DOROTHY DAY 
 
 WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE
 
 62B
 
 DOROTHY DAY
 
 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "MAYA," AND OF OTHER BOOKS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE COSMOPOLITAN PRESS 
 1911
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY 
 WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Once when the writer was examining a landscape, 
 upon which a castle, a lake, a fertile plain, a river, 
 some mountains and various other objects appeared, 
 he asked the artist from what particular place the 
 scene was taken. The answer, given with Teutonic 
 solemnity, was: "Es ist componirt!' Now it has 
 been assumed that the following narrative is an 
 authentic autobiography. This is by no means the 
 fact, for while recollections of personal experiences, 
 as well as the knowledge of what others have done 
 and thought, have all been very freely used; they 
 have been combined with each other and with imagi- 
 nary occurrences in such a way as to constitute no 
 true story of the life of any particular person, though 
 it is hoped their main features are essentially true 
 of a certain class of persons who lived just before 
 and during the Civil War, and that they are not 
 inconsistent with the vital characteristics of human 
 nature itself. 
 
 NAUHEIM, GERMANY 
 
 August 1, 1911 
 
 2135458
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I CHILDHOOD 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Home 11 
 
 II. Mother 21 
 
 III. Father 34 
 
 IV. The Rest of the Household 48 
 
 V. Our Friends and Neighbors 56 
 
 VI. My Occupations 62 
 
 VII. Grandfather Dillingham and Uncle Benjamin 66 
 
 VIII. Our Summer Home 74 
 
 IX. My Companions and Acquaintances 82 
 
 X. The Ocean 90 
 
 XL School 94 
 
 XII. Supplementary Education Commencement 103 
 
 XIII. Preparing for College 110 
 
 BOOK II THE NEW ERA 
 
 I. My Beard 119 
 
 II. Our Secret Societies 124 
 
 III. Our Professors 133 
 
 IV. Our Escapades 147 
 
 V. Albert Visconti 154 
 
 VI. A Summer in Europe 164 
 
 VII. The Days 173 
 
 VIII. Albert and Ethel 185 
 
 BOOK III THE WAR 
 
 I. The Call to Arms 203 
 
 II. Army Life 216 
 
 III. Soldierly Characteristics 229 
 
 IV. The Invasion of Pennsylvania 237 
 
 V. The First Day's Battle of Gettysburg 252 
 
 VI. The Battles on Cemetery Ridge 260 
 
 VII. The Third Day's Battle 272 
 
 VIII. Dorothy 286 
 
 IX. Conclusion .... 292
 
 Book I 
 
 CHILDHOOD
 
 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 THE scenes and faces that come forth from the 
 mist which hides my childhood, are not often of dis- 
 tinguished persons or of important events. And yet, 
 no doubt, they were important to me then or else 
 memory (though she is capricious enough in choos- 
 ing out of a thousand incidents, the single circum- 
 stance that she will cherish) would hardly have pre- 
 served these few things from amid the general 
 wreckage of forgetfulness. Naturally I recall the 
 main features of the house where I was born and in 
 which I passed the first years of my life, though even 
 here there are only a few outlines that come forth 
 distinctly. 
 
 The house was one of a row of eight brick dwell- 
 ings in a side street in the lower part of New York 
 City, a neighborhood which is now in the tenement 
 house district, but was then very quiet and respect- 
 able. 
 
 These eight dwellings were uniform, except that 
 the stone "stoops" of the two middle houses (of
 
 12 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 which ours was one) were joined together and from 
 that central point the others seemed to my childish 
 imagination to slope away in dignity and import- 
 ance on each side until they reached the two streets 
 which formed the East and West boundaries of this 
 little world. There was also, as mother told me, 
 a very important distinction. The four houses upon 
 our side had been built "by day's work" the other 
 four had been put up "by contract" and therefore 
 leaked more and needed repairs oftener and were 
 in every respect greatly inferior. 
 
 In front of each house there was a little square 
 dooryard with a small grass plat and a black iron 
 railing. I used to examine the design of that rail- 
 ing with great care in the days when I played in the 
 dooryard, being too little to be trusted in that great, 
 seething, perilous, unknown world the street. 
 Somewhere amid the intricacies of the design there 
 were smooth strips of iron that curled round and 
 round, for I used to put my little fingers on the 
 inside of the curve and follow it as it grew smaller 
 and smaller out to the end. I can feel now the 
 strange sensation and the sudden stoppage when the 
 iron with a little final twist went off into nothing, 
 and I had to begin again and do it over. 
 
 Under our "stoop" was a door opening into the 
 "entry," a lower hall, which led through the house 
 to the back yard, passing on its way the dining- 
 room and the kitchen. On this door was a brass 
 knocker. How well I remember that! For every
 
 DOROTHY DAY 13 
 
 afternoon, when father came home, he always gave 
 five raps upon it, first two slow ones and then three 
 very fast, "Rat tat tat-tat-tat" just as a drum- 
 mer beats his drum. That was the mystic signal to 
 tell me it was he, and I would run flying to the door 
 and bound into his arms as he entered ! And then we 
 would have our romp together on the basement 
 floor! But I always thought it unfair that just 
 when I was on top and had gotten him nicely under 
 and had his hair or his ears in my little fingers, he 
 would say, "There now! That is enough for to- 
 day!" when it seemed to me that the best of the 
 fun was only beginning ! 
 
 In a corner, by the window, stood a rush-bot- 
 tomed settee, a pretty piece of furniture and quite 
 old, for it had been made according to the plain yet 
 delicate taste of the early part of the century. On that 
 settee I can see grandmother, then more than ninety 
 years of age, sitting in her plain Quaker garb, on 
 the day when I first wore trousers and rushed madly 
 through the house calling upon everybody to behold 
 me in my new glory. Whereupon she raised her 
 hands and exclaimed "Hoity-toity!" 
 
 That was all, but it was enough. It was the con- 
 centrated essence of admiration, and no Roman 
 conqueror returning with spolia opima after the 
 subjugation of an empire, in his triumphal march 
 through the Eternal City, ever relished the plaudits 
 of the throng with any greater zest than I drank in 
 the flattery of that exclamation and those upraised
 
 i 4 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 arms. The conqueror, to mar his joy, had at his side 
 a slave reminding him that he was still a man. But 
 to me that was the splendor of itl I was a man, 
 indeed, and the proofs were there upon my pudgy 
 little legs! 
 
 But soon came the descent from Paradise, when 
 the skirts had to be put on again with tears and sobs 
 and the conviction that life was not worth living. 
 
 The kitchen, Katy's realm Katy, the cook 
 seems dimmer to me. There is the range certainly 
 and the table at the other side where Katy and 
 Nancy used to sew of evenings by the light of a 
 little whale-oil lamp, a brown, pear-shaped bulb, 
 perched upon the top of a straight stalk. The wick 
 was pushed up by the point of a pin whenever the 
 flame burned low. When I tried to do it the pin 
 always became so hot I could not hold it and I won- 
 dered how Katy dared put her finger right into the 
 flame to brush away the lampblack. It was at this 
 table I learned how to sew, though I never could 
 use a thimble, but took the needle between my thumb 
 and forefinger, and if the cloth was stout (espe- 
 cially at the corner of a hem where there were four 
 thicknesses) I had to push the needle against the 
 table or the wall to make it go through. 
 
 Then I remember the tubs that were brought forth 
 every Monday morning from some unknown depths, 
 when Diana came to do the washing. 
 
 Our Diana differed from the divine huntress in 
 many ways in color, form, costume and calling.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 15 
 
 Our Diana was a "sable goddess" her hue was 
 the blackest ebony that ever shone upon the human 
 form. Not even old Abbie, nor Anastase, nor Peter 
 Still (the slave who bought his freedom and wrote 
 a book) could compare with Diana in the midnight 
 inkiness of her complexion. She was large enough, 
 however, to be a dweller on Olympus, being over 
 six feet tall. She was raw-boned and angular. Her 
 costume was less airy than that of the chaste 
 Artemis, and above her head, in lieu of the cres- 
 cent, there radiated the bright hues of a wonderful 
 bandana ; in place of bow and quiver, the washboard 
 was the constant symbol and implement of her call- 
 ing; and as for Actaeon, he was a small boy, and It 
 was not the hounds nor the curses of the deity, but 
 certain puffs of steam from the boiler on the range 
 diffusing an intolerable hot moisture through the 
 kitchen that drove him to flight. 
 
 Our back yard was laid out in conventional form. 
 There were two rectangular grass plats with a stone 
 path between and around them, and narrow flower- 
 beds outside next to the high board fence. 
 
 What treasures there were in those flower-beds ! 
 The blue morning-glories that glittered with the 
 dew, the saucy "johnny-jump-ups" (for they never 
 shall be pansies to me), the lady's-ear-drops and the 
 violets and, most wonderful of all, the tiger-lilies 
 with petals orange-red, upon which were little black 
 specks that looked as if you had spattered ink upon 
 them from your pen. And from the sides of the
 
 1 6 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 slender stalk sprouted long, narrow leaves, glossy, 
 with little furrows running lengthwise, and when you 
 broke a leaf there were filaments like the threads of 
 a spider's web one thread at each furrow that 
 still held the parts together. And then, just at the 
 point where the leaf joined the stalk, there was a little 
 brown ball, as small as the smallest pea, and if you 
 pushed your thumb against it to separate it from the 
 leaf, it felt as though you were shelling peas, but 
 found only on in the pod. 
 
 There were other curiosities in the yard the little 
 communities of ants that dug their dwellings in the 
 cracks between the flagstones. Many an hour have 
 I watched them during the summer afternoons, and 
 brought them crumbs which had to be very fine so 
 that they could drag them through the hole in the 
 ant-hill. Patient, perservering little fellows they, 
 who worked with much method, and who would go 
 one to another and lay their hands one on another's 
 shoulders and whisper together confidentially in 
 some ant language, and occassionally one 'of them 
 would summon half a dozen others and they would 
 toil in unison upon a crumb bigger than the rest to 
 store it in their dark pantry again the winter time. 
 I was astonished at the courage of the tiny crea- 
 tures. They did not run away from me nor try to 
 hide, though I could have trampled them all with 
 a single pressure of my foot. I thought how it 
 would scare me to see a man come walking by whose 
 foot was bigger than our house, and I admired their
 
 DOROTHY DAY 17 
 
 pluck, as I admire it still. So I was very careful not 
 to harm them, unless perhaps the wheels of my ve- 
 locipede may have incontinently crushed them as it 
 rattled over the stone walk. 
 
 Ah ! that velocipede ! What a joy to propel it by 
 the levers at the side and steer it with my feet 
 by the small wheel in front. It was as good as 
 driving a coach and four! There was the conscious- 
 ness of power over the little wooden beast whose 
 mane flowed gracefully down from his neck in front 
 of me. And I found that velocipedes, like horses, 
 are sometimes fractious, for once when I tried to 
 make him go backward, my steed balked and sent 
 me to the ground on the back of my head, giving me 
 my first glimpse of those strange constellations that 
 shine as brightly in the daytime as they do at night. 
 
 But I must go back to the house again. Above 
 the basement there were three stories. The first of 
 these, of course, was occupied by the parlors. 
 There were two of them with great doors of ma- 
 hogany between doors that slid so smoothly upon 
 the rail beneath, that it was joy to roll them back 
 and forth and see them fit together in the middle. 
 There was no piano, for our family were "consist- 
 ent Friends." We belonged to what was commonly 
 called the Hicksite branch of the Society, though 
 father did not like the name. We were "Friends," 
 he said, or sometimes "Our Friends," to distinguish 
 us from the "Orthodox" "who went off from us" 
 at the time of the "separation."
 
 1 8 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 With both branches of the Society, however, 
 music was regarded as one of the subtle agencies by 
 which the Prince of Evil corrupts the souls of men, 
 and now and then a Friend was "disowned" by the 
 Monthly Meeting for having a piano in his house. 
 
 I remember one day a new carpet was laid upon 
 the parlor floors a Brussels carpet with big brown 
 leaves upon a green ground, as if the late Autumn 
 had dropped its faded foliage from the trees upon 
 a turf still green with the verdure of the summer. 
 The carpet was plain enough, no doubt, in reality 
 yet what a wonderful work of art did it seem to my 
 child's eyes! 
 
 And then the window shades! They were made 
 of light buff linen well oiled and with a broad gilt 
 stripe near the edges. When they became old and 
 dingy, they were removed and plain white shades 
 took their places, and some time afterwards when a 
 number of new articles were purchased which 
 seemed to me "more worldly" than the sober furni- 
 ture to which we had been accustomed, I spoke to 
 mother with some concern, and asked her if we were 
 not getting "too gay," and she answered that she 
 thought not, reminding me that the new window- 
 shades were "plainer" than the old ones. 
 
 Behind the parlors was the back porch with a 
 stairway down to the yard below. The floor of 
 the porch was not painted, but the boards were well 
 scrubbed, and looked better and would last just as 
 long, said mother, as if they had a dozen coats. It
 
 DOROTHY DAY 19 
 
 was under the cover of this porch that I used to sit 
 with father and admire the glory of the thunder 
 storms, though sometimes I was frightened when 
 a loud peal rang out and shook the earth. Here, 
 too, we watched a great comet with its immense tail 
 that stretched half across the heavens. And here 
 one night we saw the sky gleam with a great, throb- 
 bing, fiery glare above a lumber-yard back of our 
 premises, and I can remember the awe I felt at the 
 wild flames that leaped as high as a church spire, 
 flames that the red-shirted firemen could not quench 
 until all was consumed. 
 
 Above the parlors were the rooms of my grand- 
 parents grandmother's in front, and grandfather's 
 behind and I had to go by the doors of these two 
 chambers very quietly on my way upstairs, for 
 grandfather and grandmother were very old. The 
 hall bedroom belonged to Auntie, and I used to pass 
 the door of that with still greater awe, for one night 
 while I was yet a very little boy, I had entered this 
 room and had seen a dreadful sight! There was 
 a small foot bathtub upon the floor. It was very 
 dark, but the stars shone down through the win- 
 dows and were reflected upward by the water in 
 that tub until it seemed to me there was a deep hole 
 in the floor that went clear through the earth and 
 came out into the starlight on the other side. For 
 months afterwards the room was a chamber of 
 horrors to be slipped past as quickly and stealthily 
 as possible on my way to bed.
 
 20 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Our own bedroom was upon the third floor 
 father's, mother's and mine. Later, after grand- 
 mother died, we moved down to the second floor. 
 But the upper room the room where I was born, 
 stands out most vividly in my memory. Here there 
 were two beds, a broad one with low bedposts made 
 of light-colored wood and fashioned at the ends 
 into the shape of large, smooth acorns with the 
 point of the acorn on top. Next to this was a nar- 
 row bed with posts a little higher. I lay in the middle 
 so that I could not fall out. But one morning 
 father and mother went down to breakfast, leaving 
 me asleep and, although mother raised huge piles 
 of pillows and bolsters on each side of me to make 
 escape impossible, I rolled over them and tumbled 
 on the floor, followed by a confused mass of stifling 
 thing, whereupon I cried lustily, imagining the gen- 
 eral destruction of the world, until all the household 
 hurried around me, panting and exclaiming and pity- 
 ing me until I was frightened more at their terrified 
 faces than at the fall itself.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MOTHER 
 
 NATURALLY, the first features that come to me 
 from among the figures of the past, are the high 
 forehead, the brown hair and the tender gray eyes 
 of my mother. 
 
 I can hardly tell whether or not I thought that 
 her face was beautiful. The idea of beauty did not 
 occur to me in that connection. It was a dear face, 
 for it was mother's that was all. 
 
 But mother had certainly been handsome in her 
 youth and had had many admirers. She was the 
 youngest of the children of Joseph and Martha 
 Thrivewell, and had been much petted and perhaps 
 a little spoiled, and I noticed that whenever there 
 was any difference of opinion in the family, it was 
 always her way of thinking that prevailed. She had 
 no other children; all the inexhaustible treasures of 
 her love were concentrated as by a burning glass, 
 wholly upon her little son, and he suffered from 
 the excess of her affection. 
 
 Poor mother! I could hardly leave her sight! 
 Every draught of air, every sneeze, every mosquito- 
 bite was the subject of her most anxious care. She 
 had lost two children in the earliest hours of their 
 infancy and a third (my brother Freddie) had been
 
 22 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 carried off by scarlet-fever when he was only three 
 years old. I was all that was left to her, and the 
 one hope and aim of her life was to keep me from 
 the destroyer who had so ruthlessly torn away her 
 earlier treasures. At the least sign of a cough or a 
 sore throat I was put to bed. In winter I had half 
 an hour's exercise in the back yard and built my 
 little snow fort upon the grass plat with a muffler 
 wound round and round my neck up to my ears. 
 I must not run and "get over-heated"; I must not 
 read "exciting books" ; I must not go out in the night 
 air, nor in the hot sun, nor in the rain, nor in the 
 morning while the dew was on the grass. All life, 
 whichever way I turned, was surrounded by a brist- 
 ling bayonet line of "don'ts." Father used to remon- 
 strate sometimes against making a "hot house 
 plant" of me, as he called it, but nothing could stifle 
 the mad mother eagerness, which sought to shelter 
 her one remaining child even from the lightest 
 breath of heaven. 
 
 Our family physician was a Dr. Hobson, a hale 
 old man, with light eyebrows and a small brown 
 wig that did not match, a man who lived to be more 
 than ninety years of age, and who attributed his 
 ruddy cheeks and his excellent health and spirits to 
 the strict diet which he always observed no fruits, 
 no sweetmeats, no puddings, no pies, no coffee, no 
 buckwheat cakes. He was a man filled with the 
 idea that what had been so good for him ought to 
 be good for everybody.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 23 
 
 "Buckwheat cakes, madam! Why, a single buck- 
 wheat cake would set my head whirling like a top ! 
 The boy must never touch them!" 
 
 I often wondered at this, for grandfather, who 
 was also ninety years old (ninety seemed to me a 
 mystic number), had every morning a pile of buck- 
 wheat cakes upon his plate for breakfast, and they 
 never seemed to hurt him. But boys and grand- 
 fathers were very different things ! 
 
 Even water, according to the good doctor, was 
 very dangerous, and once when he was told that I 
 had taken two whole tumblerfuls at one time, he 
 came close to my bedside and said to me in a low, 
 solemn tone: "If you keep doing such things as 
 that, you'll never grow big." At first I wondered 
 whether I was to be a dwarf like Tom Thumb, then 
 it occurred to me that he meant I would die. 
 
 But, according to the doctor, although there were 
 very few things that were good to eat, yet there were 
 a great many medicines that were good to take when 
 you were ill, and these were the very vilest and 
 nastiest of all. 
 
 Mother used to say she liked the doctor because 
 he gave so little medicine, and dangerous medicines 
 like calomel he hardly ever prescribed. But the things 
 he gave were bad enough in all conscience. Castor 
 oil (whose supposed virtues corresponded with 
 its awful taste), cod-liver oil, salts and senna, ginger 
 tea, and, worse than these, enormous doses of sweet, 
 sickening ipecac ! Every few weeks I had an attack
 
 24 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 of croup. I have reason to think now that these 
 visitations were of the most trifling character and 
 all that I needed was to be let alone, but I had to 
 lie for days in bed studying the figures on the quit 
 before me, and taking great spoonfuls of that hor- 
 rible stuff, the object of which was to make me sick 
 at my stomach, an object which it always accom- 
 plished. At last the mere sight and smell of the 
 detestable medicine was quite enough. It would 
 fulfil its mission before a drop had passed my lips. 
 While I was ill my diet consisted of toast, "cambric 
 tea" and "panada," a compound of soda crackers, a 
 very little sugar and a great deal of warm water. 
 I used to wonder what it was that made the pieces 
 grow so big, and why there was so much cracker 
 and so little taste after they were put in the water. 
 
 Once, when Dr. Hobson was ill, mother called in 
 Doctor Senf, who lived near by, but the only dif- 
 ference I could see was that Dr. Senf came oftener 
 and made me lie in bed a great deal longer long 
 after I was well so that I became quite reconciled 
 to Doctor Hobson. 
 
 Whenever I went out into the street, mother al- 
 ways went with me. She would not trust me to my 
 nurse, nor to my father, nor even to Auntie. 
 Mother's walks were generally for shopping pur- 
 poses, which seemed to me a dreary business there 
 were so many things that would not fit, or for some 
 reason would not do. 
 
 I was a lonely boy, being the only child in the
 
 DOROTHY DAY 25 
 
 house and having few companions, for mother was 
 as much afraid of the blighting influence of other 
 children as she was of the night air. Once in a long 
 while Georgie Underwood or Roger Baker came to 
 see me, or perhaps little Nellie Taylor, but most of 
 my time was spent either alone or with grown-up 
 people. I had not even a dog, nor a bird, nor a 
 pussy cat, and my playthings were not only inani- 
 mate, but there was always a dose of instruction in 
 them. Even my cardboard games, so interesting on 
 account of the beautiful pictures, had vast stores of 
 unwelcome admonition, and as I shook the dice and 
 made spasmodic and halting progress along the 
 "River of Life" to the "Temple of Wisdom" at 
 the end I found that 25, "Industry" always told me 
 to go to 47, "Success" and 31, "Cruelty" to go back 
 to 14, "Remorse." So continuously did a moral be- 
 set my path that I came to believe like the Duchess 
 of "Alice in Wonderland," that there must be "a 
 moral in everything if you can only find it," until in 
 disgust I used to wonder why a boy could not be 
 allowed to do some useless thing just for the fun 
 of it. 
 
 Thus it was I became a solemn little fellow, old in 
 some ways beyond my years, yet in most things un- 
 speakably green and unsophisticated. I think that 
 fifty years ago the grown-up world did not have 
 quite the sympathy with the child life that it has now. 
 We have to-day our kindergartens and our various 
 systems for sugar-coating the pill of instruction.
 
 26 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Flogging is almost unknown, the flames of hell have 
 lost much of their terrors, and fear is everywhere a 
 less potent factor in the government of mankind. 
 As Gladstone says: "We have lived into a gentler 
 time," and human happiness has, on the whole, 
 been greatly promoted by the change. And yet in 
 all this gain perhaps there has been something of a 
 loss as well. The character that develops accord- 
 ing to its own methods, untrammeled by limitations 
 from without, may grow more luxuriantly, but it 
 sometimes shows the need, as well as the lack, of 
 pruning. The youth who grows to manhood with 
 no restraint has little power to "rule his own spirit" 
 and set himself with dogged determination to the 
 doing of those tiresome and unpleasant things which 
 still have to be done, if life is to be lived success- 
 fully. Drudgery, like adversity, has its sweet uses. 
 Mother taught me to read and taught me well, 
 but the range of the reading allowed me was very 
 narrow. Fairy tales and nursery rhymes, as well as 
 dramas and novels were forbidden. "Robinson 
 Cruscoe" and the "Arabian Nights" were unknown 
 to me until I could no longer read them with the 
 relish of youth. Even "Mother Goose's Melodies" 
 came into my hands by accident, for mother had 
 asked father to bring me a new game called 
 "Mother Goose," which had been advertised in the 
 newspapers, and he, misunderstanding the message, 
 had brought me the rhymes, all with appropriate 
 pictures. He had to take the book back at once
 
 DOROTHY DAY 27 
 
 and exchange it for the game, but fortunately he 
 had brought it home upon "Seventh Day" evening, 
 and he could not return it until "Second Day" morn- 
 ing, so I had the intervening Sabbath for my profit. 
 I know not how I came to be left alone with that 
 book, but so prodigious was my hunger for such 
 things and so excellent my memory that by Monday 
 morning I knew nearly every rhyme in that little 
 blue volume from beginning to end "Hiccory, Dic- 
 cory, Dock," "Humpty Dumpty," and all the rest of 
 them. After that I did not need the book. I had it 
 all in my delighted little head and it has remained 
 there down to the date of these presents. 
 
 Shakespeare was kept out of the house as a dan- 
 gerous character. Fiction in verse was for some 
 occult reason considered less harmful than fiction in 
 prose, provided the story itself was unobjectionable. 
 Thus, "The Lady of the Lake" was a favorite, 
 while "Marmion" was forbidden ground. Books 
 of adventure, as is well known, are pitfalls for any 
 boy whose parents intend that he shall lead a sober 
 and sensible life. I used to hear from others of the 
 wonders of Mayme Reid, but all the delights of his 
 wild tales were barred from me until one of my 
 friends loaned me "The Scalp Hunters." I had to 
 hide it under the sofa in the parlor and creep in to 
 devour it when no one was near. Oh, what a glory 
 it would be, thought I, to lead the life there de- 
 picted! Amid scenes of carnage and hair-breadth 
 escapes there were a few pages devoted to a young
 
 28 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 girl of great alleged attractions, called Zoe. What 
 a creature she was ! And what a name ! For years 
 afterward whenever I saw a fair face, the name 
 seemed to fly to it and become part of the beauty 
 that I worshiped. 
 
 History formed a large part of the literature al- 
 lowed me and I absorbed it eagerly. Having been 
 told to "take exercise," and there being no other 
 exercise to take indoors, I would throw my india- 
 rubber ball over and over against the wall above 
 the kitchen range and catch it on the first bounce 
 from the floor, and when I could stand this no longer 
 I would rush off to my Roman history and devour 
 some thrilling episode like the "Assanation of Julius 
 Caesar," as I called it when I told the story to a 
 young friend and we talked of it in solemn whispers 
 together. 
 
 I wonder if any boy ever enjoyed the study of 
 geography as I did, while I lay on my stomach on 
 the floor and pored over the atlases and imagined 
 I was traveling through the strange lands they de- 
 scribed. So well did I learn the contour of the con- 
 tinents that I could draw them pretty accurately 
 without looking on the map at all. For some rea- 
 son not very clear, Africa was, of all the great di- 
 visions of the world, by far the most seductive. 
 There was a charm about its shape, and the great 
 tract marked "unexplored" that looked so plain 
 and empty (a tract which has now vanished), filled 
 me with an irresistible desire to go and find out
 
 DOROTHY DAY 29 
 
 what was in it a desire that was further stimulated 
 by reading some of Uncle Ephraim's books of ex- 
 plorations upon the outskirts of that unknown 
 region. Next after Africa came Greenland, then 
 South America all the places in short that were 
 far off and inaccessible. Perhaps my preference 
 was part of the same instinct that has led me in later 
 years to eschew the beaten lines of travel and to 
 prefer by-ways and the remote valleys and the inns 
 that are not laid down in Baedecker. In short, it is 
 part of the Anglo-Saxon instinct of the explorer, a 
 childish impulse, if you will, but one that has led to 
 the domination of that race, and is leading America 
 to-day upon its world career. 
 
 What boy is there who sees no vistas of glory 
 opening before him? I had many such among 
 them a dream as wild as Alexander's, for by untold 
 exertions and acts of heroism I was some day to 
 win for myself the universal scepter over all man- 
 kind, and when I looked upon the map of the world 
 for some central location on which to establish my 
 capital some place equally accessible to both con- 
 tinents it seemed to me that the Azores occupied 
 a place which would be generally convenient for 
 everybody, quite handy to Europe and Africa, and 
 not so very far from America. From such a van- 
 tage ground I felt I could deal impartially with 
 both continents and give humanity a reign of un- 
 paralleled beneficence. When I saw the Azores 
 many years afterwards they did not seem quite so
 
 30 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 fit a place as I had thought. I always kept very 
 quiet about this scheme of world empire, however, 
 for somehow I feared that even my best friends 
 might laugh at it. 
 
 But this was only one of my dreams. I was also 
 going to be a great poet. One of the notes to 
 "Paradise Lost" had said that epic poetry was the 
 noblest kind, so I planned great epics which were 
 to surpass the masterpieces of Milton, and I tried 
 to find some heroes more "sublime" than his. But 
 my quest was like the conundrum: "What is greater 
 than God, worse than the devil, and kills a man if 
 he eats it?" and the answer to my search was the 
 same: "Nothing at all." Milton had found the 
 greatest. Even an epic with George Washington 
 for its hero would hardly be quite so sublime as 
 "Paradise Lost" ! 
 
 I saw myself in imagination leading vast armies 
 in procession to some unknown pinnacle of glory, 
 and to give my fancy tangible shape, I collected 
 great multitudes of spools and then lifting the leaves 
 of the mahogany dining-table, I arranged these in 
 companies and regiments upon its ample surface, 
 according to the size of the spools. The biggest 
 one was the commander in chief (that was I). The 
 next in size were just plain generals then followed 
 the colonels, the captains and the smallest of all 
 were the privates, which, like the soldiers in the 
 late Cuban war, bore a very small ratio to the num- 
 ber of officers who commanded them. The troops
 
 DOROTHY DAY 31 
 
 on my side were white spools, and those on the 
 other side were black ones. My order of battle was 
 taken from my observation of the target companies 
 that passed the door, and there was never any 
 doubt upon which side would perch the eagles of 
 victory. 
 
 Yet with all these dreams of military fame, I was 
 greatly frightened by loud and sudden noises. This 
 fear dated from early childhood when once a loco- 
 motive just opposite the window of the railway car 
 at which I sat gave a wild shriek which nearly sent 
 me into convulsions. I never got over the effect of 
 it, and for a long time I was afraid to watch even 
 those target companies and hear the great drum 
 go bang, but used to run back to the kitchen and 
 there, supported by Katy as a strong reserve, 1 
 would peep through the keyhole till the band had 
 gone by. Then I would rush out to watch the 
 "soldiers" and the colored man who carried behind 
 them the target with a big wreath upon it for the 
 victor. 
 
 Since fairy tales were denied me, I knew little of 
 that dread of ghosts, hobgoblins, genii and evil 
 spirits which so often besets the path of childhood. 
 My fears took quite another shape. I had a big 
 book on natural history, and the dreadful beasts 
 which were shown and described in its pages, the 
 bears, wolves, lions, tigers and mighty serpents filled 
 me with awe. Worst of all there was a picture of a 
 terrific hippopotamus with wide-open jaws and big,
 
 32 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 distorted teeth, so dreadful that I used to turn over 
 the leaf quickly whenever I came upon it. As I 
 went up to bed I would pass all the dark corners 
 very fast lest some of these monsters should sud- 
 denly pounce out upon me, and I often looked under 
 the bed to be sure that some bear, or perhaps an 
 awful hippopotamus was not there to swallow me up 
 after I had gone to sleep. 
 
 Mother encouraged me in the habit of making a 
 silent prayer before going to bed, but as I used to 
 stay on my knees a long while she at last became 
 curious to know what all this praying was about. 
 I did not want to tell her, but at last I owned that 
 I was asking the Lord if there were any lion, tiger, 
 bear, wolf, snake, rhinoceros, elephant or hippo- 
 potamus in the house, that he would send them away 
 quick and not let them get hold of me. 
 
 There was one book that used to excite me, how- 
 ever, as much as any ghost story could possibly do, 
 and that was "Pilgrim's Progress." The Castle of 
 the Giant Despair filled me with indescribable ter- 
 rors, and once when I was reading about the Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death, I saw the type in front of 
 me grow smaller and smaller and then go far away, 
 miles and miles away, as it seemed to me, and yet I 
 could read it all the same, and I went on reading 
 till I was nearly beside myself for fear and tossed 
 upon my bed in sleepless agony all night. 
 
 When I played in the front dooryard I had a 
 constant dread of a big boy who came from some-
 
 DOROTHY DAY 33 
 
 where around the corner. He would pass back and 
 forth on the sidewalk, just outside the iron fence 
 and challenge me. "If you want to fight, just come 
 out here and I'll lick you!" And he shook his fist 
 and looked very dangerous. "But I don't want to 
 fight," I answered. "Then why don't you say so!" 
 he replied, lifting his head high, and stalked away, 
 filled with conscious pride at his triumph in the art 
 of repartee! 
 
 As I was a delicate lad and had been kept indoors 
 without physical training, I was at great disadvan- 
 tage in such fights as were occasionally forced upon 
 me. Frank Fisher, a neighbor boy smaller than I, 
 could generally throw me or knock me down. Even 
 after I went to school I was often the victim of some 
 stronger and sturdier lad "of my own size," though 
 by that time I had come to take my punishment 
 quite stoically. It was not, however, until I went 
 to college that I learned in the "rushes" and melees 
 to take my own part effectually, and began to enjoy, 
 as a boy ought to do, the "rapture of the fight."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FATHER 
 
 NEXT to mother, father was the most important 
 person in my little world. He was a tall, fine-look- 
 ing man, about forty years of age as I first remem- 
 ber him, with clean shaven face and a Roman nose. 
 The latter had become a sort of trade-mark in his 
 family. A little way off I could hardly tell his pro- 
 file from that of Uncle Samuel, his elder brother. 
 Father was a man of commanding presence, he had 
 eyes of grayish blue, an expressive mouth, thick, 
 waving hair and a high broad forehead a forehead 
 that became higher still as the years went by. 
 
 Father wore 'the plain clothes" of the Quakers, 
 not the drab or gray, indeed, but a black broadcloth, 
 the coat with standing collar from which the front 
 edge curved in graceful outline down to the end of the 
 tail. Certainly father always looked well in his 
 plain clothes, and it may be that under them there 
 was as much pride of personal appearance as in the 
 "gayer" and more profane garments of the world's 
 people. 
 
 Father at heart was one of the kindest of men, 
 but I have seen him assume a most ferocious ap- 
 pearance when dealing with juvenile offenders, 
 which frightened the little rascals half to death. 1
 
 DOROTHY DAY 35 
 
 remember one instance in particular. We had a 
 catalpa tree growing on the sidewalk in front of our 
 house, with big leaves and long pods which, when 
 dry, the boys in the neighborhood would use for 
 make-believe cigars, smoking them proudly like 
 grown-up men. They would scramble up the tree 
 box and out upon the limbs, often breaking down 
 the smaller branches, and mutilating the tree. One 
 fellow was very persistent, and though warned to 
 desist, climbed the tree again and again and did 
 considerable damage. One afternoon father spied 
 him up among the branches, went out to the foot of 
 the tree and ordered him down. The boy descended 
 trembling to the sidewalk. There was a frown as 
 black as night on father's countenance while he took 
 the fellow by the shoulders down the front area, 
 through the door, along "the entry'' an d out into the 
 back yard. The terror on the face of the culprit 
 could not have been greater if he had been passing 
 through that dreadful portal whose inscription bids 
 him that enters abandon every hope. The urchin 
 had a little shaking in the yard and then, howling 
 with fear, was suffered to depart, while father with 
 a hearty laugh remarked to us that he didn't think 
 we would ever be troubled by that boy again. 
 Father very seldom used that frown on me. I knew 
 it too well. He was indeed quite indulgent, relying 
 upon mother (as well as he might) to keep me in the 
 narrow way. 
 
 Now father, although he had seen much of the
 
 3 6 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 world, had a great deal of childlike simplicity. He 
 had been successful in his business investments, and 
 once he told me in confidence the secret of it: "I 
 buy these bonds," he said one day to me when he 
 was cutting off the coupons, "when they are low; I 
 hold them till they rise in price; then I sell them." 
 How plain it all was! 
 
 I often wonder now that he was not made the 
 "lamb" of some intriguing speculation and that he 
 ever had anything left. The luck which went with 
 the Roman nose must have stood him in good stead, 
 as it often has his son, but the result he always at- 
 tributed to his judgment and sagacity. 
 
 Part of father's simplicity was shown in his un- 
 shaken faith in the descriptive power of adjectives, 
 especially those of the superlative degree. When- 
 ever he would describe to us some remarkable work 
 of nature or art which he had seen, he told us that 
 it was "gorgeous, magnificent, superb, tremendous, 
 awe-inspiring, most impressive," etc., these adjec- 
 tives being considered by him as quite adequate for 
 the understanding of all details. 
 
 I had, as I already said, an early inclination to- 
 ward poetry. I made verses before I could write, 
 verses from which great things were predicted, espe- 
 cially by father, who used to act as my amanuensis 
 and take down the "winged words" in which my 
 inspirations were embodied. Among these there 
 were some stanzas to "My Heart," while I was still 
 a very little fellow, which used to give him great
 
 DOROTHY DAY 37 
 
 satisfaction, not so much (as I have good reason to 
 think) on account of their artistic merit, as because 
 of the evidence which they gave of the "Light With- 
 in" which I had declared to be the source of great 
 enjoyment. 
 
 An "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte" met with no 
 such approval, for although the lines did not indi- 
 cate any intention of fighting either for or against 
 that military hero, but merely the comparatively 
 innocent purpose of going to see him, yet the desire 
 even to visit such a man indicated a tendency which 
 might lead to worse things, so I have reason to 
 believe that the leaf upon which my lines were tran- 
 scribed was soon afterwards destroyed. 
 
 Although father was proud of me, yet whenever 
 he spoke of my brother Freddie, who had died, I 
 felt how small I was by the side of such a prodigy. 
 Father would tell me with tears in his eyes of the 
 wise sayings and doings of the child whose dreamy 
 face gazed at me full of tenderness from the shin- 
 ing surface of a daguerreotype that father showed 
 me, holding it while I looked, lest I might let it fall 
 and some harm come to the precious thing. 
 
 The impression of my brother's countenance upon 
 the plate was a faint one; it might almost have been 
 the copy of his spirit, and I had to hold it at the 
 right angle or else I would see the reflection of 
 things about the room and not the face of the cher- 
 ished boy. 
 
 Father told me much of Freddie's last sickness
 
 3 8 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 how the little fellow, when he could no longer lie in 
 bed, asked his father to hold him and walk with 
 him back and forth across the room and how he 
 had died thus in his father's arms. I was told that 
 I had been a chubby, good-natured baby which 
 was well attested by another daguerrotype in which 
 I appeared in a little red plaid dress but was by 
 no means such a child as Freddie. The lost treasure 
 is ever the most precious to the father's heart. 
 
 I used to read a good deal, especially in the Bible, 
 about the rich and the poor, and how hard it was 
 for the rich man to go to heaven, and I once asked 
 father whether we were rich or poor. He told me 
 that we were neither the one nor the other, and that 
 we belonged to that middle class which he said was 
 of all in the happiest condition, and he used to re- 
 peat to me the solemn prayer whose beauty and 
 wisdom have grown even greater in my eyes after 
 the experiences of a lifetime: 
 
 "Give me neither poverty nor riches feed me with food con- 
 venient for me, 
 
 Lest I be full and deny Thee and say: Who is the. Lord? 
 
 Or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of the Lord my 
 God in vain." 
 
 As father grew older he became even finer look- 
 ing than he had been before. How well I remem- 
 ber him as he sat "at the head of the meeting" in 
 our plain, yet tasteful, meeting-house. Here at his 
 side and on the seat below, facing the congregation,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 39 
 
 sat a number of stately looking men. I have never 
 seen a group of finer faces and figures. There be- 
 side father sat Joseph Hatfield, tall, erect and rev- 
 erend, and Jeremiah Fox, kind and benignant, while 
 in the seat below were Joshua Trueblood, whose 
 thick hair, perfectly white, covered a noble fore- 
 head and a smooth-shaven ruddy face, and Samuel 
 Braithwaite, an old gentleman of imperial mien and 
 a benevolent yet determined countenance. They sat 
 there in simple gravity, the silence broken only when 
 some one was moved to speak until the time came 
 for father and Joseph Hatfield to "shake hands" 
 together and thus break up the meeting. And I 
 can well remember once when two crazy men hap- 
 pened to come to meeting one First Day morning 
 one of them imagining that he was Christ and the 
 other that he was the Holy Ghost, and they each 
 harangued and screamed defiance at each other, but 
 instead of sending for a policeman, father and 
 Joseph Hatfield shook hands and the meeting quiet- 
 ly dispersed. 
 
 Father was very careful to train me in good, 
 wholesome Quaker traditions. All the stories of 
 the sufferings of early Friends were related to me, 
 the whippings at the cart-tail, the boring of their 
 tongues with red-hot iron, the imprisonments and 
 occasional executions, and their marvelous con- 
 stancy and non-resistant heroism, as well as the 
 manifestations of Divine Grace toward them, were 
 set forth in glowing colors.
 
 40 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 There were incidents which seemed to me as won- 
 derful as the Bible miracles, strange enlightenings 
 by the Holy Spirit and prophetic visions, which, ac- 
 cording to the account, always turned out true. Father 
 told me of the marvelous doings of George Fox, 
 Robert Barclay and William Penn, and he was much 
 exasperated at Macaulay's strictures upon Penn and 
 his description of the "courtly Quaker" as a "mythi- 
 cal character." 
 
 We had a big folio volume of Penn's works in 
 our library which had come down to us from my 
 great-grandfather and contained many theological 
 papers "No Cross, No Crown," "The Sandy 
 Fountain Shaken," "Innocency With Her Open 
 Face," and others. I cannot say that I found these 
 very attractive reading, nor that I could fully un- 
 derstand the arguments about the Trinity, but I was 
 greatly interested in the account of the Trial, where 
 Penn insisted on wearing his hat before the magis- 
 trate and was summarily (with monstrous injustice 
 as it seemed to me) trotted off to prison. Penn's 
 Treaty with the Indians I came to regard as per- 
 haps the central event in all history, and once when 
 I read a poem on the Fourth of July, containing the 
 line: 
 
 "This day was won by Washington," 
 
 it occurred to me that Penn had been unjustly 
 omitted, and I asked if it was not "won by William 
 Penn, too." Father, I thought, hardly felt how
 
 DOROTHY DAY 41 
 
 wrong the omission was when he answered: "Not 
 so much by William Penn," since for my part I 
 couldn't see how William Penn could be behind any- 
 body in anything. 
 
 Father used to urge upon me the importance of 
 following "Friends' principles" and "testimonies," 
 as he called them, of adhering to "plainness of 
 speech, behavior and apparel" ; always to say 
 "thee" and not "you," since the latter was a word 
 introduced in mere compliment, and "First month," 
 "Second month," and not "January" or "Feb- 
 ruary" and "Third day" and "Fourth day," rather 
 than "Tuesday" or 'Wednesday," since the latter 
 names were those of heathen deities. But father 
 used to teach me astronomy as well as morals and 
 religion, and when he told me about Mercury and 
 Venus and Mars and Jupiter, I asked him if it was 
 not just as wrong to call these planets by the names 
 of heathen gods as it was to say Tuesday and 
 Wednesday. I think father was a little vexed at this 
 question, and although he said it was quite different, 
 I do not remember that he told what the difference 
 was, and when I proposed to call them "First 
 planet," "Second planet," etc., my suggestion was 
 not accepted, so I suppose the distinction was too 
 deep for a boy to comprehend. I think so still. 
 
 But most of all, father urged upon me the impor- 
 tance of observing what he called the "Fundamental 
 principle of Quakerism," namely, obedience to the 
 "light within," and of following all impressions
 
 42 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 of duty, which he said were revelations of the Spirit. 
 
 So far as impressions of ordinary morality were 
 concerned, I could understand this, but the "light 
 within" sometimes took a wider range. He told 
 me instances where Friends had been directed by it 
 to do things for which there seemed to be no reason. 
 There were revelations to go to a particular meet- 
 ing and preach upon some particular subject which 
 turned out to be for the salvation of some particular 
 sinner in the flock. There were revelations to open 
 the Bible and the reading of the first passage that 
 met the eye was followed by important results. 
 There were revelations to take particular lines of 
 travel followed by dreadful accidents upon the other 
 road. In fact, the whole world of miracle was set 
 before me as the result of "minding the light." 
 
 Now I tried many of these things myself, but 
 nothing strange ever happened. The providence 
 which was so constantly directing others seemed to 
 have little care of me. If, "minding the light," I 
 took the second omnibus rather than the one just 
 ahead of it, no accident ever happened to either, so 
 far as I could learn and if I reverently opened the 
 Bible for some special illumination, I most likely 
 came upon the passage, "And Obed begat Jehu and 
 Jehu begat Azariah" or perhaps some battle with 
 the Amalekites, or some instruction about the shew 
 bread which gave me little comfort. 
 
 Possibly my faith was too weak, for although I 
 assured myself when I took the omnibus or opened
 
 DOROTHY DAY 43 
 
 the Bible that I really believed in this miraculous 
 guidance, yet after two or three failures, I remem- 
 ber thinking "I knew it would be so," until at last 
 I became so skeptical that I would trust nothing out- 
 side of my own human, mortal, common sense. 
 
 Then if all the sermons I heard were inspired by 
 the Spirit, I used to wonder why it was that the 
 Spirit didn't understand English grammar any 
 better. 
 
 There was a little farmer, one Israel Van Cott, 
 from somewhere in Long Island, who used to come 
 to meeting once in a while, and he would jump up 
 three or four times at a single sitting, stringing 
 together each time a number of Bible texts in a 
 sing-song voice, and I wondered why his inspiration 
 didn't come all at once ; why he had to give it to us 
 piecemeal. But father would say: "The sermon 
 was not for thee, but perhaps it fitted the condition 
 of some one else who was there." 
 
 Then there was Amos Higgins with a mouth like 
 a clam, but he didn't have the sense of a clam in 
 keeping it shut. Amos was a carpenter, and once 
 we had him do some work for us. He was so poor 
 that he asked us to pay him in advance, and then when 
 he had got the money, he was so lazy he never 
 finished the job. When Amos got up in meeting and 
 began to preach a sing-song sermon through his 
 nose, I wanted to stick him in the leg with a big 
 pin. I thought it would make the Spirit livelier.
 
