vote either way? It is quite possible for a Government to be too strong, and this is especially dangerous in Australia, where there are so many of what are known as optional functions of government undertaken and administered by the Ministry of the day, resting on a majority in the Legislature. To maintain this ascendancy concessions are made to the personal interests of members or to local or class interests of their constituencies at the cost of the whole country. When introducing proportional representation into the Belgian Chamber the Prime Minister (M. Bernhaert) spoke well and forcibly on the subject of a strong Government:-- I, who have the honour of speaking to you to-day in the name of the Government and who have at my back the strongest majority that was ever known in Belgium, owe it to truth to say that our opinions have not a corresponding preponderance in the country; and I believe that, if that majority were always correctly expressed, we should gain in stability what we might lose in apparent strength. Gentlemen, in the actual state of things, to whom belongs the Government of the country? It belongs to some two or three thousand electors, who assuredly are neither the best nor the most intelligent, who turn the scale at each of our scrutin de liste elections. I see to the right and to the left two large armies--Catholics and Liberals--of force almost equal, whom nothing would tempt to desert their standard, who serve it with devotion and from conviction. Well, these great armies do not count, or scarcely count. On the day of battle it is as if they do not exist. What counts, what decides, what triumphs, is another body of electors altogether--a floating body too often swayed by their passions, by their prejudices; or, worse still, by their interests. These are our masters, and according as they veer from right to left, or from left to right, the Government of the country changes, and its history takes a new direction. Gentlemen, is it well that it should be so? Is it well that this country should be at the mercy of such contemptible elements as these? How often have I longed to see a Premier in this, my adopted country, rise to such fervid heights of patriotism as this? M. Bernhaert is right. It is the party Government that is essentially the weak Government. It cannot afford to estrange or offend any one who commands votes. It is said that every prominent politician in the British House of Commons is being perpetually tempted and tormented by his friends not to be honest, and perpetually assailed by his enemies in order to be made to appear to be dishonest. The Opposition is prepared to trip up the Ministry at every step. It exaggerates mistakes, misrepresents motives, and combats measures which it believes to be good, if these are brought forward by its opponents. It bullies in public and undermines in secret. It is always ready to step into the shoes of the Ministry, to undergo similar treatment. This is the sort of strength which is supposed to be imperilled if the nation were equitably represented in the Legislature. In the present state of the world, especially in the Australian States, where the functions of government have multiplied and are multiplying, it is of the first importance that the administration should be watched from all sides, and not merely from the point of view of those who wish to sit on the Treasury benches. The right function of the Opposition is to see that the Government does the work of the country well. The actual practice of the Opposition is to try to prevent it from doing the country's work at all. In order that government should be honest, intelligent, and economical, it needs helpful criticism rather than unqualified opposition; and this criticism may be expected from the less compact and more independent ranks in a legislative body which truly represents all the people. Party discipline, which is almost inevitable in the present struggle for ascendancy or defeat, is the most undemocratic agency in the world. It is rather by liberating all votes and allowing them to group themselves according to conviction that a real government of the people by the people can be secured. When I look back on the intention of the framers of the Commonwealth Constitution to create in the Senate a States' rights House I am amazed at the remoteness of the intention from the achievement. The Senate is as much a party House as is the House of Representatives. Nothing, perhaps, describes the position better than the epigrammatic if somewhat triumphant statement of a Labour Senator some time ago. "The Senate was supposed to be a place where the radical legislation of the Lower Chamber could be cooled off, but they had found that the saucer was hotter than the cup." The long illness and death of my ward, Mrs. Hood, once more gave to my life a new direction. History was repeating itself. Just as 40 years earlier Mrs. Hood and her brothers had been left in my charge on the death of their mother, so once again a dying mother begged me to accept the guardianship of her three orphan children. Verging as they were on the threshold of manhood and womanhood, they scarcely needed the care and attention due to smaller children, but I realized I think to the full, what so many parents have realized--that the responsibilities for the training of children of an older growth are greater and more burdensome than the physical care of the infant. The family belongings were gathered in from the four quarters of the globe to which they had been scattered on my giving up housekeeping, and we again began a family life in Kent Town. Soon after we had settled, the motion in charge of the Hon. D. M. Charleston in favour of the adoption of proportional representation for Federal elections was carried to a successful issue in the Legislative Council. The Hon. A. A. Kirkpatrick suggested the advisableness of preparing a Bill at this stage. A motion simply affirming a principle, he said, was not likely to carry the cause much further, as it left the question of the application of the principle too much an open one. The league, he thought, should have something definite to put before candidates, so that a definite answer could be obtained from them. In New Zealand, Mr. O'Regan, a well-known solicitor, had also introduced into the House of Representatives during 1898 a Bill for the adoption of effective voting. Unfortunately members had become wedded to single electorates, and when a change was made it was to second ballots--a system of voting which has for long been discredited on the Continent. In France, it was stated in the debates on electoral reform in 1909, for 20 years, under second ballots, only once had a majority outside been represented by a majority inside the Chamber, and the average representation for the two decades had amounted to only 45 per cent. of the voters. Writing to me after the New Zealand elections in 1909, the Hon. George Fowlds (Minister of Education), who has long supported effective voting, said, "The only result of the second ballot system in New Zealand has been to strengthen the movement in favour of proportional representation." And Mr. Paul, a Labour member in the Dominion, is making every effort to have effective voting included in the platform of the New Zealand Labour Party. Further encouragement to continue our work came when Belgium adopted the principle of proportional representation in 1898. The closing year of the century found the Effective Voting League in the thick of its first election campaign. There is little doubt that the best time for advancing a political reform is during an election, and it was interesting to note how many candidates came to our support. We had an interesting meeting at Parliament House for members just about that time. An opponent of the reform, who was present, complained that we were late in beginning our meeting. "We always begin punctually under the present system," he remarked. "Yes," some one replied, "but we always finish so badly." "Oh, I always finish well enough," was the pert rejoinder; "I generally come out on top." "Ah," retorted the other, "I was thinking of the electors." But the doubter did not come out on top at a subsequent election, and his defeat was probably the means of his discovering defects in the old system that no number of successes would have led him into acknowledging. From the two or three members who had supported Mr. Glynn in the previous Parliament we increased our advocates in the Assembly during the campaign to 14. The agitation had been very persistent among the electors, and their approval of the reform was reflected in the minds of their representatives. We inaugurated during that year the series of citizens' meetings convened by the Mayors of the city and suburbs, which has been so successful a feature of our long campaign for electoral justice, and at the present time very few of the mayoral chairs are occupied by men who are not keen supporters of effective voting. The Hon. Theodore Bruce's connection with the reform dates from that year, when he presided at a meeting in the Adelaide Town Hall during the temporary absence of the Mayor. A consistent supporter of effective voting from that time, it was only natural that when in May, 1909, the candidature of Mr. Bruce (who was then and is now a Vice-President of the league). for a seat in the Legislative Council, gave us an opportunity for working for his return, against a candidate who had stated that he was not satisfied with the working of the system of effective voting, we availed ourselves of it. So much has been written and said about the attitude of the league with regard to Parliamentary candidates that, as its President, I feel that I ought to take this opportunity of stating our reasons for that attitude. From its inception the league has declined to recognise parties in a contest at all. Its sole concern has been, and must be to support effective voters, to whatever party they may belong. To secure the just representation of the whole electorate of whatever size, is the work of the Effective Voting League, and, whatever the individual opinions of the members may be, as an official body they cannot help any candidate who opposes the reform for which they stand. I remember meeting at a political meeting during a subsequent general election a lady whom I had known as an almost rabid Kingstonian. But the party had failed to find a position for her son in the Civil Service, although their own sons were in that way satisfactorily provided for. So she had thrown in her lot with the other side, which at the time happened to gain a few seats, and the lady was quite sure that her influence had won the day for her former opponents. Leaning forward to whisper as if her next remark were too delicate for the ears of a gentleman sitting near, she said, "Do you know, I don't believe the Premier has any backbone!" I laughed, and said that I thought most people held the same belief. To my amusement and astonishment she then asked quite seriously, "Do you think that is why he stoops so much?" There was no doubt in her mind that the missing back bone had reference to the physical and not to the moral malformation of the gentleman in question. CHAPTER XXII. A VISIT TO NEW SOUTH WALES. Early in the year 1900 the Hon. B. R. Wise, then Attorney-General of New South Wales, suggested a campaign for effective voting in the mother State, with the object of educating the people, so that effective voting might be applied for the first Federal elections. Mrs. Young and I left Adelaide on May 10 of that year to inaugurate the movement in New South Wales. During the few hours spent in Melbourne Professor Nanson, the Victorian leader of the reform, with another earnest worker (Mr. Bowditch), called on us, and we had a pleasant talk over the proposed campaign. The power of The Age had already been felt, when, at the convention election, the 10 successful candidates were nominees of that paper, and at that time it was a sturdy opponent of proportional representation. The Argus, on the other hand, had done yeoman service in the advocacy of the reform from the time that Tasmania had so successfully experimented with the system. As we were going straight through to Sydney, we were able only to suggest arrangements for a possible campaign on our return. Our Sydney visit lasted eight weeks, during which time we addressed between 20 and 30 public meetings. Our welcome to the harbour city was most enthusiastic, and our first meeting, held in the Protestant Hall, on the Wednesday after our arrival, with the Attorney-General in the chair, was packed. The greatest interest was shown in the counting of the 387 votes taken at the meeting. Miss Rose Scott, however, had paved the way for the successful public meeting by a reception at her house on the previous Monday, at which we met Mr. Wise, Sir William McMillan, Mr. (afterwards Sr. Walker), Mr. (now Sir A. J.) Gould, Mr. Bruce Smith, Mr. W. Holman, and several other prominent citizens. The reform was taken up earnestly by most of these gentlemen. Sir William McMillan was appointed the first President of the league, which was formed before we left Sydney. During the first week of our visit we dined with Dr. and Mrs. Garran, who, with their son (Mr. Robert Garran, C.M.G., afterwards the collaborateur of Sir John Quick in the compilation of the "Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth"), were keen supporters of effective voting. Among the host of well-known people who came after dinner to meet us was Mr. (now Sir) George Reid, with whom we had an interesting talk over the much-discussed "Yes-No" Policy. We had both opposed the Bill on its first appeal to the people, and seized the occasion to thank Mr. Reid for his share in delaying the measure. "You think the Bill as amended an improvement?" he asked. "Probably," replied Mrs. Young, "but as I didn't think the improvement great enough, I voted against it both times." But I had not done so, and my vote on the second occasion was in favour of the Bill. But, as Mr. Reid admitted, the dislike of most reformers for federation was natural enough, for it was only to be expected that "reforms would be difficult to get with such a huge, unwieldy mass" to be moved before they could be won. And experience has proved the correctness of the view expressed. Anything in the nature of a real reform, judging from the experience of the past, will take a long time to bring about. I am convinced that had not South Australia already adopted the principle of the all-round land tax, the progressive form would have been the only one suggested or heard of from either party. Politicians are so apt to take the line of least resistance, and when thousands of votes of small landowners are to be won through the advocacy of an exemption, exemptions there will be. The whole system of taxation is wrong, it seems to me, and though, as a matter of expediency, sometimes from conviction, many people advocate the opposite course, I have long felt that taxation should not be imposed according to the ability to pay so much as according to benefits received from the State. We are frequently warned against expecting too much from Federation during its earlier stages, but experience teaches us that, as with human beings, so with nations, a wrong or a right beginning is responsible to a great extent for right or wrong development. I have the strongest hopes for the future of Australia, but the people must never be allowed to forget that eternal vigilance, as in the past, must still in the future be the price we must pay for our liberty. Later, Mr. Reid presided at our Parliament House meeting, and afterwards entertained us at afternoon tea. But one of our pleasantest memories was of a day spent with the great freetrader and Mrs. Reid at their Strathfield home. I was anxious to hear Mr. Reid speak, and was glad when the opportunity arose on the occasion of a no-confidence debate. But he was by no means at his best, and it was not until I heard him in his famous freetrade speech on his first visit to Adelaide that I realized how great an orator he was. At the close of the no-confidence debate the triumphant remark of an admirer that "Adelaide couldn't produce a speaker like that" showed me that a prophet sometimes hath honour, even in his own country. Mr. Wise was a brilliant speaker, and a most cultured man, and a delightful talker. Of Mrs. Parkes, then President of the Women's Liberal League, I saw much. She was a fine speaker, and a very clear-headed thinker. Her organizing faculty was remarkable, and her death a year or two ago was a distinct loss to her party. Her home life was a standing example of the fallacy of the old idea that a woman who takes up public work must necessarily neglect her family. Mrs. Barbara Baynton was a woman of a quite different type, clever and emotional, as one would expect the author of the brilliant but tragic "Bush Studies" to be. She was strongly opposed to Federation, as, indeed were large numbers of clever people in New South Wales. Frank Fox (afterwards connected with The Lone Hand), Bertram Stevens (author of "An Anthology of Australian Verse"), Judge Backhouse (who was probably the only Socialist Judge on the Australian Bench), were frequent visitors at Miss Scott's, and were all interesting people. An afternoon meeting on effective voting was arranged at the Sydney University, I think, by Dr. Anderson Stuart. We were charmed with the university and its beautiful surroundings. Among the visitors that afternoon was Mrs. David, a charming and well-read woman, whose book describing an expedition to Funafuti, is delightful. We afterwards dined with her and Professor David, and spent a pleasant hour with them. I was not neglectful of other reforms while on this campaign, and found time to interest myself in the State children's work with which my friend, Mrs. Garran, was so intimately connected. We went to Liverpool one day to visit the benevolent institution for men. There were some hundreds of men there housed in a huge building reminiscent of the early convict days. If not the whole, parts of it had been built by the convicts, and the massive stone staircase suggested to our minds the horrors of convict settlement. I have always resented the injury done to this new country by the foundation of penal settlements, through which Botany Bay lost its natural connotation as a habitat for wonderful flora, and became known only as a place where convicts were sent for three-quarters of a century. Barrington's couplet, written as a prologue at the opening of the Playhouse, Sydney, in 1796, to a play given by convicts-- True patriots we, for be it understood We left our country for our country's good-- was clever, but untrue. All experience proves that while it is a terrible injury to a new country to be settled by convicts, it is a real injury also to the people from whom they are sent, to shovel out of sight all their failures, and neither try to lessen their numbers nor to reclaim them to orderly civil life. It was not till Australia refused any longer to receive convicts, as Virginia had previously done, that serious efforts were made to amend the criminal code of England, or to use reformatory methods first with young and afterwards with older offenders. Another pleasant trip was one we took to Parramatta. The Government launch was courteously placed at our disposal to visit the Parramatta Home for Women, where also we found some comfortable homes for old couples. The separation of old people who would prefer to spend the last years of their life together is I consider, an outrage on society. One of my chief desires has been to establish such homes for destitute couples in South Australia, and to every woman who may be appointed as a member of the Destitute Board in future I appeal to do her utmost to change our methods of treatment with regard to old couples, so that to the curse of poverty may not be added the cruelty of enforced separation. Women in New South Wales were striving for the franchise at that time, and we had the pleasure of speaking at one of their big meetings. And what fine public meetings they had in Sydney! People there seemed to take a greater interest in politics than here, and crowded attendances were frequent at political meetings, even when there was no election to stir them up. It was a Sydney lady who produced this amusing Limerick in my honour:-- There was a Grand Dame of Australia Who proved the block system a failure. She taught creatures in coats What to do with their votes, This Effective Grand Dame of Australia! The third line will perhaps preclude the necessity for pointing out that the author was an ardent suffragist! To an enlightened woman also was probably due the retort to a gentleman's statement that "Miss Spence was a good man lost," that, "On the contrary she thought she was a good woman saved." "In what way?" he asked. "Saved for the benefit of her country, instead of having her energies restricted to the advantages of one home," was the reply. And for this I have sometimes felt very thankful myself that I have been free to devote what gifts I possess to what I consider best for the advantage and the uplifting of humanity. Before leaving Sydney I tried once more to find a publisher for "Gathered In," but was assured that the only novels worth publishing in Australia were sporting or political novels. I was in my seventy-fifth year at the time of this visit, but the joy of being enabled to extend the influence of our reform to other States was so great that the years rolled back and left me as full of life and vigour and zeal as I had ever been. Our work had by no means been confined to the city and suburbs, as we spoke at a few country towns as well. At Albury, where we stopped on our way back to Victoria, we were greeted by a crowded and enthusiastic audience in the fine hall of the Mechanics' Institute. We had passed through a snowstorm just before reaching Albury, and the country was very beautiful in the afternoon, when our friends drove us through the district. The Murray was in flood, and the "water, water everywhere" sparkling in the winter sunshine, with the snowcapped Australian Alps in the background, made an exquisite picture. Albury was the only town we visited in our travels which still retained the old custom of the town crier. Sitting in the room of the hotel after dinner, we were startled at hearing our names and our mission proclaimed to the world at large, to the accompaniment t of a clanging bell and introduced by the old-fashioned formula, "Oyez! oyez! oyez!" Our work in Victoria was limited, but included a delightful trip to Castlemaine. We were impressed with the fine Mechanics' Hall of that town, in which we spoke to a large audience. But a few years later the splendid building, with many others in the town, was razed to the ground by a disastrous cyclone. Returning from Castlemaine, we had an amusing experience in the train. I had laid aside my knitting, which is the usual companion of my travels, to teach Mrs. Young the game of "Patience," but at one of the stations a foreign gentleman entered the carriage, when we immediately put aside the cards. After chatting awhile, he expressed regret that he had been the cause of the banishment of our cards, and "Would the ladies not kindly tell him his fortune also?" He was as much amused as we were when we explained that we were reformers and not fortune tellers. I have been a great lover of card games all my life; patience in solitude, and cribbage, whist, and bridge have been the almost invariable accompaniments of my evenings spent at home or with my friends. Reading and knitting were often indulged in, but patience was a change and a rest and relief to the mind. I have always had the idea that card games are an excellent incentive to the memory. We had an afternoon meeting in the Melbourne Town Hall to inaugurate a league in Victoria, at which Dr. Barrett, the Rev. Dr. Bevan, Professor Nanson, and I were the principal speakers. Just recently I wrote to the Victorian Minister who had charge of the Preferential Voting Bill in the Victorian Parliament to ask him to consider the merits of effective voting; but, like most other politicians, the Minister did not find the time opportune for considering the question of electoral justice for all parties. I remained in Victoria to spend a month with my family and friends after Mrs. Young returned to Adelaide. The death of my dear brother John, whose sympathy and help had always meant so much to me, shortly after my return, followed by that of my brother William in New Zealand, left me the sole survivor of the generation which had sailed from Scotland in 1839. CHAPTER XXIII. MORE PUBLIC WORK. For the co-operative movement I had always felt the keenest sympathy. I saw in it the liberation of the small wage-earner from the toils of the middlemen. I thought moreover that the incentive to thrift so strongly encouraged by co-operative societies would be a tremendous gain to the community as well as to the individual. How many people owe a comfortable old age to the delight of seeing their first small profits in a co-operative concern, or their savings in a building society accumulating steadily and surely, if but slowly? And I have always had a disposition to encourage anything that would tend to lighten the burden of the worker. So that when in 1901 Mrs. Agnes Milne placed before me a suggestion for the formation of a women's co-operative clothing factory, I was glad to do what I could to further an extension in South Australia of the movement, which, from its inception in older countries, had made so strong an appeal to my reason. A band of women workers were prepared to associate for the mutual benefit of the operatives in the shirtmaking and clothing trades. Under the title of the South Australian Co-operative Clothing Company, Limited, they proposed to take over and carry on a small private factory, owned by one of themselves, which had found it difficult to compete against large firms working with the latest machinery. I was sure of finding many sympathizers among my friends, and was successful in disposing of a fair number of shares. The movement had already gained support from thinking working women, and by the time we were ready to form ourselves into a company we were hopeful of success. I was appointed, and have since remained the first President of the board of directors; and, unless prevented by illness or absence from the State, I have never failed to be present at all meetings. The introduction of Wages Boards added to the keen competition between merchants, had made the task of carrying on successfully most difficult, but we hoped that as the idea gained publicity we should benefit proportionately. It was a great blow to us, when at the close of the first year we were able to declare a dividend of 1/ a share, the merchants closed down upon us and reduced their payments by 6d. or 9d. per dozen. But in spite of drawbacks we have maintained the struggle successfully, though sometimes at disheartening cost to the workers and officials of the society. I feel, however, that the reward of success due to this plucky band of women workers will come in the near future, for at no other time probably has the position looked more hopeful than during the present year. During this same year the Effective Voting League made a new departure in its propaganda work by inviting Sir Edward Braddon to address a meeting in the Adelaide Town Hall. As Premier of Tasmania, Sir Edward had inaugurated the reform in the gallant little island State, and he was able to speak with authority on the practicability and the justice of effective voting. His visit was followed a year later by one from Sr. Keating, another enthusiastic Tasmanian supporter, whose lecture inspired South Australian workers to even greater efforts, and carried conviction to the minds of many waverers. At that meeting we first introduced the successful method of explanation by means of limelight slides. The idea of explaining the whole system by pictures had seemed impossible, but every step of the counting can be shown so simply and clearly by this means as to make an understanding of the system a certainty. To the majority of people an appeal to reason and understanding is made much more easily through the eye than through the ear. The year 1902 saw an advance in the Parliamentary agitation of the reform, when the Hon. Joseph (now Senator) Vardon introduced a Bill for the first time into the Legislative Council. The measure had been excellently prepared by Mr. J. H. Vaughan, LL.B., with the assistance of the members of the executive of the Effective Voting League, among whom were Messrs. Crawford Vaughan and E. A. Anstey. The Bill sought to apply effective voting to existing electoral districts, which, though not nearly so satisfactory as larger districts, nevertheless made the application of effective voting possible. With the enlargement of the district on the alteration of the Constitution subsequent to federation becoming an accomplished fact, the league was unanimous in its desire to seek the line of least resistance by avoiding a change in the Constitution that an alteration in electoral boundaries would have necessitated. To Mr. Vardon, when he was a candidate for Legislative honours in 1900 the usual questions were sent from the league; but, as he had not studied the question he declined to pledge himself to support the reform. Realizing, however, the necessity of enquiring into all public matters, he decided to study the Hare system, but the league declined to support him without a written pledge. Still he was elected, and immediately afterwards studied effective voting, became convinced of its justice, and has remained a devoted advocate. Our experience with legislators had usually been of the opposite nature. Pledged adherents to effective voting during an election campaign, as members they no longer saw the necessity for a change in a method of voting which had placed them safely in Parliament; but in Mr. Vardon we found a man whose conversion to effective voting was a matter of principle, and not a question of gathering votes. That was why the league selected him as its Parliamentary advocate when effective voting first took definite shape in the form of a Bill. When, later, Mr. E. H. Coombe, M.P., took charge of the Bill in the Assembly although the growth in public opinion in favour of effective voting had been surprising, the coalition between the Liberal and Labour parties strengthened their combined position and weakened the allegiance of their elected members to a reform which would probably affect their vested interests in the Legislature. Mr. Coombe had not been an easy convert to proportional representation. He had attended my first lecture at Gawler, but saw difficulties in the way of accepting the Hare system as propounded by me. His experiments were interesting. Assuming a constituency of 100 electors with 10 members, he filled in 60 Conservative and 40 Liberal voting papers. The proportion of members to each party should be six Conservatives and four Liberals, and when he found that by no amount of manipulation could this result be altered he became a convert to effective voting. His able advocacy of the reform is too well known to need further reference; but I should like now to thank those members, including Mr. K. W. Duncan, who have in turn led the crusade for righteous representation in both Houses of Parliament, for of them may it truly be said that the interests of the people as a whole were their first consideration. Before I left for America I saw the growing power and strength of the Labour Party. I rejoiced that a new star had arisen in the political firmament. I looked to it as a party that would support every cause that tended towards righteousness. I expected it, as a reform party, to take up effective voting, because effective voting was a reform. I hoped that a party whose motto was "Trust the people" would have adopted a reform by means of which alone it would be possible for the people to gain control over its Legislature and its Government. Alas! for human hopes that depend on parties for their realization! As time after time I have seen defections from the ranks of proportionalists, and people have said to me:--"Give it up, Miss Spence. Why trouble longer? Human nature is too bad," I have answered, "No; these politicians are but the ephemeral creations of a day or a month, or a year; this reform is for all time, and must prevail, and I will never give it up." During my many visits to Melbourne and Sydney I had been much impressed with the influence and the power for good of the local branches of the world-famed National Council of Women. I had long hoped for the establishment of a branch in South Australia, and was delighted to fall in with a suggestion made by the Countess of Aberdeen (Vice-President-at-large of the International Council), through Lady Cockburn, that a council should be formed in South Australia. The inaugural meeting in September, 1902, was splendidly attended, and it was on a resolution moved by me that the council came into existence. Lady Way was the first President, and I was one of the Vice-Presidents. I gave several addresses, and in 1904 contributed a paper on "Epileptics." In dealing with this subject I owed much to the splendid help I received from my dear friend Miss Alice Henry, of Victoria, now in Chicago, whose writings on epileptics and weak-minded children have contributed largely to the awakening of the public conscience to a sense of duty towards these social weaklings. In 1905 I contributed a paper to the quinquennial meeting of the International Council of Women, held at Berlin, on the laws relating to women and children in South Australia, and gave an account of the philanthropic institutions of the State, with special reference to the State Children's Council and Juvenile Courts. The work of the National Council in this State was disappointing to many earnest women, who had hoped to find in it a means for the social, political, and philanthropic education of the women of South Australia. Had the council been formed before we had obtained the vote there would probably have been more cohesion and a greater sustained effort to make it a useful body. But as it was there was so apparent a disinclination to touch "live" subjects that interest in the meetings dwindled, and in 1906 I resigned my position on the executive in order to have more time to spare for other public work. A problem which was occasioning the State Children's Council much anxious thought was how to deal effectively with the ever-increasing number of the "children of the streets". Boys and girls alike, who should either be at school or engaged at some useful occupation, were roaming the streets and parks, uncontrolled and sometimes uncontrollable. We recognised that their condition was one of moral peril, and graduation to criminality from these nurseries of crime so frequently occurred that State interference seemed absolutely imperative to save the neglected unfortunates for a worthier citizenship. It is much easier and far more economical to save the child than to punish the criminal. One of the most effective means of clearing the streets would be to raise the compulsory age for school attendance up to the time of employment. That truancy was to a great extent responsible for these juvenile delinquents was proved by the fact that more then one-half of the lads sent to Magill had committed the crimes for which they were first convicted while truanting. Moreover, an improvement was noticed immediately on the amendment of the compulsory attendance clauses in the Education Act. Truancy--the wicket gate of the road to ruin in youth--should be barred as effectively as possible, and the best way to bar it is to make every day a compulsory school day, unless the excuse for absence be abundantly sufficient. Another aspect of the neglected children problem, which Federal action alone will solve, is in dealing with cases of neglect by desertion. At present each State is put to great trouble and expense through defaulting parents. Federal legislation would render it possible to have an order for payment made in one State collected and remitted by an officer in another State. By this means thousands of pounds a year could be saved to the various States, and many a child prevented from becoming a burden to the people at large. These are some of the problems awaiting solution and the women of South Australia will do well to make the salvation of these neglected waifs a personal care and responsibility. Perhaps no other work of the State Children's Council has more practically shown their appreciation of the capabilities of the children under their care than the establishment of the State children's advancement fund. This is to enable State children who show any aptitude, to pursue their education through the continuation schools to the University. To private subscriptions for this purpose the Government have added a subsidy of 50 pounds, and already some children are availing themselves of this splendid opportunity to rise in the world. The longer I live the prouder I feel that I have been enabled to assist in this splendid work for the benefit of humanity. The years as they passed left me with wider interests in, deeper sympathies with, and greater knowledge of the world and its people. Each year found "one thing worth beginning, one thread of life worth spinning." The pleasure I derived from the more extended intellectual activity of my later years was due largely to my association with a band of cultured and earnest women interested in social, political, and other public questions--women who, seeing "the tides of things," desired so to direct them that each wave of progress should carry the people to a higher place on the sands of life. To the outside world little is known of the beginnings and endings of social movements, which, taken separately, perhaps appear of small consequence, but which in the aggregate count for a great deal in what is popularly known as the forward movement. To such as these belonged an interesting association of women, which, meeting at first informally, grew eventually into a useful organization for the intellectual and moral development of those who were fortunate enough to be associated with it. This was the "Social Students' Society," of which Miss A. L. Tomkinson was the secretary and I the first President. One of the addresses I gave was on "Education," and among others whose addresses helped us considerably was the Director of Education (Mr. A. Williams). Speakers from all parties addressed the association, and while the society existed a good deal of educational work was done. Much interest was taken in the question of public playgrounds for children, and we succeeded in interesting the City Council in the movement; but, owing to lack of funds, the scheme for the time being was left in abeyance. In the agitation for the public ownership of the tramways, I was glad to take a share. The private ownership of monopolies is indefensible, and my American experiences of the injustice of the system strengthened my resolve to do my utmost to prevent the growth of the evil in South Australia. My attitude on the question alienated a number of friends, both from me personally and from effective voting, so intolerant had people become of any opposition to their own opinions. The result of the referendum was disappointing, and, I shall always consider, a grave reflection on a democratic community which permits a referendum to be taken under a system of plural voting which makes the whole proceeding a farce. But the citizens of Adelaide have need to be grateful to the patriotic zeal of those who, led by the late Cornelius Proud fought for the public ownership of the tramways. These years of activity were crossed by sickness and sorrow. For the first time in a long life, which had already extended almost a decade beyond the allotted span, I became seriously ill. To be thus laid low by sickness was a deep affliction to one of my active temperament; but, if sickness brings trouble, it often brings joy in the tender care and appreciation of hosts of friends, and this joy I realized to the fullest extent. The following year (1904) was darkened by the tragic death of my ward, and once more my home was broken up, and with Miss Gregory I went to live with my good friends Mr. and Mrs. Quilty, in North Norwood. From then on my life has flowed easily and pleasantly, marred only by the sadness of farewells of many old friends and comrades on my life's journey, who one by one have passed "through Nature to eternity." Much as I have written during the past 40 years, it was reserved for my old age to discover within me the power of poetical expression. I had rhymed in my youth and translated French verse, but until I wrote my one sonnet, poetry had been an untried field. The one-sided pessimistic pictures that Australian poets and writers present are false in the impression they make on the outside world and on ourselves. They lead us to forget the beauty and the brightness of the world we live in. What we need is, as Matthew Arnold says of life, "to see Australia steadily and see it whole." It is not wise to allow the "deadbeat"--the remittance man, the gaunt shepherd with his starving flocks and herds, the free selector on an arid patch, the drink shanty where the rouseabouts and shearers knock down their cheques, the race meeting where high and low, rich and poor, are filled with the gambler's ill luck--fill the foreground of the picture of Australian life. These reflections led me to a protest, in the form of a sonnet published in The Register some years ago:-- When will some new Australian poet rise To all the height and glory of his theme? Nor on the sombre side for ever dream Our hare, baked plains, our pitiless blue skies, 'Neath which the haggard bushman strains his eyes To find some waterhole or hidden stream To save himself and flocks in want extreme! This is not all Australia! Let us prize Our grand inheritance! Had sunny Greece More light, more glow, more freedom, or more mirth? Ours are wide vistas bathed in purest air-- Youth's outdoor pleasures, Age's indoor peace-- Where could we find a fairer home on earth Which we ourselves are free to make more fair? Just as years before my interest had been kindled in the establishment of our system of State education, and later in the University and higher education, so more recently has the inauguration of the Froebel system of kindergarten training appealed most strongly to my reason and judgment. There was a time in the history of education, long after the necessity for expert teaching in primary and secondary schools had been recognised, when the training of the infant mind was left to the least skilled assistant on the staff of a school. With the late Mr. J. A. Hartley, whose theory was that the earliest beginnings of education needed even greater skill in the teacher than the higher branches, I had long regarded the policy as mistaken; but modern educationists have changed all that, and the training of tiny mites of two or three summers and upwards is regarded as of equal importance with that of children of a larger growth. South Australia owes its free kindergarten to the personal initiative and private munificence of the Rev. Bertram Hawker, youngest son of the late Hon. G. C. Hawker. I had already met, and admired the kindergarten work of, Miss Newton when in Sydney, and was delighted when she accepted Mr. Hawker's invitation to inaugurate the system in Adelaide. Indeed, the time of her stay here during September, 1905, might well have been regarded as a special visitation of educational experts, for, in addition to Miss Newton, the directors of education from New South Wales and Victoria (Messrs. G. H. Knibbs and F. Tate) took part in the celebrations. Many interesting meetings led up to the formation of the Kindergarten Union. My niece, Mrs. J. P. Morice, was appointed hon. secretary, and I became one of the Vice-Presidents. On joining the union I was proud of the fact that I was the first member to pay a subscription. The free kindergarten has come to South Australia to stay, and is fast growing into an integral part of our system of education. I have rejoiced in the progress of the movement, and feel that the future will witness the realization of my ideal of a ladder that will reach from the kindergarten to the University, as outlined in articles I wrote for The Register at that time. CHAPTER XXIV. THE EIGHTIETH MILESTONE AND THE END. On October 31, 1905, I celebrated my eightieth birthday. Twelve months earlier, writing to a friend, I said:--"I entered my eightieth year on Monday, and I enjoy life as much as I did at 18; indeed, in many respects I enjoy it more." The birthday gathering took place in the schoolroom of the Unitarian Church, the church to which I had owed so much happiness through the lifting of the dark shadows of my earlier religious beliefs. Surrounded by friends who had taken their share in the development of my beloved State, I realized one of the happiest times of my life. I had hoped that the celebration would have helped the cause of effective voting, which had been predominant in my mind since 1859. By my interests and work in so many other directions--in literature, journalism, education, philanthropy, and religion--which had been testified to by so many notable people on that occasion, I hoped to prove that I was not a mere faddist, who could be led away by a chimerical fantasy. I wanted the world to understand that I was a clear-brained, commonsense woman of the world, whose views on effective voting and other political questions were as worthy of credence as her work in other directions had been worthy of acceptance. The greetings of my many friends from all parts of the Commonwealth on that day brought so much joy to me that there was little wonder I was able to conclude my birthday poem "Australian spring" with the lines:-- With eighty winters o'er my head, Within my heart there's Spring. Full as my life was with its immediate interests, the growth and development of the outside world claimed a good share of my attention. The heated controversies in the motherland over the preachings and teaching of the Rev. R. J. Campbell found their echo here, and I was glad to be able to support in pulpit and newspaper the stand made by t he courageous London preacher of modern thought. How changed the outlook of the world from my childhood's days, when Sunday was a day of strict theological habit, from which no departure could be permitted! The laxity of modern life, by comparison is, I think, somewhat appalling. We have made the mistake of breaking away from old beliefs and convictions without replacing them with something better. We do not make as much, or as good, use of our Sundays as we might do. There is a medium between the rigid Sabbatarianism of our ancestors and the absolute waste of the day of rest in mere pleasure and frivolity. All the world is deploring the secularizing of Sunday. Not only is churchgoing perfunctory or absent, but in all ranks of life there is a disposition to make it a day of rest and amusement--sometimes the amusement rather than the rest. Sunday, the Sabbath, as Alex McLaren pointed out to me, is not a day taken from us, but a day given to us. "Behold, I have given you the Sabbath!" For what? For rest for man and beast, but also to be a milestone in our upward and onward progress--a day for not only wearing best clothes, but for reading our best books and thinking our best thoughts. I have often grieved at the small congregations in other churches no less than in my own, and the grief was aggravated by the knowledge that those who were absent from church were not necessarily otherwise well employed. I derived so much pleasure from the excellent and cultured sermons of my friend the Rev. John Reid during his term of office here that I regretted the fact that others who might gain equally from them were not there to hear them. I would like to see among the young people a finer conception of the duties of citizenship, which, if not finding expression in church attendance, may develop in some way that will be noble and useful to society. In the meantime the work of the Effective Voting League had been rather at a standstill. Mrs. Young's illness had caused her resignation, and until she again took up the work nothing further was done to help Mr. Coombe in his Parliamentary agitation. In 1908, however, we began a vigorous campaign, and towards the close of the year the propaganda work was being carried into all parts of the State. Although I was then 83, I travelled to Petersburg to lecture to a good audience. On the same night Mrs. Young addressed a fine gathering at Mount Gambier, and from that time the work has gone on unceasingly. The last great effort was made through the newspaper ballot of September, 1909, when a public count of about 10,000 votes was completed with all explanations during the evening. The difficulties that were supposed to stand in the way of a general acceptance of effective voting have been entirely swept away. Tasmania and South Africa have successfully demonstrated the practicability, no less than the justice, of the system. Now we get to the bedrock of the objections raised to its adoption, and we find that they exist only in the minds of the politicians themselves; but the people have faith in effective voting, and I believe the time to be near when they will demand equitable representation in every Legislature in the world. The movement has gone too far to be checked, and the electoral unrest which is so common all over the world will eventually find expression in the best of all electoral systems, which I claim to be effective voting. Among the many friends I had made in the other States there was none I admired more for her public spiritedness than Miss Vida Goldstein. I have been associated with her on many platforms and in many branches of work. Her versatility is great, but there is little doubt that her chief work lies in helping women and children. Her life is practically spent in battling for her sex. Although I was the first woman in Australia to become a Parliamentary candidate, Miss Goldstein has since exceeded my achievement by a second candidature for the Senate. It was during her visit here last May-June as a delegate to the State Children's Congress that she inaugurated the Women's Non-party Political Association, which is apparently a growing force. In a general way the aims of the society bear a strong resemblance to those of the social students' society, many of its members having also belonged to the earlier association. It was a hopeful sign to me that it included among its members people of all political views working chiefly in the interests of women and children. Of this Society also I became the first President, and the fact that on its platform was included proportional representation was an incentive for me to work for it. The education of women on public and social questions, so that they will be able to work side by side with the opposite sex for the public good will, I think, help in the solution of social problems that are now obstacles in the path of progress. In addition to other literary work for the year 1909 I was asked by Miss Alice Henry to revise my book on State children in order to make it acceptable and applicable to American conditions. It was a big undertaking, but I think successful. The book, as originally written had already done good work in Western Australia, where the conditions of infant mortality were extremely alarming, and in England also; and there is ample scope for such a work in America, which is still far behind even the most backward Australian State in its care for dependent children. As a President of three societies, a Vice-President of two others, a member of two of the most important boards in the State for the care of the destitute, the deserted, and the dependent, with a correspondence that touches on many parts of the Empire, and two continents besides, with my faculty for the appreciation of good literature still unimpaired, with my domestic interests so dear to me, and my constant knitting for the infants under the care of the State Inspector--I find my life as an octogenarian more varied in its occupations and interests than ever before. Looking back from the progressive heights of 1910 through the long vista of years, numbering upwards of four-fifths of a century, I rejoice at the progress the world has made. Side by side with the development of my State my life has slowly unfolded itself. My connection with many of the reforms to which is due this development has been intimate, and (I think I am justified in saying) oftentimes helpful. While other States of the Commonwealth and the Dominion of New Zealand have made remarkable progress, none has eclipsed the rapid growth of the State to which the steps of my family were directed in 1839. Its growth has been more remarkable, because it has been primarily due to its initiation of many social and political reforms which have since been adopted by other and older countries. "Australia, lead us further," is the cry of reformers in America. We have led in so many things, and though America may claim the honour of being the birthplace of the more modern theory of land values taxation, I rejoice that South Australia was the first country in the world with the courage and the foresight to adopt the tax on land values without exemption. That she is still lagging behind Tasmania and South Africa in the adoption of effective voting, as the only scientific system of electoral reform, is the sorrow of my old age. The fact that South Australia has been the happy hunting ground of the faddist has frequently been urged as a reproach against this State. Its more patriotic citizens will rejoice in the truth of the statement, and their prayer will probably be that not fewer but more advanced thinkers will arise to carry this glorious inheritance beneath the Southern Cross to higher and nobler heights of physical and human development than civilization has yet dreamed of or achieved. The Utopia of yesterday is the possession of today, and opens the way to the Utopia of to-morrow. The haunting horror of older civilizations--divorcing the people from their natural inheritance in the soil, and filling the towns with myriads of human souls dragged down by poverty, misery, and crime--is already casting its shadow over the future of Australia; but there is hope in the fact that a new generation has arisen untrammelled by tradition, which, having the experience of older countries before it, and benefiting from the advantages of the freer life and the greater opportunities afforded by a new country, gives promise of ultimately finding the solution of the hitherto unsolved problem of making country life as attractive to the masses as that of the towns and cities. As time goes on the effect of education must tell, and the generations that are to come will be more enlightened and more altruistic, and the tendency of the world will be more and more, even as it is now, towards higher and nobler conceptions of human happiness. I have lived through a glorious age of progress. Born in "the wonderful century," I have watched the growth of the movement for the uplifting of the masses, from the Reform Bill of 1832 to the demands for adult suffrage. As a member of a church which allows women to speak in the pulpit, a citizen of a State which gives womanhood a vote for the Assembly, a citizen of a Commonwealth which fully enfranchises me for both Senate and Representatives, and a member of a community which was foremost in conferring University degrees on women, I have benefited from the advancement of the educational and political status of women for which the Victorian era will probably stand unrivalled in the annals of the world's history. I have lived through the period of repressed childhood, and witnessed the dawn of a new era which has made the dwellers in youth's "golden age" the most important factor in human development. I have watched the growth of Adelaide from the condition of a scattered hamlet to that of one of the finest cities in the southern hemisphere; I have seen the evolution of South Australia from a province to an important State in a great Commonwealth. All through my life I have tried to live up to the best that was in me, and I should like to be remembered as one who never swerved in her efforts to do her duty alike to herself and her fellow-citizens. Mistakes I have made, as all are liable to do, but I have done my best. And when life has closed for me, let those who knew me best speak and think of me as One who never turned her back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. No nobler epitaph would I desire. 
32603	----	Julia Ward Howe. FROM SUNSET RIDGE: POEMS OLD AND NEW. 12mo, $1.50. REMINISCENCES. With many Portraits and other Illustrations. Crown 8vo, $2.50. IS POLITE SOCIETY POLITE? AND OTHER ESSAYS. With a Portrait of Mrs. Howe. Square 8vo, $1.50. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK. [Illustration: Photograph of Julia Ward Howe; signature] REMINISCENCES 1819-1899 BY JULIA WARD HOWE WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS [Decorative Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY JULIA WARD HOWE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. BIRTH, PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD 1 II. LITERARY NEW YORK 21 III. NEW YORK SOCIETY 29 IV. HOME LIFE: MY FATHER 43 V. MY STUDIES 56 VI. SAMUEL WARD AND THE ASTORS 64 VII. MARRIAGE: TOUR IN EUROPE 81 VIII. FIRST YEARS IN BOSTON 144 IX. SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE 188 X. A CHAPTER ABOUT MYSELF 205 XI. ANTI-SLAVERY ATTITUDE: LITERARY WORK: TRIP TO CUBA 218 XII. THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES: IN WAR TIME 244 XIII. THE BOSTON RADICAL CLUB: DR. F. H. HEDGE 281 XIV. MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN THE SIXTIES 304 XV. A WOMAN'S PEACE CRUSADE 327 XVI. VISITS TO SANTO DOMINGO 345 XVII. THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT 372 XVIII. CERTAIN CLUBS 400 XIX. ANOTHER EUROPEAN TRIP 410 XX. FRIENDS AND WORTHIES: SOCIAL SUCCESSES 428 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE JULIA WARD HOWE _Frontispiece_ _From a photograph by Hardy, 1897._ SARAH MITCHELL, NIECE OF GENERAL FRANCIS MARION AND GRANDMOTHER OF MRS. HOWE 4 _From a painting by Waldo and Jewett._ JULIA WARD AND HER BROTHERS, SAMUEL AND HENRY 8 _From a miniature by Anne Hall._ JULIA CUTLER WARD, MOTHER OF MRS. HOWE 12 _From a miniature by Anne Hall._ SAMUEL WARD, FATHER OF MRS. HOWE 46 _From a miniature by Anne Hall._ SAMUEL WARD, JR 68 _From a painting by Baron Vogel._ FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 138 _From a photograph._ THE SOUTH BOSTON HOME OF MR. AND MRS. HOWE 152 _From a painting in the possession of M. Anagnos._ WENDELL PHILLIPS, AT THE AGE OF 48 158 _From a photograph lent by Francis J. Garrison, Boston._ THEODORE PARKER 166 _From a photograph by J. J. Hawes._ JULIA WARD HOWE 176 _From a painting (1847) by Joseph Ames._ SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE, M. D. 230 _From a photograph by Black, about 1859._ JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE 246 _From a photograph by the Notman Photographic Company._ JOHN BROWN 254 _From a photograph (about 1857) lent by Francis J. Garrison, Boston._ JOHN A. ANDREW 262 _From a photograph by Black._ JULIA WARD HOWE 270 _From a photograph by J. J. Hawes, about 1861._ FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 276 _From the original MS. in the possession of Mrs. E. P. Whipple, Boston._ RALPH WALDO EMERSON 292 _From a photograph by Black._ FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE, D. D. 302 _From a photograph lent by his daughter, Charlotte A. Hedge._ SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE, M. D. 328 _From a photograph by A. Marshall (1870), in the possession of the Massachusetts Club._ LUCY STONE 376 _From a photograph by the Notman Photographic Company._ MARIA MITCHELL 386 _From a photograph._ THE NEWPORT HOME OF MR. AND MRS. HOWE 406 _From a photograph by Briskham and Davidson._ THOMAS GOLD APPLETON 432 _From a photograph lent by Mrs. John Murray Forbes._ JULIA ROMANA ANAGNOS 440 _From a photograph._ REMINISCENCES CHAPTER I BIRTH, PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD I have been urgently asked to put together my reminiscences. I could wish that I had begun to do so at an earlier period of my life, because at this time of writing the lines of the past are somewhat confused in my memory. Yet, with God's help, I shall endeavor to do justice to the individuals whom I have known, and to the events of which I have had some personal knowledge. Let me say at the very beginning that I esteem this century, now near its close, to have eminently deserved a record among those which have been great landmarks in human history. It has seen the culmination of prophecies, the birth of new hopes, and a marvelous multiplication both of the ideas which promote human happiness and of the resources which enable man to make himself master of the world. Napoleon is said to have forbidden his subordinates to tell him that any order of his was impossible of fulfillment. One might think that the genius of this age must have uttered a like injunction. To attain instantaneous communication with our friends across oceans and through every continent; to command locomotion whose swiftness changes the relations of space and time; to steal from Nature her deepest secrets, and to make disease itself the minister of cure; to compel the sun to keep for us the record of scenes and faces, of the great shows and pageants of time, of the perishable forms whose charm and beauty deserve to remain in the world's possession,--these are some of the achievements of our nineteenth century. Even more wonderful than these may we esteem the moral progress of the race; the decline of political and religious enmities, the growth of good-will and mutual understanding between nations, the waning of popular superstition, the spread of civic ideas, the recognition of the mutual obligations of classes, the advancement of woman to dignity in the household and efficiency in the state. All this our century has seen and approved. To the ages following it will hand on an inestimable legacy, an imperishable record. While my heart exults at these grandeurs of which I have seen and known something, my contribution to their history can be but of fragmentary and fitful interest. On the world's great scene, each of us can only play his little part, often with poor comprehension of the mighty drama which is going on around him. If any one of us undertakes to set this down, he should do it with the utmost truth and simplicity; not as if Seneca or Tacitus or St. Paul were speaking, but as he himself, plain Hodge or Dominie or Mrs. Grundy, is moved to speak. He should not borrow from others the sentiments which he ought to have entertained, but relate truthfully how matters appeared to him, as they and he went on. Thus much I can promise to do in these pages, and no more. I was born on May 27, 1819, in the city of New York, in Marketfield Street, near the Battery. My father was of Rhode Island birth and descent. One of his grandmothers was the beautiful Catharine Ray to whom are addressed some of Benjamin Franklin's published letters. His father attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the war of the Revolution, being himself the son of Governor Samuel Ward, of Rhode Island,[1] married to a daughter of Governor Greene, of the same state. My mother was grandniece to General Francis Marion, of Huguenot descent, known in the Revolution as the Swamp-fox of southern campaigns. Her father was Benjamin Clarke Cutler, whose first ancestor in this country was John De Mesmekir, of Holland. [Footnote 1: Governor Samuel Ward refused to enforce the Stamp Act, and also did valuable service as a member of the First and Second Continental Congresses. He frequently served as chairman of the Committee of the Whole, during the secret sessions of Congress. His death, in the spring of 1776, is said to have been due in large measure to the fatigue caused by his incessant labors in behalf of his country. Although he did not live to sign the Declaration of Independence, he was one of the first men to prophesy the separation of the colonies from the mother country.] [Illustration: SARAH MITCHELL (MRS. HOWE'S grandmother) _From a painting by Waldo and Jewett._] Let me here remark that an expert in chiromancy, after making a recent examination of my hand, exclaimed, "You inherit military blood; your hand shows it." My own earliest recollections are of a fine house on the Bowling Green, a region of high fashion in those days. In the summer mornings my nurse sometimes walked abroad with me, and showed me the young girls of our neighborhood, engaged with their skipping ropes. Our favorite resort was the Battery, where the flagstaff used in the Revolution was still to be seen. The fort at Castle Garden had already been converted into a pleasure resort, where fireworks and ices might be enjoyed. We were six children in all, yet Wordsworth's little maid would have reckoned us as seven, as a sister of four years had died shortly before my birth, leaving me her name and the dignity of eldest daughter. She was always mentioned in the family as the _first little Julia_. My two eldest brothers, Samuel and Henry Ward, were pupils at Round Hill School. The third, Francis Marion, named for the General, was my junior by fifteen months, and continued to be my constant playmate until, at the proper age, he joined the others at Round Hill School. A few words regarding my mother may not here be out of place. Married at sixteen, she died at the age of twenty-seven, so beloved and mourned by all who knew her that my early years were full of the testimony borne by surviving friends to the beauty and charm of her character. She had been a pupil at the school of Mrs. Elizabeth Graham, of saintly memory, and had inherited from her own mother a taste for intellectual pursuits. She was especially fond of poetry and a few lovely poems of hers remain to show that she was no stranger to its sacred domain. One of these was printed in a periodical of her own time, and is preserved in Griswold's "Female Poets of America." Another set of verses is addressed to me in the days of my babyhood. All of these bear the imprint of her deeply religious character. Mrs. Margaret Armstrong Astor, of whom more will be said in these annals, remembered my mother as prominent in the society of her youth, and spoke of her as beautiful in countenance. An old lady, resident in Bordentown, N. J., where Joseph, ex-king of Spain, made his home for many years, had seen my mother arrayed for a dinner at this royal residence, in a white dress, probably of embroidered cambric, and a lilac turban. Her early death was a lifelong misfortune to her children, who, although tenderly bred and carefully watched, have been forced to pass their days without the dear refuge of a mother's heart, the wise guidance of a mother's inspiration. A dear old cousin of my father's, who lived to the age of one hundred and two years, loved to talk of a visit which she had made in her youth to my grandfather Ward, then resident in New York. She had not quite forgiven him for not allowing her to attend an assembly on which, being only sixteen years of age, she had set her heart. Years after this time, when such vanities had quite gone out of her mind, she again visited relatives in the city, and came to spend the day with my mother. Of this occasion she said to me: "Julia, your mother's tact was remarkable, and she showed it on that day, for, knowing me to be a young woman of serious character, she presented me on my arrival with a plain linen collar which she had made for me. On a table beside her lay Law's 'Serious Call to the Unconverted.' Don't you see how well she had suited matters to my taste?" This aged relative used to boast that she had never read a novel. She desired to make one exception in favor of the story of the Schönberg-Cotta family, but, hearing that it was a work of fiction, esteemed it safest to adhere to the rule which she had observed for so many years. Her son, lately deceased, once told me that when she felt called upon to chastise him for some childish offense, she would pray over him so long that he would cry out: "Mother, it's time to begin whipping." Her husband was a son of General Nathanael Greene, of Revolutionary fame. The attention bestowed upon impressions of childhood to-day will, I hope, justify me in recording some of the earliest points in consciousness which I still recall. I remember when a thimble was first given to me, some simple bit of work being at the same time placed in my hand. Some one said, "Take the needle in this hand." I did so, and, placing the thimble on a finger of the other hand, I began to sew without its aid, to the amusement of my teacher. This trifle appears to me an early indication of a want of perception as to the use of tools which has accompanied me through life. I remember also that, being told that I must ask pardon for some childish fault, I said to my mother, with perfect contentment, "Oh yes, I pardon you," and was surprised to hear that in this way I had not made the _amende honorable_. I encountered great difficulty in acquiring the _th_ sound, when my mother tried to teach me to call her by that name. "Muzzer, muzzer," was all that I could manage to say. But the dear parent presently said, "If you cannot do better than that, you will have to go back and call me mamma." The shame of going back moved me to one last effort, and, summoning my utmost strength of tongue, I succeeded in saying "mother," an achievement from which I was never obliged to recede. A journey up the Hudson River was undertaken, when I was very young, for the bettering of my mother's health. An older sister of hers went with us, as well as a favorite waiting-woman, and a young physician whose care had saved my father's life a year or more before my own birth. After reaching Albany, we traveled in my father's carriage; the grown persons occupying the seats, and I sitting in my little chair at their feet. A book of short tales and poems was often resorted to for my amusement, and I still remember how the young doctor read to me, "Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," and how my tears came, and could not be hidden. [Illustration: JULIA WARD AND HER BROTHERS, SAMUEL AND HENRY _From a miniature by Anne Hall._] The sight of Niagara caused me much surprise. Playing on the piazza of the hotel, one day, with only the doctor for my companion, I ventured to ask him, "Who made that great hole where the water comes down?" He replied, "The great Maker of all." "Who is that?" I innocently inquired; and he said, "Do you not know? Our Father who art in heaven." I felt that I ought to have known, and went away somewhat abashed. Another day my mother told me that we were going to visit Red Jacket, a great Indian chief, and that I must be very polite to him. She gave me a twist of tobacco tied with a blue ribbon, which I was to present to him, and bade me observe the silver medal which I should see hung on his neck, and which, she said, had been given to him by General Washington. We drove to the Indian encampment, of which I dimly remember the extent and the wigwams. A tall figure advanced to the carriage. As its door was opened, I sprang forward, clasped my arms around the neck of the noble savage, and was astonished at his cool reception of such a greeting. I was surprised and grieved afterwards to learn that I had not done exactly the right thing. The Indians, in those days and long after, occupied numerous settlements in the western part of the State of New York, where one often saw the boys with their bows and arrows, and the squaws carrying their papooses on their backs. The journey here mentioned must have taken place when I was little more than four years old. Another year and a half brought me the burden of a great sorrow. I recall months of sweet companionship with the first and dearest of friends, my mother. The last summer of her life was passed at a fine country-seat in Bloomingdale, which was then a picturesque country place, about six miles from New York, but is now incorporated in the city. My father was fond of fine horses, and the pets of the stable played no unimportant part in our childish affection. The family coach was an early institution with us, and in the days of which I now speak, its exterior was of a delicate yellow, known as straw-color, while the lining and cushions were of bright blue cloth. This combination of color was effected to please my dear mother, who was accounted in her time a woman of excellent taste. I remember this summer as a particularly happy period. My younger brother and I had our lessons in a lovely green bower. Our French teacher came out at intervals in the Bloomingdale stage. My mother often took me with her for a walk in the beautiful garden, from which she plucked flowers that she arranged with great taste. There was much mysterious embroidering of small caps and gowns, the purpose of which I little guessed. The autumn came, and with it our return to town. And then, one bitter morning, I awoke to hear the words, "Julia, your mother is dead." Before this my father had announced to us that a little sister had arrived. "And she can open and shut her eyes," he said, smiling. His grief at the loss of my mother was so intense as to lay him prostrate with illness. He told me, years after this time, that he had welcomed the physical agony which perforce diverted his thoughts from the cause of his mental suffering. The little sister of whose coming he had told us so joyfully was for a long time kept from his sight. The rest of us were gathered around him, but this feeble little creature was not asked for. At last my dear old grandfather came to visit us, and learned the state of my father's feelings. The old gentleman went into the nursery, took the tiny infant from its nurse, and laid it in my father's arms. The little one thenceforth became the object of his most tender affection. He regarded all his children with great solicitude, feeling, as he afterward said to one of us, that he must now be mother as well as father. My mother's last request had been that her unmarried sister, the same one who had accompanied us on the journey to Niagara, should be sent for to have charge of us, and this arrangement was speedily effected. This aunt of ours had long been a care-taker in her mother's household, where she had had much to do with bringing up her younger sisters and brothers. My mother had been accustomed to borrow her from time to time, and my aunt had threatened to hang out a sign over the door with the inscription, "Cheering done here by the job, by E. Cutler." She was a person of rare honesty, entirely conscientious in character, possessed of few accomplishments, but endowed with the keenest sense of humor. She watched over our early years with incessant care. We little ones were kept much in our warm nursery. We were taken out for a drive in fine weather, but rarely went out on foot. As a consequence of this overcherishing, we were constantly liable to suffer from colds and sore throats. The young physician of whom I have already spoken became an inmate of our house soon after my mother's death. He was afterward well known in New York society as an excellent practitioner, and as a man of a certain genius. Those were the days of mighty doses, and the slightest indisposition was sure to call down upon us the administration of the drugs then in favor with the faculty, but now rarely used. [Illustration: JULIA CUTLER WARD (MRS. HOWE'S mother) _From a miniature by Anne Hall._] My father's affliction was such that a change of scene became necessary for him. The beautiful house at the Bowling Green was sold, with the new furniture which had been ordered expressly for my mother's pleasure, and which we never saw uncovered. We removed to Bond Street, which was then at the upper extremity of New York city. My father's friends said to him, "Mr. Ward, you are going out of town." And so indeed it seemed at that time. We occupied one of three white freestone houses, and saw from our windows the gradual building up of the street, which is now in the central part of New York. My father had purchased a large lot of land at the corner of our street and Broadway. On a part of this he subsequently erected a house which was considered one of the finest in the city. My father was disposed to be extremely careful in the choice of our associates, and intended, no doubt, that we should receive our education at home. At a later day his plans were changed somewhat, and after some experience of governesses and masters I was at last sent to a school in the near neighborhood of our house. I was nine years old at this time, somewhat precocious for my age, and endowed with a good memory. This fact may have led to my being at once placed in a class of girls much older than myself, especially occupied with the study of Paley's "Moral Philosophy." I managed to commit many pages of this book to memory, in a rather listless and perfunctory manner. I was much more interested in the study of chemistry, although it was not illustrated by any experiments. The system of education followed at that time consisted largely in memorizing from the text-books then in use. Removing to another school, I had excellent instruction in penmanship, and enjoyed a course of lectures on history, aided by the best set of charts that I have ever seen, the work of Professor Bostwick. In geometry I made quite a brilliant beginning, but soon fell off from my first efforts. The study of languages was very congenial to me; I had been accustomed to speak French from my earliest years. To this I was enabled to add some knowledge of Latin, and afterward of Italian and German. The routine of my school life was varied now and then by a concert and by Handel's oratorios, which were given at long intervals by an association whose title I cannot now recall. I eagerly anticipated, and yet dreaded, these occasions, for my enjoyment of them was succeeded by a reaction of intense melancholy. The musical "stars" of those days are probably quite out of memory in these later times, but I remember some of them with pleasure. It is worth noticing that, while the earliest efforts in music in Boston produced the Handel and Haydn Society, and led to the occasional performance of a symphony of Beethoven or of Mozart, the taste of New York inclined more to operatic music. The brief visit of Garcia and his troupe had brought the best works of Rossini before the public. These performances were followed, at long intervals, by seasons of English opera, in which Mrs. Austin was the favorite prima donna. This lady sang also in oratorio, and I recall her rendering of the soprano solos in Handel's "Messiah" as somewhat mannered, but on the whole quite impressive. A higher grade of talent came to us in the person of Mrs. Wood, famous before her marriage as Miss Paton. I heard great things of her performance in "La Sonnambula," which I was not allowed to see. I did hear her, however, at concerts and in oratorios, and I particularly remember her rendering of the famous soprano song, "To mighty kings he gave his acts." Her voice was beautiful in quality and of considerable extent. It possessed a liquid and fluent flexibility, quite unlike the curious staccato and tremolo effects so much in favor to-day. My father's views of religious duty became much more stringent after my mother's death. I had been twice taken to the opera during the Garcia performances, when I was scarcely more than seven years of age, and had seen and heard the Diva Malibran, then known as Signorina Garcia, in the rôles of Cenerentola (Cinderella) and Rosina in the "Barbiere di Seviglia." Soon after this time the doors were shut, and I knew of theatrical matters only by hearsay. The religious people of that period had set their faces against the drama in every form. I remember the destruction by fire of the first Bowery Theatre, and how this was spoken of as a "judgment" upon the wickedness of the stage and of its patrons. A well-known theatre in Richmond, Va., took fire while a performance was going on, and the result was a deplorable loss of life. The pulpits of the time "improved" this event by sermons which reflected severely upon the frequenters of such places of amusement, and the "judgment" was long spoken of with holy horror. My musical education, in spite of the limitations of opportunity just mentioned, was the best that the time could afford. I had my first lessons from a very irritable French artist, of whom I stood in such fear that I could remember nothing that he taught me. A second teacher, Mr. Boocock, had more patience, and soon brought me forward in my studies. He had been a pupil of Cramer, and his taste had been formed by hearing the best music in London, which then, as now, commanded all the great musical talent of Europe. He gave me lessons for many years, and I learned from him to appreciate the works of the great composers, Beethoven, Handel, and Mozart. When I grew old enough for the training of my voice, Mr. Boocock recommended to my father Signor Cardini, an aged Italian, who had been an intimate of the Garcia family, and was well acquainted with Garcia's admirable method. Under his care my voice improved in character and in compass, and the daily exercises in holding long notes gave strength to my lungs. I think that I have felt all my life through the benefit of those early lessons. Signor Cardini remembered Italy before the invasion of Napoleon I., and sometimes entertained me with stories of the escapades of his student life. He had resided long in London, and had known the Duke of Wellington. He related to me that once, when he was visiting the great soldier at his country-seat near the sea, the duke invited him to look through his telescope, saying, "Signor Cardini, venez voir comme on travaille les Français." This must have had reference to some manoeuvre of the English fleet, I suppose. Mr. Boocock thought that it would be desirable for me to take part in concerted pieces, with other instruments. This exercise brought me great delight in the performance of certain trios and quartettes. The reaction from this pleasure, however, was very painful, and induced at times a visitation of morbid melancholy which threatened to affect my health. While I greatly disapprove of the scope and suggestions presented by Count Tolstoï in his "Kreutzer Sonata," I yet think that, in the training of young persons, some regard should be had to the sensitiveness of youthful nerves, and to the overpowering response which they often make to the appeals of music. The dry practice of a single instrument and the simple drill of choral exercises will not be apt to overstimulate the currents of nerve force. On the other hand, the power and sweep of great orchestral performances, or even the suggestive charm of some beautiful voice, will sometimes so disturb the mental equilibrium of the hearer as to induce in him a listless melancholy, or, worse still, an unreasoning and unreasonable discontent. The early years of my youth were passed in the seclusion not only of home life, but of a home most carefully and jealously guarded from all that might be represented in the orthodox trinity of evil, the world, the flesh, and the devil. My father had become deeply imbued with the religious ideas of the time. He dreaded for his children the dissipations of fashionable society, and even the risks of general intercourse with the unsanctified many. He early embraced the cause of temperance, and became president of the first temperance society formed in this country. As a result, wine was excluded from his table. This privation gave me no trouble, but my brothers felt it, especially the eldest, who had passed some years in Europe, where the use of wine was, as it still is, universal. I was walking with my father one evening when we met my two younger brothers, each with a cigar in his mouth. My father was much troubled, and said, "Boys, you must give this up, and I will give it up, too. From this time I forbid you to smoke, and I will join you in relinquishing the habit." I am afraid that this sacrifice on my father's part did not have the desired effect, but am quite certain that he never witnessed the infringement of his command. At the time of which I speak, my father's family all lived in our immediate neighborhood. He had considerably distanced his brothers in fortune, and had built for himself the beautiful house of which I have already spoken. In the same street with us lived my music-loving uncle, Henry, somewhat given to good cheer, and of a genial disposition. In a house nearer to us resided my grandfather, Samuel Ward, with an unmarried daughter and three bachelor sons, John, Richard, and William. The outings of my young girlhood were confined to this family circle. I went to school, indeed, but never to dancing-school, a sober little dancing-master giving us lessons at home. I used to hear, with some envy, of Monsieur Charnaud's classes and of his "publics," where my schoolfellows disported themselves in their best clothes. My grandfather was a stately old gentleman, a good deal more than six feet in height, very mild in manner, and fond of a game of whist. With us children he used to play a very simple game called "Tom, come tickle me." Cards were not allowed in my father's house, and my brothers used to resort to the grand-paternal mansion when they desired this diversion. The eldest of my father's unmarried brothers was my uncle John, a man more tolerant than my father, and full of kindly forethought for his nieces and nephews. In