■ • ■ -v * -■•: SS6BSK ■MM «MMiiMwniwntumtwim« aasei I TTYfW1"Mfr * T'""""'n'riynT OT ttttl t K l OTia «nanmsM«»aam »WMwww l srarau«iYTra aB ^ k 1 L/iUi j j ■MMMHHI up 1 1 mmm i iiiiinitMiMMm— u tfookJQ-£J%_ Cojpghl X° lossible good-by. All thanks to dear Mr. Burr, and the same measure of love to his sweet little wife, for the joint invitation that makes the holidays some- thing so beautiful to look forward to. The Santa Claus hint deserves to be mentioned also. Maggie de- sires me to say, though, that his saintship is no stranger to the chimneys of " Lake Cottage," and ONE BY ONE 53 urges that I stay here. However, dear Lizzie, my heart is set upon coming to you, if only for the pleas- ure of passing the first Christmas with you and Mr. Burr in your new and beautiful home. P. S. — Water is to nature what melancholy is to the soul: beautiful in its mildness, but terrific and fear- ful in its wrath. When I began my letter, Ontario was sleeping in her beauty; but since then she has foamed and roared like a thing of very madness! Her long circling waves have overturned the sea- man's home, and borne it far down where the wind- gods sleep, and the bones of wrecked mariners lie thick on the ground. To-day I took a long, long adieu of dear William's grave. Maggie led me there and left me alone, the while to commune with my beautiful dead ; and as the waves washed the bright pebbles to the shore and bore them back again, so the tide of memory swept over my heart its cherished hopes while I watched them fall back, one by one, into the sea of life, to re- turn no more, nevermore! To Mrs. C. A. Burr, Rochester, N. Y. CHAPTER XII SO QUICK, ALAS ! Rochester, N. Y., December, 1847. But for the injunction of Kaine, " Never begin a letter with I or You/ 9 this would assuredly have opened: I am passing the holidays with my friend Lizzie, at her new home. It was not my pleasure to see the dear one exchange her hand for another's, but I heard her breathe her heart away in vows so low and sweet that the angels must have hastened to re- cord them. Her empire now is a domestic circle, her rule gentleness, and by it she winneth sway over all who come within her borders. Her sceptre over my heart, though, just now she is making golden by read- ing me the life and letters of Goldsmith, whose poetic works I had husked, as Addison says, with mine own eyes. * It is safe to read authors whom one may love as well as their writings. Byron kindled his imagina- tion by the dark and turbid waters of Acheron, while Goldsmith wandered by the great river of common life, gathering his pure thoughts and poet pictures from the every-day scenes around him. Poor Gold- smith! poverty and want, it would seem, were his only constant friends, and his haunts must have often echoed with his groans while he went up the great 54 SO QUICK, ALAS! 55 highway to distinction, wreathing upon his brow crowns woven of immortal laurels. A more ancient poet had for his motto, " The dar- ing fortune favors ! " and an American divine says : " In great and good pursuits it is honorable, it is right, to use that kind of omnipotence which says I icill. and the thing is done." But, my dear love, I am wondering how this, or any other motto, can apply to those doomed to gather gems of thought through the voices of others, or grope for them with their fingers, instead of flashing them into the soul through the starry glances of the eye ? In the early autumn, my charming friend, Mrs. Snow, came with her ponies to take me riding. We crossed twice the Genesee, then followed up its wind- ings till we came where the sun's rays were turned away by the forest trees. The sharp, quick noise of the carriage-wheels changed to a muffled rumbling. We rode slowly over the winding roads; all was sacredly silent. The hushed breeze that stirred the leaves seemed the breath of prayer. It was Mount Hope, our beautiful home for the dead; and as we wandered among the tombs and monuments, pausing to read their inscriptions in grooved and raised let- ters, I whispered to my heart : " How surely " ' The most beloved on earth Not long survive to-day/ " Dear, beautiful Mount Hope! thou art indeed a solemn volume, upon whose marble pages of moss- covered testimonies even the blind may read, and learn how verily the shining footprints of Him who 56 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY conquered death are the only lights adown the dark and lonely way. Sweet Frankie Ball is sleeping there, with her baby by her side, so covetous are the angels of their own, and so quick, alas ! " sorrow treads upon the heels of joy." The overflowing kindness of ray Eochester friends, added to the watchful tenderness of all who come in my way. has often, often made me wonder if the world has not, indeed, grown better since I could see. Still, when the flowers unfold their leaves and the birds come back, there will be nothing left for me but to take up my line of march again to that lonely in- stitution. But, my one star in all Xew York, you will come to me there sometimes, as before — will you not ? and with so much of love and so much of light, the place, even at its worst, cannot be wholly dark. A stranger, and shut up in that school for the unfortu- nate, how found I such sweet lodgement in your sym- pathies, and what good spirit moved you to come so often to beguile my lonely hours? If one good act pleases God more than another, it must be such for- getfulness of self and such desire to make others happy. Your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Holland, have returned to Boston. The day previous to their departure the sociable of their church was held at the residence of the venerable Dr. Brown, upon whom the weight of vears has fallen so lishtlv that, although over ninetv, v O * 7 O * 7 like Moses at one hundred and twenty, his force is no whit abated, and the heart in him seems as young and beautiful as ever. It was he who framed and pre- sented the bill to the Legislature for the abolition of SO QUICK, ALAS! 57 slavery in the State of New York; and every morn- ing of its anniversary, with the rising of the sun, all the sable ones of the city gather around his house, chanting hymns for themselves and imploring good cheer and length of days for the revered champion of their liberty. Toward evening all the ladies were assembling in the Doctor's room, when Mrs. Holland, ignorant of the cause, said to him: " Why, Doctor, you seem to be the star of the evening, as you have been the attraction of the day " ; whereupon the smiling hostess uncov- ered and presented to her a tray of silver pieces, all appropriately inscribed. Their choked feelings re- fused words ; the light of the past was on them ; and with these beautiful expressions of gratitude and love before them, they and all present wept over the mem- ory of love-deeds shared, kindnesses exchanged, and ties soon to be severed forever. Later Mr. Holland came, and Dr. Brown presented his son, the David of his old age, for baptism ; then the Last Supper was spread, the cup poured, fare- wells were repeated, and the little party broke up, to assemble no more until that day when, as the Master said, " I drink it new with you in my Father's king- dom." To-day the liquid thunders of the falls mingle with the winds, and storms are gathering, as on the day when you came first with books and papers to read to me in that lonely habitatio tenebrarum. Your words of love were music that fell on my ear and sank down into my heart ; and as the flowers at eve incline their heads to the departing sunbeams, so evermore my 58 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY thoughts are turning longingly to thee, my ever dear, dear Augusta Dean B ; and while I would not have those darling little ones of yours in the least disturbed in their worship at love's holiest altar, nor your heart's temple one ray less love-lighted for their coming, still, " if wishes had the potency of a fiat," I would have the first named and the first answered among their prayers for " dear mamma " the leisure and the quiet wherein to write me. To Mrs. Augusta Dean Buckley, New York. CHAPTER XIII KADIUS OF THE SOUL " Willowbank," Rochester, N. Y., March, 1848. We whose eyes are closed have but two divisions of time : a noisy night and a quiet one. Morning comes, and the light streams in sunny rills over all the glad- some earth. A little time ago we, too, awoke ere the sun had kissed the dews into vapor, and ran joyous to greet the faces of those whom we loved, refreshed and beautified by a night of slumber. And oh, do you re- member, Mary, how from the opened doors in rushed, like resisted waters, a flood of golden light, while far over the green hills the full-orbed sun showered his splendors, and high up the blue sky fleecy clouds were flying? Among the trees merry birds were singing, and on the flowers busy bees their nectar draughts were sipping ; all the insect tribes were hum- ming, and we, too, in girlhood glee, went singing : " How joyful, oh, how joyful is the morning ! " But now it is not so ; our night is unending. " Days steal on us and steal from us." We sleep and awaken, but no change comes. No flowers spring up in our path ; no garden walks nor fields unfold their colors ; no mountains rise, no rivers roll, nor oceans swell. 59 60 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY To us beauty hath veiled her face, and grandeur and sublimity have passed away. Yes, Mary, all things have passed away. The moon has left the sky, and all the constellated stars have gone down forever. The bright dreams of our youth have fled, and promised joys come not. All around are blithe and gay, but from morn till eve, Mary, we move cautiously and pensively. Our truant feet often go astray, and we know not when danger is nigh. As the chained eaglet looks heavenward and stretches out her wing in fan- cied freedom, so we sometimes intercept the flight of time and live forgetful in light and joy and hope, only to return and weep in darkness more dark and lone- liness more lonely. But, Mary, our darkness, like the clouds, must have its sunny side. God takes blessings from us only when their absence is the greater blessing. Sorrow, sanctified, quickens into newness of life the better feelings of our nature. Albeit less beloved, as per- adventure less prized, we are still the gainer, since the good of loving is ever weighed largest to him who loveth most. Those whom we hold dear come to us now clothed in our own chastened ideal, of all fault bereft, and perforce we love them more — love God more, even as David foresaw that it would be with him when he prayed, " Turn away mine eyes from be- holding vanity ! " Imagination, too, that sublime radius of the soul, is every day taking to herself a broader sweep, pierc- ing even the sepulchre of the buried past and tread- ing fearless within the boundary of the unseen. In- deed, science or art or earth or sky have no treas- RADIUS OF THE SOUL 61 ured worth, no hidden beauty, that fancy, in her fleetness, does not picture in colors brighter far than open eyes can see; and as flowers from the depths of the ocean come floating o'er the swelling tide, so beau- tiful images from the long-forgotten past gladden now our searching memories. Galileo, who saw more than all the world before him, and opened the eyes of all after him, from the top of his prison, with the instrument his own hands had wrought, watched the wheeling orbs above until his eyes grew opaque as the satellites he discovered. Then in his woe he cried : " Oh, ye gods, for power to look once more into the serene depths of the clear night-heaven ! " If we may judge from his frequent and happy al- lusions to its beauties, Milton would have given all other sights for the glorious morning; Saunders de- sired only once to look along the pages of a book ; and I have heard you say, Mary, that you would rather see the flowers again than all the world beside. But, oh, if I were to be blessed with one moment of sight, if for one brief second, even, these clouds could be folded back, I should pray to look again into the face of a cherished friend, forgetting all in the joy of once more beholding a pair of soul-lighted eyes, beaming with intelligence and love, whose spirit-glances imag- ination cannot picture, and things so holy unsancti- fied memory may not treasure. Alas ! only they who watch in heaven can pity the saddened feelings that steal upon us, when with ravished ears we listen to descriptions of paint- ings on the walls, rainbows upon the watery clouds, 62 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY and all the shades and forms of life that come and go. Ah, no; and what a mercy that hope, white- handed, forever points our thoughts away to a world where light is that fades not ; where the painter, with his brush of divine art dipped in color's native well, sketches holy imagery, scenery of heaven, with flowers blooming by living fountains ; and among them, softly moving, the fair forms of the blest when day-spring's fragrant dews hang empearled upon their seraph locks ; where poets, seated upon blissful mounds, write while the inspirations of holy genius burn and blaze along their lines ; where, invited by the voice of Him who sits in majesty enthroned, we may explore truths into which philosophers here look and grow bewildered with their depths ; where, illumined by His light, we may watch His creating hand mould worlds and toss them into the fields of ether, pensile hung, while His love clothes the lilies of the field, and " tempers the winds to the shorn lamb." Life, after all, Mary, is very much what we make it. In other words, shut away from all that is ex- ternal, we are very nearly the creators of the world we live in. Let us see to it, then, that we be good creators. Since day and night are the same, we can as well people our minds with the beams of the one as the clouds of the other; as well call back images of joy and gladness as those of grief and care. The latter, however, may sometimes be our guests to sup and dine, but let them never be permitted to lodge with us. We came forth in childhood's morn to gather flowers; and because on our way we have dropped a few, we will not sit down and weep over RADIUS OF THE SOUL 63 the lost, but rather amuse ourselves counting and admiring those we have left. Cora is an angel of patience, Mary, or I had not written you so long a letter. Her little hand must be weary, though she says No ; and when I complain of troubling her, she folds her white arms around my neck and whispers : "Afflicted friends are our ' min- istering spirits ' ; for us they languish, for us they die." Dear Mary, it is four by the clock, and I fancy myself again in the institution parlor, drumming a piano-lesson as if noise were its only object! Now opens the door. Kittie, Libbie, Josie, and Susie, all in one breath inquire : "Mr. Dean? Mr. Dean?" " No, he has not come yet." Away they run and presently return with some dozen more. Now they are not mistaken. His well-known tread in the hall they heard, and his voice guides them to his arms. Some are in his lap, others hang around his chair; all expect a kiss, a kind word; yes, and something more. Look ! what has he now for these, his pet chil- dren? Pineapples, bananas, figs, oranges, etc. These with a father's fondness he divides, answering mean- time their many questions of the people who grow and gather such delicious fruits, how preserved, where procured, etc. But where is Charlie, the pet of all the house? Forgive the little rogue ! he has gone, trudging up the long stairs with a heart full of complaint to Miss Wild that his apron pockets " aint bigger enough " ! Patting them on the head affectionately, Mr. Dean 64 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY says : " Go away now, my children, to your play, while I read a little to these larger girls." Bless his great heart ! some choice book, we know, perhaps just from the press ; and as we sit encircled around, hour after hour goes unheeded by, until, warned by the shades of evening, the book is closed, and at the yard gate we bid him adieu. It is a long walk to Mr. Dean's mansion; but his happy thoughts, like angel company, make him for- get distance and lose all record of time. Ah, Love, thou art indeed a brighter light than the sun. holier than the stars, and thy beams around the heart are more sweet and more dewy than the rosiest morning. I often wonder who comes to read for you now on Sabbath evenings since Mr. Hamilton Murray has gone to make Oswego his home. We never forget those to whom we have been truly kind; so, doubtless, thoughts of those whom his frequent visits and pleas- ant readings made so happy, will come to him some- times even there. Yesterday two canaries were presented to me. One I am to bring to Miss Ann, and the other to you, Mary. Their warblings are equalled in sweetness by none but your own. Pardon me if I flatter; but I could not compliment their musical powers more, nor describe them to vou better. To Miss Mary Brush, Blind Institute, Xew York. CHAPTER XIV A COVERT WAY Rochester, N. Y., March, 1848. It is pleasant to be even the sport of a chance breeze while it continues to set one down by pleasant places. I am passing the winter amid the sunny homes of this one city in the world so like heaven that its doors stand always ajar! Miss Ferrier says beautifully in her " Marriage " : "As the ancients held sacred the oak riven by the lightning, so a delicate mind always regards one who has been afflicted as if touched by the hand of God Himself." The cold and unfeeling, whose souls har- bor only selfishness and haughty pride, never seek those whose proofs of the Lord's love are best counted in the stripes they have received, but, like priests and Levites, pass on the other side ; which, you see, leaves me always necessarily with the good, who alone find pleasure contributing to the happiness of one who can make no return for their favors. They tell me, though, dearest Laura, that gratitude, that holiest of heavenly emotions, is too much the theme of my letters ; and complain that I give words of thanks and praise to everyone who is kind, all unmindful that green-eyed prejudice is still in the world. But they who say thus should know that the 65 66 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY inoons of two very long years have come and waned since even a harsh word has fallen upon my ear. or a frowning face, a look of anger or hate, passed be- fore my eyes. "We are creatures of habit and form our ideas of the world very much from what we see of it. Wonder not. then, that I should call it only bright and beautiful. The last time I saw the green earth and its inhabitants, they wore yet the sunny hues of innocence and gladness with which unsus- pecting youth covers all things, and so they seem to me now. Indeed, were I to bear a report to heaven, I should call this a charming world, a kind, a loving, and a forgiving world. I should say men oftener love than hate, oftener do good than ill ; and oh ! '"Long, long be my heart with such memories filled. Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled; Ye may break, ye may ruin the vase,, if ye will, But the scent of the roses will hang round it still." A Alarch morning more soft and clear never graced an Italian sky. The ice-bands of the Genesee are broken, and its waters roll on again, tossing liquid gems to the sunbeams : and robins, first warblers among the leafless trees, are welcoming in the spring. It is Saturday, the holy Sabbath of the Jews, but the Christian's preparation-day. I have been with Lizzie and Carrie to their place of prayer, and the solemnities of the house of God are still on my thoughts. White-haired age and the young were there, inquiring. " What shall we do to be saved'" A stranger opened the exercises with the words, " Seek me early, and ye shall find me." Dr. Shaw A COVERT WAY 67 followed, addressing himself mostly to the youth of his congregation, or " children of the covenant," as he called them. It is the church to which my William belonged, and it seemed sometimes that he had really come in and was sitting beside me, while memory's panorama of the beautiful bygone came brightening over my thoughts, and I was looking again into that sunlighted world, refreshing my heart with all its images of love and gladness. Oh, this night is too long! The tread of the watchman long, long since ceased, and yet no ap- proach of the dawn. Alas ! hope fails, my heart fails, all fails, save Him who hath promised, " I will guide thee with mine eye " ; and sometimes, too, even heaven seems far, far off, like those distant stars whose light has never yet travelled down to us, and I walk by faith blindly. Ah, why wish to prolong days that hardly bring more than misery f Is it the known that we love so well, or is it the unknown that we fear? How vividly the " Valedictory " you send me re- calls a like scene in the old seminary chapel such a little time ago; while the faces of those learned professors — Seager, Hoyt, Whitlocke, and Pinckney — with their lessons of instruction and their precious counsels, come smiling back to me until I can almost hear the farewell words of Professor Seager ringing again in the air, " First of all be Bible students ! " to which dear Mrs. Seager added, you remember, in her terse and happy way : " Ignorance of anything else may be palliated; but for lacking knowledge of the one Book in the world that gives grace and wisdom 68 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY to our lives, and offers immortality beyond the grave, there is no excuse and no pardon." I envy you, dear Laura, the privilege of still abid- ing in the temple where we worshipped together at the shrine of knowledge, as I might also the talent that points you with such prophetic finger to a future whose close, like the setting of the sun, may be lost in the purple and the gold of its own splendors. Alas! mine is a covert way which I tread sad and alone; but so it bring me out to that purple dawn in the closing scene of the vision, with those mys- terious, shining squares, you remember, close folded in my arms, I shall count it " an highway " indeed, and most blessed of all ways. It is doubtless no sin to be poor, and yet it would seem scarcely otherwise, inasmuch as there is hardly a command that does not imply the possession of at least more than barely enough for one's self. More still, what is there of this world's good that money does not secure, save a heart beating always in har- mony with one's own, breathing melodies in thoughts as they occur, and feelings as they spring spontaneous from the soul! Such a friend, though, rarely comes to us more than once in a lifetime, and, like an angel visitor, seems then heaven-bound and sure to leave us early. Is it true that sweet Amelia is going to make her home far away, where the gates to the beautiful Orient " on golden hinges turn"! And her native land to lose her, and our hearts to mourn her forever! It was the kine, though, lowing for their young left chained behind them, who were chosen to bear the A COVERT WAY 69 Ark of the Lord up out of Philistia. And so, full often the priests and diviners of fate call woman to pen up all the weak, crying things of her soul and leave them behind her, while she goes far over life's weary way, treading upon her own bleeding heart. Full often, too, she must needs even choke down the pain, and hide with smiles the tears that would reveal the sorrow shut up in her soul. To Miss Laura Draper, Canandaigua, N. Y. CHAPTER XV WHO TWICE BLESS Rochester, N. Y., April, 1848. By a strange contradiction of being, we are often most inclined, I believe, to what we really most dread. At least, having been twice as long absent from the institution as I found it well for me to tarry in it, I have come to think longingly of the slim white bed in the dormitory, and the three-legged stool at the table vacated by me. In other words, my music must not be any longer neglected, for although it may never serve me, it will at least help sometimes to be- guile the slow-turning hours ; and as a kind of tocsin calling me back to it, your letter here says : " The in- stitution will seem less desolate, I fancy, with those trunks nicely packed for the summer." My dear Mrs. Tuttle, your whole memory lies cir- cled around in my heart with so many deeds of love and kindness, that to make my thanks to you worthily I should have a language so woven from real thought and feeling as to leave no necessity for words. How, then, receive these delicately proposed attentions to my wardrobe, how fold this new kindness up in my heart, without some demur against your setting those white hands to such another love-labor for me ? How decline it, either, or how do better than to let you be 70 WHO TWICE BLESS 71 just as lovely to me as you wish! Imagine, then, your cordial invitation for a visit to your home covered all over with thanks, while I await opportunity there to tell you how dear and good and beautiful you are. On Christmas eve dear Mrs. Snow sent me some lovely dress patterns, with the sweetest note in the world, and a long, rich scarf ; and early in the morn- ing Miss Helen Phelps came smiling into my room, like a thing of light, with an elegant shawl for me, and a nice set of Russia marten from my young gen- tlemen friends. On New Year's, too, Mr. Champion called, and with his " Happy New Year " left with Lizzie one of his richest presents for me, saying, " Tell her that it is from Santa Glaus, only a little slow coming ! " But the greatest surprise of all was my letter to Lizzie in the paper New Year's morn- ing, with such a beautiful preface. Why, if the editor really means what he says, I may yet almost hope to do something with my pen. He called, in the even- ing, and among other encouragements assured me that my letter to Lizzie is really one of the most gracefully written things in the world. What you have heard of my clergyman friend, though, means just nothing at all. I took the name of one who, you know, sleeps by yonder lake, and put on black for him ; and I shall neither change the one nor part with the other till the angels bring me robes of light, and new-name me, I trust, among those whom heaven has called its own. However, I hope to be ere long in a position to relieve my friends of that earnest sympathy which your letter so endear- ingly expresses. The lady whom I am visiting is 72 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY one of my sincere friends, and yet she never wearies picturing brighter days for me. So trusting, may my shadow soon fall aslant your open door, and myself come straight to your loving arms. By the low win- dow there it will be sweet to watch the hours age and disappear again, while we ponder upon that strange foreshadowing of my lot, to the first four scenes of which Time has turned seer and translated them into such stern realities. Mrs. Snow read me your precious letter, and, if possible, the words were more dear falling from her lips. Oh, she is such a generous, noble-hearted woman ! I have stopped with her more than with all my friends in E , and yet she never seems to know that I have troubled her at all. Her home, like herself, is always sunny and cheerful, her carriage is the freest thing in the world, and her doors, I tell her, open and shut as though they turned in the very oil of hospitality. Her invitations, too, seem more com- mands for her own pleasure than favors conferred. In a word, like yourself, she knows how to be beauti- fully kind ; how to present roses without thorns, and give pleasure without pain — an art taught by the angels, who twice bless, blessing unseen. To Mrs. Mary B. Tuttle, Palmyra, N. Y, CHAPTER XVI NIGHT-DAYS Rochester, N. Y., April, 1848. It is arranged now that I leave for New York on the first May morning ; and, alas ! how many shadows flock to my heart at every thought of the future ! Of course you had good and wise reasons for re- signing your position as one of the board of managers at the institution; but, dear Mr. Dean, when I think of being barred again within those gloomy walls, my heart sinks at the idea of your coming no more to heighten with your cheering presence the few pensive joys possible to those destined to sit forever upon the stub of time, dreaming and blinking away the long night-days. My poor eyes, after which you so kindly inquire, have not yet wholly recovered from the effect of the coal fires, to say nothing of the blows they received there. You see, besides my own frequent collisions with the edges of doors and other stationary objects about the house and the grounds, it took me months to learn that those fearless stalkers, up and down the halls, could not see ; and our bumpings of heads were sometimes fearful. The trouble was, I went there too soon. I was neither strong of heart enough for so great a change, nor was my nervous system sufii- 73 74 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY ciently reestablished for the study and the amount of practice that I subjected myself to. However, what- ever is, must be for the best ; and, striving always to do the right, that one did a thing almost proves it best that one did do it. At all events, there is nothing left for me now but to put on as sunny a face as possible, and laugh when they speak of my returning to resume my labors as a novitiate. One does not grow to be a philosopher in a day. Sometimes, though, I seem to be letting go the past with its shades, hence on to find out higher and brighter paths, sweeter waters, and greener pastures. The last month has been like summer, and Lizzie and Carrie have made the most of it laying out and adorning the grounds around their new homes. Their places are adjoining, and between the two I have passed most of the time out of doors, which, with my visit home and long ride over the far-away hills, has done much toward restoring my former exuberance. Indeed, my cheerfulness has come to be quite a mar- vel ; but you see, Mr. Dean, I should have learned by this time to be at least as politic as the owl, who knows full well that his dolorous notes would soon drive every bird from the trees miles around him; and so, for the sake of their sweet companionship, he sits all the day long patiently choking down his melancholic griefs until night has put the world to sleep, and then — Well, yes, and then ! Alas ! if there were only a university for the blind, or only anything beyond the bare preliminaries of an education which the different States have provided ! Just think of it ! almost two thousand years since the NIGHT-DAYS 75 precept was proclaimed, Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you, and not a college yet on the globe for the class who have not only given to the world its oldest and grandest specimens of litera- ture, but being compelled, as they are, to live wholly mental lives, should be, along all the ages, the very mandarins of its wisdom. Every year scores are forced to quit the institutions of the different States, where their souls have been merely fired with the love of learning. Some go back to their country homes, there to do the churning, saw the wood, or knit the stockings, as the case may be. Others, less favored, as you know, eke out an existence by following some one or other of the paltry mechanical tricks called trades, which their fingers have been stupidly taught ; while the God-lighted souls in them drag away the years yearning for those lofty reaches of thought which made a Saunders, second only to New- ton; and a Milton, in grandeur and sublimity of the ideal second to none this side of heaven. Alas ! when will governments be wise? When will the world know to seek its own good, by being first just and generous to others! Ah, Mr. Dean, were the wealth of your friend Mr. A only yours, not a decade would pass before the turrets of a university for the blind would be towering so far heavenward that the angels, even, might mistake their beacon-lights for those of a still higher heaven, and come down to wor- ship at its immortal shrines. You have doubtless read of the one Persian college whose admittances are for life, no student ever gradu- ating thereat save with death. And such a school, 