 44 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Indeed, I never saw Amos anywhere but I wanted 
 to poke a pin into him and stir him up. 
 
 Then there was David Jones who used to preach 
 such long sermons that I was glad he didn't always 
 speak at our meeting. He was a good old man, but 
 I always thought him a great goose. For when he 
 was seventy years old he married a second wife 
 who was younger than any of his children and I 
 remember how bitterly Anna Maria, his daughter, 
 used to talk about his "infatuation" and "the dread- 
 ful influence" that woman had over him. Once 
 David told us a story of a call which he had just 
 made upon a friend. "After I took my seat in 
 the parlor," he said, "what should come in but a 
 little terrier that barked at me so fiercely I had 
 to get up on a table and from that to the mantel- 
 piece, where I could stand out of his reach and shake 
 my cane at him until I was relieved." I used to 
 wonder how much of David's life was inspired. 
 
 Another thing puzzled me still more. If the 
 Spirit was always right how could it lead Friends to 
 take opposite sides of the same question? There 
 was John Borden and Naomi Butterworth, who 
 were "misled," as father used to say. But if the 
 Spirit ever misled anybody, how could you know 
 when it was telling the truth? Once I heard John 
 Borden preach and he said some strange things, I 
 thought, and then Isaac Clear got up afterwards and 
 quoted a text about a blind man who, when he got 
 his sight saw "men as trees walking," and I thought
 
 DOROTHY DAY 45 
 
 he meant that this was the way things seemed to 
 John Borden, so I wondered which of them it was 
 that had the inspiration, or how you could tell which 
 inspiration was right. 
 
 Then there was Abraham Godlove. We children 
 used to argue which was the greater minister, 
 Lucretia Mott or Abraham. Dorcas Jones said 
 Lucretia Mott was greater, but I didn't think so. 
 Lucretia used to preach very quietly just as if she 
 were talking to somebody, and it seemed to me that 
 a really great minister ought to do more than that, 
 he ought to talk loud and high and sing a little. 
 Then Lucretia Mott had always been a very 
 good woman, but Abraham in his early life 
 used to be intemperate. I have heard him pray 
 very earnestly and thank the good Lord that he had 
 been a brand plucked from the burning, and this 
 seemed to me a great deal finer than if he had always 
 been good. The story of the "ninety and nine" had 
 made a deep impression upon my heart. Abraham 
 Godlove used to come to Yearly Meeting quite 
 often. I remember how impressive he looked with 
 his white hair, as he stood at the head of the gallery, 
 and in impassioned words besought us all to follow 
 the same good Master who had been so kind to him. 
 And when at the end of the sermon he told us that 
 his life was drawing to its close and he might never 
 meet us again, and sat down bidding us an affec- 
 tionate farewell, we all cried, for we were sure that 
 this was his last sermon to us and that he would die
 
 4 6 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 very soon. But next year he came back and once 
 more bade us the same affectionate farewell, and 
 this happened even a third time. And then I didn't 
 cry a bit, for I didn't believe a word of it. It 
 seemed to me he was likely to live forever. 
 
 At Yearly Meeting our house was full of Friends 
 from the country. There were a few of these who 
 used to smoke, not many, for Friends had "a 
 testimony" against the unnecessary use of tobacco. 
 Whenever any one smoked at our house he had to 
 go out on the back porch or into the back yard, and 
 one dear old friend, Solomon Pennington, would 
 be sent out there alone after dinner, but the little 
 boy of the house used to follow him rather than stay 
 in the parlor with the rest. We had long talks 
 together and it seemed to me that a man might be a 
 nice man even if he smoked. 
 
 There was a woman Friend who talked to me very 
 seriously on the subject and told me of a young man 
 of her acquaintance who used to chew tobacco. She 
 asked him once how much he used and how much it 
 cost him every week, and then she added it all up 
 and multiplied and calculated and said to him : "By 
 the time thee is fifty years of age thee will have spit 
 away a whole farm!" 
 
 I had peculiar ideas of the religion of those 
 strange people who were "outside of our Society." 
 One summer when we spent the Fourth of July at 
 the Heath House on Schooley's Mountain (I remem- 
 ber it was the Fourth, for a fire cracker, a "sizzler,"
 
 DOROTHY DAY 47 
 
 somehow got underneath the collar of my shirt and 
 "sizzled" there with great deliberation, making a 
 long streak of raw flesh around my neck) I met a 
 little girl with dark-brown eyes, and beautiful wavy 
 hair, who told me in a soft voice that she was a 
 Baptist. The "p" and "t" in that word as uttered 
 by her lips fitted together so melodiously that I felt 
 sure that the Baptist must be a very aristocratic sort 
 of religion. 
 
 One Christmas day father took me to hear 
 "Pontifical High Mass" at St. Patrick's church in 
 Prince Street, which was then the seat of the Arch- 
 bishop. I had never before seen anything like the 
 priests in their canonicals, except in Fox's "Book of 
 Martyrs," where men in just such caps and vest- 
 ments presided over the tortures of the Inquisition, 
 and all through the service I half expected to see 
 some victim brought out and stretched upon the rack 
 or roasted so as to make him confess.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE REST OF THE HOUSEHOLD 
 
 GRANDFATHER THRIVEWELL was a tall, slender, 
 dignified and reserved old man, with strong, sharp 
 features and deep set eyes. He had been a mer- 
 chant, had amassed considerable property, and 
 owned a number of houses and shops in the lower 
 part of the city, which he had bought near the begin- 
 ning of the century. 
 
 He was a very precise and careful man. I remem- 
 ber his exquisite handwriting as fine as steel 
 engraving and the very particular way in which 
 the leases to the tenants had to be drawn up, after 
 models he had prepared. I remember the tenants 
 themselves who used to come up to sign them and 
 after I had learned to write I used to sign my name 
 too as a witness and felt the importance of it, 
 watching every stroke of the pen while the others 
 wrote so that I could be sure I had seen all. 
 
 My grandfather was not present on these occa- 
 sions. He always stayed in his own room just above 
 the back parlor, where every morning Anne Welsh, 
 the maid, used to bring him a pile of buckwheat 
 cakes for breakfast. 
 
 I had great awe of grandfather, but once the 
 spirit of mischief was too strong for me. I entered
 
 DOROTHY DAY 49 
 
 the room softly and seeing him standing with his 
 back toward me, arrayed in his dressing gown and 
 having upon his head a nightcap that ran up into a 
 point, with a small tassel at the end, I thought I 
 would try to scare him, and so, stealing behind him 
 unobserved, and reaching up as close to his ear as 
 I could get, I shouted at the top of my voice, 
 "Boo!" But when he turned upon me, the horrible 
 expression in his shrunken eyes and open mouth 
 frightened me a great deal more than the noise had 
 frightened him. I flew headlong out of the room 
 and in Katy's arms I sorrowed over my transgres- 
 sion. For two or three days afterwards I felt like 
 a very wicked boy, but at the end of that time 
 grandfather sent me a note, saying: "I forgive 
 little Robert for scaring me," whereupon I ventured 
 back into his room and there was full reconciliation 
 and happiness. But the pointed nightcap with the 
 tassel, which had been so closely associated with that 
 dreadful look, became in my eyes a thing of grue- 
 some and unearthly character. 
 
 When grandfather died, there is one fact only in 
 connection with that event which stands out clearly 
 in my memory. Just after we had entered the car- 
 riage to go to the cemetery, our coachman called out 
 to the undertaker and to the driver of the hearse in 
 front: "I hope yez won't walk all the way," and 
 I said to myself, "I hope not, too." 
 
 There is another form that comes before me a 
 small, slender, fragile figure and a quiet, gentle,
 
 5 o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 beautiful face, with light blue eyes. That face is 
 Auntie's 
 
 Her frail body, which looked as though a stiff 
 breeze would blow it away, was, however, lithe and 
 active. She could walk for miles at a swift pace with- 
 out fatigue, and I have seen her when over eighty 
 years of age swing herself with the agility of a boy 
 up to the platform of a passing street car without 
 waiting for it to stop. She ate very sparingly, 
 hardly enough for a cat, and had little care what 
 kind of food it was, so long as it was not produced 
 by slave labor. 
 
 Indeed, her sense of smell as well as of taste was 
 decidedly defective. This relieved her from many 
 annoyances and was not without its advantages in 
 later years to her dear nephew when the boy began 
 to smoke, for, although his room at that time was next 
 to hers, she passed years of blissful unconsciousness 
 that he was acquiring such a bad habit. How much 
 more lovable are those sweet characters who can- 
 not perceive what is going on before their eyes, 
 than the knowing ones with sharp olfactories who 
 are so keenly alive to the sins of those around them ! 
 
 Auntie had once been married, but after a brief 
 period her husband, whom she loved tenderly, had 
 died and she had come back to her father's. She 
 cherished the memory of their few happy days to- 
 gether as the precious recollection of her life. I 
 know of a suitor afterwards who would have been 
 thought by many most desirable, but she wrote a
 
 DOROTHY DAY 51 
 
 letter sending him about his business, with the near- 
 est approach to indignation that I ever saw upon her 
 face. For during the many years we were together I 
 never knew her to be angry nor heard her speak 
 unkindly of any one. 
 
 Her favorite exclamation was "Patience Oh!" 
 Those who do not swear must have some equivalent. 
 
 Now auntie, I think, loved me almost as dearly 
 as my parents did, for I had been named after her be- 
 loved husband. She was not allowed to have much say 
 in the matter of my bringing up, but she took great 
 interest in my literary efforts, especially at the time 
 when I was so small that I had not yet learned to 
 write. I could print a little in great scrawling capi- 
 tal letters and was engaged in the composition of a 
 "geography," but the work of printing went so 
 slowly that Auntie undertook to write the book from 
 my dictation. This was very kind, but unfortun- 
 ately, after I had grown up and it was all forgotten, 
 she also undertook to have several hundred copies 
 published and circulated among my friends! 
 
 As a specimen of what the book contained, let us 
 take the following: I had given a definition of a 
 cataract, much the same as that which I had found 
 in my geographies then to make it all very vivid 
 and real, I had illustrated my definition with a pic- 
 ture; such a picture as a boy six or seven years old 
 might be expected to draw, and I had further illus^ 
 trated the picture by the following verse:
 
 52 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 "The cataract falls and makes its roar. 
 It never stops but still does pour. 
 It roars and roars for hours and hours. 
 Yet it keeps on, its water pours." 
 
 It may be imagined with what pleasure I received, 
 thirty years afterwards, the congratulations of my 
 friends upon this masterpiece! 
 
 The one remaining member of the family was 
 Uncle Ephraim. Uncle Ephraim was an old 
 bachelor, a small, spare man, with a face already 
 wrinkled by age. Old bachelors, I believe, are often 
 accounted "peculiar," and I recollect that Uncle 
 Ephraim always seemed to me a very "funny 
 man." He was like grandfather in this that he 
 would never see any visitors, and that he spent 
 most of his time in his own room. He took 
 no part in business and little in conversation, and it 
 seemed to me he did nothing but read. Many were 
 the books he used to buy, especially books of travel. 
 
 Auntie was the one member of the family who 
 was closest to him. She looked very carefully after 
 his comfort and watched over him with affectionate 
 guardianship. When she afterwards bought a cot- 
 tage by the seaside, where we spent our summers for 
 many years, the best room down stairs, right in the 
 middle of the house, was set apart for Uncle 
 Ephraim, and we had to go around it out of doors 
 in passing from the parlor to the dining room. 
 While we lived there, he and I used to take long 
 walks through the country together, and he had a
 
 DOROTHY DAY 53 
 
 very perverse habit of wanting to go one way when 
 I wanted to go another. Then we would separate, 
 but after crossing two or three fields a little way 
 apart, we always came together at last and went 
 home in company. 
 
 Uncle Ephraim, too, was very fond of me. When 
 on Christmas morning I rummaged in my stocking 
 or ran down to the basement to see what presents I 
 had (for the fiction of Santa Claus, like all other 
 fictions, was banished from our sober household), 
 it was always Uncle Ephraim's gift that shone most 
 resplendent in the collection. It was he who had 
 given me the two great books on Natural History, 
 one of which contained the picture of the hippo- 
 potamus. But one Christmas I had a dreadful expe- 
 rience I Looking on the table I spied, among other 
 things, a square box with a hook in front as if to 
 keep down the top. "See, I've brought him a whole 
 box of things this time." (Uncle Ephraim always 
 spoke to me as well as of me in the third person. If 
 the third person was used without any further 
 explanation, that always meant the small boy of 
 the household.) So I opened the box and up sprang 
 a terrible ferocious figure with thick beard and mon- 
 strous mustache, and I ran back to the kitchen and 
 sought safety in Katy's arms. 
 
 But like that other "monster of such frightful 
 mien" this jack-in-the-box at last became very preci- 
 ous to me, for it was the means of my awakening
 
 54 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 in my small companions the same terrors that it had 
 first aroused in me. 
 
 One day little Mary Fishtr came to play with me 
 and having been introduced to Black-beard in the 
 same way in which I had myself made that gentle- 
 man's acquaintance, she became so alarmed that she 
 could not endure the picture of a man anywhere, and 
 she even covered up with her mashed potatoes the 
 figures of the little brown men on her dinner plate, 
 so that they could not look at her. 
 
 The other inmates of our household were the 
 nurse and the chambermaid, Anne Lynch and Anne 
 Welsh (who sometimes seemed to me like East and 
 West upon the map), and Katy, the cook, who stood 
 for the broiling South. Her last name was Coftey. 
 She was a faithful soul and lived with us many, many 
 years. She spoke a wild Irish brogue that was quite 
 incomprehensible until you became used to it. She 
 was a devout Catholic and told me that the Pope 
 was the mightiest of all kings and had the largest 
 army in the world. Her husband, before she came 
 from Ireland, had been transported to Australia 
 for some offense of which he was entirely innocent, 
 but he had been led into it by wicked men! 
 
 Katy could not read or write a word, she was 
 homelier than a stone fence and yet I think that if 
 our places in the great hereafter are to be graded 
 according to the faithful performance of duty, few 
 of us will stand so near the throne. She served us 
 with industry, affection, cheerfulness and absolute
 
 DOROTHY DAY 55 
 
 honesty. Whatever may be said of the shortcom- 
 ings of domestic servants, it has always seemed to 
 me that their integrity is remarkable. Heaven 
 knows they have temptations enough! Money, 
 precious jewels and other valuable property arc 
 spread constantly before their eyes with unlimited 
 facilities for theft, and yet so little is ever missing! 
 
 When we consider the dishonesty in trade, in 
 politics, in medicine, in law, in religion itself, I 
 doubt whether the higher grades of social life will 
 average half so well. 
 
 Anne Lynch was accurately described in a letter 
 written long afterwards by one of her subsequent 
 employers in answer to an inquiry as to her char- 
 acter and capabilities. "She is conceited, garrulous, 
 impertinent, and has the voice of a hyena. If you 
 don't mind these things she is in every other respect 
 absolutely perfect." 
 
 Anne Welsh I remember with both elbows on the 
 table holding in her hands close to her eyes the tea 
 cup she had just drained, and solemnly seeking to 
 unravel her future destiny from the grounds at the 
 bottom, an art into which I was duly initiated and 
 which I have always considered quite as accurate a 
 mode of rellincr fortunes as palmistry or the con- 
 templation of the stars.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 . OUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS 
 
 NEXT door to us, in the house whose "stoop" ad- 
 joined our own, lived Mark Underwood, with his 
 wife Eliza (who once had "the influenza," a strange 
 disease somewhat different from the croup) and 
 their son, George, a boy a few years older than my- 
 self, who was for a long time my model, mentor 
 and guide, such a one as every boy must have 
 though mother used to say that he imposed upon 
 me. Mark Underwood was a "horticulturist" and 
 had a country place. In his back yard, right against 
 our fence, grew a big peach tree, named by the 
 Horticultural Society "The Underwood Seedling," 
 and I often used to wonder whether the peaches 
 that hung over on our side did not belong to us. 
 
 Just across the way lived Mrs. Hood, a widow. 
 Mrs. Hood was very rich. She owned a large meat 
 packing establishment in Division Street. Some 
 said she was worth half a miliion! Yet she con- 
 tinued to keep a stall down in Fulton Market, 
 whither she went every morning. Her portly person 
 was covered with a plain shawl, an old fashioned bon- 
 net was on her head and a basket always on her 
 arm, as she waddled up the steps and rang the bell 
 of her front door on her return. Why on earth
 
 DOROTHY DAY 57 
 
 did Mrs. Hood keep that stall, spending her time 
 among the fishwomen, when she had more than 
 money enough to keep her in comfort all her days? 
 That was the great riddle of the neighborhood. 
 
 On the west side of Mrs. Hood's house lived Mr. 
 Higgins and his wife. Mr. Higgins sometimes used 
 to come staggering home, and he was pointed out 
 to me when in this state as a dreadful warning. 
 After a while Mrs. Higgins died and we were all 
 shocked to see her husband tipsy the day after she 
 passed away. Ah, what a wretch he was! No 
 doubt he had brought her to her death-bed! But 
 Auntie said in a quiet, sympathetic voice: "Poor 
 man! He is trying to drown his sorrow!" And 
 she added she did not blame those who drank nearly 
 so much as those who sold them the liquor. 
 
 It was mostly in front of Mr. Higgins' house 
 that the organ man used to play. There were many 
 organ grinders who frequented the streets, but one 
 was persistent and we knew his tunes only too 
 well. Whether Higgins encouraged him to come 
 for the purpose of drowning his sorrow or exalting 
 his joy, I know not, but it is certain that the tunes 
 did neither, so far as the neighbors were concerned. 
 Once when I was ill, the diabolical noises produced 
 by that organ grinder set me wild and father was 
 constrained to purchase his silence at a higher price 
 that his music had ever brought. 
 
 But to me the most important house in that neigh- 
 borhood was the one next to ours on the other
 
 5 8 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 side from the Underwood's, for in that dwelt the 
 Carlisles, and there lived Maggie. Maggie was a 
 black-eyed little witch. I do not remember that I 
 ever visited her or that she ever came to see me. 
 Our acquaintance was altogether across a high board 
 fence, more impenetrable than the wall that parted 
 Pyramus and Thisbe, for in it was no chink nor 
 knot-hole. Maggie would stand on her back porch 
 and I would talk to her from the yard. Or sometimes 
 I would climb the grape arbor and look down on 
 her over the fence and we would have long conver- 
 sations. It was on one of these occasions that 
 she told me she had been to the circus. I had never 
 seen anything more than a menagerie, and the 
 glories of a circus as she described them dazzled 
 my imagination. Maggie and I often had quarrels 
 with vows that we would never speak again, but 
 these were followed by sweet reconciliations or per- 
 haps by my loud calls over the fence, in total for- 
 getfulness that there had been a feud the day be- 
 fore. I often fancied myself performing some act 
 of heroism for Maggie, rescuing her from a burn- 
 ing building or a sinking ship. I had seen in Green- 
 wood Cemetery the statue of a brave fireman who 
 had perished while saving an infant from the flames, 
 and I resolved to imitate him. In fancy, through 
 the dark night, I could see the great flames leaping 
 from the windows of Maggie's house; I could see 
 the red-shirted firemen working vainly at the engines 
 to extinguish the conflagration; I could see the multi-
 
 DOROTHY DAY 59 
 
 tudc looking up in breathless awe. Then a cry 
 announced that Maggie (who was sleeping in the 
 front room on the third floor) had been forgotten. 
 Yet no one dared to stir to rescue her. Suddenly 1 
 leaped forth from the throng, quickly mounted the 
 ladder which was placed against the window of her 
 room, entered amid smoke and flames, seized her 
 and carried her down in my arms, amid the plaudits 
 of the multitude. I did not, however, perish in the 
 falling building. I preferred to live a little longer 
 and enjoy the glory of my triumph, as well as 
 Maggie's gratitude. 
 
 But fate was cruel and gave me no chance to 
 rescue her, so I was a hero only in imagination. 
 How many such heroes there are ! Did you ever 
 read Sienkiewicz's novel, "With Fire and Sword"? 
 If so, you will remember Pan Longin Podbipienta, 
 one of whose ancestors had cut off three Turks' 
 heads at a stroke, and who had made a vow never to 
 look upon woman with the eyes of love till he had 
 done the like. Now Pan Longin was a sturdy fel- 
 low and very brave. He lacked nothing for the 
 performance of his vow except the concurrence of 
 three Turks' heads in the precise position where they 
 could all be stricken off at a single blow. One Turk's 
 head was an easy matter and so would three have 
 been if he could only find them in one place. That 
 is the way it is all through our lives. There is 
 much potential heroism and greatness in our makeup, 
 but the three Turks' heads come not often together.
 
 6o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 So Maggie was never rescued. Perhaps that was 
 just as well, for thus she avoided all anxiety, and 
 the house as well as the furniture were saved by the 
 failure of my opportunity! 
 
 There was another neighbor who played an im- 
 portant part in my life, and that was Auntie Dane, 
 a fat old woman, who kept a toy and candy shop 
 around the corner. She sold ice-cream, wholesale 
 and retail that is, a big plate for grown-up people, 
 which cost a dime or, on the other hand, an egg 
 cup, scant measure for a cent, or heaping full for 
 two cents. Often I would regale myself with a two- 
 cent portion and then go home and complete my 
 joy in the grape arbor with great bunches of 
 Isabellas I 
 
 We used to have some friends from the country 
 who would come to visit us in the winter time, and 
 then in summer we would visit them. Among others 
 were Luke and Evalina Stone from Westfield. Luke 
 was a red-faced, burly man, and he was very strong. 
 I know this because mother once told me that he 
 was stronger even than father, and I had found 
 out from romping with father on the floor, how 
 desperately strong he was. I knew well the story 
 of Samson in the Bible, and one day when one of 
 my little friends came to see me I proposed a new 
 game. He was to be Samson, the strongest man 
 in the world (in ancient times) and I was to be 
 Luke Stone, the strongest man in Westfield (at a 
 later and more advanced period) , and we were thus
 
 DOROTHY DAY 61 
 
 to contend for the mastery. So the past and the 
 present wrestled together and pounded each other 
 over the head for a long while, but I cannot remem- 
 ber whether the outcome showed the progress or 
 degeneration of mankind. 
 
 Among the most frequent visitors at our house 
 was Henrietta Simpson. Henrietta weighed about 
 two hundred and fifty pounds and she was, as 
 mother said, "a great talker." Her thoughts 
 poured forth in a smooth, solid stream without 
 pause or interruption for hours. Her husband, 
 Simon Simpson, was very hard of hearing, but I 
 used to wonder whether this was really an affliction. 
 He always carried an ear-trumpet, and when Hen- 
 rietta would signal to him that she wanted to say 
 something, he would put it to his ear and listen 
 patiently for awhile, but when at last he became 
 too tired, he would take it out and lay it gently on 
 his lap. He thus seemed to be more the master of 
 his fate than if he could have heard without it.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MY OCCUPATIONS 
 
 I RECALL many of the occupations in which I 
 passed the long and often solitary hours of my child- 
 hood. I whittled small boats of various designs, 
 boats with flat bottoms and boats with deep keels, 
 long, narrow boats and chubby flat fellows, sloops, 
 schooners, brigs, ships and catamarans. I had great 
 plans for inventions. I made kites of strange forms 
 and many tails and peculiar modes of operation, 
 which generally wouldn't rise, and I would ruminate 
 schemes for flying machines and for perpetual mo- 
 tion which I would never believe to be quite impos- 
 sible, even though the books did say it was. Mother 
 used to encourage this spirit of invention. One day 
 she took me to Fowler, the phrenologist, who 
 examined my head and told me that I would take 
 out patents before I was twenty-one. The bump 
 of "constructiveness" was marked seven, or "very 
 large" on the chart, which meant that I would "show 
 extraordinary mechanical ingenuity and a perfect 
 passion for making everything." But alas! my 
 energies were turned into other channels, the promise 
 of youth was blighted and now I cannot wrap a 
 package or drive a nail. 
 
 But another quality, "veneration" or religious
 
 DOROTHY DAY 63 
 
 feeling, was quite small. Fowler marked it only 
 three, and when I used to feel for the "bump" 
 with my hands, I thought it was rather a depression. 
 Perhaps this accounted for my doubts concerning 
 "inspiration" and my failure to see those special 
 acts of Providence which intervened so marvelously 
 in the affairs of others. I was much concerned at 
 this defect in my make-up, especially since Fowler's 
 book said that "veneration" was one of the qualities 
 which could not be cultivated too much and gave 
 sundry sage intsructions for its development. 
 
 There is something very satisfactory in having a 
 man's brain mapped out and his character described 
 with geographical precision, as if his head were like 
 the greater globe and his qualities like the conti- 
 nents and countries upon its surface; hence phren- 
 ology for a long time won more favor than it ever 
 deserved. It is safe to say that an accurate "topo- 
 graphical survey" of the brain has not yet been 
 made, that Fowler's charts were hardly better than 
 the old maps of Ptolemy or Strabo, and not relia- 
 ble for purposes of biographical navigation. 
 
 My life in the city, though it filled eleven out of 
 the twelve months in the year, contained hardly half 
 of the raptures and heart-throbs that made up my 
 real existence. The month of August, father's vaca- 
 tion, was always spent in the country, at Uncle 
 Samuel's farm. Here there were sources of infinite 
 amusement for the city boy. What a joy to milk the 
 cows or to go forth into the farmyard with an ear
 
 64 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 of corn and scattering the grains upon the ground 
 to watch the chickens rush headlong from all direc- 
 tions to be first at the feast! What grandeur to 
 walk along the pike with "Tag," the big Newfound- 
 land, as an advance guard, wagging his bushy tail 
 in measured cadences ! How springy was the hay 
 in the great mow as I jumped up and down and then 
 flung myself upon it with no fear of falling. And then 
 my play-house under the great chestnut tree ! Many 
 would never call this a house at all, for it had neither 
 walls nor roof. It was nothing but a "ground plan," 
 as an architect would say; there were little rows of 
 stones to show which was the hall and the parlor 
 and the dining-room and kitchen, and perhaps one 
 or two bedrooms on the first floor. The walls and 
 ceiling and furniture and windows were all left to 
 imagination, but poor indeed must be fancy of a boy 
 if he could not see just the kind of a house he liked 
 in those little rows of stones. Best of all, it could 
 be torn down and built in a few minutes, according 
 to his taste, and there are few palaces even (unless 
 it be Aladdin's) that have any such advantage as that. 
 
 Uncle Samuel's house was an old-fashioned one of 
 rough stone, "splatterdashed" with fine pebbles on 
 the outside. It was set back a little from the pike 
 and faced sideways, as it seemed to me, for the 
 front was toward the drive, the gable at the end 
 being next to the road. 
 
 It was a long, narrow house with a wide "piazza" 
 running the full length in front (I well knew the
 
 DOROTHY DAY 65 
 
 difference between a "piazza" and a "porch," which 
 was merely a short square thing just in front of the 
 front door, such as they had at Uncle Gamaliel's 
 and not long and broad like a "piazza"). There 
 were three front doors opening upon this "piazza." 
 The one farthest away from the pike led to the 
 kitchen, where Grandmother Dillingham used 
 secretly to give me cakes and jelly "between meals." 
 The door nearest the pike led to the parlor, a dark 
 silent room rarely opened except upon great occa- 
 sions, when there was company. In this room was 
 a picture of "The Peaceable Kingdom," painted 
 by Friend Bartholomew East, which was a great 
 wonder to me. Not only the lion and the lamb, 
 but a whole Noah's Ark collection of animals were 
 living together in great contentment with a little 
 child in the midst of them. The perspective was 
 peculiar and there were some animals I did not 
 recognize, but what of that? There might well be 
 such animals in Paradise! The middle door on 
 the "piazza" led to the sitting-room, where there 
 was a big clock on a shelf with a round, merry face 
 to welcome you as you entered and a loud, com- 
 fortable "tick" to make you feel at home. From 
 the sitting-room an inclosed stairway led upstairs, 
 and in a closet under the steps was a collection of 
 grandfather's canes. He had many kinds canes 
 light and dark, canes smooth and gnarled, canes 
 with round, curling tops, and canes with ivory 
 handles, and every one had its history.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 GRANDFATHER DILLINGHAM AND UNCLE BENJAMIN 
 
 BUT from grandfather's canes I must pass on to 
 Grandfather Dillingham himself. He was a hale 
 old man of more than seventy years with an ample 
 "bay-window" under his long drab waistcoat, for 
 he loved the good thing of earth, and the careful 
 housewives who entertained him when he "traveled 
 in the work of the ministry" would always put the 
 best they had on the table when "Joseph Dilling- 
 ham" was there to dine or sup. He had a round 
 head and a moon-like face, always clean shaven, 
 and he could shave in less time than anyone else in 
 the world. Once another Friend bantered him into 
 a race. The razors were stropped, the lather was 
 put on, the word of command was given: "Shave!" 
 and at it they went. Grandfather soon distanced 
 his competitor, and in about half a minute the vic- 
 tory was won! 
 
 Grandfather had formerly managed the farm 
 upon which the homestead stood, but he had now 
 given it to Uncle Samuel in consideration of a small 
 annuity, and he devoted his remaining years to his 
 work as a minister of the Society of Friends. The 
 Quakers, as is well known, had a "testimony against 
 a hireling ministry," a testimony which owed its
 
 DOROTHY DAY 67 
 
 origin to the corruption of the Established Church 
 at the time of the foundation of Quakerism. The 
 Gospel, they held, should be freely given to all 
 "without money and without price," so their min- 
 isters were not paid, nor even reimbursed for their 
 expenses in traveling to the meetings which they 
 "had a concern" to visit. It is said that Elias 
 Hicks used to sell a small slice of his farm when he 
 wanted to make an extended tour. But Grand- 
 father's needs were not great and his annuity enabled 
 him to visit Friends in various parts of the country 
 and give them such messages as he believed had 
 been intrusted to him by his Divine Master. I 
 often heard him preach at the old meeting house 
 in the neighborhood. He was especially fond of 
 the writings of the Apostle Paul and would fre- 
 quently take his texts from the Epistles. He began 
 his sermons in a quiet, conversational tone, but as 
 he warmed up with his subject, he would fall into 
 that half musical intonation which used to be com- 
 mon among the preachers of the society an intona- 
 tion not unlike the chant of the priests in the 
 Catholic Church. When he had finished one part 
 of his discourse, he would begin again, slowly and 
 quietly as before, and again fall into a sing-song 
 as he progressed. Once, after grandfather had 
 got into the full swing of his exhortation, a little 
 boy on one of the benches before him, nudged his 
 father, at whose side he sat, and whispered: "Papa ! 
 Papa ! NOW it goes nice 1"
 
 68 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 But grandfather was not only a minister, he was 
 a mathematician and astronomer, and used to make 
 the calculations for Friends' Almanac. So much 
 interested was he in the performances of the 
 heavenly bodies, that once upon the occasion of a 
 week-day meeting, when an eclipse of the sun was 
 to take place, he made his sermon very short and 
 "shook hands" with the Friend next to him ten or 
 fifteen minutes before the usual time; then rushing 
 to the wagon-shed, he took out his horse and drove 
 like mad back to his home where his burned glasses 
 and his telescope were awaiting him, in time to make 
 his observations just as the moon entered t-he sun'** 
 disc. There were three brass nails in the "piazza" 
 which marked the meridian, and by which he used 
 to correct his watch. For grandfather's watch was 
 always kept in excellent discipline and was never 
 suffered to get more than a few seconds out of the 
 way. Once he made us a wonderful sun-dial, a dial 
 with five faces one horizontal on top, one on the 
 south side, which was serviceable most of the time, 
 one on the east for the morning, one on the west for 
 afternoon, and one on the north, which could 
 be used for a few hours, early and late, during the 
 long summer days. There were also tables upon 
 this dial to correct the sun time for each day of 
 the year, and around the fa"*e of the dirl. at the 
 top, the appropriate motto: Non numero horas nisi 
 serenas "I count not the hours unless they are 
 clear."
 
 DOROTHY DAY 69 
 
 Grandfather was always a welcome guest at the 
 houses he visited. He was a genial soul and had a 
 vast fund of anecdotes, which always drew around 
 him a circle or listeners. His stories were generally 
 about Friends and their experiences, the wonderful 
 revelations made to them, and the odd ways of many 
 of the ministers. He used to tell what I considered 
 a very funny story of Stephen Grellet, a French- 
 man, who had been "convinced" of Friends' prin- 
 ciples. (Why was it, I wondered, that the stories 
 were always of those who had been converted to 
 Quakerism and never of those who had been led 
 away?) Stpehen once astonished his auditors by 
 beginning a sermon with the following text: "Ye 
 mountains, why do ye skip like rams and ye hills 
 like ze little moutons!" 
 
 Grandfather would also tell of James Simpson 
 who was "filled with the power of the Spirit," but 
 who could never preach if anything went wrong. 
 Once James held an oppointed meeting in a barn. 
 He had given special directions that all fowls and 
 other living creatures should be carefully excluded, 
 but just as he was rising to deliver his message, an 
 old hen that had been laying unperceived in a cor- 
 ner of the haymow, flew down among the audience 
 with great cackling and uproar. Poor James was 
 sadly discomfited. "I told thee to keep the hens 
 away," he cried to the astonished proprietor of the 
 barn, and he announced to those who had gathered 
 to hear him that they might go home, that the meet-
 
 70 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 ing was all over. But they remained, and after 
 everything had again become quiet, James rose a 
 second time "and preached," said grandfather, 
 "with greater power than ever before." 
 
 Grandfather often "had a concern" (to use 
 phraseology of the Quakers) to visit various 
 prisons, and adddress words of comfort and encour- 
 agement to the prisoners. They evidently made 
 game of his sympathetic heart, for after a visit of 
 this kind he always came back with an assortment 
 of stories of guiltless men convicted upon false 
 testimony, the victims of peculiar combinations of 
 circumstances, which unjustly cast upon them the 
 imputation of crimes committed by others. After 
 giving an incredible account of some marvelous per- 
 version of justice which he had just heard from the 
 lips of one of these innocents, he would add: "I 
 do believe that poor man's story from the bottom 
 of my heart?" Dear grandfather, with his simple 
 faith ! When at last he lay on his death-bed racked 
 with pain, he heard the songs of the angels around 
 his pillow, and said, in the words of his beloved 
 apostle : "I have fought the good fight, I have 
 finished my course, and henceforth there is laid up 
 for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, 
 the righteous Judge, shall give me in those days, 
 and not to me only, but to all such as love His 
 appearing." 
 
 Uncle Samuel and Aunt Martha were both very 
 good to me. Uncle Samuel taught me to ride
 
 DOROTHY DAY 71 
 
 "Dandy" up the drive, though he would not let the 
 horse go any faster than a walk. "Martin and 
 Dandy" were the two "best" horses. Martin was 
 the best of all, and great were the feats of intelli- 
 gence attributed to him. Dandy was a light bay, 
 better looking perhaps, but the farm hand (who had 
 picked up a few big words at school) used to say, 
 he was "not so intellectual a horse" as Martin. 
 
 On the other side of the pike from Uncle 
 Samuel's and a good way back from the road, lived 
 Uncle Benjamin, grandfather's brother, a tall old 
 gentleman, with a fine face, but very feeble. He 
 had, as it seemed to me, even a better collection of 
 anecdotes than grandfather, for his stories were not 
 about Friends, but about green Irishmen who came 
 to work upon his farm. One of these named 
 Timothy, who must have hailed from some very 
 verdant quarter of the "old country," was greatly 
 perplexed on account of a tall clock in the room 
 where he was to sleep. It was quite dark and the 
 great figure against the wall with its menacing tick, 
 tick, filled him with alarm. At last the clock struck 
 ten. The poor fellow could stand it no longer, but 
 rushing off in great consternation, he cried: "Faith, 
 Misther Benjamin (for thus it was that my uncle 
 had directed the "help" to address him), there's 
 a man in me room that hez fired at me tin times and 
 now he's peckin' his flint to fire again!" 
 
 One day there were a number of Quarterly Meet- 
 ing Friends staying at the house, and when the time
 
 72 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 came to harness their horses, Uncle Benjamin asked 
 him on which side he was going to put the gray 
 horse to a certain carriage. Timothy had entirely 
 forgotten how they had been harnessed when they 
 came, so he scratched his head and answered with 
 a twinkle of his eye: "Sure I belave the gray goes 
 on the south side whin the stern is next to the wind." 
 Dennis, another Irishman, was very proud of his 
 skill in breaking horses. There was a narrow lane 
 leading from Uncle Benjamin's out to the pike and 
 just at the gate were some bushes. Now Dennis had 
 a boy, a lubberly fellow named Mike, whom he 
 directed to stand behind the bushes and cry out at 
 the passing of a colt which he was breaking, so that 
 the animal might become used to sudden noises. As 
 Dennis drove by, the boy rushed forth and yelled 
 at the top of his voice: "Bool" whereupon the 
 colt ran away, upset the old man and broke his leg. 
 He was brought into the house and put to bed, and 
 Mike came into the room and tearfully begged for- 
 giveness. "Ah, Mike," said the father in discouraged 
 tones, "I always knew ye were a fule, but I never 
 knew ye were such a damned fule to make such a 
 big boo!" 
 
 But there were other things I learned at Uncle 
 Benjamin's besides these beautiful stories. David, 
 the farm hand, showed me how to make an Indian 
 whistle. First you took a piece of flexible wood, 
 rather broad ; you bored a hole in the end and fast- 
 ened it by a string to a straight stick which you held
 
 DOROTHY DAY 73 
 
 in your hand, and when you whirled the first piece 
 round and round as fast as you could, it gave forth 
 a dull, buzzing sound, much like a swarm of bees, 
 and David said the noise could be heard more than 
 a mile away! But Uncle Benjamin had a hive of 
 real bees not far from the house and once when 1 
 was whirling my whistle and wondering how so 
 low a sound could be heard so far, the bees, aroused 
 by the competition, came forth, the buzzing for an 
 instant became louder than ever, then a sharp pain 
 followed, and there was vocal music after the 
 instrumental, while I ran into the house and grand- 
 mother bathed my face in cream.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 OUR SUMMER HOME 
 
 ONE spring Auntie made a visit to the seashore, 
 and while she was there she took a fancy to a house 
 upon a hillside, where there was a fine view, and 
 before she came home she had purchased it, and 
 told us we were all to live there with her during the 
 summer. The carpenter was soon at work upon a 
 new addition, and before the Fourth of July (that 
 most dreadful of days in the metropolis to the quiet 
 heart of the Quaker) all was in readiness. When 
 the time came for us to go I was nearly beside my- 
 self for joy and when it was decided for some 
 trifling reason to put off our departure for another 
 day, I wept so bitterly that the family, overcome by 
 the greatness of my affliction, set off, bag and bag- 
 gage, immediately. 
 
 That same evening we reached the cottage and 
 although everything in the house was topsy turvy, 
 it seemed to me a veritable paradise. Next morn- 
 ing when I arose and went out of doors to the sum- 
 mer house at the top of the hill, I found that the 
 landscape whose charms had attracted Auntie's fancy 
 was indeed very beautiful. To the east and south 
 was a long stretch of ocean beyond a wide expanse 
 of fertile fields. To the north, far in the distance,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 75 
 
 rose the blue mountains (for such they seemed at the 
 time of life when all things are loftiest and fairest), 
 a little nearer was a range of lower and greener 
 hills, and nearer still, winding in a snakelike course 
 through the wide plain, glistened one of the forks of 
 an inlet of the sea that branched out into many arms 
 like the tentacles of a cuttlefish, enclosing peninsulas 
 of fine farming country, dotted with comfortable 
 mansions. One of these branches came up in a 
 narrow creek almost to the foot of our hill where 
 it was lost in great masses of cat-tails, that grew 
 so thick upon its edges that they seemed to stifle it. 
 The plain was checkered with many-colored fields, 
 here a pasture, there plowed land, next a cornfield, 
 then a patch of woodland, the whole besprinkled 
 with houses and other farm buildings, and one or 
 two small hamlets. Back of our hill was the village, 
 which we used to call "the Pole," from the big flag- 
 staff at the post-office where four roads met, and 
 from among the trees rose the pretty white spire of 
 the old church, which has long since disappeared. 
 At that time no screaming of locomotives nor rattle 
 of trains interrupted the quiet of the place, but once 
 a day the Highland Belle or the Ocean Storm 
 steamed down from the metropolis, a trip which was 
 always made at high tide the hour of departure 
 changing every day. Often the boat would run 
 aground especially off u jumpin' Pint," as it was 
 called by the fishermen in the neighborhood, and 
 sometimes it had to be pushed off by long poles.
 
 7 6 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 We could see the boat with a blue rim upon its 
 paddle box as it passed up the river, and at places 
 where the banks were so high that they concealed the 
 stream, the steamer looked as thougn it were mov- 
 ing across the fields, and the foam thrown up by 
 the wheels seemed as if it were earth which they 
 plowed as they passed over it, though we could 
 plainly hear the intermittent throbbing sound on 
 the quiet waters as the steamer came up to the dock 
 on a still summer evening. 
 
 The place is greatly changed now, and the quiet 
 village has grov/n into a big, bustling, uninteresting 
 town, a noisy, untidy place, where every few minutes 
 long trains of cars, with their attendant smoke and 
 dust, come rattling past, and where you can no longer 
 see the landscape on account of the things which 
 conceal and deface it. Even the trees that have 
 grown around the unsightly structures add little to 
 the attractions of the scene. There were not so 
 many of them when I was a boy, and those nearest 
 the sea were cedars, old, rugged, hardy, stunted 
 fellows with their branches bent landward by the 
 winter storms, looking as if they had indignantly 
 turned their backs upon the offending ocean. The 
 fish-hawks, too, who used to build their huge nests 
 in the dead and dying branches and bring home 
 to their brood the fish that glittered and struggled 
 in their talons these have also in a measure dis- 
 appeared, finding the advent of so much noise and 
 smoke and civilization uncongenial. The last time
 
 DOROTHY DAY 77 
 
 I visited these scenes and saw the old charm of the 
 landscape fallen into ruin, I would have turned 
 heart-sick away were it not for a single consolation 
 that remained to me. Thank God that sunsets never 
 change; or, rather, that in all their infinite changes 
 their beauty grows no less from year to year! The 
 sunset that I saw that evening was as glorious as 
 any my childhood ever looked upon. Away in 
 the depths of the clouds that rolled around it like 
 luminous moving mountains of gold and crystal, the 
 great fiery ball stood for a while close to the edge 
 of the hills beyond the woodland and then went 
 down on the other side. And what a glory was 
 left behind ! Mountains and domes and palaces and 
 soft beds of golden down, where one might be at 
 rest and dream forever! Have you never wished 
 that you could glide upon the wings of an eagle 
 down that long, shining pathway toward the west 
 and there recline awhile in the recesses of a sunset 
 cloud? If not, the glories of Paradise are not for 
 you. 
 
 But I must bring you from the clouds back to 
 Auntie's cottage and I must first tell you of the 
 dumb animals about the place, for to my thinking 
 at that time they were the most important things. 
 First there was the rooster and his eight hens. And 
 such hens! They used to lay seven eggs a day, and 
 sometimes eight, and one of them was so tame you 
 could never make her eet out of the way, but she 
 would stand in the walk in front of you, cock her
 
 78 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 head on one side and stare at you as much as to 
 say: "What are you going to do about it?" And 
 there she would stay until you almost tumbled over 
 her. She liked to eat out of your hand, and you 
 could stroke her along her neck and across her 
 back down to her very tail. Then there was Prince, 
 the dog, who came to stay with us each summer, and 
 found other less desirable quarters, I don't know 
 where, during the remaining nine months of the 
 year. Prince was an "E Pluribus Unum" dog; that 
 is, he was a great many kinds of a dog all in one. 
 He had a long, big, round body, and very short 
 legs with toes that turned out. He had coarse, 
 grizzly hair, part yellow and part dirty white, and 
 it tumbled around his eyes in a confused way, giv- 
 ing him a misanthropic look, which was justified by 
 his behavior. If you stroked his back you could 
 feel many irregularities, some of these were burrs 
 which had become buried under his thick mat of 
 hair, but most of them were bird-shot buried in his 
 skin, shot which had been deposited there by those 
 who had had scores to settle with him, in vain efforts 
 to put him out of the world. Prince was desperately 
 fond of Auntie, whom he welcomed with the mad- 
 dest demonstrations of joy and whom he followed 
 everywhere upon her walks, snapping at everybody, 
 right and left, and dodging the stones hurled at him 
 from every quarter. His instinct toward depravity 
 was unerring. The boys who stole our watermelons 
 were never molested, but our friends were all bitten
 
 DOROTHY DAY 79 
 
 in due form immediately upon their arrival. Many 
 was the time he kept us awake all night barking and 
 howling at nobody. At last I set about the task of 
 making things as interesting to him as he made them 
 to others, with the hope that he might be induced 
 to leave us, for Auntie would not turn him away. I 
 pitched him into the cistern at the barn and rescued 
 him only after I though he had been frightened 
 almost to death, but although he scampered off for 
 an hour or two, he was back in time for supper, full 
 of affection for Auntie and forgiveness for myself. 
 That dog must have had a hundred lives. He was 
 old when he first came to us, and he grew to be a 
 canine Methusaleh before we missed him upon our 
 annual return. 
 