his youth he had sustained an injury which deprived him of speech for more than a year. His friends feared that he would never speak again, but his mother, trying one day to render him some small assistance, did not succeed to her mind, and said, "I am a poor, awkward old woman." "No, you are not!" he exclaimed, and at once recovered his power of speech. He was anxious that his nieces should be well instructed in practical matters, and perhaps he grudged a little the extra time which we were accustomed to devote to books and music. He was fond of sending materials for dresses to me and my sisters, but insisted that we should make them up for ourselves. This we managed to do, with a good deal of help from the family seamstress. When I had published my first literary venture, uncle John showed me in a newspaper a favorable notice of my work, saying, "This is my little girl who knows about books, and writes an article and has it printed, but I wish that she knew more about housekeeping,"--a sentiment which in after years I had occasion to echo with fervor. CHAPTER II LITERARY NEW YORK Although the New York of my youth had little claim to be recognized as a literary centre, it yet was a city whose tastes and manners were much influenced by people of culture. One of these, Robert Sands, was the author of a poem entitled "Yamoyden," its theme being an Indian story or legend. His family dated back to the Sands who once owned a considerable part of Block Island, and from whom Sands Point takes its name. If I do not mistake, these Sands were connected by marriage with one of my ancestors, who were also settlers in Block Island. I remember having seen the poet Sands in my childhood, a rather awkward, near-sighted man. His life was not a long one. A sister of his, Julia Sands, wrote a biographical sketch of her brother, and was spoken of as a literary woman. William Cullen Bryant resided in New York many years. He took a prominent part in politics, but mingled little in general society, being much absorbed in his duties as editor of the "Evening Post," of which he was also the founder. I first heard of Fitz-Greene Halleck as the author of various satirical pieces of verse relating to personages and events of nearly eighty years ago. He is now best remembered by his "Marco Bozzaris," a noble lyric which we have heard quoted in view of recent lamentable encounters between Greek and Barbarian. Among the lecturers who visited New York, I remember Professor Silliman of Yale College, Dr. Follen, who spoke of German literature, George Combe, and Mr. Charles Lyell. Charles King, for many years editor of a daily paper entitled "The New York American," was a man of much literary taste. He had been a pupil at Harrow when Byron was there. He was an appreciative friend of my father, although as convivial in his tastes as my father was the reverse. I remember that once, when a temperance meeting was going on in one of our large parlors, Mr. King called and, finding my father thus engaged, began to frolic with us young people. He even dared to say: "How I should like to open those folding doors just wide enough to fire off a bottle of champagne at those temperance folks!" He was the patron of my early literary ventures, and kindly allowed my fugitive pieces to appear in his paper. He always advocated the abolition of slavery, and could never forgive Henry Clay his part in effecting the Missouri Compromise. He and his brother James, my father's junior partner, were sons of Rufus King, a man eminent in public life. I was a child of perhaps eight years when I heard my elders say with regret that "old Mr. King was dying." Quite late in his life, Mr. Charles King became President of Columbia College. This institution, with the houses of its officers, occupied the greater part of Park Place. Its professors were well known in society. The college was very conservative in its management. The professor of mathematics was asked one day by one of his class whether the sun did not really stand still in answer to the prayer of Joshua. He laughed at the question, and was in consequence reprimanded by the faculty. Professor Anthon, of the college, became known through his school and college editions of many Latin classics. Professor Moore, in the department of Hellenics, was popular among the undergraduates, partly, it was said, on account of his very indulgent method of conducting examinations. Professor McVickar, in the chair of Philosophy, was one of the early admirers of Ruskin. The families of these gentlemen mingled a good deal in the society of the time, and contributed no doubt to impart to it a tone of polite culture. I should say that before the forties the sons of the best families of New York city were usually sent to Columbia College. My own brothers, three in number, were among its graduates. New York parents in those days looked upon Harvard as a Unitarian institution, and shunned its influence for their sons. The venerable Lorenzo Da Ponte was for many years a resident of New York, and a teacher of the Italian language and literature. When Dominick Lynch introduced the first opera troupe to the New York public, sometime in the twenties, the audience must surely have comprised some of the old man's pupils, well versed in the language of the librettos. In earlier life, he had furnished the text of several of Mozart's operas, among them "Don Giovanni" and "Le Nozze di Figaro." Dominick Lynch, whom I have just mentioned, was an enthusiastic lover of music. His visits to my father's house were occasions of delight to me. He was without a rival as an interpreter of ballads, and especially of the songs of Thomas Moore. His voice, though not powerful, was clear and musical, and his touch on the pianoforte was perfect. I remember creeping under the instrument to hide my tears when I heard him sing the ballad of "Lord Ullin's Daughter." Charles Augustus Davis, the author of the "Letters of J. Downing, Major, Downingville Militia, Second Brigade, to his old Friend Mr. Dwight, of the New York Daily Advertiser," was a gentleman well known in the New York society of my youth. The letters in question contained imaginary reports of a tour which the writer professed to have made with General Jackson, when the latter was a candidate for reëlection to the Presidency. They were very popular at the time, but have long passed into oblivion. I remember that in one of them, Major Downing describes an occasion on which it was important that the general should interlard his address with a few Latin quotations. Not possessing any learning of that kind, he concluded his speech with: "E pluribus unum, gentlemen, sine qua non." The great literary boast of the city at the time of which I speak was undoubtedly Washington Irving. I was still a child in the nursery when I heard of his return to America, after a residence of some years in Spain. A public dinner was given in honor of this event. One who had been present at it told of Mr. Irving's embarrassment when he was called upon for a speech. He rose, waved his hand in the air, and could only utter a few sentences, which were heard with difficulty. Many years after this time I was present, with other ladies, at a public dinner given in honor of Charles Dickens by prominent citizens of New York. We ladies were not bidden to the feast, but were allowed to occupy a small anteroom whose open door commanded a view of the tables. When the speaking was about to begin, a message came, suggesting that we should take possession of some vacant seats at the great table. This we were glad to do. Washington Irving was president of the evening, and upon him devolved the duty of inaugurating proceedings by an address of welcome to the distinguished guest. People who sat near me whispered, "He'll break down--he always does." Mr. Irving rose, and uttered a sentence or two. His friends interrupted him by applause which was intended to encourage him, but which entirely overthrew his self-possession. He hesitated, stammered, and sat down, saying, "I cannot go on." It was an embarrassing and painful moment, but Mr. John Duer, an eminent lawyer, came to his friend's assistance, and with suitable remarks proposed the health of Charles Dickens, to which Mr. Dickens promptly responded. This he did in his happiest manner, covering Mr. Irving's defeat by a glowing eulogy of his literary merits. "Whose books do I take to bed with me, night after night? Washington Irving's! as one who is present can testify." This one was evidently Mrs. Dickens, who was seated beside me. Mr. Dickens proceeded to speak of international copyright, saying that the prime object of his visit to America was the promotion of this important measure. I met Washington Irving several times at the house of John Jacob Astor. He was silent in general company, and usually fell asleep at the dinner-table. This occurrence was indeed so common with him that the guests present only noticed it with a smile. After a nap of some ten minutes he would open his eyes and take part in the conversation, apparently unconscious of having been asleep. In his youth, Mr. Irving had traveled quite extensively in Europe. While in Rome, he had received marked attention from the banker Torlonia, who repeatedly invited him to dinner parties, the opera, and so on. He was at a loss to account for this until his last visit to the banker, when Torlonia, taking him aside, said, "Pray tell me, is it not true that you are a grandson of the great Washington?" Mr. Irving had in early life given offense to the descendants of old Dutch families in New York by the publication of "Knickerbocker's History of New York," in which he had presented some of their forbears in a humorous light. The solid fame which he acquired in later days effaced the remembrance of this old-time grievance, and in the days in which I had the pleasure of his acquaintance, he held an enviable position in the esteem and affection of the community. He always remained a bachelor, owing, it was said, to an attachment, the object of which had been removed by death. I have even heard that the lady in question was a beautiful Jewess, the same one whom Walter Scott has depicted in his well-known Rebecca. This legend of the beautiful Jewess was current in my youth. A later authority informs us that Mr. Irving was really engaged to Matilda, daughter of Josiah Ogden Hoffman, a noted lawyer of New York, and that the death of the lady prevented the intended marriage from taking place. "He could never, to his dying day, endure to hear her name mentioned," it is said, "and, nearly thirty years after her death, the accidental discovery of a piece of her embroidery saddened him so that he could not speak." CHAPTER III NEW YORK SOCIETY It has been explained that the continued prosperity of France under very varying forms of government is due to the fact that the municipal administration of the country is not affected by these changes, but continues much the same under king, emperor, and republican president. I find something analogous to this in the perseverance of certain underlying tendencies in society despite the continual variations which diversify the surface of the domain of Fashion. The earliest social function which I remember is a ball given by my father and mother when I must have been about four years of age. Quite late in the evening, I was taken out of bed and arrayed in an embroidered cambric slip. Some one tried to fasten a pink rosebud on the waist of my dress, but did not succeed to her mind. I was brought into our drawing-rooms, which had undergone a surprising transformation. The floors were bare, and from the ceiling of either room was suspended a circle of wax lights and artificial flowers. The orchestra included a double bass. I surveyed the company of the dancers, but soon curled myself up on a sofa, where one of the dowagers fed me with ice-cream. This entertainment took place at our house on Bowling Green, a neighborhood which has long been given up to business. As a child, I remember silver forks as in use at my father's dinner parties. On ordinary occasions, we used the three-pronged steel fork which is now rarely seen. My father sometimes admonished my maternal grandmother not to put her knife into her mouth. In her youth every one used the knife in this way. Meats were carefully roasted in what was called a tin kitchen, before an open fire. Desserts on state occasions consisted of pastry, wine jelly, blanc-mange, with pyramids of ice-cream. This last was always supplied by a French resident, Jean Contoit by name, whose very modest garden long continued to be the principal place from which such a dainty could be obtained. It may have been M. Contoit who, speaking to a compatriot of his first days in America, said, "Imagine! when I first came to this country, people cooked vegetables with water only, _and the calf's head was thrown away_!" Of the dress of that period I remember that ladies wore white cambric gowns, finely embroidered, in winter as well as in summer, and walked abroad in thin morocco slippers. Pelisses were worn in cold weather, often of some bright color, rose pink or blue. I have found in a family letter of that time the following description of a bride's toilet: "Miss E. was married in a frock of white merino, with a full suit of steel: comb, earrings, and so on." I once heard Mrs. William Astor, _née_ Armstrong, tell of a pair of brides, twin sisters, who appeared at church dressed in pelisses of white merino, trimmed with chinchilla, with caps of the same fur. They were much admired at the time. Among the festivities of old New York, the observance of New Year's Day held an important place. In every house of any pretension, the ladies of the family sat in their drawing-rooms, arrayed in their best dresses, and the gentlemen of their acquaintance made short visits, during which wine and rich cakes were offered them. It was allowable to call as early as ten o'clock in the morning. The visitor sometimes did little more than appear and disappear, hastily muttering something about "the compliments of the season." The gentlemen prided themselves upon the number of visits paid, the ladies upon the number received. Girls at school vexed each other with emulative boasting: "We had fifty calls on New Year's Day." "Oh! but _we_ had sixty-five." This perfunctory performance grew very tedious by the time the calling hours were ended, but apart from this, the day was one on which families were greeted by distant relatives rarely seen, while old friends met and revived their pleasant memories. In our house, the rooms were all thrown open. Bright fires burned in the grates. My father, after his adoption of temperance principles, forbade the offering of wine to visitors, and ordered it to be replaced by hot coffee. We were rather chagrined at this prohibition, but his will was law. I recall a New Year's Day early in the thirties, on which a yellow chariot stopped before our door. A stout, elderly gentleman descended from it, and came in to pay his compliments to my father. This gentleman was John Jacob Astor, who was already known to be possessed of great wealth. The pleasant custom just described was said to have originated with the Dutch settlers of the olden time. As the city grew in size, it became difficult and well-nigh impossible for gentlemen to make the necessary number of visits. Finally, a number of young men of the city took it upon themselves to call in squads at houses which they had no right to molest, consuming the refreshments provided for other guests, and making themselves disagreeable in various ways. This offense against good manners led to the discontinuance, by common consent, of the New Year's receptions. A younger sister of my mother, named Louisa Cordé Cutler, was one of the historic beauties of her time. She was a frequent and beloved guest at my father's house, but her marriage took place at my grandmother's residence in Jamaica Plain. The bridegroom was the only son of Judge McAllister, of Savannah, Georgia. One of my aunt's bridesmaids, Miss Elizabeth Danforth, a lady much esteemed in the older Boston, once gave me the following account of the marriage:-- "Yes, this is my beautiful bride. [My aunt was now about sixty years old.] Well do I recall the evening of her marriage. I was to be her bridesmaid, you know, and when the time came, I was all dressed and ready. But the Dorchester coach was wanted for old Madam Blake's funeral, and as there was no other conveyance to be had, I was obliged to wait for it. The time seemed endless while I was walking up and down the hall in my bridesmaid's dress, my mother from time to time exhorting me to have patience, without much effect. "At last the coach came, and in it I was driven to your grandmother's house in Jamaica Plain. As I entered the door I met the bridal party coming downstairs. Your mother said to me, 'Oh! Elizabeth, we thought you were not coming.' After this all passed off pleasantly. Your grandmother was dressed in a lilac silk gown of rather antiquated fashion, adorned with frills and furbelows which had passed out of date. Your mother, who had come on from New York for the ceremony, said to her later in the evening, 'Dear mamma, you must make a present of that gown to some theatrical friend. It is only fit for the boards.'" The officiating clergyman of the occasion was the Reverend Benjamin Clarke Cutler, brother of the bride. It was his first service of the kind, and the company were somewhat amused when, in absence or confusion of mind, he pronounced the nuptial blessing upon _M_ and _N_, the letters which stand in the church ritual for the names of the parties contracting. Accordingly, at the wedding supper, the first toast was drunk "to the health and happiness of M and N," and responded to with much merriment. I have further been told that the bride's elder sister, afterwards known as Mrs. Francis, danced "in stocking-feet" with my father's elder brother, this having been the ancient rule when the younger children were married before the older ones. In spite of the costume which met with her daughter's disapproval, my maternal grandmother was not indifferent to dress. She used to lament the ugliness of modern fashions, and to extol those of her youth, in which she was one of the _élégantes_ of Southern society. She remembered with pleasure that General Washington once crossed a ball-room to speak with her. This was probably when she was the wife or widow of Colonel Herne, to whom she was married at the age of fourteen (when her dolls, she told me, were taken away from her), and whose death occurred before she had attained legal majority. She had received a good musical education for those times, and Colonel Perkins of Boston once told me that he remembered her as a fascinating young widow with a lovely voice. It must have been during her visit to Boston that she met my grandfather Cutler, who straightway fell in love with and married her. When past her sixtieth year she would sometimes sing an old-time duet with my father. She had a great love of good literature. Here is what she told me about the fashions of her youth: "We wore our hair short, and _créped_ all over in short curls, which were kept in place by a spangled ribbon, bound around the head. Powder was universally worn. The _Maréchale_ powder was most becoming to the complexion, having a slight yellowish tinge. We wore trains, but had a set of cords by which we pulled them up in festoons, when we went to dance. Brocades were much worn. I wanted one, but could not find one at the time, so I embroidered a pretty yellow silk dress of mine, and made a brocade of it." She once mentioned having known, in days long distant, of a company of ladies who had banded themselves together for some new departure of a patriotic intent, and who had waited upon General Washington in a body. I have since ascertained that they called themselves "Daughters of Liberty." A kindred association had been formed of "Sons of Liberty." Perhaps these ladies were of the mind of Mrs. John Adams, who, when congratulating her husband upon the liberties assured to American men by the then new Constitution of the United States, thought it "a pity that the legislators had not also done something for the ladies." Among the familiar figures of my early life is that of Dr. John Wakefield Francis. I wish it were in my power to give any adequate description of this remarkable man, who was certainly one of the worthies of his time. As already said, he was my uncle by marriage, and for many years a resident in my father's house. He was of German origin, florid in complexion and mercurial in temperament. His fine head was crowned with an abundance of silken curly hair. He always wore gold-bowed glasses, being very near-sighted, was a born humorist, and delighted in jest and hyperbole. He was an omnivorous reader, and was so constituted that four hours of sleep nightly sufficed to keep him in health. This was fortunate for him, as he had an extensive practice, and was liable to be called out at all hours of the night. A candle always stood on a table beside his pillow, and with it a pile of books and papers, which he habitually perused long before the coming of daylight. It so happened, however, that he waked one morning at about four of the clock, and saw his wife, wrapped in shawls, sitting near the fire, reading something by candlelight. The following conversation ensued:-- "Eliza, what book is that you are reading?" "'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' dear." "Is it? I don't need to know anything more about it--it must be the greatest book of the age." His humor was extravagant. I once heard him exclaim, "How brilliant is the light which streams through the fissure of a cracked brain!" Again he spoke of "a fellow who couldn't go straight in a ropewalk." His anecdotes of things encountered in the exercise of his profession were most amusing. He found us seated in the drawing-room, one evening, to receive a visit from a very shy professor of Brown University. The doctor, surveying the group, seized this poor man, lifted him from the floor, and carried him round the circle, to express his pleasure at seeing an old friend. The countenance of the guest meanwhile showed an agony of embarrassment and terror. The doctor was very temperate in everything except tea, which he drank in the green variety, in strong and copious libations. Indeed, he had no need of wine or other alcoholic stimulants, his temperament being almost incandescent. Overflowing as he was with geniality, he yet accommodated himself easily to the requirements of a sick room, and showed himself tender, vigilant, and most sympathetic. He attended many people who could not, and some who would not, pay for his visits. One of these last, having been brought by him through an attack of cholera, was so much impressed with the kindness and skill of the doctor that he at once and for the first time sent him a check in recognition of services that money could not repay. After many years of residence with us, my uncle and aunt Francis removed, first to lodgings, and later to a house of their own. Here my aunt busied herself much with the needs of rich and poor. Ladies often came to her seeking good servants, her recommendation being considered an all-sufficient security. Women out of place came to her seeking employment, which she often found for them. These acts of kindness, often involving a considerable expenditure of time and trouble, the dear lady performed with no thought of recompense other than the assurance that she had been helpful to those who needed her assistance in manifold ways. In her new abode Auntie lived with careful economy, dispensing her simple hospitality with a generous hand. She was famous among her friends for delicious coffee and for excellent tea, which she always made herself, on the table. She sometimes invited friends for an evening party, but made it a point to invite those who were not her favorites for a separate occasion, not wishing to dilute her enjoyment of the chosen few, and, on the other hand, desiring not to hurt the feelings of any of her acquaintance by wholly leaving them out. When Edgar Allan Poe first became known in New York, Dr. Francis invited him to the house. It was on one of Auntie's good evenings, and her room was filled with company. The poet arrived just at a moment when the doctor was obliged to answer the call of a patient. He accordingly opened the parlor door, and pushed Mr. Poe into the room, saying, "Eliza, my dear, the Raven!" after which he immediately withdrew. Auntie had not heard of the poem, and was entirely at a loss to understand this introduction of the new-comer. It was always a pleasure to welcome distinguished strangers to New York. Mrs. Jameson's visit to the United States, in the year 1835, gave me the opportunity of making acquaintance with that very accomplished lady and author. I was then a girl of sixteen summers, but I had read the "Diary of an Ennuyée," which first brought Mrs. Jameson into literary prominence. I read afterwards with avidity the two later volumes in which she gives so good an account of modern art work in Europe. In these she speaks with enthusiasm of certain frescoes in Munich which I was sorry, many years later, to be obliged to consider less beautiful than her description of them would have warranted one in believing. When I perused these works, having myself no practical knowledge of art, their graphic style seemed to give me clear vision of the things described. The beautiful Pinakothek and Glyptothek of Munich became to me as if I actually saw them, and when it was my good fortune to visit them I seemed, especially in the case of the marbles, to meet with old friends. Mrs. Jameson's connoisseurship was not limited to pictorial and sculptural art. Of music also she was passionately fond. In the book just spoken of she describes an evening passed with the composer Wieck in his German home. In this she speaks of his daughter Clara, and of her lover, young Schumann. Clara Wieck, afterwards Madame Schumann, became well known in Europe as a pianist of eminence, and of Schumann as a composer it needs not now to speak. There were various legends regarding Mrs. Jameson's private history. It was said that her husband, marrying her against his will, parted from her at the church door, and thereafter left England for Canada, where he was residing at the time of her visit. I first met her at an evening party at the house of a friend. I was invited to make some music, and sang, among other things, a brilliant bravura air from "Semiramide." When I would have left the piano, Mrs. Jameson came to me and said, "_Altra cosa_, my dear." My voice had been cultivated with care, and though not of great power was considered pleasing in quality, and was certainly very flexible. I met Mrs. Jameson at several other entertainments devised in her honor. She was of middle height, her hair red blond in color. Her face was not handsome, but sensitive and sympathetic in expression. The elegant dames of New York were somewhat scandalized at her want of taste in dress. I actually heard one of them say, "How like the devil she does look!" After a winter passed in Canada, Mrs. Jameson again visited New York, on her way to England. She called upon me one day with a friend, and asked to see my father's pictures. Two of these, portraits of Charles First and his queen, were supposed to be by Vandyke. Mrs. Jameson doubted this. She spoke of her intimacy with the celebrated Mrs. Somerville, and said, "I think of her as a dear little woman who is very fond of drawing." When I went to return her visit, I found her engaged in earnest conversation with a son of Sir James Mackintosh. When he had taken leave, she said to me, "Mr. Mackintosh and I were almost at daggers drawing." So far as I could learn, their dispute related to democratic forms of government, and the society therefrom resulting, which he viewed with favor and she with bitter dislike. I inquired about her winter in Canada. She replied, "As the Irishman said, I had everything that a pig could want." A volume from her hand appeared soon after this time, entitled "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada." Her work on "Sacred and Legendary Art" and her "Legends of the Madonna" were published some years later. CHAPTER IV HOME LIFE: MY FATHER I left school at the age of sixteen, and began thereafter to study in good earnest. Until that time a certain over-romantic and imaginative turn of mind had interfered much with the progress of my studies. I indulged in day-dreams which appeared to me far higher in tone than the humdrum of my school recitations. When these were at an end, I began to feel the necessity of more strenuous application, and at once arranged for myself hours of study, relieved by the practice of vocal and instrumental music. At this juncture, a much esteemed friend of my father came to pass some months with us. This was Joseph Green Cogswell, founder and principal of Round Hill School, at which my three brothers had been among his pupils. The school, a famous one in its day, was now finally closed. Our new guest was an accomplished linguist, and possessed an admirable power of imparting knowledge. With his aid, I resumed the German studies which I had already begun, but in which I had made but little progress. Under his tuition, I soon found myself able to read with ease the masterpieces of Goethe and Schiller. Rev. Leonard Woods, son of a well-known pastor of that name, was a familiar guest at my father's house. He took some interest in my studies, and at length proposed that I should become a contributor to the "Theological Review," of which he was editor at that time. I undertook to furnish a review of Lamartine's "Jocelyn," which had recently appeared. When I had done my best with this, Dr. Cogswell went over the pages with me very carefully, pointing out defects of style and arrangement. The paper attracted a good deal of attention, and some comments on it gave occasion to the admonition which my dear uncle thought fit to administer to me, as already mentioned. The house of my young ladyhood (I use this term, as it was the one in use at the time of which I write) was situated at the corner of Bond Street and Broadway. When my father built it, the fashion of the city had not proceeded so far up town. The model of the house was a noble one. Three spacious rooms and a small study occupied the first floor. These were furnished with curtains of blue, yellow, and red silk. The red room was that in which we took our meals. The blue room was the one in which we received visits, and passed the evenings. The yellow room was thrown open only on high occasions, but my desk and grand piano were placed in it, and I was allowed to occupy it at will. This and the blue room were adorned by beautiful sculptured mantelpieces, the work of Thomas Crawford, afterwards known as a sculptor of great merit. Many years after this time he became the husband of the sister next me in age, and the father of F. Marion Crawford, the now celebrated novelist. Our family was patriarchal in its dimensions, including my aunt and uncle Francis, whose children were all born in my father's house, and were very dear to him. My maternal grandmother also passed much time with us. My two younger brothers, Henry and Marion, were at home with us after a term of years at Round Hill School. My eldest brother, Samuel (afterwards the Sam. Ward of the Lobby), a most accomplished and agreeable young man, had recently returned from Europe, bringing with him a fine library. My father, having already added to his large house a spacious art gallery, now built a study, whose walls were entirely occupied by my brother's books. I had free access to these, and did not neglect to profit by it. From what I have just said, it may rightly be inferred that my father was a man of fine tastes, inclined to generous and even lavish expenditure. He desired to give us the best educational opportunities, the best and most expensive masters. He filled his art gallery with the finest pictures that money could command in the New York of that day. He gave largely to public undertakings, was one of the founders of the New York University, and was one of the foremost promoters of church building in the then distant West. He demurred only at expenses connected with dress and fashionable entertainment, for he always disliked and distrusted the great world. My dear eldest brother held many arguments with him on this theme. He saw, as we did, that our father was disposed to ignore the value of ordinary social intercourse. On one occasion the dispute between them became quite animated. "Sir," said my brother, "you do not keep in view the importance of the social tie." "The social what?" asked my father. "The social tie, sir." "I make small account of that," said the elder gentleman. "I will die in defense of it!" impetuously rejoined the younger. My father was so much amused at this sally that he spoke of it to an intimate friend: "He will die in defense of the social tie, indeed!" [Illustration: SAMUEL WARD (MRS. HOWE'S father) _From a miniature by Anne Hall._] Our way of living was simple. The table was abundant, but not with the richest food. For many years, as I have said, no alcoholic stimulant appeared on it. My father gave away by dozens the bottles of costly wine stored in his cellar, but neither tasted their contents nor allowed us to do so. He was for a great part of his life a martyr to rheumatic gout, and a witty friend of his once said: "Ward, it must be the poor man's gout that you have, as you drink only water." We breakfasted at eight in winter, at half past seven in summer. My father read prayers before breakfast and before bedtime. If my brothers lingered over the morning meal, he would come in, hatted and booted for the day, and would say: "Young gentlemen, I am glad that you can afford to take life so easily. I am old and must work for my living," a speech which usually broke up our morning coterie. Dinner was served at four o'clock, a light lunch abbreviating the fast for those at home. At half past seven we sat down to tea, a meal of which toast, preserves, and cake formed the staple. In the evening we usually sat together with books and needlework, often with an interlude of music. An occasional lecture, concert, or evening party varied this routine. My brothers went much into fashionable society, but my own participation in its doings came only after my father's death, and after the two years' mourning which, according to the usage of those days, followed it. My father retained the Puritan feeling with regard to Saturday evening. He would remark that it was not a proper evening for company, regarding it as a time of preparation for the exercises of the day following, the order of which was very strict. We were indeed indulged on Sunday morning with coffee and muffins at breakfast, but, besides the morning and afternoon services at church, we young folks were expected to attend the two meetings of the Sunday-school. We were supposed to read only Sunday books, and I must here acknowledge my indebtedness to Mrs. Sherwood, an English writer now almost forgotten, whose religious stories and romances were supposed to come under this head. In the evening, we sang hymns, and sometimes received a quiet visitor. My readers, if I have any, may ask whether this restricted routine satisfied my mind, and whether I was at all sensible of the privileges which I really enjoyed, or ought to have enjoyed. I must answer that, after my school-days, I greatly coveted an enlargement of intercourse with the world. I did not desire to be counted among "fashionables," but I did aspire to much greater freedom of association than was allowed me. I lived, indeed, much in my books, and my sphere of thought was a good deal enlarged by the foreign literatures, German, French, and Italian, with which I became familiar. Yet I seemed to myself like a young damsel of olden time, shut up within an enchanted castle. And I must say that my dear father, with all his noble generosity and overweening affection, sometimes appeared to me as my jailer. My brother's return from Europe and subsequent marriage opened the door a little for me. It was through his intervention that Mr. Longfellow first visited us, to become a valued and lasting friend. Through him in turn we became acquainted with Professor Felton, Charles Sumner, and Dr. Howe. My brother was very fond of music, of which he had heard the best in Paris and in Germany. He often arranged musical parties at our house, at which trios of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert were given. His wit, social talent, and literary taste opened a new world to me, and enabled me to share some of the best results of his long residence in Europe. My father's jealous care of us was by no means the result of a disposition tending to social exclusiveness. It proceeded, on the contrary, from an over-anxiety as to the moral and religious influences to which his children might become subjected. His ideas of propriety were very strict. He was, moreover, not only a strenuous Protestant, but also an ardent "Evangelical," or Low Churchman, holding the Calvinistic views which then characterized that portion of the American Episcopal church. I remember that he once spoke to me of the anguish he had felt at the death of his own father, of the orthodoxy of whose religious opinions he had had no sufficient assurance. My grandfather, indeed, was supposed, in the family, to be of a rather skeptical and philosophizing turn of mind. He fell a victim to the first visitation of the cholera in 1832. Despite a certain austerity of character, my father was much beloved and honored in the business world. He did much to give to the firm of Prime, Ward and King the high position which it attained and retained during his lifetime. He told me once that when he first entered the office, he found it, like many others, a place where gossip circulated freely. He determined to put an end to this, and did so. Among the foreign correspondents of his firm were the Barings of London, and Hottinguer et Cie. of Paris. In the great financial troubles which followed Andrew Jackson's refusal to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States, several States became bankrupt, and repudiated the obligations incurred by their bonds, to the great indignation of business people in both hemispheres. The State of New York was at one time on the verge of pursuing this course, which my father strenuously opposed. He called meeting after meeting, and was unwearied in his efforts to induce the financiers of the State to hold out. When this appeared well-nigh impossible, he undertook that his firm should negotiate with English correspondents a loan to carry the State over the period of doubt and difficulty. This he was able to effect. My eldest brother came home one day and said to me:-- "As I walked up from Wall Street to-day, I saw a dray loaded with kegs on which were inscribed the letters, 'P. W. & K.' Those kegs contained the gold just sent to the firm from England to help our State through this crisis." My father once gave me some account of his early experiences in Wall Street. He had been sent, almost a boy, to New York, to try his fortune. His connection with Block Island families through his grandmother, Catharine Ray Greene, had probably aided in securing for him a clerk's place in the banking house of Prime and Sands, afterwards Prime, Ward and King. He soon ascertained that the Spanish dollars brought to the port by foreign trading vessels could be sold in Wall Street at a profit. He accordingly employed his leisure hours in the purchase of these coins, which he carried to Wall Street and there sold. This was the beginning of his fortune. A work published a score or more of years since, entitled "The Merchant Princes of Wall Street," concluded some account of my father by the statement that he died without fortune. This was far from true. His death came indeed at a very critical moment, when, having made extensive investments in real estate, his skill was requisite to carry this extremely valuable property over a time of great financial disturbance. His brother, our uncle, who became the guardian of our interests, was familiar with the stock market, but little versed in real estate transactions. By untimely sales, much of my father's valuable estate was scattered; yet it gave to each of his six children a fair inheritance for that time; for the millionaire fever did not break out until long afterwards. The death of this dear and noble parent took place when I was a little more than twenty years of age. Six months later I attained the period of legal responsibility, but before this a new sense of the import of life had begun to alter the current of my thoughts. With my father's death came to me a sense of my want of appreciation of his great kindness, and of my ingratitude for the many comforts and advantages which his affection had secured to me. He had given me the most delightful home, the most careful training, the best masters and books. He had even, as I have said, built a picture gallery for my especial instruction and enjoyment. All this I had taken, as a matter of course, and as my natural right. He had done his best to keep me out of frivolous society, and had been extremely strict about the visits of young men to the house. Once, when I expostulated with him upon these points, he told me that he had early recognized in me a temperament and imagination over-sensitive to impressions from without, and that his wish had been to guard me from exciting influences until I should appear to him fully able to guard and guide myself. It was hardly to be expected that a girl in her teens, or just out of them, should acquiesce in this restrictive guardianship, tender and benevolent as was its intention. My little acts of rebellion were met with some severity, but I now recall my father's admonitions as "Soft rebukes with blessings ended." I cannot, even now, bear to dwell upon the desolate hush which fell upon our house when its stately head lay, silent and cold, in the midst of weeping friends and children. Six of us were made orphans, three sons and three daughters. We had had our little disagreements and dissensions, but the blow which now fell upon us drew us together with the bond of a common sorrow. My eldest brother had recently gone to reside in a house of his own. The second one, Henry by name, became at this time my great intimate. He was a high-strung youth, very chivalrous in disposition, full of fun and humor, but with a deep vein of thought. He was already betrothed to one whom I held dear, and I looked forward to many years brightened by his happiness, but alas! an attack of typhoid fever took him from us in the bloom of his youth. I was with him day and night during his illness, and when he closed his eyes, I would gladly, oh, so gladly, have died with him! The great anguish of this loss told heavily upon me, and I remember the time as one without light or comfort. I sought these indeed. A great religious revival was going on in New York, and a zealous young friend persuaded me to attend some of the meetings held in a neighboring church. I had never taken very seriously the doctrines of the religious body in which I had been reared. They now came home to me with terrible force, and a season of depression and melancholy followed, during which I remained in a measure cut off from the wholesome influences which reconcile us to life, even when it must be embittered by a sense of irreparable loss. At the time of my father's death, my dear bachelor uncle John, already mentioned, left his own house and came to live with us. When our paternal mansion was sold, some years later, he removed with us to the house of my eldest brother, who was already a widower. After my marriage my uncle again occupied a house of his own, in which for many years he made us all at home, even with our later incumbrances of children and nurses. He was, in short, the best and kindest of uncles. In business he was more adventurous than his rather deliberate manner would have led one to suppose. It was said that, in the course of his life, he had made and lost several fortunes. In the end he left a very fair estate, which was divided among the several sets of his nieces and nephews. Long before this he had become one of the worthies of Wall Street, and was universally spoken of as "Uncle John." Shortly after his retirement from active business, the Board of Brokers of New York requested him to sit to A. H. Wenzler for a portrait, to be hung in their place of meeting. The portrait was executed with entire success. I ought to mention in this connection that the directors of the New York Bank of Commerce, of which my father was the founder and first president, ordered a portrait of him from the well-known artist, Huntington. CHAPTER V MY STUDIES As a love of study has been a leading influence in my life, I will here employ a little time, at the risk of some repetition, in tracing the way in which my thoughts had mostly tended up to the period when, after two years of deep depression, I suddenly turned to practical life with an eager desire to profit by its opportunities. From early days my dear mother noticed in me an introspective tendency, which led her to complain that when I went with her to friends' houses I appeared dreamy and little concerned with what was going on around me. My early education, received at home, interested me more than most of my school work. While one person devoted time and attention to me, I repaid the effort to my best ability. In the classes of my school-days, the contact between teacher and pupil was less immediate. I shall always remember with pleasure Mrs. B.'s "Conversations" on Chemistry, which I studied with great pleasure, albeit that I never saw one of the experiments therein described. I remember that Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" interested me more than his "Philosophy," and that Blair's "Rhetoric," with its many quotations from the poets, was a delight to me. As I have before said, I was not inapt at algebra and geometry, but was too indolent to acquire any mastery in mathematics. The French language was somehow _burnt_ into my mind by a cruel French teacher, who made my lessons as unpleasant as possible. My fear of him was so great that I really exerted myself seriously to meet his requirements. I have profited in later life by his severity, having been able not only to speak French fluently but also to write it with ease. I was fourteen years of age when I besought my father to allow me to have some lessons in Italian. These were given me by Professor Lorenzo Da Ponte, son of the veteran of whom I have already spoken. With him I read the dramas of Metastasio and of Alfieri. Through all these years there went with me the vision of some great work or works which I myself should give to the world. I should write the novel or play of the age. This, I need not say, I never did. I made indeed some progress in a drama founded upon Scott's novel of "Kenilworth," but presently relinquished this to begin a play suggested by Gibbon's account of the fall of Constantinople. Such successes as I did manage to achieve were in quite a different line, that of lyric poetry. A beloved music-master, Daniel Schlesinger, falling ill and dying, I attended his funeral and wrote some stanzas descriptive of the scene, which were printed in various papers, attracting some notice. I set them to music of my own, and sang them often, to the accompaniment of a guitar. Although the reading of Byron was sparingly conceded to us, and that of Shelley forbidden, the morbid discontent which characterized these poets made itself felt in our community as well as in England. Here, as elsewhere, it brought into fashion a certain romantic melancholy. It is true that at school we read Cowper's "Task," and did our parsing on Milton's "Paradise Lost," but what were these in comparison with:-- "The cold in clime are cold in blood," or:-- "I loved her, Father, nay, adored." After my brother's return from Europe, I read such works of George Sand and Balzac as he would allow me to choose from his library. Of the two writers, George Sand appeared to me by far the superior, though I then knew of her works only "Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre," "Spiridion," "Jacques," and "André." It was at least ten years after this time that "Consuelo" revealed to the world the real George Sand, and thereby made her peace with the society which she had defied and scandalized. Of my German studies I have already made mention. I began them with a class of ladies under the tuition of Dr. Nordheimer. But it was with the later aid of Dr. Cogswell that I really mastered the difficulties of the language. It was while I was thus engaged that my eldest brother returned from Germany. In conversing with him, I acquired the use of colloquial German. Having, as I have said, the command of his fine library, I was soon deep in Goethe's "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister," reading also the works of Jean Paul, Matthias Claudius, and Herder. Thus was a new influence introduced into the life of one who had been brought up after the strictest rule of New England Puritanism. I derived from these studies a sense of intellectual freedom so new to me that it was half delightful, half alarming. My father undertook one day to read an English translation of "Faust." He presently came to me and said,-- "My daughter, I hope that you have not read this wicked book!" I must say, even after an interval of sixty years, that I do not consider "Wilhelm Meister" altogether good reading for the youth of our country. Its great author introduces into his recital scenes and personages calculated to awaken strange discords in a mind ignorant of any greater wrong than the small sins of a well-ordered household. Although disapproving greatly of Goethe, my father took a certain pride in my literary accomplishments, and was much pleased, I think, at the commendation which followed some of my early efforts. One of these, a brief essay on the minor poems of Goethe and Schiller, was published in the "New York Review," perhaps in 1848, and was spoken of in the "North American" of that time as "a charming paper, said to have been written by a lady." I have already said that a vision of some important literary work which I should accomplish was present with me in my early life, and had much to do with habits of study acquired by me in youth, and never wholly relinquished. At this late day, I find it difficult to account for a sense of literary responsibility which never left me, and which I must consider to have formed a part of my spiritual make-up. My earliest efforts in prose, two review articles, were probably more remarked at the time of their publication than their merit would have warranted. But women writers were by no means as numerous sixty years ago as they are to-day. Neither was it possible for a girl student in those days to find that help and guidance toward a literary career which may easily be commanded to-day. The death, within one year, of my father and most dearly loved brother touched within me a deeper train of thought than I had yet known. The anguish which I then experienced sought relief in expression, and took form in a small collection of poems, which Margaret Fuller urged me to publish, but which have never seen the light, and never will. Among the friends who frequented my father's house was the Rev. Francis L. Hawkes, long the pastor of a very prominent and fashionable Episcopal church in New York. I remember that on one occasion he began to abuse my Germans in good earnest for their irreligion and infidelity, of which I, indeed, knew nothing. I inquired whether he had read any of the authors whom he so unsparingly condemned. He was forced to confess that he had not, but presently turned upon me, quite indignant that I should have asked such a question. I recall another occasion on which the anti-slavery agitation was spoken of. Dr. Hawkes condemned it very severely, and said: "If I could get hold of one of those men who are trying to stir up the slaves of the South to cut their masters' throats, I would hang him to that lamp-post." An uncle of mine who was present said: "Doctor, I honor you!" but I felt much offended at the doctor's violence. With these exceptions his society was a welcome addition to our family circle. He was a man of genial temperament and commanding character, widely read in English literature, and esteemed very eloquent as a preacher. I remember moments in which the enlargement of my horizon of thought and of faith became strongly sensible to me, in the quiet of my reading, in my own room. A certain essay in the "Wandsbecker Bote" of Matthias Claudius ends thus: "And is he not also the God of the Japanese?" Foolish as it may appear, it had never struck me before that the God whom I had been taught to worship was the God of any peoples outside the limits of Judaism and Christendom. The suggestion shocked me at first, but, later on, gave me much satisfaction. Another such moment I recall when, having carefully read "Paradise Lost" to the very end, I saw presented before me the picture of an eternal evil, of Satan and his ministers subjugated indeed by God, but not conquered, and able to maintain against Him an opposition as eternal as his goodness. This appeared to me impossible, and I threw away, once and forever, the thought of the terrible hell which till then had always formed part of my belief. In its place, I cherished the persuasion that the victory of goodness must consist in making everything good, and that Satan himself could have no shield strong enough to resist permanently the divine power of the divine spirit. This was a great emancipation for me, and I soon welcomed with joy every evidence in literature which tended to show that religion has never been confined to the experience of a particular race or nation, but has shown itself at all times, and under every variety of form, as a seeking for the divine and a reverence for the things unseen. So much for study! CHAPTER VI SAMUEL WARD AND THE ASTORS My first peep at the great world in grown-up days was at a dinner party given by a daughter of General Armstrong, married to the eldest son of the first John Jacob Astor. Mrs. Astor was a person of very elegant taste. She had received a part of her education in Paris, at the time when her father represented our government at the Court of France. Her notions of propriety in dress were very strict. According to these, jewels were not to be worn in the daytime. Glaring colors and striking contrasts were to be avoided. Much that is in favor to-day would have been ruled out by her as inadmissible. At the dinner of which I speak the ladies were in evening dress, which in those days did not transcend modest limits. One very pretty married lady wore a white turban, which was much admired. Another lady was adorned with a coronet of fine stone cameos,--which has recently been presented to the Boston Art Museum by a surviving member of her family. My head was dressed for this occasion by Martel, a dainty half Spanish or French octoroon, endowed with exquisite taste, a ready wit, and a saucy tongue. He was the Figaro of the time, and his droll sayings were often quoted among his lady customers. The hair was then worn low at the back of the head, woven into elaborate braids and darkened with French _pomade_, while an ornament called a _féronière_ was usually worn upon the forehead or just above it. This was sometimes a string of pearls with a diamond star in the middle, oftener a gold chain or band ornamented with a jewel. The fashion, while it prevailed, was so general that evening dress was scarcely considered complete without it. Not long after the dinner party just mentioned, my eldest brother married the eldest daughter of the Astor family. I officiated at the wedding as first bridesmaid, a sister of the bride and one of my own completing the number. The bride wore a dress of rich white silk, and was coiffed with a scarf of some precious lace, in lieu of a veil. On her forehead shone a diamond star, the gift of her grandfather, Mr. John Jacob Astor. The bridesmaids' dresses were of white _moire_, then a material of the newest fashion. I had begged my father to give me a _féronière_ for this occasion, and he had presented me with a very pretty string of pearls, having a pearl pansy and drop in the centre. This fashion, I afterwards learned, was very ill suited to the contour of my face. At the time, however, I had the comfort of supposing that I looked uncommonly well. The ceremony took place in the evening at the house of the bride's parents. A very elaborate supper was afterwards served, at which the first groomsman proposed the health of the bride and groom, which was drunk without response. A wedding journey was not a _sine qua non_ in those days, but a wedding reception was usual. In this instance it took the form of a brilliant ball, every guest being in turn presented to the bride. On the floor of the ball-room a floral design had been traced in colored chalks. The evening was at its height when my father gravely admonished me that it was time to go home. Paternal authority was without appeal in those days. In my character of bridesmaid, I was allowed to attend one or two of the entertainments given in honor of this marriage. The gayeties of New York were then limited to balls, dinners, and evening parties. The afternoon tea was not invented until a much later period. One or two extra _élégantes_ received on stated afternoons. My dear uncle John, taking up a card left for me, with the inscription, "Mrs. S. at home on Thursday afternoon," remarked, "At home on Thursday afternoon? I am glad to learn that she is so domestic." This lady, who was a leading personage in the social world, used also to receive privileged friends on one evening in the week, giving only a cup of chocolate and some cakes or biscuits. My eldest brother, Samuel Ward, the fourth of the same name, has been so well known, both in public and in private life, that my reminiscences would not be complete without some special characterization of him. In my childhood he was my ideal and my idol. A handsome youth, quick of wit and tender of heart, brilliant in promise, and with a great and versatile power of work in him, I doubt whether Round Hill School ever turned out a more remarkable pupil. From Round Hill my brother passed to Columbia College, graduating therefrom after a four years' course. His mathematical attainments were considered remarkable, and my father, desiring to give him the best opportunity of extending his studies, sent him to Europe before he had attained his majority, with a letter of credit whose amount the banker, Hottinguer, thought it best not to impart to the young student, so much did he consider it beyond his needs. My brother's career in Europe, where he spent some years at this time, was not altogether in accordance with the promise of his early devotion to mathematical science. He saw much of German student life, and studied enough to obtain a degree from the University of Tübingen. Before his departure from America he had written two articles for the "North American Review." One of these was on Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding," the other on Euler's works. In Paris, he became the intimate friend of the famous critic, Jules Janin, and made acquaintance with other literary men of the time. He returned to America in 1835, speaking French like a Parisian and German as fluently as if that had been his native language. He had purchased a great part of the scientific library of La Grange, and an admirable collection of French and German works. At this period, he desired to make literature, rather than science, the leading pursuit of his life. He devoted much time to the composition of a work descriptive of Paris. He wrote many chapters of this in French, and I was proud to be allowed to render them into English. He brought into the Puritanic limits of our family circle a flavor of European life and culture which greatly delighted me. [Illustration: SAMUEL WARD JR. _From a painting by Baron Vogel._] My brother had spent a great deal of money while in Europe, and my father, who had done so much for him, began to think it time that this darling of fortune should take steps to earn his own support. The easiest way for him to accomplish this was to accept a post in the banking house of Prime, Ward and King, with the prospect of partnership later. He decided, with some reluctance, to pursue this course. His first day's performance at the office was so faulty that my father, on reviewing it, exclaimed, "You will play the very devil with the check-book, sir, if you use it in this way." He, however, applied himself diligently to his office work, and soon mastered its difficulties, but without developing a taste for business pursuits. Literature was still his ruling passion, and he devoted such leisure as he could command to study and to the composition of several lectures, which he delivered with some success. I have already spoken of his marriage with a daughter of Mr. William B. Astor. This union, a very happy one, was not of long duration. After a few years of married life, he was left a widower, with a daughter still in infancy, who became the especial charge and darling of my sister Louisa. After an interval of some years, my brother married Miss Grimes of New Orleans, a lady of uncommon beauty and talent. In the mean time we had to mourn the death of our beloved father, whose sober judgment and strong will had exercised a most salutary influence upon my brother's sanguine temperament. He now became anxious to increase his income; and this anxiety led him to embark in various speculations, which were not always fortunate. He left the firm of Prime, Ward and King, and was one of the first who went to California after its cession to the United States. The Indians were then in near proximity to San Francisco, and Uncle Sam, as he came to be called, went much among them, and became so well versed in their diverse dialects as to be able to act as interpreter between tribes unacquainted with each other's forms of speech. He once wrote out and sent me some tenses of an Indian verb which had impressed him with its resemblance to corresponding parts of the Greek language. I showed this to Theodore Parker, who considered it remarkable, and at once caused my brother to be elected as a member of some learned association devoted to philological research. An anecdote of his experience with the Indians may be briefly narrated here. He had been passing some time at a mining camp in the neighborhood of an Indian settlement, and had entered into friendly relations with the principal chief of the tribe. Thinking that a trip to San Francisco would greatly amuse this noble savage, he with some difficulty persuaded the elders of the tribe to allow their leader to accompany him to the city, where they had no sooner landed than the chief slipped out of sight and could not be found. Several days passed without any news of him, although advertisements were soon posted and a liberal reward offered to any one who should discover his whereabouts. My brother and his party were finally obliged to return to camp without him. This they did very unwillingly, knowing that the chief's prolonged absence would arouse the suspicions of his followers that he had met with ill-treatment. And so indeed it proved. Soon after their arrival at the settlement they were told that the Indians were becoming much excited, and that a council and war-dance were in preparation. The whites, a handful of men, armed themselves, and were preparing to sell their lives dearly, when suddenly the chief himself appeared among them. The Indians were pacified and the whites were overjoyed. The fugitive gave the following explanation of his strange conduct. He had been much alarmed by the noises heard on board the steamer, which he seemed to have mistaken for a living creature. "He must be sick, he groans so!" was his expression. Resolving that he would not return by that means of conveyance, he had found for himself a hiding-place on a hill commanding a view of the harbor. From this height of vantage he was able to observe the movements of the party which had brought him to the city. When he saw the men reëmbark on the steamer, he felt himself secure from recapture, and managed to steal a horse and to find his way back to his own people. If his misunderstanding of the nature of the boat should seem improbable, we must remember the Highlander who picked up a watch on some battlefield, and the next day sold it for a trifle, averring that "the creature had died in the night." During the period of the civil war, my brother resided in Washington, where his social gifts were highly valued. His sympathies were with the Democratic party, but his friendships went far beyond the limits of partisanship. He had an unusual power of reconciling people who were at variance with each other, and the dinners at which he presided furnished occasions to bring face to face political opponents accustomed to avoid each other, but unable to resist the _bonhomie_ which sought to make them better friends. He became known as King of the Lobby, but much more as the prince of entertainers. Although careful in his diet, he was well versed in gastronomics, and his menus were wholly original and excellent. He had friendly relations with the diplomats who were prominent in the society of the capital. Lord Rosebery and the Duke of Devonshire were among his friends, as were also the late Senator Bayard and President Garfield. Quite late in life, he enjoyed a turn of good fortune, and was most generous in his use of the wealth suddenly acquired, and alas! as suddenly lost. His last visit to Europe was in 1882-83, when, after passing some months with Lord and Lady Rosebery, he proceeded to Rome to finish the winter with our sister, Mrs. Terry. In his travels he had contracted a fatal disease, and his checkered and brilliant career came to an end at Pegli, near Genoa, in the spring of 1884. Of his oft contemplated literary work there remains a volume of poems entitled "Literary Recreations." The poet Longfellow, my brother's lifelong friend and intimate, esteemed these productions of his as true poetry, and more than once said to me of their author, "He is the most lovable man that I have ever known." I certainly never knew one who took so much delight in giving pleasure to others, or whose life was so full of natural, overflowing geniality and beneficence. Shortly after his first marriage my brother and his bride came to reside with us. In their company I often visited the Astor mansion, which was made delightful by good taste, good manners, and hospitable entertainment. Mr. William B. Astor, the head of the family, was a rather shy and silent man. He had received the best education that a German university could offer. The Chevalier Bunsen had been his tutor, and Schopenhauer, then a student at the same university, had been his friend. He had a love for letters, and might perhaps have followed this natural leading to advantage, had he not become his father's man of business, and thus been forced to devote much of his life to the management of the great Astor estate. At the time of which I speak, he resided on the unfashionable side of Broadway, not far below Canal Street. At this time I was often invited to the house of his father, Mr. John Jacob Astor. This house, which the old gentleman had built for himself, was situated on Broadway, between Prince and Spring streets. Adjoining it was one which he had built for a favorite granddaughter, Mrs. Boreel. He was very fond of music, and sometimes engaged the services of a professional pianist. I remember that he was much pleased at recognizing, one evening, the strains of a brilliant waltz, of which he said: "I heard it at a fair in Switzerland years ago. The Swiss women were whirling round in their red petticoats." On another occasion, we sang the well-known song, "Am Rhein;" and Mr. Astor, who was very stout and infirm of person, rose and stood beside the piano, joining with the singers. "Am Rhein, am Rhein, da wachset süsses Leben," he sang, instead of "Da wachsen unsere Reben." My sister-in-law, Emily Astor Ward, was endowed with a voice whose unusual power and beauty had been enhanced by careful training. We sometimes sang together or separately at old Mr. Astor's musical parties, and at one of these he said to us, as we stood together: "You are my singing birds." Of our two _répertoires_, mine was the most varied, as it included French and German songs, while she sang mostly operatic music. The rich volume of her voice, however, carried her hearers quite away. Her figure and carriage were fine, and in her countenance beauty of expression lent a great charm to features which in themselves were not handsome. Although the elder Astor had led a life mainly devoted to business interests, he had great pleasure in the society of literary men. Fitz-Greene Halleck and Washington Irving were familiar visitors at his house, and he conceived so great a regard for Dr. Joseph Green Cogswell as to insist upon his becoming an inmate of his family. He finally went to reside with Mr. Astor, attracted partly by the latter's promise to endow a public library in the city of New York. This was accomplished after some delay, and the doctor was for many years director of the Astor Library. He used to relate some humorous anecdotes of excursions which he made with Mr. Astor. In the course of one of these, the two gentlemen took supper together at a hotel recently opened. Mr. Astor remarked: "This man will never succeed." "Why not?" inquired the other. "Don't you see what large lumps of sugar he puts in the sugar bowl?" Once, as they were walking slowly to a pilot-boat which the old gentleman had chartered for a trip down the harbor, Dr. Cogswell said: "Mr. Astor, I have just been calculating that this boat costs you twenty-five cents a minute." Mr. Astor at once hastened his pace, reluctant to waste so much money. In his own country Mr. Astor had been a member of the German Lutheran Church. He once mentioned this fact to a clergyman who called upon him in the interest of some charity. The visitor congratulated Mr. Astor upon the increased ability to do good, which his great fortune gave him. "Ah!" said Mr. Astor, "the disposition to do good does not always increase with the means." In the last years of his life he was afflicted with insomnia. Dr. Cogswell often sat with him through a great part of the night, the coachman, William, being also in attendance. In these sleepless nights, his mind appeared to be much exercised with regard to a future state. On one of these occasions, when Dr. Cogswell had done his best to expound the theme of immortality, Mr. Astor suddenly said to his servant: "William, where do you expect to go when you die?" The man replied: "Why, sir, I always expected to go where the other people went." Young as my native city was in my youth, it still retained some fossils of an earlier period. Conspicuous among these were two sisters, of whom the elder had been a recognized beauty and belle at the time of the War of Independence. Miss Charlotte White was what was called "a character" in those days. She was tall and of commanding figure, attired after an ancient fashion, but with great care. I remember her calling upon my aunt one morning, in company with a lady friend much inclined to _embonpoint_. The lady's name was Euphemia, and Miss White addressed her thus: "Feme, thou female Falstaff." She took some notice of me, and began to talk of the gayeties of her youth, and especially of a ball given at Newport during the war, at which she had received especial attention. On returning the visit we found the sisters in the quaintest little sitting-room imaginable, the floor covered with a green Brussels carpet, woven in one piece, with a medallion of flowers in the centre, evidently manufactured to order. The furniture was of enameled white wood. We were entertained with cake and wine. The younger of the sisters was much afraid of lightning, and had devised a curious little refuge to which she always betook herself when a thunderstorm appeared imminent. This was a wooden platform standing on glass feet, with a seat and a silken canopy, which the good lady drew closely around her, remaining thus enveloped until the dreaded danger was past. My father sometimes endeavored to overcome my fear of lightning by taking me up to the cupola of our house, and bidding me admire the beauty of the storm. Wishing to impress upon me the absurdity of giving way to fear, he told me of a lady whom he had known in his youth who, being overtaken by a thunderstorm at a place of public resort, so lost her head that she seized the wig of a gentleman standing near her, and waved it wildly in the air, to his great wrath and discomfiture. I am sorry to say that this dreadful warning provoked my laughter, but did not increase my courage. The years of mourning for my father and beloved brother being at an end, and the sister next to me being now of an age to make her début in society, I began with her a season of visiting, dancing, and so on. My sister was very handsome, and we were both welcome guests at fashionable entertainments. I was passionately fond of music, and scarcely less so of dancing, and the history of the next two winters would, if written, chronicle a series of balls, concerts, and dinners. I did not, even in these years of social routine, abandon either my studies or my hope of contributing to the literature of my generation. Hours were not then unreasonably late. Dancing parties usually broke up soon after one o'clock, and left me fresh enough to enjoy the next day's study. We saw many literary people and some of the scientists with whom my brother had become acquainted while in Europe. Among the first was John L. O'Sullivan, the accomplished editor of the "Democratic Review." When the poet Dana visited our city, he always called upon us, and we sometimes had the pleasure of seeing with him his intimate friend, William Cullen Bryant, who very rarely appeared in general society. Among our scientific guests I especially remember an English gentleman who was in those days a distinguished mathematician, and who has since become very eminent. He was of the Hebrew race, and had fallen violently in love with a beautiful Jewish heiress, well known in New York. His wooing was not fortunate, and the extravagance of his indignation at its result was both pathetic and laughable. He once confided to me his intention of paying his addresses to the lady's young niece. "And Miss ---- shall become our Aunt Hannah!" he said, with extreme bitterness. I exhorted him to calm himself by devotion to his scientific pursuits, but he replied: "Something better than mathematics has waked up here!" pointing to his heart. He wrote many verses, which he read aloud to our sympathizing circle. I recall from one of these a distich of some merit. Speaking of his fancied wrongs, and warning his fair antagonist to beware of the revenge which he might take, he wrote:-- "Wine gushes from the trampled grape, Iron's branded into steel." In the end he returned to the science which had been his first love, and which rewarded his devotion with a wide reputation. These years glided by with fairy-like swiftness. They were passed by my sisters and myself under my brother's roof, where the beloved uncle also made his home with us so long as we remained together. I have dwelt a good deal on the circumstances and surroundings of my early life in my native city. If this state of things here described had continued, I should probably have remained a frequenter of fashionable society, a musical amateur, and a _dilettante_ in literature. CHAPTER VII MARRIAGE: TOUR IN EUROPE Quite other experiences were in store for me. I chanced to pass the summer of 1841 at a cottage in the neighborhood of Boston, with my sisters and a young friend much endeared to us as the betrothed of the dearly loved brother Henry, whose recent death had greatly grieved us. Longfellow and Sumner often visited us in our retirement. The latter once made mention of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe's wonderful achievement in the case of Laura Bridgman, the first blind deaf mute who had ever been taught the use of language. He also brought us some of the reports which gave an account of the progress of her education. It was proposed that we should drive over to the Perkins Institution on a given day. Mr. Longfellow came for me in a buggy, while Mr. Sumner conducted my two sisters and our friend. We found Laura, then a child of ten years, seated at her little desk, and beside her another girl of the same age, also a blind deaf mute. The name of this last was Lucy Reed, and we learned that, until brought to the Institution, she had been accustomed to cover her head and face with a cotton bag of her own manufacture. Her complexion was very delicate and her countenance altogether pleasing. While the two children were holding converse through the medium of the finger alphabet, Lucy's face was suddenly lit up by a smile so beautiful as to call forth from us an involuntary exclamation. Unfortunately, this young girl was soon taken away by her parents, and I have never had any further knowledge concerning her. Dr. Howe was absent when we arrived at the Institution, but before we took leave of it, Mr. Sumner, looking out of a window, said, "Oh! here comes Howe on his black horse." I looked out also, and beheld a noble rider on a noble steed. The doctor dismounted, and presently came to make our acquaintance. One of our party proposed to give Laura some trinket which she wore, but Dr. Howe forbade this rather sternly. He made upon us an impression of unusual force and reserve. Only when I was seated beside Longfellow for the homeward drive, he mischievously remarked, "Longfellow, I see that your horse has been down," at which the poet seemed a little discomfited. Mr. Sanborn, in the preface to his biography of Dr. Howe, says:-- "It has fallen to my lot to know, both in youth and in age, several of the most romantic characters of our century; and among them one of the most romantic was certainly the hero of these pages. That he was indeed a hero, the events of his life sufficiently declare." This writer, in his interesting memoir, often quotes passages from one prepared by myself shortly after my husband's death. In executing this work, I was forced to keep within certain limits, as my volume was primarily intended for the use of the blind, a circumstance which necessitated the printing of it in raised letters. As this process is expensive, and its results very cumbersome, economy of space becomes an important condition in its execution. Mr. Sanborn, not having suffered this limitation, and having had many documents at his disposal, has been able to add much interesting matter to what I was only able to give in outline. An even fuller biography than his will be published ere many years, by our children, but the best record of the great philanthropist's life remains in the new influences which he brought to bear on the community. Traces of these may be found in the improved condition of the several classes of unfortunates whose interests he espoused and vindicated, often to the great indignation of parties less enlightened. He himself had, what he was glad to recognize in Wendell Phillips, a prophetic quality of mind. His sanguine temperament, his knowledge of principles and reliance upon them, combined to lead him in advance of his own time. Experts in reforms and in charities acknowledge the indebtedness of both to his unremitting labors. What the general public should most prize and hold fast is the conviction, so clearly expressed by him, that humanity has a claim to be honored and aided, even where its traits appear most abnormal and degraded. He demanded for the blind an education which would render them self-supporting; for the idiot, the training of his poor and maimed capabilities; for the insane and the criminal, the watchful and redemptive tutelage of society. In the world as he would have had it, there should have been neither paupers nor outcasts. He did all that one man could do to advance the coming of this millennial consummation. My husband, Dr. Howe, was my senior by nearly a score of years. If I mention this discrepancy in our ages, it is that I may acknowledge in him the superiority of experience which so many years of the most noble activity had naturally given him. My own true life had been that of a student and of a dreamer. Dr. Howe had read and thought much, but he had also acquired the practical knowledge which is rarely attained in the closet or at the desk. His career from the outset had been characterized by energy and perseverance. In his college days, this energy had found much of its vent in undertakings of boyish mischief. When he came to man's estate, a new inspiration took possession of him. The devotion to ideas and principles, the zeal for the rights of others which go to make up the men of public spirit--those leading traits now appeared in him, and at once gave him a place among the champions of human freedom. The love of adventure and the example of Lord Byron had, no doubt, some part in his determination to cast in his lot with the Greeks in the memorable struggle which restored to them their national life. But the solidity and value of the services which he rendered to that oppressed people showed in time that he was endowed, not only with the generous impulses of youth, but with the forethought of mature manhood. After some years of gallant service, in which he shared all the privations of the little army, accustoming himself to the bivouac by night, to hunger, hard fare, and constant fighting by day, he became convinced that the Greeks were in danger of being reduced to submission by absolute starvation. All the able-bodied men of the nation were in the field. The Turks had devastated the land, and there were no hands to till it. He therefore returned to America, and there preached so effectual a crusade in behalf of the Greeks that a considerable sum of money was contributed for their relief. These funds were expended by Dr. Howe in shiploads of clothing and provisions, of which he himself superintended the distribution, thus enabling the Greeks to hold out until a sudden turn in political affairs induced the diplomacy of western Europe to espouse their cause. When the liberation of Greece had become an assured fact, Dr. Howe returned to America to find and take up his life-work. The education of the blind presented a worthy field for his tireless activity. He founded, built up, and directed the first institution for their benefit known in this country. This was a work of great difficulty, and one for which the means at hand appeared utterly inadequate. Beginning with the training of three little blind children in his father's house, he succeeded so well in enlisting the sympathies of the public in behalf of the class which they represented that funds soon flowed in from various sources. The present well-known institution, with its flourishing workshop, printing establishment, and other dependencies, stands to attest his work, and the support given to it by the community. A new lustre was added to his name by the wonderful series of experiments which brought the gifts of human speech and knowledge to a blind deaf mute. The story of Laura Bridgman is too well known to need repetition in these pages. As related by Charles Dickens in his "American Notes," it carried Dr. Howe's fame to the civilized world. When he visited Europe with this deed of merit put upon his record, it was as one whom high and low should delight to honor. Mr. Emerson somewhere speaks of the romance of some special philanthropy. Dr. Howe's life became an embodiment of this romance. Like all inspired men, he brought into the enterprises of his day new ideas and a new spirit. Deep in his heart lay a sense of the dignity and ability of human nature, which forced him to reject the pauperizing methods then employed in regard to various classes of unfortunates. The blind must not only be fed and housed and cared for; they must learn to make their lives useful to the community; they must be taught and trained to earn their own support. Years of patient effort enabled him to accomplish this; and the present condition of the blind in American communities attests the general acceptance of their claim to the benefits of education and the dignity of useful labor. Dr. Howe's public services, however, were by no means limited to the duties of his especial charge. With keen power of analysis, he explored the most crying evils of society, seeking to discover, even in their sources, the secret of their prevention and cure. His masterly report on idiocy led to the establishment of a school for feeble-minded children, in which numbers of these were trained to useful industries, and redeemed from brutal ignorance and inertia. He aided Dorothea Dix in her heroic efforts to improve the condition of the insane. He worked with Horace Mann for the uplifting of the public schools. He stood with the heroic few who dared to advocate the abolition of slavery. In these and many other departments of work his influence was felt, and it is worthy of remark that, although employing his power in so many directions, his use of it was wonderfully free from waste. He indulged in no vaporous visions, in no redundancy of phrases. The documents in which he gave to the public the results of his experience are models of statement, terse, simple, and direct. I became engaged to Dr. Howe during a visit to Boston in the winter of 1842-43, and was married to him on the 23d of April of the latter year. A week later we sailed for Europe in one of the small Cunard steamers of that time, taking with us my