76 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY dear Mr. Dean, can there never be builded in the world for the knowledge-loving, knowledge-craving blind, who sit forever with veiled eyes peering down into their own souls; sighing in vain for richer and prouder material wherewith to rear temples of thought, grand and beautiful enough to make the Homers, the Miltons, and the Ossians of heaven, even, sigh to come back and dwell therein? To Mr. Nicholas Dean, New York. CHAPTER XVII YOUNG LADIES Geneva, N. Y., May, 1848. Agitated with the fears and anxieties of a lonely journey ? I find myself illy prepared to interest hearts as light and joyous as yours. Still, inasmuch as your editress has so kindly asked of me a contribution to your forthcoming paper, I hasten to jot down for your perusal a few of the thoughts and fancies that, in my sudden exit from the seeing world, memory chanced to bring along with me. Peace at last spread her downy wings upon this our fair and happy land. Our foes said it was enough. The din of battle ceased, and ere the roar of its can- non had died away, like Miriam, after the passage of the Eed Sea, Madam Rowson was the first to weave into song the gladdened notes of freedom and the hal- lelujahs of victory! And as the heart of one bird is stirred by the song of another, enough joined in the charm of her chorus to keep the wild Muses from flying away. But as in all new countries, during the first years of our independence education was con- fined to a few ; and not until machinery began to do the work of hands did the daughters of America re- ceive their emancipation papers from the distaff and the loom. Then a change, indeed, came over the 77 78 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY spirit of their dreams; and now, ere a century has elapsed, to see what they have done to help on the great march of intellect, and to mark the pace they have kept with their rivals in other lands, one must visit the temples of our nation's freedom, pass along those marble aisles, and count there the contributions they have made to those vast cabinets of intellectual treasures. True, we find there no Mrs. Hemans, who brushed the tears from her saddened cheek, and sang to the ages songs so sweet that it will be long ere one comes to rival her in the glory of her strains ; nor a Letitia Landon, who struck her heart's lyre and filled the great ear of all time with the moaning murmur of her melodies. No ; and what is more, our cousins from across the waters tell us that while, as a nation, we continue our expensive habits of dress, our luxurious indulgences of pleasure and ease, with their attendant wastes of time, we may never hope to count in our constellation of sister stars a Madam Thrale, a Mrs. Opie, or a Lady Mary Somerville; a Caroline Lamb or a Hannah More. Still, in contrast to all these, with what just pride do we point to our gifted Mrs. Maria Brooks, to whom America first bequeathed her magic wand, and in whose gorgeous imagery, blending with the sweet graces of her style, one traces all the gold and purple of our dreamy skies, fringed with the autumn hues of our forests and flowers; as in the strange melodies of her impassioned verse we hear the quaint songs of our birds and the music of our waterfalls winding and cascading adown her fines. YOUNG LADIES 79 Also Mrs. Gilman, Margaret Fuller, Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Sigourney, and, more than all, Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, whose poetic gems may be compared to bracelets of sweet opals upon the fair arms of Liberty, in whose ears Bryant has hung the jewelled stars, thousands helped to wreathe her neck around with dewy pearls, and Longfellow set the shining Pleiades in her golden crown. But while thus names, all to memory dear, and many that were not born to die, continue to crowd linked hands to our view, we have recalled enough at least to convince ourselves that the day is not far dis- tant when fair Columbia may come to boast of the wisdom and excellence of her daughters, with as much justice and pride as now she points to her sons for the might, the grandeur, and the glory of the world. My dear young ladies, you are here to be educated ; but, oh, how little of life's great discipline may be crowded into these few terms ! Knowledge is a tem- ple whose lofty structure is reared only by long years of study and watchful observation. Here you may scarcely more than lay the foundation, and let me en- treat you then to dig deep and sink its corner-stones broad and well. Do nothing superficially. " Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal." Discipline is what you most need. The mind must be expanded ere it can be stored. Year after year man may toil, patiently hoarding up his gains, and then, by some mishap, lose them all, but still be rich and great in the strength labor has given his bones and 80 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY sinews. Just so memory may prove treacherous to the mind in part, but not in all. You may gather rich thoughts and lose them, without losing the discipline of acquiring them. To a resolute will nothing is impossible, and never be afraid to aspire. You know not what rich tides of feeling may be even now purpling around your young hearts, or what starry thoughts may be rising there. Passing out of these halls, too, to participate in the varied strifes of life, upon whatever pathway to distinction you may choose to enter, or even upon the great race-ground for fame itself, you need not bear upon your escutcheon the leaden words : Impos- sible! Impossible! while all around you, abroad and at home, your brother competitors so boldly inscribe upon theirs that proudest and loftiest of all earth's mottoes, Excelsior! Excelsior! No, no. All that woman is, or ever has been, in any land on the face of the globe, is hence-on possible to the daughters of America, so only they have the courage to will, and the daring or the patience to achieve. Toil on, then ; the more difficult your tasks, the more persevering be your efforts. Knowledge is gained by littles, and the storehouse of the patient gleaner is ever found the fullest. Here a little and there a little, or everywhere something, is the true motto. But to swell the hours with study and chink the moments with thought, as they fly, is not all; and I should be as untrue to myself as unfaithful to you, were I to close this hurried communication without at least pointing you to Him who made Solomon greater than all before him, and wiser than all after him, not YOUNG LADIES 81 so much because of His greater love for him, as in that Solomon's prayer of the night pleased the Lord, " Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart." The young king of Israel, though crowned and scep- tred, honored and beloved as never had king been before, would fain become wiser-hearted, having an understanding to discuss judgment; and as a legacy from his father, David, he knew that in the pursuit of knowledge, even as in the search for peace and par- don, nothing unlocks the chambers of the soul and bends heaven to its needs, like the breath of prayer. And so, young ladies, commending you, now and always, to Him who has said, "Ask of my Father whatsoever ye will, in my name, and it shall be given unto you," I turn to go from all here with regret. If the two weeks of my stay in Geneva have not at all folded back the clouds that envelop me, they have at least fringed them with light; and I bear away with me, close locked in my heart, memories of love and kindness far brighter than the beams on yonder lake, and far longer-lived than the smiles and joys of to-day. So, friends of the Chapin Seminary, teachers, scholars, and all, I bid you adieu, with tears circling around my heart; but they be, in part, tears of joy that we may meet again and drink together at thought's native wells, and gather flowers by those life-streams unfading as the light of heaven. To The Young Ladies, Chapin Seminary, Geneva, N. Y. CHAPTER XVIII ALL OUR FEET TO CLIMBING Blind Institute, New York, May, 1848. When I left your cottage home, my dear father and mother, the sleety winds of early spring were blowing high, and the crocuses were hardly yet above the ground. At your dear threshold you kissed me good- by, and I felt your tears, mother, warm on my cheeks. Then, as if I might never come again, you all, one after another, folded me tenderly in your arms, father said, " God bless you, my child ! " and I rode away. Words are not feelings, so I can never make you know the strange sensations that nestled in my soul while I crossed the hills that windy day. Sometimes I fell into mysterious reveries, and fancied my jour- ney home, my stay with you, and my departure, all an unfinished dream, and I should soon awaken and find it so. I changed my position, and tried to open my eyes to see if the morning had not come. Then I heard distinctly the rumbling of the stage-wheels, the rattling of the harness, and the tread of the horses; the crack of the driver's whip, and the fre- quent passing of farmers' teams. No, I said, this is real ; I am not dreaming. Then I turned my face to the stage-window, and felt the biting wind as it 82 ALL OUR FEET TO CLIMBING 83 whistled by, but all around and above I could see nothing but clouds of folding darkness. Then I sank back, and my spirit reeled beneath the awful weight of conscious blindness, which like a mountain seemed falling on me and hiding me from the world forever. Still I did not weep. I have no longer any tears to shed. My heart has known grief so burning that dews and moisture nevermore gather there. Like a seared forest, its blossoms are faded and its leaves are withered and fallen. En route from Rochester I made a visit of nearly two weeks in Palmyra ; and the night before my de- parture, some young friends came and sang under my window that sweetest of songs, "We will welcome thee back again" ; and another, one couplet of which seemed written ex- pressly for me: "Tis needful we watch thee by day, But the angels will keep thee by night." Professions, though, of love and friendship cost us nothing. Words are wind, and feelings are only the natural swellings of the heart. But acts are living things ; like facts, they are stubborn and immortal ; and if good deeds are footsteps in the ladder which reaches heaven, then dear Mrs. Tuttle cannot be far from the top, after all her beautiful kindness to me. I wrote Eliza Hamilton when I should pass through Geneva, thinking only to have the pleasure of speak- ing with her ; but lo ! she and a half dozen other of my old schoolmates came and fairly captured me from 34 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY the cars; and, as you can imagine, I was too happy with them all to take much note of time. Indeed, the heart keeps no dial, and happiness always forgets to number the hours. If the scenery of a place ever gives tone to the minds and hearts of its inhabitants, then the beautiful Seneca must have lent her look of love to those who dwell by her shore, and rocked all selfishness to sleep in their hearts by the music of her waves. Eliza read to me while there, from one of the back numbers of LittelVs Living Age, a review of Sweden- borg, with lengthy extracts from his works, which I wish you would read, father, and write me how his seeming voyages to the " Other Side " impress you. The passage beginning, " It was given me to see," etc., reminded me of one of grandmother's books, al- ways on her table with her Bible and her glasses, " Dick's Philosophy of the Future State." I can see her now, coming out of her room, looking heavenly enough to have just been to spy out the land, and re- turned with her blessed hands full of the purple clusters ! Sometimes I seem faced about and living backward, so vividly everything and everybody reappear to me. Indeed, like the stars, the whole past seems to have been set in cloud only to make it appear the brighter. I had very little recollection of grandfather's looks, but I can see him now, in his arm-chair at Aldrich Hill, with his long white hair falling over his broad shoulders, and almost count the furrows in his brow, and feel the light of his dear eyes, dark and deep-set like yours, father; while my heart interprets the ALL OUR FEET TO CLIMBING 85 smile on his face, half-sad, as though inly regretting that he had not the prophetic hand of Jacob where- with to bless. I send you, with this, a volume of " Macaulay's Miscellanies," for which I am indebted to a Eoches- ter friend, and for the reading of it also. You will be pleased with " The Life and Times of Milton and Cromwell," although to enjoy his reviews, generally, one must divest his mind of all prejudice, and read and think and feel only with the great author. The type is very fine, they say; but, aided by those new glasses, you will be able to read it. Please remember, though, dear father, that even younger and stronger eyes than yours are often injured by lamp-light, es- pecially when tasked as late as you are in the habit of using yours. Brother must not think he has completed all of " Parley's Tales " because he has read one little book through. They all together make quite a library, and possibly by another Christmas Santa Claus will find a way of crowding the whole set into his stocking, small as it is! I grieve to know, dear mother, that my letter from Rochester caused you to weep. Eyes like yours, wear- ing only smiles and looks of love, should never know tears. Little Libbie Perrin has always been as sweet and loving to me as a little June of roses ; and during my last visit to her mother I hardly made a move or took a step but her little hand was quick in mine; while, for all the letters I wrote, the patient lamb sat perched up beside me, telling me when the ink was out of my pen, and when a word was perchance stray- 86 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY ing too far from the line. The first look at a letter penned under such difficulties was doubtless enough to have brought tears to eyes less pitying than yours, sweet mother. And now I am doing very little bet- ter. The teacher who sharpens pencils for the few here who write is away ; and shave one down as softly as I will, before hardly a line is written the point is gone, and often right in the midst of a word. Then nothing is left but to make a pin-prick as near the last letter as may be; and before the point is restored, it often happens that word, letter, and all are forgotten, and nothing left but to make a dash as a sort of " selah," and begin anew. Do not be discouraged, dear father, however slowly the mill goes around. Your " babies," as you used to call us when clambering for places in your arms or on your lap, will all be able to help you some time, notwithstanding we give so little promise of it now. Little promise, surely! What one hopes, though, more makes one than what one is, and despite the sunset that leaves me no more the light or the day, I have always the sweet prophecy shut up in my heart of yet doing just ever so little to brighten the way of -those whose lives must be forever sombred by the shadow of mine. Indeed, the lost is never quite all lost. Aldrich Hill, even, is still standing; and was perhaps taken away from us only for a little time, just long enough to set all our feet to climbing. To Father and Mother, "Stone Cottage," Mumford, N. Y. CHAPTER XIX MANY BATTLES Blind Institute, New York, June, 1848. There are no words for the loneliness that some- times hangs down around about the world, leaving to the brightest day, even, scarcely more than the shades of misery ! Again in New York, the city of lights and fountains; again, alas! in this gloomy institution! Happiness, though, does not so much depend upon circumstances as we allow. From our own hearts the fountain must well, or no number of tributaries can long keep alive its joyous gushings and its laughing streams. The promenade-grounds in the rear of the institu- tion, covering several acres, were a present to it from a rich " thee " and " thou " Friend ; when straightway Mr. Nicholas Dean volunteered to plant them over with trees, and behold them now tall and majestic — the ailantus from China, the catalpa from Japan, the silver-leaved poplar and abele from the South, the European linden and Norway fir, besides the maple, elm, and others from our own forests. The front yard, too, laid out with beautifully gravelled walks and circles set around with flowers, was largely the work of his love; and now he never wearies coming to tell us of their beauties, their virtues, and their 87 88 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY native homes — Nicholas Dean! whom no title could honor, and for whose great good heart the world has no name; no name either for his excellence in every way, so great he is in himself; always dignified, but never austere. The humblest child in the street might feel free to accost him, while the greatest man in the world could not presume upon his familiarity. But his holiest deeds are wrought where there are none but the angels to see. His heaven-born benevolence loves most to bless the poor little hearts which the great world passes by unheeded. TVhen office hours are over and business done, watch him day after day and year after year wending his way to this Xew York Institute for the Blind, where groups of sight- less ones fly to greet him as their eyes would seek the sun! His folding arms and sympathizing breast make an altar at which each heart there may pour out its griefs, whisper each want and hope and fear; while all the day they speak his name in their sports and pursuits, and at night breathe it in their prayers, as the angels must talk of the beautiful and the good in heaven. The Croton is at last jetting its clear waters in every part of the building, and the little boys count more birds in the trees here this summer than ever before ; and, strange, to say, their quick ears distin- guish their warbling friends by the different keys they sing in. But the old gardener is no more. When the flowers had faded and the autumn winds had strewn the ground with the dead honors of the trees, the old man laid him down to die. Xo more he comes to teach our truant feet where not to tread, and our MANY BATTLES 89 hands to find the fairest blossoms. He was a son of Erin, " green isle of the sea," and next to his God he loved his country. Regarding his own history, though, he was ever studiously silent, only once al- luding to his having been a long-time servant to Aaron Burr. French John, the cook, says : " Me burn much papier for ze old man ven he die — make une grande blaze!" Books were his only companions. His well-worn Bible still lies in his window, with his glasses beside it, all unread and uncared for now. The vocalist, George F. Root, has a class among the pupils of over one hundred, and comes to sing with them two hours every morning. Professor Reiff , though, who has many years had entire control of the musical department, passes half of each day here still. If the consciousness of having contributed to the welfare of others conduces to happiness, then Professor Reiff should be one of the happiest men in the world, if only for having given employment to so many of the blind, and set their hearts to vibrating forever with the melodies of song. If you could hear him in one of his best moods for playing, you would think, as I sometimes do, he will have little cause for complaint if up among the angels they do not present him a new harp, but let him keep his old one. music! all of Eden that escaped the fall! Lost in woe, the world went down, but music, dwelling so near heaven, lingers still, a solace for the wounds it cannot heal, a balm for the ills it may not cure. The preceptress has just returned from a tour South, and brought back with her, as you can imagine, very much to interest those whose little world lies 90 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY almost wholly within these walls. I do not envy, though, so much her drives by Charleston's beautiful bay and Mrs. Polk's charming levees, as for the pleasure of looking on and listening to those grand old Romans in the Senate Chamber — Clay, Calhoun, Crittenden, and Webster. Last week General Scott and his aides paid us a visit. The band received him with " Hail to the Chief ! " When passing them, the General took off his hat and very graciously bowed, which, to his amazement, they unanimously returned. The mem- bers of the band are all blind, and well he might won- der how knew they when to return his bow, save that their spirits were conscious of the deference a greater spirit was paying them. John Wood, the good Qua- ker director, explained it this way : " Let me tell thee, General, the soul has eyes independent of the body." When all were assembled in the chapel, Mr. Cham- berlain addressed the great hero, following him through all the battles he had fought so eloquently that it seemed General Scott could scarcely have dis- tinguished himself from a Ca?sar, a Napoleon, or a Washington, even. Then turning to his sightless charge, his petition in their behalf was so beautiful that I must quote it for you here : " Some of these, General, when you shall have filled up the measure of your fame, and to you the praise and censure of man be alike indifferent, will survive; and when they shall recount your achieve- ments, and tell to coming generations of Chippewa and Cerro Gordo, and of Contreras, and the many other fields upon which you have covered the flag of MANY BATTLES 91 our country with imperishable glory, I would have them say that once at least it was their fortune to listen to the tones of that voice whose word of com- mand was ever to the brave the talisman of assured victory." Then the veteran of many battles arose ; and after acknowledging Mr. Chamberlain's very eloquent ad- dress in the most courteous manner possible, with something in his words strongly suggestive of tears, he turned to speak to us. Alluding to our privation, he said: " Although your enjoyments are perhaps more pensive than those who see, still I know, by the light on your faces, that they are not less elevated and refined." Farther on, he said again: " While, in the providence of God, for the accomplishment of His good and wise purposes, you are called to make the journey of life debarred from the light and most of the pursuits and pleasures of this world, still you must not forget that the most blessed in heaven are those who have come up through great tribulation " ; and closed by pointing us to the Beautiful Beyond so earnestly and lovingly, that I fancied him looking more like a big angel standing up there than a vic- torious commander so late from the field of battle. When the General resumed his seat, Fannie was presented to him and recited a poem which she had prepared for his reception. In it she referred to the soldiers revelling in the halls of Montezuma. The General, in his complimentary remarks at the close, replied : " We did not revel in the halls of Monte- zuma, but subsisted there upon one meal a day; and 92 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY when the battle ended, went down upon our knees, as all Christians and good soldiers should do, and returned thanks and sought the blessing of God." It was irrelevant, but the rebuke an English Quaker once chalked upon a church-door while the people within were shouting praises to the Supreme over a great victory, came quick to my thoughts : " God takes no thanks for murder." At her request the General let Fannie take his sword. Kaising it high, she exclaimed, " You are my prisoner ! " The General laughed, and very chival- rously replied : " I always surrender to the ladies at discretion." He then joked her, something about tak- ing hearts captive, when the sightless, soul-lighted Fannie quickly turned all into laughter with her witty retort, " I have never yet seen a gentleman who quite suited my fancy ! " There is to some people a charm of presence which makes it always delightful to look at them; and I could not stay my veiled eyes from turning wistfully toward the General while picturing him to the New World what Saul was to the Old : " Head and shoul- ders above all other men." It was said of Napoleon that his enemies fell back from before him almost by the force of his will ; and so may it be ever with the good and brave General Winfield Scott, while his friends are drawn and chained around him even as Jupiter draws and holds his moons. To Mr. S. J. Raymond, Rochester, N. Y. CHAPTER XX CLAIMS TO GENIUS Blind Institute, New York, July, 1848. One finds so little within the walls of this solemn tenebrarum to awaken and call forth those lively emo- tions which make the sonl of epistolary writing, that I really approach the fulfilment of my promise to write yon with diffidence. Indeed, yon must not ex- pect me to invest my pages with the same coloring and vivacity as when mingling more with the world. Retirement is favorable to sentiment, but pent-up feel- ings die, and unexpressed and unshared thoughts do wither. We are so constituted that suggestive society of some kind is needful, as well for our mental cul- ture as for our health and happiness. Books are but the symbols of thought and feeling, and as the sub- stance is preferred to the shadow, so, in all that appertains to our social nature, originals are better than copies. One cannot have a mentor, though, al- ways at one's side, and the most that can be gathered by conversation or travel, even, covers very little space in the learned world — to the ambitious mind hardly more than the boundary that girts the infant's cradle. The future is unknown. We have not an eye like the Infinite, that we may pierce its dark veil and read its unwritten lore. To the past, then, we must 93 94 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY go for knowledge, and books are its only chroniclers, the only caskets in which its priceless pearls are set. But to me, alas ! the temples of knowledge are alike all barred; its every fountain is dry, or turned to rock, and I have no power to bring again the gushing waters. Ah, no; I may no more drink from the streams of Pieria or sip the dews of Castalia. Mine is the brow of night whose stars are set ; flowers are at my feet, and dews like diamonds are glittering all around ; but the light is gone, and, like all things else, they are to me as if they had never been. Grief has long had a place in my heart, but to-day something like the shadow of despair is nestling there, covering all my thoughts with loneliness more than words can speak. How real sorrow doth deceive the world : weeps the long night away, and at morn puts on a sunny brow to meet those around her. But if we would please others, we must ourselves at least seem to be pleased; and it is indeed well when it may be said of us, as Goldsmith said of the French, " They grow to be what they seem." Poor Maggie! When a child, scarlet fever dark- ened her bright eyes and silenced her hearing forever, leaving her only speech, and scarcely more than a bewildered recollection of the names of things. Her friends placed her here hoping that, through the sense of touch, some new avenue might be opened to her mind. But, alas! the leaden hand of disease has pressed too heavily upon that dearest angel of the soul, memory, and whatever her mind takes up it im- mediately lets go again. Nothing is retained save the little gathered before her misfortune, and her CLAIMS TO GENIUS 95 associations do not seem to have been the most de- sirable. She requires constant care, and in the ab- sence of the matron to-day I engaged to entertain her. She is fond of flowers, but she calls them trees and trees roses. I have passed hours with her going to and from one to the other, making her understand the difference perfectly, and call them over and over by their right names, " big tree," " little tree," " pretty roses," and so on, as we would come to them, but all to no purpose; and she stands here now crowding some wilted things into my hair, ever and anon ex- tending her arms and exclaiming, "So pretty trees ! " Now she strikes me on the shoulder, as much as to say, Was ever anything arranged or decked off like that ? Pollock says : " One man there was Who never had a dozen thoughts, But told them o'er from morn till night;" and so poor Maggie makes the most of hers by talk- ing them o'er and o'er! Her favorite way, though, of establishing a medium between herself and her friends, or victims, is by pressing one hand over their lips while they talk, and the other on the top of the head or back of the neck. If you refuse her this, to say the least, rather uncomfortable indulgence, she is greatly incensed, and her scolding is anything but euphonious. Her mode of being introduced, too, is quite novel. She takes your head between her two hands and commences repeating, in no very musical tones, all the names she can possibly remember, paus- ing between each for a Yes or a No, which you are 96 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY expected to signify by a nod or a shake of your head ; and when at last she chances upon the right one, or for the sake of release yon persuade yourself that " a rose by any name " is just as sweet, and nod Yes, her delight is excessive, and you are rewarded by a storm of kisses ! Like many of the blind, too, she has the mysterious consciousness of a human presence, and there is no escaping her. You may keep so still as to almost stop breathing, and yet, as if by some compen- satory instinct, she will find you out, and almost sooner than she has touched you, distinguish you per- fectly ; and woe to the culprit who has tried to avoid her! . . . The sun is at last behind the hills, and I am in the park again, where I commenced my letter to you so early this morning. A feather's weight is sometimes just so much more than the spirit can bear, and this long sultry day with Maggie has wearied every thought and sickened every feeling, until my soul cries, How long! How long? One can play philan- thropist to the lowly, minister to their wants, and share their little thoughts, trying if possible to lift them higher ; but to be companioned with them, to be herded one of them, brings one at last to the paradox of having even the nothing that one had, taken away. My whole nature thirsts for a higher and a more im- proving intercourse, and longs to feast again upon the beauties of kindling and inspiring thought. We are progressive beings, and our every act, every thought or emotion should be a step in our pro- gressive life. As the least blow upon this little earth in its acting and reacting force is felt through the CLAIMS TO GENIUS 97 illimitable fields of space, and that eternally, so man's most simple word or act in its effects will remain un- measured when matter's last atom shall have wan- dered back to that chaos whence it came forth. You say, my friend, that you make no claims to genius; but having an entire set of strong natural powers, developed by early culture, disciplined by self -application, and inspired by the love of truth, I see no reason why you should not begin where genius leaves off, ascend the intellectual throne of Bacon, or handle the more weighty reasonings of Locke; cope with Newton in his measurement of the spheres, or vie with Laplace, who in the lofty thought-rhythms of his own calculations could feel all the tremblings of the waning moon ; or seize the finger of philosophy, rend asunder the air, and with Plato's ravished ears " list the music of the chanting spheres." The gates that lead up to the great thought-towers of the world stand always ajar, and he who wills need not fail to scale its dizziest height, whence reaching far, a Herschel turned back the triple veil of the sun, and pulsed to his core the orb of day; while a Franklin, with the key of science in his hand, grasped the lightning's fiery wing and laid it harmless at his feet. To Mr. Mumford, Rochester, N. Y. CHAPTER XXI IN LONE ASTONISHMENT Blind Institute, New York, July, 1848. Unlike what hope once so loudly promised, I have no sight-seeings in Europe to picture you, no storms of ocean, nor clustered beauties of