 When we first moved to our country house we 
 used to hire Watson's horse. But it was not long 
 until we bought Terry, and then father built a barn 
 for him. Terry was a rather scraggy looking gray 
 beast with an honest, though not comely Roman 
 nose, which seemed appropriate in our family, but 
 his sterling qualities developed later and he was 
 found to be swift, strong and gentle, a horse either 
 for the carriage or the saddle. I was very fond of 
 him and for several years I used to take care of 
 him and rode him almost every day. As I grew 
 bigger and bolder, I would try experiments. Some- 
 times I would jump on his back and ride him with- 
 out saddle or bridle. Once when I did this he 
 started towards a small cherry tree with a branch 

 
 8o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 just high enough from the ground to brush me off, 
 and I suddenly found myself sitting on the grass- 
 plat close to the veranda, while Terry disappeared 
 down the front lawn. Later still I used to jump 
 fences and ride circus-fashion, standing on his back. 
 The first time I tried this I had a striking illustra- 
 tion of the fickleness of fortune. I had made very 
 careful preparations. I had put most of the saddle- 
 cloth back of the saddle so that there would be a 
 good place to stand. I had taken off my shoes so 
 that I could not slip, and letting Terry walk slowly, 
 I first rose to my knees and then stood crouching? 
 very low upon his back in most unstable equilibrium. 
 But gradually I got used to it. I lifted my head 
 higher and finally stood upright upon Terry's back 
 and felt very grand. Bogert's boys were in the 
 adjoining lot gazing at me with wonder and admira- 
 tion. This spurred me to further endeavors. I 
 made Terry pace a little and still stood upright upon 
 his back. But even this did not satisfy me, so I 
 gave him a cut with the whip to make him gallop. 
 The result was not what I expected. As I was 
 behind the saddle he tossed me a few inches in the 
 air at each bound and I went across the field 
 jump, jump, jump, till we came to the fence. There 
 Terry stopped, but I couldn't stop. I went over his 
 neck, and over the fence and landed on my head in 
 Israel Hodgin's field. Then Bogert's boys, who 
 had been all awe and envy, set up a shout of derision
 
 DOROTHY DAY 81 
 
 and I crawled back and hobbled home, crestfallen 
 and embittered at the world. 
 
 I must not forget to tell you of Bunny, a big, 
 white, pink-eyed rabbit, who used to jump up and 
 lick my face when I tried to take a nap upon the 
 lounge. After three or four tastes he would give 
 me a small bite, as if to say, "the sample is satis- 
 factory, let me have a piece." The strangest thing 
 about Bunny were his two big ears, so transparent 
 that you could see each pulsation of the blood as it 
 coursed through the dark little channels that looked 
 for all the world like the Mississippi River and its 
 tributaries as they appeared upon my map of North 
 America!
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MY COMPANIONS AND ACQUAINTANCES 
 
 YOUR boy is your true democrat. Rank and 
 station count for little with him so long as he can 
 find a comrade who will tell him something he wants 
 to know, or help him do something he wants done. 
 
 In a small cottage, a little way down the main 
 road, lived "Old Conk," an ancient fisherman with 
 grizzly beard, who always went barefoot, and one 
 of his great toes turned over the smaller ones in a 
 most interesting way. I used to wonder whether 
 his name did not come from that of the shells which 
 were always vocal with the sound of the great sea 
 on which the old man made his living. Among the 
 boys of the neighborhood he was rated as a dan- 
 gerous character. He was liable to come out and 
 shake you or beat you almost any time ! He had a 
 grandson, a barefooted little scamp, who for a while 
 was my constant companion and staunchest friend. 
 From him I acquired much of my nautical knowl- 
 edge and also certain linguistic attainments. I had 
 already been taught by Georgie Underwood a num- 
 ber of dialectic variations of that great boy-lan- 
 guage known as "Hog Latin." For example, if 
 you wanted to say, "I will not do that," you might 
 say it in several ways. You might put a letter "g"
 
 DOROTHY DAY 83 
 
 in the middle of each syllable and say, "Igi wigill 
 nogot dogoo thagat," or you might add a uniform 
 termination to each "Igary wiggary noggary 
 doogary thagary," or "Ivisa wivisa novisa dovisa 
 thavisa." This was very useful for those who wished 
 to communicate in secret so that no one else could ever 
 understand ! But Pete Conk added a new tongue 
 "Italian," he called it, and said it was a real lan- 
 guage, and that people spoke it in some country 
 far away. Its main feature was great condensa- 
 tion. For instance, if you wanted to say, "Look at 
 the sun," you would say, "Seesun," all in one word! 
 I found that this language was much harder to 
 acquire than the others but doubtless much more 
 valuable after you had learned it! In exchange for 
 instruction in this important branch of education, 
 I told him all I knew about Italy and the Italains, 
 but I didn't like to tell him that I doubted whether 
 this was the language they really spoke! 
 
 Another face that looms up distinctly in these 
 days, is that of Jesse Brown, the carpenter. While 
 he was at work on our veranda I was his constant 
 companion and great was the satisfaction I derived 
 from seeing the saw go through the boards, scat- 
 tering the sawdust on every side, or the plane that 
 went swish ! swish ! across the plank and made it so 
 smooth and shiny! And then I got to know the 
 plummet and the mitre-board and the auger and the 
 brace and bit and how simple it was to make many 
 things that before I could not understand. But
 
 84 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 it seemed to me a great shame that the square 
 columns of our veranda were hollow, when I had 
 always supposed that they were solid all the way 
 through! How many things in life are like them! 
 
 Now Jesse was something of a politician as well 
 as philosopher and used to talk to me a good deal 
 about "State rights," and "Sectionalism" things 
 that I didn't understand. He would say: "The con- 
 servative portion of this country is its flower, sir!" 
 Now, I didn't know what "conservative" meant, 
 but the word was such a nice one that it convinced 
 me, and I said: "Yes, that is so!" 
 
 Every First Day we drove to meeting at a little 
 hamlet, five miles away, which was situated at the 
 crossing of two wide and well shaded roads. It was 
 a very good neighborhood, Auntie said, for it con- 
 tained three places of worship and never a saloon ! 
 
 The houses upon both the roads looked large and 
 white and beautiful as they nestled back among the 
 trees. They had white chimneys with a black rim 
 around the edge of each, just where the smoke 
 comes out, and when we painted our chimney that 
 way, and also put a false wooden one at one end of 
 the roof to match the real one at the other end, the 
 whole house seemed to me transformed and greatly 
 improved. 
 
 The meeting-house was one of the old-fashioned 
 kind. It was a large building, covered with un- 
 painted shingles, having a partition within of slid- 
 ing shutters to separate the men's side from the
 
 DOROTHY DAY 85 
 
 women's side. The woodwork was unpainted and 
 the pine seats and floor and shutters had become 
 dark with age. There was a wood stove on each 
 side and the stove-pipe, supported by wires from 
 the ceiling, made several interesting curves and 
 elbows before it finally went out through the high 
 roof. As I used to sit in this meeting-house on the 
 hot summer days, the songs of the birds and the 
 waving of the green leaves outside were very tempt- 
 ing and in the long silence I used to think of all sorts 
 of things besides the "good thoughts" about the 
 Lord and the Bible, which people ought to think 
 when they go to meeting! The flies would come in 
 and buzz, and sometimes a big blue-bottle would 
 take his stand in front of my face and hum and flap 
 his wings so hard and fast that you could not see 
 them, and all this just to keep in the same place 
 hanging upon nothing! I often think of these blue- 
 bottles when I see so many human flies who flap their 
 wings very hard, year in and year out, yet hang upon 
 little or nothing and stay very much in the same 
 place all their lives! 
 
 A good many of our friends used to go to this 
 meeting. The two that come first to my memory 
 were "Becky and Anne." They were ancient 
 maiden ladies, distant relatives of ours, both very 
 thin, small and deaf. They were never seen apart 
 and no one ever spoke of either without the other. 
 Their last name was never mentioned; that was 
 unnecessary. They were always "Becky and Anne."
 
 86 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 They lived alone in a small village not far from 
 the meeting in a very old, shingled house, which 
 stood at the head of the main street, and was almost 
 stifled amid the trees and vines and big boxwood 
 shrubs in the front doorway. One wing of this 
 house looked so small that it was almost like a play- 
 house. That wing contained the dining-room, whose 
 raftered ceiling was so low that a tall man could 
 not stand upright in it. As for swinging a cat in 
 such a room, no one would ever think of it ! There 
 were tiny windows in front, only a foot or two wide, 
 and a little table in the middle set at meal times 
 with delicate old-fashioned blue china, little plates 
 and cups and saucers that just matched the little 
 room and the little ladies who presided at the table, 
 one at each end. I can see them, too, in their old- 
 fashioned carriage, drawn by "Bennie," a pretty 
 sorrel horse, nearly thirty years old, who trotted 
 away cheerily and briskly, to all appearance, though 
 his steps were so short that it took him a long while 
 to go anywhere. I was always somewhat in awe of 
 Becky and Anne. They seemed to me sharp and 
 "gruff" when they spoke, but I think in fact they 
 were fond of me for they gave me very interesting 
 books to read when I went to see them, among 
 others, a book of proverbs, with a story to each 
 proverb, and a picture with each story. 
 
 I must not forget Jehiel Porter, who kept the 
 store at Gosport, a homely man with a kind face and 
 a beard that grew thick and heavy upon the margin,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 87 
 
 but around his mouth and chin all was smooth 
 shaven, and he had a fine row of white teeth, and 
 very big hands! He lived in a large house on the 
 main street of the village only a few doors from 
 the store, and the creek ran up behind his back yard 
 where he had a boat, a yawl, I think they called it. 
 It looked short and fat and seemed to be laughing 
 at you. In this big house lived Jehiel and his wife, 
 Sarah, and her mother, a dear old Friend who was 
 "a little out of her mind," for she always wanted to 
 be "going home," and would steal away from the 
 house when no one was watching and walk for hours 
 and lose herself. 
 
 There are two other faces that stand clearly out 
 in my recollection: Mr. Castleton and his wife, 
 Deborah, as Auntie called them. That is just the way 
 it was. It was Mr. Castleton an dit was just plain 
 Deborah. He was a large, handsome man and very 
 entertaining. He had a fund of amusing stories and 
 agreeable songs "O Watch ye Well by Daylight," 
 "The Low-Backed Car," "When the Kie Come 
 Hame," etc. He used to say he did not see why every 
 one could not talk well, and he gave the example how 
 this might be done, for wherever he was he did 
 nearly all the talking, and everybody was delighted. 
 There seemed to be nothing he did not know. His 
 little wife Deborah sat in some retired spot and 
 said not a word, yet after all she was really an im- 
 portant ingredient in that combination, for it was 
 she who had the money! But I thought to myself:
 
 88 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 "It ought to be worth a great deal to any woman 
 to be so well entertained all her life." I have seen 
 others since, who bartered fortune for entertain- 
 ment, and they did not always fare so well. 
 
 But the most striking face of all was that of the 
 Episcopal clergyman of the neighborhod, the Rev. 
 Mr. Drawfish. He had dark, dreamy eyes and flow- 
 ing locks. He used to speak himself of the resem- 
 blance of his features to those of Christ as they 
 have come down to us in the paintings of Raphael 
 and others, and he always took great pains with 
 his personal appearance as a man ought to do who 
 had such a priceless possession. His face, his fine 
 voice and classical education were the attractions by 
 which he sought to draw men to his particular kind 
 of a Redeemer. He talked much of his sacred call- 
 ing and its hardships though what these were an 
 indefinite absence of particulars failed to disclose. 
 His accent and intonation had all the marks of the 
 Apostolic succession. He rolled his "r's" in a way 
 that no "sectarian" could imitate, and none but a 
 priest of the "church" could ever hope to acquire. His 
 diction was faultless, his sermons poetic. They con- 
 sisted mainly of similes, and if you could once recog- 
 nize the aptness of the simile, his conclusions were 
 irrefutable. His parables, however, were far more 
 gorgeous and impressive than the simple stories 
 of the Testament and the meaning was not half so 
 clear. 
 
 Humble he confessed himself to be, but it was a
 
 DOROTHY DAY 89 
 
 kind of humility where there was vanity even in 
 the confession. He knew his own worth, and still 
 more, his own attractions, and when he had chosen 
 for his wife the daughter of one of the wealthiest 
 of his flock, he conscientiously announced the engage- 
 ment to his congregation on the following Sabbath 
 for the reason, as he afterwards declared, that he 
 would not have others conceive hopes that were 
 unattainable ! He would sometimes read in advance 
 to his friends the sermon he had prepared for the 
 the following Sunday, and when he came to a com- 
 plete image or a well-turned sentence, he would ask: 
 "Is not this a graphic illustration? Is not that nobly 
 expressed?"
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE OCEAN 
 
 THERE is a good deal of art in bathing in the 
 surf when the waves are high, turning your back to 
 the breakers or diving into them, and it used to be 
 great fun to watch the greenhorns try it for the 
 first time on a rough day. 
 
 Once (but this was years afterwards) Smithfield 
 and Johnson came to see me. Smithfield had an 
 innocent, childlike face and a little pug nose. After 
 he had arrayed himself in a comical baggy suit of 
 bathing clothes he walked calmly down to the edge 
 of the water and said to Johnson, with innocent con- 
 fidence: "Now let us go in and take the waves." 
 The breakers were heavy that day, and as a wave 
 that had dashed upon the beach flowed back, he fol- 
 lowed it, and walked into the water calmly and con- 
 fidently, facing another bigger one which was just 
 coming. I stood back and watched the consequences. 
 The big wave curled over just in front of him, there 
 was a dash, a wild leap of spray in a long line upon 
 the shore, and Smithfield was lost to sight. The 
 next thing I saw was the receding water, and way up 
 on the beach there was a head sticking in the sand, 
 and two legs kicking wildly in the air. Another 
 wave caught him just as he was getting out of the
 
 DOROTHY DAY 91 
 
 tangle, until at last, battered and breathless, he be- 
 took himself to flight and did not consider himself 
 quite safe until the door of the bathing house was 
 fastened and locked behind him. 
 
 But what rapture there is in the sea to one who 
 knows it, who can plunge through the long lines of 
 foam and, swimming out beyond them, rise and fall 
 with the big swells and watch the "multitudious 
 laughter" of the waves around him as the sun strikes 
 their glittering crests 1 It was not long until I had 
 learned the joy of this and began to revel among 
 them as if I had been one of their own creatures. 
 
 Yet the ocean, which bore such raptures in its 
 hours of merriment, was filled with terror for me 
 when in the darkness I could hear its solemn voice 
 filled, as I thought, with menace and despair. There 
 was a huge wreck far down the beach, and one day, 
 when I went to look at the great spars and the high 
 prow and the scattered timbers of the big ship, an 
 old fisherman told me the story of the calamity. 
 She came ashore in the night when the wind was wild 
 and the waves were so angry that the boat they 
 dragged along the beach and tried to launch was 
 dashed to pieces when the first breaker struck it. 
 "The sand and spray were blown into our faces so 
 we could see nothing. All was black. They were 
 close by and we could hear their screams, and hear 
 them calling to us for help, yet we could do nothing, 
 but hang our heads and let them die. Only three 
 were saved one was a man whose wife was torn
 
 92 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 away from him, and the next day he walked back 
 and forth, back and forth, all the day upon the 
 beach, watching for the sea to give her up, but the 
 sea kept her. Do you see that farmhouse over 
 there? Well, they took the dead to that house and 
 laid them out and all the rooms were full and then 
 people came down from the city looking for their 
 folks, and the men broke down and cried just like the 
 women and one of the bodies that came ashore was 
 a woman and she had a baby in her arms wrapped 
 in a shawl, and it lay there as if it were asleep." 
 
 That night there was a full moon, and from my 
 bed I could see the mast leaning sideways above the 
 bluff a long way off, and I lay awake thinking of 
 the dreadful scene. The crash and the waves and 
 the spray and the darkness and the shrieks and the 
 corpses all mingled indistinguishably together in my 
 imagination. The more I thought of it the more 
 awful it seemed, and I reflected: "If even upon r!>is 
 blessed earth such things can be, how much more 
 terrible must be the endless agonies of hell!" I 
 began to wonder whether perhaps I had not com- 
 mitted some transgression which might cast me into 
 its unspeakable torments and the text came to my 
 mind about the sin which finds forgiveness neither 
 in this world, nor in the world to come. I remem- 
 bered a man who had come to see us a few weeks 
 before and had made a joke about a profane song, 
 and I had laughed at it! Perhaps that was the 
 unpardonable sin! And my poor little head grew
 
 DOROTHY DAY 93 
 
 hot as I lay awake all night thinking of the horrors 
 that were awaiting me from which no escape was 
 ever possible. This dreadful nightmare hung over 
 me for weeks until I thought I should go wild. I 
 told father of it, but he did not seem to understand 
 how terrible a thing it was. Every night I could 
 hear about my bed the wind and the dashing of 
 the waves and the shrieks, and I could see that poor 
 mother with her shawl around the child, both swept 
 together into the merciless flood. Then I saw be- 
 fore me an eternity of such visions, all for my 
 thoughtless laughter, which was to have forgive- 
 ness neither in this world nor in the world to come ! 
 
 How many a poor creature has spent his life in 
 the madhouse because he pondered too long over 
 that fatal text! If it might be permitted to sub- 
 tract aught from the sacred word, how many a kind 
 soul would blot out the dreadful menace of these 
 cruel lines from a book so full elsewhere of love 
 and gentleness! But, alas! there is another curse 
 upon the expurgation, and many a child who has 
 misquoted his text and added something or left out 
 a word, has fallen beneath the shadow of a fear that 
 perhaps his own name has been blotted from the 
 "Lamb's Book of Life." 
 
 So deep and lasting were these morbid thoughts, 
 that during the rest of the summer a settled melan- 
 choly took possession of me which was not dissipated 
 until I was back in the city and at school.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SCHOOL 
 
 MY health was so delicate that I was not sent to 
 school until I was nearly eleven years of age. My 
 education, however, suffered little from this, for I 
 picked up quite as much at home, browsing among 
 readers and histories and biographies, as ever I 
 would have learned in the class-room. At first I 
 went to a public school, but my attendance there was 
 very intermittent. After a week or two I would 
 catch cold and then I would have to stay home two 
 or three weeks with the croup, and with that dread- 
 ful ipecac. There are only a few recollections that 
 peer out from the mist of that first school life. I 
 remember that when any of the boys misbehaved 
 they were sent "on the line" for punishment, and 
 there they had to wait until one of the teachers 
 came around to administer it. There was one little 
 scamp named Pierce who used to prepare himself 
 when he contemplated some atrocious misdeed by 
 putting on two or three pairs of trousers, one over 
 the other, and when the rattan resounded on his 
 little legs we could tell from the sound of it how 
 many pairs he had on that day. But he always 
 cried so lustily that I don't think the teacher ever 
 suspected.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 95 
 
 But it was not long that I went to the public 
 school. A private academy was established not far 
 from where we lived, and I became one of the 
 pupils. This was a much nicer school, I thought, 
 than the other. The building was new and neat and 
 in front of it was a pretty little park where we used 
 to play during recess. The boys and girls were 
 together in the same class, the classes were much 
 smaller and the teachers were much more pleasant 
 and polite ! There was Mr. Trueblood, who taught 
 mathematics; Miss Fowler, who instructed us in 
 history and geography, and Miss Hitchcock, with 
 whom we learned grammar, etymology and elocution. 
 There was a big chart upon the wall of the assembly- 
 room where we recited to her and upon this chart 
 were all the sounds of all the vowels and I was 
 astonished to see that there were four sounds for 
 u a" aye-ahh-aw-ah ! We had to stand up and 
 repeat these sounds every day, in concert, at the 
 top of our voices. And Tom Tucker who stood at 
 the end of the line once got Joe McDowell to prick 
 him with a pin just as we came to the final diph- 
 thong, "ow!" and he howled it forth dismally and 
 at great length in a very natural manner. 
 
 Once a week we had to "speak our pieces." Jack 
 Sheridan declaimed "The Raven" so grandly that 
 we were sure he would become one of the finest 
 orators in the world. My particular chum was Joe 
 McDowell, who had a solemn face, but who was real- 
 ly full of mischief. Once when he was called upon he
 
 96 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 gave us in a deep, solemn voice: "Sing a Song of 
 Sixpence," gesticulating very impressively and pre- 
 tending to nip off the end of his own nose just at 
 the close. 
 
 Miss Hitchcock used to correct our compositions. 
 I had written one entitled "The Wreck," of which 
 I was very proud, especially of the last sentence, 
 which described the scene that followed the catas- 
 trophe. I worked at it so long and hard that I can 
 remember it still. It ran thus: 
 
 " 'Tis morn. The sun has risen with resplendent 
 grandeur and the sea has become calm from its 
 storm of the night before. The sea-gull and the 
 petrel are the only visitants to the spot where dis- 
 appeared that gallant ship with all its precious cargo, 
 and the billows of the ocean alone sing a requiem 
 for the dead." 
 
 When Miss Hitchcock read these lines there was 
 a quizzical expression on her face, and she asked me 
 whether I had done all that myself. My cheeks 
 flushed with conscious pride, as I answered: "Every 
 word of it!" I think now that a good part of it 
 was "fished" from certain phrases that prowled 
 perhaps unconsciously through the by-ways of mem- 
 ory, but I am sure that at the time I thought it 
 "very original." Another composition that I took 
 great pride in was one where the death of Napoleon 
 was contrasted with that of the humble Christian. 
 I had worked up a terrible storm at St. Helena, as
 
 DOROTHY DAY 97 
 
 well as in the perturbed spirit of Bonaparte, and 
 ended the scene in the following climax : 
 
 "And with ' Tete d' Armee' upon his expiring lips 
 the conqueror of nations rushed into the presence 
 of his Maker." 
 
 After this began an adagio : 
 
 "It was a quiet Sabbath eve; the sun was just 
 hiding behind a mass of white clouds fringed with 
 gold; the church bells were ringing in the gray 
 steeple just behind the wood," etc., etc., while upon 
 his bed the good old man had visions of angels and 
 archangels and passed away with a smile upon his 
 lips. 
 
 Father considered this a very edifying produc- 
 tion; as for myself, I prized it more for its fine 
 artistic form than for its ethical or spiritual value ! 
 
 Besides our regular instructors there were others 
 who came two or three hours a week to teach us 
 special things. One of these was Mr. Bendetto, the 
 drawing-master. He was a painter of some dis- 
 tinction, who used to become so absorbed with his 
 own work at the studio that he never thought to 
 come to school at all, and sometimes at the end of 
 the hour he would rush in out of breath with flushed 
 face and disheveled hair, exclaiming in repentant 
 tones: "I forgot it again!" 
 
 But our most curious and interesting specimen 
 was Professor Jacquette, the French teacher. He 
 had a shrewd Gallic face with sharp, black eyes 
 and aquiline nose. He was clean shaven except a
 
 98 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 small pair of mutton-chop whiskers just in front of 
 his ears which were always dyed black and dyed so 
 often that you could hardly ever see the little bit of 
 gray that still occasionally peeped out just at the 
 roots. He must have been very bald for he wore a 
 black wig that covered all his head except two little 
 places at the side where his hair was dyed as care- 
 fully as his whiskers. I am sure he was a very 
 old man, yet he acted like a young beau. His clothes 
 were always carefully brushed, his shirt bosom was 
 always white and shiny, he was agile, and gesticu- 
 lated with much grace, and he was politeness itself, 
 especially to the girls. Whenever one of them on 
 entering or leaving the room tried to walk behind 
 him, he always tilted his chair back against the 
 blackboard so that there was no room to pass and 
 then she had to go around in front of the table 
 where he was sitting, while he smiled deferentially. 
 This seemed to us the acme of Parisian courtesy. 
 I am sure none of us boys would ever have thought 
 of doing anything quite so polite as that! Yet his 
 courtesy was also Parisian in the fact that it always 
 yielded to a stronger impulse when a sudden puff 
 of anger took possession of him. Once when the 
 mother of two of his pupils wrote him a little note 
 on tinted paper saying that his "system" (for like 
 all French teachers he had a system) was "par- 
 faitement ridicule," he jumped up and stamped 
 around the room and swore dreadful French oaths,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 99 
 
 and it even seemed to us he was in danger of tear- 
 ing his wig off. 
 
 Professor Jacquette told us delightful anecdotes. 
 The two which have been most firmly fixed in my 
 memory are "Ze Tail of ze Rat" and "Ze Tail of 
 ze Bear." "Ze Tail of ze Rat" arose out of a dis- 
 cussion of the French equivalent for "pie." Various 
 kinds of pie were spoken of, among others mince 
 pie. "You like meence pie?" said the Professor. 
 "Ah, I nevaire, nevaire could not eat meence pie. 
 For vy? Vun time I valk down Broadway and I 
 step into ze restraurant and I call ze garcon, ze vat 
 you call him? ze vaitaire, and I ask him to breeng me 
 a piece of meence pie and he breeng ze piece of 
 pie and I put him in my mout and I feel someting 
 vair strange, vair strange, and I pull him out and 
 py gar! zaire vas ze tail of a rat! O, I nevaire, 
 nevaire could not eat meence pie aftair zat!" The 
 old professor dramatized the last part of his story 
 so realistically by his gestures and expressions of 
 dismay, that mince pie was not a favorite article of 
 diet with any of us for some time afterwards. 
 
 "Ze Tail of ze Bear," had a deeper moral pur- 
 pose. It was directed against the sin of exaggera- 
 tion. "You do evair exaggairate?" asked the 
 professor. "You should nevaire, nevaire exag- 
 gairate. For vy? Vun time zair vas vun grand 
 gentleman in France vat have ze habit of to exag- 
 gairate, so he tells his laquai, his sairvante, zat 
 venever he do hear him to exaggairate, he pull him
 
 ioo DOROTHY DAY 
 
 by ze tail of ze coat so ! so I" and the professor 
 gave a lively jerk to the tail of his own coat. "So 
 vun day zair vas vun grand dinner at zees gentle- 
 man's house and zair vas many people and zey 
 talk about ze bear, and vun man say he kill so many 
 bear, and vun man say he kill a bear vot is so big! 
 And zees gentleman say he kill a bear vot have a 
 tail so long, so long," and the professor stretched 
 out his arms at full length. "And zen ze laquai 
 who stand behind him pull hees tail, so ! so !" and the 
 professor fitted the action to the word. ; 'Non! 
 Non! Parbleu, Messieurs,' zees gentleman do say, 
 'ze tail of ze bear vas not so long, but so long vas 
 ze tail of ze bear!" Here the professor showed 
 us the length of one arm then he described another 
 pull to the coat-tail, and another reduction down to 
 half a yard, then down to a foot, then six inches 
 till at last with a voice full of humiliation and de- 
 spair came the confession: "Pardon, messieurs, ze 
 bear I kill have no tail at all, and I no kill ze bear." 
 I used to supplement my French instruction at 
 school by conversations one evening a week at Mme. 
 Des Champs "soirees," we called them and Annie 
 Wayfield, one of the older girls, used to go with 
 me. Professor Aime did most of the conversing, 
 and sometimes he would read to us. He read 
 quietly as if he were talking and I did not think 
 him half so fine an elocutionist as Professor Jac- 
 quette, who became very impressive when he de- 
 claimed passages from the French drama, and who
 
 DOROTHY DAY 101 
 
 was the greatest of all, we thought, in the scene 
 from "Cinna," where Auguste first discloses to his 
 friends his knowledge of Cinna's conspiracy. 
 
 Our hearts all thrilled with Gallic fire when 
 Auguste crushed poor Cinna with the proofs of his 
 perfidy; and we used to wonder whether Talma 
 himself could ever have declaimed so well as that. 
 
 Aime, on the other hand, was a mild little man 
 who never could impress anybody, and he had a 
 little girl, a beautiful child, whom he used to bring 
 with him sometimes to the soirees. She was very 
 well behaved, and appeared to be very fond of her 
 father, calling him not "papa," but "Jean," which 
 was his first name, and talking to him in a very 
 familiar manner. He told us that he had brought 
 her up that way and we all thought, "How 
 strange!" You see, I am dropping the "professor" 
 and calling him plain "Aime." He was that kind of 
 a man. He didn't seem to care about his dignity. 
 And he was right; let dignity take care of itself, 
 I say. If it comes naturally, well enough. If it has 
 to be tended and watched and kept out of the wet 
 and cold, it is better to part with it altogether. One 
 of the funniest things in life is to see some little 
 fellow with a squeaky voice looking to the careful 
 preservation of his dignity. Dignity is like love 
 "Sie kommt and sie ist da." Otherwise it isn't dig- 
 nity at all. 
 
 The little Aime girl was the first child I ever 
 heard talking French and it made her seem to me a
 
 102 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 very learned child, for she spoke it much more cor- 
 rectly and fluently than I could after all my study. 
 Even to-day, I cannot hear a child talk French with- 
 out unconsciously wondering at it. To hear one talk 
 German never seems so astonishing. The German 
 words are the homely household words that you 
 expect to hear from the lips of the little ones. But 
 the romance languages are filled with Latin deriva- 
 tives Latin is to us the learned tongue and to 
 hear the baby speaking the words of the lecture- 
 room suggests precocity. 
 
 Sometimes Mr. Aime could not come to the 
 soirees, and his place was filled by Mademoiselle 
 Conet, a lady of advancing years, harsh voice and 
 the rudiments of a moustache. Somebody once 
 asked her if she were a poetl Whereupon she drew 
 a fine distinction between the poetry of the soul and 
 the poetry of mere words. She was a poet of the 
 soul! In the presence of nature, of the flowers, the 
 sky, the forest, her soul was transformed and ex- 
 alted, and I don't know what. But with the jingling 
 of the rhymster she had no sympathy. The idea 
 of cramping these divine thoughts into feet and 
 measures was abominable. She was a poet whose 
 thoughts were too fine even to be set in words ! 
 There are many poets of that kind in the world.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY EDUCATION COMMENCEMENT 
 
 As time passed on, I learned to smoke, an art 
 which I began to consider necessary to manliness and 
 self-respect. I learned it amid the tribulations that 
 usually accompany the acquisition of this useful 
 branch of knowledge. I had tried cigarettes several 
 times, and they had never harmed me, so once when 
 I was in the country visiting my friend, Bob Shaw, 
 and he offered me a cigar, I took it as a matter of 
 course and smoked it as if I were quite used to 
 cigars and had been in the habit of smoking all my 
 life. But a little while afterwards a horrible feel- 
 ing overcame me. I tried to stifle it, but it would 
 not down. I went out of the house and said T 
 wanted to take a walk in the woods, which was quite 
 true, but the dreadful consequences of my rash deed 
 were not to be postponed. The cause of my pale 
 face could not be hidden and my previous innocence 
 of this manly art was revealed not only to Bob him- 
 self but, worst of all, to his pretty sister, Janet, 
 who, I thought, had looked upon me with a certain 
 admiration, but whose smiles afterwards were un- 
 doubtedly those of pity. I would have been willing 
 to go through that ordeal many times (and it was 
 not a light one) if I could have kept the knowledge
 
 104 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 of it from her. But my cup of shame and humilia- 
 tion was full till I got safely home. When the fate- 
 ful step was once taken I was bound to persevere, 
 though I watched more carefully the size of the 
 cigar and noted the strength of the tobacco. At 
 last I could smoke with anybody, and my com- 
 panions failed to floor me even when they conspired 
 to put hair in my pipe. Thus does the boy grow in 
 knowledge and discretion. 
 
 Jack Sheridan, the boy who was to be an orator, 
 took me to visit him in his home up in the Catskills, 
 and one night we went bobbing for eels by torch- 
 light. It was midnight before we returned and then 
 Jack brought out from the cellar a wonderful treas- 
 ure a bottle of champagne "That is," said Jack, 
 "it is champagne cider, which is really just the same 
 thing" and with that bottle and some cakes we had 
 a Sybarite feast while everybody else in the house 
 was fast asleep. There was something deliciously 
 wicked about the union of champagne cider with 
 such late hours. 
 
 But going to see the country girls on Sunday was 
 the greatest fun. Sometimes we found a swain in 
 the house who looked very glum when we entered, 
 and who always stayed till after we were gone. We, 
 being city boys, were the chief attractions so long 
 as we lasted, but the swain would pick up a little 
 courage and begin to look cheerful as soon as he 
 saw us ready to go. One of the girls had on a rich 
 brocade dress decidedly faded, which had come
 
 DOROTHY DAY 105 
 
 down from a more prosperous antiquity. There 
 was also a piano which spoke in faltering accents of 
 a more illustrious past, but there was nothing fal- 
 tering about the girl's voice or her dashing figure 
 as she played and sang "The Mocking Bird" with 
 such spirit and life that you would have said that 
 the bird was enlivening a marriage festival rather 
 than warbling over a grave. 
 
 Although Annie Jones was the head of my class 
 and delivered the valedictory, I had a good deal of 
 glory on the day of our graduation at the academy. 
 My child's dream of writing a great poem had not 
 vanished during the time I was at school, and I 
 thought that an epic on the conquest of Peru would 
 be a worthy theme for my muse. So I devoted my- 
 self to Prescott's work and projected a poem which, 
 if it had been completed upon the magnificent plan 
 proposed must have taken some ten years for its 
 composition. 
 
 I began with a prelude about the Vale of Cuzco 
 and the great temple and the sun rising 
 
 "O'er far Sorata's gleaming peak," 
 
 where, after dispelling the mist of the valley and 
 
 "Piercing with his rays 
 Its every nook, he seems to search and ask 
 'Where are my children?"' 
 
 This was in blank verse. Then followed a de-
 
 io6 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 scription of the glories of the ancient Peruvian em- 
 pire in ballad metre, describing how 
 
 "The Inca's rainbow-banner waved o'er nations near and far, 
 Conquering more by mild persuasion than by fierce and angry 
 war," 
 
 and how the great Huayna Capac on his deathbed 
 told of his father's spirit which prophesied, as is 
 the custom in such cases, of the coming of the white 
 men, and how he divided his kingdom between 
 Huascar, his eldest son, and Atahuallpa, his favorite, 
 giving Cuzco to his first born and Quito to his best 
 beloved, and advising the brothers to dwell in peace. 
 Then I went off into Homeric hexameters, though 
 I took a "poetic license" to prefix a short syllable to 
 some of the lines, like a grace-note in music, as I 
 had heard it called, and I began to describe the 
 quarrel between two Incas and the invasion of Cuzco 
 by Atahuallpa. The hexameters began thus : 
 
 "'Tis the Peruvian summer. The tropical sun in his fervor 
 Hurls on the lowlands and sea-coasts his parching and pestilent 
 
 arrows, 
 
 While on the lofty sierras his fiery beams vainly endeavor 
 To scatter the chill of the winter and strip the snow garb 
 from the mountains." 
 
 Then followed an account of the marshaling of 
 the troops and the battle and the conquest of Cuzco 
 by the tribes of the North. 
 
 Now I had taken so long to manufacture these
 
 DOROTHY DAY 107 
 
 various varieties of verse and to bring the Peru- 
 vians down to the place where they were to be con- 
 quered, that I had not time to get to Pizarro and 
 the conquest at all. So I had to leave that out with 
 a brief allusion to the "darkest of history's chap- 
 ters," and an invocation to Oblivion to cast its 
 "thick pall" over the events which my great epic of 
 manifold versification was intended to celebrate. 
 
 Perhaps you have seen some temples where the 
 portico and the vestibule were so elaborate that there 
 was little room for the sanctuary inside. It is said 
 that when the Roman conqueror inspected the Holy 
 of Holies in Jerusalem he found there was nothing 
 in it. My poem was of similar construction. The 
 "Conquest" was so entirely absent that I felt con- 
 strained to change the name of the great work and 
 to call it instead "The Fate of Peru," for it seemed 
 to me that the beginning and the end might be 
 enough to show what had been the fate of a country, 
 whereas many intermediate cantos would be required 
 to tell about its conquest. 
 
 Even thus, however, the poem had to have a con- 
 clusion. Commencement day was almost upon me, 
 yet the rhymes and verses would not come. Then 
 I remembered "Evangeline," how Longfellow be- 
 gan: "This is the forest primeval," and then ended 
 his poem in the same way, repeating a number of 
 the lines that he had written before. Even Homer 
 sometimes repeated himself. So I brought out my
 
 io8 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 introductory verses again and then left the Sun 
 seeking his children in the Vale of Cuzco, to wit: 
 
 "His earliest beams 
 
 Appear o'er far Sorata's gleaming peak, 
 He lingers for a while in mute amaze 
 On that high summit that the wonted shout 
 Greets not his coming. With a searching look 
 He pierces the deep mists that hide the earth. 
 The shepherds of those mountain sides are gone; 
 Their pall, the vapors that conceal the vale 
 Their dirge, the winds that play among the hills." 
 
 Although the great epic of my youth was thus 
 brought up with a rather sudden turn at the end and 
 did not fulfil the promise of its earlier stanzas, yet, 
 is not that the fate of the greatest works of genius ? 
 The concluding books of the Odyssey or of Para- 
 dise Lost fall below the standard of the earlier ones. 
 The Inferno and Purgatorio are greatly superior to 
 the Paradiso. The first acts of Hamlet and Mac- 
 beth are better than the last, and you will sometimes 
 come across an essay of Macaulay or De Quincey, 
 most elaborately conceived, which marches along for 
 a while with slow and steady tread and then makes 
 a sudden rush and scramble just at the end, so as 
 to get through in time. 
 
 So I felt that with all the shortcomings of my 
 great epic there might some time be a laurel crown 
 in store for me, and my ambitions were further con- 
 firmed by the motto affixed to my commencement
 
 DOROTHY DAY 109 
 
 bouquet, sent by some unknown hand: "Conse- 
 quitur quodcunque petit" "He attains whatever he 
 seeks." This inspired me for two or three weeks 
 afterwards with immense determination!
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 i 
 
 PREPARING FOR COLLEGE 
 
 i 
 
 AFTER my graduation it was determined that I 
 should go to college, but mother could not have me 
 away from home, so a college in the city was 
 selected. It was decided I should have a tutor and 
 a certain Mr. Hobson was employed. Exactly why 
 we chose him I do not know. He was a man over 
 seventy years of age; his clothes were always dirty, 
 he waddled like a duck as he came down the street 
 and always carried a market-basket on his arm con- 
 taining an assortment of old text-books. He had 
 a flabby face and a double chin and two little leer- 
 ing eyes close to a huge nose with a beard at the 
 end of it a beard which he shaved only twice a 
 week, so that on Wednesday and Saturday his nose 
 looked very grisly. Every two or three days he 
 would borrow a quarter or sometimes a dime for 
 carfare, which he always forgot to pay back. He 
 was a disagreeable old fellow, but he understood 
 Latin grammar and Greek verbs "av ovo usque ad 
 mala," and under his instruction I pushed ahead at 
 a rapid rate. 
 
 Hobson was a great scandal-monger, and when 
 at my recommendation he was employed by Mr. 
 Macdonald as a tutor for his boys, who were two
 
 DOROTHY DAY in 
 
 of my closest friends, and when the father agreed 
 to give him twice the price he asked, he showed his 
 appreciation by saying that the man must be a fool 
 and he retailed to me a lot of silly gossip about the 
 family. I found he acted with impartiality between 
 the two houses in this respect, and after trying in 
 vain to stop the tattle myself I called upon father 
 to see if he couldn't silence the old man. At first 
 father was disposed to laugh at the thing, but find- 
 ing I insisted he came down one morning with a 
 face as black as the night uuxr} iotxcb? for he 
 brought to my mind in an instant Homer's descrip- 
 tion of Apollo, and when he accused Hobson of 
 retailing falsehoods concerning us, the old man 
 trembled and stammered out, first lies and then 
 excuses, and after father left the room the poor 
 tutor couldn't tell the tense or the mood or the 
 conjugation of anything for the rest of that lesson. 
 But there was no more tale-bearing. 
 
 Hobson was very pedantic concerning trifling mat- 
 ters. He made it a great point that no one should 
 say "The City of New York," but always "The 
 City, New York." Any one who used the former 
 expression must be a very ignorant fellow. But 
 after a while I found a Greek genitive used in the 
 same way, that disconcerted him greatly. I never 
 liked to walk out with him for he used to forget to 
 wear a collar, nor was it pleasant to ride with him 
 in the street car, for he would stop forever at the 
 wrong streets and always talked so loud everybody
 
 H2 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 could hear and upon subjects I didn't want discussed. 
 He would explain, for instance, where I could buy 
 the cheapest second-hand text-books, and this when 
 I was with friends who never bought second-hand 
 books themselves and who looked surprised. When 
 I went to college to be examined for admission, he 
 insisted on going with me and he looked very dirty, 
 stole a catalogue from the President's private desk 
 and shuffled his feet on the floor in a manner most 
 exasperating to a poor pupil who was struggling 
 ineffectually with irregular aorists. 
 
 My examination in Greek was not triumphant. 
 As I entered the room with Hobson tagging after 
 me, a stately old gentleman, clean-shaven, with a 
 lofty forehead, large, dark, piercing eyes and a 
 mobile mouth, sat like one of the gods or Titans of 
 the elder dynasty in a high box or rostrum at the 
 end of the room. I can see his face before me, as 
 I write; it almost seems to be surrounded by a halo, 
 so dazzling the impression left upon my memory. 
 On the wall were portraits of celebrated Greek 
 scholars, Person, Dindorf, Blomfield, and I know 
 not whom else. Against two sides of the room 
 there were long benches and in front of each were 
 narrow desks. Just at the foot of the rostrum there 
 was a big chair with a bookrest on one of its arms 
 and in this chair a tall, slim fellow was then under- 
 going an examination. I noticed that when he 
 scanned he always called a dactyl a dactel, and while
 
 DOROTHY DAY 113 
 
 I thought he translated pretty well, Dr. Grandi- 
 son (he was the Titan) did not seem to think so, 
 for he told him to come again in the fall and try it 
 once more. He called me next and asked: "Have 
 you read Plutarch?" Now I hadn't read a word, 
 but I didn't like to confess it in that splendid pres- 
 ence, and in my confusion I answered "Not much 
 of Plutarch." "Well, in that case we will take the 
 first extract." I cast my eyes over it but couldn't 
 translate a line. He had caught me at once in what 
 might be called "a fib with mitigating circum- 
 stances." When I came to know Dr. Grandison 
 better I always "owned up," for the consequences 
 of even a total failure were less to be dreaded at 
 his hands than a discovery of the slightest prevari- 
 cation. He was a masterful man, a prince of old- 
 fashioned pedagogues, full of his jokes and his 
 sarcasm and his bonhomie too, toward those candid 
 fellows who never tried to appear better than they 
 were. 
 
 I was examined on the Anabasis. But by this 
 time I was so confused that the paragraphs turned 
 themselves inside out and upside down and I made 
 a dismal failure of it. Meantime old Hobson sat 
 puffing and blinking his eyes and shuffling his feet 
 and adding tenfold to my humiliation. 
 
 But Dr. Grandison gave me a last chance at 
 Homer. The passage was in the third book, an 
 invocation to old father Jupiter. I can hear the
 
 ii 4 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 dactyls and spondees ringing in my ears to-day. 
 This was the opening line : 
 
 Zsu xodtffTS fjiS iffr xat o.^o.va.Tot 9sol 
 
 In Homer the verses and the sense were so linked 
 together that my memory could not be upset even by 
 embarrassment. I knew the passage perfectly and 
 answered his questions without flinching. "You may 
 thank old Homer for that," said the professor, as 
 he marked "passed" upon my card. 
 
 I blush even now to think how green I was in 
 those days. That summer I kept a journal of my 
 doings as well as my reflections upon the common- 
 place incidents in my small world certain verdant 
 moralizing and a philosophy whereby to steer my 
 life through unknown seas. 
 
 No one shall ever see that journal! Never! For, 
 though I am willing to let it be known in a general 
 way that I was a good deal of a goose, I shall not 
 reveal all the minute particulars of my folly. There 
 are little episodes in our lives that no one ever 
 dares to speak of after he has reached years of 
 maturity. No crimes nor any great wickedness, but 
 I don't think we would be half so much ashamed of 
 them if they had been cases of respectable man- 
 slaughter. Now some of those things in the inno- 
 cency of my boyish heart I put down in that journal 
 and I think it great good fortune that I stumbled 
 upon the book a few weeks ago and destroyed it. 
 So I shall certainly not tell all the things that even
 
 DOROTHY DAY 115 
 
 now make my flesh creep, just as it creeps when a 
 pencil is scratched the wrong way upon a slate. 
 
 I think I was most ridiculous in the presence of 
 young women. I could overcome my fears of phy- 
 sical suffering or danger much more quickly than 
 my bashfulness. It seemed to me that girls were 
 always making fun of me, and a boy may be willing 
 to be pounded by another boy, but he does not like 
 to be laughed at by a girl. One, the prettiest girl 
 I ever knew, was Delia Carlisle. She had wavy 
 light brown hair, blue eyes and lips that were al- 
 ways laughing. She knew I was afraid of her and 
 used to say the sauciest and most tantalizing things, 
 and somehow my tongue would stick to my mouth 
 so I could never answer. I was so bashful that if 
 she sat by my side upon a bench or sofa I would 
 unconsciously "edge off" to the opposite end. Some- 
 times, on the other hand, I was inordinately im- 
 pudent and assumed an extraordinary boldness as 
 a cover for my fear. Two-thirds of the ill-man- 
 nered men of the world owe their bad graces to their 
 timidity. They are rude or reserved because they 
 are afraid to be natural. 
 