youngest sister, Annie Ward, whose state of health gave us some uneasiness. My husband's great friend, Horace Mann, and his bride, Mary Peabody, sailed with us. During the first two days of the voyage I was stupefied by sea-sickness, and even forgot that my sister was on board the steamer. On the evening of the second day I remembered her, and managed with the help of a very stout stewardess to visit her in her stateroom, where she had for her roommate a cousin of the poet Longfellow. We bewailed our common miseries a little, but the next morning brought a different state of things. As soon as I was awake, my husband came to me bringing a small dose of brandy with cracked ice. "Drink this," he said, "and ask Mrs. Bean [the stewardess] to help you get on your clothes, for you must go up on deck; we shall be at Halifax in a few hours." Magnetized by the stronger will, I struggled with my weakness, and was presently clothed and carried up on deck. "Now, I am going for Annie," said Dr. Howe, leaving me comfortably propped up in a safe seat. He soon returned with my dear sister, as helpless as myself. The fresh air revived us so much that we were able to take our breakfast, the first meal we ate on board, in the saloon with the other passengers. We went on shore, however, for a walk at Halifax, and from that time forth were quite able-bodied sea-goers. On the last day before that of our landing, an unusually good dinner was served, and, according to the custom of the time, champagne was furnished gratis, in order that all who dined together might drink the Queen's health. This favorite toast was accordingly proposed and responded to by a number of rather flat speeches. The health of the captain of our steamer was also proposed, and some others which I cannot now recall. This proceeding amused me so much that I busied myself the next day with preparing for a mock celebration in the ladies' cabin. The meeting was well attended. I opened with a song in honor of Mrs. Bean, our kind and efficient stewardess. "God save our Mrs. Bean, Best woman ever seen, God save Mrs. Bean. God bless her gown and cap, Pour guineas in her lap, Keep her from all mishap, God save Mrs. Bean." The company were invited to join in singing these lines, which were, of course, a take-off on "God save our gracious Queen." I can still see in my mind's eye dear old Madam Sedgwick, mother of the well-known jurist, Theodore of that name, lifting her quavering, high voice to aid in the singing. Mrs. Bean was rather taken aback by the unexpected homage rendered her. We all called out: "Speech! speech!" whereupon she curtsied and said: "Good ladies makes good stewardesses; that's all I can say," which was very well in its way. Rev. Jacob Abbott was one of our fellow passengers, and had been much in our cabin, where he busied himself in compounding various "soft drinks" for convalescent lady friends. His health was accordingly proposed with the following stanza:-- "Dr. Abbott in our cabin, Mixing of a soda-powder, How he ground it, How did pound it, While the tempest threatened louder." I next gave the cow's health, whereupon a lady passenger, with a Scotch accent, demurred: "I don't want to drink her health at a'. I think she is the poorest _coo_ I ever heard of." Arriving in London, we found comfortable lodgings in Upper Baker Street, and busied ourselves with the delivery of our many letters of introduction. The Rev. Sydney Smith was one of the first to honor our introduction with a call. His reputation as a wit was already world-wide, and he was certainly one of the idols of London society. In appearance he was hardly prepossessing. He was short and squat of figure, with a rubicund countenance, redeemed by a pair of twinkling eyes. When we first saw him, my husband was suffering from the result of a trifling accident. Mr. Smith said, "Dr. Howe, I must send you my gouty crutches." My husband demurred at this, and begged Mr. Smith not to give himself that trouble. He insisted, however, and the crutches were sent. Dr. Howe had really no need of them, and I laughed with him at their disproportion to his height, which would in any case have made it impossible for him to use them. The loan was presently returned with thanks, but scarcely soon enough; for Sydney Smith, who had lost heavily by American investments, published in one of the London papers a letter reflecting severely upon the failure of some of our Western States to pay their debts. The letter concluded with these words: "And now an American, present at this time in London, has deprived me of my last means of support." One questioned a little whether the loan had not been made for the sake of the pleasantry. In the course of the visit already referred to, Mr. Smith promised that we should receive cards for an entertainment which his daughter, Mrs. Holland, was about to give. The cards were received, and we presented ourselves at the party. Among the persons there introduced to us was Mme. Van de Weyer, wife of the Belgian minister, and daughter of Joshua Bates, formerly of Massachusetts, and in after years the founder of the Public Library of Boston, in which one hall bears his name. Mr. Van de Weyer, we were told, was on very friendly terms with the Prince Consort, and his wife was often invited by the Queen. The historian Grote and his wife also made our acquaintance. I especially remember her appearance because it was, and was allowed to be, somewhat _grote_sque. She was very tall and stout in proportion, and was dressed on this occasion in a dark green or blue silk, with a necklace of pearls about her throat. I gathered from what I heard that hers was one of the marked personalities of that time in London society. At this party Sydney Smith was constantly the centre of a group of admiring friends. When we first entered the rooms, he said to us, "I am so busy to-night that I can do nothing for you." Later in the evening he found time to seek me out. "Mrs. Howe," said he, "this is a rout. I like routs. Do you have routs in America?" "We have parties like this in America," I replied, "but we do not call them routs." "What do you call them there?" "We call them receptions." This seemed to amuse him, and he said to some one who stood near us:-- "Mrs. Howe says that in America they call routs re-cep-tions." He asked what I had seen in London so far. I replied that I had recently visited the House of Lords, whereupon he remarked:-- "Mrs. Howe, your English is excellent. I have only heard you make one mispronunciation. You have just said 'House of Lords.' We say 'House of Lards.'" Some one near by said, "Oh, yes! the house is always addressed as 'my luds and gentlemen.'" When I repeated this to Horace Mann, it so vexed his gentle spirit as to cause him to exclaim, "House of Lords? You ought to have said 'House of Devils.'" I have made several visits in London since that time, one quite recently, and I have observed that people now speak of receptions, and not of routs. I think, also, that the pronunciation insisted upon by Sydney Smith has become a thing of the past. I think that Mrs. Sydney Smith must have called or have left a card at our lodgings, for I distinctly remember a morning call which I made at her house. The great wit was at home on this occasion, as was also his only surviving son. An elder son had been born to him, who probably inherited something of his character and ability, and whose death he laments in one or more of his published letters. The young man whom I saw at this time was spoken of as much devoted to the turf, and the only saying of his that I have ever heard quoted was his question as to how long it took Nebuchadnezzar to get into condition after he had been out to grass. Mrs. Smith received me very pleasantly. She seemed a grave and silent woman, presenting in this respect a striking contrast to her husband. I knew very little of the political opinions of the latter, and innocently inquired whether he and Mrs. Smith went sometimes to court. The question amused him. He said to his wife, "My dear, Mrs. Howe wishes to know whether you and I go to court." To me he said, "No, madam. That is a luxury which I deny myself." I last saw Sydney Smith at an evening party at which, as usual, he was surrounded by friends. A very amiable young American was present, apropos of whom I heard Mr. Smith say:-- "I think I shall go over to America and settle in Boston. Perkins here says that he'll patronize me." Thomas Carlyle was also one of our earliest visitors. Some time before leaving home, Dr. Howe had received from him a letter expressing his great interest in the story of Laura Bridgman as narrated by Charles Dickens. In this letter he mentioned Laura's childish question, "Do horses sit up late?" In the course of his conversation he said, laughing heartily: "Laura Bridgman, dear child! Her question, Do horses sit up late?" Before taking leave of us he invited us to take tea with him on the following Sunday. When the day arrived, my husband was kept at home by a severe headache, but Mr. and Mrs. Mann, my sister, and myself drove out to Chelsea, where Mr. Carlyle resided at that time. In receiving us he apologized for his wife, who was also suffering from headache and could not appear. In her absence I was requested to pour tea. Our host partook of it copiously, in all the strength of the teapot. As I filled and refilled his cup, I thought that his chronic dyspepsia was not to be wondered at. The repast was a simple one. It consisted of a plate of toast and two small dishes of stewed fruit, which he offered us with the words, "Perhaps ye can eat some of this. I never eat these things myself." The conversation was mostly a monologue. Mr. Carlyle spoke with a strong Scotch accent, and his talk sounded to me like pages of his writings. He had recently been annoyed by some movement tending to the disestablishment of the Scottish Church. Apropos of this he said, "That auld Kirk of Scotland! To think that a man like Johnny Graham should be able to wipe it out with a flirt of his pen!" Charles Sumner was spoken of, and Mr. Carlyle said, "Oh yes; Mr. Sumner was a vera dull man, but he did not offend people, and he got on in society here." Carlyle's hair was dark, shaggy, and rather unkempt; his complexion was sallow, with a slight glow of red on the cheek; his eye was full of fire. As we drove back to town, Mr. Mann expressed great disappointment with our visit. He did not feel, he said, that we had seen the real Carlyle at all. I insisted that we had. Soon after our arrival in London a gentleman called upon us whom the servant announced as Mr. Mills. It happened that I did not examine the card which was brought in at the same time. Dr. Howe was not within, and in his absence I entertained the unknown guest to the best of my ability. He spoke of Longfellow's volume of poems on slavery, then a recent publication, saying that he admired them. Our talk turning upon poetry in general, I remarked that Wordsworth appeared to be the only poet of eminence left in England. Before taking leave of me the visitor named a certain day on which he requested that we would come to breakfast at his house. Forgetful of the card, I asked "Where?" He said, "You will find my address on my card. I am Mr. Milnes." On looking at the card I found that this was Richard Monckton Milnes, afterward known as Lord Houghton. I was somewhat chagrined at remembering the remark I had made in connection with Wordsworth. He probably supposed that I was ignorant of his literary rank, which I was not, as his poems, though never very popular, were already well known in America. The breakfast to which Mr. Milnes had invited us proved most pleasant. Our host had recently traveled in the East, and had brought home a prayer carpet, which we admired. His sister, Lady Galway, presided at table with much grace. The breakfast was at this time a favorite mode of entertainment, and we enjoyed many of these occasions. I remember one at the house of Sir Robert Harry Inglis, long a leading Conservative member of the House of Commons. Punch once said of him:-- "The Inglis thinks the world grows worse, And always wears a rose." And this flower, which always adorned his buttonhole, seemed to match well with his benevolent and somewhat rubicund countenance. At the breakfast of which I speak, he cut the loaf with his own hands, saying to each guest, "Will you have a slice or a hunch?" and cutting a slice from one end or a hunch from the other, according to the preference expressed. These breakfasts were not luncheons in disguise. They were given at ten, or even at half past nine o'clock. The meal usually consisted of fish, cutlets, eggs, cold bread and toast, with tea and coffee. At Samuel Rogers's I remember that plover's eggs were served. We also dined one evening with Mr. Rogers, and met among the guests Mr. Dickens and Lady B., one of the beautiful Sheridan sisters. A gentleman sat next me at table, whose name I did not catch. I had heard much of the works of art to be seen in Mr. Rogers's house, and so took occasion to ask him whether he knew anything about pictures. He smiled, and answered, "Well, yes." I then begged him to explain to me some of those which hung upon the walls, which he did with much good-nature. Presently some one at the table addressed him as "Mr. Landseer," and I became aware that I was sitting next to the celebrated painter of animals. His fine face had already attracted me. I apologized for the question which I had asked, and which had somewhat amused him. I had recently seen at Stafford House a picture of his, representing two daughters of the Duke of Sutherland playing with a dog. He said that he did not care much for that picture, that the Duchess had herself chosen the subject, etc. Mr. Rogers, indeed, possessed some paintings of great value, one a genuine Raphael, if I mistake not. He had also many objects of _virtu_. I think it was after a breakfast at his house that he showed us some Etruscan potteries. Dr. Howe took up one of these rather carelessly. It was a cup, and the handle became separated from it. My husband appeared so much disconcerted at this that I could not help laughing a little at the expression of his countenance. Mr. Rogers afterwards said to an American friend, "Mrs. Howe was quite cruel to laugh at the doctor's embarrassment." On one occasion he showed us some autograph letters of Lord Byron, with whom he had been well acquainted. He read a passage from one of these, in which Lord Byron, after speaking of the ancient custom of the Doge wedding the Adriatic, wrote: "I wish the Adriatic would take my wife." In after years I was sometimes questioned as to what had most impressed me during my first visit in London. I replied unhesitatingly, "The clever people collected there." The moment, indeed, was fortunate. We had come well provided with letters of introduction. Besides this, my husband was at the time a first-class lion, and this merit avails more in England than any other, and more there than elsewhere. Mr. Sumner had given us a letter to the Marquis of Lansdowne, which the latter honored by a call, and further by sending us cards for a musical evening at Lansdowne House. Lord Lansdowne was a gracious host. His lady was more formal in manner. Their music-room was oblong in shape, and the guests were seated along the wall on either side. Before the performance began I noticed a movement among those present, the cause of which became evident when the Duchess of Gloucester appeared, leaning on the arm of the master of the house. She was attired, or, as newspapers put it, "gowned," in black, wearing white plumes in her headdress, and with bare neck and arms, according to the imperative fashion of the time. She was well advanced in years, and had probably never been remarked for good looks, but was said to be beloved by the Queen and by many friends. The programme of the entertainment was one which to-day would seem rather commonplace, though the performers were not so. A handsome young man, of slender figure, opened the concert by singing the serenade from the opera of "Don Pasquale." I felt at once that this must be Mario, but that name cannot suggest to one who never heard him either the beauty of his voice or the refinement of his intonation. I still feel a sort of intoxication when I recall his rendering of "Com' é gentil." Grisi sang several times. She was then in what some one has termed, "the insolence of her youth and beauty." Mlle. Persiani, also of the grand opera, gave an air by Gluck, which I myself had studied, "Pago fúi, fúi lieto un di." Lord Lansdowne told me that this lady was the most obliging of artists. I afterwards heard her in "Linda di Chamounix," which was then in its first favor. The concert ended with the prayer from Rossini's "Mosé in Egitto," sung by the artists already named with the addition of the great Lablache. At the conclusion of it we adjourned to the supper-room, which afforded us a better opportunity of observing the distinguished company. My husband was presently engaged in conversation with the Hon. Mrs. Norton, who was then very handsome. Her hair, which was decidedly black, was arranged in flat bandeaux, according to the fashion of the time. A diamond chain, formed of large links, encircled her fine head. Her eyes were dark and full of expression. Her dress was unusually _décolletée_, but most of the ladies present would in America have been considered extreme in this respect. Court mourning had recently been ordered for the Duke of Sussex, uncle to the Queen, and many black dresses were worn. My memory, nevertheless, tells me that the great Duchess of Sutherland wore a dress of pink _moire_, and that her head was adorned with a wreath of velvet leaves interspersed with diamonds. Her brother, Lord Morpeth, was also present. I heard a lady say to him, "Are you worthy of music?" He replied, "Oh, yes; very worthy." I heard the same phrase repeated by others, and, on inquiring as to its meaning, was told that it was a way of asking whether one was fond of music. The formula has long since gone out of fashion. Somewhat later in the season we were invited to dine at Lansdowne House. Among the guests present I remember Lord Morpeth. I had some conversation with the daughter of the house, Lady Louisa Fitzmaurice, who was pleasing, but not pretty, and wore a dress of light blue silk, with a necklace around her throat formed of many strands of fine gold chain. I was asked at this dinner whether I should object to sitting next to a colored person in, for example, a box at the opera. Were I asked this question to-day, I should reply that this would depend upon the character and cleanliness of the colored person, much as one would say in the case of a white man or woman. I remember that Lord Lansdowne wore a blue ribbon across his breast, and on it a flat star of silver. Among the well-remembered glories of that summer, the new delight of the drama holds an important place. I had been denied this pleasure in my girlhood, and my enjoyment of it at this time was fresh and intense. Among the attentions lavished upon us during that London season were frequent offers of a box at Covent Garden or "Her Majesty's." These were never declined. Of especial interest to me was a performance of Macready as Claude Melnotte in Bulwer's "Lady of Lyons." The part of Pauline was played by Helen Faucit. Both of these artists were then at their best. Thomas Appleton, of Boston, and William Wadsworth, of Geneseo, were with us in our box. The pathetic moments of the play moved me to tears, which I tried to hide. I soon saw that all my companions were affected in the same way, and were making the same effort. I saw Miss Faucit again at an entertainment given in aid of the fund for a monument to Mrs. Siddons. She recited an ode written for the occasion, of which I still recall the closing line:-- "And measure what we owe by what she gave." I saw Grisi in the great rôle of Semiramide, and with her Brambilla, a famous contralto, and Fornasari, a basso whom I had longed to hear in the operas given in New York. I also saw Mlle. Persiani in "Linda di Chamounix" and "Lucia di Lammermoor." All of these occasions gave me unmitigated delight, but the crowning ecstasy of all I found in the ballet. Fanny Elssler and Cerito were both upon the stage. The former had lost a little of her prestige, but Cerito, an Italian, was then in her first bloom and wonderfully graceful. Of her performance my sister said to me, "It seems to make us better to see anything so beautiful." This remark recalls the oft-quoted dialogue between Margaret Fuller and Emerson apropos of Fanny Elssler's dancing:-- "Margaret, this is poetry." "Waldo, this is religion." I remember, years after this time, a talk with Theodore Parker, in which I suggested that the best stage dancing gives us the classic in a fluent form, with the illumination of life and personality. I cannot recall, in the dances which I saw during that season, anything which appeared to me sensual or even sensuous. It was rather the very ecstasy and embodiment of grace. A ball at Almack's certainly deserves mention in these pages, the place itself belonging to the history of the London world of fashion. The one of which I now speak was given in aid of the Polish refugees who were then in London. The price of admission to this sacred precinct would have been extravagant for us, but cards for it were sent us by some hospitable friend. The same attention was shown to Mr. and Mrs. Mann, who with us presented themselves at the rooms on the appointed evening. We found them spacious enough, but with no splendor or beauty of decoration. A space at the upper end of the ball-room was marked off by rail or ribbon--I cannot remember which. While we were wondering what this should mean, a brilliant procession made its appearance, led by the Duchess of Sutherland in some historic costume. She was followed by a number of persons of high rank, among whom I recognized her lovely daughters, Lady Elizabeth Leveson-Gower and Lady Evelyn. These young ladies and several others were attired in Polish costume, to wit, polonaises of light blue silk, and short white skirts which showed the prettiest little red boots imaginable. This high and mighty company took possession of the space mentioned above, where they proceeded to dance a quadrille in rather solemn state. The company outside this limit stood and looked on. Among the groups taking part in this state quadrille was one characterized by the dress worn at court presentations: the ladies in pink and blue brocades, with plumes and lappets; the gentlemen in small-clothes, with swords,--and all with powdered hair. I first met the Duchess of Sutherland at a dinner given in our honor by Lord Morpeth's parents, the Earl and Countess of Carlisle. The Great Duchess, as the Duchess of Sutherland was often called, was still very handsome, though already the mother of grown-up children. She wore a dress of brown gauze or barége over light blue satin, with a wreath of brown velvet leaves and blue forget-me-nots in her hair, and on her arm, among other jewels, a miniature of the Queen set in diamonds. At one time she was Mistress of the Robes, but I am not sure whether she held this office at the time of which I speak. Her relations with the palace were said to be very intimate and friendly. In the picture of the Queen's Coronation, so well known to us by engravings, hers is one of the most striking figures. We did, indeed, hear that on one occasion the Duchess had kept the Queen waiting, and that the sovereign said to her on her arrival, "Duchess, you must allow me to present you with my watch, yours evidently does not keep good time." The eyes of the proud Duchess filled with tears, and, on returning home, she sent to the palace a letter resigning her post in the royal service. The Queen was, however, very fond of her, and the little difficulty was soon amicably settled. I recall a pleasantry about Lady Carlisle that was current in London society in the season of which I write. Sydney Smith pretended to have dreamed that Lord Morpeth had brought back a black wife from America, and that his mother, on seeing her, had said, "She is not so very black." Lady Carlisle was proverbial for her kindliness and good temper, and it was upon this point that the humor of the story turned. I will also mention a dinner given in our honor by John Kenyon, well known as a Mæcenas of that period. Miss Sedgwick, in her book of travels, speaks of him as a distinguished conversationalist, much given to hospitality. He is also remembered as a cousin of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The scenes just described still remain quite vivid in my memory, but it would be difficult for me to recount the visits made in those days by my husband and Horace Mann to public institutions of all kinds. I did indeed accompany the two philanthropists in some of their excursions, which included schools, workhouses, prisons, and asylums for the insane. We went one day, in company with Charles Dickens and his wife, to visit the old prison of Bridewell. We found the treadmill in operation. Every now and then a man would give out, and would be allowed to leave the ungrateful work. The midday meal, bread and soup, was served to the prisoners while we were still in attendance. To one or two, as a punishment for some misdemeanor, bread alone was given. Charles Dickens looked on, and presently said to Doctor Howe, "My God! if a woman thinks her son may come to this, I don't blame her if she strangles him in infancy." At Newgate prison we were shown the fetters of Jack Sheppard and those of Dick Turpin. While we were on the premises the van arrived with fresh prisoners, and one of the officials appeared to jest with a young woman who had just been brought in, and who, it seemed, was already well known to the officers of justice. Dr. Howe did not fail to notice this with disapprobation. At one of the charity schools which we visited, Mr. Mann asked whether corporal punishment was used. "Commonly, only this," said the master, calling up a little girl, and snapping a bit of india rubber upon her neck in a manner which caused her to cry out. I need not say that the two gentlemen were indignant at this unprovoked infliction. In strong contrast to old-time Bridewell appeared the model prison of Pentonville, which we visited one day in company with Lord Morpeth and the Duke of Richmond. The system there was one of solitary confinement, much approved, if I remember rightly, by "my lord duke," who interested himself in showing us how perfectly it was carried out. Neither at meals nor at prayers could any prisoner see or be seen by a fellow prisoner. The open yard was divided by brick walls into compartments, in each of which a single felon, hooded, took his melancholy exercise. The prison was extremely neat. Dr. Howe at the time approved of the solitary discipline. I am not sure whether he ever came to think differently about it. At a dinner at Charles Dickens's we met his intimate friend, John Forster, a lawyer of some note, later known as the author of a biography of Dickens. When we arrived, Mr. Forster was amusing himself with a small spaniel which had been sent to Mr. Dickens by an admiring friend, who desired that the dog might bear the name of Boz. Somewhat impatient of such tributes, Mr. Dickens had named it Snittel Timbury. Of the dinner, I only remember that it was of the best so far as concerns food, and that later in the evening we listened to some comic songs, of one of which I recall the refrain; it ran thus:-- "Tiddy hi, tiddy ho, tiddy hi hum, Thus was it when Barbara Popkins was young." Mr. Forster invited us to dine at his chambers in the Inns of Court. Mr. and Mrs. Dickens were of the party, and also the painter Maclise, whose work was then highly spoken of. After dinner, while we were taking coffee in the sitting-room, I had occasion to speak to my husband, and addressed him as "darling." Thereupon Dickens slid down to the floor, and, lying on his back, held up one of his small feet, quivering with pretended emotion. "Did she call him 'darling'?" he cried. I was sorry indeed when the time came for us to leave London, and the more as one of the pleasures there promised us had been that of a breakfast with Charles Buller. Mr. Buller was the only person who at that time spoke to me of Thomas Carlyle, already so great a celebrity in America. He expressed great regard for Carlyle, who, he said, had formerly been his tutor. I was sorry to find in papers of Carlyle's, recently published, a rather ungracious mention of this brilliant young man, whose early death was much regretted in English society. From England we passed on to Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. In the inn at Llangollen we saw an engraving representing two aged ladies sitting opposite to each other, engaged in some friendly game. These were the once famous maids whose romantic elopement and companionship of many years gave the place some celebrity. In the burying-ground of the parish church we were shown their tomb, bearing an inscription not only commemorating the ladies themselves, but making mention also of the lifelong service of a faithful female attendant. Of my visit to Scotland, never repeated, I recall with interest Holyrood Palace, where the blood stain of Rizzio's murder was still shown on the wooden floor, the grave of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, and Stirling Castle, where, if I mistake not, the regalia of Robert Bruce was shown us. Among the articles composing it was a cameo of great beauty, surrounded by diamonds, and a crown set with large turquoises and sapphires. We passed a Sunday at Melrose, and attended an open-air service in the ruins of the ancient abbey. We saw little of Edinburgh besides its buildings, the society people of the place being mostly in _villeggiatura_. Mr. Sumner had given us letters to two of the law lords. One of these invited us to a seaside dinner at some little distance from town. The other entertained us at his city residence. Of greater interest was our tour in Ireland. Lord Morpeth had given us some introductions to friends in Dublin. At the same time he had written Mr. Sumner that he hoped Dr. Howe would not in any way become conspicuous as a friend to the Repeal measures which were then much in the public mind. This Repeal portended nothing less than the disruption of the existing political union between Ireland and England. The Dublin Corn Exchange was the place in which Repeal meetings were usually held. We attended one of these. My sister and I had seats in the gallery, which was reserved for ladies. Dr. Howe remained on the floor. This meeting had for one of its objects the acknowledgment of funds recently sent from America. The women who sat near us in the gallery found out, somehow, that we were Americans, and that an American gentleman had accompanied us to the meeting. They insisted upon making this known, and only forbore to do so at our earnest request. These friends were vehement in their praise of O'Connell, who was the principal speaker of the occasion. "He's the best man, the most religious!" they said; "he communes so often." I remember his appearance well, but can recall nothing of his address. He was tall, blond, and florid, with remarkable vivacity of speech and of expression. His popularity was certainly very great. While he was speaking, a gentleman entered and approached him. "How d'ye do, Tom Steele?" said O'Connell, shaking hands with the new-comer. The audience applauded loudly, Steele being an intimate friend and ally of O'Connell, and, like him, an earnest partisan of Repeal. Mr. George Ticknor, of Boston, had given us a letter to Miss Edgeworth, who resided at some distance from the city of Dublin. From her we soon received an invitation to luncheon, of which we gladly availed ourselves. Our hostess met us with a warm welcome. She had had some correspondence with Dr. Howe, and seemed much pleased to make his acquaintance. I remember her as a little old lady, with an old-fashioned cap and curls. She was very vivacious, and had much to say to Dr. Howe about Laura Bridgman. He in turn asked what she thought of the Repeal movement. She said in reply, "I don't understand what O'Connell really means." Some one present casually mentioned the new substitution of lard oil for whale oil for use in lamps. Miss Edgeworth said, "I hear that, in consequence of this new fashion, the whale cannot bear the sight of a pig." We met on this occasion a half-brother and a half-sister of Miss Edgeworth, much younger than herself. I think that they must have been twins, so closely did they resemble each other in appearance. At parting Miss Edgeworth gave each of us an etching of Irish peasants, the work of a friend of hers. On the one which she gave to my husband she wrote, "From a lover of truth to a lover of truth." After leaving Dublin we traveled north as far as the Giant's Causeway. The state of the country was very forlorn. The peasantry lived in wretched hovels of one or two rooms, the floor of mud, the pig taking his ease within doors, and the chickens roosting above the fireplace. Beggars were seen everywhere, and of the most persistent sort. In most places where we stopped for the night, accommodations were far from satisfactory. The safest dishes to order were stirabout and potatoes. My husband had received an urgent invitation from an Irish nobleman, Lord Walcourt, to visit him at his estate, which was in the south of Ireland. We found Lord Walcourt living very simply, with two young daughters and a baby son. He told my husband that when he first read a book of Fourier, he instantly went over to France to make the acquaintance of the author, whom he greatly admired. "If I had only read on to the end of the book," he said, "I should have seen that Fourier was already dead." He told us that Lady Walcourt spent much time in London or on the Continent, from which we gathered that country life in Ireland was not much to her taste. Dr. Howe and our host had a good deal of talk together concerning socialistic and other reforms. My sister and I found his housekeeping rather meagre. He was evidently a whole-souled man, but we learned later on that he was considered very eccentric. A visit to the poet Wordsworth was one of the brilliant visions that floated before my eyes at this time. Mr. Ticknor had kindly furnished us with an introduction to the great man, who was then at the height of his popularity. To criticise Wordsworth and to praise Byron were matters equally unpardonable in the London of that time, when London was, what it has ceased to be, the very heart and centre of the literary world. Of our journey to the lake country I can now recall little, save that its last stage, a drive of ten or more miles from the railway station to the poet's village, was rendered very comfortless by constant showers, and by an ill-broken horse which more than once threatened mischief. Arrived at the inn, my husband called at the Wordsworth residence, and left there his card and the letter of introduction. In return a note was soon sent, inviting us to take tea that evening with Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth. Our visit was a very disappointing one. The widowed daughter of our host had lost heavily by the failure of certain American securities. These losses formed the sole topic of conversation not only between Wordsworth and Dr. Howe, but also between the ladies of the family, my sister, and myself. The tea to which we had been bidden was simply a cup of tea, served without a table. We bore the harassing conversation as long as we could. The only remark of Wordsworth's which I brought away was this: "The misfortune of Ireland is that it was only a partially conquered country." When we took leave, the poet expressed his willingness to serve us during our stay in his neighborhood. We left it, however, on the following morning, without seeing him or his again. A little akin to this experience was that of a visit to the Bank of England, made at the invitation of one of its officers whom I had known and entertained in America. Another of the functionaries of the bank volunteered his services as a cicerone. He showed us among other things the treasure recently received from the Chinese government, in payment of a war indemnity. It was all in little blocks, parallelograms and horseshoes of gold and silver. An ingenious little machine was also shown us for the detection of light weight sovereigns. We paid for his attention by listening to many uncivil pleasantries regarding the financial condition of our own country. I still remember the insolent sneer with which this gentleman said, "By the bye, have you sold the Bank of the United States yet?" He was presumably ignorant of the real history of the bank, which had long ceased to be a government institution, President Jackson having annulled its charter and removed the government deposits. I mention these incidents because they were the only exceptions to the uniform kindness with which we were generally received, and to the homage paid to my husband as one of the most illustrious of modern philanthropists. Berlin would have been the next important stop in our journey but for an impediment which we had hardly anticipated. In the days of the French revolution of 1830, the Poles had made one of their oft-repeated struggles to regain national independence. General Lafayette was much interested in this movement, and at his request Dr. Howe undertook to convey to some of the Polish chiefs funds sent for their aid by parties in the United States. He succeeded in accomplishing this errand, but was arrested on the very night of his arrival in Berlin, and was only released by the intervention of our government, after a tedious imprisonment _au secret_. He was then sent with a military escort to the confines of Prussia with the warning to return no more. Thirteen years had elapsed since these events took place. Dr. Howe had meantime acquired a world-wide reputation as a philanthropist. The Poles had long been subdued, and Europe seemed to be free from all revolutionary threatenings. Through the intervention of Chevalier Bunsen, who was then Prussian ambassador at the Court of St. James, Dr. Howe applied for permission to revisit the kingdom of Prussia, but this was refused him. Some years after this time, Dr. Howe received from the Prussian government a gold medal in acknowledgment of his services to the blind. On weighing it, he found that the value of the gold was equal to the amount of money which he had been required to pay for his board in the prison at Berlin. In spite of the prohibition, we managed to see something of the Rhine, and journeyed through Switzerland and the Austrian Tyrol to Vienna, where we remained for some weeks. We here made the acquaintance of Madame von Walther and her daughter Theresa, afterward known as Madame Pulszky, the wife of one of Louis Kossuth's most valued friends. Arriving in Milan, we presented a letter of introduction from Miss Catharine Sedgwick to Count Confalonieri, after Silvio Pellico the most distinguished of the Italian patriots who underwent imprisonment in the Austrian fortress of Spielberg. His life had been spared only through the passionate pleading of his wife, who traveled day and night to throw herself at the feet of the Empress, imploring the commutation of the death sentence passed upon her husband. This heroic woman did not long survive the granting of her prayer. She died while her husband was still in prison; but the men who had been his companions in misfortune so revered her memory as always to lift their hats when they passed near her grave. Years had elapsed since the events of which I speak, and the count had married a second wife, a lively and attractive person, from whom, as from the count, we received many kind attentions. Dr. Howe was at this time called to Paris by some special business, and I remained a month in Milan with my sister. We greatly enjoyed the beauty of the cathedral and the hospitality of our new friends. Among these were the Marchese Arconati and his wife, a lady of much distinction, and in after years a friend of Margaret Fuller. Some delightful entertainments were given us by these and other friends, and I remember with pleasure an expedition to Monza, where the iron crown of the Lombard kingdom is still shown. Napoleon is said to have placed it on his head while he was still First Consul. Apropos of this, we saw in one of the Milanese mansions a seat on which Napoleon had once sat, and which, in commemoration of this, bore the inscription, "Egli ci ha dato l'unione" (He gave us unity). Alas! this precious boon was only secured to Italy many years later, and after much shedding of blood. Several of the former captives of Spielberg were living in Milan at this time. Of these I may mention Castiglia and the advocate Borsieri. Two others, Foresti and Albinola, I had often seen in New York, where they lived for many years, beloved and respected. In all of them, a perfectly childish delight in living seemed to make amends for the long and dreary years passed in prison. Every pulse-beat of freedom was a joy to them. Yet the iron had entered deeply into their souls. Natural leaders and men of promise, they had been taken out of the world of active life in the very flower of their youth and strength. The fortress in which they were confined was gloomy and desolate. For many months no books were allowed them, and in the end only books of religion, so called. They had begged for employment, and were given wool to knit stockings, and dirty linen rags to scrape for lint, with the sarcastic remark that to people of their benevolent disposition such work as this last should be most congenial. The time, they said, seemed endless in passing, but little when past, no events having diversified its dull blankness. When I listened to the conversation of these men, and saw Italy so bound hand and foot by Austrian and other tyrants, I felt only the hopeless chaos of the political outlook. Where should freedom come from? The logical bond of imprisonment seemed complete. It was sealed with four impregnable fortresses, and the great spiritual tyranny sat enthroned in the centre, and had its response in every other despotic centre of the globe. I almost ask to-day, "By what miracle was the great structure overthrown?" But the remembrance of this miracle forbids me to despair of any great deliverance, however desired and delayed. He who maketh the wrath of man to serve Him can make liberty blossom out of the very rod that the tyrant wields. The emotions with which people in general approach the historic sites of the world have been so often described as to make it needless for me to dwell upon my own. But I will mention the thrill of wonder which overcame me as we drove over the Campagna and caught the first glimpse of St. Peter's dome. Was it possible? Had I lived to come within sight of the great city, Mistress of the World? Like much else in my journeying, this appeared to me like something seen in a dream, scarcely to be apprehended by the bodily senses. The Rome that I then saw was mediæval in its aspect. A great gloom and silence hung over it. Coming to establish ourselves for the winter, we felt the pressure of many discomforts, especially that of the imperfect heating of houses. Our first quarters were in Torlonia's palace on the Piazza di Spagna. My husband found these gloomy and sunless, and was soon attracted by a small but comfortable apartment in Via San Nicolà da Tolentino, where we passed a part of the winter. There my husband undertook one day to make a real Christmas fire. In doing so he dragged the logs too far forward on the unsubstantial hearth, setting fire to the crossbeams which supported the floor. This was fortunately discovered before the danger became imminent, and the mischief was soon remedied. I was not allowed to hear about it until long afterwards. Dr. Howe went out early one morning, and did not return until late in the evening. Had I known at the time the reason of his absence, I should have felt great anxiety. He had gone to the post-office, but in doing so had passed some spot at which a sentry was stationed. He happened to be absorbed in his own thoughts, and did not notice the warning given. The sentry seized him, and Dr. Howe began to beat him over the head. A crowd soon gathered, and my husband was arrested and taken to the guard-house. The situation was a grave one, but the doctor immediately sent for the American consul, George Washington Greene. With the aid of this friendly official the necessary explanations were made and accepted, and the prisoner was liberated. The consul just mentioned was a cousin of my father and a grandson of the famous General Nathanael Greene of the Revolution. He was much at home in Roman society, and through him we had access to the principal houses in which were given the great entertainments of the season. The first of these that I attended appeared to me a melancholy failure, judging by our American ideas of a pleasant evening party. The great ladies sat very quietly in the salon of reception, and the gentlemen spoke to them in an undertone. There was none of the joyous effusion with which even a "few friends" meet on similar occasions in Boston or New York. Exceeding stiffness was obviously the "good form" of the occasion. A ball given by the banker prince, Torlonia, presented a more animated scene. The beautiful princess of the house, then in the bloom of her youth, was conspicuous among the dancers. Her fair head was encircled by a fine tiara of diamonds. She was by birth a Colonna. The attraction of the great fortune was said to have led to her alliance with the prince, who was equally her superior in age and her inferior in rank. I was told that he had presented his bride with the pearls formerly belonging to the shrine of the Madonna of Loretto, and I remember to have seen her once in evening dress, adorned with pearls of enormous size, which were probably those in question. I thought her quite as beautiful on another occasion, when she wore a simple gown of _écru_ silk, with a necklace of carved coral beads. This was at a reception given at the charity school of San Michele, where a play was performed by the pupils of the institution. The theme of the drama was the worship of the golden calf by the Israelites and the overthrow of the idol by Moses. The industrial school of San Michele, like every other institution in the Rome of that time, was entirely under ecclesiastical control. If I remember rightly, Monsignore Morecchini had to do with its management. This interesting man stood at the time at the head of the administration of public charities. He called one day at our lodgings, and I had the pleasure of listening to a long conversation between him and my husband, regarding chiefly the theme in which both gentlemen were most deeply interested, the education of the working classes. I was present, some time later, at a meeting of the Academy of St. Luke, at which the same monsignore made an address of some length, and with his own hands presented the medals awarded to successful artists. One of these was given to an Italian lady, who appeared in the black costume and lace veil which are still _de rigueur_ at all functions of the papal court. I remember that the monsignore delivered his address with a sort of rhythmic intoning, not unlike the singsong of the Quaker preaching of fifty years ago. Of the matter of his discourse I can recall only one sentence, in which he mentioned as one of the boasts of Rome the fact that she possessed _la maggiore basilica del mondo_, "the largest basilica in the world." The Church of St. Peter, like that of Santa Maria Maggiore, is indeed modeled after the design of the basilicas or courts of justice of ancient Rome, and Italians are apt to speak of it as "la basilica di san Pietro." To another monsignore, Baggs by name, and Bishop of Pella, we owed our presentation to Pope Gregory Sixteenth, the immediate predecessor of Pope Pius Ninth. Our cousin the consul, George W. Greene, went with us to the reception accorded us. Papal etiquette was not rigorous in those days. It only required that we should make three genuflections, simply bows, as we approached the spot where the Pope stood, and three more in retiring, as from a royal presence, without turning our backs. Monsignore Baggs, after presenting my husband, said to him, "Dr. Howe, you should tell his Holiness about the little blind girl [Laura Bridgman] whom you educated." The Pope remarked that he had been assured that the blind were able to distinguish colors by the touch. Dr. Howe said that he did not believe this. His opinion was that if a blind person could distinguish a stuff of any particular color, it must be through some effect of the dye upon the texture of the cloth. The Pope said that he had heard there had been few Americans in Europe during the past season, and had been told that they had been kept at home by the want of money, for which he made the familiar sign with his thumb and forefinger. Apropos of I forget what, he remarked, "Chi mi sente dare la benedizione del balcone di san Pietro intende ch'io non sono un giovinotto," "Whoever hears me give the benediction from the balcony of St. Peter's will understand that I am not a youth." The audience concluded, the Pope obligingly turned his back upon us, as if to examine something lying on the table which stood behind him, and thus spared us the inconvenience of bowing, curtsying, and retiring backward. I remember to have heard of a great floral festival held not long after this time at some village near Rome. Among other exhibits appeared a medallion of his Holiness all done in flowers, the nose being made rather bright with carnations. The Pope visited the show, and on seeing the medallion exclaimed, laughing, "Son brutto da vero, manon cosi", "I am ugly indeed, but not like this." The experience of our winter in Rome could not be repeated at this day of the world. The Rome of fifty-five years ago was altogether mediæval in its aspect. The great inclosure within its walls was but sparsely inhabited. Convent gardens and villas of the nobility occupied much space. The city attracted mostly students and lovers of art. The studios of painters and sculptors were much visited, and wealthy patrons of the arts gave orders for many costly works. Such glimpses as were afforded of Roman society had no great attraction other than that of novelty for persons accustomed to reasonable society elsewhere. The strangeness of titles, the glitter of jewels, amused for a time the traveler, who was nevertheless glad to return to a world in which ceremony was less dominant and absolute. Among the frequent visitors at our rooms were the sculptor Crawford, Luther Terry, and Freeman, well known then and since as painters of merit. Between the first named of these and the elder of my two sisters an attachment sprang up, which culminated in marriage. Another artist of repute, Törmer by name, often passed the evening with us. He was somewhat deformed, and our man-servant always announced him as "Quel gobbetto, signor," "That hunchback, sir." The months slipped away very rapidly, and the early spring brought the dear gift of another life to gladden and enlarge our own. My dearest, eldest child was born at Palazzetto Torlonia, on the 12th of March, 1844. At my request, the name of Julia Romana was given to her. As an infant she possessed remarkable beauty, and her radiant little face appeared to me to reflect the lovely forms and faces which I had so earnestly contemplated before her birth. Of the months preceding this event I cannot at this date give any very connected account. The experience was at once a dream and a revelation. My mind had been able to anticipate something of the achievements of human thought, but of the patient work of the artist I had not had the smallest conception. We visited, one day, the catacombs of St. Calixtus with a party of friends, among whom was the then celebrated Padre Machi, an ecclesiastic who was considered a supreme authority in this department of historic research. Acting as our guide, he pointed out to us the burial-places of martyrs, distinguished by the outline of a palm rudely impressed on the tufa out of which the various graves have been hollowed. We explored with him the little chapels which bear witness to the ancient holding of religious services in this dark underground city of the dead. In these chapels the pictured emblem of the fish is often met with. Scholars do not need to be reminded that the Greek word [Greek: ichthus] was adopted by the early Christians as an anagram of the name and title of their leader. Each of us carried a lighted taper, and we were careful to keep well together, mindful of the danger of losing ourselves in the depths of these vast caverns. A story was told us of a party which was thus lost, and could never be found again, although a band of music was sent after them in the hope of bringing them into safety. While we were giving heed to the instructive discourse of Padre Machi, a mischievous youth of the company came near to me and said in a low voice, "Has it occurred to you that if our guide should suddenly die here of apoplexy, we should never be able to find our way out?" This thought was dreadful indeed, and I confess that I was very thankful when at last we emerged from the depths into the blessed daylight. Among the wonderful sights of that winter, I recall an evening visit to the sculpture gallery of the Vatican, where the statues were shown us by torchlight. I had not as yet made acquaintance with those marble shapes, which were rendered so lifelike by the artful illumination that when I saw them afterward in the daylight, it seemed to me that they had died. My husband visited one day the Castle of St. Angelo, which was then not only a fortress but also a prison for political offenders. As he passed through one of the corridors, a young man from an inner room or cell rushed out and addressed him, apparently in great distress of mind. He cried, "For the love of God, sir, try to help me! I was taken from my home a fortnight since, I know not why, and was brought here, where I am detained, utterly ignorant of the grounds of my arrest and imprisonment." This incident disturbed my husband very much. Of course, he could do nothing to aid the unfortunate man. We were invited, one evening, to attend what the Romans still call an "accademia," _i. e._ a sort of literary club or association. It was held in what appeared to be a public hall, with a platform on which were seated those about to take part in the exercises of the evening. Among these were two cardinals, one of whom read aloud some Greek verses, the other a Latin discourse, both of which were applauded. After or before these, I cannot remember which, came a recitation from a once famous improvisatrice, Rosa Taddei. She is mentioned by Sismondi in one of his works as a young person, most wonderful in her performance. She was now a woman of middle age, wearing a sober gown and cap. The poem which she read was on the happiness to be derived from a family of adopted children. I remember its conclusion. He who should give himself to the care of other people's children would be entitled to say:-- "Formai questa famiglia Sol colla mia virtu." "I built myself this family solely by my own merit." The performances concluded with a satirical poem given by a layman, and describing the indignation of an elegant ecclesiastic at the visit of a man in poor and shabby clothes. His complaint is answered by a friend, who remarks:-- "La vostra eccellenza Vorrebbe tutti i poverelli ricchi." "Your Excellency would have every poor fellow rich." The presence of the celebrated phrenologist, George Combe, in Rome at this time added much to Dr. Howe's enjoyment of the winter, and to mine. His wife was a daughter of the great actress, Mrs. Siddons, and was a person of excellent mind and manners. Observing that she always appeared in black, I asked one day whether she was in mourning for a near relative. She replied, rather apologetically, that she adopted this dress on account of its convenience, and that English ladies, in traveling, often did so. I remember that Fanny Kemble, who was a cousin of Mrs. Combe, once related the following anecdote to Dr. Howe and myself: "Cecilia [Mrs. Combe] had grown up in her mother's shadow, for Mrs. Siddons was to the last such a social idol as to absorb the notice of people wherever she went, leaving little attention to be bestowed upon her daughter. This was rather calculated to sour the daughter's disposition, and naturally had that effect." Mrs. Kemble then spoke of a visit which she had made at her cousin's house after her marriage to Mr. Combe. In taking leave, she could not refrain from exclaiming, "Oh, Cecilia, how you have improved!" to which Mrs. Combe replied, "Who could help improving when living with perfection?" Dr. Howe and Mr. Combe sometimes visited the galleries in company, viewing the works therein contained in the light of their favorite theory. I remember having gone with them through the great sculpture hall of the Vatican, listening with edification to their instructive conversation. They stood for some time before the well-known head of Zeus, the contour and features of which appeared to them quite orthodox, according to the standard of phrenology. In this last my husband was rather an enthusiastic believer. He was apt, in judging new acquaintances, to note closely the shape of the head, and at one time was unwilling even to allow a woman servant to be engaged until, at his request, she had removed her bonnet, giving him an opportunity to form his estimate of her character or, at least, of her natural proclivities. In common with Horace Mann, he held Mr. Combe to be one of the first intelligences of the age, and esteemed his work on "The Constitution of Man" as one of the greatest of human productions. When, in the spring of 1844, I left Rome, in company with my husband, my sisters, and my baby, it seemed like returning to the living world after a long separation from it. In spite of all its attractions, I was glad to stand once more face to face with the belongings of my own time. We journeyed first to Naples, which I saw with delight, thence by steamer to Marseilles, and by river boat and diligence to Paris. My husband's love of the unusual must, I think, have prompted him to secure passage for our party on board the little steamer which carried us well on our way to Paris. Its small cabin was without sleeping accommodations of any kind. As the boat always remained in some port overnight, Dr. Howe found it possible to hire mattresses for us, which, alas, were taken away at daybreak, when our journey was resumed. Of the places visited on our way I will mention only Avignon, a city of great historic interest, retaining little in the present day to remind the traveler of its former importance. My husband here found a bricabrac shop, containing much curious furniture of ancient date. Among its contents were two cabinets of carved wood, which so fascinated him that, finding himself unable to decide in favor of either, he concluded to purchase both of them. The dealer of whom he bought them promised to have them packed so solidly that they might be thrown out of an upper window without sustaining any injury, adding, "Et de plus, j'écrirai là dessus 'très fragile'" (And in addition, I will mark it "very fragile"), which amused my husband. He had justified this purchase to me by reminding me that we should presently have our house to furnish. Indeed, the two cabinets proved an excellent investment, and are as handsome as ever, after much wear and tear of other household goods. We made some stay in Paris, of which city I have chronicled elsewhere my first impressions. Among these was the pain of hearing a lecture from Philarète Chasles, in which he spoke most disparagingly of American literature, and of our country in general. He said that we had contributed nothing of value to the world of letters. Yet we had already given it the writings of Irving, Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Poe. It is true that these authors were little, if at all, known in France at that time; but the speaker, proposing to instruct the public, ought to have informed himself concerning that whereof he assumed to speak with knowledge. Dr. Howe attended one of the official receptions of M. Guizot, who was prime minister at this time. I tried to persuade him to wear the decorations given him by the Greek government in recognition of his services in the Greek revolution, but he refused to do so, thinking such ornaments unfitting a republican. I had the pleasure of witnessing one of the last performances of the celebrated _danseuse_, Madame Taglioni. She it was of whom one of the same profession said, "Nous autres, nous sautons et nous tombons, mais elle monte et elle descend." The ballet was "La Sylphide," in which she had achieved one of her earliest triumphs. Remembering this, Dr. Howe found her somewhat changed for the worse. I admired her very much, and her dancing appeared to me characterized by a perfection and finish which placed her beyond competition with more recent favorites. I was fortunate also in seeing Mademoiselle Rachel in "La Czarina," a part which did not give full scope for her great talent. The demerits of the play, however, could not wholly overcloud the splendor of her unique personality, which at moments electrified the audience. Our second visit to England, in the autumn of the year 1844, on the way back to our own country, was less brilliant and novel than our first, but scarcely less in interest. We had received several invitations to visit friends at their country residences, and these opened to us the most delightful aspect of English hospitality. The English are nowhere so much at home as in the country, and they willingly make their visitors at home also. Our first visit was at Atherstone, then the residence of Charles Nolte Bracebridge, one of the best specimens of an English country gentleman of the old school. His wife was a very accomplished gentlewoman, skillful alike with pencil and with needle, and possessed of much literary culture. We met here, among other guests, Mr. Henry Reeve, well known in the literary society of that time. Mrs. Bracebridge told us much of Florence Nightingale, then about twenty-four years old, already considered a person of remarkable character. Our hosts had visited Athens, and sympathized with my husband in his views regarding the Greeks. They were also familiar with the farther East, and had brought cedars from Mount Lebanon and Arab horses from I know not where. Atherstone was not far from Coventry. Mr. Bracebridge claimed descent from Lady Godiva, and informed me that a descendant of Peeping Tom of Coventry was still to be found in that place. He himself was lord of the manor, but had neither son nor daughter to succeed him. He told me some rather weird stories, one of which was that he had once waked in the night to see a female figure seated by his fireside. I think that the ghost was that of an old retainer of the family, or possibly an ancestress. An old prophecy also had been fulfilled with regard to his property. This was that when a certain piece of land should pass from the possession of the family, a small island on the estate would cease to exist. The property was sold, and the island somehow became attached to the mainland, and as an island ceased to exist. My two sisters accompanied Dr. Howe and myself in the round of visits which I am now recording. They were young women of great personal attraction, the elder of the two an unquestioned beauty, the younger gifted with an individual charm of loveliness. They were much admired among our new friends. Thomas Appleton followed us at one of the houses in which we stayed. He told me, long afterwards, that he was asked at this time whether there were many young ladies in America as charming as the Misses Ward. Mrs. Bracebridge in speaking to me of Florence Nightingale as a young person likely to make an exceptional record, told me that her mother rather feared this, and would have preferred the usual conventional life for her daughter. The father was a pronounced Liberal, and a Unitarian. While we were still at Atherstone, we received an invitation to pass a few days with the Nightingale family at Emblee, and betook ourselves thither. We found a fine mansion of Elizabethan architecture, and a cordial reception. The family consisted of father and mother and two daughters, both born during their parents' residence in Italy, and respectively christened Parthenope and Florence, one having first seen the light in the city whose name she bore, the other in Naples. [Illustration: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE _From a photograph._] Of the two, Parthenope was the elder; she was not handsome, but was _piquante_ and entertaining. Florence, the younger sister, was rather elegant than beautiful; she was tall and graceful of figure, her countenance mobile and expressive, her conversation most interesting. Having heard much of Dr. Howe as a philanthropist, she resolved to consult him upon a matter which she already had at heart. She accordingly requested him one day to meet her on the following morning, before the hour for the family breakfast. He did so, and she opened the way to the desired conference by saying, "Dr. Howe, if I should determine to study nursing, and to devote my life to that profession, do you think it would be a dreadful thing?" "By no means," replied my husband. "I think that it would be a very good thing." So much and no more of the conversation Dr. Howe repeated to me. We soon heard that Miss Florence was devoting herself to the study of her predilection; and when, years after this time, the Crimean war broke out, we were among the few who were not astonished at the undertaking which made her name world famous. Just before our final embarkation for America, we passed a few days with the same friends at Lea Hurst, a pretty country seat near Malvern. There we met the well-known historian, Henry Hallam, celebrated also as the father of Tennyson's lamented Arthur. "Martin Chuzzlewit" had recently appeared, and I remember that Mr. Hallam read aloud with much amusement the famous transcendental episode beginning, "To be introduced to a Pogram by a Hominy." Mr. Hallam asked me whether talk of this sort was ever heard in transcendental circles in America. I was obliged to confess that the caricature was not altogether without foundation. Soon after reaching London for the second time, we were invited to visit Dr. and Mrs. Fowler at Salisbury. The doctor was much interested in anthropology and kindred topics, and my husband found in him a congenial friend. The house was a modest one, but the housekeeping was generous and tasteful. As Salisbury was a cathedral town, the prominent people of the place naturally belonged to the Anglican Church. At the Fowlers' hospitable board we met the bishop, the dean, the rector, and the curate. I attended several services in the beautiful cathedral, and enjoyed very much a visit to Stonehenge, which we made in company with our hosts, in a carriage drawn by two small mules. I inquired why they used mules in preference to horses, and was told that it was to avoid the tax imposed upon the latter. Stonehenge was in the district of Old Sarum, once a rotten borough, as certain places in England were termed which, with little or no population, had yet the right to be represented in Parliament. Dr. Fowler was familiar with the ancient history of the place, which, as we saw it, contained nothing but an area of desolate sand. The wonderful Druidical stones of Stonehenge commanded our attention. They are too well known to need description. Our host could throw no light upon their history, which belongs, one must suppose, with that of kindred constructions in Brittany. Bishop Denison, at the time of our visit, was still saddened by the loss of a beloved wife. He invited us to a dinner at which his sister, Miss Denison, presided. The dean and his wife were present, the Fowlers, and one or two other guests. To my surprise, the bishop gave me his arm and conducted me to the table, where he seated me on his right. Mrs. Fowler afterwards remarked to me, "How charming it was of the bishop to take you in to dinner. As an American you have no rank, and are therefore exempt from all questions of precedence." Mrs. Fowler once described to me an intimate little dinner with the poet Rogers, for which he had promised to provide just enough, and no more. Each dish exactly matched the three convives. Half of a chicken sufficed for the roast. As his usual style of entertainment was very elegant, he probably derived some amusement from this unnecessary economy. We left Salisbury with regret, Dr. Fowler giving Dr. Howe a parting injunction to visit Rotherhithe workhouse, where he himself had seen an old woman who was blind, deaf, and crippled. My husband made this visit, and wrote an account of it to Dr. Fowler.[2] He read this to me before sending it. In the mischief of which I was then full to overflowing, I wrote a humorous travesty of Dr. Howe's letter in rhyme, but when I showed it to him, I was grieved to see how much he seemed pained at my frivolity. [Footnote 2: This old woman was one of a number of trebly-afflicted persons--deaf, dumb, and blind--whom Dr. Howe found time to visit on this wedding trip, beginning their instruction himself in some cases, and interesting persons in the neighborhood in carrying it on. In his report of the Institution for the Blind, written after his return from Europe in 1844, he gives an account of these cases, closing with an eloquent appeal in behalf of these neglected and suffering members of the human family. "And here the question will recur to you (for I doubt not it has occurred a dozen times already), Can nothing be done to disinter this human soul? It is late, but perhaps not too late. The whole neighborhood would rush to save this woman if she were buried alive by the caving in of a pit, and labor with zeal until she were dug out. Now if there were one who had as much patience as zeal, and who, having carefully observed how a little child learns language, would attempt to lead her gently through the same course, he might possibly awaken her to a consciousness of her immortal nature. The chance is small indeed; but with a smaller chance they would have dug desperately for her in the pit; and is the life of the soul of less import than that of the body? "It is to be feared that there are many others whose cases are not known out of their own families, who are regarded as beyond the reach of help, and who are therefore left in their awful desolation. "This ought not to be, either for the good of the sufferers, or of those about them. It is hardly possible to conceive a case in which some improvement could not be effected by patient perseverance; and the effort ought to be made in every one of them. "The sight of any being, in human shape, left to brutish ignorance, is always demoralizing to the beholders. There floats not upon the stream of life any wreck of humanity so utterly shattered and crippled that its signals of distress should not challenge attention and command assistance."] Dear Sir, I went south As far as Portsmouth, And found a most charming old woman, Delightfully void Of all that's enjoyed By the animal vaguely called human. She has but one jaw, Has teeth like a saw, Her ears and her eyes I delight in: The one could not hear Tho' a cannon were near, The others are holes with no sight in. Her cinciput lies Just over her eyes, Not far from the bone parietal; The crown of her head, Be it vulgarly said, Is shaped like the back of a beetle. Destructiveness great Combines with conceit In the form of this wonderful noddle, But benev'lence, you know, And a large _philopro_ Give a great inclination to coddle. And so on. CHAPTER VIII FIRST YEARS IN BOSTON In the autumn of 1844 we returned from our wedding journey, and took up our abode in the near neighborhood of the city of Boston, of which at intervals I had already enjoyed some glimpses. These had shown me Margaret Fuller, holding high communion with her friends in her well-remembered conversations; Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was then breaking ground in the field of his subsequent great reputation; and many another who has since been widely heard of. I count it as one of my privileges to have listened to a single sermon from Dr. Channing, with whom I had some personal acquaintance. I can remember only a few passages. Its theme must have been the divine love; for Dr. Channing said that God loved black men as well as white men, poor men as well as rich men, and bad men as well as good men. This doctrine was quite new to me, but I received it gladly. The time was one in which the Boston community, small as it then was, exhibited great differences of opinion, especially regarding the new transcendentalism and the anti-slavery agitation, which were both held much in question by the public at large. While George Ripley, moved by a fresh interpretation of religious duty, was endeavoring to institute a phalanstery at Brook Farm, the caricatures of Christopher Cranch gave great amusement to those who were privileged to see them. One of these represented Margaret Fuller driving a winged team attached to a chariot on which was inscribed the name of her new periodical, "The Dial," while the Rev. Andrews Norton regarded her with holy horror. Another illustrated a passage from Mr. Emerson's essay on Nature--"I play upon myself. I am my own music"--by depicting an individual with a nose of preternatural length, pierced with holes like a flageolet, upon which his fingers sought the intervals. Yet Mr. Cranch belonged by taste and persuasion among the transcendentalists. As my earliest relations in Boston were with its recognized society, I naturally gave some heed to the views therein held regarding the transcendental people. What I liked least in these last, when I met them, was a sort of jargon which characterized their speech. I had been taught to speak plain and careful English, and though always a student of foreign languages, I had never thought fit to mix their idioms with those of my native tongue. Apropos of this, I remember that the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck once said to me of Margaret Fuller, "That young lady does not speak the same language that I do,--I cannot understand her." Mr. Emerson's English was as new to me as that of any of his contemporaries; but in his case I soon felt that the thought was as novel as the language, and that both marked an epoch in literary history. The grandiloquence which was common at that time now appears to me to have been the natural expression of an exhilaration of mind which carried the speaker or writer beyond the bounds of commonplace speech. The intellect of the time had outgrown the limits of Puritan belief. The narrow literalism, the material and positive view of matters highly spiritual, abstract, and indeterminate, which had been handed down from previous generations, had become irreligious to the foremost minds of that day. They had no choice but to enter the arena as champions of the new interpretation of life which the cause of truth imperatively demanded. I speak now of the transcendental movement as I had opportunity to observe it in Boston. Let us not ignore the fact that it was a world movement. The name seems to have been borrowed from the German phraseology, in which the philosophy of Kant was termed "the transcendental philosophy." More than this, the breath which kindled among us this new flame of hope and aspiration came from the same source. For this was the period of Germany's true glory. Her intellectual radiance outshone and outlived the military meteor which for a brief moment obscured all else to human vision. The great vitality of the German nation, the indefatigable research of its learned men, its wholesome balance of sense and spirit, all made themselves widely felt, and infused fresh blood into veins impoverished by ascetic views of life. Its philosophers were apostles of freedom, its poets sang the joy of living, not the bitterness of sin and death. These good things were brought to us piecemeal, by translations, by disciples. Dr. Hedge published an English rendering of some of the masterpieces of German prose. Longfellow gave us lovely versions of many poets. John S. Dwight produced his ever precious volume of translations of the minor poems of Goethe and Schiller. Margaret Fuller translated Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe." Carlyle wrote his wonderful essays, inspired by the new thought, and adding to it daring novelty of his own. The whole is matter of history now, quite beyond the domain of personal reminiscence. I have spoken of the transcendentalists and the abolitionists as if they had been quite distinct bodies of believers. Reflecting more deeply, I feel that both were features of the new movement. In the transcendentalists the enthusiasm of emancipated thought was paramount, while the abolitionists followed the vision of emancipated humanity. The lightning flash which illuminated the heaven of the poets and philosophers fell also on the fetters of the slave, and showed them to the thinking world as a disgrace no longer to be tolerated by civilized peoples. I recall my first years of life in Boston as nearly touched by the sense of the unresolved discords which existed in its society. My husband was much concerned in some of the changes of front which took place at this time. An ardent friend both of Horace Mann and of Charles Sumner, he shared the educational views of the first and the political convictions of the second. In the year 1845, having been elected to serve on the Boston School Board, Dr. Howe instituted so drastic a research into the condition of the public schools as to draw upon himself much animadversion and some ill-will. Horace Mann, on the other hand, characterized this work as "one which only Sam Howe or an angel could have done." Dr. Howe and Mr. Mann, during their travels in Europe, had become much interested in the system of training, new at that time, by which deaf-mutes were enabled to use vocal speech, and to read on the lips the words of those who addressed them. Soon after his return from Europe, Mr. Mann published a report in which he dwelt much on the great benefit of this new departure in the education of deaf-mutes, and advocated the introduction of the system into our own schools. Dr. Howe expressed the same views, and the two gentlemen were held up to the public as disturbers of its peace. My husband disapproved of the use of signs, which, up to that time, had figured largely in the instruction of American deaf-mutes, and in their intercourse with each other. He felt that the use of language was an important condition of definite thought, and hailed the new powers conferred by the European system as a liberation of its pupils from the greatest of their disabilities, the privation of direct intercourse with their fellow creatures. His advice, privately sought and given, induced a number of parents to undertake themselves the education of their deaf children, or, at least, to have that education conducted at home, and under their own supervision. In after years such parents and children were forward in expressing their gratitude for the advice given and followed. The Horace Mann school in Boston, and the Clarke school in Northampton, attest the perseverance of the advocates of the new method of instruction, and their ultimate success. I had formerly seen Boston as a petted visitor from another city would be apt to see it. I had found it altogether hospitable, and rather eager to entertain a novelty. It was another matter to see it with its consideration cap on, pondering whether to like or mislike a new claimant to its citizenship. I had known what we may term the Boston of the Forty, if New York may be called the city of the Four Hundred. I was now to make acquaintance with quite another city,--with the Boston of the teachers, of the reformers, of the cranks, and also--of the apostles. Wondering and floundering among these new surroundings, I was often at a loss to determine what I should follow, what relinquish. I endeavored to enter reasonably into the functions and amusements of general society, and at the same time to profit by the new resources of intellectual life which opened out before me. One offense against fashion I would commit: I would go to hear Theodore Parker preach. My society friends shook their heads. "What is Julia Howe trying to find at Parker's meeting?" asked one of these one day in my presence. "Atheism," replied the lady thus addressed. I said, "Not atheism, but a theism." The change had already been great, from my position as a family idol and "the superior young lady" of an admiring circle to that of a wife overshadowed for the time by the splendor of her husband's reputation. This I had accepted willingly. But the change from my life of easy circumstances and brilliant surroundings to that of the mistress of a suite of rooms in the Institution for the Blind at South Boston was much greater. The building was two miles distant from the city proper, the only public conveyance being an omnibus which ran but once in two hours. My friends were residents of Boston, or of places still more remote from my dwelling-place, and South Boston was then, as it has continued to be, a distinctly unfashionable suburb. My husband did not desire that I should undertake any work in connection with the Institution under his charge. I found its teachers pleasant neighbors, and was glad to have Laura Bridgman continue to be a member of the household. Dr. Howe had a great fancy for a piece of property which lay very near the Institution. In due time he purchased it. We found an ancient cottage on the place, and made it habitable by the addition of one or two rooms. Our new domain comprised several acres of land, and my husband took great pleasure in laying out an extensive fruit and flower garden, and in building a fine hothouse. We removed to this abode on a lovely summer day; and as I entered the grounds I involuntarily exclaimed, "This is green peace!" Somehow, the nickname, jocosely given, remained in use. The estate still stands on legal records as "The Green Peace Estate." Friends would sometimes ask us, "How are you getting on at Green Beans--is that the name?" My husband was so much attached to this place that when, after a residence of many years in the city, he returned thither to spend the last years of his life, he spoke of it as "Paradise Regained." It partly amuses, and partly saddens me to recall, at this advanced period of my life, the altogether mistaken views which I once held regarding certain sets of people in Boston, of whom I really knew little or nothing. The veil of prejudgment through which I saw them was not, indeed, of my own weaving, but I was content to dislike them at a distance, until circumstances compelled a nearer and a truer view. I had supposed the abolitionists to be men and women of rather coarse fibre, abounding in cheap and easy denunciation, and seeking to lay rash hands on the complex machinery of government and of society. My husband, who largely shared their opinions, had no great sympathy with some of their methods. Theodore Parker held them in great esteem, and it was through him that one of my strongest imaginary dislikes vanished as though it had never been. The object of this dislike was William Lloyd Garrison, whom I had never seen, but of whose malignity of disposition I entertained not the smallest doubt. [Illustration: THE HOME AT SOUTH BOSTON _From a painting in the possession of M. Anagnos._] It happened that I met him at one of Parker's Sunday evenings at home. I soon felt that this was not the man for whom I had cherished so great a distaste. Gentle and unassuming in manner, with a pleasant voice, a benevolent countenance, and a sort of glory of sincerity in his ways and words, I could only wonder at the falsehoods that I had heard and believed concerning him. The Parkers had then recently received the gift of a piano from members of their congregation. A friend began to play hymn tunes upon it, and those of us who could sing gathered in little groups to read from the few hymn-books which were within reach. Dr. Howe presently looked up and saw me singing from the same book with Mr. Garrison. He told me afterward that few things in the course of his life had surprised him more. From this time forth the imaginary Garrison ceased to exist for me. I learned to respect and honor the real one more and more, though as yet little foreseeing how glad I should be one day to work with and under him. The persons most frequently named as prominent abolitionists, in connection with Mr. Garrison, were Maria Weston Chapman and Wendell Phillips. Mrs. Chapman presided with much energy and grace over the anti-slavery bazaars which were held annually in Boston through a long space of years. For this labor of love she was somewhat decried, and the _sobriquet_ of "Captain Chapman" was given her in derision. She was handsome and rather commanding in person, endowed also with an excellent taste in dress. I cannot remember that she ever spoke in public, but her presence often adorned the platform at anti-slavery meetings. She was the editor of the "Liberty Bell," and was a valued friend and ally of Wendell Phillips. Of Mr. Phillips I must say that I at first regarded him through the same veil of prejudice which had caused me so greatly to misconceive the character of Mr. Garrison. I was a little softened by hearing that at one of the bazaars he had purchased a copy of my first volume of poems, with the remark, "She doesn't like me, but I like her poetry." This naturally led me to suppose that he must have some redeeming traits of character. I had not then heard him speak, and I did not wish