Naples and its rival bay, Rio Janeiro, to describe ; no ruins to paint, save perchance those of a broken heart, over which the voice of buried love ever moans like the sighings of decay amid fallen temples and mouldering castles. We have our preferences, as well for things and places as for persons; and of all the trees on these grounds, I love best this branching mulberry. I seek its shade when the sun is bright, and often when the night-dews are heavy on its leaves it covers still my brow, until long after the moon has waned and many stars have set. Oh, never breathe to human ear thy sorrow, but soothe thy grief in humble prayer; and when thy full heart goes up to heaven, let none but God and spirits hear. The hand loses its cunning without the eye to guide, and mine has become a perfect truant, placing the words now on one side of the line and now on the other. To remedy this in part, I have a card to place under the paper, covered with little slanted ridges 98 IN LONE ASTONISHMENT 99 much like the half of a shingled roof inverted or turned around, which accounts for the strange-look- ing sheets I send you. Not long since, Dr. Tyng said in a sermon: " It is a principle of our nature to prize that highest we have the most trouble to get." No disadvantage, then, to my letter, dear Mrs. Snow, if you are puzzled a little to decipher its erratic words. Two weeks ago our school closed, and a party of some fifty went on board the Santa Claus for Al- bany, thence by the cars to their respective places. Others on the same day left for their homes in and around New York, until very, very few were left. Night came, and the halls and corridors, so accus- tomed to echo with merry laugh and tread, and sounds of music from the large organ down to the trumpet whistle, were all silent, and departure seemed whispered everywhere. Little Henry, who ran back to the sick-room once more to say good-by to poor Little Jakey, was unfortunately left. When he re- turned to the lower hall, behold ! the omnibuses were far away, and nothing could call them back or stay their progress. We tried to comfort him, but all his full heart could say was, " I want to go home ! I want to go home ! " The moon was on the hills, the stars came out, and the shades of night had fallen beautifully on all the weary world. We were sleeping, forgetful and hap- py, when suddenly the spacious dormitory, the chapel, and all the empty rooms were filled with sweet sounds which seemed pouring in at the windows and sifting down from among the trees. " What is it!" and "Where is it?" everyone exclaimed, starting up, 100 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY almost wondering if the spirits of the departed had not come back to serenade those whom they had left. " The Bird Waltz," says one, as its chirpings were echoing everywhere. It was none other than the Christy Minstrels themselves, gathered among the firs in the front yard to give our loneliness a serenade. They played long and beautifully. " Lovely May," and other of their Ethiopian melodies, were never half so sweet, for which we could make them no acknowledgments. We had no bouquets to toss them, no lamps to light, and could only enjoy their music in silence; but when our quick ears followed their de- parting footsteps, our love and gratitude would fain have turned their harps to gold, such as minstrels wake beyond the skies. In the morning, as each seemed to know better the feelings of the other, we were more silent, and our plain breakfast had little relish. One after another left the dining-room, until, when the moment came for the bell, there were none to dismiss. I took my port- folio and came to this favorite tree. Presently the girls began to pass, walking, as usual, two and two, with their arms encircling each other's waist, both for the mutual protection it affords and the better companionship. Said one to her mate : " During vacation I will teach you six songs, with the symphonies and accompani- ments, if you will teach me those ' Hertz Exercises ' you know, and some pieces of Mozart and Haydn." "Agreed ! " was the reply. " I will tell you one of them now, and then we will go up and practice it." IN LONE ASTONISHMENT 101 Said another: " When I finish my spread, I am going to knit a purse and bag to send to my aunt." Another: "I shall knit nothing but star and oak- leaf tidies this vacation, and one coat for a present to my little nephew Georgie." So they went on, innocent creatures, crossing again and again the angling walks, some counting the posi- tions and bars of music, some planning pastimes, and others wondering who of their mates had reached home. " Come, sit you down here, girls," I said, " and I will tell you a story, if you like." " Oh, good ! good ! " exclaimed everyone, and in a moment they were all planted around me upon the greensward, in the best listening mood possible. I told them Miss Sherwood's tale of "Aunt Mercy," after which we arranged to meet every morning, and I was to repeat, as well as memory could bring it back, a chapter of Warren's " Now and Then," which Mr. Hastings read to me last winter. Then each one in her turn promised to do the same from some volume she had heard. Little Jennie begged to be excused; said she never could keep awake the reading-hour, and had forgotten all the stories she had ever heard. Katie complained that it always took all her time to keep Nellie still, so she had heard none of the read- ing matter either. Unless she could think of some- thing better, Mary proposed treating us to some of Wilson's " Tales of the Border." Marjie spoke of some chapters from the " Diary of a Physician " ; " but," said she, " they all end so sadly." The morning wore away, and the two months' 102 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY vacation in this Blind Institute began to look like a little lifetime, and all the days " dark and dreary." Toward evening, though, to my delight and aston- ishment, Miss Swetland returned. " Get your bonnet and shawl, quick," she said. " I could not go to Boston and leave you here so lonely, and I have come to take you over to Brooklyn." So the last two weeks I have passed at the de- lightful home of Mr. and Mrs. Emery and Mr. Augus- tus Graham, a very interesting old gentleman, if, indeed, it is at all proper to call a man old merely because the frosts of many winters have blanched his locks and deepened the furrows on his brow, while he still retains the mental freshness of youth and all the acting excellence of half his years. Mr. Graham is a native of Edinburgh, educated in London. Some fifty years since, he came to New York, where by his industry he has amassed a fortune which now in his declining years he is distributing with a hand as lib- eral as the heart of benevolence and philanthropy could ask. On our nation's last birthday he presented to the Brooklyn Institute and Hospital the pretty sum of fifty thousand dollars. Oh, who would not wish the power of dispensing good so freely! In a word, who would not like to be rich? Kiches stacked up in institutions, though, was not the Emmanuel's way of dispensing. He said to one, " Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor." Mr. Graham's apartments are cabinets of choice books, paintings, minerals, etc. One day, speaking of Paris, he placed in my hand a little relic of the Bas- tile, which he procured as follows : Passing over the IN LONE ASTONISHMENT 103 grounds and finding nothing worth preserving, the guide took him around by the outer wall, where he espied far up in a niche a figure bereft of every limb that seemed breakable, save one finger pointing in lone astonishment to the shades of misery which must forever haunt the grounds of the Bastile. Being a pretty good Benjaminite, Mr. Graham threw a stone and felled the finger to the ground. " Come," said the guide, " we must be going from this place, or those guards will be after us." So Mr. Graham pock- eted quickly his well-earned relic and walked away. The finger has on it the indenture of the nail and the little creases of the first and second joints as perfect as though chiselled but now. To Mrs. J. Snow, Rochester, N. Y. CHAPTEE XXII THESE FEW WORDS Long Island Water-Ctjre, Oyster Bay, August, 1848. When the entire force of officers and pupils had left the institution, and an army of renovators had taken possession, the few of us who were left sought the walks and benches under the trees, until one and another of the piano nooks of the building were fin- ished. Seeking to atone somewhat for my long ab- sence, peradventure the hours there were a little over- crowded with practice, while the echo of it down those empty halls was enough to have invited something more than the shades of melancholia. At all events, so the days were drummed and dreamed away until reflection grew weary, and imagination, tired of bunt- ing her head up against the blackened walls of the future, turned " bad spy " and folded down her wings. Then, lo ! a break in the clouds in the shape of a little windfall from a few editors who had copied that last letter of mine ; when straightway plans for mak- ing a Water- Cure trial for thinning the mists in these eyes began to wrangle in my thoughts. The angels always have some people by the hand, and Nicholas Dean, of New York, is one of them. Thinking to cheer a little the lorn ones left within those gloomy walls, the evening brought his welcome tread along the gravelled walks and ere three times more the sun had risen and set he had sought me out 104 THESE FEW WORDS 105 this Bethesda among the breezes where Nature has clustered so many of her beauties, and Art done so little to mar them. And, ah, what a world of delight- ful people, too, are congregated here! — among them your friends Captain and Mrs. Knight, who made the evening of my arrival memorable by an introduction to one whom I seem always to have met before, and wonder if I have not here in real life crossed paths with the shade who stood apart, you remember, with downcast eyes, in the closing scene of the vision. In my haste to reach the boat, though, lest the insti- tution carriage might be wanted, or something occur to detain me there a day longer, I failed to bring a writing-card, and every hand here is busy paddling in water — as are mine most of the time ; and whether by it or not the day brightens to my eyes, each one as it flies is leaving my heart a little world lighter. Dear Mrs. Emery, the tardiness of my reply to your sweet note and generous gift calls for an apology; and now I must beg you to excuse these few words also, straying, doubtless, like myself, now on one side of the line and now on the other. But those angel eyes of yours, ever looking after what is wander- ing, will be able to trace them. If not, I shall only fare the better by your good heart being left to sup- ply all that is intended. The six volumes came when Mr. Townsend chanced to be at the institution. Look- ing them over and piling them up again, he said: " Your friend sends you here a block of divinity itself, chiselled, in my opinion, from the very ' Rock of Ages,' and that, too, by a most masterly hand. I knew the eminent writer, was with him when he died, 106 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY and helped bear him to the tomb ; and if there is any- thing in the world more beautiful than his discourses, it is the record of any one day of the life he lived.' ' Desiring to be remembered is perhaps selfish, but it is sad to feel that one is forgotten. The heart does not willingly part with those whose smiles have warmed and blessed it, and especially mine, which the fates had robbed poor but for the few loved ones they have left; and could I compare them to jewels, thou wert among them the pearl, white like the lily, and precious as love itself; or, if Music stand my simile, then thou art a little far-off band, the sweeter because one has to listen to hear it; voiced like the murmur of a waterfall, and holy like a mute prayer. So thou comest to me, and so I carry thee along in my heart. Please praise Mr. Emery for me ; call him all beau- tiful names, and tell him that the angels love him, I know, or they had never placed in his that dear white hand of thine, that might be chiselled for a Hope, painted for a Smile, and given only to bless. This is the week you are to leave for gay Saratoga ; and wishing you all the joys that bubble around and from the " Mohegan Wells " while there, and a safe and happy return, I beg for myself the pleasure of counting you, dearest, with all your sweet ways and heavenly twinklings, a fixed star in my little galaxy of friends. To Mrs. James Emery, Brooklyn, N. Y. CHAPTER XXIII BY WHAT STKAWS Oyster Bay, L. I., August, 1848. Having lent your sanction to my making a Water- Cure trial for dissolving these clouds from my eyes, it was kind of you, surely, Mr. Dean, to look me out this breeziest place for it in the world ; and you have doubtless learned from Mrs. B how delightful your friend, Chancellor McCoon, made the sail for me up the Sound. The chief part of Union College is here; that is, the old president, for his rheumatism, Mrs. Nott, the three-wheeled carriage and pony, and the colored Moses, without whom, it seems, the good Doctor could neither walk, sleep, eat, nor preach, even, as Moses has to go into the pulpit with him, open the books, find the places, then crouch down and smooth away the pain from the swollen limbs while the venerable divine pours forth the Word. Mrs. Nott had been over to the city the day that I came up, and by the good Chancellor's favor I had the honor of a presentation to her soon after you left ; and waiting my arrival at the landing, as was arranged, it was doubtless no little surprise to Dr. S , finding me escorted by one of the most aristocratic of his sum- mer neighbors, and tete-a-tete with the most honored of his guests. Ah, by what straws mortals are 107 108 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY swayed ! It was that little incident alone, I am sure, that at table seated me next himself and opposite the revered president and Mrs. Nott, with a lovely Miss Marsh at my left, who was also met by him at the landing. The Doctor makes cheerfulness a duty, and exercise a very important part of his treatment. Each is tasked according to his ability. One subject of con- versation, it seems, never wears out : Diet ! diet ! Be- sides not faring over- sumptuously, the treatment be- gets appetite, and one meal is no sooner over than little groups on the piazzas and under the trees around are talking about what they will probably have to eat the next time. Some have their food weighed — eight ounces of coarse bread, or its equiva- lent, being all that is allowed them; pursuant to which, the Doctor is at present giving his patients and guests a course of lectures upon Shroat's theory of the Hunger Cure, whose establishment in Germany is a little way up the mountain, above that of Priess- nitz. He says he actually saw and conversed with a man there who had not taken food for seven days ; nor water, save what his body drank in from the surface, he being several hours every day rolled in damp sheets. Many thanks for the suggestion that if hydropathy, allopathy, and homoeopathy fail, there is still left " Chroma Thermal treatment." I do not know what that is, but fancy I should prefer Shroat's fasting plan as my dernier ressort. Your caution, however, to examine every day my fingers and toes shall not be disregarded, and the moment they show the least sign BY WHAT STRAWS 109 of being connected by those thin membranous sub- stances known to naturalists as webs, I shall most as- suredly ask the Doctor for his bill and hasten away ; for I have no idea of joining any of the finny tribes, whatever else may become of me ! I have entered into the full spirit of Water-Cure, though, with its every variety of bath ; and whether my eyes are benefited or not, I have already become so invigorated by it that there is scarcely a limit to the walks I can take. To Mr. Nicholas Dean, New York. CHAPTER XXIV TO EVERY THOUGHT Long Island Water-Cure, Oyster Bay, September, 1848. Let me thank you many times, Mr. Dean, for your refreshing note of . yesterday. It hardly seems pos- sible that it came from an atmosphere of 92° Fahren- heit, If Hamlet had been with you, he might have realized personally his prayer: "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" Pity that all those ancestral " banks and braes " of yours upon the Hudson cannot entice you to close those great books, and seek their quiet and their shade ! Or have you become so oblivious to self as to find all the shady slopes and running waters in the sweet consciousness of having not only sought out breezy places for your own dear ones, but for others as well! To be present at the opening of the college term, Doctor and Mrs. Nott leave for Schenectady to-mor- row, and also a lovely family of Hardys from Vir- ginia depart, all of whom will be very much missed. When the Doctor first came, he was moved only in his arm-chair, which has a wheel on each side, and so constructed that he rolls it himself. This morning, no TO EVERY THOUGHT 111 though, he walked a little way on the piazza alone, and how pleased he was ! Mrs. Hardy is a little larger than I am, and in every way my contrast — a dark brunette, jet-black eyes, and raven tresses that nearly touch the ground. Some say she is a descendant of Pocahontas, or Metoka, as her father called her. But, however, she is a very queen, generous, impulsive, cordiality itself ; and how I love her warm Southern heart only the angels can know. Indeed, we have climbed these hills, crossed the valleys and traversed winding foot- paths, waded the brooks and plunged and bathed to- gether, until she seems almost another self. I shall miss her gentle hand and kind words everywhere ; but she has arranged that I pass the month of May next at her pleasant home in Norfolk, which I fancy will be a little round of delight, almost a dissipation. The winter looks dark and cheerless now, but you see there is a bright spot for me in the spring-time. So every day brings something to be glad for — like your dear letter here, Mr. Dean, assuring me so ten- derly that these shades, though covering all my life and drooping the wings to every thought, do not at all cloud the hearts of my friends, nor make them love me less. But, oh, will it be always so? I hear you say in your dear, benign, but half -reproachful way: " That will depend very much upon yourself, my child." Alas ! I live in constant dread of losing the little power I have of interesting those around me; and so ere long the seeing world pass on and leave me, indeed, as Kirke White says, "Alone, all, all alone ! " 112 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY Miss S wetland writes that the students from the seminary will resume their evening readings at the institution; and even that little source of improve- ment, in addition to the music, quite reconciles me to returning. As if to prolong my stay, though, two more editors have copied the Willowbank letter and sent me each a Ten, and another a Five. But the hour for packs and plunges has come, the third and last time for the day ; and if the thermom- eter with you be still 92° Fahrenheit, you would doubtless not object if against the troubling of the waters one were waiting to lead you in. Joan, though, relentless nymph, is here, and knows no such word as " wait." To Mr. Nicholas Dean, New York. CHAPTER XXV BLESSED BE NOTHING Long Island Water-Cure, Oyster Bay, September, 1848. They say that old Virginia's most ancient and proudest blood purples in your veins, but be that as it may, richer tides never warmed in the heart or pulsed in the hand of mortal. Indeed, dear Mrs. Hardy, all you lack is wings, and often climbing these hills around with you, I have fancied that even they might be budding from your fair shoulders. You took flight, though, without them, and could the flowers forget the spring or the summer the year, the world were not more drear than seemed this place to me the day after your departure. Some of our friends write that they think of re- turning; but should they all come back and summer brighten again over these lakes and the bay, I were still lonely without you, as were the halls, I fancy, of your Bellevue home. No wonder those sable do- mestics were in such raptures at your return ! Those boxes and parcels were enough to have made Africa herself glad, to say nothing of the ponies and the new carriage, that row of bright-eyed boys, little Missy, the sweet babe, and dear Mr. Hardy with a smile of master, husband, and father benignly blent upon his face, all gladdened and endeared by your loving pres- 113 114 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY ence. Eden herself should have brightened to wel- come such a party! Yesterday a little company of us sailed up the Sound, and passed an hour in the house where Gen- eral Washington, soon after the close of the war, stopped overnight with his friend Captain Daniel Young. A son and namesake of the same Daniel Young resides there still, but his head is covered with the garniture of the grave; and after having shown us the little rickety table by which the General and his father supped, the chairs they sat in, etc., he said mournfully: " Soon the old house and all in it, like myself, must fall to the ground." Dr. Eogers plays matron this week, and the pa- tients say nothing more about going away on account of their fare — biscuits so hard that one answers for a day, and mush so magnificent that Miss Kate avers the kernels must have been cracked three into one ! Could Mr. have looked back upon us the day after he left, and beheld what a gap his departure made in our circle, he would have acknowledged himself complimented if not a little flattered. Every time the ladies met they were regretting his absence, while the gentlemen sat around on the piazzas, look- ing, I fancy, not a little delighted at finding them- selves suddenly sole masters of the situation. The little Swede, though, has already so stepped into favor with the young ladies that they have nearly adopted him beau general in his place. He has told me many incidents of his life. Since coming to this country he has supported his aged father in compara- tive luxury by his hard earnings, the poor man, mean- BLESSED BE NOTHING 115 time, supposing his son amassing a fortune in the New World. He knew the Bremers; once loved Fredrika. His accounts of her life, though, are very unlike the smooth, gliding way one sees in her writings. Dear Kate is sad this morning, finding herself little better than when she came. It seems, though, that I have everything to be glad for. Much like the old lady, you are thinking, who said " grace " until her last morsel was gone; then folding her hands and lifting up her eyes to heaven, exclaimed : " Blessed be nothing ! " But, dear Mrs. Hardy, so thinking, you lose sight of the May moon your letter here so en- dearingly pictures, with its long delightful drives, the sails on the river, or gathering flowers with you by your beautiful home. Ah! just for the joy of that promised elysium you have sketched upon the plane of my future, may the blessings of Abraham's tent rest upon you and your house forever, ma tendre fidele amie. • • © • • • To Mrs. Hardy, "Riverside/* Norfolk, Va. CHAPTEE XXVI SAVED BY HOPE Long Island Water-Cure, Oyster Bay, October, 1848. The delay of my note was amply compensated, reaching you as it did so illustriously companioned. How the simple thing must have blushed, though, being read while your thoughts were yet full of words from the burning pen of the Sage of Ashland ! I have also a letter from dear Mrs. Nott this morn- ing. She says since their return the good Doctor, one day in the college reading-room, counted a letter of mine in thirty-two different papers and periodicals ; and they both advise, in case I have written enough such, that they be collected into a volume. Look at that, dear Mr. Dean, and from such a source, too! You are laughing, I know, at the idea of my becoming a has bleu; but it is, to say the least, very gratifying to have friends like Doctor and Mrs. Nott so volun- tarily interested in one's behalf. Oh! how gladly would I put forth any effort whatever to save my friends all further solicitude, and myself the haunting fears of a life-long dependence. But, alas ! nevermore shall I be sufficient unto myself, unless — but you would have no faith in a vision or anything that looks like a touch of the supernatural; so I have never dared mention to you a phenomenal experience I once 116 SAVED BY HOPE 117 had, whose closing scenes were brighter even than the better days that Job came upon at last. Not much to rely upon, yon are thinking. But, dear Mr. Dean, " we are saved by hope," while despair is the dark angel of the soul, whose touch is lead, and finally sinks body and soul both. Then is it not wiser that we make every to-morrow the brightest possible, even at the risk of imitating the drowning man, catching at a straw! However, I am in the world, and cannot — at least very conveniently — get out of it ! I am in the hands of God, too, who has placed me among my fellows and veiled my eyes, seemingly as much to try them as me; for go where I will, myself provokes the sym- pathizing interest of all hearts. Even the Doctor asked me the other day how I would like to pass the winter here. I replied: " I should be most happy to do so, but it is quite impossible." He then asked if I could be as con- tented here as at the Blind Institute. I said : " Oh ! setting aside all considerations of continued benefit to my eyes, this institution is a paradise com- pared with that one ! " He then remarked : " We shall be less in number then and more like a family." The good Quaker steward and stewardess, too, often say : " I think we must keep thee here this win- ter, thou wilt be so much company for us " ; while the student brother of the Doctor quite as often alludes to my teaching him French, which, aided by " mem- ory dear," I could do even without the eyes. How- ever, thanks to the breezes, the baths, the plain diet, 118 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY and good company, John, the cook, can call me " ze pale lady " no more, and I shall in all probability return to the institution two weeks from to-day. Miss Marsh, leaving then, will see me to the institution carriage, already engaged to be at the wharf ; and do not forget, please, Mr. Dean, that I am to hear Mr. Bellows' first discourse after his return from Europe. All the ladies heard your last letter, and laughed much over the slips of your pen. Mrs. Judge Nye, of Ohio, a patient, generally reads my letters for me, and she is always delighted, as well as myself, when there is one from my good friend, Mr. Dean. It is like a new joy to know that dear Mrs. B has caught such a new lease of life from the waves and briny breath of the sea. My best love to her, please, as also to dear Mrs. Dean and Miss Juliet, A package from the institution last evening brought the card that enables me to write you with my own hand this morning. A thousand regrets, though, that I have nothing more fitting or more worthy to break upon these new and beautiful reas- surances of your abiding friendship than simply thanks ; but thanks, dear Mr. Dean, until you go wad- ing through them as one goes rustling through the golden leaves of autumn, with more, and still more, forever falling, falling! To Mr. Nicholas Dean, New York. CHAPTER XXVII THE WAKNING Long Island Water-Cure, Oyster Bay, October, 1848. Nine o'clock here puts all to sleep, and now no sound frets the air save the rustling of the leaves and the fall of dropping waters. Saying some things one says too much, while not saying them one says too little ; and such are the ever-recurring and ever-vary- ing charms of companionship that nor tongue nor pen may ever be found quite delicate enough to name or describe — those little fleeting romances born in the kaleidoscope of a thought, a blush of feeling or a glance of the eye — things so nearly nothing that, like day and night in the twilight, they are and are not; and yet bereft of them, what a barren, nameless thing companionship becomes : a wave shorn of its bubbles, a flower robbed of its bloom. Behold then why it is that I so often write my friends when I can suppose them fast asleep: no lack of responses then in their smiles, no glances from their eyes lost — soul to soul and no veils between. Mrs. Emery writes that one evening on the veranda of their hotel at Saratoga Mr. Graham made himself quite the centre of attraction talking of me and the strange foreshadowing of my lot that I was beguiled 119 120 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY into telling him about by his first recounting a phe- nomenal experience of his own. We were in the library where, during my visit, the old gentleman often read the papers to me and we lingered talking until Mrs. Emery came to announce luncheon ready. This time throwing down the paper and settling him- self back in the arm-chair like one sure of being listened to with interest : It was half a century ago, he said, in a port on the Mediterranean where he had been some time await- ing the vessel that was to take him to England after an absence of nearly four years. At last the vessel was signalled off the harbor, and he retired to his room that night in a mood little conducive to sleep. Still, hardly had his head pressed the pillow when, as a curtain is dropped, he was standing alone on a far-off desolate beach with a storm raging about him, the lightnings flashing, thunders roaring, and the bil- lowy waves breaking upon the shore. Then by a flash longer lingering, as it seemed, the outline of a ship rose distinctly to his view, when as by a light right above the ship he could see the deck, even, and the men whom he knew were the crew, and mark their affrighted faces upturned to the flaming masts that quick bent to the waves, and the ship went down. He awoke, but, strange to say, more occupied with thoughts of his father than of the scene he had wit- nessed — the father whom he had lost in India, and for whose health they had left England four years before — recalling his counsels, his looks, his dying words, etc., until he fell into the same state again and lived it all over, standing on the same beach with THE WARNING 121 the same storm raging about him, the same flashes of lightning, the roaring thunders, the same ship rising to his view with the same light lingering above it, revealing the deck, the men, their affrighted faces and all until the ship went down and he awoke as before, but so impressed this time with the warning he had received, that when the hour came for going on board he suffered the vessel to spread her sails and quit the harbor without him. " She was never heard of more, though," the old gentleman added with a sigh, and I instinctively re- plied : " Oh ! if I had only been as wise as you were, Mr. Graham, and turned my steps another way at the warning I received, the darkness might never have overtaken me." " The warning you received — what was it? " he asked with so much interest that I told him the vision that was trailed before my wide-open eyes in the blaze of day just two years before the darkness of it came to me — told it to him as many, many times I have been on the point of telling it to you, my dear friend, but could never find just the right way or the right words for introducing it; and I am glad now that the reference to it in my letter to your father has made you anxious to hear it. It was in the Lima Seminary, a little south of Eoch- ester, that I first began to quarrel with myself as to my future. I loved " the tall student," as they used to call him, the moment we met, but there was al- ways something in my heart that rebuked any idea I had of marrying him as selfish. 