 After I had finished my college entrance examina- 
 tions, Joe McDowell and I agreed to ask two of our 
 girl friends to go with us to the coming commence- 
 ment. Joe was to ask Mattie Halfine and I was to 
 ask Bessie Brown. Each was to support the other 
 loyally in his undertaking by standing just around 
 the corner of the street while his companion made
 
 n6 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 the call and gave the invitation. It rained on the 
 day that this was done. Now exactly what consola- 
 tion either Joe or I could derive in preferring our 
 requests from the fact that there was a companion 
 standing outside in the rain and awaiting the out- 
 come, I am at this maturer period of life not quite 
 prepared to explain, but it is certain that this moral 
 support seemed needful, and a slight drenching was 
 a small price to pay for the mutual protection af- 
 forded by such friendship. 
 
 The girls went with us to the commencement, but 
 neither we nor they knew how to act nor what to do, 
 and when afterwards we invited them to Del- 
 monico's, we hadn't the slightest idea of what we 
 ought to call for, and a great solemn looking waiter 
 in a swallow-tailed coat seemed to be smiling upon 
 our inexperience. 
 
 All through life I have had a constant dread of 
 a silent, well-dressed, experienced man-servant. 
 Whenever his own manners are irreproachable it al- 
 ways seems to me that he is offering a silent criticism 
 upon mine, and that when tried by his inexorable 
 standard, I must very often fall far short of what 
 I ought to be.
 
 Book II 
 
 THE NEW ERA
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MY BEARD 
 
 IF the day of his birth begins the first period in 
 a boy's life, his second great cycle of existence un- 
 doubtedly commences when he first puts the razor 
 to his face. This is the new Anno Domini from 
 which all things ought henceforth to be reckoned in 
 place of the Anno Mundi of the past; it is the time 
 when childhood is forever put away and when bud- 
 ding manhood with its new glories and responsi- 
 bilities sets forth upon its proud career. 
 
 Therefore since the immortal Homer always allows 
 at least a preliminary line or two to the rosy-fingered 
 morn that ushers in an eventful day, I cannot pass 
 without some lingering comment over the great step 
 that ushered the dignity of manhood into my own 
 life. But however stupendous the subject, I refrain 
 from keeping my reader lingering over the story 
 as long and impatiently as I waited for that beard. 
 O those weeks and months of grim suspense! 
 George Downing had shaved a year ago and had 
 brought his razor to school to prove it to us that 
 was before I left the academy but although I was 
 nearly as old as he, the marks of manliness on my 
 cheeks and lips were still entirely latent. This could 
 no longer be borne! It is well known that among
 
 120 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 the military virtues, endurance is often evidence of 
 a higher order of courage than mere impetuous 
 dash that the troops who will charge unflinching 
 upon the enemy's line, may waver if forced under 
 a prolonged and wearisome cannonade to await the 
 attack of the hostile force. A prudent general will 
 therefore sometimes lead them forth to encounter 
 their assailants. In meeting an approaching beard 
 the same tactics are sometimes adopted. At some 
 period in the long, weary waiting, patience fails and 
 the boy resolves to sally forth and encounter the in- 
 vader, of whose approach he is certain, even though 
 no visible evidence is at hand. 
 
 When I found that the down upon my upper lip 
 was thicker than it had been in childhood, I took that 
 for encouragement enough and determined to act. 
 I did not dare go to a barber for I knew he would 
 laugh at me. I would do the work myself and in 
 secrecy. So I furtively purchased the necessary ap- 
 paratus, and even this with much apprehension, 
 speaking to the vendor in such a way that I hoped he 
 would think I was buying it for someone else. There 
 was a faint smile on his face as he handed me the 
 package, and I never went to that shop again. Be- 
 ware, O tradesman, how you discover the foibles 
 of youth or it may cost you many a customer ! 
 
 I had watched my father's proceedings down to 
 the most minute particular, and now tried to imitate 
 them with Chinese fidelity. I was astonished to 
 feel how cold the lather was after the warm water
 
 DOROTHY DAY 121 
 
 evaporated. As to the razor, I could not quite 
 make out how to hold it, or which way to draw it. 
 I remembered that mother had often cautioned 
 father about his jugular vein and I thought it would 
 be more prudent to leave the neck until some future 
 occasion, when I should be more experienced. I 
 don't know how it happened, but while the instru- 
 ment was gliding smoothly over my left cheek, my 
 hand slipped, and there was a big gash under my 
 ear to betray to an inquisitive circle of relatives and 
 friends what I had been doing. Father saw it an3 
 laughed. Mother noticed it and anxiously besought 
 me to avoid such unnecessary perils. Cousin Jasper 
 perceived it and told me about the soft downy feel- 
 ing on the upper lip that I would never have again. 
 Some of my classmates observed it but they made 
 less account of it than I had feared, having perhaps 
 similar experiences or anticipations of their own. 
 Until my face was healed, I remained as far as I 
 could a hermit from the world, especially from the 
 feminine part of it. But when the gash became im- 
 perceptible the embarrasing observations were dis- 
 continued. My next effort was less calamitous, and 
 in time I came to approach even the fatal jugular, 
 and this, too, when there was little need for such a 
 risk, for it was still some months before anything 
 like a beard came to justify the use of the razor that 
 had so long anticipated it. 
 
 But the beard was only a symbol. With its advent, 
 and with the beinnings of college life, the tender con-
 
 122 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 science, the Quaker traditions and the childlike sim- 
 plicity of my boyhood were swept away like that 
 down upon the lip, while the stiffer and hardier 
 bristles of worldly experience grew in their place. 
 I had not been many months amid my new sur- 
 roundings until I grew to be as precious a scamp as 
 ever took part in the madcap pranks of disorderly 
 students and made miserable the life of long-suf- 
 fering professors. 
 
 Under and behind this transformation there yet 
 remained, no doubt, a subsoil of better principles 
 which lay too deep for total extermination and which 
 was to reappear after the "wild oats" had been 
 sown and harvested. But to all external appear- 
 ances the transformation was complete. There is a 
 part of college training not laid down in the curri- 
 culum, but quite as important to those who acquire 
 it, as Greek, mathematics or philosophy. The 
 alphabet of this kind of instruction was given us 
 at the very outset of our college career. Our in- 
 structors were not named in the list of the faculty, 
 but they were borne upon the roster of the class 
 that preceded our own. 
 
 The Sophomore is always filled with an earnest 
 solicitude for the proper education of Freshmen. 
 This education assumes many shapes. Its first great 
 object is the extinction of all forms of self-import- 
 ance and the inculcation of the virtues taught in the 
 beatitudes which bless the meek, the poor in spirit, 
 the reviled and persecuted. A good drubbing, just
 
 DOROTHY DAY 123 
 
 at the beginning of one's career, is therefore con- 
 sidered a salutary introduction to college life. 
 
 The very day we entered the Sophomores began 
 their beneficent education. They drew themselves 
 up in two lines along the walls of a narrow passage, 
 through which we had to go to our lecture rooms, 
 and we Freshmen passing between them in single 
 file were compelled to run the gauntlet to our great 
 discomfort, being thumped first against one wall 
 and then against the other. But the next day by a 
 master stroke of tactics we turned the tables, for we 
 entered the hall two abreast, arm in arm, and by 
 vigorously rushing first to the right and then to the 
 left and jamming the fellows on each side against 
 the wall we made it more unpleasant for them than 
 they could possibly make it for us, so that their 
 efforts for our moral improvement by this simple 
 process came to an untimely end.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 OUR SECRET SOCIETIES 
 
 ANOTHER important step toward my introduction 
 into college life was the initiation into one of the 
 Greek letter fraternities of the college. There is 
 always a great rivalry among these fraternities to 
 secure the most available men in each new class, and 
 the first few months of college life are devoted to 
 an earnest canvass by the members of these secret 
 orders in which the exalted merits of the Kappa 
 Delta Omega are contrasted with the utter worth- 
 lessnesss of Psi Theta Omicron in a most convincing 
 manner. 
 
 Some of the men sent out to "work" us, how- 
 ever, showed very little tact. For instance, when 
 Mortimer was setting before me the superior attrac- 
 tions of the Kappa Phi he contemptuously sneered 
 at the Sigma Taus as a set of stupid saints who had 
 a kind of chapel and prayer-meeting services and 
 nothing stronger to drink than ginger ale. But at 
 that time, poor innocent that I was, I determined 
 that this was the kind of a fraternity I wanted to 
 join, so as to preserve my little white soul from the 
 world, the flesh and the devil. Thrown thus into 
 the arms of something so entirely virtuous, I must 
 confess that my initiation into the Sigma Taus was
 
 DOROTHY DAY 125 
 
 not without its surprises, both as to the ceremonies 
 pursued in the installation, and the illusory char- 
 acter of the sanctity of the organization itself. I 
 may not reveal the details. It was such great fun, 
 however, that I not only became hardened in sin in 
 a very brief space of time, but grew intensely eager 
 that those who were still without the pale should 
 participate in similar solemnities. Indeed, we were 
 not satisfied with plain, ordinary Greek letter 
 secrecy, but a few of us began to start new societies 
 of our own, of a very evanescent character for the 
 benefit of simple-minded "neutrals" who wanted to 
 join something, but who were not sufficiently attrac- 
 tive to get into one of the regular fraternities. One 
 of our first efforts in this direction was the estab- 
 lishment of the Delta Omega Rho Beta, the 
 "Delectable Order of the Rag-tag and Bob-tail." 
 We held the initiations at the houses of the "charter 
 members" and the cellar and the coal-vault formed 
 the appropriate setting for our mysteries. We 
 would blindfold the neophyte and tie his hands be- 
 hind his back, then we would rush him out into the 
 back yard, and round and round the grass-plat with 
 many delusive observations as to the points visited 
 in his pilgrimage. Then we would lower him by 
 a rope down to the coal-hole, where the bandage 
 was removed from his eyes long enough to permit 
 him to see the solemn conclave of masked inquisitors 
 in whose presence he bound himself to the perform- 
 ance of many impossibilities, while a dim light from
 
 126 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 the street-lamp streamed directly through a grating 
 upon the blackened face of the Mu Mu Pi (Most 
 Mighty Potentate). Then we would blindfold him 
 again, lead him into the cellar and tumble him over 
 a barrel, typical of his overthrow should he fail in 
 the performance of his obligations. Then we would 
 bump his head against a beam, held just high enough 
 for this purpose, thus giving him visions of the stars 
 to whose heights, if faithful, he was soon to soar 
 (per aspera ad astro]. Then we would lay him on 
 a table, take off his shoes and stockings, warm his 
 feet in front of the open furnace door, and leave 
 him to undergo the Sigma Pi Pi or "Solitary Purga- 
 torial Penance," while the inquisitors went up stairs 
 and had "a time" together, descending again after 
 the night had waned with the glad news that the 
 neophyte had been elected to the office of Mu Sigma 
 Alpha in the brotherhood. He was now haled into 
 the light and inducted into the seat of honor, where 
 a sponge recently dipped in ice-water, was prepared 
 for him, and he was at last told the meaning of the 
 mystic letters and informed that he had been chosen 
 the "Most Solemn Ass" in the fraternity. 
 
 So greatly were we attracted by the delights of 
 secret societies that we organized them everywhere, 
 even in the country where we spent our vacations. 
 There was a great charm in the initiation of yokels 
 who did not understand Latin and Greek and to 
 whom these tongues had a peculiar impressiveness. 
 
 Among the orders due to our creative fancy, one
 
 DOROTHY DAY 127 
 
 for which a great antiquity was immediately ac- 
 quired, was the E Clampsis Vitus, whose name was 
 taken from that "blessed patron of the dance," as 
 Irving calls him, on account of the strenuous salta- 
 tory ceremonies in which the blindfolded neophyte 
 was required to take an active part, being urged 
 thereto by switches rythmatically applied to his bare 
 legs. 
 
 In these initiations it was sometimes adjudged 
 that the aspirant to the honors of membership was 
 also entitled to the "Grand Propel," a mode of con- 
 veyance requiring considerable labor and which was 
 omitted when there was a heavy man upon our 
 hands. The favorite place for such a ceremony was 
 a big barn. The "charter members" arranged them- 
 selves in two long rows, close together, and placed 
 the candidate duly bound in a horizontal position 
 between them. Then they projected him from man 
 to man up against the side of the barn with a sharp 
 bump, then back again to the other side, until they 
 were worn out by the exercise. One of the duties 
 of this order was the removal of signboards from 
 the places where they had been located by the mis- 
 directed judgment of their owners, and of fixing 
 them in conspicuous positions which we considered 
 more appropriate. 
 
 There was a little boarding-house down the road, 
 and near by on a tree was a sign-board which gave 
 the following information: "Moxon's Cottag, 
 First Class Board." There was not space enough
 
 128 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 left for an "e" in the "Cottage." On Saturday 
 evening while the occupants of the "cottag" were at 
 supper we removed the sign and hid it in some 
 bushes near by. Later, after everybody was asleep, 
 we took it down to the Episcopal Church where we 
 screwed it very firmly and securely to the the front 
 door. The next morning the congregation was 
 astonished at the statement of the new use to which 
 their beautiful edifice was to be devoted. There 
 was much indignation in the neighborhood, but the 
 guilty parties were not discovered, and we always 
 considered that Moxon was our debtor on account 
 of the advertisement we had given his establishment. 
 
 A butcher's sign with a picture of a purple bull in 
 the act of being slaughtered was fixed to the door 
 of the office of the village doctor and surgeon, while 
 the Quaker meeting-house was ornamented by a 
 sign, informing the public that choice wines and 
 liquors were to be found within. 
 
 But the richest of our college fraternities was the 
 Alpha Omega Beta or "Ancient Order of Busters," 
 if I may let you into the secret, now that the order 
 is extinct. We had our lodge rooms at Straus' 
 brewery, behind the college, and there were two 
 chapters, the Alpha chapter for Seniors and Sopho- 
 mores and the Beta chapter for Juniors and Fresh- 
 men. There was little furniture in the rooms except 
 the big table and the chairs around it, yet there 
 were certain "properties" which appertained to the 
 two chapters jointly and were quite indispensable
 
 DOROTHY DAY 129 
 
 to the proper celebration of our mysteries. For 
 instance there was a stout, thick canvas with places 
 to hold on at the side. This was our blanket for 
 the tossing of the neophytes. When not in use it 
 was generally rolled up on the floor next to the wall, 
 beside a thin, sharp rail, which was applied on 
 appropriate occasions to equestrian exercises. There 
 were other paraphernalia of various kinds, but to 
 me the blanket always seemed to be primus inter 
 pares. It has indeed been greatly distinguished in 
 literature. It plays an important part in one of 
 the most celebrated chapters of Don Quixote, and 
 we find it even in so learned and solemn a book as 
 "Ekkehardt." But no mere literature can quite do 
 justice to the sensations which accompany a good 
 old-fashioned blanket tossing. The only way to 
 learn these is to try it experientia docet. It is a 
 very odd sensation to feel that you cannot lay hold 
 of anything, that you may grasp and clutch and dis- 
 tort yourself as much as you like, but that your 
 efforts have nothing to do with the position which 
 any of your members may take with reference to 
 any other part of your body, nor with the place 
 which your body occupies in space, nor with the 
 direction toward which it tends. Another curious 
 thing is that the sensation of falling is much more 
 vivid than the sensation of rising. You seem to go 
 down a great deal more than you go up and it is 
 with some surprise that you find after so many long 
 and perilous descents that you are in the very place
 
 130 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 where the tossing began. A blanket tossing more- 
 over is unique in the edification which it gives to 
 all those who see it, furnishing, as it does, the great- 
 est possible variety in its transformations of face 
 and posture. If the victim prides himself upon his 
 dignity, if he is one of those solemn wiseacres who is 
 given to looking down with contemptuous benevo- 
 lence upon the rest of the world, the pleasure de- 
 rived from his antics is greatly enhanced. To toss 
 a man blindfolded is said to intensify the emotions 
 of the victim, but it certainly detracts from the de- 
 light of the bystanders in centemplating the varied 
 play of his features, which is indeed one of the 
 great uses of the entertainment, and might be espe- 
 cially profitable to an artist or a student of 
 physiognomy. 
 
 Now the A. O. B. was particularly great in this 
 feature of the initiation ceremonies. But we had 
 other important solemnities. We had a baptism, 
 with three glasses of beer "in the name of the A, 
 the O and the B." We had our mystic pass-word 
 "Straus," followed by the appropriate response of 
 "Lager for the Crowd" and one of the Teutonic 
 servitors of the brewery was always close to the 
 neophyte as he uttered this solemn sentence with 
 intsructions to bring it up at once. Thereupon a 
 small cask was produced from the cellar, which 
 played the principal part in our concluding cere- 
 monies, until we sometimes engaged in a lively com- 
 petition on our way home as to who could walk most
 
 DOROTHY DAY 131 
 
 unwaveringly on the straight line which divided the 
 flagstones in the middle of the pavement. 
 
 Our devotions to Bacchus were not all performed 
 within the precincts of Straus' brewery. There were 
 other places where we worshiped and sometimes 
 with ludicrous consequences. 
 
 One night before he went to Europe, Jones gave 
 a symposium to the boys at the rooms of his fra- 
 ternity. The punch was good, and when in the 
 small hours he parted from Meek at Union Square, 
 the two embraced each other tenderly, Meek declar- 
 ing (they had just had their examination in mathe- 
 matics) that Jones was the diagonal of a parallelo- 
 pipedon and Meek was the other three sides, a 
 proposition which was then mathematically true. 
 
 One night I had to see Smithfield home. I knew 
 this was my duty and that Smithfield ought not to 
 be left unprotected. Smithfield, on the other hand, 
 insisted that the trouble was entirely with me. I 
 did not feel quite .sure about it myself, yet it did 
 seem to me that Smithfield was doing things which 
 were not quite normal. For instance, he lay upon 
 his back upon the sidewalk and there intoned a pecu- 
 liar apostrophe to the moon, which was shining 
 brightly over him, concluding with the observation 
 that he had never been so happy in his life. It was 
 not until he was safely within his own door that I pro- 
 ceeded homewards, when my suspicions regarding 
 myself were at last confirmed by a grave process of 
 logic (which shows the inestimable value of this
 
 132 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 branch of education) and I proceeded slowly but 
 surely to analyze the situation in the following mono- 
 logue. "Formerly at the northeast corner of Fifth 
 Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street there was one gas- 
 lamp. To-night at the northeast corner of Fifth 
 Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street there are two gas- 
 lamps. Now either a new gas-lamp has been put up 
 at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty- 
 ninth Street, or I have had a drop too much. Quod 
 erat demonstrandum." 
 
 As no man can properly write a nation's history 
 and leave out of it a description of the budget or 
 the Treasury, so no man can properly describe col- 
 lege life and wholly omit the financial side of it. 
 
 We were all of us a pretty bad lot in that particu- 
 lar. Norton, who was required by his father to 
 keep an itemized account, put down some large 
 expenditures to Eis Kai Eikosi, telling his father 
 that this was connected with his Greek studies, and 
 indeed it is the Greek equivalent for vingt-et-un, in 
 which the money had been actually disbursed. But 
 Norton pere, who did business on the stock exchange 
 and had no Achaian environment, was always grati- 
 fied to know that his hard cash went toward the 
 maintenance of things so classical.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 OUR PROFESSORS 
 
 AMONG our professors, the first face that comes 
 to my memory is the venerable and stately counte- 
 nance of which I have already spoken. Horace 
 Grandison was the prince of old-fashioned peda- 
 gogues. Although our modern instruction is better 
 than the old, and no one wants to bring back the 
 days when the birch and the ferule furnished the 
 incentive to scholarship, yet there were great men 
 among those old-fashioned pedagogues kings by 
 divine right more certainly than many of the mon- 
 archs who sit upon great thrones and I view 
 modern progress with half a sigh when I think 
 that such a man as Grandison will never come again. 
 I can see him now, as he used to sit on his high ros- 
 trum at the end of his long lecture-room, while the 
 boy who recited sat at the other end and the rest of 
 us were ranged in rows against the side. He was 
 particularly impressive in "Prometheus." While 
 we were reading that great drama it seemed to us 
 as if he himself were one of the gods of the older 
 dynasty, a living protest against Olympian upstarts. 
 What a splendid, broad, high forehead and what 
 gleaming eyes! How well shaven his face, how 
 faultless his old-fashioned collar and black stock!
 
 134 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 And what a voice! How rich, full and musical! 
 How incomparable was the Greek tongue when 
 uttered by his lips! He had a translation of his 
 own, a noble one, which we were required to learn 
 by heart. It existed only in manuscript and nobody 
 ever spoke of it to him as his translation, but it was 
 handed down in note books from one class to an- 
 other, and woe to the poor student who was not the 
 happy possessor of a copy of this manuscript ver- 
 sion. Very likely this was not the best way to learn 
 Greek. I am sure it is not taught in this literal 
 fashion at the present time, and yet after many 
 years, when so much that I learned in college is 
 forgotten, how distinctly do the stately sentences of 
 Grandison's translation stand out in my memory! 
 Take for instance the opening passage in the 
 prometheus, where Strength and Force enter with 
 Vulcan to forge the chains of the unfortunate hero: 
 "Now have we come to a far distant spot of 
 earth, to a Scythian tract, to an untrodden wilder- 
 ness. O Vulcan, it is meet that the mandates which 
 the Father in his good pleasure imposed upon thee, 
 be now a care unto thee, to bind this boldly-wicked 
 one unto the high-precipiced rocks in indissoluble 
 fetters of chains of hardest iron. For having stolen, 
 he has bestowed upon mortals that ornament of 
 thine, the flame of all-art-aiding fire. For such an 
 offense he must needs render an atonement unto the 
 gods in order that he may be taught, if taught he 
 can be, to acquiesce in the sovereignty of Jupiter
 
 DOROTHY DAY 135 
 
 and to cease from a disposition full of friendship 
 unto mortals." 
 
 And again the noble monologue of Prometheus 
 when left alone by his tormentors, written in 
 anapaestic measure, and half spoken, half chanted 
 perhaps behind the heavy mask of the actor in the 
 great theatre of Athens. 
 
 "O divine ether, and ye breezes, swift of pinion, 
 and fountain-heads of rivers and countless laughter 
 of the ocean waves, I call thee too, Earth, mother 
 of all, behold me, what wrongs I, a god, am suf- 
 fering at the hands of the gods." 
 
 How indissolubly do the words of Prometheus 
 and the lips that pronounced them to us to stand 
 together in my recollection, until it is impossible to 
 think of the Greek god with any other features or 
 voice than that of the master by whom they were 
 thus spoken. 
 
 Grandison was essentially a tyrant, but he was a 
 tyrant great enough to win the love of those whom 
 he oppressed. They said that in his grammar 
 school, in earlier times, he used to whip each day 
 the boy who stood at the foot of the class; not a 
 very fair plan, perhaps, if the poor fellow had done 
 his best, but withal a great provoker to industry 
 and no more relentless than the stripes which mother 
 Nature herself inflicts upon her backward children. 
 He was not altogether just. Like every autocrat he 
 had his favorites, yet the grounds of his choice were 
 so human and manly that we loved him for his very
 
 136 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 partiality. A boy once caught in a cowardly action 
 was doomed forever. The conceited fellow was 
 taken down. He could never scan or parse or trans- 
 late except under the lash of keen sarcasm, while 
 the modest student who "owned up" like a man to 
 trifling derelictions found his path made lighter and 
 easier through the intricacies of Greek construction. 
 Like every other despot the professor was fond of 
 flattery, and we all became, as time went by, a set 
 of rather clumsy courtiers. One of the readiest 
 compliments, a sort of legal tender in the market, 
 was a warm appreciation of the bons mots that 
 issued from the lips of authority. Therefore, the 
 professor's jokes were greeted with an enthusiasm 
 quite out of proportion to their deserts, which were 
 ):ot always of the highest, as witness the following 
 colloquy: 
 
 Dr. Grandison: "Did you study this passage, 
 sir, before you came to recitation?" 
 
 Student: "I looked it over, professor." 
 
 Dr. Grandison: "You mean you overlooked it, 
 
 sir." 
 
 Or the following, while a student named Hadley 
 was reciting: 
 
 Dr. Grandison : "Where did you get that aorist, 
 my young friend?" 
 
 "In Hadley's grammar, sir." 
 
 "A very original treatise." 
 
 The murmurs of admiration which followed such
 
 DOROTHY DAY 137 
 
 sallies warmed the good professor's heart, and 
 brought mercy to other delinquents. 
 
 Another professor who inspired us with almost 
 as much enthusiasm as Grandison was Dr. Piper, 
 our instructor in mathematics. He was a short, 
 stout, round, red-faced man, with sharp, black eyes, 
 careless of his personal appearance, and very awk- 
 ward in his movements, stumbling over the steps in 
 front of the blackboard, or pitching headlong over 
 our big astronomical globe. He was very irascible 
 and there was a tradition that on one occasion, dis- 
 daining to use his official power, he had challenged 
 to personal encounter, then and there before the 
 class, a student who had offended him. 
 
 He used to denounce us on account of the anti- 
 quity and lack of originality of our college pranks. 
 He told us we might make him the subject of any 
 practical joke we chose if it was really new and good, 
 but that "to witness our stale and stupid perform- 
 ances year after year wearied his soul." We re- 
 spected this view of the matter, and as none of us 
 had the talent to invent an original joke we left him 
 in peace. We felt that he had some right to demand 
 originality from others since he had a large share 
 of that gift himself. He was so eloquent that he 
 could illuminate even the dull field of mathematics 
 with divine light. I remember on one occasion he 
 demonstrated the nebular hypothesis of the solar 
 system. Given the law of gravitation and a vast 
 volume of gaseous matter, distributed irregularly
 
 138 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 through space, he traced by mathematical formulae 
 the course of the chaotic mass, how it must begin to 
 revolve and form great rings and then again to 
 condense into huge spheres until we seemed to see 
 in his glowing imagery the whole process of creation 
 and to stand with the Almighty watching the forma- 
 tion of worlds. 
 
 Another member of the faculty who always com- 
 manded our respect was Prfoessor Wagner, our 
 instructor in ancient history and in Greek and 
 Roman antiquities. The subjects he taught were 
 appropriate, for he was a venerable man with white 
 hair and beard, very thin and very precise, such a 
 man as might properly be the living embodiment of 
 antiquity. But the old gentleman had a sense of dry 
 humor which relieved his prim behavior and exces- 
 sive conscientiousness, and he had withal a warm 
 and tender heart which revolted at unnecessary pun- 
 ishment for mere youthful pranks. Therefore, we 
 loved him. 
 
 I remember that once when I was walking to 
 college with George Fletcher, we saw ahead of us 
 a large flock of geese, waddling in a stately manner, 
 with heads aloft, up the avenue. It seemed to us 
 that these geese would be a very appropriate addi- 
 tion to some of the classes of Professor Newman 
 who was always exhorting us to dignified deport- 
 ment. We resolved, therefore, to drive them into 
 Newman's room. We shooed them up the avenue 
 and around the corner and up the college path, not
 
 DOROTHY DAY 139 
 
 without loud protests upon their part. Such a scene 
 offers more than ordinary attractions to the average 
 college boy who happens to have nothing else on his 
 mind, so it was not long before the flock was well 
 guarded upon every side except that toward which 
 they were advancing. We finally collected them 
 into a small area at the foot of the steps leading to 
 Newman's room, but no moral suasion was sufficient 
 to induce them to mount these steps; we had to pick 
 them up one after another and "chuck" them to 
 the landing at the top. This was done amid loud 
 cackling and great outcries. So interesting was the 
 occupation that we did not notice the approach of 
 Dr. Wagner, who now suddenly appeared in our 
 midst. His face was a study, where mingled frown 
 and smile showed the conflicting impulses of duty 
 and inclination. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said, with a deprecating wave 
 of the hand, "please desist! Your labor is unneces- 
 sary. There are quite enough of these here now." 
 
 It was a humiliated crowd of boys who now drove 
 these geese back again down the college walk to the 
 avenue. Professor Wagner never referred to the 
 subject afterwards. 
 
 These were our favorites among the professors. 
 There were others who were indifferent to us and 
 others still who were targets for our pranks. 
 
 There was Potter for instance. Potter was a 
 sneak and we hated him, yet we had to be careful 
 how we tormented him, for he had sharp eyes and a
 
 1 40 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 vindictive disposition. Our best prank was played 
 one day when an Italian organ-grinder with a 
 monkey came up the college campus. We collected a 
 fund, quite a large one, from our slender allow- 
 ances, to be paid to the organ-grinder if he would 
 open the door of Potter's room, while a class was 
 reciting, enter the room, play upon the organ, and 
 let the monkey out to the limit of his tether. The 
 payments were arranged according to a scheme of 
 arithmetical progression. For opening the door and 
 commencing, he was to have a quarter; for playing 
 for one minute, before he was turned out, he was to 
 have a dollar; for two minutes, five dollars; three 
 minutes, ten dollars, and five minutes, twenty dollars. 
 And one of us sat at the other end of the corridor 
 with watch in hand to mark the time. Spurred by 
 this unwonted stimulus, the organ-grinder opened 
 the door, entered, and began his diabolical strains. 
 He was ordered out, but being an Italian, how could 
 he understand ? We heard the uproar inside the room 
 and the loud voice of Potter commanding order. 
 The Italian was imperturbable and the organ was 
 well in the third stanza of "Santa Lucia" when, in 
 the midst of a perfect pandemonium, the professor 
 came down from the rostrum and in a single handed 
 combat, worthy of divine hexameters, finally ejected 
 the Italian who had now earned ten dollars, an ex- 
 penditure which we considered the best investment 
 we had ever made of that amount of money. 
 
 But though we hated Potter, our worst blows fell
 
 DOROTHY DAY 141 
 
 upon poor Sheldon. Sheldon had written a num- 
 ber of articles for the religious press, exposing with 
 caustic severity the errors of Rome. Somebody had 
 conceived the opinion that this was the sort of man 
 needed for the teaching of history as "she should be 
 taught," and in an evil hour Sheldon was appointed 
 to superintend our historical researches. He was a 
 mild-mannered little man with scanty knowledge of 
 the world and absolutely none of that part of the 
 world which was represented by irreverent college 
 boys. We used to make life a heavy burden to him. 
 We had a choice assortment of paper monkeys, ele- 
 phants, giraffes and everything else that might go 
 into a menagerie, which we attached to putty- 
 balls and projected up to the ceiling where they 
 stuck. Sometimes just before we entered the lecture- 
 room one of us would stand outside the door with 
 a bottle of Shaker snuff, a peculiarly strong variety, 
 and each would take a big pinch. The result was 
 that all further proceedings except sneezing became 
 impossible. We would go into convulsions which 
 actually aroused the sympathy of the poor professor, 
 who could not imagine what evil thing had over- 
 taken us. 
 
 Another favorite amusement was to throw a hen 
 into the room during examination and then assist 
 the professor in a wild chase after the terrified fowl. 
 
 On one occasion a noble opportunity presented 
 itself of tormenting Sheldon and Crawdle both at 
 the same time. Crawdle was a little pale-faced
 
 142 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 student who was preparing himself for the clerical 
 profession. He was too good for earth, so we did 
 our best to send him at an early date into the man- 
 sions prepared for the righteous. One day a big, 
 doleful cow-bell was found and tied to a long string 
 running over the benches back to the place where 
 Crawdle sat. The real culprit occupied a seat right 
 in front of the professor, so that nobody could sus- 
 pect him. As soon as the fellow who was reciting 
 had fairly begun his account of the schism in the 
 church, the bell began and Sheldon looked up in 
 astonishment. 
 
 "Mr. Crawdle, what have you got there?" 
 
 "I don't know, sir." 
 
 Evidently that must be a lie. Crawdle was called 
 up next and in his confusion he didn't know the 
 difference between the 39 Articles and the West- 
 minster Confession. So he was sent back to his 
 seat and a zero was placed against his name. No 
 sooner had he reached his seat than the bell began 
 again, whereupon poor Crawdle was called upon to 
 report to the faculty at one o'clock Friday after- 
 noon the day and hour at which our criminal 
 assizes and jail-delivery took place. But still the 
 bell continued. The whole class turned upon 
 Crawdle with looks of disapprobation. "Shame I 
 Shame!" we cried, but the bell kept up its monoton- 
 ous jargon. Finally the professor ran from his 
 rostrum and made a dash for the corner where 
 Crawdle was sitting. The fellow in front now
 
 DOROTHY DAY 143 
 
 pulled the string so sharply that it broke close to 
 the bell. There was one loud jangle and then sil- 
 ence, and the bell was found right under Crawdle's 
 seat and borne by the professor as spolia opima up 
 to his desk. 
 
 At the faculty meeting on Friday, Crawdle pro- 
 tested his ignorance of the whole transaction, but it 
 was of no use. Two warnings and two admonitions 
 was the sentence. The system in vogue at the col- 
 lege was this : Three admonitions were equal to 
 one warning, and after three warnings you had to 
 go. So Crawdle stood just on the edge of the 
 precipice during the rest of the four years. We 
 knew it was good for him. Tribulation would 
 qualify him for heaven as well as for his sacred 
 calling. 
 
 Crawdle was not the only poor wight to whom we 
 did good against his will. When the entrance ex- 
 aminations were held in June we got possession of 
 one of the lecture-rooms and organized a new de- 
 partment of our own. Epworth, who wore eye- 
 glasses and had more gray hairs than any of the 
 rest of us, the result of early piety, as he declared, 
 was duly installed as professor of English litera- 
 ture. And the youngest looking fellows of our class 
 were pressed into the service as decoy ducks, en- 
 gaged in passing their entrance examinations. Then 
 we went to the genuine candidates and told them 
 they had to be examined in English literature, that 
 it was a new requirement just adopted by the faculty,
 
 i 4 4 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 that it was not intended that any special preparation 
 should be made upon this subject, but the examina- 
 tion was merely to test the intelligence and general 
 information of the candidates. As each victim en- 
 tered the room he saw a number of boys who were 
 presumably taking examinations. Epworth sat on 
 the rostrum with his eye-glasses on, looking very 
 fierce. As soon as one of the decoy ducks had 
 finished his supposed examination the novice was 
 called to the chair. "Give me the names of all 
 poets and dramatists of the Restoration, together 
 with a list of the principal works of each!" After 
 the wretched being had stammered something about 
 Shakespeare, Milton, or Byron, he was suddenly 
 told, "That is enough, sir. You will study this sub- 
 ject thoroughly during the summer months and pre- 
 sent yourself again for examination in the fall." 
 And the trembling aspirant for college was forth- 
 with sent out of the room. 
 
 Of course it was good for him. We all knew that. 
 How much better to spend his vacation in the use- 
 ful pursuit of knowledge than in vain and frivolous 
 pastimes I And if he came again in the fall and was 
 not examined at all, he would know that much more 
 and he might thank us for it. 
 
 Perhaps poor Newman had the worst time of all 
 the professors. We used to lock him in the lecture- 
 room and then sympathetically offer to help him leap 
 down from the window to the hard pavement twelve 
 feet below.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 145 
 
 One of us brought up a bottle of assafoetida, and 
 Norton threw it on the stove, whereupon there 
 was a general exodus from the room, nobody re- 
 maining except the professor himself and two or 
 three of the faithful, who were rewarded for their 
 constancy by a headache. We were summoned be- 
 fore the faculty the following Friday, but so elo- 
 quently did we plead our cause and insist upon our 
 natural right to avoid the headache, so strongly 
 did we denounce the wretch who brought the vile 
 substance to the college that we were not only 
 acquitted, but Prex apologized for having sum- 
 moned us at all. 
 
 Newman was particularly unfortunate in uttering 
 inappropriate sarcasms and threats which he could 
 never make good. 
 
 "Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw!" was 
 one of his favorite quotations after some of our 
 puerilities. It was a sentiment always greeted with 
 unanimous applause. 
 
 "If I could catch the fellow who did that, I would 
 take him by the back of the neck and kick him down- 
 stairs." But as poor Newman could never catch 
 anybody at anything, and if he had done so could 
 never have kicked the smallest boy in the class any- 
 where, the terror inspired by his threat was greatly 
 softened by the impossibility of performance. 
 
 Another professor who stands ut distinctly in 
 memory, but in quite another way, was our professor 
 of German, to whom a tense or mood or some re-
 
 H6 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 mote allusion was of far more importance than the 
 dramatic power of the author he was elucidating. 
 For years he deprived himself of society and under- 
 mined his constitution in a strenuous effort to demon- 
 strate the meaning of Goethe's "homunculus" in the 
 second part of "Faust" in opposition to a heretical 
 commentator across the seas. For a whole genera- 
 tion they contended in erudite articles appearing 
 about a year apart. One day the professor came to 
 us with despair written upon every feature. "What 
 do you suppose has happened?" he said, "Richter is 
 dead, and he died just before the publication of my 
 answer to his absurd contention in the in the Zeit- 
 geist." We sympathized deeply with the professor 
 and told him that the rest of the world was still open 
 to conviction.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 OUR ESCAPADES 
 
 BUT we were not content to play pranks upon the 
 professors; even Prex himself was the object of 
 our irreverent practical jokes. 
 
 President Fielding was an old gentleman of 
 benevolent instincts and extraordinary attainments, 
 skilled in all branches of knowledge, very hard of 
 hearing, and of a fatal facility of speech. The good 
 doctor was especially strong upon questions of ethics 
 and propriety, just those things which, as it ap- 
 peared to us, we did not need to know at all. More- 
 over he seemed to think that the efficacy of his ad- 
 monitions was measured by their length. If then, 
 we wanted to avoid the first lecture in the morning, 
 all we had to do was to start up trouble in chapel, 
 for we knew that Prex would begin a homily upon 
 the elements of gentlemanly behavior and that when 
 he once commenced he would fall under the charm 
 of his own sentences and would not stop short of an 
 hour. Many were the times when moral instruction 
 that was little heeded took the place of the studies 
 set down in the curriculum. 
 
 During our senior year, Prex gave us a series of 
 lectures upon the evidences of natural and revealed 
 religion, but his "Ontological argument" had few
 
 148 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 charms for us when put in competition with "Land- 
 lord, Fill the Flowing Bowl," or "We won't go 
 Home till Morning," with which the class glee club 
 simultaneously entertained us without any suspicion 
 on the part of the worthy president, who was deaf 
 to everything except the music of the spheres. 
 
 But even Prex was hardly large enough game for 
 our ambitious spirits, so once we determined to play 
 a practical joke upon the whole faculty together in 
 chapel. The professors and president sat inside a 
 railed platform at one end of the room, something 
 like a chancel, while the chaplain conducted the ser- 
 vices from a small, high reading-desk in the middle 
 of this platform. To reach it, the faculty had to 
 pass down through the middle of the chapel from 
 the door at the opposite end, while the students 
 arranged themselves on the benches at each side. 
 On one occasion we provided ourselves with a large 
 quantity of percussion caps, which we scattered down 
 the middle aisle where the professors passed, and 
 which we also distributed liberally over the entire 
 platform and reading-desk. We entered chapel 
 very early that morning, took our places quietly at 
 each side, and then waited to see the sport. 
 
 Hepworth, the chaplain, came in first, followed 
 by the president leading the procession of the faculty. 
 "Crack! Crack!" sounded the percussion caps, and 
 "Jump! Jump!" this way and then that, sprang the 
 professors. It was with flushed face and looks of
 
 DOROTHY DAY 149 
 
 uncontrollable anger that Hepworth sought divine 
 grace on that memorable morning. 
 
 One day after lectures were over, Smithfield came 
 to me (Smithfield is now on the bench of the 
 Supreme Court) and said: "Dillingham, there is a 
 donkey for sale, a very little one, in the stable just 
 around the corner. What can we do with him?" 
 I suggested, "Let us bring him over early in the 
 morning and lift him on the flag-staff." 
 
 A syndicate was formed to raise the purchase 
 money and we procured the necessary tackle. Early 
 the following morning half a dozen of us appeared 
 with our long-eared friend behind the college. 
 Pierre, the deputy janitor, was bribed to open the 
 back door, and then not to know what happened. 
 It was no easy task to lug the kicking beast up the 
 steep stairways, but what will not youthful enthu- 
 siasm accomplish when animated by a lofty pur- 
 pose? A strong cloth was placed under his body 
 to make him comfortable. He was then attached to 
 the rope of the flag-staff and slowly elevated, swing- 
 ing around the pole, as he went up, first on one side 
 and then on the other. At last when he was near 
 the top we tied the rope and quietly descended. It 
 was nearly an hour before prayers. When we en- 
 tered chapel the donkey was still unperceived by 
 any member of the faculty. After prayers were 
 over, instead of going to our recitation rooms we 
 assembled on the campus in front of the college 
 buildings and Norton, mounted on the back of
 
 150 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Egbert, the biggest man in the college proposed 
 three cheers for our "Banner in the Sky." The 
 cheers were given with a will. Suddenly Prex ap- 
 peared. He bustled down to us, his silk gown 
 flapping in the wind. 
 
 "Gentlemen, what are you doing here? Pass to 
 your lecture rooms." 
 
 Our only answer was to point to the flag-staff. 
 Our honored president looked up and saw the sway- 
 ing beast with legs kicking ineffectually in the air. 
 Just at that moment the silence which his asininity 
 had hitherto preserved was broken, and with his 
 long neck stretched forth, "the ass opened his mouth 
 and he spake." 
 
 A dozen men and two hours' time were required 
 to bring the donkey down from the lofty eminence 
 to which half the hands and half the time had been 
 enough to elevate him. Such is the power of inspira- 
 tion! Not one word was ever said to us about the 
 incident by those in authority. 
 
 Were, then, our escapades the main features of 
 our college life? I confess they stand out more 
 distinctly in my remembrance than anything else. 
 But a good many of us did a lot of hard work and 
 with a curious kind of false pride we did it as 
 secretly as possible. I took great pains to be seen 
 on the Avenue in the afternoon, in the rooms of 
 our secret society at night, and afterwards perhaps 
 at a ball, so that it might easily be known of all 
 that I performed no labor. Then I would rise at
 
 DOROTHY DAY 151 
 
 five o'clock in the morning and work like an ant. 
 But I told no one of this, and if the recitation was 
 well done it was easy to see that this was the result 
 of pure genius and not at all due to toil. We dis- 
 dained all servile labor! 
 
 Once I had been selected to make one of the 
 "orations" at the opera house on the occasion of 
 the anniversary of our Philologian Society. (If the 
 president addresses the people in words forever to 
 be remembered, it is merely a "speech," but the 
 flowery platitudes of the college boy are embodied 
 in an "oration.") I worked at that "oration" 
 harder than I would have chosen to confess, and al- 
 though it was carefully committed to memory, I 
 was determined that the audience should see in it 
 nothing but the extemporaneous product of the 
 divine fire. What better device for this purpose 
 than an exordium referring to the weather? Any- 
 body could tell that an appropriate remark on that 
 subject must be spontaneous! Cicero, I had heard, 
 prepared different introductions for his orations and 
 shifted them around as occasion suited. Such an 
 example was worthy of imitation. So I prepared 
 two one for fine weather and another for bad 
 weather. The night turned out to be a fair one. 
 I am not able to say how successful were those 
 subtle efforts in convincing my hearers that my care- 
 fully rounded periods were due to the immediate 
 inspiration of their presence. But of one thing at 
 least I am persuaded, and that is that a good many
 
 152 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 of the sparks of genius in really meritorious produc- 
 tions have been struck, like my pitiful imitation, 
 from the anvil of hard work. The real discredit 
 is not in the labor, but in the false shame which 
 refuses to own it. 
 
 What a coxcomb does a young man become when 
 he goes to a college filled with rich men's sons? 
 Lucky is he who has even the ambition to work in 
 secret, stolen moments which he will not confess. 
 For myself, I had a distinct enjoyment as well as 
 ambition in literary work, though I stifled the ex- 
 pression of it; and I projected in secret great enter- 
 prises almost as elaborate as the "Conquest of 
 Peru." 
 
 Among other things, I saw the dramatic possi- 
 bilities of Sallust's "Jugurtha" and commenced to 
 write a "tragedy" of that name. I had been much 
 impressed with a recent reading given by Fannie 
 Kemble of "Richard III." and especially with the 
 opening soliloquy. My drama was to begin in the 
 same way, with the following monologue by 
 Jugurtha : 
 
 "Now hath Micipsa to the royal house 
 Called me in haste, and if the rank reports 
 That grow so thick, are rooted deep in fact, 
 The king can live no longer than the night. 
 Therefore he sends for me who seek his throne, 
 (He knows it well) to wheedle and cajole 
 Into some unripe promise of my love 
 For his poor puny sons whom still I hate 
 And will destroy, if fortune aids my plan, 
 And seize and hold alone their father's throne."
 