to hear him; but I met him, also, at one of the Parker Sunday evenings, and, after a pleasant episode of conversation, I found myself constrained to take him out of my chamber of dislikes. Mr. Phillips was entitled, by birth and education, to an unquestioned position in Boston society. His family name was of the best. He was a graduate both of Harvard College and of its Law School. No ungentlemanly act had ever tarnished his fame. His offense was that, at a critical moment, he had espoused an unpopular cause,--one which was destined, in less than a score of years, so to divide the feeling of our community as to threaten the very continuance of our national life. Oh, to have been in Faneuil Hall on that memorable day when the pentecostal flame first visited him; when he leaped to the platform, all untrained for such an encounter, and his eloquent soul uttered itself in protest against a low and sordid acquiescence in the claims of oppression and tyranny! In that hour he was sealed as an apostle of the higher law, to whose advocacy he sacrificed his professional and social interests. The low-browed, chain-bound slave had now the best orator in America to plead his cause. It was the beginning of the end. Mr. Phillips, without doubt, sometimes used intemperate language. I myself have at times dissented quite sharply from some of his statements. Nevertheless, a man who rendered such great service to the community as he did has a right to be judged by his best, not by his least meritorious performance. He was for years an unwelcome prophet of evil to come. Society at large took little heed of his warning; but when the evil days did come, he became a counselor "good at need." I recall now a scene in Tremont Temple just before the breaking out of our civil war. An anti-slavery meeting had been announced, and a scheme had been devised to break it up. As I entered I met Mrs. Chapman, who said, "These are times in which anti-slavery people must stand by each other." On the platform were seated a number of the prominent abolitionists. Mr. Phillips was to be the second speaker, but when he stepped forward to address the meeting a perfect hubbub arose in the gallery. Shrieks, howls, and catcalls resounded. Again and again the great orator essayed to speak. Again and again his voice was drowned by the general uproar. I sat near enough to hear him say, with a smile, "Those boys in the gallery will soon tire themselves out." And so, indeed, it befell. After a delay which appeared to some of us endless, the noise subsided, and Wendell Phillips, still in the glory of his strength and manly beauty, stood up before the house, and soon held all present spellbound by the magic of his speech. The clear silver ring of his voice carried conviction with it. From head to foot, he seemed aflame with the passion of his convictions. He used the simplest English, and spoke with such distinctness that his lowest tones, almost a whisper, could be heard throughout the large hall. Yerrinton, the only man who could report Wendell Phillips's speeches, once told my husband that it was like reporting chain lightning. On the occasion of which I speak, the unruly element was quieted once for all, and the further proceedings of the meeting suffered no interruption. The mob, however, did not at once abandon its intention of doing violence to the great advocate. Soon after the time just mentioned Dr. Howe attended an evening meeting, at the close of which a crowd of rough men gathered outside the public entrance, waiting for Phillips to appear, with ugly threats of the treatment which he should receive at their hands. The doors presently opened, and Phillips came forth, walking calmly between Mrs. Chapman and Lydia Maria Child. Not a hand was raised, not a threat was uttered. The crowd gave way in silence, and the two brave women parted from Phillips at the door of his own house. My husband spoke of this as one of the most impressive sights that he had ever witnessed. His report of it moved me to send word to Mr. Phillips that, in case of any recurrence of such a disturbance, I should be proud to join his body-guard. Mr. Phillips was one of the early advocates of woman suffrage. I remember that I was sitting in Theodore Parker's reception room conversing with him when Wendell Phillips, quite glowing with enthusiasm, came in to report regarding the then recent woman's rights convention at Worcester. Of the doings there he spoke in warm eulogy. He complained that Horace Mann had written a non-committal letter, in reply to the invitation sent him to take part in the convention. Ralph Waldo Emerson, he said, had excused himself from attendance on the ground that he was occupied in writing a life of Margaret Fuller, which, he hoped, would be considered as a service in the line of the objects of the meeting. This convention was held in October of the year 1850, before the claims of women to political efficiency had begun to occupy the attention and divide the feeling of the American public. When, after the close of the civil war, the question was again brought forward, with a new zeal and determination, Mr. Phillips gave it the great support of his eloquence, and continued through a long course of years to be one of its most earnest advocates. [Illustration: WENDELL PHILLIPS At the age of 48 _From a photograph lent by Francis J. Garrison, Boston._] The last time that I heard Wendell Phillips speak in public was in December, 1883, at the unveiling of Miss Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau, in the Old South Meeting-House. Mrs. Livermore was one of the speakers of the occasion. When the stated exercises were at an end, she said to me, "Let us thank Mr. Phillips for what he has just said. We shall not have him with us long." I expressed surprise at this, and she said further, "He has heart disease, and is far from well." Soon after this followed his death, and the splendid public testimonial given in his honor. I was one of those admitted to the funeral exercises, in which friends spoke of him most lovingly. I also saw his remains lying in state in Faneuil Hall, on the very platform where, in his ardent youth, he had uttered his first scathing denunciation of the slave power and its defenders. The mournful and reverent crowd which gathered for one last look at his beloved countenance told, better than words could tell, of the tireless services which, in the interval, had won for him the heart of the community. It was a sight never to be forgotten. I first heard of Theodore Parker as the author of the sermon on "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity." At the time of its publication I was still within the fold of the Episcopal Church, and, judging by hearsay, was prepared to find the discourse a tissue of impious and sacrilegious statements. Yet I ventured to peruse a copy of it which fell into my hands. I was surprised to find it reverent and appreciative in spirit, although somewhat startling in its conclusions. At that time the remembrance of Mr. Emerson's Phi Beta address was fresh in my mind. This discourse of Parker's was a second glimpse of a system of thought very different from that in which I had been reared. Not long after my marriage, being in Rome with my husband, I was interested to hear of Parker's arrival there. As Dr. Howe had some slight acquaintance with him, we soon invited him to dine with us. He was already quite bald, and this untimely blemish appeared in strange contrast with the youthful energy of his facial expression. He was accompanied by his wife, whose mild countenance, compared with his, suggested even more than the usual contrast between husband and wife. One might have said of her that she came near being very handsome. Her complexion was fair, her features were regular, and the expression of her face was very naïf and gentle. A certain want of physical maturity seemed to have prevented her from blossoming into full beauty. It was a great grief both to her and to her husband that their union was childless. Theodore Parker's reputation had already reached Rome, and there as elsewhere brought him many attentions from scholars, and even from dignitaries of the Catholic Church. He remained in the Eternal City, as we did, through the winter, and we saw him frequently. When, in the spring, my eldest child was born, I desired that she should be christened by Parker. This caused some uneasiness to my sisters, who were with me at the time. One of them took occasion to call upon Parker at his lodgings, and to inquire how the infant was to be christened, in what name. Our friend replied that he had never heard of any baptismal formula other than the usual one, "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." My sister was much relieved, and the baptism was altogether satisfactory. This was the beginning of a family intimacy which lasted many years, ending only with Parker's life. After our return to America my husband went often to the Melodeon, where Parker preached until he took possession of the Music Hall. The interest which my husband showed in these services led me in time to attend them, and I remember as among the great opportunities of my life the years in which I listened to Theodore Parker. Those who knew Parker only in the pulpit did not half know him. Apart from the field of theological controversy, he was one of the most sympathetic and delightful of men. I have rarely met any one whose conversation had such a ready and varied charm. His idea of culture was encyclopædic, and his reading, as might have been inferred from the size of his library, was enormous. The purchase of books was his single extravagance. One whole floor was given up to them, and in spite of this they overflowed into hall and drawing-room. He was very generous in lending them, and I often profited by his kindness in this respect. His affection for his wife was very great. From a natural love of paradox, he was accustomed to style this mild creature "Bear," and he delighted to carry out this pleasantry by adorning his _étagère_ with miniature bears, in wood-carving, porcelain, and so on. His gold shirt stud bore the impress of a bear. At one Christmas time he showed me a breakfast cup upon which a bear had been painted, by his express order, as a gift for his wife. At another he granted me a view of a fine silver candlestick in the shape of a bear and staff, which was also intended for her. To my husband Parker often spoke of the excellence of his wife's discernment of character. He would say, "My quiet little wife, with her simple intuition, understands people more readily than I do. I sometimes invite a stranger to my house, and tell her that she will find him as pleasant as I have found him. It may turn out so; but if my wife says, 'Theodore, I don't like that man; there's something wrong about him,' I always find in the end that I have been mistaken,--that her judgment was correct." Parker's ideal of culture included a knowledge of music. His endeavors to attain this were praiseworthy, but unsuccessful. I have heard the late John S. Dwight relate that when he was a student in Harvard Divinity School, Parker, who was then his fellow student, desired to be taught to sing the notes of the musical scale. Dwight volunteered to give him lessons, and began, as is usual, by striking the dominant _do_ and directing Parker to imitate the sound. Parker responded, and found himself able to sing this one note; but when Dwight passed on to the second and the third, Parker could only repeat the note already sung. He had no ear for music, and his friend advised him to give up the hopeless attempt to cultivate his voice. In like manner, at an earlier date, Dr. Howe and Charles Sumner joined a singing class, but both evincing the same defect were dismissed as hopeless cases. Parker attended sedulously the concerts of classical music given in Boston, and no doubt enjoyed them, after a fashion. I remember that I once tried to explain to him the difference between having an ear for music and not having one. I failed, however, to convince him of any such distinction. The years during which I heard him most frequently were momentous in the history of our country and of our race. They presaged and preceded grave crises on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe was going on the ferment of ideas and theories which led to the revolutions of 1848 and the temporary upturning of states and of governments. In the United States, the seed of thought sown by prophetic minds was ripening in the great field of public opinion. Slavery and all that it involved became not only hateful but intolerable to men of right mind, and the policy which aimed at its indefinite extension was judged and condemned. Parker at this time had need in truth of the two-edged sword of the Spirit. On the one hand he encountered the foes of religious freedom, on the other the advocates and instruments of political oppression. His sermons on theism belonged to one of these domains, those which treated of public men and measures to the other. Among these last, I remember best that on Daniel Webster, and the terrible "Lesson for the Day" which denounced Judge Loring for the part he had taken in the rendition of Anthony Burns. The discourse which treated of Webster was indeed memorable. I remember well the solemnity of its opening sentences, and the earnest desire shown throughout to do justice to the great gifts of the great man, while no one of his public misdeeds was allowed to escape notice. The whole performance, painful as it was in parts, was very uplifting, as the exhibition of true mastery must always be. Its unusual length caused me to miss the omnibus which should have brought me to South Boston in good time for our Sunday dinner. As I entered the house and found the family somewhat impatient of the unwonted delay, I cried, "Let no one find fault! I have heard the greatest thing that I shall ever hear!" At the time of the attempted rendition of the fugitive slave Shadrach a meeting was held in the Melodeon, at which various speakers gave utterance to the indignation which aroused the whole community. Parker had been the prime mover in calling this meeting. He had written for it some verses to be sung to the tune of "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," and he made the closing and most important address. It was on this occasion that I first saw Colonel Higginson, who was then known as the Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, pastor of a religious society in Worcester, Mass. The part assigned to him in the exercises was to read portions of Scripture appropriate to the day. This he did with excellent effect. Parker, in the course of his address, held up a torn coat, and said, "This is the coat of our brother Shadrach," reverting in his mind to the Bible story of the torn coat of Joseph over which his father grieved so sorely. As I left the hall I heard some mischievous urchins commenting upon this. "Nonsense!" cried one of them, "that wasn't Shadrach's coat at all. That was Theodore's coat." Parker was amused when I told him of this. From time to time Parker would speak in his sermons of the position which woman should hold in a civilized community. The question of suffrage had not then been brought into prominence, and, as I remember, he insisted most upon the claim of the sex to equality of education and of opportunity. On one occasion he invited Lucretia Mott to his pulpit. On another its privileges were accorded to Mrs. Seba Smith. I was present one Sunday when he announced to his congregation that the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown would address them on the Sunday following. As he pronounced the word "Reverend," I detected an unmistakable and probably unconscious curl of his lip. The lady was, I believe, the first woman minister regularly ordained in the United States. She was a graduate of Oberlin, in that day the only college in our country which received among its pupils women and negroes. She was ordained as pastor by an Orthodox Congregational society, and has since become better known as Antoinette Brown Blackwell, a strenuous advocate of the rights of her sex, an earnest student of religious philosophy, and the author of some valuable works on this and kindred topics. [Illustration: THEODORE PARKER _From a photograph by J. J. Hawes._] I am almost certain that Parker was the first minister who in public prayer to God addressed him as "Father and Mother of us all." I can truly say that no rite of public worship, not even the splendid Easter service in St. Peter's at Rome, ever impressed me as deeply as did Theodore Parker's prayers. The volume of them which has been published preserves many of his sentences, but cannot convey any sense of the sublime attitude of humility with which he rose and stood, his arms extended, his features lit up with the glory of his high office. Truly, he talked with God, and took us with him into the divine presence. I cannot remember that the interest of his sermons ever varied for me. It was all one intense delight. The luminous clearness of his mind, his admirable talent for popularizing the procedures and conclusions of philosophy, his keen wit and poetic sense of beauty,--all these combined to make him appear to me one of the oracles of God. Add to these his fearlessness and his power of denunciation, exercised in a community a great part of which seemed bound in a moral sleep. His voice was like the archangel's trump, summoning the wicked to repentance and bidding the just take heart. It was hard to go out from his presence, all aglow with the enthusiasm which he felt and inspired, and to hear him spoken of as a teacher of irreligion, a pest to the community. As all know, this glorious career came too soon to an end. While still in the fullness of his powers, and at the moment when he was most needed, the taint of hereditary disease penetrated his pure and blameless life. He came to my husband's office one day, and said, "Howe, that venomous cat which has destroyed so many of my people has fixed her claws here," pointing to his chest. The progress of the fatal disease was slow but sure. He had agreed with Dr. Howe that they should visit South America together in 1860, when he should have attained his fiftieth year. Alas! in place of that adventurous voyage and journey, a sad exodus to the West Indies and thence to Europe was appointed, an exile from which he never returned. Many years after this time I visited the public cemetery in Florence, and stood before the simple granite cross which marks the resting-place of this great apostle of freedom. I found it adorned with plants and vines which had evidently been brought from his native land. A dear friend of his, Mrs. Sarah Shaw Russell, had said to me of this spot, "It looks like a piece of New England." And I thought how this piece of New England belonged to the world. One of the most imposing figures in my gallery of remembrance is that of Charles Sumner, senator and martyr. When I first saw him I was still a girl in my father's house, from which the father had then but recently passed. My eldest brother, Samuel Ward, had made Mr. Sumner's acquaintance through a letter of introduction given to the latter by Mr. Longfellow. At his suggestion we invited Mr. Sumner to pass a quiet evening at our house, promising him a little music. Our guest had but recently returned from England, where letters from Chief Justice Story had given him access both to literary and to aristocratic circles. His appearance was at that time rather singular. He was very tall and erect, and the full suit of black which he wore added to the effect of his height and slenderness of figure. Of his conversation, I remember chiefly that he held the novels of Walter Scott in very light esteem, and that he quoted with approbation Sir Adam Ferguson as having said that Manzoni's "Promessi Sposi" was worth more than all of Sir Walter's romances put together. Mr. Sumner was at this time one of a little group of friends which an ironical lady had christened "the Mutual Admiration Society." The other members were the poet Longfellow, George S. Hillard, Cornelius Felton, professor of Greek at Harvard College, of which at a later day he became president, and Dr. Howe. These gentlemen were indeed bound together by ties of intimate friendship, but the humorous designation just quoted was not fairly applicable to them. They rejoiced in one another's successes, and Sumner on one occasion wrote to Dr. Howe, apropos of some new poem of Mr. Longfellow's, "What a club we are! I like to indulge in a little _mutual_." The developments of later years made some changes in these relations. When the Boston public became strongly divided on the slavery question, Hillard and Felton were less pronounced in their views than the others, while Longfellow, Sumner, and Dr. Howe remained united in opinion and in feeling. Hillard, who possessed more scholarship and literary taste than Sumner, could never understand the reason of the high position which the latter in time attained. He remained a Webster Whig, to use the language of those days, while Sumner was elected to Webster's seat in the Senate. Felton was a man of very genial temperament, devoted to the duties of his Greek professorship and to kindred studies. He was by nature averse to strife, and the encounters of the political arena had little attraction for him. The five always remained friends and well-wishers. They became much absorbed in the cares and business of public and private life, and the club as such ceased to be spoken of. In the days of their great intimacy, a certain grotesqueness of taste in Sumner made him the object of some good-natured banter on the part of the other "Mutuals." It was related that on a certain Fourth of July he had given his office boy, Ben, a small gratuity, and had advised him to pass the day at Mount Auburn, where he would be able to enjoy quiet and profitable meditation. Felton was especially merry over this incident; but he, in turn, furnished occasion for laughter when on a visit to New York, in company with the same friends. A man-servant whom they had brought with them was ordered to carry Felton's valise to the Astor House. This was before the days of the baggage express. The man arrived late in the day, breathless with fatigue, and when questioned replied, "Faith! I went to all the _oyster_ houses in Broadway before I could find yees." I little thought when I first knew Mr. Sumner that his most intimate friend was destined to become my own companion for life. Charles Sumner was a man of great qualities and of small defects. His blemishes, which were easily discerned, were temperamental rather than moral. He had not the sort of imagination which enables a man to enter easily into the feelings of others, and this deficiency on his part sometimes resulted in unnecessary rudeness. His father, Sheriff Sumner, had been accounted the most polite Bostonian of his day. It was related of him that once, being present at the execution of a criminal, and having trodden upon the foot of the condemned man, the sheriff took off his hat and apologized for the accident. Whereupon the criminal exclaimed, "Sheriff Sumner, you are the politest man I ever knew, and if I am to be hanged, I had rather be hanged by you than by any one else." It was sometimes remarked that the sheriff's mantle did not seem to have fallen upon his son. Charles Sumner's appearance was curiously metamorphosed by a severe attack of typhoid fever, which he suffered, I think, in 1843 or 1844. After his recovery he gained much in flesh, and entirely lost that ungainliness of aspect which once led a friend to compare him to a geometrical line, "length without breadth or thickness." He now became a man of strikingly fine presence, his great height being offset by a corresponding fullness of figure. His countenance was strongly marked and very individual,--the features not handsome in themselves, but the whole effect very pleasingly impressive. He had but little sense of humor, and was not at home in the small cut-and-thrust skirmishes of general society. He was made for serious issues and for great contests, which then lay unguessed before him. Of his literalness some amusing anecdotes have been told. At an official ball in Washington, he remarked to a young lady who stood beside him, "We are fortunate in having these places; for, standing here, we shall see the first entrance of the new English and French ministers into Washington society." The young girl replied, "I am glad to hear it. I like to see lions break the ice." Sumner was silent for a few minutes, but presently said, "Miss ----, in the country where lions live there is no ice." During the illness of which I have spoken, he was at times delirious, and his mother one day, going into his room, found that he was endeavoring to put on a change of linen. She begged him to desist, knowing him to be very weak. He said in reply, "Mother, I am not doing it for myself, but for some one else." Some debates on prison discipline, held in Boston in the year 1845, attracted a good deal of attention. Dr. Howe had become much dissatisfied with the management of prisons in Massachusetts, and desired to see the adoption of the Pennsylvania system of solitary confinement. Mr. Sumner entered warmly into his views. The matter was brought before the Boston public, and the arguments for and against the proposed change were very fully stated and discussed. Mr. Sumner spoke several times in favor of the solitary system, and on each occasion carried off the honors of the meeting. The secretary of the prison discipline association at that time, a noted conservative, opposed very strenuously the introduction of the Pennsylvania system. In the course of the debates, Mr. Sumner turned upon him in a sudden and unexpected manner, with these words: "In what I am about to say, I shall endeavor to imitate the secretary's candor, but not his temper." Now the secretary was one of the magnates of Boston, accustomed to be treated with great consideration. The start that he gave on being thus interpellated was so comic that it has impressed itself upon my memory. The speaker proceeded to apply to this gentleman a well-known line of Horace, descriptive of the character of Achilles:-- "Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer." I confess that to me this direct attack appeared uncalled for, and I thought that the cause could have been as well advocated without recourse to personalities. I once invited Mr. Sumner to meet a distinguished guest at my house. He replied, "I do not know that I wish to meet your friend. I have outlived the interest in individuals." In my diary of the day I recorded the somewhat ungracious utterance, with this comment: "God Almighty, by the latest accounts, has not got so far as this." Mr. Sumner was told of this, in my presence, though not by me. He said at once, "What a strange sort of book your diary must be! You ought to strike that out immediately." Sumner was often robbed in the street or at a railroad station; his tall figure attracting attention, and his mind, occupied with things far away, giving little heed to what went on in his immediate presence. Members of his family were wont to say, "It is about time now for Charles to have his pocket picked again." The fact often followed the prediction. Mr. Sumner's eloquence differed much in character from that of Wendell Phillips. The two men, although workers in a common cause, were very dissimilar in their natural endowments. Phillips had a temperament of fire, while that of Sumner was cold and sluggish. Phillips had a great gift of simplicity, and always made a bee line for the central point of interest in the theme which he undertook to present. Sumner was recondite in language and elaborate in style. He was much of a student, and abounded in quotations. In his senatorial days, I once heard a satirical lady mention him as "the moral flummery member from Massachusetts, quoting Tibullus!" The first political speech which I heard from Mr. Sumner was delivered, if I mistake not, at a schoolhouse in the neighborhood of Boston. I found his oratory somewhat overloud and emphatic for the small hall and limited attendance. He had not at that time found his proper audience. When he was heard, later on, in Faneuil Hall or Tremont Temple, the ringing roll of his voice was very effective. His gestures were forcible rather than graceful. In argument he would go over the same ground several times, always with new amplifications and illustrations of his subject. There was a dead weight of honesty and conviction in what he said, and it was this, perhaps, that chiefly gave him his command over an audience. He had also in a remarkable degree the trait of mastery, and the ability to present his topic in a large way. I am not sure whether Sumner's idea of culture was as encyclopædic as that of Theodore Parker, but he certainly aspired to be what is now called "an all-round man," and especially desired to attain connoisseurship in art. He had not the many-sided power of appreciation which distinguished Parker, yet a reverence for the beautiful, rather moral than æsthetic, led him to study with interest the works of the great masters. In his later years, he never went abroad without bringing back pictures, engravings, or rare missals. He had little natural apprehension of music, but used to express his admiration of some favorite operas, among them Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Rossini's "Barbiere di Seviglia." In the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which he was chairman for many years, his acquaintance with foreign languages was much valued. I remember a line of Tasso which he sometimes quoted when beautiful hands were spoken of:-- "Dove ne nodo appar, ne vena eccede." On the other hand, I have heard him say that mathematics always remained a sealed book to him; and that his professor at Harvard once exclaimed, "Sumner, I can't whittle a mathematical idea small enough to get it into your brain." [Illustration: JULIA WARD HOWE _From a painting by Joseph Ames in 1847._] The period between 1851 and the beginning of the civil war found Mr. Sumner at his post in the Senate of the United States. His position was from the outset a difficult one. His election had displaced a popular idol. His views regarding the heated question of the time, the extension of slavery to the territories, were far in advance of those held by the majority of the senatorial body or by the community at large. His uncompromising method of attack, his fiery utterances, contrasting strangely with the unusual mildness of his disposition, exasperated the defenders of slavery. These, perhaps, seeing that he was no fighting man, may have supposed him deficient in personal courage. He, however, knew very well the risks to which he exposed himself. His friends advised him to carry arms, and my husband once told old Mrs. Sumner, his mother, that Charles ought to be provided with a pistol. "Oh, doctor," said the old lady, "he would only shoot himself with it." In the most trying days of the civil war, this same old lady came to Dr. Howe's office, anxious to learn his opinion concerning the progress of the contest. Dr. Howe in reply referred her to her own son for the desired information, saying, "Dear Madam Sumner, Charles knows more about public affairs than I do. Why don't you ask him about them?" "Oh, doctor, if I ask Charles, he only says, 'Mother, don't trouble yourself about such things.'" I was in Washington with Dr. Howe early in the spring of 1856. I remember being present in the senate chamber when a rather stormy debate took place between Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts. Charles Sumner looked up and, seeing me in the gallery, greeted me with a smile of recognition. I shall never forget the beauty of that smile. It seemed to me to illuminate the whole precinct with a silvery radiance. There was in it all the innocence of his sweet and noble nature. I asked my husband to invite Sumner to dine with us at Willard's Hotel, where we were staying. "No, no," he said, "Sumner would consider it _infra dig._ to dine with us at the hotel." He did, however, call upon us. In the course of conversation he said to me, "I shall soon deliver a speech in the Senate which will occasion a good deal of excitement. It will not surprise me if people leave their seats and show signs of unusual disturbance." The speech was delivered soon after this time. It was a direct and forcible arraignment of the slave power, which was then endeavoring to change the free Territory of Kansas into a slave State. The disturbance which Mr. Sumner had anticipated did not fail to follow, but in a manner which neither he nor any of his friends had foreseen. At the hotel I had remarked a handsome man, evidently a Southerner, with what appeared to me an evil expression of countenance. This was Brooks of South Carolina, the man who, not long after this time, attacked Charles Sumner in his seat in the senate chamber, choosing a moment when the personal friends of his victim were not present, and inflicting upon him injuries which destroyed his health and endangered his life. I will not enlarge here upon the pain and distress which this event caused to us and to the community at large. For several weeks our senator's life hung in the balance. For a very much longer time his vacant seat in the senate chamber told of the severe suffering which incapacitated him for public work. This time of great trial had some compensation in the general sympathy which it called forth. Sumner had won the crown of martyrdom, and his person thenceforth became sacred, even to his enemies. It was after a residence of many years in Washington that Mr. Sumner decided to build and occupy a house of his own. The spot chosen by him was immediately adjoining the well-known Arlington Hotel. The house was handsome and well appointed, adorned also with pictures and fine bronzes, in both of which he took great delight. Dr. Howe and I were invited to visit him there one evening, with other guests. Among these was Caleb Cushing, with whom Mr. Sumner soon became engaged in an animated discussion, probably regarding some question of the day. So absorbed were the two gentlemen in their argument that each of them frequently interrupted the other. The one interrupted would expostulate, saying, "I have not finished what I have to say;" at which the other would bow and apologize, but would presently offend again, in the same way. At my own house in Boston, Mr. Sumner called one evening when we were expecting other company. The invited guests presently arrived, and he abruptly left the room without any parting word or gesture. I afterwards spoke of this to Dr. Howe, who said, "That is Sumner's idea of taking French leave." Whereupon our dear eldest said, "Why, mamma, Mr. Sumner's way of taking French leave is as if the elephant should undertake to walk incognito down Broadway." The last important act of Mr. Sumner's public life was the elaborate argument by which he defeated the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo to the United States. This question presented itself during the first term of General Grant's administration. The proposal for annexation was made by the President of the Dominican Republic. General Grant, with the forethought of a military commander, desired that the United States should possess a foothold in the West Indies. A commission of three was accordingly appointed to investigate and report upon the condition of the island. The three were Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, Andrew D. White, at that time president of Cornell University, and Dr. Howe. A thorough visitation of the territory was made by these gentlemen, and a report favorable to the scheme of annexation was presented by them on their return. Dr. Howe was greatly interested for the Dominicans, who had achieved political independence and separation from Hayti by a severe struggle, which was always liable to be renewed on the part of their former masters. Mr. Sumner, on the other hand, espoused the cause of the Haytian government so warmly that he would not wait for the report of the commission to be presented, but hastened to forestall public opinion by a speech in which he displayed all his powers of oratory, but showed something less than his usual acquaintance with facts. His eloquence carried the day, and the plan of annexation was defeated and abandoned, to the great regret of the commissioners and of the Dominicans themselves. I shall speak elsewhere of my visiting Santo Domingo in company with Dr. Howe. Our second visit there was made in the spring of the year 1874. I had gone one day to inspect a school high on the mountains of Samana, when a messenger came after me in haste, bearing this written message from my husband: "Please come home at once. Our dear, noble Sumner is no more." The monthly steamer, at that time the only one that ran to Santo Domingo, had just brought the news, deplored by many, to my husband inexpressibly sad. In the winter of 1846-47 I one day heard Dr. Holmes speak of Agassiz, who had then recently arrived in America. He described him as a man of great talent and reputation, who added to his mental gifts the endowment of a superb physique. Soon after this time I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of the eminent naturalist, and of attending the first series of lectures which he gave at the Lowell Institute. The great personal attraction of Agassiz, joined to his admirable power of presenting the results of scientific investigation in a popular form, made a vivid impression upon the Boston public. All his lecture courses were largely attended. These and his continued presence among us gave a new impetus to the study of natural science. In his hands the record of the bones and fossils became a living language, and the common thought was enriched by the revelation of the wonders of the visible universe. Agassiz's was an expansive nature, and his great delight lay in imparting to others the discoveries in which he had found such intense pleasure. This sympathetic trait relieved his discourse of all dryness and dullness. In his college days he had employed his hour of intermission at noon in explaining the laws of botany to a class of little children. When required to furnish a thesis at the close of his university course, he chose for his theme the proper education of women, and insisted that it ought not to be inferior to that given to men. I need hardly relate how a most happy marriage in later life made him one of us, nor how this opened the way to the establishment in his house of a school whose girl pupils, in addition to other valuable instruction, enjoyed daily the privilege of listening to his clear and lucid exposition of the facts and laws of his favorite science. His memory is still bright among us. The story of his life and work is beautifully told in the "Life and Correspondence" published soon after his death by his widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, well known to-day as the president of Radcliffe College. His children and grandchildren are among our most valued citizens. His son, Professor Alexander Agassiz, inherits his father's devotion to science, while his daughter, Mrs. Quincy Shaw, has shown her public spirit in her great services to the cause of education. An enduring monument to his fame is the Cambridge Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, and I am but one of many still surviving who recall with gratitude the enlargement of intellectual interest which he brought to our own and other communities. Women who wish well to their own sex should never forget that, on the occasion of his first lectures delivered in the capital of Brazil, he earnestly requested the emperor that ladies might be allowed to be present,--a privilege till then denied them on grounds of etiquette. The request was granted, and the sacred domain of science for the first time was thrown open to the women of South America. * * * * * I cannot remember just when it was that an English visitor, who brought a letter of introduction to my husband, spoke to me of the "Bothie of Tober-na-Fuosich" and its author, Arthur Hugh Clough. The gentleman was a graduate of Oxford or of Cambridge. He came to our house several times, and I consulted him with regard to the classic rhythms, in which he was well versed. I had it in mind at this time to write a poem in classic rhythm. It was printed in my first volume, "Passion Flowers;" and Mr. Sanborn, in an otherwise very friendly review of my work, characterized as "pitiable hexameters" the lines which were really not hexameters at all, nor intended to pass for such. They were pentameters constructed according to my own ideas; I did not have in view any special school or rule. I soon had the pleasure of reading the "Bothie," which I greatly admired. While it was fresh in my mind Mr. Clough arrived in Boston, furnished with excellent letters of introduction both for that city and for the dignitaries of Cambridge. My husband at once invited him to pass some days at our house, and I was very glad to welcome him there. In appearance I thought him rather striking. He was tall, tending a little to stoutness, with a beautifully ruddy complexion and dark eyes which twinkled with suppressed humor. His sweet, cheery manner at once attracted my young children to him, and I was amused, on passing near the open door of his room, to see him engaged in conversation with my little son, then some five or six years of age. In Dr. Howe's daily absences I tried to keep our guest company a little, but I found him very shy. I remember that I said to him, when we had made some acquaintance, that I had often wished to meet Thackeray, and to give him two buffets, saying, "This one is for your Becky Sharp and this one for Blanche Amory,"--regarding both as slanders upon my sex. Mr. Clough suggested that in the great world of London such characters were not out of place. The device of Blanche Amory's book, "Mes Larmes," seemed to have afforded him much amusement. It happened that, while he was with us, I dined one day with a German friend, who served us with quite a wonderful repast. The feast had been a merry one, and at the dessert two such sumptuous dishes were presented to us that I, having tasted of one of them, said to a friend across the table, "Anna, this is poetry!" She was occupied with the opposite dish, and, mindful of the old pleasantry to which I alluded, replied, "Julia, this is religion." At breakfast, the next morning, I endeavored to entertain those present with some account of the great dinner. As I enlarged a little upon the excellence of the details, Mr. Clough said, "Mrs. Howe, you seem to have a great appreciation of these matters." I disclaimed this; whereupon he rejoined, "Mrs. Howe, you are modest." Some months later I met Mr. Clough at a friend's house, where some informal charades were about to be attempted. Being requested to take part in one, I declined; and when urged, I replied, "No, no, I am modest,--Mr. Clough once said so." He looked at me in some pretended surprise, and said, "It must have been at a very early period in our acquaintance." This "give and take" was all in great good humor, and Mr. Clough was a delightful guest in all societies. Sorry indeed were we when, having become quite at home among us, he returned to England, there to marry and abide. I remember that he told me of one winter which he had passed at his university without fire in his quarters. When I heard of his illness and untimely death, it occurred to me that the seeds of the fatal disease might have been sown during that season of privation. CHAPTER IX SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE In June, 1850, after a seven years' residence in and near Boston, during which I labored at study and literary composition, I enjoyed an interval of rest and recreation in Europe. With me went Dr. Howe and our two youngest children, one of them an infant in arms. We passed some weeks in London, and went thence to renew our acquaintance with the Nightingale family, at their summer residence in Derbyshire. Florence Nightingale had been traveling in Egypt, and was still abroad. Her sister, Parthenope, read us some of her letters, which, as may be imagined, were full of interest. Florence and her companions, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, had made some stay in Rome, on their way to Egypt. Margaret Fuller called one day at their lodgings. Florence herself opened the door, and said to the visitor, "Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge are not at home." Margaret replied, "My visit is intended for Miss Florence Nightingale;" and she was admitted to a tête-à-tête of which one would be glad to know something. It was during this visit that I learned the sad news of Margaret's shipwreck and death. Dr. Howe, with all his energy of body and of mind, was somewhat of a valetudinarian. The traces of a severe malarial fever, contracted by him in the Greek campaign of his youth, went with him through life. He was subject to frightful headaches, and these and other ailments caused him to take great interest in theories of hygiene, and among these in the then new system of hydropathy, as formulated by Priessnitz. At the time now spoken of he arranged to pass a period at Boppard on the Rhine, where a water-cure had recently been established. He became an outside patient of this institution, and seemed to enjoy thoroughly the routine of bathing, douching, packing, etc. Beyond the limits of the water-cure the little town presented few features of interest. Wandering about its purlieus one day, I came upon a sort of open cave or recess in the rocks in which I found two rude cradles, each occupied by a silent and stolid baby. Presently two rough-looking women, who had been carrying stones from the riverside, came in from their work. The little ones now broke out into dismal wailing. "Why do they cry so?" I asked. "They ought to be glad to see you." "Oh, madam, they cry because they know how soon we must leave them again." Tom Appleton disposed of the water-cure theory in the following fashion: "Water-cure? Oh yes, very fine. Priessnitz forgot one day to wash his face, and so he died." My husband's leave of absence was for six months only, and we parted company at Heidelberg; he to turn his face homewards, I to proceed with my two sisters to Rome, where it had been arranged that I should pass the winter. Our party occupied two thirds of the diligence in which we made a part of the journey. My sister L. had with her two little daughters, my youngest sister had one. These, with my two babies and the respective nurses, filled the _rotonde_ of the vehicle. The three mammas occupied the _coupé_, while my brother-in-law, Thomas Crawford, took refuge in the _banquette_. The custom-house officer at one place approached with his lantern, to ascertain the contents of the diligence. Looking into the _rotonde_, he remarked, "Baby baggage," and inquired no further. Dr. Howe had charged me to provide myself with a watch when I should pass through Geneva, and had given me the address of a friend who, he said, would advise me where best to make the purchase. Following his instructions, I wrote Dr. G. a letter in my best French; and he, calling at our hotel, expressed his surprise at finding that I was not a Frenchwoman. He found us all at breakfast, and, after the first compliments, began a voluble tirade in favor of the use of emetics, which was scarcely in place at the moment. From this he went on to speak of the management of children. "When my son was born," he said, "and showed the first symptoms of hunger, I would not allow him to be fed. If his cries had met with an immediate response he would have said to himself, 'I have a servant.' I made him wait for his food until he was obliged to say, 'I have a master.'" I thought of my own dear nurslings and shook my head. Learning that Mr. Crawford was a sculptor, he said, "I, too, in my youth desired to exercise that art, and modeled a bust, in which I made concave the muscle which should have been convex. A friend recommended to me the study of anatomy, and following it I became a physician." We reached Rome late in October. A comfortable apartment was found for me in the street named Capo le Case. A donkey brought my winter's supply of firewood, and I made haste to hire a grand piano. The artist Edward Freeman occupied the suite of rooms above my own. In the apartment below, Mrs. David Dudley Field and her children were settled for the winter. Our little colony was very harmonious. When Mrs. Field entertained company, she was wont to borrow my large lamp; when I received, she lent me her teacups. Mrs. Freeman, on the floor above, was a most friendly little person, partly Italian by birth, but wholly English in education. She willingly became the companion and guide of my walks about Rome, which were long and many. I had begun the study of Hebrew in America, and was glad to find a learned rabbi from the Ghetto who was willing to give me lessons for a moderate compensation. My sister, Mrs. Crawford, was at that time established at Villa Negroni, an old-time papal residence. This was surrounded by extensive gardens, and within the inclosure were an artificial fish pond and a lodge which my brother-in-law converted into a studio. My days in Rome passed very quietly. The time, which flew by rapidly, was divided between study within doors, the care and companionship of my little children, and the exploration of the wonderful old city. I dined regularly at two o'clock, having with me at table my little son and my baby secured in her high chair. I shared with my sisters the few dissipations of the season,--an occasional ball, a box at the opera, a drive on the Campagna. On Sunday mornings my youngest sister usually came to breakfast with me, and afterward accompanied me to the Ara Coeli Church, where a military mass was celebrated, the music being supplied by the band of a French regiment. The time, I need scarcely say, was that of the early years of the French occupation of the city, to which France made it her boast that she had brought back the Pope. As I chronicle these small personal adventures of mine, I am constrained to blush at their insufficiency. I write as if I had forgotten the wonderful series of events which had come to pass between my first visit to Rome and this second tarrying within its walls. In the interval, the days of 1848 had come and gone. France had dismissed her citizen king, and had established a republic in place of the monarchy. The Pope of Rome, for centuries the representative and upholder of absolute rule, had stood before the world as the head of the Christianity which liberalizes both institutions and ideas. In Germany the party of progress was triumphant. Europe had trembled with the birth-pangs of freedom. A new and glorious confederacy of states seemed to be promised in the near future. The tyrannies of the earth were surely about to meet their doom. My own dear eldest son was given to me in the spring of this terrible and splendid year of 1848. When his father wrote "_Dieu donné_" under the boy's name in the family Bible, he added to the welcome record the new device, "_Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité_." The first Napoleon had overthrown rulers and dynasties. A greater power than his now came upon the stage,--the power of individual conviction backed by popular enthusiasm. My husband, who had fought for Greek freedom in his youth, who had risked and suffered imprisonment in behalf of Poland in his early manhood, and who had devoted his mature life to the service of humanity, welcomed the new state of things with all the enthusiasm of his generous nature. To him, as to many, the final emancipation and unification of the human race, the millennium of universal peace and good-will, seemed near at hand. Alas! the great promise brought only a greater failure. The time for its fulfillment had not yet arrived. Freedom could not be attained by striking an attitude, nor secured by the issuing of a document. The prophet could see the plan of the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, but the fact remained that the city of God must be built by patient day's work. Such builders Europe could not bring to the front. The Pope retreated before the logical sequence of his own initiative. France elected for her chief a born despot of the meaner order, whose first act was to overthrow the Roman Republic. Germany had dreamed of freedom, but had not dreamed of the way to secure it. Reaction everywhere asserted itself. The light of the great hope died down. Coming to Rome while these events were still fresh in men's minds, I could see no trace of them in the popular life. The waters were still as death; the wrecks did not appear above the surface. I met occasionally Italians who could talk calmly of what had happened. Of such an one I asked, "Why did Pio Nono so suddenly forsake his liberal policy?" "Oh, the Pope was a puppet moved from without. He never rightly understood the import of his first departure. When the natural result of this came about, he fled from it in terror." These things were spoken of only in the secrecy of very private interviews. In general intercourse they were not mentioned. Now and then, a servant, lamenting the dearness of necessaries, the paper money, etc., would say, "And this has been brought about by blessed [_benedetto_] Pio Nono!" People of higher condition eulogized thus the pontiff's predecessor: "Gregorio was at least a man of decided views. He knew what he wanted and how to obtain it." Once only, in a village not far distant from Rome, I heard an Italian peasant woman say to a prince, "We [her family] are Republicans." Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, Garibaldi, your time was not yet come. The French were not beloved in Rome. I was told that the mass of the people would not endure the license of their conquerors in the matter of sex, and that assassinations in consequence were frequent. In high society it was said that a French officer had endeavored to compel one of the Roman princes to invite to his ball a lady of doubtful reputation, by threatening to send a challenge in case of refusal. The invitation was nevertheless withheld, and the challenge, if sent, was never accepted. In the English and American circles which I frequented, I sometimes felt called upon to fight for the claim of Italy to freedom and self-government. At a dinner party, at which the altercation had been rather lively, I was invited to entertain the company with some music. Seating myself at the piano, I made it ring out the Marseillaise with a will. But I was myself too much disconcerted by the recent failure to find in my thoughts any promise of better things. My friends said, "The Italians are not fit for self-government." I may ask fifty years later, "Who is?" The progress of ideas is not indeed always visible to superficial observers. I was engaged one day in making a small purchase at a shop, when the proprietor leaned across the counter and asked, almost in a whisper, for the loan of a Bible. He had heard of the book, he said, and wished very much to see a copy of it. Our _chargé d'affaires_, Mr. Cass, mentioned to me the fact that an entire edition of Deodati's Italian translation of the New Testament had recently been seized and burned by order of the papal government. But to return to matters purely personal. As the Christmas of 1850 drew near, my sister L., ever intent on hospitality, determined to have a party and a Christmas tree at Villa Negroni. This last was then a novelty unheard of in Rome. I was to dine with her, and had offered to furnish the music for an informal dance. On Christmas Eve I went with a party of friends to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where the Pope, according to the custom of those days, was to appear in state, bearing in his arms the cradle supposed to be that of the infant Jesus, which was usually kept at St. Peter's. We were a little late in starting, and were soon obliged to retire from the highway, as the whole papal _cortége_ came sweeping by,--the state coaches of crimson and gold, and the _Guardia Nobile_ with their glittering helmets, white cloaks, and high boots. Their course was illuminated by pans of burning oil, supported by iron staves, the spiked ends of which were stuck in the ground. When the rapid procession had passed on we hastened to overtake it, but arrived too late to witness either the arrival of the Pope or his progress to the high altar with the cradle in his arms. On Christmas Day I attended high mass at St. Peter's. Although the weather was of the pleasantest, an aguish chill disturbed my enjoyment of the service. This discomfort so increased in the course of the day that, as I sat at dinner, I could with difficulty carry a morsel from my plate to my lips. "This is a chill," said my sister. "You ought to go to bed at once." I insisted upon remaining to play for the promised dance, and argued that the fever would presently succeed the chill, and that I should then be warm enough. I passed the evening in great bodily discomfort, but managed to play quadrilles, waltzes, and the endless Virginia Reel. When at last I reached home and my bed, the fever did come with a will. I was fortunate enough to recover very quickly from this indisposition, and did not forget the warning which it gave me of the dangers of the Roman climate. The shivering evening left me a happier recollection. Among my sister's guests was Horace Binney Wallace, of Philadelphia, whom I had once met in his own city. He had angered me at that time by his ridicule of Boston society, of which he really knew little or nothing. He was now in a less aggressive frame of mind, and this second meeting with him was the beginning of a much-valued friendship. We visited together many points of historic interest in the city,--the Pantheon, the Tarpeian Rock, the bridge of Horatius Cocles. He had some fanciful theories about the traits of character usually found in conjunction with red hair. As he and I were both distinguished by this feature, I was much pleased to learn from him that "the highest effort of nature is to produce a _rosso_." He was a devoted student of the works of Auguste Comte, and had recently held some conversation with that remarkable man. In the course of this, he told me, he asked the great Positivist how he could account for the general religious instinct of the human race, so contrary to the doctrines of his philosophy. Comte replied, "Que voulez-vous, monsieur? Anormalité cérébrale." My new friend was good enough to interest himself in my literary pursuits. He advised me to study the most important of Comte's works, but by no means to become a convert to his doctrines. In due time I availed myself of his counsel, and read with great interest the volumes prescribed by him. Horace Wallace was an exhilarating companion. I have never forgotten the silvery _timbre_ of his rather high voice, nor the glee with which he would occasionally inform me that he had discovered a new and most remarkable _rosso_. This was sometimes a picture, but oftener a living individual. If he found himself disappointed in the latter case, he would account for it by saying that he had at first sight mistaken the color of the hair, which shaded too much upon the yellow. Despite his vivacity of temperament, he was subject to fits of severe depression. Some years after this time, finding himself in Paris, he happened to visit a friend whose mental powers had been impaired by severe illness. He himself had been haunted for some time by the fear of becoming insane, and the sad condition of his friend so impressed him with the fear of suffering a similar disaster that he made haste to avoid the dreaded fate by taking his own life. The following lines, written not long after this melancholy event, bear witness to my grateful and tender remembrance of him:-- VIA FELICE 'Twas in the Via Felice My friend his dwelling made, The Roman Via Felice, Half sunshine, half in shade. But I lodged near the convent Whose bells did hallow noon, And all the lesser hours, With sweet recurrent tune. They lent their solemn cadence To all the thoughtless day; The heart, so oft it heard them, Was lifted up to pray. And where the lamp was lighted At twilight, on the wall, Serenely sat Madonna, And smiled to bless us all. I see him from the window That ne'er my heart forgets; He buys from yonder maiden My morning violets. Not ill he chose these flowers With mild, reproving eyes, Emblems of tender chiding, And love divinely wise. For his were generous learning And reconciling art; Oh, not with fleeting presence My friend and I could part. * * * * * Oh, not where he is lying With dear ancestral dust, Not where his household traces Grow sad and dim with rust; But in the ancient city And from the quaint old door, I'm watching, at my window, His coming evermore. For Death's eternal city Has yet some happy street; 'Tis in the Via Felice My friend and I shall meet. Adolph Mailliard, the husband of my youngest sister, had been an intimate friend of Joseph Bonaparte, Prince of Musignano. My sister was in consequence invited more than once to the Bonaparte palace. The father of the family was Prince Charles Bonaparte, who married his cousin, Princess Zénaïde. She had passed some years at the Bonaparte villa in Bordentown, N. J., the American residence of her father, Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain. This princess, who was _tant soit peu gourmande_ said one day to my sister, "What good things they have for breakfast in America! I still remember those hot cakes." The conversation was reported to me, and I managed, with the assistance of the helper brought from home, to send the princess a very excellent bannock of Indian meal, of which she afterwards said, "It was so good that we ate what was left of it on the second day." This reminds me of a familiar couplet:-- "And what they could not eat that night The queen next morning fried." Among the friends of that winter were Sarah and William Clarke, sister and brother of the Rev. James Freeman Clarke. It was in their company that Margaret Fuller made the journey recorded in her "Summer on the Lakes." Both were devoted to her memory. I afterwards learned that William Clarke considered her the good genius of his life, her counsel and encouragement having come to his aid in a season of melancholy depression and self-depreciation. Miss Clarke was characterized by an exquisite refinement of feeling and of manner. She was also an artist of considerable merit. This was the first of many winters passed by her in Rome. I will further mention only a dinner given by American residents in Rome on Washington's birthday, at which I was present. Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, the well-known writer, was also one of the guests. She had composed for the occasion a poem, of which I recall the opening line,-- "We are met in the clime where the wild flowers abound," and the closing ones,-- "To the halo that circles our Washington's head Let us pour a libation the gods never knew." Among many toasts, my sister Annie proposed this one, "Washington's clay in Crawford's hand," which was appropriate, as Thomas Crawford was known at the time to be engaged in modeling the equestrian statue of Washington which crowns his Richmond monument. My Roman holiday came to an end in the summer of the year 1851, and my return to my home and friends became imperative. As the time of my departure approached, I felt how deeply the subtle fascination of Roman life had entered into my very being. Pain, amounting almost to anguish, seized me at the thought that I might never again behold those ancient monuments, those stately churches, or take part in the society which had charmed me principally through its unlikeness to any that I had known elsewhere. I have indeed seen Rome and its wonders more than once since that time, but never as I saw them then. I made the homeward voyage with my sister Annie and her husband in an old-fashioned Havre packet. We were a month at sea, and after the first days of discomfort I managed to fill the hours of the long summer days with systematic occupation. In the mornings I perused Swedenborg's "Divine Love and Wisdom." In the afternoon I read, for the first and only time, Eugène Sue's "Mystères de Paris," which the ship's surgeon borrowed for me from a steerage passenger. In the evening we played whist; and when others had retired for the night, I often sat alone in the cabin, meditating upon the events and lessons of the last six months. These lucubrations took form in a number of poems, which were written with no thought of publication, but which saw the light a year or two later. CHAPTER X A CHAPTER ABOUT MYSELF If I may sum up in one term the leading bent of my life, I will simply call myself a student. Dr. Howe used to say of me: "Mrs. Howe is not a great reader, but she always studies." Albeit my intellectual pursuits have always been such as to task my mind, I cannot boast that I have acquired much in the way of technical erudition. I have only drawn from history and philosophy some understanding of human life, some lessons in the value of thought for thought's sake, and, above all, a sense of the dignity of character above every other dignity. Goethe chose well for his motto the words:-- "Die Zeit ist mein Vermächtniss, mein Acker ist die Zeit." "Time is my inheritance; time is my estate." But I may choose this for mine:-- "I have followed the great masters with my heart." The first writer of importance with whom I made acquaintance after leaving school was Gibbon, whose "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" occupied me during one entire winter. I have already mentioned my early familiarity with the French and Italian languages. In these respective literatures I read the works which in those days were usually commended to young women. These were, in French, Lamartine's poems and travels, Chateaubriand's "Atala" and "René," Racine's tragedies, Molière's comedies; in Italian, Metastasio, Tasso, Alfieri's dramas and autobiography. Under dear Dr. Cogswell's tuition, I read Schiller's plays and prose writings with delight. In later years, Goethe, Herder, Jean Paul Richter, were added to my repertory. I read Dante with Felice Foresti, and such works of Sand and Balzac as were allowed within my reach. I had early acquired some knowledge of Latin, and in later life found great pleasure in reading the essays and Tusculan dissertations of Cicero. The view of ethics represented in these writings sometimes appeared to me of higher tone than the current morality of Christendom, and I rejoiced in the thought that, even in the Rome of the pre-Christian Cæsars, God had not left himself without a witness. This enlarged notion of the ethical history of mankind might easily lead one in life's novitiate to underestimate the comparative value of the usually accepted traditions. I confess that I, personally, did not escape this error, which I have seen largely prevalent among studious people of my own time. Who can say what joy there is in the rehabilitation of human nature, which is one essential condition of the liberal Christian faith? I had been trained to think that all mankind were by nature low, vile, and wicked. Only a chosen few, by a rare and difficult spiritual operation, could be rescued from the doom of a perpetual dwelling with the enemies of God, a perpetual participation in the torments "prepared for them from the beginning of the world." The rapture of this new freedom, of this enlarged brotherhood, which made all men akin to the Divine Father of all, every religion, however ignorant, the expression of a sincere and availing worship, might well produce in a neophyte an exhilaration bordering upon ecstasy. The exclusive doctrine which had made Christianity, and special forms of it, the only way of spiritual redemption, now appeared to me to commend itself as little to human reason as to human affection. I felt that we could not rightly honor our dear Christ by immolating at his shrine the souls of myriads of our fellows born under the widely diverse influences which could not be thought of as existing unwilled by the supreme Providence. Antichrist was once a term of consummate reproach, often applied by zealous Protestants to their arch enemy, the Pope of Rome. As will be imagined, I intend a different use of it, and have chosen the term to express the opposition which has sprung up within the Christian church, not only to the worship of the son as a divine being, but even to the notion of his long undisputed preëminence in wisdom, goodness, and power. And here, as I once said that I had taken German in the natural way, with no preconceived notion of the import and importance of German literature, so I may say that I first received Christianity in the way natural to one of my birth and education. I have since been called upon to confront the topic in many ways. Swedenborg's theory of the divine man, Parker's preaching, the Boston Radical Club, Frank Abbot's depreciating comparison of Jesus with Socrates,--after following unfoldings of this wonderful panorama, I must say that the earliest view is that which I hold to most, that, namely, of the heavenly Being whose presence was beneficence, whose word was judgment, whose brief career on earth ended in a sacrifice, whose purity and pathos have had much to do with the redemption of the human race from barbarism and the rule of the animal passions. During the first score of years of my married life, I resided for the most part at South Boston. This remoteness from city life insured to me a good deal of quiet leisure, much of which I devoted to my favorite pursuits. It was in these days that I turned to my almost forgotten Latin, and read the "Aeneid" and the histories of Livy and Tacitus. At a later date my brother gave me Orelli's edition of Horace, and I soon came to delight much in that quasi-Hellenic Roman. I remember especially the odes which my brother pointed out to me as his favorites. These were: "Mæcenas atavis edite regibus;" "Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus;" "O fons Bandusiæ;" and, above all, "Exegi monumentum ære perennius." With no pretensions to correct scholarship, I yet enjoyed these Latin studies quite intensely. They were so much in my mind that, when we sat down to our two o'clock dinner, my husband would sometimes ask: "Have you got those elephants over the river yet?" alluding to Hannibal and the Punic war. Prior to these Latin studies, I read a good deal in Swedenborg, and was much fascinated by his theories of spiritual life. I remember "Heaven and Hell," "Divine Love and Wisdom," and "Conjugal Love" as the writings which interested me most; but the cumbrous symbolism of his Bible interpretation finally shut my mind against further entertainment of so fanciful a guest. Hegel was for some time my study among the German philosophers. After some severe struggling with his extraordinary diction, I became convinced that the obscurity of his style was intentional, and left him in some indignation. The deep things of philosophy are difficult enough when treated by one who desires to make them clear. Where the intention is rather to mask than to unfold the meaning which is in the master's mind, interpretation is difficult and hazardous. Hegel's own saying about his lectures is well known: "One only of my pupils understood me, and he misunderstood me." George Bancroft, the historian, spoke of Hegel as a man of weak character, and Dr. Francis Lieber, who had been under his instruction, had the same opinion of him. In the days of the Napoleonic invasion of Germany, Lieber had gone into the field, with other young men of the university. When, recovered from a severe wound, he took his place again among the students of philosophy, Hegel before beginning the day's lecture cried: "Let all those fools who went out against the French depart from this class." I think that I must have had by nature an especial sensitiveness to language, as the following trifling narration will show. I was perhaps twelve years old when Rev. James Richmond, who had studied in Germany, dining at my father's house, spoke of one of his German professors who was wont, as the prelude to his exercise, to exclaim: "Aus, aus, ihr Fremden." These words meant nothing to me then, but when, eight years later, I mastered the German tongue, I recalled them perfectly, and understood their meaning. One of my first efforts, after my return from Europe in 1851, was to acquaint myself with the "Philosophie Positive" of Auguste Comte. This was in accordance with the advice of my friend, Horace Wallace, who, indeed, lent me the first volume of the work. The synoptical view of the sciences therein presented revealed to me an entirely new aspect of thought. I did not, for a moment, adopt Comte's views of religion, neither did I at all agree in his wholesale condemnation of metaphysics, which appeared to me self-contradictory, his own system involving metaphysical distinctions as much, perhaps, as any other. On the other hand, the objectivism of his point of view brought a new element into my too concentrated habit of thought. I deemed myself already too old, being about thirty years of age, to conquer the difficulties of the higher mathematics, and of the several sciences in which these play so important a part. But I had had a bird's-eye view of this wonderful region of the natural sciences, and this, I think, never passed quite out of my mind. I used to talk about the books with Parker, who read everything worth reading. They had not greatly appealed to him. I also, at this time, read Hegel's "Aesthetik," and endeavored to read his "Logik," which I borrowed from Parker, and which he pronounced "so crabbed as to be scarcely worth enucleating." I cannot remember what it was which, soon after this time, led me to the study of Spinoza. I followed this with great interest, and became for a time almost intoxicated with the originality and beauty of his thoughts. While still under his influence I spoke of him to Mr. Bancroft as "der unentbehrliche," the indispensable Spinoza. He demurred at this, acknowledged Spinoza's analysis of the passions to be admirable, but assured me that Kant alone deserved to be called "indispensable;" and this dictum of his made me resolve to become at once a student of the "Critique of Pure Reason." I found this at first rather dry, after the glowing and daring flights of Spinoza, but I soon learned to hold the philosopher of Königsberg in great affection and esteem. I have read extensively in his writings, even in his minor treatises, and having attained some conception of his system, was inclined to say with Romeo: "Here I set up my everlasting rest." I devoted some of the best years of my life to these studies, and to the writings which grew out of them. I remember one summer at my Valley near Newport, in which I felt that I had read and written quite as much as was profitable. "I must go outside of my own thoughts, I must do something for some one," I said to myself. Just then the teacher of my sister's children broke out with malarial fever. She was staying with my sister at a farmhouse near by. The call to assist in nursing her was very welcome, and when I was thanked for my services I could truly say that I had been glad of the opportunity of rendering them for my own sake. The Kantian volumes occupied me for many months, even years. In fact, I have never gone beyond them. A new philosophy has sometimes appeared to me like a new disease. If we have found our master, and are satisfied with him, what need have we of starting again, to make the same journey with a new guide. Once we have got there, it seems better to abide. The early years of my married life interposed a barrier between my literary dreams and their realization. Those years brought me much to learn and much to do. The burden of housekeeping was new to me, a sister of mine, highly gifted in this respect, having charged herself with its duties so long as we were "girls together." I accordingly found myself lamentably deficient in household skill and knowledge. I endeavored to apply myself to the remedying of these defects, but with indifferent success. I was by nature far from observant, and often passed through a room without much notion of its condition or contents, my thoughts being intent on other matters. The period, too, was one of transition as regards household service. The old-time American servants were no longer to be obtained. The Irish girls who supplied their place were for the most part ignorant and untrained, their performance calling for a discipline and instruction which I, never having received, was quite unable to give them. During the first years of my residence at the Institution for the Blind, Dr. Howe delighted in inviting his friends to weekly dinners, which cost me many unhappy hours. My want of training and of forethought often caused me to forget some very important item of the repast. My husband's eldest sister, who lived with us, and who had held the reins of the housekeeping until my arrival, was averse to company, and usually absented herself on the days of the dinner parties. In her absence, I often did not know where to look for various articles which were requisite and necessary. I remember one dinner for which I had relied upon a form of ice as the principal feature of the dessert. The company was of the best, and I desired that the feast should correspond with it. The ice, which had been ordered from town, did not appear. I did my best to conceal my chagrin, but was scarcely consoled when the missing refreshment was found, the next morning, in a snowbank near our door, where the messenger had deposited it without word or comment. The same mischance might, indeed does sometimes happen at this later date. I should laugh at it now, but then I almost wept over it. Our kitchen and dining-room were on one floor, and a convenient slide allowed dishes to be passed from one room to the other. On a certain occasion, my sister being with me, I asked her whether my dinner had gone off well enough. "Oh yes," she replied; "only the slide was left open, and through it I saw the cook buttering the venison." I especially remember one summer which I resolved to devote to the study of cookery, for which there was then no school, and no teacher to be had at will. Having purchased Miss Catherine Beecher's Cook-book, I devoted some weeks to an experimental following of its recipes, with no satisfactory result. A little later, my husband secured the services of a very competent housekeeper, and my distresses and responsibilities were much diminished. After some years of this indulgence, I felt bound to make a second and more strenuous effort at housekeeping, and succeeded much better than before, having by this time managed to learn something of the nature and needs of household machinery. As I now regard these matters, I would say to every young girl, rich or poor, gifted or dull: "Learn to make a home, and learn this in the days in which learning is easy. Cultivate a habit of vigilance and forethought. With a reasonable amount of intelligence, a woman should be able to carry on the management of a household, and should yet have time for art and literature in some sort." In more recent years, having been called upon to take part in a public discussion regarding the compatibility of domestic with literary occupation, I endeavored to formulate the results of my own experience as follows:-- "If you have at your command three hours _per diem_, you may study art, literature, and philosophy, not as they are studied professionally, but in the degree involved in general culture. "If you have but one hour in every day, read philosophy, or learn foreign languages, living or dead. "If you can command only fifteen or twenty minutes, read the Bible with the best commentaries, and daily a verse or two of the best poetry." As I write this, I recall the piteous image of two wrecks of women, Americans and wives of Americans, who severally poured out their sorrows to me, saying that the preparation of "three square meals a day," the washing, baking, sewing, and child-bearing, had filled the measure of their days and exceeded that of their strength: "And yet," each said, "I wanted the Greek and Latin and college course as much as any one could wish for it." But surely, no love of intellectual pursuits should lead any of us to disparage and neglect the household gifts and graces. A house is a kingdom in little, and its queen, if she is faithful, gentle, and wise, is a sovereign indeed. CHAPTER XI ANTI-SLAVERY ATTITUDE: LITERARY WORK: TRIP TO CUBA Returning to Boston in 1851, I found the division of public sentiment more strongly marked than ever. The Fugitive Slave Law was much in the public mind. The anti-slavery people attacked it with might and main, while the class of wealthy conservatives and their followers strongly deprecated all opposition to its enactments. During my absence Charles Sumner had been elected to the Senate of the United States, in place of Daniel Webster, who had hitherto been the political idol of the Massachusetts aristocracy. Mr. Sumner's course had warmly commended him to a large and ever increasing constituency, but had brought down upon him the anger of Mr. Webster's political supporters. My husband's sympathies were entirely with the class then derided as "a band of disturbers of the public peace, enemies of law and order." I deeply regretted the discords of the time, and would have had all people good friends, however diverse in political persuasion. As this could not be, I felt constrained to cast in my lot with those who protested against the new assumptions of the slave power. The social ostracism which visited Charles Sumner never fell upon Dr. Howe. This may have been because the active life of the latter lay without the domain of politics, but also, I must think, because the services which he continually rendered to the community compelled from all who knew him, not only respect, but also cordial good-will. I did not then, or at any time, make any willful breach with the society to which I was naturally related. It did, however, much annoy me to hear those spoken of with contempt and invective who, I was persuaded, were only far in advance of the conscience of the time. I suppose that I sometimes repelled the attacks made upon them with a certain heat of temper, to avoid which I ought to have remembered Talleyrand's famous admonition, "Surtout point de zèle." Better, perhaps, would it have been to rest in the happy prophecy which assures us that "Wisdom is justified of all her children." Ordinary society is apt to class the varieties of individuals under certain stereotyped heads, and I have no doubt that it held me at this time to be a seeker after novelties, and one disposed to offer a premium for heresies of every kind. Yet I must say that I was never made painfully aware of the existence of such a feeling. There was always a leaven of good sense and good sentiment even in the worldly world of Boston, and as time went on I became the recipient of much kindness, and the happy possessor of a circle of substantial friends. * * * * * Shortly after my return to Boston, my husband spoke to me of a new acquaintance,--a Polish nobleman, Adam Gurowski by name,--concerning whom he related the following circumstances. Count Gurowski had been implicated in one of the later Polish insurrections. In order to keep his large estates from confiscation he had made them over to his younger brother, upon the explicit condition that a sufficient remittance should be regularly sent him, to enable him to live wherever his lot should thenceforth be cast. He came to this country, but the remittances failed to follow him, and he presently found himself without funds in a foreign land. Being a man of much erudition, he had made friends with some of the professors of Harvard University. They offered him assistance, which he declined, and it soon appeared that he was working in the gardens of Hovey & Co., in or near Cambridge. His new friends remonstrated with him, pleading that this work was unsuitable for a man of his rank and condition. He replied, "I am Gurowski; labor cannot degrade me." This independence of his position commended him much to the esteem of my husband, and he was more than once invited to our house. Some literary employment was found for him, and finally, through influence exerted at Washington, a position as translator was secured for him in the State Department. He was at Newport during the summer that we passed at the Cliff House, and he it was who gave it the title of Hotel Rambouillet. His proved to be a character of remarkable contradictions, in which really noble and generous impulses contrasted with an undisciplined temper and an insatiable curiosity. While inveighing constantly against the rudeness of American manners, he himself was often guilty of great impoliteness. To give an example: At his boarding-house in Newport a child at table gave a little trouble, upon which the count animadverted with great severity. The mother, waxing impatient, said, "I think, count, that you have no right to say so much about table manners; for you yesterday broke the crust of the chicken pie with your fist, and pulled the meat out with your fingers!" His curiosity, as I have said, was unbounded. Meeting a lady of his acquaintance at her door, and seeing a basket on her arm, he asked, "Where are you going, Mrs. ----, so early, with that basket?" She declined to answer the question, on the ground that the questioner had no concern in her errand. On the evening of the same day he again met the lady, and said to her, "I know now where you were going this morning with that basket." If friends on whom he called were said to be engaged or not at home, he was at great pains to find out how they were engaged, or whether they were really at home in spite of the message to the contrary. One gentleman in Newport, not desiring to receive the count's visit, and knowing that he would not be safe anywhere in his own house, took refuge in the loft of his barn and drew the ladder up after him. And yet Adam Gurowski was a true-hearted man, loyal to every good cause and devoted to his few friends. His life continued to the last to be a very checkered one. When the civil war broke out, his disapprobation of men and measures took expression in vehement and indignant protest against what appeared to him a willful mismanagement of public business. William H. Seward was then at the head of the Department of State, and against his policy the count fulminated in public and in private. He was warned by friends, and at last officially told that he could not be retained in the department if he persisted in stigmatizing its chief as a fool, a timeserver, no matter what. He persevered, and was dismissed from his place. He had been on friendly terms with Charles Sumner, to whom he probably owed his appointment. He tormented this gentleman to such a degree as to terminate all relations between the two. Of this breach Mr. Sumner gave the following account: "The count would come to my rooms at all hours. When I left my sleeping-chamber in the morning, I often found him in my study, seated at my table, perusing my morning paper and probably any other matter which might excite his curiosity. If he happened to come in while a foreign minister was visiting me, he would stay through the visit. I bore with this for a long time. At last the annoyance became insupportable. One evening, after a long sitting in my room, he took leave, but presently returned for a fresh _séance_, although it was already very late. I said to him, 'Count, you must go now, and you must never return.' 