122 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY " Let hini go and marry some rich girl," the voice seemed to say, " and you go and do thus and so " — that thus and so meaning no less than helping smooth the way for the long line of sisters younger than myself. Indeed, it had come to be a con- stant struggle with me between love and duty, until, as my last term at school neared the end, it seemed ever present to my thoughts. One day the eleven o'clock bell struck that dismissed one set of classes and called another. My class was on a review in Legendre, and for the past hour I had been busy in my room with the problems for that day, the last of which I had just finished when the bell struck; and shutting the book I half rose, eager to dart out the moment the tide of girls should pass my open door. My roommate, Carrie Bannister, was ahead, and in just the fleeting seconds that she was crossing the threshold, reaching the table and laying down her books, oblivious to all the present the soul in me was lifted away into the future and made to look on myself wading through a long, dark, wan- dering life that my recollection has divided into ten scenes ; and having this card and pencil, suppose I paint those ten scenes to you now as I have so often wished to do. For the first one then, imagine your- self for the nonce dropped out of this life into the shadowy land of souls where, through your spirit- eyes, you are made to look on yourself in white and much else that is white, whose significance you are be- ginning to feel when right over there, or a little way off, you behold another self in deep black with a group of others around also in black. You sense, too, THE WARNING 123 the great heat blazing down and the water rolling near. Notice those three things — they are landmarks by which you will know the scene when in real life you come to it again. Then, as by a turn of thought, yourself in white becomes the self in black, when you are suddenly overwhelmed by the world around be- coming as black as night, the awful sense of which does not leave you ; but after a little you are conscious of going, or rather of being borne or carried along through the darkness; then a pause, a long pause; then lo ! as by the wave of a hand, out in the distance the darkness begins to take on an uprising, over- awing shape of its own that fills you with an inde- scribable fear. It is a little way off, but drawn by some indefinable force you steadily approach the forbidding presence, every thought burning with dread, until so close that you touch it, only to find the surface a made or manufactured thing that half lessens down your awe of it. Then as in a flash you discover it specked all over with tiny little edges of something golden; you fall to picking them out with your right hand and dropping them into your left ; and when the hand is nearly full, with the reflection that it is money comes the remembrance of what you had felt yourself so called upon to do; and when you go to drop another shining piece into your hand, lo! all the others are gone, and you are conscious that they have been borne away by what you were thinking. Then through what seem ages upon ages, with the same dark old presence bent above and around, you move on, on, forever gather- ing those same shining bits with the one intent shut 124 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY up in your thoughts literally spiriting them away. Then comes a change that words seem hardly able to describe : the gold is gone, not a shining speck is vis- ible, and in its place a great vacuum lies spread out before you ; and lo ! while you look, quantities of a dark green material in lumps, rolls, or bunches rise up instead, not at all filling the space the gold has left, but simply stacked up in it, and your comment is: icorthless. Still, impelled by the same force that moved you to gather the shining pieces, you lift a little bunch from the top, when, seeing all its edges flash golden, you exclaim: "Why! it is precious, surely." Then for the gathering of the dark green stuff along the rougher ways that come, with sounds of alarm filling the air, there are no words. Xo words either for the long wandering years that follow of the same gathering, gathering, but never possessing, so interminable it seems. Then at last the dark green stuff also disappears — only a little up at the left-hand side and the base or ground whereon it had stood re- maining green. You are not astonished now as you were at the disappearance of the gold ; but while you stand looking at the vacuum, lo ! farther in toward the heart of the gloomy old presence a long line of golden squares begins to lengthen itself into view, so tightly wedged together, though, as to resemble seams in a rock, and over them, too, something like a yel- lowish dust that must needs be brushed away, which while you look disappears. Then up toward the right- hand end they grow loose, they come out to you, your- self seems to draw them as by a kind of right. You see their creased edges and you know that they are THE WARNING 125 gold. They are too large for your hands — you place them in your left arm, then under that arm, then in your other arm; then you walk away with some- thing like the pride of possession warming in your thoughts. You reflect : " Why ! this is wealth. I can go now and have whatever I wish,'* and for the first time in all the long way you are conscious of com- panionship, or of someone with you with whom you exchange words, or more strictly thoughts. You cross water in something that rocks under your feet; you seem more to fly than to go. Then on, on, quite a way ; then you turn to look back and discover that all the way you have been coming has been a long climb- ing way, and you are standing upon a very great height. You turn to go on, but lo ! out in the distance right above the horizon there comes a little break in the great dome of night, letting through what you first think foaming waters ; but as they fall and come rolling toward you in little eddies growing larger and larger and you see the darkness melting away, the head wave breaks over you and it is as if the heavens had opened above and you shout : " Oh ! the light, the light.'" You turn and behold one form standing apart with downcast eyes as if more dazzled by the light than seeing it. No word — the presence itself seeming to say : I have been coming with you all the way — the thought covering the idea also of having shared it all. And there it ends — your roommate has walked per- haps six steps from the door-sill to the little table, and you are not yet quite risen to your feet. The two strokes of the bell that caused you to start to rise are ringing in the air yet. You fly down to your class, 126 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY but all the flying in the world will never chase the seeming thousand years of that vision from your thoughts. Youth, health, joy, and hope keep you from growing morbid over it, but there it stands with its every scene burned into your memory. I have pictured it, my dear friend, as though it were you, but alas ! into what stern realities have the first four scenes of it been translated upon my own life — the scene in white you will recognize for my solemn marriage by the pillowed couch of one who had only four little hours to stay; then the scene in black the burial away out there by the lake, myself in black with the others, and the July sun blazing down upon us ; then the little space between, and that awful waking that found the world engulfed in night ; then lo ! by a mode of travel — cars and steamer — all new to me, literally borne or carried along through the darkness to the long pause in that gloomy insti- tution whose end is not yet. Welcome will be the fifth scene with all its dread, so only it come to toll me out of it. The fifth scene — what new shape, pray, can the darkness possibly take on to fill me with a more in- describable dread of it than I already have, with the power, too, to draw me into closer and closer contact with it? One circumstance connected with the coming on of the darkness, or third scene, has always seemed to me nearly as strange as the vision itself. In the house of the lady with whom I was stopping in Kochester was an invalid lady who in view of my departure on the morrow had come to pass the evening in the sitting- THE WARNING 127 room. Going over to the sofa to bid her good-night and good-by, the little adopted nephew exclaimed: " Why don't yon wish Comstock p'easant dweams 1 " "Ah ! Tody dear/' she replied, " Comstock's pleas- ant dreams are always wide-awake ones." Smiling, I said: "I had a dream once when wide awake that was anything but a pleasant one." " Oh ! do tell it to me," she exclaimed, " do " — seizing my dress as if she wonld pnll me down be- side her, to which Miss Crane added her plea: " Yon will have to tell it to her now or she will not sleep a wink to-night." So, settling back in my chair, I recounted the vision exactly as I have told it to you, fairly startling my little audience and myself with the pathos of the closing words : " Oh ! the light, the light ! " as if I had indeed lived the darkness and the long wander- ing way of it through. Alas ! do we draw misfortunes to us by the condi- tions we ourselves create, or are they marked and lined for our coming and we in no wise responsible for the steps we take ? Be that as it may, recounting the vision to that invalid occupied one of the last little hours the light was to linger with me, for the morrow brought no day. To Mrs. Augusta Dean Buckley, New York. CHAPTER XXVIII SEASONED AWAY Long Island Water-Cure, Oyster Bay, October, 1848. Then my new friend, as yon call him, paid the in- stitution a visit as he said he should do before leav- ing for the South. Upon one topic at least his con- versation with Mr. C must have grown serious, since he hastens to inquire as to the giving away. I have indeed lived long enough to know that things are not always what they seem ; and the delicate caution implied in the words " a stranger and a foreigner " is only what my own heart would have whispered to me hack among the sunbeams. But, dear Sibyl, if the seal of cloud set upon my life be not enough to bar me from ever receiving a proposition for this dow- erless hand of mine, my own conscience, methinks, should be enough to stay me from accepting it. Everything conspired to render the evening of my arrival here a fatality. Even Mr. Dean's letter to the Doctor, arranging for my coming, had played its part. Containing as it did a sketch of the singular inci- dents of my life, my " new friend " chancing to be near, the letter was passed over for his perusal; whereupon he exclaimed : " Certainly you will have the young lady to come? And as for special attendant, for all the walking she 128 REASONED AWAY 129 shall have me for her escort. I should like to see a lady who has passed through all she has, and yet be charming as the gentleman says." As I wrote you, the Doctor met the little brunette Miss M and me at the landing. Coming together we were assigned rooms adjoining with only a por- tiere or curtain between. After our trunks were brought up we had just time for a bath, as a begin- ning to the treatment we had come for. When I ob- jected to having my hair wet, as it would take it so long to dry, the maid said : " Oh ! that is nothing. It is a part of the treatment here to wear it down. Besides, yours is so curly it will hang in rolls, and I shall make it dry enough with towels not to damp your dress. There is a Virginia lady here who is as tall as you. Her hair is black and nearly touches the ground, yet she never has it done up except Sundays. It couldn't dry, the baths come so often. She is only an attachee, but she takes the baths the same." " An attachee — what is an attachee^ " I asked. " Oh ! we call them that when they are only here with their husbands, wives, or friends." Worrying most of all about going to the table the first time, I asked about the dining-room. " Oh ! " she said, " right under the great stairs that you came up are the folding doors that open to it. It is the other half of the wide hall that runs through the building, with one long table through the centre. Half-way down is the divison, and at the upper end of the first part the Hardys sit — Mr. Hardy at the head and Mrs. Hardy on his right, little Missy at his 130 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY left. Tbey have two ' blacks ' that wait on them. Be- yond them is the French end of the other table, with not a Frenchman among them ; and yet they all gabble French. The Captain at the head is English, the little man at his right is a Cuban. He makes all the music you will hear — plays everything. Next to him is a German, too deaf to hear anything, and yet he talks French as fast as any of them. I s'pose he knows what they say by the motion of their lips. Eight across from him sits the Swede, and above him a Russian, the most polite gentleman here. Every- body likes him. They are all lame or something but him. He was well when he came except the medicine he took when he had yellow fever." " Where are Miss Marsh and I to sit? " I asked. " 'Way on up next to the Doctor, and right opposite Dr. and Mrs. Nott. He is president of a college somewhere, but is here for his rheumatism. Mrs. Xott has been over to the city to-day — she must have come up with you in the boat. They have their col- ored Moses to wait on them. That is my table, though, or my part of it, and I am to show you down when the bell rings. All the help here wait at table." There are moments in the lives of all, I believe, when we feel that we are transcending ourselves ; and entering the long dining hall that red sunset evening, draped in a floating muslin of black and gray, my frowzy amber head full half above the little black one at my side, although seeing scarcely more than to follow the shadow of the girl who was leading the way, the soul in me never was so regally happy or so content. Indeed, my every thought must have worn REASONED AWAY 131 a smile, as though conscious of drifting at last into an atmosphere kindred or all its own. When we were seated the Doctor named Miss Marsh and myself to the venerable president opposite; Mrs. Nott we had both been presented to, and meeting her now, added to the Doctor's polite inquiries of Mr. Dean, and his cordial comments on the style of diet he was helping us to, made the dreaded first meal pass very pleas- antly and without a word of reference, even, to my not seeing. In the drawing-room soon after, I was introduced to the fatality that you call my " new friend." His first exclamation was : " Why ! I have expect to see you a little lady instead of a statue Grec; and I have promise the Doctor to have you for my pet, and do all the walking with you." " Ah ! " I replied, " this is not the first time I have found it a disadvantage not to be small ! " Strange to say, despite his memories of foreign skies and the longer years he has lived, I seemed to have known him always, and would have been little surprised if up out of the forgotten past he had evoked the time or the place of our meeting before. And so days passed, weeks passed, the hours all winged delights, until two moons had gladdened the world with their light ; then he went away, and now he writes me back that sooner the waters of the " Cocoa Spring " here run bitter and the lilies of the pond grow black than ever fade or change his thoughts of me. A little time ago the Doctor received word that he might return for a while ; and oh ! Sibyl, supposing he does come, and supposing he does say to me what he intimated to you and asks me to go 132 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY with him, what shall I say? What would you say, what would everybody say, and most of all, what would they say in heaven? You know the vision, and was not that, think you, a dark foreshadowing of what my lot is to be? When every other objection and every other obstacle has been reasoned away and reasoned away, I look back into that mysterious fore- shadowing, and every voice in my soul whispers: nay, nay, nay. To Miss Sibyl G. Swetland, Preceptress, Blind Institute, New York. CHAPTER XXIX BUBBLING SWEET WATERS TO ALL Long Island Water-Cure; Oyster Bay, October, 1848. Saturday evening Dr. S returned from the city with news of a package there for me, which he forgot to bring ; and Sunday there being no service in the little church, Miss M and I often trespassed upon the sacred hours with wonders who it could be from, what it contained, and so forth, until it oc- curred to us that colored George must have seen it. So we called the thick-lipped boy and bade him de- scribe it. " Why ! Missus," he said, " de box I seen dar in de Doctor's office is 'bout almost as long as my arm, and half as wide ; but I'se gwine to de city agin to-morrow and I'll bring it." This morning when we had arisen, bathed, and walked once around that gem of a pond, sparkling in the sunbeams, as Miss M says, " like a blue eye in the face of nature," colored George came running to meet me. " Oh ! Missus, I'se got de box ! I corned in de night. It rained powerful, but I held de umbril ober it all de way." Poor little fellow ! The stage had left, and he had to walk from Hicksville, six miles. Once, ex- 133 134 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY hausted, he lay down to pass the night, then gathered courage and toiled on, but fell asleep on the piazza before they got down to let him in. Captain Daniels cnt the twines and removed the papers, and I wish you could have heard his eloquent praise of all the tasteful appurtenances to this beau- tiful, beautiful desk. Mr. Otis said that no one but Mrs. Hardy could have selected them. Poor Mr. Mensel looked what he could not speak. George hopped and clapped his hands at everything, while Aunt Janey went into a little camp-meeting of shouts. "Bress de Lawd, bress de Lawd! My eyes hab neber seen de likes befo' ! All the ladies said they were jealous, and Miss M was a little, I think. My sweet friend, please accept my poor, poor thanks until I can find some more worthy means of acknowledging your exceeding kindness. Your heart is, indeed, a " Cocoa Spring " set around with flowers, and bubbling sweet waters to all. I never think of you but something like old Virginia herself, bathed in sunbeams, breaks upon my view, by whose light, and the light of love, I am christening this charm- ing little home for my heart by writing you from it, dearest, with my own hand. But, dear Mrs. Hardy, my heart is too full this morning for words. I cannot half thank you, half bless you, nor half write you. Please let my grateful love, then, atone for all. Mr. has sent word to the Doctor that he may return for a little time before leaving for the South; while to me he writes : BUBBLING SWEET WATERS TO ALL 135 " I am coming to make a birthday dinner for you." Besides, Miss Kate begs me to remain as long as she does, or I should leave for the institution next Satur- day. However, I shall go soon, and there please let your next sweet favor be addressed ; while, in all that is heartfelt, I stay forever thine. To Mrs. Hardy, Norfolk, Va. CHAPTEK XXX AT LEAST AKIN Long Island Water-Cure, Oyster Bay, November, 1848. When at the close of our last ramble among the trees here, we joined hands with onr exile friend and pledged to be brother and sisters forever, there was a prophecy shut up in my heart that sooner or later he would wish to change it. That day might never have come, though, but for the circumstance of having twice saved my life since his return. First, from drowning, which Miss M brought about by leav- ing me on The Point while she returned to the lunch place up the bay for her portemonnaie. Meantime the tide, that waits for no one, would have borne me out to sea but for her long heroic race, returning, then back, and away over the hill and around down to the house, where fainting, she half gasped the words that brought our friend speedily to my rescue. Whatever I was to him before, I was certainly no less to him now. He had saved my life, and in a way established a claim at least akin to the little word own, which his actions as well as his words seemed ever and ever re- peating. The days passed though, made up of rides and walks and talks as erst they were until the pro- posed birthday dinner for me came off, to which the 136 AT LEAST AKIN 137 little places around were compelled to contribute, be- sides what was brought up from New York. All the Cure folk were invited, and the poet, Mr. F , the Captain and the Doctor made speeches, leaving of course the one who presided to surpass all the others in compliment and good wishes. The greater one is, always the more indulgent to little things ; and not only great in himself, but wear- ing as he does, like a mantle wrapped closely about him, the polish of many peoples gathered in many lands, listening to the tender benignity of his words it seemed that a break must have come in heaven and on some shining way there one had paused, the while to say pleasant things of and to me. The table was as bountiful as beautiful, and the occasion a souvenir wherewith to gladden the birthdays of a lifetime. But oh ! the long, delightful walk after the dinner was over ! On the brow of the cliff we lingered, overlook- ing the waves whence so lately he had rescued me, until the red sunset had flooded the bay, the hills, and the autumn-clad forests in one vast sea of crimson and gold which melted even in upon our hearts and made us richer, the while, than we had words to ex- press ; and so stood silent, like the twin stars in the heavens, sharing each the other's glory, and wearing each the other's smile. At length drawing my arm closer to his side and covering my hand with his as if the more securely to guide my steps down the de- scent, he said: " I once watched the sun go down like this upon Mt. Lebanon. About half-way down to where some of our party were waiting to be rejoined by us for the 138 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY night we halted, not more for the rest than to con- template the awful grandeur of a world, as it seemed, enveloped in flame. Suddenly, though, our reverie was broken by an incident that called for quite as much strength and rather more courage than may be often exacted of one; and while your thoughts have been in heaven, judging by the looks on your face, I have been looking back over the years, marvelling how that one little incident, all unconsciously to my- self, has been leading my steps one after another even down to this hour — yes, even to my coming to this Cure. The incident, such as it was, secured me two life-long friends, through one of whom, after our tour of Asia, I went to London, and thence to the house of a banker in Edinburgh whose daughter I married; and some time after, through the other friend, I came to America and embarked in cotton growing, cotton buying and shipping until in New Orleans, waiting a steamer, four graves had to be made for me — wife, child, and two servants. Yellow fever took them, and thousands and thousands of times since I have said in my soul : ' Would God it had taken me also ' — as indeed it did come very near doing. Life is nothing without health, and to shirk the ill effects of that fever was what brought me to the pleasure I had in meeting you the evening of your arrival here." Again days passed, all balmy and beautiful until, as if offended with the world, the breezes suddenly broke into a furious blast and fires were needed, but could not be lighted at first because of the swallow nests that had blocked the chimneys. Toward evening, AT LEAST AKIN 139 though, when the last round of baths had been taken, and all were out for exercise in the roaring winds, a sheet-iron stove was brought and placed in the drawing-room, that by opening all the doors and win- dows had been made to draw. More chilled than usual before going out, I put over my heaviest dress that thick wadded wrapper that you admired so much ; but, hurried away by a call from the ladies on the veranda, I left my gloves, and returning, my hands were nearly numbed. Discovering the fire in the drawing-room, I rushed up to it while the other ladies went on their way to their rooms, leaving the heavy hall door to bang after them. But before hardly a moment had passed, as it seemed, the heat growing too intense upon my face, I was stepping back when these affrighted words broke upon my ear : " God of heaven ! you are all on fire ! " and in one second more the great hearth-rug, wrenched from its fastenings, was being wrapped and held tight around me. The two side doors were open, all the windows raised, and the long curtains fluttering and snapping nearly to the centre of the room. Only a few left in the house, they beyond call, and whence could help possibly have come save from the great Unseen who has said : " Lo ! I am with you alway." Our friend — not brother friend — I cannot call him that any more — was in his room, the north parlor that Dr. and Mrs. Nott had during the summer. For his walk he had been to the Landing, and returning had thrown off his overcoat and hat, and stood by the bureau, he says, brushing his hair when the second time, as it 140 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY seemed, the brush was thrust from his hand and he, not knowing how or why, left his room and crossed the hall to the drawing-room just in time to save me from the flames as, but a little time before, he had snatched me from the waves. Saved, I say, but " so as by fire " you would have thought by the charred things that hung about me, and the blisters on the two dear hands that had battled for my rescue. His return here, you know, was ostensibly to await letters again from Europe before leaving for the South; and hardly had the two hands recovered ere those letters, that I had come to feel had something to do with my destiny, came ; and when they had been read and some hours given to them, he sent me an invitation for a walk. Never was autumn afternoon more lovely ; and on the brow of the big hill, seated in the two seats there by the old oak, he told me that it was in truth but to pass a little time more with me that he had returned, and that he would fain take me away with him now to be the light and love of his sunny home in the South. The awaiting, though, of those letters and the hours of consideration that had been given to them had left me time to so frighten my heart with questionings and questionings that when the moment came for the words by which, as it seemed, my fate was to be sealed both for this life and the next, I did not, could not, promise to go with him now. You know the vow on my lips to the dead. That, though, were of little weight compared to the great happiness of devoting the life he so heroically saved to the brightening of his. But oh ! with these veiled AT LEAST AKIN 141 eyes what is there to prevent my hanging weights in- stead upon the joys that he already has, what to bar me from weaving cloud with all the sunshine of his way? Nothing, alas! save it be the faculty heaven seems to have endowed me with for so using the little ray of light that I have as to keep out of view the night bent above and around me. Once talking of a fellow student who escaped Siberian banishment with him, he said: " Some people seem born possessed of that kind of alchemy which enables them to derive benefit or extract good from whatever befalls them." I wondered then if he were not including me in his alchemistic idea, for of a surety inference and percep- tion have come to so quickly forestall the ever vary- ing positions of my dependence, that in them I am often conscious of so toying with the shadows of those around me as to win from them a lovingness, so to speak, that I never could have done with the brightest eyes in the world. My supposition he soon after verified by adverting again to his taking me away with him to be the light of his Southern home, which I quickly checked with: " Dark objects only absorb the light, impart it never." " No," he replied, " except when so highly polished as to become the most powerful reflectors of it." Then followed his first open reference to my not see- ing, when he said : " Your l veiled eyes,' as you call them, I sometimes think might with more propriety be termed unveiled eyes, since by what my learned kinsman of Tarsus pronounced ' spiritual discernment ' they have been 142 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY already more than supplemented to you." Farther on, returning from a long walk, he said: " The resolute independence that you must have possessed, your privation has softened to a trustful dependence that to me has made you the most fas- cinating of women. Upon my word, half-way around the big hill alone I am ready to blow my brains out ; but with your enchanting company I start and I am back again, hardly knowing that I have left the house yet." In another walk, following down a narrow path among the pines, the conversation turned upon the strange providences by which our paths had come to meet : " So," he said, " and when at last we have climbed so far up the winding staircase of being as to overlook the lines by which we have come, we shall doubtless see that what in our past we have named misfortunes were in reality only so many links in the great chain by which we have been led. My exile from home and country when only nineteen was almost equivalent to your banishment from the day; death robbed you of what seemed your all, and surely it robbed me as well; and was it not up out of those very events that finally amid the shadows of a day here our paths merged into one? " So we walked and talked until, as I say, those long- waited-f or letters came ; but talk, alas ! changes noth- ing. Facts stay always the same, and this is one of them : We cannot carry the freshness of the morning through all of the day ; in other words, we cannot be always young ; and would I not wrong him, think you, AT LEAST AKIN 143 by linking my hands now to his for those more som- bred years that he seems never to think of? This morning he left for New York, to-morrow Miss M and I go, and in one day more all the others depart. He is coming to see me at the insti- tution, and peradventure betime the lintels to that world of gloom are shaken by his tread, I shall be looking to him for rescue again as from the waves and the fire. But go or stay, charmed from the sla- very of melancholy to the palace of his sympathies, it was easy to love him, and the days themselves have sufficed to bind my heart around with ties as many braided as the walks these trees among, and as im- possible ever to sever as loosen or unstrand the chains that bind the spheres. I thought I owed one in heaven for illumining all my soul with love, but we never know our highest nor our best until we rise to the circumstance that calls it forth; and whatever be the result of this strange crossing of paths here, I shall remember him always as one of the few — the very few, alas ! — who put us linked hands with all that is high and heavenward beneath the stars. To Mrs. Hardy, "Riverside," Norfolk, Va. CHAPTER XXXI MYSELF DID LOOK ON MYSELF Blind Institute, New York, November, 1848. Many times the sun has rounded alternate morn and eve upon the world since the date of my last, but loving as are his beams on all the hills have been my memories of the beautiful Seneca and those who dwell by its shore. Notwithstanding I came back last spring so cou- rageous for the remainder of my stay here, when all had left for summer vacation and the days grew long and hot and sultry, the trees, even, wilting and droop- ing their heads in the great heat that burned and blazed above the city, and all the feet that went to and fro grew faint and slow and weary, what wonder that I, too, lost heart and grew faint and lone and weary and — shall I say it? — very melancholy. Yes, melancholy , that state of mind touching nearest the sublime, caring for nothing, regretting nothing, hop- ing nothing and fearing nothing, content to sit for- ever, albeit like the Sphinx in the desert, with shut eyes peering down into herself; or, mayhap, more like one drifting down the stream of time on a raft of roses, smiling at the Niagaras beyond! But the good angels did not forget me if I did them, and by a providence as beautiful as unlooked for, I went up 144 MYSELF DID LOOK ON MYSELF 145 the Sound to pass a few weeks at the Long