 DOROTHY DAY 153 
 
 This started off, I thought, pretty well, but a 
 friend called there was a theatre party that night, 
 next week came the examinations, the divine af- 
 flatus was dissipated, and the drama went no further. 
 Ah! if all the fine projects of the world could attain 
 their consummation, what a world it would be I 
 There would be no need of beckoning us on to any 
 better one.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ALBERT VISCONTI 
 
 PERHAPS the most potent factor in my trans- 
 formation at college into a scapegrace was my friend- 
 ship with Albert Visconti. College friendship often 
 becomes an intimacy which is, perhaps, next to mar- 
 riage, the closest in the world, yet these friendships 
 are generally determined more by accident than by 
 the selection of discerning judgment. It was in this 
 way that my acquaintance with Visconti first began. 
 He was in the class above me and I can remember 
 the ringing cheers with which he led his classmates 
 against us in the college rush on an occasion when 
 I had to send for a new suit of clothes before I 
 could go home. It was natural enough that any- 
 body should be attracted toward his handsome face. 
 His fine forehead, dark, waving hair, and deep, 
 expressive eyes, were more fascinating to me than 
 any I had ever seen. It was he who, in a walk 
 one afternoon, induced me to join the Sigma Taus, 
 and after I had been received into the fold, he re- 
 garded me as his personal property. He had taken 
 this inexperienced Quaker boy under his wing and 
 proposed to train his protege very carefully in the 
 way he should not go. For a long time he succeeded 
 admirably. He initiated me into the mysteries of
 
 DOROTHY DAY 155 
 
 the game of poker. He took me with a small party 
 to a burlesque one night where we occupied a 
 proscenium box and where the leading actress, 
 Mademoiselle Geraldine sang a song especially in 
 our honor. She was pretty and danced charmingly, 
 and it all seemed delightfully wicked and pleasant. 
 He even offered to introduce me behind the scenes, 
 and to get me a part where I was to do no speaking, 
 but was to come in with some French noblemen, as 
 a spectator of one of Mile. Geraldine's perform- 
 ances. He told me that he had several times taken 
 the part of the Chevalier de Maurepin, whose duty 
 it was to hand her a letter during a critical episode 
 of the play. But I was too timid to go, though I 
 looked upon him with envy as one dwelling upon 
 inaccessible heights of happiness. After that even- 
 ing he called me his violet and said I bloomed beau- 
 tifully and modestly in the shade. Never was there 
 a feudal baron that received more devoted homage 
 from his faithful vassal than Visconti did from me. 
 He was indeed a shining object of homage, for 
 whether he was humming a song or rehearsing a 
 speech for one of our anniversaries, or devising 
 some madcap prank upon the faculty, life was al- 
 ways brighter when he was by. He did not stand 
 high in his class, but the things he knew and the 
 accomplishments he possessed outside of the curri- 
 culum were astonishing. He was a fine musician; 
 he* seemed almost an expert in matters of art and 
 general literature; he had traveled extensively; he
 
 156 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 talked French and Italian and there was no game at 
 which he was not proficient. For all these things 
 I admired him the more since I was decidedly back- 
 ward in accomplishments. This was especially true 
 as to our college sports. When the baseball nines 
 were chosen from the bystanders, I was always 
 about the seventh man called out on our side, and 
 had the comfort of knowing that there were perhaps 
 two fellows who were even worse players than I. 
 In football I was in like manner about three-fourths 
 of the way down the list, though I improved greatly 
 as time went by. 
 
 Arthur, on the other hand, was sure to be the 
 first man chosen. He was the fastest runner and 
 could kick the ball the furthest, and he was the 
 best oarsman and the most skilful boxer in his class. 
 He was, therefore, my model as to all the delightful 
 and ornamental things of life. It was to him that 
 I owed my initiation into the mysteries of the art 
 of self-defense, for he induced me to take lessons 
 in boxing from his own instructor, Billy Baxter, the 
 celebrated "champion lightweight." These lessons 
 went on swimmingly so long as the champion only 
 touched me with the back of his hand, and I thought 
 I was learning to guard and strike with great dex- 
 terity, but when the hard knocks came and the tears 
 started, I instinctively adopted a method of attack 
 and defense which is not generally approved by 
 authorities on this noble art I shut my eyes firmly 
 and rushed with great fury upon my opponent.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 157 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the shelter which I thus 
 found in closing the organs of vision, proved to be 
 of the most transitory character, and after being 
 well pounded half a dozen times, I was compelled 
 to resort to other expedients. One thing I noticed 
 which greatly surprised me that a man's skill with 
 his fists depended much upon his mood, and the 
 absence of other distractions. Once while I was 
 boxing with Visconti during one of our summer 
 vacations, he had much the better me, until a very 
 pretty girl, who was a guest at the same hotel where 
 we were staying, came suddenly upon us. This girl 
 had smiled upon Visconti and he was more than 
 eager to show his skill in her presence. So anxious 
 was he that he struck wildly and took no care of his 
 guard, and I had the satisfaction of laying him out 
 in the presence of the fair one, who, soon after, 
 left us with a look of disappointment on her face, 
 whereupon Visconti, now free from embarrassment, 
 but greatly exasperated at the showing he had made 
 in her presence, proceeded to thrash me as he had 
 never done before. 
 
 I often visited him at his house and it was by de- 
 grees that I became acquainted with his family his- 
 tory. He was, as his name would indicate, the son 
 of a gentleman of Italian ancestry. His father was 
 a man of broad culture, high attainments, quiet and 
 courtly manners, who had been the proprietor of a 
 large plantation in Louisiana, and whose absolute 
 dominion over several hundred slaves had accent-
 
 158 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 uated his naturally despotic and cruel nature. 
 Albert was his only son and, although in a way the 
 father was attached to the boy and took great pains 
 with his education, yet Mr. Visconti's notions of 
 parental authority were those that prevailed upon 
 the continent. He had been somewhat wild in his 
 youth but had reformed terribly, so that he regarded 
 as little less than crimes in others, and particularly 
 in his son, the things which had been daily occur- 
 rences in his own early life. He required instant 
 obedience to every word and gesture; the boy had 
 to rise whenever his father entered the room and 
 remain standing until otherwise directed. He was 
 placed under the care of a tutor, was forbidden to 
 form any acquaintances whatever outside the family, 
 and was severely punished for the slightest short- 
 comings. Thus life became a sort of perpetual 
 imprisonment, until at last the boy resolved to break 
 away from a constraint which had become unendura- 
 ble. One night he fled from the plantation, but the 
 dogs were put upon his track and when next day he 
 was captured and brought home, he was flogged by 
 his father almost as mercilessly as if he had been 
 one of the negroes in the field. 
 
 Albert's mother, who belonged to an old Creole 
 family, was a lady of considerable beauty, graceful 
 bearing, easy disposition and infinite tact, one of the 
 few human beings who could have borne without an 
 open rupture the daily trials caused by her hus- 
 band's overbearing disposition. Mr. Visconti had
 
 DOROTHY DAY 159 
 
 come to New York for a few years to take charge 
 of an enterprise connected with the refining of sugar, 
 in which a number of the Louisiana planters had 
 become interested, and while in that city he had sent 
 his son to a preparatory school to fit him for col- 
 lege. But the discipline of his household was al- 
 most as strict as in Louisiana, a footman accom- 
 panied the boy each morning to school and went in 
 the afternoon to fetch him home, a proceeding which 
 subjected Albert to much ridicule at the hands of his 
 fellow pupils. He was still forbidden to make 
 acquaintances, and although he secretly stole out 
 of the bounds prescribed whenever his father's eyes 
 were not fastened upon him, yet this continual espion- 
 age finally engenedered a feeling of deep hatred 
 toward the parent who had mistreated him. 
 
 During Albert's freshman year at college his 
 father died, but there was little sorrow in the house- 
 hold at this event. The mother and son, if they did 
 not say it, felt that a weight had been taken off their 
 lives. To Albert, most of all, the change was wel- 
 come. A life of continual restraint became trans- 
 formed into a life of reckless liberty for his mother, 
 easy-going soul that she was, had no heart to refuse 
 anything to her only son. He now embarked on a 
 career wilder than that of any of his companions. 
 Brilliant as he was, his company was sought every- 
 where, and after a brief period of merely formal 
 mourning, which scarcely concealed the joy of his 
 deliverance, he became the center of every party of
 
 160 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 pleasure. His graceful figure, dashing presence and 
 dark, magnetic eyes, made him an object of very 
 dangerous attraction to women over whom he had 
 a singular power, a power of which he was well 
 aware, and which he was not at all scrupulous in 
 using. He made me a confidant in the details of some 
 of his escapades, several of which were going on at 
 the same time, but although I listened to him with 
 far greater tolerance than I ought to have done and 
 even took a minor part in one or two of his more 
 innocent adventures, by making myself as agreeable 
 as I could to "the other girl," who was sometimes 
 an inconvenient appendage, yet on the whole he 
 did not find me sufficiently sympathetic in his more 
 serious intrigues, and he gradually ceased to talk 
 with me on the subject, until I began to imagine he 
 was through sowing the worst of his wild oats. 
 There was, however, a darker side to his character, 
 a trait of which I was then entirely ignorant. He 
 never gave way to sudden outbreaks of passion or 
 resentment, and had therefore the reputation of 
 being tolerant, generous and kind-hearted, although 
 somewhat careless of the feelings of others. This 
 estimate was far from the fact. He was indeed 
 not easily offended, but when once satisfied that he 
 had suffered an affront, made no sign, but quietly 
 stored away the incident for use when an oppor- 
 tunity for retribution should occur. The affront 
 remained aha mente repostum, until perhaps years 
 afterward, when everybody else had forgotten it,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 161 
 
 he would deliver some crushing blow to the man 
 who had slighted or provoked him. This morbid, 
 calculating instinct was at such variance with his 
 apparent geniality and thoughtlessness in other 
 things that none of us suspected that he had it. We 
 could not understand, for instance, how it was that 
 Melville was defeated for class orator by the single 
 casting vote of Visconti, a man of his own set, until 
 some one remembered that two years before, Mel- 
 ville had left his friend out of a certain pic-nic party 
 on account of a trifling scandal that had become 
 current at that time. When Purdy was up for ap- 
 pointment before the trustees as an instructor, it 
 was found that serious charges had been preferred 
 against him, and upon inquiry it was learned that 
 these had been indirectly instigated by Visconti. No- 
 body could understand the motive for this conduct 
 until it was remembered that once in his freshman 
 year at a symposium, Purdy referred to a rather 
 discreditable incident connected with Visconti, in a 
 remark which was at the time treated by the latter 
 as a mere pleasantry. Thus one circumstance after 
 another revealed the dark trait in his character to 
 those who had been his admirers and shattered the 
 idol they had made of him, so that when he grad- 
 uated there were very few except myself who still 
 wholly believed in him and trusted him. As I see 
 it now, it was astonishing how many opportunities 
 he found to get even with those who had offended 
 him, and equally astonishing how, in the mere get-
 
 1 62 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 ting even, he had done himself a greater injury than 
 any he had ever suffered from others. But at that 
 time, in spite of the warnings of my associates, I 
 never doubted him. He had a strong touch of the 
 dramatic in his character. When he told us a story 
 it was sure to contain some sudden and startling 
 denouement or to be filled with some kind of poetic 
 nemesis. I think this tendency of his mind was 
 closely connected with his hunger for revenge and 
 that both, together with his romantic and senti- 
 mental nature, were part of his inheritance from the 
 father who had also educated him, through a long 
 course of tyranny, into the skilful suppression and 
 concealment of his deepest purposes. But although 
 the most serious blemish in his character did not be- 
 come apparent to any of us until the latter part of 
 his college course, and to some of us not until after 
 he had graduated, yet there was another shortcom- 
 ing which we all criticized, though we were ourselves 
 in less degree tarred with the same stick and there- 
 fore could not consider it a capital offense. That 
 was the outrageous manner in which he led his fond 
 mother by the nose, and beguiled her into giving him 
 large allowances and making considerable expendi- 
 tures on his behalf. Every summer he had to go 
 abroad. There were philological researches, he told 
 her, in which he was deeply interested, and in which 
 it was necessary for him to consult foreign libraries 
 and to confer with certain specialists, though when 
 he had gone he quite forgot these studies, but led
 
 DOROTHY DAY 163 
 
 instead a butterfly life at the French capital, and 
 when he had spent his all in pleasure or at the gam- 
 ing table, he would telegraph home some ingenious 
 reasons (which were always accepted) for replenish- 
 ing his exhausted treasury. These demands upon 
 his mother's resources were far more than she could 
 afford, and it was for this reason that we, who sinned 
 ourselves in the same way, at last found fault with 
 him.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A SUMMER IN EUROPE 
 
 AT the end of my junior year (Albert had just 
 graduated), he asked me to go with him on his 
 usual summer trip abroad. My parents concented, 
 and we started together on the Urania, at that time 
 one of the most popular steamers on the ocean. At 
 the end of the dining table where Albert and I sat, 
 was a fine looking man who was traveling with his 
 wife and two daughters. The eldest of these, who 
 sat next to my friend, was a grave, dark-eyed, beau- 
 tiful girl, a little shy, a little my senior in age, who 
 gave me from the moment I saw her, the impression 
 of that high breeding in which a few of our Ameri- 
 can women rival and perhaps excel even those of 
 noble birth and extensive accomplishments abroad. 
 On the opposite side of the table, next to Mr. Day 
 (for this, as I soon found, was the name of the 
 gentleman), was his wife, a tall, quiet lady, whose 
 few locks of gray intermingled with her dark brown 
 hair seemed to give added dignity and charm to a face 
 which was distinguished rather than beautiful. At 
 her side, nearly opposite me, was the younger daugh- 
 ter, with mischievous blue eyes, merry red lips and 
 ripples of golden hair that seemed to have a laughter 
 in them like the waves. It was a face which fairly
 
 DOROTHY DAY 165 
 
 startled me with its dazzling brilliancy. I was espe- 
 cially anxious not to give sign of weakness in such a 
 presence, and deep was my humiliation when, just 
 before dessert, after all hope was over and I rose 
 to stagger toward the door, I saw her eyes upon 
 me with an expression which showed perhaps a little 
 pity, but far more amusement. Dorothy and her 
 father were the only ones who remained with Albert 
 at our table until the end of the meal. 
 
 Luckily my seasickness was of short duration and 
 the charm of the new life with its wealth of sunshine 
 and sparkling light reflected from the crests of every 
 wave, began to grow upon me. We soon came to 
 know the Days quite well, and Dorothy and I be- 
 came great friends. She had always a smile for me 
 and seemed very cordial, but I soon found that the 
 pleasure she appeared to take in my companionship 
 was mainly for the purpose of tormenting me. 
 There was much instruction I acquired in that first 
 voyage, quite as much as a freshman at college 
 ever receives from a sophomore, and much of it 
 came from Dorothy herself, for she had been 
 abroad before and although young in years, was 
 much my senior in nautical information. One day 
 I thought I would like to climb the mast, and 
 Dorothy being by, encouraged me, and said she 
 only wished she could go too, that the ship and the 
 passengers and the sea itself must look beautiful 
 from so fine a point of observation. So I scrambled 
 up the ropes as far as I could. She looked at me
 
 1 66 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 with interest and I enjoyed what secerned to be 
 her admiration. The sight was indeed a curious 
 one from the masthead as it swung to and fro. 1 
 saw the passengers far below me walking like 
 pigmies up and down the deck. The steamer was 
 far longer and narrower than I had supposed, and 
 seemed to cut the water like a knife. But I noticed 
 that Dorothy had gone forward to the forecastle 
 and had spoken to one of the seamen, and now that 
 she was returning and looking up at me in great de- 
 light, what was my surprise to see half a dozen 
 sailors climbing swiftly up the ropes toward me. 
 At first I thought they had been directed to follow 
 me by the officer on duty through an unnecessary 
 regard for my safety. It was no doubt a well meant, 
 though very mistaken act of kindness, but I was soon 
 surprised to see that each one had brought with 
 him two or three strong cords, and after they 
 reached me, still greater was my astonishment, when 
 they began to tie me fast. One of them got hold 
 of each wrist and one of each ankle. Spreading 
 my limbs as far apart as possible they bound me 
 to the ropes and descended to the deck leaving me 
 there alone, trussed up like a chicken to enjoy the 
 scenery at my leisure, intimating as they went the 
 amount of ransom necessary for my liberation. 
 
 By this time I was full of fury and ready to die 
 rather than capitulate. Luckily for me, one of the 
 sailors had done his work badly, my right wrist was 
 soon free, whereupon I disengaged the other and
 
 DOROTHY DAY 167 
 
 then my feet. As soon as they saw what I was doing 
 they came after me again, but my rage lent agility to 
 my muscles. I cared little what became of me, but 
 they should not get me. I escaped them, got on 
 the inside of the ropes and took a long leap for 
 the deck, amid the applause of the passengers, who 
 had gathered around to see the outcome of my ad- 
 venture. Dorothy was there, too, to compliment 
 me on my skill in jumping. At first I was so indig- 
 nant I would have nothing to say to her, for of 
 course, I knew that the little minx had been at the 
 bottom of all my discomfiture. But where is the 
 youth that can long resist such eyes when they smile 
 upon him? After a day or two of awkward surli- 
 ness, I made up with her and was soon bound again 
 in the toils. Dorothy did not in the least mind it 
 if she was herself the victim of a practical joke. 
 On one occasion, when we went down together to 
 the stokers' room to see the big, grimy fellows 
 shovel the coal into the furnaces, some one suddenly 
 appeared just outside the door and closed it, lock- 
 ing us securely in. The heat was stifling, but 
 Dorothy threw her cloak upon a pile of coal in the 
 corner and quietly sat down prepared to hold out 
 indefinitely. This time it was T who offered to 
 capitulate, but she would not let me, so there we 
 stayed until the watch sounded and the new men 
 came to relieve those who were at work. These 
 seamen's pranks, and the custom of imposing fines 
 upon unwary landsmen who venture into parts of
 
 1 68 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 the ship where they have no business to go, are 
 now a thing of the past. 
 
 Albert and Ethel, the elder sister, were much to- 
 gether. They were fond of going to the forecastle 
 and leaning over the side of the vessel to watch the 
 sharp prow cleaving the water and see the phos- 
 phorescent glow around the ship at night. If 
 Dorothy cared for such things, for the great waves 
 and the sky and the long, bright pathway of the 
 moon upon the ocean, she certainly never let me 
 find it out; it was the doings of the officers and crew 
 and passengers that appeared to furnish her with 
 the greatest delight, the authoritative way in which 
 Captain Hawkins read the prayers on Sunday, as 
 though God were "aloft" and it would not be good 
 for Him if He didn't do what He was told to ; the 
 agony of the man from Boston who roared the 
 responses with both eyes shut and with an expres- 
 sion indicative of colic; the grim resolution of the 
 old Scotchman who walked backward and forward, 
 backward and forward on the deck the livelong day 
 like a wild beast in a cage; the convincing power 
 of the traveler returning from California who pro- 
 duced a long cord in proof of the immense cir- 
 cumference of the big trees in Calaveras which he 
 had measured; the imprudence of the lady from 
 Philadelphia who wanted to see a storm and when it 
 came asked in despair: "Why do people ever go 
 to sea?" the danger of explosion to the red-faced 
 Englishman who became suffocated with his own
 
 DOROTHY DAY 169 
 
 jokes before he could reach the point in telling them, 
 and who wanted to be Julius Caesar in charades the 
 last evening on board, but became incapacitated 
 through laughter at the idea. 
 
 When we disembarked at Queenstown, our plans 
 and the Days' took us at first to the same places, 
 and soon it seemed so natural to be together, that 
 as they appeared willing to have us, we traveled 
 in their company most of the summer. To Ethel's 
 dreamy nature the beauties of Killarney, the bright 
 green of the mountain sides, the ivied ruins, the 
 long echoes that answered the high notes as we 
 rowed across the lakes afforded infinite delight, and 
 Albert, whose disposition was romantic and dra- 
 matic to the last degree, found in her a sympathetic 
 spirit which responded spontaneously to his enthu- 
 siasms. He had plain sailing; but as for me, I 
 had a harder time with Dorothy, who never let me 
 see that she admired the scenery, the ruins and the 
 sunsets, but who was forever laughing at the ab- 
 surdity of a country where everybody you met was 
 an Irishman, where almost every horse was a don- 
 key, where the women rode to market sitting on 
 the calf or pig, where the cats were so human, the 
 children so uncanny that you couldn't quite tell at 
 night whether the cry came from a cat or a baby, 
 and where every large and commodious building was 
 a Bedlam ! One day, when our coach was passing 
 a particularly imposing structure, she offered to 
 wager that it was a madhouse. Thinking we had
 
 170 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 seen so many there was no likelihood of more, I 
 denied it, we referred the matter to the coachman, 
 and when I asked : "Is that large building an insane 
 asylum?" he answered: "No, sir! it is not, sir." 
 Here my face glowed with momentary triumph. 
 "It is a lunatic asylum, sir!" And Dorothy's voice 
 rang clearest in laughter at my discomfiture. A 
 trait that greatly amused her was the Hibernian's 
 unwillingness to admit that there was anything he 
 did not know. Once as we stopped close to a curi- 
 ous ruined tower, Dorothy asked me to inquire of 
 a peasant who stood near what it might be. Pat 
 took off his hat, bowed, looked bewildered, scratched 
 his head, and solemnly replied: "Well, sir, you've 
 studied history, sir, and I've studied history, but 
 we can't account for that, sir!" and the little bag- 
 gage pursed her lips in mock sympathy at our mutual 
 but ineffectual researches. We passed a mountain 
 one day where, as the coachman told us, there were 
 365 little lakes, one for each day of the year. 
 Ethel was much interested in the coincidence, but 
 Dorothy gravely asked him whether a new lake 
 came every leap-year. When we passed over into 
 England and visited some of the historical monu- 
 ments there, she was even more irreverent. What 
 appeared to attract her most in the cathedrals were 
 the penitential seats from which a monk was pro- 
 jected headlong if he sought to comfort himself 
 with a nap during the services, the grotesque carv- 
 ings on the choir stalls where the big pig plays the
 
 DOROTHY DAY 171 
 
 bagpipe and the little pigs dance, where the whale 
 swallows Jonah and then casts him forth on dry 
 land. 
 
 When we reached Paris she found infinite oppor* 
 tunities for diversion in the attempts of some of 
 our fellow Americans to make themselves under- 
 stood in a language which no one could comprehend. 
 There was Mr. Jones, for example, whose practice 
 was to repeat all he said in English at the top of 
 his voice, it being a well-known principle that no 
 language is unintelligible if you will only speak it 
 loud enough. There was Mrs. Grubbs on the floor 
 just below us, whom Dorothy detected in an effort 
 to explain to the chambermaid by scrubbing on an 
 imaginary washboard, that she had some clothes to 
 be laundered; there was Grubbs gesticulating to a 
 cabman and wildly revolving his arms in the air, 
 as indication that he wanted to go to the railway 
 station, whereupon cabby with a smile of intelli- 
 gence drove him to a shop where they sold veloci- 
 pedes. 
 
 At a German swimming-school, where we saw a 
 boy sprawling on the water at the end of what 
 seemed a huge fish-line attached to a pole held by 
 his instructor, and learning the motions of the swim- 
 mer in regular rhythm eins-zwei-drei, eins-zwei- 
 dre'i she suggested the advantages of having to 
 eat and drink in the same methodical manner. In 
 Switzerland I thought, with despair, that she cared 
 less for the superb scenery than for the notices
 
 172 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 posted upon the bedroom doors at Rigi Kulm: 
 "Guests are forbidden to take the bed-clothes with 
 them when they go to see the sunrise." 
 
 So it was everywhere. There was no circum- 
 stance that did not furnish food for her merry 
 raillery. On one occasion when I reproved her 
 because she would take nothing seriously, she lifted 
 from a shelf of the museum we were visiting, a 
 medieval bridle for a scold, and gravely handed it 
 to me, asking if it would not fit.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DAYS 
 
 DOROTHY DAY was the daughter of wealthy 
 parents, but they were parents who held their wealth 
 as by no means the greatest of their possessions. 
 She had the advantage of being the child in a house- 
 hold where the master and mistress were now be- 
 ginning to grow old together in the undiminished 
 warmth of an early attachment. Such households 
 may be rare, but they exist, and happy is the child 
 who is reared under their influence. 
 
 The descendant of an old New York family, 
 possessed of a liberal education to which he had 
 added considerable stores from travel, from general 
 reading and from a broad knowledge of the world, 
 Mr. Day had the tastes and instincts which come 
 from cultured ancestry and surroundings. His 
 library was extensive and well chosen, and his col- 
 lection of pictures and works of art was one of the 
 best to be found anywhere, for it represented, not 
 simply a vast outlay of money spent for the works 
 of popular masters, but the discriminating eye and 
 clear judgment of its owner. There had been much 
 rummaging in obscure shops, and pieces of unsus- 
 pected beauty had been brought forth from the lum- 
 ber that surrounded them. The collection was not
 
 174 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 so costly as many another, but it was representative 
 of different schools and periods. So, too, the furni- 
 ture of the house expressed the individuality of its 
 occupants. Each piece had a history. There was 
 the glassware upon the table, which flickered with 
 fitful suggestions of that great scamp Cellini, who 
 had designed the model; there was the rug in front 
 of the big fire place which recalled the shop at 
 Damascus where it was purchased; and another in 
 the hall where the face of "Far Away Moses" 
 seemed to peer out through the intricate geometrical 
 figures and renew the Hebraic blandishments which 
 had relaxed the purse-strings of the American 
 traveler; that Virgin in the corner with the soft bit 
 of color behind her, recalled the old junkshop 
 where it had been stored with worthless lumber, and 
 also the joy which had attended the verdict of the 
 experts that it was the work of a historic school; 
 those rubicund carousers brought to remembrance 
 the old castle in Savoy which had been despoiled of 
 its treasures by the extravagance of a profligate heir; 
 and the strange aggregation of prophets, apostles, 
 monks, and crusaders from many lands and ages, 
 wdie apart, which were thrown together upon the 
 centerpiece of that old triptych, renewed the diffi- 
 culties of identifying the fifteenth century cavalier 
 who was present when the mantle of Elijah fell upon 
 Elisha, as the older prophet mounted to heaven upon 
 his chariot of fire, while a fat little angel of the Lord
 
 DOROTHY DAY 175 
 
 whispered confidentially to Moses in the corner. 
 Ah! the catholic chronology of medieval artl 
 
 Mr. Day possessed that fortunate disposition 
 which easily shakes off care and never takes trouble 
 upon interest, and he adopted in practical life the 
 classification we all believe but seldom follow, that 
 there are only two kinds of things which cause worry 
 and distress things you can help and things you 
 cannot, a classification which gives in either case a 
 better alternative than anxiety. He looked at life 
 upon its bright side, and from him undoubtedly 
 came that sunny disposition which was one of Doro- 
 thy's prominent characteristics. 
 
 His wife and daughters esteemed him naturally 
 at his full value, indeed, at a good deal more than 
 his full value. For instance, when in early childhood 
 his little girls, Ethel and Dorothy, were talking of 
 the story of Jonah, and wondering how it could all 
 be, Ethel suggested that the fish were a great deal 
 larger in those days and that the interior arrange- 
 ments were better adapted to human habitation, 
 while Dorothy interrupted the explanation with 
 "Papa doesn't believe the story at all, and he knows 
 more than anybody in the world." 
 
 Although mamma would not have used quite that 
 language, yet the oracular power and infallibility 
 with which papa's judgments were treated in the 
 home circle had much the same meaning. 
 
 Indeed, papa was greatly spoiled at his own fire- 
 side, and yet in that household he was by no means
 
 176 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 the most important person. It was the mother to- 
 ward whom all turned first for counsel, assistance, 
 inspiration, love. No woman was ever more un- 
 conscious of herself. She had a quiet, mature dig- 
 nity which she could no more put on or take off at 
 her own will than if it were part of her own body. 
 She was conscientious almost to a fault, a little aris- 
 tocratic in her nature no false vanity of rank or 
 wealth, but a pride which disdained all contact with 
 what was unworthy. She was ambitious for her hus- 
 band and her children, and earnestly desired that 
 they should attain all good things, but only by such 
 means as were pure and honorable. As for herself, 
 she would shrink from no sacrifice which would 
 promote their welfare. She was naturally quick of 
 temper, but her indignation passed in a moment like 
 a puff of smoke, and her regret was followed by 
 added tenderness. 
 
 Her husband held the first place in her heart. It 
 would be hard to say which of her children was 
 her favorite. She would not confess even to herself 
 that she had any preference. Her two daughters 
 were as different as possible from each other, not only 
 in features, but in temperament. In the years that 
 have followed the acquaintance begun on the Urania, 
 I have come to know from many family conversa- 
 tions, the incidents connected with the childhood 
 of these two sisters so intimately, that it often 
 seems to me that I have been their companion from 
 infancy.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 177 
 
 Ethel had been a dreamy child and her little 
 world was peopled with creatures of the imagina- 
 tion. Every grove had its dryads and every stream 
 its water nymphs, and every chamber in the big house, 
 its own peculiar household divinities. But these were 
 not at all like the figures of classic fable. The faces 
 resembled those she knew and loved, and she had 
 names for all of them and considered them "her 
 friends." For a long time she told no one of this 
 wonderful fairy world in which she lived, for she 
 felt that the fancy must be a very foolish one, and 
 even mamma would surely laugh at her if she knew 
 it. But once, when her mother was reading to her 
 of the fancies of other children, she said rather 
 sheepishly: "Did you know, mamma, I had some 
 friends, too?" And strange to say, mamma did 
 not laugh at all, but gravely answered: "Oh, yes; 
 I knew it." "Why, how did you know that?" 
 
 "Because when I was a little girl I had my 
 friends." 
 
 "Did you, mamma? Then it isn't queer of me 
 to have them?" 
 
 And after that her mother became her confidant 
 and was introduced to this new circle of acquaint- 
 ances and learned how they looked, and what they 
 said and did. They were very reliable, these invisi- 
 ble friends, and when Ethel was called away from 
 home she always confided her dolls and child's treas- 
 ures to their keeping. 
 
 It always pained her to see any one in the chair
 
 178 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 where her fancy had already placed an occupant, 
 and once she asked even mamma not to sit at the 
 foot of the brass bedstead where "the children" 
 were lying. And later she took into her confidence 
 a friend who was visiting the house, and when the 
 lady said: "I would like to see them," she shyly 
 opened the door to her little bedroom, pointed to 
 the empty chairs, and looked bashfully up, but said 
 nothing. 
 
 So delicate were these confidences that a smile 
 of incredulity would have shattered them. Heaven 
 was a real place to her as much as grandmamma's 
 or the old farm in the country at Aunt Mary's, and 
 once when her mamma was putting away her sum- 
 mer clothing, she asked that her best white dress 
 might be carefully ironed so it would be ready in 
 case she should be called to heaven "right away." 
 She had big paper wings cut out ready to be fitted 
 at a moment's notice, and was quite as well pre- 
 pared for heaven as an Adventist with his resur- 
 rection robes; yes, better prepared, I think, in many 
 ways, for it ever there was a child who tried to do 
 her duty, it was she. And she wanted others to do 
 their duty, too their duty, be it said, as she under- 
 stood it, for that is the way with all good women, 
 with little women as well as big ones. And, there- 
 fore, at their summer home among the hills when 
 Bockerty, the rooster, would not lay eggs, but wan- 
 dered away more than he ought, she caught him and 
 tied him to the big box with straw at the bottom,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 179 
 
 where the porcelain egg had long ineffectually in- 
 vited him to the performance of domestic duties. 
 
 In her studies, her dreamy imagination carried 
 her along a line of literature far beyond her years. 
 She was fond of the lyrics of Shakespeare, of Ariel's 
 song and "Full fathom five thy father lies," songs 
 that have indeed in them a melody of verse that 
 appeals naturally to a child. 
 
 There was about her an odd mixture of the child 
 and the grown-up woman, and a little later she would 
 turn very naturally from reading "Comus" or "Para- 
 dise Lost" to playing with paper dolls in company 
 with other children of her own age. 
 
 The children had many pets. For a short time 
 they had a spotted coach-dog they called Mustard, 
 because he was so attractive and drew all things 
 to him like a mustard-plaster. Dorothy gave him 
 the name, for she knew most about the mustard, 
 having ineffaceable recollections of it from the time 
 when the doctor put it on to cure a dreadful cough, 
 after they had stayed out in the wet and cold con- 
 ducting the funeral services of a dead blackbird. 
 
 Now Mustard was a stalwart, enthusiastic puppy. 
 Ethel liked him all the more "because he was young, 
 and they could train him." But education is often 
 a harder task than we fancy, and after a month or 
 two in which Mustard had pulled their dresses from 
 the clothesline, had torn Dorothy's new pink sash, 
 had chewed up the leg of Ethel's best doll, had 
 upset the glasses on the sideboard, and killed two
 
 i8o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 little chickens and a duck, Dorothy came one day 
 with a flushed face to her father, and asked: 
 "Please, papa, can't we lose Mustard?" So Mus- 
 tard was appropriately lost, though Ethel some time 
 afterwards maintained there was a dog very much 
 like him, only larger, at Schneider's livery stable. 
 
 They had other pets left to console them. There 
 was Thora, the Icelandic pony, a wilful little beast, 
 whose ancestors had so long eaten fish during the 
 winters, when other fodder was not obtainable, that 
 she was quite carnivorous. Once she ate a chicken 
 that is, the chicken disappeared and its feathers 
 were seen about the pony's mouth and its feet were 
 left in the manger evidence strong enough to send 
 a poor wretch to Tyburn. 
 
 Pony was a great favorite with the horses, who 
 used to follow her everywhere around the pasture 
 nibbling at her neck and displaying every sign of 
 equine affection. Indeed, the only way to catch 
 Matilda (who could never be trapped by delusive 
 oats or ears of corn) was to catch the pony first 
 and lead her back to the stable, when Matilda would 
 peacefully follow, which showed that she considered 
 the claims of friendship as stronger than the attrac- 
 tions of a dinner. The pony was a great friend of 
 the children, and was a very amiable little beast so 
 long as she was permitted to have her own way in 
 everything. But when Dorothy mounted her, sit- 
 ting astride her fat little back, one could never be 
 quite sure in what direction Thora was going or at
 
 DOROTHY DAY 181 
 
 what time she would return, and there was a good 
 chance (if she found a convenient spot to roll) that 
 the child would be dumped off till pony had taken 
 her pleasure, when she would again receive her 
 burden and jog along in her own way as before. 
 Pony had a number of tricks. She could tell you 
 by pawing the ground just how old she was, but 
 true to the instincts of her sex, there was a proper 
 limit of age which she declined to overpass and the 
 children began to doubt her veracity when they 
 found that she remained constantly five years old 
 down to the day of her death. 
 
 When the governess began to teach the little 
 girls the history of their own country their busy 
 minds were full of the great names that we all 
 revere. What then could be more appropriate than 
 to name the numerous cats upon the place after the 
 fathers of the Republic? 
 
 The biggest one, of course, was George Wash- 
 ington, who walked in a very stately manner, though 
 he soon displayed qualities not at all consistent with 
 the honor and truthfulness of the great original. 
 Benjamin Franklin was very properly the most in- 
 telligent. His philosophic life was prolonged to a 
 good old age, while Thomas Jefferson, infected no 
 doubt with too much of the spirit of separatism and 
 independence, suddenly disappeared and was never 
 heard of more. 
 
 Ethel made the acquaintance of a small mouse, 
 who used to come out from under the grate in the
 
 1 82 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 nursery and listen to her while she sang to her doll, 
 and then ran back again when she ceased. Indeed, 
 all living things that came near her seemed to love 
 her, she was so gentle and quiet with them. But the 
 sudden appearance of Dorothy was sure to send 
 them away. 
 
 When grandpa came to visit them, the children 
 were quite sure of some gift, a rocking-horse, per- 
 haps, or a drum, a doll or bugle, for to grandpa, his 
 little granddaughters seemed to belong indifferently 
 to both sexes. And Dorothy was quite as fond of 
 the little gun as of the china tea set. 
 
 Ethel's dreamy imagination and quick conscience 
 were always awake to every call of sacrifice and 
 duty, while Dorothy was looking out sharply for 
 her own comfort and had very practical and very 
 material views of life. Indeed, the little scamp 
 slyly got credit for being better than she was, for 
 whenever there were apples or cakes or candy to be 
 divided, she always let Ethel make the division, 
 knowing full well that from her sister's goodness 
 she would be sure to get the bigger half. 
 
 When she was very little she was in mischief 
 most of the time. She made strange figures with 
 a black pencil on the white walls of the dining-room 
 and when mamma came suddenly upon her playing 
 with her sister and some other companions, and 
 severely asked: "What is this?" she spoke up at 
 once and solemnly answered: "It is a duck," there- 
 by revealing the author of the transgression, as
 
 DOROTHY DAY 183 
 
 indeed she always did when the fault lay at her 
 door. For though she sometimes fell into disgrace 
 and was often chided for her faults, yet there was 
 one thing she would not do, she would not tell a 
 lie. 
 
 Perhaps the rogue found her interest even in 
 this, for it was a rule of her parents not to punish 
 a child who had told the truth, no matter how 
 grave the offense, so as not to make her afraid to 
 tell the truth another time. No doubt Dorothy 
 discovered this easy way getting off, for she owned 
 her little acts of transgression with engaging frank- 
 ness. 
 
 Her theology was of a peculiar kind. Her God 
 was a solid, anthropomorphic god, and when the 
 lightning flashed and revealed the outlines of the 
 black clouds through the inky darkness, as they sat 
 together at the window, she said: "Ethel, I know 
 what makes the lightning. God is standing just be- 
 hind that cloud with a candle in his hand and he puts 
 it out and pulls it back again quick just like that;" 
 and she suited that action to the word. 
 
 Once she had been put to bed and told to go to 
 sleep, yet soon afterwards her mother heard the 
 patter of little feet over head, and on going up to 
 the room found the little scamp rummaging in the 
 bureau drawers and decorating herself with choice 
 pieces of jewelry. She was again put into her crib, 
 with a sharp admonition, but pretty soon the patter 
 was heard once more and she was found sailing
 
 1 84 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 improvised paper boats in the wash basin. A spank- 
 ing followed and a promise of amendment, but the 
 noise was heard again and the little rogue was found 
 on the floor playing with the kitten. Suddenly she 
 looked up and saw her mother's face right over her. 
 Jumping to her feet, she ran to the side of the bed, 
 and with a look of consternation and shame on her 
 face, she fell upon her knees and said in great earn- 
 estness: "Please, dear Lord, come and make Doro- 
 thy a good little girl right away quick!" Many art 
 older transgressor, under like circumstances, desires 
 the same sudden reformation. 
 
 But all her faults and shortcomings only set off 
 the real charm of the child, the dazzling happiness 
 that surrounded her like an aureole, that flashed 
 from her mischievous eyes, and rang out in merry 
 laughter from her lips. It was instantly contagious. 
 It filled the whole house with joy. It made Doro- 
 thy's father call her his "Little Sunshine." And 
 when she had grown up it made a certain young 
 man feel that there was light enough in her presence 
 to dissipate any gloom which might pervade all 
 other portions of the universe. And no moth ever 
 flitted around a candle with less regard to the singe- 
 ing of his wings, than did I around the flame of that 
 bright creature's presence.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ALBERT AND ETHEL 
 
 ALBERT had often said to me he would never 
 marry. The chains of matrimony were not for him. 
 The liberty of a single life was necessary for his 
 roving and unstable nature, and he entirely denied 
 the possibility that there could be any one with suf- 
 ficient attractions to subdue him to domesticity. 
 Yet, during the summer that he and I were abroad 
 it was plain enough that Ethel had stolen her way 
 into his heart. Her gentle manners never repelled 
 him, never grated upon his impulsiveness, and he 
 became more and more devoted to her as the weeks 
 went by. As for her, it was easy to see that her 
 affections were deeply engaged. To me, indeed, 
 such a result seemed inevitable. What girl could 
 be long in the companionship of such a man and 
 resist his attractive presence and brilliant conver- 
 sation? Albert never spoke to me upon the sub- 
 ject and when I tried to rally him, he retorted so 
 vigorously concerning myself and Dorothy that I 
 thought it best to let him alone. He was doubt- 
 less ashamed to admit that his claim of invulnera- 
 bility had been so quickly shattered. When we re- 
 turned to New York, it seemed to me, although no 
 engagement was announced, that there was some
 
 1 86 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 understanding between them. Finally I asked him 
 point blank if it were not so, and he told me about 
 it. 
 
 One night on the voyage home they stood at the 
 prow of the ship watching the long pathway made 
 by the moonlight upon the ocean. Albert was talk- 
 ing of his plans for the future, of the political career 
 he had marked out when he should return to Louis- 
 iana, of his determination to make for himself not 
 only a fortune but a name. Dorothy would have 
 laughed me out of countenance if I had dared to 
 make any such confession to her, but Ethel was 
 filled with sympathetic enthusiasm. She was sure 
 he would be more than all he hoped. She would 
 follow his career at every step, and how she would 
 rejoice at his success! 
 
 A declaration of love came from his lips almost 
 without his will. It was not exactly the story of 
 Othello and Desdemona, for his exploits were not 
 in the past but in the future. She loved him for 
 the great plans he had made and he loved her that 
 she did smile on them. 
 
 Ethel's parents were unwilling that she should 
 be married for some time to come and insisted that 
 she should have at least a year in society before a 
 definite betrothal. 
 
 The following winter was a brilliant one for her. 
 At the balls, the dinners, the theatre parties, she 
 was greatly admired. Many were the youths at- 
 tracted by her gracious presence, and there was
 
 DOROTHY DAY 187 
 
 more than one who sought her hand. She had an 
 invincible reluctance to inflict sorrow upon any one 
 and when she dismissed a suitor it was with such 
 tenderness that it sometimes encouraged him to con- 
 tinue his addresses. One of these incidents came to 
 Albert's knowledge, inspired him with the convic- 
 tion that Ethel was a coquette, and awakened in 
 him all the resentment of his revengeful nature. He 
 acted in a manner quite in keeping with his char- 
 acter. He uttered not one word of reproach, he 
 continued assiduous in his attentions, but he formed 
 in his mind an atrocious resolution. He would set 
 about to win her affections more deeply than ever; 
 they should become engaged, and after the an- 
 nouncement was made he would forsake her and 
 let her feel the humiliation of desertion. This would 
 be a fitting punishment for her perfidy. And thus 
 this gentle creature, utterly faithful to the unworthy 
 man to whom she had given her heart, was, each 
 week, each month, involved more and more securely 
 in the toils. Her parents, seeing that after her win- 
 ter in society her affections were unchanged, no 
 longer interposed any objection to the engagement. 
 Albert, who was pursuing his studies at the law 
 school, had, however, decided to abandon the pro- 
 fession, having received a favorable business propo- 
 sition from some influential friends of his father's 
 in New Orleans. So in June the engagement was 
 announced. Albert spent most of the summer at
 
 1 88 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 the country home of the Days, and was constantly 
 with his affianced bride. 
 
 I went occasionally to visit Dorothy while he was 
 there, and she played her pranks upon me with 
 greater freedom than she had ever done before. I 
 had once spoken to her with complacency of my 
 exploits in horsemanship, of leaping fences and of 
 standing upon Roger's back. Dorothy was herself 
 accustomed to cross-country riding, though she never 
 told me of this, but devised a subtle plan for my 
 discomfiture. One afternoon she proposed that we 
 should ride together across a tract of land that her 
 father was laying out as a park. We galloped 
 merrily over the fields and up and down the hills 
 till we came to an old-fashioned stake-and-rider 
 fence, which had not yet been torn down. She 
 whipped her horse and, running ahead, cleared the 
 fence at a bound and then turned around to watch 
 me. I followed as fast as I could, ran my heels into 
 my horse's sides and did everything which ought to 
 be done to induce the brute to go over, but he 
 stopped short, with his head almost touching the 
 fence, while I writhed in many contortions trying to 
 stay on his neck, upon which I had been inconti- 
 nently projected. I can see her now with her fair 
 hair streaming down her back and hear her ring- 
 ing laughter at my plight. Of course I had to try 
 it again, and this time I was more successful. I went 
 over by breaking down the fence. Then we came 
 to a wide ditch and Dorothy's horse cleared it at
 
 DOROTHY DAY 189 
 
 a bound, while mine first balked and then went 
 splashing through the mud at the bottom. Words 
 cannot paint the tortures I suffered at making the 
 sorry spectacle I did in her presence. She had 
 given me a horse that could not leap, but she after- 
 wards very demurely expressed her surprise that 1 
 had found any difficulty at such an easy thing. And 
 when the fall months came and the Days went back 
 to town, Dorothy amused herself by teaching the 
 Quaker boy to dance, and after I had become pro- 
 ficient, as I thought, and had asked her to be my 
 partner in a German, I found that she had taught 
 me something that nobody else knew, and that ex- 
 cept when I was dancing with her, I floundered help- 
 lessly. She would banter me to do the most out- 
 rageous things, and was indeed quite willing to make 
 a little fool of herself if she could see me perform- 
 ing a more important role of the same kind. Thus 
 the pranks I had been so fond of playing at college 
 were visited upon my own head with tenfold greater 
 skill at the hands of the fair creature whose eyes 
 and laughter had such a charm for me that I could 
 no more escape than a fly from a spider's web. 
 