'How is this, my dear friend?' exclaimed the count. 'There is no explanation,' said I, 'only you must not come to my room again.'" This ended the acquaintance! The count after this spoke very bitterly of Mr. Sumner, whose procedure did seem to me a little severe. Unfortunately the lesson was quite lost upon Gurowski, and he continued to make enemies of those with whom he had to do, until nearly every door in Washington was closed to him. There was one exception. Mrs. Charles Eames, wife of a well-known lawyer, was one of the notabilities of Washington. Hers was one of those central characters which are able to attract and harmonize the most diverse social elements. Her house had long been a resort of the worthies of the capital. Men of mark and of intelligence gathered about her, regardless of party divisions. No one understood Washington society better than she did, and no one in it was more highly esteemed or less liable to be misrepresented. Mrs. Eames well knew how provoking and tormenting Count Gurowski was apt to be, but she knew, too, the remarkable qualities which went far to redeem his troublesome traits of character. And so, when the count seemed to be entirely discredited, she stood up for him, warning her friends that if they came to her house they would always be likely to meet this unacceptable man. He, on his part, was warmly sensible of the value of her friendship, and showed his gratitude by a sincere interest in all that concerned her. The courageous position which she had assumed in his behalf was not without effect upon the society of the place, and people in general felt obliged to show some respect to a person whom Mrs. Eames honored with her friendship. I myself have reason to remember with gratitude Mrs. Eames's hospitality. I made more than one visit at her house, and I well recall the distinguished company that I met there. The house was simple in its appointments, for the hosts were not in affluent circumstances, but its atmosphere of cordiality and of good sense was delightful. At one of her dinner parties I remember meeting Hon. Salmon P. Chase, afterwards Chief Justice of the United States, Secretary Welles of the Navy, and Senator Grimes of Iowa. I had seen that morning a life-size painting representing President Lincoln surrounded by the members of his Cabinet. Mr. Chase, I think, asked what I thought of the picture. I replied that I thought Mr. Lincoln's attitude rather awkward, and his legs out of proportion in their length. Mr. Chase laughed, and said, "Mr. Lincoln's legs are so long that it would be difficult to exaggerate them." I came to Washington soon after the conclusion of the war, and heard that Count Gurowski was seriously ill at the home of his good friend. I hastened thither to inquire concerning him, and learned that his life was almost despaired of. Mr. Eames told me this, and said that his wife and a lady friend of hers were incessant in their care of him. He promised that I should see him as soon as a change for the better should appear. Instead of this I received one day a message from Mrs. Eames, saying that the count was now given up by his physician, and that I might come, if I wished to see him alive once more. I went to the house at once, and found Mrs. Eames and her friend at the bedside of the dying man. He was already unconscious, and soon breathed his last. At Mr. Eames's request I now gave up my room at the hotel and came to stay with Mrs. Eames, who was prostrated with the fatigue of nursing the sick man and with grief for his loss. While I sat and talked with her Mr. Eames entered the room, and said, "Mrs. Howe, my wife has always had a menagerie here in Washington, and now she has lost her faithful old grizzly." I was intrusted with some of the arrangements for the funeral. Mrs. Eames said to me that, as the count had been a man of no religious belief, she thought it would be best to invite a Unitarian minister to officiate at his funeral. I should add that her grief prevented her from perceiving the humor of the suggestion. I accordingly secured the services of the Rev. John Pierpont, who happened to be in Washington at the time. Charles Sumner came to the house before the funeral, and actually shed tears as he looked on the face of his former friend. He remarked upon the beauty of the countenance, saying in his rather oratorical way, "There is a beauty of life, and there is a beauty of death." The count's good looks had been spoiled in early life by the loss of one eye, which had been destroyed, it was said, in a duel. After death, however, this blemish did not appear, and the distinction of the features was remarkable. Among his few effects was a printed volume containing the genealogy of his family, which had thrice intermarried with royal houses, once in the family of Maria Lesczinska, wife of Louis XV. of France. Within this book he had inclosed one or two cast-off trifles belonging to Mrs. Eames, with a few words of deep and grateful affection. So ended this troublous life. The Russian minister at Washington called upon Mrs. Eames soon after the funeral, and spoke with respect of the count, who, he said, could have held a brilliant position in Russia, had it not been for his quarrelsome disposition. Despite his skepticism, and in all his poverty, he caused a mass to be said every year for the soul of his mother, who had been a devout Catholic. To the brother whose want of faith added the distresses of poverty to the woes of exile, Gurowski once addressed a letter in the following form: "To John Gurowski, the greatest scoundrel in Europe." A younger brother of his, a man of great beauty of person, enticed one of the infantas of Spain from the school or convent in which she was pursuing her education. This adventure made much noise at the time. Mrs. Eames once read me part of a letter from this lady, in which she spoke of "the fatal Gurowski beauty." It was in the early years of this decade (1850-1860) that I definitively came before the world as an author. My first volume of poems, entitled "Passion Flowers," was published by Ticknor and Fields, without my name. In the choice and arrangement of the poems James T. Fields had been very helpful to me. My lack of experience had led me to suppose that my incognito might easily be maintained, but in this my expectations were disappointed. The authorship of the book was at once traced to me. It was much praised, much blamed, and much called in question. From the highest literary authorities of the time it received encouraging commendation. Mr. Emerson acknowledged the copy sent him, in a very kind letter. Mr. Whittier did likewise. He wrote, "I dare say thy volume has faults enough." For all this, he spoke warmly of its merits. Prescott, the beloved historian, made me happy with his good opinion. George Ripley, in the "New York Tribune," Edwin Whipple and Frank Sanborn in Boston, reviewed the volume in a very genial and appreciative spirit. I think that my joy reached its height when I heard Theodore Parker repeat some of my lines from the pulpit. Miss Catharine Sedgwick, in speaking of the poems to a mutual friend, quoted with praise a line from my long poem on Rome. Speaking of my first hearing of the nightingale, it says:-- "A note Fell as a star falls, trailing sound for light." Dr. Francis Lieber quoted the following passage as having a Shakespearean ring:-- "But, as none can tell Among the sunbeams which unconscious one Comes weaponed with celestial will, to strike The stroke of Freedom on the fettered floods, Giving the spring his watchword--even so Rome knew not she had spoke the word of Fate That should, from out its sluggishness, compel The frost-bound vastness of barbaric life, Till, with an ominous sound, the torrent rose And rushed upon her with terrific brow, Sweeping her back, through all her haughty ways, To her own gates, a piteous fugitive." I make mention of these things because the volume has long been out of print. It was a timid performance upon a slender reed, but the great performers in the noble orchestra of writers answered to its appeal, which won me a seat in their ranks. The work, such as it was, dealt partly with the stirring questions of the time, partly with things near and familiar. The events of 1848 were still in fresh remembrance: the heroic efforts of Italian patriots to deliver their country from foreign oppression, the struggle of Hungary to maintain her ancient immunities. The most important among my "Passion Flowers" were devoted to these themes. The wrongs and sufferings of the slave had their part in the volume. A second publication, following two years later, and styled "Words for the Hour," was esteemed by some critics as better than the first. George William Curtis, at that time editor of "Putnam's Magazine," wrote me, "It is a better book than its predecessor, but will probably not meet with the same success." And so, indeed, it proved. I had always contemplated writing for the stage, and was now emboldened to compose a drama entitled, "The World's Own," which was produced at Wallack's Theatre in New York. The principal characters were sustained by Matilda Heron, then in the height of her popularity, and Mr. Sothern, afterwards so famous in the rôle of Lord Dundreary. The play was performed several times in New York and once in Boston. It was pronounced by one critic "full of literary merits and of dramatic defects." It did not, as they say, "keep the stage." My next literary venture was a series of papers descriptive of a visit made to the island of Cuba in 1859, under the following circumstances. Theodore Parker had long intended to make this year one of foreign travel. He had planned a journey in South America, and Dr. Howe had promised to accompany him. The sudden failure of Parker's health at this time was thought to render a change of climate imperative, and in the month of February a voyage to Cuba was prescribed for him. In this, Dr. Howe willingly consented to accompany him, deciding also that I must be of the party. [Illustration: SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE _From a photograph about 1859._] Our departure was in rough weather. George Ripley, formerly of Brook Farm and then of the "New York Tribune," an early friend of Parker, came to see us off. My husband insisted somewhat strenuously upon my coming to table at the first meal served on board, as this would secure me a place for the entire voyage. I felt very ill, and Parker, who was seated at the same table, looked at my husband and said, "_Natura duce_," for which I was very grateful. Presently the captain, who was carving a roast of beef, asked some one whether a slice of fat was likewise desired. At this I fled to my cabin without waiting for permission. Parker also took refuge in his berth, and we did not meet again for some time. We had encountered a head wind in the Gulf Stream, and were rolled and tossed about in great discomfort. I persisted in being carried on deck every day. My stewardess once said to the stout steward who rendered me this service, "This lady has a great deal of energy and _no power_." My bearer, seeking, no doubt, to comfort me, growled in my ear, "Well now, I expect this sea-sickness is a dreadful thing." Soon a brighter day dawned upon us, and Parker appeared on deck, limp and helpless, and glad to lie upon a mattress. We had sad tales to tell of what we had suffered. A pretty lady passenger, who sat with us, held up a number of the "Atlantic Monthly" containing Colonel Higginson's well-remembered paper, "Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?" "Yes," cried her husband, "for they have got to teach it." By this time we had reached the southern seas, and I had entirely recovered from my sea-sickness. When I made my appearance, standing erect, and in my right clothes and mind, people did not recognize me, and asked, "Where did that lady come from?" On our way to Havana we stopped for a day at Nassau. Here we were entertained at luncheon by a physician of the island. Among the articles served to us was the tropical breadfruit, which might really be mistaken for a loaf fresh from the baker's oven. Before this we attended a morning drill of soldiers at the fort. In the book which I published afterwards, I spoke of the presiding officer as a lean Don Quixote on a leaner Rosinante. The colonel, for such was his rank, sent me word that he did not resent my mention of himself, but thought that I might have spoken more admiringly of his horse, of which he was very proud. A drive in the environs and an evening service at the church completed my experience of the friendly little island. When we reëmbarked for Cuba a gay party of young people accompanied us, all in light summer wear, fluttering with frills and ribbons. The rough sea soon sent them all below, to reappear only when we neared the end of our journey. The voyage had been of small service to our friend Parker, who was a wretched sailor. Arrived in Havana, he was able to go about somewhat with Dr. Howe. He had, however, a longer voyage before him, and my husband and I went with him to the Spanish steamer which was to carry him to Vera Cruz, whence he sailed for Europe, never to return. Our parting was a sad one. Parker embraced us both, probably feeling, as we did, that he might never see us again. I still carry in my mind the picture of his serious face, crowned with gray locks and a soft gray hat, as he looked over the side of the vessel and waved us a last farewell. The following extract from my "Trip to Cuba" preserves the record of our mutual leave-taking. "A pleasant row brought us to the side of the steamer. It was dusk already as we ascended her steep gangway, and from that to darkness there is at this season but the interval of a breath. Dusk too were our thoughts at parting from Can Grande, the mighty, the vehement, the great fighter. How were we to miss his deep music, here and at home! With his assistance we had made a very respectable band; now we were to be only a wandering drum and fife,--the fife particularly shrill and the drum particularly solemn. "And now came silence and tears and last embraces; we slipped down the gangway into our little craft and, looking up, saw bending above us, between the slouched hat and the silver beard, the eyes that we can never forget, that seemed to drop back in the darkness with the solemnity of a last farewell. We went home, and the drum hung himself gloomily on his peg, and the little fife _shut up_ for the remainder of the evening." To our hotel in Havana came, one day, a lovely lady, with pathetic dark eyes and a look of ill health. She was accompanied by her husband and little son. This was Mrs. Frank Hampton, formerly Miss Sally Baxter, a great belle in her time, and much admired by Mr. Thackeray. When we were introduced to each other, I asked, "Are you _the_ Mrs. Hampton?" She asked, "Are you _the_ Mrs. Howe?" We became friends at once. The Hamptons went with us to Matanzas, where we passed a few pleasant days. Dr. Howe was very helpful to the beautiful invalid. Something in the expression of her face reminded him of a relative known to him in early life, and on inquiry he found that Mrs. Hampton's father was a distant cousin of his own. Mrs. Hampton talked much of Thackeray, who had been, while in this country, a familiar visitor at her father's house. She told me that she recognized bits of her own conversation in some of the sayings of Ethel Newcome, and I have little doubt that in depicting the beautiful and noble though wayward girl he had in mind something of the aspect and character of the lovely Sally Baxter. In his correspondence with the family he was sometimes very playful, as when he wrote to Mrs. Baxter thanking her for the "wickled palnuts and pandy breaches," which she had lately sent him. When we left Havana our new friends went with us to Charleston, and invited us to visit them at their home in Columbia, S. C. This we were glad to do. The house at which the Hamptons received us belonged to an elder brother, Wade Hampton, whose family were at this time traveling in Europe. Wade Hampton called upon Dr. Howe, and soon introduced a topic which we would gladly have avoided, namely, the strained relations between the North and the South. "We mean to fight for it," said Wade Hampton. But Dr. Howe afterwards said to me: "They cannot be in earnest about meaning to fight. It would be too insane, too fatal to their own interests." So indeed it proved, but they then knew us as little as we knew them. They thought that we could not fight, and we thought that they would not. Both parties were soon made wiser by sad experience. My account of this trip, after publication in the "Atlantic Monthly," was issued in book form by Ticknor and Fields. Years after this time, a friend of mine landed in Cuba with a copy of the book in her hand luggage. It was at once taken from her by the custom-house officers, and she never saw it again. This little work was favorably spoken of and well received, but it did not please everybody. In one of its chapters, speaking of the natural indolence of the negroes in tropical countries, I had ventured to express the opinion that compulsory employment is better than none. Good Mr. Garrison seized upon this sentence, and impaled it in a column of "The Liberator" headed, "The Refuge of Oppression." I certainly did not intend it as an argument in favor of negro slavery. As an abstract proposition, and without reference to color, I still think it true. The publication of my Cuban notes brought me an invitation to chronicle the events of the season at Newport for the "New York Tribune." This was the beginning of a correspondence with that paper which lasted well into the time of the civil war. My letters dealt somewhat with social doings in Newport and in Boston, but more with the great events of the time. To me the experience was valuable in that I found myself brought nearer in sympathy to the general public, and helped to a better understanding of its needs and demands. It was in the days now spoken of that I first saw Edwin Booth. Dr. Howe and I betook ourselves to the Boston Theatre one rainy evening, expecting to see nothing more than an ordinary performance. The play was "Richelieu," and we had seen but little of Mr. Booth's part in it before we turned to each other and said, "This is the real thing." In every word, in every gesture, the touch of genius made itself felt. A little later I saw him in "Hamlet," and was even more astonished and delighted. While he was still completing this his first engagement in Boston, I received a letter from his manager, proposing that I should write a play for Mr. Booth. My first drama, though not a success, had made me somewhat known to theatrical people. I had been made painfully aware of its defects, and desired nothing more than to profit by the lesson of experience in producing something that should deserve entire approbation. It was therefore with a good hope of success that I undertook to write the play. Mr. Booth himself called upon me, in pursuance of his request. The favorable impression which he had made upon me was not lessened by a nearer view. I found him modest, intelligent, and above all genuine,--the man as worthy of admiration as the artist. Although I had seen Mr. Booth in a variety of characters, I could only think of representing him as Hippolytus, a beautiful youth, of heroic type, enamored of a high ideal. This was the part which I desired to create for him. I undertook the composition without much delay, and devoted to it the months of one summer's sojourn at Lawton's Valley. This lovely little estate had come to us almost fortuitously. George William Curtis, writing of the Newport of forty years ago, gives a character sketch of one Alfred Smith, a well-known real estate agent, who managed to entrap strangers in his gig, and drove about with them, often succeeding in making them purchasers of some bit of property in the sale of which he had a personal interest. In the summer of 1852 my husband became one of his victims. I say this because Dr. Howe made the purchase without much deliberation. In fact, he could hardly have told any one why he made it. The farm was a very poor one, and the farmhouse very small. Some necessary repairs rendered it habitable for our family of little children and ourselves. I did not desire the purchase, but I soon became much attached to the valley, which my husband's care greatly beautified. This was a wooded gorge, perhaps an eighth of a mile from the house, and extending some distance between high rocky banks. We found it a wilderness of brambles, with a brook which ran much out of its proper course. Dr. Howe converted it into a most charming out-of-door _salon_. A firm green sod took the place of the briers, the brook was restrained within its proper limits, and some fine trees replaced as many decayed stumps. An old, disused mill added to the picturesqueness of the scene. Below it rushed a small waterfall. Here I have passed many happy hours with my books and my babies, but it was not in this enchanting spot that I wrote my play. I had at this time and for many years afterward a superstition about a north light. My eyes had given me some trouble, and I felt obliged to follow my literary work under circumstances most favorable for their use. The exposure of our little farmhouse was south and west, and its only north light was derived from a window at the top of the attic stairs. Here was a platform just large enough to give room for a table two feet square. The stairs were shut off from the rest of the house by a stout door. And here, through the summer heats, and in spite of many wasps, I wrote my five-act drama, dreaming of the fine emphasis which Mr. Booth would give to its best passages and of the beautiful appearance he would make in classic costume. He, meanwhile, was growing into great fame and favor with the public, and was called hither and thither by numerous engagements. The period of his courtship and marriage intervened, and a number of years elapsed between the completion of the play and his first reading of it. At last there came a time in which the production of the play seemed possible. Charlotte Cushman and Edwin Booth were both in Boston performing, as I remember, but not at the same theatre. They agreed to act in my play. E. L. Davenport, manager of the Howard Athenæum, undertook to produce it, and my dream was very near becoming a reality. But lo! on a sudden, the manager bethought him that the time was rather late in the season; that the play would require new scenery; and, more than all, that his wife, who was also an actress, was not pleased with a secondary part assigned to her. A polite note informed me of his change of mind. This was, I think, the greatest "let down" that I ever experienced. It affected me seriously for some days, after which I determined to attempt nothing more for the stage. In truth, there appeared to be little reason for this action on the part of the manager. Miss Cushman, speaking of it, said to me, "My dear, if Edwin Booth and I had done nothing more than to stand upon the stage and say 'good evening' to each other, the house would have been filled." Mr. Booth, in the course of these years, experienced great happiness and great sorrow. On the occasion of our first meeting he had spoken to me of "little Mary Devlin" as an actress of much promise, who had recently been admired in "several _heavy_ parts." In process of time he became engaged to this young girl. Before the announcement of this fact he appeared with her several times before the Boston public. Few that saw it will ever forget a performance of Romeo and Juliet in which the two true lovers were at their best, ideally young, beautiful, and identified with their parts. I soon became well acquainted with this exquisite little woman, of whose untimely death the poet Parsons wrote:-- "What shall we do now, Mary being dead, Or say or write that shall express the half? What can we do but pillow that fair head, And let the spring-time write her epitaph?-- "As it will soon, in snowdrop, violet, Windflower and columbine and maiden's tear; Each letter of that pretty alphabet That spells in flowers the pageant of the year. * * * * * "She hath fulfilled her promise and hath passed; Set her down gently at the iron door! Eyes look on that loved image for the last: Now cover it in earth,--her earth no more." These lines recall to me the scene of Mary Booth's funeral, which took place in wintry weather, the service being held at the chapel in Mount Auburn. Hers was a most pathetic figure as she lay, serene and lovely, surrounded with flowers. As Edwin Booth followed the casket, his eyes heavy with grief, I could not but remember how often I had seen him enact the part of Hamlet at the stage burial of Ophelia. Beside or behind him walked a young man of remarkable beauty, to be sadly known at a later date as Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln and the victim of his own crime. Henry Ward Beecher, meeting Mary Booth one day at dinner at my house, was so much impressed with her peculiar charm that, on the occasion of her death, he wrote a very sympathetic letter to Mr. Booth, and became thenceforth one of his most esteemed friends. * * * * * The years between 1850 and 1857, eventful as they were, appear to me almost a period of play when compared with the time of trial which was to follow. It might have been likened to the tuning of instruments before some great musical solemnity. The theme was already suggested, but of its wild and terrible development who could have had any foreknowledge? Parker, indeed, writing to Dr. Howe from Italy, said, "What a pity that the map of our magnificent country should be destined to be so soon torn in two on account of the negro, that poorest of human creatures, satisfied, even in slavery, with sugar cane and a banjo." On reading this prediction, I remarked to my husband: "This is poor, dear Parker's foible. He always thinks that he knows what will come to pass. How absurd is this forecast of his!" "I don't know about that," replied Dr. Howe. CHAPTER XII THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES: IN WAR TIME I must here ask leave to turn back a little in the order of my reminiscences, my narrative having led me to pass by certain points which I desire to mention. The great comfort which I had in Parker's preaching came to an end when my children attained an age at which it appeared desirable that they should attend public worship. Concerning this my husband argued as follows:-- "The children [our two eldest girls] are now of an age at which they should receive impressions of reverence. They should, therefore, see nothing at the Sunday service which would militate against that feeling. At Parker's meeting individuals read the newspapers before the exercises begin. A good many persons come in after the prayer, and some go out before the conclusion of the sermon. These irregularities offend my sense of decorum, and appear to me undesirable in the religious education of the family." It was a grievous thing for me to comply with my husband's wishes in this matter. I said of it to his friend, Horace Mann, that to give up Parker's ministry for any other would be like going to the synagogue when Paul was preaching near at hand. Parker was soon made aware of Dr. Howe's views, but no estrangement ensued between the two friends. He did, however, write to my husband a letter, in which he laid great stress upon the depth and strength of his own concern in religion. My husband cherished an old predilection for King's Chapel, and would have been pleased if I had chosen to attend service there. My mind, however, was otherwise disposed. Having heard Parker, at the close of one of his discourses, speak in warm commendation of James Freeman Clarke, announcing at the same time that Mr. Clarke was about to begin a new series of services at Williams Hall, I determined to attend these. With Mr. Clarke I had indeed some slight acquaintance, having once heard him preach at Freeman Place Chapel, and having met him on divers occasions. It is well known that this, his first pastorate in Boston, was nearly lost to him in consequence of his inviting Theodore Parker on one occasion to occupy his pulpit. The feeling against the latter was then so strong as to cause an influential part of the congregation to withdraw from the society, which therefore threatened to fail for want of funds. Some years later Mr. Clarke resigned his charge and went abroad for a prolonged stay, possibly with indefinite ideas as to the future employment of his life. He was possessed of much literary and artistic taste, and might easily have added one to the number of those who, like George Bancroft, Jared Sparks, and others, had entered the Unitarian ministry, to leave it, after a few years, for fields of labor in which they were destined to achieve greater success. [Illustration: JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE _From a photograph by the Notman Photographic Company._] Fortunately, the suggestion of such a course, if entertained by him at all, did not prevail. Mr. Clarke's interest in the Christian ministry was too deeply grounded to be easily overcome. Returning from a restful and profitable sojourn in Europe, he sought to gather again those of his flock who had held to him and to each other. He found them ready to welcome him back with unabated love and trust. It was at this juncture that I heard Theodore Parker make the mention of him which brought him to my remembrance, bringing me also very reluctantly to his new place of worship. The hall itself was unattractive, and the aspect of its occupants decidedly unfashionable. Indeed, a witty friend of mine once said to me that the bonnets seen there were of so singular a description, as constantly to distract her attention from the minister's sermon. This absence of fashion rather commended the place to me; for I had had in my life enough and too much of that church-going in which the bonnets, the pews, and the doctrine appear to rest on one dead level of conventionalism. Mr. Clarke's preaching was as unlike as possible to that of Theodore Parker. While not wanting in the critical spirit, and characterized by very definite views of the questions which at that time were foremost in the mind of the community, there ran through the whole course of his ministrations an exquisite tone of charity and good-will. He had not the philosophic and militant genius of Parker, but he had a genius of his own, poetical, harmonizing. In after years I esteemed myself fortunate in having passed from the drastic discipline of the one to the tender and reconciling ministry of the other. The members of the congregation were mostly strangers to me, yet I felt from the first a respect for them. In process of time I came to know something of their antecedents, and to make friends among them. After some years of attendance at Williams Hall, our society, somewhat increased in numbers, removed to Indiana Place Chapel, where we remained until we were able to erect for ourselves the commodious and homelike building which we occupy to-day. Our minister was a man of much impulse, but of more judgment. In his character were blended the best traits of the conservative and of the liberal. His ardent temperament and sanguine disposition bred in him that natural hopefulness which is so important an element in all attempted reform. His sound mind, well disciplined by culture, held fast to the inherited treasures of society, while a fortunate power of apprehending principles rendered him very steadfast, both in advance and in reserve. In the agitated period which preceded the civil war and in that which followed it, he in his modest pulpit became one of the leaders, not of his own flock alone, but of the community to which he belonged. I can imagine few things more instructive and desirable than was his preaching in those troublous times, so full of unanswered question and unreconciled discord. His church was like an organ, with deep undertones and lofty, aspiring treble,--the master hand pressing the keys, the heart of the congregation responding with a full melody. Festivals of sorrow were held in Indiana Place Chapel, and many of them,--James Buchanan's hollow fast, a day of mourning for John Brown, and, saddest and greatest of all, a solemn service following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. We were led through these shadows of death by the radiant light of a truly Christian faith, which our pastor ever held before us. Among the many who stood by him in his labors of love was a lady possessed of rare taste in the disposition of floral and other decorations. We came at last to confer on her the title of the Flower Saint. On the occasion last mentioned, when we entered the building, full of hopeless sorrow, we saw pulpit and altar adorned with a rich violet pall, on which, at intervals, hung wreaths of white lilies. So something of the pomp of victory was mingled with our bitter sense of loss. The nation's chief was gone, but with the noble army of martyrs we now beheld him, crowned with the unfading glory of his work. Mr. Clarke's life possesses an especial interest from the fact of its having been one of those rare lives which start in youth with an ideal, and follow it through manhood to old age; parting from it only at the last breath, and bequeathing it to posterity in its full growth and beauty. This ideal appeared to him in the guise of a free church, whose pews should not be sold, whose seats should be open to all, with no cumbrous encounter of cross-interests,--a church of true worship and earnest interpretation, which should be held together by the bond of veritable sympathy. This living church he built out of his own devout and tender heart. A dream at first, he saw it take shape and grow, and when he flitted from its sphere he felt that it would stand and endure. In marriage Mr. Clarke had been most fortunate. He became attached early in life to a young lady of rare beauty, and of character not less uncommon, to whom he once wrote some charming lines, beginning,-- "When shall we meet again, dearest and best? Thou going eastward, and I to the west?" This attachment probably dated from the period of his theological studies at Meadville, Pa. In due course of time the two lives became united in a most happy and helpful partnership. Mrs. Clarke truly attained the dignity of a mother in Israel. She went hand-in-hand with her husband in all his church work. She made his home simple in adornment but exquisite in comfort. She was less social in disposition than he, less excitable, indeed, so calm of nature that her husband, in giving her a copy of my first volume of poems, wrote on the fly-leaf, "To the passionless, 'Passion Flowers,'" and in the lines that followed compared her to the Jungfrau with its silvery light. This calmness, which was not coldness, sometimes enabled her to render a service which might have been difficult to many. I remember that a young minister, a fresh convert from Calvinistic doctrine, preached one Sunday a rather crude sermon, in Mr. Clarke's absence. After the close of the service Mrs. Clarke went up to the speaker, who was expected to preach that evening at a well-known church in the city, and said, "Mr. ----, if you intend to give the sermon we have just heard at the ---- church this evening, you will do well to omit certain things in it." She proceeded to mention the changes which appeared to her desirable. Her advice, most kindly given, was no doubt appreciated. Let me here record my belief that society rarely attains anywhere a higher level than that which all must recognize in the Boston of the last forty years. The religious philosophy of the Unitarian pulpit; the intercourse with the learned men of Harvard College, more frequent formerly than at present; the inheritance of solid and earnest character, most precious of estates; the nobility of thought developed in Margaret Fuller's pupils; the cordial piety of such leaders as Phillips Brooks, James Freeman Clarke, and Edward Everett Hale; the presence of leading authors,--Holmes, Longfellow, Emerson, and Lowell,--all these circumstances combined have given to Massachusetts a halo of glory which time should not soon have power to dim. Massachusetts, as I understand her, asks for no false leadership, for no illusory and transient notoriety. Where Truth and Justice command, her sons and daughters will follow; and if she should sometimes be found first in the ranks, it will not be because her ambition has displaced others, but because the strength of her convictions has carried her beyond the ranks of the doubting and deliberate. The decade preceding the civil war was indeed a period of much agitation. The anomalous position of a slave system in a democratic republic was beginning to make itself keenly felt. The political preponderance of the slaveholding States, fostered and upheld by the immense money power of the North, had led their inhabitants to believe that they needed to endure no limits. Recent legislation, devised and accomplished by their leaders, had succeeded in enforcing upon Northern communities a tame compliance with their most extravagant demands. The extension of the slave system to the new territories, soon to constitute new States, became the avowed purpose of Southern politicians. The conscience of the North, lulled by financial prosperity, awoke but slowly to an understanding of the situation. To enlighten this conscience was evidently the most important task of public-spirited men. Among other devices to this end, a newspaper was started in Boston with the name of "The Commonwealth." Its immediate object was to reach and convince that important portion of the body politic which distrusts rhetoric and oratory, but which sooner or later gives heed to dispassionate argument and the advocacy of plain issues. My husband took an active interest in the management of this paper, and indeed assumed its editorship for one entire winter. In this task I had great pleasure in assisting him. We began our work together every morning,--he supervising and supplying the political department of the paper, I doing what I could in the way of social and literary criticism. Among my contributions to the work were a series of notices of Dr. Holmes's Lowell lectures on the English poets, and a paper on Mrs. Stowe and George Sand. "The Commonwealth" did good service in the battle of opinion which unexpectedly proved a prelude to the most important event in our history as a nation. The reading public hardly needs to-day to be reminded that Mrs. Stowe's story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" played an important part in the change of base, which in time became evident in the North. The torch of her sympathy, held before the lurid pictures of slave life, set two continents on fire with loathing and indignation against abuses so little in accordance with civil progress and Christian illumination. Europeans reproached us with this enthroned and persevering barbarism. "Why is it endured?" they asked, and we could only answer: "It has a legal right to exist." Some time in the fifties, my husband spoke to me of a very remarkable man, of whom, he said, I should be sure to hear sooner or later. This man, Dr. Howe said, seemed to intend to devote his life to the redemption of the colored race from slavery, even as Christ had willingly offered his life for the salvation of mankind. It was enjoined upon me that I should not mention to any one this confidential communication; and to make sure that I should not, I allowed the whole matter to pass out of my thoughts. It may have been a year or more later that Dr. Howe said to me: "Do you remember that man of whom I spoke to you,--the one who wished to be a saviour for the negro race?" I replied in the affirmative. "That man," said the doctor, "will call here this afternoon. You will receive him. His name is John Brown." Thus admonished, I watched for the visitor, and prepared to admit him myself when he should ring at the door. [Illustration: JOHN BROWN _From a photograph about 1857._] This took place at our house in South Boston, where it was not at all _infra dig._ for me to open my own door. At the expected time I heard the bell ring, and, on answering it, beheld a middle-aged, middle-sized man, with hair and beard of amber color, streaked with gray. He looked a Puritan of the Puritans, forceful, concentrated, and self-contained. We had a brief interview, of which I only remember my great gratification at meeting one of whom I had heard so good an account. I saw him once again at Dr. Howe's office, and then heard no more of him for some time. I cannot tell how long after this it was that I took up the "Transcript" one evening, and read of an attack made by a small body of men on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Dr. Howe presently came in, and I told him what I had just read. "Brown has got to work," he said. I had already arrived at the same conclusion. The rest of the story is matter of history: the failure of the slaves to support the movement initiated for their emancipation, the brief contest, the inevitable defeat and surrender, the death of the rash, brave man upon the scaffold. All this is known, and need not be repeated here. In speaking of it, my husband assured me that John Brown's plan had not been so impossible of realization as it appeared to have been after its failure. Brown had been led to hope that, upon a certain signal, the slaves from many plantations would come to him in such numbers that he and they would become masters of the situation with little or no bloodshed. Neither he nor those who were concerned with him had it at all in mind to stir up the slaves to acts of cruelty and revenge. The plan was simply to combine them in large numbers, and in a position so strong that the question of their freedom would be decided then and there, possibly without even a battle. I confess that the whole scheme appeared to me wild and chimerical. Of its details I knew nothing, and have never learned more. None of us could exactly approve an act so revolutionary in its character, yet the great-hearted attempt enlisted our sympathies very strongly. The weeks of John Brown's imprisonment were very sad ones, and the day of his death was one of general mourning in New England. Even there, however, people were not all of the same mind. I heard a friend say that John Brown was a pig-headed old fool. In the Church of the Disciples, on the other hand, a special service was held on the day of the execution, and the pastor took for his text the saying of Christ, "It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master." Victor Hugo had already said that the death of John Brown would thenceforth hallow the scaffold, even as the death of Christ had hallowed the cross. The record of John Brown's life has been fully written, and by a friendly hand. I will only mention here that he had much to do with the successful contest which kept slavery out of the territory of Kansas. He was a leading chief in the border warfare which swept back the pro-slavery immigration attempted by some of the wild spirits of Missouri. In this struggle, he one day saw two of his own sons shot by the Border Ruffians (as the Missourians of the border were then called), without trial or mercy. Some people thought that this dreadful sight had maddened his brain, as well it might. I recall one humorous anecdote about him, related to me by my husband. On one occasion, during the border war, he had taken several prisoners, and among them a certain judge. Brown was always a man of prayer. On this occasion, feeling quite uncertain as to whether he ought to spare the lives of the prisoners, he retired into a thicket near at hand, and besought the Lord long and fervently to inspire him with the right determination. The judge, overhearing this petition, was so much amused at it that, in spite of the gravity of his own position, he laughed aloud. "Judge ----," cried John Brown, "if you mock at my prayers, I shall know what to do with you without asking the Almighty." I remember now that I saw John Brown's wife on her way to visit her husband in prison and to see the last of him. She seemed a strong, earnest woman, plain in manners and in speech. This brings me to the period of the civil war. What can I say of it that has not already been said? Its cruel fangs fastened upon the very heart of Boston, and took from us our best and bravest. From many a stately mansion father or son went forth, followed by weeping, to be brought back for bitterer sorrow. The work of the women in providing comforts for the soldiers was unremitting. In organizing and conducting the great bazaars, which were held in furtherance of this object, many of these women found a new scope for their activities, and developed abilities hitherto unsuspected by themselves. Even in gay Newport there were sad reverberations of the strife; and I shall never forget an afternoon on which I drove into town with my son, by this time a lad of fourteen, and found the main street lined with carriages, and the carriages filled with white-faced people, intent on I knew not what. Meeting a friend, I asked, "Why are these people here? What are they waiting for, and why do they look as they do?" "They are waiting for the mail. Don't you know that we have had a dreadful reverse?" Alas! this was the second battle of Bull Run. I have made some record of it in a poem entitled "The Flag," which I dare mention here because Mr. Emerson, on hearing it, said to me, "I like the architecture of that poem." Prominent among the helpers called out by the war was our noble war governor, John Albion Andrew. My first acquaintance with him was formed in the early days of the Free-Soil Party, of which he and my husband were leading members. This organization, if I remember rightly, grew out of an earlier one which marked the very beginning of a new movement. Its members were spoken of as "young Whigs," and its principles were friendship for the negro and opposition to war, which at that time was particularly directed against the Mexican war. It was as a young Whig that Dr. Howe consented to become a candidate for a seat in the Congress of the United States. The development of a pro-slavery policy on the part of our government, and the intention made evident of not only maintaining but also extending the area of slavery, soon gave to the new party a very serious _raison d'être_, and under its influence the young Whigs became Free Soilers.[3] [Footnote 3: In the days here spoken of, the Cochituate water was first brought into Boston. I was asked one day to furnish a toast for a temperance festival, and felt moved to send the following: "Free soil,--free water,--free grace," which was well received.] Some of these gentlemen came often to our house, and among them I soon learned to distinguish Mr. Andrew. As time went on, he became a familiar friend in our household. Our mutual interest in the Church of the Disciples, and our regard for its pastor were bonds which drew us together. He was, indeed, a typical American of the best sort. Most happy in temperament, with great vitality and enjoyment of life, he united in his make-up the gifts of quick perception and calm deliberation. His judgments were broad, sound, and charitable, his disposition full of good-will, his tastes at once simple and comprehensive. He was at home in high society, and not less so among the lowly. He was very social in disposition, and much "given to hospitality," but without show or pretense. He had been one of the original members of the Church of the Disciples, and had certainly been drawn toward Mr. Clarke by a deep and genuine religious sympathy. Although a man of most serious convictions, he was able to enter heartily into the spirit of every social occasion. He was with us sometimes at our rural retreat on Newport Island, far from the scenes of fashionable life. I once had the honor of entertaining in this place the members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. While we were all busy with preparations for the reception of these eminent persons, Mr. Andrew--he was not as yet governor--offered to compound for the company a pleasing beverage. He took off his coat, and went to work with lemons, sugar, and other ingredients, and was very near being found in his shirt-sleeves by those of the scientists who were first upon the ground. At another time we were arranging some tableaux for one of my children's parties, and had chosen the subjects from Thackeray's fairy tale of the "Rose and the Ring." I came to our friend in some perplexity, and said, "Dear Mr. Andrew, in the tableaux this evening Dr. Howe is to personate Kutasoff Hedzoff; would you be willing to pose as Prince Bulbo?" "By all means," was the response. I brought the book, and Mr. Andrew studied and imitated the costume of the prince, even to the necktie and the rose in his buttonhole. In the years that followed, he as well as we had little time for merry-making. While the political sky was darkening and the thunder of war was faintly rumbling in the air, Dr. Howe said to me one day, "Andrew is going to be governor of Massachusetts." My first recollection of him in war time concerns the attack made upon the United States troops as they were passing through Baltimore. The telegram sent by him to the mayor of that city seemed to give an earnest of what we might expect from him. He requested that the bodies of our soldiers who had fallen in the streets should be tenderly cared for, and sent to their State, Massachusetts. We were present when these bodies were received at King's Chapel burial-ground, and could easily see how deeply the governor was moved at the sad sight of the coffins draped with the national flag. This occasion drew from me the poem beginning,-- "Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms, To deck our girls for gay delights: The crimson flower of battle blooms, And solemn marches fill the nights." When James Freeman Clarke's exchanging pulpits with Theodore Parker alienated from him a part of his congregation, Governor Andrew strongly opposed the views of the seceders, and at a meeting called in connection with the movement made so eloquent a plea against the separation as to move his hearers to tears. [Illustration: JOHN A. ANDREW _From a photograph by Black._] Very generous was his conduct in the case of John Brown, when the latter lay in a Southern prison, about to be tried for his life, without counsel and without money. Mr. Andrew, on becoming acquainted with his condition, telegraphed to eminent lawyers in Washington to engage them for the defense of the prisoner, and made himself responsible for the legal expenses of the case, amounting to thirteen hundred dollars. He was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1860, and his forethought and sagacity were soon shown in the course of action instituted by him to prepare the State for immediate and active participation in the military movements which he felt to be near at hand. The measures then taken by him were much derided; but, when the crisis came, the heart of the public went out to him in gratitude, for every emergency had been thought out and provided for. The governor now became a very busy man. Who can number the hurried journeys which he made between Boston and Washington, when his counsel was imperatively demanded in the one place and no less needed in the other? These exhausting labors, which continued throughout the war, never disturbed the serenity of his countenance, always luminous with cheerfulness. They were, no doubt, undermining his bodily vigor; but his devotion to public duty was such that he was well content to spend and be spent in its fulfillment. I was present at the State House when Governor Andrew presented to the legislature of Massachusetts the parting gift of Theodore Parker,--the gun which his grandfather had carried at the battle of Lexington. After a brief but very appropriate address, the governor pressed the gun to his lips before giving it into the keeping of the official guardian of such treasures. This scene was caricatured in one of the public prints of the time. I remember it as most impressive. The governor was an earnest Unitarian, and as already said a charter member of the Church of the Disciples. His religious sympathies, however, outwent all sectarian limits. He prized and upheld the truly devout spirits, wherever found, and delighted in the Methodism of Father Taylor. He used to say, "When I want to enjoy a good warm time, I go to Brother Grimes's colored church." Although himself a Protestant of the Protestants, he entertained a sincere esteem for individuals among the Catholic clergy. Among these I remember Father Finotti as one of whom he often spoke, and who was sometimes a guest at his table. When Madame Ristori made her first visit to this country, Father Finotti entertained her one day at dinner, inviting also Governor and Mrs. Andrew. The governor told me afterward that he enjoyed this meeting very much, and described some song or recitation which the great actress gave at table, and which the aged priest heard with emotion, recalling the days of his youth and the dear land of his birth. Once, when Governor Andrew was with us at our summer home, my husband suddenly proposed that we should hold a Sunday service in the shade of our beautiful valley. This was on the Sunday morning itself, and the time admitted of no preparation. I had with me neither hymnal nor book of sermons, and was rather at a loss how to carry out my husband's design. The governor at once came to my assistance. He gave the Scripture lessons from memory, and deaconed out the lines of a favorite hymn,-- "The dove let loose in eastern skies, Returning fondly home." This we sang to the best of our ability. The governor had in memory some writing of his own appropriate to the occasion; and, all joining in the Lord's prayer, the simple and beautiful rite was accomplished. The record of our State during the war was a proud one. The repeated calls for men and for money were always promptly and generously answered. And this promptness was greatly forwarded by the energy and patriotic vigilance of the governor. I heard much of this at the time, especially from my husband, who was greatly attached to the governor, and who himself took an intense interest in all the operations of the war. I am glad to remember that our house was one of the places in which Governor Andrew used to take refuge, when the need of rest became imperative. Having, perhaps, passed much of the night at the State House, receiving telegrams and issuing orders, he would sometimes lie down on a sofa in my drawing-room, and snatch a brief nap before dinner would be announced. I seemed to live in and along with the war, while it was in progress, and to follow all its ups and downs, its good and ill fortune with these two brave men, Dr. Howe and Governor Andrew. Neither of them for a moment doubted the final result of the struggle, but both they and I were often very sad and much discouraged. Andrew was especially distressed at the disastrous retreat in the Wilderness, when medicines, stores, and even wounded soldiers were necessarily left behind. He said of this, "When I read the accounts of it I thought that the bottom had dropped out of everything." He was not alone in feeling thus. While Governor Andrew held himself at the command of the government, and was ready to answer every call from the White House with his presence, he was no less persistent in the visitations required in his own State. Of some of these I can speak from personal experience, having often had the pleasure of accompanying him and Mrs. Andrew in such excursions. I went twice with the gubernatorial party to attend the Agricultural Fair at Barnstable. The first time we were the guests of Mr. Phinney, the veteran editor of a Barnstable paper. On another occasion we visited Berkshire, and were entertained at Greenfield, North Adams, and Stockbridge. Dress parades were usually held at these times. How well I have in mind the governor's appearance as, in his military cloak, wearing scrupulously white kid gloves, he walked from rank to rank, receiving the salute of the men and returning it with great good humor! He evidently enjoyed these meetings very much. His staff consisted of several young men of high position in the community, who were most agreeable companions,--John Quincy Adams, Henry Lee, handsome Harry Ritchie, and one or two others whose names I do not recall. In the jollity of these outings the governor did not forget to visit the public institutions, prisons, reform schools, insane asylums, etc. His presence carried cheer and sunshine into the most dreary places, and his deep interest in humanity made itself felt everywhere. From an early period in the war he saw that the emancipation of the negroes of the South was imperatively demanded to insure the success of the North. It had always been a moral obligation. It had now become a military necessity. When the act was consummated, he not only rejoiced in it, but bent all his energies upon the support of the President in an act so daring and so likely to be deprecated by the half-hearted. His efforts to this end were not confined to his own State. He did much to promote unity of opinion and concert in action among the governors of other States. He strongly advocated the organization of colored regiments, and the first of these that reached the field of battle came from his State. All of us, I suppose, have met with people who are democratic in theory, but who in practical life prefer to remain in relation mostly with individuals of their own or a superior class. Our great governor's democracy was not founded on intellectual conviction alone. It was a democracy of taste and of feeling. I say of taste, because he discerned the beauty of life which is often found among the lowly, the faithfulness of servants, the good ambition of working people to do their best with hammer and saw, with needle and thread. He earnestly desired that people of all degrees, high and low, rich and poor, should enjoy the blessings of civilization, should have their position of use and honor in the great human brotherhood. And it was this sweet and sincere humanity of heart which gave him so wide and varied a sphere of influence. He could confer with the cook in her kitchen, with the artisan at his task, with the convict in his cell, and always leave behind him an impression of kindness and sympathy. I have often in my mind compared society to a vast orchestra, which, properly led, gives forth a heavenly music, and which, ill conducted, utters only harsh and discordant sounds. The true leader of the orchestra has the music in his mind. He can read the intricate scroll which is set up before him; and so the army of melody responds to his tap, and instrument after instrument wakes at his bidding and is silent at his command. I cannot help thinking of Governor Andrew as such a leader. In his heart was written the music of the law of love. Before his eyes was the scroll of the great designs of Providence. And so, being at peace in himself, he promoted peace and harmony among those with whom he had to do; unanimity of action during the war, unanimity of consent and of rejoicing when peace came. So beneficent a presence has rarely shown itself among us. I trust that something of its radiance will continue to enlighten our national counsels and to cheer our hearts with the great hope which made him great. During the years of the war, Washington naturally became the great centre of interest. Politicians of every grade, adventurers of either sex, inventors of all sorts of military appliances, and simple citizens, good and bad, flocked thither in great numbers. My own first visit to it was in the late autumn of 1861, and was made in company with Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Governor Andrew, and my husband. Dr. Howe had already passed beyond the age of military service, but was enabled to render valuable aid as an officer of the Sanitary Commission, and also on the commission which had in charge the condition and interests of the newly freed slaves. Although Dr. Howe had won his spurs many years before this time, in the guerrilla contests of the Greek struggle for national life, his understanding of military operations continued to be remarkable. Throughout the course of the war, I never remember him to have been deceived by an illusory report of victory. He would carefully consider the plan of the battle, and when he would say, "This looks to me like a defeat," the later reports were sure to justify his surmises. [Illustration: JULIA WARD HOWE _From a photograph by J. J. Hawes, about 1861._] As we approached the city, I saw from time to time small groups of armed men seated on the ground near a fire. Dr. Howe explained to me that these were the pickets detailed to guard the railroad. The main body of the enemy's troops was then stationed in the near neighborhood of Washington, and the capture of the national capital would have been of great strategic advantage to their cause. In order to render this impossible, the great Army of the Potomac was encamped around the city, with General McClellan in command. Within the city limits mounted officers and orderlies galloped to and fro. Ambulances, drawn by four horses, drove through the streets, stopping sometimes before Willard's Hotel, where we had all found quarters. From my window I saw the office of the "New York Herald," and near it the ghastly advertisement of an agency for embalming and forwarding the bodies of those who had fallen in the fight or who had perished by fever. William Henry Channing, nephew of the great Channing, and heir to his spiritual distinction, had left his Liverpool pulpit, deeply stirred by love of his country and enthusiasm in a noble cause. On Sundays, his voice rang out, clear and musical as a bell, within the walls of the Unitarian church. I went more than once with him and Mr. Clarke to visit camps and hospitals. It was on the occasion of one of these visits that I made my very first attempt at public speaking. I had joined the rest of my party in a reconnoitring expedition, the last stage of which was the headquarters of Colonel William B. Greene, of the First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. Our friend received us with a warm welcome, and presently said to me, "Mrs. Howe, you must speak to my men." Feeling my utter inability to do this, I ran away and tried to hide myself in one of the hospital tents. Colonel Greene twice found me and brought me back to his piazza, where at last I stood, and told as well as I could how glad I was to meet the brave defenders of our cause, and how constantly they were in my thoughts. Among my recollections of this period I especially cherish that of an interview with President Abraham Lincoln, arranged for us by our kind friend, Governor Andrew. The President was laboring at this time under a terrible pressure of doubt and anxiety. He received us in one of the drawing-rooms of the White House, where we were invited to take seats, in full view of Stuart's portrait of Washington. The conversation took place mostly between the President and Governor Andrew. I remember well the sad expression of Mr. Lincoln's deep blue eyes, the only feature of his face which could be called other than plain. Mrs. Andrew, being of the company, inquired when we could have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Lincoln, and Mr. Lincoln named to us the day of her reception. He said to Governor Andrew, apropos of I know not what, "I once heerd George Sumner tell a story." The unusual pronunciation fixed in my memory this one unimportant sentence. The talk, indeed, ran mostly on indifferent topics. When we had taken leave, and were out of hearing, Mr. Clarke said of Mr. Lincoln, "We have seen it in his face; hopeless honesty; that is all." He said it as if he felt that it was far from enough. None of us knew then--how could we have known?--how deeply God's wisdom had touched and inspired that devout and patient soul. At the moment few people praised or trusted him. "Why did he not do this, or that, or the other? He a President, indeed! Look at this war, dragging on so slowly! Look at our many defeats and rare victories!" Such was the talk that one constantly heard regarding him. The most charitable held that he meant well. Governor Andrew was one of the few whose faith in him never wavered. Meanwhile, through evil and good report, he was listening for the mandate which comes to one alone, bringing with it the decision of a mind convinced and of a conscience resolved. When the right moment came, he issued the proclamation of emancipation to the slaves. He sent his generals into the enemy's country. He lived to welcome them back as victors, to electrify the civilized world with his simple, sincere speech, to fall by the hand of an assassin, to bequeath to his country the most tragical and sacred of her memories. It would be impossible for me to say how many times I have been called upon to rehearse the circumstances under which I wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." I have also had occasion more than once to state the simple story in writing. As this oft-told tale has no unimportant part in the story of my life, I will briefly add it to these records. I distinctly remember that a feeling of discouragement came over me as I drew near the city of Washington at the time already mentioned. I thought of the women of my acquaintance whose sons or husbands were fighting our great battle; the women themselves serving in the hospitals, or busying themselves with the work of the Sanitary Commission. My husband, as already said, was beyond the age of military service, my eldest son but a stripling; my youngest was a child of not more than two years. I could not leave my nursery to follow the march of our armies, neither had I the practical deftness which the preparing and packing of sanitary stores demanded. Something seemed to say to me, "You would be glad to serve, but you cannot help any one; you have nothing to give, and there is nothing for you to do." Yet, because of my sincere desire, a word was given me to say, which did strengthen the hearts of those who fought in the field and of those who languished in the prison. We were invited, one day, to attend a review of troops at some distance from the town. While we were engaged in watching the manoeuvres, a sudden movement of the enemy necessitated immediate action. The review was discontinued, and we saw a detachment of soldiers gallop to the assistance of a small body of our men who were in imminent danger of being surrounded and cut off from retreat. The regiments remaining on the field were ordered to march to their cantonments. We returned to the city very slowly, of necessity, for the troops nearly filled the road. My dear minister was in the carriage with me, as were several other friends. To beguile the rather tedious drive, we sang from time to time snatches of the army songs so popular at that time, concluding, I think, with "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground; His soul is marching on." The soldiers seemed to like this, and answered back, "Good for you!" Mr. Clarke said, "Mrs. Howe, why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?" I replied that I had often wished to do this, but had not as yet found in my mind any leading toward it. I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, "I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them." So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper. I had learned to do this when, on previous occasions, attacks of versification had visited me in the night, and I feared to have recourse to a light lest I should wake the baby, who slept near me. I was always obliged to decipher my scrawl before another night should intervene, as it was only legible while the matter was fresh in my mind. At this time, having completed my writing, I returned to bed and fell asleep, saying to myself, "I like this better than most things that I have written." The poem, which was soon after published in the "Atlantic Monthly," was somewhat praised on its appearance, but the vicissitudes of the war so engrossed public attention that small heed was taken of literary matters. I knew, and was content to know, that the poem soon found its way to the camps, as I heard from time to time of its being sung in chorus by the soldiers. As the war went on, it came to pass that Chaplain McCabe, newly released from Libby Prison, gave a public lecture in Washington, and recounted some of his recent experiences. Among them was the following: He and the other Union prisoners occupied one large, comfortless room, in which the floor was their only bed. An official in charge of them told them, one evening, that the Union arms had just sustained a terrible defeat. While they sat together in great sorrow, the negro who waited upon them whispered to one man that the officer had given them false information, and that the Union soldiers had, on the contrary, achieved an important victory. At this good news they all rejoiced, and presently made the walls ring with my Battle Hymn, which they sang in chorus, Chaplain McCabe leading. The lecturer recited the poem with such effect that those present began to inquire, "Who wrote this Battle Hymn?" It now became one of the leading lyrics of the war. In view of its success, one of my good friends said, "Mrs. Howe ought to die now, for she has done the best that she will ever do." I was not of this opinion, feeling myself still "full of days' works," although I did not guess at the new experiences which then lay before me. While the war was still at its height, I received a kind letter from Hon. George Bancroft, conveying an invitation to attend a celebration of the poet Bryant's seventieth birthday, to be given by the New York Century Club, of which Mr. Bancroft was the newly-elected president. He also expressed the hope that I would bring with me something in verse or in prose, to add to the tributes of the occasion. Having accepted the invitation and made ready my tribute, I repaired to the station on the day appointed, to take the train for New York. Dr. Holmes presently appeared, bound on the same errand. As we seated ourselves in the car, he said to me, "Mrs. Howe, I will sit beside you, but you must not expect me to talk, as I must spare my voice for this evening, when I am to read a poem at the Bryant celebration." "By all means let us keep silent," I replied. "I also have a poem to read at the Bryant celebration." The dear Doctor, always my friend, overestimated his power of abstinence from the interchange of thought which was so congenial to him. He at once launched forth in his ever brilliant vein, and we were within a few miles of our destination when we suddenly remembered that we had not taken time to eat our luncheon. I find in my diary of the time this record: "Dr. Holmes was my companion. His ethereal talk made the journey short and brilliant." The journal further says: "Arriving in New York, Mr. Bancroft met us at the station, intent upon escorting Dr. Holmes, who was to be his guest. He was good enough to wait upon me also; carried my trunk, which was a small one, and lent me his carriage. He inquired about my poem, and informed me of its place in the order of exercises.... "At 8.15 drove to the Century Building, which was fast filling with well-dressed men and women. Was conducted to the reception room, where I waited with those who were to take part in the performances of the evening." I will add here that I saw, among others, N. P. Willis, already infirm in health, and looking like the ghost of his former self. There also was Dr. Francis Lieber, who said to me in a low voice: "_Nur verwegen!_" (Only be audacious.) "Presently a double line was formed to pass into the hall. Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Bryant, and I brought up the rear, Mr. Bryant giving me his arm. On the platform were three armchairs, which were taken by the two gentlemen and myself." The assemblage was indeed a notable one. The fashion of New York was well represented, but its foremost artists, publicists, and literary men were also present. Mr. Emerson had come on from Concord. Christopher Cranch united with other artists in presenting to the venerable poet a portfolio of original drawings, to which each had contributed some work of his own. I afterwards learned that T. Buchanan Read had arrived from Washington, having in his pocket his newly composed poem on "Sheridan's Ride," which he would gladly have read aloud had the committee found room for it on their programme. A letter was received from the elder R. H. Dana, in which he excused his absence on account of his seventy-seven years and consequent inability to travel. Dr. Holmes read his verses very effectively. Mr. Emerson spoke rather vaguely. For my part in the evening's proceedings, I will once more quote from the diary:-- "Mr. Bryant, in his graceful reply to Mr. Bancroft's address of congratulation, spoke of me as 'she who has written the most stirring lyric of the war.' After Mr. Emerson's remarks my poem was announced. I stepped to the middle of the platform, and read it well, I think, as every one heard me, and the large room was crammed. The last two verses were applauded. George H. Boker, of Philadelphia, followed me, and Dr. Holmes followed him. This was, I suppose, the greatest public honor of my life. I record it here for my grandchildren." The existence of these grandchildren lay then in the problematic future. I was requested to leave my poem in the hands of the committee for publication in a volume which would contain the other tributes of the evening. Dr. Holmes told me that he had declined to do this, and said in explanation, "I want my _honorarium_ from the 'Atlantic Monthly.'" We returned to Boston twenty-four hours later, by night train. Eschewing the indulgence of the sleeper, we talked through the dark hours. The Doctor gave me the nickname of "_Madame Comment_" (Mrs. Howe), and I told him that he was the most perfect of traveling companions. CHAPTER XIII THE BOSTON RADICAL CLUB: DR. F. H. HEDGE The Boston Radical Club appears to me one of the social developments most worthy of remembrance in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. From a published record of its meetings I gather that the first of them was held at the residence of Dr. Bartol in the autumn of the year 1867. I felt a little grieved and aggrieved at the time, in that no invitation had been sent me to be present on this occasion, but was soon consoled by a letter offering me membership in the new association, which, it may be supposed, I did not decline. The government of the club was of the simplest. Its meetings were held on the first Monday of every month, and most frequently at the house of Rev. John T. Sargent, though occasionally at that of Dr. Bartol. The master of the house usually presided, but Mrs. Sargent was always present and aided much in suggesting the names of the persons who should be called upon to discuss the essay of the day. The proceedings were limited to the reading and discussion of a paper, which rarely exceeded an hour in length. On looking over the list of essayists, I find that it includes the most eminent thinkers of the day, in so far as Massachusetts is concerned. Among the speakers mentioned are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dr. Hedge, David A. Wasson, O. B. Frothingham, John Weiss, Colonel Higginson, Benjamin Peirce, William Henry Channing, C. C. Everett, and James Freeman Clarke. It was a glad surprise to me when I was first invited to read a paper before this august assemblage. This honor I enjoyed more than once, but I appreciated even more the privilege of listening and of taking part in the discussions which, after the lapse of many years, are still remembered by me as truly admirable and instructive. I did indeed hear at these meetings much that pained and even irritated me. The disposition to seek outside the limits of Christianity for all that is noble and inspiring in religious culture, and to recognize especially within these limits the superstition and intolerance which have been the bane of all religions--this disposition, which was frequently manifested both in the essays presented and in their discussion, offended not only my affections, but also my sense of justice. I had indeed been led to transcend the limits of the old tradition; I had also devoted much time to studies of philosophy, and had become conversant with the works of Auguste Comte, Hegel, Spinoza, Kant, and Swedenborg. Nothing of what I had heard or read had shaken my faith in the leadership of Christ in the religion which makes each man the brother of all, and God the beneficent father of each and all,--the religion of humanity. Neither did this my conviction suffer any disturbance through the views presented by speakers at the Radical Club. Setting this one point aside, I can but speak of the club as a high congress of souls, in which many noble thoughts were uttered. Nobler than any special view or presentation was the general sense of the dignity of human character and of its affinity with things divine, which always gave the master tone to the discussions. The first essay read before the Radical Club of which I have any distinct recollection was by Rev. John Weiss, and had for its title, "The Immanence of God." It was highly speculative in character, and appeared to me to suggest many insoluble questions, among others, that of the origin of the sensible world. Lord and Lady Amberley, who were present, expressed to me great admiration of the essay. The occasion was rendered memorable by the beautiful presence of Lucretia Mott. Other discourses of John Weiss I remember with greater pleasure, notably one on the legend of Prometheus, in which his love for Greece had full scope, while his vivid imagination, like a blazing torch, illuminated for us the deep significance of that ancient myth. I remember, at one of these meetings, a rather sharp passage at arms between Mr. Weiss and James Freeman Clarke. Mr. Weiss had been declaiming against the insincerity which he recognized in ministers who continue to use formulas of faith which have ceased to correspond to any real conviction. The speaker confessed his own shortcoming in this respect. "All of us," he said,--"yes, I myself have prayed in the name of Christ, when my own feeling did not sanction its use." On hearing this, Mr. Clarke broke in. "Let Mr. Weiss answer for himself," he said with some vehemence of manner. "If in his pulpit he prayed in the name of Christ, and did not believe in what he said, it was John Weiss that lied, and not one of us." The dear minister afterwards asked me whether he had shown any heat in what he said. I replied, "Yes, but it was good heat." Another memorable day at the club was that on which the eminent French Protestant divine, Athanase Coquerel, spoke of religion and art in their relation to each other. After a brief but interesting review of classic, Byzantine, and mediæval art, M. Coquerel expressed his dissent from the generally received opinion that the Church of Rome had always been foremost in the promotion and patronage of the fine arts. The greatest of Italian masters, he averred, while standing in the formal relations with that church, had often shown opposition to its spirit. Michael Angelo's sonnets revealed a state of mind intolerant of ecclesiastical as of other tyranny. Raphael, in the execution of a papal order, had represented true religion by a portrait figure of Savonarola. Holbein and Rembrandt were avowed Protestants. He considered the individuality fostered by Protestantism as most favorable to the development of originality in art. With these views Colonel Higginson did not agree. He held that Christianity had reached its highest point under the dispensation of the Catholic faith, and that the progress of Protestantism marked its decline. This assertion called forth an energetic denial from Dr. Hedge, Mr. Clarke, and myself. M. Coquerel paid a second visit to the Radical Club, and spoke again of art, but without reference to any question between differing sects. He began this discourse by laying down two rules which should be followed by one aspiring to become an artist. In the first place, he must make sure that he has something to say which can only be said through this medium. In the second place, he must make himself master of the grammar of the art which he intends to pursue. While I cannot avoid recognizing the anti-Christian twist which mostly prevailed in the Radical Club, I am far from wishing to convey the impression that those of us who were otherwise affected were not allowed the opportunity of expressing our own individual opinions. The presence at the meetings of such men as James Freeman Clarke, Dr. Hedge, William Henry Channing, and Wendell Phillips was a sufficient earnest of the catholicity of intention which prevailed in the government of the club. Only the intellectual bias was so much in the opposite direction that we who stood for the preëminence of Christianity sometimes felt ourselves at a disadvantage, and in danger of being set down as ignorant of much that our opponents assumed to know. In this connection I must mention a day on which, under the title of "Jonathan Edwards," Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes favored the club with a very graphic exposition of old-time New England Calvinism. The brilliant doctor's treatment of this difficult topic was appreciative and friendly, though by no means acquiescent in the doctrines presented. He said, indeed, that "the feeling which naturally arises in contemplating the character of Jonathan Edwards is that of deep reverence for a man who seems to have been anointed from his birth; who lived a life pure, laborious, self-denying, occupied with the highest themes, and busy in the highest kind of labor." Nevertheless, Wendell Phillips thought the paper, on the whole, unjust to Edwards, and felt that there must have been in his doctrine another side not fully brought forward by the essayist. These and other speakers were heard with great interest, and the meeting was one of the best on our record. I have heard it said that Wendell Phillips's orthodoxy was greatly valued among the anti-slavery workers, especially as the orthodox pulpits of the time gave them little support or comfort. I was told that Edmund Quincy, one day, saw Parker and Phillips walking arm in arm, and cried out: "Parker, don't dare to pervert that man. We want him as he is." I was thrice invited to read before the Radical Club. The titles of my three papers were, "Doubt and Belief," "Limitations," "Representation, and How to Secure it." William Henry Channing was one of the bright lights of the Radical Club, a man of fervent nature and of exquisite perceptions, presenting in his character the rare combination of deep piety with breadth of view and critical acumen. We were indebted to him for a discourse on "The Christian Name," in which he vindicated the claim of Christianity to the homage of the ages. His words, most welcome to me, came to us like reconciling harmony after a succession of discords. A singular over-appreciation of the value of the spoken as compared with the written word led Mr. Channing to speak always or mostly without a manuscript. It was much to be regretted that he in this way failed to give a permanent literary form to the thoughts which he so eloquently expressed, reminding some of his hearers of the costly pearl dissolved in wine. The discourse of which I have just spoken, while arousing considerable difference of opinion among those who listened to it, did nevertheless leave behind it a sweetening and elevating influence, due to a fresh outpouring of the divine spirit of charity and peace. In this connection I may speak of a series of discourses upon questions of religion, mostly critical in tone, which were given at Horticultural Hall on Sunday afternoons in the palmy days of the Radical Club. I had listened with pain to one of these, of which the drift appeared to me particularly undevout, and was resting still under the weight of this painful impression when I saw William Henry Channing coming towards me, and detained him for a moment's speech. "What are we to say to all this?" I inquired. "Be of good cheer," said he; "the topic demanded a telescopic rifle, and this man has been firing at something ten miles away with a blunderbuss." I was always glad of Mr. Channing's presence on occasions on which matters of faith were likely to be called in question. I felt great support in the assurance that he would always uphold the right, and in the right spirit. It was in the strength of this assurance that I betook myself to Mrs. Sargent's house one evening, to hear Mr. Francis E. Abbot expound his peculiar views to a little company of Unitarian ministers. Mr. Abbot, in the course of his remarks, exclaimed: "The Christian Church is blind! it is blind!" Mr. Wasson replied: "We cannot allow Brother Abbot to think that he is the only one who sees." I remember of this evening that I came away much impressed with the beautiful patience of the older gentlemen. I must mention one more occasion at the Radical Club. I can remember neither the topic nor the reader of the essay, but the discussion drifted, as it often did, in the direction of woman suffrage, and John Weiss delivered himself of the following utterance: "When man and woman shall meet at the polls, and he shall hold out his hand and say to her, Give me your quick intuition and accept in return my ratiocination"----A ringing laugh here interrupted the speaker. It came from Kate Field. Mr. Emerson had a brief connection with the Radical Club; and this may be a suitable place in which to give my personal impressions of the Prophet of New England. In remembering Mr. Emerson, we should analyze his works sufficiently to be able to distinguish the things in which he really was a leader and a teacher from other traits peculiar to himself, and interesting as elements of his historic character, but not as features of the ideal which we are to follow. Mr. Emerson objected strongly to newspaper reports of the sittings of the Radical Club. The reports sent to the New York "Tribune" by Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton were eagerly sought and read in very distant parts of the country. I rejoiced in this. It seemed to me that the uses of the club were thus greatly multiplied and extended. It became an agency in the great church universal. Mr. Emerson's principal objection to the reports was that they interfered with the freedom of the occasion. When this objection failed to prevail, he withdrew from the club almost entirely, and was never more heard among its speakers. I remember hearing Mr. Emerson, in his discourse on Henry Thoreau, relate that the latter had once determined to manufacture the best lead pencil that could possibly be made. Having attained this end, parties interested at once besought him to make this excellent article attainable in trade. He said, "Why should I do this? I have shown that I am able to produce the best pencil that can be made. This was all that I cared to do." The selfishness and egotism of this point of view did not appear to have entered into Mr. Emerson's thoughts. Upon this principle, which of the great discoverers or inventors would have become a benefactor to the human race? Theodore Parker once said to me, "I do not consider Emerson a philosopher, but a poet lacking the accomplishment of rhyme." This may not be altogether true, but it is worth remembering. There is something of the _vates_ in Mr. Emerson. The deep intuitions, the original and startling combinations, the sometimes whimsical beauty of his illustrations,--all these belong rather to the domain of poetry than to that of philosophy. The high level of thought upon which he lived and moved and the wonderful harmony of his sympathies are his great lesson to the world at large. Despite his rather defective sense of rhythm, his poems are divine snatches of melody. I think that, in the popular affection, they may outlast his prose. I was once surprised, in hearing Mr. Emerson talk, to find how extensively read he was in what we may term secondary literature. Although a graduate of Harvard, his reading of foreign literatures, ancient and modern, was mostly in translations. I should say that his intellectual pasture ground had been largely within the domain of belles-lettres proper. [Illustration: RALPH WALDO EMERSON _From a photograph by Black._] He was a man of angelic nature, pure, exquisite, just, refined, and human. All concede him the highest place in our literary heaven. First class in genius and in character, he was able to discern the face of the times. To him was entrusted not only the silver trump of prophecy, but also that sharp and two-edged sword of the Spirit with which the legendary archangel Michael overcomes the brute Satan. In the great victory of his day, the triumph of freedom over slavery, he has a record not to be outdone and never to be forgotten. A lesser light of this time was the Rev. Samuel Longfellow. I remember him first as of a somewhat vague and vanishing personality, not much noticed when his admired brother was of the company. This was before the beginning of his professional career. A little later, I heard of his ordination as a Unitarian minister from Rev. Edward Everett Hale, who had attended, and possibly taken part in, the services. The poet Longfellow had written a lovely hymn for the occasion, beginning with this line:-- "Christ to the young man said, 'Give me thy heart.'" Mr. Hale spoke of "Sam Longfellow" as a valued friend, and remarked upon the modesty and sweetness of his disposition. "I saw him the other day," said Mr. Hale. "He showed me a box of colors which he had long desired to possess, and which he had just purchased. Sam said to me, 'I thought I might have this now.'" He was fond of sketching from nature. Years after this time, I heard Mr. Longfellow preach at the Hawes Church in South Boston. After the service I invited him to take a Sunday dinner with Dr. Howe and myself. He consented, and I remember that in the course of our conversation he said, "Theodore Parker has made things easier for us young ministers. He has demolished so much which it was necessary to remove." The collection entitled "Hymns of the Spirit," and published under the joint names of Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson, is a valuable one, and the hymns which Mr. Longfellow himself contributed to the _répertoire_ of the denomination are deeply religious in tone; and yet I must think that among Unitarians of thirty or more years ago he was held to be something of a skeptic. Thomas G. Appleton was speaking of him in my presence one day, and said, "He asked me whether I could not get along without the idea of a personal God. I replied, 'No, you ---- ----.'" Appleton shook his fist, and was very vehement in his expression; but his indignation had reference to Mr. Longfellow's supposed opinions, and not at all to his character, which was esteemed of all men. I myself was present when he read his essay on "Law" before the Radical Club. Of this I especially recall a rather elaborate argument against the popular notion of a directing and overruling Providence. He supported his statement by the imagined story of a shipwreck or railroad disaster, in which some would escape injury, while others quite as worthy might be killed or maimed for life. "How," he asked, "could we call a providence divine which, able to save all of those people, should rescue only a part of them, leaving the rest to perish?" When it became my turn to take part in the discussion of this paper, I admitted the logical consistency of Mr. Longfellow's argument. I could point out no flaw in it, and yet, I maintained that the faith in an overruling Providence lay so deeply in my mind that it still persevered, in spite of the ingenious statements to which we had just listened. Mrs. Livermore, who was present on this occasion, expressed herself as much of my opinion, acknowledging the consistency of the demonstration, but declining to abide in the conclusion arrived at. My last recollection of speech with Mr. Longfellow is of an evening on which I lectured at his church in Germantown. He gave me a most hospitable reception, and I found it very pleasant to be his guest. * * * * * To speak of my first impressions of Dr. F. H. Hedge, I must turn back to the autumn of 1841, when he delivered his first Phi Beta address at Harvard College. This was the summer already mentioned as having brought my first meeting with Dr. Howe. Commencement and Phi Beta in those days were held in the early autumn, and my sisters and I were staying at a cottage in Dorchester when we received an invitation from Mrs. Farrar, of hospitable memory, to pass the day at her house, with other guests, among whom Margaret Fuller was mentioned. It was arranged that I should go with Margaret to the church in which the morning meeting would be held. I had never even heard of Dr. Hedge, but I listened to him with close attention, and can still recall the steely ring of his voice, and the effect of his clear-cut sentences. The poem was given by Charles Sprague; and of this I only remember that in one couplet, speaking of the wonderful talents which parents are apt to recognize in their children, he asked whence could have come those ordinary men and women whom we all know. This question provoked some laughter on the part of the audience. As we left the church, I asked Margaret whether she had not found Dr. Hedge's discourse very good. She replied, "Yes; it was high ground for middle ground." Many years after this time, I asked Dr. Hedge what Margaret could have meant by this saying. His answer was that she had hoped to see him take a more pronounced position with regard to the vexed questions of the time. From the church we returned to dine with Mrs. Farrar, on whose pleasant piazza I enjoyed a long walk and talk with Margaret. By and by a carriage stopped before the door. She said, "It is Mr. Ripley; he has come for me. I have promised to visit his wife." In a few words she told me about this remarkable woman, who was long spoken of as "the wonderful Mrs. Ripley." It must have been, I think, some twelve years later that I met Dr. Hedge for the first time at a friend's house in Providence, R. I. He was at this time pastor of the first and only Unitarian church in that city. In the course of the evening which I passed in his company, I was repeatedly invited to sing, and did so, remarking at last that when I began to sing I was like the minister when he began to pray, I never knew when to leave off. Years after this time, I met him walking in Washington Street, Boston, with a mutual acquaintance. This person, whose name I cannot now recall, stopped me and said, "Here is our friend, Dr. Hedge, who is henceforth to be in our neighborhood." I replied that I was glad to hear it, and was somewhat taken aback when Dr. Hedge, addressing me, said, "No, you are not glad at all. You don't care anything about ministers." "Why do you say so?" I rejoined. "I belong to James Freeman Clarke's congregation, and I do care a great deal about some ministers." Dr. Hedge then mischievously reminded me of my speech in Providence, which I had entirely forgotten, and with a little mutual pleasantry he went on his way and I on mine. Dr. Hedge's irony might have been characterized as "a pleasant sour." I think that I felt, in spite of it, the weight and value of his character, even when he appeared to treat me with little consideration. I heard an excellent sermon from him one day, at our own church, and went up after service to thank him for it. I had with me three of my young children and, as I showed them, I said, "See what a mother in Israel I have become." "It takes something more than a large family to make a mother in Israel," said the doctor. I do not quite know how it was that I took him, as the French say, into great affection, inviting him frequently to my house, and feeling a sort of illumination in his clear intellect and severe taste. Before I had come to know him well, I asked Theodore Parker whether he did not consider Dr. Hedge a very learned man. He replied, "Hedge is learned in spots." Parker's idea of learning was of the encyclopædic kind. He wanted to know everything about everything; his reading and research had no limits but those of his own strength, and for many years he was able to set these at naught. He was wonderfully well informed in many directions, and his depth of thought enabled him to make his multifarious knowledge available for the great work which was the joy of his life. Yet I remember that even he, on one occasion, spoke of the cinnerian matter of the brain, usually termed the _cineritious_. Horace Mann, who was present, corrected this, and said, "Parker, that is the first mistake I ever heard you make." Parker seemed a little annoyed at this small slip. I heard a second Phi Beta discourse from Dr. Hedge some time in the sixties. I remember of it that he compared the personal and petty discipline of Harvard College with the independent régime of the German universities, which he greatly preferred. He also said, quite distinctly, that he considered the study of German literature to-day more important than that of the Greek classics. This was a liberal theologian's point of view. I agreed to it at the time, but have thought differently since I myself have acquired some knowledge of the Greek language, and especially since the multiplication of good translations has brought the great works of German philosophy and literature so well within the reach of those who have not mastered the cumbrous and difficult language. Dr. Hedge's last removal was to Cambridge, whither he had been called to fill the chair of the German professorship. I recall with interest a course of lectures on philosophy, which he gave at the university, and which outsiders were permitted to attend. I was unwilling to miss any of these; and on one occasion, having passed the night without sleeping, on the road between New York and Boston, I determined, in spite of my fatigue, to attend the lecture appointed for that day. I accordingly went out to Cambridge, and took my seat among Dr. Hedge's hearers. From time to time a spasm of somnolence would seize me, but the interest of the lecture was so great and my desire to hear it so strong that I did not once catch myself napping. Dr. Hedge was a lover of the drama. When Madame Janauschek first visited Boston, he asked me to accompany him in a visit to her. The conversation was in German, which the doctor spoke fluently. Madame J. said, among other things, that she had intended coming a year earlier, and had sent forward at that time her photograph and her biography. The doctor once invited me to go with him to the Boston Theatre, which was then occupied by a French troupe. This was at some period of our civil war. The most important of the plays given was "La Joie fait Peur." As it proceeded, Dr. Hedge said to me, "What a wonderful people these French are! They have put passion enough into this performance to carry our war through to a successful termination." Dr. Hedge had known Margaret Fuller well in her youth and his own. His judgment of her was perhaps more generous than hers of him, as indicated in her criticism just quoted of his discourse, namely, that it occupied "high ground for middle ground." In truth, the two were very unlike. Margaret's nature impelled her to rush into "the imminent deadly breach," while an element of caution and world-wisdom made the doctor averse to all unnecessary antagonism and conflict. She probably considered him timid where he felt her to be rash. In after years he often spoke of her to me, always with great appreciation. I remarked once to him that she had entertained a very good opinion of herself. He replied, "Yes, and she was entitled to it." He recalled some passages of her life in Cambridge. She once gave a party and invited only friends from Boston, leaving out all her Cambridge acquaintances, who, in consequence, were much offended, and ceased to make their usual calls. A sister of his, Dr. Hedge said, was the only one of those ladies who continued to visit her. He saw Margaret for the last time in Rome, and found her much changed and subdued. She was laboring at the time under one of those severe fits of depression to which her letters from Rome bear witness. The conversation between the two friends was long and intimate. Margaret spoke of the terrible night which she had passed alone upon a mountain in Scotland. Dr. Hedge more than once said to me, "Margaret experienced religion during that night." When, in process of time, the New England Women's Club celebrated what would have been Margaret's sixtieth birthday, Dr. Hedge joined with James Freeman Clarke in loving and reverent testimony to her unusual talents and noble character. I had the pleasure of twice hearing Dr. Hedge's admirable essay on "Luther," which he first delivered at Arlington Street Church, and repeated, some years later, before the Town and Country Club of Newport, R. I. But my crowning recollection of him, and perhaps of the crowning performance of his life, is of that memorable evening of anniversary week in the year 1886, when he made his exhaustive and splendid statement of the substance of the Unitarian faith. The occasion was a happy one. The Music Hall was filled with the great Unitarian audience furnished by Boston and its vicinity. George William Curtis was the president of the evening, and introduced the several speakers with his accustomed grace. He made some little pun on Dr. Hedge's name, and the noble speaker quietly stepped forward, with the fire of unquenchable youth in his eyes, with the balance and reserve of power in every word, in every gesture. No note nor scrap of paper did he hold in his hand. None did he need, for he spoke of that upon which his whole life had been founded and built. Every one of his sentences was like a stone, fitly squared and perfectly laid. And so he built up before us, with crystal clearness, the beautiful fabric of our faith, lifting us, as it rose, to a region of the highest peace and contentment. Oh, the joy of it! My heart rests upon it still. [Illustration: FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE _From a photograph lent by his daughter, Charlotte A. Hedge._] It is well known that Dr. Hedge received the most important part of his education in Germany. He was accordingly one of the first of those who helped to turn the fructifying current of German thought upon the somewhat arid soil of Puritan New England. This soil had indeed produced great things and great men, but the mind of New England was still too much dominated by the traditions of scholasticism, embodied in the system of Calvin. It needed an infusion of the æsthetic element, and the larger outlook of a truly speculative philosophy. The philosophy which it had inherited was one of dogmatism, sophistical in that it made its own syllogisms the final limit and bound of truth. The few Americans who had studied in real earnest in Germany brought back with them the wide sweeping besom of the Kantian method, and much besides. This showed the positive assumptions of the old school to have no such foundation of absolute truth as had been conceded to them. Under their guidance men had presumed to measure the infinite by their own petty standard, and to impose upon the Almighty the limits and necessities with which they had hedged the way of their fellow-men. God could not have mercy in any way other than that which they felt bound to prescribe. His wisdom must coincide with their conclusions. His charity must be as narrow as their own. Those who could not or would not acquiesce in these views were ruled outside of the domain of Christendom. Had it not been for Channing, Freeman, Buckminster, and a few others in that early day, they would have been as sheep without a shepherd. The history is well known. I need not repeat it here. CHAPTER XIV MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN THE SIXTIES This decade, 1860-1870, marks a new epoch in my intellectual life. In the period already described, I had found my way to recognized authorship. In this later time, an even greater enlargement of activity was before me, unanticipated until, by gradual steps, I came into it. The results of my more serious study now began to take form in writings of a corresponding scope. I remember to have heard John Weiss use more than once this phrase, "the poets and men of expression." The antithesis to this, in his view, evidently was, "the philosophers and men of deep thought." I confess that I myself am one of those to whom expression, in some form, is natural and even necessary; and yet I think that my best studies have been those which have made me most desirous to give to my own voice the echo of other voices, and to ascertain by experiment how much or how little of my individual persuasion is in accordance with the normal direction of human experience. In the days of which I now write, it was borne in upon me (as the Friends say) that I had much to say to my day and generation which could not and should not be communicated in rhyme, or even in rhythm. I once spoke to Parker of my wish to be heard, to commend my own thoughts with my own voice. He found this not only natural, but also in accordance with the spirit of the age, which, he said, "called for the living presence and the living utterance." I did not act at once, or even very soon, upon this prompting; the difficulties to be overcome were many. My husband was himself averse to public appearances. Women speakers were few in those days, and were frowned upon by general society. He would have been doubly sensitive to such undesirable publicity on my account. Meantime, the exigencies of the time were calling one woman after another to the platform. Lucy Stone devoted the first years of her eloquence to anti-slavery and the temperance reform. Anna Dickinson achieved a sudden and brilliant popularity. I did not dream of trying my strength with theirs, but I began to weave together certain essays which might be read to an invited audience in private parlors. I then commissioned certain of my friends to invite certain of their friends to my house for an appointed evening, and began, with some trepidation, my course of parlor lectures. We were residing, at this time, in the house in Chestnut Street which was afterwards made famous by the sittings of the Radical Club. The parlors were very roomy, and were well filled by those who came to hear me. Among them was my neighbor, Rev. Dr. Lothrop, who, in speaking of these occasions at a later day, once said, "I think that they were the best meetings that I ever knew. The conversation that followed the readings was started on a high plane." This conversation was only informal talk among those who had been listeners. My topics, so far as I can recall them, were as follows: "How _not_ to teach Ethics;" "Doubt and Belief, the Two Feet of the Mind;" "Moral Triangulation, or the Third Party;" "Duality of Character;" "The Fact Accomplished." My audience consisted largely of my society friends, but was by no means limited to them. The elder Agassiz, Dr. Lothrop, E. P. Whipple, James Freeman Clarke, and William R. Alger attended all my readings. After the first one, Mr. Clarke said to me, "You have touched too many chords." After hearing my thesis on "Duality of Character," he took my hand in his, and said, "Oh! you sweet soul!" Mr. Emerson was not among my hearers, but expressed some interest in my undertaking, and especially in my lecture on "The Third Party." Meeting me one day, he said, "You have in this a mathematical idea." This was in my opinion the most important lecture of my course. It really treated of a third element in all twofold relations,--between married people, the bond to which both alike owed allegiance; between States, the compact which originally bound them together. The civil war was then in its first stage. The air was full of secession. Many said, "If North and South agree to set aside their bonds of union, and to become two republics, why should they not do it?" Then the sacredness of the bond possessed my mind. "Was an agreement, so solemnly entered into, so vital in its obligations, to be so lightly canceled?" I labored with all my might to prove that this could not be done. I remember too that in one of my lectures I gave my own estimate of Auguste Comte, which differed from the general impression concerning him. I am not sure that I should take the same ground in these days. Whether my hearers were the wiser for my efforts I cannot say, but of this I am sure, that they brought me much instruction. I learned somewhat to avoid anti-climax, and to seek directness and simplicity of statement. On the morning of the day on which I was to give my lecture, I would read it over, and a curious sense of the audience seemed to possess me, a feeling of what it would and of what it would not follow. My last corrections were made in accordance with this feeling. A general regret was expressed when my little course was ended, and Dr. Lothrop wrote me quite an earnest letter, requesting me to prolong it if possible. I could not do this at the time; but while the war was at its height, I made a second visit to Washington, where through the kindness of friends a pleasant place was found in which I repeated these lectures, having among my hearers some of the chief notabilities then present at the capital. In my journal of this time, never published, I find the following account of a day in Washington:-- "To the White House, to see Carpenter's picture of the President reading the emancipation proclamation to his Cabinet. An interesting subject for a picture. The heads of Lincoln, Stanton, and Seward nearly finished, and good portraits. "Dressed for dinner at Mrs. Eames's, where Secretary Chase and Senator Sumner were expected. Mr. Chase is a stately man, very fine looking and rather imposing. I sat by him at dinner; he was very pleasant. After dinner came Mrs. Douglas in her carriage, to take me to my reading. Senator Foster and Mr. Chase announced their intention of going to hear me. Mr. Chase conducted me to Mrs. Douglas's carriage, promising to follow. 'Proteus, or the Secret of Success,' was my topic. I had many pleasant greetings after the lecture. Mr. Chase took me in his carriage to his house, where his daughter had a party for Teresa Carreño. Here I was introduced to Lord Lyons, British minister, and to Judge Harris. Spoke with Bertinatti, the Italian minister. Mr. Chase took me in to supper. "Mr. Channing brought me into the room, which was well filled. People were also standing in the entry and on the stairs. I read my lecture on 'The Third Party.' The audience proved very attentive, and included many people of intelligence. George W. Julian and wife, Solomon Whiting, Admiral Davis, Dr. Peter Parker, our former minister to China, Hon. Thomas Eliot, Governor Boutwell, Mrs. Southworth, Professor Bache,--all these, and many more, were present. They shook hands with me, very cordially, after the lecture." I had announced "Practical Ethics" as the theme of my lectures, and had honestly written them out of my sense of the lapses everywhere discernible in the working of society. Having accomplished so much, or so little, I desired to go more deeply into the study of philosophy, and, having greedily devoured Spinoza, I turned to Kant, whom I knew only by name. I fed upon his volumes with ever increasing delight and yet endeavored to obey one of his rules, by having a philosophy of my own. Among my later productions was an essay entitled "Distinctions between Philosophy and Religion." This was suggested by a passage in one of Spinoza's letters, in which he says to his correspondent, "I thought that we were to correspond upon matters of philosophy. I find that instead of these you propose to me questions of religion." On reading this sentence I felt that, in the religious teaching of our own time, the two were apt to be confounded. It seemed to me that even Theodore Parker had not always distinguished the boundary line, and I began to reflect seriously upon the difference between a religious truth and a philosophical proposition. I confess that my nearer acquaintance with the philosophers, ancient and modern, inspired me at this time with the desire of contributing something of my own to the thought of the ages. The names of certain essays of mine, composed after the series just mentioned, and never put into print, will serve to show the direction in which my efforts were tending. Of these, "Polarity" was the first, "Limitation" the second. Then followed "The Fact Accomplished," "Man _a priori_ and _a posteriori_," and finally, "Ideal Causation," which marked my last step in this progress. These papers were designed to interest the studious few who appreciate thought for thought's sake. The paper on "Polarity" was read before the Boston Radical Club. Armed with "Man _a priori_," I encountered an audience of scientists at Northampton, where a scientific convention was in progress. Finally, being invited to speak before the Parker Fraternity on a certain Sunday, and remembering that Parker, in his day, had not feared to let out the metaphysical stops of his organ pretty freely, I took with me into the pulpit the paper on "Ideal Causation," which had seemed to me the crown of my endeavor hitherto. To my sorrow, I found that it did not greatly interest my hearers, and that one who was reported to have wondered "what Mrs. Howe was driving at" had spoken the mind of many of those present. I laid this lesson much to heart, and, becoming convinced that metaphysics did not supply the universal solvent for human evils, I determined to find a _pou sto_ nearer to the sympathies of the average community, from which I might speak for their good and my own. From my childhood the Bible had been dear and familiar to me, and I now began to consider texts and sermons, in place of the transcendental webs which I had grown so fond of spinning. The passages of Scripture which now occurred to me filled me with a desire to emphasize their wisdom by a really spiritual interpretation. From this time on, I became more and more interested in the religious ministration of women; and though it is looking forward some way in my chronicle, this may be the proper place to say that in the spring of the year 1875, I had much to do with calling the first convention of women ministers, which was held in the Church of the Disciples, in anniversary week. Among those who met with us were some plain women from Maine, who told us that they had long acted as evangelists in portions of the State in which churches were few and far between. Several clergymen of different denominations attended our exercises, and one of them, Rev. J. J. Hunting, pronounced ours the best meeting of the week. Among the ordained women who took part with us were Rev. Ellen Gustin, Mary H. Graves, Lorenza Haynes, and Eliza Tupper Wilkes, a fair young mother, who went to her pulpit full of the inspiration of her cradle songs. I would gladly enlarge here, did my limits allow it, upon the theme of the woman ministry, but must take up again the thread of my tale. My husband was greatly moved by the breaking out of the Cretan insurrection in 1866. He saw in this event an opportunity of assisting his beloved Greece, and at once gathered together a committee for collecting funds in aid of this cause. A meeting was held in Boston Music Hall, at which Dr. Holmes, Wendell Phillips, Edward Everett Hale, and other prominent speakers presented the claims of the Cretans to the sympathy of the civilized world. Dr. Howe's appearance did not indicate his age. His eye was bright, his hair abundant, and but slightly touched with gray. When he rose and said, "Fifty years ago I was very much interested in the Greek Revolution," it seemed almost incredible that he should be speaking of himself. The public responded generously to his appeal, and a considerable sum of money was raised. The greater part of this was devoted to the purchase of provisions and clothing for the families of the Cretan combatants, which were known to be in a very destitute condition. In the spring of 1867 Dr. Howe determined to visit Greece, in order to have a nearer view of the scene of action. I accompanied him, and with us went two of our daughters, Julia Romana, remembered as the wife of Michael Anagnos, and Laura, now Mrs. Henry Richards, known as the author of "Captain January." We received gratifying attentions from the wealthy Greeks of London. Passing thence to the continent, we were soon in Rome, where I enjoyed some happy days with my beloved sister, Louisa, then, after some years of widowhood, the wife of Luther Terry. Dr. Howe hastened on to Athens, taking with him our eldest daughter. I followed him later, bringing the younger one with me. Arriving at the Piræus, we were met by a messenger, who told us that Dr. Howe had just escaped a serious danger at sea, and was too much fatigued to be able to come to meet us. We soon joined him at the Hôtel des Etrangers, and inquired eagerly regarding the accident which had befallen him. He had started in a small steamer lent him by the government, intending to visit one of the islands on which were congregated a number of Cretan refugees, mostly women and children. The steamer had proceeded some way on its course when the machinery gave out, leaving them at the mercy of the waves. They were without provisions, and were in danger of drifting out to sea, with no power of controlling the course of the vessel. After many hours of anxious uncertainty, a favorable breeze sprang up, and Dr. Howe tore down the canvas canopy which had shielded the deck from the sun. This he managed to spread for a sail, and by this the vessel was in time brought within reach of the shore. A telegram summoned help from Athens, and the party reached the city an hour or so before our arrival. I here insert some passages from a book of travels, in which I recorded the impressions of this first visit to Greece. The work was published soon after my return to Boston, and was named "From the Oak to the Olive." "Here is the Temple of Victory; within are the bas-reliefs of the Victories arriving in the hurry of their glorious errands. Something so they tumbled in upon us when Sherman conquered the Carolinas, and Sheridan the valley of the Shenandoah, when Lee surrendered, and the glad President went to Richmond. One of these Victories is untying her sandal, in token of her permanent abiding. Yet all of them have trooped away long since, scared by the hideous havoc of barbarians. And the bas-reliefs, their marble shadows, have all been battered and mutilated into the saddest mockery of their original tradition. The statue of Wingless Victory that stood in the little temple has long been absent. But the only Victory that the Parthenon now can seize or desire is this very Wingless Victory, the triumph of a power that retreats not--the power of Truth.... "Poor Greece, plundered by Roman, Christian, and Mussulman! Hers were the lovely statues that grace the halls of the Vatican--at least, the loveliest of them. And Rome shows to this day two colossal groups, of which one bears the inscription, 'Opus Praxitelæ,' the other that of 'Opus Phidiæ.' And Naples has a Greek treasure or two, one thinks, besides her wealth of sculptural gems, of which the best are of Greek workmanship. And in England those bas-reliefs, which are the treasure of art students and the wonder of the world, were pulled from the pediment of the Parthenon, like the pearly teeth from a fair mouth, the mournful gaps remaining open in the sight of the unforgiving world. 'Thou art old and decrepit,' said England. 'I am still in strength and vigor. All else has gone, as well thy dower as thy earnings. Thou hast but these left. I want them, so give them me.'... "We were ushered into a well-sized room, in which lay heaps of cotton underclothing and of calico dresses, most of them in the shape of sacks and skirts. These were the contents of one or two boxes recently arrived from Boston. Some of them were recognized by me as the work of a hive of busy bees who used to gather weekly in my own New England parlor, summoned thither by my daughter Florence, now Mrs. David P. Hall. And what stress there was at those meetings, and what hurrying! And how the little maidens took off their feathery bonnets and dainty gloves, wielding the heavy implements of cutting, and eagerly adjusting the arms and legs, the gores and gathers! With patient pride the mother trotted off to the bakery, that a few buns might sustain these strenuous little cutters and sewers, whose tongues, however active over the charitable work, talked, we may be sure, no empty nonsense nor unkind gossip. "For charity begins indeed at home, in the heart, and, descending to the fingers, rules also the rebellious member whose mischief is often done before it is meditated. At the sight of these well-made garments a little swelling of the heart seized me, with the love and pride of a remembrance so dear. But sooner than we could turn from it to set about our business, the Cretans were in presence. "Here they come, called in order from a list, with names nine syllables long, mostly ending in _poulos_, a term signifying descent, like the Russian 'witzch.' Here they come,--the shapely maiden, the sturdy matron, the gray-haired grandmother, with little ones of all small sizes and ages. Many of the women carried infants at the breast; many were expectant of maternity. Not a few of them were followed by groups of boys and girls. Most of them were ill clothed; and many of them appeared extremely destitute of attire. A strongly-marked race of people, with dark eyes, fine black hair, healthy complexions, and symmetrical figures. They bear traces of suffering. Some of the infants have pined, but most of them promise to do well. Each mother cherishes and shows her little beggar in the approved way. The children are usually robust, although showing in their appearance the very limited resources of their parents. Some of the women have tolerable gowns; to these we give only underclothing. Others have but the rag of a gown--a few strips of stuff over their coarse chemises. These we make haste to cover with the beneficent growth of New England factories. They are admitted in groups of three or four at a time. As many of us fly to the heaps of clothing, and hastily measure them by the length and breadth of the individual. A papa, or priest, keeps order among them. He wears his black hair uncut, his narrow robe is much patched, and he holds in his hand a rosary of beads, which he fingers mechanically. "The dresses sent did not quite hold out, but sufficed to supply the most needy, and, in fact, the greater number. Of the underclothes we carried back a portion, having given something to every one. To an old papa who came, looking ill and disconsolate, I sent two shirts and a good dark woolen jacket. Among all of these only one discontented old lady demurred at the gift bestowed. She wanted a gown; but there was not one left, so that she was forced to content herself, much against her will, with some underclothing. The garments supplied, of which many were sent by the Boston Sewing Circle, under the superintendence of Miss Abby W. May, proved to be very suitable in pattern and quality. As we descended the steps we met with some of the children, already arrayed in their little clean shirts, and strutting about with the inspiration of fresh clothing, long unfelt by them.... "Despite the velvet flatteries and smiling treasons of diplomacy, the present government of Greece is, as every government should be, on its good behavior before the people. Wonderfully clever, enterprising, and liberal have the French people made the author of the 'Life of Julius Cæsar.' Wonderfully reformative did the radicals of 1848 make the Pope. And the Greek nation, taken in the large, may prove to have some common sense to impart to its symbolical head, of whom we can only hope that the 'something rotten in the state of Denmark' may not have been taken from it to corrupt the state of Greece." But it was not through one sense alone that I received in Athens the delight of a new enchantment. My ear drank in the music of the Greek tongue which I constantly heard spoken by those around me. My husband's Greek committee held their sessions in our hotel parlors, and I found that, by closely listening to their talk, I could make out a word here and there. Encouraged by this, I presently purchased a primer and devoted myself to the study of its contents. I had in earlier life made one or two futile attempts to master the language. Now that it became a living tongue to me, I determined to acquire it, and in some measure succeeded. From that time to the present I have never ceased the serious pursuit of what I then began almost in play. In spite of the fact that a price had been set upon his head by the Turkish authorities in Crete, Dr. Howe persisted in his determination to visit the island. His stay there was necessarily limited to a few hours, but what he was able to observe of the character and disposition of the inhabitants led him to anticipate a triumph for their cause. We returned to Boston in the autumn of the same year, and at once began to make arrangements for a fair by which we hoped to raise some money for the Cretans. A great part of the winter was devoted to this work, and in the early spring a beautiful bazaar was held at Boston Music Hall, where the post of president was assigned to me. I was supported by a very efficient committee of ladies and gentlemen, and it was in this work that I became well acquainted with Miss Abby W. May, whose invaluable method and energy had much to do with the success of the undertaking. The fair lasted one week, and our sales and entertainments realized something more than thirty thousand dollars. But alas! the emancipation of Crete was not yet to be. We passed the summer of 1868 at Stevens Cottage, which was very near the town of Newport. I do not exactly remember how it came about that my dear friend and pastor, Rev. Charles Brooks, invited me to read some of my essays at his church on Sunday afternoons. I had great pleasure in doing this. The church was well filled, and the audience excellent in character, and a lady among these one day kissed me after my lecture, saying, "This is the way I want to hear women speak." Another lady, it is true, was offended at some saying of mine. I think that it was to this effect. Speaking of the idle lives of some rich women, I said, "If God works, Madam, you can afford to work also." At this the person in question rose and went away, saying, "I won't listen to such stuff as this." I was not at all aware of the occurrence at the time, nor did I hear of it until the same lady having sent me cards for a reception at her house, I attended it, thereby provoking some comment. I was glad afterwards that I had done so, as the lady in question paid me every friendly attention, and made me quite sure that she had only yielded to a momentary ebullition of temper, to which, indeed, she was too prone. I read the "Phædo" of Plato in the original Greek this summer, and was somewhat helped in this by an English scholar, a university man, who was passing the summer in Newport. He was "coaching" two young men who intended to enter one of the English universities, and was obliged to pass my house on his way to his lessons. He often paid me a visit, and was very willing to help me over a difficult passage. The report of my parlor readings soon brought me invitations to speak in public. The first of these that I remember came from a committee having in charge a meditated course of Sunday afternoon lectures on ethical subjects, to be given without other exercises, in Horticultural Hall. I was heard more than once in this course, and remember that one of my themes was "Polarity," on which I had written an essay, of which I thought, perhaps, too highly. In the course of the season I was engaged in preparing for another reading. Meeting Rev. Phillips Brooks one day in my sunset outing, I said to him, "Do you ever, in writing a sermon, lose sight of your subject? I have a discourse to prepare and have lost sight of mine." "Oh, yes," he replied, "it often happens to me." This confession encouraged me to persevere in my work, and I finished my lecture, and read it with acceptance. I suppose that I may have greatly exaggerated in my own mind the value of these writings to other people. To me, they brought much reflection and unfolding of thought. As I have said in another place, I read the two first named to a small circle of friends at my own house, and was somewhat disappointed at the result, as none of those present seemed willing to assume my point of view. Repeating one of them under similar circumstances at the house of a friend, Henry James, the elder, called upon me to explain some point which my lecture had brought into view. I asked if he could explain the point at issue. He replied that he could not. Being somewhat disconcerted, I said to him, "You should not ask questions which you yourself cannot answer." I meant by this to say that one must not be called upon to explain what is evidently inexplicable. Mr. James, however, did not so understand me, but told me afterwards that he considered this the most extraordinary statement that he had ever heard. He discoursed a good deal after my lecture with much color and brilliancy, as was his wont. His views of the Divine were highly anthropomorphic, and I remember that he said among other things, "My dear Madam, God is working all the time in his shirt-sleeves with all his might." This dear man was a great addition to the thought-power current in Boston society. He had lived much abroad, and was for many years a student of Swedenborg and of Fourier. His cast of mind was more metaphysical than logical, and he delighted in paradox. In his writings he would sometimes overstate greatly, in order to be sure of impressing his meaning upon his readers or hearers. Himself a devout Christian, he nevertheless once said, speaking on Sunday in the Church of the Disciples, that the moral law and the Christian Church were the meanest of inventions. He intended by this phrase to express his sense of the exalted moral and religious obligation of the human mind, the dignity of which ought to transcend the prescriptions of the Decalogue and the discipline of the church. My eldest daughter, then a girl of sixteen, said to me as we left the church, "Mamma, I should think that Mr. James would wish the little Jameses not to wash their faces for fear it should make them suppose that they were clean." Mr. Emerson, to whom I repeated this remark, laughed quite heartily at it. In anecdote Mr. James was inexhaustible. His temperament was very mercurial, almost explosive. I remember a delightful lecture of his on Carlyle. I recall, too, a rather metaphysical discourse which he read in John Dwight's parlors, to a select audience. When we went below stairs to put on our wraps, I asked a witty friend whether she had enjoyed the lecture. She replied that she had, but added, "I would give anything at this moment for a look at a good fat idiot," which seemed to show that the tension of mind produced by the lecture had not been without pain. I once had a long talk with Mr. James on immortality. I had recently lost my youngest child, a beautiful little boy of three years. The question of a future life then came to me with an agonized intensity. Should I ever meet again the exquisite little creature who had been taken from my arms? Mr. James was certain that I should have this coveted joy. He illustrated his belief in a singular way. "I lost a leg," he said, "in early youth. I have had a consciousness of the limb itself all my life. Although buried and out of sight, it has always remained a part of me." This reassuring did not appeal to me strongly, but his positive faith in a life after death gave me much comfort. Mr. James occasionally paid me a visit. As he was sitting in my parlor one day my little Maud, some seven or eight years old, passed by the open door. Mr. James called out, "Come here, Maud. You are the wickedest looking thing I have seen in some time." The little girl came, and Mr. James took her up on his knee. Presently, to my horror, she exclaimed, "Oh, how ugly you are! You are the ugliest creature I ever saw." This freak of the child so impressed my visitor that, meeting some days later with a lady friend, he could not help saying to her, "Mrs. ----, I know that I am ugly, but am I the ugliest person that you ever saw? Maud Howe said the other day that she had never seen any one so ugly." My friend was in truth far from ill-looking. His features were reasonably good, and his countenance fairly glowed with amiability, geniality, and good-will. I found afterwards that my Maud had seriously resented the epithet "wicked looking" applied to her, and had simply sought to take a childish revenge in accusing Mr. James of ugliness. Although Mr. James held much to Swedenborg's point of view, he did not belong to the Swedenborgian denomination. I have heard that, on the contrary, he was considered by its members as decidedly heterodox. I think that he rarely attended any church services. I have heard of his holding a communion service with one member of his family. He published several works on topics connected with religion. CHAPTER XV A WOMAN'S PEACE CRUSADE I had felt a great opposition to Louis Napoleon from the period of the infamous act of treachery and violence which made him emperor. The Franco-Prussian war was little understood by the world at large. To us in America its objects were entirely unknown. On general principles of good-will and sympathy we were as much grieved as surprised at the continual defeats sustained by the French. For so brave and soldierly a nation to go through such a war without a single victory seemed a strange travesty of history. When to the immense war indemnity the conquerors added the spoliation of two important provinces, indignation added itself to regret. The suspicion at once suggested itself that Germany had very willingly given a pretext for the war, having known enough of the demoralized condition of France to be sure of an easy victory, and intending to make the opportunity serve for the forcible annexation of provinces long coveted. As I was revolving these matters in my mind, while the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed. I did not dare to make this public without the advice of some wise counselor, and sought such an one in the person of Rev. Charles T. Brooks of Newport, a beloved friend and esteemed pastor. The little document which I drew up in the heat of my enthusiasm implored women, all the world over, to awake to the knowledge of the sacred right vested in them as mothers to protect the human life which costs them so many pangs. I did not doubt but that my appeal would find a ready response in the hearts of great numbers of women throughout the limits of civilization. I invited these imagined helpers to assist me in calling and holding a congress of women in London, and at once began a wide task of correspondence for the realization of this plan. My first act was to have my appeal translated into various languages, to wit: French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, and to distribute copies of it as widely as possible. I devoted the next two years almost entirely to correspondence with leading women in various countries. I also held two important meetings in New York, at which the cause of peace and the ability of women to promote it were earnestly presented. At the first of these, which took place in the late autumn of 1870, Mr. Bryant gave me his venerable presence and valuable words. At the second, in the spring following, David Dudley Field, an eminent member of the New York bar, and a lifelong advocate of international arbitration, made a very eloquent and convincing address. [Illustration: SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE _From a photograph by A. Marshall, 1870, in the possession of the Massachusetts Club._] In the spring of the year 1872 I visited England, hoping by my personal presence to effect the holding of a Woman's Peace Congress in the great metropolis of the civilized world. In Liverpool, I called upon Mrs. Josephine Butler, whose labors in behalf of her sex were already well known in America. Mrs. Butler said to me, "Mrs. Howe, you have come at a fortunate moment. The cruel immorality of our army regulations, separating so great a number of our men from family life, is much in the public mind just at present. This is a good time in which to present the merits and the bearings of peace." Mrs. Butler suggested that I might easily find opportunities of speaking in various parts of England, and added some names to the list of friends of peace with which I had already provided myself. Among these were Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Winkworth, whose hospitality I enjoyed for some days, on my way to London. This couple belonged to the society of Friends, but had much to say about the theistic movement in the society. In London Mrs. Winkworth went with me, one Sunday, to the morning service of Rev. Charles Voysey. The lesson for the day was taken from the writings of Theodore Parker. We spoke with Mr. Voysey after the sermon. He said, "I had chosen those passages from Parker with great care." After my own copious experiences of dissent in various forms, Mr. Voysey's sermon did not present any very novel interest. I had come to London to do everything in my power to found and foster what I may call "a Woman's Apostolate of Peace," though I had not then hit upon that name. For aid and counsel, I relied much upon the presence in London of my friend, Rev. William Henry Channing, a man of almost angelic character. I think it must have been through his good offices that I was invited both as guest and as speaker to the public banquet of the Unitarian Association. I confess that it was not without trepidation that I heard the toast-master say to the assembled company, "I crave your attention for Julia Ward Howe." My heart, however, was so full of my theme that I spoke very readily, without hesitation, and, if I might judge by the applause which followed, with some acceptance. Sir John Bowring now made my acquaintance, and complimented me upon my speech. The eloquent French preacher, Athanase Coquerel, also spoke with me. The occasion was to me a memorable one. I had already attended the anniversary meeting of the English Peace Society, and had asked permission to speak, which had been denied me on the ground that women never had spoken at these meetings. Finding but little encouragement for my efforts from existing societies in London, I decided to hire a hall of moderate size, where I myself might speak on Sunday afternoons. The Freemasons' Tavern presented one just suited to my undertaking. With the help of a friend, the meeting was properly advertised, and I betook myself thither on the first Sunday afternoon, strong in the belief that my effort was of the right sort, but very uncertain as to its result. Arriving at Freemasons' Tavern, I asked the doorkeeper whether there was any one in the hall. "Oh, yes! a good many," he said. I entered and found quite a numerous company. My procedure was very simple,--a prayer, the reading of a hymn, and a discourse from a Scripture text. I had prepared this last with considerable care, and kept the manuscript of it beside me, but my memory enabled me to give the substance of what I had written without referring to the paper. My impression is that I spoke in this way on some five or six Sundays. Of all these discourses, I remember only the last one, of which the text was, "I am persuaded that neither height nor depth, nor any other creature," etc. The attendance was very good throughout, and I cherished the hope that I had sown some seed which would bear fruit thereafter. I remember that our own poet, Thomas William Parsons, happening to be in London at this time, suggested to me a poem of Mrs. Stowe's as very suitable to be read at one of my Sunday services. It was the one beginning:-- "When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean," and I am glad to remember that I did read it as advised. My work in London brought me in contact with a number of prominent workers in various departments of public service. My acquaintance with Miss Frances Power Cobbe was pleasantly renewed, and I remember attending an afternoon reception at her house, at which a number of literary notabilities were present, among them the brilliant historian, Mr. Froude. I had the pleasure also of meeting Mrs. Peter Taylor, founder of a college for working women; she and her husband had been very friendly to the Northern side during the civil war. An important movement had been set on foot just at this time by Mrs. Grey and her sister, Miss Sherret. This was the institution of schools for girls of the middle class, whose education, up to that time, had usually been conducted at home by a governess. Mrs. Grey encountered a good deal of opposition in carrying out her plans. She invited me to attend a meeting in the Albert Hall, Kensington, where these plans were to be fully discussed. The Bishop of Manchester spoke in opposition to the proposed schools. He took occasion to make mention of a visit which he had recently made to the United States, and to characterize the education there given to girls as merely "ambitious." The scheme, in his view, involved a confusion of ranks which, in England, would be inadmissible. "Lady Wilhelmina from Grosvenor Square," he averred, "would never consent to sit beside the grocer's daughter." I was invited to speak after the bishop, and could not avoid taking him up on this point. "In my own country," I said, "the young lady who corresponds to the lady from Grosvenor Square does sit beside the grocer's daughter, and when the two have enjoyed the same advantages of education, it is not always easy to be sure which is which." I had been privately requested to say nothing about woman suffrage, to which Mrs. Grey had not then given in her adhesion. I did, however, mention the opening of the professions to women in my own country. Mrs. Grey thanked me for my speech, but said, "Oh, dear Mrs. Howe, why did you speak of the women ministers?" Some five or six years after this time I chanced to meet Mrs. Grey in Rome. She assured me that the middle-class schools had proved a great success, and said that young girls differing much from each other in social rank had indeed sat beside each other, without difficulty or trouble of any kind. I had heard that Mrs. Grey had become a convert to woman suffrage, and asked her if this was true. She replied, "Oh, yes; the moment that I began practically to work for women, I found the suffrage an absolute necessity." One of my pleasantest recollections of my visit to England is that of a day or two passed in Cambridge, where I enjoyed the hospitality of Professor J. R. Seeley, author of "Ecce Homo." I do not now recall the circumstances which took me to the great university town, but I remember with gratitude the Seeley mansion, as one should do who was made at home there. Mr. Seeley lent a kind ear to my plea for a combination of women in behalf of a world's peace. I had also the pleasure of hearing a lecture from him on Edmund Burke, whose liberalism he considered rather sporadic than chronic, an expression of sentiment called forth by some exceptional emergency, while the eloquent speaker remained a conservative at heart. He did not, as he might have done, explain such inconsistencies on the simple ground of Burke's Irish blood, which gave him genius but not the logic of consistency. Mrs. Seeley was a very amiable and charming woman. I remember that her husband read to me Calverley's clever take-off of Browning, and that we all laughed heartily over it. A morning ramble made me aware of the beauty of the river banks. I attended a Sunday service in King's College Chapel, with its wonderful stone roof. Here also I made the acquaintance of Miss Clough, sister to the poet. She presided at this time over a household composed of young lady students, to whom some of the university courses were open, and who were also allowed to profit by private lessons from some of the professors of the university. Miss Clough was tall and dark-eyed, like her brother, her hair already whitening, though she was still in the vigor of middle age. She appeared to be greatly interested in her charge. I spoke with some of her students, and learned that most of them intended to become teachers. So ends this arduous but pleasant episode of my peace crusade. I will only mention one feature more in connection with it. I had desired to institute a festival which should be observed as mothers' day, and which should be devoted to the advocacy of peace doctrines. I chose for this the second day of June, this being a time when flowers are abundant, and when the weather usually allows of open-air meetings. I had some success in carrying out this plan. In Boston I held the Mothers' Day meeting for quite a number of years. The day was also observed in other places, once or twice in Constantinople, and often in places nearer home. My heart was gladdened, this last year, by learning from a friend that a peace association in Philadelphia still celebrates Mothers' Day. I was very sorry to give up this special work, but in my prosecution of it I could not help seeing that many steps were to be taken before one could hope to effect any efficient combination among women. The time for this was at hand, but had not yet arrived. Insensibly, I came to devote my time and strength to the promotion of the women's clubs, which are doing so much to constitute a working and united womanhood. During my stay in England, I received many invitations to address meetings in various parts of the country. In compliance with these, I visited Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, and Carlisle. In Bristol I was the guest of Mary Carpenter, who gave me some friendly advice regarding the convention which I hoped to hold in London. She assured me that such a meeting could have no following unless the call for it were dignified by the name of some prominent member of the English aristocracy. In this view, she strongly advised me to write to the Duchess of Argyll, requesting an interview at which I might speak to her of my plans. I did write the letter, and obtained the interview. The Duchess, with whom I had had some acquaintance for many years, invited me to luncheon on a certain day. I found her, surrounded by her numerous family of daughters, the youngest of whom carried round a dish of fruit at dessert. Luncheon being at an end, the Duchess granted me a short tête-à-tête. "My only objection to a lady's speaking in public," she said, "is based upon St. Paul's saying: 'I suffer not a woman to teach,' etc." I replied, "Yes; but remember that, in another place, he says that a woman may prophesy wearing a veil." She assented to this statement, but did not appear to interest herself much in my plan of a Woman's Peace Congress. She had always been much interested in Dr. Howe's work, and began to ask me about him, and about Charles Sumner, for whom she entertained great regard. Messages were presently sent in to the effect that the carriage was waiting for the afternoon drive, and I took my leave, expecting no help from this very amiable and estimable lady. Before the beginning of my Sunday services, I received a letter from Mr. Aaron Powell of New York, asking me to attend a Peace Congress about to be held in Paris, as a delegate. I accordingly crossed the Channel, and reached Paris in time to attend the principal séance of the congress. It was not numerously attended. The speakers all read their discourses from manuscript. The general tone was timid and subdued. Something was said regarding the then recent Franco-Prussian war, and the growing humanity shown by both of the contending parties in the mutual arrangements for taking care of the wounded. I presented my credentials, and asked leave to speak. With some embarrassment, I was told that I might speak to the officers of the society, when the public meeting should be adjourned. I accordingly met a dozen or more of these gentlemen in a side room, where I simply spoke of my endeavors to enlist the sympathies and efforts of women in behalf of the world's peace. Returning to London, I had the privilege of attending as a delegate one of the great Prison Reform meetings of our day. As well as I can remember, each day of the congress had its own president, and not the least interesting of these days was that on which Cardinal Manning presided. I remember well his domed forehead and pale, transparent complexion, telling unmistakably of his ascetic life. He was obviously much interested in Prison Reform, and well cognizant of its progress. An esteemed friend and fellow country-woman of mine, Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chace of Rhode Island, was also accredited as a delegate to this congress. At one of its meetings she read a short paper, giving some account of her own work in the prisons of her State. At this meeting, the question of flogging prisoners came up, and a rather brutal jailer of the old school told an anecdote of a refractory prisoner who had been easily reduced to obedience by this summary method. His rough words stirred my heart within me. I felt that I must speak; and Mrs. Chace kindly arose, and said to the presiding officer, "I beg that Mrs. Julia Ward Howe of Boston may be heard before this debate is closed." Leave being given, I stood up and said my say, arguing earnestly that no man could be made better by being degraded. I can only well recall a part of my little speech, which was, I need scarcely say, quite unpremeditated:-- "It is related of the famous Beau Brummel that a gentleman who called upon him one morning met a valet carrying away a tray of neckcloths, more or less disordered. 'What are these?' asked the visitor; and the servant replied, 'These are our failures.' Even thus may society point to the criminals whom she dismisses from her presence. Of these men and women, whom she has failed to train in the ways of virtue and of industry, she may well say: 'These are our failures.'" My words were much applauded, and I think the vote taken was against the punishment in question. The sittings of the congress were mainly held in the hall of the Temple, which is enriched with carvings and coats of arms. Here, also, a final banquet was held, at which I was invited to speak, and did so. Rev. Frederick Wines had an honored place in this assembly, and his words were listened to with great attention. Miss Carpenter came from Bristol to attend the congress, and I was present when she presided over a section especially devoted to women prisoners. A number of the addresses presented at the congress were in foreign languages. A synopsis of these was furnished on the spot by an apt translator. I recall the whole occasion as one of great interest. I must not forget to mention the fact that the only daughter of Edward Livingston, author of the criminal code of the State of Louisiana, was an honored guest at this congress. The meetings at which I spoke in different parts of England were usually presided over by some important personage, such as the mayor of the city. On one occasion a man of the people, quite popular in his way, expressed his warm approval of my peace doctrine, and concluded his remarks by saying, "Mrs. Howe, I offer you the hand of the Tyne-side Orator." All these efforts were intended to lead up to the final meeting which I had determined to hold in London, and which I did hold in St. George's Hall, a place very suitable for such occasions. At this meeting, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Bright sat with me on the platform, and the venerable Sir John Bowring spoke at some length, leaning on his staff as became his age. The attendance was very good. The meeting was by no means what I had hoped that it might be. The ladies who spoke in public in those days mostly confined their labors to the advocacy of woman suffrage, and were not much interested in my scheme of a world-wide protest of women against the cruelties of war. I found indeed some helpful allies among my own sex. Two sisters of John Bright, Mrs. Margaret Lucas and Mrs. Maclaren, aided me with various friendly offices, and through their instrumentality the money which I had expended in the hire of halls was returned to me. I had not in any way suggested or expected this, but as I was working entirely at my own cost the assistance was very welcome and opportune. I cannot leave this time without recalling the gracious figure of Athanase Coquerel. I had met this remarkable man in London at the anniversary banquet of the British Unitarian Association. It was in this country, however, that I first heard his eloquent and convincing speech, the occasion being a sermon given by him at the Unitarian Church of Newport, R. I., in the summer of the year 1873. It happened on this Sunday that the poet Bryant, John Dwight, and Parke Godwin were seated near me. All of them expressed great admiration of the discourse, and one exclaimed, "That French art, how wonderful it is!" The text chosen was this: "And greater works than these shall ye do." "How could this be?" asked the preacher. "How could the work of the disciples be greater than that of the Master? In one sense only. It could not be greater in spirit or in character. It could be greater in extent." The revolution in France occasioned by the Franco-Prussian war was much in the public mind at this time, and the extraordinary crisis of the Commune was almost unexplained. As soon as I found an opportunity of conversing with Monsieur Coquerel, I besought him to set before us the true solution of these matters in the lectures which he was about to deliver. He consented to do so, and in one of his discourses represented the Commune as the result of a state of exasperation on the part of the people of Paris. They saw their country invaded by hostile armies, their sacred city beleaguered. In the desperation of their distress, all longed to take active part in some counter movement, and the most brutal and ignorant part of the populace were turned, by artful leaders, to this work of destruction. The speaker gave a very moving account of the hardships of the siege of Paris, the privations endured of food and fuel, the sacrifice of costly furniture as fire-wood to keep alive children in imminent danger of death. In the midst of the tumults and horrors enumerated, he introduced the description of the funeral of an eminent scientist. The quiet cortége moved on to the cemetery where halt was made, and the several speakers of the occasion, as if oblivious of the agonies of the hour, bore willing testimony to the merits and good work of their departed colleague. The principal object of Monsieur Coquerel's visit to this country was to collect funds for the building of a church in Paris which should grandly and truly represent liberal Christianity. I fear that his success in this undertaking fell far short of the end which he had hoped to attain. His death occurred not long after his return to France, and I do not know whether the first stone of his proposed edifice was ever laid. CHAPTER XVI VISITS TO SANTO DOMINGO In the year 1872, Dr. Howe was appointed one of three commissioners to report upon the advisability of annexing Santo Domingo to the United States. The two other commissioners were Hon. Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, and Hon. Andrew D. White. A government steamer was placed at the disposal of the commissioners, and a number of newspaper correspondents accompanied them. Prominent among these was William Henry Hurlburt, at that time identified with the "New York World." Before taking leave of his family, Dr. Howe said, "Remember that you cannot hear from us sooner than a month under the most favorable circumstances, so do not be frightened at our long silence." I have never heard an explanation of the motives which led the press in general to speak slightingly of the Tennessee, the war steamer upon which the commission embarked for Santo Domingo. Scarcely a week after her departure, a sensational account was published of a severe storm in the southern seas, and of a large steamer seen in unavailing struggle with the waves. "The steamer was probably the Tennessee, and it is most likely that she foundered in the storm and went down with all on board." In spite of my husband's warning, I could not but feel great anxiety in view of this statement. The days of suspense that followed it were dark indeed and hard to live through. In due time, however, came intelligence of the safe arrival of the Tennessee, and of the good condition of all on board. It happened that I had gone out for a walk on the morning when this good news reached Boston. On my return I found Dr. Dix waiting, his eyes full of tears, to tell me that the Tennessee had been heard from. The numerous congratulations which I now received showed how general had been the fear of the threatened mishap, and how great the public interest in Dr. Howe's safety. In later years, I made the acquaintance of Hon. Andrew D. White and his most charming wife. Though scarcely on the verge of middle age, her beautiful dark hair had turned completely white, in the unnecessary agony which she suffered in the interval between her husband's departure and the first authentic news received of the expedition. It was a year later than this that Dr. Howe was urged by parties interested to undertake a second visit to Santo Domingo, with the view of furthering the interests of the Samana Bay Company. He had been so much impressed with the beauty of the island that he wished me to share its enchantments with him. We accordingly set sail in a small steamer, the Tybee, in February of the year 1873. Our youngest daughter, Maud, went with us, and our party consisted of Maud's friend, Miss Derby, now Mrs. Samuel Richard Fuller, my husband's three nieces, and Miss Mary C. Paddock, a valued friend. Colonel Fabens, a man much interested in the prospects of the island, also embarked with us. The voyage was a stormy one, the seas being exceeding rough, and the steamer most uneasy in her action. After some weary days and nights, we cast anchor in the harbor of Puerta Plata, and my husband came to the door of my stateroom crying, "Come out and see the great glory!" I obeyed, and beheld a scene which amply justified his exclamation. Before us, sheer out of the water, rose Mount Isabel, clothed with tropical verdure. At its foot lay the picturesque little town. Small carts, drawn each by a single bullock, were already awaiting the unloading of the cargo. We were soon on shore, and within the shelter of a tolerable hotel, where fresh fruits and black coffee restored our sea-worn spirits. The day was Sunday, and I managed to attend a Methodist service held in a commodious chapel. The aspect of the little town was very cheerful and friendly. Negro women ran about the streets, with red turbaned heads and clad in trailing gowns of calico. The prancing little horses delighted me with their swift and easy motion. On the day subsequent to our landing, we accepted an invitation to breakfast at a sugar plantation, not very far from the town. A cart drawn by a bullock furnished the only vehicle to be had in the place. Our entertainers were a young Cuban and his American wife. They had embarked a good deal of capital in machinery; I regretted to learn later that their enterprise had not been altogether successful. The merchants in Puerta Plata were largely Germans and Jews. They were at heart much opposed to the success of the Samana Bay enterprise, fearing that it would build up Samana at the expense of their own town. So, a year later, their money was used to inaugurate a revolution, which overthrew President Baez, and installed in his place a man greatly his inferior in talent, but one who could be made entirely subservient to the views of the Puerta Plata junta. After a day and a night in Puerta Plata we returned to our steamer, which was now bound for Samana Bay, and thence for the capital, Santo Domingo. Let me say in passing that it is quite incorrect to speak of the island as "San Domingo," This might be done if Domingo were the name of a saint, but Santo Domingo really means "Holy Sunday," and is so named in commemoration of the first landing of Columbus upon the island. Of Samana itself I will speak hereafter. After two more days of rough sea travel we were very glad to reach the capital, where the Palacio Nacional had been assigned as our residence. This was a spacious building surrounding a rectangular court. A guard of soldiers occupied the lower story, and the whole of the second floor was placed at our disposal. Furniture there was little or none, but we had brought with us a supply of beds, bedding, and articles necessary for the table. The town afforded us chairs and tables, and with the help of our friend, Miss Paddock, we were soon comfortably installed in our new quarters. The fleas at first gave us terrible torment, but a copious washing of floors and the use of some native plant, the name of which I cannot remember, diminished this inconvenience, to which also we gradually became accustomed. The population of Santo Domingo is much mixed, and I could not see that the blacks were looked down upon by the whites, the greater part of whom gave evidence of some admixture of African blood. In the harbor of the capital, before leaving the steamer, I had had some conversation with one François, a man of color, who had come on board to secure the services of one of our fellow-passengers, an aged clergyman, for his church. The old gentleman insisted that he was past preaching, on account of his age and infirmities. I began to question François about his church, and found that it consisted of a small congregation of very poor colored people, all Americans by birth or descent. They held their services only on Sunday evenings, having neither clothes nor shoes fit for appearance in the daytime. Their real minister had died, and an elder who had taken his place was too lame to cross the river in order to attend the services, so they had to do without preaching. I cannot remember just how it came about, but I engaged to hold service for them on Sunday evenings during my stay at the capital. Behold me then, on my first Sunday evening, entering the little wooden building with its mud floor. It boasted a mahogany pulpit of some size, but I took my seat within the chancel rail and began my ministration. I gave out the hymns, and the tattered hymn-books were turned over. I soon learned that this was a mere form, few of those present being able to read. They knew the hymns by heart and sang them with a will. I had prepared my sermon very carefully, being anxious really to interest these poor shepherdless sheep. They appeared to listen very thankfully, and I continued these services until nearly the time of my departure from the island. I had not brought any written sermons with me, nor had I that important aid in sermonizing, a concordance. A young daughter of Colonel Fabens, a good Bible scholar, used to find my texts for me. I remember that, after my first preaching, a young woman called upon me and quoted some words from my sermon, very much in the sense of the old anecdote about "that blessed word Mesopotamia." When Good Friday and Easter came my colored people besought me to hold extra services, in order that their young folks might understand that these sacred days were of as much significance to them as to the Catholics, by whom they were surrounded. I naturally complied with their request, and arranged to have the poor little place decorated with palms and flowers for the Easter service. I have always remembered with pleasure one feature of my Easter sermon. In this I tried to describe Dante's beautiful vision of a great cross in the heavens, formed of clusters of stars, the name of Christ being inscribed on each cluster. The thought that the mighty poet of the fourteenth century should have had something to impart to these illiterate negroes was very dear to me. As soon as the report of my preaching became noised abroad, the aged elder, whose place I had taken, bestirred himself and managed to put in an appearance at the little church. He mounted the stairs of the mahogany pulpit, and seemed to keep guard over the congregation, while I continued to speak from the chancel. I invited him to give out the hymns, which he did, mentioning also the page on which they would be found. He afterwards told me that his wife, who could read, had taught him those hymns. "I never could do nothing with books," he said. We found but little English spoken at the capital except among the colored people. I always recall with amusement a bit of conversation which I had with one of the merchants who was fond of speaking our language. He had sent his errand boy to us with a message. Meeting him later in the day, I said, "I saw your servant this morning." "Yes, ze nigger. He mudder fooley in St. Thomas." I made some effort to ascertain what were the educational advantages afforded in the capital. I found there a school for boys, under the immediate charge of the Catholic clergy. Hearing also of a school for girls, founded and administered by a young woman of the city, I called one day to find out what I could of her and of her work. She was the daughter of a woman physician who had much reputation in the place. Her mother had received no technical medical education, but had practiced nursing under the best doctors, and had also acquired through experience a considerable understanding of the uses of herbs. She was a devout Catholic, and having once been desperately ill, had vowed her infant daughter to the Virgin in case of her recovery. The daughter had not entered a convent, but had devoted herself to the training of young girls. She appeared to be a very modest and simple person, and was pleased to have me inspect the needlework, maps, and copy books of her pupils. "At any rate, I keep them out of the street," she said. François, my first colored acquaintance at the capital, had spoken to me of a Bible society formed there. It was a secret association, and he told me several times that its members earnestly desired to make my acquaintance. I finally arranged with him to attend one of their meetings, and went, in his company, to a building in which an inner room was set apart for their use. I was ushered into this with some ceremony, and found a company of natives of various shades of color. On a raised platform were seated the presiding officers of the occasion. Presently one of these rang his bell and began to address me in a rather high-flown style, assuring me that my noble works were well understood by those present, and that they greatly desired to hear from me. I was much puzzled at this address, feeling almost certain that nothing that I had ever done would have been likely to penetrate the atmosphere of this isolated spot. The speech was in Spanish and I was expected to reply in the same language. This I was not able to do, my knowledge of Spanish being limited to a few colloquial phrases. The French language answered pretty well, however, and in this I managed to express my thanks for the honor done me and my sincere interest in the welfare of the island. All present had risen to receive me. There seemed to be nothing further for me to do, and I took leave, followed by clapping of hands. To this day I have never been able to understand the connection of this association with any Bible society, and still less the flattering mention made of some supposed merits on my part. François warned me that this meeting was not to be generally spoken of, and I endeavored to preserve a discreet silence regarding it. On another evening we were all invited to attend the public exercises of a debating club of young men. The question to be argued was whether it is permissible to do evil in view of a supposed good result. The debate was a rather spirited one. The best of the speakers, who had been educated in Spain, had much to say of the philosopher Balmés, whose sayings he more than once quoted. The question having been decided in the negative, the speaker who had maintained the unethical side of the question explained that he had done this only because it was required of him, his convictions and sympathies being wholly on the other side. President Baez had received us with great cordiality. He called upon us soon after our arrival, having previously sent us a fine basket of fruit. He seemed an intelligent man, and my husband's estimate of him was much opposed to that conveyed in Mr. Sumner's invective against "a traitor who sought to sell his own country." Baez had sense enough to recognize the security which annexation to the United States would give to his people. The English are sometimes spoken of as "a nation of shopkeepers." Santo Domingo might certainly be called a city of shopkeepers. When we visited it, all of the principal families were engaged in trade. When daughters were considered of fit age to enter society, they made their début behind the counter of their father or uncle. My husband decided, soon after our arrival, to invite the townspeople to a dance. In preparation for this festivity, the largest room in the palace was swept and garnished with flowers. A native band of musicians was engaged, and a merry and motley throng invaded our sober premises. The favorite dances were mostly of the order of the "contradanza," which I had seen in Cuba. This is a slow and stately measure, suited to the languor of a hot climate. I ventured to introduce a Virginia Reel, which was not much enjoyed by the natives. President Baez did not honor us with his presence, but his brother Damian and his sister Rosita were among our guests. A United States warship was in the harbor, and its officers were a welcome reinforcement to our company. Among these was Lieutenant De Long, well remembered now as the leader of the ill-fated Jeannette expedition. At two o'clock in the morning my husband showed signs of extreme fatigue. I felt that the gayeties must cease, and was obliged to say to some of the older guests that Dr. Howe's health would not permit him to entertain them longer. It seemed like sending children home from a Christmas party, the dancers appeared so much taken aback. They had expected to dance until day dawn. Still they departed without objecting. The next day those of us who visited the principal street of the city saw the beaux of the night before busy in their shops, some of them in shirt-sleeves. Our days passed very quietly. Dr. Howe took his accustomed ride before breakfast. One feature of this meal consisted of water-cocoanuts, gathered while the night dew was on them, and of a delicious coolness. The water having been poured out, the nuts were thrown into the court below, where the soldiers of the guard ate them greedily. The rations served out to these men consisted simply of strips of sugar cane. Their uniforms were of seersucker, and the homely palm-leaf hat completed their costume. After breakfast I usually sat at my books, often preparing my Sunday sermon. A siesta followed the noonday repast, and after this the greatest amusement of the day began. The little, fiery steeds were brought into the courtyard, and I rode forth, followed by my young companions and escorted by the assistant secretary of the treasury. Several of the young gentlemen of the town who could command the use of a horse would join our cavalcade, as we swept out of the city limits and into the beautiful regions beyond. The horses have a peculiarly easy gait, and are yet very swift and gentle. As the season advanced, and the spring showers began to fall, we were sometimes glad to take refuge under a mango tree, its spreading branches and thick foliage sheltering us like a tent. Our cavaliers, in view of this emergency, were apt to provide themselves with umbrellas, to the opening and shutting of which the horses were well accustomed. In case of any chill "a little rum" was always recommended. The careless mention of this typical beverage amused and almost frightened me, accustomed to hear rum spoken of with bated breath, as if unfit even for mention. The besetting evil of the island seemed to be lockjaw. I was told that the smallest wound or scratch, or even a chill, might produce it. I distinctly remember having several times felt an unusual stiffness of the lower jaw, consequent upon a slight check of perspiration. I cannot imagine a more delightful winter climate than that of Santo Domingo. Dr. Howe used sometimes to come to my study and ask, "Are you comfortable?" "Perfectly comfortable. Why do you ask?" "Because the thermometer stands at 86° Fahrenheit." A delicious sea-breeze blew in at the wide open window, and we who sat in it had no feeling of extreme heat. I remember a little excursion which we made on horseback to a village some twelve miles distant from the capital. We started in the very early morning, wishing to reach the place of our destination before the approach of noon. It was still quite dark when we mounted our horses, with a faithful escort of Dominican friends. "_Sabrosa mañana!