Island Wa- ter-Cure, whence I have just returned, restored al- most to my old laughing self again, at least in mente et corpose. Wherever we take up blessings, though, we must needs always lay something down, and happy are we when what we lay down is not more than what we take up ! A beautiful might-have-been crossed my path up there — tall, majestic, of fine military educa- tion, languages many, travel far, heart and hand free; and best of all, a heart large and generous enough to cover with love a wounded thing like me and take her for all his own. Said so, over and over he said so; and over and over — do you believe it! — I had the courage to say him nay. Surely I said him nay because — because — well, because so altogether have I been set apart from the ordinary lot of mor- tals. No one to blame, though; mine own hands builded the walls, fashioned the lock, and turned it upon myself while Fate, if you will, stood ready with her veil of cloud wherein to shroud me that, alas ! I see no more " eyes that look love to eyes again," nor mark the hands held out to me. So, first in spite of me, and then by mine own will even, I do but draw on apace toward that strange foreshadowing of my destiny at L wherein I, myself, did look on my- self wading through the unmarked years of night until ere long I came upon that gloomy old pillar, as I call it for lack of a fitter name, to whose treasures, you remember, myself was the enchanted " Open Sesame " as well as the dispenser ; which feature of it I am just now beginning to comprehend. Indeed, as another step, despite the many obstacles ever ris- 146 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY ing to view, I have a little plan shut up in my heart that looks beyond these walls again ere the roses take on their bloom ; but lest some unseen hand come and write " Tekel " upon it, it is perhaps better that I be not over-sanguine. Meantime, the world does not stand still if I do, and once more the frosts have bitten the leaves and the forests are robed in autumn's bleeding hues. The day god, too, is in the sky, glad- dening all the world. Even the gutters are turned into little seas of diamonds by his light, and the meanest things that crawl wear crowns and scarfs braided from his golden beams, while the world's most miserable abjects go strutting like very kings in rainbow mantles. How grudgingly, though, this little fragment ray comes shimmering down to me, so faint and yet so precious that I be in doubt sometimes if, after all, it melt not from the pitying eye of angels, or break from their departing wings. Now the band are in the chapel playing " Love Not " with the variations, while without, the winds seem blowing a sort of trumpet accompaniment; and how the tide of their rich harmony ebbs and flows along the borders of my soul, kindling thought and adding wings to fancy! Now they are scattering " Mozart's Requiem " on the air. Ah ! nothing strikes the chord of responsive memories like music, and Heaven be always praised for an atmosphere that may be formed into sweet sounds ! Looks of love are bright things, but the melting murmurs of its whis- pers are far more dear. Smiles play upon the heart, like moonbeams upon the waters; while words, low, tender, beautiful words, sink down into it, thence MYSELF DID LOOK ON MYSELF 147 coming' forth in blossoms and clustering fruits like seeds lost in the earth. No wonder that poor Bee- thoven exclaimed: " All the pleasures of sight and sense, all that my eyes have ever looked on, would I give for one whis- per to my heart I " In every condition, though, we have something to be grateful for. Indeed, I doubt if we are ever so placed that we have -not more cause for joy than for mourning, more smiles for the day than tears for the night. Watchful spirits are at every post, angels with folded pinions are along every path; the world is full of them, and our feet never stumble, want never approaches, and ills of any kind are seldom long in the way, but some Samaritan hand comes to lift us out of them. No night is so dark, either, that our Father's smile cannot cheer it, and no place is so barren or so far removed that His blessings and mercies cannot reach it : and oh ! how rich and bounti- ful they come — new every morning, fresh every even- ing, and repeated every moment of our lives ! To Miss Eliza Hamilton, Geneva, N. Y. CHAPTEE XXXII MAY NOT BE Blind Institute, New York, November, 1848. Anothee year lias counted out its moons and its seasons to the world, and rounded nothing brighter upon my way than singing here every morning in Professor Eoot's class, and then go for a while to drum a piano whose musical days were long since past, or like mine, have been slow to begin. Yes, one other privilege I have — that of afflicting my friends anon with chapters like this, leaving the richer ones, by their own grace, to sutler that much from the pos- tal law of non-prepay. The wounded oyster lines his shell with pearl ; but instead, the wounded ones here have set the walls that girt them 'round to echoing forever with the melodies of song. They weep, though, weep, alas ! while they sing and while they play, silvering all the notes they weave with the glitter of their tears. Dews of the night are diamonds at morn. Then why not the tears we weep here be pearls in heaven? Good Mr. Dean's carriage was prompt at the gate for me to hear Dr. Bellows' Thanksgiving discourse on his return from across the seas ; and while he looked back over the past of our country and pointed 148 MAY NOT BE 149 prophetically to its future, one could almost feel in his beautiful imagery the sublimities of the Rhine and the grandeurs of Switzerland, as well as the spirit lustre gathered among the ruins and sunny bowers of Italy, where her heroes fought, her martyrs bled, and her time-honored painters drew. From church I went to dine with Mr. Dean's daugh- ter, who is a very queen of a woman and loveliness itself. Indeed, it is only just to say of her as I once heard a Swede say. of his countrywoman, Fredrika Bremer : " In her soul heaven has happily blended all excel- lence." In the afternoon we visited the paintings at the Art Union. Mrs. Buckley was eyes for me and beauti- fully described all she saw, while Mr. B came along, as he said, to be eyes for her! " Yonder is the most clever thing in the exhibi- tion," he exclaimed, " ' The Mother's Prayer,' " which, while you gaze upon it, seems to breathe, I fancy, as though heaven had been moved by the tear melting from the upturned eyes. Mrs. Buckley was more enthusiastic over one of Mr. Hart's pieces, and both praised very much " The Young Mechanic," by Mr. Smith, of Ohio. But perhaps the most famous work of all there is " The Voyage of Life," by Mr. Cole. The design is the stream of life bearing on its rippling bosom a little boat, and in it an infant and an angel to guide. Farther on the impetuous youth seats himself at the helm, dashes furiously on amidst rocks and breakers, and so on down to tranquil old age where all is calm and peaceful; and from the 150 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY spirit world, opening above, angels have come to beckon him away. Returning we chanced to pass the Polish exile, a noble, and once an officer of high rank, now " The old blind harper," whose voice, like the strings of his worn harp, was trembling in the breeze ; and while I listened to his sacred song, he seemed so like the weary pilgrim just described to me as waiting on the boat, that I almost fancied the angels above watch- ing the close of his strain to present him a new harp attuned to the airs of heaven. As the gifted Euler of St. Petersburg saw his fig- ures and angles fade, and all objects of sight pass into dim distance, so your friend Mr. J says the slow but sure hand of cataract is weaving her veils before his eyes, which science has never reached and surgery rarely turns away. But as Huber knew bees and their habits before his blindness, so Mr. J has learned the ways and the wants of the poor; and when the light shall cease to stream in upon his mind, mem- ories of the gladdened smile of the widow and the orphan will be to his heart a sunshine, brighter and more lasting than the day. A letter is no letter, dear Cora, unless it reveals something of the writer, and you are doubtless com- plaining that I have told you so little of myself. Myself, ah! that is the one person in the world of whom I would know everything, and yet am really able to know nothing. The time appointed to me here has nearly expired, and I seem no nearer an opening from the wilderness than when I came. My good friend Mr. Dean, however, still encourages me with: MAY NOT BE 151 " Have no fears, my child ; there is wealth enough in New York to establish for you a pretty little sink- ing fund of five or six hundred a year, and it shall be done." But when my spirit eyes look into the faces of the angels, a conviction settles down around my heart that it may not, cannot be. I had once in mid- day a vision of darkness in which I lived, or thought I lived, long weary years of wandering, wandering; and since the darkness has so verily come to pass, is it not reasonable to suppose that the wandering may follow also ? Alas ! God only knows ; but it should be enough for those who trust in Him that He has said : " I will guide thee with mine eye." To Miss Cora Scranton, "Wittowbank," Rochester, N. Y. CHAPTER XXXIII PEOUD AND HAPPY Blind Institute, New York, January, 1849. In the light of many memories I sit me down to write you. The holidays came and all were again abroad, and I need not tell you that this institution began to seem lonely enough to those too far from home friends to share with them the recreations and pleasures of the season, when, to my delight, Miss Marsh and her intended came and escorted me over to Brooklyn. The old Dutch custom of devoting the first day of the Xew Year exclusively to calling, for the gentle- men, is still kept up, and, they say, with even more than * its ancient enthusiasm, both in Brooklyn and Xew York. For this one day, at least, the ladies do turn democrats, and with open doors and hearts re- ceive all who choose to look in upon them. There was never a brighter winter morning than dawned upon the world January 1, 1849. Broadway was one grand masquerade. Proteus had less shapes than the fashions of its equipage. Heads of buf- faloes, bears, lions, and tigers were mounted on stage- coaches, omnibuses, and all sorts of vehicles that go on wheels and runners. Do not understand that these creatures were really abroad so uncaged, but lesser 152 PROUD AND HAPPY 153 animals, you know, sometimes wrap themselves in the skins of the stronger ! Among the many who called upon your sweet sis- ters, Mrs. Barnes and Miss Emily, was the learned Professor Davies. Mathematicians are not always social in their feelings, fertile in imagination, nor fluent in speech; but one seldom meets so cordial, warm-hearted, and happy a man in conversation as Professor Davies. Listening to him, one would think he numbers all the fine arts in his string, and his formulas and infinite series besides. By some association the cause of my blindness was asked, whereupon I told the good Professor, play- fully, that I had sometimes thought that he might possibly have had a little to do with it; that striving to see the end of his mathematical course, after pass- ing many, many days, and not a few nights, over his too fascinating Legendre, Bourdon, Surveying, Cal- culus of Radicals, and other very interesting works, I awoke one morning to find the day god no longer in the sky. " He had doubtless overslept himself," suggested one. But indeed, dear Carrie, if I could only have succeeded in demonstrating to the good Professor by one of his own formulas that he was, in point of fact, the original cause of my blindness, I see no reason why I should not have presented my bill to him for at least a thousand dollars, my idea, you know, of fortune! Dear Mrs. Barnes, though, would soon have swept that pretty ruse away, for a little after I heard her saying low to him and the coterie around her: " The day she was a bride she was a widow, and 154 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY before a month had elapsed grief drowned the light from her eyes." Never mind, though ; as Abdul Hassan said : " God is great, God is good," and ere long that little sum, at least, will surely be mine; and may you live, dearest Carrie, to see how rich and proud and happy I shall be with it! You are smiling, but you must know since going to the Water- Cure I have learned to live without meat, butter, salt, tea or coffee, quenching my thirst always, as Kirke White says, "Luxurious from the limpid wave." Do you see! And according to Graham's computation, a true veg- etarian can fare sumptuously as need be upon fifteen dollars per year. Then certainly the difference be- tween that sum and the interest on a thousand should clothe one and allow pocket money besides ! Well, my sweet friends had other calls, too, the gal- lant, the brave, the young, the gifted and fascinating, all pouring in by scores and dozens with " A Happy New Year ! " on their lips, music in their voices, and their brows beaming with smiles captured from the bright eyes and fair faces they had just left. It is astonishing how many words and ideas can be exchanged in a little time when all parties are agree- ably excited. Seemingly, in five minutes Dr. Powers presented the various modes of observing the day in all the different countries of Europe; while the pol- ished Marquand introduced us to Paris scenes so familiarly that we seemed almost enjoying her daz- zling fetes. Mr. Humphrey, of Amherst, talked of the classics, paintings, the land of art, and our sculp- tor, Powers, in Florence. Then reference was made PROUD AND HAPPY 155 to the late New England festival where, I believe, he was toasted " Orator of the day." Lawyer Burr had on his sunniest face, and although so emphatically a man of the world, and so long a disciple of the grave Blackstone, no laugh was so merry as his and no ef- forts to please more heartfelt. I envy you such an uncle, and why should I not? Just think of his rich holiday gifts to Mrs. Barnes and Miss Emily, and then add to that the pleasure of his elegant society all the year round. Sunday morning we went to the Mission Sunday- school, the children of which are gathered, not from the highways and hedges of the country, but from the low ways and hovels of the city; and to appreciate what is being done for these little waifs of the street, one should first see them in their wretched haunts and then contrast them in the cheerful Sunday-school, after the hand of benevolence has washed them, put on them comely garments, and set their little feet in new shoes. Indeed, while I listened to them repeat- ing A, B, C, and reading, stammeringly, verses of Scripture, I could compare them to nothing but a cabinet of unwrought jewels, every lesson a touch from the hand of the polisher, revealing some new and hidden beauty. The school at present numbers over two hundred, and is taught and sustained by those of all denominations, who, like the great Teacher of mankind, delight in doing good. Mr. Barnes, for a New Year's gift, presented each of them one of " Mrs. Sherwood's Stories for Children," and by dint of much coaxing I told them " The Story of Little Jakey." 156 ^ PLACE IN THY MEMORY Poverty is a school, but her discipline is not always healthful to the mind and heart. Too often her chil- dren become proficients in art and deceit, which through life they practice upon an unsuspecting world. Even there, a child, too provident, was found smuggling a second book to sell on the morrow, as she said, for pennies to buy bread. Indeed, children can be drawn and kept securely in the right way only by the cord of love; and may He who called the little ones His own, bless everywhere the teachers and members of mission schools, and speed the day when the world shall cease to present its contrasts of hovels and palaces, or cellars for some and windows that look away toward heaven for others ! To Mrs. Thomas Hastings, Rochester, N. Y. CHAPTER XXXIV MEANTIME Blind Institute, New York, January, 1849. How your dimpled face and laughing eyes come smiling back to me to-night, as when in childhood we roamed and played together; first, around dear old Aldrich Hill, then away west along the banks of the river, and last, by the green borders of the lake, where we both discovered that we had hearts to lose, and that there were others in the world for us to win. I see you again, too, blooming and beautiful — ah! how beautiful! We parted, sister mine, our bright eyes to mingle their loving smiles, alas! nevermore. Oh, if I envied you then, how much more might I envy you now with all that made life beautiful to me passed away, and mine eyes turned inward to gaze hence- forth upon little save the faults and foibles of my own heart. Still, life is not embittered to me, nor is the world altogether a blank. No, no ! I have lived ages in the one last little year, and for aught I know, you have been doing the same. Hope stars make quick revolutions around young hearts. Full often, though, while we watch them rise they set. Some sorrows we must have, if only for pebbles in the stream of life to keep its waters clear. But so dear father is hopeful, sweet mother smiles through her tears, and 157 158 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY you all at " Stone Cottage " are laughing and glad, my morning has still the dews and the flowers, and my night at least the star of love. Writing you this windy night has coaxed my thoughts far back into that beautiful past, almost as joyous and hopeful as before. Dear "Williara is no more in the grave, and my hazel eyes are radiant again in the light of his love. Alas ! though, how bit- ter the cup from which I have had to drink, and how deep down, too, have I drained its dregs ! Despair has no blackness that I have not felt, and dependence no bitter that I have not tasted ; but, oh ! to-night how I do hope, and what wonders fancy is working before my spirit eyes ! Do not be shocked out of your sweet senses, but, sister mine, I am positively going to make a book. I have the plan of it all in my heart. Within these walls I have dreamed and lived it over and over a thousand, thousand times. Say not a word to any- one, but wait till Christmas rounds once again upon the world, and we shall see ! Last night in my dream the little book was really out, and deciding to make Dr. Samuel Johnson's opin- ion of it my criterion for the world, I went to his majesty with a copy in my hand. There he sat in gown and wig and white cravat, with a great book pressed close up to his near-sighted eyes, just as you always see him in the front of his works ; but so stern and frigid that despite all my efforts to attract his at- tention, I could not win from him so much as the turn of his head or the wink of an eye ; and finally left him, so indignant, that at the door I turned and mocked back at him in a way that woke all these nine sleepers MEANTIME 159 around me. Their fright, though, soon changed to peals of laughter when I told them that I was only mocking old Sam Johnson for refusing to even look at that little book of mine that is to be. How ridicu- lous ! and not a little ominous, too, you are thinking — are you not? Dreams, though, go largely by con- traries ; at least I like to think so, since, unlike the old poet, I shall have no Boswell to win favor for me, or for my book either. Anyway, the darkest of the night is the surest harbinger of the morn, since, hav- ing done her worst, night can do no more. • How courageously dear Lynette is moving on! Laura, too, is improving rapidly, as I can see by her letters. You should have stayed longer at the Tracy Seminary, as you surely would have done had all my letters resulted in as much as the one to Mary. Besides the editor in R who published it, several others who copied it sent me a Twenty or a Ten each, to which Mr. Dean added a Twenty for the compli- ment in it to him. I never cease blaming myself for not accepting the Preceptress-ship offered me the evening after my valedictory at L with a salary and the privilege of two scholars. But I was selfish, doubtless, as well as ambitious, and so choked away the " moving of the spirit," as father calls it, and went my own way until I saw the idol at whose shrine I had thought to offer my life's worship lying at my feet shattered and broken. Then, while with bowed head I stood and mourned, " Night let fall her sable curtain " down around my life, and pinned it, alas! with no star. 160 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY It may all come yet, though, only in another way ; and meantime yon must pray, yon dear one, as yon did long, long ago for " a doll like Litlnie Millerth's." Do von remember holding ont vonr little hands and roll- ing np yonr sweet eyes, as yon told grandmother, "to stlnee if the Lord thends it" J ? Oh! could I but hear your lisping voice to-night, how we would talk the hours away and swell the minutes into little worlds of delight TThat has become of that friend of thine with so many troublesome esses in his name, and who crowned his last visit by - asking consent " 1 Father must have been surprised enough to receive a letter over a long foreign name asking for me. His reply was beautiful. It only made it all the harder, though, for me to say no, which after all it seems was only half said, as I correspond with the gentleman still, and may think better of it when the summer brings him back again. For lack of consecutive devotion to it. music has failed me — the projected book may fail also : then, alas ! for the two dear hands that twice saved my life, for I shall think all in heaven point- ing to them as my one guide through the shadows the rest of the way. You asked me once : " Do we ever love the second time ? " Whatever my answer was to you then I know now that we do. There is such a thing. I am sure, - ft wholly intellectual love, and. ah ! how entrancing is its reciprocity of kindred thought — how brilliant and beautiful the hours are made by it! It is a love, though, easily transferred to another of equally intellectual charm, however absorbing for the time MEANTIME 161 being. To the soul or heart love, though, no such transfer, I believe, ever comes. No, souls are twained or twinned born, and for them to meet is to love once and always. The mind or intellectual love may be a beautiful memory, whereas the heart or soul love is a life whose pulsings one never ceases to feel, and whose voices one never ceases to hear. They are breathings to which the heart turns storehouse, box- ing them up like so many strains of music to be hearkened to over and over along its lonelier years. Come, dearest, say all thy heart out to me now as long, long ago ; say what sheds brightness on the past and what gives hope to the future. Oh! the angels only know how I do long, long to be with you, and possibly I may before the flowers around the cottage fade and the leaves are falling again. Dear father and mother come smiling in upon me now, just as I saw them last when we were all to- gether there, and they in the midst looking so like two happy Israelites just in from the manna fields! That was their silver wedding, since when, as Jacob says of his Joseph, " One is not." Two have been added, though, to their circle; and so, in one way or other, Heaven always gives back more than it takes. And who knows but ere the golden wedding comes we shall not only have the old parlors at Aldrich Hill to array the presents and receive the bridal pair in, but all that we may have gathered in our wanderings beside. Ah! how dear father's eyes always light up at any picture like that, as if dreaming yet of some time regaining all that he lost. Ere that day, though, he and we all may have so outgrown the old hill and 162 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY its broad slopes as to count it a hardship even to pass so much as one winter amid its high winds and heavy snows. And what is more, impossible as it now seems, climbing still farther and farther away toward the beautiful beyond, we may come at last even to break thanks upon the dear hand whose signature made the home of our childhood the heritage of another. To Miss Sarah Aldrich, "Stone Cottage," Mum ford, N. Y. CHAPTER XXXV IP THOU CANST Blind Institute, New York, April, 1849. Your letter was a darling little visitor, and my heart has had many a sweet chat with its friendly words, living o'er and o'er in them the days that I passed at your pleasant home, each gliding away like a dream of love that may not be told. True, the hours were not crowded with joy, but all that souls can share we straightway embarked in a little commerce of heart, hieing thought to and fro upon the sea of feeling until Locke, in all his reasonings, lived not half so fast. At last spring is waking, and the leaves and buds and twigs with new life are swelling, and all nature is teeming with very gladness. The little brooks have unclasped their icy bands, and gone laughing and murmuring away. The lake waters have broken their magic fetters, and donning their white caps, are again dancing to the tunes the breezes play. The little seeds in the warm earth are yearning and beat- ing and struggling upward to the world of lights and showers, even as our poor hearts should be longing for the smile of Him whose look makes the light of heaven; and panting no less for the waters whose streams flow fast by the Throne of God. 163 164 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY The world I live in is an ideal world, its inhabi- tants are beings of fancy and, of course, sinless and good. Their lips speak no lies and their hands work no evil; their smiles are the beams of the morning, and their whispers, like the night-breeze among the flowers, soft and healing as the breath of prayer. But, oh! this morning my imprisoned soul would go into raptures for one glance at this world of light. Ah! yes, I would bow in grateful adoration for so much as the fragment beam that plays idly on an in- fant's tear, or sports with a drop of dew. 0, holy light ! thou art old as the look of God, and eternal as God. The archangels were rocked in thy lap, and their infant smiles were brightened by thee. Creation is in thy memory. By thy torch the Throne of Jehovah was set, and thy hand burnished the myriad stars that glitter in His crown. Worlds, new from His omnipotent hand, were sprinkled with beams from thy baptismal font. At thy golden urn pale Luna comes to fill her silver horn, Saturn bathes his sky-girt rings, Jupiter lights his waning moons, and Venus dips her queenly robes anew. Thy foun- tains are shoreless as the ocean of heavenly love ; thy centre is everywhere, and thy boundary no power has marked. Thy beams gild the illimitable fields of space and gladden the farthest verge of the universe. The glories of the seventh heaven are open to thy gaze, and thy glare is felt in the woes of lowest Erebus. The sealed books of heaven by thee are read, and thine eye, like the Infinite, canst pierce the dark veil of the future and glance backward through the mystic cycles of the past. Thy touch gives the IF THOU CANST 165 lily its whiteness, the rose its tint, and thy kindling ray makes the diamond's light. Thy beams are mighty as the power that binds the spheres. Thou canst change the sleety winds to soothing zephyrs, and thou canst melt the icy mountains of the poles to gentle rains and dewy vapors. The granite rocks of the hills are upturned by thee, volcanoes burst, islands sink and rise, rivers roll, and oceans swell at thy look of command. And, oh ! thou monarch of the skies, bend now thy bow of millioned arrows and pierce, if thou canst, this darkness that thrice twelve moons has bound me. Burst now thine emerald gates, morn, and let thy dawning come! Mine eyes roll in vain to find thee, and my soul is weary of this interminable gloom. The past comes back robed in a pall which makes all things dark. The future, like the present, blotted out. My heart is but the tomb of blighted hopes, and all the misery of feelings unem- ployed has settled on me. I am misfortune's child, and sorrow long since marked me for her own. Yet the world does not always deal gently, even with one so sorrowed, but breaks its rude storms upon the bowed and the uplifted head all the same. Alas ! it does not know that the sea of feeling, how- ever calm, may be rippled by a breath, swollen by a word, clouded by a look, and lashed into fury by an act. Heaven, though, is just; and love like thine is slow to censure, doubts never, and believes not, till evidence look her so full in the face that there be no room for mistake; and even then she rather pities than blames, rather forgives than condemns, and lets compassion cover the faults that charity cannot hide. 166 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY Ah ! when will mortals learn that the holiest thing out of heaven is that love which is most happy itself when most living to the happiness of others? The last time Eve wandered through Eden's bowers of celestial amaranth, the angels, betokening her de- parture, gave her many flowers, which she twined in her hair and wore on her neck, all save one, a love blossom, which she pressed to her breast; the ap- proving smile of all the angels quickened its fainting leaves into life ; it took root in her heart ; and so down out of Paradise, with beautiful Eve, came the world's one relic of heaven, the blossom of love ! To Mrs. Geo. W. Fisher, Rochester, N. Y. CHAPTER XXXVI THE FIRST STEP WAS TAKEN Blind Institute, New York, May, 1849. Whoever dreamed that so many obstacles could arise in the way of publishing a little book ! Why ! I thought one would only have to send the manuscript to a publisher, and then wait a little to have it all out lovely. But, lo ! the first announcement was that, having no name as an author, no publisher would en- gage to bring out my work without being secured for at least half of the first edition; or, if stereotyped, paid for page by page. Then the engravings would have to be paid for half in advance, the manuscript copied by a professional, the proof read, etc.; then all the copies I should order, paid for down — all of which together, you see, would cost quite a sum, and I could see no way out but by soliciting subscribers enough in New York to cover the amount called for. Still, the way was not all clear to that, even. Coming to the institution, introduced to Mr. Dean, one of the Directors, by his old and much-prized friend, he has seemed to me always a sort of guar- dian — as, indeed, he has been. Besides, his years, his wisdom, and his position give his opinions the weight of oracles hard to gainsay. Imagine my dis- may then, when, after hearing me all through, even to 167 168 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY my faith in help from the Unseen, he pronounced the whole thing a certain failure, and declined to so much as head the list for me. " Why ! " he said, " my friend Bryant here, with all his fame, could hardly get subscribers enough in New York to bring out a book; and much less a stranger like you, my child." Just imagine it, Mrs. Nott. The struggles, though, that it afterward cost me to waive this noble friend's opinion and the possible criticism of everyone else — that you never can know. Besides, while the world is great, looking at it through these veiled eyes of mine my heart turned bad spy and re- ported it ten thousand times more formidable than it really is, magnifying the amazed look of boys on the street, even, to a horror too fearful to endure. Still, before me lay either life-long dependence or this one great effort; and pricked on by necessity, all unconsciously to myself, I was being every day and every hour drawn into closer and closer contact with the very world that I was so dreading. Mrs. Buckley, Mr. Dean's daughter, was not only reared in luxury, but has been all her life accustomed to New York's best society ; and my first cross was to confide to her the little peep that I had dared to take through the clouds, laying special stress upon