 She belonged to a small coterie of young women 
 of her own age and disposition, who organized a 
 secret society in mocking imitation of ours. The 
 name of it was not Greek, however, but was declared 
 to be Choctaw. Into this a number of young men 
 were initiated as associate members and elected to 
 offices which, when interpreted to us, we found were
 
 1 9 o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 "Grand Ash Man," Sublime Rag Picker," 'Majestic 
 Chimney Sweep" and the like. We were once in- 
 vited to a dinner of the order, and when we walked 
 into the brilliantly lighted room, we found there 
 were seats for the girls only, and aprons for us, 
 and that we were expected to wait upon them and 
 take our own dinner afterwards in the kitchen. But, 
 however badly we might be used, none of us could 
 be driven away. There was nothing Dorothy ever 
 asked of me that I wouldn't do. If she had bid 
 me put my head up the chimney, I would have done 
 it without questioning. Indeed, she did worse things 
 than that. She used to sit by me very demurely on 
 the sofa and ask in an interested way about my plans 
 in life ! Once she wanted to see a poem I had com- 
 posed, and finally beguiled me into reciting it for 
 her! I creep all over as I think of it! I had a very 
 high opinion of that poem at the time. I was under 
 a sort of Tennvsonian-Swinburnian spell and my 
 effusion glistened with Oriental imagery. It was 
 called "Ayesha" and began thus: 
 
 "Evening:. The crescent on Medina's mosque 
 Gleamed golden-glittering in the sunset sky 
 The palm trees climbed luxuriant up the hill 
 Whereon the prophet's holy city sat; 
 The trumpet-voiced Muezzin called to prayer, 
 And all Medina, falling, worshiped prone. 
 Sad, in the deep seclusion of her home, 
 Ayesha sat, Mohammed's blooming bride,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 191 
 
 Fair as the Houris in Al Arat's groves, 
 
 And streamlet-woven gardens, beauty-crowned, 
 
 Black-eyed and raven-haired, pale as the moon. 
 
 The verses then went on to tell of a little domestic 
 difference finally healed by an appropriate revela- 
 tion from Allah. I pronounced the lines in a low key 
 and with great solemnity. It seemed to me they 
 were very impressive and Dorothy clapped her 
 fair little hands at my balderdash in great delight. 
 Then she asked me for a copy, and a few days after- 
 wards she had a poem of her own, called "Cryesha," 
 which she recited for me in the presence of a few 
 friends, in such droll heart-rending tones, that it 
 awakened universal merriment among the others, 
 who not knowing the source from which it was 
 taken, could not understand why I blushed and 
 looked foolish and did not enjoy it. 
 
 Thus she made life a heavy burden to me. When 
 we were alone she would even upbraid me for my 
 bashfulness, and then, when I offered her the strong- 
 est tangible evidence that I was not bashful and tried 
 to kiss her, she would run like a deer and take shelter 
 where I could not follow. 
 
 Why is it that the boy will fall in love with the 
 girl who torments him ? Her sparkling eyes haunted 
 me by day and by night. Her face beamed out of 
 every page I read, and the song of every bird seemed 
 to have in it something of the echo of her laughter. 
 
 Meanwhile, Albert went to New Orleans to take
 
 1 92 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 the place offered him in that city. I went down to 
 the steamer to see him sail. Ethel was there with 
 her father, and the love and utter devotion that 
 spoke in her eyes and in every gesture and tone of 
 her voice would have been enough to have melted 
 the heart even of one who was bent upon revenge. 
 I knew nothing of Albert's abominable purpose, but 
 I noticed even then that he seemed to treat her with 
 a certain coolness and reserve which I attributed 
 to his consciousness of the presence of others. I 
 thought how differently I would act if it were Doro- 
 thy, and I looked upon his better fortune with the 
 elder sister, not without a tinge of envy. Some two 
 weeks afterwards I was at the Days' and noticed that 
 Ethel looked very pale and anxious. She asked 
 me if I had heard anything from Albert, said that 
 she had not had a single word, although she had 
 written him every day, and he had promised to do 
 the same. She had also telegraphed and had re- 
 ceived no answer, though her father had learned at 
 the office of the company that the steamer had ar- 
 rived. She was sure Albert must be very ill or that 
 some accident had befallen him. I had heard noth- 
 ing, but that night I sent a telegram to a friend of 
 mine in New Orleans asking him to inquire, and 
 next day I received an answer that Albert had ar- 
 rived safely and was quite well. The thing was 
 inexplicable, so I wrote him a full letter, telling him 
 of Ethel's anxieties and that I could not understand 
 his conduct. An answer came speaking of matters
 
 DOROTHY DAY 193 
 
 concerning which he said I could know nothing, con- 
 taining vague hints of coquetry and infidelities, with 
 the remark that it was time that Ethel should her- 
 self feel the bitterness of the sting which she had 
 long since inflicted upon him. I was filled with 
 indignation and answered him that I did not believe 
 a word of his accusations, but that if he had had 
 anything to reproach her with, he should have 
 spoken out like a man at the time, and not continued 
 his attentions afterwards, only to crush her now; 
 that I would have no such man among my friends, 
 and that if he had nothing better to say, all between 
 us must be at an end. I received no answer; I never 
 heard from Albert again nor did I ever see him 
 until but that belongs to another part of this 
 biography. 
 
 I called on Dorothy at once and I was glad that 
 Ethel was not there, for I would not have had the 
 heart to break the news to her. Dorothy was furious 
 when I gave her Albert's letter. Her cheeks were 
 flushed and her eyes flashed fire. "And this comes," 
 she exclaimed, "from giving her heart to a man!" 
 And she looked at me with such indignation that I 
 felt involved in the universal guilt of my sex, and 
 could fancy that her thought was, "How do I konw 
 that you would be any better?" But in a moment 
 her rage passed and the tears came (I had never 
 seen her weep before). "Poor Ethel, poor Ethel, 
 how shall we ever tell her?" and taking the letter 
 and bidding me good-night, she hastily left the room.
 
 1 94 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 It seems that Ethel, who had become distracted 
 in her anxiety for Albert's safety, had insisted upon 
 going instantly to New Orleans herself. Her mother 
 had determined to accompany her and they had 
 made their preparations for leaving. Dorothy 
 showed the letter to her mother, who told Ethel 
 that it would not be necessary to go, for they had 
 just learned from Mr. Dillingham that Albert was 
 safe and well. Ethel's eyes flashed with resent- 
 ment. It was not true, it could not be true. Albert 
 could never have failed to write to her for so long 
 a time. Mr. Dillingham had been misinformed. 
 But, said her mother, Albert had himself written 
 to Mr. Dillingham. And then Ethel did what every 
 good, true and devoted woman ought to do under 
 the circumstances she accused me of lying. And 
 when her mother asked what motive I could have 
 for such a falsehood, she answered that she did not 
 know or care; perhaps I, who had been less happy 
 in my attentions to Dorothy, was envious at Albert's 
 better fortune who could say what the motive was ? 
 Her mother tried to tell her as gently as possible 
 the contents of Albert's letter, softening the words 
 as best she might to take away the harshness 
 of its meaning, but Ethel showed all the more indig- 
 nation against those who dared to fabricate such a 
 story. And in her desperation she was more than 
 ever bent upon immediate departure. Mrs. Day 
 had not intended to show the letter to her daughter, 
 but now no other course was possible. Ethel read
 
 DOROTHY DAY 195 
 
 it; at first she was dazed, and then, uttering not one 
 word against the man who had so dreadfully 
 wronged her, she began to reproach herself! She 
 must have given some apparent cause for the false 
 report that had poisoned him against her. She had 
 seemingly been too kind to others, though heaven 
 knew that none but he had ever come within the 
 shadow of her heart ! She sat up all night and wrote 
 Albert a long letter, passionate, tender, telling him 
 in full all she had done in each and every matter 
 which it seemed to her might have given him the 
 slightest cause for his suspicions. She had not told 
 him those things before, because she had concluded 
 that they were not her secret alone, and she would 
 not tell him now but for the dreadful misunderstand- 
 ing they had caused. She had always been what 
 she still was, his and his only, and whatever he 
 might do, or however he might treat her, she would 
 remain his and his only until death. But Dorothy 
 came into her room in the early morning while she 
 was still writing, and saw the letter. Such a letter, 
 she said, should never be sent. Her father was 
 informed of it, and in an earnest talk with Ethel he 
 pointed out the shamefulness and deceit of Albert's 
 conduct and declared that no child of his should 
 ever, with his consent, become the wife of any man 
 who was capable of such duplicity. He asked her 
 to consider what her future life would be by the 
 side of one who in the midst of smiles and caresses, 
 was planning his bitterest revenge. What confidence
 
 196 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 could she ever have in his word, what security that 
 at any moment he might not abandon or betray her? 
 No happiness could ever be found in such compan- 
 ionship. Mr. Day had always a very strong hold 
 on Ethel's confidence. In this case his reasons were 
 unanswerable, and Ethel was now obliged to face 
 the dreadful truth that her love had been bestowed 
 upon one who was utterly unworthy of it. Her 
 idol had been shattered and within her heart there 
 was nothing but emptiness and desolation. 
 
 She did not make any extravagant demonstrations 
 of sorrow. She tried to live in the old way, to go 
 about her daily round of duties the same as before, 
 with a smile (what a sad smile it was!) for her 
 sister and her parents and her friends. But the 
 shock was too heavy and it was not long until her 
 health began to give way. Morning after morning 
 she appeared with those heavy eyes that are the 
 sure index of a sleepless night. She said nothing 
 more of her grief to any one not to her sister, not 
 to her mother it was wholly stifled in her own 
 breast, nor did the others venture to speak to her 
 of her sorrow, though her pale, thin face was the 
 constant reminder of it to all. As the weeks passed 
 on, her silent agony became more and more acute 
 until at last it became apparent that her mind was 
 giving away. She imagined that Albert was at her 
 side; she began to talk to him, and sometimes 
 Dorothy or her mother would come upon her while 
 she was calling him by the old endearing names,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 197 
 
 and planning with him for their new house and the 
 details of their future life. These agonizing scenes 
 became more frequent and cast a deep gloom upon 
 the family. Dorothy even ceased to torment me. 
 I had told her what I had written to Albert, that 
 I had received no answer and never expected to hear 
 from him again. And although she said nothing, I 
 saw an expression of gratitude in her eyes. The 
 family physician insisted upon a change of scene, 
 so the Days determined to spend the winter in Cuba. 
 The surroundings would be new and interesting and 
 Havana was not so far away that Mr. Day could 
 not be called home again if any emergency should 
 require it. The family left about the first of De- 
 cember, and when the Christmas holidays came on, 
 I, too, determined to spend them in Havana ! Doro- 
 thy was much surprised to see me, but I think not 
 altogether displeased. Her sister, although ill, 
 was no longer subject to hallucinations and had be- 
 gun to take some interest in the strange scenes 
 around her, and the family were encouraged. Doro- 
 thy had regained her spirits and now resumed her 
 occupation of amusing herself at the expense of 
 the yoor youth who was so deeply enamored by her 
 dazzling presence that he had the power neither to 
 retaliate nor to escape. Again she made sport of 
 everything, but I could see from the way she watched 
 Ethel that part of her merriment was not quite 
 spontaneous, but had also the purpose of calling her 
 sister away from her grief. The more Ethel seemed
 
 198 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 shocked at her levity the greater appeared to be 
 Dorothy's delight. There was a little fat priest 
 who came each day to instruct the family in Spanish, 
 who was a special object of Dorothy's satire. He 
 thought he understood the English language, and 
 indeed if English were spoken exactly as it is written, 
 and if men to-day actually talked the language of 
 Addison and Sheridan, probably the English of the 
 good padre would have been comprehensible. He 
 had read much. He understood thoroughly the 
 rules of etymology and syntax. He had devoted 
 more energy to the task than a Spaniard commonly 
 devotes to anything but he told us that he had 
 learned the language without a master. This we 
 could have divined for as he talked away to us in 
 easy, pleasant, fluent fashion, it was often quite im- 
 possible to tell what part of his conversation was in 
 this alleged English and what was in Spanish, the 
 two languages sounded so much alike. Dorothy 
 would gravely talk to him in the same jargon which 
 she imitated to perfection, and he appeared to under- 
 stand her more readily than the rest of us. Don 
 Jose was a timid creature, a very Don Abbondio 
 for cowardice, and he frankly gave us a comical 
 description of losing his voice through terror on the 
 occasion of an earthquake while he was saying mass 
 in a country village, and of taking to his heels, fol- 
 lowed by the entire populace. Dorothy, who had 
 some little talent in drawing, made a sketch of this 
 interesting scene which she gave to me with instruc-
 
 DOROTHY DAY 199 
 
 tions (similar to those on steamers in regard to the 
 use of life preservers), in case I should ever be 
 caught in a similar predicament. 
 
 My stay in Cuba was prolonged some time after 
 the winter vacation was at an end. The truth was I 
 could not tear myself away from Dorothy, so I 
 came back with the Days in the latter part of 
 January. I had a good deal of extra work to make 
 up on account of my absence, but this was no great 
 hardship, and now that I was nearing the end of my 
 four years' course, I found myself in the front rank 
 of my class and this in spite of the fact that I had 
 entered college very young. My classmates, too, 
 had conferred a number of honors upon me; and 
 when I returned from Cuba I found that they had 
 elected me class orator. I could not but look with 
 some satisfaction upon my academic career.
 
 Book III 
 
 THE WAR
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CALL TO ARMS 
 
 IT was amid such ocurrences as the foregoing, 
 scenes commonplace enough in the lives of the well- 
 to-do, that there broke in the discordant clash of 
 arms. For this was the time of the beginning of 
 the greatest war in American history. There had 
 long been mutterings of the approaching storm. 
 The political struggle which preceded the outbreak 
 of hostilities had been bitter and desperate. In this 
 struggle the great question to be decided was whether 
 a vast region west of the Mississippi, which was still 
 unorganized, was to be devoted to negro slavery. 
 Douglas had thrown the apple of discord among 
 the contending factions when, in 1854, he secured 
 the repeal of the "time honored" Missouri Com- 
 promise, which had fixed the line between slavery 
 and freedom. After this repeal three great parties 
 had struggled for supremacy the South, with its 
 claim that the constitution by its inherent power car- 
 ried slavery into all the territories, the Northern 
 Democracy insisting that these territories should 
 regulate their own "domestic institutions" in their 
 own way, and the new Republican party declaring 
 that it was both the right and the duty of Con- 
 gress to prohibit slavery therein. In 1860 there
 
 204 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 appeared, indeed, a fourth party which pretended 
 to ignore these burning issues, but like all negative 
 forces, it counted for little in the contest. It was 
 the division among their adversaries that gave the 
 victory to the Republicans and elected Abraham 
 Lincoln, whereupon the South, considering the 
 choice an attack upon its most cherished institution, 
 determined to break up the Union. State after 
 State seceded, the Confederacy was organized, and 
 with the fall of Sumter began the stern reality of 
 Civil War. 
 
 It is hard to-day to realize the intolerance of the 
 fury which swept over the country at this dreadful 
 time. The man who in the South gave utterance 
 to "incendiary doctrines" concerning the abolition 
 of slavery was not permitted to live, while in the 
 North those who opposed the general wave of 
 patriotism which swept over the country after the 
 fall of Sumter were often compelled to seek safety 
 either in silence or in flight. The President called 
 for seventy-five thousand volunteers, a number piti- 
 ful enough by the side of the enormous armaments 
 afterward required by the exigencies of the war; 
 but then it seemed very large. The quotas were 
 quickly filled. But soon new levies were needed, 
 new requisitions were made, and it was not long 
 until it seemed clear, at least to me, that the govern- 
 ment ought to have the services of every young man 
 in the North who loved his country and who was 
 able to go to the field.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 205 
 
 In the matter of my Quakerism, although I had 
 strayed far enough from the fold, and had become 
 to all outward appearances one of the world's 
 people, yet there were certain things absorbed in 
 early life that were still clinging to me closer than 
 I knew, forming part of my essential nature, and 
 although lying dormant upon ordinary occasions 
 under conduct that was often frivolous and foolish, 
 yet coming forth unexpectedly at critical moments, 
 and controlling my actions, almost against my will. 
 Among these things was the habit, acquired in child- 
 hood, of following implicitly every strong and clear 
 conviction of duty. I might argue as much as I 
 liked that there was no illumination of the spirit, 
 no certainty that "the voice within" was telling me 
 the truth, yet the habit of obedience was there, and 
 in really important matters if I once definitely saw 
 a thing was right, that was the end of the matter, I 
 had to do it, and I must consider blessed every man 
 of clear intelligence in whom that habit has been 
 implanted in early life. 
 
 There were points of Quaker doctrine, however, 
 that took no deep root in me, such for instance as 
 the peace principles of the society for they seemed 
 to me not workable. I felt that all government was 
 and must be founded upon force, that if there were 
 a few bad men in the world determined to use their 
 power, they could prevail against a whole universe 
 of non-resistants. So I was a poor Quaker as far as 
 fighting was concerned. Yet there was another
 
 206 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 "testimony" borne by the Society that affected me 
 profoundly. It was the protest which was very 
 early uttered by Quakerism against all forms of 
 bondage and oppression, both that spiritual oppres- 
 sion in matters of conscience and belief from which 
 Friends had so greatly suffered in the times of the 
 persecutions, and also a protest against all forms of 
 traffic in human beings. For the Quakers were per- 
 haps the pioneers in the agitation that culminated in 
 the overthrow of African slavery. The Quaker, 
 Benjamin Lundy, was the first of the Abolitionists, 
 the predecessor of William Lloyd Garrison; nearly 
 all the members of the Society took an interest in 
 anti-slavery movements, and some, like Lucretia 
 Mott, Isaac T. Hopper and Levi Coffin, were very 
 prominent therein. Among the "queries" respect- 
 ing the state of the society to be answered at the 
 periodical "meetings of business" was one inquiring 
 whether Friends were "clear" of participating in any 
 form in the traffic in human flesh. Even in the 
 South members of the Society generally refrained 
 from owning slaves, while in the North they were 
 most active in aiding fugitives to escape across the 
 Canadian border. 
 
 The family in which I had been born and bred 
 had its full share of work in the anti-slavery agita- 
 tion. My dear little auntie always insisted that 
 everything which came into the house should be the 
 product of free labor. No cotton, rice, hemp, coffee 
 or anything else would she use unless she was satis-
 
 DOROTHY DAY 207 
 
 fied that no slave had had a hand in its production. 
 She would not touch a plate of ice-cream or pre- 
 
 J. 7 
 
 serves at a friend's house until she knew that the 
 sugar had not been defiled by the traffic inhuman 
 flesh. She regarded the products of slave labor as 
 stolen goods. The slave had been robbed' 'of ' tiis 1 
 wages for producing them, and to her they were 
 unclean. She used to attend the meetings of the 
 Anti-slavery Society, which was sometimes 'f'aftrler 
 a dangerous thing to do, since rioting and blood- 
 shed occasionally occurred in the efforts to breakup' 
 these assemblies. 
 
 All our family were Abolitio.nists and our house 
 had been a station on the Underground Railroad to 
 Canada. Grandmother especially had been very 
 active in her efforts to succor ' f tHe !j mdgM VAu 1 ! 1 
 often heard mother tell of irr ^a : r^ >;; a jiegfci who 
 had been concealed for months in our house while 
 his pursuers were sea rchifig 1 tOttn elsewhere, as 
 well as of the lawsuit that F6fibj^ b ^ :lf$Bfe?V 
 own appearance on the^wfrriess stand whe^e M' baf- 
 fled the lawyers of the slaveholder, and 
 
 keeping strictly to the t'lKith; ! Ud nothing of wh 
 they wanted to know." Fcrf-' when the trial came on 
 and the rest of the family went off to some unknown 
 place in New Jersey, sH J w^Ieft alone in New 
 York for the very', reason' that she was the only 
 one who knew nothing' about the hegro, having; been 
 absent while he was secreted in the house. There- 
 fore her examination came to an untimely end, for
 
 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 she did not even know where the rest of the family 
 had gone, they having expressly left no word. So 
 in the summing up all that could be said was that 
 "Mrs,. ;TJ^rivewell and her family had been spirited 
 aw.ay.;.$(pbpdy knew how and nobody knew where." 
 Ijt;was with great unction that mother used to relate 
 th^s (jircum. stance and tell of the quiet return of the 
 family jiftef^he skies had cleared again. 
 - j'^afl jncleedjjpersonal knowledge of some of these 
 interesting ,scene % One morning when we were at 
 breakfast theje.w^s driven up to the door, by an 
 ill-looking driver, a large family of negroes crowded 
 
 into a- back.; Ther : e,was the old grandmother, the 
 i inn jiijT7r;<nn< ... .*? f ' 
 
 man andhi^wij^anctthe little children, one or them 
 a fcafty. T/^y^ad, |5epi sent on to us by some Friend 
 
 further soy th.ijiad traveled all night, had crossed the 
 i \j\'->.\ f^aOj HI. 
 
 ferry in^e e, a rly. .morning, and were consigned to 
 us for /urt^er. ^^ed^tip.4, , I remember the terror- 
 stricken faces P^ ( th|e j^egroes f y the obvious curiosity of 
 
 the driver, andiOur f ears when we dismissed him that 
 < [jTrnmiTg pijywanoi . .. . 
 
 he would infor;ri|.lWv^uth.ojjities. We gave the fugi- 
 tives a hasty breakfast,, pi;oyfaed them with funds 
 and condnci:e^,,tjjieftj to anoih^^ Friend's house in 
 town untilj'jt^^utjiic sent on Vith greater safety 
 
 ^v^fe; .rfsoa (i! Tio iriLv/ vlim 
 
 No ppe ^ f ^h,os^ .^ecoljec^ip^ begins after slavery 
 
 was abolished, can quite realizq thf^eep fervor of 
 t^e,.^bqli^p^is^s, rj ThRy ^ejq wiHing 4fO,undergo any 
 kind of mar^y^fiom, in the hlessefl^work^of setting 
 free the caprtive,,, while t:he sympathiz.ers w^th slavery
 
 DOROTHY DAY 209 
 
 regarded them as Pariahs, thieves, and even traitors, 
 for had they not declared that the matchless constitu- 
 tion of our fathers was itself a covenant with death? 
 Our family did not hold these extreme views of the 
 Garrisonians, but for all that we came in for our 
 share of the opprobrium. 
 
 It was amid such influences that I had spent my 
 early years. I had read with breathless eagerness 
 the accounts in the "Anti-Slavery Almanac" of the 
 separation of families, the flogging, the branding; 
 sometimes, indeed, the burning at the stake of help- 
 less negroes, and my heart had been stirred by out- 
 rages which were the natural fruit of the deplorable 
 institution of slavery. I recall among other mem- 
 ories of early boyhood, a small paper-covered book 
 entitled "The Narrative of James Williams A 
 Slave," giving a detailed account of the tortures in- 
 flicted by one "Huckstep," an overseer, a man who 
 was generally intoxicated with peach brandy, and 
 flogged women to death and swore dreadfully! I 
 was especially interested in the "Life of Peter Still," 
 for I knew Peter ; he came often to our house while he 
 was preparing his book for publication, in order to 
 raise the money to liberate Vina his wife. Some one 
 else wrote it for him, for he was not able even to read. 
 Peter had been kidnaped and taken South when he 
 was a boy, and had suffered much, but at last he 
 fell into the hands of a good master, a Jew, who 
 allowed him to work at night for others and save 
 money with which he bought his freedom, and I
 
 210 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 remember the comments we made, how splendid it 
 was that a Jew would act so honorably when by law 
 he might have kept both the money and the man. 
 
 I read the life of Fred Douglas and the biography 
 of Linda, a slave woman who sometimes used to 
 work for us, who had been kept concealed for years 
 in the low attic of a house near her master's planta- 
 tion (a room where she could not stand upright) 
 before she finally made her escape. I read the ac- 
 counts of the fugitives who were guided for weeks 
 and months by the North Star on their way to 
 liberty. I read "Helpers' Impending Crisis," that 
 "incendiary" book, the mere possession of which 
 sometimes gave short shrift to the luckless wight 
 upon whose person it was found. "Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin," however, I had not read, because "Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin" was a novel, and at that early period 
 of my life all novels were forbidden. 
 
 Thus from my childhood there was begotten in 
 my heart an intense hatred of that baleful system 
 which afterwards wrought such havoc in our coun- 
 try and which, though long extinct, has left deep 
 scars that sometimes bleed afresh even to-day. 
 
 I well remember the day when the news carrie of 
 the invasion of Harper's Ferry by John Brown. I 
 had risen very early that morning and had come 
 down to the dining-room while the lights were still 
 burning. Uncle Ephraim held the newspaper in 
 his thin hands, which were trembling. A strange 
 light glittered in his eye; his words were incoherent
 
 DOROTHY DAY 211 
 
 as he handed me the paper. How solemn and silent 
 was the breakfast! No one spoke in approval of 
 the act, for how could we as consistent Friends, ap- 
 prove of a lawless deed of violence and blood? But 
 what burning sympathy there was in the flushed 
 faces and how earnestly the boy of the household 
 hoped that the oppressed negroes would win the 
 liberty which was their right! I can see now the 
 madness of it all, the crime, indeed, of thus attempt- 
 ing to let loose upon the people of the South the 
 passions of an enslaved race. Then I could see only 
 the auction block, the lash and the wrongs that had 
 been heaped upon the slaves, and this great wicked- 
 ness done by the freest and foremost people in all 
 Christendom ! How I prayed that God might set 
 free the slave and bring to naught the pride of his 
 oppressors! And when the attempt failed, as was 
 inevitable, how bitter the disappointment! How we 
 watched every step in the trial which followed ! How 
 we hung breathless over the words that described 
 the heroic constancy of the wounded man in his bed 
 in the court-room; how our hearts were torn with 
 anguish in the fatal hour when we knew that his 
 life was to be offered as a sacrifice upon the gallows 
 to the race that he would have delivered from bond- 
 age! How eagerly we bought the "Life of John 
 Brown," which appeared soon afterward, written 
 by Redpath, his associate in Kansas! All these 
 things can be understood only by the few survivors 
 of the thousands who felt as we did and whose hopes
 
 212 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 and prayers and sufferings were the inspiration of 
 that great song whose notes still awaken a thrill as 
 keen and deep as any of our national melodies. 
 
 And now the war had come, the war for freedom, 
 the war for the preservation of the Union. Another 
 call had been made by the President for troops and 
 I felt as if it had been addressed to me personally. 
 It was high time to make up my mind whether I 
 would go or stay. All night I lay awake thinking 
 it over. Poor mother! It would nearly break her 
 heart! I certainly did not desire to go. I was just 
 completing my college course. I had been chosen 
 class orator and expected soon to graduate with 
 honors. But then came the argument: "Upon 
 whom had our country the right to call if not upon 
 such as I?" There never was a better cause, the 
 preservation of the world's great Republic, the 
 transmission intact to future times of that precious 
 heritage which had come from our revolutionary 
 fathers. Nay, more ; it was to be a better, purer and 
 greater republic than it had ever been for my in- 
 stinct told me that slavery could not long survive 
 the overthrow of the Confederacy. And then the 
 President who had culled us, Lincoln, the great- 
 hearted, honest, gentle, magnanimous ! How tender 
 were the words of his first inaugural where he be- 
 sought the wanderers to return! 
 
 He had been our choice for the great office he 
 was filling. But of what value the support of his 
 partisans, if at the trying moment they would not
 
 DOROTHY DAY 213 
 
 come forth at his call to sustain him in performing 
 the heavy duties they had cast upon his shoulders? 
 And the poor slaves ! We had worked these many 
 years, here a little and there a little, to right their 
 terrible wrongs; we had helped to rescue a few 
 families from bondage, but now when the supreme 
 moment had come, which would decide whether 
 slavery should live or die, a decision involving the 
 destiny of millions, should I shrink from devoting my 
 services perhaps my life to the great cause? The 
 slave power had lifted its mailed hand against the 
 best government on earth, and woe to the country, 
 and to the world if the children of the great republic 
 held back when they were called to defend her ! It 
 was curious, too, how visions of Dorothy mingled 
 with these thoughts. I had little reason to think 
 that she had any great care whether I went or 
 stayed, and yet the thought came again and again, 
 "I shall be worthy of her only if I do my duty." 
 When the morning light streamed through the cur- 
 tains of my little room, my mind was made up. I 
 would tell my father first. How would he take it? 
 He was a minister of the Society of Friends, and 
 that society had always "disowned" any of its mem- 
 bers who took up arms and engaged in carnal war- 
 fare. I cared very little about the "disowning" on 
 my own account, but such a thing would be a humilia- 
 tion to him, and he had always loved me so tenderly 
 that the thought gave me much uneasiness. Still 
 there was nothing .else to be done. I could not be
 
 2i 4 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 coward enough to run away, so after breakfast I 
 told him all. He was deeply moved, but there was 
 no resistance on his part to my purpose. He looked 
 at me for a few moments with tears in his eyes and 
 then said: "Well, my boy, if thy conscience tells 
 thee that this thing is right, it is not for me to judge 
 thee." I knew from this how deeply he sympathized 
 with me. Indeed what can the Quaker say when he 
 is told "I believe this to be my duty." To him the 
 "inner light" is the supreme law and each must 
 judge for himself whither it leads. The prinicple 
 may be disorganizing, but it leads at least to toler- 
 ance and charity. Well, I was not disowned. In- 
 deed, there were so many young Quakers at that 
 time in the same boat that to disown us all would have 
 greatly thinned the ranks of the Society, and so just 
 was the cause and so strong our reasons for going, 
 that although the act was a dreadful breach of the 
 "Discipline," I fear it met with a certain sympathy 
 and even tacit approval on the part of those in 
 authority. The meeting was much infected with 
 the war spirit. 
 
 Mother, as I had feared, was nearly heartbroken 
 when she heard of my determination, and moved 
 about the house pale and silent under the weight of 
 a great sorrow. I felt a keen remorse at her suf- 
 fering. She uttered not a word of reproach, but I 
 could see it all in her eyes, which seemed to say to 
 me: "My one child! the single joy and comfort of 
 my life, and he forsakes me, all for an idea ! What
 
 DOROTHY DAY 215 
 
 to us are the wrongs of others nay, what is even 
 our country that it should outweigh a mother's 
 love I M But there was nothing now that could shake 
 my purpose. 
 
 Then came again the thought of Dorothy. What 
 would she think? I called upon her the second night 
 after my resolution was taken. She was alone. We 
 talked for some time about other things and then I 
 spoke of the matter rather casually, as something 
 in which perhaps she would not be greatly interested. 
 But she became instantly very serious. "Do you 
 mean it?" she asked, and when I assured her that I 
 did, "When do you go?" I told her in a very few 
 days, that the company in which I had determined to 
 enlist would leave for the front within a week. 
 "Why have you done this?" she asked, and I 
 explained to her fully why I believed it was my 
 duty. She was silent for a few moments, and then 
 looking at me with as bright a smile as ever I saw 
 upon her face, she said: "You have done right; you 
 have done right! Oh how I wish I were a man!" 
 Her warm sympathy (almost the first I had ever 
 had from her) was very grateful to me, but in it 
 there was not the least sign of regret at parting with 
 me, and I thought as I walked homeward, "Well, 
 she has never loved me, why should she care?" 
 little dreamed what happened after the door had 
 closed on me and she had locked herself up in her 
 own room. I did not hear until long afterwards.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ARMY LIFE 
 
 To a young man in the vigor of health the first 
 impressions of army life are far from disagreeable. 
 At this time the hot days had not yet come, every- 
 thing was green with the freshness of early summer, 
 the constant out-of-door existence had its stimulating 
 effect upon my spirits, and I felt in a way as if I 
 were beginning the world over again. Our camp 
 near Washington was situated in a broad meadow 
 by a woodland. The men in my company were for 
 the most part energetic, intelligent fellows, and al- 
 though their interests in life had been quite different 
 from my own, and some of them seemed quite igno- 
 rant of the studies which had formed the bulk of 
 my education, I found their company far from dis- 
 agreeable. 
 
 It was still a considerable time before we were 
 actively engaged. To our great disappointment our 
 regiment was detained for the defense of Washing- 
 ton, and during the first few months there was little 
 to vary the monotony of camp life. We were drilled 
 a great deal, but it appeared to me that much energy 
 was wasted upon the mere ornamental parts of the 
 manual our wheeling and facing this way and that 
 and holding our arms in all sorts of positions as if
 
 DOROTHY DAY 217 
 
 we were to go on parade or review rather than to 
 actual battle, and I felt sure that we had far too little 
 target practice and no means whatever of correctly 
 estimating distances when we should afterwards be 
 placed upon the firing line. 
 
 There are a good many things quite apart from 
 mere military evolutions that the young recruit is 
 sure to learn in camp. He finds, for example, that 
 military service, at least among volunteer sol- 
 diers, is in many ways a great leveler of class dis- 
 tinctions. Where all alike have to perform menial 
 duties cooking, digging trenches, cleaning the 
 camp, etc. social rank counts for nothing and mere 
 book knowledge stands for very little except so far 
 as it is the index of general intelligence. The col- 
 lege man has scarcely any advantage over the artisan 
 or the farmer's boy and I soon came to respect very 
 highly men whom I would hardly have noticed in 
 civil life. At first it struck me as remarkable that it 
 was often an uneducated man, one who could not 
 even talk good English, who was the quickest to 
 learn the manual and the most handy in perform- 
 ing the unexpected duties which tKe sudden exigencies 
 of army life required. Captain Jessup commanded 
 our company. He had received his commission on 
 account of his father's political influence with the 
 governor and at first he was neither liked nor re- 
 spected. He was not merely an ignorant man, but 
 seemed to be one of less than ordinary capacity. He 
 would give his orders to us from the manual and it
 
 218 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 was often plain that he did not understand the text. 
 Once, seeing in the book the direction "Right or 
 left oblique (as the case may be)," he repeated it 
 literally, and roared out to us in stentorian tones 
 the command "Right or left oblique, as the case may 
 be ! March I" It is not easy to imagine the confusion 
 resulting from such leadership. We had very little 
 respect for Jessup until after the first battle, when his 
 enthusiasm and his superb personal courage made us 
 forget all that had gone before. He seemed to be- 
 come another man under fire, and he led a charge 
 upon a small battery with such cheers and oaths and 
 wild gesticulations that no man who was half a man 
 could have lagged behind. 
 
 But I am anticipating. When the order came for 
 us to go to the front, we were filled with delight, 
 and cheer after cheer went up from the regiment 
 when it was announced. It was a glorious summer 
 morning, clear and cool, when we broke up our 
 camp. The dew 'had gathered heavily upon the 
 grass during the night so that the drops glittered 
 when lit by the early sunbeans, like innumerable 
 jewels; and still brighter did the sun flash from our 
 sword-bayonets and the polished barrels of our rifles. 
 Before us the woodland on our left cast a long in- 
 viting shadow across the road we were to take. 
 Other regiments near us were breaking camp at the 
 same time, and one by one they fell into line on the 
 broad plain at our right. Martial music resounded 
 through the air at intervals, and then the stirring
 
 DOROTHY DAY 219 
 
 rattle of the drum made our hearts beat fast and 
 high with exciting anticipations. The colors of the 
 legiment, still bright and virgin, untouched by bloody 
 contact with the foe, fluttered tremulously in the 
 light wind, and the steeds of the officers pranced and 
 caracoled before us as their riders shouted their 
 commands. We started on our way with cheers and 
 songs, but when noon came we began to realize the 
 meaning of a long march under the fierce glare of 
 the Southern sun. Our heavy knapsacks became 
 too great a burden and we began to throw away the 
 treasures we had stored in them, the extra shoes and 
 blankets, the books, everything indeed except articles 
 of the uttermost necessity. Occasionally a man 
 would drop by the way, overcome with heat and 
 weariness, but would afterwards struggle on again 
 and join us when we halted for a meal or for the 
 night. There were very few wilful stragglers among 
 the early volunteers. On the second morning we 
 started again full of enthusiasm and it was not long 
 till we began to hear shots in front of us, at first 
 mere desultory firing, then a more continuous and 
 regular rattle of musketry and the occasional boom- 
 ing of cannon. Evidently we were going into action. 
 We were still too green in the service to know just 
 what that meant and the firing was too distant to 
 give us any great uneasiness, yet we became more 
 thoughtful, we sang our songs as on the previous 
 day, but not with the same careless joy. Soon we 
 passed a field hospital erected in a small ravine where
 
 220 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 the banks might afford some protection from the 
 enemy's lire and as we advanced we began to meet 
 the wounded straggling to the rear. Some had 
 their hands on their blouses at the place where the 
 ball had struck, some had gashes on the head or 
 across the face, one was clutching his abdomen a 
 bad case, with small hope of recovery. 
 
 We asked of those who were able to speak with 
 us how the fight was going and they answered that 
 we were beaten and that the slaughter was awful. 
 This filled our spirits with apprehension, for we 
 had not yet learned how prone are the wounded to 
 regard the battle as lost. Behind these men came 
 others, bearing upon stretchers those who were too 
 badly wounded to walk. These were covered with 
 blankets, occasionally even the head was concealed. 
 We would inquire of the bearers, "Where is he 
 wounded?" putting our question in a low voice, with 
 that involuntary awe which the presence of great suf- 
 fering inspires. Generally they answered us "In 
 the knee," "In the foot," "In the shoulder"; some- 
 times they said nothing, but gloomily shook their 
 heads. And in such cases we knew that the wound 
 was fatal. Most of the men they carried were 
 groaning. One of them screamed outright. The 
 cries of agony from a strong man are pitiful and 
 unnerving, and soon the drums began to beat loudly 
 and we could hear nothing else. That is their sad 
 office! But their beating could not stifle the look 
 of anguish, the open, panting mouths, the deathly
 
 DOROTHY DAY 221 
 
 pallor of the face, the writhing and the dripping of 
 the blood under the stretcher. 
 
 After the wounded men had passed, our songs 
 began again, for we needed them to keep up our 
 spirits. A little further on, sentinels were posted 
 with instructions to stop every man going to the rear 
 who could not show blood, and the few stragglers 
 who attempted to pass and avoid battle were driven 
 back again. We asked these sentinels how the fight 
 was going. They answered that the enemy had 
 made an attack and had been temporarily repulsed, 
 but it was believed he was receiving reinforcements 
 and would soon renew it. We had come they said, 
 just in time to fill up a dangerous gap in the line. 
 We now saw a regiment emerging from a large 
 woodland in front of us and taking position in a 
 wheat field on the right, and still other bodies of 
 troops, we could not tell how many, all making a 
 flank movement in the same direction. Then the 
 order came that we were to occupy and hold the 
 woodland they had left. As we were moving for- 
 ward to take this position, a distressing sight con- 
 fronted us. On each side of the road was a stake- 
 and-rider fence and at the angles lay the wounded 
 who had fallen in the immediate neighborhood who 
 could not yet be taken to the hospital. Blankets 
 had been put across those angles at the top to shel- 
 ter them from the fierce sun. Some of them were 
 calling for water and we gave it to them from our 
 canteens. A few of these men were in gray. They
 
 222 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 were Confederates who had been left behind when 
 their comrades had been forced to retreat. One of 
 them had his leg torn away and pointed to another 
 who was still more horribly mutilated. He grinned 
 at us as we passed and cried: "That's what you're 
 coming to. You'll catch it in the woods." Another 
 man who was dying cursed us as we went by; another 
 maliciously uncovered for us the face of a corpse 
 that was lying at his side and showed us the bettles 
 that were beginning to gather upon it. Other dead 
 men were scattered along the road and in the fields 
 that bordered it. We were beginning to find out 
 now what war meant. There was no more singing. 
 We entered the woods and deployed to the left, 
 moving caution si v. with rickets thrown out some 
 distance in advance. No enemy was there. But 
 there were manv reminders of the recent struggle. 
 The dead were Iv'ncr around us, not in any great 
 numbers, but distributed irresrularlv through the 
 forest. A few of the wounded who had been over- 
 looked were still there groaning. We sent for 
 stretchers and haB them taken awav. The pickets 
 reported that there was a stubblefield beyond the 
 woods rising gradually to a low ridge, with a stone 
 fence at the top, and a negro told us that there were 
 cannon just beyond. Fxcept a few pickets, no enemy 
 was visible. We imagined the Confederates were 
 forming behind the ridge, and our supposition 
 proved to be correct. Our orders were "Hold the
 
 DOROTHY DAY 223 
 
 woods," so we could advance no further but were 
 compelled to await their approach. 
 
 There was now a delay of two hours. It seemed 
 like days to us. There is nothing more trying to 
 raw troops than this expectancy. We filled our 
 canteens at a small brook that ran through the for- 
 est, and ate our hard-tack, though with slender ap- 
 petites, as we awaited the inevitable. 
 
 A cannon shot in front of us announced the be- 
 ginning of the attack. Other shots followed and 
 in a moment more a shell exploded at the foot of a 
 tree. The tree came crashing down in the midst 
 of the company, but no one was hurt. So these 
 shells were really not so dangerous as they seemed 1 
 But soon another dropped in our midst. The man 
 next to me on the line was lifting the canteen to 
 his lips; he fell forward with a groan and never 
 spoke again. Death was now coming pretty close. 
 That man had shared my tent and been an intimate 
 companion in the camp. I seemed to hear a voice cry 
 "Next!" but I stifled my agitation. I would have 
 given all I possessed if I could have hid myself in 
 the earth all but my self-respect. I couldn't quite 
 give up that, so I had to stand and take my chances. 
 There was no enemy in sight, no one to shoot, no 
 glory, no honor we must simply stay there and 
 await our destiny. The order came: "Lie down!" 
 "Lie close!" No second instruction was needed. 
 We lay there half an hour, the shells crashing 
 through the trees not far away. Not many of us
 
 224 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 were injured. The shells were badly aimed and 
 most of them fell short. Once I heard a horrible 
 scream. I knew the voice it was Downing, of 
 Company A, the merriest comrade in the regiment. 
 His arm had been torn off. I had ceased to care for 
 the shells, but the shriek unnerved me. It is a bad 
 thing to hear a scream like that ! At last the sounds 
 of cannonading died and we began to hope the 
 enemy had given up his purpose. But the pickets 
 came running in and cried: "They are charging the 
 wood, a whole brigade is coming!" Still we could 
 see nobody. 
 
 It seemed to me then that a mistake had been 
 made in thus posting us in the middle of the forest. 
 If we had been at the edge of the wood we could 
 have seen the approaching forces as they crossed the 
 field and could have decimated their ranks from 
 our concealment while they were in the open, but 
 among the trees we could only fight them on equal 
 terms from such shelter as each man could make for 
 himself. As I think of it now, however, our colonel 
 had done better than we knew, for the enemy had 
 supposed we were close to the open field when he 
 shattered the edge of the woods with his artillery 
 and left us almost unharmed beyond. We could 
 now hear what seemed an innumerable multitude 
 yelling like wild beasts as they burst into the forest. 
 This was the trying moment for us. Would we 
 stand or flee? No man quite knows beforehand 
 what he will do. Was it courage that kept us in
 
 DOROTHY DAY 225 
 
 our places, or was it the greater fear of disgrace? 
 We heard the voice of our colonel as if he were 
 managing an unruly horse : "Steady ! boys, steady 1" 
 and no one broke the ranks. We had stood the first 
 great test. Each man, however, sought the pro- 
 tection of some tree or boulder or fallen log and 
 held his gun in readiness, awaiting the approach of 
 the foe. The underbrush was thick and the enemy 
 could no longer advance with speed. Now for the 
 first time we began to see the gray-coats. We took 
 aim with care, and though our marksmanship was 
 none of the best, a good many of them dropped be- 
 fore our fire. Then they stopped and sought shelter 
 as we had done, and each man for himself did what 
 mischief he could to his antagonist. The aim on 
 both sides was too high, and we could see the twigs 
 and leaves and small branches dropping everywhere 
 as if shaken by an autumn wind. Soon the smoke 
 became dense and it was only for an instant when 
 it would drift away that we could fire with any 
 effect, but that moment was the time of greatest 
 danger to ourselves. We could still hear occasion- 
 ally the cries of a wounded man, but we paid less 
 attention to this than at first; we were too busy 
 with our own work of destruction. I even thought, 
 "This is by no means as bad as I have pictured it," 
 and it occurred to me that the great battle paintings 
 I had seen were much exaggerated. The time came, 
 however, when no picture nor description nor dream 
 could outstrip the reality. But that was afterwards.
 
 226 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 The firing in the woods lasted perhaps half an 
 hour. In the meanwhile we could hear a sharp 
 engagement going on in the wheat field at our right 
 and the sound of cheering which appeared to ad- 
 vance. I could begin to tell the difference between 
 the short, sharp rebel yell and the prolonged cheer of 
 our own men. Evidently our troops there were 
 driving back the Confederates, and this continued 
 until the line in front of us, being outflanked, and 
 the position no longer tenable, our assailants began 
 to withdraw. We pressed on after them, firing as 
 rapidly as we could, and I noticed that more of their 
 number were killed in the retreat than while they 
 were facing us. So it was really more dangerous 
 to withdraw than to advance ! It is a good thing for 
 a soldier to learn that lesson early. 
 