_" exclaimed the assistant secretary of the treasury, who rode beside me. Our road lay through a beautiful bit of forest land. The dawn found us at a pretty and primitive ferry, which we crossed without dismounting. The beauty of the scenery was beyond description. The air was refreshed by a succession of little mountain streamlets, which splashed with a cool sound about our horses' feet. Arriving at the village we found a newly erected _bohio_, or hut of palm-wood strips, prepared for us. It was hung with hammocks and furnished with rockingchairs, with a clean floor of sand and pebbles. At a neighboring _fonda_ luncheon was served to our party. We returned to our _bohio_ for a much needed siesta, reserving the afternoon for a ramble. A service was going on at the village church. After a late dinner we went to visit the priest. His servant woman appeared reluctant to admit us. This we understood when the old gentleman came forward to receive us, dressed like a peasant, and wearing a handkerchief tied about his head in peasant fashion. To me, as the senior lady of the party, he offered a cigar. He took pains to return our visit the next day, but came to our _bohio_ in full canonicals. He was anxious to possess a certain Spanish work on botany, and offered me a sum of money in prepayment of its price. This I declined to receive, feeling that the chances were much against my ever being able to fulfill his commission. Immediately after his visit we mounted our steeds and rode back to the capital, which we reached after the great gate had been closed for the night, a narrow postern opening to admit our party one by one. Before our departure from the island, President Baez invited us to a state dinner at his residence. The appointments of the table were elegant and tasteful. The repast was a long one, consisting of a great variety of Dominican dishes, which appeared and disappeared with great celerity. Before the dessert was served, we were requested to leave the table and return to the sitting-room. Presently we came back to the table, and found it spread with fruits and sweets innumerable. Two years after this time, my husband's health required a change of climate. He decided to visit Santo Domingo once more, and was anxious that I should accompany him. I was rather unwilling to do so, being much engaged at home. Wishing to offer me the greatest inducement, he said, "You shall preach to your colored folks as much as you like." In March of 1875, accordingly, we set sail in the same Tybee which had carried us on our first voyage to the beautiful island. The political situation meantime had greatly changed. The revolution already spoken of had expelled President Baez, and had put in his place a man devoted to the interests of Puerta Plata, as opposed to the growth of Samana. We landed at the capital, and as we walked up the street to our hotel familiar forms emerged from the shops on the right and on the left. These friends all accosted us with eager questions:-- "Addonde estan las muchachas?" (Where are the girls?) "Addonde esta Maud?" "Addonde esta Lucia?" We were obliged to say that they were not with us, and the blank, disappointed faces showed that we, the elders, counted for little in the absence of "metal more attractive." After a short stay at the capital, we reëmbarked for Samana, where we passed some weeks of delightful quiet in a pretty cottage on the outskirts of the little town. On the evening of our taking possession, I stood at the door of our new abode, watching the moon rise and overtop two stately palms which formed the immediate foreground of our landscape. On the left was the pretty crescent-shaped beach, and beyond it the lights of the town shone brightly. This was a foretaste of many delightful hours in which my soul was fed with the beauty of my surroundings. Our cottage was distant about a mile from the town, which my husband liked to visit every morning. It was possible to go thither by the beach, but he preferred to take a narrow bridle path on the side of a very steep hill. I had never been a bold rider, and I must confess that I suffered agonies of fear in following him on these expeditions. If I lagged behind, he would cry, "Come on! it's as bad as going to a funeral to ride with you." And so, I suppose, it was. I remember one day when a great palm branch had fallen across our path. I thought that my horse would certainly slip on it, sending me to depths below. Fortunately he did not. That very day, while Dr. Howe was taking his siesta, I went to the place where this impediment lay, and with a great effort threw it over the steep mountain-side. The whole neighborhood of Samana is very mountainous, and I sometimes found it impossible to obey the word of command. One day my husband spurred his horse and made a gallant dash at a very steep ascent, ordering me to follow him. I tried my best, but only got far enough to find myself awkwardly at a standstill, and unable to go either backward or forward. The Doctor was obliged to dismount and to lead my horse down to the level ground. This, he assured me, was a severe mortification for him. Dr. Howe desired at this time to make a journey on horseback to a part of the interior which he had not visited. He engaged as a guide a man familiar with the region and able on foot to keep pace with any ordinary horse. I remember that this man asked for a warning of some days, in order that he might purchase his _combustibles_, meaning comestibles. This journey, often talked of, was never undertaken. We sometimes varied the even tenor of our days in Samana by a sail in the pretty steam launch belonging to the Samana Bay Company. On one occasion we took a rowboat and went to visit an English carpenter who had built himself a hut in the forest not far from the shore. We found his wife surrounded by her young family. The cabin was provided with berths for sleeping accommodation. The household work was done mostly in the open air. On a rude table I found some Greek books. "Whose are those?" I asked. "Oh, they belong to my husband. He studies Greek in order to understand the New Testament." Yet this man was so illiterate as to allow some pupils of his to use a small i for our personal pronoun. In spite of my husband's permission, I did not preach very much during this visit to Samana. I found there a Methodist church with a settled pastor. I did take part in an open-air service one Sunday afternoon. The place chosen was well up on the side of a mountain, the assembly consisting entirely of colored people. I arrived a little after time and found a zealous elder speaking. When he saw me he said, "And now dat de lady hab come I will _obdunk_ [abdicate] from de place." A little school kept by the carpenter was not far from this spot. It occupied a shed in a region magnificent with palms. I went one day, by special arrangement, to speak to the pupils, who were of both sexes. The ascent was so steep that I was glad to avail myself of the offer of a steer with a straw saddle on his back, led by a youth of the neighborhood. From the school I went to the hut of a colored woman, who had requested the honor of entertaining me at lunch, and who waited upon me with great good-will. While I was still resting in the shade of the cabin a man appeared, leading two saddle horses and bearing a missive from Dr. Howe, requesting my immediate return. I have elsewhere alluded to this and to Dr. Howe's touching words, "Our dear, noble Sumner is no more. Come home at once. I am much distressed." My husband had been greatly chagrined by Mr. Sumner's conduct with regard to the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo. The death of his lifelong friend seemed to bring back all his old tenderness and he grieved deeply over his loss. Of the longevity of the negro population of Santo Domingo we heard wonderful accounts. I myself, while in Samana, saw and spoke with a colored woman who was said to have reached the age of one hundred and thirty years. She was a native of Maryland, and had become a mother and a grandmother before leaving the United States. In Samana she married again and had a second set of children and grandchildren. These particulars I learned from a daughter of her second marriage, herself a woman of forty. The aged mother and grandmother came up to Samana during my stay there to make some necessary purchases. Her figure was slender and, as the French say, "_bien-prise_." Her only infirmity appeared to be her deafness. A curious custom in this small community was the consecration of all houses as soon as completed. This was usually made the occasion of what we term a house-warming. Friends were invited, and were expected to make contributions of cake. The priest of the parish offered prayer and sprinkled the premises with holy water, after which the festivities commenced. The music consisted of a harmonicon and a notched gourd, which was scraped with an iron rod to mark the time. Cakes and lemonade were handed about in trays. Grandmothers sat patient with their grandbabes on their laps while the mothers danced to their hearts' content. It chanced one day that I attended one of these merry-makings. While the dance was in progress a superbly handsome man, bronze in complexion and very polite in manner, commanded from the musicians, "Una polka por Madama Howe." I had neither expected nor desired to dance, but felt obliged to accept this invitation. A large proportion of the Dominicans, be it said in passing, are of mixed race, the white element in them being mostly Spanish. This last so predominates that the leading negro characteristics are rarely observed among them. They are intelligent people, devout in their Catholicism and generally very honest. Families of the wealthier class are apt to send their sons to Spain for education. Quite distinct from these are the American blacks, who are the remnant and in large part the descendants of an exodus of free negroes from our Middle States, which took place in the neighborhood of the year 1840. These people are Methodists, but are, for some reason, entirely neglected by the denomination, both in England and in America. They are anxious to keep their young folks within the pale of Protestantism. Of such was composed my little congregation in the city of Santo Domingo. In the place last named I made the acquaintance of a singular family of birds, individuals of which were domesticated in many houses. These creatures could be depended upon to give the household warning of the approach of a stranger. They also echoed with notes of their own the hourly striking of the city clocks, and zealously destroyed all the insects which are generated by the heat of a tropical climate. The _per contra_ is that they themselves are rather malodorous. During my stay in Samana a singular woman attached herself to me. She was a mulatto, and her home was on a mountain side in the neighborhood of the school of which I have just spoken. Here she was rarely to be found; and her husband bewailed her frequent absences and consequent neglect of her large family. She had some knowledge of herbs, which she occasionally made available in nursing the sick. She one day brought her aged mother to visit me, and the elder woman, speaking of her, said, "Oh, yes! Rosanna's got edication." Of this "edication" I had a specimen in a letter which she wrote me after my departure, and which began thus, "Hailyal [hallelujah], Mrs. Howe, here's hopin." In these days the brilliant scheme of the Samana Bay Company came to its final failure. The Dominican government now insisted that the flag of the company should be officially withdrawn. The Tybee having departed on her homeward voyage, the one warship of the republic made its appearance in the harbor, a miserable little schooner, but one that carried a gun. On the morrow of her arrival, a scene of some interest was enacted. The employees of the company, all colored men, marched to the building over which the flag was floating. Every man carried a fresh rose at the end of his musket. Dr. Howe made a pathetic little speech, explanatory of the circumstances, and a military salute was fired as the flag was hauled down. A spiteful caricature appeared in a paper published, I think, at the capital, representing the transaction just mentioned, with Dr. Howe in the foreground in an attitude of deep dejection, Mrs. Howe standing near, and saying, "Never mind." * * * * * From my own memoir of Dr. Howe I quote the following record of his last days on earth. "The mild climate and exercise in the open air had done all that could have been expected for Dr. Howe, and he returned from Santo Domingo much improved in health. The seeds of disease, however, were still lurking in his system, and the change from tropical weather to our own uncertain spring brought on a severe attack of rheumatism, by which his strength was greatly reduced. He rallied somewhat in the autumn, and was able to pass the winter in reasonable comfort and activity. "The first of May, 1875, found him at his country seat in South Portsmouth, R. I., where the planting of his garden and the supervision of his poultry afforded him much amusement and occupation. In the early summer he was still able to ride the beautiful Santo Domingo pony which President Baez had sent him three years before. This resource, however, soon failed him, and his exercise became limited to a short walk in the neighborhood of his house. His strength constantly diminished during the summer, yet he retained his habits of early rising and of active occupation, as well as his interest in matters public and private. He returned to Boston in the autumn, and seemed at first benefited by the change. He felt, however, and we felt, that a change was impending. "On Christmas day he was able to dine with his family, and to converse with one or two invited guests. On the first of January he said to an intimate friend: 'I have told my people that they will bury me this month.' This was merely a passing impression, as in fact he had not so spoken to any of us. On January 4th, while up and about as usual, he was attacked by sudden and severe convulsions, followed by insensibility; and on January 9th he breathed his last, surrounded by his family, and apparently without pain or consciousness. Before the end Laura Bridgman was brought to his bedside, to touch once more the hand that had unlocked the world to her. She did so, weeping bitterly." A great mourning was made for Dr. Howe. Eulogies were pronounced before the legislature of Massachusetts, and resolutions of regret and sympathy came to us from various beneficent associations. From Greece came back a touching echo of our sorrow, and by an order, sent from thence, a floral tribute was laid upon the casket of the early friend and champion of Greek liberties. A beautiful helmet and sword, all of violets, the parting gift of the household, seemed a fitting recognizance for one whom Whittier has named "The Modern Bayard." Shortly after this sad event a public meeting was held in Boston Music Hall in commemoration of Dr. Howe's great services to the community. The governor of Massachusetts (Hon. Alexander H. Rice) presided, and testimonials were offered by many eminent men. Poems written for the occasion were contributed by Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Ellery Channing, and Rev. Charles T. Brooks. Of these exercises I will only say that, although my husband's life was well known to me, I listened almost with amazement to the summing up of its deeds of merit. It seemed almost impossible that so much good could be soberly said of any man, and yet I knew that it was all said truthfully and in grave earnest. My husband's beloved pupil, Laura Bridgman, was seated upon the platform, where a friend interpreted the proceedings to her in the finger language. The music, which was of a high order, was furnished by the pupils of the institution for the blind at South Boston. The occasion was one never to be forgotten. As I review it after an interval of many years, I find that the impression made upon me at the time does not diminish. I still wonder at the showing of such a solid power of work, such untiring industry, such prophetic foresight and intuition, so grand a trust in human nature. These gifts were well-nigh put out of sight by a singularly modest estimate of self. Truly, this was a knight of God's own order. I cannot but doubt whether he left his peer on earth. CHAPTER XVII THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT I sometimes feel as if words could not express the comfort and instruction which have come to me in the later years of my life from two sources. One of these has been the better acquaintance with my own sex; the other, the experience of the power resulting from associated action in behalf of worthy objects. During the first two thirds of my life I looked to the masculine ideal of character as the only true one. I sought its inspiration, and referred my merits and demerits to its judicial verdict. In an unexpected hour a new light came to me, showing me a world of thought and of character quite beyond the limits within which I had hitherto been content to abide. The new domain now made clear to me was that of true womanhood,--woman no longer in her ancillary relation to her opposite, man, but in her direct relation to the divine plan and purpose, as a free agent, fully sharing with man every human right and every human responsibility. This discovery was like the addition of a new continent to the map of the world, or of a new testament to the old ordinances. "Oh, had I earlier known the power, the nobility, the intelligence which lie within the range of true womanhood, I had surely lived more wisely and to better purpose." Such were my reflections; yet I must think that the great Lord of all reserved this new revelation as the crown of a wonderful period of the world's emancipation and progress. It did not come to me all at once. In my attempts at philosophizing I at length reached the conclusion that woman must be the moral and spiritual equivalent of man. How, otherwise, could she be entrusted with the awful and inevitable responsibilities of maternity? The quasi-adoration that true lovers feel, was it an illusion partly of sense, partly of imagination? or did it symbolize a sacred truth? While my mind was engaged with these questions, the civil war came to an end, leaving the slave not only emancipated, but endowed with the full dignity of citizenship. The women of the North had greatly helped to open the door which admitted him to freedom and its safeguard, the ballot. Was this door to be shut in their face? While I followed, rather unwillingly, this train of thought, an invitation was sent me to attend a parlor meeting to be held with the view of forming a woman's club in Boston. I presented myself at this meeting, and gave a languid assent to the measures proposed. These were to hire a parlor or parlors in some convenient locality, and to furnish and keep them open for the convenience of ladies residing in the city and its suburbs. Out of this small and modest beginning was gradually developed the plan of the New England Woman's Club, a strong and stately association destined, I believe, to last for many years, and leaving behind it, at this time of my writing, a record of three decades of happy and acceptable service. While our club life was still in its beginning, I was invited and induced to attend a meeting in behalf of woman suffrage. Indeed, I had given my name to the call for this meeting, relying upon the assurance given me by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, that it would be conducted in a very liberal and friendly spirit, without bitterness or extravagance. The place appointed was Horticultural Hall. The morning was inclement; and as I strayed into the hall in my rainy-day suit, nothing was further from my mind than the thought that I should take any part in the day's proceedings. I had hoped not to be noticed by the officers of the meeting, and was rather disconcerted when a message reached me requesting me to come up and take a seat on the platform. This I did very reluctantly. I was now face to face with a new order of things. Here, indeed, were some whom I had long known and honored: Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Colonel Higginson, and my dear pastor, James Freeman Clarke. But here was also Lucy Stone, who had long been the object of one of my imaginary dislikes. As I looked into her sweet, womanly face and heard her earnest voice, I felt that the object of my distaste had been a mere phantom, conjured up by silly and senseless misrepresentations. Here stood the true woman, pure, noble, great-hearted, with the light of her good life shining in every feature of her face. Here, too, I saw the husband whose devotion so ably seconded her life-work. The arguments to which I now listened were simple, strong, and convincing. These champions, who had fought so long and so valiantly for the slave, now turned the searchlight of their intelligence upon the condition of woman, and demanded for the mothers of the community the civil rights which had recently been accorded to the negro. They asked for nothing more and nothing less than the administration of that impartial justice for which, if for anything, a Republican government should stand. When they requested me to speak, which they did presently, I could only say, "I am with you." I have been with them ever since, and have never seen any reason to go back from the pledge then given. Strangely, as it then seemed to me, the arguments which I had stored up in my mind against the political enfranchisement of women were really so many reasons in its favor. All that I had felt regarding the sacredness and importance of the woman's part in private life now appeared to me equally applicable to the part which she should bear in public life. [Illustration: LUCY STONE _From a photograph by the Notman Photographic Company._] One of the comforts which I found in the new association was the relief which it afforded me from a sense of isolation and eccentricity. For years past I had felt strongly impelled to lend my voice to the convictions of my heart. I had done this in a way, from time to time, always with the feeling that my course in so doing was held to call for apology and explanation by the men and women with whose opinions I had hitherto been familiar. I now found a sphere of action in which this mode of expression no longer appeared singular or eccentric, but simple, natural, and, under the circumstances, inevitable. In the little band of workers which I had joined, I was soon called upon to perform yeoman's service. I was expected to attend meetings and to address audiences, at first in the neighborhood of Boston, afterwards in many remote places, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis. Among those who led or followed the new movement, I naturally encountered some individuals in whom vanity and personal ambition were conspicuous. But I found mostly among my new associates a great heart of religious conviction and a genuine spirit of selfsacrifice. My own contributions to the work appeared to me less valuable than I had hoped to find them. I had at first everything to learn with regard to public speaking, and Lucy Stone and Mrs. Livermore were much more at home on the platform than I was. I was called upon to preside over conventions, having never learned the rules of debate. I was obliged to address large audiences, having been accustomed to use my voice only in parlors. Gradually all this bettered itself. I became familiar with the order of proceedings, and learned to modulate my voice. More important even than these things, I learned something of the range of popular sympathies, and of the power of apprehension to be found in average audiences. All of these experiences, the failures, the effort, and the final achievement, were most useful to me. In years that followed I gave what I could to the cause, but all that I gave was repaid to me a thousandfold. I had always had to do with women of character and intelligence, but I found in my new friends a clearness of insight, a strength and steadfastness of purpose, which enabled them to take a position of command, in view of the questions of the hour. Among the manifold interests which now opened up before me, the cause of woman suffrage was for a time predominant. The novelty of the topic in the mind of the general public brought together large audiences in Boston and in the neighboring towns. Lucy Stone's fervent zeal, always guided by her faultless feeling of propriety, the earnest pleading of her husband, the brilliant eloquence and personal magnetism of Mary A. Livermore,--all these things combined to give to our platform a novel and sustained attraction. Noble men, aye, the noblest, stood with us in our endeavor,--some, like Senator Hoar and George S. Hale, to explain and illustrate the logical sequence which should lead to the recognition of our citizenship; others, like Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, and Henry Ward Beecher, able to overwhelm the crumbling defenses of the old order with the storm and flash of their eloquence. We acted, one and all, under the powerful stimulus of hope. The object which we labored to accomplish was so legitimate and rational, so directly in the line of our religious belief, of our political institutions, that it appeared as if we had only to unfold our new banner, bright with the blazon of applied Christianity, and march on to victory. The black man had received the vote. Should the white woman be less considered than he? During the recent war the women of our country had been as ministering angels to our armies, forsaking homes of ease and luxury to bring succor and comfort to the camp-hospital and battlefield. Those who tarried at home had labored incessantly to supply the needs of those at the front. Should they not be counted among the citizens of the great Republic? Moreover, we women had year after year worked to build, maintain, and fill the churches throughout the land with a patient industry akin to that of coral insects. Surely we should be invited to pass in with our brothers to the larger liberty now shown to be our just due. We often spoke in country towns, where our morning meetings could be but poorly attended, for the reason that the women of the place were busy with the preparation of the noonday meal. Our evening sessions in such places were precious to school-teachers and factory hands. Ministers opened to us their churches, and the women of their congregations worked together to provide for us places of refreshment and repose. We met the real people face to face and hand to hand. It was a period of awakened thought, of quickened and enlarged sympathy. I recall with pleasure two campaigns which we made in Vermont, where the theme of woman suffrage was quite new to the public mind. I started on one of these journeys with Mr. Garrison, and enjoyed with him the great beauty of the winter landscape in that most lovely State. The evergreen forests through which we passed were hung with icicles, which glittered like diamonds in the bright winter sun. Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, and Mrs. Livermore had preceded us, and when we reached the place of destination we found everything in readiness for our meeting. At one town in Vermont some opposition to our coming had been manifested beforehand. We found, on arriving, that the chairman of our committee of arrangements had left town suddenly as if unwilling to befriend us. A vulgar and silly ballad had been printed and circulated, in which we three ladies were spoken of as three old crows. The prospect for the evening was not encouraging. We deliberated for a moment in the anteroom of our hall. I said, "Let me come first in the order of exercises, as I read from a manuscript, and shall not be disconcerted even if they throw chairs at us." As we entered some noise was heard from the gallery. Mr. Garrison came forward and asked whether we were to be given a hearing or not. Instantly a group of small boys were ejected from their seats by some one in authority. Mrs. Livermore now stepped to the front and looked the audience through and through. Silence prevailed, and she was heard as usual with repeated applause. I read my paper without interruption. The honors of the evening belonged to us. I remember another journey, a nocturnal one, which I undertook alone, in order to join the friends mentioned above at a suffrage meeting somewhere in New England. As I emerged from the Pullman in the cold twilight of an early winter morning, carrying a heavy bag, and feeling friendless and forlorn, I met Mrs. Livermore, who had made the journey in another car. At sight of her I cried, "Oh, you dear big Livermore!" Moved by this appeal, she at once took me under her protection, ordered a hotel porter to relieve me of my bag, and saw me comfortably housed and provided for. It was fortunate for us that the time of our deliverance appeared to us so near, as fortunate perhaps as the misinterpretation which led the early Christians to look daily for the reappearing on earth of their Master. Among my most valued recollections are those of the many legislative hearings in which I have had the privilege of taking part, and which cover a period of more than twenty years. Mr. Garrison, Lucy Stone, and Mr. Blackwell long continued to be our most prominent advocates, supported at times by Colonel Higginson, Wendell Phillips, and James Freeman Clarke. Mrs. Livermore was with us whenever her numerous lecture engagements allowed her to be present. Mrs. Cheney, Judge Sewall, and several lawyers of our own sex gave us valuable aid. These hearings were mostly held in the well-known Green Room of the Boston State House, but a gradual _crescendo_ of interest sometimes led us to ask for the use of Representatives' Hall, which was often crowded with the friends and opponents of our cause. Among the remonstrants who spoke at these hearings occasionally appeared some illiterate woman, attracted by the opportunity of making a public appearance. I remember one of these who, after asking to be heard, began to read from an elaborate manuscript which had evidently been written for her. After repeatedly substituting the word "communionism" for "communism," she abandoned the text and began to abuse the suffragists in language with which she was more familiar. When she had finished her diatribe the chairman of the legislative committee said to our chairman, Mr. Blackwell, "A list of questions has been handed to me which the petitioners for woman suffrage are requested to answer. The first on the list is the following:-- "If the suffrage should be granted to women, would not the ignorant and degraded ones hasten to crowd the polls while those of the better sort would stay away from them?" Mr. Garrison, rising, said in reply, "Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the question just propounded is answered by the present occasion. Here are education, character, intelligence, asking for suffrage, and here are ignorance and vulgarity protesting against it." This crushing sentence was uttered by Mr. Garrison in a tone of such bland simplicity that it did not even appear unkind. On a later occasion a lady of excellent character and position appeared among the remonstrants, and when asked whether she represented any association replied rather haughtily, "I think that I represent the educated women of Massachusetts," a goodly number of whom were present in behalf of the petition. The remonstrants had hearings of their own, at one of which I happened to be present. On this occasion one of their number, after depicting at some length the moral turpitude which she considered her sex likely to evince under political promise, concluded by saying: "No woman should be allowed the right of suffrage until _every_ woman shall be perfectly wise, perfectly pure, and perfectly good." This dictum, pronounced in a most authoritative manner, at once brought to my mind the homely proverb, "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander;" and I could not help asking permission to suggest a single question, upon which a prominent Boston lawyer instantly replied: "No, Mrs. Howe, you may not [speak]. We wish to use all our time." The chairman of the committee here interposed, saying: "Mr. Blank, it does not belong to you to say who shall or shall not be heard here." He advised me at the same time to reserve my question until the remonstrants should have been fully heard. As no time then remained for my question, I will ask it now: "If, as is just, we should apply the test proposed by Mrs. W. to the men of the community, how long would it be before they could properly claim the privilege of the franchise?" _Du reste_, the gentleman in question, with whom my relations have always been entirely friendly, explained himself to me at the close of the hearing by saying: "I treated you as I would have treated a man under similar circumstances." I now considered my occupations as fully equal to the capacity of my time and strength. My family, my studies, and my club demanded much attention. My elder children were now grown up, and some social functions were involved in this fact, such as chaperonage, the giving of parties, and much entertainment of college and school friends. Nevertheless, a new claimant for my services was about to come upon the scene. In the early summer of the year 1868, the Sorosis of New York issued a call for a congress of women to be held in that city in the autumn of the same year. Many names, some known, others unknown to me, were appended to the document first sent forth in this intention. My own was asked for. Should I give or withhold it? Among the signatures already obtained, I saw that of Maria Mitchell, and this determined me to give my own. Who was Maria Mitchell? A woman from Nantucket, and of Quaker origin, who had been brought to public notice by her discovery of a new comet, a service which the King of Denmark had offered to reward with a gold medal. This prize was secured for her through the intervention of Hon. Edward Everett. She had also been appointed Professor of Astronomy at Vassar College. What was Maria Mitchell? A gifted, noble, lovable woman, devoted to science, but heartloyal to every social and personal duty. I seemed to know this of her when I knew her but slightly. At the time appointed, the congress assembled, and proved to be an occasion of much interest. Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Charlotte B. Wilbour were prominent among the speakers heard at its sessions. I viewed its proceedings a little critically at first, its plan appearing to me rather vast and vague. But it had called out the sympathy of many earnest women, and the outline of an association presented was a good one, although the machinery for filling it up was deficient. Mrs. Livermore was elected president, Mrs. Wilbour chairman of executive committee, and I was glad to serve on a sub-committee, charged with the duty of selecting topics and speakers for the proposed annual congress. Mrs. Livermore's presidency lasted but two years, her extraordinary success as a lecturer making it impossible for her to give to the new undertaking the attention which it required. Mrs. Wilbour would no doubt have proved an efficient aid to her chief, but at this juncture a change of residence became desirable for her, and she decided to reside abroad for some years. Miss Alice Fletcher, now so honorably known as the friend and champion of our Indian tribes, was a most efficient secretary. The governing board was further composed of a vice president and director from each of the States represented by membership in the association. The name had been decided upon from the start. It was the Association for the Advancement of Women, and its motto was: "Truth, Justice, and Honor." [Illustration: MARIA MITCHELL _From a photograph._] Maria Mitchell succeeded Mrs. Livermore in the office of president. I think that the congress held in Philadelphia in the Centennial year was the occasion of her first presiding. Her customary manner had in it a little of the Quaker shyness, but when she appeared upon the platform the power of command, or rather of control, appeared in all that she said or did. In figure she was erect and above middle height. Her dress was a rich black silk, made after a plain but becoming fashion. The contrast between her silver curls and black eyes was striking. Her voice was harmonious, her manner at once gracious and decided. The question of commencing proceedings with prayer having been raised, Miss Mitchell invited those present to unite in a silent prayer, a form of worship common among the Friends. The impression made by our meetings was such that we soon began to receive letters from distant parts of the country, inviting us to journey hither and thither, and to hold our congresses east, west, north, and south. Our year's work was arranged by committees, which had reference severally to science, art, education, industrial training, reforms, and statistics. Our association certainly seemed to have answered an existing need. Leading women from many States joined us, and we distributed our congresses as widely as the limits of our purses would allow. Journeys to Utah and California were beyond the means of most of our workers, and we regretfully declined invitations received from friends in these States. In our earlier years our movements were mainly west and east. We soon felt, however, that we must make acquaintance with our Southern sisters. In the face of some discouragement, we arranged to hold a congress in Baltimore, and had every reason to be satisfied with its result. Kentucky followed on our list of Southern States, and the progressive women of Louisville accorded us a warm welcome and a three days' hearing in one of the finest churches of the city. To Tennessee, east and west, we gave two visits, both of which were amply justified by the cordial reception given us. In process of time Atlanta and New Orleans claimed our presence. Among the many mind-pictures left by our congresses, let me here outline one. The place is the court-house of Memphis, Tenn., which has been temporarily ceded for our use. The time is that of one of our public sessions, and the large audience is waiting in silent expectancy, when the entrance of a quaint figure attracts all eyes to the platform. It is that of a woman of middle height and past middle age, dressed in plain black, her nearly white hair cut short, and surmounted by a sort of student's cap of her own devising. Her appearance at first borders on the grotesque, but is presently seen to be nearer the august. She turns her pleasant face toward the audience, takes off her cap, and unrolls the manuscript from which she proposes to read. Her eyes beam with intelligence and kindly feeling. The spectators applaud her before she has opened her lips. Her aspect has taken them captive at once. Her essay, on some educational theme, is terse, direct, and full of good thought. It is heard with close attention and with manifest approbation, and whenever, in the proceedings that follow, she rises to say her word, she is always greeted with a murmur of applause. This lady is Miss Mary Ripley, a public school teacher of Buffalo city, wise in the instruction of the young and in the enlightenment of elders. We all rejoice in her success, which is eminently that of character and intellect. I feel myself drawn on to offer another picture, not of our congress, but of a scene which grew out of it. The ladies of our association have been invited to visit a school for young girls, of which Miss Conway, one of our members, is the principal. After witnessing some interesting exercises, we assemble in the large hall, where a novel entertainment has been provided for us. A band of twelve young ladies appear upon the platform. They wear the colors of "Old Glory," but after a new fashion, four of them being arrayed from head to foot in red, four in blue, and four in white. While the John Brown tune is heard from the piano, they proceed to act in graceful dumb show the stanzas of my Battle Hymn. How they did it I cannot tell, but it was a most lovely performance. In the year 1898, for the first time since its first meeting, our association issued no call for a congress of women. The reasons for our failure to do so may be briefly stated. Some of our most efficient members had been removed by death, some by unavoidable circumstances. But more than this, the demands made upon the time and strength of women by the women's clubs, which are now numerous and universal, had come to occupy the attention of many who in other times had leisure to interest themselves in our work. The biennial conventions of the general federation of women's clubs no doubt appear to many to fill the place which we have honorably held, and may in some degree answer the ends which we have always had in view. Yet a number of us still hold together, united in heart and in hand. Although we have sadly missed our departed friends, I have never felt that the interest or value of our meetings suffered any decline. The spirit of those dear ones has seemed, on the contrary, to abide among us, holding us pledged to undertake the greater effort made necessary by their absence. We still count among our members many who keep the inspiration under which we first took the field. We feel, moreover, that our happy experience of many years has brought us lessons too precious to hide or to neglect. The coming together either of men or of women from regions widely separate from each other naturally gives occasion for comparison. So far as I have known, the comparisons elicited by our meetings have more and more tended to resolve imagined discords into prevailing harmony. The sympathy of feeling aroused by our unity of object has always risen above the distinctions of section and belonging. Honest differences of opinion, honestly and temperately expressed, tend rather to develop good feeling than to disturb it. I am glad to be able to say that sectional prejudice has appeared very little, if at all, in the long course of our congresses, and that self-glorification, whether of State or individual, has never had any place with us, while the great instruction of meeting with earnest and thoughtful workers from every part of our country's vast domain has been greatly appreciated by us and by those who, in various places, have met with us. We have presented at our meetings reports on a variety of important topics. Our congress of three days usually concluding on Saturday, such of our speakers as are accustomed to the pulpit have often been invited to hold forth in one or more of the churches. In Knoxville, Tenn., for example, I was cordially bidden to lift up my voice in an orthodox Presbyterian church, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney spoke before the Unitarian society, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell preached to yet another congregation, and Mrs. Henrietta L. T. Wolcott improved the Sunday by a very interesting talk on waifs, of which class of unfortunates she has had much official and personal knowledge. An extended account of our many meetings would be out of place in this volume, but some points in connection with them may be of interest. It often happened that we visited cities in which no associations of women, other than the church and temperance societies, existed. After our departure, women's clubs almost invariably came into being. Our eastern congresses have been held in Portland, Providence, Springfield, and Boston. In the Empire State, we have visited Buffalo, Syracuse, and New York. Denver and Colorado Springs have been our limit in the west. Northward, we have met in Toronto and at St. John. In the south, as already said, our pilgrimages have reached Atlanta and New Orleans. We have sometimes been requested to supplement our annual congress by an additional day's session at some place easily reached from the city in which the main meeting had been appointed to be held. Of these supplementary congresses I will mention a very pleasant one at St. Paul, Minn., and a very useful one held by some of our number in Salt Lake City. At the congress held in Boston in the autumn of 1879, I was elected president, my predecessor in the office, Mrs. Daggett, declining further service. As the years have gone on, Death has done his usual work upon our number. I have already spoken of our second president, Maria Mitchell, who continued, after her term of office, to send us valuable statements regarding the scientific work of women. Mrs. Kate Newell Daggett, our third president, had long been recognized as a leader of social and intellectual progress in her adopted city of Chicago. The record in our calendar is that of an earnest worker, well fitted to commend the woman's cause by her attractive presence and cultivated mind. Miss Abby W. May was a tower of strength to our association. She excelled in judgment, and in the sense of measure and of fitness. Her sober taste in dress did not always commend her to our assemblage, composed largely of women, but the plainness of her garb was redeemed by the beauty of her classic head and by the charm of her voice and manner. She was grave in demeanor, but with an undertone of genuine humor which showed her to be truly human. She was the worthy cousin of Rev. Samuel Joseph May, and is remembered by me as the crown of a family of more than common distinction. The progress of the woman question naturally developed a fresh interest in the industrial capacity of the sex. Experts in these matters know that the work of woman enters into almost every department of service and of manufacture. In order to make this more evident, it seemed advisable to ask that a separate place might be assigned at some of the great industrial fairs, for the special showing of the inventions and handicraft of women. Such a space was conceded to us at one of the important fairs held in Boston in 1882, and I was invited to become president of this, the first recognized Woman's Department. In this work I received valuable aid from Mrs. Henrietta L. T. Wolcott, who, in the capacity of treasurer, was able to exercise a constant supervision over the articles consigned to our care. On the opening day of the fair General Butler, who was then governor of Massachusetts, presided. In introducing me, he said, in a playfully apologetic manner, "Mrs. Howe may say some things which we might not wish to hear, but it is my office to present her to this audience." He probably thought that I was about to speak of woman suffrage. My address, however, did not touch upon that topic, but upon the present new departure, its value and interest. General Butler, indeed, sometimes claimed to be a friend of woman suffrage, but one of our number said of him in homely phrase: "He only wants to have his dish right side up when it rains." The most noticeable points in our exhibit were, first, the number of useful articles invented by women; secondly, a very creditable exhibition of scientific work, largely contributed by the lady students and graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; lastly, a collection of books composed by women, among which were some volumes of quite ancient date. I suppose that my connection with this undertaking led to my receiving and accepting an invitation to assume the presidency of a woman's department in a great World's Fair to be held in New Orleans in the late autumn and winter of 1883-84. Coupled with this invitation was the promise of a sum of money amply sufficient to defray all the expenses involved in the management of so extensive a work. My daughter Maud was also engaged to take charge of an alcove especially devoted to the literary work of women. We arrived in New Orleans in November, and found our affairs at a standstill. Our "chief of exposition," as she was called, Mrs. Cloudman, had measured and marked off the spaces requisite for the exhibits of the several States, but no timber was forthcoming with which to erect the necessary stands, partitions, etc. On inquiry, I was told that the funds obtained in support of the enterprise had proved insufficient, and that some expected contributions had failed. There was naturally some censure of the manner in which the resources actually at hand had been employed, and some complaining of citizens of New Orleans who had been expected to contribute thousands of dollars to the exposition, and who had subscribed only a few hundreds. I proceeded at once to organize a board of direction for the department, composed of the lady commissioners in charge of exhibits from their several States. One or two of these ladies objected to the separate showing of woman's work, and were allowed to place their goods in the general exhibit of their States. I had friendly relations with these ladies, but they were not under my jurisdiction. Our embarrassing deadlock lasted for some time, but at length a benevolent lumber dealer endowed us with three thousand feet of pine boards. The management furnished no workman for us, but the commanders of two United States warships in the harbor lent us the services of their ship-carpenters, and in process of time the long gallery set apart for our use was partitioned off in pretty alcoves, draped with bright colors, and filled with every variety of handiwork. I was fond of showing, among other novelties, a heavy iron chain, forged by a woman-blacksmith, and a set of fine jewelry, entirely made by women. The exposition was a very valuable one, and did not fail to attract a large concourse of people from all parts of the country. In the great multitude of things to be seen, and in the crowded attendance, visitors were easily confused, and often failed to find matters which might most interest them. In order to improve the opportunity offered, I bethought me of a series of short talks on the different exhibits, to be given either by the commissioners in charge of them, or by experts whose services could be secured. These twelve o'clock talks, as they were called, became very popular, and were continued during the greater part of the season. In the same gallery with ourselves was the exhibit made by the colored people of New Orleans. Of this I remember best a pathetic little art gallery, in which was conspicuous a portrait of Governor Andrew. I proposed one day to the directors of this exhibit that they should hold a meeting in their compartment, and that I should speak to them of their great friends at the North, whom I had known familiarly, and whose faces they had never seen. They responded joyfully to my offer; and on a certain day assembled in their alcove, which they had decorated with flowers, surrounding a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. A choir of melodious voices sang my Battle Hymn, and all listened while I spoke of Garrison, Sumner, Andrew, Phillips, and Dr. Howe. A New Orleans lady who was present, Mrs. Merritt, also made a brief address, bidding the colored people remember that "they had good friends at the South also," which I was glad to hear and believe. The funds placed at our disposal falling far short of what had been promised us at the outset, we found ourselves under the necessity of raising money to defray our necessary expenses, among which was that of a special police, to prevent pilfering. To this end, a series of entertainments was devised, beginning with a lecture of my own, which netted over six hundred dollars. Several other lectures were given, and Colonel Mapleson allowed some of his foremost artists to give a concert for the benefit of our department, by which something over a thousand dollars was realized. We should still have suffered much embarrassment had not Senator Hoar managed to secure from Congress an appropriation of ten thousand dollars, from which our debts were finally paid in full. The collection over which my daughter presided, of books written by women, scientific drawings, magazines, and so on, attracted many visitors. Her colleague in this charge was Mrs. Eveline M. Ordway. Through their efforts, the authors of these works permitted the presentation of them to the Ladies' Art Association of New Orleans. This gift was much appreciated. My management of the woman's department brought upon me some vulgar abuse from local papers, which was more than compensated for by the great kindness which I received from leading individuals in the society of the place. At the exposition I made acquaintance with many delightful people, among whom I will mention Captain Pym, who claimed to be the oldest Arctic voyager living, President Johnston of Tulane University, and Mrs. Townsend, a poet of no mean merit, who had had the honor of being chosen as the laureate of the opening exposition. When my duties as president were at an end, I parted from my late associates with sincere regret, and turned my face northward, with grateful affection for the friends left behind me. CHAPTER XVIII CERTAIN CLUBS At a tea-party which took place quite early in my club career, Dr. Holmes expatiated at some length upon his own unfitness for club association of any kind. He then turned to me and said, "Mrs. Howe, I consider you eminently _clubable_." The hostess of the occasion was Mrs. Josiah Quincy, Jr., a lady of much mark in her day, interested in all matters of public importance, and much given to hospitality. I shall make the doctor's remark the text for a chapter giving some account of various clubs in which I have had membership and office. The first of these was formed in the early days of my residence in Boston. It was purely social in design, and I mention it here only because it possessed one feature which I have never seen repeated. It consisted of ten or more young women, mostly married, and all well acquainted with one another. Our meetings took place fortnightly, and on the following plan. Each of us was allowed to invite one or two gentlemen friends. The noble pursuit of crochet was then in great favor, and the ladies agreed to meet at eight o'clock, to work upon a crochet quilt which was to be made in strips and afterwards joined. At nine o'clock the gentlemen were admitted. Prior invitations had been given simply in the name of the club, and their names were not disclosed until they made their appearance. The element of comic mystery thus introduced gave some piquancy to our informal gathering. Some light refreshments were then served, and the company separated in great good humor. This little club was much enjoyed, but it lasted only through one season, and the crochet quilt never even approached completion. My next club experience was much later in date and in quite another locality. The summers which I passed in my lovely Newport valley brought me many pleasant acquaintances. Though at a considerable distance from the town of Newport, I managed to keep up a friendly intercourse with those who took the trouble to seek me out in my retirement. The historian Bancroft and his wife were at this time prominent figures in Newport society. Their hospitality was proverbial, and at their entertainments one was sure to meet the notabilities who from time to time visited the now reviving town. Mrs. Ritchie, only daughter of Harrison Gray Otis, of Boston, resided on Bellevue Avenue, as did Albert Sumner, a younger brother of the senator, a handsome and genial man, much lamented when, with his wife and only child, he perished by shipwreck in 1858. Colonel Higginson and his brilliant wife, a sad sufferer from chronic rheumatism, had taken up their abode at Mrs. Dame's Quaker boarding-house. The elder Henry James also came to reside in Newport, attracted thither by the presence of his friends, Edmund and Mary Tweedy. These notices of Newport are intended to introduce the mention of a club which has earned for itself some reputation and which still exists. Its foundation dates back to a summer which brought Bret Harte and Dr. J. G. Holland to Newport, and with them Professors Lane and Goodwin of Harvard University. My club-loving mind found sure material for many pleasant meetings, and a little band of us combined to improve the beautiful summer season by picnics, sailing parties, and household soirées, in all of which these brilliant literary lights took part. Helen Hunt and Kate Field were often of our company, and Colonel Higginson was always with us. Our usual place of meeting was the house of a hospitable friend who resided on the Point. Both house and friend have to do with the phrase "a bully piaz," which has erroneously been supposed to be of my invention, but which originated in the following manner: Colonel Higginson had related to us that at a boarding-house which he had recently visited, he found two children of a Boston family of high degree, amusing themselves on the broad piazza. The little boy presently said to the little girl:-- "I say, sis, isn't this a bully piaz?" My friend on the Point had heard this, and when she introduced me to the veranda which she had added to her house, she asked me, laughing, "whether I did not consider this a bully piaz." The phrase was immediately adopted in our confraternity, and our friend was made to figure in a club ditty beginning thus:-- "There was a little woman with a bully piaz, Which she loved for to show, for to show." This same house contained a room which the owner set apart for dramatic and other performances, and here, with much mock state, we once held a "commencement," the Latin programme of which was carefully prepared by Professor Lane of Harvard University. I acted as president of the occasion, Colonel Higginson as my aid; and we both marched up the aisle in Oxford caps and gowns, and took our places on the platform. I opened the proceedings by an address in Latin, Greek, and English; and when I turned to Colonel Higginson, and called him, "Filie meum dilectissime," he wickedly replied with three bows of such comic gravity that I almost gave way to unbecoming laughter. Not long before this he had published his paper on the Greek goddesses. I therefore assigned as his theme the problem, "How to sacrifice an Irish bull to a Greek goddess." Colonel Waring, the well-known engineer, being at that time in charge of a valuable farm in the neighborhood, was invited to discuss "Social small potatoes; how to enlarge the eyes." An essay on rhinosophy was given by Fanny Fern, the which I, chalk in hand, illustrated on the blackboard by the following equation:-- "Nose + nose + nose = proboscis Nose - nose - nose = snub." A class was called upon for recitations from Mother Goose in seven different languages. At the head of this Professor Goodwin, then and now of Harvard, honored us with a Greek version of "The Man in the Moon." A recent Harvard graduate recited the following:-- "Heu! iter didulum, Felis cum fidulum, Vacca transiluit lunam, Caniculus ridet Quum talem videt, Et dish ambulavit cum spoonam." The question being asked whether this last line was in strict accordance with grammar, the scholar gave the following rule: "The conditions of grammar should always give way to the exigencies of rhyme." A supposed graduate of the department of law coming forward to receive her degree, was thus addressed: "Come hither, my dear little lamb, I welcome you to a long career at the _baa_." As I record these extravagances, I seem to hear faint reverberations of the laughter of some who are no longer in life, and of others who will never again meet in such lightness of heart. This brilliant conjunction of stars was now no more in Newport, and the delicious fooling of that unique summer was never repeated. Out of it came, however, the more serious and permanent association known as the Town and Country Club of Newport. Of this I was at once declared president, but my great good fortune lay in my having for vice-president Professor William B. Rogers, illustrious as the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The rapid _crescendo_ of the fast world which surrounded us at this time made sober people a little anxious lest the Newport season should entirely evaporate into the shallow pursuit of amusement. This rampant gayety offered little or nothing to the more thoughtful members of society,--those who love to combine reasonable intercourse with work and study. [Illustration: THE HOME AT NEWPORT _From a photograph by Briskham and Davidson._] I felt the need of upholding the higher social ideals, and of not leaving true culture unrepresented, even in a summer watering-place. Professor Rogers entered very fully into these views. With his help a simple plan of organization was effected, and a small governing board was appointed. Colonel Higginson became our treasurer, Miss Juliet R. Goodwin, granddaughter of Hon. Asher Robbins, was our secretary. Samuel Powel, formerly of Philadelphia, a man much in love with natural science, was one of our most valued members. Our membership was limited to fifty. Our club fee was two dollars. Our meetings took place once in ten days. At each meeting a lecture was given on some topic of history, science, or general literature. Tea and conversation followed, and the party usually broke up after a session of two hours. Colonel Higginson once deigned to say that this club made it possible to be sensible even at Newport and during the summer. The names of a few persons show what we aimed at, and how far we succeeded. We had scientific lectures from Professor Rogers, Professor Alexander Agassiz, Dr. Weir Mitchell, and others. Maria Mitchell, professor of astronomy at Vassar College, gave us a lecture on Saturn. Miss Kate Hillard spoke to us several times. Professor Thomas Davidson unfolded for us the philosophy of Aristotle. Rev. George E. Ellis gave us a lecture on the Indians of Rhode Island, and another on Bishop Berkeley. Professor Bailey of Providence spoke on insectivorous plants, and on one occasion we enjoyed in his company a club picnic at Paradise, after which the wild flowers in that immediate vicinity were gathered and explained. Colonel Higginson ministered to our instruction and entertainment, and once unbent so far as to act with me and some others in a set of charades. The historian George Bancroft was one of our number, as was also Miss Anna Ticknor, founder of the Society for the Encouragement of Studies at Home. Among the worthies whom we honor in remembrance I must not omit to mention Rev. Charles T. Brooks, the beloved pastor of the Unitarian church. Mr. Brooks was a scholar of no mean pretensions, and a man of most delightful presence. He had come to Newport immediately after graduating at Harvard Divinity School, and here he remained, faithfully at work, until the close of his pastoral labors, a period of forty years. He was remarkably youthful in aspect, and retained to the last the bloom and bright smile of his boyhood. His sermons were full of thought and of human interest; but while bestowing much care upon them, he found time to give to the world a metrical translation of Goethe's "Faust" and an English version of the "Titan" of Jean Paul Richter. Professor Davidson's lecture on Aristotle touched so deeply the chords of thought as to impel some of us to pursue the topic further. Dear Charles Brooks invited an adjourned meeting of the club to be held in his library. At this several learned men were present. Professor Boyesen spoke to us of the study of Aristotle in Germany; Professor Botta of its treatment in the universities of Italy. The laity asked many questions, and the fine library of our host afforded the books of reference needed for their enlightenment. The club proceedings here enumerated cover a period of more than thirty years. The world around us meanwhile had reached the height of fashionable success. An entertainment, magnificent for those days, was given, which was said to have cost ten thousand dollars. Samuel Powel prophesied that a collapse must follow such extravagance. A change certainly did follow. The old, friendly Newport gradually disappeared. The place was given over to the splendid festivities of fashion, which is "nothing if not fashionable." Under this influence it still abides. The four-in-hand is its climax. Dances can be enjoyed only by those who can begin them at eleven o'clock at night, and end in the small hours of the morning. If one attends a party, one sees the hall as full of lackeys as would be displayed at a London entertainment in high life. They are English lackeys, too, and their masters and mistresses affect as much of the Anglican mode of doing things as Americans can fairly master. The place has all its old beauty, with many modern improvements of convenience; but its exquisite social atmosphere, half rustic, half cosmopolitan, and wholly free, is found no longer. The quiet visitors of moderate fortunes find their tastes better suited across the bay, at Jamestown and Narragansett Pier. Thus whole generations of the transients have come and gone since the time of my early memories. CHAPTER XIX ANOTHER EUROPEAN TRIP In 1877 I went abroad with my daughter Maud, now Mrs. Elliott, and with her revisited England, France, and Italy. In London we had the pleasure of being entertained by Lord Houghton, whom I had known, thirty or more years earlier, as a bachelor. He was now the father of two attractive daughters, and of a son who later succeeded to his title. At a breakfast at his house I met Mr. Waddington, who was at that time very prominent in French politics. At one of Lord Houghton's receptions I witnessed the entrance of a rather awkward man, and was told that this was Mr. Irving, whose performance of Hamlet was then much talked of. Here I met the widow of Barry Cornwall, who was also the mother of the lamented Adelaide Procter. An evening at Devonshire House and a ball at Mr. Goschen's were among our gayeties. At the former place I saw Mr. Gladstone for the first time, and met Lord Rosebery, whom I had known in America. I had met Mrs. Schliemann and had received from her an invitation to attend a meeting (I think) of the Royal Geographical Society, at which she was to make an address. Her theme was a plea in favor of the modern pronunciation of Greek. It was much applauded, and the discussion of the views presented by her was opened by Mr. Gladstone himself. Lord Houghton one day asked whether I should like to go to breakfast with Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. One reply only to such a question was possible, and on the morning appointed we drove together to the Gladstone mansion. We were a little early, for Mrs. Gladstone complained that the flowers ordered from her country seat had but just arrived. A daughter of the house proceeded to arrange them. Breakfast was served at two round tables, exactly alike. I was glad to find myself seated between the great man and the Greek minister, John Gennadius. The talk ran a good deal upon Hellenics, and I spoke of the influence of the Greek in the formation of the Italian language, to which Mr. Gladstone did not agree. I know that scholars differ on this point, but I still retain the opinion which I then expressed. I ventured a timid remark regarding the great number of Greek derivatives used in our common English speech. Mr. Gladstone said very abruptly, "How? What? English words derived from Greek?" and almost "Frightened Miss Muffet away." He was said to be habitually disputatious, and I thought that this must certainly be the case; for he surely knew better than most people how largely and familiarly we incorporate the words of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon in our every-day talk. Lord Houghton also took me one evening to a reception at the house of Mr. Palgrave. At a dinner given in our honor at Greenwich, I was escorted to the table by Mr. Mallock, author of "The New Republic." I remember him as a young man of medium height and dark complexion. Of his conversation I can recall only his praise of the Church of Rome. William Black, the well-known romancer, took tea with me at my lodgings one afternoon. Here I also received Mr. Green, author of "A Short History of the English People," and Mr. Knowles, editor of the "Nineteenth Century." Mrs. Delia Stuart Parnell, whom I had known in America, had given me a letter of introduction to her son Charles, who was already conspicuous as an advocate of Home Rule for Ireland. He called upon me and appointed a day when I should go with him to the House of Commons. He came for me in his brougham, and saw me safely deposited in the ladies' gallery. He was then at the outset of his stormy career, and his younger sister told me that he had in Parliament but one supporter of his views, "a man named Biggar." He certainly had admirers elsewhere, for I remember having met a disciple of his, O'Connor by name, at a "rout" given by Mrs. Justin McCarthy. I asked this lady if her husband agreed with Mr. Parnell. She replied with warmth, "Of course; we are all Home Rulers here." We passed some weeks in Paris, where I found many new objects of interest. I here made acquaintance with M. Charles Lemonnier, who for many years edited a radical paper named "Les Etats Unis d'Europe." He was the husband of Elise Lemonnier, the founder of a set of industrial schools for women which bore her name, in grateful memory of this great service. I had met M. Desmoulins at a Peace Congress in America, and was indebted to him for the pleasure of an evening visit to Victor Hugo at his own residence. In "The History of a Crime," which was then just published, M. Hugo mentions M. Desmoulins as one who suffered, as he did, from the _coup d'état_ which made Louis Napoleon emperor. A congress of _gens de lettres_ was announced in those days, and I received a card for the opening meeting, which was held in the large Châtelet Theatre. Victor Hugo presided, and read from a manuscript an address of some length, in a clear, firm voice. The Russian novelist, Tourgenieff, was also one of the speakers. He was then somewhat less than sixty years of age. Victor Hugo was at least fifteen years older, but, though his hair was silver white, the fire of his dark eyes was undimmed. I sought to obtain entrance to the subsequent sittings of this congress, but was told that no ladies could be admitted. I became acquainted at this time with Frederic Passy, the well-known writer on political economy. Through his kindness I was enabled to attend a meeting of the French Academy, and to see the Immortals in their armchairs, and in their costume, a sort of quaint long coat, faced with the traditional palms stamped or embroidered on green satin. The entertainment was a varied one. The principal discourse eulogized several deceased members of the august body, and among them the young artist, Henri Regnault, whose death was much deplored. This was followed by an essay on Raphael's pictures of the Fornarina, and by another on the social status of the early Christians, in which it was maintained that wealth had been by no means a contraband among them, and that the holding of goods in common had been but a temporary feature of the new discipline. The exercises concluded with the performance by chorus and orchestra of a musical composition, which had for its theme the familiar Bible story of "Rebecca at the Well." A noticeable French feature of this was the indignation of Laban when he found his sister "alone with a man," the same being the messenger sent by Abraham to ask the young girl's hand in marriage for his son. The prospect of an advantageous matrimonial alliance seemed to set this right, and the piece concluded with reëstablished harmony. My friend M. Frederic Passy asked me one day whether I should like to see the crowning of a _rosière_ in a suburban town. He explained to me that this ceremony was of annual occurrence, and that it usually had reference to some meritorious conduct on the part of a young girl who was selected to be publicly rewarded as the best girl of her town or village. This honor was accompanied by a gift of some hundreds of francs, intended to serve as the marriage portion of the young girl. I gladly accepted the ticket of admission offered me by M. Passy, the more as he was to be the orator of the occasion, fixed for a certain Sunday afternoon. After a brief railroad journey I reached the small town, the name of which escapes my memory, and found the notables of the place assembled in a convenient hall, the mayor presiding. Soon a band of music was heard approaching, and the _rosière_, with her escort, entered and took the place assigned her. She was dressed in white silk, with a wreath of white roses around her head. A canopy was held over her, and at her side walked another young girl, dressed also in white, but of a less expensive material. This, they told me, was the _rosière_ of the year before who, according to custom, waited upon her successor to the dignity. Upon the mayor devolved the duty of officially greeting and complimenting the _rosière_. M. Passy's oration followed. His theme was religious toleration. As an instance of this he told us how, at the funeral of the great Channing in Boston, Archbishop Chevereux caused the bells of the cathedral to be tolled, as an homage to the memory of his illustrious friend. It appeared to me whimsical that I should come to an obscure suburb of Paris to hear of this. At home I had never heard it mentioned. Mrs. Eustis, Dr. Channing's daughter, on being questioned, assured me that she perfectly remembered the occurrence. M. Passy presented me with a volume of his essays on questions of political economy. Among the topics therein treated was the vexed problem, "Does expensive living enrich the community?" I was glad to learn that he gave lectures upon his favorite science to classes of young women as well as of young men. Among my pleasant recollections of Paris at this time is that of a visit to the studio of Gustave Doré, which came about on this wise. An English clergyman whom we had met in London happened to be in Paris at this time, and one day informed us that he had had some correspondence with Doré, and had suggested to the latter a painting of the Resurrection from a new point of view. This should represent, not the opening grave, but the gates of heaven unclosing to receive the ascending form of the Master. The artist had promised to illustrate this subject, and our new friend invited us to accompany him to the studio, where he hoped to find the picture well advanced. Accordingly, on a day appointed, we knocked at the artist's door and were admitted. The apartment was vast, well proportioned to the unusual size of many of the works of art which hung upon the walls. Doré received us with cordiality, and showed Mr. ---- the picture which he had suggested, already nearly completed. He appeared to be about forty years of age, in figure above medium height, well set up and balanced. His eyes were blue, his hair dark, his facial expression very genial. After some conversation with the English visitor, he led the way to his latest composition, which represented the van of a traveling showman, in front of which stood its proprietor, holding in his arms the body of his little child, just dead, in the middle of his performance. Beside him stood his wife, in great grief, and at her feet the trick dogs, fantastically dressed, showed in their brute countenances the sympathy which those animals often evince when made aware of some misfortune befalling their master. Here we also saw a model of the enormous vase which the artist had sent to the exposition of that year (1879), and which William W. Story contemptuously called "Doré's bottle." The artist professed himself weary of painting for the moment. He seemed to have taken much interest in his recent modeling, and called our attention to a genius cast in bronze, which he had hoped that the municipality would have purchased for the illumination of the "Place de l'Opéra." The head was surrounded by a coronet intended to give forth jets of flame, while the wings and body should be outlined by lights of another color. In the course of conversation, I remarked to him that his artistic career must have begun early in life. He replied:-- "Indeed, madam, I was hardly twenty years of age when I produced my illustrations of the 'Wandering Jew.'" I had more than once visited the Doré Gallery in London, and I spoke to him of a study of grasses there exhibited, which, with much else, I had found admirable. I believe that Doré's works are severely dealt with by art critics, and especially by such of them as are themselves artists. Whatever may be the defects of his work, I feel sure that he has produced some paintings which deserve to live in the public esteem. Among these I would include his picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, for the contrast therein shown between the popular enthusiasm and the indifference of a group of richly dressed women, seated in a balcony, and according no attention whatever to the procession passing in the street just below them. Worthy to be mentioned with this is his painting of Francesca da Rimini and her lover, as Dante saw them in his vision of hell. Mrs. Longfellow once showed me an engraving of this work, exclaiming, as she pointed to Francesca, "What southern passion in that face!" I was invited several times to speak while in Paris. I chose for the theme of my first lecture, "Associations of Women in the United States." The chairman of the committee of invitation privately requested me beforehand not to speak either of woman suffrage or of the Christian religion. He said that the first was dreaded in France because many supposed that the woman's vote, if conceded, would bring back the dominion of the Catholic priesthood; while the Christian religion, to a French audience, would mean simply the Church of Rome. I spoke in French and without notes, though not without preparation. No tickets were sold for these lectures and no fee was paid. A large salver, laid on a table near the entrance of the hall, was intended to receive voluntary contributions towards the inevitable expenses of the evening. I was congratulated, after the lecture, for having spoken with "_tant de bonne grace_." Before leaving Paris I was invited to take part in a congress of woman's rights (_congrès du droit des femmes_). It was deemed proper to elect two presidents for this occasion, and I had the honor of being chosen as one of them, the other being a gentleman well known in public life. My co-president addressed me throughout the meeting as "Madame la Présidente." The proceedings naturally were carried on in the French language. Colonel T. W. Higginson was present, as was Theodore Stanton, son of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Among the lady speakers was one, of whom I was told that she possessed every advantage of wealth and social position. She was attired like a woman of fashion, and yet she proved to be an ardent suffragist. Somewhat in contrast with these sober doings was a ball given by the artist Healy at his residence. In accepting the invitation to attend this party, I told Mrs. Healy in jest that I should insist upon dancing with her husband, whom I had known for many years. Soon after my entrance Mrs. Healy said to me, "Mrs. Howe, your quadrille is ready for you. See what company you are to have." I looked and beheld General Grant and M. Gambetta, who led out Mrs. Grant, while her husband had Mrs. Healy for his partner. At this ball I met Mrs. Evans, wife of the well-known dentist, who, in 1870, aided the escape of the Empress Eugénie. Mrs. Evans wore in her hair a diamond necklace, said to have been given to her by the Empress. I found in Paris a number of young women, students of art and medicine, who appeared to lead very isolated lives and to have little or no acquaintance with one another. The need of a point of social union for these young people appearing to me very great, I invited a few of them to meet me at my lodgings. After some discussion we succeeded in organizing a small club which, I am told, still exists. Marshal MacMahon was at this time President of the French republic. I attended an evening reception given by him in honor of General and Mrs. Grant. Our host was supposed to be the head of the Bonapartist faction, and I heard some rumors of an intended _coup d'état_ which should bring back imperialism and place Plon-Plon[4] on the throne. This was not to be. The legitimist party held the Imperialists in check, and the Republicans were strong enough to hold their own. [Footnote 4: The nickname for Prince Napoleon.] I remember Marshal MacMahon as a man of medium height, with no very distinguishing feature. He was dressed in uniform and wore many decorations. We passed on to Italy. Soon after my arrival in Florence I was asked to speak on suffrage at the _Circolo Filologico_, one of the favorite halls of the city. The attendance was very large. I made my argument in French, and when it was ended a dear old-fashioned conservative in the gallery stood up to speak, and told off all the counter pleas with which suffragists are familiar,--the loss of womanly grace, the neglect of house and family, etc. When he had finished speaking a charming Italian matron, still young and handsome, sprang forward and took me by the hand, saying, "I feel to take the hand of this sister from America." Cordial applause followed this and I was glad to hear my new friend respond with much grace to our crabbed opponent in the gallery. The sympathy of the audience was evidently with us. A morning visit to the Princess Belgioiosa may deserve a passing mention. This lady was originally Princess Ghika, of a noble Roumanian family. She had married a Russian--Count Murherstsky. I never knew the origin of the Italian title. My dear friend, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, went with me to the princess's villa, which was at some distance from the city proper. Although the winter was well begun she received us in a room without fire. She was wrapped in furs from head to foot while we shivered with cold. She appeared to be about sixty years of age, and showed no traces of the beauty which I had seen in a portrait of her taken in her youth. She spoke English fluently, but with idioms derived from other languages, in some of which I should have understood her more easily than in my own. Our first winter abroad was passed in Rome, which I now saw for the first time as the capital of a united Italy. The king, "_Il Re Galantuomo_," was personally popular with all save the partisans of the Pope's temporal dominion. I met him more than once driving on Monte Pinciano. He was