the ob- jections her father had raised ; to which her reply was so characteristic that you can almost see her noble self in it: "Men never can see the angels," she said, " until they have left them, nor hear them, either, until they have ceased calling " ; and like a good angel herself, gave me every possible encouragement. THE FIRST STEP WAS TAKEN 169 So, after praying over it by night and by day, and baptizing it a thousand times over with my tears, I finally wrote the little prospectus and got the super- intendent to have a dozen copies of it printed on the inside of the covers to a set of blanks, lined and fig- ured for names; and when the Board of Managers met again, I persuaded him to go with me up to their room and present me to them. He did so, and as I suggested, reminded them that I came there intro- duced by Senator Backus, of Eochester. Then I gathered courage and stated to the venerable body that abandoning all idea of ever becoming self- sustaining through music, I had decided to publish a volume of my letters as a future means of serving myself ; and I had taken the liberty of waiting upon them first, hoping that it would be their pleasure to sanction my little enterprise by giving their names to it. Mr. Anson G. Phelps, the president, was absent, but the president pro tern, very chivalrously arose, took the little prospectus from my hand, and laid it before the secretary to read; after which he said to me very kindly: " Excuse us, please, madam, and we will act upon this in your absence before we adjourn." The first step now was taken. I had commenced and there was no turning back; and during the in- terim of waiting I paced the upper corridor in such agitation as you cannot imagine. At length the good Quaker Director, John Wood, came hurrying up to me like one covered all over with smiles, saying : " Ah ! thee did well to come in and do as thee did. See, thee has twenty-four dollars subscribed already, 170 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY with the names all written down here and marked paid ; and if thee will let me keep this little prospectus until the Board meet again, thee shall have an hundred more names on it for thy little book that is to be." I could have embalmed him with gratitude, but, you see, I had intended the names of the Directors as a sort of commendatory introduction for myself. How- ever, I let him do as he wished, and after a few days, waiting and wondering what to do next, I made an- other commencement. Mrs. Buckley went with me and we called upon a dozen or more of the ministers of the city. She having known Bishop Onderdonk from a child, we went to him first ; and how beautiful and benign he was. He said: " I have written my name for one copy, and I wish it were for one hundred." So we went on all day, and everyone was just so pleasant and kind. Doctor Berrian, especially, and Professor Anthon expressed great interest, and spoke of many others who, they were sure, would be most happy to subscribe for copies. In the afternoon we called at " 70 Prince Street," the office of Mr. William B. Astor, long years a friend of Mr. Dean's. He read the little prospectus and subscribed for a single copy like the rest, smiling as he did so, saying : " I do not often subscribe for books, but I think I will for this." Returning, I was congratulating my- self on what a nice commencement I had again of so many well-known and distinguished names ; but my Geneva friend, Mr. Stevens, from the Theological Seminary, had called and he insisted upon taking it home with him. Being headed by the Bishop, and THE FIRST STEP WAS TAKEN 171 so many of the clergy, he was positive of adding largely to it among the officers and students of the college ; which left me again, you see, without a single name to commence with. The next morning, though, with a new clean copy of the printed prospectus, and a sweet little girl who lives near the institution for an attendant, I walked away to one of the finest streets of the city and waited upon the ladies all that day, but only obtained three subscribers — one of them a dear French lady, and one a sweet Quakeress whose home seemed like a little nook of Eden that might have escaped " the fall," and herself the one angel in it. But some way I was not at all disheartened. My little guide, Bessie, came again the next morning, and I took another clean, new little book and rode down to the City Hall, determined, if I could gain sufficient courage, to wait upon his Honor the Mayor first, The man in the office told us that the Mayor was at his house yet; and so we walked away there through the sun, only to learn that he had just left for his office. We retraced our steps and climbed the long stairs again, but still he had not arrived. We went into an inner office to wait. An hour passed, and then he came ; and with his first pompous word froze me nearly to death. Indeed, I could almost feel Bessie shudder. He asked my errand, and I ex- plained it to him in the fewest words possible, ask- ing him timidly to please read the little prospectus and then he would understand it all. But he only said gruffly : " I know nothing about it and do not wish to know anything about it. A lady from Boston deceived me 172 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY last week, and I have resolved hereafter to know noth- ing and attend to nothing here but office business," waving his hand to Bessie toward the anteroom ; but seeing it literally jammed with men waiting, Bessie looked imploringly toward the private door by which he had entered. " Yes," he said, " go out that way if you choose," and turned away. So we left him, so stunned that neither of us had heart to speak until we reached the park gate. But when it closed heavily behind us, I began to reflect and say to myself: He is only one man after all, and I have turned back at the first refusal. Then a voice in my heart re- proached me for my little faith and lack of courage, and I said to Bessie: " Come, let us go back ; there are a great many more offices there, and because the Mayor was so gruff and unkind, that is no sign the rest will be." " Oh, no," Bessie said, " I would not go into that building again for all the world! He might see us; but that great round building yonder is full of offices. I went there once with mamma to see about her taxes ; we might go there." So we took heart again, and entering the lower hall Bessie whispered : " There are doors all along here ; where shall we go in! " " No matter, no matter," I said ; " the first name you see." But all the time I was praying the Lord to direct, and the angels to be with us. Bessie spelled out over one door : " Thompson, Street Commissioner." " That is right," I whispered, and we opened the THE FIRST STEP WAS TAKEN 173 door. The office was full of men, and we were about stepping back, but — " Come in, ladies ; come in, ladies," called Mr. Thompson ; " come in. I shall be ready to wait upon you in a moment," and the men moved back to give us seats. Everything now, it seemed, depended upon a word. Men went out and came in, went out and came in, and every slam of the door seemed a death knell to my soul; and how I prayed, only One in heaven can ever know. At length a gentleman put his head into the door and called out: " Hurry, Thompson, hurry up or you will be left by the cars ! The carriage has been waiting for you this half hour." Mr. Thompson looked at his watch and said: " Never mind ; you go on. I will be there in time." They went on coming in and going out, until sud- denly it was still ; the last one seemed to have left. " Now, my dear lady," said Mr. Thompson, half coaxingly, "what can I do for you?" I arose and said to him : " Please excuse me, sir, but you have an engage- ment and I fear to detain you." " Never mind, never mind," he said, looking at his watch again ; " ten minutes more. Time enough to do business with all the ladies in New York! What is it? " Tears came to my eyes and I handed him the little prospectus. He ran his eyes down over the printed page inside of the cover, and looking up into my face, said : " Did you write this? " " I did," I answered. 174 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY " That is enough," he said. Then, turning over the blank leaves, he exclaimed : " What ! and am I the first to give my name to this beautiful little enterprise — the first you have waited upon! " Forgetting all before, and thinking only of the gruff ness of the Mayor: " The first gentleman," I said. " But who sent you to me? " " No one," I replied, " unless the Lord did." " And no letters, no commendations, no noth- ing?" " No," I said ; " I never thought I should need any." " No, and you do not need them," he continued, seemingly talking more to himself than to me. " Such confidence in the goodness of mankind is better than all the commendations in the world." Then, having run his eyes down again over the little prospectus: " How strange ! " he exclaimed, taking up his pen to write. " Why ! do you know, I was the architect of that institution, and be assured I head this unique enterprise this morning with more pride and pleas- ure than I ever did anything in all my life, and I only wish, too, it was for one thousand copies instead of one; but there is my name for one copy, and there is the money for it," he said, handing it to Bessie, " for I see," he said, smiling, " you are going to make them all pay in advance. Well, that is right," ris- ing, drawing on his gloves, and putting on his hat; " and we are to look for the little book Christmas ! Yes, and now I think of it," he added, pausing at the door, " all these young gentlemen here will want one too, who have nothing else to do with their money; THE FIRST STEP WAS TAKEN 175 and you must see, little Miss, that they all subscribe, everyone ; " and so he hurried away. But the door had hardly closed after him when a gentleman stepped out from behind one of the desks, took up the little prospectus and read it, and then wrote his name, " Alderman Hart," for five copies, marked it paid, gave Bessie the five dollars without saying a word, and passed out. Then one of the young gentlemen came down from his high desk and wrote his name for a copy, and gave Bessie the money; and then another, and another, and another, until they had all read the prospectus and subscribed, and Bessie began to be troubled to crowd the new bills into the purse. Bless the Lord ! praise the Lord ! was in all my thoughts ; and when we arose to leave, my full heart had scarcely more than tears to thank them with. Bessie, the dear child, was overjoyed, and be- gan to whisper before we were hardly out: " Oh, you should just feel this purse once ! Oh, my ! you can publish the little book now right away — you can, indeed you can, you can ; just see ! " and went on telling how soon I should have a home and every- thing, until the first I knew we were at the park gate again; where, holding a brief consultation, I pro- posed to Bessie to return and call at the other offices in the building, which she was very willing to do this time ; and hardly a gentleman refused. Indeed, dear Mrs. Nott, now ten days have passed, and it seems almost as though the angels had laid down their harps in heaven, and come down to help on about the little book. Broadway has been one long row of smiles, and it is difficult to say whether 176 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY foreigners or Americans have been the most kind and polite; and far down toward the Battery, in a dear old-fashioned place, three ladies subscribed for five copies each. I had no idea of going into Wall Street, and Bessie was afraid to go there too ; but we came out of one building the wrong way, and were going along there before we knew it. The second or third place a gen- tleman read the little prospectus and looked over the names, and then said to me very pleasantly: " I have written my name here for one copy, but I am a very rich man and you must please let me set my own price upon your little book that is to be ; " and he put into my hand a gold Five. When we came out, Bessie, looking at his name, discovered that we were in Wall Street instead of Broadway. However, we decided to keep on, and, dear Mrs. Nott, I can never tell you the half. Presidents of banks, brokers, lawyers, and all, seemed to know all about it before we came. And Bessie, after a little, said : " Why ! isn't it the drollest thing! They just smile when we come in, and hold out their hands for the little prospectus before we say a word to them." And so it was ever so far, until finally, at the end of a block, the gentleman who gave me the gold piece came up and said: " Let me look again at your list of names, please ; " and I exclaimed: " Oh ! I understand it now ! You are the good angel who has been troubling the waters for us all the way along." Laughing, he replied: " I am glad if I have done you any good, and I think by the names here I THE FIRST STEP WAS TAKEN 177 have helped you along a little ; " and before I could half thank him he passed away. Right after that we came to " 64 Wall Street " ; and when we had been all through, and everyone in the building had subscribed, we passed Mr. Dean's office ; and do you believe it, I had not the courage to go in. Half-way down the stairs, though, I decided that it was hardly polite, and turned back. Mr. Dean was sitting in his arm-chair, but was quick on his feet, and his cordial reception as quickly banished all fear of any blame that I had not listened to him. " Come," he said, before we were hardly seated ; " am I not to see that little prospectus that I have been hearing so much about? Every friend I have met the last fortnight has saluted me with: " ' Why ! how is it, Dean, that your name is not on the lists for that little institution book that is to come out up there? ' " Bessie gave him the prospectus, and looking over all the names : " Well ! " he exclaimed ; " never in all my life have I seen anything so surprising; and now you must let me ask the privilege of putting my name in here with the rest." Coming away, he said to me at the door: " I shall never doubt your angels again, my child, and I only pray that they may direct and help you thus always ! " You see, though, dear Mrs. Nott, it is nothing less than the fifth scene of the foreshadowing, that I de- scribed to you up there by the bay, the scene when at last the darkness itself began to take on a shape of its own and rise up before me, an overawing, thou- sand-eyed presence, as I told you, that filled me with 178 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY an indescribable fear — the scene that has always looked so impossible ever to be translated into real life; and yet how surely right here in New York have I not only faced the dark old presence itself, but realized every shudder of fear that it caused me, endured or lived over and over its every shadow of dread, which goes to guarantee the following of the next scene, does it not, and the next, and the next, even to the last and the light again! Would for your sake, dear Mrs. Nott, my letter were more brief. With a line less, though, it would hardly answer your kind request to know all about the progress of the little book, that with your per- mission I fain would give myself the pleasure of dedicating to you. Please say if the wee volume may be so honored — while with a thousand thanks for your last sweet favor, with much high regard to the good Doctor, and all love to your dear self, Faithfully, To Mrs. Dr. Nott, Union College, Schenectady, N. Y. CHAPTER XXXVII AIRY CASTLES Blind Institute, New York, June, 1849. How sweet to talk when the heart is full, and what a privilege to write when pent-up thoughts, like caged birds, flap their wings to be free ! That dream of music with its organ-piping is at an end ; and in place of a " lone mourner of its baffled zeal," my heart is full of something more altogether soul-engaging to do. Forsake is not the word. Rather say that I have folded up the past with its dreams and laid it away, as one does white satins when going about rough work. Memory, though, is too faithful to the heart ever to allow the sunshine of the past to grow one ray less, or suffer one face, even, to fade from its view. No ; sooner the springs of the green earth dry up and the flowers around them cease to blossom than the smile of Eliza Hamilton cease to gladden my thoughts, or my heart drift so far away from her that its pulsings no longer disturb the fancies of her dreams. Lingering there by the stile at the old seminary, repeating over and over our last fond adieu, who could have believed that in such a little time you would be half a world away, and I writing you there from the New York Institute for the Blind ; myself not only an inmate, but a sort of cen- 179 180 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY tral figure, pointed at by visitors in every hour of the day as the one whose strange mutation of fortune it was to pass from girlhood to wifehood, widowhood, and blindness, all within the brief space of a single month. Then hearken to their marvels and thought- less comments : " Cried her eyes out, they say. How strange ! She don't look blind, though. And what lovely hair she has ! I wonder who dresses it for her." Again : " What a beautiful complexion, and so tall and splendid looking! What a pity! what a pity! How becoming black is to her ! I wonder if she knows it and is going to wear it always." Quite like belonging to a menagerie, you see; and Eliza, you will not be surprised when I tell you that night-time, daytime, and all the time I have been praying those who watch in heaven to unbar these heavy doors and let me go hence. In my first from New York after having experi- mented some five months with Water-Cure for these eyes of mine, I told you of a plan I had projected upon the plane of the future that looked beyond these walls again ere the roses should take on their bloom ; and lo ! this is it : I am giving all the days now to soliciting subscribers for a little book of mine that is to be, the name to which — and there is much in a name — I have quite decided to take from the old-time song, " A Place in Thy Memory, Dearest," only omit- ting the dearest as the part rhetoric requires left to be understood. If Plato said rightly, " The begin- ning is half of the whole," my little book, having both a name and a beginning, should be at least enough AIRY CASTLES 181 to found hope upon ; and ah ! if there were only some congealing or petrifying process by which the airy castles I build from it could be preserved, my clouds were so illumined as to be scarcely known from the stars. One thing, though, my strange undertaking has brought about already: that is, another scene foreshadowed in the vision, which only Time has been seer enough to interpret. But now how plain to see that the scene wherein the darkness began to take on an overawing shape and rise up before me meant nothing less than the world itself, just as I have found it in this great, overwhelming, thousand-eyed New York ; and that other phase, myself being drawn into closer and closer contact with it, the getting sub- scribers here for that little book of mine that is to be. But as Raphael would not leave an ugly picture on canvas, so a delicate mind never says or writes what is not pleasing ; and better I entertain you with some- thing at least less ghostly than the fifth scene of a vision, or less painful than the suffocating dread I have realized in living it through. This morning dawned as all the mornings were wont to dawn in the beautiful long ago. Soon, though, the skies were full of rain ; and unable to go out, and tired at last of thinking, thinking, I rushed down to the parlor and set to drumming a piano lesson as if my life depended upon it ; then, quitting that, I sang dolefully enough, " The Light of Other Days Has Faded," which was hardly ended when the kindliest, gentlest hand in the world was resting on my shoul- der, and these words were rather melted than spoken into my ear: 182 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY " Excuse me, but I think I saw you and was intro- duced to you at the Lima Seminary five years ago, was I not?" Some voices we never forget, and especially the voice of an Indian with all the sea-shell roar of his native forests still echoing in it. I knew him at once. " Why, this is Chief of the Ojibeways ! " I ex- claimed, rising and giving him my hand. " So," he replied. " When you saw me in Lima I was on my way to England to finish my education there ; and now returning, before going to my people, I wish to seek all the knowledge I can of the institu- tions of the country, and hence my visit here. But how comes it about that I find you here? " he asked. " You have not lost your sight, I hope? " Being an- swered in the affirmative, he said sadly: " I feared as much, seeing that you entered and passed so near without observing me. You went straight to the piano, though, and but for your hav- ing no music before you, I should still have thought myself mistaken. Pray, how is it — how was it? " he was eagerly asking, still retaining my hand in his, when the door opened and the superintendent with several of the directors entered, and as you can imagine, I was only too glad to be excused, and slipped away. Soon after, the chapel bell rang, and the whole house of nearly two hundred quickly as- sembled. The great Chief was introduced ; then Miss Cynthia arose, and in her sweet voice welcomed him with a poem which she had prepared, knowing of his com- ing, opening with : AIRY CASTLES 183 "Oh ! welcome, thou stranger; our hearts' warm emotions Are clustering 'round thee, thou Chief of the brave," etc., to which the Chief replied in a manner so beau- tiful and so affecting, that I could give you no con- ception of his words but for the speech he made us at Lima Rve summers ago, when his gestures, you remember, were more like the rise and fall of a dove's wing sailing the air than the waves of a natural hand. He was an orator then ; and how we marvelled at his grace, when as yet he had only studied beneath the broad canopy of the sky, gathered his imagery amid the cloud-capped mountains of the west, and fashioned the tide of his eloquence where mighty rivers in their turbid grandeur roll. But, oh! Eliza, you should have heard him now after five years' col- lege life and travel ; when, with all the fullness of his rich Indian accent still warming in his words, he rose and exclaimed : " ' Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh ' ; and returning to this, my native land, and overlooking once more its thriving cities, garden scenes, and growing fields, my aching heart asks at every turn: What have my people received in ex- change for all this ! Looking on your proud institu- tions, too, I ask again : Upon whose grounds do they rest? Where were dug the stones from which they are piled, and from whose forests were the timbers hewed ? " The Indian has done evil, but, ah ! my friends, has he not sometimes done good? Who welcomed your fathers from the sea, and whose wigwams hid them from the storm, their enemies, and beasts of the 184 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY wood! Who smoked with them the pipe of peace, and showed them lakes and streams, running like sil- ver currents upon the bosom of the earth ? And when their French foes came down from the North with battle-axe and spear, who, like the Chief of the Mo- hawks, harangued his braves, bared his own breast, and nobly fell in their defence? " But, ah ! I say again : What have the pale-faces given in exchange for all this % They have taught our lips to thirst for fire-water instead of our mountain springs ; our bows and arrows, too, we have laid down for the white man's thunder-sticks ; and no more can we follow the buffalo in chase or vie with the fleet- footed deer, hasten the fox to his hole, or face the wolf in his den. Alas ! no ; the white man has stolen away our heritage of strength, and given us in return only the means of weakness ; afflicting us with the vices of civilization, while transporting by the ship- load its benefits to the far less virtuous, if not less attractive, heathen of other lands. So, dwindled in numbers, driven to climes uncongenial, and forced to take shelter beneath forests uninviting, the Indian is weary, his spirits fail him, his heart grows sick and dies within him, even as all over this broad and mighty land his lodge-fires have gone out forever. " Verily, our wrongs do rise to heaven ; and because we have sometimes lifted our arms in self-defence, the white man would fain make the world believe the Indian all of savage mould. But let the highly sig- nificant names he left upon his lakes and rivers an- swer for his perceptions of the beautiful. Tell me, what people, speaking a language expressing every AIRY CASTLES 185 shade of thought, could have conceived a more fitting appellation for the placid waters of a lake than Win- nipiseogee, The smile of Him who made it? By the light of his own unassisted reason, too, the Indian knows and feels that there is a God whom he igno- rantly, but reverently, worships. He marks His fierce wrath in the whirlwind and hears His anger in the thunder's roar. He sees His displeasure in the wan- ing of the moon, and feels His love in the warm light of the sun ; and savage though he be, the Indian is no hypocrite while he bends his knee and lifts his heart adoringly to the Great Spirit enthroned in the far-ofT Happy Hunting Ground. " True, my friends, your veiled eyes see not the light of yonder sun, while my people do indeed look on his glories and dance with delight when he comes up from the waves ; but, oh ! let me tell you, each and every one, that a far brighter light is shining in upon your minds here to-day. You have the Bible, and you have learned of God and the Saviour; you have a heaven all shining with love to look forward to ; and I hope when the shades of night have fallen on the world and the angels are leaning over you listening to your whispered prayers, you will not forget the children of the forest; and may the morning soon break when the blessings which you so richly enjoy will fall upon them like showers of raindrops upon wilting flowers." To Miss Eliza Hamilton, Galena, IlL CHAPTER XXXVIII EVEE SO LITTLE Blind Institute, New York, June, 1849. It is Saturday, teachers' holiday, and Sibyl is as usual with her mother. Mr. Stevens from the Theo- logical Seminary called this afternoon to favor Miss Cynthia and me with some reading sent us by the president, the Rev. Dr. Turner, and the last two hours we have been listening in raptures to the beautiful poem, " Oberon," a translation from the German of Wieland; and when he came to where Huon and Rizzia had crossed the fearful mountain and landed safe in the hermit's vale, I engaged my friend's hand wherewith to write you. Dearest Marion, as you know, I left Rochester for this Blind Institute, thinking ere long to become an organist. Arriving, not many days had elapsed when the good Professor who heads the musical depart- ment sent for me to his lesson-room; and after investigating my capacities for music — time, tune, ex- pression, imagery, etc., as though to become a musi- cian one must necessarily be a painter and a poet also — he chalked off for me seven years of hard practice. Seven years ! the exact time that I was toiling for an education, alternating between scholar and teacher. Still, since any number of added years had been prom- 186 EVER SO LITTLE 187 ised to follow the one accorded to me here, I did not falter so much at the time as at the immensity of the undertaking, and all without the eyes. But stopping only for a thought the Professor continued: " Art is long, my child, but in seven years you shall be able to play in Trinity, or St. Paul's of London, if you will ; while in half that time, with close practice, you might play for any ordinary church." Then something of the pride or the courage of my seeing days came back to me, and I said : " No, Professor, better the seven years, as one should never be content to do anything less than well when well is possible." " Exactly ! " he replied. And for my first lesson I commenced the seventy- two positions of the key- board, gliding out of one key into another by those magic sevenths — looking, you see, to modulation and transposition, the weaving of one's own preludes, in- terludes, or voluntaries, and the like. But while compelling myself to the most arduous practice, my every thought has been alert for some way out of this institution with more or better prom- ise than playing myself out; and recently I have set my hand to a little work, a book even, if you believe it, which some hundreds of New York's best have al- ready subscribed for ; and am I presuming too much upon your disinterestedness, Marion, when I per- suade myself that you, too, will be delighted to set it forward just ever so little ! The influence of the good is always desirable, and especially so in an under- taking where success is in the least doubtful. Very many of those whom you call friends have been 188 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY friends to me also; and hoping that you will be pleased to gather among them a few subscribers for the volume I am about to publish, I send you the accompanying little prospectus. If in your heart it meet with a cordial reception, some names must grace its pages. Remember me, please, to my very kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. Lyon; and dear Mrs. Burr, my darling Lizzie, who first walked with me to church ; and sweet Mary, too, who led me first among the flowers, and I called her afterward Teary, the Hebrew of Mary, because she wept with me. Kiss them both when you meet them, please, and crown all the other joys they have with the light of your smile. And dear Carrie Hastings, too, who once returned a rich veil that she might take in its place a present for me — tell her that the angels have written that love-deed in the books they keep, and from all storms and clouds I pray them to hide her forever beneath their wings. My heart grieves always for poor, dear Frankie Ball, sleeping with her baby by her side among the birds and the flowers ; and it will be beautiful to tell her in heaven that I know now how, the morning after Christmas, she went flying back to the jeweller's with her watch and chain, that she might bring the money to the stranger who had fallen in the city all dark and alone by the cold grave in her heart. Oh ! only the angels themselves can love us so ! Please speak of me, too, to dear Mrs. Saxton and her daughters. Miss Lottie has a note or two which she will perhaps let me give a place in the little book that is to be. And please remember me also with EVER SO LITTLE 189 much love to Mrs. Butts, Mrs. Buchan, and Mrs. Henry Rochester, to all of whom I am indebted for much sweet kindness. Alas ! how they err who call friendship but a name. Dear, noble Rochester is full of friends, and though far away, and I get tidings from them but seldom, still, like the pyramids, I know tkey are tkere and unckanged. Many, tkougk, make friends witk you to- day, and to-morrow witkdraw tkeir favor. Perckance you kave uttered a sentiment or taken a liberty tbat does not accord precisely witk tkeir views; or some others have expressed opinions derogatory to your worth, and behold ! they are gone. Still, there is little room to censure them, for love in all hearts is not perennial; and when the sun has ceased to shine warmly upon it, nothing is more natural than it should die, as the leaves wither and fall when storms pelt upon the trees. To Miss Marion MacGregor, Rochester, N. Y. CHAPTER XXXIX YET MANY MOEE Schenectady, N. Y., June, 1849. Since all the Fine Arts claim you for their special friend, Mr. Dean, and the whole race of sciences aspires at least to the honor of your acquaintance, how fitting that I come to write you from this, the finest seat of learning in our State ; and think of you, too, while sitting here at the feet of one greater than a Gamaliel with his college turrets towering above and around him. Yesterday the Rev. Dr. Nott, forty-five years presi- dent of this