 At the edge of the wood we halted, and looking 
 up to the stone wall on the crest of the ridge in front 
 of us over which the gray-coats were now passing, 
 we realized that behind it must be the battery which 
 had opened the engagement. We rushed forward 
 at once to charge it. And here it was that Captain 
 Jessup's wild fury communicated its contagion to 
 us, and redeemed him in our eyes. We captured 
 only one gun, which could not be limbered in time 
 to escape us. We saw the rest going off at a gallop 
 as we crossed the wall. We had no orders to ad- 
 vance further, so we remained where we were. And 
 now the wind rose suddenly, we heard behind us a 
 warning sound of dreadful portent, and looking back
 
 DOROTHY DAY 227 
 
 saw that the woods were on fire and that a terrible 
 calamity must await the men who had fallen in the 
 timber. The shells which had exploded at the be- 
 ginning of the engagement had ignited the under- 
 brush in several places. Those fire were small, and 
 nobody notice them amid the smoke and excitement 
 of the fight and it was some time before they spread. 
 At last when the wind rose, the fire caught the large 
 trees and the edge of the forest became a sheet of 
 flame. Wounded men who could not extricate them- 
 selves were lying just beyond. They shrieked in 
 terror and agony as the flames swept towards them, 
 but we could not reach them and they were stifled 
 with smoke and burned to a cinder before our eyes. 
 Most of them were Confederates, but a few were 
 our own comrades. As soon as we could enter the 
 woods we sought the charred remains and gave them 
 burial. 
 
 We bivouacked on the stubblefield that night. 
 Our enthusiasm was gone, but a more determined 
 feeling, perhaps quite as valuable in a soldier's 
 makeup had taken its place. We had behaved with 
 credit in our first fight. The action had been one 
 of no great importance and would hardly be recalled 
 now among the battles of the war, but we had been 
 successful and had acquired some of that confidence 
 that comes with success. Afterwards we were not 
 always so fortunate. For a long time we were more 
 often on the retreat than on the advance. And 
 the repeated defeats on the Peninsula, at Manassas,
 
 228 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, scarcely re- 
 deemed by the indecisive victories of South Moun- 
 tain and Antietam, tried our souls greatly, before 
 the tide began to turn in our favor.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SOLDIERLY CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 I SHALL not relate in detail the history of all our 
 campaigns but merely refer to the few incidents 
 that mark the changes in character that come with 
 a soldier's experience. Naturally the value of hu- 
 man life, so great in times of peace, was little re- 
 garded. Death was so common among us that we 
 thought lightly of it. There was of course a pang 
 when one comrade after another was missing at the 
 campfire or failed to report at roll-call, but we had 
 too much on hand to allow us to spend our time in 
 grieving, and we might ourselves "turn up our toes" 
 before another sundown. What difference who 
 went first or who went last? Yet our duty no less 
 than our safety required of us that we should not 
 expose ourselves rashly and we became more and 
 more careful as our experience in the service ad- 
 vanced, to take no unnecessary risk but to protect 
 ourselves in whatever way we could from hostile 
 fire. Indeed this caution was often mistaken by 
 some of the new recruits for timidity and we would 
 sometimes see a contemptuous smile on their faces 
 while they were exposing themselves out of mere 
 bravado to needless dangers. Many was the sharp 
 reproof we gave them for their temerity and those
 
 2 3 o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 who survived grew to be careful like ourselves as 
 time went by. 
 
 Doubtless there were occasions when our patriot- 
 ism flagged, when we would have been glad to have 
 been away from the terrible scenes we were forced 
 each day to witness, but this was rather a fleeting 
 impulse than a deep conviction, and there were very 
 few moments when, if the matter were calmly con- 
 sidered we would not have enlisted again, with the 
 full knowledge of all that was before us. War is 
 a dreadful thing, but there is no better touchstone 
 for ascertaining how great is a man's love for his 
 country. 
 
 If life became of little importance in our eyes, 
 naturally the subordinate right of property was often 
 wholly disregarded. Fences, barns, dwellings, 
 crops; all were destroyed with impunity when they 
 interfered with military operations or when they 
 might be used to shelter or maintain the enemy. At 
 first this seemed hard upon the suffering population 
 of the country, but soon we thought no more of it. 
 First of all came our own natural right as it ap- 
 peared to us, to such food as we needed. We were 
 generally hungry, and if our haversacks were empty, 
 the bacon and corn and chickens that we found had 
 to supply our needs. We paid for them when we 
 could if not, they were not paid for. I remember 
 my horror when I first saw the bodies of the dead 
 rifled upon the field. Yet it was not long until I was 
 filling my cartridge box and haversack with am-
 
 DOROTHY DAY 231 
 
 munition and rations in the same ghoulish fashion, 
 or exchanging my shoes or my blanket for something 
 better that the owner would no longer need. Why 
 not? The service gained rather than lost by such 
 appropriation. 
 
 But if our moral sense concerning rights of 
 property was somewhat blunted, there was one 
 virtue that we held in far greater esteem than 
 civilians. The good soldier must be a man who has 
 no fear. This quality of courage we respected as 
 much in an enemy as in a friend. Once when we 
 had charged a battery, the driver of one of the gun 
 carriages had been unable to bring off his piece be- 
 fore we came up. He was just starting with it as 
 we arrived. We pointed our muskets at his head not 
 two yards away and ordered him to surrender. He 
 paid not the slightest attention, but whipped his horses 
 and started. His courage was so superb in the face 
 of inevitable death that we could not fire and actually 
 allowed him to drive his gun away. Bad soldiery 
 this, no doubt, but our admiration stifled every other 
 feeling and we cheered him as he escaped us. 
 
 In other cases we were more cruel than the laws 
 of war allowed. A sharpshooter had been firing at 
 our men from the crotch of a tree where he had 
 been hidden and protected by the trunk. He had 
 killed one of our lieutenants whom we greatly loved 
 and had wounded two other men. When we came 
 close to him he dropped his rifle, threw up his arms 
 and cried : "I surrender." Doubtless our duty was
 
 232 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 to let him come down and make him our prisoner. 
 But we were too furious for this. Half a dozen 
 balls went crashing through his skull and he dropped 
 heavily on the ground at our feet. 
 
 We could not but admire the bitter disdain with 
 which the high-bred Southern women met us at 
 the doorways of their plantation homes when we 
 sought water at the well or provisions from the 
 garden or the farm-yard, and the scorn with which 
 the girls watched us pass through the streets of their 
 villages and towns on our errand of destruction. 
 Though we would gladly have had a smile or a 
 friendly greeting, I am not sure but we thought the 
 more of them for hating the enemies of their friends 
 and kindred and for looking through us and over 
 us without a word or sign of recognition. 
 
 The gray-coats themselves bore us no such per- 
 sonal animosity. When they lay wounded side by 
 side with our men there was little difference be- 
 tween the help they would extend to an enemy or a 
 comrade in reaching some protecting tree or log, 
 or in sharing their tobacco, or the contents of their 
 canteens and haversacks. Beneath the contemptuous 
 epithets of "Yank" and "Reb" there lurked a silent 
 comradeship borne of mutual respect, of common 
 dangers, and of common sufferings. Except when 
 our passions were aroused by some immediate out- 
 rage, our feeling for the men in the enemy's ranks 
 was not personally hostile, and the desire at one
 
 DOROTHY DAY 233 
 
 moment to kill, and the next to succor, seemed as 
 natural as the change from cloud to sunshine. 
 
 The negroes that we saw on the plantations did 
 not appear half as eager for their freedom as T 
 had imagined. They did not rush to us and ask 
 protection or seek to escape under the shelter of 
 our presence, but commonly kept on at their work 
 as if no war existed and no emancipation was in 
 sight. True, they were always friendly, they would 
 give us what they could of their little stores, some- 
 times going hungry themselves that we might have 
 a hoe-cake, and supplying us with correct informa- 
 tion as to the position and doings of the enemy and 
 other things except one. We found that no 
 negro would betray his master or his master's 
 family. Was this affection, was it fear, or the 
 mere habit of servitude? No doubt there were 
 varied ingredients in this fidelity. But faithful he 
 was and kind, and now after the lapse of forty 
 years I am reluctant to believe the stories of the 
 wild passions of a savage race that threaten the 
 homes of the South and require the halter, the 
 torch and the mad fury of a lawless mob for the 
 protection of the women and children. 
 
 Heaven knows it was no love of glory, no mere 
 ambition that had drawn me to the war. I had 
 enlisted as a private soldier, though T might well 
 have had a lieutenant's commission if T had sought 
 the necessary "influence" to procure it. Yet once 
 in the fie!d T had a strong desire to distinguish my-
 
 234 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 self and win promotion and fame, not so much for 
 my personal satisfaction as on account of Dorothy, 
 whose image followed me everywhere, in the camp, 
 on the march, in the fight, and amid the sickening 
 scenes of the field hospital, and stimulated me to the 
 performance of my duty. 
 
 Our last interview, when she had spoken with 
 such approval of my going to the war, had filled 
 me with the most intense determination to act with 
 credit. After our first battle I received by mail a 
 copy of the New York Tribune in which the conduct 
 of our regiment was highly praised. It seemed to 
 me that the address had been written by her, though 
 the characters were different from those of her 
 ordinary handwriting and looked as though they 
 had been made by an unsteady hand. There was 
 no explanation nor did I hear from her in any other 
 way. My mother wrote me that the Days had 
 closed their house in the city but she did not know 
 where they had gone. I was sure that however 
 little affection Dorothy might have for me, she 
 would certainly have a friendly sympathy and pride 
 in my achievements, and that she would be disap- 
 pointed and humiliated if I failed. So I wanted an 
 opportunity to win what laurels I could. On the 
 death of Coporal Fletcher, at the battle of Seven 
 Pines, I was promoted to his place. At South Moun- 
 tain I became sergeant, and after Chancellorsville 
 (where we had rendered important service at the 
 time when Stonewall Jackson was killed), I received
 
 DOROTHY DAY 235 
 
 a lieutenant's commission. I was tempted to write 
 to Dorothy and tell her of my good fortune, but I 
 refrained. Experience had made me very shy of 
 saying anything to her in praise of my own achieve- 
 ments. 
 
 But there was one drawback to the inspiration 
 of Dorothy's image in my thoughts. It added ten- 
 fold to my fear of mutilation. How could I face 
 her, a cripple, mangled, torn, like the hundreds I 
 had seen after every battle, with God's image all 
 but obliterated? It is said that very few soldiers 
 go into an engagement without a presentiment that 
 this time they are to fall. The presentiment of death 
 I did not have, because I cared little for it, but the 
 presentiment of some dreadful wound constantly 
 beset me. Where would the ball strike? Would it 
 be here in my hand, or on the leg, or on the face; 
 and as I wondered, the frightful image rose before 
 me of a man borne by on a stretcher with grinning 
 teeth gaping from a cheek that had been torn away ! 
 It was the spectre of that face, side by side with 
 Dorothy's that haunted me as I slept in our bivouack 
 before the battle, and stood by me while we awaited 
 the enemy's attack, until my breath was stifled and 
 the sweat came dripping from every pore. Yet 
 through it all I trained myself not to flinch and never 
 to dodge the balls that whistled by, which is, indeed, 
 an unnecessary precaution after the danger is over, 
 but still one as natural and almost as hard to avoid 
 as not to close your eyelids when an insect flies
 
 236 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 against your eye. No one ever imagined the tor- 
 ments I suffered from the fear of bringing my 
 mutilated body into the presence of the woman I 
 loved. If such a fate should befall me I thought 
 often of suicide. I could not quite make up my 
 mind to that, but of one thing at least I grew deter- 
 mined. In such an event Dorothy should never see 
 me again. I would flee to the ends of the earth 
 before I would permit her to gaze upon such a 
 presence.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE INVASION OF PENNSYLVANIA , 
 
 
 
 THOSE who belong to a later generation and merely 
 know of the Civil War from the record of it as em- 
 bodied in history, will find it hard to realize the 
 fatuous disbelief that prevailed throughout the 
 North in the seriousness of the struggle in which 
 we were engaged. This incredulity continued from 
 the time of the political campaign that ended in the 
 election of Lincoln down to the very midst of the 
 great war. The threats of secession were regarded 
 as idle vaporings. Why should the Union be dis- 
 solved because an unacceptable candidate had been 
 lawfully elected? When South Carolina called her 
 convention we felt sure that after it met, wiser coun- 
 sels would prevail. When the ordinance was 
 adopted there was little fear that other States would 
 be fanatical enough to follow her example. Even 
 after the Confederate Government was organized at 
 Montgomery, we felt that surely they would not be 
 so mad as to fire upon the flag! When Sumter fell 
 and the horrible reality dawned upon us that war, 
 the impossible, had come, still we were consoled by 
 the belief that it would be quickly over. What was 
 the power of the Gulf States and the Carolinas by 
 the side of the inexhaustible resources of the North?
 
 2 3 8 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Virginia would reject the ordinance of secession and 
 remain faithful to the Union. When Virginia joined 
 her sisters of the South and the capital of Virginia 
 became the capital of the Confederacy, then it 
 seemed to us that it would be all the easier to crush 
 a rebellion whose vital point was thus thrust for- 
 ward within such ready reach of our advancing 
 hosts'. "On to Richmond!" was the chorus of the 
 Northern press, and no one doubted that in a few 
 weeks the head of the Confederacy would fall. 
 
 A rude awakening came with the defeat at Bull 
 Run and the mad panic that ensued. "The Capture 
 of Washington" was cried through the streets of 
 the metropolis day after day by boys who sold to 
 excited crowds extra editions of the evening papers. 
 But the panic passed and the confidence which fol- 
 lowed was scarcely less serene and certain than at 
 first. All that was needed was that the North 
 should be aroused and the army organized, so Mc- 
 Clellan, the great "organizer," began his task. The 
 work went on much slower than seemed necessary, 
 but at last all was ready and the Peninsular cam- 
 paign began. Victories were announced at York- 
 town, at Williamsburg, at Seven Pines. Nothing 
 more natural, nothing more inevitable than this. 
 The army was already close to Richmond, a day or 
 two more and all would be ended and the flag float 
 again over a united nation. Then came the report 
 of the final seven days' struggle and the retreat to 
 the James River. Still even this was at first merely
 
 DOROTHY DAY 239 
 
 a "change of base," and it was a hard task to con- 
 vince the people of the North that the campaign 
 was, a failure and that the work had to be begun 
 again. Indeed they refused to believe that the de- 
 feat was serious. It was merely McClellan who 
 would not fight. Give them a new man and all 
 would be well. So Pope was brought from the West 
 and put in command. His first orders showed the 
 stuff he was made of! There was to be no more 
 talk of lines of retreat and bases of supply. From 
 that time it was to be a forward march I But the 
 second defeat of Manassas was as bad as the first, 
 so McClellan was again put in command, and while 
 the invasion of the enemy into Maryland was 
 checked at Antietam, all aggressive movements were 
 futile and McClellan was again relieved. Burn- 
 side's repulse at Fredericksburg and Hooker's de- 
 feat at Chancellorsville showed the superiority of 
 Lee's generalship, if not the superiority of the Con- 
 federate soldier. We who were at the front real- 
 ized far sooner than those at home the terrible na- 
 ture of the conflict in which we were involved; but 
 very few, either at home or at the front, anticipated 
 the formidable invasion of the free States and the 
 campaign which reached its climax in the terrible 
 struggle at Gettysburg. 
 
 There were several reasons which determined 
 the Confederate authorities to this daring step. 
 Their resources were limited and were becoming 
 exhausted; they could not suffer the war to drag on
 
 2 4 o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 indefinitely. Grant was closing slowly around Vicks- 
 burg, and it was necessary, by a brilliant victory in 
 the East, to force the recall of his army, or at least 
 to offset the impending disaster on the Mississippi. 
 On the other hand, great disaffection existed in the 
 North; there was a strong party opposed to the war; 
 the terms of enlistment of a large number of troops 
 was about to expire; volunteering had ceased in con- 
 sequence of repeated disasters and a conscription 
 might provoke armed resistance. Moreover the 
 Army of the Potomac was still under the command 
 of a general who with an overwhelming force had 
 failed miserably. Now, therefore, was the time 
 for the Confederacy to strike. But how? The 
 army under Hooker lay between Lee and the city 
 of Washington in a strong position. It must be 
 drawn out of its intrenchments and encountered in 
 the open field. What better means of accomplishing 
 this purpose than an invasion of the North? This 
 would relieve Virginia from a hostile army. As the 
 rations of the Confederate troops were running 
 short, Lee could replenish them in the fertile regions 
 of Pennsylvania, or by the occupation of some of 
 the wealthy cities of the North. A victory there 
 might cause even the evacuation of the Federal 
 capital. Moreover our relations with foreign 
 powers were critical; if Lee could establish him- 
 self on Northern soil, England might recognize the 
 Confederacy, ample loans could be obtained and 
 perhaps a foreign alliance formed and a fleet sent
 
 DOROTHY DAY 241 
 
 to open the ports of the South. If the Army of the 
 Potomac could be destroyed Southern independence 
 would be achieved. 
 
 There was, indeed, one drawback; the long line 
 of communications between Richmond and the Con- 
 federate army would be imperiled. Lee might pro- 
 cure forage even if this line were severed but the 
 constant supplies of necessary ammunition could not 
 be obtained on Northern soil. This was the vital 
 danger. 
 
 But it was resolved to take the risk. Lee left 
 his position at Fredericksburg and moved with his 
 army up the Shenandoah Valley. The Blue Ridge 
 on the east protected him from attack and observa- 
 tion, for the gaps in the mountains were easy to hold 
 and fortify. General Milroy was at Winchester in 
 this valley with a garrison of Union soldiers, but 
 owing to a series of blunders he was quickly de- 
 feated and the pathway to the North was cleared. 
 
 In the latter part of June, Lee crossed the Poto- 
 mac, passed rapidly through Maryland, and keeping 
 to the west of the South Mountain range, which 
 formed the continuation of the Blue Ridge, he in- 
 vaded the Keystone State. His army consisted of 
 three corps commanded by Ewell, Hill and Long- 
 street, respectively. On the 27th, Ewell reached 
 Carlisle, while Early, commanding one of his divi- 
 sions, had seized York. On the same day the corps 
 of Longstreet and Hill reached Chambersburg and 
 its vicinity, under the immediate command of Lee
 
 242 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 himself. Nowhere was there any serious opposition. 
 
 There was, of course, great excitement in the 
 North, levies of troops were made everywhere and 
 many regiments of militia were hurried forward. 
 But what could these do against the Army of 
 Northern Virginia? 
 
 Hooker had received early information that Lee 
 was disappearing from his front and was marching 
 down the Shenandoah, so he determined to follow, 
 keeping east of the Blue Ridge and South Moun- 
 tain, and thus holding the inside lines between Lee 
 and the city of Washington. He crossed the Poto- 
 mac a few days after Lee, and made his headquar- 
 ters at the city of Frederick in Maryland. 
 
 In consequence of his inexcusable failure at Chan- 
 cellorsville, the confidence of the administration in 
 his generalship was greatly impaired. He was, 
 moreover, on bad terms with Halleck, the general 
 in chief of all the armies. He now asked Halleck 
 to let him take the garrison at Harper's Ferry to 
 reinforce his troops. But Halleck objected, where- 
 upon Hooker at once offered his resignation. In 
 spite of the president's aphorism, "It is a bad thing 
 to swap horses while crossing a stream," it was de- 
 termined to make the change at once, even in the 
 immediate prospect of an impending battle. George 
 G. Meade, the commander of the Fifth Corps, was 
 selected as Hooker's successor, and ordered to as- 
 sume the command. He earnestly protested, but no 
 discretion was given him and he obeyed.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 243 
 
 Meade's position was indeed one of extraordinary 
 difficulty. He had no time to make the acquaint- 
 ance of the troops he was to command nor even to 
 learn the details of their organization. He first 
 proposed to to review and concentrate them at Fred- 
 erick, but it was shown to him that the delay would 
 give Lee time to cross the Susquehanna and capture 
 Harrisburg, so he was forced to act immediately 
 even though he had to act in the dark; and Hooker's 
 plans were, with some modifications, adopted. It 
 was determined to interpose the Army of the Poto- 
 mac between the enemy and Philadelphia if Lee 
 went north, or between him and Baltimore and 
 Washington, in case he turned southward. 
 
 The two armies were now on the eve of the deci- 
 sive battle of the war, and it will be interesting to 
 consider and to contrast for a moment the com- 
 manding generals, their immediate subordinates and 
 the number, organization and character of the 
 troops. 
 
 The Confederate army was commanded by 
 Robert E. Lee, the most skilful general of the Civil 
 War. He was at this time fifty-seven years of age, 
 tall, dignified, serene, aristocratic, tactful, brave, 
 chivalric, God-fearing, conscientious to a fault, and 
 generally sound in judgment. He was deeply be- 
 loved by all who knew him and he was the idol of 
 the army he commanded. When they discussed 
 around their campfires "the origin of the species," 
 it was said, "the rest of us may come from monkeys,
 
 244 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 but it needed a God to make Marse Robert." Even 
 before the Civil War his career had been brilliant. 
 He was a distinguished officer in the Mexican war, 
 repeatedly brevetted for skill and gallantry. He 
 had filled the office of Superintendent of the Military 
 Academy at West Point with ability. He was at 
 first opposed to secession, but after Virginia severed 
 her connection with the Union, although Lincoln 
 offered him the supreme command of the army, he 
 cast his lot with his native State and resigned from 
 the Federal service. In the early campaigns in West 
 Virginia he was not successful; but he afterwards 
 became the military adviser of President Davis, and 
 when General Jos. E. Johnston was wounded at 
 Seven Pines, Lee was given the command of the 
 Army of Northern Virginia. Calling to his aid 
 the redoubtable Stonewall Jackson, he defeated the 
 Federal troops in several great battles in his native 
 State. His prestige was unbounded. He had, how- 
 ever, as a military man, two faults his modesty 
 was such that he lacked self-assertion, that despotic 
 quality which compels obedience and fear and exacts 
 the utmost from subordinates; he left too much to 
 the discretion of his corps commanders. He had 
 another defect : "a subdued excitement occasionally 
 took possession of him when the hunt was up, which 
 threatened his superb equipoise," and which, in the 
 presence of the enemy in an aggressive campaign, 
 sometimes led him to headlong combativeness in 
 the field. When he invaded Pennsylvania he was
 
 DOROTHY DAY 245 
 
 overconfident even to rashness of the invincible 
 power of his own troops. Little wonder indeed 
 when he had seen them at Manassas, at Fredericks- 
 burg, at Chancellorsville, triumphant against such 
 overwhelming odds. 
 
 On the Union side the commander-in-chief was a 
 man of no such splendid presence nor brilliant his- 
 tory. George G. Meade was of a stooping figure, 
 tall, spectacled, short-sighted, resembling a scholar 
 rather than a soldier. His training, like that of Lee, 
 had been mainly as an engineer. He had served in 
 the Seminole war and then in Mexico though in an 
 humbler station than his great adversary. He took 
 a subordinate part in the campaign in the Peninsula. 
 At Manassas he commanded a brigade; at Fred- 
 ericksburg he led a division; at Chancellorsville he 
 commanded the Fifth Corps. He was a man just, 
 reasonable and brave, but he was excessively modest 
 and over-cautious in directing his troops. He took 
 command under enormous disadvantages and the 
 result of the campaign showed that, on the whole, 
 he commanded well. 
 
 It was quite fitting that the defense of Pennsyl- 
 vania should have been confided so largely to the 
 soldiers of that commonwealth, led by the most dis- 
 tinguished of her generals, for besides Meade, both 
 Reynolds and Hancock were from the Keystone 
 State. With such men and with Slocum, Sedgwick 
 and Doubleday in command of corps, with Pleasan- 
 ton and Buford in the cavalry, and Hunt in control
 
 246 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 of the artillery, the efforts of the commander-in- 
 chief were in the main ably seconded. 
 
 When "Stonewall" Jackson was killed at Chan- 
 cellorsville, the right arm of the Confederacy was 
 broken. In Longstreet, Ewell and Hill, the com- 
 manders of the three corps of three divisions each 
 into which his army was now divided (in place of 
 the two which had been led by Longstreet and Jack- 
 son), Lee had, indeed, men of experience and ability, 
 but Ewell and Hill could ill take the place of the 
 great Jackson. Longstreet, whom Lee effectionately 
 called his "old war horse," was a tenacious and ex- 
 cellent fighter, but slow in movement and he lacked 
 the sure instinct of Jackson in seizing at once the 
 decisive opportunity of the battle. 
 
 The size of the two armies at Gettysburg will 
 never be exactly known. The best estimates give 
 Meade a little over 90,000 men with 300 guns, and 
 Lee a little over 70,000 men with 190 guns. These 
 figures, however, do not at all represent the fighting 
 power of the two armies; in organization, discipline, 
 physical condition and morale, the Confederates 
 were greatly superior. Their regiments, brigades 
 and divisions were well filled; the soldiers were 
 nearly all veterans, whose terms of service lasted for 
 the war. They were enured to every kind of hard- 
 ship; they could live upon little and march untiringly 
 day and night; they had been seasoned by every kind 
 of experience, had stood the brunt of battle many 
 times and had been so uniformly successful that they
 
 DOROTHY DAY 247 
 
 now believed they were invincible. Their discip- 
 line for practical purposes was as nearly perfect as 
 a hard struggle like the Civil War could make it; 
 their confidence in their leader was unbounded, and 
 they felt that they were about to crown a series of 
 victories by a triumphant and crushing blow deliv- 
 ered in the enemy's country. As they entered Penn- 
 sylvania the belief was universal that "Marse Robert 
 will get the Yankees this trip, suah." "Except in 
 equipment, a better army, better nerved up to its 
 work, never marched upon a battlefield." But its 
 equipment was defective, some of the infantry had 
 nothing but smoth-bore muskets, and the ammuni- 
 tion for the artillery was poor. The men were badly 
 clothed, some of them were barefoot; some covered 
 their heads with nothing but a plait of straw; most 
 of them were ragged, and they were all as begrimed 
 and dusty as the roads on which they marched. When 
 they entered Gettysburg it was said: "One cannot 
 tell them from the street," and sometimes (this is 
 no disadvantage in war) they were not seen or no- 
 ticed because they looked so much like the mother 
 earth on which they stood. It was only their rifle 
 barrels, their bayonets and their colors that shone 
 in the sunlight. 
 
 A bitter outcry has been made against the ravages 
 they committed, the property they confiscated, the 
 contributions they levied, the live stock they drove 
 away. But this was war. They took what they 
 needed clothes, carts, horses, cattle, provisions
 
 248 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 they sent supplies back to Virginia, and for all these 
 things they paid in Confederate currency, which 
 proved worthless, indeed, but it was all they had, 
 and it was what they used themselves at home. They 
 did not wantonly destroy property nor commit un- 
 necessary cruelties. Lee had forbidden this before 
 they had passed into northern territory. It was 
 greatly to the credit of the "ragged rebels" whose 
 homes had suffered from the ravages of war, and 
 who had heard innumerable tales of outrages upon 
 their people, that they were so generally free from 
 the spirit of revenge. There were indeed com- 
 plaints of their manners. "They were a rude and 
 filthy set," declared the tidy Germans of Gettysburg. 
 Their manner of eating was shocking; they threw 
 apple-butter in all directions while spreading their 
 bread, but they harmed no women, children or non- 
 combatants ; nay, more, a Confederate soldier would 
 even go out into the street amid a shower of bullets 
 to get a bucket of water for a mother and her little 
 ones. In the flush of anticipated victory they were 
 true to the best traditions of their race. 
 
 In organization, physical training and morale, the 
 Army of the Potomac was at a disadvantage. It 
 was composed of no less than seven corps. It was 
 too greatly divided for proper union of effort. 
 There were too many commanders and too many 
 staffs. 
 
 The divisions and brigades were much smaller 
 than in the Confederate army; the proportion of
 
 DOROTHY DAY 249 
 
 veterans was much less; many of the regiments were 
 not well filled; there were new organizations of re- 
 cruits not easily assimilated, and which weakened the 
 power of the army to endure long marches and ex- 
 treme exertion; the number of stragglers was very 
 large; many of the officers were distrusted, and there 
 were bickering and jealousy among those high in 
 authority. Lee's army, on the other hand, was a 
 unit in its excellence, and in spite of its discrepancy 
 in numbers and equipment, was, under its great 
 chief, more than a match for the often defeated 
 Army of the Potomac under its untried commander. 
 
 But at the outset Lee made a serious mistake. 
 While he was marching up the Shenandoah, he gave 
 Stuart, who commanded his cavalry, the discretion- 
 ary right to separate from the main body of the 
 troops and pass, with three out of his five divisions, 
 to the east of Hooker. 
 
 Stuart led a bold but useless raid around the 
 Federal army; passed close to Washington and 
 Baltimore, advanced into Pennsylvania, and after 
 two ineffectual efforts to join, first Early at York 
 and then Ewell at Carlisle, he arrived on the field 
 of Gettysburg, worn and exhausted by forced 
 marches, on the evening of July 2d, barely in time 
 to take part in the cavalry engagement of the final 
 day of the battle. 
 
 Two divisions of Stuart's command, indeed, had 
 been left behind to guard the gaps of the Blue
 
 250 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Ridge and then follow Lee across the Potomac, but 
 they did not reach Gettysburg until the third day. 
 
 The cavalry is "the eyes of the army" to watch 
 the enemy's movements. Lee was invading for the 
 first time a hostile country where he could obtain no 
 information from other sources, and until the 28th 
 of June he was wholly in the dark as to the move- 
 ments of his adversary. 
 
 On that day a man named Harrison, a spy and 
 scout of Longstreet's, who had followed the Federal 
 army to Frederick and there found three corps, one 
 of which was about to move westward and threaten 
 Lee's communications, now made his way to the 
 Confederate army and reported what he had found. 
 Lee, startled to find that Meade was close upon his 
 heels, immediately changed his plan. He called 
 Ewell back from a projected attack upon Harrisburg 
 and directed the whole army to concentrate at Cash- 
 town, a small place eight miles northwest of Gettys- 
 burg, so as to threaten Baltimore and thus compel 
 the Union forces to turn eastward and abandon any 
 attempt upon his rear. Two divisions of Hill's 
 corps which had reached Cashtown now advanced 
 still further to the southwest toward Gettysburg 
 looking for the enemy. Thus it was that that town 
 became the scene of the great conflict. 
 
 Gettysburg lay east of the South Mountain range. 
 There were ten roads that here came together like 
 the spokes of a wheel, by which Lee could move 
 upon Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Baltimore or
 
 DOROTHY DAY 251 
 
 Washington or could retreat, either east or west o. 
 the mountains, back to Virginia. It was, therefore, 
 a most important point to hold. Each of the two 
 commanders, Lee and Meade, had resolved to fight 
 a defensive battle; each had counted upon time for 
 preparation, and neither had fixed upon Gettysburg 
 as the place of the encounter. The different corps 
 of Meade's army were spread out over a considera- 
 ble territory. They were to advance and feel for 
 the enemy, and when he was found, they were to 
 retire, drawing him on as far as Pipe Creek where 
 the line of battle was to be formed, and his further 
 progress definitely resisted. This plan was not easy 
 of execution. A retreat in the presence of an active 
 and confident enemy may become a rout before the 
 stand is made, or if Meade carried out his maneuver, 
 Lee might still have declined to attack him in his 
 chosen position and might have passed around it 
 and thus have compelled the selection of another 
 place for the decisive encounter. 
 
 Moreover, when an army full of spirit has been 
 advancing against an enemy it is often as difficult to 
 effect a retrograde movement with the immediate 
 prospect of a battle, as it is to rally troops that are 
 defeated. Neither officers nor men will retire when 
 they have come to fight, and when they see before 
 them the opportunity to win a victory. This is 
 exactly what happened at Gettysburg. The officers 
 in command would not dishearten their men by with- 
 drawing them from a good position which they could 
 hold if reinforced in time.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG 
 
 BUFORD, who commanded a division of the 
 Federal cavalry, had been directed to advance to 
 Gettysburg, and on the evening of June 3Oth he 
 arrived in that town. Reynolds was a few miles be- 
 hind him with the First Corps; Howard, with the 
 Eleventh, was a little further to the southwest; 
 Meade, with the Second and Third Corps, was at 
 Taneytown, fifteen miles south, while the three 
 remaining corps were stretched out as far as West- 
 minster, more than thirty miles distant. The army 
 was too widely scattered. 
 
 Buford knew that a portion of the Confederate 
 forces would soon be upon him, and he determined 
 to interpose between the enemy and the town. 
 
 West of Gettysburg several parallel ridges rose 
 one after another, the last and highest of which, a 
 number of miles away, formed the South Moun- 
 tain range. The ridge nearest to Gettysburg, about 
 a half a mile west from the town and running nearly 
 north and south, was crowned by the Lutheran 
 Seminary, and was called Seminary Ridge. It 
 was covered by an open wood from which the 
 ground sloped westward and then rose again, 
 forming the second, or McPherson's Ridge,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 253 
 
 which was broader and lower than the first 
 one. Both terminated together at Oak Hill, a 
 point which thus commanded their slopes and the 
 low land between them as well as a level plain north 
 of Gettysburg. 
 
 West of McPherson's Ridge, Willoughby's Run 
 flowed southward, and on this ridge, directly west 
 of the Seminary, a wood filled the slope down to 
 the run. There were three roads from Gettysburg 
 that crossed these ridges; one going southwest to 
 Hagcrstown by way of Fairfield, another going 
 northwest to Chambersburg by way of Cashtown, 
 and a third still further to the north. The Seminary 
 was in the fork formed by the Hagerstown and 
 Chambersburg roads. It was upon these ridges that 
 Buford determined to interpose his resistance. 
 
 The Confederate corps under Hill was approach- 
 ing along the Chambersburg road. Before nine 
 o'clock the battle of Gettysburg began. Buford's 
 skirmishers gave way slowly, contesting every step. 
 After an hours' fighting Reynolds arrived, soon fol- 
 lowed by the troops of the First Corps who took 
 the place of the slender lines of Buford's dismounted 
 cavalry. 
 
 An important position was the piece of woods 
 between the Chambersburg and Hagerstown roads, 
 extending from McPherson's Ridge down to Wil- 
 loughby's Run. The Iron Brigade entered these 
 woods from the east just as the Confederate brigade 
 of Archer was crossing the run to enter upon the
 
 254 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 other side. General Reynolds, at the eastern edge 
 of the wood, turning to see whether the remaining 
 troops of his corps were approaching, was shot by 
 a sharpshooter and instantly killed. The Iron 
 Brigade swooped around the right flank of Archer's 
 troops and captured them. But a Federal brigade 
 under Cutler, north of the Chambersburg road, had 
 retreated in confusion to the suburbs of Gettysburg, 
 although it afterwards returned to the front. Other 
 Confederate brigades and divisions were steadily 
 advancing. 
 
 General Howard had come upon the field just at 
 the moment when Cutler's brigade had been driven 
 in, and he sent a message to Meade at Taneytown 
 that the First Corps had fled, thus magnifying this 
 retreat to the flight of an entire corps. 
 
 The Eleventh Corps reached Gettysburg about 
 one o'clock. Two divisions were directed by 
 Howard to go north of the town, to prolong the 
 line of the First Corps to the right. The remaining 
 division with the reserve artillery was directed to 
 occupy Cemetery Hill just south of Gettysburg. 
 This was the first definite step taken in the selection 
 of that admirable defensive position. 
 
 The two divisions north of the town were com- 
 pelled to form their line of battle on low, open 
 ground. They did not connect with the First Corps 
 on their left, and their right flank was also exposed. 
 
 Early's division of Swell's corps, coming from 
 York, attacked the slender line. Soon both divisions
 
 DOROTHY DAY 255 
 
 fled and were driven back in confusion into Gettys- 
 burg. The streets were blocked with guns and 
 wagons, and the Confederates, screaming, shooting, 
 stabbing, pursued the retreating troops through the 
 town and made prisoners of thousands. 
 
 The First Corps, deprived of its support, was 
 now in desperate straits. Two divisions had lost half 
 their men, and Doubleday who had succeeded Rey- 
 nolds in command withdrew the remnants and finally 
 joined Howard on Cemetery Hill. It was about 
 this time that Lee arrived upon the scene and wit- 
 nessed the retreat of the Federal troops. 
 
 This was the vital moment when the defeat of 
 the Union army might have been turned into an 
 overwhelming disaster. A mob of fugitives was 
 pressing up the slopes of Cemetery Hill. All that 
 was needed was a final blow, and the last rallying 
 point of the Federal army would have been carried 
 by the victorious Confederates. It is said, indeed, 
 that Lee sent Ewell a direction to "press those 
 people and secure the hill, if possible, but not to 
 bring on a general engagement." With his cus- 
 tomary reliance upon his corps commanders, Lee 
 had not made the order absolute. And now there 
 occurred one of those trifling events which some- 
 times change the fate of the world. It was the 
 shower in the night before Waterloo which delayed 
 the attack of Napoleon and prevented the early 
 overthrow of Wellington. It was a false report that 
 some Union troops were advancing on the extreme
 
 256 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 left of his corps, which induced Ewell to send two 
 brigades in that direction. The absence of these 
 brigades now caused him to hesitate; he had another 
 division under Johnson which would soon be coming 
 up and he determined to await its arrival. It did 
 not reach the field until sundown. The supreme 
 moment was lost, for the Federal troops were then 
 reorganized and reinforced. 
 
 The regiment in which I served was attached to 
 the Second Corps, commanded by General Hancock. 
 When the battle began we were at Taneytown with 
 the commander-in-chief, fifteen miles away. It was 
 after one o'clock when the message came from 
 General Howard that the First Corps had fled. 
 Meade at once sent Hancock forward to the field 
 of battle to take command of the Union forces, 
 to rally the troops, and if he deemed it wise, to 
 choose the battle ground. At this moment a num- 
 ber of Hancock's staff were absent upon other duty, 
 and as I happened to be close at hand, I was de- 
 tached from my regiment, furnished with a horse, 
 and directed to join the escort which accompanied 
 him to the field, so as to be in readiness to convey 
 dispatches, to act generally as an aide and do what- 
 ever might be needful in this emergency. Our break- 
 neck ride along the dusty road, under a fierce July 
 sun was no light matter to one who had not felt 
 the back of a horse for many months, but the terri- 
 ble suspense and eagerness to know the result of 
 the battle, drove every other thought from my
 
 DOROTHY DAY 257 
 
 mind. We could hear the artillery many miles 
 away; as we came closer, the rattle of the musketry 
 from two directions, both north and west of the 
 town, became incessant and when, shortly before 
 four o'clock, we reached the cemetery, the spectacle 
 which greeted our eyes might well have daunted the 
 bravest commander. 
 
 The remains of the Eleventh Corps which had 
 been pouring through the streets of the town were 
 arriving in confusion. The remnants of the First 
 Corps, which had lost half its troops during the 
 long fight, were falling back from Seminary Ridge. 
 Thousands of stragglers and fugitives were stream- 
 ing southward, spreading the story of the defeat. 
 Carts, guns and ambulances filled with wounded en- 
 cumbered the roads, while the heights on the west 
 and the town itself swarmed with hostile forces. 
 
 Yet in the midst of this disaster Hancock deter- 
 mined that the place where he stood was the place 
 to fight the battle to a finish. How well I remem- 
 ber his superb calm amid the terrible confusion 
 around him I 
 
 The President was authorized by law to place 
 any officer over another of higher rank if he deemed 
 it necessary; and it was by virtue of this law, or, 
 perhaps, without any definite recollection of the rank 
 of the two generals, that Meade had ordered Han- 
 cock to take command of the field, although Howard 
 was the senior officer. But Howard refused to 
 recognize Hancock's authority. I heard him say:
 
 2 5 8 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 "Why, Hancock, you can't command here, I am in 
 command, and I rank you !" This misunderstand- 
 ing might well have led to fatal confusion if the 
 Confederates had then attacked, but they did not. 
 Without settling the question, each general went to 
 work to stay the current of defeat. 
 
 I had my part in the task of reforming the line. 
 A shattered brigade under Wadsworth was sent by 
 Hancock to hold Gulp's Hill, a steep eminence on the 
 right. Buford's cavalry was posted on the left. 
 Hancock sent to Meade a report that the position 
 on Cemetery Ridge was a strong one, but might be 
 easily turned. 
 
 It was hard work to rally the Eleventh Corps, 
 but at last this was accomplished and the multitudes 
 of fugitives that thronged the roads were halted. 
 The riflemen took their positions behind walls and 
 fences and breastworks hastily constructed; the 
 artillery brought back by the two corps in their re- 
 treat was placed in position; other columns in blue 
 came in sight on the roads from the south, the 
 Twelfth Corps under Slocum, part of the Third 
 Corps under Sickles, and finally our own Second 
 Corps. 
 
 Hancock, after directing these last troops to fall 
 in position on the left, hurried back to Taneytown 
 to report to Meade, and to recommend again that 
 Cemetery Hill should be the battle ground. Meade 
 adopted the recommendation, abandoned his own 
 plan of defense behind Pipe Creek, and late at night
 
 DOROTHY DAY 259 
 
 hastened to the front. I had been left at the 
 cemetery with the order to bring to Hancock any 
 despatches that might be sent him prior to his re- 
 turn. I was not needed, however, for this duty, 
 so I remained upon the field and, wearied by my 
 long ride, I lay down among the tombstones and 
 sank into an early sleep. 
 
 It was after midnight when I was awakened by 
 a group of horsemen entering the cemetery from 
 the Taneytown road and picking their way through 
 the soldiers slumbering under the cypress trees. The 
 moonlight was brilliant, and General Meade (for 
 it was the commander-in-chief who had arrived) 
 tried to realize the position of the army and the 
 character of the battle field while he listened to the 
 reports and suggestions of his officers. He was 
 pale and hollow-eyed, worn out by care and lack of 
 sleep. The clock tower on Seminary Ridge showed 
 where was the center of the enemy's forces. The 
 town at the foot of Cemetery Hill was filled with 
 hostile troops. Meade was at first not altogether 
 satisfied with the field selected, and orders were 
 drawn up to provide for a retreat to Pipe Creek in 
 case it should be necessary. Slocum was directed 
 to command the right and Hancock the center of 
 the Federal army.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE BATTLES ON CEMETERY RIDGE 
 
 THERE were really two battles of Gettysburg: the 
 battle of the first day on the ridges west of the town, 
 in the low plain north of it, and in the town itself; 
 and the battle of the second and third days south of 
 the town on Cemetery Ridge. 
 
 No part of the first day's battlefield was con- 
 tested in the subsequent engagements; the Con- 
 federates were in full possession of that section of 
 the field. I must now describe the second conflict. 
 
 It has often been said that no man can see all of 
 a battle, and certainly no maps, pictures, diagrams 
 or descriptions can afterwards exhibit it. The 
 smoke, the fearful tumult, the confusion, the terri- 
 ble sights and swift changes that flash upon the 
 vision, are impossible to set down or describe. The 
 variations are more rapid and complex than the path 
 of a serpent or the transformation of a cloud. By 
 the time you have sketched the contour of the strug- 
 gle it is something utterly different, and the general 
 melee of regiment with regiment, company with 
 company and man with man is wholly indescribable. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are few great battles that are 
 easier to understand than the second and third days' 
 conflicts at Gettysburg. The struggle was more
 
 DOROTHY DAY 261 
 
 nearly a unit than most engagements, and there were 
 several positions one on Little Round Top and 
 others on Cemetery Hill, from which nearly the 
 whole battlefield was visible. This was one of the 
 advantages of the Union position. There was no 
 place from which Lee could so well see the whole 
 of the panorama, or even the positions of his own 
 troops. 
 
 Immediately south of Gettysburg, and so close to 
 it that the houses of the town climbed the first 
 grade of the ascent, was Cemetery Hill, an eminence 
 about 80 feet high, crowned by the evergreen ceme- 
 tery from which it had taken its name, and where 
 James Gettys, the founder of the town, as well as 
 most of its deceased inhabitants lay buried. The 
 easy slopes of this ascent could readily be swept by 
 artillery posted on its summit. Southward from the 
 cemetery, perhaps a trifle to the west, and on a 
 slightly lower level, extended the long range of 
 Cemetery Ridge, which, however, about a mile south 
 of the cemetery, sank away nearly down to the inter- 
 vening valley, and then, perhaps, another mile fur- 
 ther on, rose again and terminated in two rocky 
 eminences, Little Round Top, with a bare summit, 
 something over 100 feet above the valley; and still 
 further south, Round Top itself, covered with wood- 
 land and 210 feet high. West of the two Round 
 Tops, Plum Run flowed southward, and on its op- 
 posite side rose the rough rocks of the Devil's Den; 
 the valley between, through which the run flowed,
 
 262 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 is now called from the slaughter of the fatal day, 
 "The Valley of the Shadow of Death." These two 
 miles of Cemetery Ridge stretching south from the 
 Cemetery itself, were occupied by the center and 
 left wing of the Federal army. The whole line of 
 battle may be fairly represented by a fish-hook, the 
 curve of the hook being on Cemetery Hill, the end 
 of the long shank on the left being the two Round 
 Tops, while the point of the hook at the right ex- 
 tremity of the line was Gulp's Hill, a steep, rocky 
 eminence crowned by a wood. To the east and 
 south of it flowed Rock Creek. Between Gulp's 
 Hill and the cemetery that is, between the point 
 of the hook and its bend, there was a gap in the 
 ridge where the land sank away into the valley. 
 