of large stature, with a countenance whose extreme plainness was redeemed by an expression of candor and of good humor. In the course of this winter Victor Emmanuel died. The marks of public grief at this event were unmistakable. The ransomed land mourned its sovereign as with one heart. I recall vividly the features of the king's funeral procession, which was resplendent with wreaths and banners sent from every part of Italy. The monarch's remains were borne in a crimson coach of state, drawn by six horses. His own favorite war-horse followed, veiled in crape. Nobles and servants of noble houses walked before and after the coach in brilliant costumes, bareheaded, carrying in their hands lighted torches of wax. I stood to see this wonderful sight with my dear friend Sarah Clarke, at a window of her apartment opposite to the Barberini Palaces. As the cortége swept by I dropped my tribute of flowers. I was also present when King Umberto took the oath of office before the Italian Parliament, to whose members in turn the oath of allegiance was administered. In a box, in full view, were seated a number of royalties, to wit, Queen Margherita, her sister-in-law, the Queen of Portugal, the Prince of Wales, and the then Crown Prince of Germany, loved and lamented as "_unser Fritz_." The little Prince of Naples sat with his royal mother, and kindly Albert Edward of England lifted him in his arms at the crowning moment in order that he might better see what was going on. By a curious chance I had one day the pleasure of taking part with Madame Ristori in a reading which made part of an entertainment given in aid of a public charity. Madame Ristori had promised to read on this occasion the scene from the play of Maria Stuart, in which she meets and overcrows her rival, Queen Elizabeth. The friend who should have read the part of this latter personage was suddenly disabled by illness, and I was pressed into the service. Our last rehearsal was held in the anteroom of the hall while the musical part of the entertainment was going on. Madame Ristori made me repeat my part several times, insisting that my manner was too reserved and would make hers appear extravagant. I did my best to conform to her wishes, and the reading was duly applauded. Another historic death followed that of Victor Emmanuel after the interval of a month. Pope Pius IX. had reigned too long to be deeply mourned by his spiritual subjects, one of whom remarked in answer to my condolence, "I should think that he had lived long enough." This same friend, however, claimed for Pio the rare merit of having abstained from enriching his own family, and said that when the niece of the Pontiff was married her uncle bestowed on her nothing save the diamonds which had been presented to him by the Sultan of Turkey. Be it also remembered, to his eternal credit, that Pio would not allow the last sacraments to be denied to the king, who had been his political enemy. "He was always a sincere Catholic," said the Pope, "and he shall not die without the sacraments." My dear sister, Mrs. Terry, went with me to attend the consecration of the new Pope, which took place in the Sistine Chapel. Leo XIII. was brought into the church with the usual pomp, robed in white silk, preceded by a brand new pair of barbaric fans, and wearing his triple crown. He was attended by a procession of high dignitaries, civil and ecclesiastic, the latter resplendent with costly silks, furs, and jewels. I think that what interested me most was the chapter of the Gospel which the Pope read in Greek, and which I found myself able to follow. After the elevation of the host, the new Pontiff retired for a brief space of time to partake, it was said, of some slight refreshment. As is well known, the celebrant and communicant at the Mass must remain in a fasting condition from the midnight preceding the ceremony until after its conclusion. For some reason which I have never heard explained, Pope Leo, in his receptions, revived some points of ceremony which his predecessors had allowed to lapse. In the time of Gregory XVI., Protestants had only been expected to make certain genuflections on approaching and on leaving the pontifical presence. Pope Leo required that all persons presented to him should kneel and kiss his hand. This, as a Protestant, I could never consent to do, and so was obliged to forego the honor of presentation. It was said in Rome that a brother of the Pope, a plain man from the country, called upon him just before or after his coronation. He was very stout in person, and objected to the inconvenience of kneeling for the ceremonial kiss. The Pope, however, insisted, and his relative departed, threatening never to return. CHAPTER XX FRIENDS AND WORTHIES: SOCIAL SUCCESSES Time would fail me if I should undertake to mention the valued friendships which have gladdened my many years in Boston, or to indicate the social pleasures which have alternated with my more serious pursuits. One or two of these friends I must mention, lest my reminiscences should be found lacking in the good savor of gratitude. I have already spoken of seeing the elder Richard H. Dana from time to time during the years of my young ladyhood in New York. He himself was surely a transcendental, of an apart and individual school. Nevertheless, the transcendentals of Boston did not come within either his literary or his social sympathies. I never heard him express any admiration for Mr. Emerson. He may, indeed, have done so at a later period; for Mr. Emerson in the end won for himself the heart of New England, which had long revolted at his novelties of thought and expression. Mr. Dana's ideal evidently was Washington Allston, for whom his attachment amounted almost to worship. The pair were sometimes spoken of in that day as "two old-world men who sat by the fire together, and upheld each other in aversion to the then prevailing state of things." I twice had the pleasure of seeing Washington Allston. My first sight of him was in my early youth when, being in Boston with my father for a brief visit, my dear tutor, Joseph G. Cogswell, undertook to give us this pleasure. Mr. Allston's studio was in Cambridgeport. He admitted no one within it during his working hours, save occasionally his friend Franklin Dexter, who was obliged to announce his presence by a particular way of knocking at the door. Mr. Cogswell managed to get possession of this secret, and when we drove to the door of the studio he made use of the well-known signal. "Dexter, is that you?" cried a voice from within. A moment later saw us within the sanctuary. My father was intending to order a picture from Mr. Allston, and this circumstance amply justified Mr. Cogswell, in his own opinion, for the stratagem employed to gain us admittance. Mr. Allston was surprised but not disconcerted by our entrance, and proceeded to do the honors of the rather bare apartment with genial grace. He had not then unrolled his painting of Belshazzar's Feast, which, begun many years before that time, had long been left in an unfinished condition. As I remember, the great artist had but little to show us. My father was especially pleased with a group, one figure of which was a copy of Titian's well-known portrait of his daughter, the other being a somewhat commonplace representation of a young girl of modern times. My father afterwards told me that he had thought of purchasing this picture. While he was deliberating about it Thomas Cole the landscape painter called upon him, bringing the design of four pictures illustrating the course of human life. The artist's persuasion induced him to give an order for this work, which was not completed until after my dear parent's death, when we found it something of a white elephant. The pictures were suitable only for a gallery, and as none of us felt able to indulge in such a luxury they were afterward sold to some public institution, with a considerable loss on our part. Some years after my marriage I encountered Mr. Allston in Chestnut Street, Boston, on a bitter winter day. He had probably been visiting his friend Mr. Dana, who resided in that street. The ground was covered with snow, and Mr. Allston, with his snowy curls and old-fashioned attire, looked like an impersonation of winter, his luminous dark eyes suggesting the fire which warms the heart of the cold season. The wonderful beauty of the face, intensified by age, impressed me deeply. He did not recognize me, having seen me but once, and we passed without any salutation; but his living image in my mind takes precedence of all the shadowy shapes which his magic placed upon canvas. Boston should never forget the famous dinner given to Charles Dickens on the occasion of his first visit to America in 1842. Among the wits who made the feast one to be remembered Allston shone, a bright particular star. He was a reader of Dickens, but was much averse to serials, and waited always for the publication of the stories in book form. He died while one of these was approaching completion, I forget which it was, but remember that Felton, commenting upon this, said, "This shows what a mistake it is not to read the numbers as they are issued. He has thereby lost the whole of this story when he might have enjoyed a part of it." One other singular figure comes back to me across the wide waste of years, and seems to ask some mention at my hands. The figure is that of Thomas Gold Appleton, a man whom, in his own despite, the old Boston dearly cherished. In appearance he was of rather more than medium height, and his countenance, which was not handsome, bore a curious resemblance to that of his beautiful sister Fanny, the beloved wife of the poet Longfellow. He wore his hair in what might have been called elf locks, and the expression of his dark blue eyes varied from one of intense melancholy to amused observation. [Illustration: THOMAS GOLD APPLETON _From a photograph lent by Mrs. John Murray Forbes._] Tom Appleton, as he was usually called, was certainly a man of parts and of great reputation as a wit, but I should rather have termed him a humorist. He cultivated a Byronic distaste for the Puritanic ways of New England. In truth, he was always ready for an encounter of arms (figuratively speaking) with institutions and with individuals, while yet in heart he was most human and humane. Born in affluence, he did not embrace either business or profession, but devoted much time to the study of painting, for which he had more taste than talent. It was as a word artist that he was remarkable; and his graphic felicities of expression led Mr. Emerson to quote him as "the first conversationalist in America," an eminence which I, for my part, should have been more inclined to accord to Dr. Holmes. He loved European life, and had many friends among the notabilities of English society. He was a fellow passenger on the steamer which carried Dr. Howe and myself as far as Liverpool on our wedding journey. People in our cabin were apt to call for a Welsh rabbit before turning in for the night. Apropos of this, he remarked to me, "You eat a rabbit before going to bed, and presently you dream that you are a shelf with a large cheese resting upon it." He was much attached to his father, of whom he once said to me, "We don't dare to mention anything pathetic at our table. If we did, father would be sure to spoil the soup" (with his tears, being understood). The elder Appleton belonged to the congregation of the Federal Street Church. I asked his son if he ever attended service there. He said, "Oh, yes; I sometimes go to hear the minister exhort that assemblage of weary ones to forsake the vanities of life. Looking at the choir, I see some forlorn women who seem, from the way in which they open their mouths, to mistake the congregation for a dentist." He did not care for music. At a party devoted to classical performances, he turned to me: "Mrs. Howe, are you going to give us something from the symphony in P?" He was much of an amateur in art, literature, and life, never appearing to take serious hold of matters either social or political. Wendell Phillips had been his schoolmate, and the two, in company with John Lothrop Motley, had fought many battles with wooden swords in the Appleton garret. For some unexplained reason, he had but little faith in Phillips's philanthropy, and the relations of childhood between the two did not extend to their later life. His Atlantic voyages became so frequent that he once said to a friend, "I always keep my steamer ticket in my pocket, like a soda-water ticket." Indeed, his custom almost carried out this saying. I have heard that once, being in New York, he invited friends to breakfast with him at his hotel. On arriving they found only a note informing them of his departure for Europe on that very morning. I myself one day invited him to dinner with other friends, among whom was his sister, Mrs. Longfellow. We waited long for him, and I at last said to Mrs. Longfellow, "What can it be that detains your brother so late?" "I don't know, indeed," was her reply. "Your brother?" cried one of the guests. "I met him this morning on his way to the steamer. He must have sailed some hours since." A friend once spoke to him of matrimony, of which he said in reply, "Marriage? I could never undergo it unless I was held, and took chloroform." Yet those who knew him well supposed that he had had some romance of his own. To his praise be it said that he was a man of many friendships, and by no means destitute of public spirit. It was from Mr. Dana that I first heard of John Sullivan Dwight, whom he characterized as a man of moderate calibre, who had "set up for an infidel," and who had dared to speak of the Apostle to the Gentiles as Paul, without the prefix of his saintship. In the early years of my residence in Boston I sometimes heard of Mr. Dwight as a disciple of Fourier, a transcendental of the transcendentals, and a prominent member of a socialist club. I first came to know him well when Madame Sontag was singing in Boston. We met often at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Schlesinger-Benzon, a house which deserves grateful remembrance from every lover of music who was admitted to its friendly and æsthetic interior. Many were the merry and musical festivities enjoyed under that hospitable roof. The house was of moderate dimensions and in a part of Boylston Street now wholly devoted to business. Mrs. Benzon was a sister of the well-known Lehmann artists and of the father of the late coach of the Harvard boating crew. She was very fond of music, and it was at one of her soirées that Elise Hensler made her first appearance and sang, with fine expression and a beautiful fresh voice, the air from "Robert le Diable:"-- "Va, dit-elle, va, mon enfant, Dire au fils qui m'a delaissée." These friends, with others, interested themselves in Miss Hensler's musical education and enabled her to complete her studies in Paris. As is well known, she became a favorite prima donna in light opera, and was finally heard of as the morganatic wife of the King (consort) Ferdinand of Portugal. Madame Sontag and her husband, Count Rossi, came often to the Benzon house. I met them there one day at dinner, when in the course of conversation Madame Sontag said that she never acted in private life. The count remarked rather rudely, "I saw you enact the part of Zerlina quite recently." This was probably intended for a harmless pleasantry, but the lady's change of color showed that it did not amuse her. Before this time Dwight's "Journal of Music" had published a very friendly review of my first volume of poems. It did not diminish my appreciation of this kind service to learn in later years that it had been rendered by Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, then scarcely an acquaintance of mine, to-day an esteemed friend of many years, whom I have found excellent in counsel and constant and loyal in regard. During the many years of my life at South Boston, Mr. Dwight and his wife were among the faithful few who would brave the disagreeable little trip in the omnibus and across the bridge with the low draw, to enliven my fireside. I valued these guests very highly, having had occasion to perceive that Bostonians are apt to limit their associations to the regions in which they are most at home. Speaking of this once with a friend, I said, "In Boston Love crosses the bridge, but Friendship stops at the Common." After the death of his wife Mr. Dwight had many lonely years. He was very fond of young people, and as my younger children grew up he became strongly attached to them. As editor of the "Journal of Music" he was the recipient of tickets for musical entertainments of all sorts. His enjoyment of these was heightened by congenial company, and to my children, and later to my grandchildren, he was the great dispenser of musical delights. He was to us almost as one of the family, and to him our doors were never closed. His was a very individual strain of character, combining a rather flamboyant imagination with a severe taste. He could never accept the Wagner cult, and stood obstinately for the limits of classical music, insisting even that the performance of Wagner's operas perverted the tone both of strings and brasses, and that it took some time for the instruments to recover from this misuse. He had much to do with the formation of the Harvard Musical Association, and the programmes which he arranged for its concerts are precious in remembrance. Dr. Holmes sat near me at Mr. Dwight's funeral, which took place in the Harvard rooms, whose presiding genius he had been. The services were very simple and genial. Some lovely singing, a poetical tribute or so, some heart-warm words spoken by friends, mingled with the customary prayer and scripture reading. In the interval of silence before these began, Dr. Holmes said to me, in a low tone, "Mrs. Howe, we may almost imagine the angels who announced a certain nativity to be hovering near these remains." Otto Dresel, beloved as an artist and dreaded as a critic, was an intimate of the Benzon household, and was almost idolized by Mr. Dwight. He had the misfortune to be over-critical, but no less so of himself than of others. He did much to raise the appreciation of music in Boston, possessed as he was with a sense of the dignity and sacredness of the art. His compositions, not many in number, had a deep poetical charm, as had also his soulful interpretation of Chopin's works. As a teacher he was unrivaled. Two of my daughters were indebted to him for a very valuable musical education. Boston has seemed darker to me since the light of this eminent musical intelligence has left it. I subjoin a tribute of my affection for him in these lines, which were suggested by Mr. Loeffler's rendering of Handel's "Largo" at a concert, especially dedicated to the memory of this dear friend. I also add a verse descriptive of the effect of the funeral march from Beethoven's "Heroica," which made part of the programme in question. HANDEL'S LARGO. _Boston Music Hall, October 11, 1890._ IN MEMORIAM OTTO DRESEL. On every shining stair an angel stood, And to our dear one said, "Walk higher, friend." Till, rapt from earth, in a celestial mood, He passed from sight to blessings without end; And where his feet had trod, a radiant flood His lofty message of content did send. BEETHOVEN'S FUNERAL MARCH. The heavy steps that 'neath new burdens tread, The heavy hearts that wait upon the dead, The struggling thoughts that single out, through tears, The happy memories of bygone years, And on the deaf and silent presence call: O friend belov'd! O master! is this all? But as the cadence moves, the song flowers fling To us the promise of eternal spring, Love that survives the wreck of its delight, And goes, torch bearing, into darksome night. Trumpet and drum have marked the victor's way, The seraph voices now their legend say: "O loving friends! refrain your waiting fond; The gates are passed, and heaven is bright beyond." In March, 1885, I had the unspeakable grief of losing my dear eldest daughter, Julia Romana, of whose birth in Rome I have made mention. She was a person of rare endowments and of great originality of character, inheriting much of her father's personal shyness, but more of his benevolence and public spirit. She was the constant companion and faithful ally of that beloved parent. During the years of our residence in the city, she would often walk over with him to South Boston before breakfast. She delighted in giving lessons to the blind pupils of the Institution, and succeeded so well in teaching German to a class of the blind teachers that these were enabled, on visiting Germany, to use and understand the language. She read extensively, and was gifted with so retentive a memory that we were accustomed to refer to her disputed dates and other questions in history. A small volume of her verses has been printed, with the title of "Stray Chords." Some of these poems show remarkable depth of thought and great felicity of expression. [Illustration: JULIA ROMANA ANAGNOS _From a photograph._] A new source of delight was opened to her by the summer school of philosophy held for some years at Concord, Mass. Here her mind seemed to have found its true level, and I cannot think of the sittings of the school without a vision of the rapt expression of her face as she sat and listened to the various speakers. Something of this pleasure found expression in a slender volume named "Philosophiæ Quæstor," in which she has preserved some features of the school, now, alas! a thing of remote remembrance. The impressions of it also took shape in a club which she gathered about her, and to which she gave the name of the Metaphysical Club. It was beautiful to see her seated in the midst of this thoughtful circle, which she seemed to rule with a staff of lilies. The club was one in which diversity of opinion sometimes brought individuals into sharp contrast with each other, but her gentle government was able to bring harmony out of discord, and to subdue alike the crudeness of skepticism and the fierceness of intolerance. Her interest in her father's pupils was unremitting. A friend said to me not long ago, "It was one of the sights of Boston in the days of the Harvard musical concerts to see your Julia's radiant face as she would come into Music Hall, leading a blind pupil by either hand." In December, 1869, she became the wife of Michael Anagnos, who was then my husband's assistant, and who succeeded him as principal of the Institution at South Boston. After fifteen years of happy wedlock, she suffered a long and painful illness which terminated fatally. Almost her last thought was of her beloved club, and she asked that a valued friend might be summoned, that she might consult with him, no doubt, as to its future management. To her husband she said, "Be kind to the little blind children, for they are papa's children." These parting words of hers are inscribed on the wall of the Kindergarten for the Blind at Jamaica Plain. Beautiful in life, and most beautiful in death, her sainted memory has a glory beyond that of worldly fame. * * * * * A writer of my own sex, years ago, desiring to do me some pen-service, wrote to me asking for particulars of my life, and emphasizing her wishes with these words: "I wish to hear not of your literary work, but of your social successes." I could not at the time remember that I had had any, and so did not respond to her request. But let us ask what are social successes? A climb from obscurity to public notice? An abiding place on the stage of fashionable life? A wardrobe that newspaper correspondents may report? Fine equipages, furniture, and entertainments? These things have had small part in my thoughts. As I take account of my long life, I become well aware of its failures. What may I chronicle as its successes? It was a great distinction for me when the foremost philanthropist of the age chose me for his wife. It was a great success for me when, having been born and bred in New York city, I found myself able to enter into the intellectual life of Boston, and to appreciate the "high thinking" of its choice spirits. I have sat at the feet of the masters of literature, art, and science, and have been graciously admitted into their fellowship. I have been the chosen poet of several high festivals, to wit, the celebration of Bryant's sixtieth birthday, the commemoration of the centenary of his birth, and the unveiling of the statue of Columbus in Central Park, New York, in the Columbian year, so called. I have been the founder of a club of young girls, which has exercised a salutary influence upon the growing womanhood of my adopted city, and has won for itself an honorable place in the community, serving also as a model for similar associations in other cities. I have been for many years the president of the New England Woman's Club, and of the Association for the Advancement of Women. I have been heard at the great Prison Congress in England, at Mrs. Butler's convention _de moralité publique_ in Geneva, Switzerland, and at more than one convention in Paris. I have been welcomed in Faneuil Hall, when I have stood there to rehearse the merits of public men, and later, to plead the cause of oppressed Greece and murdered Armenia. I have written one poem which, although composed in the stress and strain of the civil war, is now sung South and North by the champions of a free government. I have been accounted worthy to listen and to speak at the Boston Radical Club and at the Concord School of Philosophy. I have been exalted to occupy the pulpit of my own dear church and that of others, without regard to denominational limits. Lastly and chiefly, I have had the honor of pleading for the slave when he was a slave, of helping to initiate the woman's movement in many States of the Union, and of standing with the illustrious champions of justice and freedom, for woman suffrage, when to do so was a thankless office, involving public ridicule and private avoidance. I have made a voyage upon a golden river, 'Neath clouds of opal and of amethyst. Along its banks bright shapes were moving ever, And threatening shadows melted into mist. The eye, unpracticed, sometimes lost the current, When some wild rapid of the tide did whirl, While yet a master hand beyond the torrent Freed my frail shallop from the perilous swirl. Music went with me, fairy flute and viol, The utterance of fancies half expressed, And with these, steadfast, beyond pause or trial, The deep, majestic throb of Nature's breast. My journey nears its close--in some still haven My bark shall find its anchorage of rest, When the kind hand, which every good has given, Opening with wider grace, shall give the best. INDEX Abbott, Francis E., his comparison of Jesus and Socrates, 208; expounds his views, 289. Abbott, Rev. Jacob, stanza to, 91. "Accademia," an, in Rome, 130. Adams, John Quincy, on Governor Andrew's staff, 266. Adams, Mrs. John (Abigail Smith), anecdote of, 36. Agassiz, Alexander, 184; lectures to the Town and Country Club, 406. Agassiz, Louis, personal appearance, 182; scientific interests, 183; attends Mrs. Howe's parlor lectures, 306. Agassiz, Mrs. Louis (Elizabeth Cary), president of Radcliffe College, 183. Albinola, an Italian patriot, 120. Alfieri, dramas of, 57, 206. Alger, William R., attends Mrs. Howe's parlor lectures, 306. Allston, Washington, his studio, 429; at a dinner to Charles Dickens, 431. Almack's, ball at, 105, 106. Anagnos, Michael, 313; marries Julia Romana Howe, 441. Anagnos, Mrs. Michael, born at Rome, 128; accompanies her parents to Europe, 313; her death, 439; her work and study, 440; her Metaphysical Club, and interest in the blind, 441. Andrew, John A., war governor of Massachusetts, 258; his character, 259; his genial nature, 260; becomes governor of Massachusetts, 261; pays for the legal defense of John Brown, 262; a Unitarian: broad religious sympathies, 263, 264; his energy in national affairs, 265; his trips about the State, 266; supports emancipation, 267; arranges an interview with Lincoln for the Howes, 271; his faith in Lincoln, 272. Anthon, Charles, professor at Columbia College, 23. Appleton, Thomas G., of Boston, 104; conversation with Samuel Longfellow, 293; his appearance, 431; his wit and culture, 432; lack of serious application, 433; his voyages to Europe, 434. Arconati, Marchese, his hospitality to the Howes, 119. Argyll, Duchess of, declines to aid the woman's peace crusade plan, 338. Armstrong, General John, father of Mrs. William B. Astor, 64. Association for the Advancement of Women, the, founded, 386; distribution of its congresses, 392. Astor, John Jacob, Washington Irving at the house of, 27; calls on Mrs. Howe's father on New Year's Day, 32; wedding gift of, to his granddaughter, 65; fondness for music, 74; anecdotes of, 75, 76. Astor, William B., his culture and education, 73. Astor, Mrs. William B. (Margaret Armstrong), her recollection of Mrs. Howe's mother, 5; describes a wedding, 31; gives a dinner: her good taste, 64. Atherstone, the Howes at, 136. "Atlantic Monthly, The," 232, 236, 280; first published the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," 275. Austin, Mrs., sings in New York, 15. Avignon, the Howes at, 133. Bache, Prof. A. D., at Mrs. Howe's lecture in Washington, 309. Baez, President of Santo Domingo, calls upon the Howes, 355; invites them to a state dinner: is expelled by a revolution, 360. Baggs, Monsignore, Bishop of Pella, presents the Howes to the Pope, 125. Bailey, Prof. J. W., lectures on insectivorous plants, 407. Balzac, Honoré de, his works read, 58, 206. Bancroft, George, the historian, his estimate of Hegel, 210; invites Mrs. Howe to write something for the Bryant celebration, 277; his part therein, 279; his life at Newport, 401; in the Town and Country Club, 407. "Barbiere di Seviglia," given in New York, 15; admired by Charles Sumner, 176. Bartol, Dr. C. A., first meeting of the Boston Radical Club held at his house, 281. Bates, Joshua, founder of the Boston Public Library, 93. "Battle Hymn of the Republic," the, writing of, 273-275. Baxter, Sally. See Hampton, Mrs. Frank. Bean, Mrs., stewardess of Cunard steamer, 89; lines to, 90. Beecher, Miss Catherine, her "Cook Book," 215. Beecher, Henry Ward, his letter on Mary Booth's death, 242; advocates woman's suffrage, 378. Beethoven, symphonies of, in Boston, 14; appreciation of his work taught, 16; selections from, given at the Wards', 49. Belgioiosa, Princess, her origin and marriage, 422. Benzon, Mr. Schlesinger, his house a musical centre, 435. Berlin, Dr. Howe imprisoned at, 118. Black, William, the novelist, 412. Blackwell, Henry B., his efforts in the cause of woman suffrage, 380-382. Blackwell, Rev. Mrs. S. C. (Antoinette Brown), first woman minister in the United States, 166; preaches, 392. Blair's Rhetoric, 57. Bloomingdale, country-seat of Mrs. Howe's father at, 10. Boker, George H., at the Bryant celebration, 279. Bonaparte, Charles, 202. Bonaparte, Joseph, ex-king of Spain, 5, 202. Bonaparte, Joseph, Prince of Musignano, 202. Boocock, Mr., a music teacher, 16. Booth, Edwin, at the Boston Theatre, requests Mrs. Howe to write him a play, 237; his marriage, 241; his wife's death, 242. Booth, Mrs. Edwin (Mary Devlin), her marriage and death, 241, 242. Booth, Wilkes, at Mary Booth's funeral, 242. Boppard, water-cure at, 189. Bordentown, N. J., residence of Joseph, ex-king of Spain, 5, 202. Borsieri, an Italian patriot, 120. Boston, Mrs. Howe spends the summer of 1842-43 near, 81; her first years in, 144-187; its workers and thinkers, 150; high level of society in, 251. Boston Radical Club, 208; founded, 281; its essayists: subjects discussed, 282; John Weiss at, 283, 284; Athanase Coquerel at, 284-286; Mrs. Howe reads her paper on "Polarity" before, 311. Bostwick, Professor, his historical charts, 14. "Bothie of Tober-na-Fuosich," Clough's, 184. Botta, Prof., speaks on Aristotle, 408. Boutwell, Gov. George S., attends Mrs. Howe's lecture in Washington, 309. Bowery Theatre, fire in, 16. Bowling Green, early recollections of, 4. Bowring, Sir John, 331; speaks at woman's peace crusade meeting in London, 341. Boyesen, Prof. H. H., speaks on Aristotle, 408. Bracebridge, Charles N., 136; travels in Egypt with Florence Nightingale, 188. Bracebridge, Mrs. C. N., 136; her opinion of Florence Nightingale, 137; travels in Egypt with her, 188. Brambilla, an opera singer, 104. Breakfasts as a form of entertainment, 98. Bridewell Prison, 108. Bridgman, Laura, first blind deaf mute taught the use of language, 81; referred to in Dickens's "American Notes," 87; mentioned by Thomas Carlyle, 95; by Maria Edgeworth, 113; described to the Pope, 126; lives with the Howes, 151; at Dr. Howe's death-bed, 369; at the memorial meeting to him, 370. Bright, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob, at Mrs. Howe's peace meeting in London, 341. Brokers, New York Board of, portrait of John Ward in their rooms, 55. Brook Farm, 145. Brooks, Rev. Charles T., invites Mrs. Howe to speak in his church, 321; his advice asked with regard to starting the woman's peace crusade, 328; writes a poem for the memorial meeting for Dr. Howe, 370; in the Town and Country Club, 407. Brooks, Rev. Phillips, anecdote of, 322. Brooks, Preston Smith, 179. Brown, John, calls on Dr. Howe, 254; his attack on Harper's Ferry, 255; in Missouri, 256; anecdote of, 257. Bruce, Robert, regalia of, 111. Bryant, William Cullen, editor of the "Evening Post," 21; visitor at the Ward home, 79; celebration of his seventieth birthday, 277-280; at the meetings for promoting the woman's peace crusade, 329; admires the sermon of Athanase Coquerel at Newport, 342. Bull Run, second battle of, 258. Buller, Charles, his appreciation of Carlyle, 110. Bunsen, Chevalier, Prussian ambassador to England, 118. Burns, Anthony, 164. Butler, Benjamin F., disinterestedness of his friendship for woman suffrage questioned, 395. Butler, Mrs. Josephine, encourages the woman's peace congress idea, 329. Byron, Lord, at Harrow, 22; his works unwillingly allowed in the Ward family, 58; his example leads Dr. Howe to Greece, 85; autograph letter of, 100; praise of, unpardonable in London, 115. Cardini, Signor, Mrs. Howe's instructor in vocal music, 16; his anecdote of the Duke of Wellington, 17. Carlisle, Earl of, dinner given by, 106. Carlisle, Countess of, dinner given by, 106; her good nature: pleasantry about, 107. Carlyle, Thomas, his courtesy to the Howes, 96; appearance, 97. Carreño, Teresa, party for, at Secretary Chase's house, 309. Cass, Lewis, _chargé d'affaires_ in the Papal States, 196. Castiglia, an Italian patriot, 120. Castle Garden, 4. Cerito, her dancing, 104. Chace, Mrs. Elizabeth B., at the Prison Reform meetings, 339. Channing, William Ellery, the preacher, sermon by, 144; bells tolled in France at the death of, 416. Channing, William Ellery, the poet, writes a poem for the memorial meeting for Dr. Howe, 370; Channing, William Henry, his ministry in Washington in war time, 270; in the Radical Club, 286; his attitude in that organization, 287-289; introduces Mrs. Howe at her Washington lecture, 309; aids her woman's peace crusade movement, 330. Chapman, Mrs. Maria Weston, a leading abolitionist, 153; at an abolition meeting, 156; acts as body-guard to Wendell Phillips, 157. Charnaud, Monsieur, his dancing classes, 19. Chase, Hon. Salmon P., 225; his courtesy to Mrs. Howe, 308, 309. Chasles, Philarète, his disparaging lecture on American literature, 134. Chateaubriand, his "Atala" and "René," 206. Chemistry, Mrs. B.'s "Conversations" on, 56. Cheney, Mrs. Ednah D., aids the woman suffrage movement, 382; speaks before a Unitarian society, 392; introduces Mrs. Howe to Princess Belgioiosa, 423; her review of Mrs. Howe's first book of poems, 436. Child, Mrs. Lydia Maria, acts as body-guard to Wendell Phillips, 157. Christianity, Mrs. Howe's views on, 207, 208; attitude of the Boston Radical Club towards, 286. Civil War, the, 257, 258, 265; condition of Washington during, 270. Clarke, James Freeman, his meetings at Williams Hall, 245; goes abroad, 246; at Indiana Place Chapel, 247; his marriage, 249; always supported by Gov. Andrew, 261; goes to Washington in 1861, 269; visits hospitals, 270; his opinion of Abraham Lincoln, 272; opposes Weiss at the Radical Club, 284; upholds the Christian tone of that organization, 286; his tribute to Margaret Fuller, 301; attends Mrs. Howe's parlor lectures, 306; in the woman suffrage movement, 375, 382. Clarke, Mrs. J. F., her character, 250. Clarke, Sarah, 202; at the coronation of King Umberto at Rome, 424. Clarke, William, 202. Claudius, Matthias, works of, 59; his "Wandsbecker Bote," 62. Clay, Henry, advocates the Missouri Compromise, 22. Clough, Miss Anne J., 335. Clough, Arthur Hugh, visits the Howes, 184; his manner and appearance, 185; his repartee, 187. Cobbe, Frances Power, 332. Cogswell, Dr. Joseph Green, principal of the Round Hill School, 43; teaches Mrs. Howe German, 44, 59, 206; resides at the Astor mansion, 75; anecdotes of, 76; introduces the Wards to Washington Allston, 429. Columbia College, its situation on Park Place, its conservatism: eminent professors at, 23; Samuel Ward attends, 67. Combe, George, 22; in Rome, 131, 132; his "Constitution of Man," 133. Combe, Mrs. George (Cecilia Siddons), anecdote of, 132. "Commonwealth, The," 252. Comte, Auguste, his "Philosophie Positive," 211; Mrs. Howe's estimate of, 307. "Conjugal Love," Swedenborg's, 209. Constantinople, the fall of, drama upon, 57. "Consuelo," George Sand's, reveals the author's real character, 58. Contoit, Jean, a French cook, 30. Conway, Miss, exercises by her school, 389. Copyright, International, urged by Charles Dickens, 26. Coquerel, Athanase, the French Protestant divine, at the Radical Club, 284, 285; sees Mrs. Howe in London, 331; his sermon in Newport, 342; his explanation of the Paris commune, 343. Corporal punishment, 109. Coventry, England, 136. Cowper, William, his "Task" read by Mrs. Howe at school, 58. Cramer, John Baptist, a London musician, 16. Cranch, Christopher P., caricatures the transcendentalists, 145; his present to Bryant on his seventieth birthday, 278. Crawford, F. Marion, the novelist, 45. Crawford, Thomas, the sculptor, his work in the Ward mansion, 45; meets the Howes in Rome: marries Louisa Ward, 127; travels to Rome with Mrs. Howe, 190; his statue of Washington, 203. Crawford, Mrs. Thomas. See Ward, Louisa. Cretan insurrection of 1866, Dr. Howe's efforts in behalf of, 312, 313; distribution of clothes to the refugees of, 317-319; bazaar in aid of the sufferers, 320. "Critique of Pure Reason," Kant's, 212. Curtis, George William, his opinion of "Words for the Hour," 230; writes about Newport, 238; presides at the Unitarian anniversary in 1886, 302; advocates woman suffrage, 378. Cushing, Caleb, 180. Cushman, Miss Charlotte, 240. Cutler, Benjamin Clarke, Mrs. Howe's grandfather, 4. Cutler, Rev. Benjamin Clarke (son of the preceding), officiates at his sister's wedding, 34. Cutler, Mrs. Benjamin Clarke, Mrs. Howe's grandmother, her costume at her daughter Louisa's wedding, 34; her beauty and charm, 35; describes the dress of her younger days, 35, 36. Cutler, Eliza. See Francis, Mrs. John W. Cutler, Louisa Cordé. See McAllister, Mrs. Julian. Daggett, Mrs. Kate Newell, third president of the Association for the Advancement of Women, 393. Dana, Richard H., the elder, a visitor at the Ward home, 79; a kind of transcendentalist, 428. Danforth, Elizabeth, describes Louisa Cutler's wedding, 33, 34. Dante, his works read, 206. Da Ponte, Lorenzo, teacher of Italian in New York, his earlier career, 24. Da Ponte, Lorenzo (son of preceding), teaches Mrs. Howe Italian, 57. Davenport, E. L., manager of the Howard Athenæum, declines Mrs. Howe's drama, 240. Davidson, Prof. Thomas, lectures on Aristotle, 406, 408. Davis, Charles Augustus, his "Downing Letters," 24, 25. Davis, Admiral Charles H., attends one of Mrs. Howe's lectures, 309. De Long, Lieut. G. W., at the dance given by the Howes in Santo Domingo, 356. De Mesmekir, John, 4. Denison, Bishop, 140. Desmoulins, M. Benoit C., his kindness to Mrs. Howe, 413. Devlin, Mary. See Booth, Mrs. Edwin. Dexter, Franklin, a friend of Allston, 429. "Dial, The," Margaret Fuller's paper, 145. "Diary of an Ennuyée," Mrs. Jameson's, 40. Dickens, Charles, dinner to, in New York, 26; at Mr. Rogers's dinner, 99; takes the Howes to Bridewell Prison, 108; gives a dinner for them, 110. Dickinson, Anna, 305. Disciples, Church of the, 256; Governor Andrew a member of, 263. "Divine Love and Wisdom," Swedenborg's, 204, 209. Dix, Dorothea L., her work for the insane, 88. "Don Giovanni," its libretto, 24; admired by Charles Sumner, 176. Doré, Gustave, the artist, his studio and work, 416-419. Douglas, Stephen A., 178. "Downing Letters," those of C. A. Davis, 25. Dresel, Otto, musical critic and teacher, 438; tribute to his memory, 439. Dress, in the thirties, 30, 31; at Mrs. Astor's dinner, 64, 65; at Samuel Ward's wedding, 65; at Lansdowne House, 102, 103; at the ball at Almack's, 106. Dublin, the Howes in, 112-114. Duer, John, at the Dickens dinner, 26. Dwight, John S., translates Goethe and Schiller, 147; tries to teach Theodore Parker to sing, 162, 163; Henry James reads a paper at the house of, 324; admires Athanase Coquerel's sermon at Newport, 342; Dana's estimate of, 435; his "Journal of Music," 436; his kindness to Mrs. Howe's children, 437; Dr. Holmes's remark at his funeral, 438. Eames, Charles, 223, 224. Eames, Mrs. Charles, her kindness to Count Gurowski, 223-226; invites Mrs. Howe to dinner, 308. Edgeworth, Maria, the Howes' visit to, 113. Edinburgh, 121. Edwards, Jonathan, Dr. Holmes's paper on, 286. Eliot, Thomas, attends a lecture by Mrs. Howe in Washington, 309. Elliott, Mrs. (Maud Howe), her remark to Henry James, the elder, 325; goes to Santo Domingo with her parents, 347; takes charge of the woman's literary work at the New Orleans exposition, 395; goes abroad with her mother, 410. Ellis, Rev. George E., lectures on the Rhode Island Indians, 407. Elssler, Fanny, a ballet dancer, 104; opinions of Emerson and Margaret Fuller on her dancing, 105. Emblee, the Nightingales at, 138. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 87; remark on Fanny Elssler's dancing, 105; begins his work, 144; caricatured by Cranch, 145; avoids woman suffrage, 158; praises "Passion Flowers," 228; at the Bryant celebration, 279; a member of the Radical Club, 282; objects to having its meetings reported: his paper on Thoreau, 290; Theodore Parker's opinion of, 291; character and attainments, 292; his interest in Mrs. Howe's parlor lectures, 307. England, Bank of, visited, 116, 117. Evans, Mrs., 421. Everett, C. C., a member of the Radical Club, 282. "Evidences of Christianity," Paley's, 56. Fabens, Colonel, on the voyage to Santo Domingo, 347. Farrar, Mrs., visited by Mrs. Howe, 295, 296. Faucit, Helen, the actress, 104. "Faust," Goethe's, condemned by Mr. Ward, 59. Felton, Prof. C. C., first known by the Ward family through Mrs. Howe's brother Samuel, 49; his friends, 169. "Female Poets of America," Griswold's, 5. Fern, Fanny, her essay on _rhinosophy_, 404. Field, David Dudley, addresses the second meeting of the woman's peace crusade, 329. Field, Mrs. D. D., 191. Field, Kate, at the Radical Club, 290; at Newport, 402. Fields, James T., 228. Finotti, Father, 263, 264. Fitzmaurice, Lady Louisa, daughter of the Marquis of Lansdowne, 103. Fletcher, Alice, prominent at the woman's congress, 386. Follen, Dr. Karl, 22. Foresti, Felice, an Italian patriot, 120; reads Dante with Mrs. Howe, 206. Forks, three-pronged steel, in general use, 30. Fornasari, an opera singer, 104. Forster, John, at Charles Dickens's dinner: invites the Howes to dine, 110. Fowler, Dr. and Mrs., their courtesy to the Howes, 139-141. Francis, Dr. John W., accompanies Mrs. Ward to Niagara, 8; becomes a member of the Ward household, 12; his appearance, 36; his humor, 37; his habits, 38; his introduction of Edgar Allan Poe, 39. Francis, Mrs. John W. (Eliza Cutler), takes charge of the Ward family at her sister's death, 11, 12; dances in "stocking-feet" at her sister's wedding, 34; her kindness, 38; her hospitality, 39. François, a colored man in Santo Domingo, invites Mrs. Howe to hold religious services, 350, 353. Freeman, Edward, the artist, 127; a neighbor of Mrs. Howe in Rome, 191. Freeman, Mrs. Edward, 192. "From the Oak to the Olive," extracts from, 315-319. Frothingham, O. B., a member of the Radical Club, 282. Froude, James Anthony, the historian, at Miss Cobbe's reception, 333. Fuller, Margaret, urges Mrs. Howe to publish her earlier poems, 61; her remark on Fanny Elssler's dancing, 105; in Cranch's caricature, 145; translates Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe," 147; life of, undertaken by Emerson, 158; criticises Dr. Hedge's Phi Beta address, 296; highly esteemed by Dr. Hedge, 300; the sixtieth anniversary of her birth celebrated, 301. Fuller, Mrs. Samuel R., goes to Santo Domingo with the Howes, 347. Galway, Lady, 98. Gambetta, M., at Mr. Healey's ball, 421. Garcia, the opera singer, 14. Garrison, William Lloyd, Mrs. Howe's dislike of, dispelled, 152, 153; attacks a statement of hers, 236; joins the woman suffrage movement, 375; his work for that cause, 380, 381. Gennadius, John, Greek minister to England, 411. German scholarship, its beneficial effect on New England, 303. Gibbon, Edward, 57; his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," 205. Gladstone, William E., at Devonshire House, 410; breakfast with him, 411. Gloucester, Duchess of, her appearance, 101. Godwin, Parke, admires Athanase Coquerel's sermon at Newport, 342. Goethe, his "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister," 59; Mrs. Howe's essay on his minor poems, 60; his motto, 205. Gonfalonieri, Count, an Italian patriot imprisoned at Spielberg: his life saved by his wife, 119. Goodwin, Juliet R., becomes secretary of the Town and Country Club, 406. Goodwin, Prof. William W., 402; his Latin version of the "Man in the Moon," 404. Graham, Mrs. Elizabeth, school of, 5. Grant, Gen. U. S., at the ball at Mr. Healy's, 421. Graves, Rev. Mary H., takes part in the convention of women ministers, 312. Greeks, Dr. Howe's labors for, 85, 86, 313, 319. "Green Peace Estate, The," 152. Green, J. R., the historian, 412. Greene, George Washington, American consul at Rome, helps Dr. Howe, 123; accompanies the Howes to the papal reception, 125. Greene, Gen. Nathanael, 7, 123. Greene, Mrs. N. R., cousin of Mrs. Howe's father, anecdote of, 6. Greene, William, governor of Rhode Island, 4. Greene, Mrs. William (Catharine Ray), an ancestress of Mrs. Howe, 3; her connection with Block Island families of service, 51. Greene, William B., colonel of the First Mass. Heavy Artillery, 271. Gregory XVI., Pope, receives the Howes, 125; anecdote of, 126, 127. Grey, Mrs., her interest in schools for girls of the middle class, 333. Grimes, Brother, a colored preacher, 263. Grimes, James W., senator from Iowa, 225. Grimes, Medora. See Ward, Mrs. Samuel. Grisi, sings at Lansdowne House, 101; in "Semiramide," 104. Griswold, R. W., his "Female Poets of America," 5. Grote, George, the historian, 93. Grote, Mrs. George (Harriet Lewin), somewhat _grote_sque, 93. Guizot, M., prime minister of France, 135. Gurowski, Adam, Count, 220; employed by the State Department: his temper and curiosity, 221, 222; dismissed by Seward, 222; his breach with Sumner, 223; befriended by Mrs. Eames, 223, 224; his death, 225; his family affairs, 227. Gurowski, John, 227. Gustin, Rev. Ellen, at the convention of women ministers, 312. Hair, mode of dressing, 65. Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, his opinion of Samuel Longfellow, 293; speaks at the meeting in behalf of the Cretan insurgents, 313. Hale, George S., a friend of woman suffrage, 378. Hall, Mrs. David P. (Florence Howe), her interest in sewing for the Cretan refugees, 316. Hallam, Henry, the historian, 139. Halleck, Fitz-Greene, his "Marco Bozzaris," 22; frequent visitor at the Astor mansion, 77; his remarks on Margaret Fuller's English, 146. Hampton, Mrs. Frank (Sally Baxter), meets the Howes in Havana, 234; invites them to her home in South Carolina, 235. Hampton, Wade, his statement with regard to slavery, 235. Handel, his "Messiah" given in New York, 15; appreciation of his work taught, 16. Handel and Haydn Society, 14. Harte, Bret, at Newport, 402. Harvard College, shunned as a Unitarian institution, 24. Harvard Divinity School, Theodore Parker at, 162. Hawkes, Rev. Francis L., his abuse of Germans and abolitionists, 61. Haynes, Rev. Lorenza, takes part in the convention of women ministers, 312. Healy, G. P. A., the artist, ball at his residence, 420, 421. Healy, Mrs., 420. Hedge, Dr. F. H., his translations, 147; member of the Radical Club, 282; defends Protestant progress, 285; his Phi Beta address, 295; pastorates in Providence and Boston, 296, 297; second Phi Beta address, 298; becomes professor of German at Harvard, 299; fondness for the drama, 299, 300; his high opinion of Margaret Fuller, 300, 301; his statement of the Unitarian faith, 302; broadening effect of his studies in Germany, 303. Hegel, the German philosopher, 209; estimates of, 210; his "Aesthetik" and "Logik," 212. Hell, ideas of, 62. Hensler, Miss Elise, sings first at Mrs. Benzon's house, 435. Herder, works of, read, 59, 206. Herne, Colonel, first husband of Mrs. Cutler, Mrs. Howe's grandmother, 35. Heron, Matilda, in "The World's Own," 230. Higginson, Colonel Thomas Wentworth, at the Shadrach meeting, 165; his paper "Ought Women to learn the Alphabet," 232; his position on Christianity at the Radical Club, 285; at the woman suffrage meeting, 375; aids that cause, 382; at Newport, 402; at a mock "Commencement," 403; becomes treasurer of the Town and Country Club, 406; at the woman's rights congress in Paris, 420. Hillard, George S., his friends and character, 169, 170. Hillard, Kate, speaks at the Town and Country Club, 406. "Hippolytus," Mrs. Howe's drama of, proposed by Booth, 237; ultimately declined, 240. Hoar, Hon. George Frisbie, a friend of woman suffrage, 378; secures an appropriation for the New Orleans Exposition, 398. Hoffman, Matilda, engaged to Washington Irving, 28. Holland, Mrs. Henry (Saba Smith), reception at her house, 92. Holland, Dr. J. G., at Newport, 402. Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, at the Bryant celebration, 277-280; as a traveling companion, 277, 280; his paper at the Radical Club on Jonathan Edwards, 286; speaks at the meeting to help the Cretan insurgents, 313; writes a poem for the memorial meeting to Dr. Howe, 370. Hooker, Mrs. Isabella Beecher, speaks at the woman's congress, 385. Horace, 174; Orelli's edition of, 209. Houghton, Lord (Richard Monckton Milnes), the poet, Mrs. Howe meets, 97; entertains her in 1877, 410; takes her to Mr. Gladstone's, 411. Housekeeping, the trials of, 213-215; every girl should learn the art of, 216. Howe, Florence. See Hall, Mrs. David P. Howe, Julia Romana. See Anagnos, Mrs. Michael. Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, asked to write her reminiscences, 1; birth and parentage, 3, 4; brothers and sisters, 4, 5; early indication of inaptness with tools, 7; travels to Niagara, 8, 9; childish incidents, 7-10; her mother's death, 10; early education, 13, 14; musical training, 16, 17; seclusion of her home, 18; first ball, 29; acquaintance with Mrs. Jameson, 41, 42; leaves school: studies German with Dr. Cogswell, 43; reviews Lamartine's "Jocelyn," 44; manner of living at home, 47; her social intercourse restricted, 48; feelings on the death of her father, 52; his guidance of, 53; effect of her brother Henry's death, 54; her studies, 56-63; in chemistry, 56; in French and Italian, 57; literary work, dramas and lyrics, 57, 58; reading, 58; German studies, 59; further literary work, essays and poems, 60, 61; religious growth, 62; first dinner party, 64; her attire: bridesmaid at her brother's wedding, 65; fear of lightning, 78; social opportunities, 78, 79; spends the summer of 1841 near Boston: visits the Perkins Institution, 81; sees Dr. Howe, 82; her memoir of Dr. Howe for the blind, 83; engagement and marriage, 88; voyage to Europe, 89-91; entertained in London, 92-110; in Scotland, 111; in Dublin, 112; visits Miss Edgeworth, 113; the poet Wordsworth, 115; at Vienna, 118; at Milan, 119; arrival in Rome, 121; birth of eldest daughter, 128; leaves Rome, 133; returns to England, 133-135; visits Atherstone, 136, 137; sees the Nightingales, 138; goes to Lea Hurst, 139; Salisbury, 139-143; her travesty of Dr. Howe's letter, 142; attends Theodore Parker's meetings, 150; life in South Boston, 151, 152; in Washington, 178; second trip abroad, 188; reaches Rome, 191; returns to America, 204; studious nature, 205; ideas on Christianity, 206-208; work in Latin, 209; philosophical studies, 210-213; housekeeping trials, 214-217; free-soil preferences, 219; at Count Gurowski's death-bed, 226; her "Passion Flowers" published, 228; her "Words of the Hour" and "The World's Own" published, 230; trip to Cuba, 231; parting with Theodore Parker, 233, 234; her book about the Cuban trip, 236; writes for the "New York Tribune," 236, 237; requested by Booth to write a play, 237; disappointed at its nonappearance, 240; attends James Freeman Clarke's meetings, 245; helps Dr. Howe edit "The Commonwealth," 253; sees John Brown, 254; goes on some trips with Gov. and Mrs. Andrew, 266; visits Washington in 1861, 269; first attempt at public speaking, 271; meets Abraham Lincoln, 272; how she came to write the "Battle Hymn," 273-275; takes part in the Bryant celebration, 277-280; her papers before the Radical Club, 287; pleasantry with Dr. Hedge, 297; increasing desire to write and speak, 304, 305; gives parlor lectures at her home, 306; repeats the course in Washington, 308, 309; various philosophical papers and essays, 310; reads a paper on "Polarity" before the Radical Club, and one on "Ideal Causation" to the Parker Fraternity, 311; interested in calling the first convention of woman ministers, 312; starts for Greece, 313; arrival in Athens, 314; distributes clothes to the Cretan refugees, 316-318; returns to Boston: conducts the Cretan Bazaar, 320; lectures in Newport and Boston, 321, 322; starts a woman's peace crusade, 328; holds meetings to advance the cause in New York, 329; visits England to organize a Woman's Peace Congress, 329; speaks at the banquet of the Unitarian Association, 331; her Sunday afternoon meetings at Freemasons' Tavern, 331, 332; meets Mrs. Grey, 333; visits Prof. Seeley, 335; is constrained to apply her energy to the woman's club movement, 336; her peace addresses in England, where made, 337; asked to attend the Peace Congress in Paris, 338; attends a Prison Reform meeting, 339; her speech there, 340; holds a final meeting to further her peace crusade in London, 341; goes to Santo Domingo with Dr. Howe, 349; holds religious services for the negroes there, 350-352; visits a girls' school, 352; invited to speak to a secret Bible society, 353; every-day life there, 357, 358; invited to a state dinner by President Baez, 360; her second visit to Santo Domingo, 360; her difficulties in riding horseback, 362; her interest in the emancipation of woman takes more definite form, 372, 373; attends the meeting to found the New England Woman's Club, 374; joins the woman suffrage movement, 375; her efforts for that cause, 376; gains experience, 377; trips to promote the cause, 379-381; at legislative hearings, 381-384; attends the woman's congress in 1868, 385; elected fourth president of the Association for the Advancement of Women, 393; directs the woman's department at a Boston fair, 394; at the New Orleans Exposition, 395; difficulties encountered there, 396; speech to the negroes, 398; considered _clubable_ by Dr. Holmes, 400; presides at a mock "Commencement," 403; goes abroad with her daughter Maud in 1877: entertained by Lord Houghton, 410; breakfasts with Mr. Gladstone, 411; goes to the House of Commons with Charles Parnell, 412; visits Paris, 413; goes to the French Academy, 414; at the crowning of a _rosière_, 415; visits Doré's studio, 416-419; lectures in Paris, 419; president of a woman's rights congress, 420; at the Healys' ball, 421; speaks on suffrage in Italy, 422; visits Princess Belgioiosa, 422, 423; sees Umberto crowned, 424; reads with Madame Ristori, 424, 425; sees Leo XIII. consecrated, 426; meets Washington Allston, 429; first acquaintance with John S. Dwight, 435; feeling of loss at Otto Dresel's death, 438; her eldest daughter's death, 439; successes and failures of her life, 442-444. Howe, Maud. See Elliott, Mrs. Howe, Dr. Samuel Gridley, first known to the Wards through Mrs. Howe's brother Samuel, 49; his achievement in Laura Bridgman's case, 81; Mr. Sanborn's estimate of, 83; his philanthropic efforts, 84; espouses the cause of Greece, 85, 86; his work for the blind, 86, 87; other activities: marries Julia Ward, 88; goes abroad, 89; entertained in London, 92-107, 110, 111; visits London prisons, 108, 109; in Scotland, 111; in Dublin, 112; visits Miss Edgeworth, 113; the poet Wordsworth, 115; his connection with the Polish rebellion, 117, 118; excluded from Prussia, 118; tour through Europe to Rome, 118-121; arrested in Rome, 123; presented to the Pope, 126; with George Combe, 131, 132; leaves Rome, 133; conversation with Florence Nightingale, 138; his visit to Rotherhithe workhouse, 141; his activity on the Boston School Board, 148; advocates the teaching of speech to deaf-mutes, 149; inability to sing, 163; his circle of friends, 169, 170; his interest in prison reforms, 173; commissioner on the annexation of Santo Domingo, 181; visits Europe in 1850, 188; takes the water cure at Boppard, 189; his abolition sympathies, 218; trip to Cuba, 230; buys Lawton's Valley at Newport, 238; objects to his children attending the Parker meetings, 244; edits "The Commonwealth," 252; his friendship with Gov. Andrew, 253; his judgment in military affairs, 269; averse to women speaking in public, 305; his interest in the Cretan insurrection, 312, 313; starts for Greece, 313; arrival in Athens: his life endangered, 314; visits Crete: returns to Boston, 320; visits Santo Domingo to report on the advisibility of annexing it, 345; goes to Santo Domingo again, 347; gives a dance for the people, 355; goes to Santo Domingo a third time, 360; hears of Sumner's death, 364; returns to Boston, 368; his death, 369; tributes to his memory, 370. Hudson River, journey up the, 8. Hugo, Victor, remark on John Brown, 256; at the congress of _gens de lettres_, 413. Hunt, Helen, at Newport, 402. Hunting, Rev. J. J., commends the exercises of the convention of woman ministers, 312. Huntington, Daniel, paints portrait of Mrs. Howe's father, 55. "Hymns of the Spirit," collected by Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson, 293. Indians, the, in New York State, 9; Samuel Ward's intercourse with, in California, 70. Inglis, Sir Robert Harry, 98. Iron Crown of Lombardy, 119, 120. Irving, Sir Henry, 410. Irving, Washington, his embarrassment in public speaking, 25; at the dinner to Charles Dickens, 26; his manners and travels, 27; his love affair, 28; frequent visitor at the Astor mansion, 75. Italy, emancipation of, 121, 193-196. Jackson, Andrew, ridiculed in the "Downing Letters," 25; crushes the bank of the United States, 50. James, Henry, the elder, his character and culture, 323, 324; his views on immortality, 325; Swedenborgian tendencies, 326; at Newport, 402. Jameson, Mrs. (Anna Brownell Murphy), visits New York: her books and ability, 40; private history and appearance, 41; Mrs. Howe's acquaintance with her, 41, 42; describes Canada: later books by, 42. Janauschek, Madame, visited by Dr. Hedge and Mrs. Howe in Boston, 299. Janin, Jules, French critic, friend of Mrs. Howe's brother Samuel, 68. Johnson, Samuel, joint editor of "Hymns of the Spirit," 293. Johnston, William P., president of Tulane University, 399. Julian, George W., attends Mrs. Howe's lecture in Washington, 309. Kant, Immanuel, his transcendental philosophy, 146; his "Critique of Pure Reason," 212; influence on Mrs. Howe, 310. Kemble, Fanny, story of, 131, 132. "Kenilworth," Scott's novel of, play founded on, 57. Kenyon, John, his dinner for the Howes, 108. King, Charles, editor of the "New York American," 22; president of Columbia College, 23. King, James, junior partner of Samuel Ward, 23. King, Rufus, 23. Knowles, James, editor of the "Nineteenth Century," 412. Lafayette, General, interested in the Polish revolution, 117. Lamartine, his poems and travels, 206. Landseer, Sir Edwin, at the Rogers dinner, 99. Lane, Prof. George M., 402. Lansdowne, Marquis of, his courtesy to the Howes, 100, 101. Lansdowne, Marchioness of, 100. Lansdowne House, musical evening at, 100-102; dinner at, 103. Lawton's Valley, the Howes' summer home at Newport, 238. Lee, Henry, on Gov. Andrew's staff, 266. Lemonnier, M. Charles, editor, 413. Lemonnier, Mme. Elise, founder of industrial schools for women, 413. Leo XIII., consecrated: revives certain points of ceremony, 426. Lesczinska, Maria, wife of Louis XV., 227. Leveson-Gower, Lady Elizabeth, 106. Leveson-Gower, Lady Evelyn, 106. Libby Prison, the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" sung at, 276. "Liberator, The," 236. "Liberty Bell, The," 154. Lieber, Dr. Francis, his opinion of Hegel, 210; commends a passage from "Passion Flowers," 229; at the Bryant celebration, 278. Lincoln, Abraham, services at his death, 248; Mrs. Howe's interview with, 271, 272. "Linda di Chamounix," 104. "Literary Recreations," poems by Samuel Ward, 73. Livermore, Mrs. Mary, 158, 294; her eloquence and skill, 377, 378; labors for woman suffrage, 380-382; prominent in the woman's congress, 385, 386. Livy, histories of, 209. Llangollen, story of the two maids of, 111. London, the Howes in, 91-111; Mrs. Howe's work there for the peace crusade, 330-336; her last stay there, 410-413. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, becomes a friend of Mrs. Howe through her brother Samuel, 49; his opinion of Samuel Ward, 73; takes Mrs. Howe to the Perkins Institution, 81, 82; his translations, 147. Longfellow, Rev. Samuel, ordained, 292; his character and convictions: hymns, 293; his essay on "Law" before the Radical Club, 294. Loring, Judge, denounced by Theodore Parker, 164. Lothrop, Rev. Samuel K., attends Mrs. Howe's parlor lectures, 306; requests her to prolong the course, 308. Lucas, Mrs. Margaret, assists Mrs. Howe in her woman's peace movement, 341. "Lucia di Lammermoor," 104. "Luther," Dr. Hedge's essay on, 301. Lynch, Dominick, introduces the first opera troupe to New York, 24. Lyons, Richard, Lord, British minister at Washington, 309. Machi, Padre, visits the catacombs with the Howes, 128. Mackintosh, Robert James, calls on Mrs. Jameson, 42. Maclaren, Mrs., assists Mrs. Howe in her peace movement, 341. Maclise, Daniel, the painter, 110. MacMahon, Marshal, his reception to Gen. and Mrs. Grant, 421. Macready, William Charles, the actor, 104. Mailliard, Adolph, 201. Mailliard, Mrs. Adolph (Annie Ward), sister of Mrs. Howe: accompanies her to Europe, 88; dines with Carlyle at Chelsea, 96; her loveliness, 137; her husband, 201; her toast at the Washington's Birthday dinner in Rome, 203; returns to America with Mrs. Howe, 204. Malibran, Madame, in the rôles of Cenerentola and Rosina, 15. Mallock, William H., at a dinner for Mrs. Howe, 412. Manchester, Bishop of, opposes the founding of schools for girls of the middle class, 333. Mann, Horace, uplifts the public schools, 88; goes to Europe, 89; visits Carlyle at Chelsea, 96; inspects the London prisons, 108, 109; opinion of George Combe, 133; praises Dr. Howe's work in the Boston schools, 148; advocates the teaching of speech to deaf-mutes, 149; shrinks from woman suffrage, 157. Mann, Mrs. Horace (Mary Peabody), goes to Europe with the Howes, 89; visits Thomas Carlyle, 96. Manning, Cardinal, presides at a Prison Reform meeting, 339. "Marco Bozzaris," 22. Margherita, Queen, at King Umberto's coronation, 424. Mario, sings at Lansdowne House, 101. Marion, Gen. Francis, 4. Martel, a hair-dresser, 65. "Martin Chuzzlewit," transcendental episode in, 139. Martineau, Harriet, statue of, 158. May, Abby W., aids bazaar in behalf of the Cretans, 320; her energy in the Association for the Advancement of Women, 393. May, Rev. Samuel J., 394. McAllister, Julian, marries Louisa Cutler, 33. McAllister, Mrs. Julian, 33. McAllister, Judge Matthew H., 33. McCabe, Chaplain, mentions the singing of the "Battle Hymn" in Libby Prison, 276. McCarthy, Mrs. Justin, "rout" given by, 413. McVickar, John, professor of philosophy at Columbia College, 23. "Merchant Princes of Wall Street, The," inaccuracy of, 52. Merritt, Mrs., a New Orleans lady, addresses the colored people, 398. Metastasio, dramas of, read, 57, 206. Milan, the Howes in, 119, 120. Milnes, Richard Monckton. See Houghton, Lord. Milton, John, his "Paradise Lost" used as a text-book, 58. Mitchell, Maria, her character and attainments: signs the call for a congress of women, 385; becomes the president in 1876, 387; lectures to the Town and Country Club, 406. Mitchell, Dr. Weir, lectures to the Town and Country Club, 406. Molière, his comedies read, 206. Monza, trip to, 119. Moore, Prof., at Columbia College, 23. "Moral Philosophy," William Paley's, 13. Morecchini, Monsignore, minister of public charities at Rome, 124. Morpeth, George, Lord (afterwards seventh earl of Carlisle), at Lansdowne House, 102, 103; Sydney Smith's dream about, 107; takes the Howes to Pentonville prison, 109. Motley, John Lothrop, at school with Tom Applet on, 433. Mott, Lucretia, 166; at the Radical Club, 283. Moulton, Mrs. William U. (Louise Chandler), reports the Radical Club meetings for the "New York Tribune," 290. Mozart, symphonies of, given in Boston, 14; appreciation of his work taught, 16; his work given at the Wards', 49; admired by Sumner, 176. Munich, works of art at, described by Mrs. Jameson, 40. Museum of Fine Arts, The, in Boston, 44. Music, early efforts for, in Boston and New York, 14, 15; effect on youthful nerves considered, 17, 18. "Mystères de Paris," Eugène Sue's, 204. Napoleon I., anecdote of, 1; invasion of Italy by, 17; incidents of that invasion, 120. Nassau, visit to, 232. Newgate prison, visit to, 108. Newport, Mrs. Howe spends a summer at the Cliff House there, 221; Dr. Howe buys an estate at, 238; Mrs. Howe writes her play there, 239; people who stayed at, 401, 402; the Town and Country Club of, formed, 405. New Year's Day, custom of visiting on, 31, 32. New York City, growth of, shown, 12, 13; first musical ventures in, 14, 15; its people of culture, 21-25; social events in, 29, 66; Bryant celebration at, 277-280; meetings in, to encourage the woman's peace crusade, 329. "New York Review," publishes an essay by Mrs. Howe, 60. New York State, Indians of, 9; in the financial crisis of 1837, 51. Niagara, surprise at the first sight of, 8. Nightingale, Florence, 136; her character: conversation with Dr. Howe, 138; studies nursing, 139; travels abroad: visited by Margaret Fuller, 188. Nightingale, Parthenope, 138, 188. Nineteenth century, the, its mechanical and intellectual achievements, 1, 2. Nordheimer, Dr. Isaac, teaches Mrs. Howe German, 59. "North American Review, The," articles by Samuel Ward in, 68. Norton, Rev. Andrews, in Cranch's caricature, 145. Norton, Hon. Mrs. (Caroline Sheridan), at Lansdowne House: her attire, 102. "Nozze di Figaro, Le," libretto of, by whom, 24. O'Connell, Daniel, the Irish agitator, 113. Ordway, Mrs. Eveline M., with Mrs. Elliott at the New Orleans Exposition, 399. O'Sullivan, John L., editor of the "Democratic Review," 79. Paddock, Mary C., goes to Santo Domingo with the Howes, 347. Paley, William, his "Moral Philosophy," 13; his "Evidences of Christianity," 56. Palgrave, F. T., reception at his house, 412. "Paradise Lost," used as a text-book, 58; religious interpretation of, 62. Paris, Samuel Ward in: his work descriptive of, 68; the Howes arrive in, 134; peace congress at, 338; Mrs. Howe's last visit to, 413. Parker, Dr. Peter, attends Mrs. Howe's lecture in Washington, 309. Parker, Theodore, 105; Mrs. Howe attends his meetings, 150; his Sunday evenings, 153; his sermon on "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity," 159; his visit to Rome: christens Mrs. Howe's eldest daughter, 160; his culture, 161; affection for his wife, 162; musical attainments, 163; his great sermons, 164; at the Shadrach meeting, 165; women admitted to his pulpit, 166; his personal characteristics, 167; death, 168; compared with Sumner, 176; his opinion of Hegel, 211; repeats lines from "Passion Flowers," 228; goes to Cuba accompanied by the Howes, 231; continues to Vera Cruz and Europe, 233; his meetings, 244; his parting gift to Massachusetts, 263; his opinion of Emerson, 291; of Dr. Hedge, 298; sympathizes with Mrs. Howe's desire for expression, 305. Parker, Mrs. Theodore, 160, 162. Parnell, Charles S., escorts Mrs. Howe to the House of Commons, 412. Parnell, Mrs. Delia Stuart, gives Mrs. Howe a note of introduction to her son, 412. Parsons, Thomas W., his poem on the death of Mary Booth, 241; suggests a poem for Mrs. Howe's Sunday meetings in London, 332. "Passion Flowers," Mrs. Howe's first volume of poems, 228, 229; reviewed in Dwight's "Journal of Music" by Mrs. E. D. Cheney, 436. Passy, Frederic, takes Mrs. Howe to the French Academy, 414; also to the crowning of a _rosière_, 415; presents her with a volume of his essays, 416. Paul, Jean, works of, read, 59. Pegli, Samuel Ward dies at, 73. Peirce, Benjamin, a member of the Radical Club, 282. Pellico, Silvio, an Italian patriot, 119. Pentonville prison, visited, 109. Perkins, Col. Thomas H., his recollection of Mrs. Cutler, 35. Persiani, Mlle., an opera singer, 104. "Phædo," Plato's, read by Mrs. Howe, 321. Phillips, Wendell, his prophetic quality of mind recognized, 84; leader of the abolitionists: his birth and education, 154; at anti-slavery meetings, 155-157; an advocate of woman suffrage, 157, 158; his death, 159; compared with Sumner, 175; effect of his presence at the Radical Club, 286; his orthodoxy, 287; speaks at the meeting to help the Cretan insurgents, 313; at the woman suffrage meeting, 375; supports that cause, 378, 382; at school with Tom Appleton, 433. "Philosophie Positive," Comte's, 211. Phrenology, belief in, 132, 133. Pius IX., Pope, 125; his weakness, 194, 195; his death, 425. Poe, Edgar Allan, his visit to Dr. Francis, 39. Polish insurrection of 1830, the, connection of Dr. Howe with, 117. Polish refugees, ball in aid of, 105. Powel, Samuel, his prophecy in regard to Newport, 408. Powell, Mr. Aaron, asks Mrs. Howe to attend the Paris Peace Congress as a delegate, 338. Priessnitz, his water cure, 189. Prime, Ward & King, firm of, Mrs. Howe's father a member, 50, 51; her brother Samuel admitted, 69. Prisons, visited by Dr. Howe, 108, 109. Pulszky, Mme. (Theresa von Walther), 118. Pym, Capt., an Arctic voyager, 399. Quincy, Edmund, his remark to Theodore Parker, 287. Quincy, Jr., Mrs. Josiah, woman's club started at her house, 400. Rachel, Madame, the actress, 135. Racine, his tragedies read, 206. Red Jacket, an Indian Chief, 9. Reed, Lucy, a blind deaf mute, 81, 82. Regnault, Henri, eulogized at the French Academy, 414. Repeal Measures, agitation for, in Dublin, 112. Rice, A. H., governor of Massachusetts, presides at the Music Hall meeting in memory of Dr. Howe, 370. Richards, Mrs. Henry (Laura Howe), accompanies her parents to Europe, 313. Richmond, Duke of, visits Bridewell prison with the Howes, 109. Richmond, Rev. James, 210. Richmond, Va., theatre in, burned, 16; Crawford's statue of Washington for, 203. Ripley, George, his efforts at Brook Farm, 145; reviews "Passion Flowers," 228; sees the Howes and Parkers off for Cuba, 231. Ripley, Mrs. George (Sophia Dana), 296. Ripley, Mary, speaks at the woman's congress in Memphis, 389. Ristori, Mme., the actress, 264; reads Marie Stuart in Rome, 424. Ritchie, Harry, the handsome, on Gov. Andrew's staff, 266. Ritchie, Mrs., daughter of Harrison Gray Otis, 401. Rogers, Samuel, the poet, dinner at his house, 99, 100; his economical dinner, 141. Rogers, Prof. William B., vice-president of the Town and Country Club, 405; lectures to the club, 406. Rome, the Howes' arrival in, 121; stiffness of society in, 123, 127; Mrs. Howe's second visit to, 191; political condition of, 193-195; Mrs. Howe's stay in, on her way to Greece, 313; spends the winter of 1877-78 in, 423-427. Rosebery, Lord, a friend of Samuel Ward, 72; visited by, 73; at Devonshire House, 410. Rosebery, Lady, 73. Rossi, Count, at Mrs. Benzon's, 436. Rossini, works of performed in New York, 14; admired by Sumner, 176. Round Hill School, 5; its principal, 43; Mrs. Howe's brother Samuel at, 67. "Routs," receptions so called, 93. Russell, Mrs. Sarah Shaw, a friend of Theodore Parker, 168. St. Angelo, Castle of, 130. St. Calixtus, catacombs of, 128. St. Luke, academy of, 124. St. Peter, church of, 121, 125, 126. Salisbury, the Howes at, 139-141. Samana Bay, the Howes' first visit to, 348; later stay at, 361-368; school at, 364. Samana Bay Company, Dr. Howe visits Santo Domingo in its interests, 346; ended by order of the Dominican government, 367. San Francisco, Samuel Ward at, 70. San Michele, industrial school of, 124. Sanborn, Franklin B., his biography of Dr. Howe, 82; reviews "Passion Flowers," 185, 228. Sand, George, her works read by Mrs. Howe, 58, 206. Sands, Julia, her biography of her brother, 21. Sands, Robert, the poet, of an old New York family, 21. Santa Maria Maggiore, church of, 125. Santo Domingo, annexation of, considered by a commission, 180, 345; proper way to spell the name, 348; religious meetings for the negroes in the city of, 349-351; small amount of English spoken there, 352; secret Bible society in, 353; debating club there, 354; a city of shopkeepers, 355; pleasant winter climate of, 358; longevity of the negroes in, 364; characteristics of the people, 366. Sargent, Rev. John T., meetings of the Boston Radical Club at his house, 281. Satan, idea of, 62. Schiller, Mrs. Howe's essay on his minor poems, 60; plays read, 206. Schlesinger, Daniel, Mrs. Howe's music teacher, stanzas on his death, 58. Schliemann, Mrs., 410. "Schönberg-Cotta family, The," 6. Schubert, his music played at the Ward home, 49. Schumann, the composer, 40. Schumann, Madame (Clara Wieck), mentioned by Mrs. Jameson, 40. Scotland, the Howes in, 111, 112. Scott, Sir Walter, 28; his novel "Kenilworth," play founded on, 57; grave of, at Abbotsford, 111; works lightly esteemed by Charles Sumner, 169. Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, on John Kenyon, 108; her letter of introduction to Count Gonfalonieri, 119; praises a line from "Passion Flowers," 228. Sedgwick, Mrs. Theodore (Susan Ridley), 90. Seeley, Prof. J. R., hospitality and kindness to Mrs. Howe: his lecture on Burke, 335. Sewall, Judge Samuel E., aids the woman suffrage movement, 382. Seward, William H., secretary of state, stigmatized by Count Gurowski, 222. Shaw, Mrs. Quincy A., 184. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, his books prohibited in the Ward family, 58. Sherret, Miss, her interest in schools for girls of the middle class, 333. Sherwood, Mrs. (Mary Martha Butt), her stories, 48. Siddons, Mrs. William (Sarah Kemble), fund for her monument, 104; her daughter, 131. Silliman, Prof. Benjamin, of Yale College, 22. Smith, Alfred, real estate agent of Newport, 238. Smith, Mrs. Seba, 166. Smith, Rev. Sydney, calls on the Howes: his reputation as a wit, 91; appearance, 92; anecdotes of, 92-95; pleasantry about Lord Morpeth, 107. Smith, Mrs. Sydney, Mrs. Howe calls on, 94. Somerville, Mrs. (Mary Fairfax), intimate with Mrs. Jameson, 42. "Sonnambula, La," given in New York, 15. Sontag, Mme., at Mrs. Benzon's, 435. Sothern, Edward Askew, in "The World's Own," 230. Southworth, Mrs. F. H. (Emma D. E. Nevitt), attends Mrs. Howe's lecture in Washington, 309. Spielberg, the Austrian fortress of, Italian patriots imprisoned in, 119, 120. Spinoza, 212, 309. Stanton, Theodore, 420. Steele, Tom, friend of Daniel O'Connell, 113. Stone, Lucy, 305; speaks for woman suffrage in Boston, 375; her skill and zeal, 377, 378; her work for that cause, 380, 381; prominent at the woman's congress, 385. Stonehenge, Druidical stones at, 140. Story, Chief Justice, 169. Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher, her "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 253. Sue, Eugène, his "Mystères de Paris," 204. Sumner, Albert, brother of the senator, 402. Sumner, Charles, first known to the Wards through Mrs. Howe's brother Samuel, 49; takes the Wards to the Perkins Institution, 81, 82; Thomas Carlyle's estimate of, 96, 97; inability to sing, 163; his first appearance at the Ward home, 168; his friends, 169; his political opinions, 170; his temperament and aspect, 171-173; attitude on prison reform, 173, 174; his eloquence, 175; his culture, 176; his life in Washington, 177-180; opposes the annexation of Santo Domingo, 181; his death, 182; defeats Webster for the Senate, 218; his breach with Count Gurowski, 223; grieves at Gurowski's death, 226; dines at Mrs. Eames's, 308. Sumner, Charles Pinckney, sheriff, anecdote of, 171, 172. Sumner, Mrs. C. P., anecdotes of, 177, 178. Sunday, observance of, in the Ward family, 48. Sutherland, Duke of, 99. Sutherland, Duchess of (Harriet Howard), 99; her attire at Lansdowne House, 102; at the ball at Almack's, 106; at the Countess of Carlisle's dinner, 106, 107; her relations with the Queen, 107. Swedenborg, Emanuel, his "Divine Love and Wisdom," 204; his theory of the divine man, 208; works read, 209. "Sylphide, La," 135. Taddei, Rosa, 130. Taglioni, Madame, _danseuse_, 135. "Task, The," William Cowper's, 58. Tasso, 176, 206. Taylor, "Father" (Edward T.), Boston Methodist city missionary, 263. Taylor, Mrs. Peter, founds a college for working women, 333. Terry, Luther, an artist in Rome, 127; married to Mrs. Crawford, 312. Terry, Mrs. Luther. See Ward, Louisa. Thackeray, William M., his admiration for Mrs. Frank Hampton, 234; depicts her in Ethel Newcome, 235. Theatre, the, frowned down in New York, 15, 16. Thoreau, Henry D., Emerson's paper on, 290. Ticknor, Miss Anna, in the Town and Country Club, 407. Ticknor, George, letter of introduction from, to Miss Edgeworth, 113; to Wordsworth, 115. Tolstoi, Count Lyeff, his "Kreutzer Sonata" disapproved of, 17. Torlonia, a Roman banker, anecdote of, 27; ball given by, 123. Torlonia's Palace, 122, 128. Törmer, an artist, 127. Tourgenieff, the Russian novelist, 412. Town and Country Club of Newport founded, 405; its eminent lecturers, 406, 407. Townsend, Mrs. Gideon (Mary A. Van Voorhis), poet of the opening of the New Orleans Exposition, 399. Transcendentalism, ridiculed by Dickens, 139; by Cranch, 145; a world movement, 146, 147. "Trip to Cuba," Mrs. Howe's book, extract from, 233; published in the "Atlantic Monthly" and in book form: attacked, 236. Tübingen, University of, confers a degree on Samuel Ward, Mrs. Howe's brother, 68. Turks, their devastation of Greece, 85. Tweedy, Edmund, 402. Tweedy, Mary, 402. Umberto, king of Italy, crowned, 424. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Mrs. Stowe's, 253. United States, Bank of, Jackson's refusal to renew charter of, 50; English sneer at, 117. Van de Weyer, Mr. Sylvain, Belgian minister to England, 93. Van de Weyer, Mrs. Sylvain, 92. Vatican, evening visit to, 129; head of Zeus in, 132. "Via Felice," a poem, 200. Victor Emmanuel, his popularity and death, 423. Victoria, Queen, 93. Vienna, the Howes at, 118. Von Walther, Mme., 118. Voysey, Rev. Charles, sermon by, 330. Waddington, W. H., 410. Wade, Benjamin F., commissioner on the annexation of Santo Domingo, 181, 345. Wadsworth, William, of Geneseo, 104. Walcourt, Lord, visited by the Howes, 114, 115. Walcourt, Lady, 115. Wall Street, Samuel Ward in, 51; John Ward in, 55. Wallace, Horace Binney, a delightful companion, 198, 199; sad death, 200; lines to, 200, 201; recommends Comte's work, 211. "Wandsbecker Bote," Matthias Claudius's, 62. Ward, Annie. See Mailliard, Mrs. Adolph. Ward, Frances Marion, sent to Round Hill School, 5; at home, 45. Ward, Henry, uncle of Mrs. Howe, a lover of music and good cheer, 19. Ward, Henry, brother of Mrs. Howe, sent to Round Hill School, 5; at home, 45; his character, 53; death, 54. Ward, John, uncle of Mrs. Howe, 19; a practical man, 20; notes of his life, 54-55; anecdote of, 66. Ward, Louisa, wife of Thomas Crawford, 45; at Rome, 73; her beauty, 137; her journey to Rome with Mrs. Ward, 190; established at Villa Negroni, 192; marries Luther Terry: visited in 1867 by Mrs. Howe, 313; goes to the consecration of Leo XIII., 425. Ward, Richard, 19. Ward, Gov. Samuel, of Rhode Island, 3, note. Ward, Samuel, grandfather of Mrs. Howe, appearance and manner, 19; her father's grief at his death, 50. Ward, Samuel, father of Mrs. Howe, his birth and descent, 3; grief at his wife's death, 11; care for his children, 11; plans for their education, 13; religious views become more stringent, 15; gives up wine, tobacco, and cards, 18-20; his fine taste, 45; generosity: discussion with his son regarding social intercourse, 46; his family habits, 47; his observance of Sunday, 48; ideas of propriety; religious faith, 49; business ability, 50; carries New York State through the crisis of 1837, 50, 51; his early experience in Wall St., 51; his death, 52; his careful restraint of his daughter, 52, 53; his portrait in the New York Bank of Commerce, 55; condemns Goethe's "Faust," 59; displeased with his son Samuel's work, 69. Ward, Mrs. Samuel (Julia Rush), mother of Mrs. Howe: marriage and education: her charm of character, 5; anecdotes of, 5, 6; her tact, 6; death, 10, 11. Ward, Samuel, brother of Mrs. Howe, sent to Round Hill School, 5; travels in Europe: at home, 45; his defense of society, 46; enlivens the austerity of the Ward household, 49; establishes a home of his own, 53; marries Emily Astor, 65; his appearance and education, 67; travels abroad, 68; his lack of interest in business, his second marriage, 69; goes to California, 70; Indian adventures, 70, 71; life in Washington: becomes "King of the Lobby," 72; his friends, 72, 73; his visit to Lord Rosebery: death at Pegli: volume of poems, 73. Ward, Mrs. Samuel (Emily Astor), her marriage, 65; her fine voice, 74, 75. Ward, Mrs. Samuel (Medora Grimes), married, 69. Ward, William, 19. Waring, Col. George E., 404. Washington, Samuel Ward in, 72; Charles Sumner's residence in, 180; Count Gurowski in, 221-223; Mrs. Eames's position there, 224; funeral of Gurowski in, 226; condition of, during the civil war, 269, 270; Mrs. Howe lectures in, 308. Washington, Gen. George, 9; his attention to Mrs. Cutler, 35; waited on by "Daughters of Liberty," 36; birthday celebrated in Rome, 203. Wasson, David A., a member of the Radical Club, 282; his reply to Mr. Abbott, 289. Webster, Daniel, Theodore Parker's sermon on, 164; defeated for the senatorship by Sumner, 218. Wedding ceremonies described, 33, 34, 65, 66. Weiss, Rev. John, at the Boston Radical Club, 283, 284; on woman suffrage, 289; on poets and philosophers, 304. Welles, Gideon, secretary of the navy, 225. Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, anecdote of, 17. Wentzler, A. H., paints portrait of John Ward, 55. Whipple, Edwin P., reviews "Passion Flowers," 228; attends Mrs. Howe's parlor lectures, 306. White, Andrew D., commissioner on the annexation of Santo Domingo, 181, 345. White, Mrs. Andrew D., 346. White, Charlotte, a "character" in early New York, 77. Whiting, Solomon, attends Mrs. Howe's lecture in Washington, 309. Whitney, Miss Anne, her statue of Harriet Martineau, 158. Whittier, John G., praises "Passion Flowers," 228; his characterization of Dr. Howe, 370. Wieck, the German composer, described by Mrs. Jameson, 40. Wilbour, Mrs. Charlotte B., prominent in the woman's congress, 385, 386. Wilderness, battle of, 265. "Wilhelm Meister," Goethe's, discussed, 59. Wilkes, Rev. Eliza Tupper, takes part in the convention of woman ministers, 312. Willis, N. P., at the Bryant celebration, 278. Wilson, Henry, 178. Wines, Rev. Frederick, at the Prison Reform meetings, 340. Winkworth, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen, friends of peace, their hospitality, 330. Wolcott, Mrs. Henrietta L. T., her talk on waifs, 392; helps Mrs. Howe with the woman's department of a fair in Boston in 1882, 394. Woman suffrage, championed by Wendell Phillips, 157, 158; by John Weiss, 289; meeting in favor of, in Boston, 375; other efforts, 376; workers for it, 378; urged in Vermont, 380; legislative hearings upon, 381-384. Wood, Mrs., sings in New York: her voice, 15. Woods, Rev. Leonard, invites Mrs. Howe to contribute to the "Theological Review," 44. "Words for the Hour," Mrs. Howe's second publication, 230. Wordsworth, William, the poet, the Howes' visit to, 115, 116. "World's Own, The," a drama by Mrs. Howe, 230. Yerrington, James B., 156. Zénaïde, Princess, 202. [Transcribers' note: Original spelling has been maintained and not standardized. Footnotes have been renumbered for consistency. To indicate text in italic font, _underscores_ have been used. Typographical errors that were corrected: 'an-answered'-->'answered': It was a timid performance upon a slender reed, but the great performers in the noble orchestra of writers answered to its appeal, which won me a seat in their ranks. 'Gary'-->'Cary': The story of his life and work is beautifully told in the "Life and Correspondence" published soon after his death by his widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, well known to-day as the president of Radcliffe College. 'spoken or'-->'spoken of': The young man whom I saw at this time was spoken of as much devoted to the turf, and the only saying of his that I have ever heard quoted was his question as to how long it took Nebuchadnezzar to get into condition after he had been out to grass. 'sum'-->'summer': spends the summer of 1841 near Boston: visits the Perkins Institution. 'Vermöchtniss'-->'Vermächtniss': "Die Zeit ist mein Vermächtniss, mein Acker ist die Zeit." The index entries for 'William Ellery Channing', the preacher, referred to on pp. 144 and 416; and the poet, referred to on p. 370, were separated.]