college, passed his seventy-sixth birth- day hearing his classes as usual, attending to all the calls of his students, and listening to and correcting their rhetorical exercises, preparatory to the coming C ommencement . In the morning, while looking over the papers aloud, as he calls it, thereby to give me the benefit of his gleanings also, a committee of the senior class waited upon him, desiring permission to have a gen- eral college celebration of his birthday. At this the good sage seemed much surprised, and asked: " How in the world did you know that! Really, I did not know it myself ; but if it be so, boys, that I am verily one year older, and you wish to celebrate 190 YET MANY MORE 191 it, as you say, you must do it in the way I am going to — work with all your might ! " " But/' said they, " we would like to illuminate the college." " Illuminate the college ! " exclaimed he. " Why ! what an idea; such a thing was never done." " Why, yes," said the students ; " the first year you came here it was illuminated." " Not quite," replied the Doctor ; " for if I remem- ber rightly, we had no college to illuminate." " But," said they, " they hung the lamps in the trees, which meant the same thing." So the conference went on, and at last terminated by the Doctor's consenting to let the senior class come to his house in the evening for an informal levee, specifying, however, that they should all go home pre- cisely at ten o'clock. During the day, many old and tried friends called to offer their congratulations that another year had been added to his long and useful life, and left hoping that he would be spared to them yet many more. Many presents were sent in, also, of fruits, bouquets, etc. A political friend sent, by express, a full-length engraving of himself, elegantly framed; and while dear Mrs. Nott and a grandson, Mr. Howard Potter, were selecting the most appropriate place for hanging it, the Doctor, lifting up his eyes from his papers, ex- claimed in his piquant way : " I have it ! Hang him in the college library, where he should have been himself long ago ! " The professors and their ladies, the tutors and other officers of the college were present at the party ; 192 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY and altogether the evening was one of rare profit and pleasure. The Doctor was in fine spirits, entertain- ing the groups that thronged about him with vivid delineations of the master spirits of the last genera- tion, with most of whom he has been intimate. Some- one asked him whether he thought Hamilton or Web- ster the greater man. He replied: " Hamilton, for Webster has lived to do much since Hamilton died; and besides, the greatest efforts of Hamilton have never been published." Doctor Nott is naturally eloquent; you feel it as much in his common conversation as in his sermons and writings. Indeed, eloquence is a part of him; and while his words may not be so select as his man- ner is impressive, one cannot listen to him without being persuaded. The best feature in the evening's entertainment was his paternal address to the whole assembly, in which he dwelt with great emphasis upon the fact that men do not live out half their days in consequence of infractions upon the physical laws of their being. He said : " One-fifth of the human race die before they are twelve months old, one-third before they are two years old, and one-half before they are twenty, while nothing analogous to it is found among other ani- mals. All other species live," he said, " with but few exceptions, to a certain and uniform age. Whence then this mortality among men? The truth is, young gentlemen, the only animal endowed with reason and the higher attributes is almost the only animal that outrages the plain and obvious laws of his being." Then by way of illustration, he remarked upon his YET MANY MORE 193 own plain mode of living, his constant nse of cold baths, and his abstaining from all stimulants, both in food and drink. " Life," he said, " is the most precious of Heaven's gifts, and I have no doubt that all before me would like to extend it to the greatest number of years possible." .. In the early part of the evening, one of the stu- dents, Mr. Amasa McCoy, a young man of decided talent, read aloud some very appropriate passages from the " Bard of Avon " — one from " Henry IV.," another from the speech of Adam in " As You Like It," which seemed written almost expressly for the occasion and the venerable sire for whom it was selected : " Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty ; For in youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility ; Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly." Just before the company dispersed, the venerable Doctor referred in a touching manner to the separa- tion that would soon take place between himself and the class before him, and besought them to live with constant reference to the Judgment-Day, " to prepare for which all others are given." " I charge you," he said, " let not one before me on that tremendous day be absent from the right hand of God, that, should it be my happiness to be found there also, I may be permitted to exclaim : * Here, 194 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY Lord, am I and the children Thou hast committed to my care.' " And then, in behalf of all present, he offered up a most affecting and solemn prayer to the Father of all our mercies. His reference to the cholera, now literally " walking in darkness, and wasting at noonday," was very affecting; and in com- pliance with his fervent petition, one could almost see the Destroying Angel returning his raging sword to the scabbard and pronouncing it Enough! To Mr. Nicholas Dean, New York. CHAPTER XL THAT DESERTED ROOM Fairport, N. Y., July, 1849. My sweet thee and thou friend asks of me a letter, specifying : " and all about thyself." Far back then, in the beautiful by-gone, in a neat school-room a little way down the hill from my uncle's, I played school-mistress with a sea of faces around me as rosy and dimpled as was my own. One day a black-eyed, curly-headed little boy with a green satchel on his arm and a straw hat in his hand walked in and accosted me so handsomely that I was straight- way in love with him; and when I asked his name, he replied promptly: " Master William Lovejoy, ma'am. My father and mother are travelling this summer, and if you please they have sent me to at- tend your school." " Ah ! that is very right," I said, " and we are very happy to welcome you ; " and then by way of atten- tion I gave him a conspicuous seat, hung up his hat, opened his satchel and looked over his books, smoothed down his curls, and patted his rosy cheeks until the new-comer seemed to feel himself quite at home. Then I went on again hearing my little ones stammer through their tasks, but ever and anon my eyes wandered to Master William's seat, and as often 195 196 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY met his glancing over his shoulder, peeping quiz- zingly into the face of one or exchanging knowing looks with another; and when he saw me observing him, half laughed and looked on his book again. Master William was cousin to a little cousin of mine in the school, which by his mode of reasoning made him cousin to me, and was always very much hurt if in any way I failed to recognize the relation- ship. Toward the close of the summer and the school, Master William's parents returned and took him to their home, but not until they had exacted a promise from me evermore to consider their home my home, and for the sake of my little new cousin, to come to them as often as possible. A few years after, when my William had been but a brief time in his grave, a letter from this cousin was the first to chide the desolation of my great sorrow. " Oh ! come to us," he said. " We think of you and talk of you all the time. Come, do come soon; bring all your books and everything. Mother and I have the plans all made for the winter — what we shall do and where we shall go. Your pet table has been in my room this summer, and that old chair with the squeaking back, or l lone harp,' as you used to call it. But they are all replaced now, and it looks there again as though my dear cousin had but just stepped out." Up to this time I had strolled about the grounds like one whose soul had departed, sitting long hours under the trees with my weeping eyes staring into space or fixed vacantly upon the ground, not knowing and little caring what henceforth should become of THAT DESERTED ROOM 197 me. But these friends had read the Doctor's obituary in the papers, knew of my marriage, and had ad- dressed me over my new name; so with them there would be nothing to explain, and I felt that I could go to them. Then with something in my heart like the dawn of courage I arose, and seeking the key to the room of the departed one, I went up and began that long-dreaded work of packing his books and papers which, with his watch and a few personal effects, constituted the little all that he had left me. Ah! that day, alone in that deserted room which, but one month before, my William had left so full of hope and health and happiness. As I look back to it now, the shades of evening were already gathering heavy upon the world when the last of those sacred things had been placed in the trunks below ; after which, still lingering as if to catch one more glimpse of the fast-fading past, I too crossed hurriedly that fated threshold and came down those winding stairs only to bide a little the hour deep marked for my en- trance upon those ages of darkness, that in the brief space of a second were flashed across the plane of my soul's vision two years before — deep marked lest the Angel of Destiny should this once forget or, pitying, pass a victim already sorrowing for the loved and the lost. Then when a few moons later, as a prelude to what has since transpired of that strange fore- shadowing, I went to the Institution for the Blind, all that I had to leave was sent here, which now on my return I have come to reclaim and make a little visit with these friends. Cousin William is eyes for me and leads me over the grounds and reads to me in the 198 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY nooks and under the trees, where long ago I read to him until his speaking eyes saw poetry and beauty in everything. Yesterday I unlocked the box containing my school-day relics, and tore in pieces and consigned to the flames everything that had a line of my hand- writing upon it; and all the letters that I had ever received save three little sheets of long-ago light and love. My drawings Cousin William pleaded for, and I was almost sorry myself when they were gone, as my sisters would have prized them ; but when they are able to make better ones, I shall be glad that they have not mine for contrasts. To Mrs. Lewis Eddy, New York. CHAPTER XLI . THE EYES OR THE EARS Le Roy, N. Y., July, 1849. With those softly creeping, thought-pursuing fin- gers of yours, Mary, you have doubtless often traced or followed the Persian armies of Xerxes through all their weary march across deserts and plains to ancient Athens, and watched them in an evil hour wrap that great city in flames. But please imagine again with me those high walls being battered down, the white marble edifices and temples, dedicated to the gods, enveloped in smoke and marked for ruin; and then, along all those splendid streets, where so late art and science, life and beauty reigned, watch destruction, darkness, death, and decay slowly make their homes. I say imagine all that, for now, after nearly two thou- sand five hundred years have rolled away, and the meanest reptiles are crawling in the halls of kings, solitary toads hopping stealthily over the banquet floors, dark bats sleeping where birds of Jove plumed their glittering wings, moss and ivy growing and feeding upon the dust of princes, and the owl, sacred bird of the Athenians, making the night hideous with his dolorous cry above the ruins, I am going to take you there, Mary, for an ideal visit. But first let me 199 200 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY explain a little why I should be leading you, sweet one, away back, back through so many ages of dust and decay. Seven years ago, Miss Wright of this seminary went to Smyrna to teach the Protestant children of the Mediterranean, where she remained four years, and then came to Athens for a term of two years. During her absence, aided by friends who had pre- ceded her, she made a very choice collection of Greek, Roman, and Turkish antiquities, which are placed in the cabinet here on high shelves with glass doors. Yesterday being a holiday in the school, Miss Wright herself very kindly took them all down and put them one after another into my hands, and described them to me so minutely that I seem really to have seen them. One love-deed begets another, and so now with your permission, Mary, I am going to climb up there in fancy and do the same thing for you. First then, here is a little clay lamp which was dug from the ruins. You see it is shaped like the half of a goose-egg and about as large. It has a little tube on the top of one side for the wick, and some little holes in the middle where the oil was poured in, and they served also for a vent. It is a rude thing, but there is no knowing what great purposes it may have answered in the world. Possibly, by its light, Aris- tophanes wove his brilliant Comedies ; or it may have belonged to Plato and sat upon his little classic table while he wrote his Dialogues and Twelve Letters, the eloquence, melody, and sweetness of which, you know, so pleased the people that they entitled him " The Athenian Bee." THE EYES OR THE EARS 201 Let us see ! Socrates' father was a sculptor, and in early life, it is said, the great philosopher himself fol- lowed the same majestic art. Well, here is one of the Athenian gods that may have been chiselled by his own hand ; and one of those, too, that he was after- ward accused of ridiculing, which to us would seem a very slight offence, but then nothing could atone for it but death. Innocence, alas! then as now, was no protection against the tongue of slander. The life of Socrates, we know, was adorned by every virtue and stained by no vice. For many years, too, his high-souled independence and freedom of speech upon all subjects placed him beyond the malevolence of anyone. But after the witty and unprincipled Aristophanes had once ventured to ridicule his ven- erable character in a comedy upon the stage, the way was opened, and praise soon gave place to criticism and censure. Envy hurled at him her poisoned arrows, and Jealousy, in the voices of Melitus, Anytus, and Lycon, stood forth to recriminate him; and good Socrates was summoned before the Tri- bunal of Five Hundred, you remember, accused of corrupting the Athenian youth, and ridiculing the many gods which the Athenians worshipped. Here now is a little earthen bowl which does not seem to differ much from the pottery of our day, though it has lain underground more than two thou- sand years. If not the same, it was probably one like it from which Socrates at last drank the poison, handed him by the executioner with tears in his eyes, when the great moralist lifted up his voice and ex- claimed : 202 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY " There is but one God ! " and drew off the fatal draught. This, too, is a singular little thing, likewise a piece of pottery, shaped like a candlestick with a bilge in the middle and a hole in the top. The Greeks called it " Lachrymatory," which signifies : " A vessel for tears." What idea these people had of bottling tears, we know not ; but it reminds one of the beautiful pas- sage of David: " Thou tellest my wanderings, put Thou my tears into Thy bottle, are they not in Thy book? " These lit- tle tear-bottles, Miss Wright says, are found in nearly all the sarcophagi, or stone coffins, dug so frequently from the ruins of ancient Athens. They were placed there, doubtless, by the friends of the deceased, and probably contained the tears of the mourners, or those whose profession it was to weep for the dead — a very ancient Oriental custom, but quite as consistent as many of our funereal displays. While in Asia Minor, Miss Wright herself chanced to be present on one of these occasions ; and such control over the lachrymal glands, she says, she never before conceived possible. From perfect indifference, they were the next moment seemingly lost in the deepest grief, their cheeks bathed in what we would call " crocodile tears.'' Next, as I remember, we come upon one of the little sylvan gods of the ancient Greeks, also of pottery mould. It was probably a votive offering to Pan and Apollo, suspended perhaps in their caves, which are still to be seen in the side of the Athenian Acropolis, or highest point of the city. This, too, is another, only more ancient. Indeed, THE EYES OR THE EARS 203 from its resemblance to the Egyptian mummies, it must have been in use as far back as the days of Cadmus. See its arms folded across it breast, robed like a little Miss Mummy, indeed, and covered with hieroglyphics. Now open your hands wide, Mary, and do not let it drop. This is the head of a great lion, taken from the eaves of the ancient Parthenon, the most beauti- ful temple ever dedicated to the goddess Minerva, and still the model of architects all over the world. Put your hand in his mouth here. You see it is wide open where the water spouted out. It was chiselled from a block of Pentelican marble, which in the quarry, they say, is pure white, and glistens in the sun like rock sugar. And now, imagine me placing in your hands a little marble book that came from Mars Hill, where, four hundred years after poor Socrates suffered his trial, received his condemnation, and drank the fatal hemlock, St. Paul stood and declared to the Athenians " The Unknown God," and defended himself before the Court Areopagus boldly answering in the pres- ence of the Athenian judges for his fearless denounce- ment of their wicked idolatries. A few years since, too, Dr. King, an American missionary to Greece, was tried there for a like offence; which makes him the third, you see, in a very illustrious line of " criminals " ! When Dr. King first went to Athens, Miss Wright says his house was built upon a pile of the old ruins, from which he dug this water- jar. It is an ancient thing, but even at the present time Greek maidens 204 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY use them, only larger, for carrying water from the fountains. They are made with double handles, you see, and when filled, are carried one on each shoulder, which to us would seem impossible. Their supple joints, however, do not mind it; and if we, too, had some similar exercise, our forms would doubtless be more erect and our chests more expansive. This little stone is a bit of mosaic, taken from the floor of the old temple dedicated to Ceres at Eleusis, twelve miles from Athens. Anciently, this temple was visited by the Athenians annually in great proces- sions to pay their adoration to the goddess Ceres ; and the road to it, you remember, was called " The Sacred Way." Now, dear Mary, we will move along to a case full of Turkish things from Smyrna, Asia Minor. These large dolls represent the Turks and Armenians in their different costumes. But this droll thing is one of their chibouks, or long pipes, and the nargileh to it, which those seeing fingers of yours would soon dis- cover to be only a glass vase, beautifully painted. When used, though, it is filled with water, and the little fireplace in the top is where the tobacco is burned, from which the smoke comes down into the water, keeping it constantly bubbling, and then passes off through a long elastic tube, the end of which the smoker holds in his mouth, and may sit across the room if he like. This and coffee- sipping, you know, are among the Turk's greatest luxuries ; and now I remember, Miss Wright put into my hands next a little stack of their cups and saucers — not saucers exactly, but cunning little metal stands for the cups, THE EYES OR THE EARS 205 called zarjs y she said, and made of gold and silver or whatever can be afforded. The cups hold about as much as an American would take at one swallow; a Turk, though, would be an hour sipping it and blow- into it the smoke of his pipe. While Miss Wright was in Smyrna, a traveller from our country called at the house of a pasha; and when helped to this mark of hospitality, instead of holding the tiny cup grace- fully between his thumb and finger and sipping it gently, he seized it with his whole hand and drank it off at once. The good pasha, of course, thought his guest greatly wanting in civility, and turning to an at- tendant, inquired: " Who is this barbarian! " But let us do what we are going to do quickly and be off, is not an unusual characteristic of the American. Dearest Mary, you will be weary if I take time to tell you of all the curiosities contained in this cabi- net, and their many associations, but as we move along I recall a collection of little Turkish amulets that are very curious. They are made of glass, like small bells, and are worn upon donkeys and cam- els to keep off the " Evil Eye," or the influence of jealousy and envy. The children wear them also for the same purpose. A little daughter of one of our missionaries, who of course wore no such badge of Oriental superstition, was visited by some of the natives, who, after lavishing upon the fair one their most extravagant praises of her beauty, at last spit in her face to prevent her being flattered, they said, which was doubtless a very effectual preventive! 206 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY We read of the Pharisees, do we not, that " They do all their works to be seen of men, and make broad their phylacteries." Well, here is a phylactery, and a great many other things too, that I should like to tell you about, you dear one. I must leave you, though, to explore this large box of gold and silver embroidery with your spirit eyes, just as I must the pleasure of glancing along those cases of minerals yonder, extending across the entire room. Indeed, there seems no end here to subjects of pleasing and instructive thought. Like everything else, though, this cabinet had its beginning, or " day of small things." Many years ago, the Misses Ingham from Massa- chusetts established this school, and shortly after, a gentleman presented them a few specimens of stone from different quarries in this vicinity, around which all the rest have been slowly gathering from nearly every part of the world, until now this room is verily a little world by itself. And so the buildings, too, have been enlarged and the advantages of the school increased in every way until there are few institu- tions that afford greater facilities for the education of young ladies. The conservatories are choice, the libraries large and select, and the grounds around spacious and beautiful. Professor Stanton, who is at present the nominal head of the school, has re- cently returned from Europe, and his gallery and studio are hung around with paintings, many pieces by the old masters, but most of them are the works of his own hand. The Hon. Henry Clay and Major- General Taylor, now our President, both sat for him THE EYES OR THE EARS 207 at New Orleans, and he points to their portraits with just pride. The principal teacher of painting, though, is a mute lady; and while kneeling at the easel, her soul becomes so enrapt with the inspira- tions of her art, that they say the forms on her can- vas seem to breathe and speak again to the glances of her eye. Still, dearest Mary, would you be willing to have your ears silenced for the sake of having your eyes opened? Ah! no; dark and empty and lonely as the world may be to us, I am persuaded that no intelli- gent blind person could be found who would exchange hearing, and its attendant gift of speech, for a pair of the brightest eyes in the world; while for myself, I have sometimes even wondered if, after all, it be, in the strictest sense of the word, a misfortune not to see. All of our other senses are certainly not only immeasurably quickened, but is not our whole nature improved and our immortal being greatly elevated through this darkest of human privations? Just imagine, for a moment, a touch like Cynthia Bul- lock's, so exquisite as to feel with ease the notes, lines, and spaces of ordinary printed music; then add to that a hearing that almost notes the budding of the flowers, and you will see how little one can possibly lack even in the scale of pleasurable existence, while perception in us becomes verily a new sense. Indeed, what shade of thought or feeling ever escapes us? Almost quicker than a thing has been uttered, we have felt or perceived it. What marvellous power, too, memory comes to possess, and how tenaciously she clings to everything, often astonishing even to 208 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY ourselves; while imagination, that loftiest and most winged attribute of the soul, not only becomes more fleet, but literally turns creator, reproducing before our spirit eyes not only all that we have lost, clothed in the beautiful ideal, but unbars the gates to every new field of intellectual research, often enabling us to compete even more than successfully with those who see. Alas ! if there could be only a seat of learning for us, with all its lessons oral or in the form of lectures, as at most of the German universities, what could we not achieve! But as it is, enough renowned have arisen from our ranks to prove that, while blindness fetters the hands and the feet, it verily adds wings to thought. Indeed, the world has but one Homer who sits forever shrouded in darkness, the blind god and Father of Song ; and but one Milton who gave to the world its " Paradise Lost " and its " Paradise Re- gained," while he bequeathed to the blind of all ages the glory and the beacon-light of his name. To Miss Mary Brush, Blind Institute, New York. CHAPTER XLII A GIFT FROM THE ANGELS "Stone Cottage," July, 1849. The stars are bright on the brook by the door, as if they had alighted there awhile to bathe and watch their shadows in the sky whence they came. lovely night ! in whose peaceful hours the heart is ever wont to go abroad in search of those it holds most dear. My little sister Nin has been reading to me " Lays of Many Hours/' by Miss Maylin, of Salem, N. J., a relative, Mrs. B says, of the distinguished Dr. Bowring, of England, whence comes, doubtless, the quaint hymn-like style of her poems, and the solemn ease in the tread of her fancies. Yesterday we fin- ished " The Neighbors," and in the evening paper saw a notice that the gifted authoress is on her way to this country; and, doubtless, Mr. N will be among the first to go out to meet her. If travellers say rightly, Miss Fredrika is small and far from beautiful. But beside his well-known penchant for celebrities, Mr. N is a native Scandinavian ; and, excuse me, you will do well not to leave him too long listening to her brilliant conversations and gazing upon that charming little hand of hers, which a coun- tryman told me last summer constitutes her one per- sonal vanity. 209 210 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY I wish you could see the darling little sister who is writing for me this evening. Her voice is like the heart-note of life's song, her breath the fragrance of its one rose, and her lips its parted leaves. Sweet child! she was born on my birthday. Dear grand- mother placed her in my arms, calling her " a birth- day gift from the angels." " See," she said coax- ingly, " what tiny little feet and hands she has, and dear blue eyes, as though the light of heaven were lingering in them yet ! " "A birthday gift from the angels, surely," exclaimed dear father, " and worth a dozen of the one I promised her. Only think of it ! the seventh daughter, and a little prophetess at that — double veiled, I declare ! " Then dear mother, lying there smiling as only a loving mother can smile, and perhaps thinking over the heaps of rocking and toting her little bunch of pinks and violets in fairy cap and blanket was going to require, added: "And suppose we let her name her little birthday present if she will be good and faithful to tend her? " Name her ! Bless you, sweet mother, even now, for such a privilege to a girl heart, then already swelling as though Heaven had really sent it something beau- tiful to love. And what wonder that almost years passed before a name could be found dear and sweet and beautiful enough for a thing so lovely and so all- beloved? At length a list of names that had just been given to a little Chinese princess came in the papers, and one of them was Nin, which all were charmed with excepting dear father, who called it " the name of a heathen and no name at all." Still, the little fairy seemed to adopt it as a part of her A GIFT FROM THE ANGELS 211 sweet self, and ran and hopped and played by it, laughed and sang by it, and came and went by it, until it seemed like robbing the lamb of half her smiles to take it away. So, finally linking it with gentle Eva, for an aunt in Ohio, dear father was persuaded to take down the old family Bible, and turning back reverently the record of his thee and thou fathers of six generations, wrote in it: " Nin Eva Aldrich," then the seventh in his string of graces, or troubles. Now, though, we are nine, with but one little brother. Dearest Sibyl, you will hardly believe me, but a thousand, thousand times more than I have ever envied you your black eyes, I have coveted your hap- piness of living for those whom you love. Indeed, by my William's grave, almost before the angels had borne him away, I looked down the long, lonely years, and found comfort in the thought of living henceforth but to break smiles around the hearts of the dear ones here, and plant new lights in this cottage home. But, alas ! too soon night, like a pillar of cloud, rose up before me dark and overwhelming until its very awfulness became as a living voice to my soul. I heard the voice and followed it ; and so far, surely, the dark, lonely way has been all dewy with mercies and shining with love. When the Lord leads, the roughest way is smooth, and when He helps, everything is easy. Hardly two months have passed, and yet almost subscribers enough to publish the little book have been gathered and paid in advance ; nearly enough letters for it, too, are already returned. Only the angels from heaven 212 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY can know how my heart rejoices all the day long ; and sometimes it seems that I am just beginning to live now that I have the prospect again of something to live for. toil! how sweet; and employment, how beautiful ! Oh, anything but a life-long of listless de- pendence, a burden even to one's self and a blessing to no one! Dear Mr. Dean writes that the cholera continues to rage all about the institution, but has so far most miraculously forborne to enter it. Praying that all there may be still so guarded and blest, and hoping to have the happiness of hearing from you very soon, I am always, dear Sibyl, Lovingly yours, To Miss Sibyl G. Swetland, Preceptress, Blind Institute, New York. CHAPTER XLIII A LAKE OF SUNBEAMS "Stone Cottage/' August, 1849. Returning just now from a little walk up the hill road to the wood yonder, sweet May said to me tim- idly, while stirring her little hand in mine and edging closer to my side : " I wish you would let me write a long letter for you, like Nin. I can write almost as good as she can." " Bless you, sweet child ! " I said ; " you shall, indeed, write for me, and a long letter, too." So we hurried back, and the little queen is sitting up here now in the red sunlight, her heart running over with happiness simply because she is writing for me. Little Nin is one of those fairy sort of favorites to whom all indulgences and pleasant things seem to fall as a matter of course; while dear May, who is the younger, takes up just as naturally all the little self- denials, covers them over with her rosy smiles, and goes singing on all the same — like