 A street leading southward through Gettysburg 
 up the lower slopes of Cemetery Hill divided near 
 the edge of the town into two roads. To the right 
 was the Emmitsburg road which proceeded toward 
 the southwest, and to the left was the Baltimore 
 Pike, which took a southeasterly direction. The 
 Union line came up close to the junction of these 
 roads. The Emmitsburg road, a short distance 
 further on, branched again, the main road continuing 
 southwestward under Cemetery Ridge to Emmits- 
 burg, and another road proceeding due south over 
 the ridge and then behind it, to Taneytown. The 
 left wing of the Federal army during the second and 
 third days' battles, was on the ridge between the 
 Taneytown and the Emmitsburg roads.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 263 
 
 Almost a mile west of Cemetery Ridge and nearly 
 parallel with it, extended Seminary Ridge, the north 
 end of which has been described in the account of 
 the previous day's engagement. This ridge was 
 covered with open timber, and later in the day 
 Longstreet's troops occupied its southern stretches 
 with Hill's corps to the north of them. Ewell's line 
 extended eastward through the town of Gettysburg 
 and around to the southeast, and then south, envelop- 
 ing Gulp's Hill and the right wing of the Federal 
 army. It will thus be seen that the Confederates 
 had the outside lines running nearly parallel to 
 those of the Federal army, but forming a longer, 
 and consequently, a thinner line. 
 
 There were several plans of attack which Lee 
 might have adopted, and we were for a long time 
 uncertain which he would choose. First, he might 
 have determined to move his army southward, 
 around our left flank and thus have compelled us to 
 abandon our advantageous position on Cemetery 
 Hill and Cemetery Ridge. This, as it afterwards ap- 
 peared, was the plan urged upon him by Longstreet 
 soon after their arrival upon the field, and it offered 
 perahps a greater certainty of success than any 
 other. Or, if the temper of Lee's victorious army 
 demanded an immediate conflict, he might have 
 massed his troops and made a direct attack upon 
 Cemetery Hill at the bend of the fish-hook, as he 
 himself proposed in the evening of the first day, 
 but was dissuaded by Ewell. He might have at-
 
 264 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 tacked either our left wing near Little Round Top, 
 or our right wing at Gulp's Hill, and if he had 
 concentrated his troops, his chances of victory were 
 excellent, but no one would have believed that with 
 a slenderer and longer line than ours encircling us, 
 he would have tried to flank us and attack us at 
 both ends, when we could reinforce either wing with 
 far greater ease than he. Yet this was the plan he 
 adopted. It was the worst of all, and to make it 
 still more hopeless, owing to a series of misunder- 
 standings, the attacks were not simultaneous, but 
 successive, first on our left wing, then upon our right 
 and then on Cemetery Hill. 
 
 Lee had, however, taken greater risks before and 
 had come out them successfully. At Games' Mill, 
 on the Peninsula, at the second battle of Manassas 
 and at Chancellorsville, he had separated Jackson's 
 corps from the rest of his army by long distances, 
 and in each case had won a brilliant victory. To-day 
 he had greater confidence than ever in his invincible 
 veterans. But Jackson was dead, the Federals were 
 alert on the ground where they could see the whole 
 field of battle, and where they were defending their 
 own soil. It is not wise to tempt the gods too often ! 
 
 At daybreak I saw Meade ride out to reconnoiter. 
 At this time the Fifth and Sixth Corps and two 
 brigades of the Third had not yet arrived. Even 
 our own corps, the Second, did not take its posi- 
 tion on Cemetery Ridge until six or seven o'clock. 
 An attack at daybreak might have defeated the
 
 DOROTHY DAY 265 
 
 Federal forces. It was of the utmost importance 
 for the Confederates to begin the battle immedi- 
 ately. 
 
 There was, however, great delay. We did not 
 know the cause of it, but it filled us with inexpressi- 
 ble satisfaction. The fact was that Longstreet was 
 not ready. Instead of rushing his men forward with 
 all possible speed, he again argued with Lee in 
 favor of his flanking movement on Meade's left, 
 then urged him to postpone the attack until Pickett's 
 division, which was nearly a day's march distant, 
 should arrive. 
 
 Later still, Longstreet persuaded Lee to recon- 
 noiter, and then to wait until noon for a brigade 
 which had been doing picket duty; then the direction 
 of the troops was changed and a long circuit made. 
 Their movements were so slow that it was half-past 
 three in the afternoon before Hood's division, which 
 led the flanking movement on their extreme right, 
 was prepared to strike. 
 
 In the meantime, in our army, the balance of the 
 Third Corps had arrived, as well as the Fifth Corps 
 under Sykes. General Slocum, who commanded the 
 right wing, had his own Twelfth Corps and what re- 
 mained of the First and the Eleventh posted on 
 Gulp's Hill and Cemetery Hill, that is, he held 
 the point and the bend of the fish-hook. Next to 
 him on the left was our own Second Corps, under 
 Hancock on Cemetery Ridge just south of the Ceme- 
 tery. Further down the shank of the fish-hook was
 
 2 66 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Sickles' Third Corps, while Sykes' Fifth Corps, 
 which had just arrived, lay resting on Rock Creek 
 at the Baltimore pike. The Sixth Corps, under 
 Sedgwick, had not yet come. When it arrived dur- 
 ing the battle, it rested on the eastern slopes of 
 Round Top. 
 
 Meade evidently did not believe that the first 
 blow was to be delivered at his extreme left against 
 the Third Corps. Sickles' line did not extend as 
 far south as Little Round Top, and although that 
 position had been occupied as a signal station, it 
 was unprotected. It was a point of vital importance, 
 for it was stripped of trees and commanded our 
 entire line on Cemetery Ridge. 
 
 Sickles' troops were in a depression of this ridge 
 just north of Little Round Top. The ground there 
 was lower than it was at a peach orchard about a 
 mile further west, and Sickles believed that by ad- 
 vancing his line to this latter point he would be in 
 a better position. 
 
 The difficulty was that by extending his weak line 
 he left an open space between his corps and our 
 Second Corps, which was next to him on the north, 
 and he was also unable to occupy Little Round Top. 
 But Sickles determined upon his own responsibility 
 to advance his troops. We who were with Hancock 
 could see this movement, and we looked with fore- 
 boding upon the gap that lay between the Third 
 Corps and our own. 
 
 Hood's division, on the extreme right of Long-
 
 DOROTHY DAY 267 
 
 street's corps, now began to circle around our left 
 near the base of Little Round Top and when, about 
 five o'clock, he attacked the Federal troops he at- 
 tempted to capture that important position. We 
 could see one attack made after another on that 
 rocky eminence, and the troops pressed to and fro 
 on both sides, until a heroic charge finally drove 
 the Confederates back into the valley. 
 
 In the meantime, the battle raged fiercely from 
 the Devil's Den westward to the peach orchard. 
 Our forces were repeatedly driven in; reinforce- 
 ments from the Fifth Corps were sent to Sickles' 
 support, but one after another they were repulsed. 
 The advance of the Confederates could not be 
 stayed until Crawford's division of that corps and 
 three brigades of Sedgwick's Sixth Corps arrived 
 upon tRe field. At the close of the fight the general 
 result was the Third Corps was forced back to the 
 low ridge which formed the Federal main line of 
 battle in the morning. Sickles lost a leg near the 
 beginning of the engagement, and Hood was 
 wounded in the arm. 
 
 The conflict in the Devil's Den, in a wheat field 
 north of it, and in all the broken and rocky country 
 west of Little Round Top, was of the most desultory 
 character, the men fighting singly or in small de- 
 tachments, climbing trees and firing from among 
 the branches, lying in ambush behind rocks and 
 trunks, stalking each other and picking off their an- 
 tagonists. "Death lurked behind every leaf and
 
 268 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 stone." The slaughter on our side was greater in 
 this part of the field than anywhere else upon this 
 famous battle ground. As I crossed Plum Run with 
 a message from Hancock to the troops beyond it, 
 I saw a gruesome sight. The brook had become 
 red with blood, yet a soldier was stooping over to 
 quench his thirst from the waters, while others were 
 filling their canteens. 
 
 It was some time after Hood's attack that the 
 other division of Longstreet's corps advanced from 
 Seminary Ridge and assailed Humphrey's division 
 of Sickles' corps on the Emmitsburg road. Hum- 
 phrey found himself attacked both in front and on 
 the left, and his troops were driven back with heavy 
 loss. Hancock, who, after Sickles was wounded, 
 had been placed in command of the Third Corps as 
 well as of his own, and who for the second time 
 undertook the task of rallying the Federal forces 
 when defeat seemed imminent, hurried forward 
 his own troops to the rescue. I was directed to 
 follow him and convey dispatches. I could see that 
 Humphreys' regiments were so shattered that they 
 could be recognized only by the standards which the 
 survivors were bringing from the fight. Hancock 
 stayed the fugitives and organized a new line of 
 defense. 
 
 But our main line on Cemetery Ridge itself was 
 now assailed by the Confederate brigades of Wil- 
 cox, Perry and Wright. Wilcox stopped close to 
 the crest; Perry was repulsed, but Wright actually
 
 DOROTHY DAY 269 
 
 broke the center of the Federal line, captured a 
 number of guns, reached the top of Cemetery Ridge 
 and, looking behind it, beheld a multitude of strag- 
 glers encumbering the Baltimore pike in their ef- 
 forts to escape. Encouraged by the sight, he fought 
 with desperation and held this vital position with 
 obstinate valor during ten long minutes of splendid 
 triumph. 
 
 Here was a crucial moment when Lee should 
 have hurled every available soldier into the breach. 
 Hill's corps saw the heroic feat and burned to rush 
 to the relief of their comrades, but no order to ad- 
 vance was given and the precious opportunity was 
 gone. I had been dispatched to bring other troops 
 to the rescue of the Federal line. These at last 
 arrived, Wright, unsupported and overwhelmed by 
 the masses of our soldiers, was compelled to retire, 
 and the guns he had taken were recaptured. Thus 
 Meade's main line on Cemetery Ridge again re- 
 mained intact. 
 
 But the battle had been disastrous enough to the 
 Federal arms. Sickles has been greatly blamed for 
 his advance movement, which nearly destroyed his 
 own corps and greatly injured the Second and Fifth 
 as well. There was, however, this compensation; 
 the advance line served as a breakwater, and may 
 have prevented Longstreet from holding perma- 
 nently any part of our main line. If Sickles had 
 kept his original position, and had been driven back 
 from that, the result might have been fatal.
 
 270 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 The attack of Longstreet's Corps upon our left 
 was only a part of the second day's battle. Lee had 
 directed Ewell to assail our right, as soon as he 
 heard the sound of Longstreet's guns, but Ewell 
 did not begin until two hours after the battle opened 
 not, indeed, until Longstreet's attack was almost 
 over. It was nearly sunset when Johnson's division 
 made an attack upon Gulp's Hill. Earlier in the 
 afternoon Meade, anxious to re-enforce Sickles, had 
 ordered the greater part of the troops in this neigh- 
 borhood to go to his support, and the intrenchments 
 on our extreme right, separated by a small ravine 
 from Gulp's Hill, were thus abandoned. 
 
 Johnson's attack upon the hill was repulsed; but 
 his men found the abandoned earthworks and took 
 possession of them about nine o'clock at night, then 
 advancing still further they came within a stone's 
 throw of the Baltimore Pike, one of our principal 
 lines of communication. On the other side of the 
 pike and close at hand, was our reserve ammunition. 
 Had Johnson known this he could have captured the 
 train and thrown our army into the utmost confu- 
 sion. But it was now late at night, and he could not 
 understand why the works he had just seized had 
 been abandoned. He feared that he was moving 
 into a trap, and directed his men to retire to the 
 abandoned works and wait for morning. 
 
 In addition to Johnson's attack upon our right, 
 another assault was made just after sunset by 
 Early's division of Ewell's corps on the east side of
 
 DOROTHY DAY 271 
 
 Cemetery Hill, close to the bend in the fish-hook as 
 it turned toward the point. Early had waited until 
 the firing and smoke of Johnson's attack announced 
 that a battle was in progress. He then ordered for- 
 ward from the town and the fields east of it two of 
 his own brigades. They marched in faultless order 
 up toward a gap between Gulp's Hill and the Ceme- 
 tery, where, however, they were soon exposed to a 
 destructive artillery fire, and their ranks were mowed 
 down by canister. One of these brigades was now 
 compelled to take shelter in the ravine. The other 
 was an organization composed of troops of great 
 ferocity, who had never failed in a charge and were 
 deemed invincible. Each man bore a long knife with 
 the inscription, "In peace, a lamb; in war, a tiger." 
 They were called the "Louisiana Tigers," and they 
 pressed on, forcing their way past a stone wall, leap- 
 ing over many of the men of the Eleventh Corps 
 who were defending it and driving the others up 
 the slope. Two of the Federal batteries on Ceme- 
 tery Hill were actually reached and one was cap- 
 tured. A hand to hand fight ensued around the guns, 
 where some of the Tigers were brained with hand- 
 spikes, stones, guidons whatever could be seized 
 for the purpose. For the redoubtable Hancock was 
 again on hand, and threw Carroll's brigade from 
 his own corps into the melee. The Confederates 
 were left without support, and were driven back with 
 great slaughter. 
 
 I had been sent with an order from Hancock to
 
 272 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 Carroll and directed to remain and bring back word 
 in case further troops were required. I arrived just 
 after the Tigers were driven off, and when the firing 
 slackened I followed their line of retreat a short 
 distance down the slope. The carnage around the 
 guns and along this line had been terrible. It was 
 already dark; the forms of the dying and the 
 wounded that lay around me had grown indistinct, 
 and their moaning as they writhed upon the ground 
 added to the horror of the scene. I was about to 
 return when a low moan close at my side startled 
 me. How well I knew the voice ! What is there in 
 a simple sound which distinguishes so clearly the 
 personality of him who utters it from all the rest 
 of the countless myriads of mankind? I could never 
 mistake that tone. It was Albert's. I leaped from 
 my horse and leaned over him. He was lying with 
 his face to the earth, but dark though it was, I could 
 see the waving brown hair I had so often admired, 
 and bending close to his ear I called his name. With 
 a shriek he half raised himself and turned, then fell 
 upon his back gazing at me in terror as if I were a 
 tormenting spirit from that world he was so soon to 
 enter. Some stretcher-bearers were already upon 
 the ground. I called two of them who were passing 
 and asked them to take him to the hospital, and I 
 accompanied them as they bore him back. The 
 poor fellow was too far gone to speak; the blood 
 trickled slowly from a wound in his breast. Every 
 few minutes he would look at me and shudder, until
 
 DOROTHY DAY 273 
 
 I took his hand and pressed it, then there was a faint 
 smile, but before we reached the crest of the hill, 
 with a long gasp, he expired. They laid him where 
 he died. I noted the place and after returning and 
 reporting to my corps commander, I stole away dur- 
 ing the night, scooped out a shallow grave, and cov- 
 ering the head of my old friend with his coat, I 
 gave him such temporary burial as I could and 
 marked the spot so that it might be found when the 
 opportunity should come for a more fitting sepulture. 
 Although on our side alone nearly twelve thou- 
 sand men had been killed or disabled during the fatal 
 day, the final struggle was still to come. We felt cer- 
 tain that Lee would renew the attack upon the mor- 
 row. Meade held a council of war at the small 
 house just behind Cemetery Ridge, which he had 
 made his headquarters. As I was in waiting upon 
 Hancock I was just outside the building, and I heard 
 something and learned more of what was said and 
 done. The commanders of each of the corps and a 
 few others, twelve in all, were assembled in a little 
 room about twelve feet square. The condition of 
 the troops was disheartening. The First and 
 Eleventh Corps were shattered by the first day's 
 battle; the Third Corps was "used up and not in 
 condition to fight." The effective strength of the 
 forces was reported as only fifty-eight thousand, 
 out of an army of more than ninety thousand men. 
 Yet everybody there was in favor of remaining and 
 accepting the gage of battle if it were offered again.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE THIRD DAY'S BATTLE 
 
 THERE was bright moonlight on the second of 
 July to illuminate the ghastly battlefield. When 
 morning broke on the third day it found in many 
 places the living and the dead sleeping in bivouac 
 together. At the points where the last attacks had 
 been made, on Gulp's Hill and the Cemetery, many 
 a soldier on awakening saw at his side the agonized 
 face and the torn limbs of one who would waken no 
 more. Some, indeed, had taken a corpse for a 
 pillow. The parched ground was soiled and stained 
 by the blood of the wounded and slain. The stench 
 from the carnage was beginning to impregnate the 
 air. Corpses of men and horses dotted the slopes 
 and the valley between the two lines of battle. Be- 
 yond, the Confederates swarmed upon the heights as 
 well as in the streets of the town. Back of Ceme- 
 tery Hill, along the Baltimore Pike, there was a 
 confused mass of army trains, while the Geneva 
 cross marked the hospitals where the surgeons were 
 at work on their terrible ministrations to the 
 wounded. Scarcely had the first gray light appeared, 
 when the sound and smoke of artillery upon the 
 Federal right at Gulp's Hill announced that the 
 desperate struggle was renewed.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 275 
 
 The Federal troops which had been called away 
 the day before to reinforce Sickles, and who, when 
 they returned at midnight, found that their works 
 had been occupied by Johnson's men, began their 
 attack for the recovery of these works in the gray 
 of the morning. This was the beginning of an ob- 
 stinate struggle in the woods and among the hills 
 and rocks which lasted for six hours. So hot and con- 
 stant was the fire that the trees afterwards died from 
 the effect of the bullets that pierced their trunks and 
 branches. Finally at eleven o'clock Johnson gave 
 up the contest, and the Federal line was left once 
 more intact. 
 
 From eleven to one o'clock silence reigned over 
 the two armies. Our troops cooked, ate and slum- 
 bered, while the Confederates were making ready 
 for the cannonade which was to precede the final 
 assault. I could not but admire the magnificent dis- 
 play of Confederate artillery just before the open- 
 ing of the great bombardment as I saw it from 
 Cemetery Ridge. Our whole front for nearly two 
 miles was covered by batteries stretching in an un- 
 broken line from near the Seminary to the Peach 
 Orchard, so that the whole of Seminary Ridge in 
 front of us seemed planted thick with cannon. Never 
 before had I witnessed such a sight. A hundred and 
 twenty guns were brought to bear upon our line. 
 Our army had more artillery than the Confederates, 
 but the ground available for its use on Cemetery 
 Ridge was so contracted, that not more than eighty
 
 276 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 pieces could be placed in position to return the fire. 
 Just before the artillery duel opened, I could hear 
 through the hot, quiet air, the birds singing merrily 
 in a little copse near by. But at one o'clock, in the 
 midst of their warbling, the signal gun was fired, a 
 cannonade was opened by every piece, and we heard 
 the birds no more. The crests of the two ridges be- 
 came two long lines of flame and smoke, while a 
 thick battle-cloud settled down upon the fields be- 
 tween. The firing of the Confederates was directed 
 mainly upon our own corps, which was posted on 
 Cemetery Ridge just south of the Cemetery. 
 
 The air was full of the missiles of destruction of 
 every form and size; screaming, moaning, whirling, 
 whistling, bursting, and the fragments raining to 
 the ground; not a second passed that we could not 
 hear them Sometimes they came a dozen at a time. 
 Often they penetrated the earth, exploding there 
 and sending up great masses of soil and stone. They 
 struck the trees and felled them headlong; struck 
 /he walls and hurled the stones over upon our troops 
 crouching behind them; struck the horses belonging 
 to the batteries as those dumb creatures stood help- 
 lessly tied up to await their death. I saw a caisson 
 driven by at full speed, with one of the horses gallop- 
 ing in a frenzy upon three legs, the other shot off at 
 the hock. The bodies of our men could be seen, some 
 without heads, some without arms; others torn be- 
 yond any semblance of humanity. So fierce was the 
 fire that soon a horde of camp followers and strag-
 
 DOROTHY DAY 277 
 
 glers was seen pouring down the Baltimore Pike and 
 scattering over the fields in the rear to escape. 
 Meade himself deemed it prudent to retire to 
 Power's Hill till the storm was over. 
 
 In this artillery duel the enemy would have 
 had a great advantage if his pieces had all been well 
 directed, not only because he had more guns in ac- 
 tion, but because our army was massed and concen- 
 trated, thus forming a good target, while his bat- 
 teries were stretched over a space of two miles. The 
 fire, however, should have been wholly directed to 
 the one point where the infantry attack was after- 
 wards to be made, but although it was hottest at 
 that point it was much scattered, and many of the 
 projectiles passed beyond our line and swept the 
 open ground in the rear. 
 
 At this time Hancock, our own Hancock, the 
 indomitable, "the superb," at the head of his staff 
 and with the pennon flying which bore the trefoil of 
 our Second Corps, rode slowly in front of his line, 
 and by his calm and splendid presence gave new 
 determination to the thousands who were crouching 
 on the ground under the pitiless hail. I followed 
 him with the others of his suite as he passed across 
 the field. At one point his black charger became 
 unmanageable and he was forced to dismount and 
 borrow the horse of an aide to complete his review. 
 
 How slowly our watches ran during this dreadful 
 cannonade, and while we were awaiting the charge 
 that was to follow ! Twenty minutes, forty minutes,
 
 27 8 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 an hour, an hour and a half, and still the fiery storm 
 continued. Our artillery tried to return it, but the tar- 
 get was poor; their batteries were extended over too 
 long a line. And now it was found that our ammuni- 
 tion was running low something must be reserved 
 for the final charge, so the guns ceased firing and 
 new batteries were brought forward in place of those 
 that had been crippled. Hancock, however, who 
 divined well where the assault was to be delivered, 
 directed the batteries of his own Second Corps to 
 continue firing to the last, for he would not suffer 
 his men to be "disheartened by the silence of their 
 own guns." 
 
 Pickett's division, forty-nine hundred strong, had 
 now come up and was in position in the woods just 
 behind Seminary Ridge, where the men were pro- 
 tected and invisible. Just north of them was ranged 
 a division under Pettigrew, five thousand strong, 
 but which had suffered severely in the first day's 
 battle. And back of these were two North Caro- 
 lina brigades under Trimble, composed of twenty- 
 five hundred men. Thus the number of troops for 
 the great charge on the third day of the battle was 
 little more than twelve thousand, although batteries 
 were to be pushed forward to protect their flanks, 
 while two brigades were to follow upon Pickett's 
 right, and two others upon the left of Pettigrew. 
 
 On Cemetery Ridge, overlooking the Emmits- 
 burg Pike, there was a stone wall which followed 
 pretty generally the line of the crest, but at one point,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 279 
 
 not far south of the Cemetery where a lower ridge 
 jutted out into the valley, this wall suddenly pro- 
 jected at a right angle toward the pike, then turn- 
 ing again it followed the crest of the main ridge. 
 On this projecting point was a clump of trees and 
 southwest of it, about a quarter of a mile away, the 
 farm house of Codori stood on a little knoll. The 
 charge was to be made past Codori's house, and the 
 central point of attack was this clump of trees. 
 
 Pickett had formed his three brigades in two lines. 
 Pettigrew's troops advanced on the left of Pickett 
 and a little to the rear with a second line behind. 
 The cannonade now slackened upon both sides. The 
 men who were to make the charge marched forward 
 from the woods, ragged and shabby, indeed, in their 
 worn, rough homespun and old slouch hats, but with 
 their battle flags flying and their bright guns gleam- 
 ing in the sun. They moved with an easy swinging 
 step, in quick time and with great precision. We could 
 not but admire them as they advanced against us, and 
 I could hear our men exclaim: "Here they come! 
 here comes the infantry! how well they march!" 
 Soon little puffs of smoke issued from the skirmish 
 line as it moved on in advance of the two main lines. 
 The Federal skirmishers out in the valley answered 
 with a faint rattle of musketry as they retired. Then 
 the Federal batteries opened and the advancing 
 troops were enfiladed by the guns on Little Round 
 Top, some distance south, which killed and wounded 
 many at a single discharge. But the ranks closed
 
 2 8o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 up without a pause. The clump of trees which gave 
 direction to the attack was far to the left of Pickett's 
 troops, and when they reached the Emmitsburg turn- 
 pike, they wheeled a little to the north and moved 
 up past Codori's house. This gave them the appear- 
 ance of drifting, and some of us thought for a mo- 
 ment that the purpose of it was to keep away as far as 
 possible from the artillery fire on their right. But 
 we were mistaken, for in a few minutes they half 
 wheeled again, and resuming their former direction 
 pushed straight forward toward the clump of trees. 
 Pickett's left was in front of the projecting wall, 
 his right stretched to the south of it, while Petti- 
 grew joined him on the north, one brigade in front 
 of the clump of trees and the remainder in front 
 of the retired wall sixty yards further back, while 
 four of his regiments, which had become separated 
 from the rest, were still further north. The 
 Emmitsburg road ran diagonally over the ground 
 where these troops charged. Pickett's division had 
 already crossed this road, while most of the men 
 under Pettigrew and Trimble had yet to pass it. 
 Many were killed and wounded crossing the fences 
 and walls, and others sought protection from the 
 terrible fire by lying on the ground. In front of 
 both of the Confederate divisions was our own 
 Second Corps under Hancock. To the south of us 
 was Stannard's Vermont brigade, belonging to the 
 First Corps in another copse of trees, a little in 
 advance of our main line. Behind the Federal
 
 DOROTHY DAY 281 
 
 infantry was the artillery. The men on the first 
 line of this great charge of Pickett's division pushed 
 on until they were within about twenty paces of the 
 projecting wall, when they recoiled for a moment 
 under the terrible fire; then other troops, a little 
 further back, closed in from the right, the second 
 line came up on the rear, and all pressed forward 
 together. The leaders fell but the men pushed on 
 to the stone wall, leaped over it and over the sol- 
 diers who were lying behind it and broke clear 
 through the Federal line. There was now a hand- 
 to-hand conflict and men were firing in all directions. 
 Armistead, who had led the second line, put his hat 
 upon his sword and springing forward, cried: "Give 
 them the cold steel, boys!" but soon fell mortally 
 wounded. Excepting Pickett himself, only one out 
 of fifteen field officers in his entire division remained 
 uninjured. 
 
 The cannonade had destroyed our batteries back 
 of the projecting wall, leaving only one piece that 
 could be worked, and Lieutenant Gushing, who had 
 been fighting more than an hour and a half after he 
 had been wounded in both thighs, and who had run 
 this one remaining gun down near the wall, and 
 was now struck again, this time mortally, cried: "I 
 will give them one shot more," then with a last 
 "Good-bye," he fell dead as it was delivered. 
 
 The men who had crossed the wall and carried the 
 Confederate flags through the Union line, fought 
 with desperation. But other Federal troops closed
 
 282 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 in on every side in thick masses, swarmed around 
 their assailants and fought them with bayonets, 
 clubbed muskets, banner staves and whatever else 
 could be seized and utilized. At last many of the 
 Confederates, completely surrounded, threw down 
 their arms, thousands of prisoners and a "harvest 
 of battle flags" were taken, while the rest fled as 
 best they could. Fearful slaughter was visited upon 
 the fragments that sought to escape. There are 
 those who say they could have walked from the 
 stone wall to the Emmitsburg road on the dead 
 bodies of Pickett's men without touching the ground. 
 Six hundred were buried there in one little field. 
 
 While Pickett was advancing, Stannard's Ver- 
 mont brigade, down on our left and in advance of 
 the main line, had wheeled to the right and taken 
 Pickett's troops upon the flank and rear, inflicting 
 great damage and taking many prisoners. 
 
 It was here that the gallant Hancock fell. He 
 had seen, with a soldier's eye, this point of vantage. 
 He had galloped thither, calling as he went on one 
 of his generals to advance his troops against the 
 head of the assaulting column, and now he came to 
 order the Vermont men to charge and envelop the 
 enemy on the rear. They had already begun to 
 make the movement. The fire was so furious that 
 no mounted man could live in it. Hardly had Han- 
 cock come to Stannard's side when he was struck in 
 the groin and fell from his saddle. He lay upon 
 his elbow, with bleeding wound, watching the fight.
 
 DOROTHY DAY 283 
 
 Clasping the hand of Colonel Veazey, whose regi- 
 ment was passing, he cried: "Go in, Colonel, and 
 give it to them on the flank!" With a long hurrah, 
 they rushed forward with their bayonets and it was 
 but a few moments till a mighty shout from the 
 Union line announced that the great charge had 
 been repulsed. 
 
 Hancock's wound was a ghastly one, like the stab 
 of a butcher's knife, but it was not until the battle 
 was over that he resigned himself to a surgeon, and 
 shortly afterward he dictated this despatch to 
 Meade: "I have never seen a more formidable at- 
 tack. If the Sixth and Fifth Corps have pressed up 
 the enemy will be destroyed. The enemy must be 
 short of ammunition, as I was shot with a ten- 
 penny nail. . . . Not a rebel was in sight upright 
 when I left." 
 
 Pettigrew's troops which composed the left or 
 northern wing of the great charging line had been 
 subjected as they advanced to a heavy artillery fire 
 in front from batteries that fired first solid shot, 
 then canister. As the attacking line came up the 
 slope, closing in as if against a blinding storm, the 
 batteries opened still more rapidly, and then our 
 infantry poured into the ranks a sheet of leaden hail, 
 mowing them down as grass by a scythe. Their 
 graceful lines were enveloped in a cloud of smoke 
 and dust; "arms, heads, blankets, guns and knap- 
 sacks were tossed into the air. Their track was 
 strewn with dead and wounded; a moan went up
 
 284 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 from the field, distinctly heard amid the storm of 
 battle." 
 
 For a moment they staggered under the murder- 
 ous fire, then they returned it and dashed on with a 
 wild yell, surging forward beyond the projecting 
 wall and the clump of trees, till they reached the 
 retired wall some sixty yards further on, and planted 
 their flags upon the breastworks. The whole Con- 
 federate front, which had been more than a mile 
 long, was now compressed into a space of eight 
 hundred yards. But as the two lines came close to- 
 gether a brigade on the extreme left gave away 
 under the terrible fire. The men could not be rallied, 
 but broke and fled. A withering sheet of missiles 
 swept after them and they were torn and tossed and 
 prostrated while they ran. And now a column of 
 our infantry enfiladed them and a second Confed- 
 erate line moved forward to face this new danger 
 while the troops in front were sinking into the earth 
 under the tempest of fire. They took the positions 
 of the men who had fled or fallen. Finally, when 
 they had reached our last line they saw Pickett's 
 troops defeated and driven away. Then they were 
 ordered back and at last retreated in confusion. 
 
 While Hancock was conducting his review dur- 
 ing the cannonade, I was directed to remain behind 
 near the retired wall and my orders were to report 
 to him the events which occurred at the north end 
 of his line. Thus it was that I was an eye witness 
 of the great charge, of the repulse of Pickett and
 
 DOROTHY DAY 285 
 
 the retreat of Pettigrew. I now hastened south- 
 ward to report to Hancock, but before I reached the 
 place where I expected to find him, I was astonished 
 to see that Stannard's brigade, which projected out 
 in front of our line and had attacked Pickett's men 
 from the south, had now turned to the right about 
 and was facing southward to confront a new danger. 
 For while Pickett was in the midst of his struggle, 
 two other Confederate brigades had been sent for- 
 ward to support his right flank. One of these did 
 not follow Pickett's movement to the left toward 
 the clump of trees, but confused by the smoke, kept 
 straight ahead, so that there was an interval between 
 the point where Pickett struck our line and the point 
 where the brigade would have reached it had it been 
 able to proceed so far. Stannard's troops were be- 
 tween these two points and Pickett having been 
 driven back, Stannard had now turned his men the 
 other way to face this new advancing column, while 
 the guns from Little Round Top rained destruction 
 on the other side. There was incessant firing going 
 on when I arrived. I asked where Hancock was. 
 I was told he had been wounded, and I had just 
 reached the place where he lay bleeding when I felt 
 a sudden sharp pain in the head and fell from my 
 horse upon the ground, immediately losing con- 
 sciousness.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DOROTHY 
 
 I COULD not, of course, know how long I remained 
 oblivious to all around me, and when consciousness 
 returned it was hard to say how much was of actual 
 present fact; how much was memory; how much 
 delirium. The wild scenes I had beheld came one 
 after another before me. The attack upon Sickles' 
 corps; the drinking of the blood in the waters of 
 Plum Run; Albert's terrible eyes when they first 
 met mine; the artillery duel; Pickett's great charge 
 on the following day and the field that lay covered 
 with Confederate dead these things gradually and 
 mysteriously transferred themselves into a huge 
 hospital tent, where in some strange fashion the 
 form of Dorothy seemed to be flitting to and fro 
 and stopping at the side of my couch where she ap- 
 peared to be watching long and earnestly. Though 
 I knew this must be an hallucination, still I was com- 
 forted even by her imaginary presence. 
 
 Gradually my mind became clearer. As the door 
 of the tent fluttered open, I could see, as I thought, 
 trains of ambulances passing on a road close at hand, 
 and wounded men hobbling by on new-made crutches 
 in long files, going somewhere I could not tell 
 where. I knew that we must have won the battle,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 287 
 
 for I could see our flag on a flagstaff outside the 
 door of the tent. Then there were squads of men 
 in gray who passed by under guard, with picks and 
 spades and stretchers that were laden with heavy, 
 inanimate loads, and I thought these must be Con- 
 federate prisoners going to bury their dead. 
 
 Sisters of Charity were moving up and down 
 through the rows of cots in the great tent. How 
 good they are, I thought, these Sisters, and how our 
 prejudices against the Roman Church ought to be 
 silent as we think of their self-sacrificing ministra- 
 tions ! 
 
 But Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy could it be she 
 I had seen? What was all the rest by the side of 
 that if it were only true ! Ah, no, that was a dream ! 
 And again I sank into unconscious slumber. I was 
 once more awakened; this time in unbearable tor- 
 ment. In spite of myself a great groan escaped me. 
 Suddenly I saw rising from the ground at the foot 
 of my cot what must be, as it seemed to me, a spirit. 
 The face and form were Dorothy's, but she was in 
 the garb of a nurse; her checks were very white, 
 and there were dark rings around her eyes. She 
 came to me and did not speak, but leaning over the 
 cot she kissed me on the forehead, just by the side of 
 the bandage that some one must have bound around 
 my head. 
 
 "Dorothy, is it you," I asked. "How did you 
 come?" 
 
 "Hush! not a word," she answered, but leaned
 
 288 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 over me and smiled. Ah, that smile 1 I had heard 
 her mocking laughter many a time, but I had never 
 seen on her face a smile like that. All the love in 
 the eyes of the Madonnas could not make up its 
 sum. I knew all now. She had been with me nights 
 and days how many I could not tell, and lying at 
 the foot of the cot had watched my slow coming back 
 to life, and now, fallen asleep through utter weari- 
 ness, she had arisen at the sound of my voice, and 
 at last she was now mine, irrevocably, whether I 
 should live or die. But from that moment there was 
 little doubt which I should do. So strong was the 
 call to life that had the wound been mortal to many 
 another, I had in me the will and power to over- 
 come it. 
 
 Day by day she sat by me and watched over me 
 while I grew stronger, though it was still some time 
 before she would tell me how she had come to join 
 the corps of devoted women who were first upon 
 the battle ground on the day succeeding our final 
 struggle; how she had found me unconscious in the 
 field hospital, where I lay wounded. 
 
 Gradually I learned what had happened since I 
 parted from her when I enlisted. The night I left 
 her she had gone to her room and had fallen into 
 a swoon. Ethel had come in upon her just as she 
 was recovering consciousness. Dorothy had ex- 
 acted a promise of secrecy, and her parents sus- 
 pected as little as I did myself how deeply her heart 
 was engaged. They would have restrained her from
 
 DOROTHY DAY 289 
 
 what seemed her mad desire to become a nurse 
 in the field hospitals, but her determination was 
 fixed and it was quite vain to put any obstacle in 
 her pathway. She had engaged in the work with 
 absolute devotion, steeling herself to witness the 
 horrors of these dreadful scenes which I could not 
 myself endure, and at the same time keeping herself 
 constantly informed of the movements of the regi- 
 ment to which I was attached. It was she who had 
 sent me the newspaper clipping praising our conduct 
 in our first battle. And now she had found me and 
 there she was at my side. 
 
 There was no moment of suffering after I saw her 
 face and heard her voice that was not a thousand- 
 fold compensated by her presence. Those hours of 
 painful convalescence were infinitely more precious 
 than any moments of careless pleasure I had ever 
 known, and I was proud to feel, even though I had 
 deserved it ever so little, that she should believe 
 of me as she did believe with her whole heart, that 
 I had done my duty as a soldier. 
 
 As soon as I could clearly describe it, I told her 
 of my meeting with Albert and gave her as minutely 
 as possible a description of the place where I had 
 made for him a shallow grave. 
 
 "We must keep it from Ethel," she said. "She 
 could not bear it." 
 
 But it was not long after this that she left me 
 for two days, saying that she was called away for a
 
 2 9 o DOROTHY DAY 
 
 little while, though she did not tell me until her 
 return where she was going. Albert's body was 
 found and sent to a vault in Philadelphia, where it 
 lay until after the war. Then I went with it to 
 New Orleans, where it was buried in the cemetery 
 where most of the Confederate soldiers were in- 
 terred, and under a monument whose epitaph recited 
 the soldierly virtues that were the best elements in 
 Albert's character. His mother, who had followed 
 him South at the outbreak of the war, was no longer 
 living. A number of his surviving comrades were 
 present at the interment, but Ethel never knew until 
 all was over then I told her. She said nothing, 
 but came to me and kissed me, then suddenly left 
 the room. She was ill for some time afterwards, 
 but from this blow, too, she at last recovered. 
 
 But I am ahead of my story. My wound had 
 produced a serious congestion of the brain, and on 
 several occasions there was a recurrence of uncon- 
 sciousness and delirium. My convalescence was 
 very slow and the weakness that followed it made it 
 impossible for me to continue in the army. I there- 
 fore resigned from the service, but with the deter- 
 mination to re-enter it if I should again become 
 strong enough for active duty. 
 
 There was now no impediment to the object which 
 was dearer to me than life, and my engagement to 
 Dorothy was soon known to all our friends. 
 
 Owing to my slow recovery our marriage was
 
 DOROTHY DAY 291 
 
 long delayed; delayed indeed until after the war 
 was over. If I had been earlier restored to health, 
 we wouJd have become husband and wife, and I 
 would again have re-entered the service. Dorothy 
 had agreed to that.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 FOR the sake of history I must retrace the steps 
 of my narrative and relate what happened in the 
 concluding hours of the battle. 
 
 Lee, who had watched Pickett's charge, had a 
 moment of supreme exultation when he saw the 
 colors of Virginia waving on the crest of Ceme- 
 tery Ridge, but his joy lasted only an instant, for 
 next he saw his battle flags dropping to the ground 
 and the remnants of his best troops flowing back 
 toward him like a broken wave. His face showed 
 no signs of disappointment and he addressed to 
 every soldier he met words of encouragement. 
 
 As soon as it was clear that Pickett's charge had 
 failed, the Confederate guns ceased firing in order 
 to save ammunition if Meade should advance. The 
 men held their ground as boldly as possible, though 
 without support. The Federal guns gave them an 
 occasional shot for a while and then let them rest. 
 
 It was anticipated that Meade would make a 
 counter charge after Pickett was overthrown. There 
 has been a great deal of dispute whether this should 
 have been done. The indomitable Hancock wanted 
 the charge made. "There were," he said after- 
 wards, "only two divisions of the enemy on our
 
 DOROTHY DAY 293 
 
 extreme left opposite Round Top. There was a 
 gap of a mile that their assault had left, and I be- 
 lieve if our whole line had advanced with spirit it is 
 not unlikely we would have taken all their artillery." 
 It will seem to most of those who can now review 
 the battle in the calm of peace, that Meade ought to 
 have moved up the Fifth and Sixth Corps (the lat- 
 ter had not yet been engaged) as soon as the troops 
 of Pickett and Petttigrew were seen emerging from 
 the woodland, and that when the Confederates were 
 defeated, a counter charge ought to have been made 
 and that if made immediately, as Hancock inti- 
 mated, a crushing blow would have been delivered 
 that might have well-nigh destroyed the army of 
 Lee. But these two corps were at some distance 
 from the point where the charge was made, the 
 Union losses had been heavy, the confusion around 
 the clump of trees was verv great, and some time 
 would have been required to place these troops in 
 position to return the attack at the ooint where the 
 gap in the Confederate line was filled onlv by the 
 disorganized remnants that had escaped the fatal 
 charge. Moreover, the success of this counter at- 
 tack depended largely upon a fact which Meade 
 could not have known, and that was that the ammuni- 
 tion of manv of the Confederate batteries was ex- 
 hausted. Meade did not quite comprehend the 
 greatness of his victory. In his dispatch to Hal- 
 leek he spoke of it as a "handsome repulse." So 
 desperate had been the contest, and so intense had
 
 294 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 been the strain for the last three days, that there 
 was not left enough of energetic impulse to press 
 the charge. After the first favorable moment the 
 opportunity was gone and those who upbraided 
 Meade for the subsequent laxity of his pursuit of 
 Lee back to Virginia were ill advised. We would 
 probably have been defeated had we attacked Lee's 
 army in a position which Lee had chosen. For to 
 the unspeakable honor of the Confederate soldiers it 
 must be said that the morale of the troops had not 
 been broken. They attributed their defeat entirely 
 to the disadvantage of their position. On the fol- 
 lowing day, the fourth of July (the day that Vicks- 
 burg surrendered), Lee had concentrated all his 
 forces on Seminary Ridge and an assault would have 
 been more than hazardous. On this day Lee sent for- 
 ward his long trains of wounded, and the rain, 
 which began shortly after noon, grew to a storm 
 and fell in blinding sheets. The meadows were 
 overflowed, the fences gave way before the raging 
 streams, while the deafening roar of the elements 
 made it impossible to give orders. The wounded 
 suffered horribly as they were jolted on their rough 
 wagon beds over the mountain roads. On the fol- 
 lowing morning the whole bodv of the Confederate 
 army was on its way back to Virginia. 
 
 The losses on each side, in killed, wounded and 
 prisoners were nealy equal, and together they formed 
 the enormous total of forty-six thousand men. The 
 Union losses were slightly the heavier as the result
 
 DOROTHY DAY 295 
 
 of the disastrous conflicts of the first and second 
 days. 
 
 But Lee had been defeated; no serious invasion 
 of the North was ever possible thereafter, and it 
 became a mere question of time how long the Con- 
 federates could hold out against the overwhelming 
 resources of the nation. Their heroic resistance dur- 
 ing the two final years of the war was something 
 superb. The "last ditch" into which they were con- 
 stantly represented as retreating, seemed as illusory 
 as a will-o'-the-wisp, and when the fatal blow was 
 delivered at Five Forks and the surrender followed 
 at Appomattox the event for which the North had 
 waited for four years the long struggle cast quite 
 as much credit over the military conduct of the van- 
 quished as it did over that of the victors. 
 
 We were not as magnanimous after the war as 
 we ought to have been to those who had fought their 
 losing fight with such courage, determination an' 1 
 humanity. But late though it came, the entire nation 
 now pays its tribute to the splendid personal qualities 
 of the men in gray quite as much as to those of the 
 men in blue. 
 
 And yet history will never raise a doubt as to the 
 right and wrong of the case. Not the legal right 
 and wrong, not the constitutional question whether 
 secession could be justified by the terms of the 
 written instrument. Much may be said pro and con 
 upon this point. The greater question, however, 
 was very simple, and it was stated with a simplicity
 
 296 DOROTHY DAY 
 
 that rose to the sublime, by the leader who had 
 borne the chief burden of the struggle. 
 
 When the Soldiers' Cemetery was to be dedicated 
 at Gettysburg, I was sufficiently restored to health 
 to go with Dorothy and witness the ceremony. We 
 had seats close to the speakers' stand. The speech 
 of Edward Everett was to be the feature of the 
 occasion. Lincoln was there, but he was only to 
 say a few words at the end. Yet, when these few 
 words were spoken, it was clear that nothing else 
 that human lips might utter could ever add to the 
 solemn impressiveness of his sentences. He said: 
 
 "Fourscore and seven years ago our forefathers 
 brought forth on this continent a new nation, con- 
 ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition 
 that all men are created equal. Now we are en- 
 gaged in a great civil war, testing whether that 
 nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, 
 can long endure. We are met on a great battle- 
 field of that war. We have come to dedicate a por- 
 tion of that field, as a final resting-place for those 
 who here gave their lives that that nation might live. 
 It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do 
 this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate 
 we cannot consecrate we cannot hallow this 
 ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
 struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our 
 poor power to add or detract. The world will little 
 note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it 
 can never forget what they did here. It is for us,
 
 DOROTHY DAY 297 
 
 the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfin- 
 ished work which they who fought here have thus 
 far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be 
 here dedicated to the great task remaining before us 
 that from these honored dead we take increased 
 devotion to that cause for which they gave the last 
 full measure of devotion that we here hightly re- 
 solve that these dead shall not have died in vain 
 that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth 
 of freedom and that Government of the people, 
 by the people, for the people, shall not perish from 
 the earth." 
 
 It was under the influence of these solemn words 
 that we consecrated anew, Dorothy and I, our lives 
 to the service of our country. And in the years that 
 have followed there has been work to do hardly less 
 important than that performed during that desper- 
 ate battle. In overcoming the forces of public 
 plunder and corruption; in resisting the oppressions 
 of organized capital and its insiduous assaults upon 
 society, we have borne a part which has been modest 
 enough, but perhaps not wholly ineffectual, and we 
 can truthfully say that, apart from the rearing of our 
 own household, the supreme purpose of our lives 
 has been the maintenance of the purity and honor of 
 that great nation which was re-established by the 
 blood of those who perished at Gettysburg and on 
 the other battlefields of the Civil War. 
 
 THE END.
 
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