the brooklet by the door, running its sweetest music over the roughest places. innocent, unselfish childhood! how passing lovely; and what wonder that the Lord likened the angels in heaven to loving little ones like these ! And 213 214 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY whoever doubted, too, that it was mostly the little girls who were lifted in His arms and blessed? Leaving New York so hurriedly, dear Mr. Stevens, I doubtless lost the pleasure of evermore meeting you there. The links, though, in the chain of events that brought about my sudden departure were all too lovely, you will see, not to have been fashioned by quite other hands than mine own. My sweet escort, Bessie, came in the morning as usual, and we were down town quite early looking after subscribers for the little book that is to be. But it seemed that all the good angels had left the world that day, and it was high noon before hardly an ad- ditional name had been obtained. The sun was never so scorching, the pavements grew burning hot, and as you can imagine, we grew faint and very weary. Bessie begged to come home, but I coaxed the dear child along block after block, saying: " Never mind, darling, we will go soon ; we shall reap if we faint not. Doubtless the angels have gone on and are waiting for us a little way yonder in some good place that we shall come to presently." So, hour after hour we toiled on. Many were ab- sent, and some had one excuse and some another, until finally we came to the large importing house of Mr. Wilson G. Hunt, who was also out. But the clerk very kindly invited us to take a seat in the counting-room and wait, as he would be in shortly; and with the prospect of a little rest in a cool place, and a glass of ice water, we accepted his invitation. My heart prayed every breath, and I know Bessie's thoughts were at least faced toward Heaven. Presently, A LAKE OF SUNBEAMS 215 though, Mr. Hunt entered, and his first words broke over my soul like a little lake of sunbeams. Taking a seat by his desk he said : " Well, ladies, have you called this hot day to make an investment with me! " " Oh, no, Mr. Hunt," I replied ; " excuse me, but I have called to give you an opportunity of making a little investment, if it is your pleasure/' "Ah ! well, that is right," he said ; " but what rate of interest do you propose? " " I do not know," I answered, " unless it be the thirty-fold Scripture promises," handing him the lit- tle prospectus, which he opened and read, looked over all the names, and then very kindly wrote his own for a copy; when suddenly, as if some good angel had flitted his thoughts with her white wing, he turned and said to me : " How many of these names have you gathered to-day?" " Mr. Fletcher Harper's was the first this morning," I answered, " and only four since, beside yours." "And how many do you usually get in a day? " " Sometimes as many as thirty," I replied, " and sometimes not half or a quarter that number ; just as the Lord seems to help." Then he called out to a clerk in the office adjoining: "John, how many are we here altogether?" " Twenty-five, I believe," was the answer, " beside those in California." " Well, what are their names ? " Then John went on repeating them, one after another, while Mr. Hunt wrote them all down, 216 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY marking them all " $1.00 Paid " ; and when done, he said: " Now, John, bring me twenty-five dollars," which John did ; and Mr. Hunt placed all the bills, five new fives, in the little book of names, shut it up, and handed it to me, saying: " There now, my dear lady, one of your best day's work is done, and I guess you are not sorry." Oh! why is it that when we feel so much, we are always able to say so little! Rising, Bessie thanked him, I know, by turning her sweet self into a little statue of smiles; while my poor heart was so over- awed by his kindness, and the immediate and direct answer to my prayers, that to speak seemed impos- sible ; and when I felt a warm hand resting benignly upon my shoulder as if to bless and guide me away I knew that few words were needed, and with rainbows of gratitude melting through my tears I simply said : " I thank you forever, Mr. Hunt." " Not at all, not at all ! " was his kind reply, as he stepped along to escort us to the door ; " it doubt- less gives me far more pleasure than it does you." Then, turning to bid him adieu, I must have looked the gratitude that I could not speak, for again in the most encouraging manner possible, he said: " I shall be more than doubly paid when Christmas comes and you bring me the little books." So I de- parted, praying in my soul the white angels to encamp around about him forever, forever ! The next morning Bessie's mother sent me word that, in consequence of the increasing alarm of chol- era, she had decided to go into the country imme- A LAKE OF SUNBEAMS 217 diately, and Bessie would not be able to join me any more for the present. That morning, too, eighteen additional names were added to the sick list in the institution. A large number also waited upon the superintendent and begged him to close the school, or at least permit them to depart. I passed much of the day as usual, among the trees, thinking, thinking; when about four o'clock a despatch came for me to be ready, as that evening a friend would call to take me up the Hudson to pass some time in Schenectady with my good friends, Doctor and Mrs. Nott, of which Miss Cynthia doubtless told you. I remained seven de- lightful days with them and then I felt that I was to leave. I packed up my things myself, and to the sur- prise of all, came down to breakfast in my travelling dress. Numberless objections were raised, but noth- ing could dissuade me. I said to them : " Have no fears ; the angels will be with me along all the way." They all came down to see me off. Dear Mrs. Nott gave the conductor a thousand charges, but when the grandson, Mr. Potter, was showing me into the car, who should rise up there to receive me but Mr. Dean's minister, Doctor Bellows, almost the best friend I have in New York. He was on his way West, and left me safe with the sister who, in answer to a despatch, was waiting to meet me at the train. Since that, as you will be happy to know, Rochester has added to my list of subscribers so many of her generous names, that after a very short time more in New York, I shall be able to give the little book to the publishers. Dear, beautiful Rochester! Sorrow has hallowed 218 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY every inch of its grounds to me, and I love every stone in its walls. Indeed, my heart has set it np in its memory for a little city of refuge, a place to fly to through all time for love and light and smiles. Life's first joy was numbered to me there, and there the gates to the happy past closed upon me forever. Thenceforward I wander on, counting off sadly the dark days, as nuns tell their black beads, or like one sleep-walking in a happy dream, smiling out upon the dark. Dear Mr. Stevens, from our first meeting in Ge- neva, even until now, you have been scattering kind- nesses along my dark way ; and I have gathered them up until they make to my heart a little rose-garden of sunny memories; and would I could send you in re- turn, for all time, a never-failing lain of love, and a golden ephah of blessings ! To Mr. Stevens, Theological Seminary, Twenty-second St., New York. CHAPTER XLIV VICTORY "Stone Cottage," August, 1849. Few things are more natural than the desire to visit places foreign to one's own; besides, having in you, Cousin mine, the very soul of a poet, your imag- ination would fain be forever seeking new eyries wherein to build, and new heights wherefrom to soar. No one, more than I, would like you to see the Wind God shake old Ocean by his mane, feast your eye upon the Alps and Apennines, and watch their lakes when " red morn glows on their breasts." Still, a poet too much indulged is apt to lose his Muse. An only child, the pride of doting parents, a home lined with books, luxury at every turn, and tutors and masters always at hand, what possible ground for sympathy with my cousin save that he is too much favored instead of too little ! If we lift the curtain of the past and backward wander, however far, we find written upon every page of man's history: No excellence is obtained without labor. Young men of affluence, having little else to do than feast upon the bounties which Providence has assigned them and bask in the dawn of new enjoy- ments, are but seldom disposed to contend for meeds of honor obtained only at the expense of unwearied 219 220 A. PLACE IN THY MEMORY application and self-denial. They often enter the lit- erary course, though, and for a time may walk in ad- vance of those less favored than themselves ; until, by self-indulgence and irresolution, they become effemi- nate, fluctuate, and to their mortification yield the palm to their poor but persevering competitors, who, gradually advancing step by step, treading down every obstruction and boldly surmounting every bar- rier, nor tarrying in all the mountain-way, finally reach the goal and grasp the object of their anxious but deferred hopes. Indeed, so generally has poverty been the cradle of genius, that in every age and in every land those who have done most to defy time and decay, those to whom Science owes her greatest advancements, Art her grandest achievements, as well as those whose hands have oftenest guided safely the helm in the hour of a nation's peril, were in their youth not only deprived of the luxuries of life, but were often strangers to its most common comforts; and but for that unyielding and obstinate determina- tion which knows no such word as fail, they had with the multitude passed unknown away. Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer, said when dying : " If I owe the world anything, it is for its un- tiring opposition." The high-minded philosopher, Galileo, solicited the loan of a few shillings wherewith to construct an instrument with which he afterward shook the world's foundation of error. Rollin was running with the herd of other ragged lads when that ethereal spirit which beamed from out his eagle eye and expansive brow snatched him, a gem, from the mud, and set him up to shine forever in the unrivalled VICTORY 221 splendors of his own genius. Columbus, whose soul when unfurled " leaped across the sea and laid bare a world," lived and died stung to his heart's core with want and neglect. Many of the richest minds Eng- land has produced were pearls brought up from the greatest obscurity: Shakespeare, to whom Nature gave her magic wand; Kirk White, the genius of musings; poor Chatterton, Sir Humphry Davy and his student, the young bookbinder, now no less than Sir Michael Faraday, Chemist Royal. The master spirits of all ages who have dazzled the world with their brilliant achievements had barriers of some kind to surmount. Napoleon, when he saw his ranks becoming thin, grasped the standard in his own hand, rushed forward, leaping over bodies of the slain like a spirit of the storm, till victory was his. And just so have arisen to excellence multitudes with whom the Fates loved to war. Indeed, there are moments in the lives of all when a word, a resolve, or a single step seems to be a pivot upon which their whole destiny turns, either for success or defeat — and that moment with you, Cousin mine, is now. During the last war with England, a British bat- tery stationed upon a hill considerably annoyed the American troops. " Can you storm that battery? " said General Rip- ley to Colonel Miller. " I will try, sir," was the laconic answer. Now, only rise and arm your most lofty aspirations with Colonel Miller's weapon, and the tame way you complain of will be straightway changed to an high- way, bordered with not only all the Alps and Apen- 222 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY nines of travel that yon desire, bnt looming up in the distance the peaks of Parnassus even, np whose toil- some steeps have climbed one after another all that noble army, the story of whose lives and the veins of whose eloquence have flowed out over the ages but to fertilize the desolations of the human heart — that noble army who, employing their Heaven-lighted im- aginations for embodying Truth in living characters, set their names around with immortelles that will be new and sweet when the skies of worldly glory are darkened over and its scrolls gone to decay. You say, my dear Cousin : " I want to be some- thing in the world." Rather say : I want to do some- thing in the world, for toil he must who would have it said of him : He was great, or he was good. Good- ness is the chiefer part of greatness, and the most imperishable fame is the memory of him who made the world better by living in it, the memory of him who whitened his own immortal nature by loving and serving mankind, loving and serving God. To Mr. William W. Lovejoy, Fairport, N. Y. CHAPTER XLV ANOTHEK SCENE "Stone Cottage/' August, 1849. Out here on the steps where all is still save the noise of the brook gurgling by and the sound of the grinding in the mill below, I have come with my card and pencil to talk a night hour with you, dear Eliza Bush. It was in the old Seminary, long since to ashes gone, that I first planted you in my heart. Then it was a garden plat, fresh and green and full of hope-blossoms heavy with the perfumes of love. But now how changed ! Mildew and death are there ; frosts cold and frigid have turned their leaves, and sleety winds have shaken them to the ground. Still, like the dear Bush that you are, always ablaze in your own goodness, you stand now as then, firm and beau- tiful; like the oak you have spread your branches, and I in my weariness come to repose in their shade. Truly, Eliza, you have been to me not only a light in a dark place, but as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. It was trusting to your sweet guid- ance that I first found courage to leave my room and come out into the world, the while through your eyes to look on myself as the world was evermore to look on me, with my heart robbed poor, my hands fettered, and my feet trailing after them the heavy chains of 223 224 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY darkness. Ah! how tenderly you watched over me during that visit, praising every move and assuring me over and over that no one would ever dream of my not seeing. Friends often say those things to me now, but their sound is as the ring of broken bells compared to the music they were to my ears then. At that last dinner, though — do you remember! — when coffee was served, and the tiny handle to my cup was turned just a little too much away, and I thought to substitute a spoon for my first sip, the handle of the spoon chanced to curve up instead of down, which brought the round of the bowl to my lips. I dropped it rather quickly with a nervous laugh. Others laughed from sympathy, and then I cried. The full weight of blindness came to my consciousness with such a blow that I could not help it. Afterward, though, our sweet hostess pronounced it " the best of the wine at the last of the feast," for, she said, " it baptized all our hearts with a tenderness of sympathy and love for you we can never forget." My next tears were when dear old Senator Backus came to announce all the arrangements perfected for my entrance into the New York Blind Institute, and for as many years as would make me an acceptable organist to any church. If changing heaven for outer darkness Satan felt any regret, he had at least the comfort of companionship, whereas I was to go alone, alone, alone. If the choice had been offered me of a narrow house alongside my William, " low in the ground," how long, think you, it would have taken me to decide 1 The journey, though, to that Blind Institute was of ANOTHER SCENE 225 itself another scene of that strange foreshadowing of my lot at L , the being borne or carried along through the darkness. The time you persuaded me to repeat it to you and Belle at your house, how little I dreamed that vague scene would ever constitute a part of my life; or what I called a pause become a lapse of years within those gloomy walls. Or the shape that you remember the darkness itself finally took on, mean the getting of subscribers for a little book of mine in the great city of New York. All that was foreshadowed, you see, had to be. Every step of the dread of what was seemingly out in the distance and yet rising up before me, I had to live through. Before it was finished the alarm of cholera came and hurried me away from the city. I say alarm — it was more than alarm — it was there. Finally a telegram from Mrs. Dr. Nott, of Schenec- tady, charged me to be ready at four o'clock, a friend would come and bring me to her. The angels had me still in their keeping, and after ten days with Mrs. Nott, brought me safe back to Rochester. And, ah! how I missed you there, my dear Eliza. Yes, how I missed everybody! Of all the epitaphs known among humans, the sad- dest is covered by that one little word: Forgotten! Christmas one year agone, Santa Claus was beauti- ful to me there, and one of the gayest and brightest- colored of his gifts was a dress pattern of chally ; and farther on toward spring, when my wardrobe was in process for oue more siege at the institution, Mrs. Snow suggested that said chally be exchanged for something similar in mourning that I could wear. 226 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY The dressmaker knew exactly the place, named it, and straightway Mrs. Snow ordered her carriage, that freest thing in the world except her own heart and her home ; and when, at his store on the bridge, Mr. Aultman had kindly measured off the same number of yards and one or two more, lest his material were not quite so nice, folding it up he said to Mrs. S — - : " I think the advantage of this trade still mine. Is there not some little thing that your friend would like " — turning around to his shelves — " some pocket- handkerchiefs perhaps ? Here is a box of capes, frail but pretty enough while they last." Unfolding one, Mrs. Snow exclaimed : " How lovely ! as exquisite as the frostwork upon a window- pane ! " " Yes," he said, " but they are only illusion with the lace tracery gummed or pressed on, and while they look delicate enough to cost as many dollars, they are only seventy-five cents." One was added to the pack- age and we left. Entering the house I ran up to my room, tossed the things upon the bed, and hurried down to the lunch that was waiting. At the table the matter of the cape coming up, Miss Sarah, Mrs. Snow's niece, asked teasingly when I was going to wear it. " Oh ! there is no knowing," I replied, " unless I keep it to wear at your wedding " — which doubtless just enough piqued the curiosity of Elizabeth, the waiting-girl, to make her climb the slrirs or watch opportunity for a look at it before my departure. Anyway, the following May Mrs. Snow went to reside in Detroit, and Elizabeth went as second girl to the ANOTHER SCENE 227 house of one of my other " best friends," and carried with her the story of the cape on this wise, as I had it from the same dressmaker, who, after my year's absence, came to give some needed touches to my wardrobe : Mrs. Blank to Elizabeth: "Mrs. De Kroyft had everything made up and her trunks filled very nicely, they say, before she left." " Oh, yes," quoth Elizabeth ; " and it was as good as the light of your eyes to see the lace cape that she bought for herself. Mrs. Snow's was fifty dollars, and it was nor half the size nor half the ilegance of hers." A lace cape! — and that very lady was one of the instigators, promoters, and contributors of the purse that the Eochester ladies made up for me when, alas ! the light so suddenly faded from my eyes. As you can imagine, the awful extravagance of such a lace cape was too much to rest there, and around and around it has passed. No wonder, then, poor Marion could get only one name upon the little prospectus that I sent her for that forthcoming book of mine — no wonder! — and that one not over-zealously ac- corded, she says. I doubted at first her having made any effort, but it was all made plain when the dress- maker inadvertently asked to see that " elegant lace cape " of mine that she had heard so much about. All made plain, too, why Mrs. B passed me on the street there without a recognition even — forgotten! At the first musicale given after my return to the institution, although taking no part in the exercises, wishing to look my best I wore that cape. Coming 228 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY out of the chapel in the crowd, Mary Ann Plunkett, who always walks with her two long arms straight out in front of her like the two tusks to an elephant, gave me one rake down the back, and that piece of " vanity fair," the cape, was done, as I supposed. But not so. Just think of the friends it has cost me, and the subscribers that might have been for the little book — alas ! alas ! As it was, I let the ladies go as I did in New York, and waited only upon the gentle- men ; and, oh ! how lovely they were. So many sub- scribed that, after a little time more in New York, I shall be able to bring out the little book all paid and securely mine. Crossing the bridge one day I met Doctor Shaw, the first minister to come to see me after the loss of my eyes. After talking a moment, seeing the little roll of prospectus in my hand, he asked: " What are you doing, my child? " " You said to me once, Doctor," I replied, " that my misfortune was not for me alone, but for all the world; and I am just seeing that each one gets his part by becoming a subscriber to the little book I am going to publish." "The little book!" he exclaimed. "What is it going to be? " " A collection of my letters," I answered. " Is your Thanksgiving letter to Lizzie with that beautiful comment on the Bible to be one of them? " he inquired. " Oh, yes," I replied ; " and all the others I can get back ;" and I handed him the little prospectus. I do not know that there were tears in his eyes when ANOTHER SCENE 229 he read it down; but his voice choked when he said: " I have put me down here for &ve copies. The Lord bless you ! " And, patting me on the shoulder, he was gone. Ah ! how I bless Heaven to-night for the wide, wide world that I see spreading out before me, even to the ceaseless goings foreshadowed in the vision. In this cottage are my sweet mother, one little brother, and eight sisters younger than myself — one a golden- headed tot of three years, able to accompany herself through sixteen little songs on an accordion the size of her two fists. Another, with school slate and pen- cil in hand, says anon to little brother : " Stand still, Bub, while I make you." So with music and art running through them all, beautiful and fashioned for the accomplishments father's long-ago losses make impossible — do you see! — using the little book now for replacing to them what they should have had, will be a blessed love- work to fill up the dark years with, and make them all beautiful as they fly. The terms I had in the Westfield Academy and my three years at Lima I have woven into a story that you may have the pleasure of reading some day. Strangely enough, what I once thought that girl- romance might achieve for the dear ones in this cot- tage, I go now to do with a book that I have not only lived, but moistened all its lines with tears from these veiled eyes of mine. Oh, praise His holy name ! who can turn the darkest night, even, into a purple dawn, and fill it with flowers 230 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY and sweet odors from the far-away fields of His love! Stay ! the morning breaks ; the grinding at the mill has ceased. My father has come up and is preparing the wood wherewith to spread the morning meal. Then he will sleep — bless him ! At this season he can only have the water nights. Days it goes to the turn- ing of other mills, at the beck of the owner. To Miss Eliza Bush, Cincinnati, Ohio. CHAPTER XLVI VOICES FKOM AFAE Blind Institute, New York, September, 1849. One has said : " They are our best friends who de- mand from us our highest." Then, dear Mrs. Hardy, thou art assuredly the queen of mine, since, at the bare thought of thee, my soul rises up and would fain put on purple, while my heart is complaining ever that I have not golden wreaths of thought knotted with immortelles wherewith to set thy name around, and something dearer and sweeter than friend to call thee by. This is a dreamy half-summer and half-autumn day, and I fancy you going for the last time to sip from those joy-giving springs of old Virginia, making little pilgrimages to every crag and peak, and gazing long and lovingly on each mountain scene — something as the birds take leave of their summer homes, or as beau- tiful Eve turned reluctant from her hallowed haunts in Paradise. One year ago we strolled for the last time amid the breezes by the bay and climbed the dear old hills of Syosset; we knelt together in the little church there, lingered by the little lake, drank once more from the Cocoa Spring, and quitted sadly the murmuring shores of the sea. You told me much that was in your 231 232 A PLACE IN THY MEMORY heart that day, but what was shut up in mine, alas ! I had no words for. Indeed, I had not learned to whis- per it even to myself without blushing or shuddering with fear, and how name it, then, to a very queen, rustling along in her silks, and talking of her proud and beautiful home where she says to one : " Go, and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he cometh." Yes ; how tell you then, sweet one, that I had fash- ioned in my heart the plan of a little book, wherewith to buy gloves and shoes and the much or the little that one needs! Success, though, makes one bold; and, now that it is so nearly done, I must explain to you that in the spring, when you were going to the moun- tains to attend tournaments and feasts, pace those gay halls and sip from sparkling cups, with a little prospectus in my hand, I came down the long steps of this institution out into the dark world to solicit sub- scribers for a little book that I, myself, aspired to publish. The angels were with me though, and one touch of their white wings melted the coldest heart to kindness. In the hurry and bustle of business and amidst problems half solved, gentlemen paused, read my brief prospectus, wrote their names, paid their money, and often escorted me to the door, and saw me safely down the stairs, perchance directing my gentle guide where to find others as kind as themselves. Now, dear Mrs. Hardy, I write you to please gather up all the missives I have troubled you with from time to time, and send them back to me. My little book is to be a collection of my letters ; it lacks yet a few, and VOICES FROM AFAR 233 possibly you may have one or more in your keeping that you will allow me to give a place in it. You are surprised, I know, but, you dear one, I had to do something, and as ever so faint an effort savors some- what of virtue, better fail trying than never to have tried. The world, alas! is not so high that, like Heaven, it takes " the will for the deed " ; but never- theless "A book is a book," and mine will at least be something for me to smite the heart rocks of the world with along my wilderness way ! Oh ! you can never, never imagine the imprisonment these gloomy walls have become to my soul, or con- ceive how I long to get out into the wide, wide world. Besides, as a German philosopher says, " The way to study human nature is through the keyhole," and although I may never more read books, I may yet study mankind even better than those who see. En- veloped in these clouds, myself will be a sort of probe to each heart while I go on measuring souls, weigh- ing thought and feeling, or judging spirits by their voices, as some writer says the wise angels do. Oh ! yes, let me go, let me go ! Misfortune is its own pro- tection, and with God and the angels above, and a little friend to guide the way, I may learn the lessons that I may never more read, and, perhaps, live the book that I could never write. But, alas ! my volume must first pass the ordeal of editors, and wait their praise or criticism to pronounce it verily a book. Ah! the world! What terror is wrapped in that word, and how I have besought the Lord, night and day, to take the fear of it from my soul. But why so 234 -4 PLACE IX THY MEMORY fear the world? Its pride is short-lived, and its pomp but a name. As the morning scoreheth up its beauties, so the world feeds upon its own glories and is gone. The world hath death in its memory, tombs in its heart, and is full of wailings. The world loveth not God: the world seeks no heaven, and has no altar where to weep. Ah ! then, why not rather pity than fear the world? Indeed, my gentle friend, necessity makes slaves or heroes of us all : and what though neglect or scorn rob one's cup a little of its sweetness, the draught. I ween, is not the less healthful. Dear, dear Mrs. Hardy, that long-promised month at your home is still in the distance, but like all shad- ows its reality must be somewhere : and if my book prove a sufficient success to warrant the course I have planned for myself. I shall ere long the more assur- edly come to you. It is hard to put some things into words musical enough for delicate ears, and I must leaA'e you. my friend, for the present at least, to your own sweet conjectures as to the plan that I have planned for myself. Life, though, is a broken thing to me. and what is there left but to gather up the pieces and band them together as best I may — not to set it up. though, with the best side in view, as if to fain cheat myself or the world that it is the same thing as new ! Xo. no ; but to bear it on. on. giving thanks that no vessel is so homely and no life so broken or so overcast, but it may still hold the blessings and the mercies of God; and so mine be made to run over ever so little with good to others, leam to ask no more. VOICES FROM AFAR 235 Alas ! when one lias digged a grave so deep as to hold the sun, the moon, and the stars, all that is left one casts in easily. And here I begin existence anew ; no more past, no more pride, and no more anything but to henceforth hearken for the voices from afar and watch the white hands in the clouds that beckon the way. To Mrs. E. M. Hardy, "Riverside," Norfolk, Va. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Had I Known 1 II. The Foukth Scene 5 III. Who Shall Chide ? 11 IV. A Little Sunny Isle 15 V. As Erst I Was 20 VI. Nothing to Die ! 25 VII. Worth the Doing 31 VIII. By the Blue Ontario 35 IX. Proudest Stream 38 X. Whatever Betide 44 XI. One By One 50 XII. So Quick, Alas ! 54 XIII. Eadius of the Soul 59 XIV. A Covert Way 65 XV. Who Twice Bless 70 XVI. Night-Days 73 XVII. Young Ladies 77 XVIII. All Our Feet to Climbing . . . .82 XIX. Many Battles .87 XX. Claims to Genius 93 237 238 CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XXI. In Lone Astonishment . . 98 XXII. These Few Words . . 104 XXIII. By What Straws . 107 XXIV. To Every Thought . . 110 XXV. Blessed Be Nothing . 113 XXVI. Saved By Hope . . 116 XXVII. The Warning .... . 119 XXVIII. Reasoned Away . 128 XXIX. Bubbling Sweet Waters to All . . 133 XXX. At Least Akin . 136 XXXI. Myself Did Look On Myself . 144 XXXII. May Not Be . 148 XXXIII. Proud and Happy . . 152 XXXIV. Meantime . 157 XXXV. If Thou Canst . 163 XXXVI. The First Step Was Taken . . 167 XXXVII. Airy Castles •. . 179 XXXVIII. Ever So Little . . 186 XXXIX. Yet Many More . . 190 XL. That Deserted Room . 195 XLI. The Eyes or the Ears . . 199 XLII. A Gift from the Angels . 209 XLIII. A Lake of Sunbeams . 213 XLIV. Victory . 219 XLV. Another Scene .• . 223 XL VI. Voices from Afar . . 231 1 ' The Foreshadowed Way ' ' and ' ' Mortara, ' ' named on the title-page, are sequels to this volume — "The Foreshadowed Way ' ' carrying along the story of the author's life through fifty years. Orders for the same, "A Place in Thy Memory," "The Story of Little Jakey," "The Soul of Eve," may be addressed to the author : Mrs. Helen A. De Kroyft, Aldrich Place, Dansville, N. Y. ■ 3 I